ARCO's Abolitionists - A Vegan Forum

From huge victories for animals to exciting new celebrity campaigns, 2007 was a big year for PETA. Watch the highlights now. For related information, click here.

For all those folks that say "PETA doesn't accomplish anything".
2007 highlight video. Check it out!!

I see they managed to help perpetuate sexism through the objectification of the female body. Sexism does hurt people, very directly I might add. I see that PeTA is still building a top-down movement lead by celebrities and people with 6 digit salaries. I see that they have one video setup involving Newkirk and a turkey. Did PeTA open up any sanctuaries or shelters this year? Support any TNR work? Did PeTA spend any time attempting to convince its 1.8 million members that if they take animal interests seriously... they have absolutely no choice but reject all animal use (i.e. go vegan)? Perhaps that would jeopardize too many revenue streams. Why put in so much work to help regulate the torture of sows? Was that campaign honestly a "huge victory" Ryan? Is Michael Vick really any different than all of the non-vegan PeTA members? In both cases, you have the completely unnecessary infliction of death and misery.

Why such gravitation to media-hype stories, and an attention by any means necessary credo? Why so little effort at the grass-roots work of educating people about veganism (the only rational means of generating a societal paradigm shift)? Why tell people to support shutting down the tiger exhibit at one zoo, when you know that every exhibit needs to be shut down at every zoo! Why is PeTA excited about promoting the gassing of turkeys to the food industry? Putting aside the inherent rights-violation... won't that only make people feel better about continuing to eat turkeys, and provide food industry players with a powerful card in their back-pocket? "Oh, well PeTA gave us an award" or "we worked with PeTA to develop our slaughter methods". Maybe one day Butterball could claim to have "PeTA approved slaughter". Then you guys could announce another HUGE VICTORY and keep those funds rolling in. Perhaps we can look forward to an IPO from PeTA in 2008?

Finally. Why wasn't 2007 the year that PeTA stopped misrepresenting the animal rights position. More on that here...

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/PETAPET/index.html

Hi Nathan,

Thanks for the comments. I'll be brief in my response, since you touch on a wide variety of topics.

1) Sexiness is not the same thing as sexism. PETA uses sexiness in its ads because (as much as we would love for them to) most people don't want to watch videos of animals being killed. You and I both know that they should, but the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of the population would rather live in blind ignorance than find out what happens in slaughterhouses and other places where animals are abused.

We respond to this by using naked ads (using male and female volunteers) to draw attention to issues that people would otherwise turn a blind eye to. It is a person's personal choice whether or not to use their body as a political weapon to educate others about issues that they care about. Indeed, it would be a far greater injustice to silence them from speaking out about these topics.

2) When you ask about the emphasis on "media-hype stories", I can't help but wonder whether any executives in the meat, dairy, fur, and other industires fear a campaign from a group that relies entirely on grassroots activism. Certainly PETA does the largest grassroots efforts of any animal rights organization on Earth, but we also do media activism as well because that is where you reach out to whole new audiences.

If you asked 10 butchers which animal rights group they hate the most, 10 out of 10 of them would say "PETA". The reason for this is because we threaten their industry more than any other organization on the planet, because we reach out to their audience (lazy TV watchers) and say "WAKE UP!". That's how you win campaigns, and PETA has been winning them for decades. How else do you get Polo Ralph Lauren to stop selling fur? By leaflets alone? Of course not.

3) I'm glad to see that there is a diversity of opinions in the animal rights movement, since that is an integral part of any social justice movement. You have every right to gather petition signatures and so on, but the fact of the matter is that Peter Singer, Tom Regan, and virtually any other animal rights scholar would be able to confirm that PETA is the most effective animal rights organization on Earth, and that we are making progress that scares the crap out of industries that exploit animals. We are driving up the costs of their products (meat, dairy, eggs, etc.), and exposing them through our undercover investigations. We hit them in every single angle we possibly can, because that's what it takes to bring about change.


I hope this helps you understand our position a little better. As you can imagine, I will be deleting your comments from my posted item, since this is really more of a personal conversation I would think. No use in filling up any more space in other people's newsfeeds, eh?

Thanks, and keep up the great work!

P.S. - If you haven't already, make sure to check out this article from Satya Magazine with Bruce Friedrich (PETA VP) from several years ago, talking about the McD's campaign. It touches on many of the issues that you discuss: http://www.satyamag.com/june02/friedrich.html

Also, if you're familiar with Dr. Steven Best, he also discusses the effectiveness of our fast food campaigns in this piece (http://www.animalliberationfront.com/Ph ... sition.htm - scan to the "PETA Power" section)

Here's am excerpt from the latter article:

"Beyond the immediate gains, PETA's campaigns helped to focus a spotlight on the horrors that transpire in factory farms and slaughterhouses that previously did not exist. PETA and other groups have created an unprecedented gain: "For the first time," United Poultry Concerns stated, the [farmed] animals themselves have been declared to matter," as opposed to the slaughterhouse workers or the environment. This is truly a momentous step, not to be undervalued from purist grounds. Rather than allowing people to feel better about eating meat, it is just as likely people were appalled by what they learned and began to eat less meat or none at all -- a change PETA and other national groups continue to promote through their vegan education campaigns. Ultimately, change must come from below, from a growing movement of enlightened consumers. But the struggle to transform the consumers and the producers of meat has now become one."

