PETA was at work as soon as Gustav raised its first serious head above the clouds, trying to prevent another monumental tragedy for animals. More than a week before Hurricane Gustav's anticipated landfall, PETA sent Gulf Coast media markets our preparedness tips, reaching local residents with the lifesaving message that the calm before the storm is when they must safeguard their animals and offering instructions for evacuation. PETA's emergency team of volunteers is primed, and we await further developments.

On Saturday, Louisiana Agriculture Commissioner Mike Strain announced that more than 160 trucks have been outfitted with pet crates to handle the evacuation and that companion animal shelters for animal guardians with "critical transportation needs" are ready for service during the Hurricane Gustav evacuation, saying, "We are taking the necessary steps to ensure the safety of Louisiana's pets."

Read the Full Update for People With Animals in Hurricane Gustav's Path Below

Residents who don't have transportation must immediately call their local parish office of emergency preparedness to arrange transportation to the animal-friendly shelters. Animals can come, too, but they must be in a carrier, with at least a three-day supply of food and other supplies packed and ready to go. If an animal weighs less than 15 lbs., he or she will be allowed to ride on the human transport bus. If he or she weighs more than 15 lbs., separate animal transport trucks will take him or her to the animal shelter. Residents: You are still responsible for your animals' care during their stay at these shelters, so please be prepared with supplies, animal identification, and sturdy carriers or leashes. (Please read PETA's disaster preparedness checklist, and be sure to visit animals as often as possible to provide food, water, and comfort.) Shelter locations may change because of weather, so please have your local parish office of emergency preparedness telephone number with you at all times! Parish pick-up points for transportation to the CTN pet shelters are expected to close as storm conditions become unsafe.

People who have transportation are encouraged to evacuate to pet-friendly hotels for the duration of the evacuation. Lists of these hotels can be found at www.petswelcome.com and www.tripswithpets.com. Many hotels will relax their usual animal policy in an emergency, so call ahead and ask if your animals can come along.

Citizens who are evacuating on their own and who may need sheltering assistance are urged to stop at shelter-information points along the evacuation route to receive a reservation for the nearest shelter with openings. Those shelters will open as mass-scale evacuations begin. Shelter-information points are located at:
• Tourist Welcome Center, U.S. 65 & 84, 1401 Carter St., Vidalia
• Tourist Welcome Center, 836 I-20 W., Tallulah
• Sammy's Truck Stop, I-49, Exit 53, 3601 La. 115 W., Bunkie
• Med Express Office, 7525 U.S. 71, Alexandria
• LSU-Shreveport, P.E. Gym, 1 University Pl., Shreveport
• Pickering High School, 180 Lebleu Rd., Leesville
• Tourist Information Center, 8904 U.S. 165, Oberlin

The Lamar-Dixon Expo Center in Gonzales and Parker Coliseum on LSU's Baton Rouge campus—which were used during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina—will not be used as shelters during the Gustav evacuation.

Evacuees with large animals should contact their local LSU AgCenter county agent for information on what accommodations can be made for horses and livestock. The Agriculture Department office is open 24 hours a day to advise residents on pet and livestock issues. The phone number is 225-922-1234 or 1-800-558-9741.

Evacuation guides for residents can be downloaded here.

Mississippi residents: The Humane Society of Southern Mississippi is operating a pet shelter on the grounds of the Harrison Central High School (the school building itself will be a shelter for humans). Evacuees should follow signs leading to the pet shelter when they arrive at the school. The shelter will open at 6 p.m. on August 31.

For Mississippi residents without transportation, Gulf Transit will provide rides on school buses that will take people to the Mississippi Coliseum in Jackson, where they will be fed and cared for by MEMA until it is safe to return to the coast. Each person will be allowed to take only two bags. Small pets will be allowed but must be in a pet carrier and will count as one of the two bags. Pets will be taken to the Pet Shelter in Jackson. Owners must accompany their pets and be responsible for them at all times. Eligible pets include dogs, cats, birds, and pocket pets, with the exception of lizards and snakes. There will be no exceptions to these rules. The buses will be picking up people at the following locations:

Biloxi
• Biloxi Jr. High School, Irish Hill Parking Lot
• Biloxi High School, Football Stadium on Richard Drive
• Yankie Stadium on Lee Street
D'Iberville
• D'Iberville High School on Warrior Drive
Gulfport
• Milner Stadium on 38th Avenue
• Good Deeds Center on Madison Avenue
Long Beach
• West Harrison County Community Center on Espy Avenue
Harrison County
• Lizana Elementary School on Lizana School Road
• Saucier Elementary School on First Street
• Harrison Central Elementary on Dedeaux Road

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Gervais, whom you probably know as the star of Extras and the original version of The Office, has written a letter to U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown asking him to replace the bear fur on the Queen's Guards' caps with a cruelty-free material. In his letter, he points out that it takes the entire hide of a bear to make one hat—and that’s nothing to “have a laugh” about!

Oh, maybe you should just read the lovely man's lovely letter, before I manage to work in "Freelove Freeway" or Sir Ian McKellen's "wizard, you shall not pass" bit.

Click the letter to enlarge

Posted by Amanda Schinke

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Well, we're sick of DMX … again—and all the other celebrities who think power, money, or fame will get them off the hook for mistreating animals.

We have written a letter to Andrew P. Thomas, the judge overseeing Simmons' charges stemming from a 2007 police raid of the rapper's property north of Phoenix, where 12 pit bulls were reportedly found neglected, malnourished, and messed up. We're asking that Thomas—if Simmons is convicted of these charges—impose a sentence that forbids Simmons from owning or harboring any animals for as long as possible, that imposes a truly meaningful period of incarceration, and that requires him to undergo a thorough psychological evaluation followed by mandatory counseling at his own expense.

In one particularly cruel situation, police apparently found puppies who had been left in their cages so long that they needed to be cut out of them.

DMX has an extensive criminal past—including a similar raid that took place at his home in New Jersey in 2002 (during which police found 13 pit bulls on his property) as well as an arrest for illegal drug possession. People who abuse animals often go on to abuse or even kill humans. Remember Jeffrey Dahmer and Dennis Rader (aka "BTK Killer"), who abused and killed animals for practice prior to killing humans?

You can read our full letter here:

Click the letter to enlarge

Posted by Jennifer Cierlitsky

So today's a fairly slow news day (ya know, Labor Day weekend and all), but we wanted to be absolutely sure you all were fully prepped for your long weekends of not being at work! To give yourself one of those warm, fuzzy feelings, we thought we'd take a new direction with our videos and show you some cute videos for a change (instead of our typical videos that, ya know, make you think).

Enjoy!

Posted by Christine Doré

We've all heard the old saying "A picture is worth 1,000 words." But a picture of a zany, street-theater style demonstration is worth a zillion words (don't worry, I verified that figure on Wikipedia). PETA members, staff, interns, and activists have been hard at work as always, and I've collected a few snapshots of our peeps "takin' it to the streets." Seeing as how I'm pressed for time, I can't crank out the zillion words each of these photos deserves, but hopefully you'll be happy with the next 100 or so. Enjoy!

Here's PETA Senior VP Dan Mathews as one of our "Tax Meat" pigs at the Democratic National Convention this year. The officer next to him seems to be taking aim at a potential threat to public safety.

Outside the Smithfield shareholder meeting in Williamsburg, Virginia, we did a very eye-catching slaughter demo. No fake blood was used here—the "turkey" got a nosebleed from hanging upside-down for too long.

PETA India is turning heads and slowly (but surely!) bringing back full-body one-piece bathing suits.

Because of a last-minute cancelation by Tony the Tiger, we had to settle for a beautiful naked woman to help with our recent Seattle demonstration against Ringling.

Posted by Sean Conner

Whoever said having just one hamburger can't kill you obviously never considered the danger of microscopic spores—you know, those barely visible foreign pollutants that are all over animal products, even when cooked.

The latest attack of the killer meat has already killed at least six people in Ontario and has been blamed for two more illnesses. The culprit? Listeria bacteria, which apparently originated in meat products from a plant in Toronto … which just happens to be Canada's largest meatpacker.

With the total number of known cases at 29—for now—and investigators looking into another nine deaths possibly caused by contraction of listeriosis, it's understandable that eating meat is scary business. But recalling more than 220 meat products will not protect meat-eaters from contracting illnesses related to animal products.

That's where we come in. Intending to roll out our brand-new "Eat Meat and Die" ad in Toronto, we want Canadians to know that you can go veg and live! The choice is simple—really. It's senseless to put your body at risk over a hamburger or a bite of chicken thigh when you can have a veggie burger or a vegetarian "chicken" sandwich (sold in most KFCs in Canada) and avoid spending the night in the bathroom with stomach cramps—or worse, death. Check out our killer ad:

Repeat after me: Listeria, E. coli, campylobacter … if you can't pronounce it, it's probably not good for you. If you have meat in your fridge, the safest way to avoid contamination is to throw the whole fridge away with the meat still in it. We deserve a Nobel Prize or something. Really.

Posted by Jennifer Cierlitsky

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A few weeks ago, we told you about an awful thing that happened on a new TV show called Greatest American Dog. It featured a sweet border collie named Leroy who was tormented by his trainer during a photo shoot so that he would look "angry." 'Cuz, you know, that's what quality entertainment is all about, right?

Well, unlike dogs, some people never learn. Wednesday night's episode featured a live elephant. Why elephants on a show called Greatest American Dog, you ask? They used the elephants to try to terrify the dogs. Since, apparently, the only thing more fun than getting dogs angry is to scare the hell out of them. Ugh!

Of course, it's not exactly a party for the elephants either. They're smart and dignified, and they don't like to perform stupid tricks for our amusement. So instead of using treats to train elephants, trainers strike and gouge them with bullhooks—long, heavy rods with a steel point and a sharp hook at one end that resembles a fireplace poker—or shock them with electric prods. To see for yourself how elephants are trained, watch this.

Most elephants who are forced to perform were snatched away from their families and natural habitat in the wild, after which their lives are mostly made up of chains and intimidation. Baby elephants born on breeding farms are torn from their mothers, tied with ropes, and kept in isolation until they learn to fear their trainers.

Clearly the producers of Greatest American Dog know as little about elephants as they do about canines.

If you want to send an e-mail to the show's producer, R.J. Cutler, about this issue, please click here.

Posted by Jeff Mackey

From the category of "When Animals Fight Back!" comes a news story from Venezuela: A 29-year-old student zookeeper was strangled by a 10-foot python. It seems that the intern was working the nightshift and decided to mess around with the snake, who then bit him, suffocated him, and tried to eat him—a sensible interaction if you are a python.

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And what's more, the python was just doing what pythons do, on instinct. He saw prey, so he went into his strangle-and-swallow routine. You can't possibly tell me that humans have a slaughter-and-make-into-purses instinct, can you? The python got beaten by the way, unlike Jessica Simpson, whom we just make fun of.

