Be a Cruelty - free shopper
The following websites offer more information on adopting an ‘animal-friendly’ shopping guide by allowing consumers to search for cruelty-free companies and products.
November 10, 2008
November 7, 2008
Thanksgiving & Things You can do to Help Animals
> Write a Letter to the Editor Urging Your Community to Boycott Circus Cruelty
> URGENT: Starving Deer Dying, Abused on Sacred Island
> Help Animals in 5 MINUTES FLAT
> When an Animal needs your Help
> Podcast : The Story of a Downed Cow
> Join the Revolution : Make a Difference Today
> Win a Tofurky for Thanksgiving
> Celebrity feature : Joan Jett testimonial
> Julie Benz Speaks Out Against Violence
October 4, 2008
Celebrate World Animal Week
World Animal Week starts tomorrow and continues through next Friday, and in honour of the planet’s 
animals we’ve teamed up with The Body Shop to ask people around the world to make themselves beautiful by speaking out for animals. During World Animal Week, The Body Shop will encourage their in-store and online customers to sign WSPA’s petition to promote the Universal Declaration on Animal Welfare (UDAW) by visiting the interactive website: www.makeyourselfbeautiful.org
WSPA and The Body Shop have also come up with a few things that you can do to make a difference for animals during World Animal Week:
1. Choose farm-animal friendly products
2. Protect your pets
3. Volunteer for animals
4. Do a cruelty-free check
5. Be an animal-friendly traveller… For even more ideas go here
For a complete list of WSPA’s Animal Week celebrations around the world go here .
June 18, 2008
Unnecessary Animal Testing for new cosmetics, drugs and household products
Have you ever wondered how many animals suffer in labs? It’s a good question. Because there are so many animals in laboratories and records are not kept for all animals, estimates of the number of animals tortured and killed annually in U.S. laboratories vary widely but are in the millions.
The Animal Welfare Act requires laboratories to report the number of animals used in experiments, but it does not cover mice, rats, and birds (used in some 80 to 95 percent of all experiments). Because these animals are not covered by the act, they remain uncounted, and we can only guess at how many actually suffer and die each year.
Many household products and cosmetics companies still pump their products into animals’ stomachs, rub them onto their skin, squirt them into their eyes, or force animals to inhale them as aerosol sprays. Charities such as the March of Dimes use donations from private citizens to fund experiments on animals, and the FDA requires all drugs to be tested on animals. However, animals differ from humans significantly, making animal drug tests unreliable and dangerous. New research methods, such as computer models, cell cultures, and human studies are more accurate, less expensive, and much more humane.
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Meet David Waitzman, an animal experimenter at the University of Connecticut Health Center. Waitzman had a $1.7 million grant from the federal government that funded his cruel research on monkeys. He used the money to drill holes into monkeys’ skulls and implant steel coils in their eyeballs over and over again.
Let me share with you a shocking account from an actual cage log of Cornelius, one of the tortured monkeys in Waitzman’s experiments. Cornelius suffered from tremors and seizures for more than eight months after Waitzman drilled into his skull, yet Waitzman continued to use Cornelius in experiments in which he was held immobile in a restraint chair and his brain was poked and prodded. On his final day, Cornelius started vomiting and convulsing during an experiment. The convulsions developed into grand mal seizures, and Cornelius died from cardiac arrest.
So many helpless animals like Cornelius—some just babies—are condemned to spend their entire lives in barren metal cages in windowless laboratories. They are force-fed, injected with toxins, and afflicted with painful diseases. Chemicals are sprayed in their eyes and poured down their throats, and electrodes are implanted in their brains. Experimenters cut tissue from animals’ bodies without any anesthesia. All the animals are scared, and many die slow, painful deaths, as Cornelius did.
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Companies that do not test on animals proudly state it on their labels. Send back items that you have from companies that test on animals, and write a letter to the companies explaining why you won’t buy their products anymore. For more information on animal testing and a list of companies that do not test on animals, see PETA’s Shopping Guide for Caring Consumers and be sure to share it with your friends! Learn more . > Donate to help PETA in its efforts to stop unnecessary Animal Testing .
Souce: PETA
June 6, 2008
Weekly updates on animal issues from PETA
The following are extracts from PETA E-News for this week:
16 Horses Have Died on Racetracks Since the Kentucky Derby
In the month since Eight Belles’ ankles snapped at the Kentucky Derby, at least 16 thoroughbreds have died at racetracks around the country. PETA renews its call for a cruelty investigation into the Eight Belles tragedy. Take action today!
Ask Cirque du Soleil to Use Alternative to Live Birds
After PETA heard rumors that Cirque du Soleil—renowned for its spectacular animal-free productions—would use birds in its new Las Vegas show, Criss Angel Believe, we immediately contacted Cirque du Soleil and MGM. Take action today!
With your help, KFC Canada Finally Gives In to PETA’s Demands!
