Written by Michelle Sherrow
A lot has been happening this week at PETA: victories, anniversaries, and celebrations! We're after CareerBuilder, we stopped shipments of monkeys to laboratories, and we've done much more! Check out the latest news and victories:
What a busy week it's been in the PETAsphere! Just in case you missed any of the big news, we've got you covered. Follow us on Tumblr for future news about animal rights, vegan living, and where in the world the PETA campaigners are now.
Written by Jeff Mackey
Hey, Soul Sister! PETA has sent an urgent letter to the rock band Train urging the group to cancel their performance at KFC's franchisee convention in San Antonio—or else face the music from PETA supporters—because of KFC's refusal to stop its suppliers' cruelty to chickens.
Many of the top names in music have taken a strong public stand against KFC, including Sir Paul McCartney, Pink, the Smashing Pumpkins, and Chrissie Hynde. Let's hope that Train gets on board, too, but if they take KFC's dirty money, they must carry the company's baggage—and PETA will protest their show.
Even those of us who are not quite famous can tell KFC to take cruelty to chickens off the menu. Sign Pink's petition demanding that KFC require its suppliers to stop abusing birds (and don't eat at its restaurants until it agrees).
The TV networks have been notably, um, unenthusiastic about running PETA's Super Bowl ads, so this year PETA is planning to take its message directly to the players and fans by placing billboards in the teams' hometowns of New York and Boston as well as Indianapolis, which is hosting the game, making an irreverent plea for people to put down the chicken wings on Super Bowl Sunday.
Chickens © iStockphoto.com/Sunnybeach
It's estimated that some 600 million chickens are killed for the wings consumed just during the Super Bowl. Yikes! And that's after the abuse they all suffered through on factory farms.
Not only is this wing-eating obsession cruel, it also shows a lack of imagination. After all, there are so many mouth-watering alternatives to the old same-old same-old. For vegan game-day treats that will satisfy the most ravenous sports fan, check out these recipes for fab finger foods that won't cost birds their limbs.
If your party guests insist on being served wings, try the meatless variety, like Gardein's buffalo "wings"—the choice of the NFL's Ricky Williams—or just roll your own!
Gizmodo
What you're looking at is not a newly discovered pink Burmese python or the material used to make lawn flamingos. It's actually something edible (and I use the term "edible" loosely).
This is actually mechanically separated meat, the main ingredient in many commercial chicken nuggets (and the companies use the term "chicken" loosely). The picture has been circulating around the Internet for a while, but it's still creating buzz because it shows something we rarely see.
It's made by sending animals' bones through a machine that scrapes off the last bits of flesh and blood and smashes them together to form a paste more nausea-inducing than the kind you ate in kindergarten. The paste has to be soaked in ammonia to kill the bacteria, the "chicken" flavor has to be added to it, and the whole mess has to be dyed so that it no longer resembles, well, a big bloody log of unidentifiable animal bits.
Meet Feel Ideal. Practically every day that weather permits, he can be found outside his local McDonald's in Honolulu handing out leaflets explaining how chickens killed for the fast-food giant suffer and how the company—as one of the biggest sellers of chicken meat—could reduce this abuse by requiring its suppliers to switch to a more humane slaughter method.
It wouldn't be a proper protest without a poster, and Feel Ideal gave his a uniquely Hawaiian twist. Yes, it's the world's first McCruelty body board!
There's an important lesson to be learned from Mr. Ideal: You don't have to wait for a large organized demonstration to speak out against McCruelty (or any other kind of cruelty). You can make a huge statement all by yourself. And when you do, you're not really alone—PETA's got your back. Join the PETA Action Team to work together toward a kinder world for everyone.
Finally, a bit of justice for the most abused animal on the planet. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) charged Canada's largest chicken producer, Maple Lodge Farms, with 60 violations of federal animal health laws after it let thousands of chickens freeze to death during transport.
The CFIA cites multiple occasions on which Maple Lodge crammed crates full of chickens into unheated trucks and drove them to slaughter in temperatures well below 0 degrees Fahrenheit. CFIA inspectors even found snow and ice inside the crates of some chickens who were stacked near the truck's freezing-cold metal floor and walls.
Our neighbors to the north seem to assert that chickens at least shouldn't be frozen to death, unlike in the U.S., where birds have no federal legal protection from cruelty whatsoever while being transported to slaughter. The best protection that chickens currently receive in both the States and Canada is from people who say "No" to supporting torture and "Yes" to cruelty-free mock meats.
It sounds like the plot of a Disney movie, but this video of a pig and dog who are best buds would warm even Walt's cryogenically frozen heart.
