Following the dust stirred up by PETA and the national outrage about the very public death of Eight Belles from two snapped ankle bones, our appeals to the horseracing industry to make far-reaching changes in its practices have begun to have a noticeable effect. An article in The Wall Street Journal today quoted Alex Waldrop, the president of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association (NTRA) as saying, "It is clear that the status quo is not an option. We have to stop identifying problems and start implementing solutions."

Which, well, Amen to that. Some changes have already begun to be implemented, including a prominent horse auction company which has “instructed agents and breeders to discourage jockeys from whipping horses during a coming sales show,” citing the negative press generated by animal rights organizations as its reason for implementing the policy. What goes on behind the scenes, from whipping to doping, is another matter. Time will tell if major changes are adopted by the NTRA, and how effective and far-reaching they are, but the grave concerns about the long list of cruel and shady practices of this dirty industry—which PETA has been raising for decades—are finally beginning to be addressed.

It’s certainly too bad that it took another death of a popular horse during a televised racing event to scare the industry into recognizing that people are leaving the track in droves, but we’ll call this “better late than never” and keep our eyes firmly on the industry to ensure that these promises are more than just talk.

There’s been a lot of talk about the arrest of 75 San Diego State University students in a drug sting recently, and now that the dust has settled a little bit, we figured it was a good time to let students at the university know why eating meat is far worse for you than smoking pot. We just placed an ad in the school newspaper The Daily Aztec, which shows a close-up of a cow's face next to the tagline "Say No to Pot Roast. Don't Be a Meathead. Kick the Habit!" The ad points out that, while there’s no doubt that getting high can hurt your test scores, people who want to stay away from drugs should stay away from meat, which is often loaded with pesticide residues, hormones, and antibiotics. Meat, egg, and dairy-product consumption have also been linked to heart disease, stroke, obesity, diabetes, and cancer. As PETA President Ingrid Newkirk puts it,

"Students probably are putting more drugs into their systems by eating the burgers and chicken salad in the school cafeteria than from anything they smoke. Chickens, pigs, and cows raised on today's factory farms are fed growth-promoting drugs by the bucketful, and that's passed on to consumers by mouth."

So there you have it, kids. Say “no” to pot roast.

I love the tagline for this new ad, which features Tricia Helfer—star of the hit Sci-Fi Channel show Battlestar Galactica. Tricia plays a ruthless cylone robot on BSG, but I know for a fact that she’s very different in real life. You wouldn’t, for instance, find a ruthless robot donating their time to pose with a kitty cat to encourage people to treat their animals humanely. Unless, like, they had some devious ulterior motives, like world domination. Which is definitely not the case with Tricia—she just really cares about animals. You can watch our interview with Tricia here, and enter to win seasons 1-3 of the show, along with the movie Razor on DVD.

The ad is absolutely stunning—that’s Tricia’s pal Mr. Nix on the left.

This coat didn’t originally belong to Lindsay … or Masha Markova

I don’t know whether or not LiLo actually stole some rich chick’s fancy fur coat, as the blogs have been suggesting this week, but I can tell you that a lot of the stories about this seem to have missed the real crime here. According to The Superficial, which is where I get pretty much all my important news nowadays, this girl called Masha Markova is accusing Lindsay of running off with her $10,000 fur coat after a party. Apparently, Masha only found out that this was where her coat had gone when she saw pics of Ms. Lohan sporting it in OK magazine. As soon as I’d gotten finished weeping about poor Masha’s terrible experience, I asked PETA Vice President Dan Mathews what he knew about the story, and he forwarded me a copy of this e-mail that he sent to Masha Markova this morning. It makes for pretty good reading:

To: Masha Markova, c/o Merrill Cohen

Dear Ms. Markova,

We at PETA have read with interest about your distress over Lindsay Lohan supposedly stealing your fur coat. Has it ever occurred to you that neither you nor Lindsay are the rightful owners? That coat belonged to dozens of animals who were electrocuted, gassed, strangled, drowned or beaten to death just so you could try to appear wealthy. Ms. Markova, people who wear fur simply show that having money and style don’t go hand in hand. Please take 5 minutes to watch this video, hosted by former fur wearer Martha Stewart, who had a change of heart about wearing real fur when she saw what the animals go through. Perhaps you, too, will find your conscience and consider donating your fur coat to PETA, as have Mariah Carey, Kim Cattrall, and hundreds of others who don’t want animals to be fashion victims. We give them to the homeless, and you would even receive a tax credit for the donation. We look forward to your reply.

