The Truth about PeTA
PeTA may do some good things for animals, but they should leave the welfare of our pets up to someone else. It’s evident from the quotes below that they do not really care about the welfare of our pets and would rather see them euthanized or not exist at all. Is this the kind of group you want to support?
Congressman Charles W. Stenholm knows what the animal rights activists are up to. Here's part of his speech to the House Committee on Agriculture Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry:
Professional experts such as the AVMA, AAEP, and USDA continue to have their expertise questioned by animal “rights” activists who line their own pockets with donations secured by exploiting and distorting the issues. These groups throw sensationalistic and often staged photos in the faces of those who do not understand it and ask them to give money to save the animals. But what they do not do is use their millions of dollars in fundraising to build animal shelters, provide research for new technologies and procedures or provide truthful information to consumers about the animal agriculture industry. Emotions run high, and with continued antics by activist groups the ultimate outcome will be devastating. If animal “rights” activist groups continue to be successful like we have seen in recent months with the closing of U.S. horse processing facilities, abandonment of animals will increase, animal welfare will decline, honest and legal businesses will close, America’s trade balance will worsen, jobs will disappear, family heritage and livelihood will be stolen, and the best interest in the welfare of animals will be lost.
We must band together to defeat PeTA and other Animal Rights groups.
7 Things You Didn't Know About PeTA
If you can ignore some of the language in the following
three part video,
it will shed more light on the truth about PeTA.
Penn &
Teller on PeTA Part 1
Penn &
Teller on PeTA Part 2
Penn & Teller on PeTA Part 3
"Your Mommy Kills Animals" Movie Review
We at PeTA very much love the animal companions who share our homes, but we believe that it would have been in the animals' best interests if the institution of "pet keeping"—i.e., breeding animals to be kept and regarded as "pets"—never existed. The international pastime of domesticating animals has created an overpopulation crisis; as a result, millions of unwanted animals are destroyed every year as "surplus." This selfish desire to possess animals and receive love from them causes immeasurable suffering, which results from manipulating their breeding, selling or giving them away casually, and depriving them of the opportunity to engage in their natural behavior. Their lives are restricted to human homes where they must obey commands and can only eat, drink, and even urinate when humans allow them to.
Because domesticated animals retain many of their basic instincts and drives but are not able to survive on their own in the wild, dogs, cats, or birds, whose strongest desire is to be free, must be confined to a house, yard, or cage for their own safety.
PeTA quotes:
"We are not especially 'interested in' animals. Neither of us had ever been inordinately fond of dogs, cats, or horses in the way that many people are. We didn't 'love' animals." -- Peter Singer*, Animal Liberation: A New Ethic for Our Treatment of Animals, 2nd ed. (New York Review of Books, 1990), Preface, p. ii.
*Peter Singer is the acknowledged founding father and chief guru of the Animal Rights movement. Singer's disciple is Ingrid Newkirk, who co-founded People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, also known as PeTA. For more information, read About Peter Singer & Who is Peter Singer?
"Killing a defective infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person, Sometimes it is not wrong at all." – Peter Singer "Practical Ethics" (Cambridge University Press, 1993).
Christianity is our foe. If animal rights is to succeed, we must destroy the Judeo-Christian religious tradition." - Peter Singer [The Deweese Report, November 1998]
Torturing a human being is almost always wrong, but it is not absolutely wrong." --Peter Singer, as quoted in Josephine Donovan, "Animal Rights and Feminist Theory," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Winter 1990, p. 357.
"Let us allow the dog to disappear from our brick and concrete jungles- from our firesides, from the leather nooses and chains by which we enslave it." John Bryant, Fettered Kingdoms: An Examination of A Changing Ethic (Washington DC, PeTA, 1982). p. 15
"The cat, like the dog, must disappear... We should cut the domestic cat free from our dominance by neutering, neutering, and more neutering, until our pathetic version of the cat ceases to exist." - John Bryant, Fettered Kingdoms: An Examination of A Changing Ethic (Washington, DC: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PeTA), 1982), p. 15.
"As John Bryant has written in his book Fettered Kingdoms, they [pets] are like
slaves, even if well-kept slaves."
