Good News, Max snubs PETA, will give to a local shelter

Thanks for this post. So few people know the truth about PETA. I only found out, after donating to them for years, when I adopted a sweet pitbull. I discovered that they have an agenda of wanting pitbulls to be wiped out. The reason given, when I wrote to ask if this is true, is that the breed is so mistreated that exterminating them will save pitbulls pain. Crazy thinking.

Yes, yes, yes! There are all sorts of advantages to donating locally, but the biggest one is typically that the local shelter has your back when it comes to needing help. We needed help to deal with the dog-chewed remains of one of our cats, who escaped one morning and became the next-door-neighbor's-dog's chew toy. We needed the local shelter when we found a lost canary on our front porch one morning. We needed the local shelter when we had a male rescue kitten grow to ginormous size and threaten our ancient resident female mini-cat; we adopted another boy-kitty, and the boys played with each other and left our old lady cat alone.

Support your local shelter!

Great move, Mark, and great news!

Dont even get me started on HSUS... 'The Humane Society of the United States' has nothing to do with your local Humane Society shelters, folks! Donate to these local shelters if you care about pets!

I had a front row seat as the "activists" destroyed the Albemarle/Charlottesville SPCA so none of this is news to me. The natural human response towards infants is transformed into an irrational crusade for helpless animals. It isn't about the animals for many of these people (I've met some); uncontrollable drives have taken over and they can't react in any other way. For some it reaches a pathological level.

"No kill" is ultimately just another shiboleth--it is impossible to assimilate the sheer volume of unwanted animals. The only way to maintain a "no kill" shelter is by letting someone else do the killing. Spaying and neutering are by far the most effective remedies, limited as they are. If you don't get your animals fixed your are part of the problem.

"Finally, a note about the HSUS and PETA. They are not for animal welfare. They are for animal liberation."

Regarding HSUS, we need a citation on that.

"Likewise PETAs shelters euthanize 95% of the animals they receive, they are not interested in promoting pet adoption."

A truly skeptical blog would ask a) What is average euthanasia rate of an animal shelter? b) If a shelter specializes in sick animals, as PETA's does, what is it's euthanasia rate? and c) How many animals has PETA saved through that same program, which emphasizes helping the pet owner, not taking pets away?

I don't know the answer to any of those questions, but taking the moral high-ground against PETA, especially in a blog that is supposed to pride itself in its skepticism, means one should have to do some research before repeating the talking points of a corporate-funded* website of dubious scholarship**.

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Consumer_Freedom
**The PETA employees were acquitted of the charges. The site does not suggest what should have been done with the animals. The dumpings were against PETA policy.
http://www.roanoke-chowannewsherald.com/2007/01/31/da-probes-into-peta-…

"The PETA employees were acquitted of the charges. The site does not suggest what should have been done with the animals. The dumpings were against PETA policy."

Oh, well that's all right then. It was against *policy* to illegally dump animals in another business's dumpster, and nobody gave them any suggestions of what to do. There aren't, after all, any common practices followed by the tiny number of other organizations that have to dispose of carcasses not fit for human consumptions, such as veterinarians, slaughterhouses, livestock operations, roadkill cleanup crews, culling operations, other shelters....

C'mon. Seriously. You incinerate them or you take them to rendering plants. It's not rocket science; anyone who didn't know what to do with the bodies had no business euthanizing animals. Knowing small business owners who've had to deal with people dumping all sorts of crap in their dumpster, I bet the small businesses involved were frustrated at the acquittal. It's theft of services; most trash haulers charge by weight, after all.

What are euthanasia rates at other facilities that accept sick animals? Extremely variable. Generally not 95%, and PETA does not advertise itself as "sick animals only." In fact, there is widespread perception that PETA shelters are no-kill, based on the quite reasonable assumption that their "don't kill animals" message applies to themselves as well.

Calli,

I completely agree with your comments about property disposing of dead animals.

So does PETA. That's why the two were fired. So I don't see where the disagreement lies.

If this blog has taught us anything, it is that "widespread perception[s]" are often wrong. PETA constantly talks about how "no-kill" shelters increase suffering of animals. A simple search of their site in fact shows tons of "exposés" of "no-kill" shelters.

http://www.peta.org/b/thepetafiles/archive/2012/02/09/the-blurry-line-b…

http://www.peta.org/tv/videos/investigations-companion-animals/11087266…

http://www.peta.org/tv/videos/peta2-investigations/1472101340001.aspx

PETA is not, and never claimed to be, exclusively an organization that runs animal shelters. Everyone knows it as an advocacy group, mainly one that uses tons of celebrities and "media whoring" (their term, not mine). To say people think of it as a no-kill shelter is just wrong.

They do, however, run some programs that help pets directly. They go to homes in low-income neighborhoods and look at the animals they own. If they need a better dog house, they give them a dog house. If they need straw, they give them straw. If they are visibly sick, they give them medical care. Thus, only the sickest animals actually get admitted to the shelter. That's why I asked what the euthanasia rate for very sick animals is.

The film "I Am An Animal" has one such example.

We're skeptics, people. Start being skeptical.

