PETA Caught With Blood On Its Hands

What's that, Lassie? PETA Dumping Animals in Dumpsters? Lead the Way... or Just Read On...

Oh, the irony. Oh, the delicious, juicy, tasty, savory irony.

“Animals are not ours to eat,” the PETA website (www.peta.org) lectures us. “ Animals are not ours to wear. Animals are not ours to be experiment on. Animals are not ours to use for our entertainment. Animals are not ours to exploit.”
However, animals are apparently ours to kill and leave in dumpsters.
That’s uh… quite a moral stand you’re taking there…

That’s right, the people who seek to scare you into following their beliefs (“Eating meat causes cancer”), shame you into following their beliefs (“Torture tuesday”), or just outwardly distort the issues (“Feeding children meat is child abuse”) has egg on its face and blood on its hands, as two of its employees, Andrew Benjamin Cook and Adria Joy Hinkle are currently working their way through the North Carolina courts on charges of animal cruelty.

Cook and Hinkle (both paid employees of PETA, who were charged June 16), it seems, had been euthanizing healthy animals and dumping them in the garbage dumpster at a Piggly Wiggly supermarket. Among the animals, apparently were kittens, mother cats, and puppies.

That’s right… apparently, PETA kills puppies. Well, not PETA, only their paid employees.

In a June 17 news conference, PETA president Ingrid Kewkirk condemned the actions of Cook and Hinkle, saying, “ [It’s] hideous, it’s wrong, and it never should have happened.”

“That conduct disgusts us,” Newkirk said of the dumping. “It shames us. It violates our own protocols, it happened without our knowledge and can never be allowed to happen again. But our work is important and our work must go on,” Newkirk added. However, if this conduct really does disgust PETA, they’ve certainly gone out of their way to show it.

On the aforemention www.PETA.org, there is no mention of the incident whatsoever, and on Newkirk’s weblog (www.ingridnewkirk.com), Newkirk saw fit to post some fish cartoons (http://www.ingridnewkirk.com/archives/2005/06/more_fish_comic.html), as well as what is apparently supposed to pass as an amusing photograph (http://www.ingridnewkirk.com/archives/2005/06/slow_and_steady.html), but no mention of this very serious matter.

Which may not be so surprising. According to “Better Dead than Fed” author Debra Saunders, “ PETA always has been about killing animals. A 2003 New Yorker profile included PETA top dog Ingrid Newkirk’s story of how she became involved in animal rights after a shelter put down stray kittens she brought there. So she went to work for an animal shelter in the 1970s, where, she explained: ‘I would go to work early, before anyone got there, and I would just kill the animals myself. Because I couldn’t stand to let them go through (other workers abusing the animals). I must have killed a thousand of them, sometimes dozens every day.’ ”

Sounds an awful lot like “ in order to save the village, we had to burn it,” doesn’t it? Maybe it’s just me. But why does an organization like PETA, which claims to be dedicated to the protection of animals, euthanize them at the horrific rate that PETA does?

Too often, it comes down to money. If PETA were to use more of its money to feed and care for animals, it might not have as much money to finance its massive propaganda campaigns. This, of course, would be a tremendous inconvenience. Also, this would cost them the ability to maintain as many paid employees, which would force them to rely more recruiting volunteers, which is also inconvenient. Maybe the lives of animals just aren’t worth it.

This attitude isn’t surprising to find in an organization that has obviously never felt an ounce of embarrassment in aiming its propaganda campaigns at anyone they think they can manipulate – including children.

Don’t get me wrong. Animal cruelty is a very serious issue. However, there is something rotten at the core of PETA, and it’s only getting worse. Among other things, allegations are surfacing that link PETA to potentially violent extremist groups like the Animal Liberation Front, a group which at best can be considered good-intentioned, but rather reckless.

Maybe its time that PETA was disbanded in favor of a more widespread, volunteer-driven, community-oriented approach to protecting animals – no extreme political agenda, just helping animals through local Humane Societies and SPCAs. No hypocritical Ingrid Newkirks, just regular people doing their part to meet their responsibilities to animals.

But most of all, no more “final solution” approach to caring for animals.