Written by Michelle Sherrow
Courtesy of Lelah Foster
Having a celebrity as the face of an animal rights campaign has helped PETA achieve huge victories. For instance, vocal protests by Sir Paul McCartney and Alicia Silverstone helped convince NASA not to blast squirrel monkeys with harmful doses of radiation. Celebrities such as Olivia Munn and Sarah Silverman have helped publicize Ringling Bros.' cruelty to animals, which recently resulted in the largest U.S. Department of Agriculture fine in circus history. And with the help of Lea Michele, the suffering of horses in New York City's carriage trade is garnering attention.
Michelle Cho, the senior manager of communications, dishes about what it's like behind the scenes of some of PETA's most visible work:
What is one of the most exciting things happening right now with PETA's work with celebrities?So many professional athletes are enthusiastic about getting involved. Tony Gonzalez, Chad Ochocinco, Chase Utley, Gilbert Arenas, Amar'e Stoudemire, Willis McGahee, Lance Briggs, Chris Andersen, and many others are allowing us to reach legions of sports fans about animal issues.
What is one of your favorite celebrity stories?When I first met Steve-O six years ago, I was interviewing him about elephant abuse that he had witnessed as a student at Ringling's clown college. I recall him saying that he didn't think vegetarianism was possible for him. Then began the phone calls inquiring about feathers, leather, wool, and even animal products in chewing gum! And just two years later, he had an "aha moment" in which he decided that he didn't want to contribute to the unnecessary suffering of animals and went vegan. He is one of the most inspirational people I've ever known, and I'm so proud to call him a dear friend.
Is Hollywood more animal-friendly than it used to be?Definitely. Thanks to the Internet, we disseminate a lot more information, and it's reaching powerful people. Major ad agencies are pledging never to use great apes, filmmakers are using computer-generated imagery rather than using live animals, and TV shows and movies are including animal rights–related storylines. The support of so many influential people in show business can only pay bigger dividends for animals in the future.
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Join the A-list party! Become a PETA member today.
"What I really want to share with people is the possibility of them having the most healthy and abundant joy they could ever imagine," Alicia Silverstone told UCLA's Daily Bruin newspaper, before she spoke to hundreds of students on campus last night at an event hosted by UCLA's Bruins for Animals and peta2.
Alicia shared with students how changing her eating habits changed her life. "Being vegan truly is the secret to my life's joy and peace," she said. Afterward, she answered questions and signed dozens of copies of her bestselling book, The Kind Diet.
While some of the students likely came just to see the lovely Alicia, her message and the "Glass Walls" video that peta2 staffers screened left quite an impression. peta2 staff were bombarded with questions from people interested in learning how to change their eating habits to improve their health, protect the environment, and prevent cruelty to animals.
The vegetarian/vegan starter kits that flew off the tables and Native Foods Café's vegan Thanksgiving feast that they sampled got them off to a great start.
Written by PETA
In honor of Culinarians Day, we've whipped up a list of some of our favorite vegan celebrity chefs, chefs who cook for celebrities, and cruelty-free restaurants where you might just catch celebrities chowing down. Tasty! Check it out:
One lucky reader can win the Skinny Bitch Ultimate Everyday Cookbook. For a chance to win, just leave a comment telling us who your favorite vegan celebrity is.*
Written by Colleen Twombly-Borst
Celebrities took to Twitter yesterday to make a huge splash for seals. We asked compassionate celebrity supporters to tweet a message to their fans telling them that the Canadian commercial seal slaughter had begun and including a link to our "It's Time to End the Seal Slaughter" donation page. So many of them responded that our Twitter page looked like an A-list party.
Supporters who spoke up for seals who are bludgeoned and sometimes skinned alive for their fur include Ellen Degeneres, who also posted it on her blog, Pink, Sophia Bush, Daniella Monet, Jayde Nicole, Lea Michele, Vida Guerra, Alicia Silverstone, Dave Navarro, Stephanie Pratt, The Veronicas, Bill Maher, Ian Somerhalder, Diablo Cody, Sasha Grey, and, of course, Honorary PETA Director Pamela Anderson.
Get in on the action! Tweet this link to your Twitter followers: http://bit.ly/gNMLOJ. Or go to our donation page to help stop Canada's barbaric seal slaughter.
Compassionate celebrities want a little less conversation and a little more action. Somebody alert the Elvis Presley fan club:
Proving yet again that people who are kind to animals are winners, lovely animal rights supporter and vegetarian Brandy Kuentzel triumphed on season 10 of The Apprentice last week. Brandy was the most levelheaded and polished of all the contestants, in my book—and apparently in The Donald's as well.
