People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

"PETA" redirects here. For other uses, see Peta (disambiguation).

File:Peta toplogo.png
Founded	1980
Founder	Ingrid Newkirk and Alex Pacheco
Type	501(c)(3)
Focus	Animal rights
Location	Norfolk, Virginia
Members	2,000,000
Key people	Ingrid Newkirk, President
Revenue	$34 million for the year ending July 31, 2009
Employees	187
Website	www.peta.org

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is an American animal rights organization based in Norfolk, Virginia, led by Ingrid Newkirk, its international president. With two million members and supporters, it says it is the largest animal rights group in the world. Its slogan is "animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment."

Founded in 1980, the organization is a non-profit, tax-exempt corporation with 187 employees, funded almost entirely by its members. In its campaigns and investigations, it focuses on four core issues—factory farming, fur farming, animal testing, and animals in entertainment—though it also campaigns against fishing, the killing of animals regarded as pests, the keeping of chained backyard dogs, cock fighting, dog fighting, and bullfighting. It aims to inform the public through advertisements, undercover investigations, animal rescue, and lobbying.

The organization has been criticized for the confrontational style and content of its campaigns, and for the number of animals it euthanizes. It was further criticized in 2005 by U.S. Senate Environment Committee chairman Jim Inhofe for having given grants several years earlier to Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and Earth Liberation Front (ELF) activists charged with offenses including arson. PETA responded that it has no involvement in ALF or ELF actions, and that it does not support arson or violence. The group has also been criticized from within the animal rights movement for not being radical enough. Animal rights advocate Gary Francione, professor of law at Rutgers School of Law-Newark, calls PETA the "new welfarists," arguing that they have become an animal welfare group because they work with industries to achieve incremental reform. Newkirk explained PETA's position in 2002: "If anybody wonders 'what's this with all these reforms?' you can hear us clearly. Our goal is total animal liberation, and the day when everyone believes that animals are not ours to eat, not ours to wear, not ours to experiment [on], and not ours for entertainment or any other exploitive purpose."

History

PETA distributed images of the Silver Spring monkeys with the caption, "This is vivisection. Don't let anyone tell you different."

Further information: Silver Spring monkeys

PETA was founded in the spring of 1980 by Newkirk and Alex Pacheco, initially as what Newkirk called "five people in a basement." The group first came to public attention in the summer of 1981, during what became known as the Silver Spring monkeys case, a widely publicized dispute about experiments conducted on 17 macaque monkeys at the Institute of Behavioral Research in Silver Spring, Maryland. The case lasted ten years, involved the first police raid in the U.S. on an animal laboratory, triggered an amendment in 1985 to the Animal Welfare Act, and became the first animal-testing case to be argued before the United States Supreme Court.

Pacheco had taken a job in May 1981 inside a primate research laboratory at the Institute, intending to gain firsthand experience of working inside an animal laboratory. Edward Taub, the researcher in charge of the lab, had cut sensory ganglia that supplied nerves to the monkeys' fingers, hands, arms, and legs—a process called "deafferentation"—so that the monkeys could not feel them; some of the monkeys had had their entire spinal columns deafferented. He then used restraint, electric shock, and withholding of food and water to force the monkeys to use the deafferented parts of their bodies. The research led in part to the discovery of neuroplasticity and a new therapy for stroke victims called constraint-induced movement therapy.

Pacheco visited the laboratory at night, and took photographs that showed the monkeys were living in what the Institute for Laboratory Animal Research's ILAR Journal called filthy conditions. He turned his evidence over to the police, who raided the lab and arrested Taub. Taub was convicted of six counts of animal cruelty, the first such conviction in the U.S. of an animal researcher, later overturned on appeal. The subsequent dispute, and the ten-year battle for custody of the monkeys—described by The Washington Post as a vicious mud fight, during which both sides accused the other of lies and distortion—transformed PETA into a national, then international, movement. By February 1991, it claimed over 350,000 members, a paid staff of over 100, and an annual budget of over $7 million.

Philosophy and activism

Profile

Alec Baldwin with president and co-founder Ingrid Newkirk, at a PETA event for filmmaker Donny Moss in New York City

PETA is an animal rights organization, and as such it rejects speciesism and the idea of animals as property. It therefore opposes the use of animals in any form: as food, entertainment, clothing, and in animal testing, and would like to see an end to animals being dependent on human beings for their survival. The group has been criticized by other animal rights advocates for its willingness to work with industries that use animals—a position many animal rights advocates find problematic (see below). Newkirk rejects the criticism, and has said of PETA that it is here to hold the radical line.

