People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is an international non-profit organization dedicated to animal rights. It was founded in 1980, and its current president is Ingrid Newkirk. With more than 750,000 members, PETA is the largest animal rights organization in the world.
Most recently (in 2003), PETA has received media attention for its boycott of Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC).
PETA is well known for aggressive media campaigns and public demonstrations for animal rights. Reception of the group's actions is sharply polarized.
PETA is also famous for its attacks on large corporations for their mistreatment of animals. PetCo and Procter & Gamble are examples of companies which PETA claims are exploiting animals for profit. According to PETA, PetCo confines animals in filthy enclosures, where they are commonly left to die, and P&G tests its many products unnecessarily on animals.
PETA supporters say that the organization has been able to protect the lives of many animals, including closing the largest horse slaughterhouse in the nation and stopping the use of cats and dogs in wound laboratories. They believe the group's often radical actions to be justified to combat what they see as avoidable cruelty. They also claim that critics fail to address their fundamental belief that animals deserve some kind of moral consideration.
While most critics of PETA would probably not indentify as animal rights supporters many vegans, vegetarians, and other animals rights supporters object, if not to PETA's goals and successes, at least to many of their messages and tactics. For example, Feminists for Animal Rights (FAR) have published articles critisizing PETA for its sexism and exploitation of women.
Some critics claim that PETA is deceptive and uses immoral means to achieve its ends. Adrian R. Morrison of the University of Pennsylvania, for example, claims that the group has "cleverly edited" 60 hours of video tape stolen from his laboratory by the Animal Liberation Front into a damning 30-minute segment, that it cooperated with radical groups, and that it used questionable tactics to silence, discredit and smear their opponents. He writes:
Media campaigns and public demonstrations
A campaign was launched in the late 1990s to have the cities of Hamburg and Frankfurt, Germany to change their names, since the names are associated with hamburgers and hot dogs. The cities were offered free veggieburgers for all of their residents for life if they agreed to the change. Both cities refused.
Opponents of PETA see them as extremists; many take offense at the statements by Bruce Friedrich, a PETA executive. "If we really believe animals have the same right to be free from pain and suffering at our hands, then of course we're going to be blowing things up and smashing windows. I think it would be great if all of the fast-food outlets, slaughterhouses, these laboratories, and the banks that fund them, exploded tomorrow." (Source: Southern Poverty Law Center article.)
PETA has run advertisements of chickens in coops next to photographs of Jews in concentration camps, and its website has photos of Holocaust billboards used to promote vegetarianism. This ad campaign is called "the Holocaust on Your Plate", and its comparisons between Holocaust victims being sent to death camps and farm animals being raised for food has aroused controversy. For example, its website "masskilling.com" states:
Jewish groups have expressed outrage at PETA for taking what they claim to be an ambiguous moral stance on suicide bombings against Jews in the State of Israel. Specifically, in response to a news report in January of 2003 that a donkey was laden with explosives and intentionally blown up in a failed attack on a busload of Israeli soldiers in Jerusalem, PETA President Ingrid Newkirk sent then Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat a request that he "appeal to all those who listen to [him] to leave the animals out of this conflict." However, Newkirk intentionally stopped short of asking Arafat to try to stop suicide bombings that kill people, later telling the Washington Post, "It is not my business to inject myself into human wars."
In June 2000, a federal judge ordered the owner of www.peta.org, a parody web site called "People Eating Tasty Animals", to give up its domain name to PETA for trademark reasons. This web address is now PETA's main web site.
PETA has many famous members and supporters, including Pamela Anderson and Paul McCartney.
See also: animal rights, animal rights group
Domain dispute over peta.org
Famous members and supporters
External Links
References