PETA Kills Animals? PETA Kills Animals?

The Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) says that two employees from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals ( a.k.a PETA) are facing felony charges in the Hertford County Superior Court for allegedly killing 31 animals. The CCF's website, consumerfreedom.com, says that Andrew Cook and Adria Hinkle each face 21 counts of Cruelty to Animals and 3 counts of Obtaining Property By False Pretenses after going to shelters like the Ahoskie Animal Hospital to gather animals like puppies and kittens, promising them that they will give the furry little guys good homes.

The CCF, who is not a big fan of PETA, judging from articles like this, has vowed to place a full-page ad about the story in the New York Times. [Here's the New York Times article, entitled "Why We Criticize PETA" that explains everything (you might have to buy it though) .]

There's also a moblie billboard and a website, PetaKillsAnimals.com, about the incident.

After a bit more searching, I found the same story in the Charlotte Observer. Here's PETA's side of the story, according to the Observer:

Phil Hirschkop, a lawyer for PETA, said the group got complaints about horrible conditions in animal shelters. Emaciated dogs unable to move, lying in their own filth. Animals suffering through long, terrifying deaths in gas chambers. Animals being killed with a drug that caused their internal organs to seize up while they were still conscious.

PETA, a well-funded organization that raises more than $25 million a year from 1.6 million members and supporters, started sending workers to Bertie, Northampton and Hertford counties.

PETA employees would clean and renovate shelters, hand out free doghouses to the poor, and take sick animals to the vet. They set up programs that allowed residents to get their animals spayed or neutered at no cost. And they began handling euthanizations at the shelters, Hirschkop said.

They used the same method that veterinarians use: an injection of sodium pentobarbitol that kills the animal almost instantly.

"PETA's choice is to allow those animals to be shot or gassed in a very cruel manner, or to euthanize them themselves and at least do it humanely," Hirschkop said.

By 2005, the PETA people were picking up so many animals that they didn't have room in their small van to carry them back to Norfolk alive. So Hinkle took them from the shelters one by one and euthanized them in the van, Hirschkop said.

He says the only crime Hinkle and Cook committed was throwing the animals in a trash bin, an act for which PETA President Ingrid Newkirk has apologized and offered to pay.

Hirschkop said the pair dumped the animals because they had other stops to make and the animals often started to smell before they got back to Norfolk, where PETA has facilities for cremating animals.

"They never should have done it," he said. "But this is not the crime of the century."
Hirschkop says that in a region where county officials neglect animal shelters and private landowners routinely shoot or poison stray animals, the sudden concern about animal welfare is disingenuous. He says he believes law enforcement officials have pursued the case because they don't like what PETA stands for, and he says the prosecution has become a matter of politics rather than justice.

But veterinarians and county officials say that PETA is full of it:

Hertford County veterinarian Patrick Proctor told reporters at the time of the arrests that three of the cats in the Dumpster were a healthy mother and kittens that he turned over to PETA on the promise that they would be adopted. His allegations resulted in three charges of obtaining property by false pretenses. Proctor did not return calls from The News & Observer.

Officials in the three counties also say they believed the animals PETA took had at least a chance at finding homes.

"The verbal agreement was, if they felt like the animals could possibly be adopted, they would," said Sue Gay, the head of Northampton County animal control. "We thought at least some of them were being adopted."

What's this world coming to? PETA is killing animals? Is this one of the signs of the apocalypse? I admit that part of me was waiting for a moment like this. The way PETA kept going on and on and on about how fur is murder and how evil it is to use little rats for cancer research that could help save millions of lives someday kind of bothered me. Don't get me wrong, I like animals, but I also like a good hamburger every now and then.

It kind of makes you wonder what other organizations are up to no good. Does the National Organization for Women own female strip clubs? It's hard to know who to trust these days. Newspapers, TV news, prestigious organizations like PETA, Democrats, Republicans and many others have their own agenda, which makes it hard for us to figure out who's telling the truth. What can we do? Any Suggestions?

To get day-by-day coverage of the PETA trial, which is now in motion, go PetaKillsAnimals.com. And while your at it, look at this CCF TV ad.