Achoo! Swine flu?

Sunshine State residents who feel under the weather should know that Florida has had 141 confirmed swine flu deaths. Sounds to me like Florida residents would do well to learn about ways to stop the spread of swine flu—hence our action in Jacksonville this morning.

PETA "pig" and his peeps, decked out in our new swine flu masks, handed out copies of our "Vegetarian Starter Kit" to passersby.

Evidence is growing that the meat industry is responsible for the swine flu outbreak, just as it was largely responsible for outbreaks of MRSA, mad cow, E. coli, and bird flu. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, studies have shown that 30 to 50 percent of pigs raised for food in the U.S. have been infected with some strain of swine flu. That shouldn't come as any surprise, considering that jam-packed, filthy factory farms are breeding grounds for disease.

The best way to help guard against future swine flu outbreaks? Swear off the ham, Spam, and snouts—and go vegan.

Written by Karin Bennett

A beluga whale named Nico died this week at SeaWorld San Antonio, where he was being temporarily housed while the Georgia Aquarium underwent renovations. This marks the third time in the last three years that a beluga whale from the Georgia Aquarium has died.

drake.marin.k12 / CC

The cause of Nico's death has not yet been determined, but according to aquarium officials, he was already ailing when he was obtained from a Mexican aquarium along with another beluga whale, Gasper, who died in January 2007. The aquarium's two surviving whales, Maris and Natasha, are on loan from the New York Aquarium. A third beluga whale from New York, Marina, also died in 2007.

In a chirpy news release announcing the arrival of Maris, Natasha, and Marina in 2005, the aquarium expressed the hope that "we soon [will] have baby beluga whales."

In the same news release, the aquarium announced the arrival of Ralph and Norton, two whale sharks who—you guessed it—are now dead. Seeing a trend here?

Instead of swimming freely in the sea, animals at aquariums are relegated to a world that's measured in feet instead of fathoms. Beluga whales are extremely social animals who—when left to their own devices—play, chase each other, and interact in extended pods. They have been called "sea canaries" because of their complex vocalizations, which they use to communicate with each other.

In captivity, these whales have little room for exercise and are cut off from their natural social groups. While they might not have to face natural enemies, the stress of captivity is apparently the scariest "predator" of all.

Written by Alisa Mullins

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Purrrrr. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to make disabling declawing cats illegal, and other California cities are set to vote on similar measures this week.

Painful and traumatic, declawing is really 10 separate amputations in which the last joint of every single toe gets cut off along with the nail. Declawing a cat is the equivalent of cutting a person's fingers off at the first knuckle and leads to gradual weakening of cats' legs, shoulders, and back muscles. Declawed cats are more likely to have behavior "problems" such as avoiding the litterbox and biting, and they are commonly surrendered to shelters by frustrated guardians.

Germany and other parts of Europe have outlawed declawing as a form of cruelty, and many conscientious veterinarians in the U.S. refuse to declaw because they realize that all someone needs to do to save their furniture (or whatever other lame excuse people come up with to justify mangling their kitties) is take the time to simply trim their cats' nails and buy proper scratching posts.

The Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, and Berkeley city councils will be considering or voting on declawing bans this week, so please tell anyone you know in these cities to send an urgent e-mail to their councilmembers today.

Written by Heather Drennan (with help from Wellington)

My husband, Tim, thinks that I'm rooting for the Philadelphia Phillies to win the World Series because he's a lifelong Boston Red Sox fan (i.e., Yankee hater). It's fine with me if I get extra points for rooting "against" the Yankees, but I'm really rooting for the Phillies because of second baseman Chase Utley.

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Chase and his wife, Jen, are huge advocates for animals. They've participated in "Save a Pet at the Park," and they organized the Utley's All-Star Animals fundraisers, which raised more than $200,000 for the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Even if the Phillies don't win this year's World Series, Chase Utley has already proven he's top dog when it comes to caring about companion animals.

