Written by Jeff Mackey
After someone with a sharp eye and a kind heart spotted a thin horse confined to a small pen, the person contacted PETA's Emergency Response Team. We immediately got in touch with the local humane society, which was on the case right away! The horse was rescued from her pitiful little mesh prison and transported to a stable, where she can now walk freely for perhaps the first time in months, maybe even years.
I wonder how many people passed by this horse every day without giving her a second thought. Yet all that her happiness depended upon was the intervention of one concerned passerby. Please, if you see an animal you believe is being neglected or abused, be that one wonderful person who takes a few minutes out of the day to make a crucial difference.
Not sure what to do when you suspect cruelty or neglect? PETA can help.
Written by PETA
Talk about fast results: When star PETA member Emily Lavender organized protests against horse slaughter across Canada earlier this month, one horse was saved on the spot!
Protesters outside a slaughterhouse in Québec spotted a man who was about to hand a horse over to be killed because he didn't want to pay for a medical procedure that the horse needed. They begged the man to give the horse to a sanctuary instead of sending him to a painful and terrifying death, and the man finally agreed to let the concerned group take the horse.
With the help of generous donations, the horse (now named Joe) received his surgery and is currently at a foster home, where he is relishing the freedom to run and play. Joe's former guardian used him for breeding, so he spent most of his life cooped up in a stall. Check out this happy horse!
When they stop winning races or become injured, many horses used for racing are sent to slaughterhouses in Canada, Mexico, or Japan. We can all help save horses like Joe from ending up as glue, dog food, or human food by never attending or watching horse races.
Written by Lindsay Pollard-Post
Recently, a good Samaritan from a rural Florida community saw an emaciated horse and became determined to find help for the animal. After his calls to local authorities failed to rouse a response (perhaps because the horse's owner allegedly has political connections), he issued a plea for help on Facebook, posting a photograph of the starving horse and urging his friends to pass the information along, hopeful that someone would know how to help rescue the animal.
The man's post went up, and PETA's phones started ringing with calls alerting our Cruelty Investigations Department to this urgent situation. We didn't waste a second in contacting local law enforcement, and within hours the sheriff's department seized the horse from the property. The horse was rushed to a veterinarian for evaluation and is now awaiting adoption.
Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter can offer more than high school reunion pics. and "pokes"—as this incident shows, they can also save lives. PETA now has over 300,000 Facebook friends. May we count you as one, too?
Written by Karin Bennett
How anyone can still tune in to watch horse racing, especially after Eight Belles broke both her ankles and was euthanized at last year's Kentucky Derby? Well, some mint julep–sipping, tacky hat–wearing folks still do—and for them, this past week was another showcase of horse horrors.
All of the above occurred at just one track during just one weekend, but injuries and death are routine at racetracks.
Anybody want to guess what the upcoming Preakness and Belmont Stakes have in store for horses?
In PETA's new ad, Joel Gibb of Canadian indie band The Hidden Cameras announced that "Canada's Club Scene Sucks." and he's not talking about JELL-O shots.
Today, Joel and the band teamed up with PETA for a public unveiling of the ad in front of Queen's Park in Toronto.
The Hidden Cameras performed a short acoustic set, during which fans sang along to "Animals Belong Alone." The chorus goes like this: "We take and take, we know it's wrong. The earth belongs to animals, and animals belong alone." The performance must have been a good one, because a group of people at the park to protest the genocide of Tamils in Sri Lanka even joined in.
Talk about compassion bringing strangers together!
Click here to find out more about my new fave band, the Hidden Cameras.
Here are some photos from the event:
I hope your closets are prepared, because I'm sure this bit of news will have you rushing out to stock up on vegan sweaters and skinny jeans. Both Levi's and Gap Inc. have pledged not to use great apes in future advertising campaigns!
Following the tragic death of Travis, a chimpanzee who formerly starred in Old Navy commercials, PETA approached Levi's and Old Navy's parent company, Gap Inc. (which also owns Gap and Banana Republic), to ask the companies not use apes in any future ads. Executives for both companies knew that their choice was clear once they learned that young apes who are used in commercials are ripped away from their mothers when they are only days old, trained by being beaten, kicked, and punched, and then discarded to live in filthy roadside zoos when they are too old and strong to handle.
Gap Inc. and Levi's join other progressive companies and organizations that have also signed our pledge, including Harris Teeter, SEGA, Honda, PUMA, Subaru, Keds, Yahoo!, and The Ad Council.
And, because we are never ones to let compassionate acts go unrewarded, we are sending both companies thank-you gifts for a job well done.
Written by Shawna Flavell
The Montreal Canadiens' star enforcer, Georges Laraque, is brawny and brainy. He's vegetarian and steers clear of pigs, chickens, and other commonly consumed animals, a decision he made after seeing the animal-friendly feature film Earthlings. Not only that, but he teamed up with dozens of members of Concordia Animal Rights Association (CARA) this weekend to protest outside the North American Fur & Fashion Exposition of Montreal.
Now that he's about to get out of jail, it looks like Michael Vick is trying to revamp his image, according to Advertising Age. But it won't be with any help from us.
PETA withdrew our offer to do a TV spot with Michael Vick last December when a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) report on Vick's dogfighting activities revealed that he enjoyed placing “family pets” in the ring with fighting pit bulls and that he laughed as dogs ripped each other apart. PETA believes that this revelation, along with other factors in the report, fit the established profile for anti-social personality disorder (APD), so in January we called on NFL Commissioner Goodell to require that Vick undergo a brain scan and a full psychological evaluation before any decisions are made about the future of his football career.
What can I say? You can't believe everything you read.
Bodies may not be buried at Churchill Downs, but with so many horses having drawn their last breath there after having been run to death, it might as well be a cemetery. And for two days it will be, because PETA has erected 265 headstones outside the racetrack this week.
Why 265, you ask? We included 263 headstones to represent the horses who have died on the track since last year's Kentucky Derby and whose names we know, one headstone for the approximately 832 other horses who have died but whose names are not known—because racetracks are so bad at reporting breakdowns and deaths—and one headstone for the approximately 12,000 thoroughbreds who are sent off to slaughter each year.
Churchill Downs is, of course, home to the Kentucky Derby and is where Eight Belles lost her life one year ago. Since the Eight Belles tragedy, Churchill Downs has made some reforms in the ways that horses are treated on its track, but banning the use of legal drugs to mask injuries hasn't been one of them. PETA is calling on the people who run the track to ban the use of all drugs in the week before a race. By bringing attention to the thousands of lost lives that don't make headline news, our display will hopefully inspire horse-racing officials to take action.
After all, by my calculations, the horse-racing industry has caused 13,095 horses to die this past year. That's enough to fill a cemetery plus some.
Update: Check out these pictures from the unveiling, then go browse more art by Dan Lacey, who painted the gorgeous picture of Eight Belles.
Curious about the names of the horses who have died on racetracks during the past year? Click here.
There are a lot of sexy individuals on People's Most Beautiful list (OK, to be precise, there are 100), but People's done us proud with it's number one: Christina Applegate.
We can tell you firsthand that Christina truly is beautiful inside and out. When she was 15, she learned about the horrors of the fur industry, and a few years later, she was caring enough to strip down for a PETA anti-fur e-card.
So congratulations, Christina! You deserve it. You are a beautiful person, with no lack of either passion or compassion.
Written by Amanda Schinke
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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.