Please see the following statement from PETA Foundation General Counsel Brittany Peet in response to reports that “nearly all” of the 250 animals held at the Alligator & Wildlife Discovery Center—which is notorious for taping alligators’ mouths shut for public encounters—were killed in a fire early this morning:

After being confined to cramped cages or subjected to stressful and invasive hands-on encounters, these animals endured agonizing deaths as smoke and flames engulfed them. PETA is calling on this seedy shopping mall petting zoo to send any survivors to reputable facilities and shut its doors for good.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.