People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
Encyclopedia
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is an American animal rights
organization based in Norfolk, Virginia, and led by Ingrid Newkirk
, its international president. A non-profit corporation with 300 employees and two million members and supporters, it claims to be the largest animal rights group in the world. Its slogan is "animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment."
Founded in March 1980 by Newkirk and fellow animal rights activist Alex Pacheco
, the organization first caught the public's attention in the summer of 1981 during what became known as the Silver Spring monkeys
case, a widely publicized dispute about experiments conducted on 17 macaque
monkeys inside the Institute of Behavioral Research in Silver Spring, Maryland. The case lasted ten years, involved the only police raid on an animal laboratory in the United States, triggered an amendment in 1985 to that country's Animal Welfare Act, and established PETA as an internationally known organization. Since then, in its campaigns and undercover investigations, it has focused on four core issues—opposition to factory farming
, fur farming
, animal testing
, and animals in entertainment—though it also campaigns against fishing, the killing of animals regarded as pests, the keeping of chained backyard dogs, cock fighting, dog fighting
, and bullfighting
.
The group has been the focus of criticism from inside and outside the animal rights movement. Newkirk and Pacheco are seen as the leading exporters of animal rights to the more traditional animal protection groups in the United States, but sections of the movement nevertheless say PETA is not radical enough—law professor Gary Francione calls them the new welfarists, arguing that their work with industries to achieve reform makes them an animal welfare
, not an animal rights, group. Newkirk told Salon in 2001 that PETA works toward the ideal, but tries in the meantime to provide carrot-and-stick incentives. There has also been criticism from feminists within the movement about the use of scantily clad women in PETA's anti-fur campaigns, and criticism in general that the group's media stunts trivialize animal rights. Newkirk's view is that PETA has a duty to be "press sluts".
Outside the movement, the confrontational nature of PETA's campaigns has caused concern, as has the estimated 85% of animals it euthanizes
. PETA was further criticized in 2005 by United States Senator Jim Inhofe
for having given grants several years earlier to Animal Liberation Front
(ALF) and Earth Liberation Front
(ELF) activists, two groups that the Federal Bureau of Investigation
has identified as agents of domestic terrorism. PETA responded that it has no involvement in ALF or ELF actions and does not support violence, though Newkirk has elsewhere made clear that she supports the removal of animals from laboratories and other facilities, including as a result of illegal direct action
.
In 1980, she divorced Steve Newkirk, whom she had married when she was 19, and the same year met Alex Pacheco, a political major at George Washington University. Pacheco had studied for the priesthood, then worked as a crew member of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society's first ship. He volunteered at the shelter where she worked, and they fell in love and began living together, though as Kathy Snow Guillermo writes they were very different—Newkirk was older and more practical, whereas Pacheco could barely look after himself. He introduced Newkirk to Peter Singer
's influential book, Animal Liberation
(1975), and in March 1980 she persuaded him to join her in forming People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, at that point just five people in a basement, as Newkirk described it. They were mostly students and members of the local vegetarian society, but the group included a friend of Pacheco's from the UK, Kim Stallwood, a British activist who went on to become the national organizer of the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection
. Pacheco was reluctant at first. "It just didn't sound great to me," he told The Los Angeles Times in 1992." I had been active in Europe ... and I thought there were just too many formalities. I thought we should just do things ourselves. But she made a convincing case that Washington needed a vehicle for animals because the current organizations were too conservative."
The group first came to public attention in 1981 during the Silver Spring monkeys case, a dispute about experiments conducted by researcher Edward Taub on 17 macaque monkeys inside the Institute of Behavioral Research in Silver Spring, Maryland. The case led to the first police raid in the United States on an animal laboratory, triggered an amendment in 1985 to the United States Animal Welfare Act, and became the first animal-testing case to be appealed to the United States Supreme Court, which upheld a Louisiana State Court ruling that denied PETA's request for custody of the monkeys.
Pacheco had taken a job in May 1981 inside a primate research laboratory at the Institute, intending to gain firsthand experience of working inside an animal laboratory. Taub had been cutting sensory ganglia
that supplied nerves to the monkeys' fingers, hands, arms, and legs—a process called "deafferentation"—so that the monkeys could not feel them; some of the monkeys had had their entire spinal columns deafferented. He then used restraint, electric shock, and withholding of food and water to force the monkeys to use the deafferented parts of their bodies. The research led in part to the discovery of neuroplasticity
and a new therapy for stroke victims called constraint-induced movement therapy
.
Pacheco visited the laboratory at night, taking photographs that showed the monkeys living in what the Institute for Laboratory Animal Research's ILAR Journal called filthy conditions. He passed his evidence to the police, who raided the lab and arrested Taub. Taub was convicted of six counts of animal cruelty, the first such conviction in the United States of an animal researcher, overturned on appeal. Norm Phelps writes that the case followed the highly publicized campaign of Henry Spira
in 1976 against experiments on cats being performed at the American Museum of Natural History
in New York, and Spira's subsequent campaign in April 1980 against the Draize test
. These and the Silver Springs monkey case jointly put animal rights on the agenda in the United States.
The ten-year battle for custody of the monkeys—described by The Washington Post as a vicious mud fight, during which both sides accused the other of lies and distortion— transformed PETA into a national, then international, movement. By February 1991, it claimed over 350,000 members, a paid staff of over 100, and an annual budget of over $7 million.
PETA writes that it is an animal rights organization, and as such it rejects speciesism
and the idea of animals as property, and opposes the use of animals in any form: as food, clothing, entertainment, or as research subjects. One oft-cited quote of Newkirk's is: "When it comes to feelings like hunger, pain, and thirst, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy." The group has been criticized by other animal rights advocates for its willingness to work with industries that use animals—a position many animal rights advocates find problematic (see below). Newkirk rejects the criticism, and has said of the group that it is here to hold the radical line.
PETA lobbies governments to impose fines where animal-welfare legislation has been violated, promotes a vegan diet, tries to reform the practices in factory farms and slaughterhouses, goes undercover into animal research laboratories, farms, and circuses, initiates media campaigns against particular companies or practices, helps to find sanctuaries for former circus and zoo animals, and initiates lawsuits against companies.
The group has two million members and supporters, it received donations of over $32 million for the year ending July 31, 2009, and its website was receiving four million hits a month as of November 2008. Over 80 percent of its operating budget was spent on its programs in 2008-2009, 15 percent on fundraising, and four percent on management and general operations. Thirty-two percent of its staff earned under $30,000, 24 percent over $40,000, and Newkirk just under $37,000.
Pacheco left the group in 1999 and since then, two key staff members next to Newkirk have been Tracy Reiman, Executive Vice President, and Dan Mathews
, Senior Vice-President of campaigns.
, Drew Barrymore
, Alec Baldwin
, John Gielgud
, Bill Maher
, Stella McCartney
, and Alicia Silverstone
have all appeared in PETA ads. Every week, Newkirk holds what The New Yorker calls a war council, with two dozen of her top strategists gathered round a square table in the PETA conference room, no suggestion considered too outrageous. PETA also gives a yearly prize, called the Proggy Award (for "progress"), to individuals or organizations dedicated to animal welfare or who distinguish themselves through their efforts within the area of animal welfare.
Many of the campaigns have focused on large corporations. Fast food companies such as KFC, Wendy's, and Burger King have been targeted. In the animal-testing industry, PETA's consumer boycotts have focused on Avon, Benetton, Bristol-Myers-Squibb, Chesebrough-Pond's, Dow Chemical, General Motors, and others. Their modus operandi includes buying shares in target companies such as McDonald's and Kraft Foods in order to exert influence. The campaigns have delivered results for PETA. McDonald's and Wendy's introduced vegetarian options after PETA targeted them; Petco stopped selling some exotic pets; and Polo Ralph Lauren said it would no longer use fur. Avon, Estee Lauder, Benetton, and Tonka Toy Co. all stopped testing products on animals, the Pentagon stopped shooting pigs and goats in wounds tests, and a slaughterhouse in Texas was closed down.
As part of its anti-fur action, PETA members have infiltrated hundreds of fashion shows in the U.S, Europe, and once in China, throwing red paint on the catwalks, and unfurling banners. Celebrities and supermodels have posed naked for the group's "I'd Rather Go Naked than Wear Fur" campaign—some men, but mostly women—triggering criticism from feminist animal rights advocates (see below). The New Yorker writes that PETA activists have crawled through the streets of Paris wearing leg-hold traps and thrown around money soaked in fake blood at the International Fur Fair. They regularly engage in pie-throwing—in January 2010, Canadian MP Gerry Byrne compared them to terrorists for throwing a tofu cream pie at Canada's fishery minister Gail Shea
in protest at the seal hunt, a comment Newkirk called a silly chest-beating exercise. "The thing is, we make them gawk," she told Satya magazine, "maybe like a traffic accident that you have to look at."
PETA has also objected to the practice of mulesing
(removing strips of wool-bearing skin from around the buttocks of a sheep). In October 2004, PETA launched a boycott against the Australian wool industry, leading some clothing retailers to ban products using Australian wool from their stores. In response, the Australian wool industry sued PETA, claiming among other things that mulesing prevents flystrike
, a very painful disease that can affect sheep. A settlement was reached, and PETA agreed to stop the boycott, while the wool industry agreed to seek alternatives to mulesing.
