I'm Only Human, People.

According to an anonymous reader, the CCF (see the "PETA Kills Animals?!! PETA Kills Animals?!!" post below) may not be on the level. In response to my last article, a reader said, "Hey, Johnny, You're a day late and a penny short. The trial ended on Friday. The two PETA employees were convicted of littering. That's it. No cruelty. No misrepresentations." Some of you may have read the comment already. [By the way, reader, it's spelled J-O-N-N-Y. And yes I did that on purpose.]

I went to consumerdeception.com, the website the reader told me about, and was shocked when found this:

The Center for Consumer Freedom is a nonprofit corporation run by lobbyist Richard Berman through his Washington, D.C.-based for-profit public relations company, Berman & Co. The Center for Consumer Freedom, formerly known as the Guest Choice Network, was set up by Berman with a $600,000 �donation� from tobacco company Philip Morris.

Berman arranges for large sums of corporate money to find its way into nonprofit societies of which he is the executive director. He then hires his own company as a consultant to these nonprofit groups. Of the millions of dollars �donated� by Philip Morris between the years 1995 and 1998, 49 percent to 79 percent went directly to Berman or Berman & Co.

Richard Berman is an influence peddler. He has worked out a scheme to funnel charitable donations from wealthy corporations into his own pocket. In exchange, he provides a flurry of disinformation, flawed studies, op-ed pieces, letters to the editor, and trade-industry articles, as well as access to his high-level government contacts, who are servants of the industries he represents.

It went on to say that he has challenged organizations like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, the Center for Disease Control and of course PETA in order protect the profits of his clients. Even media organizations and newspapers (including the Center of Media and Democracy and the Washington Post) have a problem with Berman. This might not necesarily mean that PETA doesn't waste animals (a part of me still doesn't trust them), but this does complicate things quite a bit.

I'll I can say is...I'm very sorry.

I should've done more research on the CCF. But a part of me is glad that I made this mistake because it taught me to be more careful. Of course I'm not the first person on Earth to make this mistake. Hell, even the New York Times messes up every now and then. And the same can (and probably has) happened to you. There's a lot of information out there that looks good and sounds good but may not be true. That's why it's always good not to be so quick to believe everything you read. You never know who is lying (Even consumerdeception.com might not be telling the whole story. You never know.). It's like I said in the last post: "It's hard to know who to trust these days."

By the way, the CCF also knows about the end of the trial. They said:

PETA Trial Final Scoreboard:
Holier-Than-Thou Animal Killers: 1
Justice: 0
Americans: Smarter

It's over, folks. A North Carolina jury has acquitted two PETA employees of Animal Cruelty and Obtaining Property By False Pretenses. Guilty verdicts were handed down for Littering, in connection with PETA employees Adria Hinkle and Andrew Cook's improper disposal of their furry victims' bodies. Hinkle and Cook were each given suspended 10-day jail sentences, 12 months' probation, 50 hours of community service, a $1,000 fine, and nearly $3,000 in restitution. And PETA's "death van" has been confiscated by the town of Ahoskie, NC.
While we certainly didn't see these "Not Guilty" verdicts coming, we'll give PETA's highly paid lawyers credit for blowing enough smoke and sowing enough confusion to confuse a jury. (That's their job, after all.) But it has now been established in court that PETA, in fact, kills animals. Inevitably, more and more of PETA's naive supporters will get a clue.

It also compares Hinkle and Cook to O.J. Simpson. Do with this information what you will.

And keep the honest criticism coming. It's the only way I'll learn.

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.