PETA to Ant and Dec: Stop Being ‘Misery Ambassadors’ for Orca Abuse–Promoting TUI

PETA to Ant and Dec: Stop Being ‘Misery Ambassadors’ for Orca Abuse–Promoting TUI

London – As autumn officially starts this Sunday (22 September), PETA is looking ahead to next year’s summer holidays by firing off a letter to TV personalities Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly asking them to call time on their positions as “happiness ambassadors” for travel company TUI and end their affiliation with the marine abusement park–promoting business.

PETA points out that in the wild, orcas and other dolphins swim dozens of miles a day but at marine parks – including SeaWorld, to which TUI sells tickets – they’re imprisoned for life. They are held in tanks of chemically treated water and have no opportunity to choose their own friends or mate, work in pods to find food, or dive deep through the ocean currents. Instead, they swim in endless circles, float listlessly, and gnaw on the metal bars of their concrete tanks as a result of stress – sometimes until their teeth break. More than 40 orcas and over 500 other dolphins and whales have died at SeaWorld, many prematurely.

“Ant and Dec choose to be entertainers, but highly intelligent dolphins and whales are forced to perform tricks at marine parks, where they’re denied everything that’s natural and important to them,” says PETA Senior Campaigns Manager Kate Werner. “PETA is calling on Ant and Dec to stop being ‘misery ambassadors’ and drop their partnership with TUI until the company ends its promotion of abusement parks.”

Many other travel companies – including Jet2holidays, Expedia, Tripadvisor, Thomas Cook, Virgin Atlantic Holidays, Club Med, Airbnb, and Booking.com – have already stopped selling tickets to marine parks. TUI is the last major travel provider to profit from animal suffering by promoting these exploitative facilities.

PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information about PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow the group on Facebook, X, TikTok, or Instagram.

Contact:

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

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