While saving animals doesn't often appear at the top of governments' agendas, it is starting to sneak in by way of "Green Living"! In a recent newsletter from Sydney City Council I noticed they are promoting Meat Free Mondays.

Meat Free Mondays is a global campaign encouraging people to help curb climate change by having at least one meat-free day per week. If you think this sounds like a great idea, then you're in good company! The campaign already has the support of Paul McCartney, Richard Branson, Moby and the head of the International Panel on Climate Change (ie. the guy who advises the UN on all things climatey).

Governments promoting vegetarianism really makes me all goose-pimply with excitement. And this story gets better! Cause Sydney's not the only city either. In May, the Belgian city of Ghent launched a brilliant initiative to urge the whole city to go vegetarian every Thursday.

If you think Sydney Council is on a winning idea, then why not write to your school/uni/workplace to encourage them to combat climate change too and adopt Meat Free Mondays. Just think of the lives saved if they do!

After much deliberation, the winners of the new Unleashed poster comp have been decided. With so many awesome entries it was impossible for us to pick just one winner.

So we didn't!

A drum roll please...

Congrats to Georgie for setting a stellar example to other med students and future patients of how to live a healthy and cruelty free life. And a big 'hoorah!' to nAoMi for her kick ass creativity! We admire any (super)hero for the animals who dresses for the occasion :-P Not to mention the fact we think this poster will look hot in your environmental/animal club headquarters.

All of the entries would have made worthy winners. So if you didn't win, you don't need to miss out. Why not reward yourself with a set of all 3 of our shiny new posters from the Unleashed shop.

We need your help!! The nine new super-cool Unleashed badge designs are in, but the bosses are telling us that right now we can only produce three! Eek! We can't decide, so, we want YOU to decide for us...

Which of these do you want to see in the Unleashed shop? Leave a comment below with your top three, and help to make your fave Unleashed badge designs a reality!

'Warren' is the star of a brand new 3D animated clip made by those awesome guys at Choose Cruelty Free to raise awareness about the hidden horrors of animal testing! This amazing little film has already made its online debut on YouTube and hopefully will make it to TV later in the year.

CCF should be commended for this powerful animation that will hopefully challenge average Australians to buy household and cosmetic items that don't contain the added cruelty.

Every year millions of animals are poisoned, burnt and killed in the name of 'science'… a poor science that is unreliable, inaccurate and as dangerous for us as it is for the animals!

If this gets you as fired up as it does me, then let's take some action! Firstly, make sure you make the "Say no animal testing" pledge and then start spreading the word about this video! Stick it on your MySpace and Facebook and help give Warren a voice!

Want to do and learn even more? Grab your student info kit from CCF today.

Jockeys are up in (short, little) arms at the moment because they are not alowed to whip their horses as often as they want to. Yep — yesterday jockeys in VIC, NSW, QLD and WA walked off the job in protest of new rules that came in last month that restricted the number of times they can whip horses during races.

If you watch the sky news video, you'll see the Australian Jockeys Association complain that it's "unreasonable" to "burden" jockeys with having to count how many times they've hit their horses.

Uhmm ... Unreasonable!?

'Unreasonable' is what you call the standard practice of killing a horse who falls and breaks his leg on track because he is no longer considered 'profitable'.

'Unreasonable' is sending 20,000 horses to knackeries every year to be slaughtered. Their crime? They weren't fast enough :-(

'Unreasonable' is that studies show that race horses often suffer deep, bleeding gastric ulcers when forced to eat a concentrated and unnatural 'race' diet, and that one study showed that 90% of horses have blood in their lungs from over exertion.

'Unreasonable' is leaving a horse to spend up to 22 hours a day isolated in a stall, deprived of social contact and mental stimulation.

'Unreasonable' is allowing jockeys to whip horses at all, when whipping an animal off a racetrack would be illegal! (Do they think it hurts less, if they're in a race...?)

'Unreasonable' is a jumps racing trainer threatening to send his decapitated horse's head to the racing minister if the brutal sport was banned!

'Unreasonable' is expecting anyone to believe that horse racing is anything but a brutal and cut-throat industry... (warning: contains some graphic scenes).

Perhaps we can hope that those angry jockeys stay on strike ... it might be the quickest way to give these horses the break they deserve!

So whilst the jockeys are doing their bit, here are two quick ways you can help horses today:

• Vote "Hell No!" in news.com.au's poll asking 'Should jockeys be allowed to whip more than three times in a row in the last 200m?'
• Share this video with any race-going friends to show them the hidden reality behind the glamourous face of horse racing, and ask them not to bet on cruelty!

So whenever you go shopping to stock up on mouth-watering cruelty-free food, do you spend more time than you'd like trying to ignore the icky meat, egg, and dairy-laden products that clutter the supermarket shelves in your quest to find those delightful dairy-free chocolate bars, meat-free mince and eggless mayonnaise? I know I do, especially when I visit a new supermarket that I don't know very well!

Don't you just wish shops would stick big, eye-catching signs up quickly drawing your attention to all the amazing vegetarian and vegan goodies that they sell? Well, one supermarket in Adelaide has done just that! Yep, apparently Foodworks in Glenelg have figured out that more and more people are wanting to fill their shopping trolleys without contributing to animal cruelty and environmental destruction and so they have posted big signs directing shoppers to the amazing cruelty-free food that they stock. Woot!!

Tofutti cheese, pig-friendly 'bacon', meat-free schnitzels, vegan whipped cream, vegetarian 'prawns', to-die-for dairy-free icecream ... yum!! :-) If you're in Adelaide make sure you check this place out on Jetty Rd, Glenelg. And if not, post a comment below and tell everyone where your favourite veg-friendly shop is!

