Another reason why I hate PeTA

[bluefooted]

You've probably all seen this article:

http://www.wavy.com/Global/story.asp?S= ... v=23iib6s4

Most people don't know that this is really standard practice for PeTA: 84% of the animals surrendered to the group to be 're-homed' are 'euthanized' - I put that in quotes because exactly they are killed is not clear. Most of them are killed immediately upon being surrendered. This should not really be surprising because PeTA is not only against pet ownership, but the primary goal of the group is to make money using shock tactics (probably to get more money) not to spend money caring for animals.

Here's an excerpt from a local person who works in a vet's office:

Wow, what an exciting day it's been. I'll try to start at the beginning. this actually started about 2 years ago. We don't really have an SPCA here in the 2 counties. Bertie and Hertford. We have Animal Control to hold the animals. And the cats and dogs, puppies and kittens that are dropped off at the 2 vets here .The vets do try to hold them for a little while and then PETA comes and takes them back to Virginia Beach to "find them good homes". They pick up at all the animal controls and the vets. I live way out in the woods. nothing here but the nearest town is Ahoskie. a very small town with one Wal Mart as the only shopping store.

well, the year before last and last year there were a number of cats and dogs found
dead in the dumpsters , once behind the Chinise resturant and then behind the Piggley wiggley. We all thought the local animal control or whoever picks up animals from the vets that are put to sleep just got lazy and put them there. Well, last night the police, undercover , followed PETA from My vets office where they just picked up some wonderful kittens, to find them homes. These kittens were just weaned and very sweet. this is the vet where I take pictures and work part time. Anyway, they put the kittens in the van [PETA] and killed them and took them to the dumpster at Piggley Wiggley. Where the police got them. they were actually caught in the act of dumping dead animals in the dumpster.

There were a lot of animals so the police called My vet, Dr. Proctor, and animal control to come and identify the animals. Sure enough they got them. They were both PETA people. They were held in the local jail for while, not sure how long. Now it's all over the news. YEAH. My vet is so angry, He is calling and being interviewed by all the local news people. We want the word spread all over the world. who would think in a tiny little town like this is where it's all going to go down? That's probably why they thought they could get away with it.

Oh, they also got them for illegal drugs. The van was full of the drugs. Email everyone and get the word out. If any stations will pick this up or want to know about it, My vet can tell them. It's in Ahoskie, N.C. His name is Dr. Patrick Proctor. I'm so excited they finally got caught. and sick over what has happened. I just was petting and loving on those kittens yesterday. This really shows the true PETA. Of course, PETA won't make a statement yet and will probably say they weren't associated with this. But they were. Finally they are caught!

So, this is just to spread the word. Do not give up your animals to PeTA over a local shelter or SPCA, thinking that they have a better chance of finding a good home. This is not an isolated incident - this is PeTA's standard practice.

Sorry for the rant, guys

[Maelstrom]

I heard they had an absurdly high "euthanasia" rate, but not why. I just figured no one wanted to support PETA's activities in the place the center was active, and it was a case of "the road to hell and best intentions". To find out they INTENTIONALLY euthanized the animals WITHOUT giving them a chance to be adopted...!

Sweet Jesus, what is *wrong* with these people?? Even if these were extremist among extremists, the reaction of the "upper management" of PETA has me disgusted as well.

Dumping the bodies of dead dogs and cats in the garbage is wrong, but the president of Norfolk-based People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said Friday that animal cruelty charges against two employees won't stick.

"It's hideous," Ingrid Newkirk, president of the animal rights group, said of the dumping. "I think this is so shocking it's bound to hurt our work."

But she told a news conference there was no indication of "pain or suffering" among the 18 animals that police in Ahoskie, N.C., found in a shopping center garbage bin or the 13 found in a van registered to PETA. The animals received lethal injections, Newkirk said.

