Kategorie: Animals

Destroyed homes, gruesome untreated wounds, and a constant search to find enough food to survive—these are a few of the daily struggles dogs, cats, and other animals in the war zones in Ukraine face two years after the country was invaded, and their numbers grow with each day of the bloody conflict.

Those lucky enough to have survived and stayed with their guardians often fare little better. Many stores are closed, and those that are open have only limited supplies of food at extremely high prices. In addition, finding veterinary care can be nearly impossible.

“The war of aggression against Ukraine has now been going on for two years. That’s 17,520 hours of rocket attacks and strikes, ground fighting, destruction, death, and great suffering for humans and animals. During this time, PETA Germany, together with strong partners in Kharkiv, has set up a unique aid project that provides hope and comfort. We appeal to you not to forget the animals affected by the war. They want their hunger to be satisfied, their injuries to be healed, and their fear and terror to be alleviated.”

—Sylvie Bunz, Project Director of PETA Helps Ukraine

It takes a herculean effort to feed hungry animals in Ukraine each month. Teams from Germany stop at nothing to enter the war-torn country—even courageously maneuvering around a blockade recently to deliver a freight of food and other provisions. From there, other team members and a network of brave volunteers use the supply chain they assembled at the beginning of the war to reach the thousands of dogs, cats, donkeys, and others who rely on them to survive.

One delivery fills the stomachs of around 1,300 dogs and cats who live in a safe shelter near Kharkiv. Another is giving more than 50 horses the fresh bedding and feed they need to survive the harsh winter. Other animals in Dnipro, Mykolaiv, and elsewhere also count on deliveries. And every day, teams are rescuing more animals, often from the same war-torn towns and villages mentioned in the latest news from the front lines.

Here’s how teams have moved mountains for animals in Ukraine since the onset of the war:

• They’ve created 1,300 safe spaces for housing animals in need, including dogs, cats, horses, sheep, goats, chickens, pigeons, geese, ducks, swans, and fish.
• PETA’s Global Compassion Fund helped establish a veterinary clinic in October 2022. Up to 130 seriously injured and ill animals can be operated on and given the best possible care every day.
• Every month, team members perform spay/neuter surgeries for around 150 animals to prevent thousands from being born on the streets, only to suffer and die there.
• Animals in Ukraine have received more than 3.3 million pounds of food and other provisions, despite conditions that often make deliveries difficult.
• All the animals in the project receive regular veterinary care. The ones who will be transported to Europe for adoption are quarantined and prepared for the journey in accordance with EU regulations. This takes 16 weeks per animal! Around 60% of the animals are reunited with their guardians who have fled, while the remaining 40% are transported to our partner shelters in Europe.
• Every day, 85 PETA-supported employees work on site to care for the animals there and rescue others.
• More than 15,000 animals have been rescued so far!

Support PETA’s Global Compassion Fund

The post Two Years of Saving Animals in Ukraine: Here’s a Glimpse at Rescuers’ Everyday Lives appeared first on PETA.

It’s been flapping around in the news that some experimenters think changing chickens’ genes will fend off avian influenza (bird flu). How about having respect for these remarkable birds rather than tampering with their DNA in order to keep using them for food? Editing chicken genetics, which only might make the birds less susceptible to disease, is highly problematic in multiple ways.

Five Reasons Not to Edit Chicken Genetics

1. It violates individuals: Chickens are living, feeling beings who shouldn’t be bred, exploited, and killed for food or anything else. Too often, deceptive labels like “humane,” “organic,” or “free-range” are used to distract consumers from the egregious misery that the meat and egg industries inflict on these remarkable birds. PETA has campaigned for decades to increase kindness toward them.

Chickens are smart, social, and sensitive individuals, each with a distinct personality and capable of experiencing love, joy, sadness, and pain—yet they’re among the most abused animals on the planet. From the moment they hatch, billions of chickens raised for food each year are forced to endure enormous suffering, just for a fleeting taste of their flesh.

