Written by Michelle Sherrow
Pink is proving once again that she has a big heart. After someone threw a puppy off a Los Angeles overpass and into the river below, Pink donated $5,000 for emergency surgery, saving the young dog's life.
Actor Dawn Olivieri (of Vampire Diaries fame) might have jumped into the river herself. She told Marie Claire magazine, "I will stop my car if there's a stray animal along the side of the road. I've spent hours trying to catch lost dogs wearing collars so I can help people get their pets back."
There were no animals on Paula Patton's back at the Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol premiere in Moscow—her rep tells us that she braved Russia's cold in a faux-fur coat.
Ke$ha recently traveled to the Ukutula Lion Park and Lodge in South Africa to help rehabilitate an orphaned lion cub. Although she fell for the cub (now named Ke$ha), she said, "I was glad to leave my lion, because an animal like that should live in the wild. Keeping [a lion] confined is really just inhumane."
When True Blood star Kristin Bauer thinks something is inhumane, she spells it out. When the actor visits her family, she writes, "Tested on animals" in black marker on her family's products that aren't cruelty-free.
The cruelty-free and fabulous Lea Michele graces DoSomething.org's list of Top 20 Celebs Gone Good for 2011 in honor of her work with PETA, including her ever-present animal-friendly tweets. Case in point:
Written by Jeff Mackey
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!
The Delaware County, New York, District Attorney's Office has filed charges of cruelty to animals as well as a drug-related charge against Susan Marino, the woman responsible for the horrific suffering of hundreds of animals at Angel's Gate, Inc., which she founded, operates, and dares to call "a hospice and rehabilitation center." PETA's investigation of this hellhole exposed the daily neglect and terrible suffering of disabled, elderly, and ailing animals, many of whom had been shipped to Marino by well-meaning but severely uninformed individuals and agencies, including the New York Center for Animal Care and Control (NYCACC), which doomed Malcolm the Chihuahua and hundreds of other animals to die slowly at Angel's Gate through its "New Hope" program.
PETA had provided the District Attorney with the evidence that our investigator gathered while volunteering at Angel's Gate. Our investigator saw Marino allow animals to suffer, sometimes for weeks, from treatable conditions as well as terminal illnesses without providing veterinary care, medication, or pain relief. Paralyzed animals dragged themselves until they developed bloody ulcers. Animals developed urine scald after being left in soaked diapers for up to two days. Dehydrated animals were denied water, and others were forced to stay outside in freezing temperatures. The bodies of dead animals were left among those of the living for days. While Marino has been charged, the nightmare is not over for the animals at Angel's Gate, as they have not yet been seized. Please help us ensure their welfare and the safety of future victims by joining us in urging the New York State Attorney General to revoke Angel's Gate's nonprofit status and ensure that the animals are removed from Marino's custody. Please click here to send a letter to the Attorney General, and please, when your animal companions become elderly or ill, let them live out their final days with dignity in the comfort of their own homes, surrounded by their families, not at the mercy of a conniving stranger.
Some folks made Christmas merry, while others are in need of making some serious New Year's resolutions to shape up:
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]." Mercy For Animals' 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 by PETA and Mercy For Animals 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.
Has anyone ever told you that ending animal abuse is your middle name? Meet a man for whom fighting cruelty is his first, middle, and last name. PETA Foundation staffer Dan Carron has legally changed his name to CircusesHurtAnimals.com. As he admired his new driver's license, we asked him what he thinks life will be like as a website.
Whose reaction are you most looking forward to? Perhaps restaurant hosts who call out, "CircusesHurtAnimals.com, party of four"?What a great reason to eat out more! Yes, I think daily run-ins with people will be the most interesting. I use a debit card a lot, so I will be signing CircusesHurtAnimals.com for people constantly.
What does your mom think about your name change?My mom always encouraged me to speak out against all forms of cruelty, and when she learned about the abuse involved with circuses, she was happy to have a son named CircusesHurtAnimals.com—although she still calls me Danny.
Do you think that you will get much bigger birthday cakes now?That was part of the plan!
