The animal rights organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, better known as PETA, has once again chosen the Canadian seal hunt as its main cash grabbing campaign this year. Although winter is just setting in, PETA has already armed its media arsenal with celebrity support, posters, full page ads and T-shirts in their latest campaign against the seasonal spring industry. The main spokesperson for the campaign is once again longtime PETA supporter Pamela Anderson who claims that she is speaking on behalf of disgusted Canadians.

Other celebrities supporting this campaign include Playboy porn stars Holly Madison and Jayde Nicole, celebrity blogger Perez Hilton, and ‘Jackass’ star Steve-O, who in his latest film featured a person defecating in a helmet that someone was wearing. The rest of the celebrities -  including Kelly Osbourne and Sarah McLachlan – can be found on PETA’s website. The question we asked ourselves here at Animal Wrongs was, what do the individuals featured in this campaign have in common? The answer was simple: they are celebrities, porn stars, singers and actors – not experts.

So who made Pamela Anderson an expert on the humane standards of animal use? The most recent information we can find on Pamela, short of her involvement with the campaign, is that she is currently facing allegations of being broke. It is reported that she owes over a quarter of a million dollars in back taxes, and over 1.1 million to at least 5 different construction companies who have filed claim against her, after renovating her Malibu home and going unpaid. Currently living in a trailer park for the rich, rumor has it that Anderson’s renovation job has gone over budget and that she will be forced to sell her home due to lack of funds. Anderson claims that she is simply choosing to stay in the trailer park because she enjoys it and because she met her current boyfriend nearby.

Anderson has been a long time supporter of PETA, and most recently campaigned in public for their Kentucky Fried Cruelty campaign, against fast-food giant Kentucky Fried Chicken.  Who can forget the ridiculous ads of the Colonel watching as men in chicken suits are beaten and given drugs by what looks like a warden in a prison camp? The campaign forced Canadian KFC chains to respond by offering a vegetarian chicken burger on their menu, which seems hypocritical to those of us here at Animal Wrongs unless the C is dual purpose and also stands for Carrots. Pamela announced on TV that she is proud of the Canadian chains for making a ‘true Canadian initiative’, and stating that we, Canadians, are an environmentally concerned and animal loving people. Although this is mostly true, I wonder if the Canadian starlet who has lived out the majority of her life in California is aware that this country, Canada, is one founded on hunting, trapping, and fur trading. Has she ever heard of the Hudson’s Bay Company? One of the most stressed arguments in PETA’s accusations of cruelty against KFC is that hormonal growth treatments given to chickens make them top heavy and off-balance. Given their choice in a spokeswoman, we here at AW once again find the irony hilarious. During her career as a model and actress, Pamela Anderson has admitted to having several breast augmentation surgeries. These enhancements have not only made the actress more ‘top-heavy’ but also support the use of animal testing for cosmetic and non-crucial medical use. Breast implants have been, and still require testing on animals, ranging from dogs, to pigs, to rabbits to test the effects and responses they invoke within living tissue.

This isn’t Pamela’s first hypocritical stance on the use of animals. Despite her frequent declarations of veganism, Pamela Anderson only recently decided to stop wearing sheepskin boots. Caught in thousands of pictures going about her days in California sporting Uggs (sheepskin boots), and being a self-admitted fan of the footwear Pamela claims to only have just discovered that the boots were an animal product. Who would have guessed that a clothing line advertising their high quality sheep and emu skin would be animal products? Her choice in footwear is not the only thing we wish to bring under fire. Isn’t a vegan, especially a PETA spokesperson supposed to support a vegan diet? At Pamela’s latest wedding (She has had three) to Rick Salomon, who you may know as the more masculine counterpart in the Paris Hilton sex tape, the 40 guests enjoyed a menu that featured pigs in a blanket, macaroni and cheese, and tuna and lobster tacos.

The other key spokesperson of PETA’s campaign includes clothing designer Richie Rich. Rich designed the simple white T-shirts sported by the celebrities in each of the ads, featuring an image of a whitecoat harp seal, which is not hunted – because its illegal to do so. What’s Richie’s history with animal science?  He doesn’t have one. His background is one of a “club kid” – A group of young New York City club personalities led by Michael Alig and James St. James in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This group was notable for their outrageous costumes and extensive drug use — in particular, ecstasy, ketamine, and heroin.

The Vice President of PETA, Dan Matthews, appeared for interviews with the stars, and falsely made the claims that newborn seals still covered in their mothers afterbirth are hunted due to softer skins and furs, which is both illegal and not physically feasible.

Now we can’t single out Pamela for being the only celebrity taking up this cause without a clue. In the most recently publicized celebrity visit, Canada was ‘treated’ to a visit from Sir Paul McCartney and his ex-wife Heather Mills. After being invited by Newfoundland Premiere Danny Williams on Larry King Live, to come to Newfoundland and observe the hunt, Paul, who was in Prince Edward Island, argued with the Premiere on live television that he was indeed in Newfoundland. Shortly after their trip, Heather Mills, accused Paul of abuse and motioned for divorce, taking him for $50 million, and requesting an additional $19,000 a day for living expenses. Ms. Mills was also a supporter of the PETA campaign to stop giving school children cows milk, with human breast milk being one of the alternatives.

Other supporters of PETA’s campaign to stop the seal hunt, include Kelly Osbourne, heir to the royalties of the singing Price of Darkness, who became infamous after biting off the head of a live bat on stage. Steve-O, a man who has his own face tattooed on his back and who writes about vegan-ism on his personal website is one of the founders of the “Jackass” series, movies which depict young men performing horrid and culturally unacceptable acts, such as defecating on another persons face, freezing one mans testicles to a block of ice and ripping them off, and masturbating and ingesting the semen of a horse. Not exactly the most respectable members of society, roles models, or credible spokespersons for humane animal treatment.

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