Nobel Prize–winning physician, theologian, and vegetarian Dr. Albert Schweitzer once said, "The man who has become a thinking being feels a compulsion to give every will-to-live the same reverence for life that he gives to his own." It was Schweitzer's "reverence for life" that inspired our pals at PETA U.K. not only to sponsor the attendance of a vegetarian student at this week's Albert Schweitzer's Leadership for Life International Youth Leadership Conference in Dublin but also to place an ad in the event's program in Schweitzer's honor.

Albert Schweitzer: © LOC, LC-USZ62-30537 Background: © iStockphoto.com/Hiroyuki Akimoto

Showing True Leadership

Harley, the sponsored student, has been vegetarian ever since a friend urged her to watch some PETA videos, from which she learned about the cruelty of factory farms and slaughterhouses. During her sophomore year, Harley petitioned her high school to introduce more vegan options to the cafeteria, collecting 320 signatures from a student body of 400 people!

From the time he was a child, Schweitzer was horrified by the violence he witnessed against animals and would likely be even more disgusted by today's factory farms and slaughterhouses. Chickens, turkeys, pigs, cows, and fish are packed into small cages, filthy sheds, or putrid fish farms for their entire lives—at slaughter, animals often have their throats cut open while they are still conscious or are scalded to death or skinned alive.

Go Vegan 'for Life'

Going vegan might not make you a genius—but it will make the world a better, more compassionate place, which is rather brilliant, don't you think? And PETA can help you get started!

PETA U.K.'s dead-serious anti-obesity billboard is stirring up some weighty controversy:

PETA U.K. erected the billboard near a new mortuary in Gloucester built especially to accommodate obese corpses. Oddly, the U.K.'s National Obesity Forum labeled the ad as "irresponsible," although the group didn't say what exactly it objected to. We're not sure why an obesity-awareness group would take issue with a billboard that aims to help people deal with obesity pre-coffin, but protesters ripped down part of the sign (unhelpfully revealing an ad for chips—or French fries to us in the U.S.).

Isn't an obesity-awareness group's protest of an obesity-awareness sign somewhat akin to Shopaholics Anonymous holding meetings at the mall?

© Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

PETA U.K. is lambasting the judge who let convicted thief Jack Taylor out of serving jail time so that he would be free to kill baby seals and sheep.

Taylor admitted to stealing a motorcycle because he thought there were drugs under the bike's saddle. But instead of throwing the self-confessed burglar into the slammer to ponder his crime, the judge sentenced Taylor to a mere 100 hours of community service so that he could return to his two jobs: slaughtering sheep in Norway and traveling to North America seasonally to beat baby seals to death.

PETA U.K. blasted the sentence, saying, "Imagining that criminals might reform their deviant, anti-social behaviour by bludgeoning baby seals to death is not only delusional but also downright dangerous."

It is not surprising that a career animal abuser appears to be headed for a life of crime. What is surprising is that the judge apparently ignored the fact that there is a strong link between violence against animals and violence against people and that Taylor's crimes could very well escalate. Only by taking cruelty to animals seriously—reporting it when it is illegal and protesting it when it isn't—can we hope to quell the incidence of crimes against people.

A U.S. company that breeds dogs for sale to laboratories has lost its first round in an effort to expand its operations in the U.K.

B&K Universal in Yorkshire is owned by New York–based Marshall Farms, which has been repeatedly cited for federal Animal Welfare Act violations. B&K applied for planning permission to open a new facility where dogs would be confined to indoor kennels. The females would be repeatedly impregnated, and their puppies would be sold to laboratories for use in painful toxicity tests and other experiments, perhaps similar to those conducted at Professional Laboratory and Research Services, which PETA investigated last year.

Following a massive outpouring of opposition—including more than 2,000 letters from PETA U.K. supporters—the local council rejected B&K's application. Now, B&K is attempting to bypass opposition by appealing to the Planning Inspectorate, a national body.

PETA U.K. is rallying supporters and will hold an eye-catching demonstration at the Inspectorate's office. Please help dry up the demand for animal-tested products by telling everyone you know to support only cruelty-free companies. 

Written by Michelle Sherrow

The following was first published on Animal Writes: PETA UK's Blog

Looks pretty good, doesn't it? Almost 100 PETA U.K. supporters took part in an eye-catching photo opportunity in London Saturday to demand that the government not adopt lower standards of protection for animals in laboratories when it incorporates the E.U.'s new directive regulating animal experiments later this year. If the government adopts the directive without changes, all animals will be affected. But dogs and cats in particular would become far more likely to be used in experiments because they would lose the special protections that Britain has given them for more than 25 years.

