[executioneer]

i like how peta will kill animals to keep them safe from cruelty

Posted on Sat, Jun. 18, 2005

PETA workers face cruelty charges

The Associated Press


AHOSKIE, N.C. — Two employees of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have been charged with animal cruelty for allegedly getting dogs and cats from shelters and dumping their dead bodies.

Police said they found 18 dead animals in a garbage bin and 13 more in a van.

PETA's president, Ingrid Newkirk, said the workers were picking up animals to be brought to PETA headquarters for euthanization. Veterinarians and animal control officers said the PETA workers had promised to find homes for the animals rather than euthanize them, according to police.

PETA spokeswoman Colleen O'Brien said the organization euthanizes animals by lethal injection, which it considers more humane than gassing animals.

Shelter officials knew some of the animals, which are not always “cute, cuddly, housebroken or small,” would need to be put down, Newkirk said.

Among the dead animals, though, authorities found a female cat and her two “very adoptable” kittens taken from Ahoskie Animal Hospital, veterinarian Patrick Proctor said.

“These were just kittens we were trying to find homes for,” Proctor said. “PETA said they would do that, but these cats never made it out of the county.”

When Proctor evaluated one dead dog for police, he discovered a healthy, 6-month-old mutt with a needle mark on its front right leg, he said.

He also identified what he called a “death kit” that police found in the van. It was filled with syringes and two drugs that only licensed veterinarians can have, he said.

“PETA will never pick up another animal from my practice,” Proctor said.

PETA had taken 50 animals to be adopted from Proctor’s practice over the past two years, he said. PETA has also taken animals from veterinarian James Brown in Northampton County for about a year, Brown said.

“When they started taking them, they said they would try to find homes for them,” Brown said. “Nobody ever checked on them” after the animals were taken.

When PETA employees took animals from Brown’s practice in the past, they would tranquilize them and take them away in vans, said Karen Cole, the animal cruelty investigator for the Northampton Sheriff’s Office.

Some animals were very sick or injured and otherwise would have been euthanized in Brown’s clinic, she said.

“Some animals have to be euthanized,” she said. “But the way this crowd did it is sick.”