Dan Mathews
VP, PETA
http://www.petatv.com/tvpopup/Prefs.asp?video=martha

P.S. I just realized that I missed an opportunity for a bunch of “Lindsay Lohan showing off her fur in public” type jokes. Please accept my humble apologies for dropping the ball on that.

We’re going full steam ahead with our efforts to permanently ban horse-drawn carriage rides in New York, and the latest high profile New Yorker to sign on to the campaign is Lea Michele, the beautiful star of the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical, Spring Awakening. Here’s what she said about her decision to do this ad on behalf of New York’s carriage horses:

"These horses are forced to work long hours in extreme weather conditions, all while walking on hard pavement and inhaling exhaust fumes. As a New Yorker, I know how tough it can be to navigate the city streets, and that's on two feet! When I see the horses attached to carriages and made to pull heavy loads in traffic, it makes me sad and angry. I want tourists to know that long after their rides are up, these horses’ miserable lives continue, day in and day out."

Thank you, Lea! I’ve posted the new ad below, and you can learn more about the campaign here.

This thing's off to an amazing start, if you ask me. Here's the first installment of 10% Wool. With that in mind, don't forget to call your newspaper and ask them to carry DeFlocked! For more details on that, check out last week's post, in case you missed it.

Click for a larger version

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

Well, about 500 or so comments later, the thread on this post about the recent Kentucky Derby horror is still going strong. It’s clear that this issue has deeply affected a lot of people—and hopefully, all this emotion about Eight Belles’ tragedy will result in some actual reforms that will give at least some degree of protection to the horses who are abused by this industry.

I don’t usually make a point of singling out certain comments on this blog, but there were enough people who made statements along the lines of “But horses are born to race. That’s what they love,” or, like, “They’re treated better than most humans,” that I figured it was worth pointing out a few more things about the horseracing industry, which, like any industry which depends on animal domination and exploitation, will try to get away with any abusive or neglectful practice that might make them an extra dime. And the real victims—Eight Belles and the thousands of less famous horses who died under similar circumstances or else were shipped off to Europe for human consumption—live miserable lives and die painful deaths.

Here are a few key points about how this works, and there’s lots more info on this horseracing factsheet:

1. Nobody “loves to run” when they’re suffering from bleeding lungs or painful leg injuries, but that doesn’t stop trainers from pumping these animals full of drugs to mask the pain, enhance their performance and just plain keep them going. We are getting calls and faxes about all kinds of cocktail mixes that "are common knowledge in the back stretch." Sometimes people are caught and suspended when they’re careless—as was the case with this veterinarian who got busted for injecting cobra venom into a horse as a nerve blocking agent. For real.
2. Why was Eight Belles so fragile? Well, horses begin training when their skeletal systems are still growing, and they’re completely unable to deal with pounding their limbs into jelly on a hard track at high speeds. Don't tell me that all those people who "really know about horses" didn't have an inkling that this filly - a filly, no less - was a high risk for serious injuries like the ones she sustained. But she was raced anyway. Any gue$$es as to why?
3. As I mentioned before, horses that don’t make the cut get shipped off to slaughterhouses. The fact that anybody who knows this would still have the gall to comment on this blog saying that these animals are “treated better than most humans” is just too depressing to even think about.

For better or for worse, Eight Belles is now a very public representative of an industry that’s rotten to its rotten core. My only hope is that people will keep looking deeper into the way these horses are treated. And don’t dare try and tell me that they like it.

I’m actually going to leave this in the capable hands of the good folks at Deadspin. Best title for an article ever. Check it out.

In a somewhat unorthodox move, Eight Belles' owners evidently had her cremated almost immediately after her necropsy on Saturday. With this news coming right on top of a report in Sports Illustrated that the jockey riding Colonel John heard Eight Belles whinnying as they passed during the race, we want to ensure that there’s some real transparency about the investigation into this incident. Today, PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk sent a second appeal to Commonwealth's Attorney R. David Stengel in Louisville calling for the results of her necropsy and any other tests to be made public. You can read that letter here.

Horrible as it is to watch, this video should be mandatory viewing for anyone who still believes that the egg industry treats chickens humanely. The investigation, conducted by our friends at Mercy for Animals, shows workers at one of the largest egg companies in the U.S. mercilessly abusing chickens who spend their entire lives crammed into filthy cages so small that they can barely move. If this upsets you, there are two things you can do to help. First, you can contact one of the companies that refuses to set humane standards for their suppliers even though the kind of abuse documented here is endemic to the egg industry. But the best thing you can do to help is also the easiest. If you don’t buy eggs, no one has to suffer to make them. Check out this recipe for tofu scramble to get you started.

