PETA kills animals

This is a long one... so bare with me. I am going to copy and paste recent emails. Starting with the oldest and ending with the most recent... which seems backwards but if you read from the top... you get the whole picture...

From: Nathan J. Winograd (No Kill Solutions)
To: Undisclosed-Recipient:;
Subject: Peta Kills Animals It Promised to Find Homes For
Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2005 08:38:24 -0700
For years, PeTA has opposed programs to save feral cats and to promote No Kill animal sheltering because of Ingrid Newkirk's background killing animals at the Washington Humane Society. PeTA has a "policy against No Kill shelters" and does "not support right to life for feral cats." The enclosed article was carried by the Associated Press, and indicates PeTA misled shelters and animal hospitals by saying it would find homes for animals, and instead killing them. The story broke when PeTA employees were found dumping bodies in a garbage bin.


Article published Jun 17, 2005
Two PETA employees arrested for animal cruelty

The Associated Press

Two employees of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have been
charged with animal cruelty after dumping dead dogs and cats in a shopping
center garbage bin, police said Thursday.

Investigators staked out the bin after discovering that dead animals had
been dumped there every Wednesday for the past four weeks, Ahoskie police
said in a prepared statement.

Police found 18 dead animals in the trash bin and 13 more in a van
registered to PETA. The animals were from animal shelters in Northampton
and Bertie counties, police said. The two were picking up animals to be
brought back to PETA headquarters for euthanization, PETA president Ingrid
Newkirk said

Thursday.

Neither police nor PETA offered any theory on why the animals might have
been dumped.

Local officials and veterinarians said they were told that PETA would find
homes for the animals, not euthanize them. PETA has scheduled a news
conference for Friday afternoon in Norfolk, Va., where the group is based,
to discuss the charges.

Police charged Andrew Benjamin Cook, 24, of Virginia Beach, Va., and Adria
Joy Hinkle, 27, of Norfolk, Va., each with 31 felony counts of animal
cruelty and eight misdemeanor counts of illegal disposal of dead animals.
They were released on bond and an initial court date was set for Friday in
Winton.

Hinkle has been suspended, but Cook continues to work PETA, Newkirk said.
Hinkle has worked for more than two years as one of its community animal
project employees in North Carolina, PETA spokeswoman Colleen O'Brien said.
Cook, who joined a couple of months ago, was being trained.

Newkirk said she doubted Hinkle had ever been cruel to an animal and said
if the animals were placed in the bin, "We will be appalled."

PETA euthanizes animals by lethal injection, which it considers more humane
than gassing groups of animals, as poor counties are forced to do, O'Brien
said.

"PETA has provided euthanasia services to various counties in (North
Carolina) to prevent animals from being shot behind a shed or gassed in
windowless metal boxes, both practices that were carried out until PETA
volunteered to provide a painless death, free of charge," Newkirk said.

But veterinarian Patrick Proctor said that authorities found a female cat
and her two "very adoptable" kittens among the dead animals. He said they
were taken from Ahoskie Animal Hospital.

"These were just kittens we were trying to find homes for," he said.
"PETA
said they would do that, but these cats never made it out of the county."

PETA had taken 50 animals from Proctor's practice over the past two years,
he said.

PETA also has taken animals from veterinarian James Brown in Northampton
County.

"When they started taking them, they said they would try to find homes for
them," Brown said, adding that no one checked on the animals afterward.

Barry Anderson, Bertie County's animal control officer, identified nearly
all of the dumped dogs as ones that Cook and Hinkle picked up just a few
hours earlier Wednesday, said Detective Sgt. Ed Pittman of the Bertie
County Sheriff's Office.

Anderson also said that the PETA representatives "told him they were
picking up the dogs to take them back to Norfolk where they would find them
good homes," Pittman said.

Nathan J. Winograd
No Kill Solutions
www.nokillsolutions.com

P.O. Box 74926
San Clemente, CA 92673
(949) 276-6942 telephone
(949) 276-6943 fax



Next Came PETA's REPLY:

CROSS POST ** CROSS POST
From:   "Martin Mersereau" <MartinM@peta.org>
Date:   6/21/05 6:49AM
Subject:    gals
I've pasted my director's letter re the NC matter below my auto signature. Pass 
it around as you see fit. No need to reply. 