PeTA's Statement on Companion Animals
" In a
perfect world, all other than human animals would be free of human interference,
and dogs and cats would be part of the ecological scheme."
PeTA's statement on Companion Animals
INGRID NEWKIRK, President and Founder, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PeTA):
"In the end, I think it would be lovely if we stopped this whole notion of pets altogether." Ingrid Newkirk PeTA (Newsday, Feb. 21, 1988)
"I don't use the word 'pet.' I think it's speciest language. I prefer 'companion animal.' We would no longer allow... pet shops... Eventually companion animals would be phased out." Ingrid Newkirk PeTA (Harper's Magazine, Aug. 1988)
"Pet ownership is an absolutely abysmal situation brought about by human manipulation." Ingrid Newkirk, PeTA, "Just Like Us? Toward a Notion of Animal Rights" (symposium) Harper's, August 1988, p. 50.
"As the surplus of cats and dogs declined, eventually companion animals would be phased out, and we return to a more symbiotic relationship--enjoyment at a distance." Ingrid Newkirk
"You don't have to own squirrels and starlings to get enjoyment from them....One day, we would like an end to pet shops and the breeding of animals. [Dogs] would pursue their natural lives in the wild...." Ingrid Newkirk PeTA ("Where Would We Be Without Animals?", Chicago Daily Herald, March 1, 1990)
"I am not a morose person, but I would rather not be here. I don't have any reverence for life, only for the entities themselves. I would rather see a blank space where I am. This will sound like fruitcake stuff again but at least I wouldn't be harming anything."
Ingrid Newkirk PeTA (Washington Post, November 13, 1983)
"Probably everything we do is a publicity stunt...
Ingrid Newkirk PeTA (USA Today, September 3, 1991)
PeTA facts:
PeTA
has a paid staff of more than eighty people and claims to have 400,000 members,
but actually has only three. In 1987, PeTA's three-member board of
directors (Newkirk, Pacheco, and Kim Stallwood) voted themselves the only
"members" of the organization. By doing so, they converted their "members" into
customer/contributors and themselves into a multimillion-dollar partnership.
The group reported an annual budget of $10.5 million in 1991, with more than $9 million coming from contributions and most of the rest from sale of PeTA merchandise. That's enough money to save an awful lot of animals. But PeTA does not use one single cent of its money to purchase wildlife habitat, find homes for strays, spay and neuter pets, or research alternative biomedical or wildlife management techniques.
PeTA quotes and facts pertaining to ALF (Animal Liberation Front):
"Arson, property destruction, burglary and theft are 'acceptable crimes' when used for the animal cause." Alex Pacheco, Chairman of PeTA (Gazette Mail, Charleston, WV, January 15, 1989)
"In a war, you have to take up arms and people will get killed, and I can support that kind of action by petrol bombing and bombs under cars and probably at a later stage the shooting of vivisectors on their doorsteps. It's a war, and there's no other way you can stop vivisectors." Tim Daley, Animal Liberation Front (ALF) (BBC interview, 1987)
PeTA
Statement, June 19, 1991, in response to ANIMAL LIBERATION FRONT
Vandalism at Northwest Farm Foods Co-op:
"We cannot condemn the Animal Liberation Front... they act
courageously, risking their freedom and their careers to stop the terror
inflicted every day on animals in the labs. (ALF's activities) comprise
an important part of today's animal protection movement."
"I
would be overjoyed when the first scientist is killed by a liberation activist."
Vivien Smith, Animal Liberation Front (ALF) (USA Today, September 3,
1991)
"And I think
for five lives, 10 lives, 15 human lives, we could save a million, two million,
ten million non-human lives"
Jerry Vlasak, Animal Liberation Front Spokesperson ("Animal Rights 2003"
National Conference August 3, 2003)
"Looking at modern social history, it is clear that civil disobedience, property destruction, and violence have been important political tactics for the American Revolution, the abolition of slavery, labor and national independence movements, suffragette struggles, and the Civil Rights movement. Similarly, the histories of the ALF and SHAC show that break-ins, liberations, property destruction, arson, and intimidation tactics have completely shut down some operations, weakened others, and provided otherwise unobtainable documentation of animal exploitation in fur farms, vivisection labs, and elsewhere. . . But, as nonviolent groups (I do not define property destruction and psychological intimidation as violence), the ALF and SHAC never attack or injure human beings, however righteous their anger against animal exploiters; they attack property, not people. Given the gravity of the situation for the animals they represent, such direct action groups should not be criticized for using excessive force but rather commended for exercising moderation and restraint." - Steve Best, Ph.D. Chair of the Philosophy Department at University of Texas, El Paso and ALF Supporter (Thinking Pluralistically: A Case for Direct Action)
The A.L.F.(Animal Liberation Front), which has caused tens of millions of dollars in damage to U.S. research labs, factory farms and fur farms in 15 years of existence, has been branded a "terrorist" organization by the US Dept of Justice.
