PETA Victorious!

PETA is deluged every day with cruelty calls. Here are just a few of our successes:

• Convinced the chemical company AmeriBrom to abandon plans to kill 900 rabbits to retest a chemical already known to be hazardous
  
• Helped ensure jail time for puppy torturers in Louisiana and Texas and a kitten killer in Florida
  
• Worked to get Tennessee law–enforcement officials trained in animal handling after an officer killed a family’s dog
  
• Convinced a North Carolina civic association not to kill beavers
  
• Persuaded a South Carolina county council to ban exotic “pets”
  
• Went to North Carolina to rescue animals suffering in treacherous weather conditions
  
• Convinced a Los Angeles nightclub not to display monkeys
  
• Helped ensure that cruelty charges were filed against an Idaho dairy farmer after a sick cow was abandoned in the “dead pit” without food or water
  
• Persuaded the Food Marketing Institute to cancel plans for armadillo races
  
• Helped ensure that a New Yorker who threw a 16–year–old dog from a 23rd–floor balcony received a stiff sentence (12 years in prison) and that a San Francisco woman who left her dog to die in a locked closet was jailed
  

Keep the Pressure on Iams

As a result of public outrage over what we found at an Iams testing lab, including barren cages and veterinary neglect, Iams is scrambling to improve its image. In April, Iams and parent company Procter & Gamble execs met with PETA and announced that all contract laboratories were being inspected by an internal review committee and that an external review board would conduct surprise follow–up visits. They also cut ties with the lab that PETA investigated and placed 19 of the dogs up for adoption.

However, the company still refuses to let us tour its Dayton facility or its Alabama–based “retirement village” where older dogs are apparently kept until they die. PETA has asked Iams to take a bold step and be the first big dog and cat food manufacturer to stop all testing on animals.

• Get Fido in on the act. PETA is compiling a scrapbook of photos of companion animals declaring, “Iams: We Won’t Buy While Animals Die,” to send to Iams. Download the sign from PETA.org, or request one by phone or mail.
  
  
• Buy only from companies that don’t test on animals, including Wysong, Natural Life and Amore in the U.S. and Canada. In the U.K., look for Denes, Butchers and Yarrah. For a complete list, visit PETA.org.
  

New European Chemical Law “harmful if swallowed”

Proposed new chemical legislation in Europe brings new meaning to the word “overkill,” threatening to consume tens of millions of animals in hideously cruel chemical–poisoning tests without making any real commitment to protect people or the environment from chemicals that are found to be hazardous. This massive plan calls for the (re)testing of some 30,000 commonly used chemicals, thus laying the groundwork for the largest animal–testing program in Europe’s history. Here’s just a taste of what the EU has cooked up:

• Testing requirements for the most common––or “high production volume”––chemicals would involve at least six–times more animal testing than similar programs in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world.
  
• The EU says it estimates that only 20% of the 30,000 chemicals in its program would be subject to stringent regulation, or “authorization.” For the rest, this will be just another bureaucratic checklist, resulting in massive amounts of animal suffering.
  
• The EU legislation does not allow for public notification of new animal–testing proposals or the opportunity to comment, thus ensuring that the public will be shut out and that animal testing will go on in secret.
  
• The EU is proposing to throw practically every animal test in the book at some chemicals, regardless of whether or not they actually pose a risk to the environment and human health.
  
• Despite its stated “requirement” that animal testing be kept to a minimum, the EU chemical legislation does not include any sanctions for non–compliance with this provision as it does for other violations.
  
• • The proposed legislation directs the EU Chemicals Agency to “develop appropriate contacts with stakeholder organizations” and goes on to list all major stakeholders except the animal protection community.

Tell the EU to Call Off Animal Tests.
To send an e–mail message to the EU, visit StopEUChemicalTests.com today.