Drudge links a press release which reconfirms some old news — the radical animal rights group PETA euthanizes thousands of animals:
According to public records from the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, PETA killed 2,124 pets last year and placed only seven in adoptive homes. Since 1998, a total of 21,339 dogs and cats have died at the hands of PETA workers.
Despite having a $32 million budget, PETA does not operate an adoption shelter. PETA employees make no discernible effort to find homes for the thousands of pets they kill every year. Last year, the Center for Consumer Freedom petitioned Virginia’s State Veterinarian to reclassify PETA as a slaughterhouse.
CCF Research Director David Martosko said: “PETA hasn’t slowed down its hypocritical killing machine one bit, but it keeps browbeating the rest of society with a phony ‘animal rights’ message. What about the rights of the thousands of dogs, cats, puppies, and kittens that die in PETA’s headquarters building?”
I see a problem in calling PETA “hypocritical,” though. The organization has long been on record as opposing all pet ownership, which it believes to be morally wrong. (PETA has a particularly bizarre obsession with pit bulls, and their goal for the breed has long been total extermination. Yes, PETA wants to kill Coco. In the name of “ethics.”)
Moreover, PETA’s official position on euthanasia is that it’s morally right:
As difficult as it may be for us to accept, euthanasia (when carried out by veterinarians or trained shelter professionals with a painless intravenous injection of sodium pentobarbital) is often the most compassionate and dignified way for unwanted animals to leave an uncaring world.
While I might be inclined to agree in the abstract, I think PETA defines “unwanted” as meaning unwanted by PETA for purposes of adoption. Logically, if they
a) oppose pet ownership;
b) have custody of the animals they believe it immoral to own;
c) believe in euthanasia;
then killing them becomes a moral duty.
Twisted by my standards (because I support pet ownership), but hardly an act of hypocrisy.
Comments
8 responses to “Yes, but is it hypocrisy?”
Note also the inbuilt assumption that the world is an awful place, and they’re doing the animals a favor by killing them.
Given how many shelters are adopting dogs and cats out on a daily basis, I’d say their belief in an “uncaring world” is misplaced.
Projection isn’t just a river in Egypt.
Wait… if they are opposed to pet ownership, wouldn’t that make ALL dogs and cats “unwanted?” (Except for stray cats and feral dogs, of course.) Surely they understand that this would mean the elimination of all dogs and cats, as they become public nuisances (or even outright dangers) when they are not pets.
Surely they understand that this would mean the elimination of all dogs and cats
Surely they do, which proves them to be liars when they say they care about pet animals. The same is true for food animals, if we did as PETA wants and all became vegetarians food animal species would most likely become extinct.
Wasn’t the extinction of dogs & cats a key part of the backstory to ‘Battle For The Planet Of The Apes’?
More importantly, why did I just admit to knowing the backstory to the entire Planet of the Apes saga?
PETA is a hate group. This is just evidence that their hatred is trans-species.
On point: Their position is hypocritical. They claim to be looking out for animal welfare, but instead they kill certain species. Here’s the test that will prove the diagnosis of rank hypocrisy: if minks are sables were killed by a “a painless intravenous injection of sodium pentobarbital,” could I wear their fur?
Perhaps so. That’s not what they do, though. They huck ’em into walk-in freezers, as noted in Penn & Teller’s Bull$h!t. They may not support domestic ferrets but they sure like to employ weasel words.
a) oppose pet ownership;
b) have custody of the animals they believe it immoral to own;
c) believe in euthanasia;
Now that’s good analysis.
I’ve been trying to figure out why they are so interested in killing dogs and cats and well, that explains it as plausibly as I have ever heard.
PETA, the Eugenics movement for pets.