respect nature & human rights
Below please find our statement from PETA Senior Vice President Lisa Lange on reports Amy Cooper has regained custody of her dog:
Anyone who is this rough with a dog and hangs the animal by the neck, as in the video, clearly shouldn’t have a companion animal. Surely, a better home can be found than with Amy Cooper, and PETA stands ready to assist with that.
For more information, please visit PETA.org.
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Following recent reports that two dogs died in a hot car in High Ridge, PETA is issuing an urgent warning about the importance of never leaving animals in hot vehicles. In the past two years, there have been at least 116 hot weather–related animal deaths—and these are just the ones that have been reported. Most aren’t.
On a 78-degree day, the temperature inside a parked car can soar to 100 degrees in just minutes, and on a 90-degree day, the interior temperature can reach as high as 109 degrees in less than 10 minutes. Dogs, who don’t sweat and can cool themselves only by panting, can rapidly succumb to heatstroke, even if a vehicle is parked in the shade with the windows slightly open, which has little to no effect on lowering the temperature inside.
Anyone who leaves an animal to bake to death in a vehicle could face felony cruelty charges.
If you see a dog left alone in a hot car, call local humane authorities or the police. Don’t leave the scene until the situation has been resolved. If the authorities are unresponsive or too slow and the dog’s life appears to be in imminent danger, find a witness (or several) who will back up your assessment. Then remove the suffering animal from the car and wait for authorities to arrive. PETA offers an emergency window-breaking hammer for help with intervening in these life-or-death situations.
PETA has released a hot-car public service announcement featuring Mckenna Grace. For more information, visit PETA.org.
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There’s a difference between upcycling older clothing garments and profiting from stolen goods that resulted in the victim’s traumatic death. We’re talking about the ridiculous “reclaimed fur” policy being touted by Canada Goose. The company claims that starting in 2022, it will no longer buy “new” coyote fur. However, don’t be fooled by marketing ploys. Whether fur is labeled “new,” “virgin,” or “reclaimed” and whether it’s used for a little trim or a full-length coat, it was stolen, because it’s always taken from animals who didn’t give up their skin willingly.
“Reclaimed” in the fashion industry typically refers to materials produced from waste, cuttings, and used garments. So what about “reclaimed fur”? Canada Goose announced that it will use fur that already exists in its supply chain and the marketplace, which means that it could be using fur from jackets that simply went unsold or may even be using new fur that came from scraps of brand-new garments produced by other companies—both of which still support the intensely cruel fur industry.
Remember: No matter when it was stolen, all fur was taken from an animal who deserved to keep their skin and didn’t want to die.
Fur farmers raise animals inside cramped, filthy cages before violently beating, gassing, or electrocuting them to death—or even skinning them while they’re still alive. Trappers ensnare animals in their natural habitats and shoot, bludgeon, or kill them in some other violent way before skinning them. The latter is the case with coyotes used for the fur trim on Canada Goose jackets, whether it’s newly obtained fur or fur already in the supply chain or marketplace.
©Born Free USA
It’s not OK for companies to profit from animals’ suffering, and Canada Goose’s “reclaimed fur” policy completely ignores that fur is always a product of extreme violence. It’s a marketing ploy to trick well-intentioned consumers into supporting an egregious industry, and it also may allow the company to continue selling fur in places that have banned it. Canada Goose’s misleading policies fuel a cruel industry and perpetuate animal abuse.
When it comes to ethics, brands can’t pretend that “humane treatment” can be part of a conversation about killing and skinning living, feeling beings for profit. Exploitation is exploitation, and it’s never ethical to profit at the expense of others—no matter how long ago they were harmed. Don’t let Canada Goose trick you into thinking that it cares about animals. In the end, very little is changing for a company built on the suffering and deaths of countless coyotes, ducks, and geese.
Using “reclaimed fur” sends the same unacceptable message as wearing newly sourced fur—that it’s OK to allow animals to languish in steel traps or be skinned alive for the sake of vanity. People can’t tell the fur’s backstory by looking at it, so wearing any fur is essentially a pro-fur billboard. If you really don’t want to give up the look of fur, you can choose from one of the many sustainable and ethical companies that sell faux fur. And don’t be shy about telling others that it’s not real fur!
