In order to produce a 30 second advertisement of a French multinational rent car company – Europcar (which has a fleet of 200 thousand cars and is at 143 countries), a baby chimpanzee, called Suzy, was taken from United States to South Africa, so the commercial could be filmed there, because of the World Cup.

Eden Sanctuary, in South Africa, which hosts 32 chimpanzees, spoke out against it, together with other animal protection organizations, pointing the absurd of this operation. To transport Suzy, it was necessary to emit a CITES permission (that did emit the document, absurdly) and several health certificates, not to mention the correspondent import and export permissions.

Due to the large number of protests, Europcar S/A canceled the commercial and divulged a communication: “we are sorry for what happened, but it was not our intention to hurt, humiliate or mistreat the primate…”.

Eden Sanctuary Director, Phillip Cronje, declared: “Chimpanzees do not exist in the wild South Africa, but we take very good care of them both in the sanctuary and in the country.”

Eden Sanctuary is affiliated to Jane Goodall Institute and is a member of PASA – Pan African Sanctuaries Alliance.

Dr. Pedro A. Ynterian
President, GAP Project International