Written by Heather Faraid Drennan
A generous Italian-American PETA member is offering to pay $100,000 to erect a permanent testimony to vegetarianism in Rome's Leonardo da Vinci Airport with a sentiment expressed by da Vinci himself. As Italy faces a mounting debt crisis, PETA has made the country's new prime minister, Mario Monti, an offer that we hope he can't refuse.
Illustration: © iStockphoto.com/Ivan Burmistrov | Plaque: © Alfonsodetomas/Dreamstime.com | Wall: © iStockphoto.com/parema
"Our goal is to assist Italy and highlight da Vinci's passionate, but seldom discussed, refusal to eat meat," writes PETA Senior Vice President Dan Mathews in a letter to Monti.
Da Vinci, who appears in PETA's new Vegetarian Icons postage stamp collection, was such an ardent defender of animals that he sometimes bought caged birds from poultry vendors and set them free. He frequently wrote about cruelty to animals in his Notebooks, writing of the meat and dairy industries, "Endless multitudes will have their little [babies] taken from them, ripped open and flayed and most cruelly cut in pieces" and "Of the beasts from whom cheese is made … the milk will be taken from the tiny [babies]."
Do you think Italy's prime minister should accept PETA's offer to erect our da Vinci sign?
Written by Jeff Mackey
The TV networks have been notably, um, unenthusiastic about running PETA's Super Bowl ads, so this year PETA is planning to take its message directly to the players and fans by placing billboards in the teams' hometowns of New York and Boston as well as Indianapolis, which is hosting the game, making an irreverent plea for people to put down the chicken wings on Super Bowl Sunday.
Chickens © iStockphoto.com/Sunnybeach
It's estimated that some 600 million chickens are killed for the wings consumed just during the Super Bowl. Yikes! And that's after the abuse they all suffered through on factory farms.
Not only is this wing-eating obsession cruel, it also shows a lack of imagination. After all, there are so many mouth-watering alternatives to the old same-old same-old. For vegan game-day treats that will satisfy the most ravenous sports fan, check out these recipes for fab finger foods that won't cost birds their limbs.
If your party guests insist on being served wings, try the meatless variety, like Gardein's buffalo "wings"—the choice of the NFL's Ricky Williams—or just roll your own!
Written by Alisa Mullins
After Food Network star Paula Deen revealed that she has been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and is now going to plug pharmaceuticals, PETA wrote to the queen of southern cuisine and urged her to trade in her chitlins for chickpeas. The side effects of a vegan diet are glowing skin, more stamina, and a slimmer figure. The side effects of taking drugs? Well, listen to the TV spots and count 'em!
In our letter, we pointed out that numerous studies have found that adopting a vegan diet can reduce or even eliminate the need for diabetes medications and reduces the risk of developing the disease in the first place. A groundbreaking study published in the journal Diabetes Care found that 43 percent of people with type 2 diabetes who ate a low-fat vegan diet were able to reduce their medications, compared to only 26 percent of those who followed the diet recommended by the American Diabetes Association.
If you or someone you know has been diagnosed with diabetes, check out Dr. Neal Barnard's Program for Reversing Diabetes and also order one of our free vegetarian/vegan starter kits, which we've sent to Paula Deen along with a copy of Sir Paul McCartney's Glass Walls DVD. Who knows—maybe the girl from Georgia could team up with the boy from Liverpool to devise a "wild honey pie" suitable for diabetics and vegans.
Written by Paula Moore
Earlier this week, a federal appeals court ruled to uphold a Texas law that requires doctors to describe ultrasounds and play audio of the fetal heartbeat to women seeking abortions.
No matter where you stand on abortion, we hope you'll appreciate the billboard that we'll be erecting in Austin, Texas.
Pig: © iStockphoto.com/Chris Pethick
After all, the meat industry is responsible for immense suffering—from castration without painkillers to animals who are shackled and have their throat slit, sometimes while fully conscious—and billions of deaths, which is about as anti-life as it gets. In contrast, a vegan saves 100 lives a year in addition to reducing his or her risk of dying prematurely from many of our nation's top killers, including heart disease and cancer. Now that's pro-life by any definition!
If your tofu has turned green, you'll probably want to toss it. But the results of a recent study show that our tofu is so green that it's a cause for celebration!
The findings of this new study reveal how vegan foods, such as veggie dogs, tofu, and seitan, contribute little to climate change compared to meat. For example, only 350 grams of carbon dioxide are released for each kilogram of soy "meat" produced, while an equivalent amount of ground meat is responsible for around 7,200 grams of carbon dioxide. If my math is correct, that means a hamburger patty causes more than 20 times more harmful greenhouse gasses to be released than does a veggie burger of the same size.