"Britons don't want more cats and dogs experimented on or more suffering for the millions of other animals used in laboratories. They want fewer animals used and less pain," said PETA U.K. policy adviser Alistair Currie. "We are calling on the public to send a clear message to the government that the citizens will not accept the laws that protect British animals to fall to the level of the EU's lowest common denominator."

A big thanks to all the fantastic PETA U.K. supporters who sent that message loud and clear.

British beauty Tamara Ecclestone's new ad for PETA U.K. is sure to get engines revving.

"All dogs deserve to be loved", says Ecclestone, who appears in the ad with her beloved mutt, Buster. "I encourage everyone to do what they can to help animals in need and to open their homes and their hearts to a dog only if they have the time, resources, and patience to care for the dog."

The Formula 1 Racing correspondent and daughter of racing magnate Bernie Ecclestone has used her pull to persuade racers and sponsors to swear off fur and shun foie gras. 

Stateside, Ecclestone supports PETA's Community Animal Project (CAP), which helps provide veterinary care, shelter, disaster assistance, and spay/neuter surgeries to animals in Virginia and North Carolina. You can help CAP, too, by making a donation to SNIP, which is PETA's mobile low-cost spay/neuter clinic, or to PETA's Animal Emergency Fund. 
 

Written by Michelle Sherrow

We've always known that PETA Germany's staff members are dogged in their efforts to help animals, but who knew that they were such publicity hounds? Apparently, our recent blog post about the PETA India staff got them thinking that they should strut their stuff, and you know what? We couldn't agree more. So, ladies and gentlemen, here are the tireless, crazy-cool peeps of PETA Germany.

We can only imagine what the folks at PETA U.K. will be submitting for their PETA Files profile. Stay tuned to find out.

Written by Karin Bennett

And, this week's 10% Wool "Tag and Release" winner is ... Beth Ann! Congratulations.

So I see that Ringling Bros. is trying to expand its "Greatest Show on Earth" slogan …

Don't forget to check out the archive of past 10% Wool comic strips here. Get more information on the series and the writer here, and learn how to get Jeff's other comic, DeFlocked, into your local paper here.

Conservative MP Ann Widdecombe has earned kudos from the Mozfather himself for an opinion piece in the UK's Times that blasted the killing of Canadian bears for the Queen's Guards' hats.

In a letter that ran in yesterday's Times, Morrissey wrote, "I welcome Ann Widdecombe's views on the depravity of bear-baiting in order to serve the vanities of the British Army Guards. … [T]here is no sanity in making life difficult on purpose for the Canadian brown bear, especially for Guards' hats that look absurd in the first place, and which can easily be replaced by faux versions (thanks to the visionary Stella McCartney) with no death involved."

Morrissey has made clear in no uncertain terms that he wants the Guards to switch to faux fur right away. Please, please, please help him get what he wants.

Written by Alisa Mullins

After more than a decade of scientific research, negotiations, and lobbying by PETA, PETA U.K., and other groups, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has approved new, non-animal testing methods for measuring skin irritation. Now, across the world, rabbits will be spared as the standard way of testing for skin irritation is switched over to high-tech modern methods. This really is a global deal: The OECD produces binding safety testing guidelines for its more than 30 member nations—including the U.S.—and represents almost all of the world's largest economies. Many countries that aren't members also follow the OECD's guidelines.

Animal-friendly methods employ in vitro toxicity screening, "skin" grown in laboratories, and computer models. While non-animal methods have been recognized for some time as valid for testing corrosivity (whether something will permanently damage the skin), these are the first methods to be recognized as effective in measuring skin irritation, thus allowing for a complete assessment of skin effects without the use of animals.

Pam is one of thousands of people who have taken action to get outdated animal testing procedures replaced with methods that rely on new technology. The bunny in her poster is a victim of the type of test that the OECD is replacing.

The methods that have just been adopted by the OECD use reconstructed human skin models that successfully reproduce the effect of chemicals on human skin and allow reliable, accurate measurements of damage in a way that applying chemicals to the shaved, raw skin of rabbits can not. Besides the pain and distress caused to the rabbits who are used in such tests, evidence considered by the OECD also included the fact that animal tests do not accurately measure whether a substance is likely to be an irritant to human skin—in other words, these methods will be better at protecting us too.

We're particularly proud that PETA U.K. played an integral role in this process. Our affiliate financially supported the rigorous scientific testing of one of the non-animal methods that were just approved, and this helped to produce the scientific evidence that led the OECD to green-light the method. And on the U.S. side of things, PETA has given more than $850,000 over the past 10 years to the development and implementation of non-animal testing methods.

Thanks to this news, tens of thousands of rabbits a year will no longer suffer in these tests. And that should make us all feel pretty good.

Written by Shawna Flavell