"Don't mind me." After committing the most adorable case of breaking and entering ever, a baby seal curled up on a New Zealand woman's couch for a nap.
Can you do a good "fish face"? These people are spot-on. … Or are the fish doing a spot-on "human face"?
Would you like an awkward conversation about the facts of life with that? A 7-year-old girl and her mother allegedly discovered a condom in the child's McDonald's Happy Meal.
Talk about a return on your investment: Eight years after she went missing, a dog is going home to her family, thanks to a tiny, inexpensive microchip.
And a chicken named Liberty, dubbed Britain's "last battery hen" is headed home too. She will enjoy retirement on a farm with other hens who were formerly confined to battery cages as the U.K.'s ban on the cruel confinement system goes into effect for the new year.
A family is suing American Airlines after their loved one died on a flight, reportedly after consuming chicken contaminated with bacteria.
Fluke? Not so much. The Food and Drug Administration reports that there are 48 million cases of foodborne illness in the U.S. every year, resulting in 128,000 hospitalizations and 3,000 deaths. Consumer Reports found the leading bacterial causes of foodborne illness—salmonella and campylobacter—in two-thirds of the chickens that it purchased nationwide.
If you don't enjoy your meals served with a side of vomiting, diarrhea, fever, and abdominal cramps, not to mention cruelty, maybe it's time to jettison chicken from your diet. Check out a wide variety of chicken-free recipes at our Living page.
Written by PETA
In a David-and-Goliath fight against Big Chicken—i.e., Chick-fil-A—Vermont artist and local agriculture booster Bo Muller-Moore is fighting for his right to "eat more kale." Chick-fil-A called "fowl" on Muller-Moore, claiming that consumers would be bamboozled into thinking that there is some affiliation with its trademarked phrase "Eat Mor Chikin" but Muller-Moore is standing firm in what he hopes is just a game of legal "chicken."
One thing's for sure: While eating more chicken poses a multitude of health risks, you can't go wrong by raising (and eating) more kale.
Check out some kaleicious recipes on PETA's "Living" site. You'll get a healthy dose of calcium, beta carotene, and vitamin C and leave the saturated fat and cholesterol at the drive-through window.
Written by Heather Faraid Drennan
McDonald's has kicked its PR machine into high gear after a terrific undercover investigation by Mercy for Animals at Sparboe Farms, one of McDonald's primary egg suppliers, revealed that workers grabbed hens by the throat and slammed them into cages, that an employee swung a hen by her feet, that male chicks were tossed into plastic bags to suffocate, that rotting corpses of hens were left in cages with live birds, and other horrendous abuses.
In response, McDonald's announced that it will stop buying eggs from Sparboe Farms. Hang on, though—don't let McDonald's PR move lead you to believe that this will make a real difference for animals. We've seen it before. What Mercy for Animals uncovered is business as usual for factory farms, as countless PETA investigations, even of other McDonald's suppliers, have shown.
One example: A 2007 PETA investigation of a Union City, Tennessee, slaughterhouse that supplies McDonald's with much of its chicken flesh revealed that employees yanked birds out of shackles so aggressively that they broke the birds' legs, amused themselves by forcing as many as six chickens into a shackle that was designed for one bird, and forcefully slammed chickens against shackles. The electrified water bath that is supposed to stun chickens before their throats are cut was not working for two days, and slaughterhouse operators knowingly allowed tens of thousands of chickens to have their throats slit while the birds were still conscious.
It isn't good enough for McDonald's to simply switch to buying eggs from another lousy supplier with no stricter standards of "care" than the previous cruel supplier. On filthy, intensive-confinement farms—which describes every one of McDonald's and KFC's suppliers—hens are crammed into feces-filled wire cages with less space than a sheet of paper for each bird, and chicks' beaks are burned off without painkillers.
What consumers must demand are meaningful reforms and an end to the worst abuses suffered by the chickens killed for McDonald's and KFC. Here's one way to help chickens: Encourage the chains to switch to a less-cruel slaughter method called "controlled-atmosphere killing" (CAK). All the abuses that chickens suffer in slaughterhouses would be eliminated if McDonald's required its suppliers to switch to CAK, because with CAK, the birds are dead before they are shackled, bled, and scalded in defeathering tanks. Yet McDonald's and KFC have dragged their feet for years instead of switching methods, even though CAK is approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and even though McDonald's European suppliers adopted this method years ago.
Buyer beware: If you eat at McDonald's or KFC, you're eating food created via extreme cruelty to animals. Please boycott these companies and click here to tell them that you're not lovin' their chicken abuse.
Written by Lindsay Pollard-Post
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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.