That's right, lambaste the guys that did this as "hideous", but then turn around and put the "well, since they didn't suffer, the law can't get us for cruelty to animals" spin on things! According to PETA's own bylaws, since animals should be treated with all the rights as a human being, these guys just committed 31 counts of "murder", even if it was painless. We call people like that serial killers. For all their rhetoric about animal rights, they up and abandon their own rules when it suits them?

I repeat: what the hell is WRONG with these people?

[fourpawsonthefloor]

Well, to add a bit of perspective as well (and please keep in mind that I am NOT saying that telling people that you are going to find homes for animals and then euth them is right, I am NOT saying that placing them in dumpsters is right) PETA does preform a role in the south in providing good deaths for animals (injection vrs bullet or gas chamber or worse).
It is a sad fact that there are hundreds of very adoptable, cute healthy kittens, puppies and adults being euthanized every day (the southern united states are particularily suffering in this). The only true answer to this is increase spaying and neutering. Nothing else will end it. Though I am not in any way shape or form supporting the way that this particular scenario happened, I would much rather PETA provide humane lethal injection, and skew the hell out of their statistics, rather than them being shot or gassed. They are simply too many animals - way to many to find homes for them all. Wish it was different - and that is why everyone needs to take the responsibility to fix their own animals, and pressure friends and family into doing that as well.
I personally find PETA too "out there" for me, and therefore am not interested in being part of their membership or whatnot.

[Saint Kurt]

I don't like PETA - mainly because of their shock tactics and I think their message is often skewed. For instance, they are very much against animals performing in circuses and while I have issues of my own with it they are largely historical rather than ethical. Since I am studying to be a vet, working for a circus is something I chose to look into, but while searching for good information I discovered that most google searches on things like "circus animals" or "circus veterinary care" instead brought up PETA propaganda web sites. That's not cool - it obfuscates information.

And yes, a shocking number of animals are euthanized each day because of lack of homes. It's easy to fix: spay and neuter your pets and if you want to get a pet, go to your local shelter and adopt one. I don't have the numbers on me, but I was once quoted some incredible statistics like if only 20% of pet owners spay/neutered and 50% of animals were adopted from shelters and kept their homes, we would end pet over population. (I'm not sure of the exact numbers but they were lower than one would expect...)

From all my dealings with PETA though, it seems that they treat neither humans nor animals ethically. To me, they are not a good organization. I give my money and support to the local animal shelter.

-e

[fourpawsonthefloor]

Alright, again, I do not support everything PETA does, but this is the other side to the coin. Happily lifted off a pet rescue website that I belong to.
-Paws

Dear Friends,

Please allow me to begin by thanking you for your support recently. Quite a bit has been said in the press, much of which is inaccurate, sadly, and although I know many of you saw our press conference transcript, I would like you to also please visit http://www.helpinganimals.com/f-nc.asp and see a handful of photos from our NC photo albums.

Please know that it was a compassionate police officer who first alerted PETA to conditions at a North Carolina pound (in Bertie) in 2001. The officer’s visits to the tiny outdoor chain link structure consistently revealed animal suffering: we were sent photographs of, among other horrors, a large white dog drowning in a pool of water, lying on her side and too sick and weak to lift her head (she later died), a starving dog eating a dead kitten, and a dead puppy found in a gas chamber shed. Our visit confirmed that the County needed help. We found sick, injured animals in need of veterinary care, a leaky, windowless, rusty gas box (see photos at above link)in which animals were crammed and killed, and a facility that had no electricity and no covering for its cages. Every winter, the water hose froze.

PETA immediately offered aid to Bertie County and to the City of Windsor, which operates its own facility within the county limits. There, animals were restrained on a metal pole and shot with a .22. Shortly after this, we found out that Hertford County’s homeless animals were also gassed. We made arrangements to pay a local veterinarian to euthanize those animals by painless injection. PETA to this date subsidizes humane euthanasia at the Hertford facility, and has so far paid nearly $9,000 for this service. In Northampton County, animals were being killed by injection with a paralytic agent that causes suffocation. All these practices have stopped since PETA volunteered to provide a peaceful painless death, euthanasia, free of charge. No secret was made of the fact that we euthanize animals and that the animals retrieved from the pounds would be provided with a humane death. In fact, it was I who met and spoke with officials, and not one of them ever even asked me about adoption. The pounds don’t have an adoption program or an adoption rate, and never have.

