People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

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Logo of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

PETA redirects here. For other uses, see Peta.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is an animal rights organization. Founded in 1980, its headquarters located in Norfolk, Virginia, a stated 850,000 members, and over 100 employees worldwide. Outside the United States, there are affiliated offices in the UK, India, Germany, Asia, and the Netherlands. There is also the peta2 Street Team for high-school- and college-age activists. Ingrid Newkirk is PETA's international president.

PETA's philosophy is "animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment." In support of that position, it focuses on such issues as: factory farming, ^(videos) 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. The organization aims to inform the public about their beliefs through advertisements, undercover investigations, animal rescue, and government lobbying. It also takes in animals, including strays and those given to PETA by their owners, finding homes for some and euthanizing the rest.

The organization has been criticized for some of its campaigns; for the actions of its employees regarding their treatment of animals; and for its support of activists associated with the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front.

History and philosophy

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PETA's president and co-founder Ingrid Newkirk holding a Rhode Island Red chicken.

One of the first events bringing PETA to public attention was the Silver Spring monkeys case in 1981. Alex Pacheco, one of PETA's founders, conducted an undercover investigation at a primate laboratory, documenting alleged evidence of abuse. The investigation resulted in the first-ever conviction of an animal experimenter, Dr. Edward Taub, on charges of animal abuse, although all convictions were overturned on appeal. It also became the first animal-testing case to be argued before the United States Supreme Court, which rejected PETA's application for custody of the monkeys. Ingrid Newkirk, PETA's president, sums up their animal testing beliefs with the statement, "Even if animal testing produced a cure for AIDS, we'd be against it."

Ingrid Newkirk has said: "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." The PETA website states: "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." [2]

PETA is known for its aggressive media campaigns, public demonstrations, and attacks on large corporations for their alleged mistreatment of animals, such as KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken), McDonald's, PETCO, Procter & Gamble, Covance, and Huntingdon Life Sciences.

Timeline

PETA describes among its accomplishments: [3] [4] [5]

1983

• successfully stopped a United States Department of Defense "wound lab" which had allegedly planned to fire missiles into dogs and goats.

1984

• released video footage shot at the University of Pennsylvania head-injury laboratory, showing the alleged treatment of primates there. The Secretary of Health and Human Services subsequently cut off all funding to the laboratory and the experiments were stopped.
• 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 alleged 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.

1987

• stopped a plan by Cedars-Sinai, California's largest hospital, to ship stray dogs from Mexico into California for experiments.
• launched the Compassion Campaign to fight cosmetics and personal-care product testing on animals. By 1989, PETA had persuaded nearly 500 companies to go "cruelty-free."

1988

• video shot inside East Carolina University and distributed by PETA showed an allegedly 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.
• the Caring Consumer Campaign succeeded in persuading Estée Lauder and 40 other companies to halt animal testing.

1991

• the Silver Spring monkeys case- U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rejects PETA's petition.

1992

• PETA calls attention to the details of U.S. foie gras production, documenting the gavage (force-feeding) of geese. Police subsequently conducted the first-ever raid in the United States, and possibly in the world, on a factory farm.
• 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.

1996

• In North America, opponents have sardonically formed a group also known as "PETA," except that the letters stand for "People Eating Tasty Animals". They registered the domain name "peta.org" in 1996; in 2000 they were forced by a judge to surrender the domain name to PETA. PETA was involved in legal action for several years in the 1990s to shut down the competing web site operated by this group.

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 allegedly 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 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. [6] [7]
• 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.

2004

• PETA released video of shechita (kosher slaughter) at the AgriProcessors slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa allegedly showing cattle appearing to survive for minutes after slaughter with their tracheae and esophagi dangling from their throats and some of them even standing up with their throats slit. [8] A subsequent USDA investigation found that AgriProcessors had "engaged in acts of inhumane slaughter" while the agency's inspectors were playing computer games and sleeping on the job.

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. [9] After nine hours of deliberation on March 15, 2006, a Fairfax County, Virginia jury found that Ringling Bros. did not harm or conspire against PETA, and the case was dismissed. [10]

2006

• PETA persuaded J. Crew and Ralph Lauren to not sell fur. They also persuaded Welch's to end animal testing.
• PETA supporters place the winning bid for an eBay auction that offered fans a chance to dine with singer Beyoncé Knowles. PETA members posing as "fans" confront the stunned singer about use of fur in her clothing line.
• PETA persuades Ocean Spray and Tahitan Noni to drop animal tests forever.
• PETA writes Merriam-Webster, asking them to change the definition of "circus" that they publish in their dictionary. "PETA’s proposal defines a circus as a 'spectacle that relies on captive animals' who are 'forced to perform tricks under the constant threat of punishment.' It also wants the definition to say that 'modern circuses include only willing human performers.'"

Campaigns

PETA Lettuce Ladies in Columbus, Ohio

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 has requested that KFC require that its suppliers adopt the welfare recommendations of KFC's own animal welfare committee, including stopping the breaking of birds' limbs and drowning conscious birds in tanks of scalding water [11]. PETA shot video footage at a slaughterhouse in Moorefield, West Virginia and posted the footage on PETA's website. KFC is PETA's 4th fast food target, for alleged animal cruelty, after campaigns against McDonald's, Burger King, and Wendy's.

