Written by PETA
After the death of yet another orca trainer by frustrated, tormented Tillikum, retired Price Is Right host and outspoken animal defender Bob Barker issued a plea to SeaWorld to move Tillikum and its other imprisoned sea animals to sanctuaries.
Well, the list of celebrities speaking out against the use and abuse of orcas is starting to read like a Hollywood "Who's Who" and includes the following stars:
(Laz, if you're reading, we'd love to have you join our campaign to free whales. Call us.)
So, we'd like to know: How are you getting the word out about SeaWorld's cruelty?
Written by Karin Bennett
Ellen playing sweet to Simon's tart was reason enough to watch this season of American Idol, but ever since the Top 24 were revealed, we've also been tuning in to support vegetarian contestant Michelle Delamor, who easily made it through last night's vote to become one of the Top 10 ladies.
We haven't "Fallin'" this hard for an Idol hopeful since compassionate country star Carrie Underwood's now-iconic performance of "Alone."
Written by Logan Scherer
Fact: Violence against animals often leads to violence against humans. Conclusion? Require felony animal abusers to be placed on a public registry.
Sex offenders and arsonists are already required to be on registries, and soon California will consider a recently proposed bill that would require the same of animal abusers. By making residents aware of animal-abuse offenders in their community, California legislators would protect both animals and their human constituents.
California banned the use of gestation crates, battery cages, and veal crates when Prop 2 was passed. Then the state put an end to tail-docking of cows. West Hollywood recently banned the sale of dogs and cats at puppy mills, and PETA is opening up a new office in Los Angeles. Conclusion? If the Golden State passes this new bill (and stops abusing its unhappy cows), I will declare it the best state ever.
Shari—an enthusiastic PETA supporter—chatted up tons of rodeo attendees in her community last week about the abuse of animals used in rodeos, in which human performers use electric prods, spurs, and bucking straps to irritate and enrage bulls, horses, and other unwilling "costars" into participating in the show.
Shari's dedication to speaking out for animals is unrivaled. Last year, she participated in the International Day of Protest for elephants at the San Antonio Zoo and held her own anti-Ringling demonstration. She also demonstrated as a caged monkey outside NASA headquarters in Houston and then drove back to San Antonio to step into a human meat tray the next day. And that's only a sampling of her tireless efforts to save lives.
Ready to take action yourself? Get started today!
After unveiling our plan for a spay-and-neuter billboard featuring Tiger Woods, our phones rang off the hook and our inboxes were inundated with tons of feedback from supporters and skeptics alike. Among the rapid responses? A courteous call from Tiger's lawyers asking that we pull him from the ad—a request that PETA quickly honored.
Now that we've left Tiger off the billboard, we're looking to replace him with another oh-so-familiar face: continent-hopping, scandal-producing Mark Sanford, governor of South Carolina. Our potential slogan? "Your dog doesn't have to go to South America to get laid."
Ask a million different people what happiness is, and you might get a million different answers. Happiness is … a warm dog. A choice. A girls' night out.
Now animal agriculture proponents are talking about launching an ad campaign boasting, "Happiness is a dead animal." That's right—the communications "whiz" who proposed the slogan has got people arguing that it's high time "to take a positive approach and tell [the public] to go ahead, eat that dead cow, it's OK."
Wow. I mean, wow.
When farm operators and immature steak addicts are done yucking it up about this ad campaign, they'll still have trouble explaining how "it's OK" that downed cows are left to languish for days; that male baby chicks, who are "useless" to the egg industry, are ground up alive; and that farm workers get away with kicking, stomping on, and otherwise abusing animals. Good luck telling that umpteenth heart attack victim's weeping wife and children how "it's OK" that all those bacon cheeseburgers helped make their loved one obese and unhealthy and his ticker to conk out at 50 years young.
We're not concerned that this ad campaign will actually get the green light. Oh, no, no, no. That's not it at all. We've already seen this type of sophomoric pro-meat push on T-shirts, bumper stickers, etc. Yawn. Been there, done that.
At this point, the biggest concern we have about this moronic ad campaign is that they'll decide not to run it. Someone might figure out that farm operators will have an even tougher time convincing anyone—from Jane Doe to legislators—that they care one bit about the animals in their charge if they announce to the world that they believe "Happiness is a dead animal."
