Please help on four issues, four quick petitions

Wikimedia

Please click on and sign the following:

1. UK Friends: Stop the sale of manta ray leather

2. Tell Hong Kong Airlines: No more live dolphin shipments!

3. Act Now or Animal Abuse Will Be Illegal to Film and Expose

4. Urgent! Stop Plans to Build Intensive Egg Production Facility in Lincolnshire


1. Background | Source Oceana

Manta rays are threatened with extinction, but that doesn’t stop businesses from selling their parts.

Alibaba.com, the world’s largest business-to-busness commerce website, sells boots and wallets made out of manta ray leather. This is inexcusable, and they should know better.

Three years ago, Oceana supporters and other ocean activists successfully petitioned Alibaba.com to stop selling shark products. Now we’re calling on you again. We need your help to tell them the world is watching, and they need to stop selling products that threaten ocean species. We did it once—we can do it again.

Sign today, and tell Alibaba.com founder and CEO Mr. Jack Ma to be an ocean leader and stop selling manta ray products.


2. Background | Source HSI

The capture and trade of live dolphins for captive display is strongly opposed by the general public. Yet in January 2012, Hong Kong Airlines cashed in on a deal to fly five dolphins from Japan to Vietnam to be displayed in dolphinariums – for a paying public’s amusement. Most likely, these animals were taken during the brutal slaughter known as drive hunts that occur in Japan. The cruelty was featured in the 2009 Oscar winning documentary The Cove. More than 1,200 dolphins were killed in the 2010-2011 hunting season, and at least 150 were set aside alive, destined for a life in captivity.

The capture, transport, and lifelong confinement of wild dolphins pose severe welfare and conservation concerns. The potential for harmful mental and physical effects is incredibly high, such as stress-induced illness and premature death. Additionally, the removal of these marine mammals from the wild presents a threat to the continued survival of some populations.

Hong Kong Airlines has indicated that this shipment was not a one-off deal – it means to continue this lucrative and highly controversial business of transporting live dolphins. Please send a message today and urge the president of Hong Kong Airlines to enact a corporate policy to end any future shipments of live dolphins.


3. Background | Source PETA

Utah House Bill 187, which has passed through the Utah House of Representatives and is now before the Senate, could subject whistleblowers to criminal prosecution for their efforts to expose animal abuse on factory farms. The bill would make it a crime to photograph or record video or sound of a farm without the farm owner’s consent and could stop vital undercover work that exposes routine abuse of animals in the factory-farming industry. This absurd and unconstitutional bill, which infringes on Americans’ basic rights, is a desperate attempt by agriculture industry giants to prevent consumers from learning the truth about the lives and deaths of animals on factory farms.

In 2008, prompted by a whistleblower’s report, a PETA undercover investigation of an Iowa factory farm that supplied pigs for Hormel Foods revealed that workers were beating pigs with metal rods, sexually abusing them with canes, and more. Six workers faced a total of 22 charges of livestock neglect and abuse, and all of them admitted guilt, bringing the state’s first convictions for abuse or neglect of factory-farmed pigs. Other whistleblower reports and undercover investigations of factory farms, such as those done by PETA, have resulted in historic convictions after documenting that farm workers were beating, sexually abusing, stomping, kicking, and throwing animals. This bill is designed to shroud factory farming in secrecy, and it could deprive animals of the already minimal protection that they have under the law and hide from the public the truth about what happens behind the closed doors of factory farms.

Even if you live outside Utah, your voice is still needed. The meat from slaughtered animals crosses state lines, and the government needs to hear from consumers across the country who care about the way animals killed for food are treated.

Fill out the form HERE to urge Utah Gov. Gary Herbert to veto this bill should it reach his desk!


4. Background | Source PETA UK

North Kesteven District Council has received an application to build an intensive egg production facility which, if approved, would condemn 83,700 hens to a life of misery and suffering.

These inquisitive, highly social birds would be forced to spend their lives in cramped cages if this horrific plan goes ahead. Even so-called “enriched cages” do not allow hens to move freely, dust bathe or forage for food. Hens may still face the agonising pain of having the ends of their sensitive beaks cut off with a red-hot blade in a futile attempt to stop the frustrated birds from pecking at each other, and severe crowding and often filthy conditions would leave the hens highly susceptible to chronic respiratory diseases. In addition to this suffering, each year, millions of male chicks are drowned, gassed or ground up alive shortly after birth because they considered a by-product of the cruel egg industry.

Please urge North Kesteven District Council to reject this application. The closing date for objections is 4 March.

the earth
the land
the sea
the sky
a world
so grand
we cannot
watch her
children die

Karen Lyons Kalmenson