# If PETA got its way **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 7, 2007, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-peta-got-its-way/386990 "2007-01-07T00:07:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![BluePitbull](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e9bcb4/32.png) [@BluePitbull](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BluePitbull)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2007, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-peta-got-its-way/386990/1 "2007-01-07T00:07:38Z")
Everyone is a vegetarian and drugs/medical treatments use animal alternatives. No more zoos, animals are no longer in circuses or used as pets, guide dogs, search and rescue and police dogs. How would a PETA member enjoy animals? Wildlife tours? Would they be just happy that we are not using animals for our enjoyment or benefit? ---
**Author:** ![Don26](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/edb3f5/32.png) [@Don26](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don26)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2007, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-peta-got-its-way/386990/2 "2007-01-07T00:13:42Z")
[QUOTE=BluePitbull] Everyone is a vegetarian and drugs/medical treatments use animal alternatives. No more zoos, animals are no longer in circuses or used as pets, guide dogs, search and rescue and police dogs. How would a PETA member enjoy animals? Wildlife tours? Would they be just happy that we are not using animals for our enjoyment or benefit? [/QUOTE] You left out one thing; no more meat, that ought to be enough for most to oppose them. ---
**Author:** ![Seven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Seven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Seven)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2007, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-peta-got-its-way/386990/3 "2007-01-07T00:19:58Z")
[QUOTE=BluePitbull] \…or used as pets, guide dogs, search and rescue and police dogs. \ [/QUOTE] um.. CITE? PETA stands for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. How is properly keeping and caring for a domesticated animal considered unethical? How would a properly trained and cared for working animal be considered unethical? In way I could consider a police or rescue dog against PETAs concept if the animal is put in harms way. But a guide dog? Those animals are often treated better than other people in the family. My dog used to work as a therapy dog. Why would PETA be against a domesticated dog, rescued from a shelter, being taken to various places to be loved, petted and appreciated by people? ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2007, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-peta-got-its-way/386990/4 "2007-01-07T00:21:17Z")
If they got free reign, where would it actually stop? Mosquitoes, cockroaches, boll weevils, tapeworms, botflies, etc are animals and are all rather troublesome to humans. Would we be permitted to control them? ---
**Author:** ![BluePitbull](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e9bcb4/32.png) [@BluePitbull](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BluePitbull)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2007, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-peta-got-its-way/386990/5 "2007-01-07T00:38:04Z")
[QUOTE=Seven] um.. CITE? PETA stands for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. How is properly keeping and caring for a domesticated animal considered unethical? How would a properly trained and cared for working animal be considered unethical? In way I could consider a police or rescue dog against PETAs concept if the animal is put in harms way. But a guide dog? Those animals are often treated better than other people in the family. My dog used to work as a therapy dog. Why would PETA be against a domesticated dog, rescued from a shelter, being taken to various places to be loved, petted and appreciated by people? [/QUOTE] > **[Uncompromising Stands on Animal Rights](https://www.peta.org/about-peta/why-peta/)** > > PETA's uncompromising, unwavering views may be controversial, but they are always true to our driving mission: to stop animal abuse worldwide. True, they encourage proper treatment of animals and getting animals from shelters, but the 1st paragraph shows they would like it if no domesticated animals existed ---
**Author:** ![Seven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Seven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Seven)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2007, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-peta-got-its-way/386990/6 "2007-01-07T00:58:22Z")
[QUOTE=BluePitbull] > **[Uncompromising Stands on Animal Rights](https://www.peta.org/about-peta/why-peta/)** > > PETA's uncompromising, unwavering views may be controversial, but they are always true to our driving mission: to stop animal abuse worldwide. True, they encourage proper treatment of animals and getting animals from shelters, but the 1st paragraph shows they would like it if no domesticated animals existed [/QUOTE] I think they are saying “in a perfect world we would never have domesticated animals” and at the same time saying “we enjoy the company of domesticed animals and now that we have domesticated animals we should be responsible about it”. > [@PETA](#): > > Contrary to myth, PETA does not want to confiscate animals who are well cared for and “set them free.” What we want is for the population of dogs and cats to be reduced through spaying and neutering and for people to adopt animals (preferably two so that they can keep each other company when their human companions aren’t home) from pounds or shelters—never from pet shops or breeders—thereby reducing suffering in the world. I suppose it could be read either way, but I don’t read that as saying “no pets”. How about service animals? Guide dogs, therapy dogs, etc. ---