2. It worsens the climate catastrophe: Editing genes in newly bred chickens perpetuates breeding more animals. This escalates environmental destruction due to having to feed them as they grow, manage their waste, transport them to a slaughterhouse, kill them, and process and ship their corpses as food.

Raising billions of chickens on farms for food produces enormous amounts of excrement every year. Oregon State University agriculture professor Peter Cheeke says that today’s farming amounts to “a frontal assault on the environment,” which leads to widespread fecal pollution of land and water.

3. It squanders tax money: Spending tax dollars on changing chickens’ genes—as the National Institutes of Health does on other tests on animals—is a wasteful expansion of the vivisection industry. That money would be better used to benefit animals, human health, and the planet.
4. It wastes valuable time: Scientists should spend their time on meaningful and compassionate research—as laid out in PETA’s Research Modernization Deal. Damaging experiments like altering chickens’ genes would cause long-term harm, whereas human-relevant research that doesn’t involve other animals would bring about useful scientific advances.

5. It stirs up potential pandemics: Reconfiguring chickens’ genetic makeup—which requires experimenters to be in close proximity to birds in potentially dangerous ways—could lead to future pandemics. And since all viruses, including bird flu, mutate, it could find a way around genetic manipulation.

Birds used in the chicken industry and crowded into confinement have a high likelihood of contracting and carrying diseases, including avian flu, chronic respiratory illnesses, and bacterial infections. The answer isn’t to alter their genes—it’s to stop exploiting them for food.

Why Tampering With Chicken Genetics Is Cruel

We should respect chickens for who they are, rather than trying to change them. Besides, by breeding them for specific characteristics, humans have already done horrible damage.

Chickens love their families, value their lives, and are always looking out for others in their flock. They “talk” to their chicks while they’re still inside the shell and have unique calls to warn others of danger coming by land or air. They comprehend cause-and-effect relationships and understand that objects still exist even after they’ve been hidden from view. Inquisitive and intelligent, they have complex social structures as well as adept communication skills and can recall the faces and “pecking order” of over 100 other birds.

Focusing on how chickens could be changed to serve speciesism overrides compassion for and curiosity about them as individuals. Choosing kindness instead of using them for food would be better for everyone. Every animal—including every chicken—is someone.

Help Stop the Spread of Bird Flu

Crowded farms and filthy slaughterhouses are instrumental to the transmission and mutation of the bird flu virus, so our best bet at curbing its spread is to stop eating chickens and their eggs. Replacing them with animal-free options is the only way to be safe. And it’s easy to choose vegan chicken products. Have compassion for birds by ordering PETA’s free vegan starter kit:

Order a Free Vegan Starter Kit

The post Why Editing Chickens’ Genes Is a Cockamamie Idea appeared first on PETA.

We wanted a vegan guide to Palworld, and Aden Carter from Game Sandwich delivered, showing us his best attempt at a vegan run of the game—it ends at Level 28 and consists entirely of collecting berries.

Berries are great and all, but PETA now proposes that with just five updates, Palworld would be ready for a whole new audience. Let’s dig into the Pal-friendly improvements, shall we?

New Feature: Pal Pacts

In Palworld, players’ relationships with Pals involve capturing, warehousing, and commanding them. Most wild Pals don’t even attack you on sight: The only way to interact with them is by beating and capturing them. This leaves the game unplayable for those of us who respect Pals as their own individuals with wants and needs.

Players should be able to Pact with wild Pals, establishing a trusting bond based on mutual survival with them. Instead of kidnapping Pals from their habitats, players would have to make partnerships with Pals worthwhile by providing them with food, play, and care—or else they’d leave of their own accord.