PETA addresses animal advocacy at a macro and micro level, from lobbying governments to advising on how to prevent flooding without destroying beavers' homes. It promotes a vegan diet, tries to reform the practices in factory farms and slaughterhouses, initiates media campaigns against particular companies or practices, helps to find sanctuaries for former circus and zoo animals, initiates lawsuits against companies, and lobbies government to impose fines where animal welfare legislation has been violated. It also introduces children to animal rights through its teacher network and education programs.

Campaigning

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Christy Turlington during PETA's "I'd rather go naked than wear fur" campaign

The organization is known for its aggressive media campaigns, combined with a solid base of celebrity support—Paul McCartney, Pamela Anderson, and Sarah Jessica Parker are supporters, and several supermodels have posted naked with PETA's slogan "I'd Rather Go Naked than Wear Fur." Many of its campaigns have focused on large corporations, such as KFC, McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King, PETCO, Procter & Gamble, Covance, and Huntingdon Life Sciences. The campaigns have including buying shares in the target companies; for example, as shareholders of YUM! Brands, which owns KFC, PETA submitted a shareholders' resolution asking for more humane treatment of the animals KFC processes. Newkirk has said that the outrageous campaigns are the ones that grab attention, so PETA won't shirk from engaging in them, though she adds that the group has many quieter projects that are rarely heard about.

The campaigns have produced some successes for PETA. Burger King, McDonald's, and Wendy's have introduced vegetarian options in their menus after PETA targeted them; Petco dropped the sale of many exotic live pets; and Polo Ralph Lauren said it would no longer use fur. Some of the campaigns have been controversial. Newkirk was criticized in 2003 when she sent a letter to PLO-leader Yasser Arafat asking him to keep animals out of the conflict, after a donkey was laden with explosives during an attack in Jerusalem,and for the group's "Holocaust on your Plate" exhibition, where eight 60-square-foot (5.6 m²) panels juxtaposed images of the Holocaust and factory farming; see below.

Undercover investigations

PETA sends its employees undercover into facilities such as research laboratories to document the treatment of animals, sometimes requiring them to spend months recording their experiences. It also produces videos based on material collected by other groups who go undercover, including the Animal Liberation Front (ALF). Some investigations have led to lawsuits or government action against the companies or universities. PETA itself faced legal action in April 2007 after the owners of a chinchilla ranch in Michigan complained about a PETA undercover inquiry there; the judge ruled in PETA's favor that undercover investigations are one of the main ways the criminal justice system in the U.S. operates.

In 1984, PETA produced a 26-minute film called Unnecessary Fuss, based on 60 hours of researchers' footage obtained by the ALF during a raid on the University of Pennsylvania's head injury clinic. The footage showed researchers laughing at baboons as they inflicted brain damage on them with a hydraulic device intended to simulate whiplash. The ensuing publicity led to the suspension of funds from the university, the firing of its chief veterinarian, the closure of the lab, and a period of probation for the university.

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PETA filmed HLS staff in the UK beating dogs, broadcast in 1997 by Channel 4 in the UK as It's a dog's life.

In 1990, Bobby Berosini, a Las Vegas entertainer, lost his wildlife license, as well as a later lawsuit against PETA, after PETA broadcast an undercover film of him slapping and punching orangutans. A PETA investigation inside Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), a contract animal-testing company, in 1997 produced film of staff in the UK beating dogs, and what appears to be abuse of monkeys in the company's New Jersey facility. After the video footage aired on British television in 1999, a group of activists set up Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty with a view to closing HLS down, a campaign that is ongoing.

In 1999, a North Carolina grand jury handed down indictments against pig-farm workers on Belcross Farm in Camden County, the first indictments for animal cruelty on a factory farm in the U.S., after a three-month PETA investigation produced film of the workers beating the animals, and skinning a sow that was allegedly still conscious.

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A monkey in a restraint tube filmed by PETA inside Covance, Vienna, Virginia, 2004–2005.

In 2003 and 2004, a PETA investigation inside Covance, an animal-testing company in the U.S. and Europe, obtained footage that appeared to show monkeys being mistreated. A PETA employee filmed primates in Covance's Vienna, Virginia, lab being choked, hit, and denied medical attention when badly injured, according to PETA. PETA submitted a formal complaint to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Covance received 16 sanctions and agreed to a fine of $8,720, but said the citations were for minor administrative matters unrelated to animal cruelty, and that over 700 of the charges made by PETA had been rejected by the government. In 2005 Covance initiated a lawsuit charging PETA with fraud, violation of employee contract, and conspiracy to harm the company's business, but later dropped it.

