I took a community college course several years ago with a PETA member. He and I had an innocent conversation once wherein I happened to mention that I’m a vegetarian. Thinking he’d spotted a potential convert, he then spent the rest of the course giving me PETA pamphlets with horrible graphic pictures of dead animals.
No, thank you.
I do follow PETA’s list of cosmetic companies which do/don’t perform testing of ingredients or products on animals. I can’t argue against medical testing but for vanity products I try to go as vegan as possible. PETA’s list is imperfect (and they acknowledge it) but it’s something. Overall, they’re a pretty dodgy bunch.
I used to have a neighbor who worked for PETA back when I lived in VA. She did not seem insane, and she and her husband kept pets. So when the story I linked to above broke, I did wonder what she would have said about it had she been around to ask. She and her husband divorced and they sold their house and moved away even before we moved, so I didn’t know where she was by that time.
I dislike all extremist groups, regardless of their supposed good intentions. PETA is populated by a bunch of loonies with opinions that are rarely based in fact. Sort of the Tea-baggers of the left.
ETA: I see that Oscalo put it more succinctly than I.
I’m more of a carni- than an omnivore. I like to eat meat. Well, a couple years ago, I thought of severely slowing down my meat intake and going more towards vegetarian. So, as I was googling for vegetarian recipes, PETA popped up and offered a free vegetarian recipe book for meat eaters. Perfect! I thought this would be something that would change my eating habits.
A week or so later, I got the equivalent to a Jack Chick tract in the mail from PETA. The recipe book had two recipes in it and the other 30 pages or so were devoted to showing slaughterhouses and animal cruelty and preachin’ and screechin’.
They must not realize that that would actually turn someone off of their cause instead of winning them over. I never did go even close to vegetarian and while I don’t blame PETA, they certainly did not help at all.
My story -
I used to work at the National Institutes of Health in college and for a year after; first at the NCI (cancer), then at NIAMS (arthritis/musculoskelatal diseases). For a few days every year there were organized protests, specifically aimed at the laboratories that conducted animal testing. During those days security was beefed up and mostly the protestors just made it a pain in the ass to get in and out of work.
But it just bothered me that many of the protestors were wearing make-up and leather shoes/purses (not to mention the number of yippie college kids wearing nike running shoes). Some how killing animals for attire, or to ensure that mascara was hypoallergenic, was justified… :smack: These folks were so fired up about animal testing, but happily supported a company notorious for sweatshops… :rolleyes:
Wouldn’t pictures of slaughterhouses and animal cruelty make you feel guilty enough to be a vegan?
It might make me hungry. 
Not me. They make me hungry.
Mmmmm…bloody, eviscerated meat…
Seriously, I can understand why some people don’t eat red meat/poultry due to objections to factory farms and the like, but fish? FISH? Now we shouldn’t eat “seakittens” either?
Give me a break.
No.
I mean, if I had to watch it while I was eating I would probably lose my appetite. The same with having to watch a person paid far below minimum wage picking my produce while I try to eat a salad.
My problem with PETA was that instead of helping me, they chose to (figuratively) scream at me the “evils” of what I was doing.
Guess what: all your cruelty-free cosmetics are made by companies who just buy their recipes from other companies that do animal testing. That way they can say they don’t do any animal testing.
As a Green Bay Packers fan, and advocate of responsible consumption of alcohol, I hate them.
About once a season or so, PETA protests on a game day. They hate the Packers because it used to be the Acme Meat Packers, way back when. They suggest we change the name to “The Green Bay Six-Packers.” Are you fucking serious?
You have to admit, it does have a certain panache, a joie de vivre that’s fairly representative of the average NFL fan that goes to games.
I find it funny, yes. But sometimes PETA is so close-minded that they don’t realize what they’re doing. For this argument, I’ll take PETA’s stand that meat (and meat-packing) are evil. So basically, they’re moving from advocating one evil (meat-packing) to another (alcohol consumption).
I’m sure the Temperance League would be all about protesting that name change. 
Which seems especially ridiculous given that I’m sure millions of people, including me, never even realized that the team name “Packers” was originally “Meat Packers”. Why is it somehow better to change “Meat Packers” to “Six Packers” rather than just to “Packers”? The “meat” association is already gone.
Exactly!!!
Or MADD…
Make those two groups butt heads and they may convert totally to energy and annihilate wisconsin in the ensuing explosion.
They make an extremest joke out of a decent cause, minimizing the suffering of animals. Fuck PETA, and support The Humane Society and local shelters.
I hate PETA because they’re hypocrites (fueling protests outside of shelters because animals there are put to sleep - only to hide the fact that they put down thousands of animals every year themselves) and because they demand “total liberation” of animals. No pets, no more medical research (without animal studies all medical research comes to a halt), no more film, insulation, furniture glue, nothing that uses animal parts.
They want us to live in the stone age.
I had the misfortune of living in the same dorm as one. She called me a murderer for using honey, and was unable to explain where I was wrong in assuming that honey farmers in fact want their bees alive, not dead. Also according to her: humans are not omnivores, that’s just a lie spread by the government. Another government lie is that vegetarians need to pay attention to their diet to get enough nutrients, because humans can naturally extract everything they need from vegetables. Yep, just veggies - no need for things like grains or legumes. There’s seriously just no reasoning with some people.
I agree that “seakitten” is one of the stupidest attention-getting attempts ever, but there are some issues with fish farming. I’m not trying to sway you in any particular direction, but in the interest of fairness I do want to point out that fish farms can have significant environmental impact and may not be great for the fish. (I personally don’t really care; my much greater objection is that fish is the most foul-smelling edible substance ever.)