PETA Kills Animals Posted by: Dale Franks
on Tuesday, June 21, 2005
Everyone knows that PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) are big advocates of Animal Rights. They're the ones who are always going on about how animals have just as much right to live as human beings, that eating animals is murder, that killing millions of chickens for America's dinners is equivalent to the holocaust, etc. The message is clear. PETA doesn't want us to kill animals.
Police suspected that PETA workers were killing the dogs and cats they were picking up from shelters and clinics because carcasses wrapped in plastic bags were found in the bins every Wednesday for four straight weeks, according to Ahoskie police Detective Jeremy Roberts. A total of 80 dead animals were dumped, he said.
Officers staked out the garbage bins, which were at a Piggly Wiggly supermarket.
They found 18 dead dogs in the container and 13 other animal carcasses in the van, which was registered to PETA, and arrested the two workers.
The animals were alive when they were picked up earlier in the day, Roberts said, adding, "We don’t know exactly how they were killed."
Of course, PETA President Ingrid Newkirk wants to explain this.
PETA usually takes the animals back to Norfolk to be euthanized, Newkirk said, in a process that involves a single hypodermic shot and a gentle caress.
Very few are ever put up for adoption, she said.
"We won’t shy away from doing society’s dirty work as long as the alternative is a life of misery and a bad or slow death," Newkirk said.
Last year, she said, 2,278 animals were euthanized in Virginia, 7,641 sterilized and 361 put up for adoption. She said she was not sure if the North Carolina animals were part of those statistics.
Animals were not supposed to be killed in North Carolina, except by veterinarians hired by the organization or if they were in too much pain to travel, PETA said.
After they are killed, Newkirk said, the carcasses are supposed to be sent to a crematorium, not dumped in bins.
"That conduct disgusts us," Newkirk said of the dumping. "It shames us. It violates our own protocols, it happened without our knowledge and can never be allowed to happen again. But our work is important and our work must go on."
So, apparently, MS. Newkirk's organization takes the position that it is immoral to kill animals for food, but it's OK to kill them if they're inconvenient. So important, in fact, that their work must go on. I see.
You just have to admire that kind of moral clarity, huh? It's kinda funny, because, as PETA puts it on their web site:
People who support animal rights believe that animals are not ours to use for food, clothing, entertainment, experimentation, or any other purpose and that animals deserve consideration of their best interests regardless of whether they are cute, useful to humans, or endangered and regardless of whether any human cares about them at all (just as a mentally challenged human has rights even if he or she is not cute or useful and even if everyone dislikes him or her).
But if you can't find a home for them, it's OK to bump them off. And, apparently, PETA bumps off a lot of animals. The Center for Consumer Freedom, an organization that really doesn't like PETA, managed to get their hands on the official animal disposition documents from the state of Virginia. Between 1998 and 2003, it looks as if PETA euthanized over 10,000 animals at their Virginia HQ, approximately 78% of all the animals they received.
So, really, I'm not sure whether this is an indication that PETA is...uh..inconsistent in their defense of animal rights or not. Actually, I hope it's because they're hypocritical, because, otherwise, if animals and humans have equal rights, their activities imply that euthanasia is a perfectly acceptable option for unwanted human beings. I mean, hey, if it's good enough for animals, right?
The sad thing is that PETA, which takes in slightly less than $30 million a year, could, in fact, afford to shelter the animals they receive. But, I guess it's more important to them to spend millions of dollars on ad campaigns equating eating chicken with the murder of 11 million people in Nazi Death camps. And if that means they don't have enough money to shelter animals instead of killing them...well, those are the breaks. Eggs. Omelets. You know.
UPDATE [Jon Henke]
PETA, which seems to have empathy for animals and not much else, has run an ad campaign about killing animals with the ridiculous slogan "Open Your Eyes to Today's Holocaust".
Which, I suppose, makes this "PETA's Kinder, Gentler Holocaust".
PETA caseworkers tirelessly rescue homeless animals from environmental dangers, as well as cruelty and neglect (http://www.PETA.org/feat/cap/). They crawl through sewers, poke through junkyards, climb trees, and dodge traffic in order to reach animals in danger. During floods and storms, they are out saving lives at all hours.
