It's officially award season, the time of year when our televisions are dominated by red carpets, elegant gowns, and hilarious Ricky Gervais zingers—and oh, yeah, awards are given out too. If animals had submitted the Golden Globes ballots, the roster of winners might have looked pretty similar to Sunday's lineup:

Friend of fowl Kate Winslet grabbed a Best Actress statue for her work in the miniseries Mildred Pierce, and vegetarian Peter Dinklage snagged a Best Supporting Actor prize for Game of Thrones.

In another television category, one of my favorite comedies, Modern Family, with young star and peta2 supporter Sarah Hyland, claimed top honors.

Over on the big screen, The Artist, which includes the beloved animal advocate James Cromwell in its highly talented—albeit silent—cast, cleaned up with wins for Best Actor, Best Picture, and Best Original Score.

Congrats to all the winners, and thanks for helping animals win too!

PETA Senior Vice President of Communications Lisa Lange reflects on the monumental achievements for animals that she's seen in her nearly 20 years at PETA and the events—intentional and serendipitous—that led her to devote her life to protecting animals.

Lelah Foster/Los Angeles

How did you first become involved in animal rights?

I got a PETA magazine in the mail and read about all the atrocious things happening to animals and started to change my lifestyle. A couple of years later, I was helping to protest the largest pigeon slaughter in the country in Hegins, Pennsylvania, with hundreds of other activists. It was like a clay shoot but with real animals. The birds were stuffed into wooden boxes and were sprung into the air a few at a time. Drunk men would shoot the birds from sunup to sundown. They would twist the heads off injured birds or bash their bodies into trash cans. I was arrested for running across the field and creating a distraction while other people freed the birds from the boxes. I was put in a cell with PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk. Rather than pay bail money to the city that sponsored the hunt, we spent 12 days in jail. That's where she hired me—in our jail block. Eventually, we got the pigeon shoot stopped.

What was the most unforgettable PETA protest you ever participated in?

There have been a lot of them, but I loved the Wendy's demonstration with James Cromwell where he and some of us staffers did a sit-in at a Wendy's restaurant. We won that campaign and got Wendy's to improve animal welfare and have been pushing them to build on those improvements ever since.

Is there one PETA victory you are most proud of?

The Professional Laboratory and Research Services, Inc. victory is pretty major. We got that awful animal testing facility shut down and got four workers indicted on felony cruelty-to-animals charges. There are so many, though—back in the day, bringing GM to its knees was pretty fantastic. They were the last company to stop doing crash tests on animals, and when they fell, those horrid tests were history. I love all the victories these days where the mere threat of PETA protests does the trick, like with Lipton tea. I love that our reputation as being smart and strong precedes us and that people just don't want to tangle with us.

*****

Are you the next Lisa Lange? Get involved now by e-mailing the Action Team.

Written by Michelle Sherrow 

On the eve of the Kentucky Derby, Secretariat star James Cromwell has written to The Jockey Club urging it to adopt PETA's proposed Thoroughbred 360 Lifecycle Retirement Fund. The plan would require owners and breeders to pay a $360 retirement fee for each new foal they register. The money generated from the fees would be put into a fund to provide care for the 10,000 former racehorses currently sent to slaughter each year.

"These magnificent animals should not end up on a meat hook after a terrifying journey to a terrifying death," writes Cromwell in his letter. "I urge the Jockey Club, as the only official body that deals with every thoroughbred owner in every racing state, to implement PETA's Thoroughbred 360 Lifecycle Retirement Fund without delay."

Join James Cromwell in asking The Jockey Club to give racehorses the dignified retirement that they deserve.  

Written by Michelle Sherrow

Newsflash: Cows on dairy farms aren't happy. In fact, they are quite the opposite.

So how is it that the California Milk Advisory Board (CMAB) can continue to claim that the "best" cheese comes from California's supposedly ecstatic cows?

You know the ads—the one with a handful of free-roaming, robust cows cavorting sassily under a cheerful California sky? Apparently we're expected to believe that all cows used on dairy farms in California look like this …

theinspirationroom / CC

… as opposed to this:

In the past, we've had some choice words on the subject of California's supposedly happy cows. In 2002, PETA filed suit against the CMAB for false advertising—but the California Supreme Court refused to hear the case on the grounds that as a government agency, the CMAB can’t be sued for violating California state advertising laws.*

But we kept fighting the good fight against the CMAB's false advertising with a series of "Unhappy Cow" demonstrations and public service announcements, including a few starring the man himself, animal crusader James Cromwell. And now, on the heels of our most recent undercover investigation inside a dairy farm, the time has come to return to the trenches.

