General
Animal rights folks prey upon the gullible
By Connie Woodcock
Jul 25, 2003, 20:38

[By Connie Woodcock, reprinted with permission from the Toronto Sun, Dec. 3, 2001]

After reading my e-mail this week, I feel the urge to say it one more time. They (the rest of the world) hate us because we can afford to allow wrong-headed, self-indulgent organizations like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) to dictate society's agenda and inflict their narrow-minded views on the rest of us.

These people (PETA) firmly believe cows are being tortured and nothing will change their minds. Don't mention farmers around PETA - you'll get an earful. I did last week and e-mail flooded in to me and the editor.

"I suggest that you get with the times, instead of keeping reactionary, closed-minded reports on your staff."

"The Sun would do well to modernize its staff and fire people who spew such hatred for fellow animals."

One reader accused me of being in favour of cow rape. Another suggested I didn't like pets. (Please don't tell my cats).

A lot of them didn't seem to know there's a difference between dairy cows and beef cattle. Some of them think milk is poison. None had ever been near a barn, as far as I could tell.

Fortunately, there are still lots of people who find these tactics abhorrent. I heard from a broad range of people, mostly American - veterinarians, animal welfare activists (who point out there's a big difference between animal welfare and animal rights); a broadcaster, even the Missouri Federation of Animal Owners.

As one Montana woman wrote to me, "Please remember that the animal rights movement is not about helping animals. It is about using animals to raise money and control and hurt people. Animal rights is a disease of affluence."

She's right. Only in the rich, spoiled West can we afford to allow these people to dictate what people can grow, wear, eat and drink. In the rest of the world, there are millions who don't have enough of any kind of food. They must think PETA and similar groups are nuts. And who can blame them?

Some animal rights activists are nothing short of terrorists themselves. They cram themselves into fast food restaurants and destroy business - then brag they've gotten people to pay attention to the treatment of beef cattle. They break into and wreck labs that use animals for experiments - even when those experiments mean saving human life.

Hardly anyone meets PETA's standards for animal protection. The World Wildlife Foundation flunks, and the Sierra Club only gets a B-. Even Greenpeace fails to get perfect marks.

According to Daniel Oliver, a research associate with the Capital Research Centre, which studies non-profit organizations in the United States, animal rights groups "routinely use false and unsubstantiated allegations of animal abuse to raise funds, attract media attention, and bring supporters into the movement."

As well, they "have imposed significant costs on the individuals, businesses, and concerns they have targeted. Moreover, these costs are born by all society - for example, when raids on research laboratories destroy studies that seek to better understand fatal diseases." The "reforms" they take credit for are often questionable.

Together, animal rights organizations raise $100 million a year and have become, ironically, an obstacle to animal welfare, draining donations away from organizations like humane societies.

They prey upon the gullible - and they have found a huge audience ready to believe almost anything. Since this is a democracy, we have to put up with them. But we don't have to believe them, or support them.