… But PETA Germany's spunky supporters—including Jana from Germany's Big Brother—were still willing to brave the fall chill in Düsseldorf to call attention to Canada's seal slaughter.

Forget the fur—boots and scarves prevent frostbite just fine.

These gals and other caring people distributed postcards (which were addressed to the Canadian Embassy in Berlin) urging government officials to stop the slaughter. Hopefully, each passerby who picked one up put it in the mailbox.

Not quite ready to strip for the cause? Fear not—there are many other ways to call for an end to the seal slaughter.

Posted by Amanda Schinke

By now, the whole world knows about the horrors of the Canadian seal slaughter. With demonstrations taking place around the world, it's pretty hard not to notice. Our friends in Canada, Germany, and cities across the U.S. have been out on the streets to spread the word. Check out some photos of recent demonstrations, and then visit our Action Center online to find out how you can organize your own protest.

We love LUSH for being cruelty-free, and now we love the cosmetics maker even more for teaming up with Sea Shepherd to save seals.

This concerned citizen in Detroit is holding a "hakapik," a club with a hook on the end that sealers use to bludgeon seal pups.

Our friends at PETA Germany showed up in full force to defend seals.

Londoners certainly know how to make a statement!

This Chicago demo brought tears to the eyes of onlookers. One passerby even took up a poster and joined the protest.

Inspired yet? Take a minute to read the words of a Canadian who opposes the seal slaughter, and then take action by telling the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee that you won't support the Olympic Games until Canada stops supporting the seal slaughter.

Posted by Lianne Turner

Back in 2004, PETA launched our Holocaust on Your Plate (HOYP) traveling display, which juxtaposes images of animals in slaughterhouses and factory farms with images of humans in Nazi concentration camps. The display was inspired by a passage from Nobel-prize–winning Jewish author Isaac Bashevis Singer's book, The Letter Writer: "In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka." This struck a chord with one of our Jewish staffers, who proposed the idea of creating a display that he hoped would encourage people to consider that the same mindset that allows the routine and systematic murder of animals also allows the routine and systematic murder of human beings.

The HOYP display—which was also funded by a Jewish PETA member—traveled all over the U.S., where it sparked a tremendous amount of debate and discussion about both animal rights and human rights issues. Then across the pond, PETA Germany took the idea and ran with it. And that's where the trouble began. Yesterday, Germany's high court banned PETA Germany’s Holocaust display, stating that it would have made "the fate of the victims of the Holocaust appear banal and trivial."

This ruling left the staffers of our German affiliate scratching their heads, because the display only renders the humans' suffering "banal and trivial" if the animals' suffering is considered banal and trivial. Which is the whole point of the display …

Anyway, PETA Germany is, of course, appealing the ruling, and it is confident that free speech will win out in the end.

So what do you think, PETA Files readers? Did the campaign go too far? Was the German high court justified in banning it—or should free speech have reigned supreme?

Posted by Amanda Schinke

Stefan Bröckling with a rescued swan

Working with the Düsseldorf duck hotline (best duck hotline name ever, don't you think?), PETA Germany campaigner Stefan Bröckling has rescued four swans at the port of Neuss. The birds were sitting at the water's edge, totally exhausted, their feathers covered in what appeared to be cooking oil.

PETA Germany became involved after a Frau Münchs noticed an oily surface on the water and then saw eight swans with very wet-looking feathers—not at all typical for water birds—trying vigorously to groom themselves. And this wasn't the first time: Last year, at least six swans were affected in a similar incident there.

Ms. Münchs contacted local officials who gave her the ol' runaround before someone at the harbormaster's office finally admitted that a broken filter at an oil production company had leaked oil into the water. The office claimed, however, that the oil had since been removed and that they considered the situation to be under control, adding that the oil is supposed to degrade by itself in the bird's feathers.

Nice try, but we'd have to call Stier Scheiße (you will have to look that up) on that old line …

Or, as PETA Germany's Stefan put it: "That's simply wrong; the oil decomposes the protecting layer of fat within water birds' feathers and soaks in deeper and deeper as time passes. The feathers soak up water like a sponge; the swans lose body temperature and die in the end."

Stefan rescued four swans, but one had already died and the three other oiled birds are still missing. PETA Germany is now looking into filing a complaint for cruelty to animals against the oil producers as well as pushing officials to take the dumping of cooking oils more seriously.

