According to the Commonwealth of Virgina, PETA’s “shelter” kills more than 90 percent of the pets it takes in. And those are pets “taken in for the purpose of adoption” according to the requirements of state reporting.

Unless you really do believe that it’s better to be a dead pet than a loved one.

As for livestock, well … welcome and read on. Many of us here believe that food animals should be treated with respect and compassion, and allowed to engage in normal behaviors before being given a quick, fear-free and painless death. Now you may not believe we should eat animals at all, and that’s fine, but I personally believe in the circle of life — we are all food for another being. Even if you are a vegan, living things are dying for your meals — birds and small mammals in the fields, etc.

To my mind, keeping animals for food is acceptable, but torturing them is not. I eat little meat — most of my meat is purchased for the dogs and cats here — but what I do buy is from sustainable, regional sources committed to humane treatment.

Balderdash! They rescue these animals so they won’t be subjected again to the horrors of “humanity.” Furthermore PETA do not conduct their business for a profit.

Additionally the world is well aware on how humans treat livestock. Without anaesthetic, tails are chopped off, as are testicles and backsides. Pigs and chickens have their teeth filed and their beaks burnt off. Then there’s the cow where a rouseabout enters its backend, replete with shears to hack out its ovaries. And you object to PETA’s objections? I know who the sickos are and it’s certainly not PETA! Sadists!

As for Ms Newkirk and PETA—they want a world with no domestic animals at all. Which means that they want all domestic species extinct. They kill essentially all of the animals they get their hands on. They advocate killing of more shelter animals, not fewer. They advocate killing feral cats, rather than TNR. They support breed bans and killing all pit bulls—including young puppies—seized in dog-fighting raids.

They actively collect pets from people, shelters, and veterinarians, promising to help the animals find new homes, and kill those animals.

Yeah, they don’t publicly say that they want to kill all our pets. They know that wouldn’t fly. But given what they do say, and do do, it’s asking me to take an awful lot on faith, to believe that there are any circumstances whatsoever in which it would be wise or safe to permit Ms. Newkirk or her co-conspirators unsupervised access to any animal anyone cares about. What if she decided to “free” my fifteen-year-old cat in early stage renal failure, who is seriously petrified of open doors that lead to Outside? She has no survival skills, she’s old, and she needs a special diet. Putting her outside would not be “freedom”; it would be a death sentence.

Or maybe Ms. Newkirk would simply have her killed by a vet, or a vet tech, or somebody who watched E-Vet Interns once, because being a loved and pampered pet is such a terrible fate.

What we do know she wouldn’t do, is find her a new home where she’d be loved and cared for.

As far as Ingrid/PETA, I just meant to point out that her quotes (if taken in their entirety) seem to always point to her dream of a world with no domesticated animals - not a world with no animals at all. I don’t have to agree with her (I don’t) but I also don’t see any reason to make her radical ideas even more radical by suggesting she wants all domestic animals killed.

I had assumed that the study which led to the show, and the show itself, was the result of the animal liberationists’ agenda, especially as it came from the UK.

The Peta bunnies are misguided and are following a religion, one which does not stand up to any kind of scrutiny. I suspect that the leaders of the organization are suffering from either massive guilt or some sort of missionary complex. Or maybe they are just stupid - always a possibility, often overlooked.

I’m not a hunter but where I live many hunt deer in the fall. I don’t have a problem with it. You have to see deer trying to barge into our bakery (it happened, Peter held her off with a tray) or running across the street through the Post Office parking lot to get to the fields which surround our village to understand that since the predators have been largely exterminated, failure to control the deer population to even the small extent that the hunting season allows would make it very difficult and dangerous to live here. While I would have no problem with the reintroduction of native predators, I’m sure most people would oppose the idea due to myths and stories about big, bad wolves - the ‘pit bulls’ of the natural canine world.

As for dogs, I’ve seen pariah dogs and followed a pack around for awhile in Trinidad. They are a sorry lot overall and that’s in the tropics. Dogs roaming free as pariahs around here would be open to starvation, disease, exposure, wanton cruelty and unhappy deaths through accident, predation and target practice.

The whole premise, that animals should not have any relationship with humans, is based on an unnatural and false ideology.

