PETA Europe did a little trick or treating yesterday at a Burberry store in Manchester to encourage the chain to stop with the fur already. Great demo guys.

Show me any animal, and I’ll show you someone who’s found a way to systematically torture and abuse them. For sharks, it’s the finning industry, which kills an estimated 100 million sharks a year, usually by simply hacking off the fins and tossing the animals back into the water to die. And sharks have an additional strike against them in the form of a widespread myth that they’re evil, man-eating monsters, which makes it exceptionally difficult to get anyone to pay attention to their plight. Which is why Sharkwater—a new documentary opening this Friday which debunks the negative myths about these amazing animals and exposes the cruel industry that’s threatening their existence—is such an important film.

Of course, that’s not the only reason I’m psyched about this movie. Anyone who’s watched as many shark-themed TV shows on the Discovery Channel as I have will know that these animals are, to use a technical term, totally effing rad. Here’s a little teaser for the film, and you can check Sharkwater’s site for showtimes.

The Avon Foundation, a cruelty-free charity focused on breast cancer research and awareness, recently named Reese Witherspoon its first-ever global ambassador and honorary chair. She is also the newest face of Avon cosmetics, and recently shot a new commercial for the cruelty-free company. How fitting that the actor who introduced the issue of animal testing to scores of people in her role as Elle Woods in Legally Blonde II is now working with a leading animal-friendly company like Avon. Way to go Reese.

News flash! New Zealand has just banned the live export of animals from the country. This announcement comes only a few months after New Zealand farmers announced that they were ending the archaic practice of mulesing, which is a procedure where large chunks of flesh are cut from sheep’s hind quarters with no painkillers to prevent flies from laying eggs in their wrinkly skin. Kudos to New Zealand for taking the lead on both of these issues and setting the wool industry animal welfare bar a little bit higher.

Now it’s time for the Australian wool industry to pull its head out of the sand and get with the program. If New Zealand can make these two important changes in its entire wool industry in a matter of months, certainly Australia can follow suit. You can help make that happen by clicking here.

If you’re new to the blog or to this issue, there is a great overview of both mulesing and live export here.

After I posted a recent interview featuring PETA President Ingrid Newkirk, a lot of people have been asking how she ended up with a cast on her arm. When I asked her how it happened, she told me she’d broken it while disciplining her assistant, Starza, but—difficult as Starza can doubtless be sometimes—I suspect that the truth isn’t quite so dramatic. The closest I could get to full disclosure was an article that came across my desk a few days later that’s slated for the next issue of PETA’s quarterly magazine Animal Times. It’s a great little piece, so here it is for anyone who’s curious about how Ingrid ended up with that cast. Warning: this is a classic bait and switch—she’s going to turn the tables on you and make you think about, like, animal suffering—but as I say, it’s a great little piece.

"Just as I was setting out to launch my new book, Let’s Have a Dog Party!, I met a wet floor and went splat, neatly snapping the bones in my wrist. Ooh, the pain! Thank goodness for IV drips. Lying on the emergency room gurney, I thought of a seagull I had seen with a broken wing who was being tormented by boys, of the fox in our fur-farming video with a broken leg, and of the monkey who caught his arm in a laboratory cage and broke it. How had they coped without pain relief of any kind? And not just with the screaming pain of their injury, but with the simultaneous fear of attack by the humans who were clearly out to harm and even kill them? Even though they may try to hide it, animals feel pain just as much as humans do.

While researching our Animal Liberation Display, we found that during the days of human slavery, whites claimed that blacks did not experience pain as acutely as whites did. Blacks’ stoicism in the face of total domination, like that of animals today, was taken as positive proof that they were almost immune to physical pain. The same mindset allowed families to be torn apart because Africans were also, most conveniently for their owners, thought not to have the same emotional and familial ties. Some mothers walked a dozen miles every night, after a day of hard field work, to glimpse or hold a child sent to another plantation.

Families are still being torn apart. Chimpanzees used in “cute” ads like those for computer supply company CDW, which earned this year’s top Litterbox Award, are just babies, torn away from their mothers and forced to dress up in silly costumes and grimace for the camera (minus their canine teeth, which are always pulled). By the time they are 8 years old, they are too strong to be managed and are “retired” to filthy, depressing roadside zoos or laboratories, never to see their families again.

