personalmoneystore / CC

Yesterday, during her fall fashion style makeover show, a stylist mentioned that a furry vest worn in one woman's "after" look was faux. Oprah replied, "I was a PETA Woman of the Year so I hope that's faux!"

From celebrating vegan cuisine with Chef Tal Ronnen to airing an in-depth investigation of the cruelty of puppy mills, Oprah never hesitates to remind millions of television viewers to consider animals in their everyday lives.

Posted by Karin Bennett

Carla and Bryan Wilson set up this beautiful educational exhibit in Florida's largest public library.

The display includes an awww-inspiring photo of a mother turkey and her chicks along with interesting facts about these intelligent, affectionate animals. It features eye-catching boards about why meat is bad for animals, bad for your health, and bad for the environment. And what holiday display would be complete without tasty tips for cruelty-free holiday meals?

The best part? It's easy for you to replicate. For materials to set up your own cruelty-free information center, contact PETA's activist liaisons.

Posted by Heather Drennan

babble.com / CC

A concerned neighbor reached out to PETA after several high-ranking officials failed to act on his complaints, deeming the situation a parole violation only. With a little work, we were eventually able to locate a district attorney who was willing to prosecute, provided that we could obtain the necessary evidence.

We then found a sympathetic state trooper who agreed to visit the woman's property. According to his account, when he arrived he got the shock of a lifetime. After he told the woman that he had a warrant for her arrest (for an unrelated matter), she reportedly attacked him with a stun gun to his head and neck. When she refused to drop the weapon, he used pepper spray to subdue her, handcuffed her, and called for backup.

Animal control agents arrived to find more than 40 animals on her property, including dogs, cats, parrots, chickens, ducks, alpacas, a donkey, and a pot-bellied pig. Almost all the animals were in cages. The animals were sent to shelters around the state, and the hoarder is now being held awaiting bail.

Folks, you might know of someone in your neighborhood whose yard is teeming with stray cats or someone who has a multitude of neglected dogs barking nonstop in his or her backyard. Please know that there's a very strong possibility that this person is a hoarder—a mentally ill person with a compulsion to acquire "things" they can't bring themselves to discard. Hoarders don't try to find loving homes for their animals—in fact, they usually resist any effort to do so. In this case, more than 40 animals might have died from neglect and disease had it not been for police intervention!

A person who hoards animals doesn't love animals any more than a hoarder who fills his or her house with garbage loves trash. The big difference, of course, is that empty pizza boxes and beer bottles don't suffer and die from neglect—but animals do.

Posted by Karin Bennett

clap.name / CC

Here's our take on it:

To bludgeon a 4-ounce animal to death, it takes either a small man or a totally unthinking one—with no respect or consideration for lives humbler than his own. This is a time when athletes in particular need to be on their best behavior around any animal and show that they have brains and a heart, not just reactionary brawn.

Bats always try to avoid contact with humans, and there are plenty of easy ways to keep bats out of a basketball arena (or your home). We hope that the next time someone's life is on the line, Manu Ginobili will take just a few seconds to think before he acts.

Posted by Amanda Schinke

While other compassionate celebrities have opted to wear our seal T-shirt to point out that the annual massacre of baby seals is a big, bloody blot on Canada's reputation, Joel got into the spirit of things by donning our seal costume for the unveiling (well, part of it, anyway).

To read more about what Joel thinks of the seal slaughter, check out his interview with Exclaim!

Or you could check him out in concert—The Hidden Cameras are currently on tour. (No word yet on whether Joel will be performing in a seal costume.)

Posted by Heather Drennan

igougo / CC

On Monday, for the first time ever, Windsor Castle will host a vegan royal banquet. Take a moment to let that sink in. Windsor Castle has existed for 900 years, and it's just now getting around to throwing a vegan shindig. Oh, well. Better late than never.

Do we have leading U.K. climate-change expert Lord Stern to thank for this momentous occasion? Perhaps indirectly, but the true pioneer here is none other than Prince Philip (for you folks in the most far-flung colonies, he's the guy played by James Cromwell in The Queen).

