Americans were outraged last year after they saw video footage released by PETA that showed a U.S. military trauma training course in which goats were moaning and kicking as instructors stabbed them, hacked off their limbs with tree trimmers, and yanked out their internal organs. The video brought national attention to the military's crude trauma training procedures on animals.

But outrage turned to cheers when President Barack Obama signed into law a bill containing a clause requiring the Department of Defense (DOD) to create a strategy for replacing the shooting, stabbing, and dismembering of animals in training drills with non-animal methods. It was the first time in history that Congress had passed a measure aimed at protecting animals from abuse in military training exercises.

The deadline has arrived for the DOD to release its strategy, but instead of following congressional orders and taking the opportunity to modernize military training, the DOD instead provided a litany of excuses. Justin Goodman, PETA's director of laboratory investigations, blasted the report in a public statement:

PETA does not intend to let the DOD shirk its responsibility. Help keep the pressure on by urging your congressional representatives to demand that the DOD spare animal lives and better prepare our troops to treat wounded soldiers by replacing animals with lifelike human-patient simulators.

With the Budget Control Act of 2011's 7.8 percent cuts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on track to kick in at the start of 2013, PETA is urging Congress to take a more drastic measure—cut all funding for wasteful experiments on animals. 

In a letter sent today to congressional leaders, PETA explains that nearly half of NIH's current $30 billion annual research budget is awarded to projects that involve cruel experiments on animals, which do nothing to advance human health and which contribute to the country's expanding deficit. These projects include cruel and costly experiments like these:

• The University of California–San Francisco receives more than $360,000 a year in federal largesse for erectile dysfunction experiments in which rats have their penises cut apart before being killed.
• Columbia University gets half a million dollars a year to addict female monkeys to crack and cocaine in order to see how their drug use is affected by their menstrual cycle.
• The University of Wisconsin–Madison receives more than $330,000 a year for a project in which chicken eggs are injected with pure alcohol to see how the exposure affects baby chicks.
• Oregon Health & Science University—which already bears responsibility for the infamous (and lethal) "gay sheep" experiments—collects more than $2 million a year for a project that includes examining whether the offspring of obese female monkeys are more frightened of Mr. Potato Head dolls than are children of non-obese mothers.

That last one is no joke …

… but it has a sick punch line: Because animal species differ from one another biologically in many significant ways, experiments on animals almost never produce results that can be applied to humans in a meaningful way.

What You Can Do

Please tell your representatives in Washington to stop wasting lives, money, and opportunities on cruel and ineffective experiments on animals.

When members of Congress took a lunch break from haggling over Obamacare, they were greeted on Capitol Hill by a naked man with several heads of lettuce.

The majority whipped their heads around to see PETA's Sexiest Vegetarian Next Door, Zachary Koval, and the "Lettuce Ladies" as they handed out free vegetarian/vegan starter kits. And if that sight weren't enough to make the reps drop their smartphones, the tantalizing aroma of hundreds of piping-hot veggie dogs was.

After this show of agreement by all parties, will Congress be making a bipartisan leap to declare its independence from meat? Stay tuned …

Check this out: U.S. Representative Robert E. Andrews of New Jersey has introduced a bill in Congress (H.R. 220) that would designate the first Saturday in October as “National Animal Rescue Day” to encourage adoption, spaying and neutering, and creating a “humane environment” for companion animals.

This is such a wonderful idea and how appropriate that a member of Congress from the Garden State would be instrumental in trying to get us a bit closer to a Garden of Eden for animals in need!

How to Help Make This Bill a Law

Please do your part to make National Animal Rescue Day a reality—encourage your federal representative to support H.R. 220 today, and urge your friends and family to push their members of Congress to do the same!

Victory: As a result of PETA's campaign, the Army announced that it is ending its cruel use of monkeys in chemical attack training exercises and will instead use advanced human simulators!

On Monday, dozens of PETA members greeted the 32,000 attendees—who included Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Army Chief of Staff Ray Odierno—of the annual meeting of the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) in Washington, D.C. The protesters were there to urge the Army to stop poisoning primates in a cruel training exercise at Aberdeen Proving Ground. Many veterans and former military medical professionals have already joined PETA's campaign, and the protesters received more encouragement from men and women in uniform attending the meeting.

The Army's exercises involve injecting vervet monkeys with a drug overdose in a crude attempt to recreate the effects of a nerve-agent attack. The monkeys suffer from uncontrollable twitching and seizures, and some even stop breathing. One monkey suffered gaping lacerations, a torn lip, and bitten- or torn-off fingers in fights with other monkeys caused by the stress of the constant physical abuse and confinement.

