PETA has once again shown its true colors, this time aligning itself with a hunting organization in order to promote the round up and killing of community cats. As New York State legislators this week were debating whether to provide funding for sterilizing “feral” cats in lieu of killing, two groups came out in opposition: the New York Sportsmen’s Advisory Council and PETA. One wants to hunt down and kill animals and PETA, well, they also want to hunt down and kill animals. The only difference is one shoots; the other injects with poison.
Since its inception, PETA has advocated for the round up and killing of homeless cats. In 1995, for example, over the objections of cat lovers pushing for a sterilization program, the Mayor of Miami Beach pushed a plan to trap and kill cats. PETA sent a letter to the Mayor applauding his decision. The Mayor, however, had also decided that kittens would be turned over to a rescue group for socialization and adoption. But PETA took issue with this part of the plan, arguing that all the cats, including the kittens, should be taken to animal control and “euthanized by sodium pentobarbital injection.”
More recently, the Pima County, AZ, Board of Supervisors were voting last year on whether or not to reduce the killing of “feral” cats by implementing TNR at the shelter. As the local news reported, “Saving thousands of cats from being euthanized every year sounds like a good idea, but a well-known animal rights group is completely against it.” PETA told legislators that the cats were better dead then fed and urged them to continue rounding up and killing them.
When they are not advocating that community cats should be killed, they are killing them themselves. In 2014, PETA took in 1,605 cats at its Virginia headquarters and killed 1,536 (a kill rate of 96%). They transferred another 43 to kill shelters where they were either killed or displaced others who were killed. That would put the cat kill rate as high as 98%. They found homes for only 16, an adoption rate of 1%.
Thankfully, New York legislators ignored PETA. They voted 188 to 11 to pass the bill and send it to the Governor. Pima Supervisors also ignored PETA, embracing sterilization in lieu of killing. As to PETA killing animals themselves? Virginia lawmakers voted 130 to 3 (over PETA’s objections) to require private shelters, which PETA claims to be, to work to find homes for cats.
Please note: I do not criticize PETA because of what they are thought to stand for (animal rights), but because of what they actually do stand for (animal killing). I criticize them because they “do not advocate right to life for animals” (as Ingrid Newkirk herself has written), because they kill over 90% of the animals they take in, including healthy puppies and kittens, and because they also advocate that they be killed by others.
In the early 1990s, I was living in Wheaton, Maryland, a stone’s throw from PETA headquarters, before they relocated to Norfolk, Virginia. Because I love animals, am vegan, and did not want to see them killed, exploited, or abused, I became a PETA volunteer. And then one day, my roommate, a former PETA employee, found a dog in need of a home. We called him Ray. I asked her why we didn’t just take Ray to PETA. Surely, PETA, with its millions of dollars and millions of animal loving members, would find him a home. But she said no, that was a very bad idea, because PETA would just kill him. That is when I did what anyone who truly loves animals would have done, I walked away from them. It is what another PETA intern also did when he saw puppies and kittens in the kill room. He quit in disgust.
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