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Tidbit on PETA
An interesting page on how PETA runs a pet shelter. For people who consider humans and animals morally equivalent ... let's just say most death camps had a higher survival rate.
Courtesy of This Is True mail-list.
UPDATE: The shelter is in Norfolk VA. I remember its policies making the papers when I was in DC in the early 90s. Apparently, the story is a bit bigger than I remember. They've contracted to prove euthanasia services to several counties.
Here's the story from a local TV station.
"From PETA headquarters in Norfolk Friday, Newkirk said that the dogs and cats did not suffer in their deaths, so there was no cruelty.
She did say that PETA's policy is to euthanize animals here and then cremate them, not throw away the bodies. So, an investigation has been launched into the actions of the two employees.
Ahoskie police arrested the pair Wednesday night as they disposed of some bags into a dumpster. Police said the bags contained the bodies of 18 dogs; 13 other animals were found dead in a white panel van that’s registered to PETA.
Authorities said the animals were alive with the pair picked them up from animal shelters in Northampton and Bertie counties. The two were picking up animals to be brought back to PETA headquarters for euthanization, PETA president Ingrid Newkirk said Thursday.
Police have said that Cook and Hinkle said the dogs would be found good homes."
And here's a Virginia newspaper report:
"Both Northampton and Bertie [counties] currently use PETA for those services. Officials in both counties said they were under the impression that PETA would first have the animals fully evaluated by a veterinarian and then attempt to find them a good home. If that effort failed, they understood that PETA would euthanize the animals."
There were some other stories indicating that injectible drugs for euthanasia were found in the van, indicating the dogs had been killed shortly after being picked up, and ones from websites with an agenda saying that PETA's reports to the state indicate they'd euthanized over 10,000 critters.
· animal rights and eco-terrorism
12 Comments
Actually, I've been a PETA member for years and they've never claimed to run an animal shelter as far as I can remember. What they do, I know, is help to address problems in rural areas where people may not be able (or WANT) to afford food or shelter for their dogs constantly chained outside, but BOY do those folks love to breed 'em! And the "animal shelters" in those areas? Talk about hellhole DEATH CAMPS!!! (And as a Jew, I take great offense to your comparing death camps--Nazi or otherwise--to the services that PETA provides giving peaceful escapes to animals in a world that does not want them. If you have any pets, I sure hope that you adopted them and didn't buy them while these innocent creatures languish in boredom and misery, in PETA's back yard as well as in yours.)
P'Berg
Isn't the last poster the PETA spokesmouth that compared poultry farming to nazi death camps then the organization had to turn around and apologize for making such a stupid gaffe? can't have it both ways, son. And I bet you were a Special Forces Vet, too. Sure.
A lot of Jews supported PETA's Holocaust campaign, but unfortunately (but also not surprisingly), a lot didn't. Many were touched by the fact that it was based on the words of Nobel Laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer, who'd fled from Nazi Europe. His entire family was wiped out by the Nazis. Isaac wound up taking a room above a slaughterhouse in NYC and each day he saw men beating animals up the ramps to the kill floor with the same looks of calousness and viciousness that he saw in the eyes of the authorities back home. Later on he wrote, "In relation to animals, all people are Nazis." That was a theme through his writings for years. He told people in real life that he was a vegetarian for health reasons and then, after an appropriate pause, he added "the health of the CHICKEN."
That is what and whom PETA's campaign was modeled after. Unfortunately, people weren't ready for it. Or, anyway, enough people weren't ready for it. I wouldn't really call it a "gaffe," though.
P'Berg
Leaving aside the comparison between the Nazi death camps and animal shelters, I note that P'Berg dismisses the article because he says PETA has "never claimed to run an animal shelter as far as [he] can remember."
Obviously, they don't want to publicize it, but it's well-documented that the "shelter" they run in Norfolk has a very high rate of euthanasia. Seems quite incompatible with their mission, if you ask me.
And just what is their mission? It's not animal welfare - rather, it's animal rights. The folks at PETA are not primarily working to make sure that Fido and Fluffy have enough food, water and clean litter. Instead, they're working to have animals granted the same types of rights as people do.
That is, PETA is against eating animals, against animal experimentation and against keeping animals as pets. PETA believes that animals should be free - and not "slaves" to humans.
All right. You want to make fallacious statements and leave it up to me to correct them, then okay. You are wrong. At least, I've not found any evidence anywhere online that PETA runs an animal shelter, either on a PETA site or on any other site. What I found about their work in NC can be read about on the following site:
http://www.helpinganimals.com/f-nc.asp
If you still want to keep insisting to everyone reading this fascinating blog and comments that PETA runs a shelter, then please, by all means, back your words up. Thank you!
P'Berg
Re: the updated top of this page, am I right to assume that you refer to the euthanasia of 10,000 animals as a BAD thing on PETA's part, apparently without it occuring to you that that's an astounding number of homeless animals to try to find homes for rather than peacefully put them to rest from a world that does not want them?
