With more than 1.4 million subscribers, peta2 —PETA’s Youth Outreach Division—has the largest youth following of any social justice movement, animal rights or otherwise. peta2 motivates teens and young adults to make cruelty-free choices and take action to save animals from abuse and exploitation.

Hundreds of young people attended peta2’s youth-activism conferences, which were held across the U.S. and Canada. In addition, peta2 set up information tables at student journalism conferences, reaching out to the next generation of journalists.

Through peta2’s presence on more than 15 popular concert tours, we reached approximately 1.8 million young people in 2008 with literature and videos of our investigations of laboratories, slaughterhouses, circuses, and fur farms.

As a result of peta2’s outreach efforts, more than 427,000 young people signed petitions against cruelty to animals at 364 events.

During the ROCKSTAR™ Taste of Chaos music tour, more than 41,000 young people signed a pledge stating that they wouldn’t be caught dead in fur.

On the Vans Warped Tour, peta2 asked the question, “If a pig said ‘Woof!’ would you still eat him?” On this tour, peta2 collected more than 188,000 petition signatures asking the meat industry to stop the worst abuses of pigs, including cutting off their tails, clipping their teeth, cutting out their testicles, and subjecting mother pigs to intensive confinement to gestation crates.

Cut Out Dissection Month in October prompted requests from around the world for our anti-dissection leaflets and stickers. PETA helped students convince school officials that “virtual dissection” software is more effective in teaching anatomy than dissecting dead animals. To support this initiative, we persuaded a leading dissection-software company to offer a discount to interested schools and create an online video-software demonstration for teachers.

On college campuses, enthusiasm for animal rights activism has never been greater, thanks to peta2. Groups are springing up across the country and registering victories: Activists at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers and Elgin Community College in Elgin, Ill., succeeded in getting student government resolutions passed supporting a ban on KFC on campus.

By donating their time to appear in public service announcements and events, popular youth-culture celebrities helped us promote animal rights among tomorrow’s leaders. They include smash-hit singers KT Tunstall and Colbie Caillat; Ultimate Fighter champion Mac Danzig, MTV reality show stars Rob and Big; Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor; Miami Ink star Ami James; top designer Stella McCartney; MTV news reporter John Norris; popular bands Rise Against, hellogoodbye, and Say Anything; and many others.

“PETA ... conducts the best political theater in America.”

—Nashville Scene, October 3, 2008