Written by Michelle Kretzer
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!
Written by PETA
San Francisco Giants outfielder Cody Ross just knocked one out of the ballpark. When the postseason hero learned that foie gras is made by shoving tubes down the throats of ducks and geese, often causing serious injuries, and force-feeding the birds until their livers become painfully engorged, Ross immediately decided to change ducks' luck and dump foie gras.
"Once I found out what it was, it kind of made it taste a little different," he said.
PETA is sending Ross a thank-you card for being a fine friend to the feathered. To learn more about why he stopped eating foie gras, watch the Kate Winslet-narrated video here.
Written by Michelle Sherrow
After seeing PETA's heart-wrenching undercover footage of ducks and geese suffering on foie gras farms, food service giant ARAMARK recently agreed to stop distributing foie gras.
To produce this "delicacy of despair," workers shove metal pipes down birds' throats and pump them full of fat and grain until their livers painfully swell to up to 10 times their normal size. Foie gras production is so cruel that California and many countries around the world have banned it.
This is a huge victory for ducks and geese. ARAMARK serves more than 2 billion meals every year in 22 countries—meals that will now be foie gras–free. To take further action, visit our Force Fed site and ask Royal Caribbean and Gelson’s Markets to stop selling foie gras.
PETA France tried nicely asking the president of the Trophée des Hauts de France ceremony in Lille, France, not to serve foie gras, but he insisted on displaying the vile "torture in a tin." That left PETA France no choice but to not-quite-so-nicely point out the cruelty involved in its production.
Earlier this year, PETA released a video narrated by Kate Winslet that contains undercover footage taken on French foie gras farms and shows ducks being confined to iron maiden–like cages, unable to stretch even one wing or take a single step in any direction. Such intense confinement is, of course, a violation of Council of Europe guidelines.
Here's how one investigator described the conditions on one farm:
"It is absolutely astounding to enter a force-feeding room. Hundreds of ducks are lined up like shoeboxes. They are … jammed in cages that restrict freedom of movement. They are unable to stretch even the tip of a wing or to turn around. … [D]ucks are haggard, and some of them haven't enough strength to raise their heads anymore. Metal cages, darkness, animals exhausted from struggling, corpses—you feel like you're entering a torture chamber."
PETA Germany has urged the European Commission to crack down on French foie gras farms that illegally confine birds to cages that restrict their movement. You can help by writing to the European Commission and asking it to enforce the 1999 guideline (Council Directive 98/58/EC):
John DalliCommissioner for Health and Consumer PolicyEuropean CommissionB-1049 Brussels Belgiumcab-dalli-webpage@ec.europa.eu
Written by Alisa Mullins
The following is a guest post from PETA Europe's Fish & Chimps blogger Alexia Weeks:
Avid Fish & Chimps fans were probably wondering why PETA didn't jump in with teeth bared after Kate Winslet posed naked on what looks like a real fur throw in the latest issue of Vanity Fair. But behind the scenes, we were busy at work contacting Kate—the beauty we've never, ever seen wearing animal fur.
So we sent a note to Kate pointing out how shocked we were to see photos of her posing with fur. And we were right to be shocked! We had a very prompt response from Kate's rep and we have been assured that Kate never wears fur (as we suspected!). She was actually told at the photo shoot that the very real fur was fake. And that's not the first time that this sort of thing has happened! PETA US has heard from countless celebs that sneaky stylists at photo shoots can be rather coy when it comes to fur and whether it's real or not. So it seems Kate was duped—and with so many convincing fakes out there nowadays, it is easy to mistake the dead animals for the fake ones.
So, who thinks Kate should get naked with a faux-fur throw for PETA?
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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