A recent opinion piece by Nathan Everly (“PETA is wrong,” Oct. 7) mischaracterized People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and gave readers a distorted view of what PETA does. While this was unfair, it is true that our colorful street-theater protests and our provocative exhibits give the mistaken impression that all PETA employees do is make noise in the streets. But this is just a small part of our work.

Perhaps most misleading is Everly’s charge that PETA doesn’t actually work to improve animals’ lives. There is much that we do that never makes it into the headlines. For example, following more than 100 PETA protests at Safeway stores, the grocery chain became the first in U.S. history to improve conditions for factory-farmed animals. The $34 billion-a-year company pledged to increase space for laying chickens, to stop starving hens in order to force increased egg-laying and to conduct unannounced inspections of slaughterhouses and suppliers. We also persuaded Albertson’s and Kroger to pledge to follow Safeway’s lead. McDonald’s, Burger King and Wendy’s responded to our campaign to make similar improvements. We are currently focusing our campaigns on KFC.

Thanks to courageous whistleblowers, PETA has placed undercover investigators in facilities across the country, leading to exposure of abuse and criminal charges against the people who harm animals. PETA’s undercover investigation of the University of North Carolina (UNC) animal laboratories uncovered multiple violations of regulations – lab staff cut off the heads of live, conscious baby rats with scissors, failed to destroy humanely wounded and sick animals and left hemophiliac mice with their tails cut off to bleed to death. Following our expos‚, a supervisor resigned, scientists were disciplined and employee training was strengthened. The U.S. National Institutes of Health’s Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare has issued a new directive on euthanasia to all research institutions nationwide.

Last year alone, PETA received more than 13,000 reports of animal abuse. Our caseworkers worked with local authorities in communities across the country to rescue animals from deplorable conditions. Our staff risk their own safety to wade into ugly and dangerous situations to rescue animals who have been ignored by everyone else. Our headquarters in Norfolk, Va., from which we direct our worldwide campaigns and investigations, is also temporary home to many rescued dogs and cats-animals that were in terrible pain from untreated injuries or illness, starving or so abused that it took weeks before they would allow a touch of affection. As of this writing, a PETA disaster relief team has rescued hundreds of animals from Hurricane Katrina-devastated Louisiana. Our team has been on site for a month so far, and their work continues.

In our own community, our mobile spay and neuter clinic has sterilized more than 15,000 dogs and cats at little or no cost, preventing the births of hundreds of thousand of unwanted puppies and kittens. We have distributed thousands of sturdy, weather-proof doghouses with straw bedding, free of cost, to residents who will not allow their companion dogs inside. Contrary to Everly’s statement, we do not oppose keeping companion animals.

Even when issues fall out of the news, PETA has learned that we must never give up. It took many, many months of pressure from PETA before U.S. and Puerto Rican officials seized six thin, sick, depressed and filthy polar bears from the traveling tropical Suarez Bros. Circus. PETA had rallied support from polar bear experts, the U.S. Congress, government officials in Germany and Canada and celebrities including Ewan McGregor. Video footage showed the bears panting constantly while being hit, whipped and forced to perform frightening tricks in sweltering temperatures.

The great civil rights activist and African American Dick Gregory once wrote, “Animals and humans suffer and die alike. Violence causes the same pain, the same spilling of blood, the same stench of death, the same arrogant, cruel and brutal taking of life.” This, in its simplest form, is the concept behind PETA’s work. We cannot force anyone to give up wearing animal skins, patronizing circuses, experimenting on animals or eating animals, but we can put into the public domain the ugly goings-on that these industries wish to keep secret.

Whatever your view on animal rights, PETA urges you to learn about what happens to animals so that your choices are fully informed. PETA will keep protesting, educating and investigating to make sure that the animals have a voice.

Shalin is a 2003 alumna of Washington University and a research associate for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).

 Print This Post

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 19th, 2005 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Forum. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.