PETA has won a major battle in its efforts to stop the worst abuses of chickens by KFC. KFC Canada has agreed to a historic animal welfare plan that will improve conditions for millions of birds.
Enter to Win Cruelty-Free Cosmetics From Black Radiance and Tropez!
Glow from your sparkling eyelids to your shimmering toes with cruelty-free cosmetics from Black Radiance and Tropez! Both cosmetics lines have sensational products to help you achieve complexion perfection.
Win Quantum Wellness—As Seen on Oprah and Ellen!
Bestselling author Kathy Freston has appeared on Oprah and Ellen discussing the benefits of a vegan diet and her new book, Quantum Wellness. Now you can enter to win your own free copy here!
May 1, 2008
Animal Testing - As consumers, you can help to reduce cruel tests on animals
As you read this, hundreds of mice, rats, cats, dogs, birds, rabbits, monkeys, and other animals are dying in 
cruel and unnecessary medical and product-testing experiments. In fact, 219 animals are killed every minute in a U.S. lab. They die in pain, alone, without a gentle touch or a soothing voice. Animal studies teach us nothing about the health of humans because animals of different species absorb, metabolize, and eliminate substances differently than humans do. The truth is that testing on animals is bad science: It is unreliable and unnecessary.
New shampoo formulas, lotion, anti-ageing cream and new cosmetics only add on to unnecessary and excruciating pain for the animals that are being tested for the economic gain of the corporations that produce them. You can keep the pressure on those responsible for these cruel tests by signing the pledge HERE and joining the thousands of caring consumers who refuse to purchase products from corporations that abuse animals. As a caring consumer, please buy products that are cruelty-free, and have not been tested on animals.
Source : PETA http://www.peta.org/
April 10, 2008
Dear Suffering Animals , I’m so very sorry …
Dear Suffering Animals , I’m so sorry
I wish there’s more that I could help
I think about you who are defenceless against we humans,
little dogs caged in wire confines yelping away, taken away from your parents days after you were born.
caged in that little space living in your own urine and faeces..scarcely a concern of those who profit from your sale
for mommy dogs, never to have experienced the clean sensation of a fresh smelling bath, humped on each period to breed and bear puppies in the puppy mills,
each offspring whisked off somewhere or killed, depending on their conditions , for in-breeding triggers abnormalities which the rich would be horrified to see in the cute puppy trade
Panting from the sweltering heat of the day, how we need to lap up some clean water that’s nowhere in sight
in the cold months of Fall and Winter, how we long to be in your houses , where warm lights glow and shimmer behind the curtained windows. ..some days, my caged companions never wake up from their frozen slumber after spasmodic shudders in the night
I think about you — the family of African elephants trying to escape from the firing squad, always hiding somewhere for you
…not many escape, those who do have shot wounds in their flesh that fester with maggots in the savanna plains,
and your unfortunate loved ones collapse to the ground injured, stricken by armour-piercing bullets, while my human poachers run excitedly towards their prized catch of the day
My heart pains for the baby seals bludgeoned to semi-consciousness, while their moms plead for mercy at the hunters swiping away at their heads to deal that crucial blow
Consider it lucky to suffer an instantaneous death , or else suffer an ignominious pain while my human hunters tear off your blood-soaked coat of fur in your throes of slow death… I cringe at the thought of your skin-less baby freshly stripped and tossed into the mass of red snow, alive, in extreme pain and crying till it whimpers its last breath.
Somewhere in a lab, the lights turn on a few minutes before office hours, and you wonder, what’s going to happen to us today? We scutter about nervously in our cages; somewhere frantic screeches could be heard.
Will I or my fellow caged friends suffer the excruciating pain and torture?
At that instant, somewhere on many TVs and myriad communication media, flashy commercials beckon with the latest new formula shampoos, anti-ageing cream and body wash
a pair of gloved hands reaches in and grabs a struggling rabbit, injects some fluid into its arteries . As its taut muscles relaxes, liquid chemicals are deftly applied to its eyes and shaven skin during its sleep
it wakes up with an unstoppable burn…blinded by the chemicals, too abrasive for the next new formula. Oops, this doesn’t work, notes the researcher
Sometimes, I wish there was no birth.
I wish animals never have sex, I wish eggs never hatched
for in many cases, it’s better never to have an opportunity to live, and then be sentenced to a life of misery which grows worse each day
Foie gras, veal, farmed chicken….anyone ?
A calf snatched away from its mother and confined for the rest of its life in its small pen to keep its meat supple, so that we may enjoy tender veal ? NOT ME !
Geese and ducks machine-pumped with food through their beaks forced open by strong farm-hands
It’s not a meal-time to look forward to I bet… each passing day, these ducks and geese grow weaker with a bloating liver that increases to reach foie gras proportions, that’s the time to be served in some high-end restaurant
> Visit NoFoieGras.org to see how it is made
Chickens in cages, well, the story goes on…as long as their trip along the never-ending roads,
Transported from one place to another in their tight coops, their beaks gasping for air from the pack crammed into a tight crate, amidst the foulness of their dried droppings and tongues parched from the heat and thirst
no option to rest, stand they must with the rest of the pack.