In 2011, Patricia de Leon
worked with PETA to reduce support for bullfighting among Hispanic people, and was photographed by Kike San Martín
for an anti-bullfighting campaign.
Some campaigns have been particularly controversial. Newkirk was criticized in 2003 for sending a letter to PLO leader Yasser Arafat
asking him to keep animals out of the conflict, after a donkey was blown up during an attack in Jerusalem. The group's 2003 "Holocaust on your Plate" exhibition—eight 60 square feet (5.6 m²) panels juxtaposing images of Holocaust victims with animal carcasses and animals being transported to slaughter—was criticized by the Anti-Defamation League
. In July 2010, the German Federal Constitutional Court ruled that PETA's campaign was not protected by free speech laws, and banned it within Germany as an offense against human dignity. In 2005, the NAACP
complained about the "Are Animals the New Slaves?" exhibit, which showed images of African-American slaves, Native Americans, child laborers, and women, alongside chained elephants and slaughtered cows.
PETA's "It's still going on" campaign features newspaper ads comparing widely-publicized murder-cannibalization cases to the deaths of animals in slaughterhouses. The campaign has attracted significant media attention, controversy and generated angry responses from the victims' family members. Ads were released in 1991 describing the deaths of the victims of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer
, in 2002 describing the deaths of the victims of serial killer Robert William Pickton
, and in 2008 describing the murder of Tim McLean
. In several cases, newspapers have refused to run the ads.
The group has also been criticized for aiming its message at young people. "Your Mommy Kills Animals" features a cartoon of a woman attacking a rabbit with a knife. To reduce milk consumption, it created the "Got Beer?" campaign, a parody of the dairy industry's series of Got Milk?
ads, which featured celebrities with milk "mustaches" on their upper lips. When the mayor of New York, Rudolf Giuliani, was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2000, PETA ran a photograph of him with a white mustache and the words "Got prostate cancer?" to illustrate their claim that dairy products contribute to cancer, an ad that caused an outcry in the United States. After PETA placed ads in school newspapers linking milk to acne, obesity, heart disease, cancer, and strokes, Mothers Against Drunk Driving
and college officials complained it encouraged underage drinking; the British Advertising Standards Authority asked that the ads be discontinued after complaints from interest groups such as The National Farmers' Unions.
In August 2011, it was announced that PETA will be launching a soft pornography website in the .xxx
domain. PETA spokesperson Lindsay Rajt told the Huffington Post, “We try to use absolutely every outlet to stick up for animals,” adding that “We are careful about what we do and wouldn’t use nudity or some of our flashier tactics if we didn't know they worked.” PETA also used nudity in its "Veggie Love" ad which it prepared for the Super Bowl
only to have it banned by the network. PETA's work has drawn the ire of some feminists who argue that the organization sacrifices women's rights to press its agenda. Lindsay Beyerstein criticized PETA saying “They're the ones drawing disturbing analogies between pornography, misogyny and animal cruelty."
PETA has also produced various Flash games
showcasing their campaigns, including parodies of Cooking Mama
, Super Mario Bros.
, and Super Meat Boy
. A game released in November 2011 features a skinned tanuki
chasing Mario
to reclaim its fur from him. This was widely criticized as "absurd and unresearched" by the gaming community, prompting PETA to claim that it was a tongue-in-cheek effort to draw attention to the real-life issue of tanuki being skinned alive.
Other campaigns are less confrontational and more humorous. In 2008, it launched the "Save the Sea Kittens" campaign to change the name of fish to "sea kittens" to give them a positive image, and it regularly asks towns to adopt a new name. It campaigned in 1996 for a new name for Fishkill, New York, and in April 2003 offered free veggie burgers to Hamburg, New York, if it would call itself Veggieburg.
Notable cases include the 26-minute film PETA produced in 1984, Unnecessary Fuss
, based on 60 hours of researchers' footage obtained by the ALF during a raid on the University of Pennsylvania's head injury clinic. The footage showed researchers laughing at baboons as they inflicted brain damage on them with a hydraulic device intended to simulate whiplash. Laboratory animal veterinarian Larry Carbone writes that the researchers openly discussed how one baboon was awake before the head injury, despite protocols being in place for anaesthesia. The ensuing publicity led to the suspension of funds from the university, the firing of its chief veterinarian, the closure of the lab, and a period of probation for the university.
In 1990, two PETA activists posed as employees of Carolina Biological
, where they took pictures and video inside the company, alleging that cats were being mistreated. Following the release of PETA's tapes, the USDA
conducted their own inspection and subsequently charged the company with seven violations of the Animal Welfare Act. Four years later, an administrative judge ruled that Carolina Biological had not committed any violations.
In 1990, Bobby Berosini
, a Las Vegas entertainer, lost his wildlife license, as well as (on appeal) a later lawsuit against PETA, after the group broadcast an undercover film of him slapping and punching orangutans in 1989. In 1997, a PETA investigation inside Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), a contract animal-testing company, produced film of staff in the UK beating dogs, and what appeared to be abuse of monkeys in the company's New Jersey facility. After the video footage aired on British television in 1999, a group of activists set up Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty
to close HLS down, a campaign that continues.
In 1999, a North Carolina grand jury handed down indictments against pig-farm workers on Belcross Farm in Camden County, the first indictments for animal cruelty on a factory farm in the United States, after a three-month PETA investigation produced film of the workers beating the animals. In 2004, PETA published the results of an eight-month undercover investigation in a West Virginia Pilgrim's Pride slaughterhouse that supplies chickens to KFC. The New York Times reported the investigation as showing workers stomping on live chickens, throwing dozens against a wall, tearing the head off a chicken to write graffiti, strangling one with a latex glove, and squeezing birds until they exploded. Yum Brands, owner of KFC, called the video appalling, and threatened to stop purchasing from Pilgrim's Pride if no changes were made; Pilgrim's Pride fired 11 employees, and introduced an anti-cruelty pledge for workers to sign.
In 2004 and 2005, PETA shot footage inside Covance
, an animal-testing company in the United States and Europe, that appeared to show monkeys being mistreated in the company's facility in Vienna, Virginia. According to The Washington Post, PETA said an employee of the group filmed primates there being choked, hit, and denied medical attention when badly injured. After PETA sent the video and a 253-page complaint to the United States Department of Agriculture, Covance was fined $8,720 for 16 citations, three of which involved lab monkeys; the other citations involved administrative issues and equipment. The company said none of the issues were pervasive or endemic, and that they had taken corrective action. In 2005 Covance initiated a lawsuit charging PETA with fraud, violation of employee contract, and conspiracy to harm the company's business, but did not proceed with it.
PETA also goes undercover into circuses. In 2006, they filmed trainers at Carson & Barnes Circus—including Tim Frisco, the animal-care director—striking elephants while shouting at them; The Washington Post writes that the video shows Frisco shouting "Make 'em scream!" A company spokesman dismissed PETA's concerns as 'Utopian philosophical ideology," but said the circus would no longer use electric prods.
, writing that no movement for social change has ever succeeded without what she calls the militarism component: "Thinkers may prepare revolutions," she wrote of the ALF in 2004, "but bandits must carry them out."
In 2004 The Observer described what it called a network of relationships between apparently unconnected animal rights groups on both sides of the Atlantic, writing that, with assets of $6.5 million, and with the PETA Foundation holding further assets of $15 million, PETA funds a number of activists and groups—some with links to militant groups, including the ALF, which the FBI has named as a domestic terrorist threat. American writer Don Liddick writes that PETA gave $1,500 to the Earth Liberation Front in 2001—Newkirk said the donation was a mistake, and that the money had been intended for public education about destruction of habitat, but Liddick writes that it went to the legal defense of Craig Rosebraugh
, an ELF spokesman. That same year, according to The Observer, PETA gave a $5,000 grant to American animal rights activist Josh Harper, an advocate of arson.
According to Liddick, PETA has substantial links with Native American ALF activist Rod Coronado
. He alleges that two Federal Express packages were sent to an address in Bethesda, Maryland, before and after a 1992 fire at Michigan State University that Coronado was convicted of setting, reportedly as part of "Operation Bite Back," a series of ALF attacks on American animal testing facilities in the 1990s. The first package was picked up by a PETA employee, Maria Blanton, and the second intercepted by the authorities, who identified the handwriting as Coronado's. Liddick writes that the package contained documents removed from the university and a videotape of one of the perpetrators. When they searched Blanton's home, police found some of the paraphernalia of animal liberation raids, including code names for Coronado and Alex Pacheco—PETA's co-founder—burglary tools, two-way radios, and fake identification. Liddick also writes that PETA gave Coronado $45,000 for his legal bills and another $25,000 to his father.
Newkirk is a strong supporter of direct action that removes animals from laboratories and other facilities—she told The Los Angeles Times in 1992 that when she hears of anyone walking into a lab and walking out with animals, her heart sings. In an interview for Wikinews in 2007, she said she had been asked by other animal protection groups to condemn illegal acts. "And I won't do it, because it were my animal I'd be happy." But she added that she does not support arson. "I would rather that these buildings weren't standing, and so I think at some level I understand. I just don't like the idea of that, but maybe that's wishy-washy of me, because I don't want those buildings standing if they hurt anyone ... Why would you preserve [a building] just so someone can make a profit by continuing to hurt and kill individuals who feel every bit as much as we do?"
that promote the selection of purebred breeds.