Let me hypothesize here. Maybe, just maybe, people are so fascinated by this kind of news story because they feel guilty for all the human-on-animal atrocities, and when something like this happens … well, maybe it's a sign that sometimes the tables are turned, and it scares us.

Do you get what we mean now when we say that "payback is hell"?

Posted by Amanda Schinke

Nice one!

Click for a larger version

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

San Diego recently got a special treat—in the form of three fishy PETA activists. The three ladies, wearing silver body-paint and little else, posed under a net just blocks away from the harbor. Their message: "Scale Back Cruelty: Stop Fishing."

Our activists could breathe as they lay under a net in the hot sun, but fish aren't so lucky. Fish caught in commercial gill nets suffocate or slowly freeze to death as they are tossed alive into large freezers. One fact that most people might not know is that fish are equal to dogs, cats, and all other animals in their capacity to feel pain. Plus, there have been more than 500 research papers on fish intelligence, proving that fish are smart, that they can use tools, and that they have impressive long-term memories and sophisticated social structures.

Our fish ladies got a lot of attention in San Diego—and hopefully, a lot of people will think twice before their next fish fry. Check out pics of their great demo:

Posted by Amanda Schinke

If I were to say "Hari Puttar," what is the first thing that would come to mind? If you said "Harry Potter," you'd be wrong, according to Mumbai-based studio, Mirchi Movies. They pinky-promise that their film Hari Puttar: A Comedy of Terrors bears no similarity or links to the popular Harry Potter book series/films/franchise/cult-like-following. Apparently, Warner Bros. Pictures thinks anything sounding like Harry Potter is their turf and their turf alone and has filed a lawsuit against Mirchi to protect their "intellectual property."

With all this insanity over a movie title, we'd like to draw attention to a more meaningful issue, like … I dunno … skinning animals and wearing portions of their remains as ridiculous clothing. Call me crazy, but this seems a bit more pressing. In my willingness to compromise, please allow me to call our fur ad series "Hairy PETA!" Enjoy and pass along, please—for wide distribution—PETA's "Hairy PETA" series!

Have a favorite among the action-packed Hairy PETA films? Leave a comment to let me know which one you like best!

Posted by Sean Conner

Anjelica Huston has decades of experience on the set, tracing back to watching her father, John, filming during her childhood. Given her experiences with animals on the set, we were excited when she sat down with us to discuss the abuses endured by great apes used in film, television, and advertising.

U.S. Department of Agriculture inspectors have documented that chimpanzees and orangutans were denied even minimal "environmental enrichment" and veterinary care in times of illness. And undercover investigations have shown that trainers beat and scream at great apes in order to force them to perform dumb, confusing tricks, take after take, under the burning arc lights.

Chimpanzees can live to be 60 years old and orangutans can live to be 50, but they grow too strong to be handled around age 8. That's when, useless to the industry, most are dumped in roadside hellholes, where they can live in barren cages, languishing amid their own waste or sold for use in experiments. There is no Hollywood actors' retirement home for them. You can see Anjelica's video about this business here:

Anjelica also spoke with us after the filming of the video, telling us how she grew so passionate about this issue, and why the abuse of great apes will never happen on her set:

I think without question that [when] one forcibly takes small simians, small apes away from their parents at [a young] age … and manipulating them into some sort of fake response for the amusement of humans or indeed human children—it's a very bad ethic. … I remember seeing this terribly sad, lonely elephant in Bath, England, at the zoo in the pouring rain with nothing but a football for companionship, and thinking, "No child on Earth would want to see that. No child on Earth who understands the predicament of this animal could possibly approve it."

Check out the b-roll from the video shoot here:

Thanks, Anjelica, from us and from them!

Posted by Sean Conner

directnews / CC

This alternative is an injection that smoothes out the animals' skin (when it's all full of folds, maggots can hatch and eat the sheep alive). The injection is not perfect—the animals are still stressed out from being handled—but it seems relatively painless, which is a huge step forward in embracing the concept that less pain doesn't equal no pain).

We won't break out the champagne yet. In 2004, AWI agreed to end mulesing by 2010, but they've been dragging their heels disgracefully. Then they developed a different (but still very painful) type of skin-removal technique called "clip mulesing," in which big clips are clamped onto lambs' bottoms so tightly that the flesh dies and falls off, and called it "humane." Rotting, dying skin. Ewe.

So we raised a ruckus in the clothing retail industry, causing companies like H&M, Perry Ellis, and Adidas to reject all wool from mulesed lambs (including those mulesed using the hideous clips).

The injection, however, just might be a most-welcome forward movement for all those Aussie lambs.

Posted by Matt Prescott

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It just goes to show that you have NO idea how long you've got. And to keep the cheery theme alive, consider all the people who have become paralyzed by falling off their mountain bikes, etc.

You can't lock yourself in your room, and even if you did, you could be hit by a chunk of toilet ice falling out of a plane and through your roof, struck by lightening as you took a shower, or … well, you get it. Life is fleeting. In fact, that's been a theme of mine for a while. In Making Kind Choices, I wrote about how amazing it would be to have a wristwatch that would tell you not what time it is now but how much time you had left so that you could know what's important to cram in. You'd look at it and see "40 days, 3 hours, and 2 minutes," and you'd think, "OMG! Better get a move on!"

So ask yourself: Are you putting off asking that special person for a date, telling your friend you are sorry for some remark that ended your friendship, or, most importantly … buying vegan groceries? Wouldn't you rather die than have your last meal on Earth cause animals fear, pain, and death?

Oh, and Dave Freeman took this stuff seriously (yes, he didn't fully "get it," seeing as how he went to Pamplona and ran with—shouldn't that be "against"?—the bulls), so he had made a will. Now some of his leftovers, including some useful money, will go to a children's charity. Good for him! Please follow his lead and put a charity—may I suggest PETA?—in your will, too, or else the state rather than animals will benefit from your death (and you know they'll only use the money to buy something stupid).

Posted by Ingrid Newkirk

Now that the Olympics are over, it's impossible to turn on the TV or open the newspaper without seeing something about the Democratic National Convention. What's going to happen, what's going to be said, who's going to be there …

Well, we'll tell you who's there—the PETA pigs, that's who!

Our pigs don't have anything to say about any of the candidates, of course—they're tackling a global issue: meat!

The pigs—who are circling around the convention center and picking up passengers in their cherry red convertible—are calling for a federal excise tax on meat. (Look out for them next week as they cruise around the Republican National Convention!) Why? Well, there's a "sin" tax on cigarettes, alcohol, and gasoline. Why shouldn't there be one on meat, which is bad for both your health and the environment?

Our Senior VP Dan Mathews (who, as we know, is fond of wearing costumes) is among the protesters. He sums up the reason our pigs are calling for a 10-cents-per-pound tax: "The impact of the meat trade is as devastating to our health as the tobacco and alcohol industries put together—and even more so to the environment. Slapping a tax on meat would save countless lives—and not just those of animals."

Check out our pigs below—and if you're concerned about the health and environmental consequences of eating meat, check out GoVeg.com for a free copy of PETA's "Vegetarian Starter Kit"!

Posted by Amanda Schinke

OK, ever since we mentioned our proposal to take over a SeaWorld and turn it into a virtual-reality marine-mammal theme park, some people have been a bit, well, skeptical.

Obviously, these folks aren't familiar with PETA and our unique blend of determination and outside-the-box thinking. Long story short: Never say "never" to PETA people (and that includes our wonderful members and supporters).

Robotic dinosaurs from “Walking With Dinosaurs”
vertpaleo / CC

Unlike the animals currently trapped at SeaWorld, these robotic Barneys voluntarily put on an amazing 90-minute show. Machines don't get bored and anxious between performances or miss their "natural" environment, but marine mammals—who would naturally swim hundreds of miles per day, eat a diverse diet, and form complex relationships—spend their lives swimming in listless, lonely circles.

If they can already do all that with fake dinosaurs, then our SeaWorld overhaul should be a piece of cake (or maybe a cupcake), right? Like one of those aquarium screensavers—and if you're jonesing for an aquarium, that's the way to go—taken to the extreme. It's win-win: The animals are free to do their thing, and you don't go home smelling like chlorine.

Posted by Jeff Mackey

People of all different backgrounds, ethnicities, races, and religions have discovered that vegetarian food tastes delicious and is good for our bodies, the environment, animals, and … yes, our souls!

Take South Los Angeles, for instance—not exactly the veggie mecca of the world. But this inner-city community heavily populated by African-Americans has seen a rise in the number of black-owned and -operated vegetarian restaurants. Owners say that the threat of obesity and other diet-linked health ailments is motivating local black residents to search for healthy options and alternatives to animal products. Restaurants like Vegan Village Café, Stuff I Eat, and Rahel's are catering to the growing interest in plant-based food.

It still might be a while before vegetarianism takes over the world, but the addition of so many new vegetarian restaurants is definitely helping! And stars like Russell Simmons, Erykah Badu, and PETA's "Sexiest Vegetarian" winner Kevin Eubanks are urging African-Americans and everyone else to choose a cruelty-free, healthy meal that won't harm the body or any other living creature.

In fact, many African-American celebrities have recently teamed up with PETA to combat the fast-food industry's attack on African-Americans. Oscar-winning actor Forest Whitaker, basketball legend John Salley, civil rights leader The Rev. Al Sharpton, and many more are part of this important movement. Check it out here, and watch John Salley's vegetarian testimonial below:

Posted by Jennifer Cierlitsky

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Are they drinking from their lab-bench pipettes again? I mean, don't you always think of dogs as exemplifying the finest attributes we look for in humans? Loyalty, love, and—of course—fairness … aren't these qualities we can all learn from dogs? With all the human injustices—the wars, rapes, pillaging, cutting other people off in traffic, etc.—it seems a bit grandiose to claim that dogs learned their sense of fairness from us.

Consider this news story from Argentina: A 14-year-old girl abandoned her newborn baby outdoors, in winter, in the middle of the night. When the baby was found, she was being kept safe and warm—not by the human being who left her to die or by any other human but by a dog.

The dog, China, was keeping the baby girl safe among her own puppies and, perhaps seeing that she was weirdly hairless, had even covered her with a rag! Authorities theorize that China found the baby outdoors and carried her back inside. If not for China, the baby would have died unprotected against the cold outside.

So let me get this straight—who should learn from whom here?

Posted by Amanda Schinke

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I guess we can sleep well knowing that if a soldier loses his tail during a raid, some well-trained fellow soldiers, thanks to this training, may be able to reattach the necessary posterior appendage.

Given the U.S. Army's apparent outright disregard for their own regulations and the treatment of these animals, PETA is now asking commanding officers at bases in Hawaii and Texas—where a more recent training exercise included breaking and amputating the legs of nearly 1,000 goats with tree trimmers—for a court martial over the shooting, mutilating, and killing of animals during these old-fashioned training exercises.

