Written by PETA
Yesterday, at Al Gore's book signing in Beverly Hills, it wasn't the former vice president who drew the most attention from the throngs of onlookers—it was our sexy Mother Earth who turned heads. The crowd showed Mother Earth all the love she's not getting from Gore, whose hypocritical addiction to meat is getting in the way of his call to go green.
Even Gore has admitted that going vegan helps save the environment. And the official handbook for Live Earth—the concert series that Gore himself helped organize—states that not eating meat is the "single most effective thing you can do" to curb climate change. So why hasn't he taken our effortless Pledge to Be Veg yet? Apparently, the simple, delicious truth is just too inconvenient.
Written by Logan Scherer
Litter isn't just ugly and dirty—it kills. Artist Chris Jordan took a series of photographs of albatross chicks, and the photos are so surreal that I thought they were part of some strange pop-art installation meant to shock and disturb the viewer. The genuine shock, though, came when I found out that these are unaltered images of real birds.
Taken at Midway Atoll, a remote stretch of sand and coral near the middle of the North Pacific, the photographs depict corpses of albatross chicks whose parents mistakenly picked up plastic in the ocean thinking it was food. With bellies full of plastic, the chicks died from starvation, toxicity, and choking.
This isn't the first time that this tragedy has been documented. Wildlife filmmaker Rebecca Hosking used her film documentary about the Midway Atoll to get the very first ban on plastic bags enacted in Modbury, England, and her essay about it was published in Ingrid E. Newkirk's book, One Can Make a Difference.
Every year, this lethal diet of trash kills tens of thousands of albatross chicks on Midway, which is 2,000 miles from the nearest continent—proof that the empty lighters and fishing line that people carelessly discard on roadsides and beachfronts suffocates and poisons animals who inadvertently consume it. It takes only seconds for us to throw away our trash instead of littering and putting the lives of countless animals in danger. If you spot litter, pick it up, and if you catch someone littering, say something—you may literally be saving a life. It really is that easy to be kind.
Fox News host Glenn Beck may not be ready to sign PETA's "Pledge to Be Veg" just yet, but that didn't stop him from dishing up some choice words about Al Gore's continued, convenient omission of any mention of the meat industry's devastating impact on the environment.
"… I am siding with PETA on this one—once again asking Al Gore, 'If you really want to save the planet, put down the cheeseburgers and pick up the veggie burgers. Time for soy milk and Tofurky.' … I've said before I disagree with PETA, but I respect them because they are not hypocrites: They say what they mean and mean what they say. I just disagree with what they say—except when it calls for Al Gore to eat tofu."
Makes me wanna send Mr. Beck some vegan chocolate kisses.
Folks, trying to clean up the environment without going vegan is like trying to mask the smell of rotting garbage by hanging 100 fragrance trees from the ceiling. It doesn't work. The only way to get rid of the stink and cruelty to animals is to change what you put on your plate.
Written by Karin Bennett
There's a lot of buzz right now about proposed legislation designed to revise decades-old regulations of toxic chemicals, which could be wonderful news. Unfortunately, language in the proposed bill—known as the "Kid Safe Chemicals Act"—would protect neither children nor the environment, and it would spell death via poisoning for a staggering number of animals
There is a major P.R. push for this legislation, in the form of a new campaign that you may have heard of—the Million Baby Crawl. This campaign comes from none other than the longtime cruelty-free company Seventh Generation.
We have alerted Seventh Generation to the problems associated with its campaign and hope to work with the company to get better science and animal protection language inserted into the Kid Safe Chemicals Act.
Great strides have been made in biology and toxicology during the past few decades that provide a better understanding of chemicals' hazards without relying on cruel and misleading animal tests. Non-animal test methods are faster and cheaper, so more information about more chemicals can be obtained quicker than through animal testing. Modernization of the underlying science is a crucial piece of any new chemical-management legislation, and it's critical that any new legislation promote the use and further development of modern, humane test methods.
Make no mistake: We are all in favor of protecting kids' health and the environment, but the current method of testing chemicals—poisoning and killing thousands of animals per chemical—provides data that just isn't useful. And considering that there are more than 80,000 chemicals that would undergo testing if this proposed legislation passes, that's an astronomical number of animals!
Who cares about the millions of animals who will suffer and die in these tests? We know you do!
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The day after the Senate votes on an extension of the Cash for Clunkers program, we're launching our new environmentally friendly program, "Cash for Cluckers."
Because a lot of nonvegetarian Americans are buy-curious about faux-meat products—and because factory farms wreak havoc on the environment—we've decided to offer consumers a rebate on their first taste of that faux goodness. For the first box of chickenless cutlets or nuggets that non-vegetarians buy, we're going to send them a $1 rebate and include a free copy of our "Vegetarian Starter Kit."
According to Environmental Defense, if every American skipped one meal of chicken per week and substituted vegetarian foods instead, the carbon dioxide savings would be the equivalent of taking more than a half-million cars off U.S. roads. Our Cash for Cluckers program should inspire everyone to come out and try environmentally friendly products—such as those made by Boca and Lightlife—which offer the spot-on texture and flavor of chicken flesh, minus the animal suffering.
Want in on PETA's Cash for Cluckers program? Read the following rules and then head to the supermarket to explore the faux-chicken section—and remember to save that receipt!
Cash for Cluckers: Rules
Cash for CluckersPETA501 Front St.Norfolk, VA 23510
Neither Boca Foods nor Lightlife Foods are affiliated with or otherwise endorse, sponsor, or support this promotion.
