Update on PETA Killing Doggies and Kitties
The two PETA workers who were charged with killing dogs and cats and dumping them in trash cans have been charged with more crimes. The biggest news is that these new charges include three counts of obtaining property under false pretenses. The property are cats and dogs. The false pretenses are, allegedly, that PETA would find them homes when the intent was always to kill them.
This story reveals the underbelly of PETA. Animal liberationists' ultimate goal is to eradicate all domesticated animals (not by killing them but preventing further breeding--which we might call doggie and kittie eugenics). This desire could explain why clearly adoptable animals have apparently been killed by PETA rather than found homes, which I wrote about here. (Yes, I know that PETA also has adopted out pets. But the group's kill to adoption ratio is much higher than local humane society shelters.)
In any event, the facts of this case could get interesting.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 9:18 AM
3 Comments
3 Comments:
No intellectual dishonesty here. Just revealing the intellectual foundation of animal liberation philosophy, and the dark places where that can lead. Thanks for your continuing contributions and countervailing views.
I didn't realize that PETA even considers keeping pets a form of oppression! There is something really shocking about this degree of lunacy. Great post and a real eye-opener.
I did a post on it at prolifeblogs:
http://www.prolifeblogs.com/articles/archives/2005/10/pet_peeves.php
I was, of course, disturbed by these stories about PETA so I wrote to them and demanded an explanation. This is the response I received:
Thank you for contacting PETA about the North Carolina situation. That means you care, and we wish everyone did.
Please forgive this form response. We are getting hundreds of e-mail messages, calls, and letters every day about all sorts of issues, which means that it is impossible to reply to each one personally. We do want to underscore the fact that despite this form response, we take your concerns very seriously, and all comments we receive regarding this situation are being reviewed by our senior staff as well as staff involved in our Domestic Animals Department.
First, the report from North Carolina regarding the dumping of animal bodies in a Dumpster by a PETA staff member is deeply upsetting. It is against PETA's policy to put the bodies of euthanized animals in Dumpsters, as you might imagine, and we are appalled that a member of our staff apparently did that. Despite the fact that we know this woman to be a caring soul and someone who has done much selfless work to help animals, there is no excuse for what happened. As an initial result, she has been suspended. We have launched our own investigation of the circumstances surrounding this case.
Because there has also been a great deal of misinformation in the news about this case and its circumstances, we want to provide you with some additional background information something the media has not done.
We started working in North Carolina in 2000, after PETA was contacted by a police officer who was distressed by conditions in a county pound. North Carolina has the second-highest rate per capita of euthanasia in the country, 35 animals killed annually for every 1,000 residents. Most do not die a humane death. When we step in to humanely euthanize animals "at no cost to the participating shelters" as we did in this instance, our involvement prevents animals from being shot to death with a .22 caliber firearm, being gassed to death in an old, rusty metal box, injected with a paralytic that causes slow suffocation without loss of consciousness, suffering for weeks on end from disease and illness, or worse. In some of those places, dogs had drowned in floods and frozen to death in winter.
We are a "shelter of last resort," offering a humane death to animals who would otherwise suffer a slow and painful end. To learn more about the conditions that led to our involvement in these North Carolina counties, and some of the many improvements we‚ve been able to make, please visit http://www.HelpingAnimals.com/f-nc.asp.
Sadly, the shelters we work with in North Carolina also have no adoption programs or hours set aside for adoption. In fact, most of them have no staff on site. PETA has begged for years, through formal proposals and numerous meetings, for officials to allow us to implement an adoption program as part of a larger picture of shelter improvements that would also include a spay/neuter program, a humane education program, 24/7 emergency services, and rabies clinics.
It is important to add that PETA does not run an adoption facility ourselves - we refer most adoptable animals to known shelters open to public traffic, although we have managed to place 360 animals in excellent, lifelong homes in just the past year. There is, in fact, a North Carolina dog called Dovey in our office as this is written.
It is also PETA policy that no one on our staff is ever to give anyone the impression that animals we accept are being taken for placement. From what we have been able to determine in this situation, the shelters from which our staff picked up the dogs were fully aware of this fact, although it may be politic for them to deny that now, given the outcry. It is our policy as well that the vast majority of animals we accept are only those who are in terrible conditions or unadoptable for some reason, such as aggression or sickness in old age.
We wish that there were other options available. We cannot bring the majority of animals back to Virginia for placement. The same issues regarding adoptability of injured, sick, or old animals exist everywhere, including here, and "all-admission" shelters (those which, unlike "turn-away" or so-called "no-kill" shelters, never turn their backs on any animal) are, as in the rest of the country, already unable to cope with the overpopulation of unwanted animals and cannot find enough homes for all of them. Using Virginia shelters also means that there would be fewer homes for animals already in Virginia adoption facilities.
Some might argue that the solution to this crisis of overpopulation of so many unwanted animals is to open sanctuaries. But the sad reality is that the math doesn't add up. There is not enough money available to us or anyone to build enough sanctuaries or organize enough animal-adoption programs to keep up with the number of unwanted animals, particularly those animals deemed "undesirable" because of their infirmities, age, or behavior. And putting all your resources into fostering and kenneling unwanted animals does nothing to stop the flow of more and more unwanteds. The source of the problem - trying to stop future unwanteds from being born is where the money needs to go.
We believe that the spaying and neutering of animals, supported by appropriate local laws, is the single most effective tool in reducing the number of unwanted animals. For that reason, our humane education and outreach programs promote spaying and neutering. Our goal is to create a society where every dog and cat has a loving home. We have always advocated fixing the problems of overpopulation through practical methods, including encouraging people not to patronize pet shops or breeders. Those stories, however, rarely get coverage in the media.
