[Magnetonium]

So which ones of y'all are PETA supporters? Get your girlfriends and wives to read this. This is old news for many of us, but I find PETA very repulsive. Warning: article (link) contains disturbing photos.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nathan-j- ... 79220.html

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is an organization that publicly claims to represent the best interest of animals -- indeed their "ethical treatment." Yet approximately 2,000 animals pass through PETA's front door every year and very few make it out alive. The vast majority -- 96 percent in 2011 -- exit the facility out the back door after they have been killed, when Pet Cremation Services of Tidewater stops by on their regular visits to pick up their remains. Between these visits, the bodies are stored in the giant walk-in freezer PETA installed for this very purpose. It is a freezer that cost $9,370 and, like the company which incinerates the bodies of PETA's victims, was paid for with the donations of animal lovers who could never have imagined that the money they donated to help animals would be used to end their lives instead. In fact, in the last 11 years, PETA has killed 29,426 dogs, cats, rabbits, and other domestic animals.

Most animal lovers find this hard to believe. But seeing is believing. And if it is true that a picture speaks a thousand words, the following images speak volumes about who and what PETA really stands for.

The PETA headquarters is on the aptly named Front Street. While claiming to be an animal rights organization, PETA does not believe animals have a right to live. Instead, it believes that people have a right to kill them, as long as the killing is done "humanely," which PETA interprets to mean poisoning them with an overdose of barbiturates, even if the animals are not suffering. In 2012, 733 dogs entered this building. They killed 602 of them. Only 12 were adopted. Also in 2012, they impounded 1,110 cats. 1,045 were put to death. Seven of them were adopted. They also took in 34 other companion animals, such as rabbits, of which 28 were put to death. Only four were adopted.

A supermarket dumpster full of garbage bags. When police officers looked inside, they found the bodies of dead animals -- animals killed by PETA. PETA described these animals as "adorable" and "perfect." A veterinarian who naively gave PETA some of the animals, thinking they would find them homes, and examined the dead bodies of others, testified that they were "healthy" and "adoptable."

mother cat and her two kittens, all perfectly healthy and adoptable and none in danger of being killed until they were given to PETA by a veterinarian who was trying to find them homes and was told by PETA employees that they would have no problem adopting them out. After PETA lied to him and the mother and her kittens were entrusted to their care, they reportedly killed them, within minutes, in the back of a van.

The PETA field killing kit found by police in the back of the PETA death van in Ahsokie, North Carolina.

An Ahsokie Police Detective dressed in a hazmat suit prepares to bury a puppy killed by PETA. This puppy and dozens of other animals including cats and kittens were found by police throughout June of 2005 after PETA employees dumped them in a garbage bin in North Carolina.

Puppies killed by PETA in the back of a van -- a donor-funded slaughterhouse on wheels. Despite $35,000,000 in annual revenues and millions of "animal-loving" members, PETA does not even try to find them homes. PETA has no adoption hours, does no adoption promotion, has no adoption floor, but is registered with the State of Virginia as a "humane society" or "animal shelter."

According to inspection reports by the Virginia Department of Agriculture, the PETA facility "does not contain sufficient animal enclosures to routinely house the number of animals annually reported as taken into custody... The shelter is not accessible to the public, promoted, or engaged in efforts to facilitate the adoption of animals taken into custody."

Routine inspections often found "no animals to be housed in the facility" or, at best "few animals in custody," despite thousands of them impounded by PETA annually. Since they take in thousands per year, where were they? "90% [of the animals] were euthanized within the first 24 hours of custody," according to the Virginia Department of Agriculture inspector. How can people adopt animals from PETA when they kill the animals they acquire within minutes without ever making them available for adoption? How can people adopt animals when they have no adoption hours, do no adoption promotion, and do not show animals for adoption, choosing to kill them without doing so? In fact, when asked by a reporter what efforts they make to find animals homes, PETA had no comment.

A postcard written and signed by Ingrid Newkirk, PETA's founder, admitting that PETA does not believe animals have a right to live, despite its public perception of PETA as an "animal rights" organization. The right to life is the most fundamental of all rights. It is fundamental because without it, no other "rights" are possible. How can animals be guaranteed the right to food, water, shelter and protection, when those things can be taken away by killing them?

