In this local story PETA workers took a man’s dog off his property and killed it that same day. PETA admits they took the wrong dog and gave him a fruit basket to apologize. He is suing them for 9 million dollars.
The lawsuit aside what mandate is PETA operating under when they take pets off of people’s properties without he owners being present? They are not a state agency with police type powers.
What gives them the legal right to do this? Are there actually people telling them saying “Please pick up my dog and while I’m not home and maybe euthanize it?”
Umm… Since always? PETA is rather infamous for being one of the foremost euthanizers of domestic animals. They justify their actions because they say that there is an “overpopulation” of pets.
“While most shelters strive for a 90% re-homing rate, PETA is apparently proud of their 99% killing rate and callously boasts that the animals it rescues are ‘better off dead.’ That is an alarming ratio that should be fully investigated. PETA’s track record is absolutely unacceptable,” AKC Chairman Alan Kalter says in a release.
Link to the wikipedia article on PETA, relevant section:
Copy-paste of relevant information in that link:
PETA’s operation of an animal shelter has drawn criticism. In 2008, the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF), an industry front group, formally petitioned VDACS, requesting official reclassification of PETA as a slaughterhouse. The CCF said in a press release that “(a)n official report filed by PETA itself shows that the animal rights group put to death nearly every dog, cat, and other pet it took in for adoption in 2006.” A spokesperson for the VDACS said that it had considered changing PETA’s status from “shelter” to “euthanasia clinic”, citing PETA’s willingness to handle animals that other shelters would not.
So it seems that PETA thought that dog was a stray and killed it immediately.
I always thought of PETA and their ilk as supreme assholes. Doesn’t surprise me that they act like this.
I think PETA act like assholes at times, but there are some things they’re right about, and one is the overpopulation of domestic animals in the United States. According to the ASPCA, estimates for stray cats in the US go as high as 70 million. And that doesn’t touch on the dogs.
The country would be better off if every one of those strays were dead. Stray and feral animals spread disease, and they pose a danger to actual pets as well as to native wildlife. They also breed more and more stray animals, with the ASPCA estimating (same web page as above) that only about 10% of animals that end up in shelters are spayed or neutered.
Also, the quote from the kennel club guy is a trifle misleading. He says that “most shelters strive for a 90% re-homing rate.” Well, that’s nice. I strive to hit 90 percent of my three-point shots on the basketball court too, but it doesn’t mean that i ever hit that number. The same ASPCA site that i’ve been quoting above says that, of the almost 8 million animals that end up in shelters every year, over one-third have to be euthanized - 31% of dogs and 41% of cats.
Given these sorts of figures, the fact that PETA focuses on euthanasia in its shelters and ends up euthanizing a few thousand or even a few tens of thousands of animals a year is a drop in the bucket compared to the overall problem.
Americans go all gooey at the sight of poor helpless kitties and puppies in shelters, and get outraged by groups like PETA, but the fact is that Americans are to blame for the millions of animals killed by shelters in the first place, and for the millions of strays. PETA’s policy is a symptom of the problem, not the cause of the problem. And i say that as someone who grew up with pets, who has had pets at many times in my life (although not right now), who loves both cats and dogs, and who is also a vegetarian.
None of that, of course, excuses what happened in the case discussed by the OP. Stealing someone’s pet to euthanize is fucked up. There are enough stray and neglected animals in the nation that stealing and killing a loved and cared-for family pet is completely beyond the pale. To say nothing of the basic issue of property rights and theft.
ISTM I’ve read stories from time to time of PETA folks doing stuff like that. As far as I can tell, it’s a purely vigilante action, without any authority or mandate at all.
So I wonder, then: Is this something that PETA, the organization, can be held tortiously liable for, or is it strictly on the individual persons who did it?
They’ve helped tighten up our animal welfare laws over the past century (along with HSUS), but I (speaking as a volunteer and former board member in a couple of rescue groups) really hate some of their tactics. Also in another thread I mentioned how people who work in animal welfare/rescue disagree so much amongst themselves that we actually work against each other, and PETA is a good example. Stealing and killing beloved pets is heinous and doesn’t help “the cause”. There are actually people out there, and probably many who belong to PETA, who feel that keeping pets is oppressing or enslaving animals and that they’re better off in the wild or just plain dead.
This is very true, and I blame our “sterile” system where you can drop the animal off and never see what actually happens to it at the shelter. It’s too easy for people to hand off their unwanted animals and then never pay any more mind to what happens to it after that. Here’s a very eloquent post that goes around the internet occasionally that really should be a “must read” for anybody who thinks that they can dump pets at shelters and they’ll be adopted the next day: (The original is a wall of text, so I’ve just copied it here to add some paragraph spacing. Also note that while it’s written in the first person, I’m not the author.)
