respect nature & human rights
In a landmark victory for horses, the Chicago City Council passes a ban on cruel and dangerous horse-drawn carriage rides, making the Windy City the largest city in the country to ban the archaic industry. PETA supported the Chicago Alliance for Animals’ push for a progressive ban every step of the way.
The post 2020: Chicago Bans Horse-Drawn Carriage Rides appeared first on PETA.
Because a watch for tornadoes has been issued for the Charleston area, PETA is sharing tips for keeping animals safe.
PETA has released these disaster-preparedness public service announcements. This video stars Dean Winters, and this one tells the real-life story of a man reunited with his dog after a tornado. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
The post Urgent From PETA: Tornado Survival Tips for Animals in South Carolina appeared first on PETA.
After learning from PETA that greeting cards featuring great apes wearing costumes, displayed in studios, or interacting with humans hinder conservation efforts, Rite Aid is pulling all such cards from its 2,450 stores and will no longer feature great apes in its advertising.
“Kudos to Rite Aid for helping PETA push Hallmark and American Greetings to stop exploiting apes for their cards,” says PETA primatologist Julia Gallucci. “Chimpanzees aren’t models or props, and clownish photos of them wearing clothes or sitting at desks put these endangered animals at risk.”
Emmy Award–winning wildlife documentary producer Chris Palmer (who has written two books on the ethics of photographing wild animals) also sent a letter on PETA’s behalf to Joe Arcuri, the CEO of American Greetings, explaining that unnatural images of chimpanzees mislead consumers into believing that the species—which may face extinction within our lifetime—is thriving. These portrayals may also increase the black market demand for endangered great apes as “pets,” which is one of the main forces driving them toward extinction.
For all these reasons, greeting card company Moonpig has dropped all images of captive great apes from its products, and top stock-image agencies such as Getty Images, Shutterstock, and Dreamstime are banning inappropriate images of nonhuman primates.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use in entertainment”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
The post Rite Aid Pulls Great Ape Greeting Cards From Shelves Following PETA Push appeared first on PETA.
In a first-of-its kind ruling within the Fifth Circuit, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas has denied Texas A&M University’s attempt to dismiss a lawsuit that PETA filed against it. The litigation challenges Texas A&M Vice President of Brand Development Shane Hinckley’s refusal to allow PETA to place an ad on the school’s buses showing a dog used in Texas A&M’s canine muscular dystrophy (MD) experiments.
Hinckley claimed that the ad violated Texas A&M’s advertising standards prohibiting ads that contain “political campaigns and viewpoints or endorsements”—but today’s decision allows the case to move forward so that PETA can prove that this ban on “political” speech is unreasonable.
PETA is asking the court to declare that the school’s policy prohibiting “political” advertisements is vague and discriminates against the group’s viewpoint in violation of the First Amendment. In today’s decision, the court ruled that these claims may proceed to discovery so that PETA can collect evidence from Texas A&M.
PETA had previously filed two First Amendment lawsuits challenging Texas A&M’s deletion of comments about the dog laboratory on its official Facebook page and other social media sites. The group settled the first lawsuit to its satisfaction, and the second is pending.
“Texas A&M doesn’t mind hurting dogs, but it sure hates it when the public finds out,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “The university is violating the law to avoid public scrutiny when it could just shut down its gruesome laboratory and release all the dogs there into loving homes.”
The dog on PETA’s ad is Peony, one of those at Texas A&M who struggled to walk, swallow, and even breathe. She repeatedly suffered from parasites, was subjected to painful surgeries, and was regularly soaked in the drool caused by her enlarged tongue. She was euthanized at 22 months old.
Under pressure from PETA supporters, 500 physicians, and humans with MD, Texas A&M stopped breeding dogs to develop the disease. The lead experimenter has retired, and many of the nearly 100 dogs have been adopted into homes—but the laboratory still keeps 25 dogs imprisoned there.
For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
The post In Groundbreaking Ruling, PETA’s Free-Speech Lawsuit Against Texas A&M University Is Upheld appeared first on PETA.
From an Omaha meat shop, Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts has declared a statewide “Meat on the Menu Day” in response to Colorado’s “MeatOut Day” and its laudable effort to reduce the consumption of animals, do a little something to protect the environment, and enhance public health. Please see the following statement from PETA President Ingrid Newkirk:
PETA is planning to put up a billboard on the Colorado side of the border with Nebraska warning, “Entering Nebraska, Home of Meathead Governor Ricketts!”—calling out a governor who is so afraid of the vegan future that he created a whole day to celebrate his meat-industry campaign contributors for killing animals, operating filthy slaughterhouses in which workers have been exposed to COVID-19, polluting waterways with factory-farm effluent, and turning a blind eye to meat-related maladies such as heart attacks, cancer, and diabetes.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for food”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
The post PETA Mocks ‘Meathead’ Governor’s Pro-Meat Day appeared first on PETA.
