Los Angeles: PETA’s City of the Year

City Also Home to PETA’s Person of the Year: Anjelica Huston

Los Angeles -- Los Angeles became a friendlier city for animals than ever in 2012, with the Los Angeles City Council banning the retail sale of animals in pet shops in order to fight puppy mills, endorsing Meatless Mondays, and considering a ban on circuses that force exotic animals to perform. These progressive moves have earned the bustling city PETA’s 2012 City of the Year award—the first ever of its kind—and fittingly, the award-winning city isn’t just home to the group’s Bob Barker Building. It’s also home to PETA’s 2012 Person of the Year Anjelica Huston, whose work with the group led all of the top 10 advertising agencies in the U.S. to pledge that they will not use chimpanzees and other great apes in their commercials.

“PETA could not ask for a more progressive home for our West Coast operations than Los Angeles or for a more steadfast ally than Anjelica Huston,” says PETA Senior Vice President Lisa Lange. “From promoting meat-free meals and animal adoption to fighting industries that exploit animals for ’entertainment,’ Los Angeles and Anjelica Huston have inspired countless people in Hollywood and beyond to make the world a better place for animals.”

In October 2012, the City Council banned the sale of animals from breeders and puppy mills in pet shops. Now, adoptions of only homeless animals from shelters and rescue groups are permitted. In November, Los Angeles became the largest city to endorse Meatless Mondays in a unanimous decision by the City Council, which cited the environmental, health, and animal welfare benefits of meat-free meals. And also this November, the City Council’s Personnel and Animal Welfare Committee recommended a full City Council vote on a proposed measure that, if passed, would ban circuses and other traveling exhibits that keep exotic animals in captivity, haul them from city to city, and violently force them to perform.

Copies of Huston’s hard-hitting video exposé showing how great apes are torn away from their mothers shortly after birth and violently forced to “perform”—along with, in many cases, a personal appeal from Huston herself—were sent to numerous companies that have since pulled ads featuring chimpanzees or signed PETA’s Great Ape Humane Pledge. Huston’s other work defending animals in 2012 also included speaking out against the deadly fur trade and New York’s cruel horse-drawn carriage industry.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.