I understand your POV and understand that you don’t care much for PETA. I too wouldn’t automatically agree with any opinion levied against them. For example, if someone was earnestly going around saying that PETA loved to kill animals and got off on it, I’d say that was wrong and stupid.
Fair enough–agree to disagree!
Well I for one have not read through the evidence and anybody who wants to force me to waddle through PETA’s website should be prosecuted for animal cruelty!
More seriously, that was good clarification, LHOD. But I’m honestly puzzled about what PETA is up to. They aren’t listed as an animal shelter in the internet yellow pages and I assume that’s intentional. What exactly is it about PETA’s euthanasia methods that are allegedly superior to the other animal shelters in Norfolk, VA? I mean I can understand them rating animal shelters on the basis of their methods and policies, or trying to redirect unadoptable animals to more humane executors. But why would you set up your own execution system without adoption hours? I find it hard to believe that they have some secret extra-double anti-cruel technology.
As an aside, animal shelters sound like pretty scary places if you are an animal with a much better sense of smell than humans have (eg a dog or cat). I have no idea how to deal with that problem humanely.
Good question.
My understanding from the Ahoskie trial is that they didn’t just get animals from Norfolk; they got them from the Atlantic seaboard, including rural coastal NC areas (where IIRC Ahoskie is). In some of those areas, municipal pounds euthanized with methods ranging from gunshot to carbon monoxide poisoning to intracardial injection. All of these methods are problematic (interestingly, gunshot is probably the most humane of them when competently performed, but when incompetently performed it’s terrible). PETA, I believe, used intravenous sodium pentobarbital injection, the method recommended by the AVMA.
As for the smell of animal shelters, a positive air filtration system–in which a steady airflow sends air over each cage and into vents behind the cage that vent outside–can help both with the smell and with disease control. Other stressors include sounds (our shelter used to be in a converted county garage, and the dog-bark-echoes were deafening) and even sights (some shelters have feral dogs passing through the cat intake area, which of course is a bad thing).
I can see the problem: lethal injection presumably poses risk for the animal handlers.
I noticed this from the Humane Society .pdf: Euthanasia should not be administered in the field unless an animal is suffering to such a degree that she is in need of immediate relief by euthanasia. I’m not sure why they recommend this, but PETA reportedly euthanized the animals in their vehicle.
More from the Humane Society: Carbon monoxide (CO), when in the form of compressed cylinder gas and delivered in a properly manufactured and equipped chamber,is a conditionally acceptable method of euthanasia for some animals. It is unacceptable to use CO for the euthanasia of dogs and cats who are under four months of age, or who are old, sick, or injured. National Geographic article: National Geographic
I don’t understand the issue with using CO on old, sick and injured animals, provided that the method is applied to one animal at a time. Apparently, it is typical for multiple animals to be placed in a chamber at once. That said, I wouldn’t mind it if my jurisdiction dug into its pockets and applied best practices.
Right, and I’m pretty sure that’s a big part of what PETA fired them for. They were supposed to bring them back to HQ and didn’t.
Yeah, the problem is that these rural jurisdictions weren’t using best practices; instead, they were doing things like backing a truck up to the holding area and letting exhaust fill the room until the animals were dead.
So is PETA evil or a punchline? So far, I judge the preponderance of the evidence to favor “Dishonest Punchline” over “Evil Clown”. It’s a close call though.
Anyway, let’s check out today’s news (via google):
Texas (that’s right: Texas) bans carbon monoxide killing of animals. They are phasing in the Humane Society-approved method of sodium pentobarbital shots. http://www.news-journal.com/news/local/area-animal-shelter-directors-praise-new-euthanasia-law/article_6e523748-4994-5846-a0e5-78db145c226c.html
PETA does not like it when people refer to them as “Animal Kervorkians” (something I wouldn’t never do, within reason pending careful investigation). They are suing the Huffington Post to release the names of offending online posters: among those singled out are those going by the usernames of “Lucy Van Pelt,” “Eyema Nurde,” and “ambersommerville”.
PETA wants to sue those posters to Huffpo’s comments section for libel, which I think successfully shifts their needle towards the “Evil Clown” zone. Hacktivist collective Anonymous (another group of fine upstanding citizens) retaliates:
http://www.ryot.org/anonymous-fights-peta-over-right-to-remain-anonymous/183329
Wow. in spite of the fact that I am in favor of humanity toward animals, my respect for PETA, which wasn’t very high in the first place, has hit a new low. Shades of Scientology or Uri Geller, no?
Any religion has it’s fanatics.
PETA is a religion? Uri Geller is a religion? Scientology is a religion (only to the IRS)?