Many animal lovers who have publicly condemned PETA for their killing have received a letter from the PETA legal department, threatening a lawsuit. However, because a lawsuit would allow for subpoenas of PETA employees past and present -- leading to under-oath testimonies about the grisly reality of what has and is going on at PETA headquarters -- it is unlikely that PETA would ever follow-through with these empty threats.

Their donor-funded attorneys rattle their sabers, but know they have a lot more to fear from the public disclosure that would result from a lawsuit than the animal activists who are truthfully -- and, given PETA's threats and intimidation, bravely -- reporting on PETA's atrocities against animals in the hope of bringing them to an end. When you donate to PETA, you not only fund the killing of animals, you fund the intimidation of animal lovers.

Not only does PETA kill animals, they also defend the killing of animals by others. This is a dying kitten in a Houston shelter after staff "lost" the kitten. When he was found, he was near death. His last hours were ones of suffering. Houston officials put job applicants with a history of violence, a history of criminal behavior and those who scored the lowest on city aptitude tests in animal control. When I was hired by the Houston Health Department to assess the shelter, my advice regarding staff was to fire people who abuse animals; hire those who care about them. PETA defended this shelter, urging government officials not to listen to me.

A puppy dying of parvovirus in the Houston shelter is not given anything soft to lie on as she urinates all over herself. Here she sits, unable to keep her head up, alone in a cold, barren stainless steel cage without receiving necessary veterinary care. Other shelters have a better than 90% rate of saving dogs with parvovirus. In a letter to the editor of the Houston paper, PETA publicly defended this shelter, urging Houstonians to reject my advice on the need for reform and how to do so.

The PETA solution: dead "feral" cats in a Florida shelter. PETA successfully defeated SB 1320, a law that would have clarified that nonlethal programs to neuter and release feral cats, rather than killing them, are legal in Florida. As shelters and health departments nationwide embrace trap-neuter-release programs, PETA remains a stalwart opponent of this humane alternative to killing, arguing that healthy feral cats should continue to be killed, even urging their supporters to take them to shelters or veterinarians to do so. The PETA website states that, "the most compassionate choice is to euthanize feral cats. You can ask your veterinarian to do this or, if your local shelter uses an injection of sodium pentobarbital, take the cats there." This shelter used "an injection of sodium pentobarbital," killing the cats in front of other cats, catch-poling the cats as they tried to flee while they urinated and defecated all over the kennel in fear. That is how terrified feral cats behave in shelters. Apparently to PETA, this is as it should be.

A cat in the King County, Washington shelter begs for food and water. Cats in the infirmary were not fed or given water over a three-day holiday weekend and both their food bowls and water bowls are empty. Although staff was assigned to the shelter, supervisors and staff chose to socialize instead. I was hired by the King County Council to assess the shelter. My advice: Hire supervisors who are not part of the same union so as to eliminate conflicts of interest; all staff should be given a checklist of assigned duties; and supervisors should double check that those duties have been done. In a letter to the King County Council, PETA told officials not to listen to me because I was "radical."

If PETA had its way, this dog would be killed in every shelter in America because someone says he looks like a "pit bull." According to Ingrid Newkirk, a growing number of shelters are enacting policies banning the adoption of pit bulls and requiring their automatic destruction and PETA "supports the pit bull policy."

After finishing the year saving 98% of cats and 94% of dogs, the fourth-year Shelby County, Kentucky had 90+ percent save rates, they announced they were crowded and would begin killing animals. Once again, as they have done so many times before,the Shelby County No Kill Mission, a private organization both responsible for and dedicated to ensuring that Shelby County remains No Kill, went to work and the "crisis" was averted, bringing the population down through rescue, foster and adoption.

Unlike Shelby County No Kill Mission, PETA also reached out to officials, but not to help save the animals. PETA didn't ask what they could do with their $35,000,000 a year in revenues and millions of animal-loving members to help save animals being threatened with death, as donors intended and as supporters assumed. They didn't offer to help the Shelby County shelter find homes, build temporary kennels, board animals, foster animals, adopt animals or even just get the word out across Kentucky that animals need help. Instead, PETA sent Shelby County government and shelter officials a gift basket, with a note thanking them for their decision to start killing again after four years. "Thank you for doing the right thing" wrote PETA.