Times change and victims’ identities shift, but old, worn-out, flawed arguments remain. Please join us in vigorously bursting these balloons that drift everywhere around us. Every word spoken, every myth challenged, and every pamphlet posted and video link shared puts a pin in them. Thank you."
-Ingrid Newkirk

A little light relief for you all this morning: A man in Tama, Iowa, was out pheasant hunting with his dog this week, when the mischievous little canine stepped on the hunter’s gun, shooting the man in the left leg. True story. The hunter, James Harris, is apparently recovering in an Iowa hospital, and, hopefully, having a long hard think about things like poetic justice, irony, and why it sucks to get shot at by another animal. There’s no word yet on whether the dog is being charged with the shooting.

4peaks/Creative Commons

Those overeducated academics over at peta2 have just released their annual list of the top 40 vegetarian-friendly colleges in the United States, so if you want to show a little love for your alma mater or your hometown school, you can cast your vote here. The school with the best vegetarian options will be announced in the second week of November, so there’s still a bit of time to vote. The contest has already been getting some good press in college newspapers across the country, including this piece in Yale’s newsletter, and this little vignette from ASU.

My school a) didn’t have a cafeteria to speak of, and b) wasn’t in the U.S., so I went ahead and voted for Berkeley—because Berkeley is beautiful, and they have vegan chicken nuggets. You can vote for your favorite here.

Ah, MySpace. It can be so tacky, so infuriating, so unutterably ugly. But there’s no denying that it’s also completely addictive. And the good news is that it’s turned out to be a really powerful tool for activism—helping to encourage a sense of community among activists, and keeping people up to date on breaking news and campaigns. Which is why we’re very excited to announce the launch of the official PETA MySpace page. (Yeah, I know—those trendsetting hipsters over at peta2 have had their MySpace page since it was in Beta. We just took our time with this one.)

So for my fellow MySpace junkies out there, you don’t have to admit that you sometimes spend your Friday nights sending out bulletins about, like, what you ate for dinner, but please do take a moment to check out PETA’s MySpace page, and maybe even add us as your friend. Kthxbye.

Or maybe it’s fox. Either way, a whole lot of them had to die so that the aging Stone could wear her desperation on her sleeve on the red carpet yesterday. I hate to give this photo any ink at all, as I’m sure the only reason Stone wore the hideous wrap was because she’s having trouble getting any meaningful attention these days. And because she’s total trash.

And fyi, it’s not just that Stone is uneducated on this issue. She knows that animals suffer horribly when they are killed for their fur. We’ve written, called, sent videos, you name it. She just doesn’t care. She is, as my friend Joel puts it, just a horrible human being.

MSNBC/Creative Commons

Add Dame Vivienne Westwood to the growing list of designers going fur-free. The renowned British designer—who is credited with pioneering modern punk and new-wave fashions and who helped create the avant-garde look of the Sex Pistols back in the day—has decided to ban fur from her lines, now and forever. I know it’s crushing to think that even the ever so original and avant-garde Sex Pistols had a “look” created for them, but hey, that’s the world we live in. Today, Westwood’s celebrity fans include Gwen Stefani, Mick Jagger, Marilyn Manson, and tons of others.

Oh, so about the fur thing. Westwood came to her compassionate decision after meeting with members of PETA Europe and learning about the suffering of animals raised and trapped for fur. The last of Westwood's furry items were eight rabbit-fur handbags, which the company allowed PETA Europe to donate to a wildlife sanctuary. Apparently, the bags will be used to comfort orphaned baby animals.*

The list of progressive fur-free designers is getting longer every day. Westwood joins Ralph Lauren, Betsey Johnson, Stella McCartney, Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Comme des Garçons, Marc Bouwer, and others who have banned fur from their designs. It’s high time for Michael Kors and other furry designers to get their heads out of the sand and evolve. Seriously, it’s 2007 already. Get over it.

*Wow. I never thought I’d use the words “orphaned baby animals” and “Sex Pistols” in the same blog entry. Wonders never cease, I guess.

