Chrissie Hynde got married while sitting in a horse-drawn carriage in Manhattan in the '80s, but she’s changed her views on how ‘romantic’ carriage horse rides are since then. This afternoon, she led a PETA protest in Central Park to encourage tourists not to support the carriage-horse industry, which is notorious for abusing the animals it profits from, and forces them to pull heavy loads through exhaust-filled streets in all weather extremes. Here’s what she says about the whole sordid business:

"Learning about how horses have died in accidents and seeing their pathetic night stalls got me to change my tune about carriage horses. I love horses and hate seeing them reduced to beasts of burden in one of my favorite cities in the world."

And here’s what she said about her marriage:

"I got hitched to Jim Kerr (Simple Minds) in a horse drawn carriage in New York. The marriage didn't last and I hope the carriages meet the same fate."

A huge thank you to Chrissie for selflessly coming through for animals in need yet again. There are some pics from the event below, and while we’re at it, you can click here for a nice photo of Ms. Hynde at the recent opening of her vegan restaurant in Akron, Ohio. You frickin’ rule, Chrissie Hynde.

We have an urgent action alert up on our site right now, asking department store chain Lowe’s to pull the glue traps from its shelves ASAP. The deal with glue traps (as a lot of people find out the hard way when they use them) is that they’re exactly as crude as they sound. Animals trapped by glue boards generally die of starvation, dehydration, self-mutilation, or shock after they’ve finally exhausted themselves struggling to get free. The whole process, as you might imagine, is just supremely unpleasant, and not the sort of thing that any self-respecting home improvement warehouse should be endorsing.

You can make that point to Lowe’s through the handy little web form on this page.

Deflocked, baby. Deflocked.

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This one’s a total winner, from the folks at PETA Asia Pacific, who want you to know that eating meat can lead to impotence. Check out the brand-new ad below, and click here to see it in context, doing its job in the men’s room of a Bangkok bar.

smh/Creative Commons

Now I’m sure there are a bunch of things that Ayumu would prefer to be doing than playing a computer game with an accountant from Derby (such as, like, being a normal chimpanzee), but the widely reported story does show, yet again, just how intelligent primates are, and just how overwhelmingly hideous it is that it’s still legal to throw them in cages, pump them full of drugs, and dispose of them once we’ve gotten what we wanted out of them. I’m thinking specifically of you guys right now, Covance.

Not to be a total downer or anything, but here’s hoping that this story at least helps a few more people to make that connection.

The Los Angeles City Council has just announced that a meeting will be held on Friday morning to discuss a historic ordinance that would require virtually all dogs and cats in Los Angeles to be spayed or neutered. If you happen to live in L.A. and have an urge to whisper sweet words of encouragement into your council member’s ear, you can find his or her phone number at http://www.lacity.org/council.htm. Just let 'em know that you support the spay-neuter ordinance, and you’re hoping they will too. Council members love that sort of thing. You can also attend the meeting to show your support.

If you don’t live in L.A., there’s probably not all that much you can do about this particular bill, but at least you don’t have to deal with the lousy traffic conditions they have in that city. That’s gotta be worth something, right? There’s also tons of information about how you can help cats and dogs in your community right here. And to continue with a theme started earlier this week, here’s a criminally adorable pro spay/neuter spot, starring animated kittens.

A sign in the window of Schumacher Furs during a lawful protest against the cruelty of the fur industry
Greenisthenewred/Creative Commons

Well, last week, the judge in the case ordered Schumacher Furs to pay PETA more than $40,000 as reimbursement for legal fees incurred fighting the lawsuit (which he called "an extraordinary abuse of the litigation process"), and his statement in the ruling just about says it all:

"I find that awarding fees in this case will properly serve to deter putative plaintiffs from filing multimillion-dollar suits against nonprofit groups and private citizens engaged in First Amendment activities ...."

So there you have it—a victory for animals and for free speech all in one go. The cash is a nice bonus, too.

I don’t know if they’re trying to put me out of business or what, but PETA Europe have just launched their very own blog, dedicated to all things animal rights, except, like, from a British perspective. So you can expect a lot of references to Eastenders and veggie bangers and mash. But they have brought in some real talent in the form of my friend Alexia Weeks to write the thing, and it’s off to a great start. So be sure to head over there and let Alexia know what you think.