PETA argues that it would have been better for animals had the institution of breeding them as "pets" never emerged, that the desire to own and receive love from animals is selfish, and that their breeding, sale, and purchase can cause immeasurable suffering. They write that millions of dogs spend their lives chained outside in all weather conditions or locked up in chain-link pens and wire cages in puppy mills, and that even in good homes animals are often not well cared for. They would like to see the population of dogs and cats reduced through spaying and neutering, and for people never to purchase animals from pet shops or breeders, but to adopt them from shelters instead. PETA supports hearing dog
programs where animals are taken from shelters and placed in appropriate homes, but does not endorse seeing-eye-dog
programs because, according to one of their Vice Presidents, "the dogs are bred as if there are no equally intelligent dogs literally dying for homes in shelters." PETA also opposes the keeping of fish in aquarium tanks, suggesting that people view computer videos of fish instead.
and leukemia
, stray dogs, litters of parvo
-infected puppies, and backyard dogs, and says that it would be unrealistic to follow a no-kill policy in such instances. They offer free euthanasia services to counties that kill unwanted animals via gassing or shooting—they recommend the use of an intravenous injection of sodium pentobarbital
if administered by a trained professional, and for severely ill or dying pets when euthanasia at a veterinarian is unaffordable. They recommend euthanasia for certain breeds, such as pit bull terriers, and in certain situations for animals in shelters: for example, for those living for long periods in cramped cages.
Two PETA employees were acquitted in 2007 of animal cruelty after at least 80 euthanized animals were left in dumpsters in a shopping center in Ashoskie over the course of a month in 2005; the two employees were seen leaving behind 18 dead animals, and 13 more were found inside their van. The animals had been euthanized after being removed from shelters in Northampton and Bertie counties. The group said it began euthanizing animals in some rural North Carolina shelters after it found the shelters killing animals in ways PETA considered inhumane.
PETA is critical of television personalities they call self-professed wildlife warriors, arguing that while a conservationist message is getting across, some of the actions are harmful to animals, such as invading animals' homes, netting them, subjecting them to stressful environments, and wrestling with them—often involving young animals the group says should be with their mothers. In 2006 when Steve Irwin
died, PETA's vice-president Dan Mathews
said Irwin had made a career out of antagonizing frightened wild animals. Australian Member of Parliament Bruce Scott
said PETA should apologize to Irwin's family and the rest of Australia.
research and in vitro
cell research. PETA employees have themselves volunteered for human testing of vaccines; Scott Van Valkenburg, the group's Director of Major Gifts, said in 1999 that he had volunteered for human testing of HIV vaccines.
in 2005 to support animal rights programs and campaigns in Asia. Jason Baker, a former staff member of PETA who was involved in setting up PETA India and PETA Australia, is PETA Asia Pacific's first director. Its offices are in Hong Kong and Manila
. It works through public education, animal cruelty investigations, research, animal rescue, legislation, special events, celebrity involvement, and protest campaigns. Its campaigns cover countries including China
, Japan
, Malaysia, and South Korea
.
outlets to promote better treatment of chickens used by the company.
In February 1995, a parody
website calling itself "People Eating Tasty Animals" registered the domain name
"peta.org". PETA sued, claiming trademark
violation, and won the suit in 2001. While still engaged in legal proceedings over "peta.org", PETA themselves registered the domains "ringlingbrothers.com" and "voguemagazine.com", using the sites to accuse Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus and Vogue
of animal cruelty. PETA later surrendered the domains under threat of similar legal action over trademark infringement.
Robert Garner of the University of Leicester writes that Newkirk and Pacheco are the leading exporters of animal rights to the more moderate groups in the United States—both members of an animal rights elite that he argues has shaken up the animal rights movement, setting up new groups and radicalizing old ones.
There is criticism of PETA from both the conservative and radical ends of the movement. Michael Specter writes that it provides for groups such as the Humane Society of the United States
the same dynamic that Malcolm X
provided for Martin Luther King, or Andrea Dworkin
for Gloria Steinem
—someone radical to alienate the mainstream and make moderate voices more appealing. The failure to condemn the Animal Liberation Front triggers complaints from the conservatives, while the more radical activists say the group has lost touch with its grassroots, is soft on the idea of animal rights, and that it should stop the media stunts, the pie-throwing, and the targeting of women. "It's hard enough trying to get people to take animal rights seriously without PETA out there acting like a bunch of jerks," one activist told writer Norm Phelps.
The ads featuring barely clad or naked women have appalled feminist animal rights advocates. When Ronald Reagan
's daughter Patti Davis
posed naked for Playboy, donating half her $100,000 fee to PETA, the group issued a press release saying Davis "turns the other cheek in an eye-opening spread," then announced she had been photographed naked with Hugh Hefner
's dog for an anti-fur ad. In 1995, PETA formed a partnership with Playboy to promote human organ donation, with the caption "Some People Need You Inside Them" on a photograph of Hefner's wife. The long-standing campaign, "I'd rather go naked than wear fur," in which celebrities and supermodels strip for the camera, generated particular concern.
Newkirk has replied to the criticism that no one is being exploited, the women taking part are volunteers, and if sexual attraction advances the cause of animals, she is unapologetic. Asked by Wikinews how she feels when criticized from within the movement, she said: "Somebody has to push the envelope. If you say something that someone already agrees with, then what's the point, and so we make some more conservative animal protection organizations uncomfortable; they don't want to be associated with us because it will be embarrassing for them, and I understand that. Our own members write to us sometimes and say, 'Oh why did you do this? I don't want anyone to know I'm a PETA member.'"
Gary Francione, professor of law at Rutgers School of Law-Newark, argues that PETA is not an animal rights group—and further that there is no animal rights movement in the United States—because of their willigness to work with industries that use animals to achieve incremental change. This makes them an animal welfare group, in Francione's view: what he calls the new welfarists. A proponent of abolitionism
, Francione argues that PETA is trivializing the movement with what he calls the "Three Stooges" theory of animal rights, making the public think progress is underway when the changes are only cosmetic.
Like Francione, PETA describes itself as abolitionist. Newkirk told an animal rights conference in 2002 that PETA's goal remains animal liberation: "Reforms move a society very importantly from A to B, from B to C, from C to D. It's very hard to take a nation or a world that is built on seeing animals as nothing more than hamburgers, handbags, cheap burglar alarms, tools for research, and move them from A to Z ..."
Francione has also criticized PETA for having caused grassroots animal rights groups to close, groups that he argues were essential for the survival of the animal rights movement, which rejects the centrality of corporate animal charities. Francione writes that PETA initially set up independent chapters around the United States, but closed them in favor of a top-down, centralized organization, which not only consolidated decision-making power, but centralized donations too. Now, local animal rights donations go to PETA, rather than to a local group.
Animal rights
Animal rights, also known as animal liberation, is the idea that the most basic interests of non-human animals should be afforded the same consideration as the similar interests of human beings...
organization based in Norfolk, Virginia, and led by Ingrid Newkirk
Ingrid Newkirk
Ingrid Newkirk is a British-born animal rights activist and president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals , the world's largest animal rights organization...
, its international president. A non-profit corporation with 300 employees and two million members and supporters, it claims to be the largest animal rights group in the world. Its slogan is "animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment."
Founded in March 1980 by Newkirk and fellow animal rights activist Alex Pacheco
Alex Pacheco (activist)
Alexander Fernando Pacheco is an American animal rights activist. He is the co-founder and former chairman of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals...
, the organization first caught the public's attention in the summer of 1981 during what became known as the Silver Spring monkeys
Silver Spring monkeys
The Silver Spring monkeys were 17 wild-born macaque monkeys from the Philippines who lived inside the Institute of Behavioral Research in Silver Spring, Maryland...
case, a widely publicized dispute about experiments conducted on 17 macaque
Macaque
The macaques constitute a genus of Old World monkeys of the subfamily Cercopithecinae. - Description :Aside from humans , the macaques are the most widespread primate genus, ranging from Japan to Afghanistan and, in the case of the barbary macaque, to North Africa...
monkeys inside the Institute of Behavioral Research in Silver Spring, Maryland. The case lasted ten years, involved the only police raid on an animal laboratory in the United States, triggered an amendment in 1985 to that country's Animal Welfare Act, and established PETA as an internationally known organization. Since then, in its campaigns and undercover investigations, it has focused on four core issues—opposition to factory farming
Factory farming
Factory farming is a term referring to the process of raising livestock in confinement at high stocking density, where a farm operates as a factory — a practice typical in industrial farming by agribusinesses. The main products of this industry are meat, milk and eggs for human consumption...
, fur farming
Fur farming
Fur farming is the practice of breeding or raising certain types of animals for their fur.Fur used from wild caught animals is not farmed, and is instead known as 'free range fur' because the animals have lived their lives free and natural in the wild....
, animal testing
Animal testing
Animal testing, also known as animal experimentation, animal research, and in vivo testing, is the use of non-human animals in experiments. Worldwide it is estimated that the number of vertebrate animals—from zebrafish to non-human primates—ranges from the tens of millions to more than 100 million...
