People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has been repeatedly criticized over its pet program that seems long on euthanasia and short on adoption. Now, the nonprofit Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) published documents online showing that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) killed 95 percent of the adoptable pets in its care during 2008. As noted below, CCF is as controversial as PETA however.
This amounts to killing 5.8 pets every day at its Norfolk, VA headquarters, according to the group. (It is not clear what happens to the remaining .2 percent of the leftover pet).
PETA President Ingrid Newkirk has been personally accused by one group being responsible for the murder of thousands of pets in a pound in the 1970s by dispatching them early in the mornings.
The recent report relies on public records from the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services that purportedly show that PETA killed 2,124 pets last year and placed only seven in adoptive homes. Since 1998, a total of 21,339 dogs and cats have died at the hands of PETA workers.
While PETA is flush with an annual budget of $32 million budget, it does not operate an adoption shelter and appears to make no effort to find homes for the pets.
While the data may stand up, the CCF itself may be a poor messenger. It has been attacked as a front for industry and ridiculed by the likes of Stephen Colbert.
PETA may take the position that its focus is on humane euthanasia and not adoption — leaving the latter to other groups. It describes this option on its PETA2 website:
Good and Bad Solutions
Because of the high number of unwanted companion animals and the lack of good homes, sometimes the most humane thing that a shelter worker can do is give an animal a peaceful release from a world in which dogs and cats are often considered “surplus” and unwanted. PETA, The American Veterinary Medical Association, and The Humane Society of the United States concur that an intravenous injection of sodium pentobarbital administered by a trained professional is the kindest, most compassionate method of euthanizing animals. The American Humane Association considers this to be the only acceptable method of euthanasia for cats and dogs in animal shelters.
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“While PETA is flush with an annual budget of $32 million budget, it does not operate an adoption shelter and appears to make no effort to find homes for the pets.
While the data may stand up, the CCF itself may be a poor messenger. It has been attacked as a front for industry and ridiculed by the likes of Stephen Colbert.”
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Sort of a new spin on a famous observation from Nietzsche:
“Success has always been the worst of liars”
(Beyond Good and Evil, 1886)
Then Mikey you are!
I’ve noticed on my last 3 comments that it came out as Michael Spindell, that was neither a change of sobriquet or an impostor. Merely an accident. Many of the women who were in the past a serious part of my life would always call me Michael. I always saw it as a way that they were trying to “civilize” me into their conception of who I should be as a person. My wife, of many years always called me Mike, since she knew what she was getting and happy with it. In my mind I’m a Mike, Mikey actually, and that was the way my business cards read. Michael always seemed to stuffy and pretentious.
Five demerits for me though for being grossly off topic.
One group of crazies opposed by another.