Seems like there’s been quite a bit of naked going on lately, especially with all the work that went into putting together this year’s glorious State of the Union Undress, but these images—from a recent anti-fur demonstration in Barcelona—are way too good to pass up. Dozens of activists gathered to draw attention to the cruelty of the fur industry on Monday, and the results are just incredibly compelling.

Check out the photo gallery here.

And there’s a nice piece about the event here.

Here’s what PetSmart spokesman Bruce Richardson had to say when he was asked about the shocking video footage revealed by our recent investigation into a PetSmart supplier in Texas:

“I don’t know what those images say. … Just because you see a dead pet, does that mean there was abuse? No. Pets die, particularly when you are dealing with volume.”

“When you’re dealing with volume,” Bruce? Does it not strike you as just a little bit callous to refer to the living, breathing beings that your company trades in as if they were lawn furniture? No, of course it doesn’t. Because that’s exactly the attitude that seems to be driving this business—despite being confronted by scenes of incredible suffering inflicted by a PetSmart supplier, Bruce and his colleagues appear to have seen nothing at all, beyond a few “acceptable losses” of their “product.”

Before I get too rhetorical here, let’s switch gears and watch something a bit more uplifting. It’s good to know, at least, that for every Bruce Richardson there’s also someone out there who’s taking time to make a positive difference for animals. Here’s a creative pro-spay and neuter spot by Alliance for Humane Action that I just came across. I like it because it has cats in it.

Yeah, I know. It’s not exactly the most exciting thing in the world. In fact, the exclamation point in the title may have been more wishful thinking on my part than actual exuberance. But for anyone who’s a) on Facebook, and b) in possession of a little bit of extra spending money, this really is an excellent opportunity to help give a big boost to PETA’s KFC Campaign. Here’s how it works, according to my friend Pulin Modi, who’s working on this project with Facebook (because he’s, like, all Web 2.0 and stuff):

“Facebook.com is hosting a “Giving Challenge” where PETA has an opportunity to win a pretty sizeable chunk of money as well as the attention of many of this site’s members. The goal is to have the most unique donors who contribute at least $10.

The “Stop Kentucky Fried Cruelty” cause will generate money for PETA and already has taken in just over $3,000 and helped us make a lot of great connections by building buzz around our work and campaigns! You can check it out at http://apps.facebook.com/causes/view_cause/53026.

It’s going well, but we still have a bit to go. If you are able to give $10 that would be great. We’re especially hoping to push for donations between now and 3pm EST tomorrow (January 28) to win an extra $1,000 as a daily award! Tell your friends and family who use Facebook, too. This is something that has to be done through Facebook and is a donation through a secure page, but only takes a minute to set up if you don’t have an account. As I mentioned, there are daily awards, plus the top cause gets $50,000 (with awards of $25,000 and $10,000 for the next dozen causes, too).”

If this sounds like it might be up your alley, you can check it out here. Hooray for philanthropy!

For the second year in a row, an extremely brave PETA member has bared all for our State of the Union Undress. The result is nothing short of stunning, and I can’t say enough about how amazing this young lady has been in helping us put the video together as a way of reaching a wide audience with a message of compassion for animals. I don’t know what to expect from Bush’s speech tonight, but I feel extremely confident in guaranteeing that our State of the Union is going to be a whole hell of a lot sexier.

I’ve written a fair amount about Sheriff J.B. Smith over the past couple of weeks, related to a back and forth he’s been having with us over a letter we wrote to him asking that he put an accused cannibal in his charge on a vegetarian diet. Well, the sheriff (who’s obviously doing a bang-up job over in Smith County, Texas) was in the news again this morning following a major drug bust in which he reportedly uncovered 242 pounds of marijuana hidden in a bin of lettuce inside a truck during a traffic stop. Anyway, the news report about the bust made me laugh out loud—the sheriff obviously has PETA on the brain:

“This was a great stop and it took a lot of drugs off the streets. … We are still working on this and are being assisted by the DEA, so there are still things we do not know.” Smith said his office is trying to contact the company that purchased the lettuce, but if the purchaser did not make immediate arrangements, it would be divided between the East Texas Food Bank and the Salvation Army. “We would also keep some of the lettuce and feed it to the (jail) population. This should make PETA happy, because we might be serving more salads in the next few days.”

