OK ladies and gentlemen, congratulations are in order. The votes are in and following an impressive week-long rally by Jay Leno, Tonight Show band leader Kevin Eubanks has been voted PETA’s World’s Sexiest Vegetarian man for 2007, while American Idol superstar Carrie Underwood has been voted World's Sexiest Vegetarian woman.

Well over 100,000 ballots were cast, and the other finalists include Milo Ventimiglia, Joaquin Phoenix, Kristen Bell, Bryce Dallas Howard, Jared Leto, TV Guide columnist Michael Ausiello and Maggie Q.

I’m sure Leno couldn't be happier about Eubanks' win. He mentioned the contest several times during the past week and said that he stopped by to vote for Eubanks, noting that he wanted Kevin to win to bring honor to the Tonight Show stage. And Tonight Show viewers logged on in large numbers, pushing Eubanks ahead of his competitors. I’m not saying Eubanks wouldn’t be up there in the rankings without it, but Leno’s repeated stump speeches had to have given him an edge. Leno even brought out some rather revealing shots from Kevin’s past to get viewers excited . . .

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Previous winners, in case you’re keeping score, include Prince, Natalie Portman, Shania Twain, Chris Martin, Andre 3000, Tobey Maguire, Josh Hartnett, Alicia Silverstone, and Lauren Bush.

Congrats Carrie and Kevin, from all of us at PETA. And Jay, how about a segment with both winners on the show?

I don’t know about you, but I always get a little bristly when my “almost” vegetarian friends tell me that they “only eat fish.” Of course, I totally believe that nobody is perfect, myself included, and that every small step people take to help animals is important. I just don’t understand how fish got so removed from the compassion radar that some people actually call themselves vegetarians while scarfing down tuna melts?

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They may not be as cute and cuddly as dogs and cats, but they feel pain and value their lives just as much.

Anyway, my point here is that everything I read about fish intelligence and sentience just blows me away. And this story from the UK put a smile on my face. It’s just kind of nice to see the plight of our piscine friends finally being taken seriously . . .

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I am very, very excited about the fact that it's finally summertime and, by extension, barbeque season. My roommate and I kicked off the season a couple of weeks ago with a Memorial Day barbeque to end all Memorial Day barbeques—Boca burgers, chick'n patties, grilled portabella mushrooms, vegan potato salad, veggie bratwurst, veggie dogs, and pretty much every other fake meat you can think of. Doubtless inspired by our legendary cookout, the folks in PETA's Vegan Campaigns Department have cooked up a little BBQ recipe contest of their own, with a sweet-ass portable grill as first prize and some other cool stuff, including a cookbook and some barbeque sauces, for the runners-up.

Anyway, if, like me, you have an unbeatable vegetarian recipe for a summertime barbeque, you should enter that bad boy here—the winners will be featured on VegCooking.com and PETA.org, so even if the portable grill isn't enough of an incentive for you, you may enjoy that opportunity for instant Internet celebrity. Also, if you have any cool vegan BBQ recipes that you'd like to share, feel free to post them. Barbeque king though I may be, I'm not above learning something new every now and then.

The voting has officially opened. Last year, Veronica Mars' Kristen Bell took home the coveted prize of World's Sexiest Female Vegetarian, and Prince beat out some of the best-looking dudes in Hollywood to win the award for the guys. According to my source over in our Vegetarian Campaigns department, Heroes star Milo Ventimiglia has taken an early lead in the voting, and Bryce Dallas Howard, who's starring in this summer's Spiderman 3—which, if the box office numbers are anything to go by, everyone in the country has seen a couple of times already—is currently inching ahead in the votes for the ladies.

Remember, it's not that meat-eaters can't be sexy. It's just that they could be sexier. You can pick your favorite vegetarian celebrity by clicking here. I will be voting for Alyssa Milano. Multiple times. Just FYI.

