Written by Michelle Sherrow
A lot has been happening this week at PETA: victories, anniversaries, and celebrations! We're after CareerBuilder, we stopped shipments of monkeys to laboratories, and we've done much more! Check out the latest news and victories:
What a busy week it's been in the PETAsphere! Just in case you missed any of the big news, we've got you covered. Follow us on Tumblr for future news about animal rights, vegan living, and where in the world the PETA campaigners are now.
Former "pussycat" Kimberly Wyatt instinctively knows that torturing rabbits, mice, and other animals for makeup is wrong. In her new ad for PETA U.K., Kimberly, who has her own line of cruelty-free cosmetics, exposes the painful and often deadly effects that chemical tests have on animals.
Hair: Klare Wilkinson|Make-up: Lan Nguyen|Studio: ShoreditchStudios.com|© karlgrant.com
Testing cosmetics on animals has been banned within the European Union (E.U.) since 2009. The E.U. also approved a ban on the sale of cosmetics containing ingredients that were tested on animals elsewhere, effective in 2013. But under pressure from some cosmetics companies, the E.U. is considering delaying that ban. Kimberly is hopeful that her ad will encourage the E.U. to uphold the original deadline.
She's got a lot of support: After PETA U.K., PETA Germany, and PETA Netherlands sent out action alerts to their members, the European Commission (the E.U.'s executive branch) received more than 20,000 e-mails urging it not to delay the ban. And when PETA U.S. sent out a similar action alert, we quickly collected and delivered more than 50,000 letters from people in the U.S. and other countries imploring the European Commission to keep the deadline and keep animals safe.
On this side of the pond, we aren't fortunate enough to have such a ban yet, but we can implement one in our homes by buying only cruelty-free products.
Written by Lindsay Pollard-Post
The new year is already looking a bit brighter for animals: A PETCO store in Dickson City, Pennsylvania, has announced that it will close permanently on January 1—which is great news for the hamsters, gerbils, mice, fish, and other small animals who suffer and die every day in PETCO's stores and suppliers' facilities.
"Life" for the animals PETCO sells often consists of struggling to survive wild capture or captive breeding in horrific conditions, suffering from untreated injuries and illnesses, and fighting for food in feces-strewn, severely crowded cages. At the massive breeding mills that supply live animals to the pet trade, PETA investigations have revealed sick and dying animals placed in freezers to die, live hamsters placed in a plastic bag and bashed against a table in an attempt to kill them, animals deprived of veterinary care and left to cannibalize their cagemates' corpses, and other horrors.
For the sake of small animals, please say "No" to PETCO and other stores that sell animals.
Written by PETA
Each of us is inherently an "animal rights person" to some degree, whether we realize it or not. Take the recent case of the Charleston, West Virginia, Daily Mail blogger who wrote about having a mouse in her house. In the post, she wrote, "Please don't email me PETA." We did one better—we sent her a humane mousetrap and then she contacted us to learn more about it. A week later, she wrote this in her blog:
"So I thought I'd do a little research on the humane mousetrap and have a chat with PETA, after all they were kind enough to send it to me, to help with my 'uninvited' guest. At first, I was a little wary. I mean this is the group that files lawsuits on behalf of orcas, and well, there's nothing I like better than a … steak. But we may have found common ground on the mousetrap."
jma.work | cc by 2.0
Whether or not people support all of PETA's campaigns, most everyone can agree on the basic principle that cruelty to animals is wrong. Even if our friends and family aren't yet convinced that they should part ways with meat, perhaps they do agree that dogs deserve better than spending their lives on a chain or that baby elephants shouldn't be beaten by circus trainers.
When we work to find that common ground, animals win. And who knows, maybe today's humane-mousetrap user is PETA's next Person of the Year.
Do you take your tea with a dash of blood? How about a spoonful of dead mouse? PETA's new parody of a Nestea commercial from the '80s shows viewers why they should avoid the brand and "take the CruelTEA plunge":
Nestea insists on testing on mice and rats in an attempt to make health claims—despite the fact that U.S. and European regulators have stated that tests on animals are not sufficient to prove health claims about food and beverage products. One test involved locking highly social mice in dark chambers and painfully shocking their sensitive feet. In another test, experimenters injected mice with chemicals to make them develop diabetes and then force-fed them tea ingredients.
Share the new ad on Facebook and Twitter to urge everyone you know to "take the CruelTEA plunge" by pledging to drink only cruelty-free tea. Please also click here to urge Nestea to stop testing on animals. Unless you want to quench a thirst for cruelty, Nestea is one brand to avoid like the plague.
Written by Heather Faraid Drennan
As the nights get chilly, the thought of passing the evenings with friends and family in a nice, warm house sounds delightful … to mice. Like humans, mice are social animals who enjoy each other's company, and while you might not be so eager to enjoy theirs, you might have a little more respect for them after reading these fascinating mouse tidbits:
If—despite their charm—you still don't care to share your home with mice, the best way to keep them out of your humble abode is to prevent them from getting inside in the first place. Seal mouse-size holes (mice can enter a hole the size of a dime), keep food in sealed containers, always clean up crumbs right away, and use safe, homemade deterrents like peppermint-soaked cotton balls. If you already have unwanted mouseguests, never use cruel glue traps, which leave the animals to suffer slow deaths from suffocation or dehydration. Instead, pick up a few humane mousetraps and set the mice free outdoors.