Martin Mersereau, Casework Division Manager
Domestic Animal and Wildlife Rescue & Information Dept.
757-962-8232 @ 757-628-0796 (fax)

Dear Friends,

Please allow me to begin by thanking you for your support recently. Quite a  bit 
has been said in the press, much of which is inaccurate, sadly, and although I 
know many of you saw our press conference transcript, I would like you to also 
please visit http://www.helpinganimals.com/f-nc.asp and see a handful of photos 
from our NC photo albums.

LINK

Please know that it was a compassionate police officer who first alerted PETA to 
conditions at a North Carolina pound (in Bertie) in 2001. The officer's visits 
to the tiny outdoor chain link structure consistently revealed animal suffering: 
we were sent photographs of, among other horrors, a large white dog drowning in 
a pool of water, lying on her side and too sick and weak to lift her head (she 
later died), a starving dog eating a dead kitten, and a dead puppy found in a 
gas chamber shed. Our visit confirmed that the County needed help. We found 
sick, injured animals in need of veterinary care, a leaky, windowless, rusty gas 
box (see photos at above link)in which animals were crammed and killed, and a 
facility that had no electricity and no covering for its cages. Every winter, 
the water hose froze. 

PETA immediately offered aid to Bertie County and to the City of Windsor, which 
operates its own facility within the county limits. There, animals were 
restrained on a metal pole and shot with a .22. Shortly after this, we found out 
that Hertford County's homeless animals were also gassed. We made arrangements 
to pay a local veterinarian to euthanize those animals by painless injection. 
PETA to this date subsidizes humane euthanasia at the Hertford facility, and has 
so far paid nearly $9,000 for this service. In Northampton County, animals were 
being killed by injection with a paralytic agent that causes suffocation. All 
these practices have stopped since PETA volunteered to provide a peaceful 
painless death, euthanasia, free of charge. No secret was made of the fact that 
we euthanize animals and that the animals retrieved from the pounds would be 
provided with a humane death. In fact, it was I who met and spoke with 
officials, and not one of them ever even asked me about adoption. The pounds 
don't have an adoption program or an adoption rate, and never have.

The pounds that we have helped are in impoverished counties where animal control 
is at the bottom of the list. They are located in remote locations, have no open 
hours at all-not even for adoption-and no staff except one animal warden whose 
job is to respond to dog bites and stray animal calls. In Bertie County, the 
animal warden is also in charge of litter control. We have only improved living 
and dying conditions for unwanted animals, whose fate was to die by a bullet, to 
fight to claw out of a filthy gas box, or to suffocate to death. We could not 
let those things go on, even it meant doing the sad work ourselves. Performing 
euthanasia affects our staff deeply. Gallons of tears have been shed for North 
Carolina's homeless animals, but we are thankful to have been allowed to spare 
them a terrifying, painful end. 

PETA doesn't just pick up animals from the pounds. Over the last few years, PETA 
has worked with these struggling agencies to clean and build, help personnel 
with training and provide supplies and services. We have spent more than 
$250,000 on veterinary and other services in one North Carolina county alone. 
Each dollar spent means a needy animal helped, cold abated, shade provided, 
water, medicine and food given, and suffering relieved. We have also delivered 
hundreds of free dog houses and straw to dogs chained to metal barrels or not so 
much as a tree, and we have paid to spay and neuter countless animals already in 
homes.  

PETA submitted several proposals to officials and attended several meetings 
where we offered (and begged) to be allowed to implement, among other things, an 
on-site adoption program. We have pushed for such a program since 2003. 
Officials were not interested in our offer. 

Many of you attended the House Interim Committee meetings and saw the video 
footage of Yadkin County piling animals one layer atop another in a metal gas 
box. This is still going on. If PETA had allowed that to go on in a jurisdiction 
that welcomed its help-unlike Yadkin-simply in order to avoid bad press or 
having to get dirty or dealing with the grief of feeling the life go out of an 
animal you've just fed and loved and whose likely never known kind words 
before*well, we would not be doing our job. 

