Center for Consumer Freedom

It looks like the animal-rights zealots at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have caught on to the serious reputational damage that their well-documented history of killing animals by the thousands has caused. PETA's apparent (and unsurprisingly conniving) attempt at damage control? Stop telling people how many animals they've killed.

Unfortunately for PETA, Virginia's Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (VDACS) requires every "humane society" in the state (including PETA) to file an "Animal Record" report each year, specifying the number of animals it cared for and the number it killed. VDACS figures from previous years show that PETA has killed over 14,400 dogs and cats, racking up a four-figure body count -- and a 90 percent kill rate -- in 2005 alone. But PETA's report for 2006, due on March 31, is still missing in action.

We have good reason to believe PETA's pet death-toll didn't dip in 2006. In sworn testimony during the January 2007 animal-cruelty trial of two PETA employees, a PETA manager acknowledged that her organization still sends out staffers to collect and kill pets from local animal shelters, and that PETA is contracting with a Norfolk-area crematorium to dispose of dead bodies by the ton.

As we're telling the press today, PETA's celebrity supporters should take notice of the group's hopeless hypocrisy. That includes Alec Baldwin -- who, given the nauseating anthropomorphism of his friends at PETA, might have been paying his young daughter a compliment when he recently called her a "little pig."