After the Fairport Harbor, Ohio, Mardi Gras Concessions Committee heard from PETA concerning its use of live rabbits as prizes each year, the committee decided to discontinue the practice. Going a step further, the committee even sent a letter to all vendors who attend the event mandating that tickets redeemable at local pet stores not be given away either.
After learning that toy giant FAO Schwarz was offering a miniature pony for $15,000 in its print and online catalogs, we wrote to the company to voice our concerns and ask that the pony be pulled from the catalog. We confirmed with management that the pony offer has been permanently discontinued.
The Addison, Illinois, park district planned to hold a "Go Fish for Goldfish" Day in which 5,000 goldfish would be dumped into the city's pool, and children would be allowed to try to capture the fish and take them home. We immediately contacted the Health Department to determine whether this cruel event would violate health codes and followed up with a fax asking for the department's immediate intervention. The Health Department launched an investigation following our complaint and the event was canceled.
Thanks to pressure from PETA, two members of the Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity at the University of Missouri-Columbia were charged with abusing 40 opossums who were rounded up and stuffed - living and dead - into a barrel as part of a contest. Twenty opossums and two raccoons died.
Read more about the link between animal and human abuse.
When PETA learned that the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) was calling for more animal tests on a natural, plant-based sweetener derived from stevia, our scientists submitted extensive comments to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) refuting CSPI's claims. Stevia and its derivatives have been thoroughly studied in animals and safely used by people for hundreds of years. The World Health Organization and many countries already recognize its safety. To support its argument, CSPI commissioned a UCLA graduate student and her advisor to write a report on the potential dangers of stevia derivatives. The report misrepresented existing evidence and made the absurd assertion that since rats are not good "models" for toxicological effects in humans, all the studies of stevia derivatives that have been done on rats should be repeated on mice and more rats. PETA also sent out an action alert to its members and supporters urging them to contact CSPI and speak out against its push for more animal testing. You responded with more than 700 e-mails in just five days! On December 18, 2008, we learned that the FDA had declared the sweetener to be safe for use in foods and beverages, sparing thousands of animals from having it pumped into their stomachs for their entire lives in unnecessary tests.
