I wouldn’t eat any more or less meat as a result of their activities. I’d oppose them in a political sense because they’re jerks.
Also, I used to work on a dairy farm. Spend a few months up to your knees in cow shit, and you’ll start to believe that a good cow is a dead cow.
I hate PETA because they believe in an aesthetic ideal and will put that pretty-looking ideal above actual animals any time. Dump ex-aquarium sharks in the ocean - the probability that they’ll be dead in a week or so is most likely pretty high. Never mind, though! No one has to
(Sorry, missed edit window!)
…see those sharks die, so it’s OK! Much better than living long, peaceful lives in an aquarium, because then some people would have to deal with the aesthetic dissonance of “they belong in the ocean, y’know?” I’m convinced that animals have consciousness and emotions and all that stuff, but I’m equally convinced that they have no concept of such abstract philosophical concepts as freedom. As long as they’ve got enough food and enough space and mental stimulation not to get bored, they’re set.
But that offends these peoples delicate sensibilities, because “they belong in the wild”, and so “better dead than bred”, better dead than anything, it seems.
I also hate them because their great far-future ideal of no captive animals whatsoever would necessarily involve the extinction of all domestic species or subspecies, and a vast decline in the number of individual animals alive in the world at any time. Also, with no zoos or any other place where children can ever come into contact with animals, the next generation would have no emotional attachment to animals, no personal incentive to preserve them in the wild.
A third reason why I hate PETA is because they not only don’t like us eating meat, they don’t really like animals eating meat either. What I mean is that they seem to prefer prey animals to predators. They are against the re-introduction of predators such as wolves into their historical ranges, from which they were driven out by man, because one, to do this the wolves would have to come into contact with humans. Being darted, kept in enclosures for a while to get them used to their new environment before being released, and so on. Oh, the horror! Much better to release them willy-nilly so that they have absolutely no chance of surviving. Anyway, the second reason why they’re against predator re-introductions is *oh, the poor little deer! * They say on their website (and I’m quoting this from memory, I don’t want to go back and get pissed off again) that the prey animals of an area where the predators had been wiped out are used to no predation, and re-introducing predators would be traumatic for them. Deer good, wolves bad.
Me, I prefer wolves to deer any day, and tigers to chickens. In South Africa where I’m from, some game parks are in a conservation program together with China, to breed South China tigers and get them used to living in the wild over here, so that they can be released back into their natural habitat in China. (See, there ARE tigers in Africa! Living wild too!) So anyway, they started training these tiger cubs to fend for themselves by giving them chickens to hunt. So then the SPCA (more or less the equivalent of SPCAs in other contries, but with slightly watered-down PETA-style animal rights policies rather than animal welfare. So like PETA, only with more power locally to influence laws 
and fewer sexy adverts) goes ballistic because oh, the poor little chickens! So the deaths of a few chickens are more important than training endangered South China Tigers to live and hunt in the wild. (“where they belong!”:dubious:)
So that’s why I hate, hate, hate PETA and anyone like them.
I don’t eat anything with a face on it. That’s why I have the butcher cut that part right off.
The faces aren’t particularly tasty anyway… 
Yup. She was nuts, as in full disability and occasional institutionalization.
Sharks are instinctive hunters. Cite for the claim that they can’t be released into the wild as adults?
Hey, this is the Pit, and that was an opinionated rant! I wasn’t particularly thinking of cites, but here’s a barely-related article where some people, at least, feel that a shark should go through some kind of rehabilitation before being released: Wildlife Extra - Petside
I wasn’t for a moment thinking that sharks couldn’t catch their own food; you may have been confused by the tiger story. I’m thinking more in terms of other things eating them.
Seriously? Like the kids book says, Everybody Poops.
Here’s hoping this economy doesn’t force you to take a job in a sewage treatment plant.
Ah. Well, that’s a fair point. You may remember the darkly humorous story of Dunham, the bottlenose dolphin rescued and rehabilitated by Clearwater Marine Aquarium. He was released back into the Gulf of Mexico, and… immediately eaten by sharks.
No specific shark cite, but I’m sure there are plenty out there for animals raised in captivity not knowing how to find prey and/or how to keep from being eaten. If the nurse sharks were being fed regular old fish food, they may not recognize anything else as “food”.
Not that I really care - the whole idea of sharks needing to “be free” to “be happy” is just silly…
Oh no, that’s horrible! 
I agree with you there - as I said, I can definitely credit animals with emotions and intelligence, but freedom is such an abstract concept I’m sure it’s the last thing they’d be concerned with (always assuming their needs including enough space and mental stimulation are being taken care of).
I dislike PETA for many reasons, but it’s things like their “Holocaust on your Plate” campaign that really anger and disgust me. There are holocaust survivors still alive now, right? I’m sure they are just so thrilled about PETA’s piss-poor look-at-me godwinization. Barf.
Comparing concentration-camp prisoners to farm animals. Barf barf barf.
Not only is it spectacularly dumb and in extremely poor taste, it also trivializes the Nazis’ crimes.
But hey, you might say, PETA’s fucked-up shock campaign worked! Or why else is it still being talked about years later? Well, fuck that! Yes, it worked - in that it made at least some of us realize what utter assholes PETA are.
Fuck PETA.