Does PETA Defend Killing Cows in the Climate Wars?

Where will cancelled cows contemplate their cud when farms are closed?

As a former litigation attorney, I have been threatened by a great many lawyers in my day. So being threatened by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), in an effort to silence me for exposing PETA’s unethical conduct, made me guffaw. I invite you to guffaw with me.

The essence of PETA’s thin-skinned legal squawking is my simple observation that in calling for an end to the use of animals for food, PETA is implicitly calling for millions of livestock to be euthanized (and/or never created by terminating breeding) in the name of saving them. This has long been a PETA conundrum, but it has been exposed visibly as Holland, Ireland and other nations move to eliminate thousands of farms—and their livestock—to supposedly rescue the planet from climate change. Just as PETA is deceptive about its true animal intentions, this climate malarkey of replacing meat with veggies will actually pollute the planet faster and more intensely than eating grass-fed burgers.

PETA advocates thoughtless policies that hold allure for animal rights quacks who do not critically assess what is being touted. PETA calls to boycott the honey industry because bees are allegedly mistreated:

It’s not unusual for larger honey producers to cut off the queen bee’s wings so that she can’t leave the colony or to have her artificially inseminated on a bee-sized version of the factory farm “rape rack.” When the keeper wants to move a queen to a new colony, she is carried with “bodyguard” bees, all of whom—if they survive transport—will be killed by bees in the new colony. Bees may be killed or have their wings and legs torn off by haphazard handling.

But the honey industry is a top funding source for research into sudden colony die-off (Colony Collapse Disorder) and other bee maladies: boycotting honey undermines bee-saving research. And what are PETA’s clueless bevy of honey-duckers to seek as alternative sweeteners--the high fructose corn syrup whose non-organic production relies on neonicotinoids, GMOs and glyphosate? Or rice syrup, produced by spewing greenhouse gasses?

PETA is thus actively lobbying to help kill off honeybees, in the name of saving them from unpleasant practices. If industrial honey production ends as PETA demands, where are all its allegedly suffering bees to go, if not to their deaths?

This was essentially the logical assessment I explained in a recent interview regarding my book about local farming, Small Farm Republic. PETA and others who claim they care about animals are joining with climate alarmists to eradicate all cows in the name of saving them. PETA howls that cows are bred using Artificial Insemination (the “other A.I.”), and that this enslaves them.  

Rape is perhaps the single most heinous crime involving both power and violence. But it’s standard procedure in the dairy industry. Like all mammals, cows produce milk only during and after pregnancy, so roughly every nine months, cows on dairy farms are forcibly impregnated so that their milk production will continue. They’re restrained on what the farmers themselves call “rape racks” while insemination instruments are shoved into their vaginas.

Yet humans pay big moola for sperm donors and human AI; using stirrups. Cows left with large, aggressive bulls can suffer severe injuries including broken backs, or crushed young calves. PETA has its solution: eliminate cow non-suffering by eliminating their breathing or walking the earth. Don’t ever breed them at all. Save the animals by eradicating them.

The irony of this is profound, however lost it is on PETA and its lawyers. In a tweet a few years ago, PETA condemned people for personifying humans as animals, even demanding alternative language (calling people chicken was an offense to poultry: call them “cowards” instead). PETA righteously proclaimed:

Calling someone an animal as an insult reinforces the myth that humans are superior to other animals & justified in violating them.

PETA routinely humanizes cows, bees, and other animals. It is just immoral to use animal words to “animalize” humans. 

This silly trans-speciesism is all the sillier when drenched in PETA hypocrisy: PETA doesn’t want anyone to slight animals by using their names as adjectives, while it advocates killing them in the name of sparing them future suffering. Imagine if it treated humans similarly: calling that “genocide” might be unfair, as that term applies only to killing humans. What IS the term for what PETA does, if not animalcide?

