From: swood@vela.acs.oakland.edu (Scott Wood - EVENSONG)
Subject: Animal Cult Backtracks on Dog Show Attacks
Organization: Oakland University, Rochester MI.
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 05:42:17 GMT

                 Animal Cult Backtracks on Dog Show Attacks

     People for the ethical Treatment of Animals (PeTA) national
director Ingrid Newkirk says she wants to abolish pets.  She should
have kept her mouth shut.  Animalists - many of them sporting PeTA
t-shirts, banners, pickets and literature - have begun protesting dog
shows around the country.
     Simultaneously, reports are flooding in to PPF from dog fancies
that these extremists are releasing show dogs from cages and crates.
There have also been anonymous telephone calls threatening to poison
show dogs with antifreeze in their drinking water.
     Ranchers, zoos and researchers are used to such tactics.  But this
campaign against pets is a direct attack on the animal cult's own
donor base. Pet owners, the traditional backbone of the humane
movement, are horrified to discover that the groups they are funding
now seek not to improve animal care, but to abolish it.
     For example, in its "Statement on Companion Animals," PeTA says,
"In a perfect world, all other-than-human animals would be free of
human interference, and dogs and cats would be part of the ecological
scheme.'  The statement goes on to quote John Bryant's animalist
manifesto, Fettered Kingdoms, that pets are "slaves."  Bryant concludes
that Dogs should not be," and "Cats, like dogs, must disappear."
     Naturally most pet owners, who mistook PeTA for puppy and kitten
lovers, are shocked to find themselves marked as "slavers."  Yet
Ingrid Newkirk snarls, "Pet ownership is an absolutely abysmal
situation brought about by human manipulation."  Under her regime, she
told Harper's magazine, "Eventually companion animals would be phased
out."
     "Phase One" involves attempts by groups such as the Peninsula
Humane Society and Fund For Animals to ban pet breeding across the
nation. As John Hoyt of HSUS demands, "Don't breed, don't buy, don't
even accept giveaways."
     But the animalists' virulent antagonism toward pet owners is
alienating those who love their pets, and diverting their
contributions from so-called animal "rights" back to genuine animal
welfare groups.  As a result, our sources indicate, the PeTA money
machine lost $2 million last year.
     Panicked, the animalists have begun a cover-up.
     In the March 1992 issue of The Animals' Agenda, editor Merriett
Clifton insists that "never, anywhere, at any time" has anyone
"liberated" any dogs at any show.  He claims that such "rumors" were
started by none other than Putting People First.
     "I was there," responds the editor, "and personally observed the
behavior of the group which claim PeTA affiliation.  They were
dressed in the '60's 'hippy' style. . . they were dirty, unkempt, and
not interested in listening to anyone, only in causing obvious
trouble.  They screamed loudly that they were PeTA members.  The
Security folks reported several opened crates and loosed dogs, and
these people claimed they had done it and were glad they did it!"
     In a form letter to breed club magazines, Ingrid babbles that their
news reports of "direct action" at dog shows are mere "folktales."
     "In fact," writes Ingrid, "if anyone would stop and think about it
for a second, letting dogs lose to potentially harm themselves runs
counter to everything we believe in."
     How is "liberating" dogs any different from releasing lab rats or
farm animals to starvation, dehydration, predation, disease and
cannibalism - acts PeTA has expressly endorsed as 'acceptable
crimes?"  The only difference is that pet owners are a lucrative
market.  PeTA's scam depends upon deceiving them that it is a
legitimate humane organization.
     PeTA just spent more than $100,000 on its failed attempt to ban
carriage horses in D.C., and more than ten thousand on one ad (equating
everyone who eats meat with mass murderer Jeffrey Dahmer).  PeTA's
priorities could not be clearer.

(courtesy of Fred Trost`s Outdoor Digest "SOS Alert!" June/July 1992)
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