PETA: 'Lopez Forced Billboard To Drop Our Advert'

Animal rights charity PEOPLE FOR THE ETHICAL TREATMENT OF ANIMALS (PETA) have accused JENNIFER LOPEZ of bullying BILLBOARD magazine into removing their full-page advert, which lambasted the Latina for wearing fur.

The music magazine had agreed to run PETA's advert, which features a gruesome photo of a skinned animal beside an open letter to Lopez, attacking her for glamorising fur in her new SWEETFACE clothing line and encouraging the "sadistic slaughter" of rabbits, minks, foxes and chinchillas.

But yesterday (28MAR05) Billboard cancelled the $5,000 (GBP2,600) advert, leading PETA Vice President LISA LANGE to conclude that the magazine "caved to pressure" from Lopez's record label SONY CORP's EPIC RECORDS and her publicist NANCI RYDER of BAKER-WINOKUR-RYDER.

Ryder admits, "I'm doing my job, which is protecting my client. I don't understand why PETA want to meet with Jennifer.

"In my opinion, there would be nothing worse than a meeting, unless in the meeting we could commit to not wearing fur and not using fur in fashion. Unless we could do that, I didn't quite understand where the meeting would go."

PETA have retaliated by emailing the banned advert to hundreds of radio stations nationwide.