Written by Heather Faraid Drennan
It never hurts to brush up on answers to questions about animal issues—even seasoned protesters can get a stumper from passersby now and then. See if you know the answers to the following five questions that often pop up in discussions about animal rights:
What's wrong with eggs and dairy products from "free-range" animals? There are no standards for what "free-range" means, so animals on such farms may still spend most of their time in filthy, crowded sheds. Cruel practices such as searing off hens' beaks with a hot blade and relegating male calves to veal crates occur, and when the animals stop producing enough eggs or milk, they are sent to the same slaughterhouses as factory-farmed animals.
If we don't test on animals, what other methods are available? Computer simulations, cell cultures, human cadavers, and clinical trials are just some of the many options researchers can use instead of animal testing to obtain more accurate and cost-effective results.
davedehtre|cc by 2.0
What's wrong with wearing wool? In Australia—where most of the world's merino wool comes from—sheep have been bred to have excessively wrinkled skin in order to produce more wool. The wrinkles collect moisture, which attracts flies, so many farmers resort to "mulesing," a gruesome and cruel procedure in which huge chunks of skin and flesh are cut from lambs' backsides in a crude attempt to prevent flystrike.
Should we put endangered animals in zoos? Endangered animals bred in zoos are rarely released into the wild. Instead, they will spend their lives "warehoused" in cramped enclosures that cannot come close to replicating their natural habitats. As a result, many develop stereotypic behaviors such as pacing, rocking from side to side, and self-mutilation. The only humane and effective way to combat extinction is to protect animals' habitats.
What's wrong with using a choke or prong collar on my dog? As their names imply, choke and prong collars inflict discomfort and pain, and they can severely injure dogs' necks and throats. Far safer and more humane options are no-pull harnesses and halters like the Easy Walk, Halti, or even a standard figure-H harness. For cruelty-free dog-training tips, check out celebrity dog trainer Tamar Geller's video series for PETA.
Have another animal rights question that you've always wondered about? Visit PETA's Frequently Asked Questions page.
Written by PETA
Arrested Development is coming back! Squeals of joy reportedly reverberated through the Twitterverse when the show's creator, Mitch Hurwitz, announced that the series will return for a limited run, followed by a movie. We can't wait to see more of the lovely and compassionate Portia de Rossi and fuzzy funnyman David Cross.
And while we're talking man candy, check out what vegetarian UFC fighter Jon Fitch had to say about milk: “Milk and dairy is poison. It’s poison. There’s nothing good about it for you to put it in your body.” For Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker, it was the plane crash that nearly took his life that made him want to adopt a healthy vegan diet. He told Rolling Stone: "I've been vegan since I got out of the hospital. It's another eye-opener."
The ladies aren't lagging behind in grabbing cruelty-free fare: Scarlett Johansson is into baking vegan breads, cakes, and muffins, and the WNBA's Taj McWilliams-Franklin said that dumping meat has helped her keep her weight down, recover from injuries faster, feel better, and have more energy.
It's Kathy Griffin's rescued dogs who make her feel like a million bucks barks. She told OK! magazine, "They offer unconditional love, and that's all they ask for in return."
Written by Michelle Sherrow
After the Sacramento Superior Court ordered the spin doctors behind the blatantly false "Happy Cows" advertising campaign to hand over to PETA thousands of pages of records they wrongfully claimed were "trade secrets," it became obvious why the agencies wanted to keep the documents under wraps.
The California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) is required to ensure that the California Milk Advisory Board (CMAB) doesn’t make baseless (let alone outlandish) marketing claims. However, even though the CDFA searched thousands of records, it couldn't produce so much as a single page that substantiated the ad claims. The CDFA and the CMAB have conspired for years to mislead consumers into thinking that dairy cows in California are somehow spared the horrors of the abusive dairy factory-farming industry.
The documents also show that PETA’s campaign against the "Happy Cows" deception led to the ads' demise, and the records support our claim that the CMAB's newest propaganda, the "Family Farms" campaign, is just as tall a tale. We are working to have those ads pulled and sent into the deep recesses of the CMAB's archives of lies. The judge also ordered the CDFA to pay PETA's attorneys' fees and costs over the wrongfully withheld documents.
Unless California's milk producers are all auditioning for impostor spots on To Tell the Truth, they need to learn the difference between fact and fiction. You can avoid funding their lies by throwing the support of your dairy dollars behind real cruelty-free milks like rice, soy, and almond milk.