"A Dose of Reality
I am posting this (and it is long) because I think our society needs a huge wake-up call. As a shelter manager, I am going to share a little insight with you all - a view from the inside, if you will. Maybe if you saw the life drain from a few sad, lost, confused eyes, you would change your mind about breeding and selling to people you don’t even know - that puppy you just sold will most likely end up in my shelter when it’s not a cute little puppy anymore. How would you feel if you knew that there’s about a 90% chance that dog will never walk out of the shelter it is going to be dumped at - purebred or not!
About 50% of all of the dogs that are “owner surrenders” or “strays” that come into my shelter are purebred dogs. The most common excuses I hear are: We are moving and we can’t take our dog (or cat). Really? Where are you moving to that doesn’t allow pets? . The dog got bigger than we thought it would. How big did you think a German Shepherd would get? . We don’t have time for her. Really? I work a 10-12 hour day and still have time for my 6 dogs! . She’s tearing up our yard. How about bringing her inside, making her a part of your family? They always tell me, “We just don’t want to have to stress about finding a place for her. We know she’ll get adopted - she’s a good dog”.
Odds are your pet won’t get adopted, and how stressful do you think being in a shelter is? Your pet has 72 hours to find a new family from the moment you drop it off, sometimes a little longer if the shelter isn’t full and your dog manages to stay completely healthy. If it sniffles, it dies.
Your pet will be confined to a small run / kennel in a room with about 25 other barking or crying animals. It will have to relieve itself where it eats and sleeps. It will be depressed and it will cry constantly for the family that abandoned it. If your pet is lucky, I will have enough volunteers that day to take him / her for a walk. If I don’t, your pet won’t get any attention besides having a bowl of food slid under the kennel door and the waste sprayed out of its pen with a high-powered hose.
If your dog is big, black or any of the “bully” breeds (pit bull, rottweiler, mastiff, etc) it was pretty much dead when you walked it through the front door. Those dogs just don’t get adopted.
If your dog doesn’t get adopted within its 72 hours and the shelter is full, it will be destroyed. If the shelter isn’t full and your dog is good enough, and of a desirable enough breed, it may get a stay of execution, though not for long. Most pets get very kennel protective after about a week and are destroyed for showing aggression. Even the sweetest dogs will turn in this environment.
If your pet makes it over all of those hurdles, chances are it will get kennel cough or an upper respiratory infection and will be destroyed because shelters just don’t have the funds to pay for even a $100 treatment.
Here’s a little euthanasia 101 for those of you that have never witnessed a perfectly healthy, scared animal being “put-down”. First, your pet will be taken from its kennel on a leash. They always look like they think they are going for a walk - happy, wagging their tails. That is, until they get to “The Room”, when every one of them freaks out and puts on the brakes when we get to the door. It must smell like death, or they can feel the sad souls that are left in there. It’s strange, but it happens with every one of them.
Your dog or cat will be restrained, held down by 1 or 2 vet techs (depending on their size and how freaked out they are). A euthanasia tech or a vet will start the process. They find a vein in the front leg and inject a lethal dose of the “pink stuff”. Hopefully your pet doesn’t panic from being restrained and jerk it’s leg. I’ve seen the needles tear out of a leg and been covered with the resulting blood, and been deafened by the yelps and screams. They all don’t just “go to sleep” - sometimes they spasm for a while, gasp for air and defecate on themselves.
When it all ends, your pet’s corpse will be stacked like firewood in a large freezer in the back, with all of the other animals that were killed, waiting to be picked up like garbage. What happens next? Cremated? Taken to the dump? Rendered into pet food? You’ll never know, and it probably won’t even cross your mind. It was just an animal, and you can always buy another one, right? I hope that those of you that have read this are bawling your eyes out and can’t get the pictures out of your head. I do everyday on the way home from work. I hate my job, I hate that it exists and I hate that it will always be there unless people make some changes and realize that the lives you are affecting go much farther than the pets you dump at a shelter. Between 9 and 11 MILLION animals die every year in shelters and only you can stop it.
I do my best to save every life I can but rescues are always full, and there are more animals coming in everyday than there are homes. My point to all of this is DON’T BREED OR BUY WHILE SHELTER PETS DIE! Hate me if you want to - the truth hurts and reality is what it is. I just hope I maybe changed one person’s mind about breeding their dog, taking their loving pet to a shelter, or buying a dog. I hope that someone will walk into my shelter and say “I saw this thing on craigslist and it made me want to adopt”. That would make it all worth it. "
A couple of interesting (to me, as a rescue volunteer) notes from that sad post:
Any of you who have euthanized an old or sick pet note the difference between that and what’s described here. At the vet, there is a “put to sleep” shot first so that the animal doesn’t feel the second shot that stops the heart. At shelters, they skip that first shot.