PETA's always said that "meat's not green" because of the severe environmental damage caused by factory farming—which releases massive amounts of the greenhouse gasses that cause climate change.
With a growing focus on our responsibility for maintaining our planet, there's still no better way to go green than by going vegan.
Written by Michelle Sherrow
If it walks, hops, crawls, flies, slithers, has got eyes, a momma and a daddy, it's meat.
It's the first week of the new year, which means that gyms are flooded with folks determined to keep their resolutions to lose weight and be healthier in 2012. Chicagoans burning up the treadmill to Fox News Chicago's morning edition got some advice that may have made them stop panting through the "uphill" setting and take notice: To lose weight, go vegetarian.
Dr. Terry Mason, chief medical officer of the Cook County Health & Hospitals System, asked Windy City residents to quit eating meat for a month and see how they feel. And by "meat" he means, "If it walks, hops, crawls, flies, slithers, has got eyes, a momma and a daddy, it's meat."
Dr. Mason has created the Restart4Health program, advising people on what he calls "TLC"—total lifestyle change. For people outside Chicago who are ready to start giving their bodies TLC in 2012, try the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine's 21-Day Vegan Kickstart.
There are countless things that we can do that endanger our lives, but there's one thing we can do that can not only help us live longer but also save many more lives at the same time: adopting a vegan diet.
Around 16 billion (that's "billion" with a "b") animals are slaughtered each year to feed Americans, which works out to more than 100 animals per meat-eater in the U.S. But you're smart—you do the math. And then do the smart thing: Go vegan.
The year 2011 was a great one for animals, and 2012 is bound to be even better. Tell us what you plan to do for animals in the coming year, and you could win a gift basket to help you start the year off right! The basket contains a selection of fabulous health, beauty, and whole-food products—including Bija certified organic teas, Green Beaver hair-care products, olive oils, and nutritional supplements—from PETA Business Friend Flora, Inc.
Not sure how to get active for animals in 2012? Here are some ideas:
Let us know in the comments section what you have up your sleeve for the new year, and you'll be entered in the drawing for a chance to win the Flora gift basket.
A winner will be chosen at random from the animal-friendly comments that are submitted. The contest will end on January 13, 2012, and we'll contact the winner by January 31, 2012. Make sure that you read our privacy policy and terms and conditions, as you're agreeing to both by commenting. No purchase necessary, void where prohibited by law. Good luck!
North Carolina law-enforcement officials raided a Butterball turkey factory farm after viewing disturbing video footage of workers who abused turkeys. The video, shot during an undercover investigation by Mercy For Animals, shows workers who kick and stomp on birds, smash them into the ground, and bash in their heads with metal rods.
Mercy For Animals' findings mirror those uncovered during PETA's 2006 undercover investigation of a Butterball slaughterhouse in Arkansas. We documented that one employee stomped on a bird's head until it exploded, that another smashed a turkey into a metal handrail so hard that her spine burst through her skin, and that another worker sexually assaulted a female turkey. One worker told the investigator, "If you jump on their stomachs right, they'll pop ... or their insides will come out of their [rectums]." The findings are also strikingly similar to the horrific abuses documented by PETA's 2008 investigation of Aviagen Turkeys, Inc., which led to the first-ever indictments for felony cruelty to animals for the abuse of birds and the first-ever cruelty convictions of turkey factory-farm workers.
The abuse documented is apparently business as usual for Butterball and the turkey industry. Click here to urge the company to adopt "controlled-atmosphere killing" (CAK), in which birds are killed by inert gas while still in their transport crates, eliminating much of the opportunity for abuse at the slaughterhouse. And to help end the abuse that these intelligent, sensitive animals suffer before they make it to slaughter, refuse to eat turkeys and choose fowl-friendly faux turkey instead.
We've all seen the ribbons tied around trees on the side of the road, crosses stuck in the ground, and signs asking us to drive carefully—all reminders of lives that were lost in traffic accidents. Certainly, humans aren't the only casualties of reckless driving, so should they be the only ones honored? PETA doesn't think so.
We're applying to Illinois' Fatal Accident Memorial Sign Program to post two road signs as a tribute to cows who were severely injured and killed on the state's roadways.
PETA has chosen the sites of two horrific accidents as the locations for our signs. In May, a tractor trailer tipped over on an overpass, spilling cows onto the road below. Cows who didn't die on impact or from being struck by cars languished in agony until they were finally euthanized. Another truck overturned in October after the driver fell asleep at the wheel. Six cows were killed by oncoming vehicles—again, many were left to suffer for hours from their injuries.
If humans are going to continue to sentence these animals to die in slaughterhouses, isn't erecting a small remembrance of a few of the millions who lose their lives every year the least that we can do, given that they die for no better reason than because someone craves the fleeting taste of their flesh?
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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.