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

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

This one's a beauty. Vanessa Carlton, whose latest album, Heroes and Thieves, has been making critics go all gooey for a few months now, is the star of a new PETA ad to help prevent animal overpopulation as part of our Animal Birth Control Campaign. Check it:

And just so you can have it playing in your head for the rest of the week, here's A Thousand Miles.

There’s just so much to say about last night, and so little that has anything to do with the subject matter generally covered by this here blog. But Michael Strahan did get himself a key sack and another well-deserved ring … and we love Michael Strahan here at PETA. So, even though my blood runs burgundy and gold, I’m going to go right ahead and say congratulations, the New York Giants. That was amazing. Now here’s Michael:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here we go again.

Every so often, someone sets up a hoax website like Bonsai Kitten, which purported to be changing the shapes of cats by putting them in jars, Save Toby (that guy who claimed he was gonna kill his pet rabbit unless people sent him cash), and Kitty Beef (my personal favorite—the title kind of speaks for itself), and a lot of people get (understandably) very upset about the whole thing. Well, there’s a new kid on the block now, and this one may be the most interesting of them all, because it draws attention to a little-known aspect of the animal-experimentation business that really reveals a lot about the whole sick industry.

IBuyStrays.com is a hoax. Just to be clear on this, it’s not a real site. The person who set it up doesn’t really buy stray cats and dogs to sell to animal experimenters. So there’s no need for alarm on that front. But sadly, the situation it describes is very real. As many as 115 million animals are experimented on and killed in laboratories in the U.S. every year. Not that it makes any difference, ethically speaking, but a large number of these animals are cats and dogs, and a great many of those cats and dogs come from the streets, from animal shelters, and from people’s back yards.

Class B animal dealers, or “Bunchers,” are licensed by the USDA to obtain dogs and cats from “random sources,” which are defined as “animal pounds or shelters, auction sales, or from any person who did not breed and raise them on his or her premises.” And many states allow “pound seizure,” which means that the shelters are required by law to turn over certain animals to experimenters on demand.

So my point here is that anyone who’s shocked or upset by IBuyStrays.com should direct their attention towards the animal experimentation industry itself. Although it may be a bit tactless, the site isn’t doing any actual harm—in fact, if you ask me, it’s doing a good thing by making people aware of the fact that the horrific circumstances which it ironically depicts are a daily occurrence. And there is something we can do about it. To learn more about how you can help animals suffering in labs, check out StopAnimalTests.com, and if you haven’t already, you can click here to pledge to boycott products that are tested on animals.

Some Other Helpful Links

IBuyStrays.com Is a Hoax
What Is Pound Seizure?
More on Bunchers
List of Cruelty-Free Products
Testing … One, Two, Three
Moshe Solomonow’s Experiments on Cats from a Class B Dealer

The British Olympic committee is off to a lovely start. They’ve evidently refused to allow an animal rescue group to save feral cats living in a colony on the future site of Olympic Park in London. What this means, in effect, is that these animals will be starved, crushed, and buried before building begins for the British Olympics. Not exactly the most auspicious foundation on which to construct the British Olympic hopes—and, given that an animal rescue group is standing by to take care of the problem in a humane way, it’s just not an acceptable way of carrying on.

Please click here to tell the British Olympic Delivery Authority to stop being such a bunch of heartless bureaucrats and allow the Celia Hammond Animal Trust to save the feral cats at Olympic Park before demolition begins. Thanks.

I have to admit that I don’t have a very good head for figures, but the math here seems pretty straightforward. And while we’re talking numbers, selling people dogs and cats when there are between 6 and 8 million waiting for homes in shelters every year is about as dumb as shelling out a thousand dollars for an animal at Petland when you could be rescuing one of the 3 to 4 million who will be euthanized this year for lack of a good home.

These pics are from Friday’s demonstration outside an Orlando Petland where we debuted our new “Priceless” ads, which make a simple but effective point to potential pet store customers.

Right now, anyone who wants can walk into any Petland store in America and buy an animal with a credit card as if they were picking up the latest Britney Spears single. What ends up happening is that, much like the new Britney joint, these animals get discarded, cast aside, or returned to the store at the earliest opportunity. With more than 6 million cats and dogs turned in to shelters every year in the U.S., stores like Petland are already an unpleasant example of ethics and social responsibility taking a back seat to making easy money, but the very least that they can do is implement some basic, commonsense policies that will help to prevent the animals they sell from ending up with someone who’s going to neglect them, dump them at a shelter, or worse.

