Posts tagged as "Animals"

Perhaps best known for his Oscar-nominated role as John Coffey in the movie "The Green Mile," actor and muscle man Michael Clarke Duncan is now taking on a new role: animal advocate. 

In a new video released by PETA (embedded below), Duncan talks about why he decided to become a vegetarian three years ago, when he turned 51, and how his meat-free diet has changed his life.

Influenced by the video "Meat Your Meat" and the books Skinny Bitch and Skinny Bastard, Duncan says after learning about the process animals go through before ending up on our plates and how eating meat can harm our bodies, he "cleaned out his fridge" and decided to "try something new and exciting and different."

In the video he says, "The best thing about being a vegetarian for me, number one is I know I'm not harming any animals. The number two thing is increased strength. I'm a lot stronger than I was when I was eating meat."

Earlier today, a powerful and extremely graphic new undercover video inside a Wyoming pig breeding factory farm was released by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS).

The footage, which was filmed by an investigator employed at Wyoming Premium Farms, a company that supplies Tyson Foods, reveals incredibly violent and downright sadistic scenes of animal abuse including mother pigs repeatedly punched and kicked in the face, piglets swung around by their back legs or kicked like soccer balls, and injured pigs with broken legs or prolapses unable to walk who were left without access to food, water, or veterinary care.

In addition to enduring egregiously abusive conditions and spending months on end nearly immobilized inside narrow gestation crates, these pigs are also forced to live in filthy conditions with mummified corpses of piglets and aisles littered with feces as well as the cut-off tails and testicles of piglets.  Read the full investigative report from HSUS.

Mother's Day is just two days away—this holiday is a wonderful reminder to celebrate our own moms, but it's also a nice time to reflect on the special bond between the mothers and children of all species.

Today, Compassion Over Killing, Animal Legal Defense Fund, Farm Sanctuary, and Animal Protection & Rescue League, and several concerned individuals joined forces to file a lawsuit against the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) for allowing the sale of a diseased poultry product commonly known as foie gras.

Foie gras, which means “fatty liver,” is produced by force-feeding ducks and geese multiple times a day for weeks. As a result of pumping large quantities of food into their stomachs, their livers swell up to ten times the normal size – a condition known as hepatic lipidosis, or fatty liver disease. In other words, foie gras is, by definition, the product of a diseased animal.

Did you know that the egg industry designates May as National Egg Month in an effort to convince consumers to keep buying eggs after the Easter rush?

Most consumers are surprised to learn that despite the happy hen imagery you might see on cartons of eggs, behind virtually every “incredible, edible” egg sold in grocery stores today is a hen crammed inside a barren wire cage so restrictive, she can barely even move. Intensively confined for nearly their whole lives, these smart and social animals are rountinely treated as little more than mere egg-producing machines. This is the sad reality for more 250 million egg-laying hens in the US.

Egg-laying hens may not have a choice, but thankfully we do — we can crack the cruelty simply by choosing to leave their eggs out of our shopping carts.

On Saturday, April 28, I competed on behalf of Compassion Over Killing in the 10th Annual Grilled Cheese Invitational (GCI) at the Pasadena Rose Bowl--and took home the trophy for 3rd place in the professional chef category!

The GCI is the largest sandwich cooking contest in the country, drawing in nearly 10,000 people every year - and this is the first time any awards have been given to vegan entries!

In addition to the competition itself, the event includes cheese-themed poetry, grilling demonstrations, a costume contest, and food trucks. With all the cheesy hoopla, the crowd is led to believe that cheese is something to celebrate, when in fact dairy products are incredibly harmful to animals, the planet, and our health. We entered this contest to represent vegan cheeses and demonstrate that the compassionate version of America's favorite sandwich not only tastes great--it might even taste better than the original!

Mixed news on the "ag gag" front: this week, the Missouri House passed ag-gag bill HR 1860, meant to shut down whistleblowing investigations of factory farms. These bills aim to criminalize the conduct of undercover investigators, such as filming or distributing footage taken inside an animal agribusiness facility. The Missouri bill is now in the hands of the Senate.

While Missouri is one step closer to passing "ag gag" legislation, the good news is that New York's ag-gag bill has been tabled for the remainder of the legislative session. This means the bill is dead for the year. 

In January 2012, the European Union’s ban on the use of barren wire battery cages for egg-laying hens took effect – and the impact seems to ruffling the feathers of many retailers concerned about the rising cost of eggs.  In fact, egg prices have quadrupled in some markets in EU due to a shortage in supply.

Adopted in 1999, this newly-enacted farm animal welfare directive sets minimum standards of care for the more than 330 million egg-laying hens throughout the EU, most of whom have been intensively confined inside barren cages – until now. Under this directive, all egg producers are required to provide hens with more space, nesting areas, perches, and scratching areas. 

Not all egg producers were willing or able to rip out their old barren cages and invest in new housing systems, which can include larger, yet more costly, enriched cages. According to the UK’s Daily Mail, as a result, “some in the industry simply abandoned production.”

"The reality of food processing can be off-putting... There is always a percentage of dead birds [and] chicken houses will inherently contain a level of fly and rodent activity." - Ron Kreider, President of Kreider Farms, responds to new undercover video

As reported last night on ABC World News, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) just released a new undercover video exposing severe overcrowding of hens crammed inside barren wire battery cages, rotting corpses of birds in cages with live hens, and filthy, fly-infested conditions. The video was filmed by an HSUS investigator working inside Kreider Farms, an egg factory farm in Pennsylvania, the nation's third-largest egg-producing state.

Earlier today, the National Pork Producer's Council (NPPC) hosted an “educational” briefing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC titled “Farm Animal Welfare: How We Really Treat Our Animals.”  Only thing is, the NPPC’s presentation -- just like the factory farms that dominate the pork industry -- was hidden behind closed doors. 

Compassion Over Killing went down to Capitol Hill to attend this so-called "fact- and science-based briefing" but we weren’t allowed in, and neither were numerous other members of the public who simply wanted to see what NPPC had to say. This of course makes one wonder: What is the NPPC telling our federal lawmakers and their staff that it doesn’t want the American people to know?