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This article is not neutral

I would like to dispute the neutrality of this article as it is slanted towards making PETA appear to be more ethical than unethical, example: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nathan-j-winograd/peta-kills-puppies-kittens_b_2979220.html

There isn't even a "criticism" section. Yet another example of bias in Misplaced Pages and very poor moderating. Craxusius (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 08:03, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Criticism sections are controversial at Misplaced Pages, and in the past the consensus at this page has been to have criticism section-by-section. I've long been concerned that the page is not critical enough, and I'm receptive to adding sources that criticize the euthanasia practices. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:31, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Dude, you didn't even read the article if you think it's slanted. You find it slanted because it's not slanted; that is, it doesn't portray PETA with the same propogandistic vitriol you wish it to. 68.67.92.144 (talk) 01:15, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

Like all criminal nut-cults, PETA assigns some of their minions to scrub any criticism of their cult from wikipedia. Unless the critics are as dedicated as the cultists, the cult will usually win this tug-of-war. See the pages for el ron hub bard's cult or the moons for similar examples. 50.131.153.242 (talk) 02:46, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Actually, this article is way too critical of PETA. The negative points and quotes, esp. in the intro and the conclusion, far outweigh the positive ones, as my comments and analysis below indicate. Calling PETA a "criminal nut-cult" (as this last poster does) indicates that the person's perspective is completely skewed in a way that cannot begin to be taken seriously. That's just empty name-calling, without any substance. PETA is not "criminal" or a "cult"--to be accurate, it's a legit and perfectly legal animal rights nonprofit that exercises its free-speech rights. And although opinions may vary, it probably makes far more sense to say that those who oppose the ethical treatment of animals are "nuts" rather than those who support it. Also, the person who writes "I've long been concerned that the page is not critical enough" ("Tryptofish"), obviously isn't looking carefully at what's there. This piece is currently quite biased against PETA and needs to be brought into balance and also into alignment with Misplaced Pages's own neutrality guidelines. 174.22.190.144 (talk) 15:07, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

"Killing of shelter animals"

Much of the information in this section is duplicated, and needs to be cleaned up. 74.90.255.19 (talk) 02:11, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Yep, sure was. Thanks for the heads up. Don't know how I missed it, but it seems as though three graphs were added to the top of this section that were simply rehashes of info already contained within. A couple of items were inadequately sourced. Removed. All the info is still there, just not repeated. Bob98133 (talk) 12:28, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

With one quibble, I agree. Those paragraphs were added rather recently. I went through them just now, looking critically for anything that was reliably sourced but not covered elsewhere in the section. There was pretty much nothing, but I did find one thing, and I just made an edit, putting that back. It was some specific numbers about the proportions of animals euthanized or not euthanized, and I think that it is worthwhile for us to report exact numbers. On the other hand, the information was sourced to the CCF, and I recognize the issues about sourcing material to them. Therefore, I tried to put the material in an appropriate position within the section, and to put it in the context of its source. I hope that's OK. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:03, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Agreed on keeping the stats, but not on the source. I've pulled the stats instead from the gov't agency directly, rather than the picked and chosen ones that CCF used (i.e. the animals that were surrendered to other agencies). I also used the gov't agencies nomenclature "euthanized" rather than "killed." I have a problem with using the percentages as quoted by CCF. I will look to see if there's another source that will compare their percentage rate to the other shelters and put that back in. I think the stats speak for themselves. PETA obviously euth'd most of the animals they took in. Is that ok? Cheers...Bob98133 (talk) 19:54, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. (I moved the "VDACS" abbreviation to the first occurrence, and took out the repetitions of the long agency name, but that's a trivial revision.) I think that the source you added is a good improvement, as are the more complete figures. As I said, I was a bit uncomfortable with the previous source, so I'm happy that you improved upon it. I see some value in not only telling our readers, as we do, that PETA euthanized most of the animals, but also indicating the extent to which PETA's practices differ from other shelters. When PETA does something in a manner that is specific to PETA, that seems encyclopedic to me. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:14, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Where's the reference for the claim that most of the euthanized animals are healthy? I can't find anything supporting that in the references around the text. I'm also very dubious of using primary sources for the euthanasia rate without context or secondary sources to interpret them. Is that rate higher than normal shelters? Is that rate representative of the annual average, or was 2006 an unusual year? These are all things that are missing from the article, and precisely the reason that primary sources should be used with extreme caution. 128.84.216.20 (talk) 15:44, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your note. Took a look and decided to update the stats. This is such a contentious issue that I do feel it's best to put the primary source for the numbers out there. You're right about the use of "healthy," and I did remove that since none of the citations supported that claim. I am game to put some context about the numbers, but will have to think on how best to word and from what sources. If you have suggestions, please advise! Bob98133 (talk) 20:22, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Reverted what appeared to be an add about 2014 VDAC numbers that didn't match up to actual VDAC numbers cited in the previous sentence, which are linked to the original source in the footnote. If I'm not doing the math right, please do correct with explanation. Thanks! Bob98133 (talk) 19:56, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