The pounds that we have helped are in impoverished counties where animal control is at the bottom of the list. They are located in remote locations, have no open hours at all—not even for adoption—and no staff except one animal warden whose job is to respond to dog bites and stray animal calls. In Bertie County, the animal warden is also in charge of litter control. We have only improved living and dying conditions for unwanted animals, whose fate was to die by a bullet, to fight to claw out of a filthy gas box, or to suffocate to death. We could not let those things go on, even it meant doing the sad work ourselves. Performing euthanasia affects our staff deeply. Gallons of tears have been shed for North Carolina’s homeless animals, but we are thankful to have been allowed to spare them a terrifying, painful end.

PETA doesn’t just pick up animals from the pounds. Over the last few years, PETA has worked with these struggling agencies to clean and build, help personnel with training and provide supplies and services. We have spent more than $250,000 on veterinary and other services in one North Carolina county alone. Each dollar spent means a needy animal helped, cold abated, shade provided, water, medicine and food given, and suffering relieved. We have also delivered hundreds of free dog houses and straw to dogs chained to metal barrels or not so much as a tree, and we have paid to spay and neuter countless animals already in homes.

PETA submitted several proposals to officials and attended several meetings where we offered (and begged) to be allowed to implement, among other things, an on-site adoption program. We have pushed for such a program since 2003. Officials were not interested in our offer.

Many of you attended the House Interim Committee meetings and saw the video footage of Yadkin County piling animals one layer atop another in a metal gas box. This is still going on. If PETA had allowed that to go on in a jurisdiction that welcomed its help—unlike Yadkin—simply in order to avoid bad press or having to get dirty or dealing with the grief of feeling the life go out of an animal you’ve just fed and loved and whose likely never known kind words before…well, we would not be doing our job.

A terrible mistake was made with the dead bodies. But the ones who remain at the facilities are alive, and I am worried. The fact that these shelters may terminate the relationship we have with them likely means that these facilities will return to their old ways. Please don't let that happen and encourage officials to allow us to continue servicing their county. Thank you again for your support and for all you do for animals.

Regards,

Daphna Nachminovitch

PETA

[Maelstrom]

I was wondering what the other end of the spectrum had to say about this. Thanks, fourpaws, for posting that. I appreciate it.

My problem, I suppose, is that PETA is such an extreme group, with extreme leaning, extreme "black and white" thoughts about animal rights, and extreme ways about acting out that I just can't work up the belief that this was all a mistake.

Euthanizing animals in a humane way, when those animals would be killed anyway, is perfectly laudible. I'm all in favor for doing anything that eases an animal's suffering to the last. But considering PETA's stated end goal is to eliminate pet ownership (it's "slavery", after all), convince everyone to turn vegan ("meat is murder"), and to give animals the exact same legal status as humans... well, let's just say that by all rights they shouldn't be involved in euthanasia any more than a Roman Catholic priest should run a "compassionate end" place for the terminally ill to end their suffering with dignity. Regardless of whether it's humane or not, whether it ends suffering, whether the goal is agreeable to me, it runs contrary to PETA's stated, immutable ideals.

When a group publically screams that:
* meat is murder,
* fur is murder,
* animal testing is torturous abomination,
* animal ownership is slavery,
* animals have more of a right to live than I do...

....Then defends its practice of "death with dignity" for said animals instead of providing for them for the rest of their lives, they look like raving hypocrites. I'd have far more respect if they put their money where their mouth was and adopted the animals instead. At least that would fit in with their rigid ethical code, similar to how an extreme "right-to-life" group might also sponser an orphanage and foster care system for any unwanted child they came across. Maybe I wouldn't agree with their point of view, but I would seriously respect them for actually giving a constructive alternative.