People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals: Encyclopedia - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is the largest animal rights organization in the world. Founded in 1980 as a non-profit organization, it has its headquarters in Norfolk, Virginia, and a stated 850,000 members and over 100 employees worldwide. Outside the U.S., there are affiliated offices in the UK, [1] India, [2] Germany, [3] Asia, and the Netherlands. [4] There is also peta2 Street Team for high school and college-age activists. [5] Ingrid Newkirk is PETA's international president.

PETA focuses on four core issues: factory farming, [6] vivisection or animal testing, fur farming, and animals in entertainment, as well as fishing, the killing of animals regarded as pests, abuse of backyard dogs, and cock fighting. It also provides spay, neutering and euthanasia services to homeless animals in the state of Virginia.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals - PETA's philosophy

PETA's motto is: "Animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment." [7] Its website states:

The organization was founded in 1980 by Ingrid Newkirk and Alex Pacheco, who were inspired by Peter Singer's 1975 book Animal Liberation. Newkirk once stated, "When it comes to feelings such as pain, fear, hunger, and thirst, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy."

In the long term, PETA advocates the abolition of animal exploitation, and espouses the philosophical position of animal rights; in the short term, it is willing to advocate animal-welfare reforms, and it has negotiated with a number of industries that use animals to obtain improvements in welfare standards. PETA strongly supports the vegan lifestyle.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals - History

The group first came to public attention in the United States in 1981, when it became involved in the Silver Spring, MD monkey case. Pacheco conducted an undercover investigation of a primate laboratory, documenting numerous cases of abuse and neglect. The investigation resulted in the first-ever conviction of an animal experimenter on charges of animal abuse and the first-ever suspension of federal research funds for cruelty. [9]

Other highlights of the organization's campaigns include:

• 1983: successfully stopped a United States Department of Defense "wound lab" which had planned to fire missiles into dogs and goats.
• 1984: released more than 70 hours of videotape shot in the University of Pennsylvania head-injury laboratory, showing the treatment of primates there. The secretary of health and human services subsequently cut off all funding to the laboratory and the experiments were stopped. In the same year, a Texas slaughterhouse to which 30,000 horses were taken each year from all over the United States, then allegedly left to starve outside without shelter, was closed after a PETA campaign.
• 1985: revealed details of the treatment of dogs at the City of Hope laboratory in California. The government fined the center $11,000 and suspended more than $1,000,000 in federal funding.
• 1986: stopped the total-isolation confinement of chimpanzees at a Maryland research laboratory called SEMA. Dr. Jane Goodall called her tour of the SEMA lab “the worst experience of my life.”
• 1987: stopped a plan by Cedars-Sinai, California’s largest hospital to ship stray dogs from Mexico into California for experiments. In the same year, they launched the Compassion Campaign to fight cosmetics and personal-care product testing on animals. By 1989, PETA had persuaded nearly 500 companies, including Mary Kay and Amway, to go cruelty-free.
• 1988: secret video shot inside East Carolina University and distributed by PETA showed an inadequately anesthetized dog undergoing surgery during a classroom exercise. The university subsequently declared a moratorium on the use of live animals.
• 1990: exposed the alleged beating of orangutans by Las Vegas entertainer Bobby Berosini, who used the primates in a nightclub act. His captive-bred wildlife permit was suspended by the U.S. Department of the Interior, and his show closed. Four years later, the Nevada Supreme Court unanimously ruled in PETA’s favor and overturned a Las Vegas jury’s $3.2 million defamation award to Berosini. In the same year, the Caring Consumer Campaign succeeded in persuading Estée Lauder and 40 other companies to halt animal testing.
• 1991: the Silver Spring Monkeys case receives a unanimous, positive ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court, the first time that a case involving animals in laboratories had been heard by the court.
• 1992: PETA undercover investigators revealed the details of U.S. foie gras production, documenting the force-feeding of geese. Police subsequently conducted the first-ever raid in the United States, and possibly in the world, on a factory farm, and many restaurants removed foie gras from their menus. In the same year, PETA testified at the first-ever U.S. congressional hearing on the use of animals in circuses, rodeos, films, and other types of entertainment.
• 1993: General Motors gave PETA a statement of assurance that it had ended the use of live pigs and baboons in crash tests after a PETA campaign. In the same year, L’Oréal, the world’s largest cosmetics company, signed a worldwide ban on animal testing, following a PETA campaign. PETA also revealed details of scabies experiments using dogs and rabbits at Wright State University. The university was subsequently charged with violating the Animal Welfare Act, and the experiments ended.
• 1994: Buckshire Corporation, a laboratory animal breeding facility, was charged with violations of the Animal Welfare Act after a 38-page complaint was submitted by PETA. A furrier is charged with cruelty to animals following the release of PETA videotapes showing a California fur rancher electrocuting a chinchilla by clipping wires to the animal’s genitals. It was the first time in U.S. history that a furrier was charged with cruelty.
• 1999: a North Carolina grand jury handed down the first-ever felony cruelty indictments against pig-farm workers after an undercover PETA investigator videotaped workers beating lame pigs with wrenches, and skinning and dismembering a conscious pig.
• 2000: successfully campaigned for 11 months against McDonalds to implement more stringent welfare standards.
• 2001: launched a successful campaign against Burger King. After months of vocal public pressure, the fast-food giant agreed to implement the welfare standards demanded by PETA. These standards increased the amount of cage space given to laying hens and promised unannounced inspections of slaughterhouses, among other things. [10] [11] In this same year, the group launched a very public, but unsuccessful campaign to have the University of South Carolina change its mascot from the Gamecock. The group contended that the name promoted cock fighting, but the school stood firm and kept the mascot name, saying that cock fighting had not been legal in South Carolina for more than a century, and the mascot was a representation of the fighting power of a gamecock, not indicative of any promotion of cockfighting.
• 2005: PETA sued Feld Entertainment (producer of Ringling circus and Disney on ice) saying Feld ran a spying operation on the PETA organization run by an ex-CIA employee. [12]

