Stop live farmed animals being exploited at the Olympic opening ceremony
Viva! is one of the signatories of a joint letter from leading animal groups to the Olympic committee asking them not to use real farmed animals during the opening ceremony. Read it here. The letter’s co-signatories are: Animal Aid, Animal Defenders International, Captive Animals Protection Society, CIWF and PETA.
Unbelievably, live farmed animals – including sheep, ducks and chickens – are to be used as part of the Olympic opening ceremony in London at the end of July.
Not only will it be exploitative and potentially cruel, it will also perpetuate the myth of small scale farming when the reality is that most farmed animals are now intensively reared in Britain.
Please politely contact London 2012 and ask them to abandon plans to use live animals at the ceremony.
Use our email below as a basis for your message – or even better write your own.
“Dear London 2012
I am really looking forward to the Olympics this summer, but I was horrified to read that live farmed animals will be used during the opening ceremony.
I can’t believe that anyone could think it was a good idea to subject farmed animals to the pandemonium of an Olympic opening ceremony! It smacks of the Roman gladiatorial arena. Many of those animals, especially sheep (which are particularly susceptible to stress), are likely to be terrified.
Quite apart from the serious welfare concerns of using farmed animals as little more than living props, it is also perpetuating a myth of a British countryside that doesn’t exist anymore. The stark reality is that most animals raised for meat and dairy in Britain are increasingly intensively farmed. Almost all broiler chickens, ducks and most pigs are kept indoors in factory farms in their thousands. This vision of the British countryside is about as believable as the set of Teletubbies.
Please make London 2012 something we can all be proud of and abandon plans to use live farmed animals at the opening ceremony.
Yours faithfully”
Sign the petition against the use of live animals at the Olympics.
|
Campaigns 