According to the Army's own regulations, the Army is required to use alternatives to animals in training exercises when scientifically valid and comparable alternatives exist. And they do! The animal exercise should have been replaced with validated, state-of-the-art simulators, such as the Department of Defense's own Combat Trauma Patient Simulator, which more realistically simulates battlefield conditions and, consequently, is considered superior to outdated animal methods. Other viable alternatives include Dr. Emad Aboud's "living" cadaver perfusion model, Simulab Corporation's TraumaMan system, and establishing military level one trauma centers in nearby communities in order to have trainees work with the community to take care of their city's population.

Kathy Guillermo, director of PETA's Laboratory Investigations Department, says, "The Army has regulations in place specifically to prevent this kind of cruelty to animals, but the oversight committee apparently chose to ignore them. Our soldiers deserve to be trained using the most advanced technology available—that means using human simulators."

The U.S. Army does not train soldiers to race into battle zones to retrieve injured pigs, goats, or dogs. That would be great, but let's face it: It's not the government's main agenda. Time, money, and resources could be far better spent.

You can take action on this issue here.

Posted by Jennifer Cierlitsky

Some blogs are just too cool for a cohesive theme. Internet Soup is a perfect example of that. Here are all the bits and pieces we've been meaning to share with you. Without further ado, here's your steaming serving of interweb goodness!

1. Do rising gas prices bother you? Do women who insist on wearing more than bikinis bother you? Finally, we cooked up an eye-catching, pro-vegetarian demonstration to address these pressing concerns.


2. I'm wondering if we should start an "Animal Control Gone Horribly Wrong" series. Installment two could be about a man who tried to spray his apartment for bugs but somehow managed to blow it up instead. Now all we need is someone to tase himself or herself while trying to apply a homemade shock collar to a dog.


3. This horseback riding simulator seems like a pretty cute idea, but even my not-quite-heterosexual self would prefer to go see girls on the mechanical bull in a downtown bar.


4. On the other side of the world (from me, anyway), PETA Asia-Pacific is taking on Burberry, with bronze-, silver-, and gold-painted animal champions telling passersby about where Burberry stands on fur.


5. Apparently even the folks at The New Yorker sympathize a bit with the lobster liberation movement. If only real lobsters were so lucky …


6. What happens when a non-native fish species gets transported, dumped in foreign waters, and thrives? Native populations are devastated and the local ecosystem lurches out of control—just like how lionfish are wreaking havoc on the East Coast.


7. Last, but certainly not least, we now have the coolest pop-culture icon ever on board with our KFC campaign. Who better to tell the Colonel what's what than the "master" of compassionate reflection, The Zen Master?

While you folks digest all that, I'll be getting back to checking humor blogs work and probably researching how I can easily identify/avoid lionfish, which have now officially displaced zombies as my number one perceived infestation threat.

Posted by Sean Conner

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That's right—four horses forced to compete in the Olympics have tested positive, and have subsequently been banned, for the drug capsaicin. Capsaicin is banned because, in the words of one article, "it is derived from the chilli pepper and is used for either medication, as a pain-killer, or for its hypersensitizing properties. In both cases a horse might jump better as a result of its use." Of course, when you mask pain and overuse a limb, the repercussions can be bone-shatteringly bad.

The four horses banned were competing in team show jumping. Their riders have also been banned from participating in individual events—and if more horses are found to have been drugged, the Olympic medals may be shifted around. Of course, this wouldn't be the first Olympics where horse-dopers have been stripped of their medals—Germany lost the gold in Athens for the same crime.

People will be shocked to hear of this scandal—and for good reason. If horses are subjected to this kind of mistreatment at the highest level of the "sport," maybe "sport" isn't the right place for these beautiful, sensitive animals. Horses should not be drugged up and run into the ground by greedy people for money or for medals, even if it means abusing animals whose athleticism wins the gold. Oh, and did you see any of the close-ups, with the horses' heads being yanked all the way to their chests and up again, their eyes almost popping out of their heads as they were jerked around? Nice.

Posted by Amanda Schinke

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Heartbroken, Gana kept carrying her dead baby on her back as she had when he was alive, looking back again and again in the hope of finding him recovered. She held her child up, desperately searching for signs of movement in his limp body, and sat cradling him.

Zoo visitors were visibly moved and many cried upon seeing Gana's grief. But no one who has been paying attention to animals should be surprised by the depth of emotion that Gana showed in her mourning. Animals feel pain, fear, anger, love, and grief. Mother cows bellow for their calves, who are taken away so that humans can drink the milk that they make solely to nourish their babies. Dogs, beavers, and monkeys take pity on orphaned animals and adopt them as their own. Animals—from pigs to porpoises—show concern for humans, too, by going to great lengths to rescue us from peril.

Yet people often look away from this glaring evidence of sentience. By convincing themselves that animals don't feel deeply—that they're "not like us"—humans have justified inflicting all kinds of horrors on animals. But if people torturing primates in laboratories or slaughtering gorillas in the Congo could look into Gana's shattered heart, they might wake up to the true cost of their actions.

Posted by Jeff Mackey

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It seems that cast member Sandra Oh has been up to a little plot-scheming of her own in the offseason. The vegan vixen has recently divulged her not-so-super-secret plan to turn her costars vegan too!

The television doctor recently treated a group of cast and crew members to a 100 percent cruelty-free lunch at Truly Vegan in Hollywood. Has it worked? Turns out Mr. McDreamy himself, Patrick Dempsey, thoroughly enjoyed the restaurant's chocolate vegan cake, and Ellen Pompeo has become a frequent customer!

Maybe all those script readings and hours on the Grey's set has taught the cast and crew a thing or two about the health benefits of a plant-based diet! Oh yeah, and it probably helps that vegan food doesn't taste like grass and soggy sticks, contrary to what some meatheads and unweaned grownups believe.

One can only wait and see if Sandra's plot will play out in the new season! In the meantime, though, why not make your friends swoon with a delicious cruelty-free concoction of your own?

Posted by Jennifer Cierlitsky

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However, some people think that some of our campaigns "cross the line." Hmmm, if you were in a battle for your life—as the billions-with-a-"b" of animals in slaughterhouses, on fur farms, in laboratories, and in circuses are—wouldn't you want a defender to come to your rescue who is mighty ferocious and not afraid to take some flak? Well, in 28 years, PETA has never backed down from a fight. And believe you me, we can take a hit. Lawsuits, federal investigations, infiltrators, slanderous news articles … the list go on. Yet we're stronger than ever in our relentless battle for what's right, and we're gaining momentum every day.

From the boardroom to the classroom, we employ every tactic and tool we can get our eager hands on in the defense of animals, so send us your ideas and we might add 'em. Now, maybe you've only heard about the colorful tactics we use to catch the media's attention, but that's only a fraction of what we do. Here's a quote from PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk:

Few people know the depth of our work, as it is mostly our stunts that make the news. While cruelty to animals is a serious matter that should elicit widespread public outrage, efforts to reach the public through more serious means often fall on deaf ears in a world in which sex sells and there are both a war and an economic downturn. . . . Forgive us our bikinis and our shock tactics, but our message that all beings—both human and nonhuman—deserve compassion and respect is one that we must work hard to make heard.

So, in celebration of our anniversary, we decided to give y'all some free goodies for showing us your stuff. Here's the contest—let us know your favorite PETA victories (you can totally cheat by going to this heartwarming site), and you'll be entered to win a copy of the acclaimed documentary I Am an Animal on DVD. It answers quite a few questions about PETA and our tireless president that you might have had—and it just might get ya fired up enough to join us! If so, we've got a bikini with your name on it!

You can comment until September 4, 2008, to win the DVD. We will contact the winner on September 5, 2008. Be sure to read the contest terms and conditions and PETA's privacy policy before you comment—you're acknowledging that you have read and agree to both by leaving a comment.

Posted by Missy Lane

After a two-year stint of showing off his finely chiseled physique in America, David—as in Michelangelo's "David"—is returning home to Italy. Only, he's leaving a new man—or should we say, a new sculpture?

Yes, Michelangelo's most famous sculpture has taken a little bit of the U.S. with him, in the form of 50-plus pounds of extra fat. Looks like David consumed the standard American diet of hamburgers, chicken wings, glasses of milk, and cheese on everything!

The image was actually created by advertising agency Scholz & Friends, which is based in Germany, for an ad campaign they're running to get people up off their rumps and active with healthy doses of daily exercise.

Coincidently, the fat "David" image has surfaced right on the heels of our request to put up ads along the U.S.-Mexican border to warn crossing immigrants about the United States' severely unhealthy meat- and dairy-centered diet.

Obesity is one of the leading health problems in this country for people of all ages—and it's really not shocking, given the poor eating habits and exercise regimens of most Americans.

The good news is that you don't have to be a part of America's expanding-waistline problem. Adults who follow a vegan diet on average weigh 10 to 20 lbs. less than their meat-eating and dairy-guzzling counterparts. Plus, meat, dairy, and egg consumption is linked to asthma and increases a person's chances of getting certain cancers by 40 percent! If you're looking to build the healthy, well-defined body that "David" is best known for, we recommend laying off the animal products. Your looks and health will thank you.

Posted by Jennifer Cierlitsky

dogbreedinfo / CC

In a lawsuit filed on Monday, a man said he ordered salmon salad for lunch from Shaw's Crab House in Chicago in 2006 and fell violently ill. He later passed the giant (three yard sticks long!!!) parasite, which a pathologist determined came from undercooked fish, such as, yes, salmon.

So, which current top reason not to eat salmon does a 9-foot (!!!) tapeworm knock off? The Environmental Working Group estimates that 800,000 people in the U.S. face an excess lifetime cancer risk from eating farmed salmon. Would you rather have cancer or a tapeworm? Studies have also shown that children born to mothers who eat fish are slower to talk, walk, and develop fine motor skills and that they have weaker memories and shorter attention spans (fish collect toxins). Hmm … brain damage or tapeworms? Tough choices ahead!

Oh, wait! Sorry for making a big deal about the fact that the tapeworm was 9 feet long. It turns out that tapeworms can measure up to 50 feet long. So I guess 9 feet is nothing to worry about. No big deal.

Take a look at our original Top 10 Reasons Not to Eat Salmon list here, and let me know what you think about this whole, um, adventure.

Posted by Joel Bartlett

Some officious cop in San Marcos, Texas, recently thought it a better idea to berate a grieving couple instead of helping them get their dying dog to a veterinary hospital. Krystal Hernandez held Missy, a choking teacup poodle, as Michael Gonzalez rushed south along I-35 from their home toward the New Braunfels Veterinarian Clinic. The trio sped by Officer Paul Stephens at 95 miles per hour in a 70 miles per hour zone.

The rookie officer pulled the couple over, then called for backup. After Stephens pulled the couple over, things got really crazy.

Once Officer Stephens realized that the dog was in danger (according to him, Missy's tongue was out of her mouth, and she was unmoving), he gave Hernandez and Gonzalez a hard time instead of a helping hand. As another officer struggled to clear Missy's airway and administered CPR, Stephens lectured Gonzalez about his driving and imparted this insightful jewel: "It's a dog, OK? You can get another one. Relax." Check out the video below:

The officers claimed that the dog was already dead at that point, so there was no emergency.

