Last week, the People for the Ethical Treatment for Animals, or PETA, started a campaign urging children to send a petition to the director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, asking him to stop promoting the hunting of sea kittens. The campaign's explanation is that fish need to fire their PR guy - stat and when your name can also be used as a verb that means driving a hook through your head
it's time for a serious image makeover [...] who could possibly want to put a hook through a sea kitten?
The obvious silliness of renaming fish as sea kittens aside, PETA's shenanigans make my head hurt. For example, last Thanksgiving, PETA released a tasteless online game called Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals apparently to educate kids about the brutality animals suffer at the hands of the villainously cute Nintendo Wii character, Cooking Mama. Back in 2000, PETA asked the Green Bay Packers to change their name to the Green Bay Pickers, and recently asked Palm Beach Atlantic University to change their mascot to the Sea Kittens. Again, I ask: what does all this have to do with anything, much less animal rights?
The thing is, I believe that PETA, and the people who support their silliness, live on the corner of Ideologically Driven and Just Plain Ignorant. Displaying both ignorance and ideology, PETA's co-founder Ingrid Newkirk said that even if animal research resulted in a cure for AIDS we'd be against it. Newkirk has also publicly supported illegal activism, saying that no movement for social change has ever succeeded without 'the militarism component.'
Speaking specifically about the eco-terrorist group, the Animal Liberation Front, she said that thinkers may prepare revolutions
but bandits must carry them out. This war-on-sanity sentiment is reflected elsewhere within the organization; Vegan Campaigns Director Bruce Friedrich believes that if we really believe that animals have the same right to be free [...]
then of course we're going to be blowing things up and smashing windows. [...] I think it would be great if all of the fast-food outlets
slaughterhouses
these laboratories
and the banks that fund them
exploded tomorrow. And who says that hippies are all kumbayah-singing peaceniks!
And it gets worse. PETA's financial and logistical ties to eco-terrorist groups are well-documented, donating money and resources to the defense funds of domestic terrorists such as Rod Coronado, who was convicted of arson in connection with a string of attacks on agricultural research facilities and fur farms in 1995 code-named Operation Bite Back
culminating in a firebombing at Michigan State University.
After Coronado was arrested, authorities found packages full of evidence from Coronado's raids sent to Newkirk and other PETA higher-ups. Federal Express intercepted another package full of evidence sent by Coronado (under a false name) to Newkirk, because he had used a phony account number to ship the package. In Coronado's sentencing memo, a footnote appears: significantly
Newkirk had arranged to have the package delivered to her days before the MSU arson. The founder of PETA knew of Operation Bite Back, and assisted Coronado.
I grew up on a farm, and some of my best friends have been animals. As the dominant species on Earth, we are trusted by Nature to serve as stewards of Nature, whereas PETA and its associates believe that we are subordinates of Nature. However, we are not slaves to Nature; we have opposable thumbs and self-awareness for a reason. PETA doesn't know this, because, as Kelli Ludlum from the American Farm Bureau Federation said in a phone interview, people who actually care for animals twenty-four-seven are the real experts on animal welfare.
Jesse Hathaway is a senior studying English. Send him an e-mail at jh309105@ohiou.edu.
