El Paso, TX – This morning, Terrace Hill Middle School joined the long list of schools targeted by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). With its school campaigns, PETA targets children as young as six years old for indoctrination with violent and graphic propaganda. The $25 million animal rights group targets kids at every age level, sidestepping parents and school authorities to lure young and impressionable children into radical activism. PETA targets kids using graphic comic books, age-specific websites, grotesque toys, schoolyard demonstrations, and e-mail alerts sent directly to small children. All of these efforts are exposed in a report by the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF), titled “Your Kids, PETA’s Pawns.”
Psychologists and school officials have denounced PETA’s propaganda tactics. “Some of the graphics and some of the messages are very, very disturbing – especially to younger kids,” says Dr. Jeffrey Dolgan, chief of psychology at Children’s Hospital in Denver. “Children become the unwitting victims of some campaigns, which are, in fact, harmful because they prey on children’s fears, and they prey on children’s vulnerabilities, and they prey on children’s anxieties.”
PETA’s 2003 annual report boasts of reaching more than 2.3 million children and teachers using a variety of reckless tactics:
Elementary School – PETA activists give young children graphic “Your Mommy Kills Animals” comics outside theaters; a newsletter introduces children to the vocabulary of the radical “animal liberation” movement; PETA employees in colorful animal costumes intercept kids as they walk to and from school.
Middle School – PETA sent a convicted felon into schools as a “humane education lecturer”; a “PETA Kids” website condemns fishing, preaches against milk, and teaches them to boycott circuses and zoos.
High School – PETA’s curriculum encourages students to consider if it’s “acceptable to break a law” for animal rights; websites urge teens to join an “army of animal rights rebels” and rewards illegal “actions” with free merchandise; online column urges vandalism of dairy posters in school cafeterias.
“Parents shouldn’t be fooled into thinking that PETA is warm and fuzzy,” said Center for Consumer Freedom Director of Research, David Martosko. “It’s a band of radicals intent on abolishing fish, beef, chicken, milk, cheese, circuses, zoos, wool, leather, hunting, fishing, and the medical research that aims to cure cancer and AIDS. Even worse, the group’s activists go behind parents’ backs to preach directly to impressionable young people. PETA is a $25 million menace to children of all ages — and most parents don’t even know their kids are being targeted.”
To obtain “Your Kids, PETA’s Pawns” please visit www.consumerfreedom.com. To schedule an interview, contact Andrew Porter at 202.463.7112.