No matter what your stance is on the highly controversial U.S.-Mexican border fence project, everyone can agree that those who decide to come to the U.S. should be warned about the downside of our nation's meat and milk consumption habits. PETA is warning immigrants that there's much more to worry about than proper documentation.

We've written a letter to the commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection asking to buy space at each of the nine southwest border sectors for our new ad. Those considering entry will then read this message: "If the border patrol doesn't get you, the chicken and burgers will. Go vegan" (or, in Spanish, "Si no te agarra la migra, te atraparan el pollo y las hamburguesas. Sé vegano").

Spanish version

English version

By leaving behind a far healthier staple diet of vegetables and grains—like rice, beans, corn, peppers, and tortillas—Mexicans and other immigrants will likely find themselves fattening up on the fiberless, fatty, cholesterol-laden U.S. diet, which is linked to heart disease, various types of cancer, and strokes (our nation's three biggest killers) as well as impotence (internationally recognized killer of the mood).

PETA's placement of these colorful ads would certainly offset some of the tax dollars that fund the fence. It's a winning solution for the folks at U.S. Customs and Border Protection, immigrants, and farmed animals alike!

Posted by Sean Conner

tomorrowaustin / CC

Around Texas' capital city, a popular slogan on T-shirts and bumper stickers proclaims, "Keep Austin Weird." Well, if Austin's weird, who wants to be normal?

Case in point: This past weekend, Austin was home to the second annual veggie-hot-dog–eating contest, organized by iLoveMikeLitt. Now, last year, we bemoaned missing the first-annual (well, first-ever at that point) contest. So imagine how I feel about missing this year's event, since Austin's a mere three-hour drive from my home in Houston (slogan: "Houston's great—no, really!").

Somehow they managed to carry on without me, though. In fact, nearly 300 folks showed up—including Austin's famed vegan firefighters—to polish off 1,500 LightLife Tofu Pups, along with 14 gallons of vegan ice cream from Austin's own NadaMoo. In the solo contest, Spencer "Tree" Lockwood ate 21 hot dogs to narrowly edge out last year's solo champ, Colin "The Tim Duncan of Competitive Eating" Kalmbacher, whose sentiments captured the quintessentially Austin nature of the whole event:

What is more Austin than a bunch of vegans, vegetarians, and omnivores, all alongside each other, gorging themselves on hundreds of soy dogs for the sheer insanity of it?

Indeed. If you're an Austinite (Austinian?), be sure to sign up for the iLoveMikeLitt event newsletter so that you don't miss out on next year's contest—or other fun stuff like Vegan Arm Wrestling and Veggie Speed Dating. Those of us living in less "weird" places can still get in on the fun—I'm staging my own vegan hot-dog–eating party for the Fourth of July (though, so far, it's just me and my soy-loving hound, Gus). Our resident foodies have picked their favorites, but I'm interested to know what you'll have on the grill over the holiday. Fire it up!

Posted by Jeff Mackey

Not even kidding. According to The Austin American Statesman, grief counselors were made available to employees of the University of Texas Keeling Animal Research Center after an adult chimpanzee who escaped from the experimentation facility was shot and killed near the campus. Anyone else find it odd that employees of a facility that cages animals and performs cruel experiments on them against their will would need specialists to comfort them when the animals die due to their facility’s negligence?

PETA filed a formal complaint today, calling on the U.S. Department of Agriculture to investigate the laboratory for alleged violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act, including failure to ensure that personnel are qualified to perform their duties and failure to provide structurally sound housing for nonhuman primates. Here’s what PETA Primate Specialist Dr. Debra Durham told the media:

"Chimpanzees are intelligent, sensitive, and resourceful—they shouldn't be incarcerated in laboratories in the first place. Research on chimpanzees is banned in many countries. The very least that this laboratory can do is ensure that these animals have safe living spaces."

Which doesn’t seem to be happening at the moment, given that this is the second chimpanzee escape from the facility in the past six months. You’d almost think these animals don’t want to be there.