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals - Campaigns

PETA is well known for its aggressive media campaigns, public demonstrations, and attacks on large corporations for their alleged mistreatment of animals. In 2003, PETA received media attention for its boycott of Kentucky Fried Chicken. PETCO and Procter & Gamble are other examples of companies PETA says are exploiting animals for profit. According to PETA, PETCO confines animals in filthy enclosures, where they are commonly left to die, and Procter & Gamble tests its products on animals. On April 12, 2005, PETA announced it had ended its boycott against PETCO, in part because of PETCO's decision to end sales of large birds in its stores.

Jesus was a Vegetarian

Several PETA commercials have used Christian themes to promote vegetarianism, including one claiming that Jesus was a vegetarian, and another featuring a pig with the caption "He Died for Your Sins." [13] Some Christian leaders, such as the Reverend Andrew Linzey, support some of these ideas, but mainstream theologians cite passages in the Christian Bible that seem to support the view that Jesus ate fish and lamb. [14]

Lettuce Ladies

PETA's 'Lettuce Ladies' are women, some of them Playboy models, who appear publicly in scanty costumes made to look like lettuce leaves, and distribute information about the vegan diet. [15] There is a lesser-known male counterpart to the Lettuce Ladies, called the Broccoli Boys.

Holocaust on Your Plate

One of the most controversial PETA campaigns was their Holocaust on Your Plate campaign. In it PETA claimed that: "like the Jews murdered in concentration camps, animals are terrorized when they are housed in huge filthy warehouses and rounded up for shipment to slaughter. The leather sofa and handbag are the moral equivalent of the lampshades made from the skins of people killed in the death camps. [16]."

The Anti-Defamation League strongly criticized the implication of moral equivalence between the killing of animals and the Holocaust. A press release from the ADL stated:

PETA's effort to seek approval for their Holocaust on Your Plate campaign is outrageous, offensive and takes chutzpah to new heights. Rather than deepen our revulsion against what the Nazis did to the Jews, the project will undermine the struggle to understand the Holocaust and to find ways to make sure such catastrophes never happen again.

