PETA’s lack of tact
by intern Heather B.
Recently, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, a VA-based animal rights activism organization, proposed that 2 billboards promoting vegetarianism be erected in Wichita, KS, in the wake of the late Dr. George Tiller’s death. Tiller, an extreme late-term abortionist, was shot to death May 31 while working as an usher at his church in Wichita.
The Wichita Eagle reported the explanation by PETA’s campaign manager Lindsay Rajt…
While our hearts go out to the family and friends of George Tiller, we are hoping that these billboards will make those who are rightly shocked by his murder sit up and realize that behind closed doors, millions of animals are suffering every day, and that we as individuals can help to reduce the amount of violence and suffering in the world.
Rajt’s insulting proposal, which allegedly attempts to equate the manufacturing of beef burgers and animal-tested cosmetics with the tragic loss of human life, was not well-received by the Wichita community.
Consequently, 3 billboard companies rejected the insensitive attempt at bipartisanship, declaring the timing inappropriate.
One of PETA’s billboards would have read, “Pro-Choice? Choose Vegetarian,” and the other design read, “Pro-Life? Go Vegetarian.” An image of 3 baby chicks would have been featured on each sign.
Of the negative response to PETA’s proposal, Rajt said, “If our billboards leave a bad taste in anyone’s mouth, we just think they might give a thought to what animals feel when they go to the slaughterhouse.”
Hopefully, next time, PETA will give a thought to what people – especially family and friends of the deceased – feel when they go to the funeral home.
[Photo attribution: reflectionsofaparalytic.com]
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
I have no problem with PETA exposing animal abuse, even with the use of graphic, real images. Real images of aborted babies are an asset to the pro-life movement, and encourage those who find them offensive to consider joining us in advocating protection for the very real children in the pictures instead of protecting their sensitive sensibilities. On the other hand, I’m sure PETA is fully away that they are considered a joke among mainstream Americans, especially those on the right. Will coupling politically divisive messages with pictures of fluffy chicks open the right-winger’s eyes to animal suffering? Highly, highly doubtful. I would be more open to considering PETA’s position if they focused more on the actual animals and various practical ways to get involved rather than equating pro-choice politics to choosing a vegetarian diet.
“fully away” = “fully aware”
I kind of like it.
It makes people think about things as they really are not how they wish they were.
Fact is abortion is not just choice. It is the violent destruction of an innocent baby.
Likewise, choosing a burger isn’t just a preference. Many slaughter houses are in fact filthy and inhumane. The news rarely publicizes the deplorable reality just as they ignore the brutal images of dismembered aborted babies.
Fact is being pro life means a commitment to the rights of all children without regard to circumstance. Going vegetarian is a commitment not to use your money to support an inhumane industry.
To be clear, just killing an animal for food is not necessarily inhumane. However, the vast majority of the meat industry is inhumane.
Do you remember Sarah Palin at the turkey slaughtering plant?
At least she was willing to have her picture taken with the turkeys. While I might not choose what she does for dinner, she didn’t shrink from the dirty work.
How many pro aborts would have their picture taken with the dismembered babies whose destruction they endorse?
Most meat eaters and pro aborts want to distance themselves from the actual blood and guts.
So when was the last time you slaughtered an animal?
I’m all for PETA. The PETA I belong to is People Eating Tasty Animals. ;)
When we get a handle on making sure all human beings have the right to life, then maybe I will consider vegetarianism.
Personally, I am against massive farms and buy most of my food locally. But I realize not everyone has that option nor can they afford it.
Of the negative response to PETA’s proposal, Rajt said,
of course it would have been nice if Rajt said, “”If our billboards leave a bad taste in anyone’s mouth, we just think they might give a thought to what babies feel when they are torn apart during an abortion.”
I’ll go you one better, and tell you all I’ve raised my own pigs and chickens, and hope next to get at least one cow. We loved those animals, and cared for them day-in, day-out just like we did our animals that were considered pets. We were sad when they were killed and the carcasses butchered, but certainly saw the meat on our plates as more valuable and were far more appreciative of the sacrifice those animals made to feed our large family than just picking up a cellophane-wrapped package at the supermarket. I love raising my own animals and also hope to actually FINISH ALL THE LICENSING REQUIRED TO HUNT ONE OF THESE SEASONS (*sigh*), because I feel these methods are both FAR superior to large-scale meat processing operations. I believe my Native American ancestors were on to something when they focused on respecting the animals and the appreciation one must show to the departed animals who sustain your life on a daily basis. I do not, however, think that abortion is in any way equivalent to eating meat, although I might be inclined to change my opinion when a cow learns to play the electric guitar and write music.