Back to the Drawing Board: Paldeck Reworks

The Paldeck (Palworld’s Pokédex) has a lot to say about how Pals are used by humans—not cool, Pocketpair. Pals exist in their own right and have complex, rich lives without human interference. The ways in which we describe Pals, like any animal, impact how we think about them—so it pays dividends to “write kind”! When Pocketpair gets the Paldeck ready for release, it should also focus on sharing positive Pal facts. PETA’s writing team is always there to help.

New Content: Pal-Free Crafting Materials

We get it—resources are limited on the Palapagos Islands. However, if the best minds of the land can invent computer tech like the Palbox, surely they can figure out fruit leather, plant textiles, and vegan options for other base materials. Pals’ skin, flesh, milk, fur, and so on belong to them alone.

With vegan material options, players would be able to clothe themselves, sleep in a bed, and unlock a substantial portion of the technology tree without having to loot Syndicate goons for their nonvegan leftovers. In other words, animal advocates would be able to play the game!

Added Missions: Flesh Out the Free Pal Alliance

It seems pretty clear that the Palapagos Islands need defenders of justice who will work to establish Pal rights and free them from the subjugation of human supremacy. The Free Pal Alliance is the start of something great, but it shouldn’t be an enemy of players. We want opportunities for players to work with the alliance.

Lily, its leader, is a great start! She eschews the master-servant relationships that have ravaged the Palapagos Islands and wants humans and Pals to live in harmony. Instead of fighting her as a boss, we’re envisioning a main-story quest line by her side, in which you could help her liberate Pals from their abusers and spread a mission of compassion to your fellow humans.

New Content: Better Vegan Recipes

Palworld’s current vegan food selection is paltry, albeit functional. While you can scrape by, there are only five vegan base ingredients: berries, mushrooms, wheat, tomatoes, and lettuce, and the cooked vegan dishes the game lets you make with them are limited.

Cue the update! Palworld’s base ingredients list should include nuts and beans, with which players could craft delectable plant-based cheeses, dairy-free milk, nut butter, and other vegan delights to use in advanced recipes. We also want to be able to use flour to create delicious seitan, to replace Pal flesh in the game’s large roster of meat-based recipes.

If the game’s creators are looking for meal inspo, they’re welcome to reference PETA’s favorite recipes!

Palworld’s Vegan Patch: Coming Soon?

Pocketpair, the spotlight’s on you. Can we count on you to turn Palworld into a game that compassionate players can really enjoy, or will you leave us to our sticks and berries?

If you’re not feeling the vegan vibes just yet, maybe the modding community will take up the task. Who knows what the future holds?

The post PETA Proposes a Vegan Update for Palworld, Awaits Pocketpair’s Response appeared first on PETA.

PETA’s bipartisan mascot Chris P. Carrot is on the campaign trail in South Carolina, where he’ll give attendees and presidential hopefuls some food for thought as he holds an “EAT ME!” sign and urges them to go vegan for three good reasons: to stop harming animals, to bolster human health, and to protect the environment. Chris P. Carrot will appear at Nikki Haley’s bus tour stops in Georgetown this afternoon and in Myrtle Beach later this evening.

“Animal agriculture is a killer, spewing methane that’s destroying the planet, hardening humans’ arteries with cholesterol, and sending billions of animals to their deaths,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA’s Chris P. Carrot is urging candidates and voters to go vegan before it’s too late—and we have free downloadable vegan starter kits for all.”

According to the United Nations, about a third of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are linked to food production and the largest percentage of these emissions come from the meat and dairy industries. PETA notes that growing water-intensive crops just to feed animals raised for food consumes more than half the water used in the U.S. and that up to 80% of deforestation in the Amazon is linked to meat production, either for grazing or for growing food for cows. Vegan foods—such as fruits and vegetables, whole grains, beans, peas, nuts, and lentils—require less energy, land, and water.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, or Instagram.

The post ‘Eat Me!’ Chris P. Carrot Says Presidential Candidates Must Go Vegan to Combat Climate Catastrophe and More in Georgetown appeared first on PETA.

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