Two ON-topic questions - I promise

[singing4every1]

I edited the last post I made about Curves. I apologized for a couple things. Go read if you wish. Anyway, if there's anyone here who still thinks I am a nice person (I promise, I am!) , I was wondering if anyone could answer these questions for me.

First off, PETA. Why do a lot of vegetarians and vegans dislike PETA? Besides the fact that some

Comments

[neva_butterfly]

I grew up in a hunting family. I don't doubt that many hunters believe that hunted animals are overpopulating and that hunting controls the population, but this is actually false. Whenever populations of animals are studied it is usually the food supply that controls population, not predators. Also, while a natural predator would take sick, injured, weak, and sometimes young animals, human hunters typically go after the healthiest and strongest member of a herd, leaving sicker ones to reproduce and this damages the overall health of the herd. You are right that our overpopulation creates more conflicts between humans and wildlife, but this isn't the only problem. In the area where I live white tailed deer are increasing in number. We killed all of their natural predators, then we cut down the forests creating more grazing land, then we planted ornamental plants that they like to eat. Then we complain when they eat our plants...

Further one of the main reasons why the gov't encourages hunting wild animals on public lands is because they compete with cattle for grazing land, not because they are in fact over-populated.

As for not liking PeTA, everyone has their reasons I guess. I don't like that many of their campaigns seemingly trivialize the issues. When we talk about animal issues we're talking about something very serious, and PeTA campaigns reduce these issues to a joke. Also some of their campaigns have been viewed as sexist or racist. They also are not really open to input from activists or other groups. They kill animals--they take in abandoned dogs and cats and then kill about 90% of them I think, and they are anti-feral cat (their reasoning is faulty).

[singing4every1]

Wow, great post. Yes, I actually talked to someone from PETA on the phone the other day and asked them about the killing of the animals and they said they try to take in hurt animals basically and save who they can, but a lot of them are too far hurt to be saved and must be put out of their misery. Seems like a good argument to me. And where are they racist? I can see the sexist thing because they could be seen as "exploiting" to women, but besides that, where's some evidence of racism? I am interested in seeing where that is on their site. And I loved what you said about hunting. More comments everyone, more :). Thanks.

[neva_butterfly]

I'm from the area of PeTA, more or less, so my volunteering for them went back quite a few years. I was a huge, huge PeTA supporter and I no longer am. Ingrid Newkirk comes from a traditional animal control background and that's the attitude that is dominant at PeTA. They do feel they are putting animals out of their misery, but the truth is that they openly kill perfectly healthy animals, even puppies and kittens who would have a better chance of adoption. This is because they subscribe so whole-heartedly to the philosophy that there aren't enough homes and that the only way to solve this is by killing the majority of animals that come through shelters and rescues.

I believed this for years until I started learning more about these issues. I would suggest reading some of Nathan Winograd's materials about finding more humane, more life-affirming solutions to the problem of homeless companion animals.

Further when PeTA left this area for Norfolk, VA they killed most of the animals in their sanctuary (largely rescued farm animals) to save the cost and inconvenience of relocating them. This was a huge betrayal in the view of many people who had supported the sanctuary.

PeTA employees were caught (and ultimately prosecuted for) taking animals out of rural shelters, promising the shelters they'd find homes for them, and then just putting them to death inside the van and disposing of them in dumpsters. Absolutely no effort was ever put into finding them homes.

I started working on feral cat rescue about a decade ago. Before I got involved I knew very little about feral cats. It turns out there are a lot of good scientific studies that show that killing feral cats, the way PeTA does by trapping and "euthanizing" the cats, does not decrease their population. The science shows that 1) nobody ever manages to kill all the cats, and 2) when there is a sudden drop in the population this creates a reaction in the surviving cats where they have more frequent and larger litters of kittens until the population is replenished. However, managing the colony by getting the cats to the vet, sterilized, and vaccinated, and then putting them back stabilizes the population. This is what I do and over the course of a year and a half I did sterilize all the female and most of the male cats in my neighborhood. Despite all the studies and all the other organizations who have recognized this as the best, most successful, and most humane approach, PeTA still advocates trapping and killing feral cats.

[singing4every1]

WOW! Again thank you, very informative and I feel lucky to see an insider's view!

[neva_butterfly]

I don't take a stance really one way or the other on the sexism and racism really. People feel that certain ads including the "I'd rather go naked" and a previous "fur trim" ad were sexist. Some think that certain ads that featured African American women in a jungle background, naked, with body paint to make them look like leopards had racist undertones. Also the comparisons between human slavery and farmed animals are controversial to many. Some claim that to compare human slaves to animals in any way is racist while others insist the comparison is legitimate.

[culturallyaware]

didn't they also do a nazi/holocaust campaign that started a lot of controversy? or at least someone from peta made some insensitive comments about it?

[miss_roark]

I did read about PETA being in a huge lawsuit a couple of years ago because they were basically going around and taking dogs and cats from shelters and then euthanising them in their van. People found out because they just threw them in dumpsters after. These weren't sick animals, one of the shelter people even gave them their own dog after they promised to place it with a family who would give it more time. The people took it and even took pictures of the dog with a new collar and sent it to the guy. Then they killed it and threw it in the dumpster.

We have the same issues with hunting where I am (New England) and every point you made was dead on! I'm going to use them. ;)

[neva_butterfly]

Exactly. And they ignore the entire body of scientific evidence supporting humane control for feral cats and still advocate killing them.