Photos: PETA Launches Virtual Reality Experience in Bristol

Photos: PETA Launches Virtual Reality Experience in Bristol

Bristol – Today, to encourage empathy for the millions of animals who face being mutilated, poisoned, psychologically tortured, and killed in UK laboratories, PETA visited Bristol to launch Abduction – a unique virtual reality experience touring many of the UK’s largest cities.

Modelled on experiments inflicted on animals, such as tests carried out at the University of Bristol, this unique VR experience puts participants in the position of someone who has been abducted by extraterrestrials and awakens in a laboratory. They watch their friends being used as test subjects in experiments – knowing that they will be next.

Images from the event are available here.

“Many people aren’t aware that frightened and confused animals are still being tormented, mutilated, and killed in cold, barren laboratories, with no way to escape or even understand what’s happening to them,” says PETA Senior Campaigns Manager Kate Werner. “PETA is on a mission to open the public’s eyes to this cruelty, help them understand what it feels like, and motivate them to join our call for a switch to superior, non-animal research.”

Following the experience, PETA supporters provided a debrief on the University of Bristol’s ongoing use of the forced swim test, a cruel and pointless experiment that pushes terrified rats and mice to the point of near drowning. The public were encouraged to sign the petition asking the school to end the horrific test.

PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow the group on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

Contact:

Lucy Watson +44 (0) 20 7837 6327; [email protected]