The really outrageous thing here is that, apparently, they’re deliberately timing it with the Tiller situation. I’m okay with the ads themselves, even though they’re playing both sides of the coin here. You can be either pro-choice or pro-life and still be an animal-rights vegetarian.
Though, really I don’t understand how someone can object to the killing of an animal but support the killing of a preborn child.
It just doesn’t make sense to me.
Good for the three billboard companies who rejected these non-sensical ads. What’s the difference between “choose vegetarian” and “go vegetarian” and what does it have to do with the price of rice in Japan? I don’t get it.
I think that’s a really good way to do things, X. I would definitely like to support more of an individual and humanely raised animals that are slaughtered for food than the mass produced way we do things, though at this point nothing I do reflects that belief. My father-in-law is a framer and hunts a lot and uses the animals he hunts for food. I think that’s a great way to go.
I’m not necessarily that offended by the billboards, despite the HUE discrepancy between the slaughter of animals and the slaughter of children. Still, I can kinda see where a group like PETA would put them on the same level, and although I disagree, I’m not necessarily *offended*…
What does offend me about it is the fact that it’s obviously one-sided. I’m not sure how you could make it an insult on pro-choicers per-say, but it’s clearly a statement that meat eating pro-lifers are hypocritical. Of course, it’s hard to make that argument with pro-choicers who eat meat, as they’re being consistent (‘I’m ok with slaughtering animals, but I’m okay with slaughtering babies too’). Still, it seems like it could have been done in some way.
I don’t know. I guess I *do* find the billboards offensive, particularly because they’re openly playing off of Tiller’s death. I just find them offensive *more* based on the imbalance than on the message (I expect PETA’s message to be somewhat crazy).
I don’t understand how you can be anti abortion but for killing animals. I thought it was all about life. Who are you to decide who lives and who dies?
Amanda, there is a fundamental difference between animal life and human life. Humans have innate capacities that lower animals are lacking.
I am for posting these billboards. I frankly don’t see the why all the fuss. If a pro-choice person objects to a billbd denouncing the inhumane killing of animals than I think it is their own hypocrisy they have to deal with. The timing is perfect when this issue of killing is on the forefront.
And to refute Lauren’s statement that
“Humans have innate capacities that lower animals are lacking.” I think you need to educate yourself about animals. They are sentient beings with capabilities far beyond our range of perception. They love unconditionally and experience emotions, thoughts, pain and suffering so to say they don’t deserve the same life free of inhumane treatment is illogical.
I highly recommend all ppl who think humans have the market on this quality of a “higher life” to watch a new movie called “http://www.tribeofheart.org/” . It will open your heart and your intelligence to another dimension of the animal kingdom that most ppl never experience.
yawn……..
I ate turkey lunch meat tonight (need to get it eaten up as I’ve had it for awhile) with a piece of Provolone cheese. Tomorrow I’m going to make beanie weenies (baked beans and turkey franks I bought at the store yesterday). YUMMMMMMMM
Who are you to decide who lives and who dies?
Posted by: Amanda at June 29, 2009 8:42 PM
A human being, who possesses the cognitive capacity to make decisions like that, and to be in a position to make those decisions because of my cognitive capacity.
PETA is full of it. Years ago I read their estimates of annual output of animal waste. They were off by hundreds of times. Then they published how much water was required to feed and raise cattle. They were millions of gallons off per head. Now the good news. If it wasn’t for prime quality chicken poo, how do they expect to fertilize their organic vegies?
Organic vegies need all the animal poo they can get. They are poo starved. I go for top quality chicken meat. The vegetarians consume the chicken waste. How ironic.
By the way. e-coli is showing up frequently on vegies. The reason this is is because often more foreign than not have a lot of animal waste in their fields that has not been composted and is rich in e-coli. If they used straight nitrogen, the e-coli events would fall.
Actually the incidents of contaminated vegetables are the results of animal wastes from adjacent farms contaminating veggies in the field.
I think you are confusing composted rotted manure which is used for fertilizer with agricultural runoff and contamination.
Sure PeTA is provocative, but few vegetarians are PeTA folks, just like there are thousands of pro life folk but very few of them are nuts. I personally know lots of very conservative christians who are vegetarian or vegan, some for health reasons, etc. They aren’t a monolithic militant bunch.