Those wily British counterparts of mine just won’t stop pushing the envelope. I wrote last week with some pride about how their “Feeding Kids Meat Is Child Abuse” ad made the BBC’s top 10 most controversial ads list—well, according to The Guardian, they’re at it again! Apparently there have been complaints about the anti-KFC ad pictured below. Some nannies are worried (not kidding) that it “breaches the advertising code's stipulations on responsible advertising, decency and causing fear and distress.” A couple of points here: 1) I’ll admit that the prospect of KFC slicing up defenseless animals is both frightening and distressing, but surely that’s KFC’s fault, no? 2) As PETA President Ingrid Newkirk told the journalist who wrote the Guardian piece about this ad: "The cartoon image of Colonel Sanders killing a chicken on our leaflet is obviously a caricature - a comic. We cannot imagine that our leaflet would provoke fear in anyone unless the reader was a chicken." ‘Nuff said.

Following the shocking death of the horse that Senator Hillary Clinton publicly bet on in the Kentucky Derby, PETA has asked her to denounce this dirty “sport.”

In a letter to the Senator today, PETA’s president pointed out that Eight Belles was fiercely whipped in the final stretch just before the bone in her ankles broke through her skin and she crashed to the ground. Given that the joints of the young horses used in these races are not yet fully formed, this kind of accident is inevitable, and the expressions of surprise about this incident from within the horseracing industry are utterly fake. In her letter to the Senator—which points out that Eight Belles is just one out of a long list of horses who have broken their legs and had to be killed throughout the history of the Triple Crown and the hundreds more who die every year in the horseracing industry—PETA’s president writes:

“Attending the Derby is as despicable as attending a dogfight. For most—not a few—of the horses you see will not end up put out to pasture on a beautiful ranch but will be sent overseas to be slaughtered for someone's dinner plate. At some point, all horses stop winning.”

The letter asks Clinton to withdraw her public support of horseracing, and condemn the cruel “sport” instead.

I should point out here that PETA is a 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to stopping the exploitation and abuse of animals. PETA's condemnation of Hillary Clinton for betting on horses and its request that she denounce horseracing are in no way intended as intervention in favor of or in opposition to any candidate for political office.

Here’s the letter:

Dear Senator Clinton:

As a high profile political figure with the esteem of many women, I regret to say that your public support of horseracing—and specifically betting on Eight Belles—makes you culpable in her destruction. I ask you now to publicly condemn races like the Kentucky Derby. Eight Belles ran for her life and was fiercely whipped as she came down that final stretch when she was no doubt in a great deal of pain. We cannot call ourselves a civilized nation if we allow any living being to endure such abuse.

Races like this are the equivalent of child sweatshops. These are not even seasoned horses: They are young fillies and colts whose joints are not formed enough to endure such a grueling race. Despite this, they are pushed beyond their limits. The Triple Crown and other major horse races have become the graveyards of too many horses who were called champions. For example, Go For Wand, who went down in the 1990 Breeders' Cup Distaff and then stumbled up and tried to keep running with her broken leg dangling; Union City, who fractured a leg in the 1993 Preakness and was destroyed; Prairie Bayou, who that same year suffered a compound fracture in the Belmont Stakes and had to be destroyed; George Washington, who was euthanized after breaking his leg while running the Preakness last year; and of course Barbaro, the "poster horse" of the racing industry's failures and excesses, who despite efforts could not be saved from the injuries sustained during the 2006 Preakness. Barbaro's injuries were terrible—fractures of his canon bone, sesamoids, and long pastern as well as the dislocation of the fetlock joint. These are just a few of the horses we hear about—they are the winners, the horses who run the big races. Hundreds of horses meet the same painful, deadly fate every year in the horseracing industry. A race track is not a place for a fun day out, and we are writing to Chelsea on that score. Attending the Derby is as despicable as attending a dogfight. For most—not a few—of the horses you see will not end up put out to pasture on a beautiful ranch but will be sent overseas to be slaughtered for someone's dinner plate. At some point, all horses stop winning.

PETA takes no position on whether you win or lose the race you are in, but we call on you to publicly reject betting on such hideous spectacles of domination over wonderful animals who deserve more than pain and death for human profit and amusement.

Very truly yours,

Ingrid E. Newkirk
President

For years now, the horse racing industry has systematically ignored efforts by the animal protection community and its own disgusted insiders, including some veterinarians who aren’t afraid where their bread is “buttered,” to make life more tolerable for the horses it profits from. Given this weekend’s horror at the Kentucky Derby, we’re hoping that the members of the Kentucky Horse Racing Authority and others within the industry will now be forced to take these issues seriously. If they don’t care about the suffering of these animals, perhaps their PR people will give them a reason to care.