, and animals in entertainment—though it also campaigns against fishing, the killing of animals regarded as pests, the keeping of chained backyard dogs, cock fighting, dog fighting
Dog fighting
Dog fighting is a form of blood sport in which game dogs are made to fight, sometimes to the death. It is illegal in most developed countries. Dog fighting is used for entertainment and may also generate revenue from stud fees, admission fees and gambling....
, and bullfighting
Bullfighting
Bullfighting is a traditional spectacle of Spain, Portugal, southern France and some Latin American countries , in which one or more bulls are baited in a bullring for sport and entertainment...
.
The group has been the focus of criticism from inside and outside the animal rights movement. Newkirk and Pacheco are seen as the leading exporters of animal rights to the more traditional animal protection groups in the United States, but sections of the movement nevertheless say PETA is not radical enough—law professor Gary Francione calls them the new welfarists, arguing that their work with industries to achieve reform makes them an animal welfare
Animal welfare
Animal welfare is the physical and psychological well-being of animals.The term animal welfare can also mean human concern for animal welfare or a position in a debate on animal ethics and animal rights...
, not an animal rights, group. Newkirk told Salon in 2001 that PETA works toward the ideal, but tries in the meantime to provide carrot-and-stick incentives. There has also been criticism from feminists within the movement about the use of scantily clad women in PETA's anti-fur campaigns, and criticism in general that the group's media stunts trivialize animal rights. Newkirk's view is that PETA has a duty to be "press sluts".
Outside the movement, the confrontational nature of PETA's campaigns has caused concern, as has the estimated 85% of animals it euthanizes
Animal euthanasia
Animal euthanasia is the act of putting to death painlessly or allowing to die, as by withholding extreme medical measures, an animal suffering from an incurable, especially a painful, disease or condition. Euthanasia methods are designed to cause minimal pain and distress...
. PETA was further criticized in 2005 by United States Senator Jim Inhofe
Jim Inhofe
James Mountain "Jim" Inhofe is the senior Senator from Oklahoma and a member of the Republican Party. First elected to the Senate in 1994, he is the ranking member of the United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and was its chairman from 2003 to 2007. Inhofe served eight...
for having given grants several years earlier to Animal Liberation Front
Animal Liberation Front
The Animal Liberation Front is an international, underground leaderless resistance that engages in illegal direct action in pursuit of animal liberation...
(ALF) and Earth Liberation Front
Earth Liberation Front
The Earth Liberation Front , also known as "Elves" or "The Elves", is the collective name for autonomous individuals or covert cells who, according to the ELF Press Office, use "economic sabotage and guerrilla warfare to stop the exploitation and destruction of the environment".The ELF was founded...
(ELF) activists, two groups that the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
has identified as agents of domestic terrorism. PETA responded that it has no involvement in ALF or ELF actions and does not support violence, though Newkirk has elsewhere made clear that she supports the removal of animals from laboratories and other facilities, including as a result of illegal direct action
Direct action
Direct action is activity undertaken by individuals, groups, or governments to achieve political, economic, or social goals outside of normal social/political channels. This can include nonviolent and violent activities which target persons, groups, or property deemed offensive to the direct action...
.
Ingrid Newkirk
Newkirk was born in England in 1949 and raised in Hertfordshire, and later New Delhi, India, where her father—a navigational engineer—was stationed. Newkirk, now an atheist, was educated in a convent, the only British girl there. She moved to the United States as a teenager, first studying to become a stockbroker, but after taking some abandoned kittens to a shelter in 1969, and appalled by the conditions she found there, she chose a career in animal protection instead. She became an animal protection officer for Montgomery County, then the District of Columbia's first woman poundmaster. By 1976 she was head of the animal-disease-control division of D.C.'s Commission on Public Health, and in 1980 was among those named as Washingtonian of the Year. She told Michael Specter of The New Yorker that working for the shelters left her shocked at the way the animals were treated:I went to the front office all the time, and I would say, "John is kicking the dogs and putting them into freezers." Or I would say, "They are stepping on the animals, crushing them like grapes, and they don't care." In the end, I would go to work early, before anyone got there, and I would just kill the animals myself. Because I couldn't stand to let them go through that. I must have killed a thousand of them, sometimes dozens every day. Some of those people would take pleasure in making them suffer. Driving home every night, I would cry just thinking about it. And I just felt, to my bones, this cannot be right.
In 1980, she divorced Steve Newkirk, whom she had married when she was 19, and the same year met Alex Pacheco, a political major at George Washington University. Pacheco had studied for the priesthood, then worked as a crew member of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society's first ship. He volunteered at the shelter where she worked, and they fell in love and began living together, though as Kathy Snow Guillermo writes they were very different—Newkirk was older and more practical, whereas Pacheco could barely look after himself. He introduced Newkirk to Peter Singer
Peter Singer
Peter Albert David Singer is an Australian philosopher who is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne...
's influential book, Animal Liberation
Animal Liberation (book)
Animal Liberation is a book by Australian philosopher Peter Singer, published in 1975.The book is widely considered within the animal liberation movement to be the founding philosophical statement of its ideas...
(1975), and in March 1980 she persuaded him to join her in forming People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, at that point just five people in a basement, as Newkirk described it. They were mostly students and members of the local vegetarian society, but the group included a friend of Pacheco's from the UK, Kim Stallwood, a British activist who went on to become the national organizer of the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection
British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection
The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection is a British animal protection and advocacy group that campaigns for the abolition of all animal experiments...
. Pacheco was reluctant at first. "It just didn't sound great to me," he told The Los Angeles Times in 1992." I had been active in Europe ... and I thought there were just too many formalities. I thought we should just do things ourselves. But she made a convincing case that Washington needed a vehicle for animals because the current organizations were too conservative."
Silver Spring monkeys
Pacheco had taken a job in May 1981 inside a primate research laboratory at the Institute, intending to gain firsthand experience of working inside an animal laboratory. Taub had been cutting sensory ganglia
Dorsal root ganglion
In anatomy and neuroscience, a dorsal root ganglion is a nodule on a dorsal root that contains cell bodies of neurons in afferent spinal nerves.-Unique unipolar structure:...
that supplied nerves to the monkeys' fingers, hands, arms, and legs—a process called "deafferentation"—so that the monkeys could not feel them; some of the monkeys had had their entire spinal columns deafferented. He then used restraint, electric shock, and withholding of food and water to force the monkeys to use the deafferented parts of their bodies. The research led in part to the discovery of neuroplasticity
Neuroplasticity
Neuroplasticity is a non-specific neuroscience term referring to the ability of the brain and nervous system in all species to change structurally and functionally as a result of input from the environment. Plasticity occurs on a variety of levels, ranging from cellular changes involved in...
and a new therapy for stroke victims called constraint-induced movement therapy
Constraint-induced movement therapy
Constraint-induced movement therapy is a form of rehabilitation therapy that improves upper extremity function in stroke and other Central Nervous System damage victims by increasing the use of their affected upper limb....
.
Pacheco visited the laboratory at night, taking photographs that showed the monkeys living in what the Institute for Laboratory Animal Research's ILAR Journal called filthy conditions. He passed his evidence to the police, who raided the lab and arrested Taub. Taub was convicted of six counts of animal cruelty, the first such conviction in the United States of an animal researcher, overturned on appeal. Norm Phelps writes that the case followed the highly publicized campaign of Henry Spira
Henry Spira
Henry Spira is widely regarded as one of the most effective animal rights activists of the 20th century....
in 1976 against experiments on cats being performed at the American Museum of Natural History
American Museum of Natural History
The American Museum of Natural History , located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States, is one of the largest and most celebrated museums in the world...
in New York, and Spira's subsequent campaign in April 1980 against the Draize test
Draize test
The Draize Test is an acute toxicity test devised in 1944 by Food and Drug Administration toxicologists John H. Draize and Jacob M. Spines...
. These and the Silver Springs monkey case jointly put animal rights on the agenda in the United States.
The ten-year battle for custody of the monkeys—described by The Washington Post as a vicious mud fight, during which both sides accused the other of lies and distortion— transformed PETA into a national, then international, movement. By February 1991, it claimed over 350,000 members, a paid staff of over 100, and an annual budget of over $7 million.
Profile
Speciesism
Speciesism is the assigning of different values or rights to beings on the basis of their species membership. The term was created by British psychologist Richard D...
and the idea of animals as property, and opposes the use of animals in any form: as food, clothing, entertainment, or as research subjects. One oft-cited quote of Newkirk's is: "When it comes to feelings like hunger, pain, and thirst, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy." The group has been criticized by other animal rights advocates for its willingness to work with industries that use animals—a position many animal rights advocates find problematic (see below). Newkirk rejects the criticism, and has said of the group that it is here to hold the radical line.
PETA lobbies governments to impose fines where animal-welfare legislation has been violated, promotes a vegan diet, tries to reform the practices in factory farms and slaughterhouses, goes undercover into animal research laboratories, farms, and circuses, initiates media campaigns against particular companies or practices, helps to find sanctuaries for former circus and zoo animals, and initiates lawsuits against companies.
