PETA kills animals

[wazzickle]

In terms of the list of reasons to go veggie, or just eat less meat, animal welfare ranks below environmental concerns, but is still important to me.

If you didn't know, PETA are utter scum. Animal rights activists on the whole are delusional and tend to value animal life above human life to the extent they're willing to kill humans to get their message across: they are basically terrorists.

PETA kill >95% of their animals within one year.

Last week, in Sydney, they mock barbecued a dog (looking just like the breed of my dog, an irish terrier) outside a mall.

[PC-LAD]

As an owner to a dog and a cat, it is appalling to see animals treated badly. But I'd prefer an animal to be euthanized if it is to be caused distress or cause others to be distressed. Not enough people will take these animals in and nor will they have a good life if caged. 30 million dogs are eaten globaly, we see dogs as companions and they are but they can also be hunters or food. If the street was filled with rampent dogs or diseased dogs, it would be because of failing public order and not having a group like peta out there (despite themselves being against pet ownership and being almost instantanious in killing the potential pets before they can be re-homed/habilitated). I personally believe that everyone should be educated on what happens to animals that could be pet and try and prevent their pointless deaths. In turn owners should take responsibility for their dogs and cats to prevent unwanted litters.

[sammyc]

All you have to do is research genuine everyday cruelty in food/farming methods, in an ideal world that should be sufficient information/incentive for anyone. If animal welfare was being dealt with properly then extreme organisations would not have an issue to contest.

[PC-LAD]

All you have to do is research genuine everyday cruelty in food/farming methods, in an ideal world that should be sufficient information/incentive for anyone. If animal welfare was being dealt with properly then extreme organisations would not have an issue to contest.

I Agree in every regard

[wazzickle]

I highly doubt that. If half the world went vegetarian overnight, PETA would merely feel empowered. They exist on publicity, not morality.

[Ttaskmaster]

Animal rights activists on the whole are delusional and tend to value animal life above human life to the extent they're willing to kill humans to get their message across: they are basically terrorists.

I find this is true of activists in general though, not just those campaigning for animal rights...

I also tend to value animal life above humans, but that doesn't make me a terrorist.

[sammyc]

I highly doubt that. If half the world went vegetarian overnight, PETA would merely feel empowered. They exist on publicity, not morality.

Be that as it may; half the world going vegetarian is better than nothing, however if half the world's sweatshops shut down, does that sound like time to sit down?

[wazzickle]

If half the world went vegetarian, it wouldn't be because of PETA.

[sammyc]

& as I've said, nor should it be, it should be a decision on its own merit, shock tactics shouldn't actually be required; and everyone can/should concern themselves with animal cruelty, vegetarian/vegan or not. The failure is in people not arriving at an anti-animal cruelty position left to themselves, which gives extreme organizations the opportunity to say well, leaving it to your own conscience doesn't cut the mustard - shame to hand them that argument on a plate, so to speak.

[mikerr]

Last week, in Sydney, they mock barbecued a dog (looking just like the breed of my dog, an irish terrier) outside a mall.

https://www.news.com.au/national/nsw...fea2f36e3d1c77

[sammyc]

I didn't go looking for this, it just happened to cross my path & ties in with the thread - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...-a8754056.html

The peta dog/lamb point holds up perfectly well as far as I'm concerned; attack the approach by all means, it would have upset me as a kid, as other gruesome things would have; but the flipside of 'feed the kiddies Sunday lamb (just don't upset them!)' doesn't wash with me either.

[wazzickle]

Dogs and lamb are different animals. We have different relationships to them. We domesticated dogs 30-50,000 years ago, and they form close bonds with us, protect us, work for us, express emotions strongly, etc. We do not routinely use them as food, outside of China and Korea. We are very used to lamb being livestock that we rear, kill and eat. They do not fill the functions of a pet or an animal that can work for us very well. The comparisons are, quite frankly, asinine. The idea that people should be shocked by a dog being barbecued but not by a pig or a lamb is entirely reasonable and in keeping with the way we treat animals.