There are around 14 million egg-laying hens in Australia. That's a lot of birds! ... and all of them are female. So have you ever wondered what happened to all the males?

Male chicks can't produce eggs ... so the egg industry doesn't want them. They don't grow fast or large enough to be profitable to be raised for meat, so ... what then?

Well a new investigation by US based group, Mercy for Animals exposes the dirty little secret the egg industry doesn't want you to know. Brace yourself, cause the answer isn't pretty...

You might hope that Australian standards would be better. But sadly that's not the case. Every year, the Australian egg industry grinds up alive or gasses to death an estimated 10 million male chicks. For these animals their first day in the world is also their last. They are picked up roughly by their fragile wings, tossed into disposal chutes and hauled off to their death.

Sounds more like a horror movie than reality, doesn't it. But sadly this is not only a reality, it's legal and is standard practice in Australia across all egg laying systems.

So what can you do about it? Well for starters you can cast your vote with your plate, simply don't eat eggs! And please join me in letting the Australian Egg Corporation know that you won't support their appalling disregard for animal welfare.

So if you're like many Australian families, you may well have a copy of the CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet (as my parents do). This 240 page book could have easily been summarised in one word – "meat" because that's pretty much the main ingredient in every meal.

But what you may not know is that CSIRO scientists (the good guys) discovered that high meat consumption is linked with bowel cancer and presented this to the CSIRO board (bad guys) in April 2006. Yet in October 2006 the CSIRO ran a second print of their bestselling book, despite the fact the book claimed "Studies have shown that fresh red meat (beef and lamb) is not a significant risk factor for colorectal cancer." LIES! So basically the book was reprinted and continues to be sold despite containing completely misleading information about the risks of cancer and meat. Not to mention the fact it promotes a diet that is extremely harmful to the environment!

Thankfully there is a good bloke out there by the name of Geoff Russell making sure that this blatant spread of misinformation does not go unheard, and he's written his own book: CSIRO Perfidy. Now I'll be honest, I didn't know the definition of 'perfidy' before I heard about this book, but when you read the definition, you'll see that there's no better word to describe the actions of the CSIRO.

Perfidy: –noun, 1. deliberate breach of faith or trust; faithlessness; treachery: perfidy that goes unpunished.

So the good news is you can pick up a copy of CSIRO Perfidy from the Unleashed store. I recommend anyone whose parents have a copy of the CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet to buy a copy of this book for them, to give them the full story. As Professor Peter Singer (Philosopher, Author of Animal Liberation, Hero) said "Read this book: it may save your life. And if enough people read it, it just might save the planet.''

So if you took part in our recent action calling on Qld Premier, Anna Bligh, to protect roos instead of encouraging Queenslanders to eat them, then you might have received the same lame response from the Qld Govt that I did. If you haven't here's a few snippets:

The kangaroo is an iconic Australian animal. It is also the foundation of an important commercial industry ... and contributes approximately $270 million annually to regional economies.

Kangaroo numbers in Australia have increased substantially since European settlement…

The commercial harvesting of kangaroos in Queensland is strictly monitored and controlled by the Department of Environment and Resource Management.

The National Code of Practice for the Humane Shooting of Kangaroos and Wallabies for Commercial Purposes 2008 has been produced to ensure that all harvesting of kangaroos is undertaken in a way that minimises pain and suffering. The Code also provides for the humane euthanising of pouch young and young at foot.

In other words: "Don't worry, we've got it under control. There's plenty of kangaroos, and bucket loads of cash to be made. So what are you worried about?"

What the Premier neglects to mention is the fact that severe droughts have seen roo numbers in shooting zones across WA, SA, NSW and QLD drop by more than half since 2001. She also doesn't mention the fact that the 'humane euthanising of pouch young and young at foot' recommended by the National Code of Practice is for joeys to be killed by decapitation or a blow to the head from a blunt object (like a towbar).

But the part of her letter that really rubbed me up the wrong way was this bit:

The working group that produced the Code included representatives from Commonwealth, State and Territory Government authorities responsible for kangaroo management and welfare, the kangaroo industry, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) and Animals Australia.

Animals Australia was on that working group - to represent the animals' interests - but unfortunately the final product did not reflect our recommendations. So to suggest we supported the final recommendations is about as far from the truth as you can get. It's bad enough that the Queensland Premier is planning to hock slaughtered Aussie wildlife to Queenslanders as food! But to suggest that an animal protection group gave a tick of approval to codes that permit joeys to be decapitated is not cool.

We were so appalled by this gross misrepresentation of Animals Australia's stance that we had to respond. If you want to check out the response from Animals Australia's Executive Director, Glenys Oogjes, to Anna Bligh's letter click the image below. And please take a moment to let the Premier know that she should be looking out for our national icon, not supporting it's slaughter.

So, last week, whilst everyone was busy uploading their latest mug shots and attending jumps racing protests, a little milestone happened ... the thousandth member joined Unleashed :-)

Yep — we're now more than 1,000 members strong with recent recruits from every corner of Aus and even a few blow-ins from around the world. With so many new and caring voices for animals we think it's time to celebrate! And to mark the occasion we've created three brand new Unleashed posters (in 42cm x 42cm glory) for your viewing pleasure:

If you like what you see you can head on over to the Unleashed Shop and pick up a value-pack of all 3 today. Or, if you've already blown your spending money this week (like I have), then leave a comment below to tell us how you kick ass for the animals and you could score yourself a spankin new 'Kicking Ass' Poster! We'll be judging entries on flair, creativity, and general kick-ass-ness.