Our Cruelty Casework Division deals with reports of cruelty to animals every day, responding to literally thousands of instances of animal abuse in a year by writing to prosecutors, informing judges about the link between animal abuse and violence against humans, and sending out fieldworkers to respond to reports of animals in need. When I come across a case like this one, I honestly don’t know how they manage it.

Here’s the story that was reported to one of PETA’s caseworkers. We’re asking the District Attorney to prosecute this case to the fullest extent of the law, so if you’d like to help us out with that, please click here:

Christopher Alessi will be answering to these charges in court this year. As always with these cases, if he’s convicted we need to make sure that he spends a long time in prison, and that he’s never allowed near animals again.

Ouch. Sophie Dahl is a British fashion model, known in the U.K. as a poster-girl for Yves Saint Laurent, and, unfortunately, a lover of expensive furs. These pictures, of Sophie looking just extremely uncomfortable as some concerned animal lovers express their disgust about her idea of “fashion,” made their way around the World Wide Web yesterday, and I thought I’d share them with you. Sucks to get singled out like that, Sophie, but it’s nowhere near as excruciating as what the animals go through.

No, not that Jack Black … The Jack Black line of skin care products for men that's taken the world by storm, with rave reviews and awards from Men’s Health and Esquire magazines. Now the company has teamed up with PETA to highlight its new cruelty-free Pure Performance Shave Brush with a contest over at CaringConsumer.com.

Until now, essentially all high-end barber shop quality shave brushes have been made with badger hair, so this is a real breakthrough. To be honest, I’m a little behind the uber-hip urban dude grooming curve. But even an emo guy like me can appreciate the fact that this brush helps guys get a nice clean shave, and more importantly, lets badgers carry on being badgers. It took years of development and commitment to make it happen, so PETA is presenting our Trail-Blazer Award to Jack Black cofounders Curran Dandurand and Emily Dalton for their commitment to developing products that are free from animal ingredients and never tested on animals.

The holidays are coming, so Mum and Dad, if you’re reading, I really like the looks of this stuff . . . I’m just saying is all. Oh yeah, here’s a direct link to the contest.

You heard me. We needed to know who was the cutest vegetarian child in the world, and thus began a painstaking, epic search throughout the land for the most adorable—but also compassionate re: animals—young lads and lasses that have been produced in the last 10 odd years of human procreation. Our quest for the World’s Cutest Vegetarian finally came to an end when we happened upon young Caitlin Rosendorn of Bloomington, Illinois, and her male counterpart, the undeniably adorable Ian Kaminski of North Syracuse, New York, both of whom beat out a very tough field of extremely lovable little kiddies. So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the winners of this year’s World’s Cutest Vegetarian Kids contest—you can learn more about them at PETAKids.com. Out of sheer laziness, I’ve copied these bios from the text written by my good friend Patricia Trostle who runs our PETA Kids department.

Seven-year-old Ian Kaminski of North Syracuse, New York, is a proud vegetarian who never misses the chance to tell others what's wrong with eating meat. Ian's mom, Christina, tells us he's so compassionate that he knows he shouldn't even kill bugs and that after finding destroyed bird nests on the ground, he discourages his friends from climbing trees in order to protect other nests.

Caitlin Rosendorn loves Tofurky sandwiches and Morningstar Farms corn dogs, and when asked about being a vegetarian, Caitlin lets others know that she loves animals and doesn't want to eat them. Not only does this little lady with a heart of gold have a great sense of style—just look at that ensemble!—she also has great taste in music and loves female-fronted bands like Rainer Maria and Rilo Kiley.

I seriously can’t get over the fact that this young lady is way into Rainer Maria. Not only is she precocious enough to have worked out the practical ethics of meat consumption for herself, but she already has the music taste of a disaffected Brooklyn scenester at the tender age of 6. I love it.

Congratulations, Caitlin and Ian! It’s not always easy to make a compassionate choice like going vegetarian when a lot of your classmates are doing something else, but it’s impressive as hell, and it’s something that you’ll never regret.