Hugs For Puppies E-Newsletter – March 6, 2008 Major Upcoming Events!! Mark Your Calendars!! The weather is getting warmer and the days are getting longer – it’s time for our outreach and action to get bigger! HFP has a few very big events coming up this month, so please mark your calendars and try to make it out! In particular, we are having a major weekend of action March 21-22 (Friday-Saturday) for National Meat-Out Day. More details are below and to the right – please make it out for these incredibly important events!!! Campus Philly/HFP Vegan Dinner – Thu, March 13 (6 pm) Campus Philly – a city-funded organization that works with thousands of local college students – and HFP are teaming up for a special Vegan Dinner as part of Campus Philly’s “Alternative Spring Break” program. Featuring a delicious dinner provided by vegan caterer Miss Rachel’s Traveling Fare, a mere $12 both gets you a home-cooked dinner and introduces a civic-minded college student to the benefits (and delicious taste) of a veg diet! Event will be at 1821 Bainbridge St. at 6 pm on Thursday, March 13. If you wish to attend, you MUST RSVP by this Sunday! Send RSVPs to hugsforpuppies@riseup.net . National Meat-Out Day!! – Fri, March 21 (4 pm - 6pm) As part of National Meat-Out Day, HFP will be holding a massive Veg Outreach event from 4 to 6 pm on Friday, March 21! We’ll be holding outreach stations at several downtown locations (Broad and Chestnut; 15^th and Market; 17^th and Market; 10^th and Market; 30^th and Market) to educate thousands of Philadelphians about the cruel realities of factory farming. Leaflets and leafleting tips will be provided – please join us to make this day as successful as possible! This will be our biggest Veg Outreach event of the Winter/Spring, so don’t miss it!! RSVP required, please email us at hugsforpuppies@riseup.net if you would like to participate! All Out For The Ducks!! – Sat., March 22 (4 pm on) Our last major “All Out For The Ducks” day of demonstrations last September led 4 restaurants to pull foie gras from the menu permanently! Please join us for another huge day of action against foie gras in Philadelphia! This is our biggest day of anti-foie gras demos in 6 months, so please DO NOT MISS IT!! With your support we will continue to work towards making Philadelphia a foie gras-free city! We will be meeting for restaurant demos at 4 pm at Broad and Walnut Sts. Signs and leaflets will be provided, please wear comfortable shoes and warm clothing. We will also be having an earlier round of foie gras home demonstrations starting at 12 pm – for details, email us at hugsforpuppies@riseup.net . So please join us on Saturday March 22 for a big, effective evening of protest against the cruel foie gras industry!! New E-Leafletting Program Takes Off! Referred to as “Web 2.0”, social networking sites like MySpace and FaceBook offer unprecedented opportunities to quickly and at no cost reach many thousands of people with the realities of factory farming. In doing veg outreach over the past year or two, we’re often told by teenagers who are vegetarian that they went veg after seeing factory farming videos online. Now, in addition to our other veg outreach programs (see below), HFP has recently launched what is to our understanding the animal advocacy community’s first-ever “e-leafletting” program. “E-leafletting” consists of inviting people from a specific demographic (we are currently focusing on women age 16-24, as they are more likely to go veg than any other demographic) to be our “friend” on MySpace. The MySpace pages we have set up are veg-specific, and contain factory farming and veg-related videos, links to free Veg Starter Kits and other helpful resources, and info on factory farming. Everyone who responds to our friend request by viewing our MySpace pages instantly sees the infamous “Meet Your Meat” video, with plenty of additional information at their fingertips. Automated programs allow us to quickly and easily reach hundreds of people per day (we are currently reaching 500 new users per day), and we expect to reach roughly 100,000 people by year’s end through our e-leafletting program. Perhaps best of all, this program is completely cost-free! More Veg Outreach Updates – New Stands, New Schools, New Plans Our Veg Outreach programs continue to expand and are running at record-setting paces for 2008! We’ve just added 5 new Veg Starter Kit stands in New Jersey, which will be maintained by a HFP volunteer, two more Philly stands, and a new suburban PA stand that will be up this weekend - for a grand total of 36 Veg Starter Kit stands in Philadelphia, NJ, and Baltimore (Baltimore stands are maintained by our great friends at the Baltimore Animal Rights Coalition)! A total of just under 10,000 Veg Starter Kits have been distributed so far this year. Meanwhile, our leafleting numbers are running at a record pace, with 14,250 leaflets distributed so far this year, thanks in part to a couple dedicated volunteers who have been joining us for regular leaflettings! We’ve also been visiting new colleges and new city locations, and early April will see a 2-week out-of-area college leafleting tour by HFP volunteers. Please help our efforts by signing up for our massive National Meat-Out Day veg outreach event on March 21! To see the sort of impact YOU can have my simply handing out veg leaflets with us, please read this email which we recently received from a local college student: “Hey, I saw you on campus handing out leaflets and I wanted to let you know that you were very well received. A lot of my friends came up to me within that week and asked me about becoming vegetarian and some already vegetarian friends are considering becoming