The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has announced that it is leading a boycott of Burger King stores worldwide. The boycott’s aim is to force Burger King to change the way it treats animals, as McDonald’s already has. (Of course, as soon as McDonald’s buckled, PETA started asking for more concessions. It’s important to remember that PETA doesn’t really care about how animals are treated before they are processed. PETA won’t be happy until restaurants stop serving meat, period.) PETA is also promising to take action against several other restaurant and grocery chains.
What type of action can we expect from PETA? PETA president Ingrid Newkirk told the Dallas Morning News, “We are anti-violence. And, I think some days, maybe the lack of physical confrontation is holding us back. We can’t just tell people how bad the situation is. We have to give them a course of action.”
PETA could fulfill Ingrid’s desire to become more violent by modeling new efforts on a terrifying campaign currently underway in the UK. In attempts to force the closing of a lab that conducts animal testing for pharmaceutical companies, activists have assaulted lab employees at their homes, firebombed their cars, and threatened their children. In a different twist, activists are now picketing the banks that provide the lab with its money, promising to shut the banks down should they continue to provide the lab loans.
