Written by Michelle Kretzer
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The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health held a contest to create the most eye-catching and informative packaging for its free condoms, and … well, let's just say that eye-catching and informative are what PETA does best.
Doctors say that the Atkins diet could be bad for the heart. Shocker.
"No-kill" animal shelters are slowly killing animals. Here's how.
What swim, have fins, and are radioactive? … And the male ones may also have a lower sperm count than natural as well as female body parts.
If people you know are still using products that have been tested on animals, PETA's alarming video "Testing … One, Two, Three" might be all it takes to change their minds.
What better way to celebrate a day that's all about love than by showing how much you love animals? See how your big day can make a big difference for our furry friends with PETA's vegan wedding guide.
If you need yet another reason to love Stella McCartney, here's a big one: She's giving one lucky PETA supporter her Falabella Cross Body Bag, worth $1,095. Enter to win it!
El Al Airlines has reneged on its promise not to ship monkeys to laboratories. Tell the airline to stop profiting from cruelty to animals.
The California State Legislature is considering a bill that would ban using dogs to hunt bears and bobcats. Urge the Assembly to pass this bill, which would protect all three species from cruelty.
Sandia National Laboratories is poisoning squirrels on its grounds even though PETA has given the company information on humane squirrel control. Urge Sandia to adopt the humane and more effective methods.
Rob_ert|cc by 2.0
The Frederick Keys minor league baseball team in Maryland is planning to strap monkeys onto dogs' backs while the dogs herd sheep and to release a captured dove as part of its between-innings entertainment. Tell the team that cruelty to animals has no place in the great American pastime.
Tell Revlon to come clean about whether it's paying for animal tests in order to market its cosmetics in China, and encourage the company always to be cruelty-free.
For each saltwater fish displayed on PETCO's shelves, nine more died before even reaching the store as a result of their traumatic capture. Urge PETCO to stop dealing in saltwater animals who were ripped from their natural homes.
Written by PETA
It is finally the beginning of the end for the horrific cat hell known as "Caboodle Ranch, Inc." (Caboodle)—a disgusting, crowded, disease-ridden no-kill "rescue sanctuary" in Madison County, Fla.—that has long been the subject of complaints to PETA's office.
Today, thanks to evidence gathered by a five-month-long PETA undercover investigation, the cats are being seized and taken to safety.
Video footage and photos taken by PETA's investigator show cats suffering from upper-respiratory infections so severe that they gasped for air and struggled to breathe, drooled, and had bloody mucus clogging their noses. Cats also had ruptured corneas, went blind, and, in some cases, died. One such cat, Lilly, died after fighting for months, losing her battle with what initially seemed to be a simple cold.
Caboodle's founder and operator, Craig Grant, faces criminal charges of cruelty to animals, based on the information gathered by PETA. We are grateful to Madison County Animal Control, the Madison County Sheriff's Office, and the Third Judicial District of Florida State Attorney's Office for taking this case seriously and pursuing it with the seriousness that it deserves.
This investigation comes at a critical time for homeless and unwanted animals in Florida. A dangerous bill is currently making its way through Florida's legislature. Animal shelters would be forced to hand over animals to self-proclaimed, unregulated animal "rescues" like Caboodle if the misleading "Animal Rescue Act" (S.B. 818 and H.B. 597) becomes law. PETA is calling on the bill's sponsors to withdraw the legislation without delay. Won't you please help us?
Written by Dan Paden
The economic downturn has taken its toll on nearly everyone, and animals are no exception.
Animal shelters across the country are overflowing with record numbers of cats and dogs—many of whom were surrendered by people who lost their homes or could no longer afford to care for their animal companions after being laid off.
With so many animals in need of refuge, now is a terrible time for an alarming number of animal shelters to arbitrarily implement limited-admission, "no-kill" policies. These policies put animals in danger because they prompt shelters to turn animals away or they make it expensive and difficult for people who can no longer care for their animal companions to surrender them to a shelter.
The only effective way to deal with the companion animal overpopulation crisis is through aggressively pursuing laws and policies requiring people to have their animals spayed or neutered and making it easier for them to do so. When shelters refuse to take in animals—and communities fail to address the underlying causes of the problem—animals pay the price.
Under pressure from people with good intentions but no clue of the ugly reality of overpopulation—nor of the sheer number of animals who flood shelters every day—some facilities are stooping to all-time lows to manipulate their euthanasia rates. Many adopt policies and practices that endanger the very animals they should be protecting. These include charging fees for surrendering unwanted animals (sometimes outrageous fees, such as $96 for feral or stray cat "turn-ins" in Maricopa County, Arizona); requiring citizens who can't care for their animals to make appointments and "wait until there is room"; refusing to accept feral or stray cats, even when people might resort to doing them harm; refusing to accept animals from outside the invisible boundaries of a certain town or area; and giving away animals free of charge and without adequately screening adopters.
Here are just a few heart-wrenching news stories about the ways in which no-kill shelters and policies harmed animals in 2010:
PETA's small sheltering program takes in any animals who need help—even those who are aggressive, horribly injured, or terminally ill. We took in nearly 80 dogs and cats whom PETA staffers brought back from crowded New Orleans–area shelters after the Gulf oil leak nightmare dealt an additional blow to the Gulf economy.
No one ever needs to pay a fee or make an appointment to drop off an animal to PETA. Our field staff is on call 24/7; animals are accepted at all hours of the day and night. PETA's fieldworkers rushed out to help both of the following animals after receiving emergency pager calls early in the morning on weekends:
Animals like Buddy are the reason why PETA will never turn away any animal in need. Is a shelter in your community turning away animals? Work to open its doors by following these guidelines.
Written by Lindsay Pollard-Post
I’m not sure that I’ve directly addressed this topic before on this blog, but there have been two events this month that really underscore the importance of having a serious discussion about “no-kill” shelters among animal advocates, so here goes: The first was this article in The LA Daily News, which published statistics showing that more animals die in “no-kill” or “limited-admission” shelters in LA than people think. As the article puts it:
“Over the last five years, the number of animals euthanized in L.A. shelters has been cut in half, from 37,024 to 17,881. But with that gain come trade-offs. Keeping large numbers of unadoptable pets alive means shelters will be more crowded. Animals can't be as closely monitored. Contagious illnesses will spread, and violent animals will more often prey on weaker ones. So while euthanasia rates have gone down, animal deaths from other causes - including illness and attacks - have gone up from 1,462 to 3,312 a year, a 127 percent increase.”
To me, the article addresses what is in many ways a problem of terminology: “No-Kill” sounds pretty great, but it doesn’t mean “No-Suffering” (or “No-Death" for that matter), by a long shot. What it means is that the people running the shelter (though they are often well-intentioned individuals) have made a decision to turn their backs on the animals who may be abandoned and die on the streets because their limited-admission shelters lack room for more, and—as the article shows—allow the animals who are in their shelters to die from overcrowding, disease, or injury instead of humane lethal injection in the arms of caring people.
The second event that brought this topic to mind was the recent release of footage from a PETA undercover investigation into a “no-kill” shelter called All Creatures Great and Small. The investigator, who was there throughout a 7-month period, discovered systematic abuse and neglect of the hundreds of animals kept in filthy, overcrowded cages with no hope of reprieve or release from their suffering. There’s some more information about PETA’s stance on this issue here, and you can watch the video from our investigation below. I know this is a complex and emotional topic, but I thought this was a good opportunity to explain where we stand.
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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