We all want to end the use of fur and save animals, but we can’t give back the pelts that belonged to the animals who’ve already been killed and skinned.
If you’ve already bought a Canada Goose coat, you can simply remove the fur trim from it. You can also donate fur items to animals or humans in need. PETA receives furs from people all over the world who’ve come to their senses. We send unwanted furs to wildlife rehabilitation programs to be used as bedding and donate many of them to homeless people or to refugees who can’t afford to buy their own coats—the only people who have any excuse to wear fur.
Do you have fur in your closet? Check out PETA’s donation program to learn how you can put it to good use. Unless an older garment is being used to help someone in need, it shouldn’t make anyone feel good about using fur.
Tell Canada Goose to Ditch ALL Fur and Down!
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After obtaining documents revealing that Louisiana State University experimenter Christine Lattin has apparently captured, confined to laboratory cages, and killed approximately 80 sparrows, PETA sent an urgent letter to the Office of the District Attorney requesting an investigation into Lattin’s actions in potentially violating the Baton Rouge municipal code, which designates the city as a bird sanctuary and prohibits trapping and harming wild birds.
In the letter, PETA points to a recent research proposal by Lattin showing that she has apparently trapped and killed 80 sparrows, pumping 20 males and 20 females with sex steroids for a week before exposing them to predator calls and then killing them. Additionally, she intends to capture and kill an estimated 100-plus birds over the next two years, including breeding pairs and their chicks, for use in cruel stress tests. In the tests, Lattin plans to subject nesting sparrows to a barrage of predator calls meant to stress and frighten them—and after their chicks hatch, she plans to kill all the birds and dissect their brains. Significant differences between humans and birds—and even among different bird species—mean that these experiments won’t tell us why some animals handle stress better than others and don’t have any relevance to stress experienced by humans.
“For more than a decade, Christine Lattin has captured, physically harmed, terrified, and killed wild-caught birds in cruel experiments, and now it appears that she may be willing to break the law in order to continue doing so,” says PETA veterinarian Dr. Ingrid Taylor. “PETA is calling on officials to investigate and, if warranted, throw the book at her for making a mockery of city laws meant to protect wild birds.”
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—notes that Lattin has previously stressed birds by wounding their legs, rattling their cages, and restraining them in cloth bags. She’s fed them crude oil mixed with feed and subjected them to injections that damaged their adrenal glands. After enduring these experiments, the birds were killed.
PETA’s letter to District Attorney Hillar C. Moore III is available upon request. The group opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.
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Just in time for National Doughnut Day (June 5)—and to encourage people to support local businesses as states begin to reopen—PETA has selected the country’s Top Vegan Doughnuts, and The Sweet Praxis has scored a (sweet) spot on the list. The shop’s award-winning doughnut delights—which are available for pre-order and curbside pickup Fridays through Sundays—include Chocolate Sprinkle and Strawberry, plus unique flavors like Hibiscus, Boston Cream Pie, and Snickerdoodle.
“The Sweet Praxis’ aglazeing vegan doughnuts hit a hole-in-one for both pastry buffs and animals,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “Dollars to doughnuts, PETA bets you’ll love these delicious vegan treats that don’t harm a hair on an animal’s head.”
Not only are vegan pastries free of saturated animal fat and cholesterol, they also spare animals immense suffering: In the dairy industry, calves are torn away from their mothers shortly after birth, and in the egg industry, parts of chickens’ beaks are cut off with a hot blade when they’re just a few days old. In the age of coronavirus, vegan treats are the safe choice for humans, too, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that approximately 75% of recently emerged infectious diseases affecting humans originated in other animals.
Other honorees include Doe Donuts in Portland, Oregon; Lovebirds Donuts in Kittery, Maine; and Tandem Doughnuts in Missoula, Montana. View the full list here.
The Sweet Praxis will receive an award letter and a framed certificate.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.
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