Brandy, who went vegetarian while she was in law school, has volunteered at animal shelters for nearly a decade and admires the way that PETA pal Alicia Silverstone promotes a vegan lifestyle. Let's hope that Brandy's animal-friendly ways will rub off on the entire Trump organization!
Written by Lindsay Pollard-Post
The ever-awesome Pink has just released a new video, "Raise Your Glass," which is filled with both cool and disturbing animal imagery, including a row of women producing breast milk that's being consumed by a calf. (Pink isn't afraid to knock fans out of their complacency!) The video also features an anti-bullfighting segment in which Pink shows a matador how it feels to have someone come at you with a sword.
It's little wonder that Pink's video is so cutting-edge and thought-provoking. After all, it was directed by another PETA friend—the fabulous (and vegan!) Dave Meyers, who directed our sizzling Alicia Silverstone public service announcement.
Watch the video and tell us what you think about Pink's unique way of getting the animal rights messages across.
Written by Jennifer O'Connor
Victory Update: Following a year of vigorous campaigning, PETA has learned that government officials have grounded plans for a cruel and ineffective radiation experiment on monkeys. Learn more about this victory for monkeys.
Employees at Brookhaven National Laboratory might have thought that their ears where playing tricks on them when they showed up at work Wednesday morning to find a message on their phones from none other than Alicia Silverstone. The not-so-Clueless actor is so fired up about NASA's plans to fund an experimenter to bombard up to 30 squirrel monkeys with radiation at the facility that she sent a passionate phone message to each of Brookhaven's more than 1,000 employees urging them to reject the experiments.
Alicia informed Brookhaven staffers that if the experiments go forward, then intelligent, social primates would be locked up in cages for the rest of their lives. The radiation could cause them to suffer brain damage, cancer, or even blindness.
She also told them that NASA's European counterpart—the European Space Agency—has publicly condemned such experiments on monkeys.
Your tax dollars would be paying for these cruel and unnecessary experiments. Please add your two cents' worth to Alicia's by dropping Brookhaven's head honchos a line, letting them know that you oppose NASA's planned experiments on monkeys, and asking them nix the experiments right now. And don't forget to urge everyone you know to pick up the phone too. We can save these monkeys.
What do you get when two of our all-time favorite people—Oprah Winfrey and Alicia Silverstone—tackle the topic of America's addiction to cheaply raised, unhealthy animal products? An episode of Oprah that's both a chilling reality check and a charming hunger-inducer.
Oprah's never been one to shy away from the hard-hitting issues, and on yesterday's show she took a critical look at modern factory farming methods. Viewers were given a glimpse of modern farming methods and were, no doubt, shocked to see footage of chicks tumbling down a chute—as though they were nothing more than paper clips on an assembly line—and adult chickens, belly up, struggling to breathe in jam-packed, stench-filled sheds. But, never one to leave her audience without a solution to an issue, Oprah invited the vivacious and lovely Alicia Silverstone to the show to teach viewers about delicious, satisfying vegan alternatives to meat-laden and dairy-drenched foods.
While Alicia set to work making mouthwatering recipes from her cookbook, The Kind Diet, she also revealed that her acne, insomnia, and asthma all vanished when she went vegan. If I weren't already dining on a cruelty-free diet, those facts combined with Alicia's recipe for Artichoke, Mushroom and Leek Crostinis would have been enough to get me to try it out. So tell us: Was it the food or the health benefits that finally convinced you to try a vegan diet?
Written by Karin Bennett
"These animals are kept in stables that are too small, often they're cold, they work long hours and they don't have time off. … There was a horse about three months ago that got his foot caught on a parking meter and had to be destroyed—it's awful. You know, it looks nice when you go to the park and see a horse-drawn carriage, but unless there is some way to care for these horses properly, and it doesn't appear that there is, I think we should ban it completely." —New York Governor David Paterson
"These animals are kept in stables that are too small, often they're cold, they work long hours and they don't have time off. … There was a horse about three months ago that got his foot caught on a parking meter and had to be destroyed—it's awful. You know, it looks nice when you go to the park and see a horse-drawn carriage, but unless there is some way to care for these horses properly, and it doesn't appear that there is, I think we should ban it completely."
—New York Governor David Paterson
In the wise words of Alicia Keys, "Let's hear it for New York!" With this gubernatorial compassion and Bethenny Frankel's scorching new ad, I've never been more proud to be a New Yorker—or more inspired tell all my friends in NYC to contact their councilmembers.
Written by Logan Scherer
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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