When PETA President Ingrid Newkirk was in Las Vegas on her Unstoppable tour, she presented two very special awards. The first, a Compassionate Business Award, went to St. Tropica, a cruelty-free company that supports animal rights through the PETA Business Friends program and by making items that benefit our hair without harming a hair on an animal’s head.
St. Tropica also donates products for PETA’s online contest giveaways, which always go viral and bring hundreds of new people to PETA’s Facebook page and other social media sites. Before long, they’ve learned information about a variety of animal rights issues, all because we offered them a free St. Tropica hair mask.
The second award, a Compassionate Activist Award, went to the Animal Beta Project (ABP), which helps track down animal abusers and makes them face legal consequences for their actions. John Greene, Muervet Douglas, and Deanna Thompson formed ABP to find and identify a person in Canada who had committed a series of animal-related crimes before killing a student. With ABP’s help, Luke Magnotta was convicted.
ABP has joined forces with PETA on several cases that have led to felony charges, including a Chicago case in which two people posted videos of themselves torturing dogs. ABP also helped shut down a major international “crush video” cell. As you may know, crush videos are animal-torture pornography. The case resulted in the first-ever federal prosecution under the federal anti-crush video law and a 50-year sentence for cruelty to animals for the man who produced them.
While St. Tropica and ABP work in very different ways, they’re both helping animals—and that’s what matters most. They both deserve our thanks and support. It was a privilege for PETA to recognize their efforts in behalf of animals.
Perhaps someday, we’ll have the pleasure of recognizing you or your company or group for something that you’ve done to help stop animal suffering. We want to hear about your efforts, both big and small, to help animals and inspire humans to make compassionate choices. Don’t be modest—tell everyone about your actions in the comments section below.