**Author:** ![BluePitbull](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e9bcb4/32.png) [@BluePitbull](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BluePitbull)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2007, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-peta-got-its-way/386990/7 "2007-01-07T01:10:12Z")
[QUOTE=Seven] I think they are saying “in a perfect world we would never have domesticated animals” and at the same time saying “we enjoy the company of domesticed animals and now that we have domesticated animals we should be responsible about it”. I suppose it could be read either way, but I don’t read that as saying “no pets”. How about service animals? Guide dogs, therapy dogs, etc. [/QUOTE] I see what you mean. I was talking about PETA’s perfect world. I would imagine that they would rather not have any animal serving people, what so ever. ---
**Author:** ![Seven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Seven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Seven)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2007, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-peta-got-its-way/386990/8 "2007-01-07T02:07:04Z")
I’m not so sure about that. Yeah, SOME Peta people might. ALF people for sure. I think the org itself isn’t as wacky as most would want to believe. I get the impression they see the symbiant relationship between man and animal. They want to help them why not have them help us - as long as we don’t harm them in the process. Many of the people I know who have worked with PETA are against horse racing but like to ride horses. They’re against dog racing but have dogs. They are against mass produced dairy but see no problem with a family keeping a cow and milking it. It all has to do with HOW the animal is treated. I don’t agree with PETA 100%. (I’m a meat eating, extra cheese loving kind of guy. I’ll rescue every wild animal I come across but I’m not against hunting for food -I am against hunting for fun and sport. I’ll wear leather but not fur). I think by being slightly extreme on some points helps PETA’s causes in the long run. Kind of like haggling. The seller puts the price high, the buyer low, and somewhere you meet a middle ground. ---
**Author:** ![Menocchio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de053/32.png) [@Menocchio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Menocchio)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2007, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-peta-got-its-way/386990/9 "2007-01-07T02:41:11Z")
[QUOTE=Seven] I don’t agree with PETA 100%. (I’m a meat eating, extra cheese loving kind of guy. I’ll rescue every wild animal I come across but I’m not against hunting for food -I am against hunting for fun and sport. I’ll wear leather but not fur). I think by being slightly extreme on some points helps PETA’s causes in the long run. Kind of like haggling. The seller puts the price high, the buyer low, and somewhere you meet a middle ground. [/QUOTE] I disagree. PETA is so extreme and so laughable that invoking its name is enough to frighten away people who would be amenable to moderate means. I was in Arizona just before the last elections. They had a ballot initiative to mandate that livestock be kept in pens large enough to turn around in (or something like that, not being an AZ resident, I don’t know the details). Reasonable enough, but opponents fought it by simply placing signs that said “PETA SUPPORTS —\>” by signs in favor of the initiative. People don’t take crazy extremists seriously. Are the majority of PETA members extremists? No. But their leadership is. ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2007, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-peta-got-its-way/386990/10 "2007-01-07T03:15:08Z")
Bill Owens (the governor of Colorado) called PETA a bunch of losers. From Fox: > [@](#): > > Colorado Republican Governor Bill Owens says the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is “a bunch of losers.” He is reacting to PETA’s refusal to help some of the 340,000 cows and steers left stranded by southeastern Colorado’s most recent snowstorm. A PETA spokesman told a Denver radio station that the group would not spend money to save the animals because, “In six months they’re going to be killed and end up on someone’s plate.” > > Governor Owens told the station he was amazed that PETA “doesn’t want us to feed freezing cattle” and said “it’s symbolic of what PETA stands for.” Owens also called PETA “a strange group of people” and told listeners, “don’t send money to PETA.” I can’t find confirmation in the Denver Post or the Rocky Mountain News. Anyway, did you ever see the episode of South Park “Douche and Turd” with the PETA encampment? Somehow I wouldn’t be surprised if some members actually supported that. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2007, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-peta-got-its-way/386990/11 "2007-01-07T03:26:02Z")
Occasionally, PETA protesters will stage some sort of goofy demonstration in Bangkok, like locking themselves into chicken-wire cages in front of a KFC or even, on one occasion, appearing nude in public. Considering how a lot of humans are treated in Thailand, especially upcountry and especially in the Northeast, the Thais are generally left scratching their heads wondering what these yahoos are all about. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2007, 6:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-peta-got-its-way/386990/12 "2007-01-07T06:49:24Z")
In light of recent threads, shouldn’t the title of this one be "What would a PETA America be like? It’s conceivable to me to the protein we now get from meat could be replayed by soybeans and whatnot, but keeping cats as pets would have to end unless some kind of meat substitute proved sufficient for them. They’d likely go feral and devastate bird and rodent populations. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2007, 7:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-peta-got-its-way/386990/13 "2007-01-07T07:35:06Z")