Nice article at legal website. PETA filed the lawsuit on May 23rd in a New York State court alleging that “false and defamatory statements” were made by various commenters to the Huffpo blog. They want the website to hand over “…users’ addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, IP addresses, Internet service provider access records, account histories and user activity records.” They are not suing the author of the piece, Nathan J. Winograd, referenced earlier in this thread. Interestingly, PETA penned a Huffpo post a few days after the Winograd article appeared.
Okay, yeah, that’s some real bullshit, and an excellent example of how PETA really sucks.
Exactly. PETA learned long ago to tone down their more radical ideas and to take baby steps. So, in early days it was all companion animals should be set free to live without human intervention, now it’s everyone should rescue altered animals from a shelter, rather than getting a well bred pup from a breeder. Everyone has jumped onto the “spay/neuter pets” and “rescue shelter pets” bandwagons, to the point that in many (most?) large cities, euthanasia of dogs is way down.
The result is a move away from purpose bred dogs to irresponsibly bred ones who have been altered, and the goal is to slowly reduce the population of pets thru attrition. Another way they are doing this is thru legislation such as breed specific bans and very tight regulations on breeders. John Q Public currently tends to have a bad impression of purpose bred dogs because they believe the propaganda that tells them that every purpose bred puppy kills a shelter dog. What kills shelter dogs are irresponsible humans, which should be obvious but PETA has become very good at what they do. With help from the HSUS, they may even achieve their goal of making us all vegetarians living without animal companions.
There have been allegations on the internet that PETA is an animal Kervorkian operation. Cite from Yahoo news: Now PETA Wants to Sue People Who Leave Anonymous Comments. I don’t know what to make of such claims, but I know they exist because of PETA’s lawsuit against anonymous internet posters. Otherwise I would not know that PETA might be an animal Kervorkian organization, not that I’m not saying they are an animal Kervorkian operation: the evidence is not in.
The funny thing is, in this entire thread, nobody saw reason to cite anonymous internet commentators from Huffpo. I’ve tried to dig up some inflammatory commentary from this Huffpo article, but the comment section goes on for 88 pages and I haven’t been able to search it with google. I can however quote a commentator from FARK:
[QUOTE=
Mattyb710]
So, saying PETA IS LIKE KEVORKIAN FOR ANIMALS pissed them off enough to sue? Are they trying to say that the assertion that THEY MURDER MORE ANIMALS THAN ANY OTHER ORGANIZATION ON THE PLANET isn’t true?
[/QUOTE]
I guess the answer is yes, they did sue.
Anyway, judged on the merits, the evidence is mixed. On the one hand there’s an understandable interpretation of PETA’s kill rates put forward by LHOD which I consider reasonable. It’s not clear though the extent to which they attempt to redistribute adoptable animals from regions with bad facilities to regions with a strong adoption networks. There’s also the claim by the former director of Norfolk’s SPCA, Dana Cheek:
Cite: How Many Pets Did PETA Kill in 2012? | HuffPost Latest News
Here’s another article by an author at Huffington Post who has not been sued by PETA: “PETA’s Celebs: Naked in the Name of Mass Pet Slaughter”
Furthermore, given the upthread quotes about the leader of the organization, there’s reason to speculate that PETA hasn’t been as pro-active as they could be about taking in animals from certain regions and channeling them to good homes in other regions.
I’d really like these reporters to dig a little deeper. WHO are these people who
“surrendered their pets to PETA with the understanding that PETA will 'find them a good home”? What kind of paperwork did they sign? What did the paperwork say?
When I worked at a shelter, yes, we* euthanized healthy animals almost every day, sometimes a dozen or more. THere were no homes for them. And even though our paperwork made it completely clear that that might happen, that surrendered animals might be euthanized immediately, we still had idiots who surrendered their animals and then had a change of heart and came back later, furious at us for euthanizing them.
Is that what’s happened in PETA’s case? Or are they lying to people?
These reporters need to find the people that Dana Cheek says called her.
- Not me personally, but co-workers who dearly loved animals and who hated this part of the job
In trying to find out Dana Cheek’s qualifications, I ran into a dead end. But I am finding that the Norfolk SPCA is a no-kill shelter (with amazing numbers–they adopted out 2,000 animals in 2011, props to them). As they state on their website:
I tend to think that the animosity between no-kill and open-access shelters is overblown and stupid. Both sorts of shelters serve a vital role. But just as PETA is irrationally angry at no-kill shelters, a lot of no-kill shelters get irrationally angry at open-access shelters. There’s a chance Dana is telling the truth, but it’s also possible she’s exaggerating based on an antipathy toward kill shelters.