In 2004, PETA published the results of an eight-month undercover investigation in a West Virginia Pilgrim's Pride slaughterhouse that supplies chickens to KFC. The New York Times reported the investigation as showing workers stomping on live chickens, throwing dozens against a wall, tearing the head off a chicken to write graffiti, strangling one with a latex glove, and squeezing birds until they exploded. Yum Brands, owner of KFC, called the video appalling, and threatened to stop purchasing from Pilgrim's Pride if no changes were made; Pilgrim's Pride fired 11 employees, and introduced an anti-cruelty pledge for workers to sign.

Positions

On direct action and the ALF

Ingrid Newkirk on clashes with other animal rights organizations and her feelings about the Animal Liberation Front.

Newkirk is outspoken in her support of direct action. PETA members have been criticized for taking activism too far, particularly in their long-standing efforts to halt the fur industry, which have involved disrupting fashion shows and throwing red paint on the runway. In 1996, PETA activists (acting independently of PETA) famously threw a dead raccoon onto the restaurant table of Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of Vogue, who promotes the use of fur, and left bloody paw prints and the words "Fur Hag" on the steps of her home. In January 2010, Gerry Byrne, a Canadian MP, compared PETA to terrorists for throwing a tofu cream pie at Canada's fishery minister Gail Shea in protest at the Canadian seal hunt.

Not until black demonstrators resorted to violence did the national government work seriously for civil rights legislation ... In 1850 white abolitionists, having given up on peaceful means, began to encourage and engage in actions that disrupted plantation operations and liberated slaves. Was that all wrong?—Ingrid Newkirk

The group has also been criticized for providing financial support to ALF activists faced with legal action. Newkirk makes no apology for this, writing that no movement for social change has ever succeeded without the "militarism component": "Thinkers may prepare revolutions," she wrote of the ALF, "but bandits must carry them out."

In 2004 The Observer described what it called a network of relationships between apparently unconnected animal rights groups on both sides of the Atlantic, writing that, with assets of $6.5 million, and with the PETA Foundation holding further assets of $15 million, PETA funds a number of activists and groups—some with links to militant groups, including the ALF, which the FBI has named as a domestic terrorist threat.

According to the New York Post, PETA gave $1,500 to the Earth Liberation Front in 2001; Newkirk said the donation was a mistake, and that the money had been intended for public education about destruction of habitat. In 1995, Rod Coronado, a former ALF activist, received $64,000 from PETA and two months later $38,240, as a loan to fund his legal defense, after being convicted of setting fire to a Michigan State University research lab in 1992. During Coronado's trial, U.S. Attorney Michael Dettmer said Newkirk had arranged before the fact to have Coronado send her documents from the lab and a videotape of the raid.

On neutering, backyard dogs, and pets

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PETA provides dog houses for chained backyard dogs.

PETA runs several programs though its Community Animal Project that helps cats and dogs in poorer areas of Virginia, near PETA's headquarters. In 2008 they neutered 7,485 cats, dogs, and rabbits in that area, including pit bulls and feral cats, at a discounted rate or free of charge. The group helps neglected dogs and cats who are ill and injured, and pursues cruelty cases. Each year they set up hundreds of dog houses with straw bedding for dogs chained outside all winter. PETA also produces advertisements urging people to control the pet population through neutering and adoption from shelters, and campaigns against organizations such as the American Kennel Club that promote the breeding of purebred strains.

PETA argues that it would have been better for animals had the institution of breeding them as "pets" never emerged. The group argues that the desire to own and receive love from animals is selfish, and that their breeding, sale, and purchase can cause immeasurable suffering. They write that millions of dogs spend their lives chained outside in all weather conditions or locked up in chain-link pens and wire cages in puppy mills, and that even in what they call good homes animals are often not well cared for. They would like to see the population of dogs and cats reduced through spaying and neutering, and for people never to purchase animals from pet shops or breeders, but to adopt them from shelters instead. The group makes clear that they have no desire to confiscate or set free animals who are well cared for, and deplores what they call the "myth" that they would want to do so.