It's a good thing that Ms. Münchs was vigilant and blew the whistle. If you want to know more about how to help wildlife, check this out.

Posted by Jeff Mackey

allmoviephoto / CC

The soup kitchen receives much of its food through company sponsorships and has already proven vital to the Berlin community. Much like soup kitchens that are geared toward humans, Animal Board is reducing the number of hungry dogs one meal at time.

It's no surprise that when bills are high and the economy isn't exactly booming, money woes extend to all members of the family, including animal companions. The free services of the soup kitchen might just reduce the number of animals who are deserted, turned out, or given up by guardians for financial reasons. We'll have to wait and see. But for now, we're excited to see more compassionate individuals looking out for dogs. We give the kind folks at Animal Board two furry paws up.

Posted by Jennifer Cierlitsky

Always a bit of a wild child, PETA Germany definitely has a flare for the exotic. Just take a look at these anti-zoo, anti-circus "Exotic Animals Belong in Liberty" ads. They featured a menagerie of MTV Germany and VIVA music channel hosts painted as exotic animals (my fave is the contemplative tiger). They were recently published in the German TV magazine TV Digital. Way to go, PETA G!

Posted by Amy Elizabeth

kdrv / CC

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

And remember: Pels Ud, Kaerlighed Ind!

Some more pics and video at these sites, which are presumably more informative if you speak German Danish.

http://politiken.tv/nyheder/indland/article470983.ece
http://galleri.tv2.dk/index.php/category-Nyhederne/id-10407233/page-1.html

Update: I just heard from my friend Harald at PETA Germany that the kind soul who rescued the lobsters is a PETA Germany activist! So, if you’re reading this, anonymous German lobster-liberating activist: Danke! From der bottom of mein heart.

It’s been a good month for lobsters. Well, insofar as it’s possible to have a good month when your people are routinely boiled alive and made into bisque. Let’s call it a “slightly better” month than usual. First, a study published in New Scientist proved what we all know already: that lobsters feel pain (scientists are sometimes a bit slower to catch on than the rest of us—they are a methodical people). And now, there’s news from Stuttgart, Germany, that dozens of lobsters escaped from an Asian supermarket out into the street, where they were rescued and sent to an animal sanctuary. Here’s how our good friends at Der Spiegel described the incident:

“The clawed crustaceans, some of them up to 15 centimeters long, managed to crawl out of their crates, which had been poorly secured with wire mesh, then scurried across the floor of the supermarket and squeezed through the metal shutters covering the front of the store. The front door had been left open by mistake.”

Congratulations, lobsters! We’re all pulling for you. We’re all pulling for you. And for more on this story, Stephen Colbert, ladies and gentlemen:

I think I've talked before about how amazing PETA Germany is at coming up with stuff that's totally out of left field. They're literalists, when it comes to demonstrations, and the results are often indescribably compelling. Faced with the problem of how to convey to people just how gruesome the force-feeding of ducks for foie gras is, the Germans simply brushed aside all objections and created the world's first-ever Force-Feeding Demo. Great work, PETA G. You guys rule.

We just had our monthly staff meeting last week, where everyone gives a presentation about what their departments have been up to and shows pictures and video of the highlights of last month's work. We also get some reports on what PETA's affiliates around the world are up to, and there's usually something really, profoundly weird and compelling that they came up with (I'm looking at you in particular PETA Germany). Anyway, these are all old stories that made big headlines in their respective countries, but I got a real kick out of them, so I figured I'd share:

PETA Asia Pacific's Jason Baker, dressed in a chicken costume, was attacked by angry KFC employees at a demonstration in Egypt. This story is funnier if you actually know Jason, though of course there's a whole big WTF KFC? element to it as well:

PETA India made a headdress out of vegetables for supermodel and actor Aditi Govritikar to wear in their newest ad campaign: Use Your Head, Go Veg. Fundamentally odd as that sounds, the picture is actually really striking, and Aditi looks stunning:

And finally, PETA Germany, which never, ever disappoints, held a hilarious demo outside the offices of Agriculture Minister Horst Seehofer, who has been trying to reverse the ban on battery cages for egg-laying hens in Germany. Seehofer has also been in the German press lately for upsetting his wife by getting his mistress pregnant, so PETA Germany stood outside his office on Valentine's Day with a big sign asking him to "Have a heart for animals, not just for women." Priceless.