Heart 4 Animals

The holiday season is upon us, but for turkeys on factory farms, there is nothing to be thankful for. We have just released footage from an undercover investigation that reveals a rarely seen side of the turkey industry. I must warn you that the cruelty to turkeys that we found is horrifying and heart-wrenching.

Men shoved feces and feed in turkeys’ mouths and held turkeys’ heads under water. One worker bragged about jamming a broom stick 2 feet down a turkey’s throat because the turkey had pecked at the worker’s back. The same man mimicked raping a turkey hen whom he had pinned against a shed floor.

Others told PETA’s investigator that they had killed turkeys, including by hitting them with pieces of lumber and pipes. Workers broke turkeys’ necks, sometimes leaving them to suffer for several minutes before trying again or stomping on their heads. A supervisor said that he saw workers kill 450 turkeys with 2-by-4s. Many of the workers kicked and violently threw turkeys, and hens’ beaks were cut with dull pliers. You can watch video footage from the investigation here.

Now that our undercover investigator has exposed what the turkey industry does not want America to see, we need you to help turkeys on factory farms by writing to the National Turkey Federation (NTF) and asking it to support PETA’s seven-point animal welfare plan, which will help reduce the suffering of turkeys.

After writing to the NTF, please consider other ways that you can help birds during this holiday season. You can keep them off your plate this holiday season by choosing mouthwatering vegan options instead, and you can support PETA’s work so that we can continue to investigate and stop animal abuse worldwide.

Thank you for your compassion for animals.

Very truly yours,

Ingrid E. Newkirk
President

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Last week, our team of animal rescue experts saved more than 200 dogs from another horrific puppy mill. This massive rescue operation was our second in just six days, and I’m writing to you today because we desperately need your help to continue our campaign to eradicate puppy mills from across Canada.
But first, I want to share a story with you: Imagine spending your entire life in a cramped wire cage in a dark basement, slowly starving. Imagine being sick and terrified, with no end to your suffering in sight.

Now imagine a caring team of people throwing open the doors of your cage and carrying you to safety.

It is because of your support that HSI Canada was able to do exactly this during our two recent rescue operations. With your help, we rescued more than 300 dogs, 7 cats and a rabbit from two of the worst puppy mill operations our team has ever seen. Please watch our video from the rescue, and make a special gift today to ensure we can save even more animals from miserable lives in puppy mills.
The conditions were horrific: dogs and puppies confined in tiny wire and wooden cages stacked floor to ceiling, the smell of their waste so strong we could barely breathe. Ninety percent of the dogs were emaciated, many covered in open sores. One dog had been left to die in a filthy cage in a closet. His body was so thin we thought he was already dead until he moved.

When you buy a pet, you are promoting the greedy live animal trade in which animals are often housed in filthy conditions and/or killed if they don’t meet the sale-able requirements. (Read about Puppy Mills here . > Help us stop Puppy Mills )

There are many animals at your local SPCA / animal shelters awaiting adoption. The sad thing is, once past a certain period, these animals would have to be put to sleep.

To find animals up for adoption in your locale, google or type “SPCA (your City)” or “Animal Shelter (your City)” in your search engine to find your nearest shelter.  For residents of BC, here are some beautiful animals (dogs) waiting to be adopted by loving and responsible owners. Most of them were given up because their owners had to move. How sad to be left behind by the ones you love most. I wish I could adopt all of them.  ( > Update: The Obama Family WILL Adopt! )

Please visit http://www.hsicanada.ca/ for this news just in.

Some kind-hearted people asked me what they can do to help animals.  Below are examples of suffering animals that you can read more about. Thought I’d share with you some key animal news of the week from the People For The Ethical Treatment of Animals. Please follow the links to the original articles which will show you how you can help these animals suffering around the world :

FDA = Federal Dog Abuse
In a full-page Washington Post ad, PETA slams Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Andrew Von Eschenbach for requiring crude and unreliable animal tests, including tests on dogs. You can help stop this cruel testing!
What You Won’t See in the Upcoming Olympic Coverage
There’s a lot to celebrate about the Summer Olympics in China. But there’s an ugly side for animals living in the Olympic host country: the Chinese fur industry’s horrific abuse of animals. You can help us expose the horrible abuse of animals.    Read more and take action today!

Introducing PETA Living Introducing PETA Living
Welcome to PETA Living, the new section dedicated to bringing you helpful advice for your cruelty-free lifestyle. From animal-friendly fashion tips to the latest on wildlife-friendly landscaping, PETA Living is a treasure chest of insider tips waiting to be discovered!
U.S. Government Sends Tigers to a War Zone! U.S. Government Sends Tigers to a War Zone!
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has issued a permit for a roadside zoo in North Carolina to send two tigers to the Baghdad Zoo in Iraq. It is cruel and irresponsible to put tigers in harm’s way in a country where most people don’t even have access to basic necessities. Take action today!
U.S. Army Shooting Live Pigs in Trauma Training
A brave whistleblower in the U.S. military has come forward to expose cruel medical training practices— pigs are being shot while still alive. We need your help! Check out PETA’s action alert and take action on this important issue today.
PETA Names Top 10 Vegetarian-Friendly Ballparks of 2008
Ballparks across the continent have stepped up to the plate when it comes to serving delicious vegetarian food. Find out which ones made PETA’s annual list of vegetarian-friendly ballparks for 2008, and read more about their mouthwatering menu options.