Maybe they can send in a team of basic human decency counselors along with the grief folks. Just a thought.

A little while back, we wrote to the county jail holding alleged cannibal Christopher Lee McCuin, asking that they put him on a flesh-free diet ASAP—since, apart from anything else, there really is something horribly perverse about feeding the guy body parts given the circumstances surrounding his arrest. We received a prompt response to our letter from one Sheriff J.B. Smith, who pointed out (very reasonably) that intentionally altering McCuin’s meals without changing all the other inmate’s meals might be viewed as prejudicial treatment, and asked if we could provide some documentation to support our statement that vegetarian meals promote nonviolence in correction facilities.

Our follow-up letter, which was faxed to the sheriff’s office today, does exactly that. Complete with references to Pythagoras, Albert Einstein, and Tolstoy, along with some information about trial programs at correctional facilities that have given all the inmates vegetarian food, it makes for a pretty good read. Here it is in full.

Following Houston's decision to ban Alicia Silverstone's sexy pro-vegetarianism PSA, one PETA Lettuce Lady took it upon herself to make a personal plea to Texas Governor Rick Perry to encourage Texans to go vegetarian. When the top "fattest cities" in America were announced this year, Texas had four cities in the top ten, so if there's anyone who needs a bit of urgent advice about a healthy diet, it's the good folks in the Lone Star State.

Texas, you've been a very naughty state. But nobody wants to hear that kind of talk from me when they can get it from a lovely Lettuce Lady. Check out the amazing video that the wonderful Nicole Matthews sent to Texas' governor today. How can you say no to this one, Rick?

Now that you've watched the video, please click here to sign our petition asking Governor Rick Perry to get on board with our "Go Veg Texas" Campaign.

You probably remember the Primarily Primates, Inc. (PPI) case we have been working on for a year or so. If not, PPI is the pseudo-sanctuary in Texas where, late in 2005, staff members called PETA to report that animals were suffering horribly and dying and that the facility's director, Wally Swett, was drunk a lot of the time. PPI staff members reported that Swett did the following things:

• Refused to provide veterinary care to animals who desperately needed it
• Shot animals because "bullets are cheaper" than euthanasia
• Denied primates any psychological enrichment
• Threw out donated enrichment treats
• Ignored staff members when they pleaded for animals to be given proper shelter
• Purchased birds and a baby chimpanzee for tens of thousands of dollars
• Locked chimpanzees in isolation for no reason
• Took baby chimpanzees away from their mothers in order to hand-rear them in his house, neglecting them so badly that some died
• Told staff members to use high-pressure water hoses to control chimpanzees, because the poor design of the facility does not enable anyone to safely enter the enclosures

To make a long story short, on the heels of a lawsuit fueled by PETA, the Texas Attorney General filed its own lawsuit against PPI and the Court appointed a well-known specialist with more than 20 years of primate and rehabilitation experience to bring the place up to some level of decency. She did that, and then some, and things were getting better—animals have received veterinary care, proper feed, clean water, and the comfort of bedding and nesting boxes that was all denied to them previously.

But just today, the Texas Attorney General has entered into a settlement agreement whereby all charges against PPI are to be dismissed, and he will wash his hands of the obligations of caring for all the animals and turn the pseudo-sanctuary back over to a board of directors that includes Friends of Animals president Priscilla Feral, who backed the old regime including its director, Wally Swett, who drunkenly threatened volunteers with a firearm most recently and, in the past, has failed to provide even emergency veterinary care for dying animals.

The court-appointed Receiver (the current administrator of PPI), Lee Theisen-Watt, her attorney, Skip Trimble, and longtime staff member and whistleblowers on site are expressing their outrage. In the settlement, the Attorney General pledges to use his offices to attempt to retrieve the seven surviving former OSU chimpanzees who are now doing well in their rehabilitation at Chimp Haven in Louisiana, a move that will be hard fought. Their return would violate a Texas state and local law prohibiting dangerous animals at a site like PPI, so let’s all hope that doesn’t happen.