Your thoughts?
Some say Olympic snowboarder Greg Bretz "won" an informal McNugget-eating contest by downing 60 blobs of fried chicken bits. But judging by the dazed expression on his face in the second photo, I'm thinking that even he agrees: major biff!
Regardless, we've asked Greg to lay off the McNuggets until McDonald's adopts a less cruel slaughter method. McCruelty in the U.S. and Canada refuses to improve slaughter methods for birds, instead allowing suppliers to break chickens' bones and scald many of them to death—never mind that controlled-atmosphere killing (CAK), approved for use in the U.S., is already used by McDonald's suppliers in Europe.
Perhaps he'll decide to follow Olympic medalist and snowboarder extraordinaire Hannah Teter's lead, who, when asked about life at the Olympics, scored gold in the hearts of caring people around the world when she quipped, "They have McDonald's at the athlete village, so I'll hit that up every morning. … Not!"
Vegan? There's an app for that. Electronic pie-throwing? There's a tweet for that. Animatronic shadow-detecting? Thanks to some talented students at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, there may be a system for that sometime in the very near future.
Chris Nadovich—director of laboratories in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Lafayette—was so intrigued by our request to the Groundhog Club's Inner Circle to replace Punxsutawney Phil with an animatronic groundhog that he created a project for his students, asking them to develop a shadow-detection system that would help an animatronic Phil "see" his shadow. Right now, five teams of two students each are slated to begin working on this project, which will be completed by the end of April.
We can't wait to see what Nadovich's class comes up with. In the meantime, we're already working on a name for the new technology. Our suggestion: "iShadow." What would you call the groundbreaking (and groundhog-liberating) innovation?
After reading PETA's news release announcing that footwear giant Nike has banned exotic skins, I had to pinch myself to make sure that I wasn't dreaming. I'm not, and neither are you. According to a newly revised policy, Nike and its upscale affiliate Cole Haan will stop selling skins from alligators, crocodiles, lizards, snakes, ostriches, fish, and marine mammals.
This fabulous decision was made after the footwear giants were sent PETA Asia's undercover video footage, which details the gruesome, intense suffering that the exotic-skins industry inflicts on animals. We asked Nike to "just do it." And it did!
Nike is the world's leading shoe manufacturer. Its 2009 sales topped $19 billion, and it operates in more than 160 countries, with approximately 675 Nike-owned retail stores operating worldwide. Cole Haan stores operate in Canada, Japan, and 25 U.S. states. Nike and Cole Haan are world leaders in trendy footwear, and now they've joined H&M and Overstock.com as trendsetters for animals.
After you kick up your cruelty-free heels, please take a moment to thank the companies for their compassionate decision.
President Obama's new proposal to help pay for the healthcare revamp by taxing tanning salons is almost as brilliant as that tanning-bed afterglow. Obama's tan tax—which some proposals have put as high as 10 percent—attaches a monetary price to the health risk that tanners take when they expose themselves to radiation.
Now, as it turns out, some people have this tan tax business all mixed up, but in their confusion they've actually come up with a great idea. Perhaps addled by the toxins that he breathes every day, a leather tannery employee has sent us hate mail about the "PETA-based tan tax" that he fears could hurt the leather business. We're thick-skinned (geddit?), so the vitriol doesn't get to us, but we really like this tannery tax idea.
Although the president hasn't yet officially included leather tanneries in his proposal, it would be a terrific next step in raising funds for healthcare—especially considering that governmental agencies have already deemed tanneries to be a threat to human health and the environment. Most leather produced in the U.S. is chrome-tanned, despite the fact that the Environmental Protection Agency considers all wastes containing chromium to be hazardous. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention even found that the incidence of leukemia among residents in an area surrounding one tannery in Kentucky was five times the national average. Arsenic, a common tannery chemical, has long been associated with lung cancer in workers who are exposed to it on a regular basis. And each chrome-tanning facility wastes nearly 15,000 gallons of water and produces up to 2,200 pounds of solid waste—including hair, flesh, and trimmings—for every ton of hides that it processes.
Leukemia, lung cancer, environmental destruction, and the exploitation and mutilation of cows—we can't stand any of it. How long do you think it would take a new "tannery tax" to ruin tanneries that are already destroying our health and the planet?
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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