Written by PETA
It's so hot in the city, you'd think I'd be making another batch of lemonade—but I've got a hankering for some Internet Soup. It's been a while since the last batch, so dig in!
Oof! I don't know about you, but I'm full after all that soup—and guac. This Special K needs a siesta. Until next time …
Written by Karin Bennett
If you don't want people to start chanting, "Fatty, fatty two-by-four, can't fit through KFC's door," you might want to put down that drumstick and pick up some Gardein buffalo wings instead. A recent study of hundreds of thousands of Europeans revealed that the more meat people ate, the more weight they gained over time—and chicken is the big culprit.
This is important to tell everyone: Researchers found that the people who were most likely to gain weight were also those who ate the most chicken, followed by processed meats and red meat.
Researchers at Imperial College London in the U.K. found that people who ate more meat gained about a pound a year on average, even if they consumed the same amount of calories as people who ate less meat. And most meat-eaters eat far more calories than do vegetarians or vegans. And predictably, the more meat people ate, the more weight they gained. For every additional 8.8 ounces of meat that people ate daily, they packed on about four and a half extra pounds over five years.
"Our results suggest that a decrease in meat consumption may improve weight management," wrote the study's authors in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Hurry—surf on over to GoVeg.com and order a copy of our vegetarian/vegan starter kit today, before you end up looking like this.
Written by Alisa Mullins
Our honorary director, Pamela "Bombshell" Anderson, dazzled her Québécois admirers as she hit Montréal today to launch her latest global ad campaign for PETA.
One small snag: City officials suddenly decided to prohibit the unveiling at its original location, claiming that the ad is sexist. It sounds like they're confusing "sexist," with "sexy," don't you think? Not missing a beat, Pam decided to unveil the ad instead at her news conference for the Just for Laughs festival, for which she's hosting a gala tonight. In the ad, as you can see, each of her perfectly sculpted body parts is clearly labeled like a traditional butcher's diagram.* The message? "All Animals Have the Same Parts."
Pam's striking ad offers a reminder that cows, pigs, and chickens are flesh, blood, and bone, just like us. Looking at any animal as a collection of breasts, shoulders, and ribs to be hacked apart is unthinkable. Or as the lovely Ms. Anderson herself said, "Humans and animals have a lot more similarities than differences. Both have a brain, a nervous system, and most importantly, a heart. And that's why I'm a vegetarian. I hope that this new campaign helps people come to the same conclusion."
Written by Jeff Mackey
*How cool is it that a Google image search for "butcher's diagram" turns up so many pictures of PETA campaigns?
Here's another reason not to visit zoos and circuses: The lions you gawk at today could end up on a restaurant menu tomorrow.
A restaurant in Mesa, Arizona, made headlines this week for serving lion-meat burgers as part of a promotion related to the World Cup in South Africa. CNN reports that the meat was supplied by an Illinois butcher who was sentenced to six months in prison in 2003 for selling meat from federally protected tigers and leopards.
And where, exactly, did he get the lion meat? PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk gives her view—and reminds meat-eaters that lion burgers aren't really any worse than what's already on their plate (hint: factory farms are no walk in the park):
Lion meat served in restaurants could come from old lions who lived in roadside zoos or were forced to perform in circuses. They could be unwanted grown-up cubs from ever-prolific lions—ones the zoos love to breed, as any baby animal draws a crowd and boosts ticket sales. Or they could have been "hunted" in a fenced-in compound by cowards who want a trophy to hang on the wall—so that's what anyone who buys a lion burger is likely to be supporting. But the most manly meal is one that won't make you impotent by the time you reach 40—and that's one with no meat at all. So PETA's advice is to give a thought for the majestic old lions—not to mention the cows and chickens whose flesh is being served in the restaurant down the block: They went kicking and screaming to their deaths too.
Tell us what you think about this sordid story.
Written by Paula Moore
This one's scarier than that shower scene from Carrie: It's been shown before, but there's more news that researchers in the U.K. have found a link between high meat consumption and early periods in girls.
