A new PETA US investigation of Hudson Valley Foie Gras - a Sullivan County, New York, farm that supplies the Gordon Ramsay-licensed restaurant at The London NYC hotel - has revealed abysmal factory-farm conditions at America's self-styled "premier producers of foie gras".

Puppy and kitten farms, or 'battery farms', are set up so that greedy traders can exploit animals in order to profit from their young. The cats and dogs used for breeding often go without proper socialisation or veterinary care and are often left in solitary confinement or in overcrowded conditions.

Now more than ever, as animal testing is being scrutinised and debated in the public forum, animal advocates must continue to speak for those whose voices have been ignored for too long. We can win the fight against animal testing and eliminate the need to mark World Day for Animals in Laboratories ever again.

This Earth Day, 22 April, many environmentalists will be advocating the three R's - recycling, reusing and reducing. While these actions are important and worthwhile, we would be better off focusing on a different letter: V for vegan.

Shock and outrage continue to grow, as every day seems to bring revelations of horsemeat being discovered in a new food product. And rightly so: Horses are smart, sensitive animals who deserve far better than to meet their end with a bolt gun.

For an organisation which campaigns against the cosmetic industries' use of animal testing, PETA seem unwilling or unable to engage with the relationship between the fashion-beauty complex, animal testing and torture, and their own use of pornography.

Animals have feelings and emotions, and they suffer from pain, disabilities and diseases just as humans do. But unlike my father, who could clearly communicate his wishes through a system of blinking his eyes, animals can't tell us (at least not in human language) that they don't feel well, are in terrible pain or even want to die. They depend on us to notice when something is wrong and to be brave enough to make the heartbreaking-but-humane decision to end their suffering when the time comes.

Electrocution sends a current through the heart and immobilises the animal, but it does not stop brain activity. When animals are electrocuted without prior stunning, they suffer the crushing, agonising pain of a full-blown heart attack until their hearts finally stop beating.

She's blonde, she's beautiful, she's famous, she's topless and she's in her knickers. TV starlet and model Joanna Krupa ticks those PETA boxes alr...