Since the Halloween season is upon us and all that, I wanted to share this bit of Halloween trivia with you. Zombies hate KFC. Seriously, they hate it. In fact, they hate it so much that they held a protest at a KFC in Moscow, ID, with signs reading “I’d Rather Be Dead Than Eat at KFC”. Unfortunately for this group of zombies, their photographer only got shots of their signs reading “Aurgh Graun Uargh”. But you get the idea. If you’d like to do your own zombie-themed KFC demo, click here.

And since you asked . . . No, I am not dressing up for Halloween. In fact, I’d rather go naked than dress up for Halloween.

Much as it hurts my pride to get scooped by The Dog Blog on a topic, I’m man enough to admit when I’ve been beaten to the punch. PETA’s resident dog blogger, KP, just posted a great entry about a series of ads put out by the Southern Hope Humane Society in Georgia. The campaign, called “Don’t Get a Dog,” has the simple message that if you can’t take care of an animal, you shouldn’t frickin’ have one. It’s nothing short of tragic that this point isn’t immediately obvious to some people, but I’ve seen enough dogs chained in backyards or crated inside someone’s house that I’m very aware of just how important these ads are. Good stuff, Southern Hope.

You may remember that a couple of years ago, we went after Cindy Crawford for agreeing to appear in ads wearing fur. Doing furry ads is bad enough, but Crawford had actually once posed for PETA’s Fur Campaign and even signed a statement declaring that she would speak up for animals by refusing to wear fur. Shortly after we raised a stink, Crawford crawled back under her rock and we hadn’t heard from her since. Actually, nobody had heard from her; it’s not like there’s much decent work for morally bankrupt washed-up former models out there.

Well it looks like Crawford finally scored another gig. She just showed up on the cover of the November issue of Russian Vogue wearing what appears to be an entire family of dead animals on her back. Since Crawford is so desperate for her mole-ridden face to be seen, maybe it’s time to bring back the poster we used last time . . .

Oklahoma ranks close to the top nationally in the number of breeders currently doing their dirty work in the state, and The Tulsa World recently featured a fascinating investigation into Oklahoma’s culture of breeding, from the hideous puppy millers to the other vile breeders, who parade their sickly “pedigree” animals around and worry about their posture, while they completely ignore the fact that the miserable animals are languishing in hutches and cages not fit for a rock, let alone a living, breathing animal. Much like the shelter animals down the road from them, who will die because these people have chosen to make their living bringing more dogs into a country that has millions more than it can handle.

It’s all a little depressing, but definitely worth checking out—particularly this video, which shows the legal conditions that licensed breeders keep their animals in, because the USDA has told them it’s “acceptable.”

On a much more positive note, The Chicago Tribune is holding a contest to pick Chicago’s most beautiful dog. If you’re a dog lover, a Chicagoan, or just someone with an interest in canine aesthetics, you can go check it out here, but be sure to vote for a mutt. Because everybody loves a mutt.

As I mentioned before, we're pretty effing displeased with Denny's restaurants at the moment, since the company has jumped into bed with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, who, in addition to being documented animal abusers, are seriously among the sleaziest bunch of people anyone could ever hope to do business with (for a little background on that claim, check out this recent article from the Huffington Post).

But yeah. The point is that Denny's needs to find themselves another corporate partnership ASAP, and until they do, we'll be letting them know about it on the daily. Here's a pic from a recent demonstration in New York. Thanks to all the activists who came out!

Remember Dan Mathews’ trip to Australia for the launch of his book Committed: A Rabble Rouser’s Memoir there? Well, here’s a great profile that came out yesterday from a huge Australian gay and lesbian website called Same Same. There's a kickass video at the end too.

The folks at the Hamptons International Film Festival just announced that "I Am an Animal," the forthcoming documentary about PETA and Ingrid Newkirk, has been named Best Documentary! It's not actually coming out on HBO until next month — and I haven't seen it, so I can't tell you all that much about it — but I can definitely recommend checking out this interview with Ingrid and the film's director, Matthew Galkin. It looks like it's going to be a hell of a film. The HIFF people certainly seemed to think so anyway.

Ladies and gentlemen: DeFlocked.

Click for a larger version

To check out the archives of past strips, click here.