PETA defended the comparison, saying that "the logic and methods employed in factory farms and slaughterhouses are analogous to those used in concentration camps." PETA argued that in both the Holocaust and animal slaughter, there is a systematic "concept of other cultures or other species as deficient and thus disposable, and that this indifference allows the slaughter to continue." [17]. PETA also claimed the moral support of Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize winning author Isaac Bashevis Singer, and used his statement "In relation to [animals] all humans are Nazis; for them it is an eternal Treblinka". The use of this quote in this context was supported by Singer's grandson Stephen J. Dujack. [18] In May 2005, PETA apologized for the campaign while broadly defending the analogy. The campaign however continues in areas such as San Francisco

Name changes of cities

PETA regularly asks towns and cities whose names are suggestive of animal exploitation to change their names. A campaign was launched in the late 1990s to have the cities of Hamburg and Frankfurt, Germany change their names, since the names are associated with hamburgers and hot dogs. The cities were offered free veggieburgers for all of their residents for life if they agreed to the change. Both cities refused. However, these campaigns have been effective in generating media coverage of animal-rights issues. PETA also campaigned in 1996 to have the town of Fishkill, New York change its name, claiming the name suggests cruelty to fish. (The root "kill", found in many New York town names, is Dutch for "creek".)

Anti-fur campaigns

PETA may be best known for its long-running campaign, "I'd Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur", in which activists and celebrities appear partially nude to express their opposition to fur-wearing. This tactic has resulted in widespread media coverage.

Campaigns targeting children

PETA also has a campaign "Your mommy kills animals," targeted at children, using graphic images of a woman killing a rabbit. [19] PETA also has a similar campaign "Your Daddy Kills Animals!" featuring graphic images of a man killing a fish, along with a warning to children that states, "Until your daddy learns that it's not "fun" to kill, keep your doggies and kitties away from him. He's so hooked on killing defenseless animals that they could be next!". [20]

Comparisons to slavery

The most recent controversy generated by PETA is its "Are Animals the New Slaves?" campaign. [21] The campaign involves a tour of the United States and featured a display in which images of black people who had been hung were juxtaposed with slaughtered cows [22]. The campaign was criticised by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [23], and PETA suspended the campaign [24].

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals - Criticism of PETA

PETA has critics who frequently point out that PETA has financially contributed to eco-terrorist groups such as the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF). [25]

Critics also point to a statement from Alex Pacheco, one of PETA's founders, that "arson, property destruction, burglary, and theft are acceptable crimes when used for the animal cause" [26] as a reason that PETA should lose its status as a non-profit organization. [27] Part of the cause for concern is the degree of financial support given by PETA to these eco-terrorist organizations, [28][29] associated with firebombings and other destruction of property, and described by the United States Department of Homeland Security as terrorist threats. [30] PETA has also been accused of operating animal shelters that kill more animals than most publicly operated shelters in the United States. [31]

Adrian R. Morrison DVM PhD, has accused PETA of using edited and out-of-context video footage to allege cruelty to animals. In particlar, he cites an example of videos purporting to show cats being embalmed alive by the Carolina Biological Supply Company being given to the USDA as evidence of animal cruelty. Subsequent testimony demonstrated that the cats had not been alive and that the video was being used in an attempt to convey false information [32].

In North America, opponents have sardonically formed a group also known as "PETA," except that the letters stand for "People Eating Tasty Animals." PETA was involved in legal action for several years in the 1990s to shut down the competing web site operated by this group.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals - Targeting of vulnerable groups

PETA has also been accused of targeting vulnerable or emotionally sensitive groups, particularly teenage girls, and was widely criticized in the United Kingdom for its anti-milk campaign, in which it targeted school children with ‘game cards’ saying that dairy products cause obesity, acne, belching and flatulence, and excessive nasal mucus build up.

