For those who don’t know, Ingrid Newkirk is president of a pet killing organization called PETA. PETA kills almost every single pet that crosses its VA slaughterhouse threshold. The group is well known for trying to cash in on current hot topics for publicity. So it is with [scary music] HOARDERS!!!!!!!
Ingrid Newkirk writes in an op-ed piece:
But “institutional hoarders” now threaten to turn back the clock on hard-won reforms by bullying authorities into adopting magical sounding “no kill” policies that do animals no favors.
Ruh-roh Raggy. Whenever Ms. Newkirk talks about doing animals “favors”, I know what’s coming – some fanciful talk about killing pets as a kindness. Wait for it.
In well-run shelters, managers know that you cannot store animals like oranges. Tough decisions must be made about who remains on the adoption floor and who goes to sleep forever, for, as long as people fail to spay and neuter, acquire and dispose of animals casually, and buy from breeders and pet shops instead of adopting, there will be far more dogs and cats than there are homes. Millions more.
Goes to sleep forever. It sounds so lovely, like you’re doing the pet a favor – that is, unless you’re a radical who thinks allowing pets to live and adopting them out is some kind of good idea. I suppose PETA employees who were caught killing pets in a van and tossing their bodies into a Piggly Wiggly dumpster is more in line with Ms. Newkirk’s idea of doing pets a favor.
Also, the pet overpopulation myth has been thoroughly debunked. Stick to your newer, hipper scare tactics Ms. Newkirk – the old ones just aren’t fooling people like they used to.
Last month in Virginia, PETA ran an ad pleading for homes for 28 cats. Three people responded.
Oh boo-hoo. Ran an ad. Sorry PETA but if you had any sort of experience actually adopting out pets instead of just slaughtering them, you’d know it takes much more than running an ad to attract adopters. I wonder too if the public might be hesitant to respond to an ad placed by a pet slaughterhouse when looking to adopt a pet. Just a thought.
Municipalities need to stand firm. Time and money must go into mandatory spaying/neutering and guardianship education, not into warehousing animals. The “no kill” movement is harmful to humane sheltering.
Mandatory spay-neuter kills pets. While that may fall perfectly in line with PETA’s agenda, it’s not what the public wants. Warehousing pets (pdf), MSN, going to sleep forever – you need some new tricks in your bag Ms. Newkirk. The people know better than to believe your lies anymore.
Priceless. She markets PETA with millions of $$ in free and paid publicity, but tries to market cats by running an ad.
What is it Winogard calls her, the butcher of Norfolk?
She doesn’t say whether PETA let the 3 ad responders adopt any cats. I would guess that all 28 cats wound up in the walk-in freezer.
Oh man, it would be interesting to find those people and how things went.
*If* each of those 3 people adopted one cat, that would mean that the adoption rate for that group of cats would top 1%, a huge improvement for PETA. Nonetheless, she glossed over their lack of a Petfinder site.
Oh my. And people still listen to her? We have much more work to do.
I wonder how much more the No-Kill Revolution could get done if they didn’t have to waste time backtracking to debunk this sort of crap.
Is it really just all about money? That is SO sad.
That’s just it we spend so much time trying to explain to people why they should not support animal murdering PETA, it takes time out of the important work of pushing for social change. Better laws, NO KILL world-wide, no canine profiling, no euthanization for space. Storing dogs like oranges? What a ridiculous comment, oranges can be stacked you moron (Ms. Newkirk is the moron I am speaking to here just to clarify)dogs can’t. Doesn’t mean we should kill them all for storage reasons! The reason PETA says there are too many animals to find homes for is because they have never bothered to find homes. Geez an ad? Really?
Actually, I agree with many of the ideas on this blog, but sadly, dogs CAN be stacked like oranges. It’s called crating and so can cats, any animals can be stored as if they were inanimate objects. I know I’d rather be dead if the choice was that or fall into the clutches of a true hoarder. Animals are helpless, anyone can grab them and stuff them into a cage. That isn’t what no-kill is about.
“That isn’t what no-kill is about.”
But according to Ingrid Newkirk that IS what no kill is about. That’s why the premise of her piece is wrong.
“I know I’d rather be dead if the choice was that or fall into the clutches of a true hoarder.”
No animal need ever be subject to someone having to choose death or life with a hoarder. That’s a false choice that PETA and others opposed to no kill want us to believe. Euthanasia is never the right choice for a healthy/treatable/friendly pet. Ideally, no pet should ever have to live in substandard conditions but for the unfortunate ones who do, there is always another choice once rescue arrives: LIFE!
I think what makes it a round trip into perversion is people like Ingrid seem to be the true hoarders.
They do not trust people.
Yet, they are unwilling to care for animals themselves.
So, they conclude the best thing for the animal is to kil it.
That op-ed piece is truly a treasure trove. Only someone who is truly batshit crazy could come up with an image like this:
“But, like scary viruses, hoarders have morphed into something even more insidious. They are trying to take over our shelters.”
Kudos to the editor for letting that line slip by.
Then there’s this:
“Today, while some primitive pounds remain, great strides in humane sheltering standards have been made. There are places where behaviorists work to reduce abandoned animals’ separation anxiety, groomers cut away matted hair to make animals comfortable and adoptable and walkers are employed to ensure that no cage paralysis sets in. There are municipal shelters that cope with tens of thousands of animals a year yet still provide a comfortable, caring environment.”
Wow, sounds like the Tompkins County SPCA, Nevada Humane Society and the Charlottesville-Albemarle SPCA to me, among others, but she’d probably choke on those names.
But to me the piece de resistance is this:
“Giving an animal a quiet, painless and peaceful death is a sad indictment of our throwaway society, but life in a cramped, filthy cage is not a “rescue.”
