In Wednesday's New York Times dining section, someone thought it would be a riot to take the decapitated, amputated, defeathered corpse of a chicken and prop the body up in a sexually suggestive "come hither" pose.

PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk was not amused. "When I saw it, I just couldn't believe that an editor of The New York Times would find it acceptable," she told The Atlantic Wire. "It's downright offensive, not just to people who care about animals but to anyone. It's a plucked, beheaded, young chicken …. [That's] necrophilia. It's not amusing. It's just sick."

Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

Some have suggested that PETA, which has never shied away from using nudity to make a point, is in no position to cast stones. Excuse me? A key difference between PETA's ads and the New York Times' photo is that our models are willing participants who are still very much alive.

Is it a sign of how desensitized our society has become to the animals who are violently slaughtered for food that someone would think it a "sexy" joke to pose a young chicken—a baby, really, as chickens are slaughtered at 6 to 8 weeks old—like the star of a lingerie commercial. But picture in this bird's place the decapitated, amputated, skinned corpse of a puppy or a kitten. Would anybody be laughing—or licking their chops? Doubt it.

We already know what your number one New Year's Resolution is—going vegan, right? It turns out that some celebrity chefs are also resolving to be kinder to animals—and their arteries—in 2011. In the current issue of O magazine, four gourmet gurus made the following veg-olutions: 

• Mario Batali, who previously announced that all his restaurants would be participating in Sir Paul McCartney's Meatless Mondays program, is continuing the trend by resolving to "master more vegetarian dishes" like spicy chickpea bruschetta. 
• Ellie Krieger, cookbook author and host of Food Network show Healthy Appetite, vows to "make sure to include a fruit or vegetable at every meal and snack."
• Alton Brown, Iron Chef commentator and host of Good Eats on the Food Network, wants to try to avoid supporting egg factory farms. "I don't want to have to worry about the chicken's welfare or what's in the egg," he says, probably referring to this summer's massive salmonella outbreak. 
• New York Times columnist Martha Rose Shulman wants to incorporate more quinoa (a high-protein grain that contains all eight essential amino acids) into her cooking and cites her quinoa salad with tofu, snap peas, and ginger vinaigrette as a tasty example.

Written by Alisa Mullins

Talk about a cheesy marketing ploy. Sunday's New York Times reveals that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which has long had the paradoxical job of both policing and promoting animal agriculture, runs a multi-million-dollar dairy marketing company with the blandly sinister name Dairy Management Inc.

With an annual budget of nearly $140 million, Dairy Management's stock in trade is the same ingredient that other (less generously funded) arms of the USDA are warning people against: high-fat cheese.

One Dairy Management "success" story is Domino's Pizza. Dairy Management helped the chain develop a new line of pizzas with 40 percent more cheese. The $12 million campaign to promote the new pizza has been a big success (just try to watch an hour or two of prime-time TV without seeing one of the ads)—for Domino's bottom line, that is, not for customers' arteries. Just one slice of the new pizza contains up to two-thirds of the maximum recommended daily limit of saturated fat.

Dairy Management was also the driving force behind those once-ubiquitous dairy ads that claimed that eating more dairy products can help you lose weight. When the sketchy science  behind this claim began to unravel (research that was partly funded by Dairy Management), the industry was forced to scrap the ads.

Thanks in part to Dairy Management's marketing campaigns, Americans now eat an average of 33 pounds of cheese per year—nearly triple the 1970 rate. Cheese has become the largest source of saturated fat in Americans' diets.

It gives a new meaning to the term "bloated bureaucracy," doesn't it? Speaking of which: When fiscal conservatives start looking for a place to cut government spending, may we suggest, ahem, cutting the cheese?

Written by Alisa Mullins

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but The New York Times wasn't pussyfooting around when it printed this about fish sea kittens:

We've been saying it all along, but there it is in black and white—thanks to The Gray Lady. Now, why don't you issue your own official statement, in yellow and blue?

Via Gawker

Written by Karin Bennett

Sorry, Internet, but even as a blogger, I have to say that there's no better way to start the morning than to get newsprint-smudged fingers as you flip through the Times. Actually, I stand corrected: The only thing more satisfying is opening up this morning's New York Times to see an ad that exposes Ringling's abuse of baby elephants.

Didn't get a copy of this morning's paper? Check out the full-page spread here:

Written by Logan Schrer

Ever since The New York Times reminded Americans of the devastating effects of meatborne illnesses, the topic has been at the center of discussion around many a dinner table. It was also the hot topic on Monday night's episode of Larry King Live, in which panelists debated: Should Americans be eating meat?

The answer: No, unless you don't mind that your hamburger patty may contain bacteria-laden meat not just from multiple cows, but from multiple factory farms around the world. Barf.

If you missed the show, we've got the full segment for you right here:

If even infamous foie gras–loving chef Anthony Bourdain is against factory farming, then you know it must be bad. Next time you're at the grocery store looking for some patties to throw on the grill, opt for the veggie burgers.

Written by Liz Graffeo

What's more important to the racing industry: horses or money?

If you thought horses, we've found two recent news stories that will change your mind.