The fact that mass farming industry is cruel to animals does not mean we cannot have a healthy relationship with eating meat. The fact that PETA thinks it's immoral to have pets kinda disqualifies them from being taken seriously on other matters. Mock bbqing a dog - with nothing on show at the time, only as far as i can tell some communication with friendly parts of the press to reassure them it was just a prop - hammers that home. They were out to shock. They don't care whether their message is taken the right way, or whether they reduce animal cruelty, they are in it for the publicity.

[sammyc]

Dogs and lamb are different animals. We have different relationships to them. We domesticated dogs 30-50,000 years ago, and they form close bonds with us, protect us, work for us, express emotions strongly, etc. We do not routinely use them as food, outside of China and Korea. We are very used to lamb being livestock that we rear, kill and eat. They do not fill the functions of a pet or an animal that can work for us very well. The comparisons are, quite frankly, asinine. The idea that people should be shocked by a dog being barbecued but not by a pig or a lamb is entirely reasonable and in keeping with the way we treat animals.

The fact that mass farming industry is cruel to animals does not mean we cannot have a healthy relationship with eating meat.

These are matters of opinion and we aren't going to agree here; but at the least you might concur (hopefully) that many opinions about animals that were firmly entrenched in the past have been rightly subject to change and there is nothing about the attitudes held now to say they are the final enlightened word on the subject. "We are very used to.." is a godawful reason for any practice in my book. We were used to trophy hunting. You may not believe that keeping pets is immoral in itself (& assuming this leaves aside bad owners), but how about rabbits in hutches, birds in cages, exotic species, pet shops & so on - obviously there's a line, & the line moves with the passage of time & attitude, & shifting understanding of different species' intelligence &c.

But as I say, obviously I take an opposite position to yourself, and your opening statement - animal welfare ranks below environmental concern - is not one I can even conceive of holding, let alone agree with. Likewise the references in your post above to the role of animals in relation to us is anti anything I believe, animals are not ours to utilise imo.

[wazzickle]

If we don't look after the environment, there won't be any animals left, wild or domesticated. Environmental concerns are animal welfare concerns, just thinking in the future. To hold animal welfare over environmental welfare is to regard your feelings of wanting to do good as more important than fact.

There's a mix of opinion and fact in my post. It's a fact that dogs show a much wider emotional range than sheep. It's a fact that we have had a close, symbiotic relationship with them for 10s of thousands of years. It's a fact that bbqing a dog upset a lot of people and rather than getting people onside with their message, alienated their target audience (eg me). It's a fact that I've never met a reasonable animal rights activist. The only part of my post that was opinion really was that the comparison between dog and sheep is asinine. It could be other things.

Plants have been shown to have a form of intelligence, that can exist without consciousness. Every one of our actions comes at the cost of something or someone else. Everyone has a personal choice to make how much they are willing to sacrifice in order to impact the environment and animals less. At every point on the scale, from the Jain monks who wear a cloth over their mouth to avoid killing bacteria, to Jordan Peterson, you will be responsible for some level of death, unless you decide the only rational, moral choice is to kill yourself.

Of course attitudes are subject to change. Of course more people should eat less meat. But eating meat is not in and of itself immoral. Mass-farming of animals and cruelty to animals are obviously wrong, so obviously as to the point that it doesn't need to be discussed (at least amongst us). That does not make eating a locally-sourced, well-treated animal, from time to time, or occasionally drinking milk or eating cheese, a worse crime than say flying to new york for a weekend, just because you don't like the idea.

Animals are not ours to utilise. Why should plants be? Plants belong to the earth. Eating them in a non-sustainable way damages the earth irreparably. But we've got to live. The question is how to do the most good. Is it by having a hardline attitude, telling people they're monsters, worse than paedophiles, that meat is murder? Or, alternatively, we should be realistic in our goals and try to recommend for a bunch of reasons (environmental, health, for those who don't care as much about animal welfare as you do) that we cut down on our meat and dairy consumption. That is how you do good. Because, really, how you stack up next to the guy next to you doesn't matter at all only matters for the purpose of appearing more virtuous, and appearing more virtuous does little to no good and could even do harm - what matters is how you stack up next to how you used to be, because that's static, whereas everyone around us is changing, so maybe the guy next to you has a backward slide and all of a sudden you're better than him.

