Vegetarian Star

Bill Maher has a guest post at the New York Daily News urging his Canadian friends to make strides towards ending the country’s annual seal hunt.

Ever the sarcastic personality Maher is, he uses examples of how other governments have agreed the hunt is senseless, while Canada falls behind even the…gasp…United States Senate!

“Opposition around the world is growing. Last year, the U.S. Senate – a group of people who usually can’t agree that the sky is blue – unanimously passed a resolution calling for an immediate end to the annual slaughter. But the Canadian government just keeps putting its fingers in its ears and singing “la, la, la” so that it won’t hear anything it doesn’t like. Or, if it does hear, it responds with all the subtlety and sophistication of a fistfight in the men’s room at a monster-truck rally.”

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Eight Belles trainer Larry Jones is defending statistics found in a study on thoroughbred fatalities at North American tracks, stating the injuries are what is to be expected in athletic situations and will happen, regardless of the racing track surface.

A year long study released by the Welfare and Safety of the Racehorse Summit in Lexington, Kentucky shows there were 2.14 deaths on dirt tracks per 1,000 starts, while both synthetic and turf tracks each had 1.78 fatalities.

“What so many people don’t want to understand is that a lot of our injuries are from them being athletes in general,” Jones told Reuters.

“If we had swimming races for horses, somehow a certain number of them would be getting hurt. Look at how many humans get hurt at track and field and that’s a no-contact sport.”

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John Tartaglia, actor and singer known for his roles in the Broadway plays like “Avenue Q”, has joined the ranks of celebrities like Leona Lewis and Simon Cowell to put his face on the Animals Matter to Me campaign from the World Society for the Protection of Animals. The campaign calls for international recognition of laws to protect animal welfare and end animal cruelty.

Tartaglia has two Cocker Spaniel rescue dogs that are also disabled, Dora and Parker, along with two shelter cats, Mia and Shanti.

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Celebrity websites–good. Celebrity websites with vegetarian twists–even better.

Olivia Wilde has joined company with fellow vegan actress Alicia Silverstone and has launched her own website, Wilde Things.

Wilde Things includes information on Olivia’s work with charities, such as teaching children in Haiti, photos, acting projects and her thoughts on veganism.

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"Feed Your Pet Right" Marion Nestle

Marion Nestle, author of Feed Your Pet Right, wrote the book to bring pet owners a summary of what goes on in the industry that produces savory sauces for four legged connoisseurs. Nestle examines various pet food diets from dry, canned, wet, semi-most, premium, all-natural, and yes, the vegetarian and vegan.

Nestle sat down with Time Magazine to discuss the book, where she gave her take on veggie dogs and cats.

“Cats are carnivorous, but there’s plenty of research that shows they’re perfectly capable of digesting grains, as long as they also get the amino acids, vitamins and minerals they need. Dogs are fine with grains too. In fact, most complete and balanced pet-food products contain grains.”

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West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd has died at the age of 92, after a brief hospitalization.

According to PETA’s blog, the Democratic congressman was a voice for animals as well as people. He helped convince the Senate Appropriations Committee to put $5 million toward enforcing the Humane Slaughter Act, and just a year earlier, had given a speech about the horrors he saw in factory farms.

“Our inhumane treatment of livestock is becoming widespread and more and more barbaric. Six-hundred-pound hogs—they were pigs at one time—raised in 2-foot-wide metal cages called gestation crates, in which the poor beasts are unable to turn around or lie down in natural positions, and this way they live for months at a time. … These creatures feel; they know pain. They suffer pain just as we humans suffer pain.”

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Patrick McDonnell

“Why not become vegetarian? That’s the question. I’ve been vegetarian for more than 20 years and it was the best decision I ever made. A couple of weeks into it, I felt better. My head felt clearer.

—Patrick McDonnell, creator of the comic strip Mutts, which details the daily life of a house cat named Mooch and a dog named Earl. McDonnell has an interview in the July/August 2010 issue of Vegetarian Times, available at your nearest Whole Foods stand now.

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Dr. Temple Grandin, scientist who has worked with the animal agricultural industry to bring change to way animals raised for food and handled, spoke with Food Safety News on the Conklin Dairy Farm investigation that uncovered a worker beating and torturing a cow. Grandin feels these incidents are not the norm, as many activist insists.

“Most places are not doing stuff that horrible. To say that every dairy treats their animals that way, no, that’s wrong, they’re not. But on the other hand, the truth is usually somewhere in the middle, between the animal rights advocates that say everything is an atrocity, to the industry who says everything’s just fine. I’ve worked in a lot of places. It’s somewhere in the middle. It’s a constant battle. You can’t under staff and overwork. Tired people are more likely to get angry, and so are overworked people.”

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