A man who was spear-fishing off Anna Maria Island in the Gulf of Mexico found out what it was like to be speared by a fish when a shark bit his left thigh. By issuing a series of biting (geddit?) ads placed in the area, PETA is using this incident to remind Floridians that the deadliest killers in the water aren't sharks—but human beings.
Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com
Sharks aren't the only animals who have been striking back:
Perhaps if animals always fought back, people might think twice about abusing them. It would save a lot of lives all around. And speaking of saving lives—maybe these surfers will always be spared from shark attacks in return for their compassionate actions.
PETA's "do test" and "don't test" lists have been an essential part of shopping for millions of people for nearly three decades—and in all those years, we've never made a change to the way we list companies: They either conduct (or pay someone to conduct) painful skin, eye, and other poisoning tests on animals, or they don't.
© Jessica Florence
Now, for the first time ever, we are launching a new category, called "Working for Regulatory Change." This new category recognizes manufacturers that only conduct tests on animals that are required by law and work hard to develop and lobby for the validation of non-animal tests. The requirements for making the list are as tough as boot camp. In addition to refusing to conduct any tests on animals that are not required by law and devoting substantial support and human hours toward the acceptance of non-animal methods, companies must lift the veil of secrecy and talk openly with PETA about what tests they conduct on which species and how many animals are used. And they have to do it every year.
With such tough standards to meet, it's not too surprising that only one company is on the "Working for Regulatory Change" list so far: Colgate-Palmolive. Colgate has been transparent with the public and with PETA about what it does and why, and the company has had a moratorium on all tests on animals for its adult personal-care product line for more than a decade. In its last reporting year, Colgate conducted no tests on animals at all.
We'd never suggest buying products from companies that test on animals, but we also recognize that some companies have never spent one corporate dime on developing and validating non-animal test methods. We challenge these companies to follow Colgate's example and stop hiding and start working for an end to all tests on animals.
What do you get when you mix PETA, a company that tests on animals, and a roomful of eco-friendly executives? A round of applause, which is what happened when an animal advocate stood up during the Industry Water Award Ceremony in Stockholm and asked Nestlé Chair Peter Brabeck-Letmathe when its tea brand, Nestea, will stop carrying out painful and deadly experiments on animals and switch to cruelty-free non-animal testing methods.
A few weeks ago, Nestlé USA CEO Brad Alford got the same surprise inquisition at the Grocery Manufacturers Association Conference in Colorado Springs.
Experimenters working for Nestea have injected mice with toxic chemicals in order to give them diabetes, then force-fed them tea ingredients before killing them. In another experiment, mice were force-fed tea extracts and then had their leg muscles cut open before being decapitated. In still another test, mice bred to suffer brain damage and rapid aging were locked in dark chambers, and painful shocks were administered to their sensitive feet before the mice were killed.
Not only are these tests not required by law, the results also aren't even admissible as proof of tea's health benefits—the very reason that Nestlé claims it conducts the experiments. You can give Nestlé executives a surprise of your own by visiting PETA's new website, NesteaCruelTEA.com and e-mailing AlfordCEO of Nestlé S.A. Paul Bulcke and to ask them to call off the killing.
This may be what you're used to thinking of as an anti-viv poster:
But nowadays, you're just as likely to see this as an anti-viv poster:
That's because PETA has a squadron of scientists who meet with government regulators, serve on expert working groups, put pressure on international corporations, publish in scientific journals, and make presentations at international scientific conferences like the one that took place in August in Montréal.
The World Congress on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences is the premier international conference on alternatives to animal testing. (Yes, we know that the "and" in the title should be "to" and have mentioned that to the organizers.) Even though animal experimenters attend the conference and peddle their wares and displays touting cruel experiments like force-feeding animals Jerusalem artichokes (seriously), there is also a lot of excellent information presented on non-animal testing methods and strategies.
Five PETA scientists presented displays and gave talks at last week's conference about ways to avoid using animals in endocrine testing, skin testing, and other tests. Our presentation on vaccine testing evidenced how PETA has succeeded in using a variety of pressure points to save thousands of animals from being used in cruel vaccine testing, including convincing the U.S. government to replace the use of pigs in painful erysipelas vaccine tests. Another PETA scientist addressed attendees regarding new non-animal technologies that can replace the use of mice in antibody production work.
With close to 1,000 participants from more than 50 countries at the conference, PETA's scientists were encouraged to note how many companies and laboratories represented at the Congress are actively working on technology and testing methods that can reduce or replace the use of animals. Not only are these methods 100 percent humane, they are also less expensive, more effective, and faster than animal tests.
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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.