The group has two million members and supporters, it received donations of over $32 million for the year ending July 31, 2009, and its website was receiving four million hits a month as of November 2008. Over 80 percent of its operating budget was spent on its programs in 2008-2009, 15 percent on fundraising, and four percent on management and general operations. Thirty-two percent of its staff earned under $30,000, 24 percent over $40,000, and Newkirk just under $37,000.
Pacheco left the group in 1999 and since then, two key staff members next to Newkirk have been Tracy Reiman, Executive Vice President, and Dan Mathews
Dan Mathews
Dan Mathews is the Senior Vice President of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. He is known for heading PETA's most controversial and attention-getting campaigns, including the "I'd Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur" ads, as well as campaigns involving celebrities such as Morrissey, Pamela...
, Senior Vice-President of campaigns.
Campaigns and consumer boycotts
The organization is known for its aggressive media campaigns, combined with a solid base of celebrity support—Pamela AndersonPamela Anderson
Pamela Denise Anderson is a Canadian-American actress, model, producer, author, activist, and former showgirl, known for her roles on the television series Home Improvement, Baywatch, and V.I.P. She was chosen as a Playmate of the Month for Playboy magazine in February 1990...
, Drew Barrymore
Drew Barrymore
Drew Blyth Barrymore is an American actress, film director, screenwriter, producer and model. She is a member of the Barrymore family of American actors and granddaughter of John Barrymore. She first appeared in an advertisement when she was 11 months old. Barrymore made her film debut in Altered...
, Alec Baldwin
Alec Baldwin
Alexander Rae "Alec" Baldwin III is an American actor who has appeared on film, stage, and television.Baldwin first gained recognition through television for his work in the soap opera Knots Landing in the role of Joshua Rush. He was a cast member for two seasons before his character was killed off...
, John Gielgud
John Gielgud
Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937...
, Bill Maher
Bill Maher
William "Bill" Maher, Jr. is an American stand-up comedian, television host, political commentator, author and actor. Before his current role as the host of HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, Maher hosted a similar late-night talk show called Politically Incorrect originally on Comedy Central and...
, Stella McCartney
Stella McCartney
Stella Nina McCartney is an English fashion designer. She is the daughter of former Beatles member Sir Paul McCartney and the late photographer and animal rights activist, Linda McCartney.-Early life:...
, and Alicia Silverstone
Alicia Silverstone
Alicia Silverstone is an American actress, author, and former fashion model. She first came to widespread attention in music videos for Aerosmith, and is perhaps best known for her roles in Hollywood films such as Clueless and her portrayal of Batgirl in Batman & Robin .-Early life:Silverstone...
have all appeared in PETA ads. Every week, Newkirk holds what The New Yorker calls a war council, with two dozen of her top strategists gathered round a square table in the PETA conference room, no suggestion considered too outrageous. PETA also gives a yearly prize, called the Proggy Award (for "progress"), to individuals or organizations dedicated to animal welfare or who distinguish themselves through their efforts within the area of animal welfare.
Many of the campaigns have focused on large corporations. Fast food companies such as KFC, Wendy's, and Burger King have been targeted. In the animal-testing industry, PETA's consumer boycotts have focused on Avon, Benetton, Bristol-Myers-Squibb, Chesebrough-Pond's, Dow Chemical, General Motors, and others. Their modus operandi includes buying shares in target companies such as McDonald's and Kraft Foods in order to exert influence. The campaigns have delivered results for PETA. McDonald's and Wendy's introduced vegetarian options after PETA targeted them; Petco stopped selling some exotic pets; and Polo Ralph Lauren said it would no longer use fur. Avon, Estee Lauder, Benetton, and Tonka Toy Co. all stopped testing products on animals, the Pentagon stopped shooting pigs and goats in wounds tests, and a slaughterhouse in Texas was closed down.
As part of its anti-fur action, PETA members have infiltrated hundreds of fashion shows in the U.S, Europe, and once in China, throwing red paint on the catwalks, and unfurling banners. Celebrities and supermodels have posed naked for the group's "I'd Rather Go Naked than Wear Fur" campaign—some men, but mostly women—triggering criticism from feminist animal rights advocates (see below). The New Yorker writes that PETA activists have crawled through the streets of Paris wearing leg-hold traps and thrown around money soaked in fake blood at the International Fur Fair. They regularly engage in pie-throwing—in January 2010, Canadian MP Gerry Byrne compared them to terrorists for throwing a tofu cream pie at Canada's fishery minister Gail Shea
Gail Shea
Gail Shea, PC, MP is a Canadian politician, currently the Member of Parliament for Egmont. She was previously a member of the Legislative Assembly of Prince Edward Island from 2000 to 2007, representing the electoral district of Tignish-DeBlois as a member of the Progressive Conservative Party.As...
in protest at the seal hunt, a comment Newkirk called a silly chest-beating exercise. "The thing is, we make them gawk," she told Satya magazine, "maybe like a traffic accident that you have to look at."
PETA has also objected to the practice of mulesing
Mulesing
Mulesing is a skilled surgical task that involves the removal of strips of wool-bearing skin from around the breech of a sheep to prevent flystrike in regions where it is common....
(removing strips of wool-bearing skin from around the buttocks of a sheep). In October 2004, PETA launched a boycott against the Australian wool industry, leading some clothing retailers to ban products using Australian wool from their stores. In response, the Australian wool industry sued PETA, claiming among other things that mulesing prevents flystrike
Myiasis
Myiasis is a general term for infection by parasitic fly larvae feeding on the host's necrotic or living tissue. Colloquialisms for myiasis include flystrike, blowfly strike, and fly-blown. In Greek, "myia" means fly....
, a very painful disease that can affect sheep. A settlement was reached, and PETA agreed to stop the boycott, while the wool industry agreed to seek alternatives to mulesing.
In 2011, Patricia de Leon
Patricia de Leon (actress)
Patricia Michelle De León is an actress, model and television host. She started working as a model at a very early age. After being crowned Miss Panama , her career started blossoming, getting major breaks hosting Corte del Juez Franco on TV Azteca, and the Billboard Latino...
worked with PETA to reduce support for bullfighting among Hispanic people, and was photographed by Kike San Martín
Kike San Martín
Kike San Martín is a celebrity photographer. He has developed most of his photographic career in Miami, Florida, where he currently resides since 1995. He started his professional career in the early 90s in Argentina.-Professional career:Kike began his career studying marketing and advertising...
for an anti-bullfighting campaign.
Some campaigns have been particularly controversial. Newkirk was criticized in 2003 for sending a letter to PLO leader Yasser Arafat
Yasser Arafat
Mohammed Yasser Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini , popularly known as Yasser Arafat or by his kunya Abu Ammar , was a Palestinian leader and a Laureate of the Nobel Prize. He was Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization , President of the Palestinian National Authority...
asking him to keep animals out of the conflict, after a donkey was blown up during an attack in Jerusalem. The group's 2003 "Holocaust on your Plate" exhibition—eight 60 square feet (5.6 m²) panels juxtaposing images of Holocaust victims with animal carcasses and animals being transported to slaughter—was criticized by the Anti-Defamation League
Anti-Defamation League
The Anti-Defamation League is an international non-governmental organization based in the United States. Describing itself as "the nation's premier civil rights/human relations agency", the ADL states that it "fights anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry, defends democratic ideals and protects...
. In July 2010, the German Federal Constitutional Court ruled that PETA's campaign was not protected by free speech laws, and banned it within Germany as an offense against human dignity. In 2005, the NAACP
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, usually abbreviated as NAACP, is an African-American civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909. Its mission is "to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to...
complained about the "Are Animals the New Slaves?" exhibit, which showed images of African-American slaves, Native Americans, child laborers, and women, alongside chained elephants and slaughtered cows.
PETA's "It's still going on" campaign features newspaper ads comparing widely-publicized murder-cannibalization cases to the deaths of animals in slaughterhouses. The campaign has attracted significant media attention, controversy and generated angry responses from the victims' family members. Ads were released in 1991 describing the deaths of the victims of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer
Jeffrey Dahmer
Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer was an American serial killer and sex offender. Dahmer murdered 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991, with the majority of the murders occurring between 1987 and 1991. His murders involved rape, dismemberment, necrophilia and cannibalism...
, in 2002 describing the deaths of the victims of serial killer Robert William Pickton
Robert Pickton
Robert William "Willie" Pickton of Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada is a former pig farmer and serial killer convicted of the second-degree murders of six women. He is also charged in the deaths of an additional twenty women, many of them prostitutes and drug users from Vancouver's...
, and in 2008 describing the murder of Tim McLean
Murder of Tim McLean
The murder of Tim McLean occurred on the evening of July 30, 2008. McLean, a 22-year-old Canadian man, was stabbed, beheaded and cannibalized while riding a Greyhound Canada bus about west of Portage La Prairie, Manitoba traveling the Trans Canada Highway...
. In several cases, newspapers have refused to run the ads.
The group has also been criticized for aiming its message at young people. "Your Mommy Kills Animals" features a cartoon of a woman attacking a rabbit with a knife. To reduce milk consumption, it created the "Got Beer?" campaign, a parody of the dairy industry's series of Got Milk?
Got Milk?
