Animal Activists Outraged with PETA for Euthanizing Dogs and Cats at Shelters

It's a well-known fact that people can be more passionate about animals than fellow human beings when it comes to neglect and abuse. By now we've all heard about the Ellen DeGeneres meltdown earlier this week. Her "moment" now affectionately termed "Iggigate" and "poochgate," shows how one person can set aflame an entire nation of animal lovers over something that's really not an issue at all.

This article is a response the Associated Content article entitled PETA: The UNethical Treatment of Animals by Content Producer Shanika. Her article was written out of pure passion, so much so, that readers were left with a severely biased outlook on the organization. PETA takes great strides to ensure all animals, even the unwanted ones, are treated humanely and with dignity. She also suggested that PETA as a whole is a cruel and heartless organization due to the criminal actions of two employees back in 2005. Her words can easily be translated into blatant flaming, so I've decided to put the rest of the story out there.

On June 15^th, 2005 PETA employees Andrew Cook and Adria Hinkle were arrested for disposing 18 euthanized adult dogs and puppies in a dumpster behind a supermarket and for carrying 13 more dogs and kittens in their PETA van. The workers were arrested. All in all about 100 animals over a period of a month were suspected of being dumped by these employees.

Fellow PETA members were outraged. Those who were more involved with the group knew about the humane euthanasia training programs but they too were outraged and embarrassed by the actions of these two staff members.

Many animal lovers don't understand why PETA euthanizes animals to begin with but when they heard that PETA members dumped these dead animals in a dumpster the public went ballistic and started labeling PETA an undercover organization of animal murderers. As word spread it turned into a bad game of telephone. Facts either got misconstrued or the whole story wasn't given which blew the situation out of proportion and left PETA with an unfavorable impression to this day.