@Bob98133: Please see the numbers for the "previous sentence" they are for 2013, the numbers removed were for 2014. Why suppress information verified to a reliable source, the Washington Post?— Preceding unsigned comment added by RightCowLeftCoast (talk • contribs) 12:15, 25 February 2015‎ (UTC)

Hi there, please, I'm not trying to suppress anything. The Washington Post is using the same source as I cited: the VDACS 2014 shelter numbers. If you click on the 2014 numbers within the Wash Post article, they take you to the exact same source as I link in the footnote #67. Please take a look. What the Washington Post is doing is only counting cats and dogs. If you look at the VDACS numbers, PETA took in 3014 animals TOTAL, and the subsequent figures are based on all the animals, not just cats and dogs. And if you look at the 2013 numbers, the 81% figure is actually the same in 2013 and 2014 when you figure total animals and total euthanasias. I don't know why you would want to limit the information to just dogs and cats? Thanks!Bob98133 (talk) 21:49, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

No, sorry if the above editor misunderstood what I was saying. I provided a link in my last comment that shows that the links differ. Here: 2013, 2014. The WaPo story links to the 2014 information where it got its different numbers.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 00:57, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
@Bob98133: The previous content sources the 2013 numbers, and not the 2014 numbers which I added and sourced to WaPo (which used the 2014 numbers) and Bob98133 removed. So the confusion is not on me, but on Bob98133. Please, correct this Bob98133.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 01:39, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Okey-dokey, I'm going to change everything to the 2014 numbers. Again, the Washington Post is citing the same source but as it says in the article only for the cats and dogs. I am using the VDACS 2014 numbers for ALL ANIMALS taken in by PETA in 2014. ALL OF THEM, NOT JUST THE CATS AND DOGS. I really don't understand why this is so hard to understand. I see no reason (and I am open to a reason) for just using the number for cats and dogs. PETA took in 3017 animals in 2014 and euthanized 2455 for an 81% euthanasia rate. It's right here https://arr.va-vdacs.com/cgi-bin/Vdacs_search.cgi?link_select=facility&form=fac_select&fac_num=157&year=2014. Please look at this and at the link in the Washington Post article again---they are the same exact thing. The reason I had not changed the 2013 citation is because that year, PETA took in 2210 animals and euthanized 1805 which also comes to an 81% euthanasia rate. But since using 2013 seems to have caused some confusion, I've changed that citation as well. Again, if you can explain why you just want the cats and dogs number, I'm all ears.Bob98133 (talk) 17:39, 26 February 2015 (UTC) Sorry, one more thing, just feel like I should spell all of this out: The Washington Post article http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/animal-bill-could-put-peta-out-of-the-shelter-business/2015/02/23/2f4f05b6-bb6a-11e4-b274-e5209a3bc9a9_story.html says "In 2014, according to state reports, PETA took in 2,631 cats and dogs. All but 307 were euthanized." Their source is https://arr.va-vdacs.com/cgi-bin/Vdacs_search.cgi?link_select=facility&form=fac_select&fac_num=157&year=2014, and indeed, if you add up the columns for cats and dogs ONLY, you get 2631 and then add up the euthanized dogs/cats and subtract, you get 307. Cool. I am using the same source but including all of the animals from all columns. Please tell me that makes sense? I don't think we're at cross purposes here. I think you did make a good faith edit, but I don't know why we would want to only have the cats/dogs numbers when PETA euthanizes all kinds of animals. Thanks!Bob98133 (talk) 18:14, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Why not include the 2013 and the 2014 numbers? And numbers from previous years (if available)(and a table could be made) if more than two years were available.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 02:54, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Oh, yeah, you can go back a number of years on the VDACS website. I'm not so skilled at the table thing :), but I can put in a couple of years of numbers, or at least link to a couple of years back. What do you think? Bob98133 (talk) 18:00, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

I don't see why not. More information the better. Not having looked at the numbers, the high percentage of euthanizing might be a recent aberration rather than a historical norm.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 19:51, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 3 September 2014

This edit request to People_for_the_Ethical_Treatment_of_Animals has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Please change "shopping center in Ashoskie" to "shopping center in Ahoskie" — Preceding unsigned comment added by Carolinet91 (talk • contribs)

 Done Stickee (talk) 02:27, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

"Science-Based Medicine" is not a reliable source

The blog "Science-Based Medicine" is a blog run by Dr Gorski and is not a reliable source of information for the purposes used in this article. I would recommend removing anything that is supported by this blog, or else finding other sources. That blog, in my experience, is largely an industry-supporting agenda-based propaganda machine, and it bans commenters for disagreement with the content. SageRad (talk) 12:19, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

Please quote a few words from the article that would allow a search to find the source you are referring to. Johnuniq (talk) 05:50, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

Here's the article quote:

According to sciencebasedmedicine.org, PETA embraces pseudoscientific views and has "a history of (as the old saying goes) using science as a drunk uses a lamppost – for support rather than illumination. In that way they are typical of ideological groups. They have an agenda, they are very open about their beliefs, and they marshal whatever arguments they can in order to promote their point of view."