vegan. So, I just wanted to say great job and keep it up! You're work is not going unnoticed!” Foie Gras News and Updates – Thank You Emails Needed! Hearings began in the Maryland State Senate this week on a bill that would ban the sale of foie gras there. House hearings are scheduled for the coming week. Meanwhile, Prince Charles made headlines by banning foie gras from royal dinners. Click here for the Daily Mail’s report! (direct link: http://tinyurl.com/24xk3a ) On the home front, HFP is proud to report that we will be suspending protests against Susanna Foo after a positive meeting with management there. Susanna Foo pulled foie gras from the menu as protests began several months ago, and at the recent meeting SF’s manager expressed his agreement that foie gras is unethical. While the restaurant did not promise that foie gras will never be served there again, it has been off the menu since protests began and it was communicated to us that it is likely to remain off the menu into the future. Thank you to Susanna Foo for pulling this cruel dish from their menu! Twenty21 Restaurant has also informed HFP that they do not plan on serving foie gras in the future. Twenty21 has served foie numerous times in the past, and took part in the laughable “Five Dollar Foie Gras” publicity stunt back in December. Of the 20 restaurants claimed to have been participating in that event, Twenty21 is the 9^th restaurant that either never did serve foie gras, or has since stated they do not plan on serving it in the future. Thank you to Twenty21 for making the ethical decision! Please take a moment to thank them for their decision by emailing them at: info@twenty-21.com . Animal-Friendly Lifestyle: “Farm Sanctuary: Changing Hearts and Minds”; and, 7-11s Seitan-ic Offerings Earlier this week, national book publisher Simon and Schuster officially released “Farm Sanctuary: Changing Hearts and Minds About Animals and Food” by Farm Sanctuary founder and director Gene Baur. This book is rich with touching stories of rescued animals, a chronology of the history of Farm Sanctuary, and information on the cruelties of the factory farming industry, and has received advance praise by everyone from Jane Goodall to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to Alicia Silverstone. For more information and to order the book, please visit http://www.genebaur.com . Gene will also be appearing to speak and sign books at the U-Penn Law School on April 3 at 6:30 pm (more details in future e-newsletters!). Meanwhile, our friends at Peta have asked us to spread the word about 7-Eleven’s Vegan Sandwiches. Please read on for their action alert, then do some tasty activism by snagging some vegan sandwiches from one of the participating 7-Elevens in order to encourage the chain to launch veg options into national distribution! “The convenience-store chain 7-Eleven is doing a test run of a variety of delicious vegetarian sandwiches at several of its Philadelphia locations. (See the list of locations below.) Among the sandwiches offered are faux chicken, seitan steak, falafel, and tofu egg salad. If these products sell well in Philly, the company's executives will take notice and may start selling this food in 7-Eleven stores nationwide! You probably know that going vegetarian and getting others to join you is the most effective way to help animals (every vegetarian saves more than 100 animals a year). A key part of successful vegetarian outreach is making sure that good vegetarian food is widely available. It would be an enormous victory for animals if 7-Eleven started selling these sandwiches in all of its thousands of stores. So please, drop what you are doing, run to your local 7-Eleven, and start enjoying these sandwiches. Buy some for your friends or coworkers. Better yet, stop eating anything besides 7-Eleven's vegetarian sandwiches, and don't let your family eat anything else either! Well, that might be going overboard, but you get the point. Don't forget to thank the 7-Eleven workers for offering vegetarian food! Participating 7-Eleven Stores 16^th Street and JFK Boulevard 34^th Street and Lancaster Avenue Ridge Avenue and Walnut Lane Temple University Willow Grove Avenue (Glenside) 19^th Street and JFK Boulevard”

Upcoming Events Fri, Mar 7: Foie Gras Demos! Meet at 1600 Arch St at 6:00 pm. In case of inclement weather, call 484-904-6004 to find out if demos are cancelled. Sun, Mar 9: Veg Outreach Meeting at 5^th and South Sts. at 2 pm Thu, Mar 13: HFP/Campus Philly Vegan Dinner! 1821 Bainbridge St., 6 pm. Catered vegan dinner, $12 – must RSVP by this Sunday! Fri, Mar 14: Veg Outreach in Camden! Major Veg Outreach event at the Tweeter Center, 4 pm. Sat, Mar 15: Foie Gras Demos in Baltimore! We’re teaming up with our friends in BARC for major foie gras demos in Baltimore. Leaving Philadelphia around 1 pm, carpooling. Email hugsforpuppies@riseup.net for details! Fri, Mar 21: National Meat-Out Day! Huge Veg Outreach event! Don’t miss it! Various locations in Center City, 4-6 pm. Email hugsforpuppies@riseup.net to join in! Sat, Mar 22: All Out For The Ducks! Our biggest day of foie gras demos since last September! Please join us! Full details TBA, afternoon home demos start at 12 noon and evening restaurant demos start at 4 pm at Broad and Walnut Sts. in Center City. Contact us for more details about upcoming events! Visit the Hugs For Puppies Website Hang out with us at MySpace! Hugs for Puppies is a 501(c)3 animal advocacy non-profit based in Philadelphia, PA. HFP works to aid farm, lab, and companion animals through outreach, education, and campaigning. Hugs for Puppies PO Box 23819 Phila, PA 19143 www.HugsForPuppies.org info@hugsforpuppies.org (484) 904-6004