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Fried chicken, fried shrimp, fried fish, chicken-fried steak ... seeing a pattern here? A recent study shows that good ol' Southern-style, high-calorie, high-fat, meat-filled dishes are why the U.S.' Southern states are the nation's most obese. Lordy, y'all! Let's have us some massive amounts of deep-fried animal flesh!

Is your state one of the most obese? The study, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, announced that the top 10 most obese states are Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Louisiana, West Virginia, Arkansas, South Carolina, Georgia, Texas, and Oklahoma.

In an effort to combat soaring obesity rates, PETA has sent a letter to the governor of each of the above-mentioned states with an easy solution: Simply promote a vegetarian lifestyle and encourage more vegetarian options within their respective states. Easy as pumpkin pie.

Update: And we’ve got pics! Lemme know which design you like best for the suggested memorial.

After 122 years in business, the world's largest stockyard closed down last month, holding their very last livestock auction in front of a nostalgic crowd on April 11. After we had finished celebrating here in the office, we decided that, much as one might like to forget them, the actions of South St. Paul Stockyards—where around 300 million cows have been poked, prodded, kicked, and dragged to their deaths in the last century—need to be commemorated. Today, we sent a letter to Greg Miller—president of Interstate Partners, the company that plans to redevelop the stockyard property—urging him to erect a memorial to the animals who passed through the stockyard's gates. As PETA President Ingrid Newkirk puts it:

You can read PETA’s letter to Greg Miller here. I’ll let you know if we get a response.

Deflocked, baby. Deflocked.

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You hear politicians and journalists complain all the time about how grueling it is to follow the campaign trail, but none of those guys ever had to do it in a pink pig costume (to my knowledge). So I want to take a moment to recognize my colleague Ashley Byrne and the brave PETA interns Chris Arellano and Lacey Knox who have been showing up at campaign stops around the country to drum up support for PETA’s call for an excise tax on meat. These pics from South Carolina—where the pigs were a big hit with democrats and republicans alike—are pretty damn adorable.

We’re just knocking them out of the park at the moment. Literally two hours after posting an alert on our site asking members to contact the American subsidiary of Russian oil-giant Lukoil about their promotion of the Ringling Bros. Circus, the company has made the compassionate decision to cut all ties with the circus due to its history of animal abuse. Or, as they put it in their email to us: "Per our conversation today, we do not have a sponsorship/partnership with Ringling Bros. and are not going to in the future."

Thanks, guys! And thanks to everyone who helped us out by letting Lukoil know what they were getting into.

Ami James, the star of the hit TLC reality show Miami Ink, is also the new face of our anti-fur campaign, showing off his 40 colorful tattoos in a new “Ink, Not Mink” ad for PETA. He’s unveiling the ad at his Miami club—the Love Hate Lounge—this evening, and will be renaming the venue “Love Animals, Hate Fur” for the night. Needless to say, we’re really excited about Ami’s involvement with this campaign. You can see Ami’s new ad and tattoo design here, but in the meantime here’s a PETA Files exclusive video interview with Ami James that took place at the ad shoot:

A little while back, we wrote to the county jail holding alleged cannibal Christopher Lee McCuin, asking that they put him on a flesh-free diet ASAP—since, apart from anything else, there really is something horribly perverse about feeding the guy body parts given the circumstances surrounding his arrest. We received a prompt response to our letter from one Sheriff J.B. Smith, who pointed out (very reasonably) that intentionally altering McCuin’s meals without changing all the other inmate’s meals might be viewed as prejudicial treatment, and asked if we could provide some documentation to support our statement that vegetarian meals promote nonviolence in correction facilities.

Our follow-up letter, which was faxed to the sheriff’s office today, does exactly that. Complete with references to Pythagoras, Albert Einstein, and Tolstoy, along with some information about trial programs at correctional facilities that have given all the inmates vegetarian food, it makes for a pretty good read. Here it is in full.

Update: You can watch the Today Show segment about this investigation here.

As you may have noticed from the front page of our site, PETA released the details today of a major investigation into a PetSmart supplier in Texas. You can learn more about that investigation on our brand-new PetSmart Campaign website. The whole thing is pretty disturbing, but the footage depicting the treatment of a baby Goffin’s cockatoo named Angel is utterly devastating. From the beginning of Angel’s “life,” which was spent in solitary confinement, until an agonizing death after four months wasting away from an untreated disease, Angel’s experience was characterized solely by suffering. It’s difficult to watch, but this video should be mandatory viewing for anyone who has ever considered buying a bird from a pet store.

You can contact PetSmart and ask them to immediately end all animal sales through the web form here.