PETA President Ingrid Newkirk says we shouldn't drink milk, and PETA is suing the Milk Board for what it calls deceptive advertising. PETA says the ads are deceptive because they show happy cows in green meadows.
"Almost no cows have a blade of grass or a tree," Newkirk said.
"Some of them are on mud," Newkirk said, "which means when it rains, they're living up to their hocks in manure."
But in nature, cows walk around in mud. If there weren't farmers taking care of them, the cows' living conditions might be worse. And many cows do live in green fields. You see them all over America.
Farmers want healthy animals — a healthy chicken lays more eggs, a happy cow gives more milk. That's why some dairy farmers even give their cows waterbeds to sleep on. Newkirk says that only a "vast, vast minority" are treated that well.
Still, it shows that the farmer wants a healthy cow, too, right?
"It's economics, that's all it is. If it ruins the leather …" Newkirk said.
Economics is OK. A happy cow, a healthy cow, more milk, more meat.
‘Concentration Camps for Animals’
PETA also wants us to stop eating turkey, because, according to Newkirk, the turkeys have nothing but "stress, pain, disease, fear, and in the end, a traumatic death." She says turkey farms are "like concentration camps for animals."
I think that's an insult to the people who were in concentration camps.
She told me: "If you go to these turkey farms, turkeys are crammed together so tightly, and they're transported in all weather conditions, only to be hung up by one leg and have their throat slit. That's not kind."
But nature isn't kind either. Lions hunt down zebras and start to eat them while they're still alive. And while life on a turkey farm is no picnic, wild turkeys have tough lives, too. In the wild, they would fight, and die slowly, suffering as much pain as turkeys on a turkey farm.
PETA says we shouldn't wear fur, either. Some of its members stormed the runway at the recent Victoria's Secret fashion show to protest a model who poses for fur ads.
At a protest in Boston a month later, PETA activists doused themselves with red paint — to represent the animal's blood — and then slithered over Macy's store windows, smearing as much of the paint as possible to protest Macy's selling fur coats.
That protest cost Boston-area taxpayers money. The Boston Sanitation Department had to come to clean up the sidewalks. When I asked her about this Newkirk said, "I'm sorry, John, but I think somebody has to give the animals a voice."
PETA has gotten some very famous people to be the animals' voices. It's a trendy charity; celebrities such as Alec Baldwin and Alicia Silverstone appear in PETA ads.
Activism or Terrorism?
Some of their ads encourage us to protest research on animals. Even though animal testing has led to penicillin, organ transplants, the cure for polio, PETA says medical research involving animal testing must not be done.
Newkirk said, "It's totally immoral, and I would no more experiment on my neighbor's child than experiment on an animal."
Newkirk said that all animals feel pain, and feel afraid, and "it's rubbish research."
Other animal rights activists advocate not just civil disobedience, but force.
Robin Webb asked a crowd to destroy a New Jersey laboratory that uses animals to do research on diseases like AIDS and cancer when he spoke at an event for Stop Huntington Animal Cruelty.
PETA says it does not fund terrorists, but when arsonists who blew up a research lab in Michigan were caught, PETA paid $45,000 for the legal defense of arsonist Rodney Coronado.
"We gave him money for his defense because it is America and you are entitled to a legal defense and he's a fine young man and a schoolteacher," Newkirk said.
Coronado doesn't seem to have any remorse for his action. He's out of jail, and a few months ago the Center for Consumer Freedom taped him urging others to burn buildings down.
"I wish I didn't have to stand up here and talk about and justify and encourage direct action — encourage breaking the law, encourage burning down buildings that are built for life's destruction, but I do," he said.
He's the fine young teacher PETA's defending? The guy blew up a building. He didn't just speak his mind, he spoke with a bomb.
Now you know, when you make your contribution to PETA, that's where some of it goes.
Give Me a Break!
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