First of all, I myself am vegetarian, and always have been, coming from a vegetarian family. For the record, I am completely okay with the fact that they made that decision for me at the start of my life, so I can say with pride that I have never eaten the flesh of another living thing. I have owned multiple pets throughout my life, and cared for them, most lately a pair of humongous rabbits that took up the most part of my Saturday with cleaning duties. Sadly, all but two of our pets - a couple of amazing fish - have passed away, but I think you are getting the picture - I am an animal lover. In fact, I am subscribed to Peta and Peta2's mailing lists, I follow them on Facebook, and I once spent a day of school talking only in French to raise money for the RSPCA. So, I am not your average Peta-basher, just out here to make comments like 'LOL MEAT IS NICE' or 'WHO NEEDS SEALS ANYWAY'. I am here to make what I believe is a valid, considered rant about some things they do that really annoy the Hell out of me.
I am going to make two points here, which I believe I can prove. Peta are HYPOCRITICAL (1), and they do not CONSIDER the consequences of their propaganda (2).
Let's start by examining the following campaign, which encourages people to adopt instead of buying dogs: Outward link to Peta website
In the past, I have seen Peta encourage Facebook users to be abusive towards certain celebrities during a weird hate campaign, which frankly is nothing short of inhumane in itself. Who deserves to be bombarded with this kind of press, not to mention the viewer comments, emails, posts elswhere etc etc, just because they wanted to buy a dog? Should Peta not be celebrating the fact that someone wants to look after an animal, rather than condemning it? In the eyes of Peta, it seems, it is worse to buy dogs because 'animals sold in pet shops often come from "puppy mills", where they are housed in cramped, filthy and unhealthy conditions and lack proper veterinary care'. Hmm. Alright. Well, I can see why they would want to discourage the advance of this industry, but don't they usually encourage people to save animals from such horrific treatment (1)? They state that, in regards to animal shelters, 'as many as one dog every hour is killed because of a lack of good homes'. Right, right, okay. But... what exactly happens to the dogs in the pet shops when no one buys them, then (2)?
And hang on, wait a moment - don't Peta put down animals too? In fact, don't they put down a hell of a lot of animals, claiming that it is a 'necessary evil', according to the article I have just linked (1)? If you cannot be bothered to cast an eye over the above information, I will summarize it for you: there are alternatives which have been proved to work, which mean that only unhealthy animals need to be put down. Is peta campaigning to get these alternatives used by more shelters? No! Is peta in fact practicing these methods itself? No!
So let's put Peta to the question: Why do they still euthanize unwanted pets? Well, they have created this useful little page as an answer (warning: disturbing images), presumably because so many people have asked the question. Again a summary: they plainly state, in much nicer words, that they are willing to put down animals who do not have a home in order to save them from the nasty men who will be mean to them if they don't. All of this, by the way, inbetween horrific photographs of injured and unwell pets, drawing your attention away from the words between the lines.
A little side note here, too: If you had young children, would you feel comfortable with the idea of adopting a dog with a troubled past, that may or may not have violent tendencies because of it?
So, in conclusion, what makes me mad about Peta is their hypocrisy and their short-sightedness. They need to stop needlessly pummeling celebrities for buying dogs and start focusing on making sure that they do not euthanize dogs without homes, they encourage more people to spay and neuter to stop the growth of the canine population (and again, this is hypocritical, but still better than the above), and that they make sure people know that there are dogs out there in shelters that need homes in the first place. It has been shown many times throughout history that going on the attack is not a very good way of getting people to listen to your message - it is a way of making people lose respect for you. Please, Peta, stop making veggies look bad.
Now, take a deep, calming breath, looking at the soothing blue and white flowers on either side of this post and how pretty they are, and tell me what your view on this is.
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