With Yom Kippur just around the corner, we'd like to urge all our Jewish readers to speak out against the killing of chickens for kapporos.

Kapporos is a sacrificial ritual that takes place on the eve of Yom Kippur. This ritual is sometimes performed by swinging a live chicken around the head three times and then slaughtering the terrified, abused bird. In Brooklyn alone, 50,000 chickens are killed every year during kapporos ceremonies.

Rabbi Joseph Karo, who composed the Shulchan Aruch (an important codification of Jewish law), wrote that killing an animal for kapporos is "a foolish custom."

Using money instead of live chickens to perform the kapporos ritual is an acceptable substitute for outdated chicken sacrifices, which all compassionate Jews should condemn.

After all, you can't expect forgiveness and mercy when you have blood on your hands.

Posted by Shawna Flavell

csiwhalesalive / CC

After a brief glimmer of hope that the slaughter in Taiji, Japan, would not happen this year, it has belatedly begun. Of the 100 dolphins rounded up so far, half will be released and the other half will be sent to prison aquariums. Fifty pilot whales have been slaughtered.

But there is hope: Worldwide outrage prompted by the recent movie The Cove means that the future of the slaughter is uncertain, according to an anonymous official at the Taiji fisheries association.

There's still work to be done. Please contact your local Japanese embassy and express your disgust over the sale of dolphins to aquariums and the slaughter of pilot whales.

Posted by Shawna Flavell

From the folks at Ecorazzi comes the number-one reason for rushing out to see The Cove: It saves dolphins' lives.

The annual dolphin slaughter in Taiji, Japan, was supposed to start yesterday, but all's quiet in the cove:

ok4me2 / CC

Compare that with last year at this time:

seashepherd / CC

Ric O'Barry, the famous former (and reformed) trainer of TV's Flipper, has been battling Taiji's dolphin slaughter for years. He reports that instead of being filled with dolphin killers, the cove was filled with news reporters, including—for the first time ever—Japanese film crews.

Looks like Japan's dirty secret is no longer a secret.

Posted by Alisa Mullins

As a PETA blogger, I know that male chicks in the egg industry are simply discarded and killed—but knowing about it didn't make watching it any easier.

This new footage from an undercover investigation by Mercy for Animals shows workers at an Iowa hatchery killing 150,000 newborn male chicks every single day.

Chicks born at hatcheries are sent off to slaughter the very day they take their first breath. The only lives these babies know is one in which they are sorted and handled like pieces of garbage. Workers grab them by their wings, toss them onto conveyor belts, and throw them down a chute to spend their final moments in a grinding machine—in which they are ground up while they are still alive.

All this is standard procedure, widely accepted at commercial hatcheries and within the bounds of animal welfare laws. The egg industry considers male chicks to be useless because they don't lay eggs and can't be raised profitably for meat. Their sisters are not exactly lucky to remain alive.

For anyone who thinks that eating eggs doesn't kill animals, millions of male chicks each year are born in hatcheries and promptly thrown into the blades of giant garbage disposals.

Egg-free recipes, anyone?

Posted by Heather Drennan

If you visited PETA's Web site during the month of November, you probably saw turkey slaughter footage. And no, I don't mean Sarah Palin's infamous turkey pardon fail.

But have you ever seen slaughter footage from Turkey? Turns out animals are killed as cruelly there as anywhere else.

This video was taken in a slaughterhouse in Turkey, but pointlessly cruel abuse like this can happen to any animal anywhere—from the 8-day-old calf who was beaten and kicked while on her way to slaughter in the U.K., to the conscious chicken plunged into scalding-hot water in an Indian slaughterhouse, to any of the animals enduring the many horrific abuses we've documented in the U.S. at Pilgrim's Pride, Smithfield Foods, Butterball, and AgriProcessors facilities, among others.

If this video upsets you, please run, don't walk, over to GoVeg.com and order a copy of our free "Vegetarian Starter Kit." For those of you who are already vegetarians, keep this video handy and show it to the next person who asks you why you refuse to eat anybody who had a mother.

Posted by Jeff Mackey

Our recent undercover investigation, which revealed exactly what happens to horses abandoned by the coldhearted racing industry, has been picked up by a variety of news outlets, but we were particularly glad to see this piece featured on ESPN's Outside the Lines:

Maybe now more sports fans will recognize that horse racing is anything but sporting—especially for the thousands of horses who meet tragic ends every year—and perhaps they'll join us in calling for an end to these abuses.

Posted by Jeff Mackey

We all know about the horrific treatment of animals killed for human consumption, but a lot of us dog guardians haven't stopped to think about what we're feeding Fido for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Recently, a University of Florida student investigated Moses Dog Food company (based in Ocala, Florida) to find out what's in your dog's bowl. Check out the video below to see what the student discovered:

The majority of dog and cat food comes from factory farm–raised animals who failed to meet standards for human consumption, falling into one of the "Four D's" categories—dead, dying, diseased, or disabled. Does that sound like something you'd want to feed your dog?

Luckily, there are plenty of humane non-animal alternatives available, such as the legendary V-Dog vegan dog food available on our Web site. We've also got vegan pig ears and treats for you to stock up on—so get shopping!