A terrible mistake was made with the dead bodies. But the ones who remain at the 
facilities are alive, and I am worried. The fact that these shelters may 
terminate the relationship we have with them likely means that these facilities 
will return to their old ways. Please don't let that happen and encourage 
officials to allow us to continue servicing their county. Thank you again for 
your support and for all you do for animals. 

Regards, 
Daphna Nachminovitch
PETA

Now The most recent BEST FRIENDS gets their shot.

Date:   6/28/05 1:57PM
Subject:    Best Friends Statement On PETA Killing Animals

"So we consider it to be extraordinarily irresponsible for a single animal
rights group with a loud voice and a reputation for protecting animals
to grab the headlines and tell the world that the best thing we can do
for homeless pets is kill them."



http://news.bestfriends.org/index.cfm?page=news&mode=entry&entry=B09758A0-BB9-396E-9CEDD01793F3D860


June 24, 2005 : 7:15 PM ET

Many of you have called and e-mailed Best Friends to express your views
and ask our opinion on the recent arrest of two PETA employees on charges
of animal abuse.

Since these two people will be going to trial, it would be
inappropriate for us to comment on their particular situation. However, we can certainly
comment on the policies of PETA and their public remarks and actions.

PETA runs some very effective campaigns and we support much of what
they've done to help bring an end to some of the worst abuses of animals in
laboratories, factory farms, "sporting" events, and fur farms.

But in the area of companion animals, we have some fundamental
disagreements.

At a press conference following the arrest of those two employees,
PETA president Ingrid Newkirk said, "PETA believes euthanasia is the kindest
gift to a dog or cat unwanted and unloved." We simply couldn't disagree
more. The kindest gift to a homeless animal is a good home. The kindest gift to
an unloved dog or cat is a loving, caring place to go.

We know perfectly well that there are still more homeless animals each
year than shelters feel capable of placing in new homes. But the number of
animals being killed in shelters has dropped from about 17 million just
15 years ago to less than 5 million today. And we can now look forward to
a day, quite soon, when there will be No More Homeless Pets in this
country.

This remarkable goal is being accomplished through the work of
increasingly progressive humane groups and shelters, where good people are working
to save lives, not destroy them. Any organization that's aspiring to a
leadership role in relation to companion animals needs to be
encouraging people to save more lives, rather than to go on repeating the failed
policies and practices that helped create the problem in the first
place.

So we consider it to be extraordinarily irresponsible for a single
animal rights group with a loud voice and a reputation for protecting animals
to grab the headlines and tell the world that the best thing we can do
for homeless pets is kill them. While PETA is in the forefront of many
animal-related issues, they are way behind the times when it comes to
companion animals. We would hope that they will continue to lead in
the areas where they do well, and to stay out of areas in which, by their
own words and deeds, they have no positive contribution to make.
******************************************************************************

http://news.bestfriends.org/index.cfm?page=news&mode=entry&entry=B0994D1D-BB9-396E-9BB3367BABD1FE39


Notes on PETA's claims
June 24, 2005 : 7:10 PM ET

Some additional notes on Ingrid Newkirk's explanation of why she and
PETA kill homeless pets

PETA's Options: Death or Death
PETA asserts that the only available options are:
a) the animals die a horrible death through inhumane practices.
b) the animals are warehoused in horrible conditions.
c) the animals are turned loose on the streets to die other horrible deaths.
d) the animals are placed in imperfect homes where they live horrible lives.
PETA can generate more publicity than any other animal welfare organization
in the world. But they never use their pulpit to hold shelters accountable
for doing more to save more animals. Instead, they simply blame the
continued "need" for killing on the community's lack of responsibility.
And they offer, as the primary solution, more "humane" ways to kill
animals. Certainly, reasonable people would look at animals being killed in
decompression chambers and agree that intravenous sodium pentobarbital
injection is preferable. But this is simply arguing one method of
death against another, rather than arguing for life rather than death.