Prince Philip's Alliance of Religions and Conservation is hosting a three-day interfaith conference at Windsor called "Many Heavens, One Earth: Faith Commitments for a Living Planet," which will be attended by leaders from the Bahai, Buddhist, Christian, Daoist, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Shinto, and Sikh faiths. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will also attend. Because they'll be talking about the ways in which religious communities can foster environmental protection, it only makes sense that they would dine on the most environmentally friendly (i.e., vegan) foods. Still, it's not every day that environmentalists actually put their money ethics where their mouths are, so this is a pretty big deal. Are you listening, Al Gore?

All the food at the three-day conference will be vegetarian, and most of it will be organic and locally grown. In case you aren't already jealous enough, here's what's on the vegan lunch menu at Windsor Castle: roasted pear salad with cobnuts and chicory, portobello mushrooms stuffed with artichoke and herbs, pearl barley risotto, and organic wine.

Yum—being a royal environmentalist tastes pretty good!

Posted by Alisa Mullins

1. It's the only holiday when dressing up like a really scary monster and scaring the hell out of people is both appropriate and encouraged. Take that, Christmas!
2. Power pumpkins.
3. Two words: baked pugtatoes.
4. One word: candy.

And the number one reason why Halloween is a scream …

1. Zombies!

Posted by Amy Elizabeth

thepulseofrevolution / CC

"… I am siding with PETA on this one—once again asking Al Gore, 'If you really want to save the planet, put down the cheeseburgers and pick up the veggie burgers. Time for soy milk and Tofurky.' … I've said before I disagree with PETA, but I respect them because they are not hypocrites: They say what they mean and mean what they say. I just disagree with what they say—except when it calls for Al Gore to eat tofu."

Makes me wanna send Mr. Beck some vegan chocolate kisses.

Folks, trying to clean up the environment without going vegan is like trying to mask the smell of rotting garbage by hanging 100 fragrance trees from the ceiling. It doesn't work. The only way to get rid of the stink and cruelty to animals is to change what you put on your plate.

Posted by Karin Bennett

petpost.co.nz / CC

There is a major P.R. push for this legislation, in the form of a new campaign that you may have heard of—the Million Baby Crawl. This campaign comes from none other than the longtime cruelty-free company Seventh Generation.

We have alerted Seventh Generation to the problems associated with its campaign and hope to work with the company to get better science and animal protection language inserted into the Kid Safe Chemicals Act.

Great strides have been made in biology and toxicology during the past few decades that provide a better understanding of chemicals' hazards without relying on cruel and misleading animal tests. Non-animal test methods are faster and cheaper, so more information about more chemicals can be obtained quicker than through animal testing. Modernization of the underlying science is a crucial piece of any new chemical-management legislation, and it's critical that any new legislation promote the use and further development of modern, humane test methods.

Make no mistake: We are all in favor of protecting kids' health and the environment, but the current method of testing chemicals—poisoning and killing thousands of animals per chemical—provides data that just isn't useful. And considering that there are more than 80,000 chemicals that would undergo testing if this proposed legislation passes, that's an astronomical number of animals!

Who cares about the millions of animals who will suffer and die in these tests? We know you do!

Sign up here if you are interested in doing more. Updates will follow.

Posted by Karin Bennett

Amidst the world's rightful outcry at the injustice of whaling, Stan fights the good fight—protecting whales from senseless slaughter—and along the way finds out the real reason why the Japanese government thinks it's A-OK to attack beloved marine life.

More commentary—with spoilers—after the jump.

It all went down on last night's episode of Top Chef. (Warning: Spoilers ahead for those who haven't seen it yet.) Like my fellow PETA Files blogger, Missy—who gave us a heads-up about this treat back in July—I'm a fan of the show despite its constant emphasis on serving up, well, dead animals (which the contestants bizarrely insist on calling "protein," as if they're nutritionists instead of chefs).