UCHSC/Creative Commons

We’ve talked about Moshe Solomonow a bit before. He was a candidate for Vivisector of the Week a few weeks ago (he lost, in a last-second upset, to a deceased monkey butcher named Thomas Langfitt), and his other accomplishments include performing invasive back surgery on cats without, apparently, using proper anaesthetics … for the past fifteen years. Well, if you’ve checked out the main feature on the PETA website in the past couple of days, you’ll know that the latest on Moshe and his pals at the UC Denver and Health Sciences Center is an entire litany of complaints from a whistleblower about shoddy animal welfare practices, neglect, and outright cruelty in their labs. Here are some of the things these folks have allegedly been up to over the past few years:

• Failing to provide veterinary care or euthanasia in emergencies
• Failing to properly train animal care employees
• Improperly reviewing experimental procedures
• Skimping on anaesthesia during painful surgeries
• Leaving a monkey with a prolapsed colon to suffer for hours
• Killing a conscious rabbit with a heart puncture

And the list goes on—to the tune of a 30-page complaint that we just submitted to the NIH, gently suggesting that they have a look into the way these people are spending their money.

Rabbit with skin lesions

If you’d like to write to University of Colorado’s president about his labs, you can do so through the form on this page. We’re asking them to dismiss their Animal Care and Use Committee (these folks were supposed to be checking up to make sure there weren’t any violations in the animal labs—I guess they spent their time playing minesweeper instead, or maybe keeping up with Us Weekly), and to ban ol’ Moshe from ever using animals in research again.

Hey, I didn’t write the title for this post, so don’t take it out on me. It’s actually a reference to a feature that appeared in everyone’s favorite quarterly publication, Animal Times, this fall. And I thought it was pretty damn cute.

For most of the regular commenters, this quiz isn’t mandatory—feel free to just skim through and look for the funny parts. But Halo Snipe, the bad Steve, Dr. C, and Mars: I’m expecting you all to post your scores. I’m guessing you four aren’t PETA members already, but if you’ve just been waiting for that extra incentive, Animal Times comes free when you donate $16 or more.

Anyway here it is. No cheating (answers after the jump).

Do you know everything there is to know about what’s happening in the finned, feathered, and furry world of animals? To find out, put on your thinking cap (synthetic, of course) and use your primate prowess to answer the following questions:

1. According to a 2006 Harvard study, people who frequently eat chicken have a 52 percent greater chance of developing what disease?

a. Bird flu

b. Impotence

c. Bladder cancer



2. The stress of captivity sometimes causes dolphins to:

a. Kill their trainers

b. Obsessively watch Gilligan’s Island reruns

c. Commit suicide



3. In Anna Wintour’s closet, you might find the skins of:

a. Former assistants

b. Cats and dogs

c. Leopards

d. All of the above



4. Which of the following cosmetics companies still tests on animals?

a. Revlon

b. Estée Lauder

c. Clinique

d. CoverGirl

5. Which of the following animals have brains similar to humans’ and are able to remember 50 faces from photographs for up to two years?

a. Sheep

b. Dolphins

c. Ted Nugent

6. Former US Vice President Al Gore could save more water by not eating a pound of beef than by:

a. Disabling the irrigation system at his Tennessee mansion

b. Not showering for a year

c. Cutting back to six lattes a day

7. Which country has a political party dedicated to animal protection?

a. The Netherlands

b. Tonga

c. India

8. Which celebrity had a change of heart about wearing fur after being named on PETA’s 2006 Worst-Dressed list?

a. Lindsay Lohan

b. Christina Ricci

c. The GEICO cave man



9. Animals at The National Zoo in Washington, D.C., have died after:

a. Eating poison put in their enclosure to kill rats

b. Their infections went untreated for weeks or months

c. Being crushed by a hydraulic door

d. All of the above

10. The president of which country is a vegan whose Easter message encouraged people to spare animals from “our lust for meat”?

a. Serbia

b. Slovenia

c. Sweden

Answers: 1. c.; 2. c.; 3. b. Even though the sale of dog and cat fur is illegal in the US, it is still imported from China illegally and falsely labeled as fur from other species; 4. d.; 5. a.; 6. b.; 7. a.; 8. b.; 9. d.; 10. b.

How did you score? Give yourself one point for each correct answer.

0-2: Novice. No worries — we all have to start somewhere.

3-6: Trainee. Not bad! Log on to PETA.org and you’ll be an animal whiz in no time.

7-10: Expert. Great job — we want your résumé!