San Marcos Police Chief Howard Williams ordered a reprimand against Stephens, who is 23 and has served as an officer for 15 months, but found him not guilty of misconduct. The department also discussed dismissing Gonzalez's speeding ticket.

Gonzalez filed a complaint against the officer and claimed that valuable time was wasted, which resulted in Missy's death. Choking is a deadly serious matter and appeared in recent headlines when Oprah Winfrey lost one of her beloved dogs last year from a choking accident. We recommend reading up on the Heimlich maneuver for dogs. We also recommend asking the San Marcos Police Department to implement a sensible strategy for cases like this one that involves training for these situations and disciplinarian action should the death of an animal result from an officer's nonchalant and overbearing attitude. That's what community relations classes are for. Get involved here.

Tonight, you can catch Pam and Dan Mathews, PETA's senior vice president, as they attend the White House Correspondents Dinner in Washington, D.C. E! calls the episode "Crazy Bitch," but Pam and Dan fondly refer to it as "Washington or Bust" (Tuesday, August 19, 10:30 p.m. EST, E!, in syndication all week). This was Pam's first visit to D.C. since becoming a U.S. citizen and the same visit during which Pam hand-delivered a PETA report to Capitol Hill blasting animal testing. Pam says: "Being a citizen excites me not just because I can vote, but because I can crack the whip on Capitol Hill to defend animals."

The show's behind-the-scenes footage includes everything from Pam and Dan's planning their upcoming escapades during a camping trip to Dan discussing talking points from the bathtub before their appearance on Larry King Live.

Oh, Pam. You make our hearts happy.

Being a shareholder of a major company can come with perks. I once got a free pen for attending Smithfield Foods' annual meeting. I got a coupon (which I used for a veggie burger) at another shareholder meeting.

OK, so those types of perks aren't anything to write home about. The real "perk" for us—which is the reason that we purchase stock in animal-abusing companies in the first place—is the chance to have a voice in the inner workings of a company like Hormel Foods, the meatpacking giant based out of Austin, Minnesota.

This week, we cashed in on that perk, so to speak, by submitting a shareholder resolution calling on the company to include information on its packaging disclosing every piece of meat's greenhouse-gas "footprint" on the world. Doing more damage than all the automobiles and airplanes in the world combined, it's the meat industry that contributes most to global warming. And we're not the only ones who think it's smart to clue consumers in: Some food companies are already printing per-serving greenhouse-gas emissions levels on product labels.

Now, as a result of our resolution, all Hormel investors—from Joe Schmoe, who might own a dozen shares, up to the largest major banking firm, which might own five to 10 percent of the company—will be able to read about all the ways that producing meat contributes to global warming, and more importantly, they'll have a chance to vote on whether they feel that Hormel should own up to its devastating eco-footprint.

You can read the full text of the resolution here.

Posted by Matt Prescott, assistant director of Corporate Affairs

Imagine stumbling into a sticky substance so strong that you couldn't break away from it. Frantic, you struggle to pry yourself free, but all that happens is that you tear patches of your skin and hair off or get your mouth and nose stuck in it and start to suffocate.

That is exactly what mice, rats, birds, squirrels, hamsters, kittens, and other small animals stuck on glue traps endure. Some even try to chew off a paw in order to escape otherwise certain death. Some, helplessly trapped, die of dehydration. Motomco, which makes some of these little torture devices, is telling shoppers that one of its products is humane. George Orwell might be spinning in his grave.

Here's the scoop: Motomco puts a substance called eugenol in the trap, citing that it is a "naturally occurring anesthetic." Eugenol can be a pain reliever but only when it is injected into an animal's bloodstream or pumped directly into the stomach. But just as you don't get drunk by rolling around in alcohol, animals' pain isn't taken away when they come into contact with eugenol. In fact, studies show that eugenol can cause animals to suffer more by causing a painful burning sensation, vomiting, and nausea.

Is Motomco trying to sell its sticky glue traps by duping compassionate consumers who don't want to harm animals? We think so, and PETA has filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) seeking action against the company for false advertising.

You can read our FTC complaint here. If you have purchased a Motomco trap, thinking it was a humane solution, or if you know people who have, please let us know!

Oh, and if this whole ordeal with Motomco weren't bad enough, Lowe's is still selling these terrible contraptions.

Posted by Grace Friedan

minconline / CC

PETA has written to Ms. Paltrow numerous times about the hideous cruelty on fur farms, including that animals are skinned alive and kept in tiny cages for so long that they exhibit stereotypical behaviors. However, it appears that she didn't get the memo.

Here's what PETA President Ingrid Newkirk had to say about Paltrow's latest hobby:

Gwyneth Paltrow won't be the apple of her daughter's eye if she flaunts the skins of once-beautiful animals. Promoting an industry that electrocutes animals, snaps their necks, and skins them alive is a shocking example to set for a young child. Apparently, Paltrow's beauty really is only skin deep.

Paltrow may like to live the glamorous life, but there is nothing glam about paying others to slaughter animals for your clothes.

Posted by Jennifer Cierlitsky

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Are you into the classics? Then be sure to check out "Meet Your Meat," narrated by Emmy- and Academy Award-nominated—and Golden Globe-winning actor—Alec Baldwin (30 Rock, The Cooler). If you see—or show a meat-eater—only one video this year about factory farming, make it "Meet Your Meat."

Then, over on peta2, there's a video the entire family can agree on—Full House of Horrors, starring everyone's favorite (and by "favorite," I mean most hated) twins, Hairy-Kate and Trashley Trollsen! They're all grown up, although you wouldn't know it by the way they act.

Remember Kentucky Fried Movie? Of course you don't! Well, you'll never forget Kentucky Fried Cruelty. You'll laugh, you'll cry … actually, you'll probably just cry. It's a real tear-jerker. Show it to someone you love. Speaking of love …

Love those gritty detective shows with storylines "ripped from the headlines"? Also, love all things China, especially after the Beijing Olympics? Well, while the networks have chosen to ignore this demographic, PETA TV invites you to go undercover with investigators from Swiss Animal Protection/EAST International in C.F.F. Hebei. Travel deep into China's Hebei Province to expose the "living hell" that is a Chinese fur farm.

So, the next time you get tired of channel surfing, surf on over to PETA TV. With hundreds of videos you can watch on-demand and free of charge, you're sure to find a video that will allow you to kill a little time and, hopefully, save an animal from being killed.

So you've probably heard that the Dallas-Forth Worth International Airport (DFW) is having financial problems. And what is PETA if not a helping hand? We've asked the airport if they'd be so inclined as to sell advertisements in their bathrooms, and if so, we're first in line! While folks are busy evacuating (and forgive me, but we're not talking hurricane routes here), they could read about the benefits of a vegan diet, ensuring them less stuffed-up feeling (and we're not talking about a summer cold) and much happier insides (not to mention a happier environment and a longer life). Check out our suggested ad below:

Here's our letter to the DFW CEO. Let us know what you think.

August 18, 2008

Jeffrey Fegan, CEO
Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport

Dear Mr. Fegan:

We at PETA are sorry to hear that the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) is experiencing financial difficulties, but I have a proposal that might help. While DFW doesn't currently have bathroom advertisements, we'd like to suggest them as a new revenue source, and we'd like to be the first to buy space. The ad we'd like to run on bathroom stall doors (attached) promotes the health benefits of a vegetarian diet. The ad makes the point that one of the many health hazards of eating beef—as well as other meats and animal products—is an increased risk of colon cancer.

The scientific evidence linking meat to society's most severe health problems, including colon cancer, is extensive. A study in the American Journal of Epidemiology identified "red meat intake and white meat intake as important dietary risk factors for colon cancer …." The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition states that a "vegetarian and fiber-rich diet and a decreased risk for colon cancer has been reported in many studies." According to the American Dietetic Association, vegetarians have "lower rates of death from ischemic heart disease" as well as "lower blood cholesterol levels, lower blood pressure, and lower rates of hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and prostate and colon cancer" than meat-eaters do.

There are other important reasons to promote vegetarianism. In addition to being rotten for your health, meat-eating is also murder on animals and the environment. Chickens and turkeys often have their throats cut while still conscious and are scalded to death, pigs have their teeth broken off and their tails and testicles cut off without any painkillers, and cows are often skinned alive. Furthermore, a recent UN scientific study concluded that raising animals for food causes more greenhouse-gas emissions than all the cars, trucks, SUVs, ships, and airplanes in the world combined.

Bathroom advertising is an emerging trend in a variety of public places—restaurants, bars, and even airports, including JFK in New York. Will you please consider running our ad in bathroom stalls at DFW? Not only would the ad raise revenue for the struggling airport, it would also potentially help airline passengers stay healthy and able to travel for years to come. Please contact me as soon as possible to discuss pricing and how we can proceed with placing this ad. Thank you very much for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Tracy Reiman
Executive Vice President

Posted by Christine Doré

msnbcmedia1 / CC

Get this—the vivisectors at the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences have announced a new wonder drug, a magical pill that would, they say, mimic the effects of exercise. Just swallow a little pill, their report says, and experience increased muscle endurance and doubled fat-burning muscle. It's SO easy!

The mice who were subjected to the drug apparently showed a decrease in fat and an increase in oxygen consumption—but not any of the other benefits from exercise. People are asking serious questions about the "just like exercise" claim.

It seems to me that the vivisectors at Salk got vaguely promising results from the mice and decided to cash in on America's fascination with weight loss and reluctance to exercise—not to mention all the Olympics-related fitness hubbub that's going on right now!

But come on, we really shouldn't be surprised that these "scientists" are grossly exaggerating their lab results in order to make headlines—think about all the other "scientific breakthroughs" that have been "proven" by mouse vivisection. As Yale University's Dr. David Katz writes, "Extrapolation from rodent research to outcomes in people is notoriously uncertain and fraught with danger. Basic science studies and animal experiments have resulted over the years in headlines about cures for cancer, a definitive obesity gene and effective AIDS vaccines, to name a few. None of these has yet to materialize, and early hyperbole in each case gave way to disappointment."

Well, I'm sure people will be disappointed—disappointed that animal testing is still going on, despite its cruelty, its inaccuracies, and the better alternatives that exist.

Posted by Amanda Schinke

ics / CC

PETA sent a letter to the CEO of InBev this morning offering to buy the marine mammal parks and their captive animals, thanks to a very generous PETA donor. Have we mentioned before how compassionate and amazing our donors and supporters are?!

Just don't expect penguin enclosures, sting-ray petting tanks, or hoop-jumping dolphins. PETA's vision is to turn the animal-exploiting money-maker into an educational non-animal theme park with state-of-the art virtual marine mammal displays that are so realistic that it's as if you're nose to snout with Flipper. And the animals currently held captive in the parks would be rehabilitated in coastal sanctuaries before being released back into their natural environments—a place many of the mammals remember fondly from before they were captured, sent to flounder (geddit?) in SeaWorld's small pools, and forced to perform mindless tricks, over and over and over and over and over again, for the amusement of little children.