PETA does not run a shelter. In fact, they refer every healthy, cute, young animal we can to shelters. And some of the animals they rescue are lost companions whom we are able to joyfully reunite with their families. Of the homeless animals they take in, the healthy and adoptable ones are fostered, adopted, or taken to local shelters. However, most of the animals they receive are broken beings for whom euthanasia is, without a doubt, the most humane option.
To cite an instance locally (here in Norfolk, VA), when a power-line transformer explosion burned a flock of starlings, PETA was the only agency to come to the birds’ aid; if PETA’s trained technicians had not been ready to end these starlings’ misery, the injured birds would have suffered horribly for days before finally succumbing to a painful death. They also provide free euthanasia services for local residents who have very sick, critically injured, or geriatric animals but can’t afford to take them to a veterinarian. As reported in the local paper, one family, lacking money for vet care and transportation, turned to PETA for help for their cat, who had barely crawled back home after being mauled by a pack of dogs. They were able to help by giving the cat a peaceful end to her intense pain.
The best way to save the lives of homeless animals is to reduce their numbers through spay/neuter programs, such as PETA’s mobile SNIP (Spay and Neuter Immediately, Please) clinic, which brings low-cost and free alterations and other procedures to low-income neighborhoods (http://www.HelpingAnimals.com/i-nobirth-snip.html). Since every animal purchased from a pet store or breeder means that another homeless animal must die, adopting an animal from a shelter or rescue group is the only responsible way to bring a furry friend into your life (http://www.PETA.org/factsheet/files/FactsheetDisplay.asp?ID=29).
PETA, which seems to have empathy for animals and not much else, has run an ad campaign about killing animals with the ridiculous slogan "Open Your Eyes to Today’s Holocaust".
There’s a Dick Durbin/Gitmo joke to be made in there somewhere...
By the way, Mrs Jensen? When you’re done reading from your PETA literature, do you care to discuss PETA’s links to domestic terror organizations such as the ELF?
Oh please. PETA endorses killing animals only via euthenasia. If the intent is to prevent suffering, it’s hardly hypocritical to kill an animal that would otherwise suffer prolonged agony before dying anyway.
That said, PETA is a group of insane zealot fuckwits. While I agree with their general philosophy of preventing [needless] animal suffering, they seem to take that as a mandate to override every other moral principle of existence.
Example from the PETA site: PETA operates under the simple principle that animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment.
Ours? No. Can we eat them? Yes. Should we eat them? Within reason, yes: natural order (evolution? top o the food chain?) implies neither sadism nor gluttony, but it does imply we can eat em; and until every moron with an opinion and a modem began yammering, I thought this was self-evident.
The biggest problems with pundits and special interest groups is their tendency to bog down discourse to the point where the average Joe is thrashing about in a swamp of rationalizations, where individual critical thought becomes passe.
Make up your own mind based on available facts, not on available opinions. I trust reasonable people to make up their own minds about what constitutes animal abuse.
I firmly believe in the prevention of cruelty to animals. I believe in protecting them from suffering and saving as many animals lives as possible. I used to think that PETA believed in all of that too.
I have always thought PETA was guilty of using over-the-top and, in some cases, just plain crazy methods of accomplishing their goals. But with the recent information that has come to light what a fraud PETA has proven themselves to be!
PETA has always billed themselves as an organization devoted to preventing the senseless slaughter of animals the world over. They ask for donations and sell things on their web site to help further their cause. They vow to protect the animals by speaking for and defending those that cannot speak for or defend themselves.
What a load of crap this turned out to be. It’s perfectly fine for them to kill over 10,000 animals in a four year time period but God help KFC for killing a chicken or God help anyone else for doing what they themselves do.
As pointed out in this article, they take in close to 30 MILLION dollars a year!! They couldn’t spend some of that money to shelter these animals until suitable homes can be found?? If some cities and communities can run no-kill shelters with donations from local businesses and residents why can’t PETA do the same thing with athe millions of dollars given to them each year? If they weren’t spending so much on fancy and stupid ad campaigns they might be able to do something good with that money.
All the "damage control" they’ve done in recent days isn’t to prove their dedication to animals it’s to keep that money rolling in.