That’s a good overall lesson for everyone to learn, hippie: no group is a monolith.
The most basic way to be pro-life is to go vegan. The fact is, no one (in most of the world today) needs to take innocent, sentient life to feed themselves healthfully.
You may not think non-human animals are as important as the human animal, but there is no scientific doubt that the majority of creatures feel pain and suffering (even fish!), as they release the same neurotransmitters and respond in very similiar ways to humans experiencing pain.
In fact, the pain they feel, equivalent to a born human being, is far more traumatic than what a human (or animal) fetus aborted early on feels! (and yes, I am anti-abortion, btw.)
If you are Christian, why would a merciful god create animals with the ability to experience pain and then give us all permission to torture and kill them? If animals believe in Satan, he surely comes in human form. If you don’t believe this, i challenge you to watch Earthlings, a documentary of behind the scenes footage of what happens to animals used in the food, fashion, vivisection, entertainment, and pet trades. In fact, I dare you! http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6361872964130308142
“If you are Christian, why would a merciful god create animals with the ability to experience pain and then give us all permission to torture and kill them?”
I don’t know. I’m not Christian, either, but I know that in the New Testament, God gives a vision to Paul, I think it was, specifically stating that all the animals it was before unlawful to eat in the Old Testament, it is now perfectly reasonable to eat. So God disagrees with you, and that is Biblical teaching.
Biologically-speaking, there are nutrients one can aquire almost exclusively through the consumption of other animals, and considering other animals indulge in this practice quite often, I’m inclined to do so myself. Although you should feel free to go picket the lions in the zoo, as I hear they are quite fond of tearing other animals to shreds while still alive and feasting upong their flesh. I’ve been watching Animal Planet, and let me tell you, it’s terribly barbaric the way those lions torture and kill those gazelles.
Xalisae,
The only nutrient humans need that’s unavailable in vegan food is vitamin B12 in small amts, which can be obtained by taking a supplement, eating B12 fortified foods, or by eating some dirt wih your organic veggies (I’d prefer doing the first 2 myself.) We get plenty of protein eating beans, seitan (wheat protein), whole grains, etc. Some vegans don’t eat enough protein b/c they eat too many carbs and junk food, but this is easily solved by paying better atn to what you’re eating.
it’s so easy to be a healthy vegan these days. I know so many of them, including me. it is not hard to do if you eat a wide variety of plant foods and take a vitamin supplment, something most people, vegan or not, should do, b/c our foods have been so stripped of nutriets by modern industrial farming methods.
i’m the only one in my family who is of normal weight with a healthy cholesteral level. I am also the only vegan.
you know very well those lions and tigers and bears (oh my!) have to eat other animals to survive, they have no choice. We do. also, when a lion kills a gazelle for ex, she is helping to keep the species in balance. There are so many deer in the US now b/c humans have killed off all their natural predators.
We, on the other hand, raise and kill 10 billion animals every year who are not even native to the US, so we totally disrupt the natural balance. (Turkeys are the only farmed animal native to North America.) Cows, pigs, and sheep are from Europe and chickens from the jungles of SE Asia.
Millions of native wildlife, wolves, coyotes, birds, praire dogs, etc, are killed by our federal govt (by the Orwellian-named “animal services” division) because they either eat the grain grown for cows, pigs, chickens, etc or they (wolves and coyotes, for ex) prey on cows or sheep.
We kill the wolves for trying to kill the animals we will eventually kill for no good reason! What a sick situation.
In addition, the UN Food and Ag Org came out with a report in ’06 saying that animal agriculture causes more greenhouse gas emmissions, in the form of nitrous oxide and methane, than all of transportation combined! Of course Al Gore paid this no attention in his film, the steak-loving hypocrite! You can google “Livestock’s Long Shadow” and get the report.
See: http://www.veganoutreach.org for some great info.
You know I think it is all the same. Unneccasay evils. And I hate that animals are killed and I hate abortion. I think that all life is equal and that everyone should coexist. The problem is that there are generations of abortions and meat eating. What do you do for a girl that has been abused all her life, kicked out at a young age that knows nothing but bare basic survival. You won’t know these girls, but they are out there. And they get pregnant, and when an abused girl is pregnant she is terrified and she can only process one thought”how am i going to survive” Now unless we can stop that girl from being in that situation to begin with we can never stop or even condone abortion. And she will live with the tears and the scars that the tragedy that abortion has left her with and noone will see those tears or scars but she will cry everyday for her unborn children. No woman wants to let her baby die.