Consider this: Thanks to a lawsuit involving the co-owners of former Kentucky Derby favorite I Want Revenge, it's become even clearer how often horses used in the racing industry are dangerously overmedicated. Horses are given anti-inflammatory steroids and painkillers to keep them running even after they've been injured—and of 20 trainers interviewed by The New York Times, only three were willing to turn over their veterinary records.

The New York Times also reports, "[T]here is a consensus among equine researchers and surgeons that legal medications and cortisone shots, over time, leave a horse vulnerable to a catastrophic breakdown."

In other words, even the legal drugs that the racing industry pumps into horses make horrific incidents like the one at last year's Kentucky Derby more likely. This is what PETA has been saying since Eight Belles crashed to the track with two broken ankles in the 2008 Kentucky Derby.

delmarscene / CC

Meanwhile, ESPN reports that the owners of Lava Man—a famous horse forced to "retire" early because of injuries—are trying to squeeze a few more bucks out of the old fella by bringing him back onto the track. According to ESPN, because of his previous injuries, Lava Man is at great risk of suffering a catastrophic breakdown on the track and says that while "[n]ot a single national media outlet will cover Lava Man's comeback race," "every single one would cover a disastrous outcome. … Pick your letters: ESPN, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, or, worse yet, PETA."

Darn skippy.

Time after time, the racing industry risks animals' lives for an extra dollar. Forget the finish line—it's all about the bottom line.

Written by Amanda Schinke

marlerblog / CC

In a chilling reminder to all meat-eaters, Saturday's New York Times recounted the tragic story of Stephanie Smith, whose meatborne illness almost killed her and left her paralyzed.

Two years ago, Smith was a dance instructor who ate a hamburger contaminated by E. coli bacteria, which happens when feces from cattle comes into contact with their flesh during the slaughter process—something that's hard to avoid when the animals are forced to lie in their own urine and feces in barren feedlots and when they are hacked apart in filthy slaughterhouses.

Stephanie experienced stomach cramping that turned into bloody diarrhea. Then her kidneys shut down. Seizures, which knocked her unconscious, were so frequent that doctors had to force her into a coma. Nine weeks later, she woke up. The virus had ravaged Stephanie's nervous system to the point that she can no longer walk, and doctors believe she will be bound to a wheelchair for the rest of her life.

The name "E. coli" comes from "colon," where E. coli is found. In other words, anything that comes into contact with feces can be contaminated. While raw vegetables can be cross-contaminated with meat or with waste runoff from factory farms, ground beef is the most common source of E. coli poisoning.

Ground beef is usually a mixture of the flesh of many cattle from several slaughterhouses. Stephanie Smith's deadly burger contained "trimmings" from one slaughterhouse in Nebraska that kills 2,600 cattle each day. Other bits of the burger came from a slaughterhouse in Texas that kills discarded dairy cows and old bulls.

According to the Times, there isn't any federal law requiring meat-grinding companies to test for E. coli. Many slaughterhouses put the fear of losing money in recalls before public safety and will only sell to grinders who agree not to do testing.

The company that made Stephanie Smith's burger continues to sell its cheap bits and pieces of dead cattle to supermarkets, fast-food restaurants, and the school lunch program, so if a dose of E. coli doesn't sound appealing, go vegan.

Written by Heather Drennan

nytimes / CC

William Safire, who passed away yesterday at the age of 79, is perhaps best known as the genius who penned the words "nattering nabobs of negativism." OK, maybe he's only most famous for that among English majors. In truth, he is best known as being a pioneering conservative pundit.

Here at The PETA Files, we are longtime fans of his "On Language" column in the New York Times Magazine, where he once wrote about the history of vegetarian diets and even gave kudos to the "charmingly crotchety" Donald Watson for inventing the word "vegan."

You had to admire the man's way with words. In turn, he admired others' way with words, most notably in his book, Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History.

In William Safire's memory, we are posting an excerpt from a speech from that book by 19th century Senator George Graham Vest. In his introduction to the speech—which is actually then-prosecutor Vest's closing statement* at the trial of a man accused of killing his neighbor's dog—Safire warns, "If there has ever been a good dog in your life, read this with a handkerchief handy …."

If William Safire had dogs, I imagine their heads are between their paws as I write this. Our thoughts are with them and Safire's family.

Written by Alisa Mullins

*Not surprisingly, he won the case.

McDonald's billboards boast "Billions [of patties of slaughtered animal bits] Served." But in a recent New York Times article, the restaurant chain tries to downplay the slaughter of millions of hoki, a breed of fish sea kitten, for its restaurants each year.

Why is McCruelty so shy all of a sudden?

jacksonlocal / CC

The fast-food giant, which refuses to ease the worst cruelties inflicted on the billions of chickens killed for its restaurants, now finds its Filet-O-Fish Sea Kitten under scrutiny. Hoki, the main ingredient in McDonald's fish sandwich, are dragged (along with other "unintended" victims) from the depths of their ocean homes by huge factory trawlers off the coast of New Zealand. Now alarm bells are ringing as environmentalists realize that hoki populations are dwindling.

Considering McDonald's indifference to the suffering of the factory-farmed animals who are killed for the cheap, unhealthy crap it sells, we suspect that the company won't give a hoot about hoki either.

But there is hope for hoki (and other animals)—if you go vegetarian and join our McCruelty campaign.

Written by Karin Bennett