Vegetarian Star

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Tippi Hedren went from starring in Birds to caring for cats.

The actress founded the Shambala Preserve, a home to tigers, lions and other big kitties that include Michael Jackson‘s Thriller and Sabu tigers.

Hedren’s life with big cats started in the 80s when she produced and starred in the film with African Lions, Roar, inciting her interest in the giant creatures.

Hedren was recently honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Humane Society’s Genesis Awards.

“It’s such a gift to have a mission that you feel really strongly about,” Hedren says in the video.

More information on the Shambala Preserve can be found on its website.

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Jennifer Lopez‘s new movie, The Backup Plan, has two incredible eco and animal rights themes included in the story line.

Lopez’s character Zoe, is a single woman who gets artificially inseminated only to discover the man of her dreams in a taxi days later.

Zoe has just left her corporate job to take over a pet shop that sold her a disabled dog that came from a puppy mill.

Her true love Stan, played by Alex O’Loughlin, has turned his family farm into an organic one and sells his cheese products at the farmers market.

An animal welfare champ and a locavore getting together to raise a child?

We can smell a protest coming from the crib already.

According National Geographic, buying from a puppy mill is more likely to result in an animal that will need urgent veterinary care for a genetic disease it’s carrying, amplified by inbreeding. These diseases may not surface until several years into its life.

It’s also common to see chronic infections in these animals, such as in the ears and eyes, that can lead to blindness and deafness.

For more information on puppy mills and how you can help, visit the Humane Society.

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Animal Factory by David Kirby

Journalist David Kirby recalls the night he slept near a pig farm during his investigations of factory farms.

Kirby wasn’t able to fall asleep that night, as all he heard were pigs fighting, screaming and squealing at each other, a sound he described as “kids being tourtured.”

Those three years of experiences that led to his book, Animal Factory, are just a few that he shared in a recent Time magazine interview, “The Problem With Factory Farms.”

What Exactly is a Factory Farm?
We collectively refer to these facilities as factory farms, but that’s not an official name. The government designation is CAFO, which stands for Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation. Basically it’s any farm that has 1,000 “animal units” or more. A beef cow is an animal unit. These animals are kept in pens their entire lives. They’re never outside. They never breathe fresh air. They never see the sun.

What happens to the wastes from factory farms?
The manure is liquefied. It gets flushed out into an open lagoon, where it is stored until farmers can use it on what few crops they do grow. There’s just so much of it, though. I’ve seen it sprayed into waterways and creeks. These “lagoons” filled with waste have been known to seep, leak, rupture, and overtop. This stuff is untreated, by the way. We would never allow big open cesspools of untreated human waste to just sit out on the ground near people’s homes and schools. And yet because it’s agriculture, the rules are different.

Read the entire interview with Kirby at Time.

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A NYC Evening For The Oceans

Here’s your chance to meet Captain Paul Watson and benefit the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

NYC Evening for the Oceans will be held on April 30 between 7:30 PM and 11:30 PM at Collective Hardware at 169 Bowery between Broome and Kenmare in Manhattan, New York City.

The cost for the evening is $100 and tickets must be purchased in advance. The event poster says, “No ticket sales at door,” so you won’t even be able to offer them tins of nutritional yeast to sweet talk your way in that night.

Besides meeting Watson and the crew, attendees will enjoy food from vegan restaurant Candle Cafe.

Items will be auctioned and donations will be accepted.

For more information and to order tickets, visit the event’s website.

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“I personally am never going to fight for rights per se. All this fighting for human rights and yet we abuse them everyday, all around the world. So while we’re still abusing human rights is it really going to help the animals? It won’t harm them to have rights. I would always say ‘good show’ to the people who fight for them. My approach is different. I’m fighting for human responsibility.”

“So my job is to make people think of animals differently – as they really are. You can have a law – and we’re surrounded by laws – but it’s so often possible to get around them – they are continually being broken. So I want people to understand that animals really do have personalities and feelings – so that they want to obey laws that protect them.”

–Primatologist, conservationist and author Jane Goodall, on her take on how to protect animals from abuse and mistreatment.

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Stephanie Izard

Top Chef winner Stephanie Izard received criticism from PETA for hosting a veal dinner in a series of meals titled “Wandering Goat.”

“We’re writing today because numerous individuals—including fans of yours—contacted us to let us know that they were shocked to see you promoting veal and even displaying a photo of a skinned baby calf—Guillermo, as you named him—on your Twitter. Please know that the veal industry is cruel and inhumane and will remain financially viable as long as influential people like you continue to refer to the meat from sick, malnourished baby cows as a delicacy. It doesn’t matter where you purchase the meat—if you support the veal industry, you are supporting cruelty.”

Izard responded to PETA’s letter on her blog, explaining she sought veal that was raised locally and by what she considers humanely.

“In the past I have rarely used veal due to the inhumane treatment of calves. However, I was contacted by a local farm that raises free range veal in a very respectable way. While many people shun veal, the greater culinary community will continue to have veal be a part of their menus. All I am trying to do is get people to look at these local farms as refuge from larger meat-processing plants.”

Although the Kilgus Farm in Fairbury, Illinois does let goats feed on the pasture in the spring and fall, switching to homegrown hay in the winter, the baby calves, of course, are fed mother’s milk before quickly being taken to slaughter.

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Bryan Adams says being sexy is the most important aspect of animal activism.

“Being sexy helps when you’re trying to do anything!” the Canadian rocker told Metro News. “Seriously, that is all PR nonsense,” Adams said of the famous annual PETA lists. “What’s important is getting people involved in helping the cause, so if that is what it takes, fine.”

His good lucks may or may not have helped him in numerous campaigns, including Japanese whale hunting and asking KFC to slaughter chickens in an approve more humane way.

But when it came to distributing postcards at his concerts that urged countries to create a sanctuary for Southern Antarctic Whales, a pretty face only went so far.

“We distributed postcards at my concerts in order to persuade countries supporting the whaling industry to vote yes to the sanctuary. We succeeded and had lots of fun doing it. But in one case, the government of a small Polynesian island wrote back pleading with us not to send anymore postcards, because they couldn’t handle the volume.”

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Bea Arthur "McCruelty" PETA Ad

It’s been said before that celebrities make more money from their graves than alive.

In the case of Golden Girl Bea Arthur, let’s hope that statement is true for the impact they make as well.

On Thursday, Arthur will be featured in a full page ad in the Chicago Tribune as part of PETA’s McCruelty campaign against McDonald’s.

“It’s enough to make Bea Arthur roll over in her grave,” is the tagline of the ad that describes how the animal rights group is dissatisfied with the fast food giant’s current methods of slaughtering chicken, and urges it to adopt another USDA approved method that is less painful and more humane.

The method is supported by McDonald’s animal welfare advisors, but its CEO Jim Skinner is currently calling the shots that ring “No.”

The ad’s message ends with Arthur’s character Maude’s famous haunting saying, “God’ll get you for that,” to Skinner.

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