I said the other day that I've been a PETA member for years. That being the case, when this story hit the news I checked into some things. I found that even with these euthanasias, there was absolutely no shortage of homeless, unwanted animals in "shelters" in rural NC or even the more urban Norfolk, VA area where PETA's HQ is located. I also noticed that the Norfolk SPCA was used as some sort of bogus example of how they can adopt out such a high percentage of animals that they take in, in contrast to PETA's numbers. There's just one problem with that--the Norfolk SPCA does not have an open-door policy. They don't take in ANY strays. They only take in the most adoptable animals and they leave the rest out for someone else to do the dirty work...or, worse, for no one to do the dirty work so that the animals just have to deal with it. Lovely, huh? Great service the provide for these animals, huh?
Do you really cite this number of ten-thousand animals which PETA supposedly has euthanized and you don't see a greater problem of where these animals might be coming from? Are there homes for 10,000 homeless animals in YOUR town?
BTW, again you said that PETA runs a shelter. PETA does not run an animal shelter. I don't know where you guys keep coming up with this. What is the address of this supposed shelter? Maybe fifteen years ago they ran some shelter when they were in the DC area, but they sure don't now!
P'Berg
Very well, PETA doesn't run a shelter, at least not that I can find on the web.
They just drive around in vans and take animals from other shelters.
And kill them.
http://www.nokillnow.com/PETAanimalpeople.htm
They're against neuter-and-release programs. They promise shelters that they're taking (healthy) animals to place them in homes.
Then they kill them in their mobile euthanasia van and dispose of the bodies in the local dumpster.
Ingrid Newkirk and her followers are nuts.
I spoke too soon.
According to this page, which quotes former PETA chairman Alex Pacheco, they did claim to run a shelter at least at one time:
San Francisco Chronicle's Debra Saunders wrote: "This is not the first report that PETA killed animals it claimed to protect. In 1991, PETA killed 18 rabbits and 14 roosters it had previously "rescued" from a research facility. "We just don't have the money" to care for them, then PETA-Chairman Alex Pacheco told the Washington Times. "The PETA animal shelter had run out of room."
As long as people know the facts, all I can ask is for them to make up their own minds. I sure can't speak about what PETA was like in 1991. I know it's much larger now than it was five years ago, let alone fifteen. But if you think it's so terrible to free animals from overcrowded hellhole "shelters"--which know their limitations and had worked with PETA for long periods of time specifically so that the group could provide euthanasia services in its mobile units--then you're free to hold that opinion. If you think it's so bad to oppose programs that spay/neuter animals and then return them outside without shelter where they can become victims of bored kids, get hit by cars, etc., then you're free to hold that opinion, too.
P'berg
P'Berg,
Unfortunately, as the pages I linked to document, the facts indicate that:
(1) PETA lies to shelters to acquire homeless animals, at least some of which are healthy and adoptable.
(2) PETA kills said animals, either in a mobile van or at its headquarters in Norfolk.
(3) PETA opposes both neuter-and-release programs (which are very effective at stemming the population of feral cats, by the way - I have no idea about dogs) AND no-kill animal shelters.
While we can disagree about neuter-and-release programs, I can think of no rational reason not to support no-kill shelters.
Oh, God--have you ever seen some of these "no-kill" shelters? There are two hideous scenereos that they lead to:
1) The animals linger for months, even years on end. As I've said throughout this discussion, there aren't enough homes for all of these homeless animals, so--again to everyone reading this--if you buy animals from pet stores or breeders, that is a huge reason the reason why these problems exist to begin with.
Not only do animals linger there but the facilities get very crowded, and then you run into "hoarder" situations where individuals think that they are doing good by these animals when in fact they cannot take care of them and the animals suffer from neglect, with not enough attention available to be given to them all. Animal hoarding is a serious psychological phenomenon and occurs in private homes as well as private "no-kill" shelters.
2) If limits are set so as to avoid overcrowding as I described above, then that means you're turning animals away. What happens to them? If they're taken to other pounds or shelters which do euthanize, then what good is the other one being "no-kill" to begin with? If they animals are not taken anyplace, then they're left on the streets where they can fall victim to sadistic individuals, or get hit by cars, or just maybe not have the "street smarts" or other means to take care of themselves and perish. Etc. I mentioned the Norfolk SPCA which has a closed-door policy to any strays and any animals who are not "adoptable." Yes, of course they do good for 'some' animals, but what a shitty way to operate for so many more who need their help but are turned away.
Do you really not see how "no-kill" shelters are not in homeless, unwanted animals' best interests? This isn't some "radical" animal rights thing here. It's basic animal welfare. Euthanasia is sad but it's a fact of life and is often the best options available to animals who live in a world that just does not want them. How many PETA employees are there? Do you expect them to take in all of these animals? So that they become animal hoarders themselves?
I can't debate the ethics or lack of ethics in telling a shelter that you're going to find homes for animals but end up euthanizing them with a loving hand. The word "adoptable" has been thrown around plenty about these particular animals, and perhaps they met the characteristics but apparently the COMMUNITY didn't rise to task in meeting those characteristics, the animals wallowing in their unattended, outdoor "shelters" in Bertie County and the others. Frankly, we know that these shelters had worked with PETA to have the organization euthanize animals before and, so, I never particularly believed that they were so "shocked" that the group was euthanizing these animals. I think that when the controversy hit, the shelters had to answer to the other people in the community. But I very well may be totally wrong about that!
P'berg
Penn and Teller show 'bullshit' did an entire show on the BS of PETA:
http://thatvideosite.com/view/709.html