Circuses

PETA regularly protests circuses that use animals. The Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Baily Circus is a frequent target of PETA's allegations of abuse. PETA asked a number of mayors to pass legislation banning items used to train elephants from cities the circus was due to visit. PETA specifically asked that "bullhooks, electric prods and other devices that PETA claims inflict pain on, or cause injury to, elephants" be banned, after the animal care director of the Carson & Barnes Circus, Tim Frisco, was filmed allegedly attacking elephants with bullhooks and electric prods. PETA's videotape of one of Frisco's training sessions allegedly shows him attacking elephants with steel-tipped bullhooks, shocking them with electric prods, and shouting "Make 'em scream!" The elephants are shown screaming and recoiling in pain, according to PETA. (video)

In response to PETA's request, Mayor Rod DesJardins of Munising, Michigan called the organization "radical extremists with a bizarre philosophy that considers the life of an insect equal to the life of a human being." [12]

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]

Lettuce Ladies

PETA's 'Lettuce Ladies' are women, some of them Playboy models, who appear publicly in bikinis made to look like lettuce leaves, and distribute information about the vegan diet. [14] There is a lesser-known male counterpart to the Lettuce Ladies, called the Broccoli Boys. [15]

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, New York, 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 burgers to local schools if the name was changed. The town declined.

Anti-fur campaigns

PETA has long-running advertising campaigns such as; "Here's the rest of your fur coat"[16], and "I'd Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur", in which activists appear partially nude to express their opposition to fur-wearing . This tactic has resulted in widespread media coverage . On 21 May 2006 they held a high-profile naked protest on St Peters Hill, near St Paul's Cathedral, in central London to continue their protest against the use of real bear fur in the Bearskins used by the Foot Guards.[17]

Youth Education

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Joaquin Phoenix on the cover of PETA's Grrr! Magazine

PETA runs a website geared towards children at Petakids.com with contests, online games, online videos, a free subscription to Grrr! Magazine, comics, and songs that are supportive of PETA's causes. The website also provides an E-News list that has seen an increase from 50,000 to 350,000 subscribers.

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

PETA2 dispatched supporters 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 disseminated information.

Animal Liberation Project

The most recent controversy generated by PETA is its "Are Animals the New Slaves?" campaign. [18] The campaign involves a tour of the United States and featured a display in which images of oppressed minorities, including black slaves, Indians, child laborers, and women, were juxtaposed with those of chained elephants and slaughtered cows [19]. The campaign was criticised by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [20], and PETA suspended the campaign [21], but decided to continue after discussions with the group. Comedian and social activist Dick Gregory stated in a paid PETA advertisment that when he sees animals in cages, "slavery" is the only word that comes to mind.

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 cannot 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.

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." [22]

The Anti-Defamation League strongly criticized the implication of moral equivalence between the killing of animals and the Holocaust. Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League criticised the campaign saying "the effort by Peta to compare the deliberate systematic murder of millions of Jews to the issue of animal rights is abhorrent... 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 a way to make sure such catastrophes never happen again,"

[23] Fred Zeidman, chair of the US Holocaust Memorial Council said of the campaign that PETA "has chosen to ignore common decency and to desecrate the memory of Holocaust victims, survivors and their families in its perverted effort to generate headlines."[24]id 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," thereby attempting to justify their implicit claim that animal abuse is the moral equivalent of human genocide. 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." [25]. 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" [26]. The use of this quote in this context was supported by Singer's grandson Stephen R. Dujack. [27] In May 2005, PETA apologized for the campaign while broadly defending the analogy.

Criticism of PETA

Campaigns aimed at children

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Image from the front cover of pamphlet

PETA was ordered by the UK's Advertising Standards Authority to discontinue claims it made about milk consumption in a campaign aimed at school children, concluding that the compaign "played on children's anxieties and were likely to cause some children undue fear and distress." The ad featured trading cards with statements such as "Sue's milk-drinking led to her battle with zits." Other cards claimed that dairy products cause obesity, belching and flatulence, and excessive nasal mucus build up. In response to the ruling, PETA modified the cards to address the Standards Authority's regulations.

Additionally, PETA has been criticized for distributing graphic pamphlets to children attending school plays. According to PETA's website, [28] the pamplets are geared toward making parents aware of how their actions affect their children. PETA states that pamphlets are never given to children under the age of 13. One pamphlet, addressing the wearing of fur, was titled "Your Mommy Kills Animals," [29] and featured an illustration of a mother figure slicing a knife into a rabbit's stomach. Another pamphlet was titled "Your Daddy Kills Animals!" [30] and showed an image of a father figure gutting a fish. The latter pamphlet declared that "Since your daddy is teaching you the wrong lessons about right and wrong, you should teach him fishing is killing. Until your daddy learns it's not fun to kill, keep your doggies and kitties away from him. He's so hooked on killing defenseless animals, they could be next." Activists say that kids experience much more graphic things than that at the age of 13. [31]

Euthanasia

In 1999, of the 2,103 companion animals PETA took into its shelters, new owners were found for 386, and the remaining 1,325 (63%) were euthanized. Of the animals not reclaimed by their owners in 2004, 86% (2,278) were killed. and 93% (1,946) in 2005.

