Re: On PETA

[thiolsulfate]

Ok, I'm going to start rough because I need to get this out, I'm having some really serious issues with fucking PETA.

I used to think that they were just FOR animals. Which, I admit, I don't mind. I can understand that we don't want to abuse animals, we want to encourage pet adoption, we want to avoid excessive abuse of farm animals -- but the SPCA does that as well.

The SPCA, however, doesn't do this:

In Wake of Shooting, PETA Urges Both Sides in Abortion Debate to Go Vegetarian

Wichita, Kan. -- With the debate between pro-choice and pro-life adherents rekindled following the shocking murder of abortion provider Dr. George Tiller at a Wichita church on Sunday, PETA plans to place two billboards in the city. One features the text "Pro-Life? Go Vegetarian" and the other reads, "Pro-Choice? Choose Vegetarian." The group hopes that the ads will help Wichita residents on both sides of the controversy find common ground in concern for the suffering of billions of living beings horrifically abused on factory farms and in slaughterhouses.
[...]

http://www.peta.org/mc/NewsItem.asp?id=13131

WHAT -- THE -- FUCK?!

Dr. Tiller's body wasn't even cold and PETA exploits the death of one of the few doctors left who perform late term abortions, a hero to desperate women everywhere, to promote their stupid bullshit about farming practices or vegetarianism.

I knew PETA was a bit on the extreme side, but I never really cared to look into PETA until the 2008 CA referendum where both Prop 2 and Prop 8 passed -- giving more rights to farm animals while taking away rights from homosexuals. And I had to pause -- and ask myself, "How the hell did that happen?" How can people care about animals more than they care about other people? I didn't get it; I couldn't wrap my head around it.

Then I realized it, it's PETA. It's PETA and idiots who think like PETA who, for whatever reason, put other animals before people.

Here's another of PETA's projects I came across:

Read PETA's letter to Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield

September 23, 2008

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, Cofounders

Ben & Jerry's Homemade Inc.

Dear Mr. Cohen and Mr. Greenfield,

On behalf of PETA and our more than 2 million members and supporters, I'd like to bring your attention to an innovative new idea from Switzerland that would bring a unique twist to Ben and Jerry's.

Storchen restaurant is set to unveil a menu that includes soups, stews, and sauces made with at least 75 percent breast milk procured from human donors who are paid in exchange for their milk. If Ben and Jerry's replaced the cow's milk in its ice cream with breast milk, your customers-and cows-would reap the benefits.
[...]

http://www.wptz.com/news/17539127/detail.html

More here: http://www.peta.org/mc/NewsItem.asp?id=12015

The campaign is linked to this:

What he hell is going on at PETA? Does PETA know where human breast milk comes from and how we get it? Women only produce breast milk during and for some time after pregnancy -- essentially PETA is advocating to take milk away from infants to protect cows.

Secondly, the link between milk and autism is through casein supported by testimonials and non-double-blinded studies brought to us by the same idiots who brought us the MMR vaccine-autism causality -- that is to say that there is no provable link between casein (or gluten for that matter) and autism, and that every controlled and clinical trial indicates that there is no link between casein, and thereby milk, and autism.

Look, I care about animals -- I just don't care about animals more than I care about people.

I donated money to PETA once and if there was a way to get my money back I would. My boycotting of PETA won't affect them in any tangible by since I never intended to give them money even before I found all this crap.

If you do donate to PETA, please look at some of their projects and really ask yourself if it's worth your money. Please, I beg you, look into PETA and decide for yourself if it is worth any support at all.

[curiosityandthecat]

Oh, right, PeTA... People for Extortion, Terrorism and Abuse. I know them.  

[thiolsulfate]

Oh, right, PeTA... People for Extortion, Terrorism and Abuse. I know them.  

Has PETA always been this full of shit or is this something new?

[Whitney]

A true PETA member would not eat anything that is alive...after all, who are we to decide to end the life of an innocent plant.

PETA is a nutball organization.  I like animals, I think they should have rights as far as humane treatment is concerned.  However, we all need to eat (including the carnivore animals) and not everyone likes veggies and not everyone can be healthy on a vegetarian diet.

Have you heard of the idiots who try to make their pet cats vegetarians...guess what they end up with?  Dead cats.

[curiosityandthecat]

PeTA is an organization that values animal life over human life, run by a woman, Ingrid Newkirk, whose synthetic insulin was developed by testing on animals.

Hellooooo...