What is your ultimate goal with changing your name?I want to use every chance I get to tell people why they should boycott circuses that use animals. After people have visited CircusesHurtAnimals.com and have seen the elephants chained for up to 100 straight hours and have seen the baby elephants who were torn away from their families and beaten bloody with bullhooks, I think they will stop supporting this abuse.
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Ready to join CircusesHurtAnimals.com in slamming the circus? Get started right now with PETA's addictive new iPhone game, Circus Slam!
Written by Jennifer OConnor
Lions will no longer be forced to spend their days in the middle of the MGM Grand Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas after the display closes for good on January 31.
mamamusings | cc by 2.0
In their natural savannah home, lions roam many miles of territory, hunt, raise their young, and avoid all contact with blackjack tables and slot machines. But at the MGM Grand, lions are confined to a display made of artificial rock and floor-to-ceiling glass, allowing them no privacy and no opportunity to escape crowds of gawking tourists. The stress and unnatural conditions led to at least two lion attacks on handlers at the display, prompting PETA to successfully appeal to the Nevada Occupational Safety and Health Administration to cite the exhibitor, Keith Evans, for workplace safety violations and to fine him. On top of the state citations, Evans was also cited by federal officials for illegally declawing two lion cubs.
PETA had appealed to the management of the Strip landmark for years to eliminate the cruel and dangerous display, for which lions were hauled back and forth between the casino and Evans' off-site facility. Now, we are offering to assist MGM with placing the cats into reputable sanctuaries.
Please click here to give a roar of gratitude to MGM management for discontinuing the display and to ask that they work with Evans to retire the lions to reputable sanctuaries using funds that have been set aside for the animals' care.
A chimpanzee named Cheetah, who reportedly played Johnny Weissmuller's sidekick in the old Tarzan movies, has died. There is some debate over Cheetah's credentials, but regardless of whether he ever acted in the Tarzan movies, he almost certainly was torn away from his family and home when he was just a baby and spent decades being exploited by humans.
He ended his years in a Florida "scamtuary"—a facility formerly known as the Chimp Farm—which for years confined intelligent primates to cramped concrete and iron cells. Unfortunately, little has improved since the outfit gave itself the misleadingly grandiose name of Suncoast Primate Sanctuary and the original owner's granddaughter took over operations.
Ending up in decrepit roadside zoos is often how animal "actors" are "retired." Please never buy a ticket to a movie that uses animals instead of innovative computer-generated imagery, and never visit roadside zoos and pseudo-sanctuaries that continue to exploit formerly famous animals to their dying day.
I just received the gift of a 2012 calendar illustrated by Mutts artist Patrick McDonell to go along with my PETA "Rescued" calendar. But my walls won't be the only ones sporting the designs of this talented and compassionate artist in the new year. PETA's mobile SNIP (Spay and Neuter Immediately, Please!) clinic received a facelift earlier this month when it was rewrapped with colorful Mutts artwork, courtesy of McDonnell.
PETA's fleet of state-of-the-art mobile low-cost to no-cost clinics—we now boast three—spayed and neutered more than 10,000 dogs, cats, and rabbits in 2011, and we hope to surpass that number in 2012, thereby preventing thousands of unwanted animals from being born into a world long on suffering and short on good homes. We've spayed and neutered more than 75,000 animals in the last 10 years!
If you'd like to support SNIP's lifesaving work (the clinics operate at a loss and rely on donations to keep "snipping"), we can hook you up.
PETA has sent Compassionate Legislator Awards to members of the Margate, Florida, City Commission for unanimously voting to ban bullhooks, electric prods, and other cruel devices specifically designed to inflict pain on animals. The move means that the Cole Bros. Circus, which has visited Margate in the past and whose handlers have been caught on tape beating elephants with bullhooks, should be barred from bringing elephants into the city in the future.
The sharp metal hook and tip on the end of a bullhook can rip elephants' skin and leave bloody wounds and abscesses. The tricks that animals in circuses and traveling shows are forced to perform go against their natural instincts, which is why handlers must beat them into submission. When not performing, animals in circuses spend most of their lives caged or chained in trailers and railroad boxcars while traveling from city to city.