I could have sworn that Ingrid Newkirk (PETA President) is also opposed to all medical tests on animals. That’s just a wee bit extreme. ---
**Author:** ![bouv](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bc8723/32.png) [@bouv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bouv)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2007, 7:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-peta-got-its-way/386990/14 "2007-01-07T07:58:43Z")
[QUOTE=Marley23] I could have sworn that Ingrid Newkirk (PETA President) is also opposed to all medical tests on animals. That’s just a wee bit extreme. [/QUOTE] Sadly, this seems to be a big thing that a lot of PETA members oppose, becuase they are all so fucking ignorant of what goes into designing and testing implants, drugs, and medical devices. All they see is an animal being tested on, injured, and killed. If we couldn’t use animal models to test the latest heart failure drug, then we might never find out that, if used with aspirin, it might cause some crazy reaction where your blood never clots and you bleed to death from a small cut (just a random example that has no actual bearing (AFAIK) in real life.) The point of the matter is, PETA wants to treat animal life on the same level as human life, and the problem is whether or not that is ethical. Sure, we’ve created cities, culture, language, science, etc…, but is the fact that we’ve done that proof that we have more right to live than an animal? But on the flip side, do us and animals have the same right to live just because we happen to both exist? The thing is, it IS the case that we are capable of more complex thinking than other animals. A cow can’t learn calculus. A chicken can’t learn about the battle of Waterloo. So are we therefore “better” than them? Tough call. But I’m willing to bet that yes, we have more right to live, if only because we are able to _recognize_ that we have a right to live in the first place. To shift gears for a moment and go for another line of reasoning, there are predatory animals, and prey animals. Are we to be faulted/judged because, for the most part, as predatory animals, we use our prey animals for means other than strictly food? We are still preying on them, in a manner of speaking. We are using them to benefit our means of existance. That, to me, still seems to be in the “natural order” of things. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2007, 8:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-peta-got-its-way/386990/15 "2007-01-07T08:40:02Z")
[QUOTE=BluePitbull] True, they encourage proper treatment of animals and getting animals from shelters, but the 1st paragraph shows they would like it if no domesticated animals existed [/QUOTE] They need to take that up with some dogs’ ancestors, then. Didn’t the Dog domesticate itself? ---
**Author:** ![chowder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/977dab/32.png) [@chowder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chowder)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2007, 8:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-peta-got-its-way/386990/16 "2007-01-07T08:48:51Z")
[QUOTE=Monty] They need to take that up with some dogs’ ancestors, then. Didn’t the Dog domesticate itself? [/QUOTE] Absolutely not. We domesticated the dog, or wolf as was, it quickly learned that staying around humans could more or less guarantee grub without having to go hunt for it. Once it realised we had tamed fire the dogs goose was cooked, so to speak ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2007, 10:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-peta-got-its-way/386990/17 "2007-01-07T10:12:14Z")
Are you sure? I seem to recall one professor at my university explaining that the dog became domesticated of its own effort, not humanity’s. ---
**Author:** ![chowder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/977dab/32.png) [@chowder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chowder)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2007, 10:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-peta-got-its-way/386990/18 "2007-01-07T10:20:43Z")
I think it’s a case of 70/30 in our favour. The dogs (wolves) were useful to us in warning us of approaching danger and I guess initially we had them caged up. After a while we had sorta domesticated them to a point when it was safe enough to let me out of the cage to perhaps huddle around the fire, from then on it was a fairly simple transition from wild to tame(ish) ---
**Author:** ![chowder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/977dab/32.png) [@chowder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chowder)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2007, 10:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-peta-got-its-way/386990/19 "2007-01-07T10:22:04Z")
:smack “them” not me :smack ---
**Author:** ![Seven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Seven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Seven)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2007, 10:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-peta-got-its-way/386990/20 "2007-01-07T10:57:14Z")
I will bow out about speaking for/about PETA as an org. I will admit I don’t follow what PETA does very closely (I’m a SPCA guy myself). I do know people who are involved with PETA and none of them are what I would call wacky. They seem quite down to earth. One guy is against medical animal testing but fully understands and agrees that **some** is needed (which is where I am. I don’t want these critters to suffer, but i’m not willing to step in and put my own ass on the line and let some doctor stick a electrode in my brain while pumping me full of some strange new drug… go figure) So, take what I said about PETA to be mostly talking out of my ass. I only know based on my friends actions. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-peta-got-its-way/386990.md?page=2)