I’ve seen a report about someone trying to get government officials to reclassify that “shelter” as a “slaughterhouse” but that didn’t work.
There’s supposedly a statement given by Ingrid Newkirk during an interview in which she explicitly states that animals “are better off dead than in a shelter” but I can’t find the original source, which is why I had dropped out of the thread.
This is speculation, though. The only reports we have of anyone surrendering an animal directly to PETA is in Ahoskie, in which some veterinarians made an oral agreement with some dumbshits who worked for PETA with a vague understanding that the animals were to be adopted out.
If you demonstrate–via, say, a copy of a surrender contract at the PETA shelter, or a few different people who surrendered their animals to PETA directly, or even anyone who’s surrendered their animal to PETA in the last couple of years–that PETA is misrepresenting themselves to people who surrender their animals, then I’ll be persuaded.
But my understanding of what they do is that they don’t advertise themselves as a shelter to the general public, that they don’t seek animal surrenders.
drew, for me it’s difficult to see how anyone can pay attention to what PETA actually says and conclude that PETA thinks death is preferable to pethood for animals. Did you bother to read my link to PETA’s own posts about animal shelters and companion animals? If not, I encourage you to do so. If all you’re doing is getting information from astroturf lobbyists, you’re doing yourself a disservice.
Then according to drewtwo99, either you are not a rational person, or else you are deliberately endorsing some aspects of “pure evil incarnate”.
:dubious: Some elements of this conversation are making PETA look positively sane by comparison.
Well, PETA explains the numbers by saying that the vast majority of adoptable animals they deal with never enter their shelter at all:
Those evil bastards, encouraging and helping people to keep their pets instead of disposing of them to shelters because they can’t afford to maintain them. :dubious:
Like I said originally, I have plenty of disagreements with many of PETA’s positions and plenty of objections to specific things they’ve done. But I simply can’t get worked up about the fact that they euthanize a very high proportion of pets in their self-described “shelter of last resort”, unless you can show that they’re doing so under false pretenses.
I don’t like PETA because their stain rubs off on me.
I will confess to eating free veggie burgers when they used to hand them out downtown. I like veggie burgers, and it entertained me to be served by nice looking people wearing broccoli and plastic gloves.
I never knew Bricker had a long lost twin.
Excellent point. You’ve convinced me.
Kimstu, you are quoting PETA. You can’t quote PETA in defense of PETA. Find me a third party.
That’s not particularly Brickeresque. Though I do suppose you were raised by a different family and all that 
I’m going to call bullshit on myself on that. The Atlantic is a third party.
However, I just do not buy PETA’s explanation for their “shelter”. I don’t really have a problem with a euthanasia clinic. JUST CALL IT THAT!
sorry for shouting.
Is that a category under Virginia law? Because it’s my understanding that they don’t advertise their facilities to the public as a shelter; rather, folks who go digging into their registration papers find that term. If they’re using the closest term under Virginia law for their facility, but aren’t using that term in their advertisements or public relations materials, is it really a problem?
Christ Jesus, do some research. Yes, yes it is a category.
Yes, you are a fan. Or you wouldn’t be taking their word for what they believe over their actual actions. If you actually hated them or were even neutral, a disagreement of actions and words would lead you to fall on the side of actions.
Only supporters try to whitewash things by saying that somehow their words mean more than their actions.
What’s actually happening is that you have a preconceived idea that PETA has good shelters, and you are refusing to update that idea with new evidence. And what type of people do that? Fans. If you weren’t a fan, you wouldn’t have any investment in proving them good, and would just let the facts lie where they do.
It’s a pretty common tactic to point out the flaws in something so you seem unbiased, but it doesn’t prove anything. To an unbiased person, words mean next to nothing–actions means something. And shelters that don’t even let you try to adopt a pet, killing them instead, mean that you think it’s better for them to die than to be someone’s pet.
It doesn’t matter one whit if they claim otherwise.
I don’t think you’ve been reading the Dope long enough. The OP tells people to get upset about it. So there will always be those contrary people who have to come up with excuses not to be upset. And those people are much more likely to post in a thread about PETA, since everyone else sees the title and just thinks, “Duh!”–no need to read.
Seriously. When an organization has a definite reputation for dishonesty, you can’t take their statements at face value. So you look at their actions.
Sure, there’s an astroturf operation involved. But the Huffpo article was written by another animal rights maniac and it was vetted by a real reporter at a respected publication - the Atlantic magazine.