Got Milk? is an American advertising campaign encouraging the consumption of cow's milk, which was created by the advertising agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners for the California Milk Processor Board in 1993 and later licensed for use by milk processors and dairy farmers. It has been running...
ads, which featured celebrities with milk "mustaches" on their upper lips. When the mayor of New York, Rudolf Giuliani, was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2000, PETA ran a photograph of him with a white mustache and the words "Got prostate cancer?" to illustrate their claim that dairy products contribute to cancer, an ad that caused an outcry in the United States. After PETA placed ads in school newspapers linking milk to acne, obesity, heart disease, cancer, and strokes, Mothers Against Drunk Driving
Mothers Against Drunk Driving
Mothers Against Drunk Driving is a non-profit organization in the United States that seeks to stop drunk driving, support those affected by drunk driving, prevent underage drinking, and overall push for stricter alcohol policy...
and college officials complained it encouraged underage drinking; the British Advertising Standards Authority asked that the ads be discontinued after complaints from interest groups such as The National Farmers' Unions.
In August 2011, it was announced that PETA will be launching a soft pornography website in the .xxx
.xxx
.xxx is a sponsored top-level domain intended as a voluntary option for pornographic sites on the Internet. The sponsoring organization is the International Foundation for Online Responsibility . The registry is operated by ICM Registry LLC. The ICANN Board voted to approve the sTLD on March 18,...
domain. PETA spokesperson Lindsay Rajt told the Huffington Post, “We try to use absolutely every outlet to stick up for animals,” adding that “We are careful about what we do and wouldn’t use nudity or some of our flashier tactics if we didn't know they worked.” PETA also used nudity in its "Veggie Love" ad which it prepared for the Super Bowl
Super Bowl
The Super Bowl is the championship game of the National Football League , the highest level of professional American football in the United States, culminating a season that begins in the late summer of the previous calendar year. The Super Bowl uses Roman numerals to identify each game, rather...
only to have it banned by the network. PETA's work has drawn the ire of some feminists who argue that the organization sacrifices women's rights to press its agenda. Lindsay Beyerstein criticized PETA saying “They're the ones drawing disturbing analogies between pornography, misogyny and animal cruelty."
PETA has also produced various Flash games
Browser game
A browser game is a computer game that is played over the Internet using a web browser. Browser games can be created and run using standard web technologies or browser plug-ins. Browser games include all video game genres and can be single-player or multiplayer...
showcasing their campaigns, including parodies of Cooking Mama
Cooking Mama
is a cookery simulation-styled minigame compilation video game for the Nintendo DS and iOS developed by Office Create and published by Taito, Majesco Entertainment, and 505 Games. It was awarded IGN's "Best Of E3" award for 2006 and was joined by a sequel for the DS, Cooking Mama 2: Dinner with...
, Super Mario Bros.
Super Mario Bros.
is a 1985 platform video game developed by Nintendo, published for the Nintendo Entertainment System as a sequel to the 1983 game Mario Bros. In Super Mario Bros., the player controls Mario as he travels through the Mushroom Kingdom in order to rescue Princess Toadstool from the antagonist...
, and Super Meat Boy
Super Meat Boy
Super Meat Boy is an independent video game designed by Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes and developed by Team Meat. It is the successor to McMillen and Jonathan McEntee's October 2008 flash game Meat Boy. Super Meat Boy was released on the Xbox 360 through Xbox Live Arcade in October 2010, on...
. A game released in November 2011 features a skinned tanuki
Tanuki
is the common Japanese name for the Japanese raccoon dog . They have been part of Japanese folklore since ancient times...
chasing Mario
Mario
is a fictional character in his video game series, created by Japanese video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. Serving as Nintendo's mascot and the main protagonist of the series, Mario has appeared in over 200 video games since his creation...
to reclaim its fur from him. This was widely criticized as "absurd and unresearched" by the gaming community, prompting PETA to claim that it was a tongue-in-cheek effort to draw attention to the real-life issue of tanuki being skinned alive.
Other campaigns are less confrontational and more humorous. In 2008, it launched the "Save the Sea Kittens" campaign to change the name of fish to "sea kittens" to give them a positive image, and it regularly asks towns to adopt a new name. It campaigned in 1996 for a new name for Fishkill, New York, and in April 2003 offered free veggie burgers to Hamburg, New York, if it would call itself Veggieburg.
Undercover investigations
PETA sends its staff undercover into research laboratories, factory farms, and circuses to document the treatment of animals, requiring them to spend many months as employees of the facility, making copies of documents and wearing hidden cameras. By 2007, it had conducted 75 such investigations. It has also produced videos based on material collected during ALF raids. Some investigations have led to lawsuits or government action against the companies or universities. PETA itself faced legal action in April 2007 after the owners of a chinchilla ranch in Michigan complained about an undercover inquiry there, but the judge ruled in PETA's favor that undercover investigations can be legitimate.Notable cases include the 26-minute film PETA produced in 1984, Unnecessary Fuss
Unnecessary Fuss
Unnecessary Fuss is a film produced by Ingrid Newkirk and Alex Pacheco of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals , showing footage shot inside the University of Pennsylvania's Head Injury Clinic in Philadelphia....
, based on 60 hours of researchers' footage obtained by the ALF during a raid on the University of Pennsylvania's head injury clinic. The footage showed researchers laughing at baboons as they inflicted brain damage on them with a hydraulic device intended to simulate whiplash. Laboratory animal veterinarian Larry Carbone writes that the researchers openly discussed how one baboon was awake before the head injury, despite protocols being in place for anaesthesia. The ensuing publicity led to the suspension of funds from the university, the firing of its chief veterinarian, the closure of the lab, and a period of probation for the university.
In 1990, two PETA activists posed as employees of Carolina Biological
Carolina Biological Supply Company
Carolina Biological Supply Company is a supplier of science and math education materials to teachers, college professors, home-school educators, and professionals in health and science-related fields in the United States.-History:...
, where they took pictures and video inside the company, alleging that cats were being mistreated. Following the release of PETA's tapes, the USDA
United States Department of Agriculture
The United States Department of Agriculture is the United States federal executive department responsible for developing and executing U.S. federal government policy on farming, agriculture, and food...
conducted their own inspection and subsequently charged the company with seven violations of the Animal Welfare Act. Four years later, an administrative judge ruled that Carolina Biological had not committed any violations.
Bobby Berosini
Bohumil Berousek, known professionally as Bobby Berosini is a Czech-born American entertainer best known for his long-running show involving live orangutans.Berosini emigrated from Czechoslovakia in 1964, and eventually made his way to Las Vegas...
, a Las Vegas entertainer, lost his wildlife license, as well as (on appeal) a later lawsuit against PETA, after the group broadcast an undercover film of him slapping and punching orangutans in 1989. In 1997, a PETA investigation inside Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), a contract animal-testing company, produced film of staff in the UK beating dogs, and what appeared to be abuse of monkeys in the company's New Jersey facility. After the video footage aired on British television in 1999, a group of activists set up Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty
Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty
Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty is an international animal rights campaign to close down Huntingdon Life Sciences , Europe's largest contract animal-testing laboratory. HLS tests medical and non-medical substances on around 75,000 animals every year, from rats to primates...
to close HLS down, a campaign that continues.
In 1999, a North Carolina grand jury handed down indictments against pig-farm workers on Belcross Farm in Camden County, the first indictments for animal cruelty on a factory farm in the United States, after a three-month PETA investigation produced film of the workers beating the animals. In 2004, PETA published the results of an eight-month undercover investigation in a West Virginia Pilgrim's Pride slaughterhouse that supplies chickens to KFC. The New York Times reported the investigation as showing workers stomping on live chickens, throwing dozens against a wall, tearing the head off a chicken to write graffiti, strangling one with a latex glove, and squeezing birds until they exploded. Yum Brands, owner of KFC, called the video appalling, and threatened to stop purchasing from Pilgrim's Pride if no changes were made; Pilgrim's Pride fired 11 employees, and introduced an anti-cruelty pledge for workers to sign.
Covance
Covance, Inc. , formerly Corning Incorporated, with headquarters in Princeton, New Jersey, USA, is a contract research organization , providing drug development and animal testing services...
, an animal-testing company in the United States and Europe, that appeared to show monkeys being mistreated in the company's facility in Vienna, Virginia. According to The Washington Post, PETA said an employee of the group filmed primates there being choked, hit, and denied medical attention when badly injured. After PETA sent the video and a 253-page complaint to the United States Department of Agriculture, Covance was fined $8,720 for 16 citations, three of which involved lab monkeys; the other citations involved administrative issues and equipment. The company said none of the issues were pervasive or endemic, and that they had taken corrective action. In 2005 Covance initiated a lawsuit charging PETA with fraud, violation of employee contract, and conspiracy to harm the company's business, but did not proceed with it.
PETA also goes undercover into circuses. In 2006, they filmed trainers at Carson & Barnes Circus—including Tim Frisco, the animal-care director—striking elephants while shouting at them; The Washington Post writes that the video shows Frisco shouting "Make 'em scream!" A company spokesman dismissed PETA's concerns as 'Utopian philosophical ideology," but said the circus would no longer use electric prods.
