Because he uses his influence to promote the benefits of following a vegan diet, PETA is pleased to name Bill Clinton its 2010 Person of the Year.

Studies have proved that vegetarians and vegans live, on average, six to 10 years longer than meat-eaters. One reason why President Clinton took a step toward going vegan is that he wanted to make sure that he would be around to enjoy his future grandchildren now that his daughter, Chelsea, is married. Since then, Clinton says that his metabolism has improved, and he now weighs as much as he did in high school—so he’s definitely on the right track. “I live on beans, legumes, vegetables, fruit,” he said. “I drink a protein supplement every morning. No dairy.”

By choosing a plant-based diet, President Clinton has spared the lives of nearly 200 animals a year and reduced his risk of cancer, strokes, and other diseases. Of course, the reasons for going vegan don’t end there. The meat industry also contributes to world hunger, exploits workers, and devastates the environment.

Because he uses his influence to promote the benefits of following a vegan diet, PETA is pleased to name Bill Clinton its 2010 Person of the Year. You can join President Clinton in helping to save animals by trying a vegan diet. Take our pledge to be vegan for 30 days and see the benefits for yourself.

Ever been stuck at the store wondering if a product is cruelty-free? Well, iPhone users, your problem is now solved! The folks over at Hot Frog Creative have teamed up with PETA for what we think is one of the most useful iPhone apps out there: the “Be Nice to Bunnies” app.

We’ve come a long way from those reliable little paper pocket guides. This searchable application for your iPhone or iPod touch helps you make an informed decision about cruelty-free purchasing on the go. Feeding directly from PETA’s own cruelty-free database, this app will get you the up-to-date information that you need to stay a caring and informed consumer on everything from toothpaste to dog treats!

Search by brand, manufacturer, or product category. You can also view all products in a full do-test and don’t-test list format. The “Be Nice to Bunnies” app is quick and easy and essential to anyone who shops cruelty-free.

Get the ‘Be Nice to Bunnies’ App Now!

On June 3, 1997, the Supreme Federal Court of Brazil outlawed Farra do Boi. However, Santa Catarina officials have failed, year after year, to enforce this ban, and the cruel Farra do Boi events continue to this day.

Please contact Santa Catarina Governor Luiz Henrique da Silveira as well as the Brazilian Embassy and demand that municipal authorities stop this horrible event. Remind them that citizens can easily celebrate without torturing animals and that compassionate tourists will gladly forgo traveling to Brazil, and particularly to Santa Catarina, until the Farra do Boi butchery comes to an end.

Please send polite comments to:

Luiz Henrique da Silveira
Governador do Estado
Centro Administrativo do Governo
Rod. SC 401, km. 5, nº 4600
88032-900
(48) 3221-3186
(48) 3221-3164 (fax)

U.S. Embassy
SES, Av. das Nações, Quadra 801, Lote 03
70403-900 Brasília, DF
(55-61) 3312-7000
(55-61) 3225-9136 (fax)

Please visit PETA to voice your protest.

With your help, PETA is mounting international pressure on the Canadian government to stop this state-sanctioned, senseless slaughter. We urgently need you to join us in speaking up for these animals today.

Please make as generous an online donation as you can to support PETA’s global campaign to help bring an end to the seal massacre and to stop the killing of other gentle animals for their skins.

Thank you for taking a stand for these and other vulnerable animals everywhere.

Please visit PETA for more information.

Thousands of live animals are shot, stabbed, dismembered, burned, and poisoned every year in Department of Defense (DoD) training exercises designed to train medics and infantry in how to treat various human battlefield injuries. PETA is asking President Obama to issue an executive order requiring the DoD to replace animals with non-animal methods. These methods are readily available and already in use at several military installations. The non-animal methods include rotations in military trauma hospitals and the use of the DoD’s own Combat Trauma Patient Simulator.

Please help animals who suffer for military training by asking President Obama to extend his ban on torture to include animals used in military trauma-training exercises.