When ALF member Roger Troen was convicted of burglary and arson at the
University of Oregon, in which $36,000 in damage was inflicted, PeTA paid Troen's
$27.000 legal fees and his $34,900 fine. Gary Thorud testified under oath that
"we were illegally funding this individual with money solicited for other
causes, and Ingrid was using that money, bragging to the staff that she had
spent $25,000 on the case."
Deposition of Gary Thorud, Berosini v. PeTA, at 49-50.
Rodney Coronado, a member of the Animal Liberation Front, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 57 months in prison for the destruction of an animal diagnostics research lab at the University of California, Davis in April, 1987 (total damage estimates: $4.5 million). PeTA sent $45,200 to Coronado's 'support committee,' which was a sum 15 times greater than what PeTA spent on animal shelters nationwide in all of that year.
Other Animal Rights Activist Quotes
"Don’t breed dogs, don’t buy, don’t even accept giveaways" HSUS CEO John Hoyt in a 1991 speech.
"It's not about loving animals. It's about fighting in justice. My whole goal is
for humans to have as little contact as possible with animals." Gary
Yourofsky - ADAPTT
(Associated Press; dateline: Detroit; citing an interview with the Detroit Free
Press; Dec. 7, 1998)
"It is time we demand an end to the misguided and abusive concept of animal
ownership. The first step on this long, but just, road would be ending the
concept of pet ownership."
-Elliot Katz, President, In Defense of Animals, "In Defense of Animals,"
Spring 1997
"Liberating our language by eliminating the word 'pet' is the first step ... In
an ideal society where all exploitation and oppression has been eliminated, it
will be NJARA's policy to oppose the keeping of animals as 'pets.'" -New
Jersey Animal Rights Alliance,
"Should Dogs Be Kept As Pets? NO!" Good Dog! February 1991, p.20
"I don't have a hands-on fondness for
animals...To this day I don't feel bonded to any non-human animal. I like them
and I pet them and I'm kind to them, but there's no special bond between me and
other animals." HSUS President Wayne Pacelle, quoted in Bloodties:
Nature, Culture and the Hunt by Ted Kerasote, 1993,p. 251.
When asked if he envisioned a future without pets: "If I had my personal view, perhaps that might take hold. In fact, I don’t want to see another dog or cat born.” Wayne Pacelle quoted in Bloodties: Nature, Culture and the Hunt by Ted Kerasote, 1993, p. 266.
"We have no ethical obligation to preserve the different breeds of livestock produced through selective breeding. ... One generation and out. We have no problem with the extinction of domestic animals. They are creations of human selective breeding." - Wayne Pacelle, Senior Vice-President of HSUS, formerly of Friends for Animals; Quoted in Animal People, May, 1993
"If we could shut down all sport hunting in a moment, we would." HSUS V.P
Wayne Pacelle - Former National Director of Fund for Animals
(Quoted in "Impassioned Agitator," Associated Press, Dec. 30, 1991)
"Our goal is to get sport hunting in the same category as cock fighting and dog fighting. Our opponents say that hunting is a tradition. We say traditions can change." Wayne Pacelle (Quoted in Bozeman Daily Chronicle, Oct. 8, 1991)
"Only 7% of Americans are hunters. That means there are more of us than there are of them. It is simply a matter of democracy. The majority rules in a democracy. We are going to use the ballot box and the democratic process to stop all hunting in the United States... We will take it species by species until all hunting is stopped in California. Then we will take it state by state." Wayne Pacelle (Full Cry, October 1990)
More quotes
http://naiaonline.org/body