Animal lovers worldwide now have access to more than a decade’s worth of proof that People for the
Ethical Treatment of Animals ("PETA") kills thousands of defenseless pets at its Norfolk, Virginia headquarters. Since 1998, PETA has opted to “put down” 21,339 adoptable dogs, cats, puppies, and kittens instead of finding homes for them.
PETA’s “Animal Record” report for 2008, filed with the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, shows that the animal rights group killed 95 percent of the dogs and cats in its care last year. During all of 2008, PETA found adoptive homes for just seven pets.
Just seven animals -- out of the 2,216 it took in. PETA just broke its own record.
Why would an animal rights group secretly kill animals at its headquarters? PETA’s continued silence on the matter makes it hard to say for sure. But from a cost-saving standpoint, PETA’s hypocrisy isn’t difficult to understand: killing adoptable cats and dogs – and storing the bodies in a walk-in freezer until they can be cremated – requires far less money and effort than caring for the pets until they are adopted.
PETA has a $32 million annual budget. But instead of investing in the lives of the thousands of flesh and blood creatures in its care, the group spends millions on media campaigns telling Americans that eating meat, drinking milk, fishing, hunting, wearing leather shoes, and benefiting from medical research performed on lab rats are all “unethical".
The bottom line: PETA’s leaders care more about cutting into their advertising budget than finding homes for the nearly six pets they kill on average, every single day.
The Virginia Beach SPCA, just down the road from PETA’s Norfolk headquarters, manages to adopt out the vast majority of the animals in its care. And it does it on a shoestring budget.
Years of public outrage has not been enough to convince PETA to eliminate its pet eradication program.
Now the death toll of animals in PETA’s care has reached 21,339, including more than 2,000 pets last year. That’s not an animal charity. It’s a slaughterhouse.
PETA's Dirty SecretHypocrisy is the mother of all credibility problems, and PETA has it in spades. While loudly complaining about the "unethical" treatment of animals by restaurant owners, grocers, farmers, scientists, anglers, and countless other Americans, the group has its own dirty little secret.
PETA kills animals. By the thousands.
From July 1998 through December 2008, PETA killed over 21,000 dogs, cats, and other "companion animals". That's more than five defenseless creatures every day. PETA has a walk-in freezer to store the dead bodies, and contracts with a Virginia Beach company to cremate them.
Not counting the pets PETA spayed and neutered, the group put to death over 90 percent of the animals it took in during the last five years. And its angel-of-death pattern shows no sign of changing.
Year Received† Adopted Killed Transferred % Killed % Adopted
2008 2,216 7 2,124 34 95.8 0.32
2007 1,997 17 1,815 35 90.9 0.85
2006 3,061 12 2,981 46 97.4 0.39
2005 2,165 146 1,946 69 89.9 6.74
2004 2,655 361 2,278 1 85.8 13.60
2003 2,224 312 1,911 1 85.9 14.03
2002 2,680 382 2,298 2 85.7 14.25
2001 2,685 703 1,944 14 72.4 26.18
2000 2,681 624 2,029 28 75.7 23.27
1999 1,805 386 1,328 91 73.6 21.39
*1998 943 133 685 125 72.6 14.10
Total 25,112 3,083 21,339 446 85.0 12.28
* figures represent the second half of 1998 only
† other than spay/neuter animals
» Skeptical? Click here to see the proof.
On its 2002 federal income-tax return, PETA claimed a $9,370 write-off for a giant walk-in freezer, the kind most people use as a meat locker or for ice-cream storage. But animal-rights activists don't eat meat or dairy foods. And during a 2007 criminal trial, a PETA manager (testifying under oath) confirmed the obvious -- that the group uses the appliance to store the bodies of its victims.
In 2000, when the Associated Press first noted PETA's Kervorkian-esque tendencies, PETA president Ingrid Newkirk complained that actually taking care of animals costs more than killing them. "We could become a no-kill shelter immediately," she admitted.
PETA kills animals. Because it has other financial priorities.
PETA rakes in nearly $30 million each year in income, much of it raised from pet owners who think their donations actually help animals. Instead, the group spends huge sums on programs equating people who eat chicken with Nazis, scaring young children away from drinking milk, recruiting children into the radical animal-rights lifestyle, and intimidating businessmen and their families in their own neighborhoods. PETA has also spent tens of thousands of dollars defending arsonists and other violent extremists.
PETA claims it engages in outrageous media-seeking stunts "for the animals." But which animals? Carping about the value of future two-piece dinners while administering lethal injections to puppies and kittens isn't ethical. It's hypocritical -- with a death toll that PETA would protest if it weren't their own doing.
PETA kills animals. And its leaders dare lecture the rest of us?
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