I’ve read in other places some references of euthanized pets being rendered into pet food, but no actual citations. It’s interesting to see it mentioned here too. I think there are some dark-alley business arrangements in this “industry” that people don’t want to know about. Sure, it’s all protein in the end, but it also smacks of cannibalism so seems very wrong. I don’t actually know what to believe on this, but the idea is disturbing. I’ve also seen un-cited references to unwanted pets being sold to laboratories for research subjects. These days labs prefer animal bred specifically for the purpose so that they can control the genetics, but if you look in the legal codes that regulate laboratories there is a category of test subject called “Class B” or random sources. See the Wikipedia page for the disturbing description.
Interesting. Well, I think they’re right to the extent that a universal no-kill policy is utterly impractical and can only result in crowded pens of unhappy animals. We just produce way more dogs and cats than anyone is interested in keeping.
But I did not realize that they actually operated facilities on the premise; I thought they were just an advocacy/propaganda organization.
The Pit is also very often used to hurl insults and invective at people and organizations outside of the SDMB, such as the Republican Party, or customers at a store, or people who run red lights, and so on.
(Were you really ignorant of the Stupid Republican Idea of the Day in the Pit?)
The point is that there is nothing to stop you hurling invective at PETA in this thread. The main restrictions imposed outside the Pit relate to insulting other members of this board.
Fuck PETA!
There you go. No rules broken. Were you really ignorant of this?
Not the level of invective I want to use, involving heavy-duty fecal-strength hyperbole, with desires for evil fates stopping just short of grievous bodily harm. That kind of language is permitted in the Pit but not out here.
Were you really ignorant of this?
(Come on, mhendo: this is a stupid game. Let’s play something else.)
Are you kidding?! They are acting on NO legal authority whatsoever. Quite the opposite, they are engaging in criminal acts. They believe that pet ownership is akin to slavery. IOW they are not an animal welfare group, like the ASPCA or The Humane Society (PETA despises these organizations), they are a quasi-terrorist group that feels they are working towards their own ‘greater good’.
What does the first letter in PETA stand for? That’s who’s benefit they’re concerned with, their own…
And…waitaminnit…aren’t these the same guys who released thousands of minks from mink-fur farms, introducing feral animals into an environment that can’t support them?
Now, suddenly, they’re aware of the problems of feral animals?
Are these separate sub-groups of PETA, or did someone in their hierarchy actually learn something from their mistakes?
(Hm… I may be wrong… After Googling, I can’t find concrete cites for PETA, as an organization, doing this, only commenting on it after it happened.)
Nothing quasi about it, they’re in bed with the ALF, and no, I don’t mean the 80’s space alien who’s back in POG form, but an actual terrorist organization.
As to the first part, it is doubtful, especially with the big names brands. There is a regulatory agency and a process they (the pet food companies) have to go through in order to get their approval. I don’t see cats and dogs entering the food chain that way. Plus really? Food animal scraps are way cheaper than even an euthanized stray. Now, a middleman claiming its food is 100% beef tripe when it is not, I could possibly see it happening, but again, cost issues. It is waaaay easier to supply them with food animal scraps.
EDIT: Or with melamine and cyanuric acid, which is what happened 7-8 years ago when the dogs started having acute renal failure. A Chinese company used those products to inflate the amount of protein in their ingredient and make it more tempting for the companies to buy. And in case you’re wondering, they did a similar thing in humans over in Asia. It didn’t end well there either.
Not to mention that animals euthanized with chemicals are toxic to those who eat them, which is why the guidelines over at AVMA mention that if the owners want to bury their own pet, they should dig a hole deep enough so that the body won’t get scavanged by wildlife and cause problems with it.
Now to the second part, if you’re thinking of live pets, it is very unlikely they would take an adult animal as a research subject and place it in a research colony. Those places have tight biosecurity controls and the chance of introducing a “dirty” animal and introducing pathogens to the colony is too risky.
Related to this, but it would require a different thread, stop being so much against animal testing and research done in animals. It can freaking helps animals too. There are numerous investigations in multiple fields using them, and the use of animals in any research facility worth its name is tightly regulated.
In the case of dogs, sometimes they are “released” of their research use into loving homes. I know two such dogs that went from being lab dogs to spoiled pets in their old age. Throughout their lives, although their first half may not have been luxurious, they never lacked food, water, and veterinary care. Now in their old age they have pampering and comfort.
If you’re talking about use as dead subjects, sadly yes. Many euthanized dogs or dogs slated for euthanasia ARE used as terminal subjects. They are used for training of veterinary students and other related health fields. Many institutions who do that are also looking at ways of reducing the need for this or finding alternative ways.