PETA Global 2018 Issue 3

JAPAN

ASIA

USA

PETA Asia Video Persuades Sponsors

A MESSAGE FROM Ingrid Newkirk PETA’s President

Kitten: © iStock.com/amandafoundation.org • Beagle: © iStock.com/LivingThroughTheLens

to Drop Cruel Elephant Polo

After PETA Asia released footage of trainers viciously beating elephants on the head with bullhooks for the “prestigious” 2018 King’s Cup Elephant Polo Tournament at the Anantara Riverside Bangkok Resort in Thailand, IBM, Johnnie Walker, PwC, Vespa, Ecolab, Securitas, Leading Quality Assurance, and other sponsors ended their support of the event. According to organizers of the

L ike other choices in my early life, from fishing to fur-wearing (’fraid so), I made some that caused my relationship with horses to get off to a bad start. As a girl, I was required to take riding lessons. Once, I went straight over a horse’s neck when he lowered his head unexpectedly to nibble some tempting weeds (there went a tooth). Later, I was thrown again, at a roadside stable, when the horse “smelled the barn” and bolted, leaving me nursing a sore jaw. I forgave them both, but the question is this: Would they forgive me for their involuntary servitude?

After hearing from PETA scientists since 2015, the Japanese government eliminated its requirement that companies conduct year-long pesticide poisoning tests on dogs, who will no longer be forced to eat pesticide-laced food or inhale pesticide fumes daily for a year before being killed and dissected. The move came after PETA scientists repeatedly provided Japanese authorities with detailed analyses demonstrating that data from these cruel tests aren’t used to protect humans. The US, Canada, and the European Union had already stopped mandating the test after discussions with PETA, sparing thousands of dogs annually. PETA is urging other countries to follow suit. VICTORY! PETA Prompts Japan to Say ‘Sayonara’ to Dog Poisoning Tests

Beau Bridges Says, ‘Don’t Eat Sea Animals’

From lobsters to fish and oysters to octopuses, more aquatic animals are killed – including in prolonged and painful ways – for food each year than all other species combined. To help stop this slaughter, celebrated actor – and vegan – Beau Bridges stars in a new PETA video on sea life. “Humans have only one heart, compared to an octopus’s three, but surely, we can show sea animals compassion by leaving them in the ocean and off our plates,” he says.

tournament, the last of its kind, the six trainers PETA Asia caught abusing elephants were expelled – but all elephant trainers use domination, all captive elephants are being kept in involuntary servitude, and all elephant abuse needs to go. Take Action Now Please call one of the few remaining sponsors, INVNT, and urge it to stop supporting elephant abuse: +1 212-334-3415.

On a family trek in Kashmir, India, my mother says that I ruined the trip by fussing because I was concerned about a horse named Sampson, who had to climb up rocky terrain with my father – a man of considerable size – on his back. Nevertheless, I gadded about Delhi in a horse cart, or tonga, only later realizing how poorly shod the ponies were and how thin.

GLOBAL

GLOBAL

Victory! Jack Daniel’s Cuts Ties With Iditarod USA

AUSTRALIA

Recently in Delhi, PETA India confiscated two lame horses – one of whomwas partially blind, as I discovered when I pulled back his blinders. Staffers also persuaded five horse cart owners to surrender their elderly equines, who are now retired, in exchange for mechanized carts. In 2018, why isn’t it considered insane – or at least bizarre – to sit on horses’ backs and kick them to get them going, as if you were kick-starting a motorbike? If giraffes were as plentiful as horses, would we ride them? Is riding horses any less silly? If we “love” horses, why don’t we recognize that they are herd animals who want to live their own lives, unencumbered by human beings? They are not ours to breed, race, eat, isolate from each other, keep in stalls, pull this way and that, or use as “beasts of burden,” a telling term. Please pass this issue of PETA Global on to anyone who cares about horses. Also, if your employer has charity fund drives, visit PETA.org/WorkplaceGiving to find out how your workplace donation can benefit PETA’s campaigns to stop horse abuse. Thank you.

YOU DO THE MATH!

I

For World Water Day, a PETA volunteer stripped, jumped into the shower on a public street, and suggested that people in drought-stricken cities save water and animals by scrubbing meat, milk, and eggs from their diets. Passersby learned that growing crops to feed animals raised for food sucks up more than half the water in the US. In the UK, the “water footprint” of animals raised for food is about 40% of the country’s total water use. In Australia, 43% of agricultural water is guzzled to grow food for animals used for meat and dairy “products,” while growing fruit and vegetables for humans uses only 10%. PETA Pulls Back the (Shower) Curtain on Water Waste

Victory! PETA Australia Gets University Petting Zoo Nixed After a PETA campaign that included protests outside Jack Daniel’s headquarters and e-mails from more than 186,000 PETA supporters, the whiskey maker’s parent company, Brown-Forman, confirmed that it has now ended its 15-year sponsorship of the barbaric Iditarod dog sled race. PETA first contacted Jack Daniel’s about ending its Iditarod sponsorship after five dogs died during the 2017 race (memorialized by PETA in a protest at the 2018 race, above). More than 150 dogs have died since the race began, and those are just the reported deaths – that numb r oesn’t include those who died immediately after the race, during training, or while chained up at mushers’ compounds in the snow and ice amid their own waste. Reportedly, some dogs are denied veterinary care when they fall ill, and some are beaten. Take Action Now Visit PETA.org/Iditarod to urge the race’s remaining sponsors to stop supporting cruelty to dogs.

PETA released its free Kitten Squad video game on Nintendo Switch, and players are taking to it like tabbies to catnip. The first advocacy game on the popular gaming console, it allows you to play as a kitten, rescuing captive baby elephants, cows imprisoned on dairy farms, and orcas enslaved at a marine park – all by using yarn-ball guns and carrot rocket launchers. Kitten Squad has been downloaded well over 1 million times. PETA’s ‘Kitten Squad’ Video Game a Hit on Nintendo Switch

50%

WORLD’S WATER NEEDED IN MEAT PRODUCTION

10%

WORLD’S WATER NEEDED IN VEGETABLE PRODUCTION

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