It’s a familiar scene: Four hyenas have separated a sickly, young zebra from the protection of its herd, sending it into a panic. Giving chase, the predators run their prey into utter exhaustion. When its defense gives out, they begin feeding excitedly on its crippled form – tearing away chunks of striped meat while it’s still alive. The young zebra’s disembowelment and ensuing death finally ends its torment.
This is by no means the most brutal act found in the natural world. Scavengers prey on newborns and the unborn. Carnivores suffocate their meals into submission. Parasites destroy their hosts from the inside out, causing unspeakable pain. Cannibalism is a common occurrence for more than 1500 species.
That said, when extremist animal-rights organizations such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) demand, in the words of PETA president Ingrid Newkirk, “total animal liberation” (i.e. no pets, no seeing-eye dogs, no animals used for AIDS research, no zoos, no animals used for food, clothing, or basically any human-related purpose whatsoever) what utopian world do these folks think spawned us? A glance at PETA’s website suggests that it must have been a cutesy one without any slimy insects or reptiles. Or hyenas.
PETA has become the worst kind of “environmental” activist group – one whose decrees are blindly followed by its members without any attempt to understand basic ecology.
PETA has become the worst kind of “environmental” activist group – one whose decrees are blindly followed by its members without any attempt to understand basic ecology. As a result, more rationally-minded animal rights proponents and vegetarians have received a bad rap. Much of the general public now assumes that vegetarians are naïve treehuggers who simply can’t stomach devouring anything with eyes, and that animal rights activists run around willy-nilly pelting fur garments with paint. Such fallout has inspired the ire of fellow animal rights campaigners.
“Ingrid Newkirk runs PETA like a guru cult,” said Merritt Clifton, founder and editor of the national animal protection newspaper Animal People. “Sooner or later, everyone who questions her or upstages her in any way, no matter how unintentionally, ends up getting shafted in the most humiliating manner Newkirk can think of.”
It’s true that PETA has done a lot of good since its founding in 1980. They’ve shut down squalid animal testing facilities, strengthened animal cruelty laws, and launched successful campaigns against the likes of KFC and McDonald’s. However, most of their philosophical underpinning remains irrevocably skewed.
Let’s start with hunting. Sure, most people with a conscience condemn poaching, hunting for pure sport, and those who get their rocks off by guzzling beer and killing stuff. But let’s not forget that hunting for sustenance – a practice utilized by most surviving indigenous people – is an ecologically sound and completely natural endeavor. In fact, more ecologically sound than, say, eating some highly processed meat replacement produced in a large-scale industrial facility and shipped halfway across the country to your plate. As an added bonus, the production of the soy used in such highly processed products is now competing with cattle grazing as one of the main causes of rainforest destruction.
PETA even goes so far as to tell children their fathers are murderers for engaging in any type of fishing. Fishing! Are pelicans murderers? How about sharks? The cover of one cartoonish PETA brochure features a maniacal fisherman with crazy-eyes violently gutting his catch beneath the words “Your Daddy Kills Animals!” Within, it warns children to keep the family pets away from psychotic animal-hating daddy because “they could be next.”
And what about fur, leather, and other animal-derived products? Again, our hunting and gathering ancestors utilized nearly every part of the animals they killed – creating tools, clothing, and shelter – without producing the type of waste and devastation created by even one industrial plant cranking out carcinogenic synthetic fibers. Of course, eating meat excessively and imprisoning and slaughtering animals on a massive scale for nothing more than one desirable product is a travesty, but that’s the real issue here.
The problem isn’t that human beings shouldn’t ever incorporate meat – loaded with a wide array of essential proteins and complex fatty acids – into their diets, or use any products or innovations derived from animals in their daily lives. The problem is that we’ve extracted ourselves from the basic checks and balances of the ecological world and declared dominion over it – the net result of this being industrialized agriculture and factory farming. These processes serve to disassociate individuals from the procurement of their food, enabling society to lose the respect it once had for the species (including plants) that give their lives so we might continue to exist.
