Tomorrow in a North Carolina courtroom, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals employees Adria Hinkle and Andrew Cook are scheduled to face felony charges for allegedly killing healthy cats and dogs in the back of a PETA-owned van and abandoning their bodies in a grocery-store dumpster. Meanwhile, our newest magazine advertisement — a full page running in the current issue of U.S. News & World Report — will challenge PETA supporters to reconsider writing that next check to the Norfolk, VA animal-rights giant.
PETA has been busy, perhaps trying to distract the media's attention from what will likely be an embarrassing trial. Last week the group renewed its ridiculous call for the town of Fishkill, NY to change its name — a name that actually means "fish stream" in Dutch. "I don't know what's the matter with these people," the town's historian told The Poughkeepsie Journal. "I think they don't mind a lot of ridicule." And PETA's new traveling "Animal Liberation" exhibition, modeled loosely on the group's horrifying "Holocaust On Your Plate" promotion, debuted in South Carolina. The ink is barely dry on PETA president Ingrid Newkirk's "apology" for her group's offensive mistreatment of Jewish Holocaust victims, and now PETA is trying to compare farm animals to African-American slaves and victims of civil-rights-era racism. But as new stories surface about PETA's institutional animal-killing program, it's unlikely that the related furor will die down completely. The manager of the commercial property where Hinkle and Cook were arrested says he remembers nine other instances in the past 18 months when animal bodies were found in trash dumpsters his company owns. The carcasses were always found on Wednesdays (Hinkle and Cook were arrested after allegedly dumping dead animals on a Wednesday in June), and wrapped in the same kind of commercial-strength trash bags involved in the PETA case. A Norfolk television news report says investigators may level additional charges against Hinkle and Cook. An Ahoskie, NC police sergeant told reporters: "The only person that can euthanize an animal in North Carolina is a licensed vet and they were not even supposed to be in possession of the drugs to euthanize animals." And a Warren County, NC animal rescue group told reporters on Wednesday that it had no idea what happened to over 1,000 animals it transferred to PETA in recent years on the promise that they would be adopted. "We had faith," a former shelter employee told The Warren Record. "This is PETA. They told us they were fostering, vetting, networking these animals. Isn't this deception? We believed in them." If you believe in our efforts to blow the whistle on PETA's unethical behavior, please consider helping us run more ads by making a tax-deductible donation to the Center for Consumer Freedom.
