North Carolina law-enforcement officials raided a Butterball turkey factory farm after viewing disturbing video footage of workers who abused turkeys. The video, shot during an undercover investigation by Mercy For Animals, shows workers who kick and stomp on birds, smash them into the ground, and bash in their heads with metal rods.

Mercy For Animals' findings mirror those uncovered during PETA's 2006 undercover investigation of a Butterball slaughterhouse in Arkansas. We documented that one employee stomped on a bird's head until it exploded, that another smashed a turkey into a metal handrail so hard that her spine burst through her skin, and that another worker sexually assaulted a female turkey. One worker told the investigator, "If you jump on their stomachs right, they'll pop ... or their insides will come out of their [rectums]." The findings are also strikingly similar to the horrific abuses documented by PETA's 2008 investigation of Aviagen Turkeys, Inc., which led to the first-ever indictments for felony cruelty to animals for the abuse of birds and the first-ever cruelty convictions of turkey factory-farm workers.

The abuse documented is apparently business as usual for Butterball and the turkey industry. Click here to urge the company to adopt "controlled-atmosphere killing" (CAK), in which birds are killed by inert gas while still in their transport crates, eliminating much of the opportunity for abuse at the slaughterhouse. And to help end the abuse that these intelligent, sensitive animals suffer before they make it to slaughter, refuse to eat turkeys and choose fowl-friendly faux turkey instead.

We've all seen the ribbons tied around trees on the side of the road, crosses stuck in the ground, and signs asking us to drive carefully—all reminders of lives that were lost in traffic accidents. Certainly, humans aren't the only casualties of reckless driving, so should they be the only ones honored? PETA doesn't think so.

We're applying to Illinois' Fatal Accident Memorial Sign Program to post two road signs as a tribute to cows who were severely injured and killed on the state's roadways.

PETA has chosen the sites of two horrific accidents as the locations for our signs. In May, a tractor trailer tipped over on an overpass, spilling cows onto the road below. Cows who didn't die on impact or from being struck by cars languished in agony until they were finally euthanized. Another truck overturned in October after the driver fell asleep at the wheel. Six cows were killed by oncoming vehicles—again, many were left to suffer for hours from their injuries.

If humans are going to continue to sentence these animals to die in slaughterhouses, isn't erecting a small remembrance of a few of the millions who lose their lives every year the least that we can do, given that they die for no better reason than because someone craves the fleeting taste of their flesh?

What do Bill Clinton, former President George W. Bush speechwriter Matthew Scully, and the Rev. Al Sharpton have in common? They're all political animals who don't eat meat. Sharpton first got an idea of what happens to animals on factory farms when he appeared in PETA's video exposing cruelty in slaughterhouses that supply KFC and called on the black community to join PETA's boycott of the fast-food chain. His message to KFC? "That's foul!"  

We caught up with Sharpton, who now hosts MSNBC's show PoliticsNation, to ask him what inspired him to change his eating habits, how his new diet makes him feel, and what his favorite foods are.  

"I overhauled my diet after a 40-day hunger strike when I was in jail for the Vieques [military bombing practice] protest," Sharpton told us. "I dabbled with weight loss ideas, wanting to keep off the pounds I lost. First, I gave up red meat, then chicken. I ran into Bill Clinton, who told me how he has more energy, needs less sleep, and can think more clearly since going vegan, and I can tell you the same thing happened to me. I also kept in mind the words of another vegetarian friend—Coretta Scott King—who always spoke of the ethical reasons to give up meat."

Sharpton dedicated his PETA Humanitarian Award to King when he accepted it at PETA's awards gala in New York City in 2006.

To date, the reverend has lost more than 120 pounds. To read more about Sharpton's triumphs and tribulations, check out his essay in PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk's book One Can Make a Difference.

If you want to be a champion for animals, take the pledge to go vegan. Not only will you enjoy reduced stress and more energy, you'll also be less likely to suffer from obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.

Written by Monica Alexander

When PETA's herd of "cows" stampeded down the sidewalk in front of the Vancouver Convention Center, where the British Columbia Dairy Conference was taking place, the cow abusers inside nervously looked out the windows.

They sent the convention center manager outside to ask their worried questions: What were the cows planning to do? Come inside the building? The conference-goers had seen the Facebook page for the demonstration, and they were terrified!

Even though the bovines didn't infiltrate the conference, the dairy farmers should have been scared of what they were doing outside. As throngs of passersby stopped to talk, they learned about how cows on dairy factory farms are repeatedly impregnated to keep producing milk, that calves are traumatically torn away from their mothers within days or even hours of birth, and that many male calves are imprisoned in tiny, filthy crates until they are slaughtered for veal.

When many of the passersby then expressed a preference for soy milk, rice milk, or almond milk, the cows were over the moon.

This might make you blue, but red and white meat isn't green.

That's just as true halfway around the Earth as it is here. That's why these members of PETA Asia-Pacific went earthy from head to toe: to ask the folks in that part of the world to dump their Earth-wrecking addictions to meat.