PETA to Obama: Melting Pot Deserves National Mutt
PETA President Ingrid Newkirk has sent a letter to Sen. Barack Obama and his family urging them to adopt a “pound pup,” or Great American Mutt, rather than buy a dog from a breeder or a pet store. Read the full letter exclusively on The PETA Files.

Action Alerts Link

Please click on the link “Action Alerts” on the right panel of this website to speak out on various critical animal issues . Defence-less animals are counting on YOUR voice.

PETA is seizing the international spotlight of the Summer Olympics to help animals by exposing the nightmarish conditions for dogs, cats, and other animals who are unlucky enough to be on Chinese fur farms.

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 much of it is sold in North America.

The video footage from PETA’s undercover investigations on Chinese fur farms have revealed that dogs—including German shepherds and golden retrievers—and defenseless tabby and Siamese cats were strung up by their legs or tails and skinned alive. Their fur is often labeled as “Asian jackal,” “rabbit,” or “raccoon” fur and sold to unwitting consumers around the world.

If someone feels uncomfortable wearing the skin of a kitten or a puppy, they should certainly be uncomfortable wearing the skins of rabbits, raccoons, and other animals.

As our undercover video footage reveals, the suffering of dogs, cats, and other animals in China’s fur industry is extreme. After spending their lives crammed together in filthy, homemade wire-mesh cages, they are thrown onto trucks and bludgeoned, poisoned, electrocuted, or even boiled alive before their skin is ripped off their bodies. Some animals in the video footage are still conscious and look up at the camera while they are skinned.

I hope that you will make a donation to PETA to help our work for animals who are caught up in China’s wretched fur industry. Please help us push harder with our global campaign to stop the torture of animals for their fur. The support of caring individuals like you is the best hope for ending this horrific industry.

As you know, there is absolutely no acceptable use of animal fur in our society: not for jackets, hats, boots, purses, glove linings, trinkets, cat toys, consumer vanity, or corporate greed. Killing animals for their skin is repugnant, intolerable, and cruel.

Yet the slaughter of innocent animals continues.

But working together, we can save millions of individual animals in China and around the world from suffering. Please make your special gift to help animals today.

Because of supporters like you, PETA has been able to reduce the suffering of so many animals already. We’ve convinced some of the world’s leading designers and retailers—including Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Polo Ralph Lauren, and Ann Taylor—to adopt permanent no-fur policies, and countless people have agreed to stop wearing and buying fur. But we have much, much more to do before all animal suffering for the sake of fashion ends.

Please help us devastate this industry, which thrives on animal misery. Your donation to PETA today will turn up the heat on the Chinese government to close these cruel fur farms and auctions, and it will help convince more people all over the world to say “No” to fur forever.

Thank you for standing up for animals’ rights.

Kind regards,

Ingrid E. Newkirk
President

People For The Ethical Treatment of Animals

P.S. PETA’s anti-fur campaign is truly global: We target companies everywhere that supply and sell fur, from Chinese fur farms to North American retailers, like the Burlington Coat Factory, that continue to sell fur. But we need your support to get our investigators inside these operations, mobilize our grassroots activists, and conduct our hard-hitting media campaigns. Your online donation to PETA today can help us save animals who are in danger of being tortured and killed for their skin.

Senator Obama and his family have said that, win or lose, they’re going to add a dog to their family after the election this November.

That’s a great idea. But I hope they decide to adopt one from their local shelter. Why? Because as long as people still buy their pets from pet stores and commercial breeders, millions of abandoned pets are killed in shelters across the country every year.

So here’s one issue that’s truly bi-partisan – one that we can all agree on. Let’s ask our national leaders always to adopt their pets from shelters, rather than buying them from pet stores.

Members of Best Friends Animal Society have started a petition to invite the Obama family to do just that. Whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, left-wing, right-wing or any other wing, you can make a bipartisan difference by signing our petition at ObamaFamilyDog.com, and encouraging all your friends and family to sign it, too.

Thanks for thinking about the nation’s homeless pets!

Watch heartwarming video of puppies freed from puppy mills by clicking here .

Be a responsible consumer - stop fuelling animal mills and adopt a pet from an animal shelter instead. .

I was shocked to read the following article (excerpt below) :

The small animals sold at PetSmart cost the multibillion-dollar company next to nothing and make up a minuscule percentage of the company’s total sales. So why does PetSmart buy them by the thousands only to leave them to die from disease and injury?

The answer is simple. Adorable hamsters are frequently bought on impulse when parents can’t resist their child’s pleading. The hamster may not cost much, but supplies add up quickly. Cages, bedding, food, and other paraphernalia amount to millions of dollars in annual profit.

