The staggering hypocrisy of PETA

PETA, the American animal-rights organisation, has a new campaign featuring, as so often, scantily-clad models. The aim of the ads is to get people to “Always Adopt, Never Buy” (click to see it more clearly). It’s a good idea that as many unwanted pets as possible should be given good homes. But, as we had cause to write only last week, PETA are guilty of appalling humbug in spouting this particular message.

For PETA has its own animal shelter. Its aim presumably, is to find people to adopt discarded cats and dogs. In ten years, however, over 22,000 animals have been killed there. A rapidly declining adoption rate saw just 7 animals from PETA’s shelter finding homes last year out of a total of 2,216. The rest, 95% of the cats and dogs it was looking after, were all put down.

It may seem unbelieveable, but the proof is in this report dated January 2009 .

We spoke to the Battersea Cats and Dogs Home. They would not say what rate of adoption they achieve, but when we revealed the “success” rate at PETA’s shelter, there was a loud gasp of disbelief.

So buy all means try to get people to adopt pets rather than buy them. But shouldn’t PETA set a far, far, far better example before lecturing everybody else?