On euthanasia

Before founding PETA, Newkirk was chief of animal-disease control and director of the animal shelter in the District of Columbia. She has said that she was shocked by the way the animals were treated in the shelter, and by the methods used to euthanize them. She told Michael Specter of The New Yorker:

I went to the front office all the time, and I would say, "John is kicking the dogs and putting them into freezers." Or I would say, "They are stepping on the animals, crushing them like grapes, and they don't care." In the end, I would go to work early, before anyone got there, and I would just kill the animals myself. Because I couldn't stand to let them go through that. I must have killed a thousand of them, sometimes dozens every day. Some of those people would take pleasure in making them suffer. Driving home every night, I would cry just thinking about it. And I just felt, to my bones, this cannot be right.

PETA opposes the no kill movement. The group takes in feral cat colonies with diseases such as feline AIDS and leukemia, stray dogs, litters of parvo-infected puppies, and backyard dogs, and as such it would be unrealistic to operate a no-kill policy. They offer free euthanasia services to counties that kill unwanted animals via gassing or shooting—they recommend the use of an intravenous injection of sodium pentobarbital if administered by a trained professional—and for severely ill or dying pets when euthanasia at a veterinarian is unaffordable. They recommend euthanasia for certain breeds, such as pit bull terriers, and in certain situations for animals in shelters: for example, for those living for long periods in cramped cages.

Two PETA employees were charged with 31 felony counts of animal cruelty and eight misdemeanor counts of illegal disposal of dead animals in 2005, when at least 80 euthanized animals were left in area dumpsters over the course of a month; the two employees, who were later acquitted, were seen leaving behind 18 dead animals, and 13 more were found inside their van. The animals had been euthanized after being removed from shelters in Northampton and Bertie counties. The group said it began euthanizing animals in some rural North Carolina shelters after it found the shelters were killing animals in ways PETA considered inhumane.

On wildlife conservation personalities

PETA criticizes conservation personalities such as Steve Irwin for placing animals under stress.

PETA is critical of television personalities they call self-professed wildlife warriors, arguing that while a conservationist message is getting across, some of the actions are harmful to animals, such as invading animals' homes, netting them, subjecting them to stressful environments, and wrestling with them. Those actions often involve juvenile animals which the group says should be with their mothers. In 2006 when Steve Irwin died, PETA's vice-president Dan Mathews said that Irwin had made a career out of antagonizing frightened wild animals, a dangerous message to send to children. Australian Member of Parliament Bruce Scott said PETA should apologize to Irwin's family and the rest of Australia.

On animal testing

PETA believes that animal testing—whether toxicity testing, basic or applied research, or for education and training—is wasteful, unreliable, and irrelevant to human health, because artificially induced diseases in animals are not identical to human diseases, and because humans and animals differ in biologically significant ways. They say that animal experiments are frequently redundant and lack accountability, oversight, and regulation. Newkirk told Vogue magazine in 1989 that even if animal research resulted in a cure for AIDS, PETA would be against it. PETA promotes alternatives, including embryonic stem cell research and in vitro cell research. PETA employees have volunteered for human testing of vaccines; Scott Van Valkenburg, PETA’s Director of Major Gifts, said in 1999 that he had been a volunteer in human testing of HIV vaccines.

Conflicts with other animal rights advocates

PETA has been the target of criticism from animal rights advocates who believe the group is too soft on animal rights; that PETA should not target women in its ads; or that it should stop the pie-throwing and other stunts. PETA's "I'd rather go naked than wear fur" campaign generated criticism from feminists, as did their poster—showing a woman's legs with black stockings, high heels, and a fur coat dripping with blood—with the caption: "It takes up to 40 dumb animals to make a fur coat. But only one to wear it." Feminist writer Carol J. Adams writes that the anti-fur campaign spoke the male language of exchange, as do the coats themselves: women wear them, but it is mostly men who buy them. Feminists for Animal Rights also criticized an ad in which Patti Davis posed naked with Hugh Hefner's dog.

Gary Francione argues that PETA are "new welfarists," not animal rights advocates.

Gary Francione, professor of law at Rutgers School of Law-Newark, has said PETA has become an animal welfare group, and calls them the "new welfarists," because they work with industries that use animals to effect incremental change. A proponent of abolitionism, Francione argues that PETA's approach—that of traditional animal welfare groups—makes the public think progress is underway when the changes are only cosmetic.