I sincerely hope this news does some serious damage to PETA. It isn’t like they’re actually doing what they promise anyway.
PETA might be a halfway decent organization if they cared less about how much money they can get thier greedy hands on and cared more about the animals they claim to protect.
Yes, I too was concerned when I heard the news out of NC, but, like Monty says, look at the facts, not the chatter. I called PETA and spoke with one of their campaigns people about this case... Yes, PETA does kill these animals, but what’s the alternative?! These animals would have been shot or gassed by under funded animal shelters. PETA was doing both the animals and that county a favor by taking unwanted animals off their hands and killing them in the most humane way possible. Yes, the dumping is a bit sketchy, but one bad apple in an organization with hundreds of employees isn’t surprising. It sounds like they’re dealing with the situation rather well, best I can tell.
No matter what anyone thinks about PETA they do what they think needs to be done. To be sure they’ve made some bad decisions (they recently apologized for their Holocaust campaign), but every decision they make, and policy they have, is going to be based on their mission statement. I find that remarkably admirable in a world of PR and spin. That organization risks PR hell to do what they think is right. I trust PETA, if for nothing else, to make decisions that are in the animals best interests. That orgainzation is run by people (zealots or not) who care above all about animals; they are not going to do something that intentionally puts them in harms way.
Yes, PETA does kill these animals, but what’s the alternative?!
Take them home. Release them into the wild. Build no-kill shelters. But if your position is that killing animals is unalterably immoral, then intentionally killing animals isn’t mitigated simply because you say you were being "nice".
Who said anything about killing animals being "unalterably immoral"?! Do you even know what PETA believes?
They are saying it’s wrong to cause animals undue harm, not that it’s categorically immoral to kill. Their stance is simply that suffering should be minimized and they advocate a vegetarian diet because of the hideous things that are done to animals in our country before they end up on our dinner plates. See for yourself!
I guarantee that the unfolding facts in this case will reflect that PETA (and that employee) were doing what they thought to be best they could for those poor animals. No one who is willing to go in into NC to deal with that kind suffering on a daily basis could be guilty of cruelty to animals. I’d put money on it. That’s not to say she won’t be found guilty of other things, dumping them illegally and the like, but these people don’t want to hurt or kill animals. They only do it’s the best they can do.
Animal welfare theories accept that animals have interests but allow those interests to be traded away as long as the human benefits are thought to justify the sacrifice, while animal rights theories say that animals, like humans, have interests that cannot be sacrificed or traded away to benefit others.
PETA is an "animal rights organization", and—as such—necessarily believe that animals have "rights" that cannot be traded away.
Which is to say, they regard intentionally killing an animal on the same moral plane as intentionally killing a human.
PETA says that animals suffer in the same capacity as human beings. Killing is killing, they would say, so I do think that they would consider intentionally killing a human being and an animal to be, as you say, "on the same moral plane" insofar as the acts are the same. This is not to say, however, that if an animal rights activist was forced to choose between saving the life of a human or an animal they would save the animal, nor do I think any PETA employee would find that to be any less ridiculous a question than do any of the rest of us.
Humans and animals are different and these people are saying that both of us are entitled to certain rights, but everyone knows that these rights cannot be the same, including them. If you apply this philosophy, this eithic, to the situation mentioned in this article above, you’ll see the real world application; all beings should be given the right to live a life in which their suffering is minimized. If we have to chose between gassing dogs, shooting them in the head or humanely euthanizing them, groups like PETA will spend their own money to do the best they can for those animals.
At the dog park I take my adopted greyhound to, at least once a week I hear people discussing the breed they "just have to buy" and the "responsible" local breeder they go to. I was appalled to hear these same people berate PETA for euthanizing unwanted animals in North Carolina.
PETA did not create the overpopulation problem. People need to realize that there are too many animals, not nearly enough homes, and that if they’re buying animals from breeders and pet stores, they are only exacerbating the problem. PETA has spent something like $240,000 in their southern neighbor’s counties to try to implement adoption and spay/neuter programs, improve their dilapidated shelters, and give the often mange-ridden, starved, uncared for and unwanted animals a humane death - as opposed to a gunshot to the head, life in a cage, or other horrors.