 

Check out Penn & Teller's Bullshit! episode about them. It's entertaining and mind-numbing at the same time.

[thiolsulfate]

A true PETA member would not eat anything that is alive...after all, who are we to decide to end the life of an innocent plant.

PETA is a nutball organization.  I like animals, I think they should have rights as far as humane treatment is concerned.  However, we all need to eat (including the carnivore animals) and not everyone likes veggies and not everyone can be healthy on a vegetarian diet.

Have you heard of the idiots who try to make their pet cats vegetarians...guess what they end up with?  Dead cats.

I totally know what you mean.

Whenever I talk to vegetarians or vegans about eating meat I get this half-formed un-refined argument that eating meat is a form of human exceptionalism; that farming and raising animals for the express purpose of consuming them is unnatural and wrong -- as though the state of something being natural or unnatural made it good or evil, and constructing a weak wall separating what is natural vs unnatural. Even ignoring the fact that some species of ants have agriculture, and that some ants raise caterpillars for the purpose of milking them, and the idea that we have put ourselves a step ahead of other animals by eating them is a fallacious one -- because other animals also eat other animals; even if we ignore all that, the analogism of natural/unnatural to good/bad is an ignorant and stupid one. Cancer is absolutely natural, but I wouldn't advocate that anyone get it. Glasses are absolutely unnatural but I wouldn't smash another person's glasses because of their unnaturalness.

(There are idiots who go on Oprah (damn Oprah) and say that synthetic vitamins are poison or worthless while *natural* vitamins are life savers. They advocate against drinking milk with Vitamin D (because of that stupid, refuted claim that casein in milk causes autism) in favor of sitting in the sun -- and getting skin cancer, presumably. They totally ignore the fact that most *unnatural* vitamins are produced in laboratories with the same metabolic processes that *natural* vitamins are made and that most *natural* and *unnatural* vitamins have the same effectiveness to the exception of Vitamin E for which laboratories have not been able to control the stereochemistry and have only been able to produce racemic mixtures of the vitamin.)

I will admit that I make a conscious effort to eat less meat and to avoid eating, at any one time, excessively more meat than my body can process into muscle; I don't like to waste meat so I restrict how much I consume to what my body can integrate.

There is nothing exceptional about eating animals, predation is a reality of nature. It happens. That we do it too is the exact opposite of human exceptionalism. But even if it wasn't natural, even if no other animal ate another animal, the nutritional benefits of eating meat and the necessity of having animal protein ready for growing children and adults who want to maintain muscle mass throughout their life is reason enough to eat meat.

[Jolly Sapper]

What he hell is going on at PETA? Does PETA know where human breast milk comes from and how we get it? Women only produce breast milk during and for some time after pregnancy -- essentially PETA is advocating to take milk away from infants to protect cows.

Most things that lactate will continue to lactate so long as there is something drawing the milk from the breasts.  Think about dairy cows, they get preggers once and because they are milked twice a day after the calf is old enough to be weaned the cow continues to produce milk.  People are the same way.

I'm an odd ball and I have a different take on PETA.  Three words.

Evil

Super

Genius  

I'm sure that most of the members/supports of PETA are bat shit crazy and are nothing more than mindless foot soldiers in the PETA machine.  But I think that within the highest ranks of the PETA leadership somebody got the bright idea that to see anything change in any incremental way you have to push for an extreme position that advocates for something way farther than what your target is.

Example:

PETA advocates a total vegan diet.  PETA makes lots of noise about the benefits of being vegan and why eating meat is bad.  PETA uses methods that offend lots of people.  People start talking and often come to the conclusion that, on some points they agree with PETA but don't really like the organization.  People try to find a middle ground between eating excessive amounts of conventionally produced meat and eating nothing but veggies.  People start to pay attention to what they are eating, where it comes from, start small organic/natural farms that provide for a local customer base (organic chicken, grass feed and finished beef, raw milk, home made cheese, locally harvested honey, local in season pesticide free produce, etc).

So people who kinda agree with some of what the PETA people agitate for decide that they don't like how either PETA behaves or how the current system functions and create a third way.  Hooray for market systems!

[thiolsulfate]

I would like to agree, but I don't think they're that smart. Any popular shift towards being more healthy is a side-effect and not the intention of PETA's ridiculous campaigns.