She’s been here 3 years longer than you. If you ever learned how to read you might have known that.
Heh. Well, the article writers in question at Huffpo are probably not paid reporters, though they do drive page traffic. Huffpo is an opinion website and I suspect they love this sort of controversy. Here’s their page on euthenasia.
That said: work with me LHOD. We know that this stuff has received a casual vetting by an Atlantic reporter, but that’s it. Following elaboration by the citizen reporter in the comments section, I find the full Dana Cheek quote at this advocacy website, which I believe is a CCF front: PETA's Lame Response
[QUOTE=Dana Cheek]
I often receive phone calls from frantic people who have surrendered their pets to PETA with the understanding that PETA will “find them a good home.” Many of them are led to believe that the animals will be taken to a nearby shelter. Little do they know that the pets are killed in the PETA van before they even pull away from the pet owner’s home … PETA refuses to surrender animals they obtain to area shelters for rehoming. If only the celebrity “deep-pocket” donors on the west coast knew that their donations were going to kill adoptable cats and dogs here in Norfolk.
[/QUOTE]
Emphasis added. Now I can understand reasons for operating a compassionate-kill shelter, but it seems to me that such operations should have working partnerships with no-kill outfits. Either that or adoption hours. But there are allegations that PETA’s efforts in that regard are strictly pro-forma. From the CCF website:
[QUOTE=CCF front]
“We do not run a traditional shelter. In fact, we refer every healthy, cute, young animal we can to shelters.”
Uh oh. There they go again. In 2003 PETA reported transferring exactly one animal to another shelter. In 2002 PETA transferred just two animals. Click here to see the documents PETA filed with the state of Virginia. Since 1998, PETA has transferred a total of 130 animals to other shelters, and 21 of them were chickens. By comparison, it killed over 10,000 animals.
[/QUOTE]
According to the State of Virginia document at the website, PETA disposed of 4569 animals in 2010: 3630 (79%) via euthanasia, 838 (18%) via adoption and 63 (1.4%) via transfer to another animal facility. Those numbers seem cockeyed: how the heck did they adopt out 838 animals without holding adoption hours? And that 1.4% figure suggests to me that they might not be trying very hard, despite their $32 million annual budget.
I mean let’s go through this slowly. I trust there are rural shelters that don’t use best practices. But I highly doubt whether super-proportionate majorities of their animals in custody are truly unadoptable. Surely there is some scope for redistributing adoptable animals across geographic regions. I mean if you’re going to have an animal transport program for the purpose of giving them lethal injection rather than a CO chamber, you might as well tack on a non-trivial adoption program.
2009 article in the Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/5106600/Peta-under-fire-over-claim-that-it-kills-most-animals-left-at-its-US-headquarters.html The 2010 figures apply to the post-reform PETA era.
Not only do I agree, but I also suspect that PETA, for ideological reasons, might shy away from such relationships–and if they do, that’s bogus.
That said, if you’ll work with me, you’ll see that the no-kill shelter already says they sometimes can’t take in new animals. Their openness to taking in the animals PETA claims to take in is in question.
Earlier in the thread we saw PETA’s response to this, which is that their stats only include animals that come through their doors, and they say that most of the time if an animal is adoptable, they facilitate the transfer without taking the animal in, so it doesn’t show up in their stats. Do we have any evidence that this claim is untrue?
As for the adoptions, I saw that, and filed it under the list of unanswered questions. Perhaps they held some adoption events somewhere other than their shelter? I don’t know.
Right now, the story seems to me to be poorly reported, with an overreliance on a no-kill zealot (who’s also gunning for HSUS–I mean, really) and an astroturf group. PETA might be sloppy in this regard, but the theory that they’d rather euthanize an animal than see it go to a good home is ridiculous, and fails on every level. I’m perfectly willing to believe bad things about PETA–I believe they’re being jerkwads on the free-speech front, for example–but I need to see better evidence for malfeasance than just the statistics we’ve seen so far.
It’s in question, but Dana Creek says otherwise.
Their lips are moving? Seriously, PETA is so full of horsepucky that you can’t take their claims at face value. So we have to leave it up in the air, IMHO.
I have to agree with this though. I’ve verified your characterization of Winograd who appears to be a no-kill zealot. The Dana Creek cite is a partially quoted letter written to an astroturf group. But sufficient evidence to clear PETA of depraved indifference has not been offered, though the prosecution hasn’t come close to clearing the reasonable doubt bar either. As for myself, I really don’t have a dog in this fight (ha!) other than an understandable desire to see a jackass organization cut down an appropriate number of notches with factual claims.