For the rest of the investigator's photos and contact information for the company so that you can voice your concerns, please visit "The Meat They Eat."

Posted by Liz Graffeo

The moose-hunting, fur-wearing, pro-aerial-wolf-gunning governor is in the news again. On Thursday, Sarah Palin visited a turkey farm in Wasilla for the traditional pre-Thanksgiving turkey "pardoning." Now, most people probably don't think about exactly how the turkeys raised for Thanksgiving dinner every year meet their maker. But not to worry. Sarah has that under control. In this video, while responding to a reporter who asks about her post-election plans, Palin talks about how she wants to "promote a local business" and do something that won't "invite criticism." While turkeys are being slaughtered. Behind her. ON CAMERA.

Was that one of those "gotcha" questions, Sarah? Because it seems to me that showing the bloody reality of slaughter is just about the worst thing you could do to promote this business. Some people just won't want to eat turkey after watching—especially when this happened the day after PETA released new undercover video from the world's leading poultry-breeding facility. In that video, workers stomp on turkeys' heads, punch them, and bang their heads against metal scaffolding.

This is a country of people who love animals—in fact, numerous polls show that the overwhelming majority of Americans believe that farmed animals deserve protection from abuse. The more that people are confronted with the ways that animals who are raised for food suffer—from the moment they're born until the moment they're killed—the more that people will start thinking about giving vegetarian meals a try. And then the factory farming industry will need a bigger bailout than the "Big Three."

Posted by Dan Shannon

P.S.—Sarah Palin should take a cue from our own "President Bush," whose turkey-pardoning this year really was a "mission accomplished."

PETA’s Investigator Inside the Slaughterhouse

Last week, PETA revealed shocking footage taken inside a South American slaughterhouse which exports kosher meat to the U.S. The abuse our investigator found was especially horrific due to the use of a method called "shackling and hoisting," which is extremely painful and frightening for the animals. I spoke with the investigator yesterday to discuss his experiences working on this case:

What was the most difficult thing about this investigation for you?

Being Jewish, I grew up believing that kosher food was better supervised and therefore cleaner, healthier and produced more humanely. Like the famous kosher slogan, I thought the kosher food industry always “answered to a higher authority.” It was disillusioning to see, yet again, such callous violations of the most fundamental Jewish principles, such as tsa’ar ba’alei chayim (kindness to animals) and to witness this horror face-to-face with the tortured animals.

Why did you agree to do this investigation?

As someone who keeps kosher, I feel ashamed and embarrassed that the kosher food industry has been complicit in some of the worst farmed animal abuses. PETA has been instrumental in bringing about humane improvements to kosher slaughter within the United States and much of that has been due to our undercover investigations. We have also tried for years behind the scenes to get the important companies to end this hideous “shackle and hoist” kosher slaughter method in South America but unfortunately these companies were more concerned with hiding what goes in their slaughterhouses. Undercover footage is the best way to expose the truth and ultimately hold people accountable to make conditions less cruel for the animals. I desperately want kosher food to live up to the highest standards and I know other kosher consumers demand the same.

You can watch the results of the investigation below, and if you’d like to take action, please click here to write to Jewish leaders asking them to enforce tougher standards on kosher slaughterhouses like this one to ensure that these horrors never happen again.

Hey, I had to use that subject line at some point. Cut me some slack here. The reference is to a fantastic piece by Bill Maher that appeared in yesterday’s Huffington Post, asking George Bush to pardon all the turkeys. Here’s an excerpt:

"I ask you to do what I'm going to do and pardon a turkey this Thanksgiving. It's not hard. Just eat something else (ideas here and here). Not someone else, because it doesn't seem fair to spare a turkey and roast a hunk of pig or cow instead. If we can bow our heads in gratitude for our families, our friends and our big screen TVs, and then carve into a creature who lived a miserable life and died a horrible death, then our ethics are about as sensible as Britney's parenting skills."

You can read the full post here, and be sure to leave a comment telling Bill Maher he’s a badass. Or something more eloquent. In making the case for a vegetarian Thanksgiving, Bill’s piece refers to our investigation into a Butterball factory farm that was a central theme of the recent HBO documentary about PETA, as well as a brand-new PETA investigation into a standard American turkey slaughterhouse, which is required viewing for anyone who is still thinking about cooking a turkey for dinner this Thanksgiving:

Other Viewing Options

When I walked by my boss Ingrid’s office this morning and heard “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys” blaring, I knew something fishy was going on . . .

Well, toss your cowboy hat in the air, crank up “On The Road Again” and holler yee haw! Willie Nelson (Yes, THE Willie Nelson) and his daughter have been trying to close horse slaughterhouses in Texas for many years, and today their efforts and the efforts of everyone who was fighting right alongside them won out! The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has ruled that the old law on the Texas books prohibiting the operation of these hideous places is valid—meaning that the two remaining horse slaughterhouse in the state have to close! The only other option the horse butchers have is to try their luck in the Supreme Court, but I really don’t see that happening.

To celebrate, I’m throwing a huge party this weekend, and I just bought “Mama Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys” to start getting pumped up for the big event.

I just love that Willie and his family have worked so hard to help horses. Thank you, guys!