Written by Karin Bennett

If you can, pick up a copy of this week's New Yorker. There's a review of Jonathan Safran Foer's new book, Eating Animals, along with a photograph of a very powerful painting by artist Sue Coe—the same painting that Coe gave to PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk. Ingrid is not ashamed to say that she burst into tears the first time she saw the painting, and she often talks about how powerfully it reminds people of the truth and horror of the slaughter business so casually supported by the majority of people.

The painting is very Coe-esque—dark, haunting, and surreal. It looks like a nightmare put on canvas, and in fact, it is—a real-life nightmare. When Sue Coe was growing up, she lived next door to a hog factory farm and a block away from a slaughterhouse. In an essay she wrote for Ingrid's book, One Can Make a Difference, Coe describes the events that inspired the painting:

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. This one is. Even though we aren't all gifted artists like Sue Coe or talented writers like Jonathan Safran Foer, there is still plenty that we can do to give animals a voice.

Written by Alisa Mullins

Thanks for all of your wonderful comments on this Win It Wednesday. The winners of Eating Animals are Kim, Jenna, Brandon, Alyson, and Rachel. Congratulations!

To say that every person who picks up the latest book by bestselling author Jonathan Safran Foer walks away illuminated wouldn't really be stretching the truth. Eating Animals, Foer's first foray into nonfiction, hit bookstore shelves today, but the book has already influenced Natalie Portman to go vegan and has sparked intelligent conversation in the New Yorker and on NPR (to name just a few media outlets) about the moral, health, and environmental implications that most people ignore when they sit down to a steak dinner.

For this week's "Win It" Wednesday, not only are we giving you a chance to win a copy of Eating Animals, we also have an interview with the author to share with you. I'm calling it "Four With Foer."

Enjoy the Q&A, and then learn how you can win the book.

1) Children are naturally drawn to animals, but society often influences us into thinking that eating meat is normal and OK. How will you educate your children concerning your family's choice to be vegetarian?

The burden of education falls to parents who feed their children meat. Killing animals for food—even when done in the most humane ways—is antithetical to everything else parents teach their children about animals. Animals are the heroes of children's books, the stuffed toys kids fall asleep with, pets, objects of fascination and wonder. No parent would stand idly by as his or her child abused an animal.

None of this necessarily says anything about the rightness or wrongness of eating animals—we raise our children with all different kinds of over-simplicities, half-truths, and make believe. But in the three years I spent researching animal farming, I didn't meet a single slaughterer who was perfectly comfortable with killing animals. That says something. Our taste for animals can be lost, but our discomfort with what we do to them cannot.

In any case, my son is now old enough to understand that he doesn't eat animals, and that most of his friends do. We've had numerous conversations about it, but he's never needed a second explanation for why we don't.

2) Of all the horrible things that you witnessed on factory farms while writing this book, is there a particular instance that sticks with you?

The real horror of factory farming is not found in the instance, but the rule. It's a shame that most people's exposure to the meat industry comes through horror videos of slaughterhouses. While such images do correspond to very real events (which are productive and necessary to document and share), they are, even at the worst farms, the exception. And unfortunately, they can conceal something that is far more horrible: the everyday, systematized cruelty and destruction. In a way, videos of animals being tortured are a distraction that the meat industry is probably happy to have, as they suggest that the fault is with workers. The fault is not with workers, but the system itself. It is simply impossible to raise the number of animals we are currently raising for food without making their lives miserable. The misery is built into the system. Another system could take this system's place. But a movement toward small, family farms will require people to eat much, much less meat. And that's not going to happen any time too soon. In the meantime, the most important thing is to come to terms with the dominance and destruction of factory farming, and reject it.

3) One of our campaigns at PETA asks people, "If your dog tasted like pork, would you eat her?" In your book, you talk about your relationship with your dog and how it influenced your dietary decisions. Could you go into that briefly for our readers?

I spent the first 26 years of my life disliking animals. I thought of them as bothersome, dirty, unapproachably foreign, frighteningly unpredictable, and plain old unnecessary. I had a particular lack of enthusiasm for dogs—inspired, in large part, by a related fear that I inherited from my mother, which she inherited from my grandmother. As a child I would agree to go over to friends' houses only if they confined their dogs in some other room. If a dog approached in the park, I'd become hysterical until my father hoisted me onto his shoulders. I didn't like watching television shows that featured dogs. I didn't understand—I disliked—people who got excited about dogs. It's possible that I even developed a subtle prejudice against the blind. And then one day I became a person who loved dogs. I became a dog person.