Virtual reality technology has become so advanced that there is absolutely no need to make animals suffer or to put them in danger for human enjoyment or education. 3-D effects put us right in the action—and make us feel as if we're swimming in the cold Pacific with the great whites. It's safe for the animals, and you don't have to worry about losing a leg or being painfully stung by jellyfish.

You can read our full letter to InBev under the cut.

Posted by Jennifer Cierlitsky

When some people go on vacation, they send postcards of landmark buildings or landscapes with the message "Having a great time! Wish you were here!" Longtime PETA booster Maru Vigo, however, sends postcards of animals—like silly-looking llamas—with a different message: "Having a great time—saving the animals!"

When Maru goes to Peru, she doesn't just get off the plane, see the sights, and hop back on. Instead, she takes the time to organize volunteers, who go out onto the streets to promote spaying and neutering in Lima and throughout the country. Check out Maru's great team of volunteers in their PETA T-shirts:

Maru is a great example of a committed activist who makes a difference for animals no matter where she goes. We all look out for stray dogs and cats in our hometowns, so why not in another city or country—or continent? The next time you're on vacation, pay attention to the skinny mama dog outside the hotel or the sad cat foraging at the ruins—you could help save their lives. Wouldn't that make for a much better vacation story than the time you got sunburned at the theme park?

To see how PETA has helped dogs and cats around the world and to learn how you can help, too, check out HelpingAnimals.com.

Posted by Amanda Schinke

A few weeks ago, we exposed the horrific conditions that our PETA Asia-Pacific affiliate found at the Sanchong animal shelter, including untreated sick and injured animals and a building structure in such bad shape that it could not protect animals from the natural elements. We asked for your help in urging Sanchong to make vast improvements for the animals—and as always, you rose to the occasion!

PETA Asia-Pacific has just met with the mayor of Sanchong and has inspected changes made at the recommendation of the local government. A new floor has been installed, preventing floodwaters from seeping in and keeping the dogs from drowning. The puppies housed at the shelter have been moved to a more suitable area, and the dogs now have individual pens in order to prevent fighting. If workers don't forget and bunch them up again, this is good news. Water bowls have been installed (although it's in such a way that they can't be cleaned and must now be moved) and a new roof (that is too low and also must be moved) has been erected to keep out rain.

While this shelter has a long way to go to be acceptable, we are pleased with the efforts made by the government. PETA Asia-Pacific will stay on top of the situation, and we will continue to update you.

Thank you to everyone who has written in and contacted the city of Sanchong about this. Below are a few photos depicting the improvements that have now been made for these homeless animals.

The mayor with PETA Asia-Pacific director Jason Baker

New floors at the Sanchong shelter

New floors for the puppy area

Posted by Jennifer Cierlitsky

usjudo / CC

"As of right now I am a vegan," she told reporters.

Rousey, whose favorite foods include imitation crab meat, comes from a family with an athletic history—her mother, AnnMaria, is a former U.S. world champion judoka. AnnMaria is very supportive of her daughter, explaining to reporters that there is no reason why a vegan lifestyle can't mix with an intense physical sport like judo: "I mean, we're tough but we don't kill our opponents and eat them."

Rousey is joining many other athletes—like John Salley and Mac Danzig, just to name a few—who have realized that the health benefits of going vegetarian or vegan are ideal for athletes as well as for average Gym Joes and Janes. Benefits like lower cholesterol, lower blood pressure, and a heightened immune system are certainly of use to athletes, right?

We think so—and so do Tony Gonzales, Carl Lewis, Scott Jurek, Chris Evert, and Ricky Williams. … You get the idea.

Congratulations, Ronda! If you're inspired by Rousey (and who isn't?) to try out a veggie diet for yourself, leap over to GoVeg.com, where you can order a free copy of our "Vegetarian Starter Kit."

Posted by Amanda Schinke

This down-to-Earth designer is taking the swimsuit world by storm with her creations. Her designs are highly sought after by celebrities and have graced the cover of the much coveted Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. Ashley also has her own reality show, Bikini or Bust, which airs Saturdays at 11 a.m. Eastern Time on TLC and gives fashion fans an intoxicating glimpse into her world of design, business, family, and, you guessed it, her love for animals! To ensure that Bikini or Bust gets picked up for a second season, you can e-mail the network at viewer_relations@discovery.com or fill out their Web form here.

See for yourself just how fab Ashley is. Check out the interview that she just did with PETA. Here she is in her own words.

As a fur-free fashion designer, what do you think of designers who continue to work with fur—sometimes even on bikinis?
They truly disgust me.

What has been the best part about running Ruff Houzen, your animal rescue group? Has there been a particularly memorable rescue? When people who have adopted animals from me and bring them by to visit, it's so adorable that I can't help but think back to when I first rescued them. Sometimes it makes me cry. I'm "sensitive," I'm year of the dog. I have so many memorable stories, here's two:

Memorable story 1
One day my boyfriend was coming down hard on me for bringing too many strays home. Later that same day he called and said, "I just spent the last hour chasing a little 'mangy' mutt all over Sunset Blvd." I laughed and said, "Well, did you catch him?" and he said, "Yes, he's sitting in my lap!" Funny how passion persuades!!!

Memorable story 2
So I eventually got a new boyfriend, who was much more supportive of my love for rescuing animals. He also happens to be year of the dog, like me. One morning, a little stray dog decided to play chase with us in the center divider line during rush hour morning traffic. I was in a bikini and Alek was wearing only his underwear. After we managed to catch the little "wild" dog, we slowly let traffic continue and thanked everyone for stopping. One woman rolled her window down and commented, "How cute!" I couldn't help but wonder if she was talking about the dog or my new boyfriend.

You say your favorite breed of dog is the mutt. Why is that?
I'm against breeding and selling animals, and puppy mills break my heart. People who showcase their purebreds to better their image are such sad, delusional people. The Mutt is humble, and I believe the world could use more humble people!

Your mom seems like such a sweet, caring woman. Did she influence your love for animals? Did your family have companion animals when you were growing up?
When I was a little girl, my mom would always bring home strays, but we lived in an abusive home where she could never keep them for long. It angered me for many reasons, and I would always tell myself, when I grow up, I'm going to have a house full of animals that need a loving home. And I did!

What animals do you share your home with now?
I have 8 dogs and 2 cats, but it fluctuates, between successful adoptions and "rescued newbies." My permanent guests include a Pit/Wiener dog mix named Petunia, a Senior Shepherd named Cali, a Wiener dog named "The Flying Peeing Weiner," and a feral cat that lives under my bed named Crazy Eyes!

What advice would you give to somebody who's looking to adopt a dog?
Adopt two! Haha, no really, it's usually much easier for both you and your rescues. Remember, dogs like to be in a pack and they get lonely when you're not around. Just make sure you're the pack leader!

Do you frequent any of the vegetarian restaurants in L.A.? Have any favorites?
There's a great little Thai vegan restaurant right by my shop named the Vegan House on Wilcox. They even make vegan sushi, one of my favorites. And my boyfriend likes Real Food Daily on La Cienega, which specializes in raw.

We love Bikini or Bust. Can you tell us what's coming up on the show?
The final episode is me having to choose between a corporate apparel job or sticking it out at "my little company that could." I announce my decision during pet adoptions in my store. You guys probably could guess the answer … but make sure to tune in.

What are your ideas for next season?
I am praying for a second season, but the new president has not given us a green light yet. I know how important it is to stay on the "boob tube" as long as possible, for the animals. If we do get it, you bet there will be a great anti-fur demonstration in NYC during Fashion Week, lots of dramatic animal rescue, and probably some friendly fashion thrown in there somewhere. Oh—and as for mom, she's planning a cross country road trip with Spring Louisee to pick up maw and paw paw to bring them out to California. So let's do the math, 5 people, 8-10 dogs, 2-5 cats, and hopefully a camera crew of about 30.

Ashley often uses the spotlight to draw attention to animal rescue. In fact, this Saturday's episode of Bikini or Bust is all about the canines! We'll definitely be tuning in for some puppy love—and you should too! Don't forget to catch the show and let TLC know that this compassionate show deserves a spot on television.

Posted by Jennifer Cierlitsky

Fantastic and hilarious ...

Click for a larger version

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

According to Science News magazine, researchers have discovered the first known vegetarian spider in Mexico. A jumping spider who dwells and dines in acacia trees, Bagheera kiplingi (Kip, to his friends) is a fly guy who passes on the usual bug buffet for leafy snacks snatched from neighboring ants. That's right—Kip is an itsy-bitsy pickpocket. Athletic, thanks no doubt to their healthy vegetarian diet, these covert little arachnids give patrolling ant guards the slip and then swoop down and steal their supply of protein and fat-packed nubbins sprouting from the tips of leaves.

An eight-legged vegetarian renegade taking on an army to nick some nubbins. Neat, huh? Actually, all spiders are pretty darn neat. They're also much more frightened of us than we are of them—and for good reason! Even on the rare occasions when spiders may try to bite to defend themselves, only a few can actually pierce human skin.

So what have we learned? Spiders are cool and deserve respect. Some vegetarians have eight legs. And when picnicking under an acacia tree in Mexico, never ever take your eyes off your salad. That said, here's Kip, my personal pick for the "Cutest Vegetarian Alive":

Posted by Amy Elizabeth

Blind and sighted, man or macaque—we all celebrate in the same way. A recent study from scientists at the University of British Columbia and San Francisco State University shows that the "victory dance"—arms raised, chest puffed out—is an instinctive trait of all primates.

You mean I have something in common with Michael Phelps? All right, then!

cnn / CC

It turns out that the victory dance closely resembles the dominance displays of chimpanzees and monkeys—"Yes, I'm strong, and I'm bigger than you"—and is universal among all athletes, from all cultures, including blind Paralympians. Since the blind athletes couldn't have learned this behavior from others, the victory dance has to be innate.

Similarly, poses of defeat—heads down, shoulders slumped—are also the same for all primates (and not only primates), with the exception of some sighted athletes from the U.S. and Western Europe. The lead author of the study speculates that "the athletes were intentionally hiding their feelings—consciously overriding their innate urge to signal defeat—because losing is so stigmatized in their cultures." Tellingly, blind athletes from the same countries did exhibit the same defeat poses as other primates—showing again that this is innate behavior.

More and more studies confirm what we already know—that we are all one under the skin. Hopefully, these studies will bring humans one step closer toward having respect for all primates.

Posted by Amanda Schinke

So, since grizzly-bear hunting season is set to open next week in British Columbia—and a record 430 grizzlies were killed last year, mostly by trophy hunters (like the "gentlemen" pictured)—we recognize our responsibility to offer you an alternative perspective of this "blood sport." I mean, hey, we're PETA, isn't it our job to lay it on the masses and get them off their asses to fight against these fascist practices? (Bragging rights to anyone who knows what that paraphrases.)

