"Why is PETA always doing crazy stunts and demonstrations?" As a PETA Foundation employee, this is probably the number-one question I get asked. So, if you are one of those curious folks—or even if you just don't know what I'm talking about when I say "wacky PETA stunts"—you're in for a treat, because I'm about to give you the rundown of the wackiest of the wacky things that PETA and its affiliates have pulled off over the years.

Brace yourself.

10. Wienermobile Takeover
    
    Long before the Wienermobile nearly brought about its own demise by crashing into a suburban home, we trailed it around the country as it conducted a talent search for children to sing the Oscar Mayer theme song. At one stop, our "pig" even managed to clamber aboard the Wienermobile, and he was poised to take the fiberglass frank for a spin when he was apprehended by the authorities.
9. Grim Fairy Tale
   
   Mother Goose doesn't take it too kindly when her feathered brethren are force-fed so that their grotesquely enlarged livers can be sliced up and served on toast points. When she took her case to a foie gras convention in NYC, bemused police officers felt obliged to arrest her and insisted that she keep her head on during booking so that everybody in the precinct could get a "gander" at their unusual collar.
8. Cannibal Comparison
   
   Way back in 1991, when newspapers were abuzz with stories about Jeffrey Dahmer, we ran what is arguably our most controversial ad ever. In it, we made the point that people who are creeped out by a cannibalistic serial killer should also be creeped out by the serial killings of thousands of animals in slaughterhouses every day. Strangely, some folks found this inconvenient truth a little hard to, er, swallow.
7. KKKrazy About Dogs
   
   Ever notice the eerie similarities between the AKC and the KKK? No? Well, our fiendishly funny "Wrong Meeting?" TV ad, in which a Klansman shows up at an AKC meeting, spells it all out.
6. Milk Gone Wild
   
   When PETA's "Milk Gone Wild" spoof was rejected by Super Bowl censors, so many people flocked to MilkGoneWild.com to see what could possibly be racier than Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction that they temporarily crashed our servers.
5. Unhappy Mother's Day
   
   How do you spend Mother's Day if you are eight months pregnant? How about by baring it all in London to protest the filthy, cramped gestation crates that pregnant sows are forced to live in?
4. The M-Word
   
   After celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey served horse meat on his U.K. show The F-Word, PETA Europe made sure that everyone knew Ramsey was "full of it" when they dumped a ton of manure at his restaurant's doorstep.
3. Rest in Pieces
   
   PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk gave people food for thought when she released the contents of her will, which stipulates, among other things, that her feet be made into umbrella stands and that her pointing finger (no, not that finger) be mounted and sent to Ringling chief Kenneth Feld as a reminder of who's to blame for the deaths of 26 elephants (and counting).
2. Putting the 'Ma' in 'Vermont'
   
   When we told Ben and Jerry's that "breast is best" and asked them to start making their ice cream with (human) mother's milk, it turned into a breast-milk brouhaha.
1. Faux Father Furor
   
   PETA V.P. Dan Mathews was a man (of the cloth) on a mission when he talked his way into furry designer Gianfranco Ferré's 2004 Milan fashion show and leaped onto the catwalk. As security guards tackled him and tried to drag him off, they were attacked by outraged Italians who swatted them with their programs while shouting, "Leave the priest alone!"

smh.com.au / CC

If all this has left you wondering, "Why pick on cranky chefs and giant hot dogs, PETA?" you should check out The PETA Practical Guide to Animal Rights. The book explains why our passion for animal rights drives us to push the envelope—and push compassion into the public consciousness.

So which is your favorite PETA stunt? Spill it below.

Posted by Alisa Mullins

Apparently, NBC has something against girls who love their veggies. After we submitted our proposed Super Bowl ad, which features a comely crop of models demonstrating their fondness for fresh produce, NBC nixed the ad, saying it "depicts a level of sexuality exceeding our standards." No joke, this is straight from NBC—so stop fondling your fruit salad right now and read the list of shots NBC requested we cut before they’d reconsider:

• licking pumpkin


• touching her breast with her hand while eating broccoli


• pumpkin from behind between legs


• rubbing pelvic region with pumpkin


• screwing herself with broccoli (fuzzy)


• asparagus on her lap appearing as if it is ready to be inserted into vagina


• licking eggplant


• rubbing asparagus on breast

Wow, that list even made us blush! You can read the full NSFW letter from NBC here and then watch the video out to see what the controversy is all about.

OK, I'll admit, it's not the Jonas Brothers eating apple pie, but it sure does drive home the fact that vegetarians make better lovers. And I'm pretty sure that most Super Bowl fans would find the ad a lot more appealing than the impotence and other not-so-sexy effects that a steady stream of chicken wings and burgers can have on their love lives.

Why so grouchy NBC? Sounds like someone’s not getting enough um…vegetables. I’m thinking network execs could really benefit from a broccoli booty call.

That said, what do you think about our sexy Super Bowl ad? Do you agree with NBC's decision to reject it?

Posted by Amy Elizabeth

Those boots may be made for walkin', but were they made from an animal's sensitive skin? That may be the big question in the minds of travelers shuffling through the Memphis International Airport in the coming months.

In lieu of the nation's financial crunch, the Transportation Security Administration has decided to allow advertising on the shoe/belt/bag bins at security checkpoints in order to bring in extra revenue. Well, you can bet we're already all over this one!

