On Dairy Day in Albany—when dairy industry representatives flood the New York capitol—State Sen. Tony Avella, a friend to animals and member of the Agriculture Committee, joined PETA in calling on Agri-Mark, Inc., maker of Cabot and McCadam cheeses, to end animal abuse on its suppliers' farms.

Cow Care Inaction

Three months have passed since PETA alerted Agri-Mark to the cruelty to cows documented during PETA's undercover investigation at one of Agri-Mark's suppliers, Adirondack Farms, LLC, and asked the company to require all cooperative members to implement basic and reasonable reforms that would prevent such cruelty from continuing and improve cows' lives.

Nearly 60,000 supporters have joined PETA's call so far, but Agri-Mark remains silent and apparently hasn't done a thing. Indeed, one manager who jabbed a downed cow in the ribs with a screwdriver and used a skid steer to drag her approximately 25 feet and electro-shocked another cow on the face repeatedly was left working in a supervisory capacity at the facility!

Cruelty in Every Cup

The dairy industry flacks—including those pimping McCadam cheese, made just down the road from Adirondack Farms—were hoping to celebrate Dairy Day by cozying up to lawmakers but were instead reminded of the cruelty of their dirty business as Sen. Avella displayed video footage from PETA's investigation. The exposé showed cows who were jabbed with poles and a calf who thrashed in agony while her horn buds and surrounding tissue were burned off without pain relief as smoke rose from her flesh.

What You Can Do

Please help Sen. Avella and PETA make sure that Agri-Mark gets the message to implement PETA's recommendations to end the most egregious abuses of cows on its cooperative members' farms immediately.

After reading these cheese facts, you won't smile when someone says, "Say cheese!" In fact, the thought of cheese might make your stomach turn. Speaking of stomachs, let's jump right into why eating cheese could make you heave:

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• Many cheeses are made with rennet, an enzyme that comes from calves' stomach lining. That's right—the pre-cheese gloop must pass through a simulated calf stomach to start things off. Kinda hard to stomach, isn't it?
• Cheese is crawling with bacteria—some of it harmless, some of it pretty icky. For example, the same family of bacteria that makes Limburger cheese smell so bad, brevibacterium linens, is what makes your feet smell so bad.
• Two words—spray mold. Cheesemakers spray the outside of soft, slimy cheeses like brie with mold to create a white rind. The next time someone tries to shove a brie-slathered cracker at you, you might want to say, "Hold the mold!"
• If you have to wonder what the pus content of something is, should you really be eating it? Cheese—like all dairy products—contains pus from cows whose udders get bacterial infections when the cows are treated like milk machines by the dairy industry.
• Cheese is loaded with artery-clogging saturated fat and cholesterol. Most varieties derive 70 to 80 percent of their calories from fat, while cream cheese is a whopping 90 percent fat. The good news is that yummy vegan cheeses like Daiya and Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese contain no cholesterol and slash the fat without sacrificing flavor.

And if all those reasons aren't enough to make your stomach turn, just think about the cows forced to stand knee-deep in their own feces and mud on factory farms, having their babies ripped away from them within days of birth so that humans can drink the milk nature intended for them.

So, if you're still eating cheese, what are you waiting for? Spare cows and your health by tossing that moldy piece of pus-laced stomach lining, and try some tempting vegan cheese options today.

Written by Heather Faraid Drennan

Talk about a cheesy marketing ploy. Sunday's New York Times reveals that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which has long had the paradoxical job of both policing and promoting animal agriculture, runs a multi-million-dollar dairy marketing company with the blandly sinister name Dairy Management Inc.

With an annual budget of nearly $140 million, Dairy Management's stock in trade is the same ingredient that other (less generously funded) arms of the USDA are warning people against: high-fat cheese.

One Dairy Management "success" story is Domino's Pizza. Dairy Management helped the chain develop a new line of pizzas with 40 percent more cheese. The $12 million campaign to promote the new pizza has been a big success (just try to watch an hour or two of prime-time TV without seeing one of the ads)—for Domino's bottom line, that is, not for customers' arteries. Just one slice of the new pizza contains up to two-thirds of the maximum recommended daily limit of saturated fat.

Dairy Management was also the driving force behind those once-ubiquitous dairy ads that claimed that eating more dairy products can help you lose weight. When the sketchy science  behind this claim began to unravel (research that was partly funded by Dairy Management), the industry was forced to scrap the ads.

Thanks in part to Dairy Management's marketing campaigns, Americans now eat an average of 33 pounds of cheese per year—nearly triple the 1970 rate. Cheese has become the largest source of saturated fat in Americans' diets.

It gives a new meaning to the term "bloated bureaucracy," doesn't it? Speaking of which: When fiscal conservatives start looking for a place to cut government spending, may we suggest, ahem, cutting the cheese?

Written by Alisa Mullins

What will it take to make California stop misleading consumers about its unhappy cows? Last fall, we filed a complaint against the California Milk Advisory Board (CMAB) for alleged false advertising, asking the Federal Trade Commission to make the CMAB end its misleading campaign, and big names like John Robbins and Ginnifer Goodwin have shown cows big love by writing to the FTC in support of our complaint. Now, PETA's latest move in the pursuit of happiness for California's cows is sure to turn heads in the state's capital:

Cows on dairy factory farms are not given much more than the numbered ear tag that's used to identify them. PETA's undercover investigation inside Land O'Lakes supplier Reitz Dairy revealed deplorable, filthy conditions for cows on the Pennsylvania farm, such as pens that were filled with deep excrement and cows who collapsed, becoming "downers," but who were not given veterinary care or put out of their misery. Yet when this information was presented in a court of law, the judge found the owners not guilty after testimony that our heartbreaking photos and video footage showed "standard practices" for the dairy industry.

