Kategorie: Animals

On Black Friday—the busiest shopping day of the year—a “cow,” an “alpaca,” a “sheep,” and a “goat” will lead PETA supporters as they descend on an Urban Outfitters store and block the entrance to demand that it stop selling leather, alpaca fleece, wool, mohair, and anything else cruelly and violently obtained from animals. The protesters will hold signs showing the terrified faces of exploited animals and reading, “The Face of Fashion Is Fear.”

“Behind every wool sweater and leather purse on Urban Outfitters’ shelves was a gentle animal who felt pain and fear and didn’t want to die,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA is calling on the retailer to stop selling animals’ stolen skins and stock only the stylish vegan designs that it already offers.”

PETA launched its campaign against Urban Outfitters, Inc., brands—which also include Anthropologie and Free People—after Anthropologie was implicated in a first-of-its-kind PETA investigation revealing that workers mutilated alpacas during shearing. Other videos have revealed that workers hit, kick, and mutilate gentle sheep for their wool; leave sensitive goats with bloody, gaping wounds at mohair and cashmere operations; burn, electroshock, beat, and slaughter cows for leather; yank out the feathers of ducks and geese by the fistful for down; and boil silkworms alive to produce silk.

Where:           Urban Outfitters, 743 Richmond St., London

When:             Friday, November 27, 3:30 p.m. 

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

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You may be celebrating this year’s “ThanksVegan” on Zoom, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go to town on a hearty vegan feast. Folks all across the country are celebrating this year by cooking up some delicious plant-based holiday dishes or ordering takeout from local vegan restaurants. Check out the unique ways restaurants, grocery stores, and even celebrities are joining in on the ThanksVegan fun this year!

5 Actions to Take This ‘ThanksVegan’

If you’re putting your vegan chef hat on like Slutty Vegan owner Pinky Cole with her signature ThanksVegan recipe, you might want to stop by these supermarkets for some vegan-friendly ingredients:

Sprouts Farmers Market, Sobeys, Safeway, Lincoln Market, Gelson’s Markets, Key Food, ALDI U.S., Tops Friendly Markets, Giant Eagle, Ingles Markets, Lidl, MOM’s Organic Market, Vallarta Supermarkets, and Price Chopper are all offering ready-to-roast vegan turkeys and other animal-free holiday dinner options. For those not ready to brave the stores, meal delivery services Veestro, Boycemode, Fresh n’ Lean, and MamaSezz are all participating in ThanksVegan, offering tasty Thanksgiving-themed options that will be delivered right to your door.

These stores and restaurants are also taking a seat at the ThanksVegan table this year:

Manna Kitchen, Chicago

Bandaloop, Arundel, Maryland

Kahiau’s Bakery & Cafe, Virginia Beach, Virginia

Miami Nice, Portland, Oregon

The Cider Press Café, St. Petersburg, Florida

Kotobuki Japanese Restaurant and Sushi Bar, Norfolk, Virginia

Vegiterranean Kitchen, Moorpark, California 

Lovin’ Spoonfuls, Tucson, Arizona 

Vegan Avenue, San Antonio

Good Foods Co-op, Lexington, Kentucky

Kale My Name, Chicago 

The Grain Café, Los Angeles

Bangkok Garden Restaurant, Norfolk, Virginia

Lincoln Market, Brooklyn, New York

Sunshine Vegan Eats, Buffalo, New York

House of Leaf & Bean, Jacksonville, Florida

Vegan Fine Foods, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Veg’n Out, San Diego

The Village Restaurant, Litchfield, Connecticut

Here are some other places participating in ThanksVegan that will help you pile your plate with plant-based foods this year:

• Mama’s International Tamales, Los Angeles
• Granby Bistro & Deli, Norfolk, Virginia
• Rajput Indian Cuisine, Norfolk, Virginia
• Naomi Vegan Meets, Norfolk, Virginia
• Pelon’s Baja Grill, Norfolk, Virginia
• Shawarma, Norfolk, Virginia
• Your Pie, Norfolk, Virginia
• Ben’s Chili Bowl, Washington, D.C.
• Busboys and Poets, Washington, D.C.
• Pow Pow, Washington, D.C.
• Calaveritas, Atlanta
• Golden Dinosaurs Vegan Deli, Gulfport, Florida
• Souley Vegan, Oakland, California
• Chunkie Dunkies, Riviera Beach, Florida
• Loving Hut, Claremont, California
• Star of India, Fort Collins, Colorado
• Flourish Plant-Based Eatery, Evansville, Indiana
• Plant, Asheville, North Carolina
• AJ’s Stone Oven Pizzeria, Norton, Massachusetts

How will YOU be celebrating ThanksVegan?

Will you join these restaurants, stores, and Pinky Cole in this year’s ThanksVegan festivities?

Whether you’re an expert in the kitchen or you prefer takeout, these places have you covered this year. If you support any of these participants, take a photo of your stacked holiday plate and post it on social media with the hashtag #ThanksVegan!

Have you heard of #ThanksVegan? https://t.co/7sm6smvX1l pic.twitter.com/nLSItIX7E8

— PETA (@peta) November 22, 2020

Celebrate ‘ThanksVegan’ This Year

The post Stores and Restaurants Participating in ‘ThanksVegan’ 2020 appeared first on PETA.