PETA's Statistics
PETA uses wildly exaggerated statistics -- presumably to justify the
need to kill more animals by pretending that the problem is too big to be
fixed without killing the animals. Here's an excerpt from a fact sheet on
PETA's
web site:
http://www.peta.org/mc/factsheet_display.asp?ID=29
More than 70 percent of people who acquire animals end up giving them away,
abandoning them, or taking them to shelters, which receive about 27
million animals annually. More than half - about 17 million - must be destroyed
for lack of homes. This figure is completely inaccurate. Back in the
1980s, there were, indeed, roughly 17 million dogs and cats being killed in
shelters each year. But that number is now down to somewhere between 4
and 5 million. There are still big challenges to be overcome, but we are now
well on our way toward a time when there will be no more homeless pets
being killed in shelters for lack of an available home.

And now for my response.

Pot Kettle Black.

Best Friends, do you take in EVERY animal that is homeless? No. Thereby you allow them to be killed as they would be. What I read from the PETA statement was they were trying to STOP the gassing and tried to use a less painful method. The animal abuse by the two who were arrested seemed like a different matter. Is Utah a No Kill state? How do they euthanize when they have to? Gas or needle?

There is NO SUCH THING as a NO KILL SHELTER. Let me use a line from my film, "FREE to a Good Home" --All the shelter has to do is "refuse to take in the animal and then it goes to a kill shelter." Thereby making ALL shelters kill shelters.

Currently we do NOT have 5 million homes available. Therefore some animals will have to be killed. Unless, you intend to take them all in until suitable homes can be found. Do you encourage homechecks? Do you encourage applications? Adoption fees? Do you feel that no matter the income everyone has a right to have a pet as a companion? Yes, we are working toward a "no kill" future. But even Best Friends does not delare "No Kill" the way to go. I read your brochures on why it is called "No More Homeless Pets" as opposed to "No Kill" because not all animals are placeable at least not now and maybe not ever. And using the word "Pet" you can ease out of those animals who are not "pet-like."

If the problem was solvable right now. You would have certainly solved it. But it is not. And until the problem of unwanted animals and animal overpopulation comes under "control" animals will be euthanized. Who will take these animals? They will have to be euthanized. Why? Because we do not have the room for them. We do not have the housing. And warehousing them is and can be cruel. You are working toward a No More Homeless Pets society. But we are quite a ways off. Euthanasia is right now our only choice. If there is another choice wouldnt you have mentioned it? Give them to the overtaxed animal rescuers?

In a few places in the East they STILL use gassing as a method of killing unwanted animals. What I read was that PETA was using needle injections to cease the cruel practice of gassing. Now if PETA does not do it, what will happen to those animals, gassed again? Or will Best Friends step in and take them all home to Utah? Will Best Friends step in and euthanize them with a needle?

You said we are well on our way to a time when there will be "No More Homeless Pets" and my question is something you did not address in your statement. What happens until that time. Should PETA allow the states to gas animals to continue that practice?

I know Best Friends has made great strides in the lives of companion animals. But before you point fingers, look first at yourself. How are you culpable in this situation? I saw nothing in your statement that reflected that their intentions to stop the hidious gassing of these animals for a more compassionate alternative was at least offering something better. Afterall, we are all in this together. But I did not see that. I saw the opportunity to blame. But the blame lies with ALL OF US. Every person in America is reponsible for this situation. When we drive by a stray we are just too tired to pick up, when we delete the hundreds of emails about saving this animal or that. When we do not go to the shelter and help a rescue group pull an animal who is begging to borrow a rescue card. When we make getting those rescue cards harder than they need to be. When we say, no, we are full. We are all responsible. Maybe if you had taken in all those animals who were to be gassed, this would have never have happened. I am certain if PETA had a place to put those animals, like The Best Friends Sancatuary in Utah they would have most certainly called you. But if that were possible PETA would never have needed to step up and stop the gassing and replace it with needle injections. What? Don't kill them? Okay, then you take them. You can't possibly take them all in, you say? Well then whatever do we do with them? Ship them all to Utah?