This morning, PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk sent a letter to the Kentucky Horse Racing Authority proposing changes in the rules that would result in a drastic reduction of the types of injuries that claimed the life of Eight Belles in the running of the Kentucky Derby. The maudlin expressions of regret and sadness over the Eight Belles incident that we’re hearing from people within the industry are ringing pretty hollow right now. If they genuinely want to do something to try and prevent incidents like this in the future, they can start with the following:

• Suspend the jockey and bar the trainer from racing other horses
• Thoroughbreds under the age of three should not be permitted to race
• Synthetic surfaces or grass turf—which result in dramatically fewer injuries—should be mandated at all racecourses
• The number of races that horses run in a season should be limited
• Whipping should be banned

You can read PETA’s letter here. I’ll keep you posted.

Update: And we’ve got pics! Lemme know which design you like best for the suggested memorial.

After 122 years in business, the world's largest stockyard closed down last month, holding their very last livestock auction in front of a nostalgic crowd on April 11. After we had finished celebrating here in the office, we decided that, much as one might like to forget them, the actions of South St. Paul Stockyards—where around 300 million cows have been poked, prodded, kicked, and dragged to their deaths in the last century—need to be commemorated. Today, we sent a letter to Greg Miller—president of Interstate Partners, the company that plans to redevelop the stockyard property—urging him to erect a memorial to the animals who passed through the stockyard's gates. As PETA President Ingrid Newkirk puts it:

"Millions of cows were bought and sold at South St. Paul Stockyards with no more regard for their feelings than if they were made of tin. At the very least, they deserve a stone or plinth that helps people remember the suffering the animals endured on their way to people's dinner tables."

You can read PETA’s letter to Greg Miller here. I’ll let you know if we get a response.

With the shock of Barbaro's death after the 2006 Preakness still fresh in their minds, the Kentucky Derby crowd saw for themselves the sordid truth about what racing means for the horses involved last night, as the filly Eight Belles was killed after collapsing on the track.

This young filly's death may have been humane, but the race sure wasn't. PETA is calling for the immediate suspension of jockey Gabriel Saez—who whipped Eight Belles mercilessly as she came down the final stretch, no doubt in agony from two front legs that were about to snap.

While the trainers, jockeys, and owners may weep their crocodile tears today over Eight Belles' euthanasia, they will be back on the track tomorrow, putting other horses at risk. Thoroughbreds are raced on hard dirt surfaces—like the one at Churchill Downs. Their bones simply can't take it, as Eight Belles' two broken front legs showed last night. Despite the wealth associated with thoroughbred racing, for the horses—most of whom end up broken, cast off, or sent to Europe to be killed for the dinner table—it's a dirty business and no better than dogfighting.

There are two things I really like about the story that hit the wires this week reporting New York’s recent ban on anal and genital electrocution of animals for fur. The first thing’s kind of obvious: Animals on fur farms in New York won’t be electrocuted any more (they’ll still suffer, but their deaths will now, hopefully, be just a bit less painful). In case you haven’t kept up to date on electrocution techniques, this isn’t like sticking your finger into a wall socket: The fur farmers attach one electrode to the fox’s or raccoon’s ear or muzzle and stick the other one in the animal’s anus or vagina. The result is a dagger-like heart attack without loss of consciousness. On one fur farm we investigated, the farmer plugged the chinchillas into the wall socket and timed it by listening to a song on the radio—then skinned them without checking to see if they were dead.

But the thing that should be really remarkable for most people reading this story is not the fact that New York has banned electrocution—but the implication that this is still legal everywhere else. That’s right. New York is now the only state where anally and genitally electrocuting fur-bearing animals (fur farmers do it this way so they won’t damage the pelts) could get you into trouble.

As my friend Melissa put it when she was interviewed for the AP piece, "Anal electrocution is common practice in fur farms across the world. A lot of these methods aren't effective and these animals will wake up while they are being skinned."

That’s all. I just wanted to drive home that point. It’s awesome that New York is leading the way here, and hopefully other states will soon follow suit. But this is also a good opportunity to store away that little tidbit about anal and genital electrocution being 100 percent legal in 49 out of 50 states—just in case anyone ever tries to tell you that wearing fur is anything other than reprehensible.

… it stars me, so it must be awesome. Actually, it stars a bunch of people at the forefront of PETA’s work to help animals, who really know what they’re talking about. I just get to introduce them. This month’s Podcast features PETA Vice President Bruce Friedrich talking about how to be an effective advocate for animals (e.g., more with the positive outreach, less with the vegan police force), and it’s really compelling stuff. So if you’ve got 20 minutes to spare this afternoon, get your headphones on, pull up an Excel spreadsheet to make it look like you’re working, and listen to Bruce’s Effective Advocacy tips. Then let me know what you think.