Ryan, your positions (are you distinguishable as an individual, separate from PeTA?) are still very unclear to me. There is so much we could discuss, but let's focus a little bit here. Could you please directly address the first and third paragraphs that follow below.

Peter Singer is NOT an "animal rights scholar"! He is a utilitarian, and therefore, not surprisingly (if you are familiar with philosophy), he rejects rights. Therefore, PeTA misrepresents his work, contribution, and philosophy every time they associate him with animal "rights". His use of the term is rhetorical only. He has admitted this. The question of rights represents a major qualitative gulf between Regan and Francione on one hand, Singer on the other. Do you reject what I have just said? If so, in what way?

What do leaders in the animal exploitation industries have to fear from PeTA? Nothing. PeTA is their greatest ally. Your group isn't promoting veganism as a moral baseline. Your members aren't even consistently vegan. I don't understand why that is. Your group seems willing to compromise campaigns to the point of meaninglessness. Giving exploiters the stamp of approval if they accept the most modest reforms, which by the way, have little chance of actually being upheld and perpetuated by oversight in such massive and hidden industries. But I suppose that watering down ethical standards does allow for more efforts to be labeled as "victories", which will certainly generate more profits for PeTA. Seems like you are frequent partners with animal exploiters, rather than challengers of their very existence. If PeTA actually accepted or understood rights, wouldn't they seek the elimination of animal use, rather than being preoccupied with the regulation of animal treatment?

Is there any empirical evidence for PeTA having helped to increase the price of meat, dairy, or eggs? Should I assume you are distressed about PeTA claiming that CAK will be PROFITABLE for the exploiters of chickens and turkeys? Furthermore, what do you think of the actual details of the gestation crate campaigns (timetables, loopholes)? In what sense can you quality them as "victories"?

Thank you in advance for your time,
Nathan Schneider

To answer your first question, there is an undeniable difference between the philosophies of Singer, Regan, and Francione. All I was emphasizing was that people of a wide variety of opinions and strategies can come together on specific issues even if there are smaller differences between them. In essence, the person who is 10% my enemy is 90% my friend. You may disagree with Singer and others about the approaches to reducing animal suffering and ending their exploitation, but everybody agrees that veganism is a central element of animal rights and should be a goal for all supporters.

To touch on your second paragraph though, it would be absurd for us to require that all PETA members be vegan. You say you don't understand why that is, but clearly you would agree that it would be ridiculous to reject people who want to help animals, regardless of their personal purity, right?

I don't know about you, but I did not go vegan overnight. I was a vegetarian for a year before that, and if I had a group telling me that I was insignificant for that, I may have never gone vegan in the long run. It takes encouragement to move those steps, and that's what we do. That's why we offer a wide variety of resources (which we ship out for free) to help people adopt a vegan lifestyle.

As for your third paragraph, CAK is cheaper in the long run for the companies because the industry is shifting that way anyways (due to pressure from consumers). Many of the steps we push companies to take though are undeniably more costly (abandoning gestation crates, battery cages, etc.). It is clearly cheaper to raise chickens in battery cages than without them. So by us pressuring companies like Smithfield to phase out gestation crates, or getting Burger King to expand the space their chickens live in. These are coming at a cost to the companies, which will inevitably drive up their production costs, which makes meat and other products less desirable to the public.

This, of course, doesn't take into consideration the countless people who decide to become vegetarian or vegan as a result of our fast food campaigns. I can say from personal experience that when I discuss the KFC campaign with people, they are often so horrified by what they find out, that they decide to become vegetarian as a result. Many of those people, including some of my relatives, have gone on to become vegan. You cannot deny the positive effects of these massive campaigns, since they are educating people on an enormous scale, and keeping animals in the spotlight.

At the end of the day though, you and I don't have to agree. Clearly I am vegan, as is everybody who works in the office with me, so we're all on the same page for 99.9% of what we're talking about. Why don't we try to work together on issues that we agree with (we have many campaigns I would imagine you would agree with, including those against zoos (http://www.peta.org/campaigns/ar-zoos.asp), caged birds (http://www.peta.org/campaigns/ar-cagedbirds.asp), and against charities that fund animal experimentation (http://www.peta.org/campaigns/ar-lifeta ... rities.asp)).

Industries that exploit animals benefit from the bickering of animal rights activists over minor differences. Instead, we should each be fighting against the cruelty we all acknowledge as unacceptable, and join together on issues we can. That's what I plan to do, so hopefully you'll be doing your part as well.

Thanks!