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.

About Da Vinci's Cruelty-Free Lifestyle

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]."  

What Do You Think?

Do you think Italy's prime minister should accept PETA's offer to erect our da Vinci sign?

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

Why Worry About Wings?

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.

Try Tasty Alternatives!

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!

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.

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.

Some folks made Christmas merry, while others are in need of making some serious New Year's resolutions to shape up:

• Kisses to hip international clothier Mango. The retailer will no longer sell fur or exotic-animal skins.
• Hisses to Essence magazine for featuring real animal pelts alongside their far more attractive—and humane—faux counterparts in a gallery of "opulent furs."
• Kisses to the Pacific Islands Conservation Initiative for working to designate the waters surrounding the Cook Islands as a sanctuary where sharks won't have their fins cut off for soup.
• Hisses to San Juan Mayor Jorge Santini for sending disturbing Christmas cards showing his family standing alongside taxidermied animals.
• Kisses to the Seattle City Council for protecting animals in Puget Sound and the Pacific Ocean by banning plastic bags from groceries and other retail stores, which can kill birds, turtles, and other marine animals when the bags wash into the water and animals ingest them or become entangled in them.
• Hisses to forever flip-flopping Drew Barrymore for betraying animals by ditching her vegetarian diet to please her boyfriend.
• Kisses to Israel for making cat declawing a crime punishable by up to one year in prison and a $20,000 fine.
• Hisses and gag reflexes to Wendy's for adding a $16 foie gras burger to the menu in its Japanese restaurants.

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?

Since, as the holiday classic explains, "the weather outside is frightful," you have to admire the dedication of PETA's "Mistletoe Misses," who have been braving Arctic breezes wearing nothing but mistletoe-covered bikinis to share "kisses"—along with the word about the many advantages of a vegan diet.

The delightful duo has been giving away vegan chocolates with tags saying, "Be Sweet to Animals," along with PETA's vegetarian/vegan starter kits.

What do Bill Clinton, former President George W. Bush speechwriter Matthew Scully, and the Rev. Al Sharpton have in common? They're all political animals who don't eat meat. Sharpton first got an idea of what happens to animals on factory farms when he appeared in PETA's video exposing cruelty in slaughterhouses that supply KFC and called on the black community to join PETA's boycott of the fast-food chain. His message to KFC? "That's foul!"  

We caught up with Sharpton, who now hosts MSNBC's show PoliticsNation, to ask him what inspired him to change his eating habits, how his new diet makes him feel, and what his favorite foods are.  

"I overhauled my diet after a 40-day hunger strike when I was in jail for the Vieques [military bombing practice] protest," Sharpton told us. "I dabbled with weight loss ideas, wanting to keep off the pounds I lost. First, I gave up red meat, then chicken. I ran into Bill Clinton, who told me how he has more energy, needs less sleep, and can think more clearly since going vegan, and I can tell you the same thing happened to me. I also kept in mind the words of another vegetarian friend—Coretta Scott King—who always spoke of the ethical reasons to give up meat."

Sharpton dedicated his PETA Humanitarian Award to King when he accepted it at PETA's awards gala in New York City in 2006.

To date, the reverend has lost more than 120 pounds. To read more about Sharpton's triumphs and tribulations, check out his essay in PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk's book One Can Make a Difference.

If you want to be a champion for animals, take the pledge to go vegan. Not only will you enjoy reduced stress and more energy, you'll also be less likely to suffer from obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.

Written by Monica Alexander