Cities and counties all across the country have enacted bans or restrictions against shows that hurt and exploit animals. You can help by contacting your own local officials to ask them to initiate proceedings to do the same. E-mail our Action Team for help getting started.
Written by PETA
here's the winning caption for last week's 10% Wool comic contest! We're in the process of contacting the winner, so be sure to check your in-box!
"Not to worry, it's a faux Santa beard sweater!"
Don't forget to check out the archive of past 10% Wool comic strips and get more information on the series and the writer. Join the flock and become a fan of Jeff's nationally syndicated comic strip, DeFlocked.
PETCO pledged in 2005 that it would end the sale of large birds in its stores. Last month, a concerned PETCO customer noticed that a PETCO store in his area had a white-capped pionus, a kind of parrot, for sale. The bird had apparently spent 14 months in a cage at the store, waiting for someone to buy her. PETCO's price tag for the bird was $799, but for some time, there was a "Manager's Special—50% Off" sign on the cage she was in, as if this sensitive bird were an out-of-style shirt to be placed on the clearance rack.
PETA reached out to its contact at PETCO's corporate office and got the complainant in touch with the pet trade giant. For once, PETCO did the right thing and allowed the person who contacted PETA to adopt the bird, since named Tegan, for a donation to the PETCO Foundation, which provides funds for animal welfare organizations and spay-and-neuter efforts, among other things.
Tegan now has the run (fly?) of the house and the company of other birds. The kind man who took her in says that Tegan is a very affectionate bird who enjoys taking showers and who spends at least 4 to 5 hours a day riding around on his shoulder, where she seems happiest. You can find tips on caring for birds on our companion animals webpage.
Two important lessons emerge from this case. One: Never hesitate to speak up when you suspect an animal needs help. And the other? Don't support the pet trade—shop only at pet-supply stores that don't sell live animals.
Written by Lindsay Pollard-Post
Sparks flew recently after Congress restored funding for U.S. inspectors to oversee horse slaughter, opening the door for horses to be killed and butchered in the United States for the first time since 2006. But there is hope for a better bill: The American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act of 2011 (S. 1176/H.R. 2966), which would outlaw horse slaughter in the U.S. as well as close the loophole that previously allowed horses to be sent on grueling journeys to slaughterhouses in Mexico and Canada, something that added approximately 230 extra miserable miles to their already miserable lot. Horses urgently need anyone and everyone you can enlist—your neighbors, friends, coworkers, and family—to actively support this act. Please click here to register your support now.
Each year, more than 130,000 frightened horses are trucked from the U.S. and killed in slaughterhouses in Canada and Mexico. After enduring hundreds of miles jostled about in cramped trucks—often in extreme temperatures without food or water, on slippery floors, their heads bent over from the low ceilings, being kicked and bitten by other horses—they are shot in the head, are strung up by one leg, and have their throats cut.
The American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act of 2011 would prohibit shipping, transporting, moving, delivering, receiving, possessing, purchasing, selling, or donating horses and other equines for human consumption. In other words, it would effectively end the use of U.S. horses for food—both here and abroad!
This lifeline for horses is currently sitting in Congress and requires that we act fast. Please click here now to urge your members of Congress to vote in favor of the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act of 2011. Ask everyone you know, and set up tables to enlist those you don't, to do the same.
Written by Heather Faraid Drennan
It's the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. In the case of animal abusers, every so often they get done unto them just as they do. Here are this year's best stories in which the Golden Rule put its game face on:
Leg photo © iStockphoto.com/Shelly Perry Shark photo © Getty Images/Digital Vision/Carl Roessler
Looks like animal abusers might want to consider a New Year's resolution to adhere to the Golden Rule … or else.
The new year is already looking a bit brighter for animals: A PETCO store in Dickson City, Pennsylvania, has announced that it will close permanently on January 1—which is great news for the hamsters, gerbils, mice, fish, and other small animals who suffer and die every day in PETCO's stores and suppliers' facilities.
"Life" for the animals PETCO sells often consists of struggling to survive wild capture or captive breeding in horrific conditions, suffering from untreated injuries and illnesses, and fighting for food in feces-strewn, severely crowded cages. At the massive breeding mills that supply live animals to the pet trade, PETA investigations have revealed sick and dying animals placed in freezers to die, live hamsters placed in a plastic bag and bashed against a table in an attempt to kill them, animals deprived of veterinary care and left to cannibalize their cagemates' corpses, and other horrors.
