Downed cows—those who are too sick or injured to stand up—are of little use to callous cattle auctioneers. So when a cow collapsed at a Texas livestock auction company, what did the employees do? They simply wrapped a chain around her leg, attached the chain to a truck, dragged the cow into a dirt lot next to the auction area, and left her for dead. With no food or water, she would have eventually died from dehydration or succumbed to her illness or injury.

Someone saw the cow being dragged to the lot and left there, but when he saw that she was still in the same spot three days later, he called PETA. After making several phone calls to the auction company owner, we were able to convince him to euthanize the dying cow and spare her from one moment more of suffering.

Unfortunately, neither "downers" nor this kind of treatment of them is unusual on factory farms, at auctions, or at slaughterhouses. By simply swapping meat-based dishes for their scrumptious, meatless counterparts, we can avoid supporting facilities that treat living beings like broken-down farm equipment.

Written by Michelle Sherrow

Alarming new findings from Britain's Health Protection Agency reveal that many people could still be infected with, and eventually die from, mad cow disease. In humans, it is referred to as "new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease," or vCJD. As leading vCJD expert Professor John Collinge notes, "The incubation period, where there are no symptoms, can last for decades."

But that's Great Britain, not the U.S., right? Well, we're potentially at an even higher risk because while Europe banned the macabre farming practice that is believed to have caused mad cow disease—feeding ground-up farmed animals to other farmed animals—it is still legal in the United States. And while England tests every cow slaughtered for the presence of the disease, the U.S. tests only a small percentage. 

The symptoms of vCJD are so similar to those of dementia or Alzheimer's that there is some indication that a large number of Americans may have been misdiagnosed.

Obviously we can't un-eat meat we ate in the past that may have contained the indestructible prions that cause mad cow disease, although British scientists are working on a blood test that can check for the disease. But what we can do is reduce our risk of future infection by quitting hamburgers and steaks, ahem, cold turkey.

But if you're thinking that eating cold turkey or another meat would be better, don't be fooled—you still run the risk of all those other diseases that any kind of meat consumption contributes to, including heart disease, diabetes, and even cancer. 

Continuing to eat meat despite the mounting evidence that it will hurt us in one way or another seems pretty mad, right?

Written by Michelle Sherrow

No animals were arrested in the making of this protest, but yesterday in Zuccotti Park Liberty Square, a "pig," "cow," and "chicken" joined the Occupy Wall Street protesters to push for more corporate accountability. Our animals were at the center of a whirlwind of police, photographers, protesters, and intrigued passersby who stopped to read the animals' posters and pick up copies of PETA's vegetarian/vegan starter kit.

Bearing delicious vegan pizzas, the animals—representing 100 percent of the animals raised for food in the U.S.—brought attention to the fact that corporate greed is responsible for billions of animals' being treated like cogs in a meat machine rather than the intelligent, sensitive individuals they are.

On factory farms, pigs have their tails and testicles cut off without being given any painkillers; cows are fattened for slaughter on barren, filthy feed lots; and chickens are crammed by the tens of thousands into airless sheds, where their accumulated waste results in ammonia-laden air that burns their eyes and throats.

To opt out of the corporate abuse of animals, order your own free vegetarian/vegan starter kit and get busy breaking down the barricades to protecting animals, your health, and the planet.

Written by Heather Faraid Drennan

After reading these cheese facts, you won't smile when someone says, "Say cheese!" In fact, the thought of cheese might make your stomach turn. Speaking of stomachs, let's jump right into why eating cheese could make you heave:

