Day One Hundred and Seventy-Eight - Monkey Business

Yes, I am a vegetarian [okay, I try - lately I've been trying very hard and even trying to be vegan when given the choice] and yes, I think animals are superfantastic and yes, I try to go out of my way to support companies that do not test on animals. However, I am not a big fan of PETA - they have a lot of problems. However, I find their strategies to be amusing [okay, they used to be - now they are a little dated] and they do raise a lot of awareness. However, I'm not sure how successful they are in changing the hearts and minds of the general public. One thing their website is very good for [www.peta.org] is providing a lot of useful information [for companies that do/don't test, for example] and for pointing one in the right direction to specific campaigns that might be of interest.

Although I like all types of animals, I do have a particular fondness for monkeys and apes. I also think if you are campaigning for animal rights, involving other primates [other than yourself that is] is a great idea. One area that gets a bit overlooked in terms of animal abuses is the entertainment industry - most people are aware of scientific testing on animals and the badness of circuses and stuff like that - but I am speaking about tv/films/adverts and their use of animals. It's something I've been learning a lot about lately [and Pam Anderson too, evidently as she "wrote" a column in the NY Times about this recently and was on Larry King Live tonight] thanks to a documentary and some other research. True, there is not a lot that one can do to speak out against the use of animals in media, but you can boycott companies and films/tv programmes and tonight I wrote letters in support of NoMoreMonkeyBusiness.com - the website makes this embarassingly easy. They don't have a nifty colourful link thing, so I will just say that if you are interested in learning more or supporting this cause, please click here.

It's a dream of mine to someday be associated with an primate sanctuary type place - where more fortunate celebrity monkeys/apes or lab monkeys/apes go to live the rest of their lives after they have outlived their previous "usefulness" - but it would be even better if places like that didn't have to exist anymore.