You can check out campaign news here. PETA and its affiliates have spanned the globe—from naked protesters in Europe to a feisty activist dressed in bear suit that successfully stalked a Royal couple across the Caribbean. As always, there are sassy celebrity endorsements to encourage you to get involved too. Please do your part to save a bear and sign PETA Europe's petition to U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown in support of bears.

Posted by Missy Lane

i76 / CC

So we wrote and explained that encouraging teenagers (or anyone!) to hurt and kill even the smallest life form "just for fun" can desensitize them to suffering in general. Besides, all insects, like them or not, play a role in our ecosystem. And there's also the small matter of health risks like allergic reactions, nausea, and gastrointestinal distress—humans, you may realize, are not meant to eat giant hissing cockroaches.

Six Flags agreed! Six Flags public relations manager Sue Carpenter said, "We're on to other Fright Fest events that do not include any living creatures!"

Roller coasters, Halloween, and no harm to animals? Sounds great to me!

We're so glad that Six Flags has decided to pursue only animal-friendly events that we're sending a small token of our appreciation to Ms. Carpenter—a box of vegan chocolate roaches—completely cruelty-free, maybe a little bit scary, and 100 percent delicious.

Posted by Amanda Schinke

paddleasia / CC

Charles River's announcement follows a string of contact with PETA from a whistleblower claiming to be a Charles River employee, who was concerned about what appeared to be gross negligence. We immediately followed up with a formal complaint to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (the body charged with enforcing the minimal standards of the Animal Welfare Act), which subsequently opened an inquiry into the lab.

"This is a terrible and unfortunate tragedy," the company said in a statement released to the media. The monkeys were slated to be used in preclinical drug experiments, so Charles River's concern is quite curious. The deaths were written off as the result of "several human errors"—unlike the frequent and intentional monkey murders that preclinical testing laboratories voluntarily participate in.

This accident is only one disgusting incident among many for Charles River's abysmal record. They were cited for 22 violations of the ever-so-minimal standards of the pitifully limited Animal Welfare Act in 2005 alone, and they netted 20 violations (as reported to federal officials) in 2006 and 2007.

Stay tuned to this spot. More's afoot on this front.

Posted by Sean Conner

No matter what your stance is on the highly controversial U.S.-Mexican border fence project, everyone can agree that those who decide to come to the U.S. should be warned about the downside of our nation's meat and milk consumption habits. PETA is warning immigrants that there's much more to worry about than proper documentation.

We've written a letter to the commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection asking to buy space at each of the nine southwest border sectors for our new ad. Those considering entry will then read this message: "If the border patrol doesn't get you, the chicken and burgers will. Go vegan" (or, in Spanish, "Si no te agarra la migra, te atraparan el pollo y las hamburguesas. Sé vegano").

Spanish version

English version

By leaving behind a far healthier staple diet of vegetables and grains—like rice, beans, corn, peppers, and tortillas—Mexicans and other immigrants will likely find themselves fattening up on the fiberless, fatty, cholesterol-laden U.S. diet, which is linked to heart disease, various types of cancer, and strokes (our nation's three biggest killers) as well as impotence (internationally recognized killer of the mood).

PETA's placement of these colorful ads would certainly offset some of the tax dollars that fund the fence. It's a winning solution for the folks at U.S. Customs and Border Protection, immigrants, and farmed animals alike!

Posted by Sean Conner

Staying up 'til the wee hours of the morning to catch your fave Olympians go for the gold in Beijing? That's cool. But what's even cooler is the fact that the best athletes in the world can be found in the animal kingdom, not the Olympic Village. If the Summer Olympics were open to all of the planet's species, humans probably wouldn't even have a shot at medaling—especially if they had to compete against these top five animal athletes:

5. Cows. Natural track and field stars, cows have been known to hurdle a 6-foot fence to escape from a slaughterhouse and trot 7 miles to reunite with calves sold at auction.

4. Ants. Known for their Herculean strength, ants can lift 20 times their own body weight. That's the equivalent of a 200-pound weightlifter bench pressing 4,000 pounds!

3. Cheetahs. The fastest land animal, cheetahs can reach speeds of up to 75 miles per hour. Able to accelerate faster than a Ferrari, cheetahs can go from 0 to 68 miles per hour in just 3 seconds.

2. Sharks. Frightfully fast, sharks are excellent swimmers thanks to scales covered with tiny teeth that enable water to flow smoothly over their bodies. Hoping to reduce drag and increase speed, many Olympic swimmers are now sporting swimsuits modeled after shark skin.

1. Chickens. Chickens know how to bend it like Beckham. Give a small round object to a group of chickens, and they'll happily pass it around, much like they're playing soccer.

Yep, chickens. Take that, all you live-animal markets! Speaking of China not exactly giving a cluck about animal protection (see also: fur farms), I say that we honor the true Olympic spirit of friendship and fair play by treating all animals like gold.

Posted by Amy Elizabeth

i152 / CC

Stella—who is totally dedicated to her anti-fur and -leather stance—only found out about the ad when she saw it in the latest issue of Vogue. There it was: one of her designs—partially covered by a ghastly mink coat and accessorized with a ghastly leather belt. Stella had lent the bra to a stylist for use in an editorial photo shoot, but the stylist had a mix up and used it for the advertisement instead—without asking for Stella's permission.

The story is that when Stella saw the ad, she "hit the roof and said that she planned to sue." Good for her! Stella doesn't want to support the cruelty of the fur industry. (Heck, I wouldn't like it if my second-grade finger-paintings were used to promote those animal killers.)

As for the fur boutique, they have already issued a "grovelling apology" and will not be using the ad again—which is quite a blow for them, considering that the ad would've cost £10,000 (about $19,000) to shoot in the first place—and about $50,000 to place in Vogue! That's a lot of money for a boutique to lose, even for one that regularly peddles $10,000 animal skins.

It's nice that the boutique has apologized to Stella. I don't suppose there's any chance that they'll next apologize to the countless animals who are caged, electrocuted, and skinned alive in the name of "fashion" … ?

Posted by Amanda Schinke

OK, I'll go easy on the impotence jokes here. I promise—just straight-up hard reporting on this one. Damn…

Anyway, I'm happy to announce that Rocket Boy, an old-school ad featuring an impotence-fighting boy astronaut, is back and ready to go where no PETA ad has gone before: outer space. You see, Virgin chair Sir Richard Branson just unveiled the WhiteKnightTwo, a carrier aircraft created to launch a commercial six-passenger spaceship within the next decade. PETA wants Rocket Boy to be onboard, so our VP Bruce Friedrich sent Branson a letter asking to buy ad space on the seat backs.

In his letter, Bruce writes:

By following our advice and ditching meat, your male passengers could rise to new heights. Cholesterol and saturated fat clog arteries and block blood flow to all of a man's vital organs—not just to his heart. Physicians report that the link is clear: Eating meat can cause impotence. Any of your passengers who have trouble "lifting off" will be glad to hear that impotence—as well as heart disease, high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, and prostate cancer—can likely be prevented and even reversed by switching to a healthy vegetarian diet.

No word back from Mr. Branson yet, but here's Rocket Boy, all suited up and ready to launch:

Severely injured dog in Sanchong shelter

Conditions at the shelter are so bad that redoing the concrete floor and putting up a tarp to help keep out torrential rain isn't going to do it. So long as the same lazy louts are still in charge—people who stand around joking while dogs convulse at their feet—we'd like the place to be closed down and the money to be used to move strays straight from the street into veterinary care. Please tell Sanchong to use the shelter for something else, to reassign the callous workers, and to send dogs straight to the vet for treatment or euthanasia if they are pain.

PETA Asia-Pacific's Coco and local volunteers held a great demo (see below).

Gossip gurus are all worked up over recent rumors that PETA supporter Jenna Jameson is pregnant. Jenna recently stripped down to her birthday suit and slipped beneath the sheets (again, which you can win!) to appear in our new animal birth control ad.

Jenna definitely knows a thing or two about birth control—and she understands the necessity of birth control for animals too. Why is it so important? She says:

Until dogs and cats can go on the pill or wear condoms, we need to help them practice safe sex—by spaying and neutering. Millions of homeless animals are turned in to shelters every year because there simply aren't enough good homes for them all. The answer is as easy as ABC: Animal Birth Control, which means get your Fido of Fluffy fixed!

Jenna can decide for herself whether or not she has the time, love, patience, money, and desire to have a baby—animals cannot.

You can comment until August 29, 2008, to win Jenna's autographed sheets (how hot is that?). We will contact the winner on September 3, 2008. Be sure to read the contest terms and conditions and PETA's privacy policy before you comment—you're acknowledging that you have read and agree to both by leaving a comment.

KFC is known to work with suppliers that breed and drug chickens to grow so large that they can't even walk, cut off baby birds' sensitive beaks without any painkillers, and drop birds into tanks of scalding-hot water—often while they are still conscious. KFC accepts these cruel practices because they help fill the chain's buckets of chicken at a cheap price.

To highlight the twisted practices of a company that focuses on its wallets while ignoring animal welfare, we've created a series of provocative billboards. "Another Life, Another Dollar," "3 Lives for $2.99," and "Cheap Chicken Means Animals Pay a High Price" are just a few of the taglines. Hey, we never said subtlety was our forte.

Check out the ads, and then tell us which is your favorite by leaving a comment below!

Yesterday, we mentioned an advertisement that we wanted to run in a Canadian newspaper in the wake of a shocking stabbing murder and possible cannibalism in Manitoba. Countless people have contacted us with their concerns, so we'd like to explain why we wanted to run the ad that no newspaper will touch with a 10' pole.

Yes, of course we were horrified (who wouldn't be?) when we heard the details of this barbaric, incomprehensible killing. And obviously, everyone's good thoughts go out to anyone affected by this violent act. That's all a no-brainer. Now, remember, PETA is known for being provocative—that's our job. The animals don't benefit from our silence. So our thought is always: How can we get people to see that despite their feelings about this kind of violence, they are often paying someone to do exactly what was done to the man on the bus, and worse, just so that they can eat a sandwich? Voila, the ad!

We see parallels between acts of violence against humans and cruelty to animals, since both spring from a common root. We understand that such comparisons may be uncomfortable for many people, but they're not inaccurate.

Responding to violence with anger is also natural, but just being angry solves nothing, does it? Real change comes about when we channel anger or sadness into action. By juxtaposing the shocking details of the murder with the fate of animals whose bodies are casually hacked apart to end up between two slices of bread, some good will come. Already, thousands of people have visited our site not just to scream at us but also to read about slaughterhouses, and many have watched "Meat Your Meat." If you can sit through that and not see the truth in what we are saying, what can we say?

