Pet food company, Whiskas, has recently launched a new
advert to highlight their partnership with the WWF in order to raise awareness
and funds for tiger conservation. Whilst I have my reservations about some of
the work of WWF (mainly because of this sort of thing) and Whiskas (mainly because of the
wider work of its parent company, Mars),
the principle behind the advert makes a lot of sense; using people’s love of
domestic cats to support the conservation of one of the most critically endangered
animals in the world.
The tiger cubs featured in the newest advert were filmed at
their home in a French zoo. Again, the very fact that these cubs are in a zoo
sits uncomfortably with me. But if they were filmed doing what comes naturally
to them, if they were not interfered with and if they were not trained or otherwise manipulated to get
the footage, then the ad itself has not necessarily made their sorry
situation any worse than it already is. Indeed, the WWF is not opposed to captivity in principle and so
filming in a zoo was presumably deemed acceptable. Even so, the charity does
realise that “having captive
populations of animals does not solve underlying problems of habitat
destruction, which are often one of the key causes of the species’ decline”
so, even by their own standards, the use of captive tiger cubs to promote in situ tiger conservation was perhaps not
the most fitting of choices. Having said this, I risk going way off track here,
so will leave the rights and wrongs of filming in a zoo for now as the purpose
of this post isn’t about captivity per se.
No, what bothered me about this new initiative relates to
another ad released by Whiskas in the last few months. The production in
question depicted a leopard padding around an urban garden and then
transforming into a domestic cat as he passes through a cat flap. The idea
behind both the leopard and tiger adverts appears to be to show that big cats and
little cats have lots in common. The focus of the leopard advert is
specifically on the natural behaviour of cats, stating that “small cats share
the same instincts as big cats” before going on to claim that the Whiskas brand
of pet food “gives your cat everything they naturally need”. The recognition
that animals have natural needs and instincts forms the foundation of the production.
With this in mind, it was disappointing to learn that Whiskas
chose to use a performing animal business, Hollywood Animals, to provide the leopard
in the first production. Ironically, this advert which appears to be
celebrating all that is natural about felines has used a captive animal which
has had all opportunity to live a natural life taken away.
It has been recognised that the use of wild animals in performances
can seriously compromise the welfare of the animals involved; not just during
production itself but over their entire lifetimes as they are held captive,
trained and transported both nationally and internationally (and in the case of
those used by Hollywood Animals “from Africa to Australia”). Furthermore, these
animals are kept in physical and social environments that bear no resemblance
to those that they are naturally evolved to inhabit.
Many businesses enter into agreements with performing animal
companies through ignorance of this industry. Thankfully, an increasing
number of brands and agencies are committing to avoid the use of live performing animals in
the future thanks to schemes such as www.animalpledge.org and the work of
campaigning organisations around the world. But still these performing animal businesses
which exploit animals for commercial gain continue. And they will keep going
whilst there is still demand for seeing big cats on leashes to advertise fashion brands, chimpanzees dressed in human clothing to promote recruitment companies and monkeys in TV studios to sell coffee. In some cases, and because of the nature of some of the businesses which have animals for hire in this way, the animals used in these commercials
are the same individuals that are used in circuses. Sadly, there is still a long way to
go before a large part of the general public, and the media industry, make the connection that
the use of wild animals in circuses - a practice which is increasingly rejected globally - is no
different, from the point of view of the animals, to the use of wild animals in film and TV.
Whilst it would be great if the Whiskas/WWF partnership can
help to raise funds which will truly make an impact on tiger conservation, Whiskas
and other companies like them must take their responsibility to animals seriously.
After all, exploiting one wild animal whilst working to save another can hardly be
considered to be a sound basis for conservation, let alone in the interests of
the animals involved.
Have a look at www.animalpledge.org
for more information on the use of wild animals in the audiovisual industry. If
you work in the media industry then please consider taking the pledge.
