Roxilla

There’s been a bit of discussion over at iMod about animal rights issues, and how bloggers can make a bit of a difference using their online platforms. Max mentioned her brilliant blog footer idea, which incorporates her ‘Hunter of Genius’ payoff into a slick WWF banner. Chris then thought about making ribbons that bloggers could display on their sites to link to their supported organisation, and the ball is kinda rolling from there.

As a long-time animal rights supporter, and vehement anti-fur, anti-animal testing, anti-cruelty and anti-circus chick who was full vegetarian for 27 years (and have only been eating fish for the last few months), this is something that means a lot to me. I know that people are aware, and that there is a lot of noise and exposure about some of the appalling things that go on all over the world, but the thing is, it’s often only the biggest or worse things that are brought to light. The average person on the street may know about Chinese fur farms and hellish circuses, but they may not know for example that Iams pet food funds horrific animal testing. Or that Mars Chocolates tests their candy on rodents in extremely nasty ways. They may have heard something about KFC and the ‘chickens’ they mass produce which can barely be called chickens they are so deformed. There is so much going on in even supposed developed countries that is still only the tip of the iceberg as Max points out on iMod. And the thing is, there is a lot that people can do to help that doesn’t involve throwing paint at fur coated bimbos or getting in front of whaling ships. Hell, you don’t even need to work your credit card to help, although funding is a crucial element in most animal rights groups.

All you really need to do is spread the word, and make a bit of time to send off those annoying forms to various bigwigs about various animal rights issues. Find out what products test on animals and just don’t buy them. Take a stand and stick to it. It’s that simple – you don’t have to be a superman to make a little bit of a difference.

So, here’s what I want to do. First, when these ribbons get into effect, I want one of those. Also, I am going to make a little section in my sidebar for Peta campaigns. I won’t push for donations, I just want people to be aware of these causes. I think that is the blogging community as a whole put little steps like this into motion, we may be able to spread some awareness viral style. And that would rock.

P.S. Max pointed me in the direction of getting Peta banners, take a look and check them out.