A leading contributor to climate change is the emission of greenhouse gasses such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. Raising animals for food is one of the largest sources of carbon-dioxide emissions and the single largest source of both methane and nitrous-oxide emissions. We now use 30 percent of the Earth's land to raise animals for food. And the excrement-riddled runoff from factory farms pollutes our waterways more than all other industrial sources combined.  

Now it's your turn. You know what I'm about to say: Go blue, go green, go vegan!

Written by Michelle Sherrow

Just how greedy are pork producers? The National Meat Association (NMA) is challenging a California law that requires the euthanasia of pigs who are too weak or sick to stand when they arrive at slaughterhouses. A lawyer representing the NMA noted that this means that many slaughterhouses would have to euthanize up to 300 pigs every single day—a "financial impact" that the pork industry apparently is not willing to take lying down.

The U.S. Supreme Court will consider the case next week in order to decide whether states have the authority to implement laws like this one governing slaughterhouses. If the justices rule in favor of California, the case could set a precedent that would encourage more states to enact broader animal welfare laws for pigs and other animals.

Does the meat industry need to be required by law to do the right thing? You bet it does. Downed animals are often dragged, prodded, or bulldozed into the slaughterhouse. PETA's investigations at pig factory farms have shown that workers beat, kick, and bludgeon sick or injured animals with gate rods and hammers and slam them against concrete floors. A PETA undercover investigator at a Hormel supplier's pig-breeding factory farm in Iowa saw a supervisor kick an injured pig as she dragged herself out of a crate and a worker laugh as the supervisor shot her in the head with a captive-bolt gun.

Don't wait for the courts to do the right thing. Rule in animals' favor today by adopting a healthy vegan diet and encouraging everyone you know to do the same.

Written by Heather Faraid Drennan

About 195 live pigs were hurled to the ground—killing or leaving at least 47 so badly injured that even industry workers knew that they had to be killed—after a slaughterhouse-bound transport truck ran off the road, flipped onto its side, and crashed into a pole in Suffolk, Virginia, early this morning. This crash, which happened on a clear day on a relatively straight road, is at least the ninth accident involving pigs who were being transported to a Smithfield Foods slaughterhouse in southeastern Virginia since 2004.

The pork industry's shameful history of hiring reckless drivers has left the mangled remains of countless pigs on Virginia highways and jeopardized the safety of other motorists. The driver cited for reckless driving in this crash, William Orville Barnett, allegedly violated federal transportation safety laws twice last year. Also last year, a driver hauling 80 pigs for Smithfield Foods subsidiary Murphy-Brown, LLC, crashed in Chesterfield County, Virginia, killing more than 45 of the pigs. The driver—who was charged with reckless driving and failure to maintain control—had three months earlier crashed a truck in North Carolina while hauling 46 cows. Virginia court records indicate that the driver had been previously cited for failure to obey a traffic signal and speeding. In spite of all this, Murphy-Brown put him behind the wheel to drive pigs hundreds of miles across the country.

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

The meat industry thrives on the abuse of animals, so it comes as no surprise that former pig factory-farm workers are alleging that the management of Murphy-Brown—a subsidiary of the world's largest pig producer, Smithfield Foods—turned a blind eye to sexual harassment of female employees.

In a case that went before a federal jury this week, one woman claims that female staff were groped by male coworkers, were spied on in the shower via peepholes, and had their underwear stolen from their lockers. The harassment allegedly went on for years despite complaints to supervisors. It is worth noting that the men accused of the harassment—said to include putting what is suspected to be semen on women's underwear—worked at a breeding farm where sows were artificially inseminated, which is typically done by men armed with bags of boar semen and tubes that they shove into pigs' reproductive tracts.

Unfortunately, PETA investigations show that failure to discipline workers for sexual abuse seems to be standard policy at many factory farms, particularly when the victims are animals.

Ryan Gosling has certainly earned his cape this month. First, he broke up a street fight in Manhattan. Then, the Academy Award-nominated actor leapt to the defense of chickens and turkeys on factory farms. Gosling wrote a letter to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) on PETA's behalf calling on the agency to revoke its approval of a foam-based extermination method that kills birds by submerging them in foam to slowly suffocate them. This process can take up to 15 minutes and is as traumatic and panic-inducing as killing birds by choking them, strangling them, smothering them, or burying them alive.

"If dogs and cats were killed in this way, the person committing these acts would be charged with cruelty to animals," Gosling wrote. He went on to urge the USDA to put its stamp of approval on a less cruel alternative that uses carbon dioxide to painlessly render birds unconscious and that has already been approved by veterinary experts.

This isn't the first time that Gosling has flexed his impressive muscles in birds' behalf. He previously wrote to KFC and McDonald's urging the fast-food chains to adopt PETA's proposed animal welfare reforms.

We just love a guy who has such a drive to stick up for chicks. You can be a hero for animals, too—don't patronize McDonald's or KFC.

Written by Alisa Mullins