UK Greetings Bans ‘Grinning Chimpanzee’ Cards Following Push From PETA

London – After hearing from PETA, UK Greetings – Britain’s market-leading direct-to-retail publisher and manufacturer of greeting cards – has confirmed it has stopped producing products featuring unnatural and degrading images of chimpanzees that are known to hinder conservation efforts.

PETA notes that clownish images of chimpanzees dressed in costumes – often infants who have been taken from their mothers – frequently display a fear grimace, which the public is fooled into mistaking for a grin. Studies confirm these images impede conservation efforts by leading consumers to believe that the species is thriving rather than endangered and may drive the black-market demand for the animals as “pets” – one of the main threats to wild populations.

“UK Greetings’ decision to stop making cards featuring images of captive great apes in unnatural situations acknowledges that such portrayals hold power, and for chimpanzees threatened with extinction, it can be a matter of life or death,” says PETA Vice President of Corporate Projects Yvonne Taylor. “PETA is celebrating this victory for chimpanzees, and we hope other card manufacturers follow the company’s compassionate lead.”

UK Greetings – part of American Greetings, which banned chimpanzee images in 2022 after a PETA US campaign – joins other leading card companies, including Hallmark and Moonpig, and stock-image agencies, such as Shutterstock, in banning the harmful depictions.

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

Contact:

Sascha Camilli +44 (0) 20 7923 6244; [email protected]

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