AFI’s Davey Havok Speaks Out Against Animal Testing in New PETA Campaign Video: Watch

Jude Zhu
·1 min read
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Davey Havok of AFI recently partnered with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) on a campaign against animal testing and speciesism, the human-supremacy world view. In a new video, a rescue rat called “Wee Man” rests on Havok’s shoulder as the singer urges pharmaceutical companies to ban the “Forced Swim Test.” The test is supposed to measure depression in rats that are forced to swim in water, and it has been traditionally used to test antidepressant drugs.

“Is that depression that you’re measuring?” Havok asks, as clips of rats struggling in beakers full of water are shown. “No. It’s fear. It’s trauma. It’s fight or flight…Nothing is gained from that except their suffering. And no animals deserve that. No animals deserve to be treated like that.” In a separate video, Havok advocates against speciesism, the notion that humans are superior to other species.

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The ad was posted on World Rat Day (April 4), and it targets large pharmaceutical companies like Eli Lilly. PETA said in a press release that the swim test has been shown by studies to be inaccurate. “All life has value,” the musician said in the ad, again posing with Wee Man. “And it’s not our place to choose which life is more valuable than another.”

An avid advocate against animal cruelty, Havok has previously teamed up with PETA in 2016 for their “I’d Rather Go Naked” campaign, where he posed naked as a statement against wearing leather. In 2017, he was named one of PETA’s Hottest Vegetarian Celebrities, along with Madelaine Petsch.

See Havok in the new PETA video below.

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