Drugged, over-milked, and kept in filthy, crowded lots, the typical California cow is anything but happy. Instead of encouraging CMAB to continue misleading consumers, take a minute to contact the FTC and then save a cow by downing a tall glass of soy milk.

Written by Logan Scherer

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Showing cruelty of gastronomical proportions, restaurants in Queens (Sik Gaek and East Seafood Restaurant) are chopping up and serving live octopuses to customers. Octopuses have their tentacles cut off while they are still conscious and are then served, writhing, while their hearts are still beating. Others are slowly steamed alive in front of customers before their tentacles and upper bodies are cut into small pieces with scissors.

Since we can't "release the Kraken" on these animal abusers, we're unleashing our legal team on the district attorney—calling on the DAs to file cruelty charges against the restaurants. Because octopuses have sophisticated nervous systems and feel pain just as acutely as mammals do, we feel that the restaurants' practices clearly violate the state's anti-cruelty statute.

Recently, octopuses were observed carrying around coconut shells to use as shelter—making these complex cephalopods the first known invertebrate animals to use tools. These "deep" thinkers are also fond of decorating. They decorate their dens with bottle caps, stones, and other objects that they find on the ocean floor. They are so smart that they can also learn how to do things such as unscrew jars by watching someone else do it—once!

Let's hope that the district attorney in this case is just as smart and sentient. You can call or fax the Queens County District Attorney's Office and politely ask that they take action against these restaurateurs. We'll keep you posted. Until then, take this octopus-inspired poll.

Written by Amy Skylark Elizabeth

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PETA pal Pink recently tweeted that she had "… the BESTest day" with her "amazing sexy hubby," Carey Hart, riding around on beach cruisers and watching the circus. Not to worry, though—our girl Pink would never attend the kind of circus that tears baby elephants away from their mothers and beats them with bullhooks. Pink's tweet continued: "Not the real circus people. No animals, just people. That look and behave like animals. On acid. Tis' a colorful world." We should all take a cue from this compassionate couple and support one of the many circuses that leave animals in peace and feature only amazingly talented—and, most importantly, willing—human performers!

Via Vegetarian Star

Written by Lindsay Pollard-Post

Dr. Mehmet Oz's wife, Lisa, has long been health-conscious. On a recent episode of The View, she mentioned that she's been a vegetarian since she was 15 and that she cooks vegetarian meals for her family. She's obviously having a positive influence: Her husband even convinced a guest on his show—a cowboy, no less—to go vegan. If you haven't already done so, take the doctor's—and his wife's—advice and ditch meat, eggs, and dairy products. For tips, check out Quantum Wellness by best-selling author (and Lisa's good friend) Kathy Freston.

Written by Heather Moore

Yes, it is, according to an audit conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Office of Inspector General, which reveals that beef containing dangerous pesticides, antibiotics, heavy metals, and other toxins is showing up on supermarket shelves because the government has neither set limits for the chemicals nor is it routinely testing for them. Perhaps they think that people will just buy the stuff regardless!

Potentially toxic substances that can be found in meat include arsenic; flunixin, an anti-inflammatory drug that can cause stomach ulcers, intestinal bleeding, and kidney necrosis; and antibiotics such as penicillin, which can cause life-threatening reactions in people who are allergic and also contribute to the development of deadly antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

These unregulated chemicals and drugs are just the toxic icing, if you will, on a beefcake that is already loaded with artery-clogging saturated fat and cholesterol and is often contaminated with deadly bacteria such as E. coli and salmonella.

Sounds like a good time to mosey on over to VegCooking.com and check out some savory seitan recipes, doesn't it? For your family's sake?

Thanks to PETA Files reader Laura for sending this story our way

Written by Alisa Mullins

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"Canada, if you cancel the seal hunt, I will dress up like Justin Bieber and sing one of his songs on YouTube."
—Kelly Osbourne on what she's willing to do to stop the seal slaughter. Go, Kelly, go!

Kelly Osbourne really, really wants to convince the Canadian government to end the senseless seal slaughter. We're not really surprised that she chose Justin Bieber, though: The young star is Canadian, überhot, and animal-friendly.

Sign our petition and then leave a comment letting us know which Justin Beiber song you hope Kelly will cover if Canada ends the slaughter.

Written by Paula Moore

A couple celebrating their wedding anniversary in New Bern, North Carolina, got stuck with the memory of a lifetime when the horse-drawn carriage in which they were riding was struck by a car, sending them and the carriage driver to the hospital. (Needless to say: open carriage, no seat belts, no air bags.) The horse, Suzi, was also injured.

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Horses like Suzi have a bad life, trying to dodge traffic—but traffic doesn't always dodge them. This couple may now have a cautionary tale to tell their grandkids, but for Suzi and other horses who are forced to bear the weight of carriages and tourists in traffic day and night in all weather extremes, carriage rides are a hard trip down memory lane. New Bern needs to join cities around the world that have put these rides out to pasture for good.

Send a polite note to New Bern Mayor Lee Bettis Jr. asking him to ban horse-drawn carriages.

Written by Jennifer O'Connor