On direct action and the ALF
Newkirk is outspoken in her support of direct actionDirect action
Direct action is activity undertaken by individuals, groups, or governments to achieve political, economic, or social goals outside of normal social/political channels. This can include nonviolent and violent activities which target persons, groups, or property deemed offensive to the direct action...
, writing that no movement for social change has ever succeeded without what she calls the militarism component: "Thinkers may prepare revolutions," she wrote of the ALF in 2004, "but bandits must carry them out."
In 2004 The Observer described what it called a network of relationships between apparently unconnected animal rights groups on both sides of the Atlantic, writing that, with assets of $6.5 million, and with the PETA Foundation holding further assets of $15 million, PETA funds a number of activists and groups—some with links to militant groups, including the ALF, which the FBI has named as a domestic terrorist threat. American writer Don Liddick writes that PETA gave $1,500 to the Earth Liberation Front in 2001—Newkirk said the donation was a mistake, and that the money had been intended for public education about destruction of habitat, but Liddick writes that it went to the legal defense of Craig Rosebraugh
Craig Rosebraugh
Craig Rosebraugh is a writer, filmmaker and activist advocating for political and social justice, human rights, and environmental and animal protection.- Activism :...
, an ELF spokesman. That same year, according to The Observer, PETA gave a $5,000 grant to American animal rights activist Josh Harper, an advocate of arson.
According to Liddick, PETA has substantial links with Native American ALF activist Rod Coronado
Rod Coronado
Rodney Adam Coronado is a Native American eco-anarchist and animal rights activist. He is an advocate and former activist for the Animal Liberation Front and a spokesperson for the Earth Liberation Front...
. He alleges that two Federal Express packages were sent to an address in Bethesda, Maryland, before and after a 1992 fire at Michigan State University that Coronado was convicted of setting, reportedly as part of "Operation Bite Back," a series of ALF attacks on American animal testing facilities in the 1990s. The first package was picked up by a PETA employee, Maria Blanton, and the second intercepted by the authorities, who identified the handwriting as Coronado's. Liddick writes that the package contained documents removed from the university and a videotape of one of the perpetrators. When they searched Blanton's home, police found some of the paraphernalia of animal liberation raids, including code names for Coronado and Alex Pacheco—PETA's co-founder—burglary tools, two-way radios, and fake identification. Liddick also writes that PETA gave Coronado $45,000 for his legal bills and another $25,000 to his father.
Newkirk is a strong supporter of direct action that removes animals from laboratories and other facilities—she told The Los Angeles Times in 1992 that when she hears of anyone walking into a lab and walking out with animals, her heart sings. In an interview for Wikinews in 2007, she said she had been asked by other animal protection groups to condemn illegal acts. "And I won't do it, because it were my animal I'd be happy." But she added that she does not support arson. "I would rather that these buildings weren't standing, and so I think at some level I understand. I just don't like the idea of that, but maybe that's wishy-washy of me, because I don't want those buildings standing if they hurt anyone ... Why would you preserve [a building] just so someone can make a profit by continuing to hurt and kill individuals who feel every bit as much as we do?"
On neutering, backyard dogs, working animals, and pets
PETA runs several programs though its Community Animal Project that helps cats and dogs in poorer areas of Virginia, near its headquarters. In 2008 they neutered 7,485 cats, dogs, and rabbits in that area, including pit bulls and feral cats, at a discounted rate or free of charge. They help neglected dogs and cats who are ill and injured, and pursue cruelty cases. Each year they set up hundreds of dog houses with straw bedding for dogs chained outside all winter. They urge population control through neutering and adoption from shelters, and campaign against organizations such as the American Kennel ClubAmerican Kennel Club
The American Kennel Club is a registry of purebred dog pedigrees in the United States. Beyond maintaining its pedigree registry, this kennel club also promotes and sanctions events for purebred dogs, including the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, an annual event which predates the official...
that promote the selection of purebred breeds.
PETA argues that it would have been better for animals had the institution of breeding them as "pets" never emerged, that the desire to own and receive love from animals is selfish, and that their breeding, sale, and purchase can cause immeasurable suffering. They write that millions of dogs spend their lives chained outside in all weather conditions or locked up in chain-link pens and wire cages in puppy mills, and that even in good homes animals are often not well cared for. They would like to see the population of dogs and cats reduced through spaying and neutering, and for people never to purchase animals from pet shops or breeders, but to adopt them from shelters instead. PETA supports hearing dog
Hearing dog
A hearing dog is a specific type of assistance dog specifically selected and trained to assist people who are deaf or hearing impaired by alerting their handler to important sounds, such as doorbells, smoke alarms, ringing telephones, or alarm clocks...
programs where animals are taken from shelters and placed in appropriate homes, but does not endorse seeing-eye-dog
Guide dog
Guide dogs are assistance dogs trained to lead blind and visually impaired people around obstacles.Although the dogs can be trained to navigate various obstacles, they are partially color blind and are not capable of interpreting street signs...
programs because, according to one of their Vice Presidents, "the dogs are bred as if there are no equally intelligent dogs literally dying for homes in shelters." PETA also opposes the keeping of fish in aquarium tanks, suggesting that people view computer videos of fish instead.
On euthanasia
PETA opposes the no kill movement, and euthanizes an estimated 85% of the animals it takes in. The group takes in feral cat colonies with diseases such as feline AIDSFeline immunodeficiency virus
Feline immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that affects domesticated housecats worldwide and is the causative agent of feline AIDS. From 2.5% up to 4.4% of cats worldwide are infected with FIV...
and leukemia
Feline leukemia virus
Feline leukemia virus is a retrovirus that infects cats. FeLV can be transmitted between infected cats when the transfer of saliva or nasal secretions is involved. If not defeated by the animal’s immune system, the virus can be lethal...
, stray dogs, litters of parvo
Parvovirus
Parvovirus, often truncated to "parvo", is both the common name in English casually applied to all the viruses in the Parvoviridae taxonomic family, and also the taxonomic name of the Parvovirus genus within the Parvoviridae family...
-infected puppies, and backyard dogs, and says that it would be unrealistic to follow a no-kill policy in such instances. They offer free euthanasia services to counties that kill unwanted animals via gassing or shooting—they recommend the use of an intravenous injection of sodium pentobarbital
Pentobarbital
Pentobarbital is a short-acting barbiturate that was first synthesized in 1928. Pentobarbital is available as both a free acid and a sodium salt, the former of which is only slightly soluble in water and ethanol....
if administered by a trained professional, and for severely ill or dying pets when euthanasia at a veterinarian is unaffordable. They recommend euthanasia for certain breeds, such as pit bull terriers, and in certain situations for animals in shelters: for example, for those living for long periods in cramped cages.
Two PETA employees were acquitted in 2007 of animal cruelty after at least 80 euthanized animals were left in dumpsters in a shopping center in Ashoskie over the course of a month in 2005; the two employees were seen leaving behind 18 dead animals, and 13 more were found inside their van. The animals had been euthanized after being removed from shelters in Northampton and Bertie counties. The group said it began euthanizing animals in some rural North Carolina shelters after it found the shelters killing animals in ways PETA considered inhumane.
On wildlife conservation personalities
Steve Irwin
Stephen Robert "Steve" Irwin , nicknamed "The Crocodile Hunter", was an Australian television personality, wildlife expert, and conservationist. Irwin achieved worldwide fame from the television series The Crocodile Hunter, an internationally broadcast wildlife documentary series which he co-hosted...
died, PETA's vice-president Dan Mathews
Dan Mathews
Dan Mathews is the Senior Vice President of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. He is known for heading PETA's most controversial and attention-getting campaigns, including the "I'd Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur" ads, as well as campaigns involving celebrities such as Morrissey, Pamela...
said Irwin had made a career out of antagonizing frightened wild animals. Australian Member of Parliament Bruce Scott
Bruce Scott
Bruce Craig Scott , Australian politician, has been a National Party member of the Australian House of Representatives since March 1990, representing the Division of Maranoa, Queensland. He was born in Roma, Queensland, and was a wool and grain grower before entering politics...
said PETA should apologize to Irwin's family and the rest of Australia.
On animal testing
PETA opposes animal testing—whether toxicity testing, basic or applied research, or for education and training—on both moral and practical grounds. Newkirk told Vogue magazine in 1989 that even if it resulted in a cure for AIDS, PETA would oppose it. The group also believes that it is wasteful, unreliable, and irrelevant to human health, because artificially induced diseases in animals are not identical to human diseases. They say that animal experiments are frequently redundant and lack accountability, oversight, and regulation. They promote alternatives, including embryonic stem cellEmbryonic stem cell
Embryonic stem cells are pluripotent stem cells derived from the inner cell mass of the blastocyst, an early-stage embryo. Human embryos reach the blastocyst stage 4–5 days post fertilization, at which time they consist of 50–150 cells...
research and in vitro
In vitro
In vitro refers to studies in experimental biology that are conducted using components of an organism that have been isolated from their usual biological context in order to permit a more detailed or more convenient analysis than can be done with whole organisms. Colloquially, these experiments...
cell research. PETA employees have themselves volunteered for human testing of vaccines; Scott Van Valkenburg, the group's Director of Major Gifts, said in 1999 that he had volunteered for human testing of HIV vaccines.
