Written by Michelle Kretzer
The ladies of the Lingerie Football League are part of the NFL (No Fur League), and they want to make sure that everyone gets drafted. The BC Angels are the latest team to join PETA's anti-fur campaign, asking Vancouver to "tackle cruelty: bench fur."
The gals had a ball tossing around the faux pigskin and talking to holiday shoppers about how fur is a personal foul.
And when a woman in a ridiculous fur hat got snippy with them, the classy lassies snapped right back, politely telling her that while they may choose to take a beating on the field, animals who are killed for their fur would definitely choose not to be beaten, electrocuted, or skinned alive.
Help intercept the cruel fur industry by telling bebe that you won't be buying until it takes fur out of the game.
An 8-foot-tall goose on a busy sidewalk is enough to make people do a double-take. But an 8-foot-tall goose who has had his feathers ripped out is enough to make people stop in their tracks.
PETA's goose made feathers fly in order to ask holiday shoppers to save geese's skin.
PETA's goose is touring the country asking people to be benevolent to birds.
As the hurried shoppers stopped to gape at the goose, they readily accepted information about the cruel down industry. People were horrified to learn that geese are often held down while workers yank out their feathers by the fistful. The birds are often left with gaping wounds, which the workers hastily sew closed without any painkillers.
As shoppers learned, it couldn't be easier to be a friend to fowl. Many companies, including Martha Stewart, The Company Store, and Lands' End, offer bedding or coats made with high-tech synthetic materials like PrimaLoft® and Thinsulate™ that are as warm as down but, unlike bird feathers, don't lose the ability to insulate when they get wet.
Join compassionate shoppers in taking PETA's pledge to be down-free and make a goose's day.
Written by Jeff Mackey
Many of you have joined PETA and PETA India (as well as Paul McCartney) in calling for the release of Sunder, the horribly abused baby elephant who was held captive in spiked chains in a dark shed at the Jyotiba Temple in Maharashtra, India. Despite assurances from the government that Sunder would be taken into protective custody, the authorities fear retaliation from the temple trustees if they seize him, and now the little elephant has been moved not to a sanctuary but into a heavily guarded factory compound where no one can see him. PETA India has stepped up pressure for Sunder's release, including holding this demonstration outside the office of the principal chief conservator of forests, sending a message that he could hardly have missed:
Our friends in Mumbai report that they've been fielding calls from people who are exasperated with the government's inaction and eager to see as much attention as possible brought to Sunder's predicament until he is released. Stay tuned …
What You Can Do
In the Americas, many elephants are also held captive and abused by circuses—please help set them free.
PETA is always saying that we wish people would put themselves in the place of animals. But if they won't, we'll do it for them. The founder of PETA and our affiliates worldwide, Ingrid E. Newkirk, let herself be hitched with a bit in her mouth to a horse-drawn carriage in order to help PETA India show Mumbai residents that they wouldn't like it if the horseshoe were on the other foot.
Ingrid let traffic at a busy intersection watch her struggle to pull the carriage, called a "Victoria," just as horses often do. But unlike horses, she didn't have to worry that if the load proved to be too heavy, the cart driver would yank on the spiked bit in her sore mouth or whip her mercilessly to make her force a few strained steps out of her trembling legs. And what do the horses get for their effort? They are denied adequate food, water, and rest and are kept in filthy, damp stables infested with biting insects. Many never receive any veterinary care in their entire lives.
And horse-drawn carriages aren't just dangerous for horses. Passengers and people standing nearby are often injured when horses collapse from exhaustion, get frightened and bolt, or collide with other vehicles.
A growing number of cities in India and around the world have banned horse-drawn carriages, and PETA India is working to make Mumbai the next. Stateside, you can join the campaign to get abused horses off New York City's congested streets.
The grisly photos of Nakai, an orca imprisoned at SeaWorld who has a dinner plate–size gaping wound on his lower mandible that he likely sustained when another orca attacked him, have sparked nationwide outrage.
As PETA alleged in its complaint to government regulators, SeaWorld confined Nakai to a small tank with other orcas with whom he was not compatible, in clear violation of the Animal Welfare Act, and then tried to cover up its orca abuse following the attack by claiming that Nakai injured himself on the side of the pool. A huge, impassioned crowd gathered outside SeaWorld San Diego, where Nakai is kept, to let residents know to steer clear of the marine-mammal prison.
If the response they got is any indication, the protesters were preaching to the choir. People who were stopped at red lights waved and cheered their support and took leaflets with them. And there were so many honks from the passing cars that advocates who were giving interviews to the throngs of reporters had to keep starting over.
People all across the country are telling SeaWorld to get out of the cruelty business. Urge The Blackstone Group, which owns SeaWorld, to retire its marine mammals to sanctuaries.
Students at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (UW) likely had no idea that as they made their way to class, they were passing by a laboratory in which cats, exactly like the ones many of the students would return home to, were being tormented and killed in gruesome experiments. But PETA set out to show the students exactly what was going on behind closed doors on their campus and to enlist their support to get the experiments stopped.
UW experimenters did not want information about their cruel sound localization experiments on cats to be released, and they fought PETA for more than three years to try to keep the information under wraps. But we sued the school for release of the disturbing pictures taken of the laboratory's feline victims—and got the photos.
PETA members marched onto campus holding signs emblazoned with the graphic images of Double Trouble, one of the many cats UW abused. UW faculty drilled holes into Double Trouble's head, screwed a steel post to her skull, implanted electrodes in her brain, and put coils in her eyes. They dripped toxic chemicals into her ears to deafen her, then implanted devices in both ears. During at least two of these surgeries, Double Trouble's anesthesia was inadequate, and she woke up or was conscious and likely in pain.
