Factory farms, fur trade, entertainment, and laboratories, the four major platforms of animal use that the organization PETA works to improve or abolish.

People for the Ethnic Treatment of Animals, or PETA, was established in 1980, with headquarters based in Virginia, to create and protect the rights of animals, from domesticated house pets to endangered animals. They hold firm to the idea that animals are not ours to eat, wear, test on or use for our own personal entertainment.

According to their website, PETA operates through “public education, cruelty investigations, research, animal rescue, legislation, special events, celebrity involvement, and protest campaign”, although they often support groups like Ban Pit Bulls, an organization that believes pit bulls should be killed and their breeding discontinued to protect them from cruelty and death.

While these points are highly valid, PETA is a large, corrupt non-profit organization operating not on the basis of animal welfare, but on an agenda of hate and distrust of their fellow communities.

According to the Virginia Department of Agriculture, in 2017, PETA seized or accepted from families surrendering their animals 4,569 companion animals at the central Virginia headquarters. Out of those 4,569, only 838, or 1.8%, were adopted, while 3,630, or 79.4%, were euthanized within PETA’s walls. While PETA claims that they only euthanize animals who are too sick or injured to carry on, as they were not running a ‘traditional animal shelter,’ far too many animals are sent to their untimely doom within their facilities.

Former Employee Heather Harper-Troje, wife of a US diplomat, recounted her time at the facility in Norfolk where President Ingrid Newkirk often encouraged employees to falsify euthanization records and encouraged employees to steal animals and adopt them out quickly to hide their dastardly deeds without leaving a trail.

PETA has long since used disturbing stunts to bring awareness to their organization, including Newkirk bathing in blood and distributing pamphlets with graphic imagery involving parents slaughtering animals for dinner intended for children.

Furthermore, the development of PETA2, the student and youth outreach, manipulates students into working towards their corrupt agenda.

With a large social media presence, PETA2 posts a series of videos and articles heavily detailing animal abuse, intended to convince youth to join in their campaign alongside PETA to raise awareness and end animal suffering.

And while it is important to recognize that animals are treated with an unfound cruelty, those who have been domesticated as well as those who have lived ‘free’ for their lives, PETA is not the organization to support. Students have the power to end animal cruelty, but it can’t be found through euthanizing animals without providing them with the option of adoption, or abusing the minds of youth.

If students want to support an organization that advocates for the rights of animals and does it justly, look further into local rescue farms, the Humane Society of the United States, Best Friends Animal Society, or the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

These organizations work tirelessly in shelters that properly house animals until their adoption, with the Humane Society placing more than 96% of all animals entrusted to them, in comparison to PETA’s abysmal 1.8% adoption rate.