PETA’s underlying Disneyfied vision of nature is merely the laughable icing on the deeper cake of hypocrisy and extremism.
PETA’s underlying Disneyfied vision of nature – where everything coexists peacefully without suffering, pain, or death – is merely the laughable icing on the deeper cake of hypocrisy and extremism. The group funds the ALF – an organization that firebombs laboratories conducting experiments with animals – and decries any and all animal testing, while simultaneously benefiting from its results. Case in point: PETA’s Senior Vice President, MaryBeth Sweetland, is a type A diabetic kept alive with synthetic insulin. She apparently doesn’t see this as a moral quandary.
“I’m not going to take the chance of killing myself by not taking insulin,” she said. “I don’t see myself as a hypocrite. I need my life to fight for the rights of animals.”
What’s more, PETA’s definition of ethical treatment includes the euthanizing of nearly two-thirds of the unwanted domesticated animals that come into their care. From July 1998 through December 2005, the group killed over 14,400 dogs, cats, and other “companion animals.” In 2005, 31 felony counts of animal cruelty were brought against two PETA employees for the unlawful disposal of animal carcasses in North Carolina dumpsters. According to veterinarian Patrick Proctor, PETA told North Carolina shelters they would try to find the dogs and cats homes. He handed over two adoptable kittens and their mother, only to learn later that they had been swiftly euthanized.
Finally, there are the over-the-top ad campaigns. Some highlights include: The “Holocaust on Your Plate,” a campaign which juxtaposed images of factory farms with images of holocaust prisoners and expectedly enraged the Jewish community. The “Are Animals the New Slaves?” exhibit, which displayed images of noosed black men hanging from trees alongside photos of slaughtered cows and was suspended after outcry from the NAACP. And last but not least, there’s the infamous “I’d Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur” campaign, which utilized nude models to demonize fur. Hey, sex sells.
Rather than making ridiculous demands such as “total animal liberation,” activists looking to better the Earth should turn their attention to building local, eco-friendly methods of food and clothing production – animals and all. Because if the mere act of one species feeding on or utilizing another in pursuit of its own survival is unethical, PETA better move to another planet.
5 responses so far ↓
1 El Testigo // Nov 11, 2007 at 5:31 am
I got the principal idea of your speech…but from defending animals and make some mistakes in the way to being more harmful than helpful there is a big difference…i´m not some PETA big supporter but i agree with a lot of their work, even if extreme sometimes, but the animal situation is extreme as well and think that can´t be understand by somebody that still finding common points between fishing for pleasure and fishing for survive (That means respecting the nature and taking what you really need) or keeps the comparisions between use fur for coldness, shelters or tools in places in the 5th corner of the stoneage world and using fur for 5000 dollars clothes took away from animals while alive…there is levels of responsability and respect to animals, and the half of the humankind or more can live without take to many animals to the slaughter house or at least not for all those fake cosmetic-fashion-diet reasons. Is not in the hands of the african kids starving in the deserts or in the hands of the families living in the garbage dumps in the 3rd world contries. No, is in the hands of those that have the choice do a little for the animals that in this human egoism world can do nothing to defend themselves. Then is not just about PETA, or about pets, not even just about meat, is about us and about respect and worthy life for those that depend on us. Is about balance between living beings.
Sorry for my english, i hope at least part of the message arrive.
2 knsummers // Feb 26, 2008 at 3:29 am
As a teacher I’ve called on Hugs for Puppies, the Philadelphia chapter of PETA famous for some of their “radical” stances on animal liberation, to come into the classroom and educate students about kindness, reciprocity, and respect for animals.
Like PETA and ALF I think we all hold humans to different standards than predators like pelicans. Peter Singer helps us understand better the reasoning behind Animal Liberation propaganda.
I think your perspective is very human-centered. Bears, cougars, pelicans get to eat meat! Why cant I eat meat?
“Racists violate the principle of equality by giving greater weight to the interests of members of their own race, when there is a clash between their interests and the interests of those of another race. Similarly speciesists allow the interests of their own species to override the greater interests of members of other species.”