Keep up the great work, sheriff, and thanks for keeping us in mind.

We’re just doing our part to help get a bit of money back for the government. And by “we,” I mean my colleague Justin Goodman, who, as a graduate student at the University of Connecticut, worked tirelessly to expose the hideous experiments carried out by David “The Butcher” Waitzman (I just made that nickname up, but who knows—maybe it’ll catch on with his students) who used a sizeable grant from the NIH to, among other things, drill holes into monkeys' skulls and implant steel coils into their eyes. Well, according to this morning’s Hartford Courant, the university has been ordered to return $65,005 of the grant as a result of animal welfare violations in Waitzman’s lab that were exposed during a USDA investigation prompted by Justin’s complaints.

Not only is this wonderful news for people who care about animals, but it will also serve as a powerful warning to other animal experimenters like Waitzman: Even if massive public outcry leaves them cold, you can bet that they’ll sit up and take notice once they know that someone like Justin is on the case—and that it may not be very long before their grant money’s on the line as well.

You hear politicians and journalists complain all the time about how grueling it is to follow the campaign trail, but none of those guys ever had to do it in a pink pig costume (to my knowledge). So I want to take a moment to recognize my colleague Ashley Byrne and the brave PETA interns Chris Arellano and Lacey Knox who have been showing up at campaign stops around the country to drum up support for PETA’s call for an excise tax on meat. These pics from South Carolina—where the pigs were a big hit with democrats and republicans alike—are pretty damn adorable.

Time for a little Deflocked!

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We’re just knocking them out of the park at the moment. Literally two hours after posting an alert on our site asking members to contact the American subsidiary of Russian oil-giant Lukoil about their promotion of the Ringling Bros. Circus, the company has made the compassionate decision to cut all ties with the circus due to its history of animal abuse. Or, as they put it in their email to us: "Per our conversation today, we do not have a sponsorship/partnership with Ringling Bros. and are not going to in the future."

Thanks, guys! And thanks to everyone who helped us out by letting Lukoil know what they were getting into.

Ami James, the star of the hit TLC reality show Miami Ink, is also the new face of our anti-fur campaign, showing off his 40 colorful tattoos in a new “Ink, Not Mink” ad for PETA. He’s unveiling the ad at his Miami club—the Love Hate Lounge—this evening, and will be renaming the venue “Love Animals, Hate Fur” for the night. Needless to say, we’re really excited about Ami’s involvement with this campaign. You can see Ami’s new ad and tattoo design here, but in the meantime here’s a PETA Files exclusive video interview with Ami James that took place at the ad shoot:

A little while back, we wrote to the county jail holding alleged cannibal Christopher Lee McCuin, asking that they put him on a flesh-free diet ASAP—since, apart from anything else, there really is something horribly perverse about feeding the guy body parts given the circumstances surrounding his arrest. We received a prompt response to our letter from one Sheriff J.B. Smith, who pointed out (very reasonably) that intentionally altering McCuin’s meals without changing all the other inmate’s meals might be viewed as prejudicial treatment, and asked if we could provide some documentation to support our statement that vegetarian meals promote nonviolence in correction facilities.

Our follow-up letter, which was faxed to the sheriff’s office today, does exactly that. Complete with references to Pythagoras, Albert Einstein, and Tolstoy, along with some information about trial programs at correctional facilities that have given all the inmates vegetarian food, it makes for a pretty good read. Here it is in full.

Update: You can watch the Today Show segment about this investigation here.

As you may have noticed from the front page of our site, PETA released the details today of a major investigation into a PetSmart supplier in Texas. You can learn more about that investigation on our brand-new PetSmart Campaign website. The whole thing is pretty disturbing, but the footage depicting the treatment of a baby Goffin’s cockatoo named Angel is utterly devastating. From the beginning of Angel’s “life,” which was spent in solitary confinement, until an agonizing death after four months wasting away from an untreated disease, Angel’s experience was characterized solely by suffering. It’s difficult to watch, but this video should be mandatory viewing for anyone who has ever considered buying a bird from a pet store.