When public school systems fall on hard times, they know they can count on PETA to pitch in. Remember when we sent message toilet paper to a struggling Detroit school? So, of course, we jumped into action when we heard about a cash-strapped school in Idaho that's limiting how much writing paper teachers can use.
One of Pocatello High School's teachers has actually begun selling ad space on the writing paper he uses in his classroom—one pizza joint has already placed an ad. While we respect his initiative, we thought we could one-up him. So we've written to the school's principal, Don Cotant, offering to provide the whole school with an entire semester's worth of recycled writing paper printed with our snazzy Meat's Not Green logo on it.
We'll let you know if Pocatello High takes us up on the offer! It would definitely be a more eco-friendly way to ease the budget crunch than encouraging kids to spend $5 on a pus-laced pizza. Plus it would be one step in the right direction toward being listed as one of the most vegetarian-friendly school districts next year.
Written by Shawna Flavell
Well … kind of. The former veep, unsatisfied with having invented the Internet itself, is now attempting to create a new domain-name suffix ".eco" for use by individuals, organizations, and companies that promote environmentally friendly causes. We think this is such a great idea that we plan to be first in line to use the new suffix that Al and Dot Eco LLC have teamed up to try to create—for our Web site OffsetAlGore.eco.
Sure, we already have the wildly popular OffsetAlGore.com, where you can go to compensate for some of the carbon and methane that Al Gore releases into the atmosphere every time he eats one of his daily Angus steak dinners or lunches by pledging to go vegetarian for 30 days. But OffsetAlGore.eco has such a nice ring to it, don't you think?
Click here to read PETA's letter to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (the corporation that approves new domain names) expressing wholehearted support for the opportunity to introduce legions of people to the idea that the harm their sea kitten sticks and pepperoni pizza inflict on the environment may be the most inconvenient truth of all.
Written by Alisa Mullins
While nobody wants to get sick or injured while traveling abroad, if you're going to do it, make sure it's in the U.K. That's because all public hospitals in the U.K. are proposing to start offering meat-free menus as part of a National Health Service plan to curb the carbon emissions that cause climate change.
These hospitals should be seriously applauded for making progress and doing something positive in the fight against global warming (not to mention cruelty to animals). You don't have to be a scientist or climate-change expert to know that raising animals for food is the world's leading cause of carbon dioxide emissions.
PETA's "naughty nurses"—who have been visiting hospitals around the U.S. urging heart patients to go vegan—obviously endorse NHS's proposal. Click here to see for yourself!
Written by Lianne Turner
Recently, an 11-year-old Mexican "bullfighter," goaded on by parents who make Brooke Shields' mom look overprotective, tried to establish a Guinness world record by killing six bull calves in one day in Merida, Mexico—despite attempts by the courts and animal protection groups to cancel the event.
Bullfighting is always cruel—the bulls are often beaten in the kidneys, have Vaseline smeared into their eyes, and are given laxatives to slow them down before they are released into the ring to be stabbed to death—but this was calf-killing. Like the child "bullfighter," Michelito Lagravere Peniche, these animals were still youngsters, but, unlike him, they didn't choose to be there and they didn't want to hurt anyone. They just wanted to prance and play. To make matters worse, hundreds of other kids were brought by their parents to watch the carnage and be encouraged to emulate the little matador (literally, "murderer").
The good news is that Guinness World Records takes animal abuse seriously and has refused to publish this new "record," saying, "We do not accept records based on the killing or harming of animals." Olé to Guinness!
Written by Jeff Mackey
Next week's historic presidential inauguration is being touted as the "greenest" of all time, so of course, we at PETA will be there in all our green glory!
Tomorrow, we'll already be on the streets of D.C. handing out fur coats to the homeless. Yep, you read that right. See, fur does nothing to raise a person's social status. On the contrary, only if you have nothing do you actually have any real excuse for wearing someone's cast-off fur. Next—to show our appreciation to all the fur-free folks attending the inaugural festivities in the cold—we'll be serving free hot soy cocoa in PETA cups printed with the message, "Thank you for not wearing fur."
If you'll be in D.C., keep an eye out for PETA staffers and members dressed as foxes, raccoons, and rabbits and wearing pins that read, "Be Fur-Free."(Yes, they'll pose for photos.) If that isn't enough excitement for you, the peta2 "not-a-nugget" chick, "cows," and "pigs" will also be working the crowds with signs reading, "Yes We Can: Go Vegetarian!" They'll also be handing out copies of our free "Vegetarian Starter Kit." Even if you don't spot a PETA mascot, you'll probably catch a pedicab adorned with PETA's anti-fur ads.
As you know, fur is anything but green, folks. It's treated with chemicals (to keep it from decomposing, ewww), and the production of the ugly stuff pollutes rivers and streams with tannery runoff. It also takes 15 times the energy to produce a fur coat than it does to produce a faux-fur one. Then there's the business of ripping animals from their natural environment and killing them painfully. We're thinking that if Styrofoam isn't allowed, then fur certainly has no place at the inauguration.
So, here's to a truly green inaugural celebration.
Also, if you would like to donate your "change of heart" fur to us, click here. We'll make sure it is put to good use: We send donated furs to animal sanctuaries so that rescued animal orphans can be comforted by them. We also cut them up for refugee children in war zones and use them in educational displays.
Written by Missy Lane
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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