For the sake of small animals, please say "No" to PETCO and other stores that sell animals.
They may have been born as strays on a porch, but thanks to the efforts of some wonderful volunteers, seven Labrador retriever–mix puppies spent their first Christmas indoors, surrounded by their loving adoptive families.
While heading out to pick up and transport animals belonging to low-income residents for spay-and-neuter surgeries at one of PETA's mobile clinics, a PETA Community Animal Project fieldworker spotted a truck driver attempting to drag something out of a ditch on the side of a busy highway. Our staffer pulled over to make sure that the "something" was not an animal, but to her horror, it was just that—a horribly injured hound dog who was soaking wet, shivering, covered with lacerations, and unable to stand or walk.
The tracking collar around the dog's neck helped explain how he had wound up wandering along a highway: He had been used for hunting. Hunters rarely treat their dogs any better than the animals they take pleasure in killing. Countless hunting dogs are hit by cars when they cross highways while tracking prey or when they become lost during hunts. Dogs are frequently (and illegally) abandoned at the end of the season or when the dog "won't hunt." Many hounds spend most of their lives chained up or confined to pens in all weather extremes, and they are often trained with shock collars, which can cause burns and cardiac fibrillation and turn dogs into confused, fearful, nervous wrecks.
As for this poor, suffering hound, PETA's fieldworker gently loaded him into her van and quickly rushed him to an animal shelter. The dog was taken to a veterinary clinic right away, where it was determined that he had suffered a broken back and that euthanasia was the most humane option for him.
Hunting hurts not only the animals targeted by this cruel blood sport but also the dogs hunters use as their unwitting pawns. It's time to stop hunting for trouble.
For many young people, college is a time when they are making their first independent decisions about what they will eat three times a day and, on a broader scale, what issues are important to them. The decisions that they are making now will shape the rest of their lives and, in fact, the course of the future of our country as they become our leaders. We talked to Ryan Huling, manager of college campaigns and outreach for peta2, about the impact that college students across the country are having on the animal rights movement.
What have college students done to make campuses more cruelty-free?The number of vegetarian college students has risen by more than 50 percent since 2005, and the number of vegans has more than doubled, so it's no surprise that the demand for meatless options on campuses is high. And as a result of students' growing objections to dissection, more colleges are creating formal and informal policies that allow students to opt out of dissection and be provided with humane alternatives.
peta2 says that young people are leading the charge for animal rights. How so?Young people, and college students in particular, have been an integral part of every social-justice movement in recent history, and animal rights is no exception. peta2's Liberation exhibit that we present on college campuses juxtaposes the abuse that humans have inflicted on each other throughout history (such as child labor, slavery, and the denial of basic rights) with the abuse that we currently inflict on animals. Students are highly motivated to correct this injustice as well.
The peta2 Street Team (our youth activist network) has more than 70,000 active members who are signing petitions, making phone calls to companies that abuse animals, running student groups, and educating their friends about animal rights every day. Many who have visited a youth-focused concert, such as Warped Tour, lately will attest to the fact that every show attendee either is vegetarian or has friends who are. The idea of boycotting animal products has become mainstream in youth culture, and today’s young people will influence future generations.
For more exciting news on the college-outreach campaign, see peta2's just-released list of 2011's Top 10 Most Vegan-Friendly Colleges.
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?
The best show in Vegas last week wasn't in a casino—it was on the sidewalk on Las Vegas Boulevard. Luck was a lady leopard (and a cow and a snake) when PETA's "showgirls" stripped down on The Strip to reveal their animalistic bodypaint.
Crowds flocked to the ladies like they were the hottest blackjack table, posing for pictures and scooping up information about how animals raised or trapped for their skin suffer.
With the flurry of flashbulbs now over and loads of leaflets distributed, it's a safe bet that any animal skins the passersby will be flaunting from now on will be as fake as an Elvis impersonator.
You and animals both win when you choose animal prints, not animal skins.
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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.