True to form, the opening "Quickfire Challenge" involved creating TV dinners inspired by iconic TV shows, and all of them ended up meat-centered. So when the chefs were told that the "Elimination Challenge" would take place at judge Tom Colicchio's Vegas steakhouse, Craftsteak, they eagerly began planning which cut of meat to use and how to cook it.

But Top Chef loves its surprises, and this week's came in the lovely form of guest judge Natalie Portman, who told the cheftestants, "I love food. I love eating. I'm pretty adventurous with flavors and different cuisines, and the one thing is, I'm a vegetarian." Cue the dramatic music and shocked faces.

Some of the chefs, like Robin and Mike I., professed confidence in handling a veggie challenge, while others were apprehensive, including Kevin, who had earlier proclaimed, "Cooking meat is me in my element!" But more surprises were in store, as meat-loving Kevin won the challenge with his hearty ensemble of mushrooms, smoked kale, candied garlic, and turnip purée.

I hope this episode provides aspiring chefs—both on and off the show—with food for thought (sorry).

Posted by Jeff Mackey

Check out the look on the face of the woman in the foreground.

Why were these two nice ladies attending a conference for the Fisheries Council? Because the Fisheries Department oversees Canada's annual seal slaughter, in which hundreds of thousands of baby seals are bludgeoned or shot to death. Boo, hiss!

The duo chanted and drew attention to the seal slaughter for about 20 minutes, then they were carted off to the pokey. Ah well, all in a day's work.

Posted by Alisa Mullins

JFL / CC

In an essay posted on HuffingtonPost.com, Natalie Portman explains that after reading an advance copy of Jonathan Safran Foer's new book, Eating Animals, she went "from a twenty-year vegetarian to a vegan activist." Whoa, props to you, Jonathan (and to Portman, too, of course).

What exactly caused Portman to go from not eating animals to not eating anything stolen from them (e.g., eggs and milk), either? Ironically, it was the cost to humans of exploiting animals. In Foer's book, he talks at length about the environmental devastation wreaked by factory farming as well as the deadly bacteria and other diseases that fester in the filthy conditions on factory farms. Portman was so fired up about these issues that she used the "S" word—twice. "Factory farming of animals," she says, "will be one of the things we look back on as a relic of a less-evolved age."

Coincidentally, an essay by Foer himself (the first in a two-part series) was posted today on CNN.com. In it, he talks about the link between the surge in antibiotic-resistant bacteria and—surprise!—the nontherapeutic use of antibiotics on factory farms. Did you know that eight times as many antibiotics are fed to factory-farmed animals as are taken by humans? Yeah, me neither.

Both pieces are great reading—and they're apparently getting people thinking: Natalie Portman's essay has already generated more than 1,000 comments. You can read Portman's essay here and Foer's essay here. Eating Animals hits bookstores next week.

Posted by Alisa Mullins

rockinontheblog / CC

Hmm. That just might have been our point.

So, it's not safe to allow members of congress and lobbyists to be exposed to factory farms, but it looks like tough luck for the millions of Americans in rural areas who have to live amidst the poisonous waste of factory farms. And although the president has declared swine flu a national emergency, the government continues to prop up the industry that caused the crisis (to the tune of $62.6 million in one year alone—with the possibility of $250 million more in the coming fiscal year).

What do you think?

Posted by Amanda Schinke

Whew. OK, back to the post.*

Media representatives were invited to the photo shoot, to which Amber wore only painted-on stripes. The ad will run in Japan, Thailand, Germany, the U.S., and Korea later this year.

Photo: Aaron Lee

The fresh-faced beauty has graced the pages of Harper's Bazaar, FHM, and Playboy and has appeared on television and in Chinese films, including The 3rd Generation and Trio & a Bed. Amber says, "Tigers, elephants, and chimpanzees aren't meant to live fenced in any more than I am."

Knowing how animal prisoners suffer constant mind-numbing boredom and extreme frustration that leads to nonstop pacing and poop-slinging, we couldn't agree more.

Posted by Karin Bennett

*Between the ad and the exercises, I'm feeling the burn, people.