Like humans, animals are made of flesh, blood, and bone. Animals in slaughterhouses experience terror in the face of death. They fight for their lives and struggle to avoid pain. Birds love and grieve. In light of animals' suffering, we are urging people to embrace nonviolence in the face of senseless violence—against all beings—by going vegetarian. If someone doesn't like it, maybe it is because it makes them feel guilty for just saying, "Oh, how terrible," about the bus violence but not wanting to face the fact that they contribute to violence as well. To think otherwise is simply supremacist.

You know what it's like—you get started with something, thinking you'll have just this one or do it just this once, and then you think, "One more wouldn't hurt, right?" And before you know it, it's all out of hand.

Of course, when I do it, I end up eating half a package of Newman-Os, not egging 400 people's houses and cars.

That's right—a couple in Pennsylvania have recently been charged with perpetrating an 18-month "egging spree" that resulted in $7,000 worth of damage.

This news article explains that the couple started egging because they "wanted to retaliate against friends for damages they said were inflicted upon them" but moved on to other targets to avoid suspicion.

Hate to break it to you (geddit?), but 400 targets might arouse a little suspicion, don't you think?

Now, the county's district attorney is urging the victims of the spree to come forward, saying, "We have an obligation under the law to seek to make them whole and to get restitution for them."

Sure, the people who had to wash their cars and hose down their driveways deserve "restitution." But let's take this further: What is washing your car compared to being crammed into battery cages and having your beak cut off with a hot wire?

When you think about it that way, aren't the hens the number one victims here?

We think that all the victims of this crime deserve restitution. For this reason, we've written a letter to the DA with a logical suggestion: It takes up to 34 hours for a hen to produce a single egg, and during that time, she isn't watching TV—she's crammed into a cage that doesn't allow her to take a step or stretch one wing, and she has to balance on wire and do her business on the backs of other birds. If the DA has an "obligation" to "get restitution" for the victims of this crime, wouldn't justice best be served by sentencing the perpetrators to 34 hours of community service in a vegan soup kitchen or doing bird rescues for each egg wasted? We think so!

Check out our letter to the DA:

With the opening ceremonies of the 29th Olympiad just days away, our friends at PETA Asia-Pacific decided to get into the spirit of the games by awarding gold, silver, and bronze honors to Beijing's top vegetarian restaurants.

I know what you're thinking: vegetarian restaurants in China?!? Yes, my friends, it's true, but we really shouldn't be so surprised. After all, the Chinese gave the world tofu, that wonderful high-protein, versatile ingredient that can be used in everything from chocolate mousse pie to faux-ricotta lasagne (if you're still wrestling with tofu, check out our guide to vegetarian cooking).

And now with a drum roll, here are the top vegetarian restaurants in Beijing, as determined by PETA Asia-Pacific:

Gold: Taking the gold is Godly Vegetarian Restaurant. Beijing's oldest Buddhist vegetarian restaurant specializes in Chinese traditional classics, including KingKong HuoFang (stewed mock pork), sweet and sour mock ribs and fish, mock meatballs, mock duck, and much more.

Silver: Pure Lotus Vegetarian Restaurant—run by Tibetan monks—netted the silver. Voted "Best Vegetarian Fare" in the 2007 Beijing Reader Restaurant Awards, this restaurant serves up creatively named dishes such as "hot tears fill the eyes glazed noodles" and "countenance of mercy, words of love stir-fry." Yummy food with a side of zen.

Bronze: Coming in with the bronze is Still Thoughts, a relaxing and intimate oasis of vegetarian calm amidst a bustling alley in the heart of the city. Favorites include the spicy mock-pork intestines dry pot (testament to the fact that for any cruel and weird thing that humans would consider eating, human ingenuity can create a cruelty-free option!), shredded veggie-duck pancakes, and the faux-chicken hot pot.

And on a kinda-sorta related note, here are gold, silver, and bronze naked ladies! They are drawing attention to cruel practices on Chinese fur farms just in time for the Olympic Games:

So, Megan Webb has been crowned the 2008 West Virginia Beef Queen by the West Virginia Cattlemen's Association, and PETA has sent her a letter making it very clear that we've got "beef" with the Mistress of Meat.

We have invited the Beef Queen (I just can't get enough of that title!) to take a page out of our "Vegetarian Starter Kit"—and make the switch to a healthy, humane diet rather than promote cruelty to animals, environmental destruction, and life-threatening diseases—or take on one of our Lettuce Ladies in a tofu-wrestling match.

This earlier bout between a PETA member and a Playboy model will give you an idea of how the beef vs. lettuce throwdown might go:

And the prizes for the wrestling match aren't too shabby either. We've found a reformed rancher who is offering to donate $5,000 to a mutually acceptable charity of the winner's choosing. We've also agreed to let the winner design a meal for the loser. (Yes, we're that confident our Lettuce Lady will win.) And perhaps best of all, the winner will get bragging rights.

Check out the full letter here.

As though it were a gruesome scene in a horror movie, a Canadian Greyhound passenger found himself in the hands of a highly disturbed man this past weekend while en route from Edmonton to Winnipeg. Passengers riding the bus reported that Vince Weiguang Li jumped on top of 22-year-old Tim McLean and began stabbing him repeatedly before cutting off his head and allegedly consuming some of his flesh. Parts of McLean's ear, nose, and mouth were found in Li's pocket.

This tragic incident will certainly leave scars on the minds of the other passengers and the victim's family and friends. While it isn't every day that a human is violently attacked and eaten by another human, it's worth noting that it is the norm for many people not to give any thought to the fact that restaurants are serving flesh that comes from innocents who were minding their own business before someone came after them with a knife. How amazingly and conveniently compartmentalized the human mind is…

To stress this very point, PETA will be running an ad in the Portage Daily Graphic comparing the similarities between this gruesome bus butchering and the acts of cruelty and killing performed every day by the meat industry.

The horror that cows, chickens, and pigs face on factory farms goes on for a long time too. Chickens are violently tossed into cages with dozens of other birds and forced to live amid their own waste. Baby pigs have their testicles ripped out without any painkillers. And male calves are starved and chained inside tiny stalls until their flesh becomes soft and milky white before being slaughtered for someone's veal dinner.

PETA is running the ad to make people rethink the proposition that it is, rightly so, a criminal act to kill and eat our own kind but that it's "OK" to kill every other species but our own and eat them.

View behind-the-scenes footage of the photo shoot here.

Amanda Beard, the incredibly gorgeous U.S. swimmer, has posed naked for a brand-new anti-fur ad, just as the Olympics are about to kick-off in Beijing.

The Olympic gold medalist unveiled the stunning "Be Comfortable in Your Own Skin" ad just hours after Beijing officials stopped her from holding a news conference, reportedly for "safety" reasons. Hmm, what’s so dangerous about a naked lady?! So the swimmer simply moved her location and revealed the stunning ad to a swarm of reporters and TV cameras elsewhere.

Given that Beijing is hosting the Summer Olympic Games this year and the horrific conditions that have been documented on Chinese fur farms, now is a great time to remind folks that animals grow fur to protect themselves from the elements, not to cover 100-lb. fashionistas from paparazzi camera flashes.

The ad shows that she's comfortable in her own skin and doesn't need to steal anyone else's. During the shoot Amanda sat down with us and explained: "I'd much rather go naked than ever put a dead animal on my body." Well said, Amanda!

You can get on board by signing our pledge to go fur-free pledge.

Photos from Amanda's unveiling in Beijing:

Photo Credit: Patrick Alleyn

There's a lot of buzz on the interwebs about Eva Mendes' Calvin Klein ad that showed so much skin, it's been banned from U.S. television.

I just wanted to remind the world that before Eva revealed her smoldering body for CK (a designer who WON'T use fur, by the way), she bared it all for the animals. How hot is Eva?!?!

Not only do PETA and CK share a friendship with Eva and a dislike of fur—PETA has also had one or two ads banned from TV in our day. Heck, who are we kidding—we’ve had dozens. View our favorite banned ads here!

An Excerpt From "Grooming Sounds Grand Until Bowser Gets Baked" (From KP's Dog Blog)

Little Miss came away from her grooming appointment with a broken tail.

I took one look at those dryers in the Today piece and shuddered. I couldn't believe my ears as I watched person after person, including someone from The Humane Society of the United States repeat some version of the mantra, "These cage dryers are safe if used properly."

Excuse me? First of all, the cage dryer has a setting that goes up to 100°F, so it has a built-in setting for death. Secondly, machines malfunction. A groomer might think that the dryer was set at 80°F, but in reality, it might go haywire and shoot up to 100°F or even 135°F. Thirdly, there are many dogs who, for various reasons, are automatically going to be at high risk inside one of these contraptions. These include dogs with flat muzzles, older dogs, dogs with heart problems, dogs with respiratory problems, etc. Finally, the dryers are run by mere mortals, who work for a largely unregulated industry. On any given day, a person can be distracted, tired, hung over, ill, depressed, or just plain stupid—any of which could cause a careless mistake, leading to tragedy…

Read the full entry on KP's Dog Blog.

Snake charmers, fairies, and leprechauns…if you thought all three only existed in the pages of fairytales, here's a surprise. Snake charmers have been and still are entrancing villagers into believing the myth that the sounds from their instrument can hypnotize a snake, who will "dance"—for money, of course.

Sound a little slippery? That's because it is. There is no magic involved, only cruelty. Here's how:

Snakes are trapped and taken from their natural habitats. Their teeth are yanked out without any painkillers, their mouths are often sewn shut (leaving a little gap to pour water or milk down), and their venom ducts are often pierced with a hot needle, causing the glands to burst and incapacitating this animals' most effective defense mechanism. None of the snakes lives very long, and death comes slowly and painfully.

The "dance" these snakes perform is actually a terrified reactive sway to the snake charmer's movements—as a means of self-defense from "attack" by the pipe. Snake charming is so violent, in fact, that the Indian Wildlife Act of 1972 actually banned it. But snake charmers show their disregard for the law and these animals by continuing their cruel ways.

With the upcoming holiday of Naga Panchami, which is held in honor of the Serpent God, PETA India decided to do a little charming of their own by releasing a brand-new ad urging people to boycott snake shows. The ad tells the story of a snake and a snake charmer, played by supermodel Jesse Randhawa and Hollywood/Bollywood dance instructor Sandip Soparrkar, and features the tagline "Snakes Are Not Natural Performers—We Are."

Jesse Randhawa and Sandip Soparrkar say, "Snakes Are Not Natural Performers—We Are," in a new PETA India ad.

The ad sends out a great message to people in India. It points out that a country that has worshipped snakes throughout its history can't "honor" the reptiles with acts of cruelty. Check out PETA India's new mesmerizing ad here!

It's time once again for my PETA Files feature: our Vivisector of the Month contest. Every month, I read up on two of our nation's most vile vivisectors and let you, our dear readers, decide on who is the worst by voting.

Before we begin, I would like to congratulate Michael Weed at Johns Hopkins, who won last month's contest by a landslide. May he forever be recognized for his brilliant work creating a primate crack house—complete with residents infected with the simian form of HIV. Bravo!

