Written by Michelle Sherrow
Katherine Heigl loves Utah so much that she chose the state as the site of her 2007 wedding and later purchased a home there. But when Utah lawmakers proposed an "ag gag" bill that would make it a crime to shoot video on factory farms, Heigl wanted to let lawmakers know that kind citizens like her would not support it.
She penned a letter on PETA's behalf to Utah's state senators urging them to squelch House Bill (H.B.) 187 and allow people to continue to obtain video evidence of animal abuse so that authorities can prosecute the offenders.
As animals cannot defend themselves, the public must maintain its right to document illegal cruel practices in order to alert law enforcement to [their] existence. In 2008, my friends at PETA went undercover at a major pig farm in Iowa that supplies Hormel and found that workers were beating pigs with metal rods and jabbing clothespins into their eyes; one employee was even caught sexually abusing a pig with a cane. Because of this investigation, six workers were charged with a total of 22 counts of livestock neglect and abuse, and all of them admitted guilt. PETA worked hand in hand with local law enforcement to achieve these convictions, for which the undercover footage made the sheriff's job much easier. Please don't impede law enforcement by passing this terrible bill.
Cloris Leachman has already asked Utah lawmakers to dump the bill, which is on very shaky constitutional ground. Last year, when similar "ag gag" bills cropped up in Florida, Iowa, Minnesota, and New York, animal advocates defeated them, thanks in part to the work of kind folks like Cloris and Mary Matalin.
Help us defeat H.B. 187 in Utah too.
Last year, PETA and other animal advocates successfully defeated "ag gag" bills in Florida, New York, Minnesota, and Iowa. Now, another "ag gag" bill that would make it illegal to shoot video on a factory farm has just passed in the House of Representatives in Utah. And once again, we're fighting back against this unconstitutional measure.
Flush from her success in her home state of Iowa, Raising Hope star and longtime animal advocate Cloris Leachman penned a letter to Utah lawmakers on PETA's behalf urging them not to block people from gathering the evidence needed to prosecute animal abusers
I hope that Utah legislators recognize that with consumer demand for better treatment of animals, they must work to enforce and strengthen laws, not penalize those trying to expose cruel and illegal practices. Citizens' right to document cruelty to animals—wherever it occurs—is crucial in helping local, state, and federal officials enforce anti-cruelty laws.
Every PETA undercover investigation of factory farms has yielded evidence that workers were abusing animals. We recorded workers who sexually assaulted a pig with a cane, stomped on a turkey's head until her skull exploded, and spit tobacco into chickens' eyes and mouth. This indisputable proof of abuse is key to securing historic charges against and convictions of such abusers on cruelty-to-animals charges.
Utah residents, please ask your senators to vote against this bill and to continue to allow people to expose blatant cruelty to animals.
When students at China's Guangdong University of Foreign Studies bustled onto campus for open day, little did they know that their education would begin on the sidewalk.
Armed with hundreds of leaflets and stickers courtesy of PETA Asia-Pacific, an enterprising group of students flooded the campus with messages about protecting animals and the environment using the slogan "We all live under the same sky."
Considering how eagerly their receptive classmates grabbed information about factory farming, zoos, and other animal rights issues, it's safe to say that these students opened the school year with a bang.
If you know students who want to get active for animals, let them know that they can "take charge" by visiting peta2.com
Written by PETA
Hundreds of pigs were burned alive when an electrical fire destroyed the barn in which they were crammed at a factory farm in Utah operated by Murphy-Brown, LLC, a subsidiary of notorious pig abuser Smithfield Foods, Inc. Gruesome pictures taken by a news crew on the scene show a mass of charred bodies piled on the floor of the building.
An emergency response coordinator for the area reported that he thought some of the pigs had survived, but considering the fact that any survivors face a fate that is hardly less ghastly, it is hard to hope for that. As one former Smithfield employee recounted:
“[P]igs are shocked with a stun gun and thrown onto a conveyor belt, where their legs and feet are tied and their necks are broken in a bizarre machine. Not even a second later, they're hung upside-down on a meat hook and sliced open. Their guts are scooped out and thrown into a trash can, which ends up next door to be processed as ‘other’ pig products. The swinging bodies are still twitching as they continue on to be cut up into smaller pieces. Blood and guts are everywhere.”
Please share this post with your meat-eating friends and tell them that if they are opposed to cruelty to animals, they should put their opposition into action by ordering PETA’s free vegetarian/vegan starter kit today.