We’re asking the company to ban the use of credit cards to purchase live animals, implement a 24-hour waiting period on live-animal purchases, and spay or neuter puppies and kittens before release. If you’d like to contact Petland yourself about these issues, you can do so here. It’s not a lot to ask of a multi-million dollar corporation, but it will make a world of difference for the animals.

We've just learned that the Georgia Department of Agriculture (GDA) and its commissioner, Tommy Irvin, have been found in contempt of court by Judge Tom Campbell of Fulton County Superior Court. This ruling comes after a more than seven-month legal battle that began when PETA received reports that dogs and cats were being cruelly and illegally gassed to death by various pounds and shelters in Georgia and that the Georgia Department of Agriculture was not upholding a 17-year-old law, the 1990 Humane Euthanasia Act.

The lawsuit was filed by Law firm Schiff Hardin LLP in Atlanta on behalf of two plaintiffs: a former Clayton County Humane Society employee—whose dog was hit by a car and then killed in one of the gas chambers—and former state representative Chesley Morton, who introduced Georgia’s Humane Euthanasia Act in 1990. PETA sent a cease-and-desist letter to Cobb County on April 5 requesting assurance that the shelter would comply with the law, but the letter and subsequent communications were simply ignored on the basis of a "grandfather clause," which the county incorrectly claimed gave them an exemption from using humane methods of euthanasia.

It is simply incredible that private citizens had to go to court to get the department to abide by the very laws it is charged with enforcing, but the recent announcement that the GDA is finally being held accountable for their actions is a major victory, and hopefully it will help to shed some light on the brazen disregard for the law and for animal suffering that places like Cobb County have been getting away with for years in a crude attempt to deal with the cat-and-dog overpopulation crisis. Euthanasia is a tragic necessity while 6-8 million animals are abandoned in shelters in the U.S. alone every year and breeders continue to manufacture more for profit, but unwanted animals discarded by society must be offered a dignified, humane exit if death is the best we can offer them. There is no excuse for employing inhumane methods which simply prolong and intensify the suffering of these unwanted animals.

You can click here to see footage (taken in Yadkin County, North Carolina), which shows the horrific practice of using carbon monoxide gas chambers to kill animals. The GDA has simply ignored an act which prohibits this kind of "euthanasia" method in contempt of the law and in a complete violation of the public trust.

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.

Sometimes it’s kind of hard for people to make the connection between their pets and the animals they eat, so here are some masks our Production department made to help with that. What do you think?

If you haven’t heard about the little tiff we’re having with eBay at the moment, the point of contention is that the company refuses to prohibit the sale of live cats and dogs—as well as items lined with dog fur—on its Chinese website. Which, honestly, this is really an issue that everyone can get on board with, especially once you see the photos posted by eBay sellers showing animals chained to cages on the streets, puppies trapped in wire-bottomed cages, and other horrors that would be more suitable in an animal-cruelty case file than on an international auction site that’s supposed to have a code of ethics. Well, since the company has been turning a deaf ear to our pleas, this morning, we took them straight to the shareholders: Our fearless campaigner Deedra spoke at the Boston eBay shareholder meeting, while my friends Melissa and Julie stood outside to let passersby know exactly what’s going on at eBay China. Check it out, and if you’d like to write to eBay about this issue, click here.

Princess Cuteyface: You can take the cat off the streets, but you can't take the street out of the cat

I hope day 2 of Be Kind to Animals Week is treating you well. This one's a wee bit controversial, but I thought it would be a good time to address the issue of purebred animals, especially given some of the surprising comments I've been seeing from so-called "responsible" breeders on a recent entry about some landmark legislation that's being pushed through in California to help cats and dogs. PETA's position on "responsible" breeding is that there just ain't no such thing, because every animal that a breeder sells means an animal in a shelter who won’t find a home. The harsh reality of the situation is that, with 6 to 8 million animals handled by animal shelters in the United States every year—3 to 4 million of whom won't make it out alive—deliberately breeding cats and dogs is about as irresponsible (and frankly, cruel) as it gets.

Anyway, without getting too preachy here, one great way to celebrate Be Kind to Animals Week is, if you or anyone you know is thinking about getting a pet, be sure to adopt them from a shelter. And if you happen to be running a breeding operation, frickin' stop it.

Here's a link to some more info on the topic. And here's a link (this one kind of dates me) to the only good kind of Breeders. Kim Deal rocks.