So a while back, I posted an entry on these here PETA Files calling out the Ross University School of Veterinary Medicine about numerous photographs we had received documenting the mutilation of animals who were forced to undergo multiple surgeries before being killed and cut apart at the university. Sounds like a pretty reasonable point for an animal protection organization to raise with a veterinary school, but our letters to the university met with enough resistance that we decided to launch an action alert encouraging people to contact the school about the issue.

The good news is that, after a few weeks of back and forth, the Ross folks cancelled all invasive and terminal dog surgeries, something that we—and a whole lot of dogs—were extremely grateful for. As my friend Shalin points out in his recent letter to the local newspaper, it’s totally cool by us if they want to claim that this development was a coincidence and had nothing to do with our requests—as long as they’re making the changes, that’s the important thing.

But we’re not quite finished yet. Ross is still conducting invasive and terminal surgeries on donkeys and sheep, and that needs to stop, like, ASAP. Plenty of veterinary schools are able to teach students to help animals without killing them first, and Ross should join that club sooner rather than later. They’ve already taken an important step in the right direction. I’ll keep you posted on how it all turns out.

Field Cate is the 10-year-old star of ABC’s smash-hit dramedy (Wikipedia assures me that this is a real word) Pushing Daisies, and he is more knowledgeable about a wide array of animal issues than most people twice his age. Here he is, holding forth on the ethics of vegetarianism, pet care, dissection, circuses, and animal testing. Seriously, when Field’s finished with being a TV star, he should run for president.

There’s more info, and a contest for kids to win a signed T-shirt, here.

Does anyone else find it a bit depressing that everyone breaks out the party balloons after an animal gets taken off the Endangered Species list, when all it really means is that people can start the killing again? So it goes with the Gray Wolf, who now needs to start watching his back following an announcement that he’s no longer in imminent danger of extinction. Now that he’s off the list, he can once again be shot by ranchers who are protecting their flocks so they can kill them on their own time.

I’ve always thought that the “save endangered species” stuff was kind of a selfish notion at its core — as if we suddenly realized that the animals we’ve royally screwed over for generations actually enriched our lives just by being around, which apparently means that it’s time to panic for a few years and put them on a “safe list” until there are enough that we can start killing them again...

Anyway, the point is that the Gray Wolf is officially no longer on the Endangered Species List — but given the way we’ve treated these animals in the past and will now continue to treat them, I’m not sure I really feel like celebrating. Feel free to agree or disagree in the comments — I’d love to hear people’s opinions on this one.

Update: It looks like Environmental Graffiti had a similar mixed reaction to the news.

Norfolk’s annual Doo Dah Parade invites local organizations and business owners to march the streets in ludicrous outfits so that the citizens of this fine city can laugh at them. I’ve never quite figured out why this goes on, but it’s certainly a whole lot of fun. Tragically, I didn’t make it this year, but a lot of my colleagues did — all dolled up in dresses and wigs to show that “Fur Is a Drag” — so let’s take this opportunity to laugh at them now:

Steve, Matt, Thomas, and Tim "Danger" Hogarth


Joel S. Bartlett


Thomas and Joel


Mike


Travis

We’re debuting our very first branded food product today, and, being PETA, we figured we’d do something that would make a bit of a splash. We’re launching Newkirk Nuggets™ (patent pending), a cutting edge (and surprisingly delicious) animal-meat alternative created by cloning cells from an upper arm biopsy of PETA President Ingrid Newkirk who is “100% free range, grain fed, white meat.” It’ll be a little while before these bad boys appear in grocery stores, but we’re planning to generate some buzz about the new product by handing out free samples outside KFC restaurants here in Virginia, in the hopes that fast-food lovers with a taste for flesh will choose our “100 Percent Human(e) Alternative” instead of chowing down on the tortured remains of chickens inside a KFC. As Ingrid says, “They say everything tastes like chicken, and now so do I.”

The breakthrough has been in the making for 11 years in laboratories spread across three countries, working to grow animal tissue with the taste, texture and, most difficult of all, the “skin depth” or muscle mass of fish and chicken. According to the experts: “The tissue was taken from Ingrid’s upper arm and cultured in a “nutrient soup” of mushrooms, human collagen and soy broth to form myoblasts. The myoblasts reproduce rapidly to form ¾-inch-thick sheets of what PETA calls “100 per cent victimless meat.”

I know, it sounds a wee bit gross at first, but I suspect that anyone who really knows how meat is processed will welcome this safe, humane, and tasty alternative. Check it out: