Video: PETA Protesters Disrupt ITV’s Annual Meeting Over ‘I’m A Celeb’ Cruelty
2 May 2024
Video: PETA Protesters Disrupt ITV’s Annual Meeting Over ‘I’m A Celeb’ Cruelty
London – Today, PETA supporters dressed as frogs descended on ITV’s annual meeting, calling on the broadcast network to stop allowing animal abuse on I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here! Displaying a sign proclaiming, “ITV: It’s Cruelty to Animals … Get It out of I’m a Celeb!” the protesters informed board members and shareholders that using frogs, insects, ostriches, crocodiles, rats, and other animals in tacky stunts is cruelty, not entertainment, and must end. Video footage of the action is available here.
“Over the past 23 seasons that I’m a Celebrity has been running, thousands of animals have suffered and died on the show,” says PETA Senior Campaigns Manager Kate Werner. “PETA is calling on ITV to end the use of animals for the show’s cruel, moronic stunts and urges it to finally send the message to viewers that animal abuse is not acceptable or entertaining.”
For over two decades, the show has used numerous live animals – Including snakes, rats, spiders, and thousands of insects – in stunts, prompting over 10,000 people to log complaints with Ofcom over the programme’s mistreatment of animals. In addition, producers also create challenges in which celebrities are encouraged to eat animals’ genitals, organs, and other body parts. In 2022, PETA sent a letter to presenters Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly, calling on them to end their complicity in the show’s animal abuse and step down from their roles. Last year, PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk bequeathed her rump to the show’s producers in a bid to get them to use the body parts of willing individuals in future challenges.
PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment or abuse in any other way” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow the group on Facebook, X, TikTok, or Instagram.
Contact:
Jennifer White +44 (0) 20 7837 6327; [email protected]
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