This ad, along with details on a hotline that whistleblowers who witness abuse on movie sets can call, appeared in Variety magazine this week

A while back a whistleblower from the set of Speed Racer reported that one of the chimpanzees used to play Speed Racer’s sidekick, Chim Chim, was beaten during filming and bit a human actor. The Speed Racer movie is coming out next week, and while the industry’s fleeting attention is attuned to the issue of animal abuse in Hollywood—especially after a bear used in the recent Will Ferrell movie attacked and killed his trainer—we figured now was the perfect time to encourage Hollywood insiders to speak up when they see abuse. Because nobody else is doing it right now.

A full-page ad prominently placed in yesterday's Variety magazine calls on Hollywood insiders who witness or suspect animal abuse in the production of a movie to immediately report the incident to PETA via a special hotline. Here’s what PETA Director Debbie Leahy told the media:

"Beating and shocking great apes who are used as 'actors' is the rule—not the exception. We're urging anyone involved in any facet of film production who has witnessed or suspects animal abuse to report it to PETA immediately."

The story’s been making its way around the blogosphere today. There’s a good write-up on Deadline Hollywood Daily, and there’s tons more info on our campaign to prevent animals from being abused behind the scenes in movies and on TV on our cleverly titled “No More Monkey Business” website.

P.S. Check out the sweet article about the issue on HuffPo.

P.P.S. You can tell Warner Bros. that you’re boycotting their Speed Racer movie through this webform.

In case you missed it, there’s a Battle of the Divas going on in the media right now. Mothra Madonna is evidently trying to throw down with Mariah Carey to see who’s the most popular. Which means that it’s time to either take sides or get out of the way … and I want to take this opportunity to officially throw the weight of the world’s largest animal rights organization (that’s us) behind our girl Mariah, with whom—to use the immortal words of Ol’ Dirty Bastard (RIP)—we go back like babies and pacifiers. Here’s my argument for why Mariah blows Madonna out of the water in this competition:

1. When a Russian tycoon gave Mariah Carey a pair of outrageously expensive fur coats in a misguided attempt to show her what a big fan he was, she immediately donated the coats to PETA for us to give to the homeless. Roughly around the same time, Madonna was photographed trouncing around London in about $70,000 worth of dead chinchillas.
2. A whole lot more people are buying Mariah’s new album than are buying Madonna’s. Which kind of settles it, just in case my first point didn’t do the trick for you.

So there you have it. The forces of good prevail, while the groovy soundtrack of “Touch My Body” plays in the background. If you know of any other Diva competitions that need a’refereeing, just let me know. I’m always happy to help out.

Image credits: DailyMail, the-planets / CC

The dust has cleared a bit from the tornado that hit our area this week, but we’re still working in the community to help people and animals who were affected by the disaster. I found out yesterday that my colleague Cindy Clark, who works in the PETA Foundation’s Development Department, was one of those people—her home was right in the path of the storm. Her story, in addition to being pretty exciting, is also a great reminder about how to keep your head in a disaster like this and do everything you can to ensure that your animals, who rely on you completely, don’t become victims. Here’s how it all went down, according to Cindy:

We evacuated on Monday afternoon when the tornado came to town. I live in a mobile home in Driver. My trailer is fine, thankfully. We were able to return Monday evening, but had to get the heck out of Dodge on Monday afternoon.

It's odd, but many people have asked me through the years what I would do with my dogs if I ever had to evacuate. Of course, I would never go anywhere in that situation without my dogs.

We were in downtown Suffolk at the school admin building when the storms hit. When we heard the emergency alarm on the radio is basically came down to - you are 20 mins away from your mobile home where your dogs are in the direct path of a tornado. You have 10 mins. GO!

We got to my house, snatched the dogs out, and tried to get away from the storm but only made it about 2 miles from my house. Tornado was straight ahead of us on the right about 1/4 mi, elementary school about 200 yards on the left. SCHOOL!

We vacated the Suburban we were in the fire lane at the school and proceeded to the gym. We were there for about two hours. My dogs calmed the kids that were scared and crying. They were a nice distraction for the kids and my dogs enjoyed tummy rubs, 10 hands at the time.

I like the happy ending. Big thanks are due to the folks at Nansemond Parkway Elementary School and the shelter at Kings Fork High School for being awesome throughout. There’s more info on what you can do to make sure your animals are safe in the event of an emergency here.