As well as paying for sterilization of animals in North Carolina, we run a mobile spay/neuter clinic here in Virginia seven days a week. It focuses much of its work in disadvantaged neighborhoods, where we offer free and low-cost surgeries and other services such as flea/tick treatments and worming. In the last year, we have sterilized more than 7,600 dogs and cats, including feral animals - many free of charge and all others at well below our own costs. To date, we have sterilized nearly 25,000 in our clinic. Support for this program is much needed, as you can imagine.
PETA has always spoken openly about euthanasia, on our Web site and in our publications, and while we understand that it is upsetting to learn about, it is necessary in this imperfect world, and we hope you understand that it is gut-wrenching for those of us at PETA and at shelters across the country who care deeply for animals to have to hold animals in our arms and take their lives because there is nowhere decent for them to go. Euthanasia will continue to be necessary until people prevent dogs and cats from bringing new litters into the world and as long as people hide their heads in the sand and leave the dirty work to others.
We hope this has shed some light on what happened, our policies, and our work. Our Web site http://www.helpinganimals.com may also be useful for additional information. Thank you for caring enough to ask about this.
As usual, the press only reported on the scandalous part of the story, PETA employees charged with animal cruelty. It seems that the employees are only guilty of the inappropriate disposal of the euthanized animals and given the wording of the letter, PETA seems to think that only one of the two employees is the one who took that disturbing action, and is being dealt with appropriately. Why in the world she would do such a thing, well I guess that's one of the questions PETA's internal investigation will answer.
In the meantime, what this emailed response does tell us is why PETA was euthanizing animals in the first place. I did not know PETA did this at all, I was aware of their policy of referring all requests for pet rescues to the appropriate local shelters (having attempted to get their help in this regard once.) But it is good to know that PETA will step in, as they say, as a shelter of last resort.
If you follow the link to the page on the conditions they found in North Carolina, you will see why animals had to be euthanized. Do not blame PETA for the conditions they found and remedied. Those pictures leave no uncertainty that euthanasia was necessary.
It is unfortunate that the answer to the problems in North Carolina was euthanasia. From all I have read, PETA did not euthanize any animals that were "adoptable." As PETA said, "It is our policy that the vast majority of animals we accept are only those who are in terrible conditions or unadoptable for some reason, such as aggression or sickness in old age." PETA wrote that they double-checked, and the shelters from which they were taking animals were aware that PETA was taking their unadoptable cats and dogs for euthanasia.
I find that people's angry response when they believe that PETA was euthanizing adoptable pets puzzling? Why would you be upset if PETA had to euthanize 12,000 healthy pets because they could find no homes for them? (Again, this is not what happened, these animals were either old and infirm, dangerously aggressive, or sick or injured.) Every year, according to the Humane Society of the United States, 3 to 4 million cats and dogs are euthanized in American animal shelters. This is about 1/2 of all animals entering shelters each year. (For more HSUS Pet Overpopulation Statistics, click here) Where is your outrage over this? Clearly, you are simply looking to use this to condemn an organization you already despise. The title of this blog entry highlights your use of this unfortunate situation to condemn PETA, it is an incendiary title, and you are clearly making fun of PETA and taking delight in what you see to be an incident that makes them look bad. You really have no concern fo the "doggies and kitties."
Oh, yeah, in response to papijoe, PETA doesn't consider keeping pets a form of oppression. Most, if not all, PETA workers have pets, including Founder and President Ingrid Newkirk. As written in the response, they even have office pets, including one of the NC dogs that was in decent shape. I once interviewed for a job at PETA's offices, and I remember there being at least 2 cats in Ms. Newkirk's office. (Just so you know, I applied about 9 or 10 years ago to be a cruelty investigator, and did not get the job. So my knowledge of PETA is from their website, the press, and in this case, their own response to my email. I have no "inside information" and have no affiliation with PETA.) PETA not only doesn't consider keeping pets a form of oppression, they encourage pet ownership, as long as you adopt your pet from a shelter. They do discourage buying dogs or cats from pet stores, because that enourages breeding of pets when overpopulation is a problem, and because many of these pets are from puppy mills, which are terrible places.
(There are people out there who do think that even pet ownership is a form of oppression. I've run into their rantings online. These are the fringe of the animal rights movement, and no major animal rights or animal welfare organization promotes that view. Most of us are involved because we love animals and we consider our pets part of the family. Personally, I could not imagine our household without our two cats, and I think these people who don't believe in pets must be sad and lonely people.)
So, to summarize, PETA's employees will most likely be cleared of the animal cruelty charges but at least one of them will likely be found guilty of improper disposal of those animals. PETA took those animals that no one wanted and were in no shape to be adopted, and ended their lives peacefully, painlessly, and with dignity. It is terrible that they were not given dignity in death, I look forward to getting an explanation as to why an animal rights activist would not take proper care of the animals she was forced to euthanize by bringing them to a reputable place for cremation. But I have no doubts that the euthanization of those poor cats and dogs was necessary. As I said, follow the link, the pictures speak for themselves.
The outrage everyone is expressing should be redirected to those North Carolina municipalities that did not have proper shelters and procedures in place to deal with the adoption of well animals and the euthanization of sick animals. While PETA did the euthanizing, these animals were really killed by whoever initially abandoned them at such terrible facilities, and those responsible for creating and maintaining those facilities.
While the PETA employees are made to answer for their mistakes, for lack of a better word, made while carrying out of their role in this tragedy, where are all the others who are responsible for making these animals sick in the first place? Where are their cruelty charges? As long as we obsess over what two PETA workers did, those truly responsible for cruelty, for starving and diseased and injured dogs and cats, are going unidentified and unpunished.
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