Please send a polite e-mail to your Congressional representative asking him or her to urge President Obama to issue an executive order requiring the DoD to replace the use of animals in trauma and chemical-casualty training exercises with available non-animal methods.

Please Click Here

Animals on today’s factory farms have no legal protection from cruelty that would be illegal if it were inflicted on dogs or cats: neglect, mutilation, genetic manipulation, and drug regimens that cause chronic pain and crippling, transport through all weather extremes, and gruesome and violent slaughter. Yet farmed animals are no less intelligent or capable of feeling pain than are the dogs and cats we cherish as companions.

The factory farming system of modern agriculture strives to maximize output while minimizing costs. Cows, calves, pigs, chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, and other animals are kept in small cages, in jam-packed sheds, or on filthy feedlots, often with so little space that they can’t even turn around or lie down comfortably. They are deprived of exercise so that all their bodies’ energy goes toward producing flesh, eggs, or milk for human consumption. The giant corporations that run most factory farms have found that they can make more money by cramming animals into tiny spaces, even though many of the animals get sick and some die. Industry journal National Hog Farmer explains, “Crowding Pigs Pays,” and egg-industry expert Bernard Rollins writes that “chickens are cheap; cages are expensive.”

They are fed drugs to fatten them faster and to keep them alive in conditions that would otherwise kill them, and they are genetically altered to grow faster or to produce much more milk or eggs than they would naturally. Many animals become crippled under their own weight and die within inches of water and food.

While the suffering of all animals on factory farms is similar, each type of farmed animal faces different types of cruelty.
Chickens killed for their flesh in the United States are bred and drugged to grow so quickly that their hearts, lungs, and limbs often can’t keep up. .
Hens used for eggs live six or seven to a battery cage the size of a file drawer, thousands of which are stacked tier upon tier in huge, filthy warehouses.
Cattle are castrated, their horns are ripped out of their heads, and third-degree burns (branding) are inflicted on them, all without any pain relief.
Cows used for their milk are drugged and bred to produce unnatural amounts of milk; they have their babies stolen from them shortly after birth and sent to notoriously cruel veal farms so that humans can drink the calves’ milk.
Mother pigs on factory farms are confined to crates so small that they are unable to turn around or even lie down comfortably.
Fish on aquafarms spend their entire lives in cramped, filthy enclosures, and many suffer from parasitic infections, diseases, and debilitating injuries. Conditions on some farms are so horrendous that 40 percent of the fish may die before farmers can kill and package them for food.
Turkeys’ beaks and toes are burned off with a hot blade. Many suffer heart failure or debilitating leg pain, often becoming crippled under the weight of their genetically manipulated and drugged bodies.
When they have finally grown large enough, animals raised for food are crowded onto trucks and transported over many miles through all weather extremes to the slaughterhouse. Those who survive this nightmarish journey will have their throats slit, often while they are still fully conscious. Many are still conscious when they are plunged into the scalding water of the defeathering or hair-removal tanks or while their bodies are being skinned or hacked apart.

Original Source : http://www.goveg.com/factoryFarming.asp

They’re Begging Your Pardon
Turkeys are “smart animals with personality and character, and keen awareness of their surroundings,” Oregon State University poultry scientist Tom Savage says. Turkeys are social, playful birds who enjoy the company of others. They relish having their feathers stroked and like to chirp, cluck, and gobble along to their favorite tunes. Anyone who spends time with them at farm sanctuaries quickly learns that turkeys are as varied in personality as dogs and cats. The president “pardons” a turkey every year—can’t you pardon one too? Learn more about turkeys.

Get Rid of Your Wattle
Turkey flesh is brimming with fat. Just one homemade patty of ground, cooked turkey meat contains a whopping 244 mg of cholesterol, and half of its calories come from fat. Research has shown that vegetarians are 50 percent less likely to develop heart disease, and they have 40 percent of the cancer rate of meat-eaters. Plus, meat-eaters are nine times more likely to be obese than vegans are. Learn more about animal products and your health.

