PeTA: Parading Their Moral Incoherence Before the World

If you've been living in a parallel universe over the past couple of months, you might have missed that PeTA has been "outed" for how they care (and I use the word "care" advisedly) for the animals left with them in their "shelter". First, the Center for Consumer Freedom revealed that PeTA killed over 10,000 of the animals left in their cruelty-free care between 1998 — 2003. That number represents upwards of 75% of the creatures PeTA agreed to take.

That's a far higher percentage than some other shelters in their area, and is made all the more appalling given that PeTA's lavish resources are more than sufficient to ensure that it could be be a non-kill shelter.

PeTA's second disaster occurred when two of it's staff were arrested after a month long sting operation. Allegedly, the pair picked up animals from shelters, giving every indication that an effort would be made to adopt out the fully adoptable animals, only to kill the animals in the back of a van registered to PeTA and pitch the corpses into dumpsters (but the executions were cruelty-free).

For it's part, PeTA has issued various statements, each seemingly more damning than the last (for example, see this).

PeTA continues desperately trying to put a tourniquet on their image, which is hemorrhaging credibility-units at an unprecedented pace.

Now, they've abbreviated this press statement and posted it here to help us all properly understand how virtuous they are. I don't think it's going to help:

PETA was first invited to help animals in North Carolina by a police officer who was appalled by conditions in area “shelters”—some are just shacks without heating in which animals were left to drown or freeze to death.

Interesting — notice that "a police officer" invited PeTA's help. This appears to be an informal request made by one individual, who happens to be a policeman, to an organization. That's all well and good, but it doesn't mean that any formal request was made by a city, county or state authority to PeTA. This doesn't imply that PeTA was acting outside the law, but merely that PeTA lacked a formal governmental imprimatur, though the phrasing of their statement seems calculated to lead the unwary reader to believe that the government had actively requested their intervention.

PETA has now helped countless animals in North Carolina and assisted animal control agencies and personnel with training, supplies, and services.

I'm suspicious. This is all way too vague . . . I'd be interested in knowing precisely which animal control agencies PeTA really did assist, and what those agencies had to say about PeTA training their people and providing them with supplies and services.

You would think that if PeTA really were as helpful as they claim they were, they'd refer us to specific agencies so that we could verify their claims.

I wonder why they don't?

Any guesses?

PETA has spent more than $240,000 in the past few years in one county in North Carolina alone, making improvements for animals. Each dollar spent means a needy animal helped—cold abated, shade provided, water and food given.

Fascinating — Ms. Newkirk's original statement pointed with pride to PeTA having spent $240,000 in the state of North Carolina (the link is no longer available, but one of Brian Carnell's alert readers captured it's text here, and I captured it here).

But now we find that the $240,000 was spent in only one county. I suspect that both claims are correct: that PeTA spent $240,000 in the state of North Carolina, all of it in one county. It sounds better to truthfully say you spent that much money in only one county, and let an inattentive audience falsly conclude that you spent additional money in other counties of the state, than to tell your audience that your entire expenditure for the state was $240,000.

Though I could be wrong, viz. PeTA may have dumped gobs of money more than the $240,000 into the rest of the state, logic is on my side. PeTA has never been a group that's shy about tooting its own horn, and now, more than ever, that horn needs to be tooted. So — at a time when PeTA is desperate for good PR, and when it's in their best interests to show their largesse, why would they hold back and give us a smaller figure for a county rather than a larger figure for an entire state?

I've pointed this out before, but it's worth hitting again. At best, PeTA would would have contributed $80,000 a year for each of 3 years. That's not much for an organization whose annual budget is between 25 and 29 million dollars.

If you do the math, it gets downright ugly: 80,000 ÷ 27,000,000 = .00296, or less than 3/10 of one percent of an annual budget. If the $240,000 was spent over 4 years, rather than 3, it would be even worse: $60,000 ÷ 27,000,000 = .00222, or just above 2/10 of one percent. This is a paltry amount, an insulting amount, really.

I'd like more specifics. For example, I'd like to know how much they spent in the entire state, broken down county by county, for each of the last 10 years.

We have also delivered hundreds of free, sturdy doghouses and straw in winter to dogs who have nothing or next to nothing to protect them from the elements—perhaps only a metal barrel or a tree during storms. We have gone to the rescue of dogs and cats who need veterinary care for which PETA has then paid the bills; and we have even built a whole cat shelter from the ground up in an area where cats were previously set free into the woods to breed.

And, exactly where in the annals of Animal Rights ideology can one find an ideological justification for killing or spaying and neutering animals simply because they might enter the woods to breed?

Don't those cats have rights? If humans have the right to enter the woods and breed, why don't cats? Or would PeTA kill humans, or spay and neuter them, or keep them caged and separate from one another, for no other reason than there is an inconveniently great number of them?