So if we should be calling anyone "hypocrites," it’s not PETA - it’s the irresponsible people who keep bringing these animals into the world and then cry foul when caring groups have to "clean up" the resulting mess.
No, Lucy, it’s perfectly legitimate to call members of PETA hypocrites when they kill animals they say have a "right" to life, merely because it would be inconvenient for the PETA members to help them.
It’s certainly silly of people to complain about overpopulation problems when they’re exacerbating those problems, but there’s a simple solution: no more "animal shelters". Any strays not claimed within a brief period should be put down in the most inexpensive ways possible. The notion that we need animal shelters to protect animals is just ridiculous. If we have too many, let’s start by not spending money to prolong the life of these unwanted animals.
So then you agree with PETA? That seems to be their view as well. Again, PETA doesn’t say they have a right to life, they say that animals have a right to be free from suffering... Honestly, you seem to see things the same way PETA does.
No, I don’t think animals have "rights" at all—and the PETA definition certainly includes "life". I have no particular problem with putting animals down in the manner most convenient for us, regardless of their preference. If there are too many dogs, eliminate the unowned ones. PETA would probably blanche at that notion.
Why do you say that the PETA definition of animal rights includes life? Because they’re vegetarian? They’re vegetarian because animals today are raised and killed in ways that you would never believe! Again, PETA thinks that animals should be spared unnecessary suffering, but that does not mean that they have a "right to life".
PETA has never made a secret of the fact that most of the animals picked up in North Carolina are euthanized. PETA has been working with shelters in the area for years and to save the animals a prolonged and agonizing death by gassing, they administer a lethal injection to allow them a painless passing from a world that didn’t want them. You do agree with PETA, like it or not! I don’t like PETA because they spend their money on euthanasia programs rather than no kill shelters... I don’t have any idea why you have a problem with PETA if you think that all unwanted animals should be put to sleep.
They have a right to avoid suffering, but they don’t have a right to life? That’s contradictory—like saying I could kill John Doe, but I couldn’t hit him.
Which is in fact what is legal in the US with regard to human beings... But I guess that’s not the point.
Where’s the contradiction? If your mission statement is to protect animals from suffering and the only way to do that is to humanely euthanized them, I don’t see the problem. A needle in the leg hurts a lot less than suffocating in a poorly sealed box (often the alternative).
It sounds to me like you’d made up your mind about PETA before you saw this article and you’re just using it as fuel for the fire and thinking about it very little. It seems like you’re assuming a (groundless) proposition: All death requires suffering. This is simply not the case, and even if it were, some deaths are clearly better than others.
Slaughter houses are evil, and drive its humans insane, making them a sociopathic/homicidal danger to other humans. I write from personal experience. Yes PETA is evil. It’s obviously run under the banner of Jewish Rockefellers’ euthenasia Death Camp genocide system to destroy USA, by killing most humans and animals. PETA profits by $300-million/decade, or $3-billion/century. The solution is for sane vegetarians to seize the day, and plagerize PETA’s marketing plan, sans genocide, and cut into PETA’s marketshare. Vegetarians live a lot longer than cannibals, and are a lot saner. Rockefellers’ Death Camps genocide 7,000 Americans in Death Camps in USA EVERY DAY. 45-million Americans were aborticided since US Supreme Court legalized genocide in 1973. For every baby murdered, an adult must be murdered to balance the economy and pension Ponzi schemes. Another tip off that PETA is selling EVIL is that it recommends soy products, sabotaged with cancerous phyto-estrogen hormones (also a byproduct of petrochemical plastics). Meat-eating cannibals are genocided every day in USA, so they get their justice. For those of us who want to survive the rat race, we keep trying to find a solution to the elites’ Final Solution.
PETA is indeed hypocritical (liars, really) when its employees tell rescuers and shelter workers that they will find homes for animals and then immediately kill them. There is an alternative to killing: it’s called adoption. As a rescuer who has fostered hundreds of dogs over the years, I am proud that they have all found homes, except for a few that died of old age while waiting for a home, a few that were PTS for failing health, and a very few PTS for aggression (a total fewer than 10). And I work with organizations that have a tiny fraction of the budget that PETA has. PETA should be ashamed! They are frauds!