There is a cure for the summertime blues—an oscillating fan, a glass of lemonade, and a chilled bowl of Internet Soup:
As a nutrition and fitness expert for almost 80 years, Jack LaLanne dedicated his life to inspiring people to eat properly and exercise. So it's no wonder that the nonagenarian was still remarkably spry when he passed away on Sunday at the age of 96. For LaLanne, eating properly meant avoiding meat and milk. When questioned about his aversion to milk during an interview on Dateline NBC, the always jovial Jack said, "It's not good for you. It's good for a suckling calf. Are you a suckling calf?"
Among his many credits, the "godfather of fitness" authored many books on health and hosted the longest-running television exercise program in history, The Jack LaLanne Show, for 34 years. LaLanne opened many health clubs and designed much of the equipment used in gyms today. He is also known for his amazing feats of strength, such as swimming from Alcatraz Island to San Francisco while handcuffed (vegan PETA Foundation staffer and endurance swimmer Becky Fenson has made the same trek—swimming the butterfly, no less—but admittedly handcuff-free), towing up to 70 boats long distances while handcuffed and shackled, and doing 1,033 push-ups in 23 minutes. LaLanne set several world records for strength and endurance.
Jack LaLanne's feats brought him fame, but all he really wanted was to show people how to be healthy. If you would like to follow Jack's long-lived example, you can start by picking up PETA's free vegetarian/vegan starter kit.
Two decades of dumping wastewater from Hilmar Cheese Co. onto surrounding fields has polluted the groundwater in Hilmar, California, according to a report by consultants hired by the company. Eighteen wells in and around Hilmar are so contaminated with nitrates, arsenic, barium, and salts that the water is undrinkable, forcing some people to abandon their homes.
One of the world's largest cheesemakers, Hilmar Cheese has a long history of objecting to pollution limits and enforcement actions proposed by the regional water quality control board, and despite thousands of violations over nearly 16 years, it never paid any fines. However, following an exposé by the The Sacramento Bee, the company settled in 2006, paying a $1 million fine and $1.8 million toward environmental studies. Hilmar Cheese is now under a state order to clean up waste discharges by February, but it has also won permission to increase the amount of wastewater that it dumps on fields.
Speaking of dairy-related pollution, a farmer in Berks County, Pennsylvania, had to be rescued after he fell into a 15-foot-deep manure pit earlier this week. I guess you could say he was having a crappy day—kind of like every day for cows on factory dairy farms.
Written by Alisa Mullins
And, this week's 10% Wool "Tag and Release" winner is ... Beth Ann! Congratulations.
Don't forget to check out the archive of past 10% Wool comic strips here. Get more information on the series and the writer here, and learn how to get Jeff's other comic, DeFlocked, into your local paper here.
Healthy, humane alternatives to cruelly produced dairy products continued to make headlines this week. An executive order signed earlier this year by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has gone into effect requiring city vending machines to be stocked with soy and rice milks in an effort to curb obesity rates and improve consumers' overall health.
Considering San Fran's healthy and humane options in vending machines and L.A.'s dairy-free delight, the "Pamela Anderson" milkshake, California almost seems like heaven on Earth. Please take a minute to thank Mayor Newsom for his decision to provide his city with healthier, humane beverages.
Written by Karin Bennett
Of course, I'm not talking about the tormented bulls—I mean the intoxicated bullies who were trampled on the second day of Pamplona's weeklong San Fermín festival. Reporters, who were apparently channeling their inner Hemingway, described the bulls as "angry," "threatening" "hulking beasts." I think those terms better describe the people who goad animals into a terrified stampede, don't you?
Maybe it's just me, but I don't see anything heroic or brave about terrorizing animals just for the thrill of it. It seems like the truly courageous people are the ones who stripped to their undies to protest Pamplona's annual exercise in stupidity and cruelty:
Now that takes some cojones.
According to a new study by researchers at The University of Auckland in New Zealand, that whole business about the ocean being a "silent world" is a bunch of bunk. Fish talk to each other all the time through growls, grunts, chirps, and pops—we just can't hear them without special equipment. Gurnards turn out to be the "Chatty Cathys" of the underwater world, talking to one another throughout the day.
My response to this "amazing" discovery? Duh!
As the "fish lady" in the PETA Foundation's Writers Group, I've been reading and writing about fish for more than a decade. I've learned that fish can count and tell time, they are fast learners, they think ahead, they have unique personalities, and they may even have a sense of humor. So I'm not at all surprised to learn that fish communicate with each other—I'd be surprised if they didn't!
The Auckland U. scientists believe that fish talk to attract mates, warn others of danger, and scare off predators. I think they're trying to tell us that "fish are friends, not food." What do you think they're saying?
Written by Paula Moore
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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.