Back when I was young, PETA was the only animal rights organization there was. I donated birthday and Christmas money....I still appreciate all the information and resources they provided for free.
Unfortunately, PETA has gotten involved with some pretty shady things...mass euthanization of adoptable animals, support for breed specific legislation, etc.
PETA's position seems to be that since "owning" pets or other domesticated animals is wrong, then all those animals need to die. It seems to me they only care about animals in the abstract, not as individuals with rights and a will to live. For an organization that promotes animal rights, that seems pretty backwards to me.
Aside from these issues, PETA is in an amazing position, as arguably the most well known animal rights organization in the world, to lend its influence to various campaigns by other groups and individuals. For 2014, PETA's annual budget was $47,381,215. That's an awful lot of money. Now, PETA spends less than 1% of its annual budget on overhead, so that leaves plenty to do good with, right? PETA allocates $1 million per year to legal expenses alone. You would think that PETA would be supporting the heck out of efforts to end animal exploitation, right? But, wrong.
Back in the 90's, PETA knuckled under to legal and other pressures and rolled over because Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) seemed to be carrying a bigger stick.
For background see:
http://dbsst.org/case_histories/full_textSciences
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huntingdon_Life_Sciences
PETA could have fought back. PETA could have supported the activists trying to shut HLS down. But they didn't. Instead PETA continues to spend money on murder instead of on life.
Sunday, October 11, 2015
What's with PETA?