Using data from a group of children who were studied from birth, researchers determined that 7-year-olds who regularly chow down on meat face a 75 percent chance of prematurely getting their periods by age 12. The curse of earlier puberty for youngsters also sets the stage for their increased risk of breast cancer later on, thanks to extended exposure to higher levels of estrogen.
OTR tweens, IBD, UTI—it's easy to crack the code: Stop eating animals. Period.
If you think that you can judge that package of dismembered animal bits by its expiration date, here's a cautionary tale that will make you think again. A customer at a Brooklyn grocery store found a newer "sell-by" label slapped on top of an expired one on a package of chicken and told the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets about it. The inspecting body for food safety shrugged it off, saying that sell-by dates are "nothing but a tool for store managers," who are permitted to relabel or repackage food.
60 Minutes called the fluid in which dead chickens float before they are processed for food "fecal soup," and we have heard enough horror stories to realize that most meat is contaminated with dangerous bacteria like E. coli, campylobacter, listeria, and other bacteria that live in the intestinal tracts and feces of animals. Meat and dairy products spoil fairly quickly, so this might be a good time to start avoiding the stuff altogether. I'm hoping for a run on our vegetarian/vegan starter kit displays, but if you don't have one nearby, you can download a copy or order one from our Web site.
It just goes to show—any way you slice it, meat is still just decomposing flesh.
Written by Heather Moore
Officials are scrambling to contain the beyond-massive oil spill that's headed for the Gulf Coast and its wetlands and wildlife areas. At times like this, I know it's popular to blame big business, and that's fair enough. But in a free-enterprise system, business only gets big (and sloppy and greedy) because of consumer demand. This morning, PETA delivered that message to Alabama residents by flying a banner over downtown Mobile reading "Meat on Your Grill = Oil Spill."
Raising animals for food causes environmental devastation on a massive scale, and oil spills can be blamed in large part on the oil-guzzling meat industry—which owes its existence to the meat-guzzling public. According to a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, it takes more than 10 times as much fossil fuel to produce a calorie of animal protein as it takes to produce the same amount of plant protein.
This disaster will have a devastating, long-lasting impact on the region and its residents, including more than 400 animal species, but crying over spilled oil and blaming big corporations won't make a difference. To ease tremendous animal suffering, safeguard human health, and help prevent oil spills, go vegan.
Just in time for barbecue season comes a new study about meat eaters showing that eating charred meat, doubles the risk of bladder cancer. Even eating fried fish and chicken can significantly increase the odds.
Other studies have already shown that eating charred meat may increase the risk of pancreatic cancer. Kind of makes a few ants and some clouds seem like trivial problems, huh?
So, given that well-done meats can form chemicals that can increase the risk of cancer and undercooked meats can cause food poisoning, you might want to grill some mouthwatering veggies and mock meats at your next gathering. You want to keep your guests happy and healthy and save the lives of animals—don't you?
Yes, you've read that correctly, and no, the headline wasn't ripped from The Onion. In a joint press conference this morning, the Australian Meat Industry Employees Union and the World Society for the Protection of Animals agreed that the live export of sheep who were once abused for their wool is destroying the nation's economy.
Every year on the grueling journey from Australia to their slaughter in the Middle East, millions of sheep endure weeks, and sometimes months, on extremely crowded, disease-ridden ships with little access to food or water and through all weather extremes. Many sheep fall ill, become stuck in feces and are unable to move, or are trampled to death by other sheep. Those who survive are dragged from the ships, are thrown into the backs of trucks and cars, and eventually have their throats cut while they are still conscious.
Hopefully, this surprise support from Australia's meat industry will mean less suffering for sheep. And who knows, maybe the next shocking headline we'll see will read, "Australian Meat Workers Oppose Meat" (considering the energy, land, and resources wasted by the production of meat—a guy can dream, can't he?).
Written by Logan Scherer
Spring cleaning is about to take on a whole new meaning in Colorado Springs, where officials facing a lack of funds have removed trash cans from public parks. To help the mayor stop the economic slump from turning Colorado Springs' parks into dumps, PETA is offering to bring back the wastebaskets, with one caveat—they need to sport this ad:
How does meat trash the planet? A U.N. study found that factory farming is "one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global." Our name for these doubly productive garbage cans? Wasteless Baskets.
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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