Why I am a proud member of PETA

A line I hear constantly from liberals is "I'm no fan of PETA, but...." Invariably, the person will go on to talk about how upset she is over some type of animal abuse or neglect. But it seems to be necessary to qualify all such statements with a disclaimer that the speaker certainly isn't endorsing PETA.

Well, I'm here to endorse PETA.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is not the only organization that fights cruelty and neglect. The Humane Society of the United States and the Doris Day Animal League do a wonderful job, also. But it is PETA that makes people uncomfortable. And that is good. In any reform movement, there must be a faction whose existence gets people's attention and makes them uncomfortable. That is how a movement gets media attention, and it is how a movement makes people change the way they look at the world.

People were angry when PETA representatives told school children that the adults in their lives were part of the massive animal suffering brought about by factory farming. But it is the truth.

People got really upset when PETA launched its "Holocaust on Your Plate" campaign. I have the set of posters, and looking at them requires all the courage I can muster. It is not an insult to Jews (or to homosexuals, Gypsies, the disabled, and all of the other 5 million forgotten Holocaust victims). What the factory farming industry does every day to thousands of creatures is obscene and evil. Their suffering is horrific, and American consumers happily support it.

PETA does not break the law, but people like to insist that anarchist acts such as letting lab animals loose or causing property damage are things that PETA does. That simply is not true.

In just the last few months, here are some things that PETA has accomplished:

• Uncovered cruelty to monkeys at Covance U.S. The lab cruelty included striking, choking, and yelling at the monkeys; hosing cages with monkeys still in them; blaring loud music all day; slamming monkeys into cages right after dosing tubes were forced down their throats; and slamming doors to frighten them. Monkeys were found with rectal prolapses, monkeys were left to die painful deaths without euthanasia, their injuries went untreated, and they mutilated themselves out of chronic boredom.

• Uncovered--for the second time--massive cruelty to lab animals at the University of North Carolina, who had promised to conform to proper standards, but had done nothing. Because of PETA's follow-up investigation, the NIH has now launched another investigation.

• Uncovered terrible cruelty to dogs in the cardiac lab of Columbia University.

• Led the fight against the Australian wool industry and against Benetton, who refuses to boycott Australian wool. Australia still performs the painful and barbaric practice of mulesing sheep, and also sends sheep on "death ships" to the Middle East, where their throats are slit. Only thousands of them collapse and die on the ships because of the temperature, which can get as high as 122 degrees.

• Offered rewards to find various pet killers.

• Led the campaign against Iams for its so-called nutritional research, which involves the killing of a number of cats and dogs. So far, Iams has responded by torturing mice, saying they will kill fewer dogs that way.

• Led the campaign to stop the U.S. Park Service from trapping dogs with steel-jaw traps.

• Began working with the Army Corps of Engineers to ban the use of steel-jaw traps.

• Led the campaign against Kentucky Fried Chicken, whose chickens are bred and drug so that they cannot walk. They are crammed into massive sheds where they live in their own excrement, then--at a very young age (all factory farm chickens die very young), they are scalded to death in feather-removal tanks.

• Got passage of an anti-chaining law in Virginia Beach.

• Obtained significant prison sentences for people who set dogs on fire, beheaded a dog, and starved several animals.

• Convinced Junonia to go fur-free.

If some of PETA's stands annoy you, my question to you is: Do you agree with every single stand taken by your political party or your church?

Try to imagine the civil rights movement without the Black Panthers. Try to image the gay rights movement with ActUp.

Without PETA, the animal rights movement would not be as far along as it is.