Of what use is the concept of Animal Rights, if not the protection of an animal's fundamental "rights" to live a life of unfettered freedom, to reproduce and to roam? Where, exactly, does the "Book of Animal Rights" give PeTA the authority — literally, the power over life and death — to withdraw those rights, and to encourage others to do so as well?

PETA has provided euthanasia services to various counties in that state to prevent animals from being shot with a .22 behind a shed or gassed in windowless metal boxes—both practices that were carried out until PETA volunteered to provide a painless death for the animals, free of charge.

This is a classic "red herring" — Appeal to Emotion fallacy.

The idea is to get you to agree with PeTA, but on emotion rather than reason. Being shot with a .22 is off-putting, as is being placed in a chamber that is dirty and/or that is without windows.

The fact that the animal hasn't a clue that she's facing death (even if you tell her!) and that death can occur instantaneously in the first instance and almost as quickly (Wow! 30 seconds of being in an unpleasant chamber before passing out!) in the second is irrelevant. From PeTA's point of view, it is morally acceptable to kill an animal with a lethal injection, but not from gunshot. Having a PeTA technician coo sweet nothings into the animal's ear, and administering death through an injection, makes all the difference!

PeTA has — either willfully or through stupidity — conflated æsthetics with ethics.

The animal is just as dead either way — through the firing of a .22 bullet into her head or by lethal injection — and that to purposefully kill an animal is an AR sin, any way you slice it.

If you believe animals have rights, how can you possibly find it morally acceptable to exterminate them?

We believe that euthanasia is a kindness for dogs and cats who are born into a world that doesn’t want them, has not cared for them, and ultimately has abandoned them to be disposed of.

Wow! For the full impact of this, you first need to appreciate that to a person believing in Animal Rights, a human life and an animal life are equally valuable — and that to discriminate on the basis of species differences ("speciesism") is as morally reprehensible as is racism. (Check here, and here.)

Now consider the "Euthanisia as kindness" meme, and it's rationale! PeTA's position is this: living creatures can be killed for no other reason than the animals entered a world where they aren't wanted and aren't cared for, and to do so is a kindness.

Well, since every life — animal and human — is equally valuable in the Animal Rights mind, and PeTA's willing to kill animals because they are unwanted, why would it not be morally justifiable to kill humans for similarly kind reasons?

If you choose not to kill humans, you're a "speciesist" by definition — you're according humans a right to life that you aren't willing to accord animals.

Their own ideology demands the same respect for the "rights" of animals that humans have.

They have justified the extermination of human "undesirables."

How ghastly is this?

We welcome discussion of this issue because the sad fact is that there are far too few good homes to go around—people patronize pet shops where dogs and cats can be bought on a credit card or seek out purebreds from breeders who are adding to the population overload; and too few people spay and neuter their animals or keep animals for a lifetime.

Although we have placed dogs and cats in homes—indeed, one dog from North Carolina lives in our office (click here to see some of the animals we’ve adopted out), dogs from North Carolina pounds often have conditions such as parvovirus or contagious mange. Many have lived their whole lives on a chain—in one recent case, a dog had a chain embedded deeply into his infected neck—and are not generally socialized or attractive to people, most of whom are looking for small, cute, housebroken puppies without medical problems.

Of course, these are the most vulnerable of animals, precisely the ones that one would believe are most deserving of PeTA's help.

Should humans and animals lose their rights simply because they have some contagious or incurable disease? If you are PeTA, what is the ideological justification for killing an animal who cannot be socialized because he is the victim of human abuse?

How can you help? In many ways: If anyone feels they can offer a home to any animal, please go to your shelters now, as there are many there who are waiting for you. Get two to keep each other company. You can also help by lobbying your city or other legislative body for spay/neuter legislation, getting the pet shop out of your local mall, making sure that your local shelters require spaying/neutering before adoption, and distributing our educational literature—or contacting us for other suggestions. You can make a difference, which is what we live to do.

As I've pointed out before, spaying and neutering is a violation of an animal's right to reproduction. It also makes the animals more compliant than their nature would otherwise dictate, and it deprives them of the pleasures of having sex and of bearing and rearing offspring.

Question for PeTA: are you as enthusiastic about forcibly sterilizing humans as you are about forcibly sterilizing animals?

PETA seeks to solve the animal overpopulation problem in North Carolina by subsidizing spay/neuter services, but we do not and will not hesitate to roll up our sleeves and do the dirty work at our own expense. Although it is hard to deal with for everyone, discussing euthanasia may make some people decide not to add to the dog and cat population explosion, to make an appointment to get their animals spayed or neutered, or to get involved with their local humane society or with PETA.

Folks, you can't have it both ways: you can't demand that animals be accorded "rights" even as you kill them and spay and neuter them.

Period.

Thanks to Tom P. for the tip.

Brian