Everyone knows it as an advocacy group, mainly one that uses tons of celebrities and "media whoring" (their term, not mine).

Everyone except the people interviewed in the news coverage of the incident, that is. They all expressed great shock.

I think you are a bit naive of the general population if you think they're all that well informed. Most people I meet are not skeptics. Most people I meet think of PETA as some sort of slightly kooky but otherwise harmless bunch of cuddly animal supporters who occasionally get naked and a bit silly on the subject of veganism. That you don't apparently meet these people doesn't mean they don't exist.

"Finally, a note about the HSUS and PETA. They are not for animal welfare. They are for animal liberation."

Regarding HSUS, we need a citation on that.

"Likewise PETAs shelters euthanize 95% of the animals they receive, they are not interested in promoting pet adoption."

A truly skeptical blog would ask a) What is average euthanasia rate of an animal shelter? b) If a shelter specializes in sick animals, as PETA's does, what is it's euthanasia rate? and c) How many animals has PETA saved through that same program, which emphasizes helping the pet owner, not taking pets away?

About HSUS and my claim that they are not involved in animal welfare but liberation. Well for one, they engage in an outrageously dishonest ad campaign to generate revenue which shows animals that are sick or pathetic, and sell themselves as a rescue organization but less than 1% of their money goes to rescue or shelters. Their mailings asking for cash are similarly smarmy suggesting that funds to HSUS will go to rescue animals. Granted, the CFF is the one shouting it from the rooftops, and one should be suspicious of yet another advocacy organization, but it is a fact demonstrated on publicly-available forms they have to submit as a non-profit and from documentation from the mailings HSUS sends out. That should be enough to hang them right there as despicable, raising millions of dollars under the guise of being a rescuer then spending the money on lawyers and for things most pet owners would disagree with. From humane watch:

But no lobbyists at all are mentioned in HSUSâs TV adsâand hardly a whisper of its lobbyistsâ objectives is heard. In addition to its direct lobbying expenditures, HSUS spent $6 million between 2005 and 2009 on political front groups designed to attack livestock farmers at the ballot box. HSUSâs ultimate goal for animal agriculture, in one former VPâs words, is to âget rid of the industry.â

This is a far cry from saving the dogs and cats in HSUSâs ads.

While $17.3 million in lobbying expenses over five years may not sound like much for a group that raises $100 million every year, itâs instructive to put HSUSâs lobbying expenditures in the context of other charities. HSUS spent a little over three percent of its 2009 budget on lobbying. Thatâs significantly more than the American Red Cross (0.02 percent), the St. Jude Childrenâs Research Hospital (0.01 percent), or the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (0.14 percent) spent on the same.

I know, it's the CFF talking here. But they are citing actual facts from tax forms to make a legitimate and cogent argument. HSUS collects millions a year using pictures of suffering animals, borrows legitimacy from people's admiration of the work of local humane societies, and then instead of rescuing those poor animals spends the money lobbying against farmers and food production. Their execs are usually former-PETA members or active PETA members, and their actions demonstrate them to be more of a anti-meat organization than a rescue organization. If you want to spend your money to lobby against factory farming, fine, that's your right. But calling yourself a humane society, showing pictures of cats and dogs suffering, then taking that money to lobby against farming is despicable and has nothing to do with animal rescue and welfare.

The data on PETA, similarly, comes from public information, largely from Virginia, which requires shelters to submit information on their euthanasia rates. From the American Humane Association:

* Of the 1,000 shelters that replied to the National Council's survey, 4.3 million animals were handled.
* In 1997, roughly 64 percent of the total number of animals that entered shelters were euthanized -- approximately 2.7 million animals in just these 1,000 shelters. These animals may have been euthanized due to overcrowding, but may also have been sick, aggressive, injured or suffering from something else.
* 56 percent of dogs and 71 percent of cats that enter animal shelters are euthanized. More cats are euthanized than dogs because they are more likely to enter a shelter without any owner identification.
* Only 15 percent of dogs and 2 percent of cats that enter animal shelters are reunited with their owners.
* 25 percent of dogs and 24 percent of cats that enter animal shelters are adopted.

95% strikes me as high, and is high comparable to other shelters. So high that the Virginia department of agriculture investigated. CCF uploaded the result. What is striking is that while they claim the reason their euthanasia rate is so high is that they transfer out the adoptable animals. However, in the most recent year of data 2300 animals were euthanized and only 16 animals were transferred. So, your telling me that 95% of the animals that come in are so sickly they're unadoptable? That virtually none of the animals they take in were transferred out or adopted because every animal they get is on death's door? I call bullshit. They don't emphasize adoption, they don't advertise for adoption, they don't advocate for adoption because they don't believe in pet ownership.

Re: the commenters defending PETA killing 91-95% of the cats and dogs it takes into its "shelters":

Every year in the US, roughly 3.6 million healthy cats and dogs are euthanized in shelters. However, also every year, roughly 17 million households are looking to get a new cat or dog. The math seems pretty simple to me. There are indeed plenty of homes out there for every single shelter pet, ergo, PETA kills animals for other reasons.

http://www.nokilladvocacycenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/nokill10…