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• Many cheeses are made with rennet, an enzyme that comes from calves' stomach lining. That's right—the pre-cheese gloop must pass through a simulated calf stomach to start things off. Kinda hard to stomach, isn't it?
• Cheese is crawling with bacteria—some of it harmless, some of it pretty icky. For example, the same family of bacteria that makes Limburger cheese smell so bad, brevibacterium linens, is what makes your feet smell so bad.
• Two words—spray mold. Cheesemakers spray the outside of soft, slimy cheeses like brie with mold to create a white rind. The next time someone tries to shove a brie-slathered cracker at you, you might want to say, "Hold the mold!"
• If you have to wonder what the pus content of something is, should you really be eating it? Cheese—like all dairy products—contains pus from cows whose udders get bacterial infections when the cows are treated like milk machines by the dairy industry.
• Cheese is loaded with artery-clogging saturated fat and cholesterol. Most varieties derive 70 to 80 percent of their calories from fat, while cream cheese is a whopping 90 percent fat. The good news is that yummy vegan cheeses like Daiya and Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese contain no cholesterol and slash the fat without sacrificing flavor.

And if all those reasons aren't enough to make your stomach turn, just think about the cows forced to stand knee-deep in their own feces and mud on factory farms, having their babies ripped away from them within days of birth so that humans can drink the milk nature intended for them.

So, if you're still eating cheese, what are you waiting for? Spare cows and your health by tossing that moldy piece of pus-laced stomach lining, and try some tempting vegan cheese options today.

Written by Heather Faraid Drennan

With a terse dismissal, the State Fair of Texas denied PETA's application to display our own version of a 4-H booth at the upcoming event. Fair officials must not want visitors to know that the cows, sheep, goats, and chickens 4-H participants have spent countless hours bonding with will ultimately make their way to a blood-soaked killing floor, just as most animals raised for food do.

Our four "H's" stand for "hellish for animals," "hazardous to the environment," "heart attack–inducing," and "hypocritical for teaching kids to care about only certain animals and to disregard others." We planned to screen Glass Walls and hand out free copies of our vegetarian/vegan starter kits.

I suppose that, to paraphrase Jack Nicholson, the State Fair of Texas can't handle the truth. But we think their patrons can—or at least their hearts can.

Written by Jennifer O'Connor

Mahatma Gandhi said, "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated." What, then, can we surmise about the U.S., where 59 billion animals a year suffer intensive confinement, are deprived of all that is natural to them, have their bodies mutilated by dehorning, castration, ear cropping, and more, all before they are killed for a fleeting taste of flesh? October 2, Gandhi's birthday, marks World Farm Animals Day, a day to honor Gandhi's advocacy of nonviolence and vegetarianism and to remember the animals killed for what he called "the satisfaction of our bodily wants."

The plain facts are appalling: Every year in the U.S. alone, more than 7 billion chickens and 275 million turkeys have their legs slammed into shackles and their throats cut before being immersed—often while still conscious—in scalding water to remove their feathers. Many of the 118 million pigs killed annually are improperly stunned and scream in pain as they are scalded to death. More than 39 million cows are hung upside down and left to dangle with all their body weight suspended by one leg before their throats are cut and they are skinned and gutted, some aware of what is happening to them as their bodies are hacked apart.

If humanity is to make real moral progress, we must treat animals as sentient beings whose lives are their own and do not belong to us. This World Farm Animals Day, we're trying to get 10,000 people to visit Meat.org and watch the site's "Glass Walls" video. Please share the page on Facebook, on Twitter, and in any other way you that can imagine to get the word out there!

Written by Michelle Sherrow

After the Sacramento Superior Court ordered the spin doctors behind the blatantly false "Happy Cows" advertising campaign to hand over to PETA thousands of pages of records they wrongfully claimed were "trade secrets," it became obvious why the agencies wanted to keep the documents under wraps.

The California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) is required to ensure that the California Milk Advisory Board (CMAB) doesn’t make baseless (let alone outlandish) marketing claims. However, even though the CDFA searched thousands of records, it couldn't produce so much as a single page that substantiated the ad claims. The CDFA and the CMAB have conspired for years to mislead consumers into thinking that dairy cows in California are somehow spared the horrors of the abusive dairy factory-farming industry. 