Can You Spell ‘Pandemic’?
Experts are warning that a virulent new strain of bird flu could spread to human beings and kill millions of Americans. The Bush administration is trying to deal with the problem, but experts warn that current factory-farm conditions, in which turkeys are drugged up and bred to grow so quickly they can barely walk, are a prescription for disease outbreaks. Eating a turkey carcass contaminated with bird flu could kill you, and currently available drugs might not work. Cooking should kill the virus, but it could be left behind on cutting boards and utensils and spread through something else you’re eating. Learn more about bird flu.

Recall Process Doesn’t Fly
The U.S. government is the only government in the Western world that does not have the power to recall contaminated animal products. Instead, American consumers must trust the profit-hungry meat, dairy, and egg industries to decide when recalls are necessary. Dan Glickman, secretary of agriculture under President Bill Clinton, explained that this limit on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) power to protect consumers from tainted animal products is “one of the biggest loopholes out there.” There are all sorts of killer bacteria found in turkey flesh, including salmonella and campylobacter. The Center for Science in the Public Interest found that 28 percent of fresh turkeys were contaminated with bacteria, primarily with campylobacter, for which the USDA does not even require testing. Learn more about meat contamination.

Let the Turkeys Give Thanks!
Let’s face it: If you’re eating a turkey, that’s a corpse you’ve got there on the table, and if you don’t eat it quickly enough, it will decompose. Is that really what we want as the centerpiece of a holiday meal: an animal’s dead and decaying carcass? Thanksgiving is a time to take stock of our lives and give thanks for all that we have, so why not let the turkeys give thanks too? Learn more about what happens to turkeys on factory farms.

Want Stuffing With Your Supergerms?
Dosing turkeys with antibiotics to stimulate their growth and to keep them alive in filthy, disease-ridden conditions that would otherwise kill them poses even more risks for people who eat them. Leading health organizations—including the World Health Organization, the American Medical Association, and the American Public Health Association—have warned that by giving powerful drugs (via animal products) to humans who are not sick, the farmed-animal industry is creating possible long-term risks to human health and will spread antibiotic-resistant supergerms. That’s why the use of drugs to promote growth in animals used for food has been banned for many years in Europe. Learn more about antibiotics used in animal products.

Without a Wing and a Prayer
On factory farms, turkeys live for months in sheds where they are packed so tightly that flapping a wing or stretching a leg is nearly impossible. They stand in waste, and urine and ammonia fumes burn their eyes and lungs. At the slaughterhouse, turkeys have their throats slit while they are still conscious. Those who miss the automated knife are scalded to death in the defeathering tank. Learn more about the cruelty endured by turkeys.

Foul Farming
Anyone who has driven by a farm has probably smelled it first from a mile away. Turkeys and other animals raised for food produce 130 times as much excrement as the entire U.S. human population—all without the benefit of waste treatment systems. There are no federal guidelines to regulate how factory farms treat, store, and dispose of the trillions of pounds of concentrated, untreated animal excrement that they produce each year. Learn more about how factory farming damages the environment.

Blood, Sweat, and Fear
Killing animals is inherently dangerous work, but the fast line speeds, the dirty, slippery killing floors, and the lack of training make animal-processing plants some of the most dangerous places to work in America today. The industry has refused to slow down the lines or buy appropriate safety gear because these changes could cut into companies’ bottom lines. In its 185-page exposé on worker exploitation by the farmed-animal industry, “Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Workers’ Rights in U.S. Meat and Poultry Plants,” Human Rights Watch explains, ‘These are not occasional lapses by employers paying insufficient attention to modern human resources management policies. These are systematic human rights violations embedded in meat and poultry industry employment.”

A Cornucopia of Turkey Alternatives
Give up the giblets and carve out a new tradition this Thanksgiving—Tofurky Roast and UnTurkey, savory soy- and wheat-based roasts with stuffing and gravy or oven-roasted, peppered, hickory-smoked, or cranberry- and stuffing-flavored Tofurky Deli Slices. Give animals and yourself something to be really thankful for this year: Order a free vegetarian starter kit full of tasty recipes and celebrity features today.