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.
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian. -Paul McCartney
All summer long, the millions of people who will visit Washington, D.C.'s National Mall will be greeted by PETA's arresting "Glass Walls" display across from the Museum of Natural History. With 12 massive panels and a large-screen television playing Sir Paul McCartney's "Glass Walls" DVD, the display causes passersby to stop to watch, talk to PETA staff, and take away copies of the video and vegetarian/vegan starter kits.
One mother walking with her teenage son stopped, pointed, and told him, "Watch—this is how animals are treated at slaughterhouses. This is terrible!" She said she was going vegan and left with information. A young boy also repeatedly brushed off his impatient father so that he could continue to scan the panels. A passing bike rider vowed never to eat chicken again after stopping to watch the section of the video about chickens.
In the first month alone, more than 10,000 copies of "Glass Walls" were distributed, along with similar numbers of vegetarian/vegan starter kits, free stickers, and other resources to help people transition to a vegan diet. We expect to distribute more than 50,000 DVDs before summer's end and change the minds and lives of thousands of people.
If you are in D.C. this summer, swing by the National Mall to check out the "Glass Walls" display or check it out online at Animal Liberation Project. You can also get the information from PETA's literature catalog and grab some extras to give to your friends.
The world didn't come to an end when road crews shut down 10 miles of one of Los Angeles' busiest freeways this past weekend, but the absence of the usual bumper-to-bumper traffic on the 405 was certainly an other-worldly scene. Then there was a heavenly vision: PETA members reminding the hardy motorists who dared to brave Carmageddon that going vegan clears up arteries faster than $5-a-gallon gas.
If we want to get serious about unclogging arteries, maybe road crews should put orange cones in front of slaughterhouses and factory farms.
During the hot summer months in South Korea, where dogs are bred to be killed and eaten, restaurants serving dog meat soup boast long lines of patrons who mistakenly believe it will help keep them cool.
But while many of us are quick to condemn killing dogs for food, shouldn't we also be bothered by the consumption of cows, chickens, and pigs? Who wouldn't be repulsed by how cows are crammed into filthy feedlots and are often butchered while conscious? Or how female pigs spend their lives confined to small metal crates and are repeatedly inseminated and forced to bear babies who will be torn away from them? And considering that chickens' cognitive abilities are comparable to those of dogs, why does it make sense that we call one "friend" and the other "dinner"?
Every animal wants to live, and every steak, drumstick, and ham sandwich is a life taken. We each have the power to make a lifesaving decision three times a day, every day.
It took only 45 minutes for temperatures inside a crowded Johnston County, North Carolina, barn to skyrocket when the barn lost power, killing 50,000 chickens. On one Kansas farm, nearly 4,500 turkeys died in one weekend during a scorching 100-degree heat wave. Birds in barns that aren't air conditioned sometimes die when they crowd together at doorways in the vain hope of catching a breeze.
As heartbreaking as these animals' deaths are, the fates they faced otherwise were arguably worse. After being confined by the tens of thousands to filthy, windowless sheds, the birds would have been thrown into crates and loaded onto trucks bound for the slaughterhouse. There, they would have been hung upside down with their delicate legs forced into shackles (which often causes broken bones), their throats would have been slit, and if they had dodged the blade, they would have been scalded to death in a defeathering tank.
Neither being baked nor boiled to death is fair to these sensitive, intelligent animals. To help protect birds from suffering, encourage your friends and family to give a cruelty-free diet a try.
Say you're an edgy, rabble-rousing punk band and you want to make a statement against cruelty to animals. What would you do? One band that had a bone to pick with KFC took a musical approach to get its message across.
The toe-tapping tune was performed by the Phoenix, Arizona, "punkgrass" outfit Haymarket Squares—all of whose members are vegan or vegetarian—and written by bassist Marc Oxborrow. "He is a big animal lover and he wanted to express his disgust with factory farming practices and peoples' connection to those practices when they choose to work around, buy, and eat meat," says guitarist John Norris. "Our song about/against factory farming seemed like a great fit for a fast food restaurant."
The management didn't agree and attempted to eject the band mid-performance. But the customers were transfixed—look closely and you'll see a little girl clapping in time to the music.
If you live in Arizona, you can catch the band's next performance in Mesa on July 22. This time, they'll be performing at a more conventional venue, the Hollywood Alley—I just hope that it doesn't make the mistake of having fried chicken on the menu.
Written by Alisa Mullins
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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