PUBLISHED TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2001
Animal rights group scraps `revenge` ad Amie K. Streater @PensacolaNewsJournal.com
An animal rights group announced Monday it's abandoning an advertising campaign planned for Pensacola after a shark attack killed a 10-year-old Virginia boy.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals was trying to buy billboard space in downtown Pensacola for a sign they wanted displayed next week.
The sign would have read, "Would you give your right arm to know why sharks attack? Could it be revenge? PETA GoVeg.com."
On Sunday, David Peltier of Richmond, Va., died after a Saturday evening shark attack at Virginia Beach.
"It happened just minutes away from our headquarters," said Dan Shannon, fishing campaign coordinator for Norfolk-based PETA. "We're just not comfortable with this billboard anymore."
Shannon said PETA had been negotiating with an outdoor advertising company that had recently rejected the ad, he said.
On July 6, a 7-foot bull shark bit off the right arm of 8-year-old Jessie Arbogast at Gulf Islands National Seashore. It also bit off about a third of the muscle in Jessie's right thigh.
Doctors were able to reattach his arm, but the Mississippi boy remains in a coma.
"I think it's very inappropriate and it is insensitive to Jessie and his family and not in keeping with the community's concern for Jessie," Monte Blews, general manager of the Santa Rosa Island Authority, said of the proposed billboard. "I'm glad they pulled it."
Shannon said the group is trying to convey the message that "humans are much more of a danger to sharks than sharks are to us."
The organization's Web site states that mankind, "has a meat addiction that kills more than 50 million sharks and billions of other sea animals annually, in contrast to the 10 people killed worldwide by sharks last year.
can't plant vegetables, bake bread, or cruise the supermarkets," the group's site stated.
The group acknowledged in a news release Monday that, "right now people would just shoot the messenger without hearing the message."
To go to original site, (Good insight to how Peta feels about you)