In their laughable letter, PETA’s legal counsel tried to cattle-prod me:

I write on behalf of PETA to demand that you cease and desist from publishing any defamatory statement that PETA supports the mass killing of cows as part of a purported solution to climate change. ….On July 2, 2023, during an interview that aired on OAN's In Focus broadcast, you falsely and maliciously stated in relation to the subject "cow-killing effort” that "this is backed by animal rights groups like PETA. They want to save the cows by killing them." This blatant and intentional falsehood is directly contrary to PETA's longstanding and well-publicized position encouraging people to take personal responsibility for saving the planet by going vegan. Your failure to abide by this letter will require PETA to seek alternative means of enforcing its rights against you. Please conduct yourself accordingly. 

This disingenuous effort falls flat: PETA encourages people to voluntarily avoid meat, because it opposes all livestock farming ventures, from pigs to chickens to cows. It does not have plans for a PETA Petting Zoo to comfortably retire them: its unspoken policy is that these animals will be denied any life at all. Similarly those who call to eliminate farms in the name of climate, whether in Holland, Ireland or America, do not address the millions of cows and other “live”stock that will be shipped for slaughter prematurely as a result.

PETA kills dogs and cats to save them from an unpleasant life. As Newsweek reported, PETA kills more domestic pets at its facilities than other humane services. PETA’s deceptive response:

"If you have an open-door intake policy and welcome damaged animals who are abused, neglected, unloved, or who no one else will accept, of course your [euthanization] numbers will look different than those of a shelter that accepts a limited number of animals and turns animals away," PETA told Newsweek in an email Friday.

That explanation is just more PETA subterfuge. One web site (petakillsanimals.com) created to expose PETA’s dog-and-cat-icide practices notes:

Why does PETA kill cats and dogs by the thousands instead of finding them homes? Simply, PETA does not believe in pet ownership. Ingrid Newkirk has called pet ownership “an abysmal situation.” She further elaborated on her goal for destroying the human-pet bond: “If people want toys, they should buy inanimate objects. If they want companionship, they should seek it with their own kind.”

In PETA’s twisted mind, it’s more humane to just euthanize the animals than for a hypothetical harm to befall them in the future. Similarly, PETA has also argued in court that elephants are better off being killed than living in American zoos where they are well cared for.

PETA’s pro-killing attitude is part of its core—and it should shock any animal lover.

It appears that PETA’s modus operandi is showing: this is the same tack PETA takes with cows! PETA uses the worst examples of animal husbandry to malign all animal farming and to persuade people to avoid milk and meat:

Cows who don’t die on the way to slaughter from exposure or traffic accidents are shot in the head with a captive-bolt gun and hung up by one leg then have their throats cut before finally being skinned and gutted. ….help put an end to these atrocities. Order PETA’s free vegan starter kit for tips and recipes to help you make the transition to a cruelty-free diet today. 

PETA also claims white supremacists drink milk:

Geneticists are alarmed that white nationalists—who are now using milk emojis and sharing photos of themselves chugging milk to celebrate their “whiteness”—are contorting science and using it as an excuse to hate. ….All we can say is this: Human supremacists need to start thinking about other species’ interests in not being exploited. ….Aside from “lactose-tolerant” white supremacists, cow’s milk really is the perfect drink of choice for all (even unwitting) supremacists, since the dairy industry inflicts extreme violence on other living beings. PETA is trying to wake people up to the implications of choosing this white beverage and suggesting that they choose something else pronto.

….With so many different types of cruelty-free, delicious milks on the market, opposing supremacists has never been easier.

I told a simple truth in my recent interview: that PETA and others are calling to eradicate millions of cows in the name of saving the planet and sparing cows from future suffering. This is hardly “ethical” treatment of animals. One would expect those who love animals to advocate for their humane treatment (as do I, as an activist for on-farm slaughter and regenerative farming), and stand up to save the cows.

I truly advocate for cows: returning them to pastures and freeing them from Confinement Operations.  I am the animal rights activist, not PETA: I am fighting for the bovines PETA openly seeks to extinguish, and I will not be cow-hobbled.

So sue me….