What could be wrong with wool?  It's not like sheep are hurt or killed just to get their wool, right?  Wrong.

Sheep are often raised in factory farms with cramped and dirty conditions. They're castrated without anesthesia. Their tails are cut off without anesthesia. Babies get trampled.  To make the most money, sheep are often sheared when their coats are nice and full, which is when they need their coat the most.  Sheep are bred to be so big and woolly that they sometimes collapse from their own weight.  Some sheep are bred to have wrinkly skin.  More skin means more wool.  But the skin folds often get infected and full of maggots.  When the sheep get older and stop producing enough wool to be profitable, they're often killed for their meat.

Obviously not all sheep live this way.  But this is the reality for most factory farms, which is where most of our wool comes from.  So if you stay away from meat or fur, you should probably stay away from wool as well.

http://www.care2.com/causes/animal-welfare/blog/think-wool-is-a-great-fur-alternative-not-quite/

Some animals had been in a shelter for a while.  They hadn't found homes yet.  So a police officer shot them.

The officer says he got direct orders to shoot the animals from the mayor.  The mayor is denying that but is admitting that the city switched from lethal injection to shooting in order to save money.

Since the case is a bit unusual, it's making the news.   People are looking into just how much effort was put into finding the animals homes first.  Apparently it wasn't much.  Nearby shelters are even saying they could have helped out and taken the animals.  One shelter volunteer got a few of the animals out and was trying to get the rest out at the time they were shot.

People are not too happy about the whole situation.  They're saying that shooting the animals is barbaric when we have access to lethal injection.  They're also saying the shelters should try harder to adopt and should work together.

I sort of agree with them and sort of disagree.  I think it's odd that we have all these double standards about how and what we can kill.  Killing a cow is an every day thing.  Killing a dog is a felony.  Unless it's a shelter.  Then it's ok.  Unless they shoot the dog.  That's not ok.  They have to stick a needle in the dog that will kill it.  Really?  Shouldn't we, as a society, see all that stuff as barbaric?

As for whether the shelter tried hard enough to find the animals homes, well, I bet a lot of shelters don't.  It's just that they kill the animals quietly and don't make the news.  That's sad and scary.  But when you think about it shelters can only do so much.  If we don't donate to the shelters, adopt from the shelters, volunteer at the shelters, stop breeding, stop buying from breeders, etc., then we can't really expect the shelter situation to be all that great.

http://www.adn.com/2010/02/02/1121874/houstons-disposal-of-shelter-animals.html

A lot of restaurants have animal heads hanging on the walls.  PETA has offered to replace the stuffed severed heads with cardboard cut outs.

I think it's an interesting idea.  But since the cardboard heads don't look real, a restaurant would probably need a bit of a sense of humor, a really artsy setting, or to be veg in order to pull it off.  All in all I don't see many restaurants jumping on the idea, especially when most of them are serving dead animals right on the plates. But it was a nice try.

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/01/01/2010-01-01_peta_sticks_its_head_into_moose_case.html