So that explains a few things. She is indicting society when she kills all those animals at PETA. That’s what the “Community Animal Project” is all about. The animals are society’s throwaways (and hers), and killing them is a means to a particularly disgusting end. And its all black and white. Anyone who wants to save them is condemning them to cramped, filthy cages, because in her empty and rotten little world, that’s all there is.
I absolutely agree with you about PETA. 100%!
But, I do take exception to the term “slaughterhouse” being used. It diminishes and demeans the very real suffering and brutality inherent in actual slaughterhouses – the ones that process 20,000-30,000 sentient, feeling beings a DAY, 10 BILLION a year. They are not “put to sleep” but die in terror and pain.
What PETA does to healthy adoptable animals is wrong. It is called killing, not euthanasia. It is not a slaughterhouse, though – having been in several and watched the terror and blood and decapitations and evisceration, I can’t help but cringe when that term is applied to inserting euthanasia solution into the vein of a dog/cat surrounded by people who care but are doing the absolutely wrong thing for the dog/cat.
And has anyone seen this cat adoption ad? I’m curious.
IF there was such an ad, not only what did it look like, but where was it published? Maybe one of those free classifieds that people use to give away used mattresses.
“Also, the pet overpopulation myth has been thoroughly debunked….”
Let me state from the outset that I have read Nathan Winograd’s first book, “Redemption and the No-Kill Revolution in America”; and I agree 100% with the goal and the approach; along with 95+% of what Winograd personally has to say about it. I have not yet read, “Irreconciliable Differences,” so I cannot speak directly to that.
But as much as he promotes enthusiasm for the cause of saving pets, the book does have some major weaknesses. There are few if any footnotes showing the primary sources where he gets some of his information.
Let’s take his blog article (which you have linked to; and much of the same information also presented in his book) debunking the pet overpopulation myth. He states, “[H]ow many people in the U.S. are looking to bring a new dog or cat into their home next year but have not decided where they will get the animal and can be influenced to adopt from a shelter? 17 million. So, 17 million people for 2-3 million dogs and cats.”…
Seventeen *million*? Does that represent 17 million separate *households*? (given the total current population of the U.S., it’s hard to believe); or are Mom, Dad, Sis and Junior all counted as four in this 17-million total? Where did he come up with that estimate to begin with? He doesn’t say — and the “Comments are closed” tag at the end of each blog entry conspicuously and effectively insulates him from even the most constructive queries.
Nor should lost pets (those who have “run away from home”) count in this total. Someone else has to rescue and rehome these animals — so unless Winograd is presuming they all die on the streets or euthanized in shelters (which is exactly what we’re trying to prevent here, with responsible pet guardianship), it doesn’t represent a net gain of homes available to adopt.
Don’t get me wrong — I am a total supporter of the No-Kill revolution and am totally opposed to the “business-as-usual” approach taken in most shelters and AC facilities today. I just think that we need to “tighten ship” a little and deal more honestly with some of these issues. If the case for No-Kill is as tight as we’d all like to believe, then I say ~open up~ the forums (including Winograd’s blog) for outside input. He should be firmly but politely exposing the “catch and kill” rationale and showing the weaknesses in PETA’s philosophy/approach to resolving these problems.
The fact that I have searched and searched (in the interest of “balance”), and have effectively only found *one article* directly attacking Winograd (on the HSUS site) is an interesting (and encouraging, if one thinks about it) development, as it suggests the No-Kill opponents really don’t have that much substantial to argue with in response. If memory serves, the article accused him of being allied with breeders — which I find ludicrous as why then would he be advocating for massively more shelter adoptions over buying purebred pets?
So what do we need censorship for? that just weakens our case to some of the very people we need to convince. I appreciate that this is what you’ve done here, in providing a place for open reader feedback. :) I’m glad I discovered this blog; and your timely, informative articles, plus the fact that I can comment and add my own voice to the issues being presented is what keeps me coming back.
An excellent post. Hopefully, anyone who hasn’t seen Penn and Teller’s PETA expose will surf over to Youtube and check it out.
I agree with Redemptionis† in that it is truly nice to be able to comment under articles about the No-Kill Movement and ask questions and hopefully receive answers. I too wish that was possible on Winograd’s blog. I also like to know just where info is coming from when possible. So Redemptionis† does have some good points.
YesBiscuit!, Thank you so much for writing articles about No-Kill and having a place that is open for comments and discussions.
Ingrid Newkirk is a walking turd. If she says something, you can bet the opposite is true.
Not only is she a pathological liar, she is a psychopath killer.
I guess PETA members are cowards for not peacefully overthrowing this walking piece of fecal matter.
I guess PETA members, like Newkirk, care more about killing animals, than saving them.
Disgraceful.
Thank you so much YesBiscuit.
Anyone who wants to understand the forces of ignorance check out the Liberty Humane Shelter Uncensored page on Facebook. It is fascinating to read the many comments based on ignorance mimicking all the comments Ingrid makes.
Bless YesBiscuit, Winograd, Matt at Pets Alive for taking the time to argue these points with people.
I keep thinking that these days, three responses to a local newspaper classified is a very good return – at least, from my experiences selling or giving away things, rather than placing pets. Now, who knows how many they’d’ve gotten had they bothered to upload individual profiles and photos to Petfinder, Craigslist and their own website? But no. Had they put even the most minimal honest effort into it, they’d’ve run the risk of actually adopting the poor cats out, and that wouldn’t have fit the program.
RE: Erich Riesenberg says, “I think what makes it a round trip into perversion is people like Ingrid seem to be the true hoarders.”
That says it to me. All the majors (ASPCA, HSUS, PETA) are hoarders of money and power that could help animals…they are perverse….and worse.
Does anyone else find it disturbing that there’s a link to Maddie’s Fund from this page?