to rants page.
I've been uncomfortable about the organization P.E.T.A. (that's "People for the Ethical Tretment of Animals", not "People Eating Tasty Animals") for years - even before I got into an argument with an 'animal rights' activist who insisted on feeding her cat a vegan diet. (For the record, I still haven't found a non-PETA associated veterinarian who would endorse this). Even before hearing that PETA had called in a bomb threat on a building which, as far as I knew, contained no animals whatsoever. (It turned out that there was a small lab containing animals in the basement. It was at the National Cancer Institute, and most of the building worked with tissue culture.)
My unease with P.E.T.A. came when I met a pair of ferrets (whose names I have long since forgotten), and heard the story of how they were rescued from a P.E.T.A. activist who 'rescued' them, then kept them in filthy cages, did not give them any exercise, and did not give them sufficient food or water. I thought, at the time, that he (the activist) was a single, misguided individual. Still, I have never heard of PETA giving any sort of training about how to care for 'rescued animals'.
More evidence that it's not a few isolated incidents, has to do with the infamous case of Adria Hinkle and Andrew Cook, the PETA workers who took healthy animals from shelters, contracting to find homes for them, killed them and dumped their bodies. The law suit has finally hit the news again, in part because PETA moved that the charges be dropped because (you guessed it) they were PETA employees! (Story covered by WVEC, WTKR, WNCT and the Wilmington Star. PETA's other defense was that the manner in which the animals were killed 'was humane'.
PETA is best known for horrific videos of animals who suffer during medical experiments and product testing. Their first line of rhetoric is that animal life, and animal pain, should be equally important, from a moral standpoint, as human life and human pain. They work to eliminate not only animal testing, but all animal based products (meat, dairy, leather, fur, wool, you name it). They also run animal shelters (kill shelters only) and spay and neuter clinics. In recent years they have become somehow involved with the Humane Society of the US (though not the state Humane Society, nor the ASPCA).
Their stance on 'companion animals' is slightly softer, but they make it clear that it is 'unethical' to keep animals 'for amusement'. PETA has declared living with domestication unnecessary, and cruel. It has not discussed the ethics of the alternative - the deliberate extinction of all domesticated species, which it feels humanity has 'outgrown the need for'. Yet, I can see no other point to their agenda.
Their second line of argument, about the spay/neuter clinics, is that animals cannot decide for themselves, and that it is the moral duty of those who can make the choice for them to spay and neuter. This argument is essentially identical to that of the Humane Society, and is probably common sense. It is, however, rather chilling when taken in conjunction with the initial premise, of moral equivalence. PETA does not take a stand about involuntary sterilization in human beings, but the logic is clear.
PETA's ethical stance is that the domestication of animals is wrong. Their solution is the extinction (through sterilization or 'humane' killing) of all domesticated species.
This summer they were asked/allowed to give a seminar at the Green Party assembly (probably because many Greens are vegans). I was providing day care, and didn't find out about it until afterward. This is probably a good thing.