Other military courses already use human simulators, which can mimic the effects of nerve-agent exposure. Tell Congress to take action now to save monkeys and troops by replacing animals with advanced non-animal training methods.

Written by Heather Faraid Drennan

Once upon a time, Congress came up with the good idea (strange, but true) to create an interagency committee to encourage and validate modern, animal-friendly testing methods for use by governmental agencies. Unfortunately, the committee, known by its acronym ICCVAM, or the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Validation of Alternative Methods, has been doing just the opposite—blocking scientifically sound and humane non-animal testing methods. For example, ICCVAM has done the following:

• Actively campaigned to prohibit the U.S. from adopting the Globally Harmonized System of labeling, which would allow the use of non-animal methods to assess skin irritation
• Insisted on the use of rabbits for testing chemical effects on eyes
• Failed to review any of the non-animal methods used by the Environmental Protection Agency for its Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program
• Actively excluded experts in non-animal testing methods from its advisory committee

The ickiest thing about ICCVAM is its leader, Dr. William Stokes, who has pushed all of this unscientific and animal-unfriendly tomfoolery under his watch.

PETA is calling on Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the agency that oversees ICCVAM, to fire Dr. Stokes and replace him with someone who will actually VAM (validate alternative methods). You can help by e-mailing Dr. Birnbaum and seconding our concern.

Written by Philip Douglas

Taxes on your mind with Tax Day approaching? Well, soon you may get a break if you help give a break to the millions of homeless dogs and cats who suffer as a result of the animal overpopulation crisis. We're asking Rep. Sandy Levin, D-Mich., Chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, to introduce a bill that would give a tax credit to citizens who spay or neuter their animal companions.

A recent survey reveals that one of the main obstacles to spaying and neutering is the cost. Providing a tax credit to reimburse Americans who fight the taxing reality of animal homelessness would take away that excuse, while stimulating the economy and helping cut cities' and counties' animal control expenses. Will Spay Day soon become Pay Day? We hope so. In the meantime, don't wait another minute to spay or neuter your animal companions if you haven't already—and urge everyone you know to do the same.

kojobaby / CC by 2.0

Written by Logan Scherer

http://www.flickr.com/photos/back_garage/
CC BY 2.0

"I have been in many lunchrooms during lunch period and can attest to the food that is frequently lacking from a nutritional perspective and very high in saturated fats. … What our bill will do is provide some lower-fat and lower-cholesterol ways for kids to get the nutrition that they need to be healthy." —U.S. Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) on the Healthy School Meals Act, which would start a $4 million pilot program to incorporate vegetarian food and drinks into school districts' lunch programs over a two-year period.

We'll cheer for that! Considering that vegetarian diets have been proven to curb childhood obesity, which remains a crisis in the U.S., Polis's proposed legislation would save kids and animals.

Many schools across the nation have already successfully adopted humane menus. Encourage your local schools to do the same.

Written by Logan Scherer

blogs.westword / CC

… in the kitchen. Freshman U.S. Representative Jared Polis, the first openly gay person to be elected to Congress as a non-incumbent, may not be a vegan (yet), but he lives like one, thanks to his partner, animal rights activist and writer Marlon Reis.

In an article about the Colorado Democrat, Roll Call reports,

[Polis'] partner is a vegan, and although [Polis] eats meat, the couple keeps a vegan household. … [Polis'] shoes and belt are "cruelty free"—meaning no animals were involved, he says. The shoes—he pops one off casually to check the brand when asked—are a brand called "Bourgeois Bohème."

Reis is the first same-sex partner of a member of Congress to be recognized as "spouse" on his congressional ID card. His days are spent working on his vegan culinary skills and his new novel, which he hopes "will give readers the reason they've been missing to give animals the fair consideration they deserve …."

Now, PETA isn't suggesting that you should run out and start a tawdry affair, but make no mistake: We believe that slipping some Cheatin "chorizo" into the chili is always a good thing.

Written by Karin Bennett

deathpenaltyinfo / CC

In a move that is waaaay long past overdue, a military panel has recommended adding cruelty to animals to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which is the foundation of US military law. Hard to believe it wasn't already in there, but we're just glad it's in the works now.

Last year, PETA called for such a provision after a video of a Marine apparently throwing a live puppy off a cliff circulated on the Internet. If this new regulation is added, service personnel who commit such atrocities could be prosecuted specifically for cruelty to animals, as opposed to military authorities having to scramble to find some vaguely-worded offense, such as "unbecoming conduct," to file such crimes under.

The law is intended to address crimes like killing or abandoning companion animals, but maybe it will also add fuel to our case that lethal military trauma training exercises on animals violate military code too.

Before it can be added to the UCMJ, the new provision has to be approved by Congress. Congress, you know what you have to do.

Written by Alisa Mullins