In PETA's letter to the CEO of Memphis International Airport, we are requesting the right to advertise an anti-leather ad (shown below) on the shoe bins. The ad features the photograph of a "missing" calf named Charlie, who was pulled away from his mother, most likely branded without any pain relief, and eventually slaughtered for his meat. And his skin was made into someone's shoes, belt, or jacket—the very same items that get tossed into the bins at security checkpoints.

Airport advertising has the potential to reach gazillions of people, and by placing our ad in such a highly visible location we can help high-flyers get the message that leather kills—and make them think twice about their next purchases. Gorgeous, durable, cruelty-free shoes await their feet. Besides, the production of leather is catastrophic to the environment; planting a carbon offset tree for flight miles won't cover that!

Posted by Jennifer Cierlitsky

Just in time for the release of Saw V and the craziness of the Halloween horror-movie season, PETA will be running one of our creepy KFC ads in movie theaters in Baltimore and Denver for the next four weeks. This will really make horror-movie lovers think about the horror that chickens go through just to end up in a greasy KFC bucket.

While people cringe in their seats at the blood and guts on screen, hopefully they'll think back to the ad and realize that the same bloody butchering scene goes on in slaughterhouses every day.

Check out the ad here and tell us what you think:

Posted by Christine Doré

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

If you're looking for a good time, or maybe just an entertainment center, Craigslist is usually a great place to start. But there's a really worrying side to the online community that has directly facilitated a number of extremely disturbing cases of cruelty to animals.

Craigslist's "free to a good home" ads seem innocuous at first glance, but the fact is that giving away animals over the Internet to anyone who so much as expresses an interest is just unbelievably irresponsible, and Craigslist's ads have resulted in such hideous animal abuse cases as the recent torture and mutilation of three gray tabbies in Austin, including a 3-year-old cat named Taylor (pictured), who were evidently obtained through one of these "free to a good home" ads.

PETA has been begging the company for years to implement a policy prohibiting these ads for exactly this reason, but thus far Craigslist has done nothing beyond posting a mild warning about giving away animals on their site. So we're stepping it up a notch. If you have a moment, please click here to tell Craigslist to immediately ban these ads from its site before the company sees another incident like the Austin case.

PETA's Senior Vice President Lisa Lange was on The O'Reilly Factor last night to talk about two of our latest ads, a sexy veggie testimonial starring Alicia Silverstone and a racy new promo for our Animal Birth Control (ABC) Campaign featuring burlesque dancer Dita Von Teese. The question at issue was whether these ads were somehow offensive. O'Reilly himself was very fair and balanced about the whole thing, and even made some positive comments about the animal protection movement, and Lisa did a great job of explaining why she believes that there's nothing wrong with a beautiful woman using sex appeal to make a point.

In fact, the only person who came out of the show looking bad was that Queen of Prudes, Fox News' Kirsten Powers, who was so scandalized by the super-sexy Dita Von Teese ad that she could barely string together a coherent sentence. Powers' blustering aside, I do think O'Reilly's question is an important one, and it's something we take very seriously at PETA. The way I see it, both Alicia's veggie PSA and Dita Von Teese's ABC ad are tasteful, professional, and, honestly, stunning, each in their own way. They do what ads are supposed to do—they grab your attention and they generate discussion about the issue.

Anyway, I'd love to hear what people think about this tactic. It won't mean that we're going to stop running sexy ads for our different campaigns to help animals (I'm busy working away on the script for next year's "State of the Union Undress" right now), but a little bit of healthy debate never hurt nobody. Except Kirsten Powers.

See Also

Politics of Power and PETA
A Photo Gallery of PETA's Naked Campaigns
Animal Rights Uncompromised: PETA's Tactics

Because milk doesn't actually help you lose weight, which makes the ads ("Milk your diet. Lose weight!) just a teensy bit misleading. Here's how it went down, according to The New York Times: The ads, which were overseen by our old friends the USDA (whom you may remember from such hijinx as failing to enforce their animal welfare regulations and having lousy, inadequate regulations in the first place) made claims such as that three servings of dairy products a day can help people stay thin, and featured celebrities such as Yankees superstar Alex Rodriguez to help promote those claims. But, two years after the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine petitioned the F.T.C. to argue that the ads were misleading (on the grounds that there's just no substantial scientific evidence for the claim), the Dairy Council has decided to withdraw the ads "until further research provides stronger, more conclusive evidence of an association between dairy consumption and weight loss." Here's what PCRM's president, Dr. Neal Barnard had to say:

“I think people will start to recognize that the dairy industry, which used to have a mom-and-pop image, is a huge commercial entity that will exaggerate to sell its products.”

This isn't the first case of misleading ads from the Dairy Industry. You may remember the "Happy Cows" ads from the California Milk Board, which had the tagline "Great cheese comes from happy cows" and the insidious implication that the living conditions for California's dairy cows made them happy—which is like saying that Abu Ghraib was a five star hotel. Though PETA sued the Milk Board in that case, it was eventually decided that the state is exempt from its own false-advertising laws, so the ads were allowed to stand. I’m not even kidding. As you can imagine, watching the Dairy Industry finally being held accountable for its misleading advertising is immensely satisfying. Let's hope this trend continues.