The first full chapter of my book explores our divergent attitudes toward dogs and fish—fish being at the far end of the spectrum of our regard. I write about a simple trick that backyard astronomers use: If you are having trouble seeing something, look slightly away from it. The most light-sensitive parts of our eyes (those we need to see dim objects) are on the edges of the region we normally use for focusing. Eating animals has an invisible quality. Thinking about dogs and their relationship to the animals we eat is one way of looking askance and making something invisible visible.

4) Who do you hope will benefit from reading Eating Animals?

I don't expect readers to come to the same conclusions that I do, but I hope that they will agree with me about the urgency and importance of the problems. I can respect those who, after reading my book, decide to move in a direction that isn't the one I've chosen for myself. (I can even respect those who chose not to move at all.) But I can't respect that all-too-common response of, "I don't want to know about it." Such willed ignorance—which, by the way, I have spent the better part of my life practicing, and in other areas continue to practice—sucks.

We have five copies of Foer's newest book to give away. How do you win? This week's contest is easy peasy. To enter, fill out the form below by November 18, 2009, and we will notify the lucky winners by November 20, 2009. Good luck!

This contest has now ended.

Written by Shawna Flavell

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Well, we tried—but our permit to set up a factory farm display on the steps of the U.S. Capitol has been denied. Apparently, the Capitol Police thought that such a display posed "significant public health concerns about the possible spread of the H1N1 virus."

Hmm. That just might have been our point.

So, it's not safe to allow members of congress and lobbyists to be exposed to factory farms, but it looks like tough luck for the millions of Americans in rural areas who have to live amidst the poisonous waste of factory farms. And although the president has declared swine flu a national emergency, the government continues to prop up the industry that caused the crisis (to the tune of $62.6 million in one year alone—with the possibility of $250 million more in the coming fiscal year).

What do you think?

Written by Amanda Schinke

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It's true: Dollar General cares—about its customers' concerns and about animals.

After we received complaints that Dollar General, which has thousands of stores across the U.S., was selling hideously cruel glue traps, we wrote to the bargain retailer. In our letter, we described how animals who get stuck on glue traps can suffer for days before finally dying of starvation or dehydration. Many victims of glue traps rip their skin from their own faces and bodies as they try to escape, and some resort to chewing off their own limbs while trying to free themselves. We also let the company know that there are plenty of humane ways to deal with mice and rats.

Dollar General responded to our letter by announcing that it will stop selling glue traps. Just like that. The company didn't hem and haw—officials simply made a compassionate decision.

Dollar General joins other large retailers, including Albertsons, Walgreens, CVS, Rite Aid, and Safeway, that have stopped selling glue traps after discussions with PETA. Please thank the company for its decision—and then ask home-improvement biggie baddie Lowe's to follow suit.

Written by Karin Bennett

Now that the World Health Organization has declared the swine flu outbreak "a pandemic," I'm going to predict that PETA's "flu prevention" mask will sneak past blinged-out cell phones as the must-have accessory this summer. I have a feeling that fashionistas and health officials all over the world will soon agree with me.

Despite denials issued by big pig farms and the change in the name of the illness, funnyman Jim Carrey hit the nail right on the head when he said, "There wouldn't be a swine flu if we treated the pigs better!"

PETA's swine flu mask will serve as a reminder of that.

Written by Karin Bennett

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"The government does not want us to call it the swine flu. They're calling it the 2009 H1N1 virus. The reason for the change is they want people to know you can still eat all the pork you want without any risk to your health, except diabetes, obesity, and heart disease."

That's Jimmy Kimmel's take on swine flu, as quoted in the New York Times.

And, if you're inclined to take a trip down Memory Lane, here's Jimmy Kimmel's take on PETA's Alicia Silverstone and Super Bowl ads.

We love Jimmy!

Written by Shawna Flavell