Ok… I’m a meat eater who cut out cows and pigs. Maybe one day I’ll go vegetarian or even maybe vegan.
I understand why people dislike vegans and vegetarians but why do people specifically hate PETA?
The only thing I heard was that they euthanized animals that weren’t adopted or something like along those lines. I really don’t know, so I won’t venture to guess.
I also vaguely remember a story about one of their members using medicine that was tested on animals after the fact saying that it was already tested so why not use it.
I know they’re annoying. But is there any other reasons? Could the reasons I listed be clarified?
Because they are the lunatic fringe of vegetarianism. I respect vegetarians/ vegans and animal rights campaigners generally, but PETA are a bunch of idiots.
Things like trying to get fish renamed as “sea kittens” show them to be utterly off the rails.
PETA aren’t animal rights extremists. They’re just trolls who want attention. Animal rights are only important to them as a means of getting attention.
If you want a real animal rights organization, that actually works towards those ends, there’s the ASPCA and the Humane Society.
For a while, I lived in a house where a lot of PETA members used to hang out and meet, as one of my housemates was a supporter. She had 3 dogs, one of which she stole. She started refusing to walk them, or train them at all, even did stuff like go away for the night and without asking anyone else to care for them. All the PETA guys acted like she was was doing a great thing, simply because she claimed that the dogs were ‘rescued from abusers’ and she didn’t call them pets. It wasn’t too bad when I moved in, she cared for them properly, but the more involved with the group she got, the worse she treated the dogs.
They’ve always seemed to be a very hypocritical group, that’s more about screaming at everyone else for doing the ‘wrong thing’ than in any way trying to do the ‘right thing’ themselves.
The real shame of it is that PETA treats some important issues with absolute insanity and extremism. There’s no nuance, and whenever I’ve drilled down into the details I find they have usually oversimplified things.
I could get behind a fair bit of what they talk about - who doesn’t want animals treated better? I could even be persuaded that we need to give up large-scale meat production for a number of good reasons. But there’s no way I would align myself with PETA because their fringe positions go beyond any sensible interpretation.
I’ve worked in dog rescue and have a very liberal animal welfare “bent” but this is the angle I agree with. PETA has some good ideas but they tend to thwart themselves by embracing the lunatic fringe. Also some of their good ideas are about a half-century or full-century ahead of their time and people just are not ready to hear about them, let alone agree. Even I can’t agree with them yet, because our society is not ready, sad to say. (Primarily the meat industry. I think when lab-grown meat is made more palatable and nearly indistinguishable from animal meat, that’s when we will start seriously moving in that direction.)
PETA is an extremist group with the religious zeal of anti-abortionists. They seek to end ALL ownership of ALL animals, and ALL use of ANY animal product. The organization, if not all the individuals in it, has a credo that it is better for an animal to be dead than owned. To that end, they euthanize virtually every animal they “rescue” (including the ones they steal under the excuse of “rescuing”). And that is just the tip of the iceberg, believe me. They know what to say and what not to say to extract a phenomenal amount of sympathetic press and vast piles of donations from naive animal lovers. They are actually described as a domestic terrorist organization by the FBI.
I do not know a single person who has any investment in any kind of animal breeding or training or management who doesn’t hate and fear them. Not one, from cattle ranchers to poodle groomers. It’s not a collective fantasy, it is very real.
They’re also cozy with actual terrorist group, the Animal Liberation Front.
Sorry, no. The ASPCA is a legitimate animal welfare group. They do good stuff in sheltering animals.
The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS; note capitals) is an animal rights group, who is a little less demonstrative than PETA, but they are also fundamentally irrational group who likely causes active harm to animals. At best they’re incredibly deceptive.
Now, you might’ve adopted your pet from your local humane society (note lowercase). I can’t speak for all of these, but they’re likely good people. They have zero affiliation with the national organization, who sponges off donations from people who think they’re helping their local shelter.
Otherwise, HSUS’ tactics might involve fewer obnoxious ads, but they’re still a kneejerk lobby group.
Mary Beth Sweetland, a senior vice president of PETA (dunno if she still is or not), is a diabetic. She once said “I’m not going to take the chance of killing myself by not taking insulin. I don’t see myself as a hypocrite. I need my life to fight for the rights of animals.”
PETA manages to stay afloat because they have a good public relations team, and they aim their promotion at young people who don’t know how to vet charities.
And don’t support HSUS or the ASPCA. Support your local animal shelter.
PETA also seems to like to get PR around stunts like trying to convince the Green Bay Packers to change their name, since the name “Packers” refers to the team’s original sponsor, a meat-packing company, and thus glorifies animal cruelty (in their eyes).
Stunts like that likely appeal to their supporters, while making the rest of us think that they’re idiots.
PETA are useful idiots who can point at their tactics and say that’s what all people who dislike cruelty to animals are like.
They do things like telling people not say “bring home the bacon.” They condone actions like releasing mink from fur farms,,even though the released mink will be dangerous to the local environment.
They have done some good things, too, of course. I think the controversial sex sells anti-fur campaign was clever and helped to spur interest in a cause that was still somewhat on the fringes at the time.
Not sure why you’d say that you understand why people hate vegetarians and vegans though. Why? That seems a bizarre thing to hate people for, so why is it understandable?