October 2001 The Washington, D.C., Dining Society held a banquet that was scheduled to serve and promote foie gras to its patrons. After learning about the cruelty of foie gras production and hearing from our members, the event’s organizer made the compassionate choice to remove foie gras from the banquet. Foie gras is produced by forcing … Read more »
October 2001 PETA wrote to Des Moines University-Osteopathic Medical Center after receiving reports that medical students were cutting off the nipples of live dogs and then sewing them back on as a surgery exercise. According to students who participated in this exercise, dogs woke up during “surgery” and were kept alive for up to two weeks … Read more »
October 2001 After the two airplanes slammed into the World Trade Center, residents of nearby apartment buildings quickly fled, not realizing that it would be days before they were allowed to return. Others were at work and returned home to find their entry barred. PETA received dozens of calls from New York City residents, desperate to … Read more »
July 2001 PETA’s undercover investigation of Seaboard Farms, Inc., a pig farm located 8 miles east of Guymon, Oklahoma, shows employees routinely throwing, beating, kicking, and slamming animals against concrete floors and bludgeoning them with metal gate rods and hammers. Other pigs were left to die agonizing deaths from severe injuries, illness, and lameness―often unable to … Read more »
July 2001 In January 2001, PETA launched a campaign against Burger King after more than three months of negotiations in an attempt to persuade the chain to follow McDonald’s lead by instituting policies to protect farmed animals. Our campaign lasted six months and included provocative ads, celebrity support from Alec Baldwin, James Cromwell, and Richard Pryor, … Read more »
July 2001 DAIA was contacted by a Florida woman whose two cats had been poisoned to death with antifreeze. When the second cat got sick, she found a bowl of tuna mixed with antifreeze in her neighbor’s yard and called the police. Her neighbor admitted to the police that he had put out the antifreeze intentionally … Read more »
July 2001 An activist alerted PETA that several cats had suffered and/or died after becoming entangled in the batting cages’ netting at Incarnate Word Academy in Corpus Christi, Texas. PETA obtained disturbing video footage of a cat trapped in the mesh, spread-eagled, panting, and clearly in distress, desperately struggling to escape. The footage also showed the … Read more »
April 2001 PETA wrote to the St. John Health System in Detroit, Michigan, after receiving numerous complaints about its use of cats to teach endotracheal intubation (ETI) in pediatric advanced life support (PALS) classes. These classes were optional training for nurses and emergency-room physicians. We informed St. John Health System that there are humane alternatives to … Read more »
April 2001 PETA received a call from a former employee of North Las Vegas’ Parks and Recreation Department, who reported to us that each year, on the opening day of the city’s pools, hundreds of fish were dumped into the pools and children were given plastic bags with which to capture the fish and take them … Read more »
April 2001 After months of local activism and letters from PETA and veterinarians, Shenango Valley animal shelter agreed to discontinue the use of the gas chamber and give injections a “trial run.”
April 2001 Florida residents contacted us in February after hearing a local radio show during which a caller had bragged about killing his dog. The man stated that the dog had bitten his son, who had apparently been kicking her. The caller bragged that after dropping his child at the doctor, he returned to the house … Read more »
April 2001 In January 2001, PETA learned that General Motors (GM) administrators routinely ordered maintenance crews to trap and drown “nuisance” animals, such as raccoons and coyotes, at the Milford Proving Grounds plant in Michigan. We fired off a letter of protest to GM President and CEO G. Richard Wagoner Jr., and in March, GM agreed … Read more »
April 2001 In March, a distraught couple in Speedwell, Tennessee, contacted us after a neighbor viciously attacked their dog, Half Shell. Apparently, the man had cut the beagle’s tether and coaxed her onto his property, where he repeatedly picked the dog up and slammed her to the ground before kicking her and walking away. Half Shell’s … Read more »
April 2001 PETA received a call from a floral manager of a Tops Market, a grocery-store chain with more than 130 stores scattered across the East Coast, about a product she was to begin selling in her store called “Betta Fish Arrangement,” a small vase containing a betta fish and a plant. We immediately sent a … Read more »
April 2001 PETA was inundated with e-mail messages and calls of concern about a product being sold by 1-800-FLOWERS called “Enchanted Tranquil Garden.” Many of the callers told us they had received the product, a vase containing a betta fish and a plant, as a gift and that the fish had arrived dead! We immediately wrote … Read more »