Newkirk has responded to the criticism with the argument that PETA pursues reform while retaining the goal of total animal liberation. She told an animal rights conference: "Reforms move a society very importantly from A to B, from B to C, from C to D. It's very hard to take a nation or a world that is built on seeing animals as nothing more than hamburgers, handbags, cheap burglar alarms, tools for research, and move them from A to Z ... If anybody wonders 'what's this with all these reforms?', you can hear us clearly. Our goal is total animal liberation and the day when everyone believes that animals are not ours to eat, not ours to wear, not ours to experiment, and not ours for entertainment or any other exploitive purpose."

Francione has also criticized PETA for having caused grassroots animal rights group to close, groups that he argues were essential for the survival of the animal rights movement, which rejects the centrality of corporate animal charities. Francione writes that PETA initially set up independent chapters around the U.S., but closed them in favor of a top-down, centralized organization, which not only consolidated decision-making power, but centralized donations too. Now, local animal rights donations go to PETA, rather than to a local group.

Finance

PETA received donations of over $32 million for the year ending July 31, 2009. Over 80 percent of its operating budget was spent on its programs; 15 percent on fundraising efforts; and four percent on management and general operations. Thirty-two percent of its staff earned under $30,000, and 24 percent earned over $40,000. Newkirk earned just under $37,000.

The U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works has criticized PETA's finances, pointing to tax-return claims for funding organizations such as the ALF. The BBB Wise Giving Alliance said in 2008 that PETA does not meet three of its 17 accountability standards: the board chair serves as the treasurer of the board; it has only three voting members of the board, instead of the recommended five; and its website does not provide electronic access to its most recent IRS Form 990.

Media campaigns

Animals as food

Two of PETA's Lettuce Ladies in Columbus, Ohio

See also: Kentucky_Fried_Cruelty § KentuckyFriedCruelty.com

PETA promotes vegetarian and vegan diets through celebrity ads, a vegetarian-specific website, a vegetarian cooking blog and website, by offering free Vegetarian Starter Kits, and by publishing explicit videos of meat production. PETA has also criticized kosher and halal methods of animal slaughter as inhumane.

Holocaust on your Plate

Further information: Animal rights and the Holocaust

The 2003 Holocaust on your Plate exhibition consisted of eight 60-square-foot (5.6 m²) panels, each juxtaposing images of the Holocaust with images of factory farming. The campaign was inspired by the Nobel Prize-winning Jewish author Isaac Bashevis Singer, an animal rights advocate, who wrote: "In relation to [animals], all people are Nazis; for them it is an eternal Treblinka." The exhibit's creator, Matt Prescott, who himself lost relatives in the Holocaust, said it was the same mindset that made the Holocaust possible—that we may do what we want to those we decide are inferior—that allows atrocities to be committed against animals.

Photographs of concentration camp inmates were shown next to those of caged chickens, and piled bodies of Holocaust victims next to a pile of pig carcasses. Captions included: "like the Jews murdered in concentration camps, animals are terrorized when they are housed in huge filthy warehouses and rounded up for shipment to slaughter. The leather sofa and handbag are the moral equivalent of the lampshades made from the skins of people killed in the Nazi death camps." Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League said comparing the systematic murder of millions of Jews with animal rights was abhorrent. In May 2005 Newkirk apologized for the pain the campaign had caused, while defending its goals.

Dairy

To reduce milk consumption, PETA created the "Got Beer?" campaign, a parody of Got Milk?. Advertisements urged students to "wipe off those milk moustaches and replace them with. . . foam." Mothers Against Drunk Driving and college officials complained that the campaign encouraged underage drinking. A new campaign placed ads in high school newspapers and printed trading cards saying that dairy products caused acne, obesity, heart disease, cancer, and strokes. The British Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) asked PETA to discontinue it after a complaint from The National Farmers' Unions, the Dairy Council, the Royal Agricultural Society of England, and one member of the public; the ASA said it played on children's fears and that the health-risk claims were not directly supported by the cited articles. PETA changed some of its material and continued the campaign. PETA suggested in 2008 that Ben & Jerry's create an ice-cream product from human milk, after a Swiss restaurant began using human milk in some of its menu items.

"Your Daddy Kills Animals!"

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Front cover of Your Mommy Kills Animals

The organization has been criticized for distributing graphic pamphlets to children. PETA says the pamphlets are geared toward making parents aware that their actions affect their children. "Your Daddy Kills Animals!", showing a cartoon father gutting a fish, says: "Until your daddy learns it's not fun to kill, keep your doggies and kitties away from him. He's so hooked on killing defenseless animals, they could be next." "Your Mommy Kills Animals" features a cartoon of a mother slicing a knife into a rabbit's stomach; the title was adopted by a 2007 documentary about PETA. In February 2010, the British Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruled against a PETA poster featuring one of the people jailed in the UK for the death of Baby P: "Steven Barker: Animal Abuser, Baby Abuser, Rapist. People who are violent towards animals rarely stop there." The ASA said the poster constituted unnecessary shock tactics.

