Kategorie: Animals

This morning, PETA supporters armed with signs reading, “Jason Buechel: Stop Selling Coconut Milk From Tortured Monkeys,” interrupted the Whole Foods CEO’s keynote speech at the Transform Food USA 2023 conference to challenge the company’s sale of Thai coconut milk—including in its own 365 by Whole Foods Market brand—despite receiving ample evidence of cruelty revealed in PETA Asia’s investigations showing that Thai monkeys are captured, forced to pick coconuts, trained through fear of punishment, caged in isolation, and chained for life. Photos and video of the disruption are available here.

“After three damning investigations, Whole Foods continues to sell Thai coconut milk and ignore the suffering of monkeys who are kidnapped and used as coconut-picking machines,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is calling on Whole Foods to stop supporting Thailand’s abusive coconut industry and get Thai coconut milk off its shelves immediately.”

In Thailand’s coconut-picking industry, endangered pig-tailed macaques are often illegally snatched from their forest homes as babies. Handlers put metal collars and leashes on them and may even remove their canine teeth so they can’t defend themselves. PETA Asia’s investigative footage shows trainers striking them, dangling them by their necks, and whipping them. Because the industry and the Thai government lie about their systemic reliance on forced monkey labor, it’s impossible to guarantee that any coconut milk from Thailand is free of it.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, or Instagram.

The post Video: PETA Disrupts Whole Foods CEO’s Speech Over Profits From Thai Monkey Abuse appeared first on PETA.

This morning, in light of the most recent U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) inspection report—which included citations for housing a dolphin with others who apparently broke several of her ribs, failing to provide protection from direct sunlight (which can cause or perpetuate eye lesions), allowing a dolphin trainer to undermine the attending veterinarian’s authority, and failing to maintain enclosures in good repair, among other violations—PETA fired off a letter to Miami-Dade County officials urging them to immediately terminate the Miami Seaquarium’s lease.

The report prompted the county to issue the Seaquarium a notice of default on its lease, which requires that the facility maintain its property in “a good state of repair” and “maintain animals in accordance with federal laws.” The county’s notice gives the Seaquarium 45 days from November 1 to improve conditions for the animals—but as PETA points out in its letter, the facility has already had years to rectify the chronic and repeat violations documented in USDA reports from 2021, 2022, and 2023.

“Having failed at every opportunity to clean up its act, the Miami Seaquarium is still subjecting animals to injuries from incompatible tankmates and denying them shelter from the scorching Miami sun, just as it did Lolita,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is calling on Miami-Dade County to break this cycle of abuse by immediately terminating this abusement park’s lease.”

A dolphin named Abaco was left bloody at the Miami Seaquarium after his rostrum (a dolphin’s snout) got caught in the fence of an enclosure.

Other violations noted in the USDA’s most recent inspection report include failing to provide necessary equipment to ensure adequate veterinary care and treatment (three manatees hadn’t been weighed in more than five years because the Seaquarium didn’t have the scales to do so); ignoring the attending veterinarian’s recommendations, including that a dolphin who had ingested plastic and concrete from a dilapidated enclosure should be moved; and failing to adequately handle animals during public interactions, resulting in a guest being bitten on the hand by a dolphin.

The new report repeats several violations listed in the USDA’s 2021 and/or 2022 inspection reports, including ignoring veterinary recommendations; housing incompatible animals together, resulting in injuries, with the same dolphin sustaining broken ribs in both 2021 and 2023; and putting trainers and guests at risk for physical harm.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, or Instagram.

The post Feds, County Crack Down on Seaquarium; PETA Pushes for Immediate Lease Termination appeared first on PETA.

The post National Mango Board: Don’t Squeeze The Life Out Of Mice appeared first on PETA.

Today, more than 1,000 PETA supporters diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and other attention-deficit disorders called on Johns Hopkins University experimenter Shreesh Mysore to stop drilling into barn owls’ skulls and mutilating their brains. This petition is part of a new multimedia campaign launched by PETA.

The supporters all signed the petition that was sent with a letter today to university officials. They’re also calling for the reimbursement of the more than $3.7 million in taxpayer money that Mysore has received from the National Eye Institute for these experiments, almost $2 million of which he collected during the seven years he illegally experimented on and killed owls without mandatory Maryland state permits.

PETA’s campaign also includes an eye-catching full-page ad in The Johns Hopkins News-Letter exposing Mysore’s deadly and irrelevant tests on owls and a new video posted today on the group’s social media channels featuring supporters with ADHD demanding, “Talk to me. Stop torturing owls.” The video is narrated by Dr. Elena Tillman, a clinical psychologist who has ADHD.

PETA’s full-page ad featuring this petition, signed by more than 1,000 supporters who have attention disorders, appears in The Johns Hopkins News-Letter today.

“Cutting open owls’ heads and poking around in their brains to study human ADHD is as cruel as it is pointless,” says PETA Vice President of International Laboratory Methods Shalin Gala. “PETA is calling on Johns Hopkins to shut down Mysore’s lab now and switch to modern, animal-free research methods that are actually relevant to humans.”

In his experiments, Mysore cuts into barn owls’ skulls, implants electrodes in their brains, forces them into plastic tubes or jackets so cramped that they can’t move their wings, clamps their eyes open, and bombards them with sounds and lights for up to 12 hours. When he’s done with them, he kills them.

Modern, sophisticated neuroimaging techniques that don’t use animals—including functional MRI, positron emission tomography, transcranial magnetic stimulation, and electroencephalography—have already led to major advancements in understanding attention-deficit disorders.

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, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, or Instagram.

The post 1,000 Members of Attention Disorder Community Demand That Johns Hopkins Stop Mutilating Owls appeared first on PETA.

The post ‘Talk to Me. Stop Torturing Owls’: Over 1,000 PETA Supporters Issue Urgent Plea to JHU appeared first on PETA.