Misplaced Pages

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by RK (talk | contribs) at 21:14, 19 October 2003 (Jewish groups are offended by PETA's stance on suicide bombings towards Jews in Israel. (They are Ok, as long as animals are not hurt!)). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 21:14, 19 October 2003 by RK (talk | contribs) (Jewish groups are offended by PETA's stance on suicide bombings towards Jews in Israel. (They are Ok, as long as animals are not hurt!))(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is an international non-profit organization dedicated to animal rights. It was founded in 1980, and its current president is Ingrid Newkirk.

Disambiguation: One might be looking for the article on peta.

Media campaigns and public demonstrations

Most recently (in 2003), PETA has received media attention for its boycott of Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC).

PETA is well known for aggressive media campaigns and public demonstrations for animal rights. Reception of the group's actions is sharply polarized. Critics often claim that PETA is deceptive and uses immoral means to achieve its ends. Adrian R. Morrison of the University of Pennsylvania, for example, claims that the group has "cleverly edited" 60 hours of video tape stolen from his laboratory by the Animal Liberation Front into a damning 30-minute segment, that they cooperated with radical groups, and that they used questionable tactics to silence, discredit and smear their opponents. He writes:

Two of the attempts to ruin my reputation were particularly despicable, but, fortunately, they were unsuccessful. PETA sent a letter with a copy of The Village Voice article to my neighbors, informing them that I was an animal abuser. My neighbors ignored or openly rejected the letter: one builds up credibility as the local Scoutmaster. A series of scurrilous articles on my contributions to science that were commissioned by the American Anti-Vivisection Society were laughed at by my colleagues. That society later protested publicly when the American Association for the Advancement of Science awarded me their Academic Freedom and Responsibility Award just a year after the raid.

In striking contrast, PETA's supporters believe the group's actions to be justified to combat what they see as avoidable cruelty. They also claim that critics fail to address their fundamental belief that animals deserve some kind of moral consideration.

Objections from Jewish groups

Many Jewish groups have repeatedly expressed outrage at certain PETA public relations campaigns that posit a moral equivalency between eating meat and the Holocaust of the Jewish people in Europe under Nazi Germany. Specifically, PETA's Masskilling.com website states that "...author Isaac Bashevis Singer first noted the disturbing similarity between the treatment of Jews during the Holocaust and that of animals raised for food when he noticed that the techniques of mass slaughter developed for use on animals had also been used on human beings. . . . If we are revolted by comparisons between the plight of animals and the plight of human victims of oppression, it can only be because we are not yet prepared to accept our own role in the animals' fate.....Decades from now, what will you tell your grandchildren when they ask you whose side you were on during the `animals' holocaust'? "

PETA has run advertisements of chickens in coops next to photographs of Jews in concentration camps, and their website has photos of Holocaust billboards used to promote vegetarianism. Many Jewish groups, most notably the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), have attacked this practice as "abhorrent." A recent press release from the ADL states that "PETA's effort to seek approval for their Holocaust on Your Plate campaign is outrageous, offensive and takes chutzpah to new heights. Rather than deepen our revulsion against what the Nazis did to the Jews, the project will undermine the struggle to understand the Holocaust and to find ways to make sure such catastrophes never happen again."

Jewish groups have been upset at PETA for their stance on suicide-bombings against Jews in the State of Israel.

Domain dispute over peta.org

In June 2000, a federal judge ordered the owner of www.peta.org, a parody web site called "People Eating Tasty Animals", to give up its domain name to PETA for trademark reasons. This web address is now PETA's main web site.

Famous members and supporters

PETA has many famous members and supporters, including Pamela Anderson and Paul McCartney.

See also: Animal rights -- Animal rights group

External Links

Morrison, A.R. (2001). Personal Reflections on the “Animal-Rights” Phenomenon. In Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, vol 44:1, pp. 62-75. The Johns Hopkins University Press.