PETA has also been accused of promoting vegetarian and vegan lifestyles without providing sufficient information on the health risks involved in excluding meat and dairy from a typical Western diet without providing an alternative source of nutrition. It has also linked both lifestyles to weight loss, prompting concerns over PETA's targeting the gender and age groups that are vulnerable to eating disorders.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals - Support of extremists and terrorists

• "We're here to hold the radical line." (Ingrid Newkirk, founder and director of PETA, 1991)
• "Arson, property destruction, burglary, and theft are acceptable crimes when used for the animal cause." (Alex Pacheco, director of PETA at the time, and its co-founder, in 1989)
• "We cannot condemn the Animal Liberation Front ... they act courageously ... [their activities] comprise an important part of today's animal protection movement." (PETA statement concerning ALF's activities, 1991)
• Paid $45,200 in support of convicted ALF arsonist Rodney Coronado (1995). [33]
• The United States FBI considers ALF to be a "terrorist threat". [34]
• Paid $2,000 to the ALF spokesman after the ALF claimed responsibility for fire bombing the Utah Fur Breeders Agricultural Co-op in 1997. [35]
• Paid $2,000 to David Wilson, a member of ALF in 1999. [36]
• Paid $5,000 to the "Josh Harper Support Committee" in 2000. [37] [38]
• Paid $1,500 to ELF in 2001. [39]
• Paid $7,500 to Fran Stephanie Trutt, who attempted to kill a medical research executive. [40]
• "Of course we're going to be, as a movement, blowing stuff up and smashing windows...is a great way to bring about animal liberation". (Bruce Friedrich, the Vegan Campaign Coordinator for PETA, during a 2001 animal rights convention.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals - Response to a suicide bombing

In response to a news report in January of 2003 that a donkey was laden with explosives and intentionally blown up in a failed attack on a busload of Israeli soldiers in Jerusalem, PETA President Ingrid Newkirk sent then Palestinian Authority president Yasser Arafat a request that he "appeal to all those who listen to [him] to leave the animals out of this conflict." However, Newkirk deliberately did not ask Arafat to try to stop suicide bombings that killed people but did not harm animals. She later explained what many saw as a morally untenable stance, to the Washington Post: "It is not my business to inject myself into human wars."

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals - Use of nudity

Feminists for Animal Rights have published articles criticizing PETA for its use of female nudity (though no one has ever fully stripped in public) in campaigns such as "I'd rather go naked than wear fur," "vegetarians make better lovers" and for using Playboy models in some campaigns as well as having string-bikini-clad women wrestle in tofu. Animal-rights lawyer Gary L. Francione has also been outspoken in his condemnation of what he sees as PETA's sexism. Many also feel that PETA's use of gimmicks such as nudity trivializes the seriousness of animal-rights issues. PETA's defenders respond that they are not sexist, as both men and women appear in the campaigns, and that they use arresting images to gain publicity for their campaigns against animal abuse.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals - Animal cruelty and euthanasia

In June 2005, police investigators staked out a garbage dumpster in Ahoskie, North Carolina after discovering that over one hundred dead animals had been dumped there every Wednesday for a month. [41]

Police observed PETA employees Andrew Benjamin Cook and Adria Joy Hinkle approach the dumpster in a van registered to PETA and dump 18 dead animals in a garbage dumpster behind a grocery store. Thirteen more were found inside the van. The animals were from shelters in Northampton and Bertie counties. Police charged Cook and Hinkle each with 31 felony counts of animal cruelty and eight misdemeanor counts of illegal disposal of dead animals. These were dismissed on 14 October 2005, and 25 felony charges (22 of animal cruelty and three felony charges of obtaining property by false pretense) brought in their place. The latter charges are based on PETA having euthanized three cats from an Ahoskie veterinarian after promising to find the animals new homes [42])

Newkirk responded to the media attention with the statement: "PETA has never made a secret of the fact that most of the animals picked up in North Carolina are euthanized." [43] According to PETA's own filings with the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, PETA killed 86.3% of the animals in its care in 2004. [44]. Similar filings for the Norfolk SPCA shelter, located 3.5 miles from the PETA headquarters, show that the Norfolk SPCA killed fewer than 5% of animals in its care. PETA has defended its actions by saying there is inadequate care for the animals they receive, and that killing them humanely is a better fate then allowing them to live in inappropriate conditions.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki