Company Ignores Pleas, Airs Super Bowl Ad Featuring Abusively Trained Baby Chimpanzees
For Immediate Release:
February 8, 2011
Contact:
David Perle 757-622-7382
Chicago -- At this moment, four PETA supporters, wearing chimpanzee masks and holding protest signs, have begun a sit-in in the lobby of CareerBuilder's Chicago headquarters on La Salle Street. The protest follows CareerBuilder's airing of an ad featuring chimpanzees during the Super Bowl despite hearing from thousands of concerned consumers about the abuses suffered by great apes used as "actors" after the company aired ads featuring chimpanzees in 2005 and 2006. PETA's "chimpanzees" have altered CareerBuilder's logo to read "CareerBuilder.com Abuses Chimpanzees."
When: Now, Tuesday, February 8
Where: Inside the lobby of CareerBuilder headquarters, 200 N. La Salle St., Ste. 1100, Chicago
"Every decent person who learns about the abuses suffered by baby chimpanzees who are used in commercials is outraged," says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. "CareerBuilder has been told—a thousand times over—that these infants are beaten into performing."
As revealed in PETA's exposé hosted by Anjelica Huston, young chimpanzees used in movies, TV, and ads are traumatically taken away from their mothers, and common training methods include beatings, the use of electric shock collars, and other cruel techniques that instill fear in the animals. A primatologist who spent 14 months working at a California facility that trained great apes for the TV and movie industries observed that trainers kick, punch, and beat baby chimpanzees in order to make them obedient. By age 8, chimpanzees become too strong for trainers to control and often end up in squalid roadside zoos.