Price is Right host and animal rights activist Bob Barker sent a high profile letter to the Oregon Zoo demanding that they send Packy to a sanctuary. Packy is an elderly elephant with tuberculosis who has spent his entire life at the zoo.  “After 52 years of service, Packy deserves to be sent to a place where he can enjoy his final years in peace and serenity,” said Bob Barker. During Packy’s recent birthday “celebration,” the animal rights group Free Oregon Zoo Elephants, which campaigned to get Packy elected to the City Council via write-in ballots, staged a protest in front of the zoo.

Elephants want freedom, not cake. Photo: Michael Durham

If social media is any indication, the world is waking up to the plight of captive elephants — intelligent and socially sophisticated animals who are deprived of virtually everything that comes naturally to them in zoos and in circuses, where they are also beaten into submission with bull hooks, confined for up to 100 hours at a time in box cars and forced to perform tricks in exchange for nourishment. Please support Free Oregon Zoo Elephants in their effort to send Packy to a sanctuary.

In an effort to prevent the public from seeing the conditions in which farm animals are raised and slaughtered, agribusiness is aggressively pursuing “ag gag” and “farm protection” legislation that make it a crime to document factory farms. In a story published in an agricultural trade publication, a spokesperson for the Animal Ag Alliance claims that these bills “show consumers how well animals are cared for.” She also says that undercover investigators stage abuse for the cameras, bring disease onto the farms and “damage animals and crops.” 

Even though animals on factory farms often live in their own excrement, agribusiness uses “biosecurity” as a rationale to keep out investigators. “Biosecurity” was a scary word even before the recent Ebola outbreaks, so using it to scare the public into supporting “farm protection” legislation is pretty crafty – and, of course, totally duplicitous. Agribusiness knows that the public is horrified by undercover video footage which could impact their sales, so they are going to move mountains to keep the cameras out through legislation. We must therefore continue to support the efforts to kill these bills.

Using social media, Chinese animal rights activists recruited “thousands” of volunteers to rescue 2,400 dogs on their way to the butcher after spotting the five slaughter-bound trucks on a highway near Beijing. According to the NY Times, the activists and volunteers were “able to surround the trucks, preventing their escape.” Even though dog slaughter is legal in China, the police allowed the activists to take possession of the dogs because many were companion animals who had been kidnapped, and most did not have the proper paperwork.

Photo: Susan Wang

We are so accustomed to vilifying China for being the world’s biggest consumer and/or supplier of fur, shark fins and ivory that we forget to acknowledge the activists who are moving mountains to help animals in China. Providing food, water, medicine and housing to 2,400 dogs on a moment’s notice is a breathtaking feat. Can you imagine if we tried to rescue the thousands of abused chickens stacked in cages in Brooklyn during Kaporos, the pre-Yom Kippur ritual in which religious Jews swing chickens around their heads to transfer their sins to the chickens before slaughtering them? We’d be all be thrown in jail.

After learning that a human leg was found at a recycling plant in Dublin, PETA produced an ad depicting a human leg on a dinner plate to remind people that “all meat is murder.” A furious Council Member said, “The deliberate use of human remains in an advertisement is sickening and disgusting . . .That person will have family, friends and loved ones worried about them and I would call on PETA to stop trying to gain publicity out of such a sickening situation.”

Given the extraordinary challenge of getting the general public to give serious thought to the plight of animals, PETA employs attention-grabbing tactics, such as nude protests, that many find offensive. But do the benefits of these tactics outweigh the downsides?  I think so.  These tactics generate media coverage that our typical protests do not receive.  And media coverage drives people to their website, which can trigger people to go veg.

Excitement surrounding the opening of Aspen’s new $45 million art museum has been overshadowed by anger over a two month exhibit of African tortoises walking around with iPads mounted to their shells. The iPads are displaying photos of “Aspen Ghost Towns” (whatever that means). In response to protests, a local vet issued a statement: “The tortoises have adapted well to their new habitat, and the iPads have not interfered in any way with their natural behavior.” Aspen resident Lisbeth Oden, who has experience working with tortoises, says, “To have anything attached to them is exploitation for human enjoyment.”

African turtles belong in Africa, not in Aspen — serving as mobile TV stands for a thoughtless artist and museum curator. According to the museum, these turtles were “rescued” from a breeder where they were living in an over-crowded pen. Is the artist going to take care of these turtles for life when the exhibit ends?  Doubtful!  This museum should place these tortoises in a sanctuary and then have an exhibit of photos entitled “From Museum Captivity to Freedom.” Here’s an online petition to shut down his exploitive exhibit. Please share.