Newkirk Defends PETA’s Doggy Killing
The sordid tale of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ (PETA) doggy-and-kitty-killing ways has made a big splash across the pond, and a reporter with the Sunday edition of The Guardian sat down with the group’s president, Ingrid Newkirk, to let her explain herself. At the end of the profile, the reporter challenges Newkirk to explain why PETA kills so many pets. The reporter notes:
Yet the number you [PETA] put down, in one small area of the United States, is one third of the number that animal organisations put down in the entire UK last year.
In reply, Newkirk let loose the typical dubious defense that all the animals PETA kills are already basically on death’s door, but the reporter notes this interesting tidbit:
When things have calmed down a bit [Newkirk] admits that even within the organization not everyone agrees with her [about pet killing].
Apparently all the killing of “adorable” and “perfect” animals —these characterizations by PETA employees are from evidence in a North Carolina trial — has dissidents within PETA wondering if PETA’s definition of “total animal liberation” really means liberation from life itself. Obviously it’s hypocritical for the world’s most notorious animal liberation group — we must quibble with the article’s claim that PETA is “largest,” since other animal liberation groups with starkly similar ideologies like the Humane Society of the United States are larger — to kill the overwhelming majority of the dogs and cats in its care.
But there is a more sinister truth: It kind of isn’t hypocritical to get rid of pets when you’re an animal liberationist. PETA’s ideology is so radical that even pets must be “liberated,” and PETA’s record shows that the group’s utopia is pet-free:
- PETA’s pet body count, now nearing 30,000 reported to the Commonwealth of Virginia;
- PETA officials called for a Florida town to become a “no-birth” community and put pets on the path of the dodo;
- Newkirk once said, “It would be lovely if we stopped this whole notion of pets altogether”;
- PETA balked at a project to reduce and eliminate pet euthanasia at its hometown’s city pound; and
- PETA objected to a pilot program to help homeless pets and homeless people rehabilitate each other in San Francisco.