Experimenters immobilized Double Trouble's head and made her try to locate sounds coming from different directions. They starved her for days in order to make her cooperate during these experiments in exchange for a piece of food. When the experimenters were done using Double Trouble, they killed and decapitated her.
And after all the pain and trauma that Double Trouble was subjected to, the experimenters admitted that the project was a failure. Meanwhile, institutions around the world study how the brain locates sounds by using advanced methods with human volunteers.
Many UW students signed PETA's petition asking the National Institutes of Health to stop giving the school taxpayer money to fund these cruel experiments. You can, too.
For more than two decades, experimenters at the National Institute on Aging (NIA, part of the National Institutes of Health) and the University of Wisconsin–Madison (UW–Madison) starved caged monkeys—depriving them of a whopping 30 percent of needed calories—to see if this would increase their longevity. Now, the vivisectors at NIA have announced that the extreme, prolonged deprivation had no effect on the monkeys' life span.
The NIA studies, funded by taxpayers, started in 1987, and the UW–Madison studies began in 1989. At both facilities—and also at the Oregon National Primate Research Center, where similar experiments are being conducted—the monkeys, in addition to being kept chronically hungry in a semi-starved state, were imprisoned in tiny barren cages and condemned to a lifetime of isolation, without even the simplest benefit of any cage mates. As journalist Gina Kolata described in The New York Times:
For 25 years, the rhesus monkeys were kept semi-starved, lean and hungry. The males' weights were so low they were the equivalent of a 6-foot-tall man who tipped the scales at just 120 to 133 pounds. The hope was that if the monkeys lived longer, healthier lives by eating a lot less, then maybe people, their evolutionary cousins, would, too.
When the studies at UW–Madison were first made public in 2009, PETA filed a formal complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the university's egregious violations of the Animal Welfare Act. In addition, PETA complained to the UW–Madison Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, but our concerns were dismissed.
Now, after decades of condemning intelligent, sensitive monkeys to protracted suffering, the vivisectors have admitted that their experiments not only failed to make their point but also were poorly designed: The monkeys were fed a diet that was 28.5 percent sucrose (i.e., empty calories). So, in addition to being ethically inexcusable, the experiments were scientifically nonsensical.
But no matter what the experimenters were trying to prove, it was wrong to cage and starve these monkeys. All so-called "calorie-restriction experiments" (that's vivisector lingo for "starving animals") should be banned now. Primates are extremely intelligent animals who form intricate social relationships, experience the same wide range of emotions that we do, and exhibit a capacity for suffering similar to ours. Rhesus macaque monkeys have been shown to use tools, count, and communicate complex information. Monkeys can also express empathy, and they possess a sense of fairness—something that many experimenters seem to lack.
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We each have a role to play in helping monkeys and other primates suffering in laboratories. Please urge the federal government to stop wasting our tax dollars on cruel and pointless experiments on animals.
PETA has teamed up with St. Louis Vegans to put extra pressure on St. Louis Children's Hospital and Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL) as part of PETA's campaign to stop live cats from being tormented in painful and archaic medical training conducted cooperatively by the institutions.
A Real Horror Show
As the hospital and university held a Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS) course where trainees were forcing plastic tubes down cats' windpipes as part of the crude intubation training exercise, the groups acted out the cruel procedure in a particularly unsettling—and unforgettable—form of street theater.
WUSTL and St. Louis Children's Hospital continue to torment cats in PALS courses even though sophisticated humanlike simulators are available and the American Heart Association—which sponsors the course—states that it "does not require or endorse the use of animals in PALS courses."
Simulators are already used instead of animals at virtually every institution that offers PALS, including other schools and medical centers in St. Louis. Even one of the original developers of the course has joined the fight against these crude laboratories.
Please join PETA and St. Louis Vegans in telling Washington University and St. Louis Children's Hospital that it's time to leave the dark ages—and cruelty to cats—in the past and use superior modern simulators instead.
Written by PETA
When 10-year-old Nicky Schwarz learned that the principal of his California elementary school had agreed to eat fried worms if the students read for a half-million minutes, this kind kid sprang into action. Nicky circulated a petition calling for an alternative to the event and rallied his friends and classmates to speak up, too—and the stunt was called off!
For demonstrating that compassion should apply to all beings, Nicky received a PETA Kids Compassionate Action Award. We sent this smart fifth-grader a framed certificate, a letter of recognition, and a bagful of PETA goodies.
Help inspire the kids you know to turn their compassion into action by giving them a copy of PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk's book 50 Awesome Ways Kids Can Help Animals.
Every animal advocate has been faced with a challenging situation at some point, be it a question we aren't quite sure how to answer or even a person who is downright rude. In her 30 years at PETA’s helm, President Ingrid E. Newkirk has faced them all, and she wanted to share her wisdom for maintaining grace under fire and still getting out important messages about cruelty to animals.
Ingrid has recorded a CD chock-full of helpful suggestions, Ingrid Newkirk on Activism, which is available for free on iTunes. For a quick preview, we've compiled some of our favorite "Newkirk Nuggets" on our website.
You can hear Ingrid's advice on feeling confident ...
"Never be intimidated. After all, remember: You hold the ace in your pocket, and that is the strength of our moral argument."
... dealing with difficult people ...
"If someone is a jerk to you, always try to be polite back, no matter how much you want to just punch them."
... and many other pearls of wisdom.
After you've listened to Ingrid's advice, let us know which nugget is your favorite, and share some of your own by leaving a comment below with your best suggestions for being an ambassador for animals.
Written by Michelle Sherrow
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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