Introducing peta2's Holiday Survival Guide! November 20, 2009

Posted by Rachel-O at November 20, 2009 1:44 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBack

The holidays are coming up—you know what that means! For me, it's lots of Tofurky, vegan pumpkin pie, and spending time with friends—but it wasn't always that way. I first went vegan around Thanksgiving because of how disturbed I was by the dinner centerpiece—a headless, oversized, stuffed dead bird. But let's face it, it's not always easy being vegan around the holidays, especially if you have a family like mine that wanted to know why I wasn't eating their food, what I would eat instead, and why I'd made such a "crazy" decision.

Every year we receive thousands of e-mails from Street Teamers who are facing the same dilemma, and this year, peta2 is coming to the rescue with our brand new holiday survival guide.

Click to check out the guide!

The guide features advice on some common situations you might run into over the holiday season, and it also includes recipes to help you veganize holiday favorites. If you can't win them over with your words, you can definitely win them over with our cruelty-free versions of pumpkin pie, snickerdoodles, and chex mix! Download peta2's holiday survival guide now! It even includes a holiday Nugget poster—who doesn't love that?

E-mail us at StreetTeam@peta2.com and let us know what recipe you made (and for who), and we'll give you 500 Street Team points! Want even more points? Snap a pic with the super-cute Nugget poster that's included with the guide and post it on Facebook or hang it on your locker or door, and send us a pic for 1,000 points!

If you're feeling the pressure and need some inspiration, we've got that covered too. Last Thanksgiving, PETA released our undercover investigation into Aviagen, a company who breeds some of the nearly 270 million turkeys are killed for food every year in the US. Investigators documented employees stomped on turkeys' heads, punching turkeys, hitting them on the head with a can of spray paint and pliers, and striking turkeys' heads against metal scaffolding. The best way for you to fight this abuse is by not eating turkeys, and by using the advice in our guide to help educate your family on why you're choosing to be cruelty free!

Happy (cruelty free) holidays!

Turkey Abusers Convicted: One Jailed! June 29, 2009

Posted by Rachel-O at June 29, 2009 9:06 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 28 ) | TrackBack

We're starting this week off with another historic victory for animals! Check out this blog from PETA's Karin Bennet!

Late last year, some factory-farm employees were fired from Aviagen Turkeys, Inc. in response to PETA's undercover investigation, which documented that workers were breaking turkeys' necks, stomping on their heads, and shoving feces and feed into turkeys' mouths.

Then, in February, a grand jury handed down 19 indictments, including 11 felony charges, against three former Aviagen workers, marking the first time in U.S. history that factory-farm employees have faced felony cruelty-to-animals charges for abusing birds.

Fast forward: Two of the three ex-employees, Scott Alvin White and Edward Eric Gwinn, recently pleaded guilty to cruelty charges. On June 8, White was sentenced to serve one year in jail—the maximum period permitted by law! Today, Gwinn was sentenced to serve six months' home confinement—the maximum period permitted by law—on each count, concurrently, and is banned from living with, owning, and working with animals for five years. The case against the third ex-employee, Walter Lee Hambrick, is pending.

These historic victories by no means even the score for the turkeys who were punched and thrown or the many other birds who suffered when they were forced to watch as other turkeys were abused at Aviagen. After watching our undercover video, animal behavior expert Dr. Lesley J. Rogers stated, "It is now known that when social animals, like turkeys, see and hear other members of their species under stress or suffering physical injury, their levels of stress become elevated. Hence, the behavioural stress is widespread in the birds in the vicinity of those that have been injured and/or handled roughly."

Still, these convictions will remind workers on other factory farms that if they don't clean up their acts, PETA investigators (and the whistleblowers who tip us off) will have their eyes on them.