“Young folks,” writes Memphis Commercial Appeal columnist Bryan Brasher, have “fallen victim to a band of thugs who are 1) shameless and 2) smart.” Brasher isn’t referring to street gangs, drug dealers, or Hannah Montana promoters. He’s talking about the animal-rights “crackpots and nut cases” at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). Kids, Brasher says, are “born looking for a cause — and in the absence of a real one, they’ll tow the line for any user or poser who fills their head with delusions of grandeur.”
We examined this disturbing trend a few years ago in a report called Your Kids, PETA’s Pawns. If you’re the parent of a budding animal liberationist, it’s worth a serious read.
At the end of 2006, PETA boasted that it reached “more than 2 million young people” with its disturbing messages. The group also killed an awful lot of dogs and cats. PETA only recently reported its 2006 death-toll to the state of Virginia (9 months late).
Other than the pets reclaimed by their owners after being spayed or neutered, PETA employees took in 3,061 dogs, cats, and other “companion animals” in 2006. They killed 2,981 of them. A 97.3 percent kill rate is disturbingly high, even for PETA.
Last week the National Pork Board reported the results of surveys and focus groups of American children aged 9 to 14. “Only one-third of the surveyed children said they had heard of PETA or visited its Web site.” Only one-third? The U.S. Census reports that there are over 20 million children in that age group. One-third is far too many.
If your kids want to volunteer for PETA’s lunatic brigade, Bryan Brasher has some sound advice:
Sit them at a table covered with pamphlets for the Red Cross, the American Heart Association, the Goodwill, the Mental Health Association and any other reputable charity you think might be worth their time. Then throw in a pamphlet or two from PETA, and let them decide which would be a better use of their time, passion and commitment.
They’re your kids. Surely you don’t want them to wake up 10 years from now and realize they just gave 10 years of their precious lives to a bunch of crackpots and nut cases. Not when they could have been changing the world for the better.
