Vegetarian Star

Isabel Lucas is a vegetarian and animal rights activist who’s views have even gotten her arrested on occasion, such as the time she protested against the dolphin slaughter in Japan.

Years ago, she wasn’t as outspoken about her beliefs.

Until an incident with a frog changed that.

When she was 10, Isabel saw a boy torture a frog to death.

“I was shocked and upset with myself for not saying anything,” Isabel said. “I felt so guilty and furious afterwards.

“From then on, I thought if anything like that happens again, I’m going to say something. I’m grateful to him for that experience – that’s how you learn, through your mistakes.”

“I do feel I am in a unique position where I can use my public status to draw attention to things that matter to me and hopefully a lot of other people as well.”

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A creative PSA has been put together featuring the likes of vegetarian celebrities like Jason Mraz and Woody Harrelson, plus several others who care about the plight of captive dolphins.

The video starts out with facts about each celebrity’s “friend.”

After summarizing a slew of skills this friend has that humans don’t, it’s revealed the friend is in danger, threatened by both captivity and hunting.

The PSA was created by the people involved with the Oscar award winning documentary on the killing of dolphins in Japan that are later sold for meat and captivity, The Cove.

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Jimmy Kimmel featured a funny video featuring cats recording a “We Are The World” like song about the plight of their eviction.

Definitely worth the watch for some good afternoon humor.

The planned George W. Bush presidential library on the Southern Methodist University campus is also home to feral cats that will soon face eviction.

According to the LA Times, a feral cat program was started by the university in 2005 in an effort to control the population, which has dwindled dramatically since its inception.

It’s expected that the remaining cats will be relocated to a nearby woods area.

One effective way at reducing feral cat numbers and improving their lives (and the accompanying problems such as loud noise from fighting behaviors, flea infestations and odor from males marking territory), is the use of Trap-Neuter-Return programs.

TNR cats are spayed/neutered, vaccinated from rabies and surgically ear-tipped, which is the universal sign a cat has gone through the TNR system.

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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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“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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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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“This is a disappointment, of course. But not just for thousands of innocent badgers. The irony is that it is ultimately a tragedy for farmers, too – the very farmers who have been pushing for badgers to be culled. The decision to cull cannot lead to any significant long-term gain in the fight against bovine TB, even with the complete extermination of our native badgers. I believe all this will be seen in a few years time for what it is … a tragic wrong turn which did nothing to solve the problem of TB in cattle.”

—Brian May, Queen guitarist, PhD, vegetarian and animal activist on the recent decision of the a judge to reject a legal challenge against a cull of badgers in Wales in an attempt to control bovine TB.

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People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is calling for manslaughter charges to be filed against the Orlando, Florida marine park SeaWorld, in relation to several deaths, including the recent one by trainer Dawn Brancheau by Tilikum the killer whale.

PETA’s General Counsel Jeffrey Kerr sent a 12-page letter to Florida State Attorney Lawson Lamar asking him to consider charges for both the park and its executives, saying they are “culpably negligent” for continuing to allow trainers to interact with animals despite previous events and a government warning three years ago.

There have been six publicized attacks on trainers since 2002, and an investigation by the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health after an orca attacked its trainer in 2006 concluded it was “only a matter of time” before someone was killed.

“SeaWorld has shown reckless disregard for the lives of its trainers by paying them to be in close contact with massive, powerful, wild animal who can kill them in a flash,” PETA President Ingrid Newkirk said in a statement.

“Corporations must be held accountable when their greed causes suffering and loss of life.”

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