|
PETA demonstrators protest in front of the Statehouse in Providence, R.I. They placed themselves in containers
Protesters from PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment
PETA's 'chicken' protests alleged KFC mistreatment of chickens
PETA mascot |
NORFOLK--At the risk of causing Frank Perdue to spin in his grave, here's an observation spun off from one of his old TV ads:
It takes a tough person to save a tender chicken.
And it takes a thick skin to work for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the Norfolk-based group with a global reach that is celebrating its silver anniversary.
In observance of the anniversary, the group is giving away toy race cars bearing the words, "Driving you crazy for 25 years."
PETA's primary message is as basic as one of the stickers it distributes--a cartoon of a baby chick next to the words, "I am not a nugget."
But it's possible that the only organization more frequently targeted for vilification is al-Qaida.
Take on the beef, dairy, chicken, slaughterhouse and meat-packing industries, go after corporate restaurant chains, and they're going to bite back, and bite hard.
Critics have called PETA weird, radical and vulgar.
And many Americans have a mental caricature of PETA people as antisocial oddballs who can't relate to other human beings.
But during a recent visit, PETA headquarters appeared odd only in that it was unusually pleasant and friendly.
PETA's bright, airy quarters on the waterfront in Norfolk are a vegan, "animal-product-free" zone.
Dogs and cats who have become office pets roam the building and nap at the feet of workers.
Employees aren't allowed to eat animal food products in the building or to wear leather shoes or belts to work. They wear "pleather," an artificial leather substitute.
Workers are not required to be vegetarians, but most are, said Colleen O'Brien, the organization's 29-year-old manager of communications.
While volunteering at a Washington state zoo as a teen, O'Brien began to think differently about eating meat, and her increasing sensitivity to animals led her to work for PETA.
She said those who portray PETA as misanthropic and as putting animal rights before people's welfare are simply wrong.
"It's not a choice," she said. "You don't have to either be kind to human beings or be kind to animals. You can be both."
O'Brien has the passion of a missionary, but doesn't have a moral superiority complex.
She says PETA believes most people simply don't think about what they're doing.
To most, she says, meat is something that comes in shrink-wrap in a supermarket.
And to many, leather shoes come from the mall, not from a cow, she says.
"When you sit down to eat dinner or breakfast," O'Brien says, "You make a decision. You can add to the level of suffering in the world by eating an animal. Or you can eat a vegetarian meal that'll be healthy and delicious, and you won't be hurting any animals.
"We're just trying to open people's eyes to the fact that when it comes to pain and suffering, there's no difference between us and the animals."
PETA wants you to know there's more to that bucket of extra-crispy than one unlucky chicken.
Chicken farms once run as "mom-and-pop" operations have become factories that churn out bulbous hens by the millions.
Male chicks are superfluous. The don't lay eggs. They don't get big enough to provide much meat. So, for years, untold numbers of tiny male chicks have been crushed to death with stones. Or drowned in large drums.
It's not very efficient, so according to Wednesday's Wall Street Journal, a Dutch man has invented a machine called the AED-100 that kills 10,000 birds per hour. It grabs them by their feet and drags them through electrified water.
The device could make the ironically named Harm Kiezebrink very rich, because the threat posed by avian flu in Asia has created a need for farmers to kill chicken and ducks and geese faster than ever. They've found that setting the birds on fire or stuffing them into sacks and beating them, doesn't kill them fast enough.
Most people don't want to know the gory details about the hot wings they had for lunch.
And acting as the messenger has always been an unpopular job when the news is unpleasant.
PETA was launched in 1980 by Ingrid Newkirk and Alex Pacheco with an undercover investigation at the Institute for Behavioral Research in Silver Spring, Md.
Police removed a group of monkeys involved in experiments in which nerves were cut to see how well the monkeys could learn to use numb limbs.
The organization has since brought about charges and changes in a number of similar cases.
For example, in response to one PETA campaign, General Motors halted crash tests on animals.
But last month, the tables were turned.
Foes had a field day when two PETA workers in North Carolina were charged with animal cruelty after tossing euthanized dogs and cats into other people's Dumpsters.
Charges of hypocrisy are gleefully flying on Web sites such as PETAKillsAnimals.com, which is maintained by the Center for Consumer Freedom, run by Washington Richard B. "Rick" Berman, a former labor lawyer and restaurant industry executive who is a lobbyist for the food, alcoholic beverage and tobacco industries.
"PETA kills animals--and its leaders dare lecture the rest of us," the Berman-connected PETAKillsAnimals.com Web site says.
PETA has been a big, inviting target for just about all of its 25 years in existence.
It has often consciously opened itself up to attack with ad campaigns and stunts designed to jolt the media and the public into paying attention to issues it considers important. It has provoked backlash with calculatedly outrageous stunts and campaigns designed to focus media attention on what it believes are unconscionable acts against helpless animals.
One highly controversial ad campaign earlier this year compared the food industry's approach to slaughtering animals to the Holocaust.
A rare case in which PETA backed away from a campaign because of criticism occurred earlier this year in Orange County, when the group scrapped plans to put up a billboard there that said "To protect your family, chain your door, not your dog."
Some experts contend that leaving dogs chained in backyards as "guard dogs" with minimal human contact can essentially cause them to become psychotic and can lead to attacks. The campaign, PETA said, was designed to point that out.
But a 4-year-old Orange County boy had just been killed by a chained dog, and not long before that, an elderly Spotsylvania County woman had died after being mauled by a neighbor's roaming dogs.
The message of the "Chain your door, not your dog" campaign was being misinterpreted in the Fredericksburg area in the highly charged atmosphere after those two tragedies, PETA said.
The charges against the PETA workers in North Carolina are loosely related to that effort to take care of chained dogs.
PETA has been building doghouses for pets that are left chained without shelter.
And it says it has been euthanizing some animals that have been abandoned, abused, and are starved or sick in the same areas.
Dan Paden, a cruelty caseworker at PETA, says it's been heartbreaking to see the suffering involving chained, neglected dogs in North Carolina, with some of those dogs too far gone to help.
Media campaigns PETA uses to get its sad message across to a public suffering from information overload run the gamut from gut-wrenching to erotic to funny.
There have been sexy ads involving PETA supporter Pamela Anderson and other sympathetic actors and models.
There have been silly stunts such as the one directed at Al Gore in 1999. A PETA activist famously dressed up in a bunny suit and stalked the Democratic presidential candidate on the campaign trail. It was a protest against Gore's support of a program that tests industrial chemicals on animals for toxicity.
There was the recent "Running of the Nudes" campaign intended to draw attention to the cruelty of the annual Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain, that ends with the animals dying in bullfights.
O'Brien said using edgy humor and sex appeal are often the only way to attract attention from a jaded media.
The Internet is becoming a more and more important tool for PETA, which often puts video of animal abuse cases on its Web site, PETA.org, in an attempt to sway public opinion.
"It's hard to get these images on TV," O'Brien said. "It's hard to watch. But on the Internet, you can show almost anything."
And, she says, every time PETA puts up video detailing abuses, it receives a surge of supportive messages and donations.
MICHAEL ZITZ is a staff writer with The Free Lance-Star. Contact him at 540/374-5408 or mikez@freelancestar.com.
