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PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is an is PETA's international president.

PETA focuses its attention on four major areas of human interaction with animals: , the killing of Animals Regarded As Pests , abuse of backyard dogs, Bullfighting , and Cock Fighting .

PETA works through public education, cruelty investigations, research, animal rescue, legislation, special events, celebrity involvement, and protest campaigns. There has been significant criticism of PETA from a variety of sources, notably with regard to claims of lack of care for animals.


PETA'S PHILOSOPHY

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"PETA believes that animals have rights and deserve to have their best interests taken into consideration, regardless of whether they are useful to humans. Like you, they are capable of suffering and have an interest in leading their own lives; therefore, they are not ours to use—for food, clothing, entertainment, experimentation, or any other reason."
Official PETA Website, About PETA, 2/24/2006

"There is no rational basis for saying that a human being has special rights. A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. They are all mammals." — Ingrid Newkirk, ''Vogue'', 1989


HISTORY


The group first came to public attention in the United States in 1981, when it became involved in the Silver Spring Monkeys case. Alex Pacheco, one of PETA's founders, 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, although all convictions against the researcher were overturned on appeal. {Link without Title} {Link without Title}

Other highlights of the organization's campaigns include:

  • 1983: successfully stopped a United States Department Of Defense "wound lab" which had planned to fire Missile s 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 Primate s 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 Chimpanzee s 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 Orangutan s 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 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 with the intent to harm or destroy PETA. [http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/12/09/circus.spies.ap/index.html] After nine hours of deliberation on March 15th, 2006, a Fairfax County, Virginia jury found that Ringling Bros. did not harm or conspire against PETA, and the case was dismissed. [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/15/AR2006031502226.html]



CAMPAIGNS

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PETA is well known for its aggressive Media campaigns, public demonstrations, and attacks on large Corporation s 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.


Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC)

PETA has a major campaign targeting Kentucky Fried Chicken that has included more than 10,000 demonstrations worldwide and support from the Dalai Lama , Al Sharpton , Paul McCartney , and Dick Gregory , among others. PETA is requesting that KFC require that its suppliers adopt the welfare recommendations of KFC's own animal welfare committee, including using stopping the breaking of birds' limbs and drowning conscious birds in tanks of scalding water. {Link without Title}


Circuses

PETA regularly protests circuses that use animals, especially targeting Ringling Brothers, accusing them of using abusive methods to train their animals and keeping them in inhumane conditions when not performing. {Link without Title}


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." {Link without Title}


Lettuce Ladies

PETA's 'Lettuce Ladies' are women, some of them 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. {Link without Title} ."

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." 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 people are Nazis; for the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka " The use of this quote in this context was supported by Singer's grandson Stephen R. Dujack. [http://www.peta.org/mc/NewsItem.asp?id=3021 In May 2005, PETA apologized for the campaign while broadly defending the analogy. -->


Name changes of cities

PETA regularly asks towns and cities whose names in its view are suggestive of animal exploitation to change their names. In April 2003, they offered free veggie burgers to the city of Hamburg in exchange for changing its name. 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".)

In October 2003, the group urged the town of Rodeo, California , to change its name because it invokes images of the sport of Rodeo , which they claim is harmful to animals, even though the town's name is pronouced differently than a cowboy 'rodeo'. As a replacement name, they suggested Unity, an acknowledgement of Union Oil 's role in saving the area economically in the late 19th century. PETA offered to donate $20,000 worth of Veggie Burger s to local schools if the name was changed. The town declined.-->


Anti-fur campaigns

PETA may be best known for its long-running campaign, "I'd Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur", in which Activist s and Celebrities appear partially nude to express their opposition to Fur -wearing. This tactic has resulted in widespread media coverage. There was also the "Here's the rest of your fur coat" campaign. {Link without Title}


Youth Education


On the cover of PETA's Grrr! Magazine]]PETA runs a website geared towards kids at Petakids.com with contest, online games, online video, a free subscription to Grrr! Magazine , comics, celebrities and music that is supportive of animal causes. The website also provides an E-News list that has seen an increase from 50,000 to 250,000 subscribers.

PETA teamed up with bands such as Deftones , STUN, and Further Seems Forever , to record radio spots on a variety of topics, including reporting animal abuse. The youth-oriented web site Peta2.com featured over 50 interviews from popular bands such as Yellowcard , The Shins , The Used , and Good Charlotte . PETA’s efforts were widely covered, including by MTV , Rolling Stone , AP , and Revolver .