The documents also show that PETA’s campaign against the "Happy Cows" deception led to the ads' demise, and the records support our claim that the CMAB's newest propaganda, the "Family Farms" campaign, is just as tall a tale. We are working to have those ads pulled and sent into the deep recesses of the CMAB's archives of lies. The judge also ordered the CDFA to pay PETA's attorneys' fees and costs over the wrongfully withheld documents.

Unless California's milk producers are all auditioning for impostor spots on To Tell the Truth, they need to learn the difference between fact and fiction. You can avoid funding their lies by throwing the support of your dairy dollars behind real cruelty-free milks like rice, soy, and almond milk.

Written by Michelle Sherrow

PETA's band of bovines had Georgia on their minds when dairy farmers and suppliers brought their propaganda-filled displays to the International Dairy Show in Atlanta.

Our "cows" told passersby what the dairy farmers wouldn't—that cows are continually impregnated in order to force them to keep producing milk and that their babies are taken from them within days or even hours of birth. Many male calves are sent to veal crates, while females are sentenced to the same fate as their mothers.

Considering the plethora of delicious nondairy milks available, it's easy to have our milk and save cows too.

Chances are that by now, you've seen the red-hot viral video of the Utah jazz band New Hot 5 playing music to entertain a herd of cows while on a trip to France. If, like me, you've always thought that "The Utah Jazz" was a strange name for an NBA team, the charming sight of these cows gathering to listen to "When the Saints Go Marching In" might change your mind.

Inspired by the band's act of kindness to these arts-loving animals too often viewed merely as raw materials for hamburgers, PETA came up with five hot new reasons to make music for cows instead of eating them:

1. Unlike the chattering, smoking, drink-swilling crowds at nightclub gigs, cows really pay attention when you play for them.
2. Cows know where to find the best grass—for grazing, that is. (What did you think we meant?)
3. Cows never shout out requests for "Freebird" (although chickens might).
4. Music is good for your heart, while meat is a disaster for your cardiovascular health.
5. Cows will never approach you after a show and try to slip you a demo tape by their cover band, "The Moo Fighters."

Sounds like it's time to dust off the old saxophone. But while PETA can't help you master chord progressions, you'll find plenty of help here to kick the meat habit for good!

Written by Jeff Mackey

Update: Yvonne has come out of the woods and "turned herself in". She "apparently got tired of the loneliness" and hopped a fence to a farm where she grazed for awhile, and she is settling in at the Gut Aiderbichl animal sanctuary. Yvonne's son, who had been thought dead, was located by the sanctuary, and mother and son have been reunited in their new home.  

It may sound like the storyline of a Disney movie, but a cow in Germany has been successfully hiding out in the woods for nearly four months after running away from a Bavarian farm, where she was being fattened for slaughter.

As Yvonne the cow eludes search teams, including the police, rescuers from an animal sanctuary, and even a helicopter equipped with a thermal camera, her escape and the subsequent search for her have generated an international media frenzy. There is even a hit song about Yvonne playing on German radio, telling her, "Don't let them take your freedom."

Authorities had previously ordered that Yvonne be shot on sight after she jumped in front of a police car, but the order was rescinded after animal rights advocates rallied to her defense, setting up Facebook pages devoted to saving her, and Germany's largest newspaper put up a reward for anyone who helped find her. If Yvonne is ever caught, she will spend the rest of her days at the Gut Aiderbichl Animal Sanctuary with her sister Waltraud and a calf named Waldi, who came from the same farm that Yvonne ran away from.

PETA Germany has talked to numerous reporters about Yvonne and has been quick to point out that she is no different from any other brainy bovine. Like Yvonne, all cows value their lives and do not want to suffer and die.

The average vegan saves 100 lives every year. To start saving cows like Yvonne yourself, order one of PETA's free vegetarian/vegan starter kits.

 
Written by Michelle Sherrow