My mom, my sister, and I always used to play "spot the celebrity" in airports. Not real celebrities, necessarily—just people who look like the rich and famous. So, for me, it's only fitting that PETA's new public service announcement—which we had hoped to run in New York City airports during fashion week but was rejected by the CNN Airport Network—is full of real celebrities to spot:

Just in case you need some help, we'll give you a few hints:

1. This person has been called PETA's "weapon of mass distraction" by her pal, PETA V.P. Dan Mathews.
2. This person's "Ink, Not Mink" ad showed us all that he has "Your Name" tattooed on his butt.
3. This musician was one of the first celebrities to get involved with PETA, with her 1987 hit record Don't Kill the Animals.
4. This celebrated writer and comedian firmly established her niche when she recorded a vegetarian testimonial about being Jewish, lesbian, and vegan.
5. This comedian just went viral as a "fried" Ronald McDonald.

So, can you spot all the celebrities?

Posted by Amanda Schinke

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

Robert Dziekanski was killed by a Taser stun gun in a Canadian airport last month. Dziekanski’s death, which has been widely reported after a video of the incident was posted on YouTube last night, is one in a long list of fatalities that have been caused by Taser stun guns. And yet Taser International continues to claim that these weapons are safe, practical tools for law-enforcement. How are they able to do this and get away with it?

The strategy’s pretty simple, actually. For years, Taser International has been funding and performing crude experiments on pigs, horses, and other animals that serve no other purpose than to provide them with “evidence” that their weapons are safe for humans. And yet as Robert Dziekanski’s death shows, the information that Taser International has been able to gather from shocking pigs is utterly useless—except insofar as it serves to protect Taser CEO Rick Smith from mounting public opposition to the use of his dangerous weapons.

The Taser situation is a perfect example of a problem that is endemic to all such animal experimentation. As is the case with so many drugs that go to market after animal testing only to be pulled from the shelves when they’re shown to be dangerous to humans, the results of these experiments have no relevance whatever to how humans will be affected, because (as should be obvious to a first-grader) pigs and horses have fundamentally different physiologies to humans. We just don’t work the same way. And the inevitable result—as we’ve seen time and again—is that companies like Taser International manipulate the data from their meaningless experiments to justify whatever argument they care to make. And people like Robert Dziekanski pay the price.

This video shows one of the hideously cruel experiments that Taser International has been performing on bulls, pigs, and other animals since they first tried to rush their weapon to market. Do we really want to stake our safety on the word of a man who does this?

Answers/Creative Commons

The words "poetic justice" spring to mind. If you missed the story, America's most notorious animal trainer, Jack Hanna, got stuck in an airport turnstile yesterday when he was trying to transport a flamingo in a crate like she was carry-on luggage. Hanna also had a leopard and a mongoose in tow, so the terrified animals had to sit there for God knows how long while firefighters worked to free the flamingo’s crate from the turnstile. Or as he put it:

"I was stuck like a worm. My eyes were as big as grapefruits. I can't describe the feeling in my stomach. I can't move up or down. The bars are on your face."

Boy, it must be really unpleasant to be stuck like that, Jack. I know it’s hard, but see if you can grind those mental gears just a little bit more and think about whether there might be something wrong with the fact that your entire career is based on putting animals through exactly the same kind of nightmare.

I know—those khaki pants and that corny sense of humor make Jack Hanna oh-so-likeable, but the bottom line is that he has a simply lousy track record when it comes to animals. It's abundantly clear from incidents like this one that the animals themselves aren't Hanna's first priority, since he clearly feels comfortable lugging them around in crates to be brought out and paraded around for people's amusement, and it shouldn't take a wildlife expert to figure out that this experience can be immensely stressful for the animals involved. You can click here for some more info about the tawdry exotic-pet trade, which Hanna helps to glamorize by pimping leopards and big snakes on TV.

For future reference, Jack, exotic animals don't belong in crates any more than they belong in a TV studio, no matter how much they pay you. Here's hoping that next time you end up behind bars, it's for good.