I was a little dubious about your posts, but there is some evidence for your claim. I looked up animal shelter norfolk, VA at yahoo local, google maps, yelp and yp.com (yellow pages). Only yelp showed them listed under animal shelters, assuming no error on my part. If PETA is truly acting like a subcontractor and not accepting adoptable animals, then their high kill rates are unsurprising and legitimate.
But it needs to be repeated that such an interpretation is inconsistent with the reporting of The Atlantic.
Left Hand of Dorkness, you tell me to look at PETA’s mission statement and their stuff, which I have definitely read. I submit to you that reading their statements and such is about as valuable as reading the tourist page and listening to the state-run news of North Korea.
You have to look at their actions, and the overall mentality and the proof. It’s very easy for them to say nice things on one hand about loving pets and all that, but there is no evidence of it. In fact, all the evidence points to PETA hating pets and wanting them all dead. (Not to say they enjoy killing them, but just that they honestly believe that pets are better off dead then “adopted” out as slaves).
Even with this assumption, it isn’t consistent. If we assume that we must follow the same ethics with animals and humans, we’re in the following situation :
You’re sheltering several hundreds of former slaves without the means to support and feed them. Should you euthanize them or release them in a war zone with only scarce food available (the human equivalent of living in the wild for a pet), or give them back to slave owners?
Euthanasia doesn’t seem the morally correct choice to me.
Jesus Christ, I just did some research. Googling
returns no useful results. The only references I can find to a euthanasia clinic is in articles about PETA, or about a single-day horse euthanasia clinic in California, or about a Dutch euthanasia clinic for humans.
I did find this article, with this line:
It doesn’t follow up to tell what this means, or why it didn’t happen, or anything else. You may be right, that it’s currently possible. But given that the state of Virginia apparently considered and rejected this course, I’m not sure you’re better qualified than them to make the decision.
Shut up, BigT.
I think you both misunderstand. I’m not asking you to take a look at their statements about this case. I’m asking you to read their public-relations about animal shelters in general, in which they’re advising their audience how to relate to animal shelters.
If they genuinely thought that animals were better off dead than adopted out, you’d expect to see them encouraging their fans not to adopt from shelters, constantly telling people how terrible all animal shelters are, talking constantly about how animals do not benefit from being adopted.
Instead, we’ve got PETA telling its followers the following things:
There’s a lot more where that comes from.
What’s the theory? How does a desire to see animals dead rather than be pets square with them having pets (excuse me, “animal companions” :rolleyes:) of their own, that they bring to the office? How does it square with encouraging their followers to adopt animals from shelters? How does it square with them helping get a dog and her puppies adopted to a new home? How does it square with them helping shelters with adoption contracts?
I’m not talking about what they say about their own case. They may be the lyingest liars about their own case. I’m talking about what they tell their followers to do, and it ain’t “stop having pets.”
I guess it just comes down to the fact that PETA realizes they can only be just so radical, so they pay lip service to their pet-owning supporters by giving them such instructions, stories, etc.
But anyhow, there’s really nothing else for me to add to this discussion. It’s obvious we’ve both seen the same evidence, and we’ve drawn different conclusions, and we don’t understand why the other can’t see things the way we do. To me it’s as clear as day that PETA as an organization would rather see all pets humanely killed than to continue in their servitude as pets to us terrible human beings. To you, they encourage pet ownership and love pets and that while they may think in some abstract sense that pets would be better off not existing, it doesn’t mean they want them all to die.
The last sentence is definitely true. It’s very hard for me to see how someone can come to your conclusion based on the evidence, but it’s certainly possible, I can tell that :).
As for your first sentence, I’ve never seen evidence that PETA realizes they can only be just so radical. I’ve been defending them in this thread from charges I consider unjust, but overall on the board I’ve repeatedly dismissed them as dishonest trolls and attention whores. I actually think their work with animal shelters is their best work (and their work with fast food restaurants is pretty good, if diminished by rampant dishonesty). But a lot of their public campaigns are just pitiful people saying, “Look at me! Look at me!” with very little concern for the practical effects of the campaigns. Again, they’re often very dishonest in the factoids they promote about vegetarianism and other animal rights issues, and I think that speaks to a lack of confidence about the evidence for their position.
I dislike most of PETA intensely. But that doesn’t mean I think any charge against them is fair game.