We just came from a fascinating event at the National Press Club in Washington. At noon today, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) vice president Bruce Friedrich did his best to implicate IAMS (a well-known pet food company) in a product recall related to the deaths of a few hundred dogs and cats. We weren’t terribly surprised when Friedrich had us thrown out of the building -- after all, we were there to remind the national media that PETA itself has killed far more animals than the tainted pet food. And in PETA’s case, it’s on purpose.

This month’s pet food recalls made us wonder how PETA would react if manufacturers all committed to making their products safer by testing every single batch -- on animals. The only way to be absolutely sure dog food is safe for Fido, after all, is to feed it to some other living creature. (In fact, that’s how the manufacturer of the recalled pet food confirmed that the product was tainted in the first place.) But PETA’s press release today recommends “a list of dog and cat food manufacturers that don’t test on animals.” [emphasis added] And PETA’s chief beef with IAMS has always been that the company isn’t on that list.

Is PETA more interested in harming IAMS and making headlines than in improving pet-food safety? We have our suspicions. But no one, not even PETA, is disputing that these poisoned-pet incidents were accidental. In the case of PETA’s angel-of-death program, getting caught (click here and here) has been the group’s only “mistake.”