Many people have been asking about PETA and how it connects (or doesn’t) to Veguary. New Veguary blogger Leat Halpert will answer this question in a new feature. – Ed.
Hey, and welcome to a new portion of the Veguary blog, where we discuss animal cruelty around the world and the ethical treatment of animals. Throughout history people have been eating meat, some might even argue that it’s ‘survival of the fittest’ and therefore not cruel or inhumane to eat meat. But what has been occurring now is drastically different. An organization that has risen to speak out against animal cruelty, and is probably the most recognized one around, is PETA. PETA stands for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and focuses on four core issues that are; factory farming, fur farming, animal testing, and animals in entertainment. Their slogan is “animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment.” The ways that they try to enlighten the public of the brutality of animals are advertisements, animal rescue, protesting, undercover investigations and more. It sometimes leads to more drastic measures, and they have been known to berate and ridicule celebrities who wear animal products.
PETA is considered an animal rights organization, rejecting the idea of speciesism, which is the idea that animals are a form of ‘property.’ Their future goal is to be that all animals aren’t dependent on humans for survival. They oppose every use of animal possible, from animal testing to using Seeing Eye dogs for the blind and even shepherding sheep.
The history of PETA had dated back to the 1980s, when Alex Pacheco, PETA’s co-founder along with Ingrid Newkirk, went on an undercover investigation inside a primate research laboratory at the Institute of Behavioral Research in Silver Spring, Maryland. What he found there was appalling. The researcher had cut of the sensory ganglia of the monkeys so that they couldn’t feel anything and used restraint and electric shock, and even withheld from them food and water which was considered ‘experiments.’ So, Pacheco visited the laboratory at night and took pictures and showed them to the police, who consequently arrested the researcher and raided the lab. This virtually brought PETA on the map, from being just “five people in a basement,” and into a national movement.
However, PETA’s efforts to stop animal cruelty have been criticized by a number of organizations as being too extreme in their attempts. Newkirk, one of the founders, was criticized when he responded to a Jerusalem bombing attack where a donkey was loaded with explosives by appealing to Arafat to keep animals out of the situation. Another situation that was severely criticized was their extremely controversial campaign juxtaposing the images of the Holocaust with images of factory farming. This was considered “major chutzpah” comparing the slaughtering of millions of Jews to the issue of animal rights. Their extreme measures against the fur factory have led to members throwing paint against fur coats and stopping fashion shows. All these controversies have led people to even call them a terrorist organization, and were listed as domestic terrorist threats by the U.S Department Of Homeland Security.
In my opinion, I think PETA has definitely gotten the public to notice the cruelty animals have to face every day in slaughterhouses and around the world. It has made a lot of people become vegetarians, after realizing that the issue surrounding vegetarianism is ‘survival of the fittest’ but rather horribly inhumane ways that animals are being killed, and for what? There is definitely something wrong with the ethical treatment of animals in this world, however I think PETA might be taking things a little too far. If you take the focus away from the animals, and onto your organization’s actions, I don’t think you are doing a really good job of bringing the world’s attention to the main problem. On the other hand, maybe people wont realize how detrimental this situation is unless you give them a drastic measure. Maybe the saying, “drastic times calls for drastic measures ” is becoming more and more relating to this, as more are getting inhumanely slaughtered and killed without the public even batting an eye. Well, I hope this article has given you the tools for you to make your own decisions…
Note: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
