Jona Weinhofen featured in controversial PETA Australia adverts

Published April 21, 2015 by Dan SW

A new PETA Australia featuring xvx guitar player Jona Weinhofen of I Killed the Prom Queen is facing controversy after targeting the country’s wool industry. The advert has prompted the Victorian Farming Federation to file complaint to the Advertising Standards Bureau, and Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce has denounced the ad as a misinformed attack on the Australian wool industry. Watch the video ad below.

In response, I Killed The Prom Queen has released the following statement:

Hi all,
Seeing as the new Peta campaign has made it onto mainstream Australian news, is being commented on by government ministers & we’re being bombarded by angry farmers online, we thought we’d add something with a bit more information than the one-off photo.

Most of you who are familiar with the band over the last 15 years are aware of iktpq’s vegan & vegetarian members. While we have some lyrics about the ethics behind animals in the livestock industry, it hasn’t been the centre-point of the band, we all have friends, loved-ones & family who of course aren’t vegetarian, we aren’t anti-farmer & we’re not angry teens-year-olds inciting anything extreme. Other than we think veganism/vegetarian is extremely positive and worth checking out.

We know farmers are hard working & often dealing with ongoing financial & emotional hardships, but that doesn’t mean everyone should turn a blind eye to the cruel practices the animals have to cope with during their existence in the livestock industry. Of course this isn’t a product of farmers being vindictive or bad people at all, but merely because the animals involved are considered possessions to turn a profit, with maximum efficiency & minimal-to-no care for the physical or psychological well-being of the creatures, outside of those with an economic impact.

In 2015 we feel that most people who would see an injured animal would think to care for it, rather than to eat it, or cut off its skin or fur as none of that is necessary in the world we’re lucky enough to live in & that’s why the practices in these industries are worth most people looking into. So they can be aware if they’re supporting something with their purchasing dollar, that they would not knowingly support.

We recognise that the wool industry is really the small end of the cruelty inherent in much of the livestock industry, and its nice that the more severe end, like live export & factory farming have finally begun to make it on the radar of mainstream media. However much of the wool industry seems governed by the same profit mentality, amongst other things allowing mulesing, where a lamb’s skin is cut off from its hindquarters without anaesthetic to avoid flystrike, which they’re only at such risk for due to how we’ve bred them. Similarly while every last sheep might not be as unlucky as the sheep savagely mistreated in video [exposés] that can be found in a few seconds of searching, they are certainly still merely possessions for economic profit and at risk of these practises, which is what the photo of Jona & the lamb represents.

Please take a minute to check out the accompanying video, do whatever research you like & make up your own mind. While many have vested economic interests in this argument, we have no shares in tofu, we just feel good about not supporting animal cruelty.

The Australian wool industry is the third largest rural export and worth approximately $2.8 billion a year. Figures courtesy of the Sydney Morning Herald.

– WARNING: Video contains graphic images –