Prize for in-vitro meat creation

In April 2008, PETA announced a US$1m prize for the creation of a method to produce commercially viable quantities of in vitro meat at competitive prices by 2012. The announcement caused what Newkirk called a near civil war in their office, since many of PETA's members are repulsed by the thought of eating animal tissue even if no animals are killed in its creation.

As clothing

Two long-running campaigns are "Here's the rest of your fur coat," and "I'd Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur," in which supermodels appeared nude to express their opposition to wearing fur. In May 2006, PETA held a naked protest near St Paul's Cathedral in London to highlight the use of real bear fur in the Bearskins used by the Foot Guards. In 2009, they called for a boycott of Canadian maple syrup and the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver to protest the Canadian fur seal hunt.

As entertainment

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Shilpa Shetty in a Boycott the circus advertisement

The group regularly protests circuses that use animals. The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus is a frequent target of PETA's allegations of abuse. PETA asked a number of mayors to pass legislation banning items used to train elephants from cities the circus was due to visit. In one specific case, PETA asked that "bullhooks, electric prods and other devices that inflict pain on, or cause injury to, elephants" be banned, after the animal care director of the Carson & Barnes Circus, Tim Frisco, was filmed allegedly attacking elephants with bullhooks and electric prods. PETA's videotape of one of Frisco's training sessions allegedly shows him attacking elephants with steel-tipped bullhooks and shocking them with electric prods. The elephants are shown screaming and recoiling in pain, according to PETA.

In animal testing

In October 2007, PETA asked the United States Army to reconsider its use of live animals to simulate battlefield injuries during medical education and training, and in February 2008 sent a letter to Assessment and Training Solutions, a contractor which offers the training to the military, asking the company to change its methods. In late 2008, the United States Department of Defense (DoD) formed an analysis team to reevaluate the use of live animals for training; it said that the review was unrelated to external activities or organizations. PETA spokesman Shalin Gala said of the development, "They wouldn't be reviewing this unless pressure was brought to bear on the situation."

General

"Are Animals the New Slaves?"

The 2005 "Are Animals the New Slaves?" campaign featured a display in which images of oppressed groups, including African-American slaves, Native Americans, child laborers, and women, were juxtaposed with those of chained elephants and slaughtered cows. One panel in the exhibit juxtaposed a picture of an African-American being lynched with a photo of a cow hanging from its feet. Others juxtaposed a picture of a burning corpse with that of a burning chicken, and of a fettered slave next to a circus elephant. An 11-part display set up next to a memorial to the Amistad mutineers on the New Haven Green was taken down after a protest from the NAACP.

Requests for name changes

PETA regularly asks towns and groups to change their names to highlight specific issues. It campaigned in 1996 for a new name for Fishkill, New York, and in April 2003 offered free veggie burgers to Hamburg, New York if it would call itself Veggieburg. In October 2003, it offered $20,000 worth of veggie burgers to local schools if Rodeo, California would call itself Unity, an acknowledgment of Union Oil's role in the area's economy. In 2007, it asked Commerce City, Colorado to change its name to KentuckyFriedCruelty.com; in 2008, it launched the "Save the Sea Kittens" campaign, calling fish "sea kittens" in an attempt to give them a positive image; and in 2009 asked the Pet Shop Boys to change their name to Rescue Shelter Boys.

See also

• People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals v. Doughney

Further reading

• PETA homepage
• McCartney, Stella. "Fur farm investigation", PETAtv.com
• 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.
• Meet Your Meat a PETA-produced film about the treatment of animals in the egg and meat industries. Narrated by Alec Baldwin
• Pence, Gregory. Classic Cases in Medical Ethics: Accounts of Cases That Have Shaped Medical Ethics. McGraw-Hill, 1999.
• Workman, Dave P. Peta Files: The Dark Side of the Animal Rights Movement 2003. ISBN 0-936783-32-X
• "We will win!", PETA interview with Sir Paul McCartney, accessed July 10, 2006.
• The Sexiest PETA Ads Of All Time! a slideshow by The Huffington Post