PETA argues that many of the animals they take in are diseased, and are dying in pain.

Employees charged

In June 2005, police investigators staked out a garbage dumpster in Ahoskie, North Carolina after discovering that over one hundred dead animals had been left there over the course of a month. Police observed PETA employees Andrew Benjamin Cook and Adria Joy Hinkle approach the dumpster in a van registered to PETA and leave behind 18 dead animals. Thirteen more were found inside the van. The animals had been euthanized by PETA in shelters in Northampton and Bertie counties. PETA condemned the dumping as against their policy, and suspended Cook. Police charged Cook and Hinkle each with 31 felony counts of animal cruelty and eight misdemeanor counts of illegal disposal of dead animals.

Allegations of extremism

PETA has been accused of financially contributing to groups such as the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front, [32] (pdf) which have been classified as domestic terrorist threats by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. In response, PETA states that it has not helped to finance any illegal or violent activities, drawing a distinction between supporting the activists and supporting their actions. PETA says that it has donated money to ELF in order to support the creation and distribution of leaflets on the effects of meat consumption on the environment. [33]

Adrian R. Morrison 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. [34]

PETA was criticized in 2003 when Ingrid Newkirk sent a letter [35] to Yasser Arafat in response to a Jerusalem bombing attack, in which a donkey was loaded with explosives and blown up, [36] and also listed several other instances where animals were harmed during armed human conflicts. PETA was criticized for the letter for not asking Arafat to stop all violence, but only to refrain from using animals in the conflict. [37] [38] [39]

Unnecessary Fuss

PETA was criticized in 1984 over a 26-minute film it made, called Unnecessary Fuss, (video) which was based on several hours of footage stolen by the Animal Liberation Front from the University of Pennsylvania's Head Injury Clinic. The footage showed researchers inflict brain damage on non-human primates using a hydraulic device intended to simulate whiplash. An independent investigation by the Office for Protection from Research Risks (OPRR) confirmed that there had been "extraordinarly serious violations" of animal welfare legislation by the lab, which led to the closure of the lab, the firing of the university's head veterinarian, and a period of probation for the university.

PETA was nevertheless criticized by the OPRR for having edited the film in a misleading way. Twenty-five errors were identified in Newkirk's voiceover, including a scene where she described an accidental liquid spill over a conscious baboon as an acid spill, with no evidence to suggest it was anything but water. The film also gave the impression that several baboons were being brain damaged and, it appeared, abused, whereas subsequent examination of the 60 hours of original footage allegedly showed that only one baboon was featured in the 26-minute film, but that the scenes were constantly repeated.

List of well-known members and supporters of PETA

Well-known members and supporters of PETA

• Pamela Anderson [40]
• Christina Applegate [41]
• Bea Arthur [42]
• Simon Cowell [43]
• Des'ree [44]
• Ellen Degeneres [45]
• Sophie Ellis-Bextor [46]
• Edie Falco [47]
• Emmylou Harris [48][49]
• Andy Hurley [50]
• Tommy Lee [51]
• Loretta Lynn [52]
• Bill Maher [53]
• Sir Paul McCartney [54]
• Rue McClanahan [55]
• Nellie McKay [56]
• Sharon Osbourne [57]
• Dolly Parton [58]
• P!nk [59]
• Trent Reznor [60]
• Charlotte Ross [61]
• Steven Seagal [62]
• Amy Sedaris [63]
• Russell Simmons [64]
• Anna Nicole Smith [65]
• Charlize Theron [66]
• Betty White [67]
• Montel Williams [68]
• Carnie Wilson [69]

• Morrisey [70]

Multimedia releases to benefit PETA

• Animal Liberation (April 21, 1987) WaxTrax! (LP, CS, CD)
• Paul McCartney and Friends: The PETA Concert for Party Animals (2000) Image Entertainment (DVD)
• Tame Yourself (April 30, 2001) R.N.A./Rhino (CD)
• Liberation: Songs to Benefit PETA (2003) Fat Wreck Chords (CD)

Further reading

• Craft, Nikki. "PeTA: Where Only Women Are Treated Like Meat"
• Morrison, A.R. (2001). Personal Reflections on the “Animal-Rights” Phenomenon. In Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, vol 44:1, pp. 62-75. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Meet Your Meat a PETA-produced film about the treatment of animals in egg and meat industries.
• Penn and Teller episode
• PETA's main website
• AskCarla.com
• IAMSCruelty.com
• StopAnimalTest.com
• KFCCruelty.com
• VegetarianStarterKit.com
• "PETA's Appeal for Jewish Community Support 'The Height of Chutzpah'", Anti-Defamation League.
• "Does 'PETA' stand for People Excusing Terrorist Atrocities?", Jewish World Review.