PETA exist because people feel like action needs to be taken, and the louder the action, the better. That doesn't make it the right action if your goal is doing good, it makes it the right action if your goal is feeling good.

[sammyc]

My point is that any opinion based on learned/cultural influences is automatically suspect - my generation's early experiences were all of the Ladybird book Mrs Cow gives us milk, Mr Pig is for bacon, Mrs Hen lays eggs for our tea sort, you then have to question everything retrospectively & unlearn the bits you feel don't hold up. In a culture that eats dog there will be those that disagree with it but many that will also put forward the it's "in keeping with the way we treat animals" & we have always done x & y argument. It's difficult to look at your own culture and conclude categorically that you would have come to the same conclusions about which animals to treat in which way left to yourself. If you have looked at everything you believe and are fine with it, then that's down to the individual, obviously many don't give it that much in-depth thought.

Eating a locally-sourced well treated animal can clearly never equate to the environmental impact of flying, for me - one involves an animal's early & involuntary death, & although any mention of taking frightened animals to slaughter as per my link seems to be inevitably looked on as emotional blackmail/sentimental or taking the moral high ground, they are matters of fact and can/do change people's minds when confronted with them. Take the example of celebrities going into the jungle & routinely jibbing at eating something that they have never contemplated has feet & a head, or didn't even know what animal it's a bit of. If everyone's attitude to what they eat was the end product of facing all the facts, the basic non-hardline ones, then fine (well not fine by me obviously, but the best one can expect). But that doesn't happen, or you wouldn't have this attitude whereby explaining to people where their dinner comes from is looked on as some sort of dirty trick to put someone off their KFC. (I'm not sure which us you are referring to by "Mass-farming of animals and cruelty to animals are obviously wrong, so obviously as to the point that it doesn't need to be discussed (at least amongst us).")

I accept you're talking from a pro-animal welfare viewpoint so we're cool there, as far as it goes, but obviously we differ widely on principle, which (for the record) is not about my trying to do good/appear virtuous. Genuinely, that has nothing whatever to do with why I am against eating lamb. I can't justify it, end of, & if I could put anybody off their Sunday roast by fair means, I happily would, with no idea of there being a halo in it for me. Do I think hardline tactics are better than softly softly? Not necessarily. Do I think that the kind of person that will coo over footage of one lamb saved from a blizzard & eat lamb anyway can do with an occasional glimpse of something grisly such as that kind of a stunt? Yes, probably. I wouldn't have thanked my mother for graphic depictions of what happens to farm animals, but nor do I appreciate a culture that fed me animals first & left it to me to ask questions later.

[opel80uk]

But eating meat is not in and of itself immoral.

Sorry, I don't buy that. Eating meat is immoral IMO. Killing sentient beings, who have the capacity to feel pain, for no other reason than we want to eat them, especially when we are perfectly capable (and indeed may be better off) of having a meat free diet, is indefensible. I also happen to believe that one day in the future, humans will look back at eating animals as barbaric.

And before I get attacked as being another PC snowflake liberal, I eat lots of meat. easily 4 or 5 times a week, if not more. And yes, I'm aware of how this all makes me a hypocrite, and immoral, but I prefer that to the cognitive dissonance on display whenever this topic is brought up, especially when it comes to arguments like: Lamb=Ok, Dog=not Ok.

As for PETA though, I do partly agree. Much like the Militant Atheists (who in principle I tend to agree with), I just think the tactics they use in trying to win hearts & minds is all wrong. But the idea that they can't actually do good because you have decided that they want to feel good (by virtue of you seemingly deciding what is good), rather than actually do good is disingenuous. Firstly, 'good' is subjective. And secondly, PETA have, throughout their history, have has some notable successes with their campaigns, especially in relation to the fur trade and animal testing, so they would dispute what you say. Furthermore, to describe most Animal rights activists as 'terrorists' and 'willing to kill' is nonsense, backed up by no evidence what so ever. If most animal activists were actual terrorists, we would all be in a lot of trouble. I would argue that using that kind of language demeans your overall point.