PETA's Lame Response We'll say this much for PETA's leaders: they've got an answer for everything. If you write to PETA and ask them about our "PETA Kills Animals" website, they'll send back a form letter including some of the lame excuses below: "Thank you for contacting PETA about the 'PETA Kills Animals' billboard and the accompanying promotions for it … PETA can't afford billboards in Times Square, so we're grateful for the opportunity that this one provides to discuss the animal overpopulation crisis." PETA's lying. The organization has erected not one but two Times Square billboards (one in 1997 and another in 2003), both featuring silicone beauty Pamela Anderson. Click here and here to see PETA's own promotional materials about these advertisements. And PETA's annual budget is over $25 million. That's about seven times what the Center for Consumer Freedom spends. "We do not run a traditional shelter. In fact, we refer every healthy, cute, young animal we can to shelters." Uh oh. There they go again. In 2003 PETA reported transferring exactly one animal to another shelter. In 2002 PETA transferred just two animals. Click here to see the documents PETA filed with the state of Virginia. Since 1998, PETA has transferred a total of 130 animals to other shelters, and 21 of them were chickens. By comparison, it killed over 10,000 animals. "[M]ost of the animals we receive are broken beings for whom euthanasia is, without a doubt, the most humane option." PETA kills 85 percent of the animals it takes in, and finds adoptive homes for just 14 percent. By contrast, the Norfolk SPCA, whose shelter is located less than 4 miles from PETA's headquarters, found adoptive homes for 73 percent of its animals in 2003. It’s rather hard to believe that the animals entrusted to PETA are any more likely to be “broken beings.” Dana Cheek, the former (and most recent) director of the Norfolk SPCA, wrote to us recently: I often receive phone calls from frantic people who have surrendered their pets to PETA with the understanding that PETA will "find them a good home." Many of them are led to believe that the animals will be taken to a nearby shelter. Little do they know that the pets are killed in the PETA van before they even pull away from the pet owner's home … PETA refuses to surrender animals they obtain to area shelters for rehoming. If only the celebrity "deep-pocket" donors on the west coast knew that their donations were going to kill adoptable cats and dogs here in Norfolk. PETA talks a good game about caring for animals, but seems uninterested in saving the only creatures it actually has contact with. If PETA were sincere, it could use its incredible wealth to buy a huge plot of land where its thousands of victims could live out their natural lives. Instead, these animals meet PETA's hypocrisy head-on, in the form of "tough love."