PETA Asia-Pacific
PETA Asia-Pacific was founded by Ingrid Newkirk in Hong KongHong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
in 2005 to support animal rights programs and campaigns in Asia. Jason Baker, a former staff member of PETA who was involved in setting up PETA India and PETA Australia, is PETA Asia Pacific's first director. Its offices are in Hong Kong and Manila
Manila
Manila is the capital of the Philippines. It is one of the sixteen cities forming Metro Manila.Manila is located on the eastern shores of Manila Bay and is bordered by Navotas and Caloocan to the north, Quezon City to the northeast, San Juan and Mandaluyong to the east, Makati on the southeast,...
. It works through public education, animal cruelty investigations, research, animal rescue, legislation, special events, celebrity involvement, and protest campaigns. Its campaigns cover countries including China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, Malaysia, and South Korea
South Korea
The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...
.
Vegetarian/vegan/factory farming
PETA Asia-Pacific promotes vegetarian and vegan diets through three specific campaigns: education about the benefits of a vegetarian diet, demonstrations and celebrity involvement against fast food outlets, and undercover investigations of animals used for live transport and traditional religious slaughter. The organization has also used the PETA Lettuce Ladies in local demonstrations. PETA Asia-Pacific regularly demonstrates against KFCKFC
KFC, founded and also known as Kentucky Fried Chicken, is a chain of fast food restaurants based in Louisville, Kentucky, in the United States. KFC has been a brand and operating segment, termed a concept of Yum! Brands since 1997 when that company was spun off from PepsiCo as Tricon Global...
outlets to promote better treatment of chickens used by the company.
Anti-fur
PETA Asia-Pacific supports the PETA campaign "I'd Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur", in which celebrities appear nude to express their opposition to wearing fur. The group also stages anti-fur events to publicize their opposition to fur. PETA Asia-Pacific has been involved in several undercover investigations of fur farms in China.Animals used for entertainment
The group regularly protests the use of animals in entertainment, including circuses. These demonstrations are specific to the area, including anti-bull riding, not keeping wild animals in chains, and stopping human–animal wrestling matches.Other
PETA Asia Pacific also coordinates protests against other uses of animals which it believes are abusive, such as improving the treatment of rats, and it advocates for improvements for companion animals.Domain name disputes
In February 1995, a parody
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
website calling itself "People Eating Tasty Animals" registered the domain name
Domain name
A domain name is an identification string that defines a realm of administrative autonomy, authority, or control in the Internet. Domain names are formed by the rules and procedures of the Domain Name System ....
"peta.org". PETA sued, claiming trademark
Trademark
A trademark, trade mark, or trade-mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or...
violation, and won the suit in 2001. While still engaged in legal proceedings over "peta.org", PETA themselves registered the domains "ringlingbrothers.com" and "voguemagazine.com", using the sites to accuse Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus and Vogue
Vogue (magazine)
Vogue is a fashion and lifestyle magazine that is published monthly in 18 national and one regional edition by Condé Nast.-History:In 1892 Arthur Turnure founded Vogue as a weekly publication in the United States. When he died in 1909, Condé Montrose Nast picked up the magazine and slowly began...
of animal cruelty. PETA later surrendered the domains under threat of similar legal action over trademark infringement.
Position within the animal rights movement
There is criticism of PETA from both the conservative and radical ends of the movement. Michael Specter writes that it provides for groups such as the Humane Society of the United States
Humane Society of the United States
The Humane Society of the United States , based in Washington, D.C., is the largest animal advocacy organization in the world. In 2009, HSUS reported assets of over US$160 million....
the same dynamic that Malcolm X
Malcolm X
Malcolm X , born Malcolm Little and also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz , was an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of African Americans, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its...
provided for Martin Luther King, or Andrea Dworkin
Andrea Dworkin
Andrea Rita Dworkin was an American radical feminist and writer best known for her criticism of pornography, which she argued was linked to rape and other forms of violence against women....
for Gloria Steinem
Gloria Steinem
Gloria Marie Steinem is an American feminist, journalist, and social and political activist who became nationally recognized as a leader of, and media spokeswoman for, the women's liberation movement in the late 1960s and 1970s...
—someone radical to alienate the mainstream and make moderate voices more appealing. The failure to condemn the Animal Liberation Front triggers complaints from the conservatives, while the more radical activists say the group has lost touch with its grassroots, is soft on the idea of animal rights, and that it should stop the media stunts, the pie-throwing, and the targeting of women. "It's hard enough trying to get people to take animal rights seriously without PETA out there acting like a bunch of jerks," one activist told writer Norm Phelps.
The ads featuring barely clad or naked women have appalled feminist animal rights advocates. When Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
's daughter Patti Davis
Patti Davis
Patti Davis is an American actress and author. She is the daughter of former President of the United States Ronald Reagan and Reagan's second wife, First Lady Nancy Reagan...
posed naked for Playboy, donating half her $100,000 fee to PETA, the group issued a press release saying Davis "turns the other cheek in an eye-opening spread," then announced she had been photographed naked with Hugh Hefner
Hugh Hefner
Hugh Marston "Hef" Hefner is an American magazine publisher, founder and Chief Creative Officer of Playboy Enterprises.-Early life:...
's dog for an anti-fur ad. In 1995, PETA formed a partnership with Playboy to promote human organ donation, with the caption "Some People Need You Inside Them" on a photograph of Hefner's wife. The long-standing campaign, "I'd rather go naked than wear fur," in which celebrities and supermodels strip for the camera, generated particular concern.
Newkirk has replied to the criticism that no one is being exploited, the women taking part are volunteers, and if sexual attraction advances the cause of animals, she is unapologetic. Asked by Wikinews how she feels when criticized from within the movement, she said: "Somebody has to push the envelope. If you say something that someone already agrees with, then what's the point, and so we make some more conservative animal protection organizations uncomfortable; they don't want to be associated with us because it will be embarrassing for them, and I understand that. Our own members write to us sometimes and say, 'Oh why did you do this? I don't want anyone to know I'm a PETA member.'"
Gary Francione, professor of law at Rutgers School of Law-Newark, argues that PETA is not an animal rights group—and further that there is no animal rights movement in the United States—because of their willigness to work with industries that use animals to achieve incremental change. This makes them an animal welfare group, in Francione's view: what he calls the new welfarists. A proponent of abolitionism
Abolitionism (animal rights)
Abolitionism within the animal rights movement is the idea that focusing on animal welfare reform not only fails to challenge animal suffering, but may prolong it by making the exercise of property rights over animals appear acceptable. The abolitionists' objective is to secure a moral and legal...
, Francione argues that PETA is trivializing the movement with what he calls the "Three Stooges" theory of animal rights, making the public think progress is underway when the changes are only cosmetic.
Like Francione, PETA describes itself as abolitionist. Newkirk told an animal rights conference in 2002 that PETA's goal remains animal liberation: "Reforms move a society very importantly from A to B, from B to C, from C to D. It's very hard to take a nation or a world that is built on seeing animals as nothing more than hamburgers, handbags, cheap burglar alarms, tools for research, and move them from A to Z ..."
Francione has also criticized PETA for having caused grassroots animal rights groups to close, groups that he argues were essential for the survival of the animal rights movement, which rejects the centrality of corporate animal charities. Francione writes that PETA initially set up independent chapters around the United States, but closed them in favor of a top-down, centralized organization, which not only consolidated decision-making power, but centralized donations too. Now, local animal rights donations go to PETA, rather than to a local group.
See also
- Kentucky Fried CrueltyKentucky Fried CrueltyKentucky Fried Cruelty is a People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals campaign that began in 2001, seeking to change KFC's treatment of chickens raised for its restaurants. Since then, PETA says it has protested more than 12,000 times against KFC...
- Women and animal advocacyWomen and animal advocacySeveral writers have argued that the animal advocacy movement — embracing animal rights, animal welfare, and anti-vivisectionism — has been disproportionately initiated and led by women....
- Your Mommy Kills Animals (film)Your Mommy Kills Animals (film)Your Mommy Kills Animals is an American 2007 documentary film written and directed by Curt Johnson. Filmed in several locations across the United States, the film is about the animal liberation movement and takes its name from a 2003 PETA comic book of the same name...
Further reading
- PETA homepage, accessed July 2, 2010.
- McCartney, Stella. "Fur farm investigation", PETAtv.com, accessed July 2, 2010.
- Morrison, A.R. Personal Reflections on the “Animal-Rights” Phenomenon, The Physiologist, Volume 44, Number 1, February 2001, accessed July 17, 2010.
- Pence, Gregory. Classic Cases in Medical Ethics: Accounts of Cases That Have Shaped Medical Ethics. McGraw-Hill, 2007.
- PETA. Meet Your Meat, a film about the egg and meat industries, narrated by Alec BaldwinAlec BaldwinAlexander Rae "Alec" Baldwin III is an American actor who has appeared on film, stage, and television.Baldwin first gained recognition through television for his work in the soap opera Knots Landing in the role of Joshua Rush. He was a cast member for two seasons before his character was killed off...
, accessed July 2, 2010. - The Huffington Post. The Sexiest PETA Ads Of All Time! a slideshow, accessed July 2, 2010.
- Workman, Dave P. Peta Files: The Dark Side of the Animal Rights Movement, Merril Press, 2003.