Original article : http://www.goveg.com/f-top10turkeys.asp

Stars such as Sir Paul McCartney and Chrissie Hynde are lending their voices to share what science has already proven—that the meat industry is one of the leading sources of the greenhouse gases that lead to global warming.

When asked what personal change people could make to help the environment, McCartney replied, “I think the biggest change anyone could make in their own lifestyle would be to become vegetarian.”

A 2006 United Nations report found that the meat industry produces more greenhouse gases than all the SUVs, cars, trucks, planes, and ships in the world combined. Greenhouse gases cause global warming, which studies show will increasingly lead to catastrophic disasters—like droughts, floods, hurricanes, rising sea levels, and disease outbreaks—unless we drastically reduce the amounts emitted into the atmosphere.

Many conscientious people are trying to help reduce global warming by driving more fuel-efficient cars and using energy-saving light bulbs, but they could do more simply by going vegetarian.

* The official handbook for the Live Earth concerts says that “refusing meat” is the “single most effective thing you can do to reduce your carbon footprint.”
* According to Environmental Defense, if every American skipped one meal of chicken per week and substituted vegetarian foods instead, the carbon dioxide savings would be the same as taking more than a half-million cars off U.S. roads.
* The University of Chicago reports that going vegan is 50% more effective than switching to a hybrid car in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Eating 1 lb. of meat emits the same amount of greenhouse gasses as driving an SUV 40 miles.
More than Just CO2

Raising animals for their flesh, eggs, and milk is one of the world’s leading emitters of carbon dioxide (CO2). But global warming is caused by more than just CO2. Animal agriculture is the leading source of methane and nitrous oxide emissions, which—combined with carbon dioxide—causes the vast majority of global warming.

* Methane: The billions of farmed animals crammed into factory farms produce enormous amounts of methane, both during digestion and from the acres of cesspools filled with feces that they excrete. Methane is more than 20 times as powerful as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in our atmosphere.Statistics from the Environmental Protection Agency show that animal agriculture is the number one source of methane emissions in the U.S.
* Nitrous Oxide: Nitrous oxide is about 300 times more potent as a global warming gas than carbon dioxide. According to the U.N., the meat, egg, and dairy industries account for a staggering 65 percent of worldwide nitrous oxide emissions.

The most effective way to fight the global warming crisis is to stop eating meat, eggs, and dairy products. Start today by taking the Pledge To Be Veg for 30 Days.

But there’s an ugly side for animals living in the Olympic host country, a side that you won’t see in this week’s nonstop coverage: the Chinese fur industry’s horrific abuse of animals.

By making an urgent donation today to support our work, you can help us draw the world’s attention to the cruelty of the Chinese fur industry and keep people from unwittingly supporting it.

An estimated 2 million cats and hundreds of thousands of dogs are tortured and slaughtered for their fur in China every year. PETA’s undercover video footage shows terrified animals crouched in tiny cages that are crammed so full of animals—both dead and alive—that the animals are unable to move. Some of the dogs and cats shown in the footage were still wearing the collars that their former families put on them. Animals are often hung upside-down by their legs or tails, and their skin is ripped off their bodies as they writhe and struggle.

China’s fur industry unrepentantly continues to torture and kill animals for their skins.

China is one of the world’s largest suppliers of animal fur. More than 95 percent of China’s finished fur garments are exported for sale overseas, and many of them go to North America. Dog and cat fur is often intentionally mislabeled as “Asian jackal” or “rabbit” fur.

With so much attention focused on China right now, this is the time to demand an end to the Chinese fur industry’s terrible torture of animals. Please help us stand in the way of the fur industry by taking the following two simple steps:

* Sign our pledge to go fur-free. Thousands of people—including gold-medal-winning Olympic swimmer Amanda Beard—have already pledged never to buy or wear fur. Please also forward this pledge to all your friends, colleagues, and family members. This simple act is one of PETA’s most successful weapons in the fight against fur because it gets new people to take the pledge and think about the cruelty that goes into making fur garments.
* Make a generous donation online to support PETA’s worldwide anti-fur campaign. Your gift will allow us to keep working hard to end the horrors of the fur industry in China and around the world. Please help us stop the slaughter of animals for fashion!