“For the great majority of human beings, especially in urban, industrialised societies, the most direct form of contact with members of other species is at meal-times; we eat them. In doing so we treat them purely as means to our ends. We regard their life and well-being as subordinate to our taste for a particular kind of dish. I say “taste” deliberately - this is purely a matter of pleasing our palate. There can be no defense of eating flesh in terms of satisfying nutritional needs, since it has been established beyond doubt that we could satisfy our need for protein and other essential nutrients far more efficiently with a diet that replaced animal flesh by high-protein vegetable products.”
Peter Singer
3 Jason Glover // Feb 26, 2008 at 9:26 pm
I am constantly amazed that this article is so misconstrued.
How is my viewpoint human-centered? It is the opposite of human-centered. PETA’s viewpoint is human-centered because they assume as human beings we are somehow separate from the ecological laws that hold predation and a species depending on another species for survival as essential.
Secondly, PETA practices speciism by assuming its better to kill a carrot for food than to kill a rabbit. Also by only giving a shit about cute mammals but not caring one bit about saving cockroaches (or apparently house cats). Hug a puppy? How about save a spider in a cup and let it go outside.
The only point of this article is to illustrate that the problem isn’t the ethics of eating meat. The problem is our declaring dominion over the web of life. Again, hunter-gather cultures hunt food, have respect for the animals they kill and a great connection to them, and have a smaller ecological footprint (and therefor less adverse effect on the entire web of life, including the ability of all animals to survive) than a suburban dwelling vegan.
Of course urban citizens only coming into contact with animals through eating them is a tragedy. This is addressed above:
I might add that I am a vegetarian and think the cause of animal rights is a noble one. I just think animal rights extremists are misguided and do the cause a disservice with their black and white worldview.
How is the act of a human eating meat in a sustainable and ethical fashion of detriment to any other species?
Yes, free the chickens. Let them be massacred by foxes rather than leading lives of content laying eggs on an organic farm and being eaten at the end of their lifespan.
4 winnie3k // Apr 15, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Hmmn. I wasn’t aware that PETA was an environmental organization–I thought the point was animal rights first, use saving the environment as an incentive program.
If your problem with PETA is that an animal rights platform is not necessarily an ecologically sound one, you might be right. But I don’t know that it’s a particularly meaningful bone to pick.
Also, I think you are trying to frame your argument from the point-of-view of a species, whereas PETA tries to frame their argument from the point-of-view of the individual animal. When you say “How is the act of a human eating meat in a sustainable and ethical fashion of detriment to any other species?,” well, it might not be. If you change the question to “How is the act of a human eating meat in a sustainable and ethical fashion of detriment to any other CREATURE?,” the one who died for the meal might have a pretty smart answer. That’s if it could talk. And it weren’t dead.
And as for the chickens–if they weren’t domesticated, they would still be living in the jungles of Vietnam, where they are well-adapted to living with local predators. After all, isn’t that the way nature is supposed to work?
5 Jason Glover // Apr 15, 2008 at 4:31 pm
My problems with PETA, and PETA’s general viewpoint, are numerous.
1. PETA is hypocritical - they kill animals after telling people they will look for homes for them, and their members benefit from animal research.
2. PETA’s overly hostile approach gives rational animal rights proponents and vegetarians a bad name.
3. Their point of view disregards the operation of natural ecosystems.
4. Their viewpoint is emotionally driven and illogical - not to mention narrow-minded. This gives credence to the Ultra Right viewpoint that all environmentalists are bleeding-heart fools with absolutely no logical basis to their arguments.
And why exactly would anyone want to care about a particular CREATURE over an entire SPECIES. That’s just silly, to be nice about it.
Chickens are domesticated. That’s the fact. The question is what will happen when domesticated chickens are released - which is apparently what PETA would desire.
They will be eaten. Or they will die of old age. Either way they will die. Everything dies and death isn’t decidedly negative.
PETA sees the world through the eyes of a naive child and assumes if we pay make-believe long enough we can transform a world where life feeds on death and death feeds on life into a perfect utopia (that is, unless you’re a carrot).
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