I don't think this result is a third way so much as it's a false balance. Apart from the idiots who advocate the Atkins diet (who aren't nearly as loud but equally as stupid as PETA), there are no groups who advocate for the exclusive consumption of animals. There are no even slightly legitimate organizations who advocate for the abuse of animals. The line is between people who don't abuse animals and PETA who says that those people do abuse animals. The "third way" is making un-guilty people feel guilt for something they don't do, and that's wrong.

Don't get me wrong, I love some of what PETA does. Naked girls, painted up, in cages, in public places is always enjoyable -- for me. If that was all PETA did, I'd be all for it. They could advocate whatever the hell they wanted, if they did it like that I would be fine. But they don't work like that -- unfortunately. People take PETA seriously, and that's the problem.

My objection to PETA is the same objection I have against Jenny McCarthy, Jim Carrey, and their ilk who advocate against vaccination. Their aim is clear but what will the results be if they succeed? Is the "third way" really preferable to the norm?

What is the aim of PETA's advocating against animal testing -- unless it's human testing or no testing at all. Both of which would halt almost all medical and biological and psychological research as the former would never be permitted and the latter would end it outright. What is the purpose of lying about medical research practices except to end research? There are already strict ethical standards with respect to animal testing not to mention clinical reasons to avoid abuse of test subjects. Any "third way" in that respect is unacceptable.

[Ninteen45]

This is why PETA deserves to be massacared by a gentetically altered cow.

[Jolly Sapper]

I don't think this result is a third way so much as it's a false balance. Apart from the idiots who advocate the Atkins diet (who aren't nearly as loud but equally as stupid as PETA), there are no groups who advocate for the exclusive consumption of animals. There are no even slightly legitimate organizations who advocate for the abuse of animals. The line is between people who don't abuse animals and PETA who says that those people do abuse animals. The "third way" is making un-guilty people feel guilt for something they don't do, and that's wrong.

I guess I didn't do a good enough job of stating my point.  It wasn't about finding a balance but letting people know that there are other ways to think about your food.  PETA says if its got a face and you eat it, you've murdered it.  Agri-biz says it doesn't matter if people in New York eat tomatoes from Mexico instead of growing their own (or purchasing the produce from a more local source).  People in both camps can do whatever they want, but there are probably a lot of people who have never thought much about their food (like where it comes from, how it was produced).  

So PETA goes out and acts like a bunch of assholes in their attempts to push people into a viewpoint that many may consider extreme only wind up opening an avenue for those who do not believe that animals should be raised in battery cages but don't mind eating the animal when its raised in a different manner.  

Its not about balance, just doing things a different way.

[curiosityandthecat]

Jolly has a good point, in that people need to know where their food comes from. I mean, I've seen slaughterhouses and I still eat beef, so it didn't change my view, per se, but it still seems important.

Jamie Oliver's Fowl Dinners is a good place to start.

[Will]

PETA's dead. The barrage of stupid ad campaigns over the past 10 years have sealed the tomb forever. It was over long before sea kittens.

[curiosityandthecat]

PETA's dead. The barrage of stupid ad campaigns over the past 10 years have sealed the tomb forever. It was over long before sea kittens.

AAAHHHHH who's that person on your avatar?!  

[Jolly Sapper]

Jolly has a good point, in that people need to know where their food comes from. I mean, I've seen slaughterhouses and I still eat beef, so it didn't change my view, per se, but it still seems important.

Jamie Oliver's Fowl Dinners is a good place to start.

Omnivores Dilemma and Fast Food Nation were pretty good books.

[VanReal]

PETA is an interesting organization and although their views on most things are extreme to the average Joe at least they are consistent in their loonacy.  You know exactly where those people stand, and they don't bend or waver and are actually pretty effective when they get their minds/hearts set on things.

It is interesting that the two bilboards related to the abortion terminology has vegetarian listed on it because they advocate staunch veganism,.  But, I guess they figure if they posted that word on those billboards people would flee.  Vegan is kind of like atheist, it scares people.  Although vegans are actually scary and ethical vegans are extremely militant!

The factory farms are horrendous, and it's not intentional but it's unfortunately a reality when we consider the number of meat-eaters there are.  It's not like sweet little family farms would be able to manage our population.  So, I'm glad there are more people moving towards vegetarianism, and there are people willing to consume less meat for health reasons or whatever, so those conditions may change some in the future.  However, stating that the process of harvesting honey is torture and cruel to bees, that fish experience suffering, and that the milk I drink is full of infectous pus is freakin' ridiculous.

They've definitely drawn a lin in the sand.  And filled it in with concrete!  Nothing surprises me when it comes to their campaigns, statements, or marketing tools.