If you can’t shoot the message, shoot the messenger.
PETA wants to discredit me. To PETA, I am a threat. Why?
Because I eat meat? No, that can’t be it. I’m an ethical vegan of 20 years living with a vegan wife, two vegan kids, and vegan dogs. I even have a vegan cookbook due out next year.
Because I experiment on animals? No, that can’t be it either. As an intern in law school, I worked with the Animal Legal Defense Fund on two lawsuits against the U.S. Department of Agriculture to enforce Animal Welfare Act standards. I even publicized violations of the Animal Welfare Act by Stanford University’s animal research lab while I was a student there which led to a federal investigation by both the National Institutes of Health and USDA-Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.
Because I think dogs and cats should be killed? No, that can’t be it. I’m a committed No Kill advocate. I created the nation’s first No Kill community. I am the director of an organization dedicated to ending the systematic killing of animals in shelters. And I’ve worked with communities nationwide to reduce rates of shelter killing.
According to Alicia Silverstone, the actress and PETA spokesperson, Ingrid Newkirk says I want to destroy the animal rights movement. Can that be it? No, I believe animals have a right to live. I have even called for animal rights activists and No Kill advocates to come together on the issue of companion animals.
Could it be that I am a threat precisely because of all of those things? Because I take issue with PETA’s slaughter and cannot be superficially dismissed as part of some group which just wants to exploit animals? That my positions reveal the hypocrisy of PETA’s kill-oriented policies? Because through my association with the No Kill movement, I am helping–along with many others–to strip PETA of the excuses they use to justify their nefarious actions against over 2,000 innocent animals every year? Because I am helping to prove that the anti-No Kill, pro-killing positions PETA advances are regressive, ethically bankrupt, and cruel?
They have threatened to sue me. They’ve taken out ads against me. They’ve written letters to the editor of newspapers lying about me. And they’ve come to the defense of regressive shelters against my reform efforts. But PETA’s latest salvo against me really takes the cake* : “Dog Breeders love Nathan.” That is what PETA recently posted on an internet list-serve devoted to animal rights which was debating the No Kill philosophy in order to undermine my credibility and to champion its policy which favors killing.
Dog breeders love Nathan. Wow—a non-sequitur. I:am:..speechless. And that little gem is supposed to discredit the No Kill philosophy? And that is supposed to absolve the Butcher of Norfolk of her wanton disregard for the value of animal life? And PETA’s lackeys are that gullible that they will accept that claim as a reason to continue supporting the PETA death squads?
Well then, here are mine in return:
Dog killers love PETA. So long as the dog killers call themselves “animal control,” “humane society,” or “SPCA.” Nationwide, animal control directors who would rather kill dogs then save them using readily available lifesaving alternatives and who are under scrutiny from No Kill advocates working to reform their shelters can count on PETA to come to their defense. It seems the worse the shelter, the more PETA rallies, as it did in King County, WA even after it was found that animals were not being fed, were allowed to suffer with untreated injuries and illness, and were neglected and even abused by the staff who was supposed to be their protectors.
Cat killers love PETA. Not only do shelter directors who kill cats despite readily available lifesaving alternatives love PETA for the same reason as those who needlessly kill dogs do, but those who want all feral cats rounded up and killed do too. In fact, Georgetown University cited PETA when it embraced an extermination campaign after I lobbied for them to follow the example of Stanford University, my alma mater, and set up a campus TNR program. In fact, unweaned kittens were found left to starve after the PETA-endorsed campaign rounded up their feral mothers to kill.
Vivisectors love PETA. While PETA claims to be against animal research, they championed a Pit Bull ban in Ontario, even though Ontario allows pound seizure. After 72 hours in a municipal pound, dogs are sold to any researcher from a registered research facility for $6. Its bad enough that PETA endorsed a Pit Bull ban in Ontario that causes people to surrender their animal companions under the threat of arrest. But now these family pets are being sold to laboratories for animal experimentation.
Who else loves PETA?
Vortech Pharmaceuticals, the makers of Fatal-Plus (the drug used to kill animals in shelters), loves PETA. PETA’s own use and PETA’s advocacy for increased use, despite readily available lifesaving alternatives, is increasing Vortech profits.
Pet Cremation Services of Tidewater loves PETA. PETA pays them to pick up the dead bodies of the animals they kill. And since they get paid by weight, and some estimates say that PETA delivers up to 30 tons of dead animals annually, that amounts to tens of thousands of dollars in profits thanks to PETA’s killing rampage.
The company PETA paid $9,370 of its members donations in order for them to install a large walk-in freezer to store all the bodies of dead animals PETA kills at its headquarters loves PETA.
People who want to scapegoat and kill all Pit Bulls love PETA. When anti-Pit Bull advocates introduced legislation in Indianapolis to make it easier to kill Pit Bulls, PETA urged them to go further and ban them outright. Just kill them all!
PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk loves PETA. PETA provides political cover for her dark impulses to seek out innocent animals to kill.
Hypocrites love PETA. PETA has long argued that feral cats are better dead than fed and has blasted people who feed feral animals, including cats. But do those rules apply to Ingrid Newkirk?
In the book, Pigeons: The fascinating Saga of the World’s Most Revered and Reviled Bird, the author tells people not to feed feral pigeons because it inflates their numbers, increases dependence on humans, and increases human-pigeon conflicts which lead to lethal campaigns against them. If you overfeed pigeons, he concludes, you are giving fodder to anti-Pigeon forces seeking to eradicate them. I am not sure I buy into that. I am an advocate for feeding feral cats. Why are pigeons different? Maybe they are. I’ve never seen a skinny Pigeon. I just don’t know enough about it to make the call. But PETA agrees. They’ll tell you not to feed them. They’ll tell you it’s wrong. They’ll agree that if you care about them, you should leave them alone. That is what they’ll tell you. But that is not what Ingrid Newkirk does herself. Here’s a tidbit from Pigeons on p. 239:
Ingrid Newkirk, founder of PETA. No matter how much she is educated about overfeeding the pigeons on her office balcony in Norfolk, Virginia, she apparently can’t quit the habit.
No surprise there. This comes from a woman who says she believes in animal rights and then demands the right to kill them. Apparently, there are rules for everyone else and then there are different rules for Newkirk. As head of the nation’s largest so-called “animal rights” organization, she’ll tell you that animals have intrinsic value independent of their relationship to humans and they should be treated with respect and compassion, but then she turns around and claims animals do not have a right to live. Her group kills over 2,000 every year. She champions policies, like Pit Bull bans, to kill even more of them. And she attacks those working to save animals who disagree with her.
It would be ludicrous, if it wasn’t so disturbing.
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* Cake: flour, organic sugar, soy milk, egg replacer, baking powder, vanilla flavor, sea salt. Frosting: Organic powdered sugar, margarine, cocoa powder, water, vanilla powder, sea salt. Walla! Vegan cake.