PETA2 dispatched activist, volunteers, and staffers on 61 summer concert and skateboard tours including the Warped , Phish , and Morrissey tours. At these events, PETA screened the "Meet Your Meat" video and spoke with and handed out information to approximately 3,500,000 youths.


Animal Liberation Project

The most recent controversy generated by PETA is its "Are Animals the New Slaves?" campaign. The campaign involves a tour of the United States and featured a display in which images oppressed minorities, including black slaves, Indians, child laborers, and women, were juxtaposed with those of chained elephants and slaughtered cows [http://www.tolerance.org/news/article_tol.jsp?id=1266 . The campaign was criticised by the National Association For The Advancement Of Colored People
and PETA temporarily suspended the campaign [http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1034920&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312 , but decided to continue after discussions with the group. African-American activist and legendary comedian Dick Gregory would go on to explicitly state in a PETA campaign that when he saw animals in cages, "slavery" was the only word that came to mind. PETA's 2004 IRS form 990 shows that on March 30th of that year, PETA gave Dick Gregory $3,000[http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2004/521/218/2004-521218336-1-9.pdf] to support program activities.


Community Animal Project

PETA has several programs helping cats and dogs in poorer areas of southeastern Virginia and northern North Carolina. PETA has spayed or neutered over 25,000 cats and dogs for reduced price or for free in the last few years. The organization comes to the aide of neglected dogs and cats who are severely ill and injured, and it pursues cruelty cases against extreme cases. They offer free humane euthanasia services to counties that kill unwanted animals via gassing or shooting. PETA also offers free euthanasia to people whose companion animals are severely ill/dying but who can’t afford euthanasia at a veterinarian. PETA paid for and built a cat shelter in a North Carolina county. Each year the organization builds and sets up hundreds of sturdy dog houses, with straw bedding, for dogs that are chained outside all winter. PETA also creates and airs numerous public service announcements and billboards urging people to help control the rampant pet overpopulation crisis through spaying/neutering, and adopting animals from shelters instead of purchasing cats and dogs from pet stores or breeders.


CRITICISM OF PETA

PETA has been accused of financially contributing to Eco-terrorist groups such as the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front . In response, PETA claims that they have never financially supported any illegal or violent activities. {Link without Title} .

Critics also point to a statement from and the Earth Liberation Front , associated with destruction of property, and described by the United States Department of Homeland Security as "terrorist threats." [http://www.cq.com/public/20050325_homeland.html


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.

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 22 felony charges of animal cruelty the 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 )

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." 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. 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. However, the Norfolk SPCA is reported to turn away many stray animals every week so they don't have to euthanize them, leaving this task to other local groups. 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.


Extremism and support of industrial sabotage


  • "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 ... 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).

  • Donations to ELF. The United States FBI considers ELF to be the "most active domestic terrorism group in the country" (2000/01).

  • Paid $2,000 to the ALF spokesman after the ALF claimed responsibility for fire bombing the Utah Fur Breeders Agricultural Co-op in 1997.

  • Paid $2,000 to David Wilson, a member of ALF in 1999.

  • Paid $5,000 to the "Josh Harper Support Committee" in 2000.

  • Paid $1,500 to ELF in 2001.

  • Paid $7,500 to Fran Stephanie Trutt, who attempted to kill a medical research executive.





Adrian R. Morrison DVM PhD, has accused PETA of using edited and out-of-context video footage to allege cruelty to animals. In particular, 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. He claims that subsequent testimony demonstrated that the cats had not been alive and that the video was being used an in an attempt to convey false information {Link without Title} .

Following a complaint from the Research Defence Society , the UK Advertising Standards Authority ruled that a PETA mailing about vivisection was misleading {Link without Title} .

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.


On PETA

In the first episode of season 2, Penn And Teller delivered a scathing indictment of PETA, accusing the organization of misleading its members, euthanizing most of the animals it received, funding a convicted arsonist, and ultimately putting its political agenda of animal rights over the welfare of human beings. PETA accuses the show of numerous inaccuracies.


LIST OF FAMOUS MEMBERS AND SUPPORTERS OF PETA

Famous members and supporters of PETA





MULTIMEDIA RELEASES TO BENEFIT PETA



REFERENCES



FURTHER READING



Official PETA sites

Other official PETA sites





Criticism of PETA

Sites critical of PETA