These pictures reveal the truth about PETA, a reality that is deeply at odds with the public's perception of that organization as a radical animal rights group. In practice, PETA is the functional equivalent of a slaughterhouse, while their efforts to undermine the lifesaving work of animal lovers throughout the country continually derail urgently needed reforms that would further the rights of our nation's homeless dogs and cats.

By defending regressive and cruel shelters and sheltering policies that mandate killing, by calling for the death of certain groups of animals entering shelters and by injecting thousands of animals with a fatal dose of poison every year, these actions are not only inconsistent with the mission of an animal rights organization, they are the antithesis of one. Only one question remains: Why is anyone still donating to PETA?

[mikema63]

And PETA protests outside of animal shelters for the exact same reason.

[SecretSquirrel]

Who cares about this? So they kill some animals. Its better than having even more millions of strays and feral beasties roaming around.

[Ter]

Especially cats are a danger for the local wildlife. The decline of many a songbird species is due to them.
Dogs are just shit mills, if you don't mind the shit everywhere and the barking at night, you are welcome to keep them alive.

[Rei Murasame]

None of this is a secret, though. PETA is not an animal shelter in the usual sense, and has never claimed to be operating as such. They openly say that if animals come under their care, they are the 'last resort', and they will indeed euthanise them.

Their logic is that all of this is the end result of an overall system of animal exploitation, and so all those who are outraged over the quick euthanasia, are merely outraged over the 'last resort' externalities that their own casual pet-breeding system has created.

If the market wasn't excessively breeding all these cats and dogs to sell to people to chain up their back yards without a care, then PETA wouldn't have to be opening its doors to kill the failed results of that system, and PETA wouldn't have to be driving around with mobile killing vans to catch strays.

PETA is not interested in operating an animal shelter to take care of animals that are already doomed, and it is not interested in trying to ameliorate the effects of the pet-owning system out of some kind of kindness. If they did that, they'd be forever managing the castaways of pet owners and no systemic change would actually occur.

PETA wants to attack the systemic roots of the problem, and that's why they are saying that you should not be commercially breeding so many of these things in the first place, and why they support efforts to strike at the root and stop the cycle of overbreeding, cruelty, and neglect.

[Magnetonium]

I don't like having pets either, but the point of the article is that PETA is no different than any other animal care agency, and actually worse, as shown in its sub-par care and treatment of animals, slaughter of animals received in its care within 24 hours. They show a high standard of hypocrisy and intimidation in trying to defend their brand and flow of donations from stupid people. PETA does not represent effectively any of the issues that animals/pets are dealing with in United States.

[Goldberk]

Rei is spot on, Peta are dealing with a symptom, it is our relationship with domesticated animals that necessitates mass slaughter.

[Rei Murasame]

Well, PETA's explanation for the high death rate in their care is that when they come into possession of animals, they handpick the ones that they believe are unsalvageable and keep them (for euthanising), and send on the others who are savable to regular animal shelters which are not run by PETA. So PETA essentially acts as the 'burial squad' (as much as I dislike that term in this context), because a lot of animal shelters have a "No Kill policy" and won't do it.

The writer of the article in the opening post works for a "No Kill policy" shelter, incidentally, so the animals he is castigating PETA for slaughtering, are the kinds of animals that his shelter would have left rolling around in the streets.

[Magnetonium]

Well, PETA's explanation for the high death rate in their care is that when they come into possession of animals, they handpick the ones that they believe are unsalvageable and keep them (for euthanising), and send on the others who are savable to regular animal shelters which are not run by PETA. So PETA essentially acts as the 'burial squad' (as much as I dislike that term in this context), because a lot of animal shelters have a "No Kill policy" and won't do it.

The writer of the article in the opening post works for a "No Kill policy" shelter, incidentally, so the animals he is castigating PETA for slaughtering, are the kinds of animals that his shelter would have left rolling around in the streets.

The first paragraph in the article states that 96 percent of animals in PETA care are euthanized. No reason to defend PETA for doing such a terrible job at trying to save the animals, I can't think of any non-PETA shelter where such a proportion of animals is put to death. My local animal shelters alone do a much better job dealing with the pet issue, by going after the root problem (issuing cheap animal tags for owners, for one).

How can they deem if the animal is "unsalvagable" (that's a very heartless word to use, in my opinion) when they kill them within 24 hours and not give adoptions a chance? Or how about them using local animal adoption clinics to dump animals into just to satisfy their own bottom line and image for no cost?

[Goldberk]

No reason to defend PETA for doing such a terrible job at trying to save the animals,

The fact remains that we callously breed animals for our own consumption way beyond what we have the capacity to consume as pets.

Incidentally the activities of "no Kill" shelters are rarely admirable, they often keep animals caged (in small spaces) with little opportunity for socialisation and emotional enrichment.

[Magnetonium]

The fact remains that we callously breed animals for our own consumption way beyond what we have the capacity to consume as pets.

Incidentally the activities of "no Kill" shelters are rarely admirable, they often keep animals caged (in small spaces) with little opportunity for socialisation and emotional enrichment.

That sounds great and all, but why can't PETA then be more transparent about what they do with the animals then?

[Goldberk]

but why can't PETA then be more transparent about what they do with the animals then?

They probably know that loads of people would take against them if they did.

[Decky]

PETA are stupidly immoral. Think of all the meat they waste.All those dead animals could be made into food for the homeless and then would actually earn their charitable status as they would help someone.

[benpenguin]

Decky made a great point, but hippies being hippies, we can only morally starve the homeless and morally kill dogs and cats at the same time.

[Progressive Patriot]

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is an organization that publicly claims to represent the best interest of animals -- indeed their "ethical treatment." Yet approximately 2,000 animals pass through PETA's front door every year and very few make it out alive. The vast majority -- 96 percent in 2011 -- exit the facility out the back door after they have been killed, when Pet Cremation Services of Tidewater stops by on their regular visits to pick up their remains. Between these visits, the bodies are stored in the giant walk-in freezer PETA installed for this very purpose. It is a freezer that cost $9,370 and, like the company which incinerates the bodies of PETA's victims, was paid for with the donations of animal lovers who could never have imagined that the money they donated to help animals would be used to end their lives instead. In fact, in the last 11 years, PETA has killed 29,426 dogs, cats, rabbits, and other domestic animals.

Most animal lovers find this hard to believe. But seeing is believing. And if it is true that a picture speaks a thousand words, the following images speak volumes about who and what PETA really stands for.

The PETA headquarters is on the aptly named Front Street. While claiming to be an animal rights organization, PETA does not believe animals have a right to live. Instead, it believes that people have a right to kill them, as long as the killing is done "humanely," which PETA interprets to mean poisoning them with an overdose of barbiturates, even if the animals are not suffering. In 2012, 733 dogs entered this building. They killed 602 of them. Only 12 were adopted. Also in 2012, they impounded 1,110 cats. 1,045 were put to death. Seven of them were adopted. They also took in 34 other companion animals, such as rabbits, of which 28 were put to death. Only four were adopted.

A supermarket dumpster full of garbage bags. When police officers looked inside, they found the bodies of dead animals -- animals killed by PETA. PETA described these animals as "adorable" and "perfect." A veterinarian who naively gave PETA some of the animals, thinking they would find them homes, and examined the dead bodies of others, testified that they were "healthy" and "adoptable."

mother cat and her two kittens, all perfectly healthy and adoptable and none in danger of being killed until they were given to PETA by a veterinarian who was trying to find them homes and was told by PETA employees that they would have no problem adopting them out. After PETA lied to him and the mother and her kittens were entrusted to their care, they reportedly killed them, within minutes, in the back of a van.

The PETA field killing kit found by police in the back of the PETA death van in Ahsokie, North Carolina.

An Ahsokie Police Detective dressed in a hazmat suit prepares to bury a puppy killed by PETA. This puppy and dozens of other animals including cats and kittens were found by police throughout June of 2005 after PETA employees dumped them in a garbage bin in North Carolina.

Puppies killed by PETA in the back of a van -- a donor-funded slaughterhouse on wheels. Despite $35,000,000 in annual revenues and millions of "animal-loving" members, PETA does not even try to find them homes. PETA has no adoption hours, does no adoption promotion, has no adoption floor, but is registered with the State of Virginia as a "humane society" or "animal shelter."

According to inspection reports by the Virginia Department of Agriculture, the PETA facility "does not contain sufficient animal enclosures to routinely house the number of animals annually reported as taken into custody... The shelter is not accessible to the public, promoted, or engaged in efforts to facilitate the adoption of animals taken into custody."

Routine inspections often found "no animals to be housed in the facility" or, at best "few animals in custody," despite thousands of them impounded by PETA annually. Since they take in thousands per year, where were they? "90% [of the animals] were euthanized within the first 24 hours of custody," according to the Virginia Department of Agriculture inspector. How can people adopt animals from PETA when they kill the animals they acquire within minutes without ever making them available for adoption? How can people adopt animals when they have no adoption hours, do no adoption promotion, and do not show animals for adoption, choosing to kill them without doing so? In fact, when asked by a reporter what efforts they make to find animals homes, PETA had no comment.

A postcard written and signed by Ingrid Newkirk, PETA's founder, admitting that PETA does not believe animals have a right to live, despite its public perception of PETA as an "animal rights" organization. The right to life is the most fundamental of all rights. It is fundamental because without it, no other "rights" are possible. How can animals be guaranteed the right to food, water, shelter and protection, when those things can be taken away by killing them?

Many animal lovers who have publicly condemned PETA for their killing have received a letter from the PETA legal department, threatening a lawsuit. However, because a lawsuit would allow for subpoenas of PETA employees past and present -- leading to under-oath testimonies about the grisly reality of what has and is going on at PETA headquarters -- it is unlikely that PETA would ever follow-through with these empty threats.

Their donor-funded attorneys rattle their sabers, but know they have a lot more to fear from the public disclosure that would result from a lawsuit than the animal activists who are truthfully -- and, given PETA's threats and intimidation, bravely -- reporting on PETA's atrocities against animals in the hope of bringing them to an end. When you donate to PETA, you not only fund the killing of animals, you fund the intimidation of animal lovers.

Not only does PETA kill animals, they also defend the killing of animals by others. This is a dying kitten in a Houston shelter after staff "lost" the kitten. When he was found, he was near death. His last hours were ones of suffering. Houston officials put job applicants with a history of violence, a history of criminal behavior and those who scored the lowest on city aptitude tests in animal control. When I was hired by the Houston Health Department to assess the shelter, my advice regarding staff was to fire people who abuse animals; hire those who care about them. PETA defended this shelter, urging government officials not to listen to me.

A puppy dying of parvovirus in the Houston shelter is not given anything soft to lie on as she urinates all over herself. Here she sits, unable to keep her head up, alone in a cold, barren stainless steel cage without receiving necessary veterinary care. Other shelters have a better than 90% rate of saving dogs with parvovirus. In a letter to the editor of the Houston paper, PETA publicly defended this shelter, urging Houstonians to reject my advice on the need for reform and how to do so.

The PETA solution: dead "feral" cats in a Florida shelter. PETA successfully defeated SB 1320, a law that would have clarified that nonlethal programs to neuter and release feral cats, rather than killing them, are legal in Florida. As shelters and health departments nationwide embrace trap-neuter-release programs, PETA remains a stalwart opponent of this humane alternative to killing, arguing that healthy feral cats should continue to be killed, even urging their supporters to take them to shelters or veterinarians to do so. The PETA website states that, "the most compassionate choice is to euthanize feral cats. You can ask your veterinarian to do this or, if your local shelter uses an injection of sodium pentobarbital, take the cats there." This shelter used "an injection of sodium pentobarbital," killing the cats in front of other cats, catch-poling the cats as they tried to flee while they urinated and defecated all over the kennel in fear. That is how terrified feral cats behave in shelters. Apparently to PETA, this is as it should be.

A cat in the King County, Washington shelter begs for food and water. Cats in the infirmary were not fed or given water over a three-day holiday weekend and both their food bowls and water bowls are empty. Although staff was assigned to the shelter, supervisors and staff chose to socialize instead. I was hired by the King County Council to assess the shelter. My advice: Hire supervisors who are not part of the same union so as to eliminate conflicts of interest; all staff should be given a checklist of assigned duties; and supervisors should double check that those duties have been done. In a letter to the King County Council, PETA told officials not to listen to me because I was "radical."

If PETA had its way, this dog would be killed in every shelter in America because someone says he looks like a "pit bull." According to Ingrid Newkirk, a growing number of shelters are enacting policies banning the adoption of pit bulls and requiring their automatic destruction and PETA "supports the pit bull policy."

After finishing the year saving 98% of cats and 94% of dogs, the fourth-year Shelby County, Kentucky had 90+ percent save rates, they announced they were crowded and would begin killing animals. Once again, as they have done so many times before,the Shelby County No Kill Mission, a private organization both responsible for and dedicated to ensuring that Shelby County remains No Kill, went to work and the "crisis" was averted, bringing the population down through rescue, foster and adoption.

Unlike Shelby County No Kill Mission, PETA also reached out to officials, but not to help save the animals. PETA didn't ask what they could do with their $35,000,000 a year in revenues and millions of animal-loving members to help save animals being threatened with death, as donors intended and as supporters assumed. They didn't offer to help the Shelby County shelter find homes, build temporary kennels, board animals, foster animals, adopt animals or even just get the word out across Kentucky that animals need help. Instead, PETA sent Shelby County government and shelter officials a gift basket, with a note thanking them for their decision to start killing again after four years. "Thank you for doing the right thing" wrote PETA.

These pictures reveal the truth about PETA, a reality that is deeply at odds with the public's perception of that organization as a radical animal rights group. In practice, PETA is the functional equivalent of a slaughterhouse, while their efforts to undermine the lifesaving work of animal lovers throughout the country continually derail urgently needed reforms that would further the rights of our nation's homeless dogs and cats.

By defending regressive and cruel shelters and sheltering policies that mandate killing, by calling for the death of certain groups of animals entering shelters and by injecting thousands of animals with a fatal dose of poison every year, these actions are not only inconsistent with the mission of an animal rights organization, they are the antithesis of one. Only one question remains: Why is anyone still donating to PETA?

Like open-admission animal shelters across the country, PETA performs the heartbreaking task of euthanizing animals who are unwanted for one reason or another: because they are aggressive, sick, hurt, elderly, or at death's door and because no good homes exist for them. Front groups for animal-exploiting industries seize on this aspect of our work to further their agenda, attempt to divide our movement, and protect their profits.

There is another side to this ......"One of these groups is the disingenuously named Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF), which is run by lobbyist Richard Berman and is funded by KFC, Outback Steakhouse, Philip Morris, cattle ranchers, and other companies who cruelly kill millions of healthy animals every year—and who bring them into this world just to kill them. The CCF devotes considerable manpower, time, and money in an attempt to make people who care about animals believe false and misleading information about PETA's work."

Source: http://features.peta.org/petasaves/

Could this be a smear campaign because of PETA's stance on factory farming? "From the meat industry's rampant abuse of animals and environmental devastation to the tremendous health benefits of a vegan diet to helping end world hunger and deplorable working conditions in slaughterhouses, there are countless reasons why more and more people are leaving meat off their plates for good and embracing a healthy and humane vegan diet." Source: http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used ... ault2.aspx

[Progressive Patriot]

Who cares about this? So they kill some animals. Its better than having even more millions of strays and feral beasties roaming around.

I care about"this" I care more about animals than I do about people who don't care, not to mention Libertarians.

[mikema63]

Why?

[Rainbow Crow]

PETA should start an adoption service since everyone keeps giving them animals.

[Great Smell of Brut]

The fact is that the Anti Peta propaganda comes from the Agriculture industry and the people who promote it are mostly just anti animal rights.

The animals that peta euthanises are unadoptable. there are simoly far too many strays compared to the people that are prepared to adopt. Animals that come into petas care that are adoptable are given to other shelters.

[mikema63]

Define the animal rights you think animals should have, and how you determine how many rights each kind of living thing gets.

Otherwise I can't tell you whether I'm anti animal rights or not.

PETA though, is a crap organization, your reasons that they euthanize stray animals are perfectly reasonable. The issue is that they protest shelters that do the same thing for those same reasonable reasons.