Here is PETA President Ingrid Newkirk’s statement on this disaster:

“PETA is pleased to have helped gather and organize the evidence that led to a search and seizure warrant being served at PPI in October, 2006. Although it was too late to save animals who had died of outright neglect, some lingering in pain for long periods of time, as a result of that entry into what had been a closed premises, relief was delivered to hundreds of chimpanzees and other animals who had been neglected. Since then, animals have received veterinary care, proper feed, clean water, and the comfort of bedding and nesting boxes that was all denied to them under Wally Swett and Stephen Tellos, and with the protection of Friends of Animals. The Texas Attorney General has now settled the case, much to the distress of those who have come to know and love the animals they have cared for during this interim period, and to the concern of all those who know what Friends of Animals sanctioned and how it stood by and didn’t take action that could have saved animals from suffering. Nevertheless, we live in hope that lessons have been learned and that the facility will no longer be mismanaged and be the place of despair for animals it once was.”

Please take just a few moments to contact these people to politely state your concern:

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott:
Phone: 512 475-4665
Fax: 512-322-0578

Governor Rick Perry
www.governor.state.tx.us/contact

Citizen's Opinion Hotline: 800 252 9600
Main Switchboard: 512-463-2000
Fax: 512-463-1849

And just to give you a first-person perspective on this mess, I’ll leave you with a letter written by Chance French who has worked with these amazing animals over the past few months. At the end is a list of animals who will suffer because of the Attorney General’s action:

November 1, 2006 7:30 a.m.

This was the first time Christina and I ever stepped foot on PPI's property. Let me tell you it was one of the hardest days in our lives. The abuse and neglect we were shown for the next eleven hours was horrific. The only thing that kept us going was the thought that we were going to be able to make a difference in all of these amazing, forgiving lives. And the next day we begun! Day after day, hour after hour WE MADE A DIFFERENCE! To give a friend (chimp, for those of you who haven't ever heard me speak of them) a blanket when it's cold or uncomfortable on the concrete at night, a toy to play with when bored, a three course meal of produce three times a day when all they've ever had was monkey chow (a damn' dog biscuit), enrichment filled with treats because they deserve it or just those fifteen minute talks throughout the day with them, those times when they look at you and you see in their eyes the joy and happiness it brings each and every one of them. We all were hopeful it would never end. Well it's happened, the attorney general has dropped the case against PPI because the receivership has brought the sanctuary back to the standards it should be at. The truth is the attorney generals office dropped the ball by misfiling and other problems. So to save face and not look stupid they're running! Let me tell you if I could save this place by dancing naked only in a cowboy hat in front of the Alamo in this great state of Texas.................IN A HEARTBEAT! The sad truth is that it will end up back to what it was. And who suffers?

TINA
CHAMP
DEETER
JEWEL
URI
RAISIN
KOKO
OKO
JOSHUA
WILLIE
CHOBE
HARRY
SIRI
CHEETAH
LB
ARLENE
VANESSA
PENNY
VIOLET
RICHIE
SHANNON
NICOLE
LAURA
NAOMI
SIERRA
JESSIE
EFFIE
CINDY
RUDY
JOSIE
JASON
JONSIE
LEAHA
HANZIE
BANGO
OLIVER
JUSTIN
CLAIRE
DEE
ROSEMARY
HOPE
LISA
BOBO
WANDA
HOLLY
MANDY
ABE
CARMEN
BUFFY
APRIL
HOPE
AMY
THEO
THOMAS
SUDIO
MARION
MALLORY
STELLA
SEAN
SHU SHU
BAXTER
WALTER
BUBBA
BARBI
JULIE

Among hundreds of other wonderful loving animals. I don't know what else to say except they were all stabbed in the back by one elected official.

Chance

Please, for all the animals above, take the time to contact the officials listed above. Thanks guys.