We're filing a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, calling on it to make the CMAB stop lying to consumers about the way cows on dairy farms are treated. "Happy cow" ads mislead consumers into believing that California dairy cows are pasture raised, free roaming, and grass fed and live in conditions that make them "happy" (i.e., that they are well cared for, content, comfortable, and healthy). In reality, these cows are drugged up, over-milked, and denied even the most basic care. Doesn't sound like a "happy cow" to me.

Written by Amanda Schinke

*Let's put aside how alarming one might find the idea of a government not subject to regulation.

I think I'm finally morphing into a football fan. First, I learned about all the excellent veggie fare at football stadiums, and today PETA released an exclusive interview with hunky football tight end Tony Gonzalez, and his gaga-gorgeous wife, October.

After their sexy shoot for a new anti-fur ad for PETA, the couple sat down to talk about the benefits of a plant-based diet. In the interview, Tony calls the cruel treatment of animals on factory farms "appalling" and describes how his health improved dramatically after ditching meat and dairy products two years ago.

On the many benefits of his mainly plant-based diet, Tony says, "I'm going into my 13th year in the NFL, and I switched over [to a plant-based diet] two years ago. … [T]he day after a game, everybody's sore … and I'm jumping rope and they're looking at me like, 'Man you're supposed to be the old guy on the team. You're acting like you're the youngest guy on the team.'"

I may be Tony's newest admirer, but I have no doubt that many of his longtime fans will follow his lead and explore meat-free cuisine.

Written by Karin Bennett

As a PETA intern, I've had the opportunity to tour several cities protesting everything from the dairy industry to glue traps. But the most attention-grabbing of all the tours I've taken part in involved setting up a steel-jaw trap in cities throughout the Midwest, including Minneapolis, Madison, Milwaukee, and Lansing.

That's me on the left!

Every year, millions of animals are drowned, gassed, electrocuted, and even skinned alive to produce fur coats and trim, yet there are no federal laws to protect animals on fur farms. Covered in blood and wearing a fur coat that was donated to PETA, I had the opportunity to educate people about the horrors of the fur industry by pretending to be trapped like an animal captured for his or her fur.

I was able to walk away from the trap unharmed. Animals aren't so lucky.

Some passersby looked on in fear, some stopped to make sure I was breathing, and others thanked us for speaking up for animals. One guy even purchased a vegetarian lunch because of our demonstration.

I'm glad that my participation inspired one person—if not many—to be more compassionate.

Many top retailers and designers refuse to sell or work with fur, but callous designers such as Giorgio Armani ignore the fact that synthetics are more practical and just as luxurious—not to mention cruelty-free.

My PETA internship has been a tremendous experience that's allowed me to educate people about the fur industry, meet concerned citizens from around the country, and fight for the rights of animals everywhere. How about you give it a go?

Written by PETA intern Stephanie Boardmen

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.

Photo © Chris Jordan

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.

Photo © Chris Jordan

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.

Written by Logan Scherer

stylenews.peoplestylewatch / CC

As if we needed another reason to adore Ellen DeGeneres, the delightfully ubiquitous comic loves her vegan lifestyle and wants everyone to know it. She's dedicated a page of her Web site to promoting her cruelty-free existence. On this new Web page, she writes the following:

This has me wondering if we can petition to change the American Idol rules: Can Ellen, who is next season's new judge, be crowned American Idol? After all, her powers of persuasion are undeniably charming, and I can't think of anyone better to convince people to make the compassionate, healthy, and environmentally conscious decision to go vegan.

Posted by Logan Scherer

In case you forgot how smart, social, and absolutely adorable pigs are, meet Sherlock. Found wandering down a rural road in Suffolk, Virginia, this little guy was captured and taken to the local animal shelter:

When he was found, Sherlock was still a baby, but he was already castrated and his tail had obviously been docked. That means that this plucky little piglet likely fell off a truck headed to a growing/finishing barn—which is what the piggy flesh industry calls the factories that are used to fatten up little pigs like Sherlock for slaughter. On factory farms, piglets are taken away from their moms when they are less than 1 month old. Workers cut off their tails, clip their teeth with pliers, and castrate the males—all without painkillers. The animals spend their entire lives in extremely crowded pens on tiny slabs of filthy concrete. It gets even more heartbreaking when you factor in the abuse that these animals face: A recent undercover investigation of an Iowa pig factory farm, which supplies piglets to Hormel, documented that workers beat pigs with metal rods and sexually abused them with canes.

When one of our fieldworkers saw the headline about Sherlock in the Suffolk paper, she immediately went to work to find this guy a wonderful home. Click here to see how Sherlock's story ends!

Written by Amy Elizabeth