We know that the fight against the fur trade is one that we can win for animals if we push hard enough, long enough, and vigorously enough. PETA’s efforts to expose the true cost of every piece of fur has already helped convince some of the world’s leading designers and retailers—including Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Polo Ralph Lauren, and Ann Taylor—to adopt permanent fur-free policies. With your help, we can work to ensure that animals, including dogs and cats who are treated like trash by the Chinese fur industry, don’t suffer for their fur.

Don’t let this important moment pass without doing all that you can to help cats and dogs and other tortured animals in China. Sign the petition, and make your gift now.

Click Here

* Pound Seizure
Animal shelters in certain states are required to turn over homeless dogs to government-run facilities for medical experiments if they are not claimed by former or new guardians within five days of arriving at the shelter. This is commonly known as pound seizure.

Three states require pound seizure of government-run facilities: Minnesota, Oklahoma, and Utah. Thirteen states, including Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and West Virginia, forbid pound seizure. Most other states have no law and leave it up to county or town governments to decide.

* Class A Dealers
Anyone selling animals to laboratories or selling more than 24 dogs or cats per year at the wholesale level must be licensed. Class A dealers maintain their own breeding colonies, such as puppy mills.

According to the States News Service, Class A dealers or breeders who choose to release animals for research; people who donate their companion animals to research; and private and federal facilities that breed animals are capable of supplying far more cats and dogs than are required by current laboratory demand.

* Class B Dealers
Anyone 18 or older who is willing to pay a fee can obtain a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Class B dealer license. In states that allow pound seizure, Class B dealers may buy animals from pounds and animal shelters. “Bunchers” are also a vital source of animals in the dealers’ network. Using sedatives hidden in meat, females in heat, and nets, they lure or trap dogs and cats. Some thieves pose as animal control officers and comb neighborhoods in vans, “confiscating” animals without tags. Many bunchers also purchase litters from unsuspecting people who allow their animal companions to breed and obtain animals from “Free to a Good Home” advertisements.

C.C. Baird, the largest and most notorious Class B animal dealer in the United States, purchased animals from people using false addresses and non-existent driver’s license numbers. In March 2004, after years of efforts by animal protection organizations, the USDA filed a 108-page complaint listing hundreds of violations against C.C. Baird, his wife, Patsy, and their daughters, Jeanette and Patricia.

States News Service reports that there are about 50 “random source” animal dealers across the United States. They often keep hundreds of animals in squalid conditions and give them little food and water. These animals often are eventually sold to research laboratories for $200 to $500 each.

Primates
Chimpanzees and other primates used in U.S. laboratories are primarily captive-bred. Unwanted chimpanzees from zoos and circuses are sometimes sold to laboratories. Poachers also shoot chimpanzee mothers and take their infants for research. Many of the captured baby chimpanzees die before they reach the laboratory.

The Oregon National Primate Research Center brags that it maintains colonies of rhesus monkeys, snow monkeys, vervets, and baboons who were taken from the wild and/or brought to the center from other facilities.

Rodents and Other Animals
Birds, frogs, pigs, sheep, cattle, and many naturally free-roaming animals (e.g., prairie dogs and owls) are also common victims of experimentation. So are mice, rats, guinea pigs, hamsters, gerbils, and rabbits.

Most small animals used in laboratory experiments are bred by callous companies who view animals as little more than walking pin cushions and test tubes with whiskers. For example, Charles River Laboratories is one of the world’s largest suppliers of rats, mice, hamsters, gerbils, rabbits, guinea pigs, and other animals for laboratory experiments. The Jackson Laboratory supplies approximately 2 million specially bred JAX Mice to major universities, medical schools, and research laboratories in the world every year.

Original Source : http://www.stopanimaltests.com/AnimalsWindupinLabs.asp