PetSmart sells birds and other animals to people who often buy them on impulse and don’t have a clue about how to care for them properly. Just as there are puppy mills, there are enormous bird factories and massive animal “suppliers,” where breeders warehouse thousands of “breeding stock,” whose babies are taken away and sold. Regulation of such massive facilities is often lax or non-existent, leaving the monitoring of breeders to the company itself—and leaving the animals to suffer the consequences. > Full article & Video here > Photo Gallery .

What YOU Can Do :

> Blow the Whistle on Animal Cruelty > Write to PetSmart by editing letter guide provided .

Guide to recognizing fur - A new Liberation BC publication!

If you or someone you know owns an item with real fur on it, please snap a pic and send it to info@liberationbc.com. We are working on a guide to recognizing fur for the fall shopping season, and your photos can help to provide necessary visuals. If you would like to help in any way with this project, or would just like more information, please send an email. It’s important to get information out there so that people can distinguish real fur from fake fur, before they buy it, and you can help.

If you are willing to part with any fur or fur-trimmed items (either on a permanent or temporary basis) they would be invaluable as visual aids when tabling.

If you have an item that you’re unsure of, contact us and we may be able to help. Tips can also be found here.

Pappas Furs Campaign

Every Saturday
1-3pm
Aberdeen Centre (4400 Hazelbridge Way, Richmond, located conveniently on the 98 B-Line bus (Cambie Road stop))

These protests at Aberdeen Centre are continuing until Pappas Furs is shut down.  Pappas Furs is a Canadian furrier that specializes in clothing of the cruelest kind — enormous fur coats, wraps, and muffs made from the skins of suffering animals.

How many animals are there in a standard full-length fur coat? Anywhere from 10 to 20 foxes, 18 to 20 lambs, or 130 to 200 chinchillas!

How can you help?

Come out to one of these Saturday events and join other compassionate people in speaking out against this cruelty. These events are friendly outreach events. All you need to bring is hope and a smile!

If you can’t make it out to Richmond, you can still help by contacting Aberdeen Centre and politely telling them that you don’t want Pappas Furs in the mall!

Telephone: 604.270.1234  or  604.273.1234 ext 12
Email:  info@aberdeencentre.com, leasing@aberdeencentre.com, promotion@aberdeencentre.com
Address:  Fairchild Developments Ltd., Suite 130,
4400 Hazelbridge Way, Richmond, BC, V6X 3R8

Foie Gras Outreach Event

Friday, May 30th,
7-9 pm,
Café de Paris Bistro, 751 Denman St.

The ducks and geese need your help! The campaign has been really successful so far, and many people have stopped to sign the petition. Best of all, more and more people are becoming aware of this issue.

Can’t make it out?  Please give Café de Paris a call at 604-687-1418 and let them know that there’s no excuse for foie gras!

If you haven’t contacted the other restaurants on the list of foie gras offenders, now is the perfect time! All it takes is a few minutes and an email account or a phone! The list is constantly being updated, so check back often!

If you learn of a restaurant or store that is carrying foie gras, please send an email to info@liberationbc.com so that they can be added to the list. Thanks!

Respect for Chickens

International Respect for Chickens Day may have been celebrated a few weeks ago, but we know that any day is a good one when it comes to celebrating chickens.  Did you know that chickens are intelligent birds with cognitive abilities rivaling those of small children? It’s true! Did you know that they are very social birds who recognize each other by their facial features and have 24 distinct cries, including separate alarm calls depending on whether a predator is approaching by land or by sea? They are also good at problem-solving!

“As a trick at conferences I sometimes list  attributes, without mentioning chickens, and people think I’m talking about monkeys,” says Dr. Chris Evans, Professor of Psychology at Macquarie University.

Learn more about the remarkable chicken at GoVeg.com and CompassionOverKilling.

Eat Less Meat!

The Vancouver Humane Society has issued a challenge on the newest page of their website:

Stop animal suffering.
Protect the environment.
Stay healthy.
Save vital resources.

Eat less meat.

We couldn’t agree more! Rising meat consumption is the driving force behind the growth in factory farming that’s ruining our environment, harming our health and condemning billions of animals to misery.  Learn what you can do to stop it!

You can help put a stop to the suffering by speaking flickout against it. Please consider joining other activists at any of the friendly outreach events listed below.

If you can’t make it to an event, there are many other ways to help. You can write letters, send emails, or make phone calls. If you would like to start your own leafletting or outreach event, or if there’s some other way that you feel you can help, send an email to info@liberationbc.com.

Also, consider making a donation to Liberation BC. Your donations help to cover the costs of printing leaflets and signs and purchase important equipment like the tent, the television, and the portable battery. Liberation BC is an all-volunteer organization with no funding, except from donations. Your support is vital to continue to spread this message of compassion and concern for the millions of voiceless animals who are suffering right now.

The animals need you.

Please, donate now.

Source: Liberation BC at http://www.liberationbc.com/ .