I used to admire Peta because they brought attention to issues that needed to be aired. That ended a long time ago, unfortunately, as I watched them descend into corruption and fanaticism.

Such a shame.

Cats—an interesting situation. The North African wild cat essentially is a domestic cat with a shorter intestinal tract. And they still spontaneously “domesticate” themselves, moving in to human habitations of their own volition.

Ingrid Newkirk opposes Trap-Neuter-Release for feral cats, and she opposes simply leaving them to fend for themselves. She advocates killing them. That’s not letting them return to a state of nature. That’s extermination.

There is no space, without eliminating large numbers of humans, for large numbers of horses, cattle, pigs, or sheep to “roam free” and revert to a state of nature. The mustang herds of the American west are subject to careful management in order to keep them around and yet not a problem.

Domestic cattle are not the same critters that still roam wild in some places. If they are eliminated from our farms and ranches, they will not “revert to nature”; they will die.

And so on through the species. What she claims to want, she must know to be impossible. And her solution for the animals that don’t fit her ideas of what is “natural” is to kill them.

That’s what happens to the animals unfortunate enough to fall into PETA’s clutches. They are killed. A 97% kill rate—the most indifferent, heartless Animal Control shelter in the country would blush to have a kill rate that high. PETA is not an organization run by people who care about what’s in animals’ best interests.

Oh, and your first point:
Lis said: “Uh, no. It’s more like if Christie had become outraged by someone trying to use her information to eliminate the entire pet food industry.”

That happened! And seriously, there are still PLENTY of people who have given up all faith in the pet food industry and would like to see it vanish …but not to starve pets to death…rather IN FAVOR OF going back to the days when everyone fed their pets real food.

No, Joy, choosing to home-cook for your own pets is not the same thing as attempting to eliminate the pet food industry and removing the ability for other people to make their own choices.

Jemima Harrison wants changes in the practices of purebred breeders and the kennel clubs, to increase the health and preserve the existence of our purebred dogs. PETA wants to eliminate domestic dogs. Ms. Harrison has every right and every reason to be absolutely furious at PETA attempting to exploit her work to advance their ends and making it appear that she endorses their extremist, anti-domestic-animal agenda.

That happened! And seriously, there are still PLENTY of people who have given up all faith in the pet food industry and would like to see it vanish …but not to starve pets to death…rather IN FAVOR OF going back to the days when everyone fed their pets real food.

“They’re about eliminating dogs, and cats, and horses and pigs and cows and any other domestic animals you can think of.”

Again, I’m pretty sure the idea doesn’t end with “to eliminate”. From everything I’ve ever heard/read from Ingrid, I’ve gathered that she wants to end domestication…not to cause mass extinction but IN FAVOR OF allowing domesticated animals to eventually revert back to the wild and live free.

Those are quite radical ideas all by themselves - even without the added insinuations. But I think it’s important we at least try to understand the WHOLE of an idea before reacting to it.

I know far too many regular-everyday (not PETA radicals) animal welfare/rights people who feel strongly that ALL breeding must end immediately. And I’m NOT a fan of that idea any more than I am of many of PETA’s ideas. But if I really think about it and listen to them, they’re usually just misguided or misunderstood. They are frustrated with the cruelty and greed and think that if the breeding stopped it would end “overpopulation” which in turn, would end the cruelty. In my opinion, that is wrongheaded and unsound thinking but to make the jump that those anti-breeding people are out there eying my purebred dog with a shotgun behind their backs….I just think that’s a bit much.

I’m a Dalmatian lover, but I’m also watching what’s going on with the addressing of the genetic stone issue. I’d love a well bred spotted puppy in my future, but depending on where the club goes, it will make a difference in my decision on registry and breeder (along with other things I’m looking for in a pup). That’s because of education and learning more about the breed and the breed club. And that info doesn’t come about through PETA efforts . . . I don’t have a problem with exposing issues, just how they are exposed and the “goal” of the ones exposing.

Honestly, what I’ve seen of PDE, I think it’s interesting and would be helpful in getting future dog owners going to breeders to ask the right questions. In the pet insurance thread here, I actually learned about an eye issue that effects some Dals that I had never heard of. It’s one more question I can ask a breeder about. I’m all for people learning this kind of info. I’m not for “all PB dogs are genetically sick” as a blanket statement and then just eliminating them :)