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You've probably heard of PETA. No, it's not People for the Eating
of Tasty Animals. It's People for the Ethical Treatment of
Animals. According to their website, they have more than 800,000
members and a budget of $17 million, and they'd love to have you
join them.
PETA is against the use of animals for food, clothing, entertainment
and medical research--not just against these things, but
disgustingly overboard. The extreme nature of their agenda was
exposed by Michael Specter of the New Yorker magazine in an April
14, 2003 article.*
Specter reported, among other things, on the group's repulsive
tactics. "To protest the use of fur in the pages of Vogue, PETA
once deposited a dead raccoon on the plate of Anna Wintour, the
magazine's editor, while she was eating lunch at the Four Seasons in
Manhattan."
They even deplore the use of milk, maintaining that it causes
cancer. With its own version of the "Got Milk?" slogan, they put up
a billboard with Rudy Giuliani wearing a milk mustache. It said,
"Got prostate cancer? Drinking milk contributes to prostate
cancer."
They will go out of their way to vandalize the inventory of fur
traders, manufacturers of fur products and users. A favorite method
is to splash fake blood on the fur. Once they dumped buckets of
money soaked in fake blood on audiences at the International Fur
Fair.
I'm afraid, however, that their cause is falling on a deaf ear at my
house. Not that we are fur users. My only fur is a fake fur collar
on my winter coat, and my wife owns no fur. It's not that we're fur
aversive. The truth of the matter is that my wife and I are
devoting all of our time to People for the Ethical Treatment of
People.
* See http://www.michaelspecter.com/ny/2003/2003_04_14_peta.html
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