An open letter in support of removing PETA’s ‘animal shelter’ designation

Valerie Hayes
PETA needle
Below is a version of emails I sent to Commissioner Lohr and Dr. Dan Kovich of VDACS.  I encourage everyone who cares about animals and people to write to them as well in support of the No Kill Advocacy Center’s petition to remove PETA’s designation as an ‘animal shelter’.  Other than employees of animal shelters, only licensed veterinarians can legally euthanize or kill pets, so removing the shelter designation would remove the cover under which PETA kills thousands of healthy and treatable pets every year, leaving them with nary a lettuce bikini to hide it behind.  A shelter is supposed to be a place for adoptions, not a place of mass killings.

If you haven’t already, please take a few minutes to send your own emails to Commissioner Lohr: matt.lohr@vdacs.virginia.gov  and to Dr. Kovich: dan.kovich@vdacs.virginia.gov, because enough is enough.

Dear Sirs,

On June 15, 2013, it will be eight years since the real PETA was revealed to the world.  I am talking, of course, about the Piggly Wiggly Dumpster Incident and subsequent trial.  Since learning the painful truth about how an organization claiming to work on behalf of the rights of animals instead perverts the definitions of ‘rights’, ‘ethical’, and ‘animal shelter’ by seeking out and killing thousands of healthy and treatable pets every year, I have done what I can to spread the word, in hope that the more voices raised against this perversion, the sooner it would come to an end.

You have the power to put an end to it by granting the petition filed by the No Kill Advocacy Center, and I implore you to do so.  Your state’s own shelter statistics reporting webpage shows that many of Virginia’s shelters and rescues are capable of great things and save many lives (and on budgets a tiny fraction of PETA’s).  Your own findings in your site visit of almost two years ago show that PETA does not even have proper facilities nor the inclination to house and adopt out pets.  Some of Virginia’s open-admission animal control shelters save an impressive 90% or more of the animals they take in and more are working towards that admirable and achievable goal.  PETA, with its wealth, national reach, and claim to be a leading voice for animal rights, should be leading the way in saving the lives of lost and homeless pets, yet it uses its wealth and its platform to fight against saving these animals and seeing them into new homes.  They are perverts.  To them a shelter designation is nothing else but a license to kill.  Please take their license to kill away.

As a witness to the creation of the first No Kill community in the nation, I am well aware of, and profoundly concerned with the negative effects that the needless killing of homeless pets has on individual people and on the community at large.  Allowing PETA to keep it’s shelter designation would not only be fatal to thousands of healthy and treatable pets every year, but would also be very bad for people as well.  It is bad for the people who are deprived of an opportunity to adopt those animals and share their lives with them.  It is bad for the people who surrender animals to PETA, having been led to believe that “the world’s leading voice for animal rights” would find them a good home.  Why should anyone have to face that betrayal?  It is bad for the animal rescuers and the staffs and volunteers of shelters targeted by PETA in their twisted little war on the No Kill movement.  Those people work hard to better the plight of homeless animals and seek to do all they can for the animals in front of them, animals that PETA would kill within minutes to further their sick agenda.  It is bad for the people who go to work for PETA, perhaps with the good intention of making the world better for animals, and who instead end up allowing themselves to be manipulated into becoming those who seek out and kill healthy and treatable pets and make no effort to find them homes–perhaps the worst possible perversion of their better selves.  What does the future hold for them?  Why should this organization be allowed to destroy their souls?

There is a better way.  Please remove PETA’s designation as an animal shelter.  Please take away their license to kill animals and to cut a destructive swath through the community of animal lovers.

Sure, they’ll make a ruckus about it, but so what?  The shouts of joy from real animal lovers across the country and around the globe will drown it out.

Sincerely,
Valerie Hayes

One Response to “An open letter in support of removing PETA’s ‘animal shelter’ designation”

Leave a Reply

Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. You can also subscribe without commenting.