You can contact PetSmart and ask them to immediately end all animal sales through the web form here.

The annual Glitterbox Awards are PETA’s way of recognizing companies that advertise their products in a way that promotes kindness to animals, and this year’s big winners are General Motors and Georgia-Pacific’s Brawny paper towels for commercials which, respectively, raise awareness about vegetarian diets and protecting the environment, and depict a “man’s man” as someone who humanely removes a spider from the house. You can watch GM’s veg-friendly Chevy ad here. I can’t find the Brawny ad on YouTube, but here’s one from last year where the Brawny man saves a baby bird. Seems like they’ve got a good thing going over at Brawny.

Lest we get overwhelmed by all this positivity, we’ve also handed out two Litterbox Awards to companies that advertise in ways that show a lack of respect for animals or handle animals irresponsibly. CDW hauled in the dubious honor this year for a series of commercials featuring a man and his chimpanzee sidekick. There’s some more info here about the lousy conditions that chimpanzees used by the ad industry have to endure. And the other Litterbox Prize goes to a Singapore Airlines print ad, which shows a man holding a bullhook as he forces an elephant to bow. I’m not going to link to either of these ads, because, well, they suck.

Last week, there were a lot of news reports mentioning the fact that President Bush had turned up for a dinner with Saudi King Abdullah wearing a full-length fur-lined robe. It’s probably for the best that there aren’t any available images of this little fashion disaster, but we did confirm that the President had received the robe as a gift from the king, which prompted this response from PETA VP Dan Mathews:

"President Bush should learn from his mother, who refused the offer of a free fur coat for his dad's inauguration. I can't imagine he'd embrace the pimp look anyway."

The damage is done as far as the animals are concerned, but we’re hoping the President will consider donating the robe to our anti-fur campaign. We have a great program in which old furs are given to homeless people who can't afford to buy coats (the only people who have any excuse to wear fur), so we’d be sure to put it to good use. You can read PETA President Ingrid Newkirk’s appeal to the President here.

In response to a request from PETA, DirectBuy, which had been selling fur coats, hats, and wraps, has agreed to remove all the fur from its catalogs. DirectBuy is the nation’s largest franchiser of members-only consumer buying centers with 149 showrooms across the U.S. and Canada (thank you, Wikipedia), so that’s a whole lot of fur not being sold anymore. If you see what I mean. Hooray!

But everybody had a good time in the end. Ben Franklin himself—who once suggested that the turkey should be America’s national bird instead of the bald eagle—tried some of the delicious faux turkey sandwiches distributed by PETA’s lettuce ladies at his birthday bash in Philadelphia, and commented that he was the person who first brought tofu to the U.S. Thanks for that, Ben. Seriously. Here are some pics:

PETA President Ingrid Newkirk has been in India for the past couple of weeks on a tour for the Indian version of her book “50 Awesome Ways Kids Can Help Animals.” We’ve been getting daily updates about the demonstrations, rallies, and educational events she’s been attending to fight animal abuse in India, and it’s all been pretty amazing stuff. But this morning’s news was the most interesting yet:

According to India’s national newspaper, The Hindu, Ingrid was arrested last night in Coimbatore for blindfolding the statue of Mahatma Gandhi at Gandhi Park to protest the Indian Supreme Court’s decision to legalize a stupid macho ritual called jalikkattu, in which a crowd of men take turns taunting and abusing a terrified bull, who is forced to drink alcohol and deliberately agitated by having chili peppers rubbed in his eyes before being released into the crowd.

According to the news reports, Ingrid urged children to speak out against jallikattu, arguing that the cruel blood sport was a direct violation of Gandhi’s principles of non-violence. Ingrid described the protest as a symbolic action to close Gandhi’s eyes “towards the horror meted out to animals in the name of jallikattu.”

After detaining her for some hours, Indian police eventually allowed Ingrid to leave the city, and her Indian visit is going ahead as scheduled. I’ll keep you posted …

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