Veterinarian Paul Armbrecht during testimony in which he asserted that hanging animals from a forklift does not constitute cruelty

If you live in Iowa, make sure you don't take your animals to a guy named Dr. Paul Armbrecht for a checkup. With a straight face and a full wallet (the good doctor was paid for his troubles), Dr. Armbrecht recently testified under oath that strangling pigs to death by hanging does not constitute cruelty to animals. In part due to this "expert" testimony from Dr. A., three hog farmers who were accused in a high-profile case of torturing pigs were let off with a slap on the wrist.

During an undercover investigation conducted by the Humane Farming Association at Wiles Hog Farm in Creston, Ohio, employees were caught killing sows by fastening a chain around their necks and attaching it to a front-end loader, which was hoisted into the air, strangling the animals to death over a period of four to five minutes. In addition to testifying that this was a reasonable form of "euthanasia," the doctor opined that Wiles Farm's practice of dragging, kicking, and dropping sows off a 4-foot ledge was an acceptable method of transporting the animals to their deaths.

Along with five other major animal protection organizations, we have asked the Iowa Veterinary Medical Association to immediately investigate this pathetic excuse for a veterinarian. The Iowa Veterinary Practice Act explicitly prohibits "knowingly making misleading, deceptive, untrue, or fraudulent representation in the practice of the profession," and if his testimony is shown to have violated this clause, we're asking them to immediately revoke his vet's license.

As PETA VP Bruce Friedrich puts it, "Dr. Armbrecht's testimony directly contradicts industry guidelines, which provide only the bare minimum of protection for animals. Giving the okay to a killing method that causes animals to slowly strangle to death makes Dr. Armbrecht a disgrace to the veterinary profession, and it opens the door for even more widespread abuse of animals."

It's a little tough to watch, but here's some video footage of the practices that Dr. Armbrecht recently defended as being "humane."

Please click here to contact the Iowa Vet Board about this issue now.

Other Viewing Options

Lindsay and Nicole, a couple of die-hard anti-KFC campaigners, completed the Louisville Half-Marathon in KFC’s hometown yesterday. So what, you ask? Well, they did the whole thing with “Boycott KFC” and the like written on their bodies, and the pair reported that they got tons of support from the crowd and even talked to several Yum (KFC’s parent company) employees along the way, including one particularly chatty woman who wanted to debate around mile six. Of course, she couldn’t defend KFC, since you can’t really defend a company that refuses to take even the smallest steps towards improving the miserable lives and deaths of the animals killed for its products, despite the fact that its own animal welfare advisory board recommends the changes, and other industry giants like McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy’s, and scores of others, have already taken similar action.

Congrats Lindsay and Nicole!

And on a totally unrelated note, Wu Tang Clan member RZA walked away with the crown in the Hip Hop Chess Federation’s first annual Chess Kings Invitational. Lucky for RZA that I didn’t know about it in time to enter!

We got an e-mail the other week from a student named Christopher Leeman, who had taken the time to create these unique web banners to help promote our wool, fur, and leather campaigns. I liked them so much that I figured I'd post them on the blog (with Christopher's generous permission) for anyone who's looking to spice up their website or myspace page with some artistic, anti-fur bling. Feel free to use the code provided to post these on your site, and if web banners is your thing, there are a bunch more at http://www.peta.org/actioncenter/banners-clothing.asp.

Of course, if you don't have your own website, blog, or myspace page, these aren't going to be much practical use to you beyond maybe providing a bit of inspiration, but they're pretty to look at. Thanks, Christopher!

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Australian singer, actress, and long-time vegetarian Sophie Monk is as compassionate as she is beautiful, which is why she jumped at the chance to star in this beautiful ad promoting vegetarianism.

Sophie is super hot right now, and not just because she’s lying on a bed of chili peppers. She was in Date Movie and Click last year, she’s set to star in Scary Movie 5, and she absolutely killed it in a guest spot on Entourage last season. And I’d be remiss not to mention her amazing cover of the classic Salt ‘n’ Pepa track “Push It.” The video for “Push It,” directed by Sophie’s fiancé, Good Charlotte guitarist and fellow animal rights supporter Benji Madden, became an online hit almost immediately.

Check out what Sophie has to say about being vegetarian, animal testing, and other animal issues in this exclusive behind-the-scenes video from the photo shoot: