Written by PETA
If anyone still believes that "organic" eggs are a humane choice, please look at these gut-wrenching photos from the Organic Valley farm in Wisconsin: They show birds in stinking, stifling, windowless warehouses, crammed so tightly together that they're barely able to move—much less spread their wings, scratch in the dirt, or interact normally in any way.
The heartbreaking photos were released by a farm-policy research group called The Cornucopia Institute in a report called "Scrambled Eggs," which details the entrenched abuse in industrial-scale egg factories.
As the pictures attest, "organic" doesn't mean that birds are allowed to be free. Cage-free does not mean free range, of course, and so the chickens can still be crammed into sheds and forced to suffer through having a part of their beak cut off, just like birds on factory farms. But "organic" does mean that the chickens aren't fed antibiotics—leaving them all the more susceptible to illness in the filthy, poorly ventilated, crowded conditions.
Break the cycle of cruelty in your own life by choosing vegan alternatives to eggs, meat, and dairy products. Call 1-888-VEG-FOOD or order a free copy of our vegetarian/vegan starter kit today.
Written by Jennifer O'Connor
As many as 60,000 chickens died recently at Greenway Farms in Cleveland County, North Carolina, after a generator failure caused a fan to stop working in one of the chicken houses, leaving the smart, sensitive birds to suffer an excruciating death in the suffocating heat under intensive confinement.
We'd like to say that this horrific incident is unusual, but it's not—every summer, chicken-farm operators casually write off losses of birds because of their own careless failure to provide or maintain back-up generators or to employ emergency evacuation plans. But one thing is different in this case: Unlike many other jurisdictions, Cleveland County has cruelty-to-animal statutes that rightly apply to chickens—not just dogs and cats. So PETA has called on the county's district attorney to look into this case and to carefully consider filing cruelty-to-animals charges against the owners of Greenway Farms.
Tired of supporting businesses that treat living beings as if they were expendable materials? Click here to learn how to free yourself—and animals—from this cycle of cruelty.
Written by Jeff Mackey
It's so hot in the city, you'd think I'd be making another batch of lemonade—but I've got a hankering for some Internet Soup. It's been a while since the last batch, so dig in!
Oof! I don't know about you, but I'm full after all that soup—and guac. This Special K needs a siesta. Until next time …
Written by Karin Bennett
Note to bigwigs at animal-abusing companies: Don't offer to answer questions unless you're prepared to sit in the hot seat! When PETA learned that McDonald's vice president Bob Langert is taking questions from stakeholders—people who are affected by McDonald's actions—on McDonald's "corporate responsibility" blog, PETA Senior V.P. Dan Mathews sent in this query, which is sure to make Langert squirm:
Chickens who are killed by McDonald's suppliers have their throats cut while they are still conscious, and many suffer broken limbs or are scalded to death in defeathering tanks. As the leading U.S. purchaser of chicken meat, your company has the ability and the market power to end these abuses. When will McDonald's become a leader in animal welfare by requiring your U.S. suppliers to switch to a less cruel slaughter method that's approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and is already used by McDonald's suppliers in Europe?
After all, who is more affected by McDonald's actions than the nearly 300 million chickens who are slaughtered for the chain each year? It's unlikely that Langert will respond, even though PETA is not only a stakeholder but also a company shareholder.
You can give McCruelty an earful about its abusive methods by leaving a stakeholder comment of your own or by urging the company to adopt that less cruel slaughter method, which is called "controlled-atmosphere killing."
Written by Lindsay Pollard-Post
Hot on the heels of news that some doctors are recommending that elementary school–age kids be put on statin drugs (seriously—I wish I were making it up) comes a better prescription for dealing with the side effects of the childhood obesity epidemic. Several of the U.K.'s leading doctors are recommending a junk-food jihad.
"If we were really bold, we might even begin to think of high-calorie fast food in the same way as cigarettes—by setting stringent limits on advertising, product placement, and sponsorship of sports events," said Professor Terence Stephenson, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.
Meanwhile, PETA is taking the Detroit Public Library system and Detroit's first lady to task for bribing encouraging kids to read books by promising them a free McDonald's Happy Meal. Hopefully, kids will turn up their noses at this shameless gimmick after they read That's Why We Don't Eat Animals, a copy of which PETA has sent to the library.
Written by Alisa Mullins
"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: But when I became a man, I put away childish things."1 Corinthians 13:11
When I was a child (in 1976), I entered—and "won"—a fishing contest. But when I became a man, I put away the childish rod and reel because I had learned that real men are kind to animals.
A recent study suggests that men tend to overcompensate when their masculinity is threatened, and this feeling of inadequacy can manifest itself as aggression toward others. So our friends at PETA U.K. are asking a question: Do anglers have small rods? Maybe they're overcompensating for something. I mean, why would a grown-up impale animals with a hook, pull them up out of the water, and let them slowly suffocate? Especially when we now know that fish are complex and intelligent individuals who experience terror and suffering just as land animals do. If anglers treated cats the way they treat fish, they could be put in prison on cruelty charges!
Head over to DoAnglersHaveSmallRods.com to see what's going on. And if you're not someone who stakes your manhood on the state of your tackle box, click here to find out what you can do to help fish.
After finding out that a McDonald's restaurant in his hometown of Liverpool had plastered the walls with photos of him and the rest of the Fab Four, Sir Paul McCartney—who is known by all (except maybe the marooned fighter pilot on Gilligan's Island) as being a longtime and outspoken vegetarian—was less than glad all over.
Refusing to let it be, McCartney urged his fans to boycott the fast-food behemoth. Surprisingly, the notoriously tone-deaf purveyor of patties seems to have gotten the message, and the photos have reportedly gotten back to where they once belonged.
Maybe next McDonald's will agree to make improvements in the way chickens are killed for its restaurants. I'm sure Sir Paul wouldn't object to Meat-Free Mondays at McDonald's, either—or better yet, meatless meals eight days a week.
Once again, the PETA Files goes to the movies. First up: Vegans are hitting the big time on big screens across America, courtesy of Rob Schneider's vegan character in last week's box-office hit, Grown Ups. Sure, the movie made fun of vegans, but it made fun of everything—besides, we at PETA have a good sense of humor.
This week, we're curious to see whether Aang, the hero of The Last Airbender, will share his vegetarian views as he did in the beloved Nickelodeon series Avatar: The Last Airbender. He should, of course, considering that it's in keeping with his steadfast Buddhist and Taoist beliefs—but the film is tied in with a massive McDonald's promotion featuring Airbender commercials and action figures. Go figure. Are Airbender producers and McCruelty execs banking on the hope that audiences won't notice—or care—that a corporation that refuses to make even minimal improvements to reduce its cruel treatment of billions of animals is pushing figurines of a passionate animal defender?
We're going to go ahead and cry fowl on this partnership—and then ask: Will you speak up for chickens?
The following is a Canada Day guest post from Bill Maher, the genius behind Politically Incorrect and HBO's Real Time With Bill Maher. Maher offered his wit for an op-ed, originally posted in today's Daily News, in a humorous protest against a deadly serious issue: Canada's annual slaughter of tens of thousands of seals—the largest massacre of marine mammals in the world.
Here's some good news from my friends at PETA, just in time for Canada Day on July 1: Canada's annual commercial seal slaughter is over—at least for this year—and more than 80 percent of the seals who had been marked for death were spared because hardly anyone wants to wear baby-seal fur anymore. But Canada won't cancel the massacre outright. Why?
There are a lot of things to admire about our neighbor to the north, but the country's strange seal phobia is not one of them. Canada is terrified of seals. Baby seals, in particular. I know, it doesn't make any sense to me either.
Canada's seal "hunt"—which happens every November to June off Canada's East Coast—is the largest slaughter of marine mammals on the planet, leaving tens of thousands of animals dead every year. And let's be clear: The Canadian government may call it a "hunt," but impaling baby seals in the jaw with hooks, dragging them across the ice, and throwing them into a pile where they choke on their own blood before being skinned isn't a sport—it's a massacre. The video of it is like a starter snuff film designed for serial killers.
Opposition around the world is growing. Last year, the U.S. Senate—a group of people who usually can't agree that the sky is blue—unanimously passed a resolution calling for an immediate end to the annual slaughter. But the Canadian government just keeps putting its fingers in its ears and singing "la, la, la" so that it won't hear anything it doesn't like. Or, if it does hear, it responds with all the subtlety and sophistication of a fistfight in the men's room at a monster-truck rally.
The European Union, for example, recently passed a ban on seal products. So after stomping its feet and jutting out its lower lips for a while, Canada threatened to go tell mom that it's being picked on. Sorry, did I say "mom"? I meant the World Trade Organization. And as if that weren't tone-deaf enough, in response to the EU's ban, Canada's parliament also pushed—unsuccessfully—to incorporate seal skins into the uniforms of the Canadian Olympic team in a desperate attempt to legitimize the seal slaughter.
When Russia announced a ban on the killing of baby harp seals in that country, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called the seal slaughter a "bloody industry that should have been banned long ago." Shortly thereafter, Canada's Governor General Michaëlle Jean cut open a seal and chowed down on the animal's raw heart, burbling inanely, "It's like sushi." I'm not making that up.
Note to Canada: When your officials are making Vladimir Putin look like the voice of reason and the U.S. Senate appears to be a model of civility, you're doing something wrong.
Let's clear up a couple of myths perpetrated by the Canadian government in defense of the "hunt." The sealing industry is not a subsistence trade for native peoples. The Inuit—most of whom live in the Arctic, far away from the main seal-killing regions of Newfoundland and Labrador—are responsible for only about 3 percent of the annual seal kill.
Nor is the slaughter important to the Canadian economy. In Newfoundland, where the majority of sealers live, revenues from sealing account for just about 1 percent of the province's economy. But even if it were more, that's still no excuse for clubbing babies.
You'd think that officials would have gotten the message that it's time to stop the slaughter when many sealers sat out this year's massacre in the face of plunging demand and record-low ice levels. Incredibly, Fisheries Minister Gail Shea instead increased the killing quotas.
In fact, Canada is spending millions of dollars—and despite what you may have heard, Canadian dollars are real money—on desperate efforts to prop up the dying commercial seal slaughter, including rushing Shea to China to try to peddle seal pelts there and posting a $75,000 contract for a "Social Media Reputation and Online Issues Management" advisor to track seal chatter on the Web.
Not long ago, Canada launched a "Keep Exploring" ad campaign to attract tourists. Vacationers may find it hard to have a really good time with all that shooting and beating going on in the background.
Reacting to the tourism campaign, PETA is pushing back with its own campaign, called, "Explore Elsewhere," encouraging people to leave Canada out of their travel plans until the seal massacre is stopped for good. I've never really been one to call for boycotting an entire country, but in the face of such heartless ineptitude, maybe it's worth considering.
PETA's brand-new McCruelty PSA starring actor Jenna Jameson turned out fantastic, as we knew it would, but we had to shoot it several times. Jenna had to stop the action to regain her composure whenever she started talking about how chickens' legs are often broken when workers slam them upside down into metal shackles, and how these gentle birds are frequently scalded alive in defeathering tanks.
It's depressing enough to think (and blog) about cruelty that McDonald's could stop but simply chooses not to—let alone to talk about it on camera. Perhaps McDonald's should change its slogan "You deserve a break today" to "We'll give you a breakdown today."
Jenna is passionate about this issue, and she's optimistic that better times for chickens are ahead. "They're going to listen. Just wait," she told PETA. Yes, they will, if we all get behind the campaign and push—so come on, everyone. And thank you, Jenna!
Please join Jenna in demanding that McDonald's start buying chickens from suppliers that only use controlled-atmosphere killing, a less cruel form of slaughter.
Written by Heather Moore
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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