• Gentle Thanksgiving Registers 220 Events
• AR2008 Conference Plans Are Underway
• FARM Offers Seasonal Greeting Cards
• Letters from FARM Promote Vegan Message

Gentle Thanksgiving Registers 220 events

For this year’s Gentle Thanksgiving observance, we registered a record 220 events in 43 states plus DC. This annual campaign promotes compassionate alternatives to turkey dinners and illustrates the growing popularity of meat-free eating.

Events included public vegan feasts, cooking classes, special restaurant menus, information tables, exhibits, leafleting, and food sampling.

Throughout November, activists distributed nearly 6,000 handouts that detail the suffering of turkeys and offer free Vegetarian Starter Kits. The cards pulled in approximately 600 requests for Vegetarian Starter Kits and countless visitors to our Gentle Thanksgiving website.

Several thousand press releases were sent to food and lifestyle editors, and to talk show producers. Newspaper articles, television features, and radio interviews created much public awareness. Letters to the editor were published in more than 100 newspapers.

FARM wrote a letter to President Bush requesting that he pardon all turkeys this year, rather than just two. TV host Bill Maher also released a Presidential pardon request.

View the Gentle Thanksgiving 2007 Report.

AR2008 Conference Plans Are Underway

Save the date! The Animal Rights 2008 National Conference will be held on August 14-18 at the Hilton Mark Center in Alexandria, a Washington DC suburb. The hotel offers free shuttle service to the Metro and the Washington National Airport.

This is our most attractive venue since we started hosting the national animal rights conferences in 1981. The building has lots of sunlight, and we have the entire conference level. It adjoins a small lake and a botanical preserve with running trails.

The 2008 program will offer a number of new features, including plenary presentations by prominent leaders of the consumer, environmental, and social justice movements, and presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich.

Early e-mail registration opens in January.

Check for regular updates at www.ARconference.org.

FARM Offers Seasonal Greeting Cards

The start of the new year brings a special opportunity to send a caring greeting cards to your relatives, friends, and coworkers. The card cites the merits of a vegan diet, offers a free Veg Starter Kit and weekly supportive e-newsletters, and promotes the vegan diet as the best New Year's resolution.

It also provides space for your personal greeting.

To request the free handouts, visit our Literature Request page.

Letters from FARM Promote Vegan Message

In the past year, we published nearly 2,000 letters to the editor on 18 topics in more than 300 newspapers. The topics included new year's resolutions, cancer, global warming, lent, Meatout, Earth Day, animal feed contamination, vegan babies, Mother's Day, Independence Day, Vick’s dogs, hypertension, WFAD, water, Thanksgiving.

Letters to the editor are the second most read section of the newspaper after the front page. They are a most effective vehicle for bringing our message to millions of middle Americans that we don't reach in other ways.

To learn more about Letters from FARM, visit our website.

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