What will 17 packs of cigarettes a day do to a monkey? Just ask Marina Picciotto!
CC / My Barina

New Haven, Connecticut, local and Yale professor Marina Picciotto spends her days hidden away in a university laboratory, drugging and tormenting monkeys, mice, and rats—often with the aid of your federal tax dollars! Her chemicals of choice include nicotine, cocaine, morphine, and alcohol—all of which she either feeds or injects into animals before scoring them on bizarre "behavioral assessments," sometimes with the stated goal of making them suffer.

In one study, Picciotto measured despair in mice by making them swim in pools of water with no resting platform or by hanging them from their tails with tape. For each group, despair was measured by how little they were still willing to struggle for self-preservation. In another study, she bored holes into rats' skulls so that she could directly inject chemicals into their brains; she then decapitated the animals and froze their heads. In yet another study, this time on learned helplessness, she exposed mice to 360 inescapable shocks.

Her most stunning experiment involved giving monkeys Kool-Aid mixed with liquid nicotine as a sole source of fluid, with the amount of nicotine ingested by one monkey nearly reaching the equivalent of smoking 17 packs of cigarettes per day. Picciotto conducted this experiment to determine how long one should wait after ingesting nicotine before brain imaging is done, despite the fact that researchers went on to take brain images of human smokers in another experiment that could have provided information without caging and drugging monkeys.

Winston-Salem, North Carolina, resident and Wake Forest assistant professor Allyson Bennett is known for her egregious cruelty to monkeys, but she has also dabbled in torturing rats and mice, making her a great match for Picciotto. Lucky for Bennett, Wake Forest now houses nearly 1,500 monkeys and receives loads of federal funding, so she's unlikely to run out of victims to torment or cash flow to drive her operations.

A queen of seemingly pointless research, Bennett has deprived rats of food for up to two days to observe their consequent behavior in an arena of both food and nonfood objects. To her surprise, food deprivation led animals to come in increased contact with food, despite also inspecting nonfood items out of curiosity. This genius study was funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and conducted at an NIH Animal Center.

In another study, she took baby monkeys away from their mothers and forced them to grow up without parents—causing them emotional distress just so that she could see how this affected right- or left-hand preference. She's even broken new ground in the research world by investigating whether or not adolescent binge-drinking might be bad for you—if you happen to be a monkey, that is.

Will it be Miss Mouse Depression or the Mistress of Starvation? Leave a comment to let me know!

Pamela Anderson, PETA's honorary director, was in Canada, her home country, today. Where'd she have lunch? At a KFC with local animal rights advocates, just to sample the new faux-chicken Classic Vegetarian Sandwich!

For the past five years, Ms. Anderson has been a big part of PETA's international campaign against KFC, whose suppliers have been responsible for some serious Kentucky Fried Cruelty. While the KFC boycott continues to rage outside Canada, the United Purchasing Group of Canada—which is responsible for coordinating the purchasing of all chickens for Canadian KFCs—entered into an agreement with PETA to dramatically improve animal welfare standards and reduce suffering. Yes, before you comment—we'd rather all the KFCs were all-vegan and we'd rather the whole world went vegan. But if you were a chicken with the choice of whether or not you wanted to have a wing painfully broken and be scalded to death, and PETA could help you get that relief but didn't control the whole world, I'm guessing I know which option you'd go for.

The new faux-chicken Classic Vegetarian Sandwich is available at most KFCs in Canada, so head on up north of the border and try one yourself!

It looks like scientists do sometimes spend time on worthwhile projects and have now found that being caged, having your bone marrow sucked out, and being used for bioterrorism research is torture—no matter whom it's being done to.

A recent study showed that 95 percent of 119 chimpanzees who had been used for "research" exhibited the same symptoms as humans who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. This really shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone—I mean, chimpanzees and humans share the same blood types and have at least a 98 percent genetic similarity. Why wouldn't they have shellshock and nightmares if we do?

This study is being presented today at a primate conference in Edinburgh—I hope it shakes things up in some rigid minds!

Update 12/22/2008: Donna Karan has announced that her fall 2009 lines will be fur-free and that she has "no plans" to use fur in the future! Read more.

Today, pajama-clad PETA members paid a visit to Donna Karan at her Intimates and Sleepwear Fashion Show in New York, wielding signs that read, "We're Tired of Your Fur."

Why won't PETA let Karan rest? Because the flip-flopping designer once promised to stop using fur in her designs but has since broken that promise and now uses lots and lots of dead rabbits to line her coats. PETA wants Donna to return to her pre–bunny butcher days and opt for cruelty-free materials instead.

What happens to rabbits and other animals killed for their skin is simply hideous. Animals in the wild are trapped, drowned, or beaten to death, and animals on fur farms are killed by gassing, electrocution, or cervical dislocation (neck-breaking).

Donna's bunnies are probably from a source that does neck-breaking, but whatever the method, we're betting that it's no fun for the bun. And many poor bunnies are even skinned alive in a business that sees them as nothing more than trim and linings. Some people just don't get the horror of the fur industry until they see it for themselves, so please show this video to as many people as you can.

Many top fashion designers—including Calvin Klein, Stella McCartney, Ralph Lauren, and Tommy Hilfiger—are 100 percent fur-free. Gucci is on the way—they have agreed to not use seal fur (ask them to stop using all fur here).

If you didn't make it to the protest in New York, you can definitely still help PETA and our campaign to urge Donna Karan to stop using fur in her designs.

Big thanks to everyone who came out to the demonstration!

An Alabaman evangelist named Anthony Hopkins was apparently arrested last week when his wife—who'd been missing for three years—was reportedly discovered in his freezer. (Now, why does that name sound so familiar…?)

Local police reportedly found the body of what they believe to be Hopkins' wife, a mother of eight, and reportedly arrested him on a murder charge as he preached at a church in southern Alabama. We're not sure what the subject of the sermon was. News reports say he's now sitting in a Mobile County jail, awaiting a bond hearing.

He's not been tried yet, so whether or not he planned on eating her liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti is a matter of speculation.

While people are rightly horrified at the thought of Hopkins' frozen wife, we're hoping that some good might come from pointing out that there's something wrong with stowing away any flesh. To highlight this, PETA has launched a new thought-provoking billboard, which we're attempting to run in Mobile, Alabama. We hope it makes some folks stop and think about how everyone—not just humans—is made of flesh, blood, bone, and emotions.

So, how about trying an easy and tasty vegetarian meal?

Everyone needs to pay attention because this is getting a lot less hype in the media than the original story did. There's scientific evidence to prove what PETA has been saying all along: The recent salmonella outbreak wasn't all about tomatoes or jalapeños but rather contaminated water.

Why is the water contaminated, you ask? Long story short, it's because massive overproduction of factory-farmed animals leads to tons of feces. Cattle are sick (rhymes with "ick"), and so are chickens. Living in filth makes their disease spread. Those tons and tons of contaminated feces then end up in the irrigation water (ick)—the same water that then ends up on the produce (double ick).

The meat industry is the culprit! (I keep hearing my mother's voice in my head ... "If I've told you once, I've told you 1,000 times.") So stop blaming the poor tomatoes already!

Better yet, join the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) in demanding that the Department of Health and Human Services investigate the meat industry—the real reason why our produce is contaminated!

lockeyebc / CC

On Wednesday night's episode of Greatest American Dog, the show actually aired previously taped footage in which Leroy was what I can only call abused by his trainer … what were they thinking?!? PETA received numerous complaints from viewers, and rightfully so. We hope that the executive producer of the show will hear viewers and PETA loud and clear: Abusive behavior against a dog or any other animal is never, ever acceptable. Check out PETA Senior VP Lisa Lange's letter to the show:

August 1, 2008

To: R.J. Cutler, c/o Actual Reality Pictures
From: Lisa Lange

Dear R.J.,

PETA has received numerous calls and e-mails of complaint from viewers of Wednesday night’s Greatest American Dog.

The issue concerns Teresa's treatment of her dog Leroy, specifically spraying him in the face, squirting lemon in his face, turning a vacuum cleaner on him (and then having the nerve to scream at him when he bites her in reaction to the offending loud noise), and forcing him to wear a snarl band. This was all done in a cruel and misguided effort to make him look "angry" for his photo shoot. To make matters worse, Leroy is a border collie—a breed that dog trainers will tell you is especially sensitive to physical manipulation and psychological abuse (e.g., yelling at him for reacting in a way that any frightened dog would when having a vacuum cleaner aimed at him).

This type of behavior must not be allowed on the show, and although we are aware that this episode was taped some time ago, we are calling on you now to have one of the judges make a statement at the beginning of next week's show explaining that this is recognized as abusive behavior, that it will never be allowed to happen again in the house or during judging, and that Teresa will not be eligible for or allowed to appear in the season finale if the season finale is live.

As you well know, many dogs are abused in similar ways by people who have no idea how to humanely train a dog. This sends a dangerous message to people who take their cues from this show, especially considering that Teresa is labeled as a dog trainer/sitter on the show's Web site.

Please let us know right away that you'll be taking these steps, or we'll have no other option than to urge people to boycott the remainder of the season.

May I please hear from you right away?

Sincerely,

Lisa Lange
Senior VP, PETA

speedysigns / CC

Is your state one of the most obese? The study, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, announced that the top 10 most obese states are Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Louisiana, West Virginia, Arkansas, South Carolina, Georgia, Texas, and Oklahoma.

In an effort to combat soaring obesity rates, PETA has sent a letter to the governor of each of the above-mentioned states with an easy solution: Simply promote a vegetarian lifestyle and encourage more vegetarian options within their respective states. Easy as pumpkin pie.

Pam wearing a ‘Ban Horse Drawn Carriages' button

Here's what Pam had to say:

Dear Tony,

I'm in New York this week, and although I dread seeing the carriage horses being forced to work in the summer heat, I'm thrilled that you've introduced a bill to ban this cruel old trade. I hope you're successful in getting New York to join Toronto, Paris, and Beijing in getting horse-drawn carriages off the streets. Good luck and best wishes from me and all your pals at PETA!

Pamela Anderson

Nice work, Pam! Boarding a horse-drawn carriage in a busy city like New York City is as senseless as playing a game of Russian roulette. City noises such as construction, loud music, and even car horns easily spook horses, putting not only horses but also passengers, car drivers, and pedestrians in danger.

Conditions are very cruel for these working animals. Horses are exposed to drastic weather changes and a lack of shade during summer months, and they often do not receive veterinary checkups on a routine basis. Consider this: If you dislike walking on the hot sand during the summer, you better believe that working horses don't enjoy stepping on the city asphalt—which can climb up to 30 degrees warmer than the ambient air temperature. Then try breathing exhaust fumes as you pull a cart.

To show your support for this bill, trot (geddit?) on over to our action alert and contact NYC's VIPs to let them know what you think about horse-drawn carriages. Also check out our NYC Horse Drawn Carriage MySpace page and friend us already!

Posted by Jennifer Cierlitsky