The many which collapse from mere exhaustion can only be discovered when their journey ends , as live chickens are wrenched away from the coops into a processing centre, and they topple to be chucked into some grinding machine with a petrified squawk
Animals may not be smarter than any one of us humans (except perhaps dolphins), but each one has a life like ours.
They experience fear and the sensation of pain.
I’m not sure how to ask humans to change their perspective on animals, to treat them with care
if only love for animals was fostered at a young age to nurture compassion!
Would humans care to spend some time putting themselves in the shoes of these animals ? Perhaps they don’t have the time, or see no need to.
What if humans were one day to be dominated by some other “superior”, or more powerful species and be treated like these animals ?
I wonder.
letter to animals, April 10, 2008, by Andrew Wee
January 12, 2008
Companies that don’t test on Animals
This link sends you to a page which provides you a list of companies that do not test their products on animals > See List .
Compassionate Shopping - knowing that your products do not unnecessarily harm animals
AAVS recently assumed responsibility over leading the Coalition for Consumer Information on Cosmetics (CCIC), which manages the Leaping Bunny Program. Formed in 1996 by AAVS and six other animal advocacy organizations, the CCIC works with companies to verify the elimination of all new animal testing from their products and promote the use of an international ‘leaping bunny’ product logo that is easily recognizable for consumers seeking trust-worthy, animal-friendly products.
AAVS only lists companies that have joined the Leaping Bunny Program in its Compassionate Shopping Guide, giving consumers confidence in the cruelty-free products they are buying. Request a free Guide! Or view and print our pocket-sized Compassionate Shopping Guide in Acrobat PDF format:
Product Testing on Animals
Every year, millions of animals, mostly rabbits, mice, and rats, are subject to tests that assess the safety of personal care and household products. However, there is no law that specifically requires that animals be used as human models to test personal care products such as soap, cosmetics, or deodorant and household products such as floor cleaner or laundry detergent, and neither the U.S. Food and Drug Administration or the Consumer Product Safety Commission require companies to use animal tests to prove that their ingredients and finished products are safe. Furthermore, reactions to the exposure of these products vary among species, making it difficult to extract data from animal tests and apply them to situations in which humans are exposed.
Additionally, there is no ethical justification for the use of animals in testing the effects of personal care and household items. The Draize eye irritancy test, for example, subjects animals, usually rabbits, to procedures where they are restrained and a test substance is placed into one of each animals’ eyes, with the opposite eye serving as the control. During the experiment, little veterinary care is given and the use of topical anesthetics is rare. The animals¹ eyes are evaluated for up to three weeks to gauge ocular changes, including damage to their eyelids, conjunctiva, iris, and cornea, and the animals are likely killed upon completion of the experiment. Other toxicity tests include the Draize skin irritancy test, which is similar to the Draize eye test, only done on shaved skin, and acute toxicity tests, also called the LD50 and LD100, which involve the poisoning of animals until half or all the test subjects die. While consumers do deserve safe products, animal tests such as these have never been subjected to rigorous scientific testing to assess their ability to predict human safety yet are readily accepted, having never been validated.
Be confident about your cruelty-free choices.
Look for the leaping bunny logo!
January 3, 2008
Ways You Can Help the Animals
Ways You Can Help the Animals
(Source: The Humane Society of Canada)
* If you decide to add a pet to your family, adopt a dog or cat from an animal shelter. Don’t buy a pet from a pet store or a breeder. Always microchip and keep ID tags on your pets; both are a lost pet’s ticket home.
* Don’t wear fur in any form: fur coats, fur hats, or fur-lined gloves, boots or jackets. Don’t buy fur novelty items, such as mink teddy bears. By wearing or buying fur, you are promoting the ruthless slaughter of furry animals.
* Do your part to help the pet overpopulation problem. Spay or neuter your pets. Encourage other pet owners to spay or neuter their pets, too.
* Spread the word. Write messages on your checks, such as “Stop pet overpopulation-spay/neuter your pet.” Take advantage of opportunities to speak at schools, churches, and at other public forums about how we all can help animals.
* Avoid forms of “entertainment” such as rodeos, horse races, dog races, circuses, roadside zoos, animal pulls, and travelling shows in which animals are abused. Also avoid films and television programs whose production caused animals to suffer.
* Report animal abuse to your local animal shelter, animal control department, humane society or SPCA. You will be helping animals, and you may be helping people. Studies show that in a home in which animals are being abused, children may be suffering from abuse as well.
* Buy cosmetics and personal care products that are not tested on animals. Use cruelty-free household cleaners, or make your own cleaners from natural products.
* Donate your time to help animals. Volunteer at a local animal shelter or humane society. Work to pass legislation that protects animals.
* In consultation with your doctor or nutritionist, reduce the amount of meat in your diet, and if you can eliminate it altogether.