Written by Alisa Mullins
It's not over yet, but Iggy Pop, Perez Hilton, Kelly Osbourne, Pamela Anderson, Sarah McLachlan, Diane Warren, and all the people who have spoken out, worn the PETA shirts, and appeared in our ads in the last year have brought us closer to the end of the Canadian seal slaughter. Just weeks before the annual slaughter is set to resume, Ryan Cleary, a member of the Canadian Parliament who represents one of the regions in which the seal slaughter takes place, has acknowledged that the tremendous outcry against beating and shooting baby seals has him questioning the future of the bloody massacre. Says Mr. Cleary: "Part of our history is also whaling, for example, and the day came when the whaling industry stopped. Now, is that day coming with the seal hunt? It just may be."
© Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
Cleary's statement comes just weeks after Russia announced that it was taking steps to ban the import of Canadian harp-seal fur, a move that came after Pamela Anderson led an international appeal on PETA's behalf.
Polls have consistently shown that most Canadians oppose the seal slaughter, and as Cleary noted, the industry is an increasing liability for Canada that the country is having more and more difficulty defending.
Please click here to tell Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper that yes, the time has come to send the seal slaughter the way of whale slaughter and ban it before the next massacre commences this spring.
Written by PETA
Iggy Pop had a few choice words for Norway's minister of foreign affairs before his performance in Bodø this week, expressing his disgust at the government's support of the Canadian seal slaughter.
A single company in Norway—which has received funding from the Norwegian government for years—buys a whopping 80 percent of Canada's seal pelts. Norway is also joining Canada in contesting the European Union's ban on seal product imports, and both countries want the hearings on the issue to be held behind closed doors.
I've seen a lot of vile sights in my days, but few were as dark and twisted as the beating of helpless baby seals for their fur ... If Norway has nothing to hide, there should be no problem with making this process public. —Iggy Pop
Iggy Pop, along with Joan Jett, Sarah McLachlan, Pamela Anderson, and many others, has called for an end to Canada's seal slaughter, and you can too.
Written by Michelle Sherrow
In honor of Father's Day, here are some fathers who are friends to the furry, feathered, and finned. We had way too many great dads like Kevin Nealon, Bryan Adams, Woody Harrelson, Iggy Pop, and Chad Ochocinco to choose from, so here are just a few of the fellas who make us glad for awesome dads:
Usually, when we put the words "Canada" and "seal" in the same sentence, it's bad news. But not today. Canadian officials are reporting that this year's seal slaughter saw one of the lowest numbers of seals killed in recorded history. The 2011 commercial slaughter claimed the lives of about 38,000 harp seals, which, while still awful, is less than 10 percent of the 400,000-seal maximum.
The slaughter officially ends today, although under "ministerial descretion" sealers can stay out longer. But why would they? Fewer and fewer sealers are participating in the slaughter. With the U.S. and European Union bans on seal-product imports, the price of a pelt has plummeted to $20 or $30, barely enough to cover the sealers' expenses for fuel and boat insurance.
To help continue the seal slaughter's downward spiral, tweet at Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper (@pmharper) and ask him to stop supporting the bludgeoning and live skinning of baby seals, and ask your friends and family to speak up for seals too.
Rock icon Iggy Pop is celebrating his 64th birthday today.
His lust for life includes seals' lives, so to help him celebrate, please take a moment and e-mail Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Canadian ambassadors around the world and ask them to put a stop to Canada's annual baby seal slaughter.
Both Ke$ha and Iggy Pop love a good beat—but not in Canada, where baby seals are beaten, shot, and sometimes skinned alive for their fur. The musicians are just the latest celebs to star in PETA ads opposing Canada's annual seal slaughter. Explains Ke$ha, "Canada gets to be host to harp seals each year during their migration to the ice to give birth which is beautiful and peaceful. But because the babies' fur is so soft, there are people who club and brutally kill these young animals." She asks her fans to turn the heat up, up, up on the Canadian government by joining PETA's "Save the Seals" campaign.