Mercy for Animals, an animal rights group based in Ohio, has just released video footage of an undercover investigation into a House of Raeford Farms slaughterhouse in North Carolina. House of Raeford Farms, which is one of the biggest turkey processors in the country and supplies companies such as Denny’s and Arby’s, turned 250 million pounds of live turkeys into dead turkeys in 2006 and raked in about 276 million bucks for their efforts. If this video is anything to go by, they're not putting an awful lot of that money back into animal welfare. But, as Mercy for Animals point out on their website, the workers responsible for the abuse can't even be charged under federal law, because the USDA's Humane Slaughter Act doesn't protect turkeys and chickens. The blasé attitude towards unbearable suffering and the outright sadism that you can see on this video turns up again and again and again when one of these hellholes is exposed, but you can bet that the poultry industry is going to act like this is an isolated incident and do everything they can to fight the PR fallout, and the absolute bare minimum to correct the abuses this investigation has uncovered. There are hundreds of great reasons for going vegetarian, but honestly, this is the only one you'll ever need:

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if hundreds of dogs took over a brewpub? Well, people in Portland, OR, found out yesterday, at the annual Portland “Pug Crawl”, a benefit for the Oregon Humane Society. The event was basically a traditional pub crawl, but dogs were invited along as well.

Cute Overload eat your heart out.

This little guy’s outfit served two purposes, it protected him from the ever present Portland drizzle, and was a great entree into conversations about KFC cruelty.

Thanks to Donna from Portland for the pics and “Pug Crawl” report.

I was pretty much blown away by The Station Agent when that movie came out a couple of years ago, and I've been a fan of the movie's star, Peter Dinklage, ever since. Peter went on to have a recurring role in Nip/Tuck, and he's also landed the part of Trumpkin in the next Narnia movie (Prince Caspian, for those of you keeping track). It's going to be a little while until that movie comes out, but in the meantime, you might want to check out the awesome "veggie testimonial" that Peter Dinklage just starred in for us. So cool.

I’m sure everyone has seen our Sexiest Vegetarian contest by now, and hopefully you’ve voted for your favorite already. The number and quality of entries has been truly inspiring.

If we ever decide to have a Dumbest Vegetarian contest, however, there won’t even need to be any voting because this girl will definitely win. ... Not much to say about it, huh? Wow.

In 2000, I was still busy trying to figure out how "electronic mail" worked, and PETA, for all its marketing brilliance, was still just kind of feeling its way in terms of having an Internet presence. But we did hit on a campaign that ended up having a real life of its own on the ol' World Wide Web—it was all over blogs and forums, and it's still talked about on religious websites—and, with Easter just around the corner, I thought I'd raise that burning question again:

Was Jesus a Vegetarian?

Here is the website that started the debate, and you can read some more of the controversy here. Have a great Holy Saturday, everyone!

Not sure how many of you will care, but I thought I’d share some cool geeky news that I’m pretty excited about.

Have you noticed how I’ve been hyperlinking the word vegetarian a bit lately? Well, our resident search guru Joel Bartlett has been at me to do it because it helps with "Search Engine Optimization." Or, in English, it helps Goveg.com rank higher in internet search engines.

Well, today, after months of super technical and top secret work behind the scenes, and after not nearly as much or nearly as technical and obviously not top secret work by me hyperlinking the word vegetarian, I’m happy to announce that GoVeg.com is now the highest ranking website on Google when you search for the word “vegetarian.”

As you also may have noticed, next on Internet-nerd Joel Bartlett’s agenda is getting his myspace profile to be the highest ranked page on Google when you search for Joel Bartlett. And he’s got some tough competition from an ABC weatherman by the same name who I will not link to for fear of increasing his search ranking . . .

All joking aside, we’re pretty psyched about this because we believe GoVeg.com is the best resource available for helping people go vegetarian, so we want it to be super easy for people to find the site. It really has taken a lot of work and many months to get there, so we’re pretty thrilled about it.