In case anyone wonders why I hate PETA…

I’ve always — even over the years as a idealistic teenager that I was a vegetarian — viewed PETA as a terrorist organization. I know, it’s not kosher (hmm, how many buzzwords can I throw into a single paragraph?) to toss that word around these days, to use it to describe anyone who isn’t from some far away country where they’re clearly spending 24/7/365 plotting the fall of western civilization… oh, come on people, don’t make me roll my eyes again, I’ve been doing it enough this week. But I digress. PETA. Terrorists. Absolutely. Their purpose isn’t animal rights, it’s to terrorize the minds (and sometimes, the persons) of anyone who disagrees with their extremist point of view. And if you question this assumption on my part? Let me point you to this article… a snippet is below:

An animal rights group has tried – and failed – to run a newspaper ad comparing the beheading of a passenger on a Greyhound bus last week to the treatment of animals by the meat industry.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, said on its website it would run the ad in the Portage la Prairie Daily Graphic.

However, city editor Tara Seel said the newspaper had no intention of running the ad, which uses imagery of “an innocent victim’s throat” being cut, in reference to the slaughter of cows, chickens and pigs on factory farms.

“His struggles and cries are ignored … the man with the knife shows no emotion … the victim is slaughtered and his head cut off … his flesh is eaten,” reads the ad, which is posted on the website.

“If this ad leaves a bad taste in your mouth, please give a thought to what sensitive animals think and feel when they come to the end of their frightening journey and see, hear and smell the slaughterhouse.”

Are you kidding me??

I suppose, in a way, this shouldn’t surprise me. After all, this is the same organization that has brought us the “Holocaust on your plate” ads, the woman getting clubbed to death in the subway for her fur coat ads, the woman in the fur coat drinking from the toilet ad, the woman in the fur coat using a litterbox ad, the “are animals the new slaves?” ads, the “got beer?” ads (hell, that one’s tame!), encourages kids to fear their dad if he fishes, — google the ads if you want, I won’t link them, but you can find them on PETA’s site, most of them are under “banned,” — the hypocrisy of their own killing of animals and the fact that their fearless leader is a friggin’ nutjob… no, really.

So it shouldn’t surprise me that they’ve taken the next step in idiocy and decided to compare the poor kid just riding the Greyhound home and getting beheaded to the plight of animals. Because after all, according to Ingrid Newkirk, their wack-job founder, the world would be an infinitely better place without humans in it at all, so why not exploit the death of one, or of millions (Holocaust ad, slavery ad) to bring the point home? Who cares if you’re coming across as the most insensitive people on the planet, right? Besides, 80% of PETA’s approach is to cause controversy, with “10% celebrity, and 10% truth.” Nice.

Of course we should treat animals humanely. There isn’t a reason for the way we raise food animals, in tight, cramped quarters, forcing antibiotics and hormones into their bodies so they grow faster and stay alive longer. I did the vegetarian thing for all the “right” reasons, and it was spawned by driving by one of the cattle ranches and seeing the cows, all clustered together without enough space between them to even turn around, the babies getting lost in the crowd, it just turned my stomach, and I gave up meat for five years.

Did a number on my health from it, and I have come to the conclusion that meat isn’t bad for you, but there are ways to get it that are more humane. And frankly, that are better for us as well. Free-range. Organic. Hormone/antibiotic-free. Grass-fed beef. Buy local. Buy from a butcher that can not only tell you the farm your meat came from, but if the animal had a name could have told you that (I once had some lamb that, when it was passed on to me, the woman said, and I quote, “Willy was such a bastard, I didn’t think he’d be so tender.” I couldn’t help but laugh — and it was damned tasty meat too!). Buy from the local farms at your farmer’s markets. There are all sorts of ways to work to make the lives of our food animals better, without resorting to extremes.

In the end, this is just one more in a long list of things PETA has done that make my stomach turn. Usually, they just make me want to go eat a cheeseburger, but right now, I feel kind of sick from it all.