A California federal judge’s recent ruling that enforcing a ban on “offensive” license plates violates freedom of speech has led locally based PETA staff member Lewis Crary to submit an application today to change his license plate to read, “ILVTOFU.” The action is part of PETA’s campaign encouraging people to save animals’ lives and help prevent future pandemics by going vegan and embracing delicious, versatile foods like—you guessed it—tofu!

“Crary has every right to show off his love for tofu and give other motorists food for thought about eating vegan,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA’s goal is, of course, to drive home the message that while animal-borne diseases thrive in filthy, cruel meat markets and slaughterhouses, tofu has never caused a pandemic.”

Not only is tofu cheaper than meat, it is also packed with protein, contains zero cholesterol, and can lower one’s risk of suffering from heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and numerous other health issues. COVID-19 is believed to have originated in a live-animal market in China where live and dead animals were sold for food. Previous influenza viruses have originated in pigs and chickens.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat” and which opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview—offers a variety of delicious tofu-based recipes on its website, such as General Tso’s Tofu and Buffalo Tofu-Scramble Breakfast Tacos.

PETA staffers previously sought approval for license plates reading “ILVTOFU” in Colorado, Florida, and Tennessee, which rejected the message in 2014 for being “vulgar,” leaving PETA to assume that the Department of Revenue missed the intended soyful message and misread it as the far steamier “I-LV-TO-F-U.”

For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

The post Will Judge’s Ruling Mean a Green Light for PETA’s Cheeky ‘ILVTOFU’ License Plate? appeared first on PETA.

Tofu never caused a pandemic—but it does make for some great gift ideas! This season, we’re inspired by tofu in a big way, because it’s versatile, easy to prepare, and, most importantly, animal-friendly. To encourage others to jump on the tofu train, we’ve created some tofunny gifts that will bring some levity and laughter to your holiday celebrations. Check out the PETA Shop to buy these tofu-themed gifts:

Tofu-Scented Candle 

Love candles but can’t deal with pesky scents? Try our soy-based tofu candle! Just like tofu, it’s virtually scentless, so your home will smell the same as it did before you lit it. Even better, it’s completely vegan, so it doesn’t contain any animal-derived ingredients like beeswax.

Tofu Jewelry 

Throw away your diamonds and pearls, because you won’t need them once you try on our tofu jewelry. Our tofu ring and earrings are eye-catching accessories, and just as tofu goes with every food, these charming statement pieces go with any outfit.

Tofu Holiday Card 

Let friends and family know how well you’re doing by telling them that you’re going sledding with a block of tofu.

Tofu Calendar

Did you know that tofu’s favorite activity is traveling to scenic destinations? This well-traveled block of tofu traveled all around the world, from Stonehenge to the Taj Mahal, for our 2021 calendar.

Tofu T-Shirt

Be a total trendsetter by sporting our plain white Tofu T-shirt (or giving it to someone as a gift)!

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No matter how you’re celebrating the holidays, make this special season animal-friendly with tofu. Check out the PETA Shop for a full catalog of our holiday gifts, and visit our website to find out how to make the perfect tofu.

Shop PETA’s Tofu Collection!

The post PETA’s Holiday Gifts Celebrate the Gift That Keeps on Giving: Tofu! appeared first on PETA.

Spiking COVID-19 cases are compromising California’s reopening plan, and PETA is calling on the California Department of Public Health to cut cruel animal experiments statewide—starting with tests on animals, many of whom institutions deemed in response to the pandemic to be non-essential—and protect human health by having staff not come into laboratories to conduct worthless experiments.

In its letter, PETA points out that during the initial COVID-19 shutdown, universities in California issued guidance deeming many of their experiments—and the animals used in them—extraneous, which resulted in the apparent euthanasia of numerous animals in their laboratories, including the following:

• Chapman University told experimenters that “no animal research activity should commence during the campus closure.”
• Stanford University indicated plans to “[r]educe rodent breeding to only numbers required to maintain lines.”
• The University of Southern California directed experimenters to “suspend certain studies and euthanize animals.”
• The University of California–Berkeley implemented a plan to “ramp down, curtail, or postpone, animal research experiments.”
• The University of California–Davis urged its staff to “ramp down all noncritical on-campus research activities.”
• The University of California–Los Angeles requested that its experimenters “ramp down or terminate research.”
• The University of California–San Diego urged experimenters to “consider culling non-essential animals.”
• The University of California–San Francisco informed its staff that “[i]n mouse facilities, breeding should be reduced to the minimum possible; no increases in cage counts will be permitted and all researchers should plan for additional reductions of cage counts in the future.”

PETA questions why animals deemed by the universities to be extraneous are being bought, bred, trapped, or experimented on in the first place and notes that staff conducting these experiments are being put at unnecessary risk as a result of working in close proximity to others. Also, if animal testing resumes and California shuts down again, more animals may be euthanized, wasting tax money that could have funded superior, human-relevant studies.

“This pandemic should be a wake-up call to shift away from experiments on animals and toward a ‘new normal’ of modern, non-animal research methods,” says PETA Vice President Shalin Gala. “PETA is calling on state officials to learn from the past and keep all animals from suffering in cruel and wasteful tests.”

More than 90% of results from basic scientific research—much involving animal testing—fails to lead to treatments for humans, and 95% of new medications found to be safe and effective in animals fail in human clinical trials.

PETA previously called for an audit of public money, personnel, property, equipment, and space used by the University of California system for animal tests deemed non-essential, noting that the universities received $428 million in state appropriations in the last fiscal year, some of which may have funded such animal experiments.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

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