DANNY Boyle, the artistic director of the opening ceremony for the London 2012 Olympics, has sent a hand-written letter to animal rights campaigners pledging that no harm will come to the animals used in the making of his show.
The Oscar winner wrote to Ingrid Newkirk, managing director of Peta, claiming "genuine care will be taken of the animals". It was prompted by fears over the welfare of the creatures in the £27 million curtain raiser at the Olympic Stadium on July 27.
Animals including 12 horses, three cows, two goats, 10 chickens, 10 ducks, nine geese, 70 sheep and three sheep dogs will appear in the opening scenes.
Mr Boyle, the award-winning director of Trainspotting and Slumdog Millionaire, also claims he will "vigorously" look at whether the creatures can be retired to an animal sanctuary after the ceremony.
The venue in Stratford, east London, is being mocked up to look like a meadow. The audience of about 62,000 and a billion people watching worldwide will see farmers tilling soil while animals graze.
Ms Newkirk wrote an to Mr Boyle in the hope he would accept that using live animals could trigger serious problems for the creatures such as stress and trauma.
Mr Boyle replied: "In our attempt to present an inclusive, rounded picture of British life I fear we will never see eye to eye.
"All I can say is that genuine care will be taken of the animals."
A Peta spokesman said: "Danny Boyle's reply does not fully address our concerns."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article