Long-time PETA pal Iggy Pop wants to search and destroy the Canadian seal slaughter and save hundreds of thousands of baby seals every year. The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer said, "The terror and suffering that these defenseless, friendly, intelligent, inquisitive creatures endure to create fur jackets—it's immoral."
Watch Iggy's exclusive behind-the-scenes video and get his advice for how you can help end Canada' shameful massacre.
It's time once again for the not-so-coveted Vivisector of the Month award. Of course, all vivisectors deserve the "prize" for their mad science, but we've narrowed the field to two particularly nasty candidates. We're asking you to vote for the person you would most like to see in a stockade getting beaned in the head with fruit.
Mark Lowell is a faculty member at the University of Michigan (UM) who seems to have forgotten that when he went through medical school he swore an oath to do no harm. Lowell directs a Survival Flight course for nurses; in the course, cats and pigs are tormented even though superior human simulators are used to teach the same skills in other courses at UM. Cats have hard tubes repeatedly forced down their windpipes for intubation training, and many of them are killed. Pigs have holes cut into their limbs, throats, and chests and are stabbed with needles in their bones and the tissue surrounding their hearts. PETA, students at UM, the campus newspaper, the student government, and even UM alum Iggy Pop are vigorously urging Lowell to shut down this nasty operation.
In the other corner, weighing in at "cold and callous," is Bradley Greger. This peach of a person is one of the experimenters we've been telling you about at the University of Utah (the U) who buys cats from the North Utah Valley Animal Shelter and subjects them to cruel experiments before killing them. Greger also drills holes into monkeys' and cats' skulls and implants electrodes into their brains. He screws titanium pins into the monkeys' skulls and attaches an aluminum head-restraint device to immobilize the animals in chairs for up to eight hours per day for brain experiments.
You can use our form to e-mail the University of Michigan and the University of Utah and tell them that you support modern, humane science—not cruel animal experiments.
So who will it be: Mark "Lower Than Low" Lowell or Bradley "The Butcher" Greger? Get your moldy oranges ready, aim, and fire.
Not only do PETA folk get to help animals (of course), and get e-mails with subject lines like "Has anyone seen our giant bunny costume?"—they also get to share in the involvement of the super-cool rock legends (from Macca to Grace Slick to Chrissie Hynde) who throw their considerable weight behind our efforts to help animals.
Now the one-and-only Iggy Pop has joined PETA and students at Iggy's alma mater, the University of Michigan (U-M), in demanding that animals who are tormented and killed in a medical training course be replaced with the humane and educationally superior alternatives that are available. After learning that U-M abuses and kills cats and pigs in its Survival Flight course for nurses, Iggy fired off a letter on PETA's behalf, urging the university to drop these cruel and archaic animal labs and to switch to the sophisticated simulators that are already used to teach the same skills in other advanced U-M training courses.
Iggy writes, "It's common sense that cutting apart pigs and maiming cats isn't the best way to train people to treat humans. … U-M should not be harming animals when better alternatives are available and already in use on campus."
Written by Jeff Mackey
A lot of cool stuff happened to me when I was in college, but, I have to admit, nothing was as cool as what's happened to an animal rights group at Michigan State University. The MSU group is working hard to push for a permanent circus ban on their campus, and they've just received some serious help—from none other than punk godfather (and Michigan native) Iggy Pop!
The university has made the compassionate decision to ban circuses on campus this year after learning that elephants, tigers, and other animals are beaten and forced to perform under the big top. After Iggy Pop heard the news, he wrote a letter to the school in support of the students' proposal to make the ban permanent.
Want to find out how to make your own college campus circus-free? Take a little visit to peta2.
Written by Amanda Schinke
If you have a general question for PETA and would like a response, please e-mail Info@peta.org. If you need to report cruelty to an animal, please click here. If you are reporting an animal in imminent danger and know where to find the animal and if the abuse is taking place right now, please call your local police department. If the police are unresponsive, please call PETA immediately at 757-622-7382 and press 2.
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