The cited source is this essay, and my purpose is just to point out that this website is, in my estimation, an agenda-driven source of its own, so it's like "Yes it is!" "No it's not!" sort of back and forth. But... that's just a heads-up and i'm not involved in either side of the debate, just putting up a flag for someone to put a little attention on this section. The quote from sciencebasedmedicine.org does read like a polemic to me, and i wonder if the quote needs to be there. It's also ironic because in my reckoning, sciencebasedmedicine.org is also an agenda-driven ideological group, so it's pot and kettle. SageRad (talk) 14:56, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

Multiple Issues with This Entry

First, it's odd that the intro concludes with two paragraphs about controversy. The information in these paragraphs does not seem essential to the introduction of this subject and should perhaps be moved to a separate "Controversy" section or elsewhere. For instance, Gary Francione's opinion is not a central or defining fact about PETA and certainly does not merit such prominence. Objectively speaking, what has Francione accomplished on behalf of animals that begins to compare with what PETA has done? And what gives him the "stature" to be the one person whose opinion really "counts" here? Frankly, his opinion is a pretty trivial piece of information. Likewise, why should a notorious climate-change denier such as James Inhofe have his critical opinion about this group so prominently displayed? What special authority does he have on the topic of PETA and animal rights? This is not an objective and well-considered presentation, and I don't believe it's typical of Misplaced Pages articles to present such hostile and arbitrarily selected opinions in the intros to other subjects. And what about some counter-balancing positive opinions of the group? Frankly, it looks like industrial enemies of the animal rights movement have tampered with this piece to skew it against the organization. The presentation needs to be more balanced and more in line with the standards of an encyclopedia and Misplaced Pages's own stated standards of neutrality.

Profile

This section says the group has "two million members and supporters," whereas other sections, including the boxed info at the top, say three million (which seems to be the correct number).

Campaigns and consumer boycotts

The list of celebrity supporters is both short and arbitrary. A much more complete list appears here:

https://www.looktothestars.org/charity/peta

And it includes many very prominent names not listed in this section, such as Kate Winslet, Paul McCartney, Richard Linklater, Roger Moore, and many, many others. I would suggest expanding the list and using the page above as the reference.

The criticism of the Holocaust analogy should probably be balanced by a reference to the fact that the great writer Issac Bashevis Singer initiated it. According to your own Misplaced Pages page: "In The Letter Writer, wrote 'In relation to , all people are Nazis; for the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka.' which became a classical reference in the discussions about the legitimacy of the comparison of animal exploitation with the holocaust."

Just because the Anti-Defamation League has criticized this analogy does not make it illegitimate, and, obviously, it is not rejected by all Jews, since Singer, a Jew, initiated it.

Killing of shelter animals

The CCF should probably be immediately identified as what it is, a front group for industries that abuse and slaughter animals. Frankly, by any standard of proportion and logic, a group that represents KFC, just for starters, which slaughters about *a billion* animals a year, criticizing a group that euthanizes a few thousand old, sick, and injured animals is pretty laughable stuff. It's kind of like Stalin criticizing Jack Kevorkian. It's also worth noting how disproportionate the attention to PETA's euthanasia program has been. According to the Humane Society of the United States, about 2.7 million cats and dogs are euthanized in the U.S. each year:

http://www.humanesociety.org/issues/pet_overpopulation/facts/pet_ownership_statistics.html

PETA performs about 2,000 of those, which is something like .1%. You would hardly gather that, though, from all the attention this subject receives. By way of analogy, imagine if your cause is greenhouse-gas emissions. Would you go after the country that's responsible for .1% of the emissions (e.g., Bahrain, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/List_of_countries_by_greenhouse_gas_emissions, which makes PETA the Bahrain of euthanasia)? Or would you go after the truly big emitters, such as the U.S. and China? (Breeders and animal mills would be the equivalent in this case, because they are to blame for the overpopulation crisis.) Clearly, then, the critics who harp on this issue are not really interested in addressing the issue of euthanasia itself in a serious manner. They are interested in tearing down PETA. So I would suggest approaching this issue with appropriate caution and skepticism. And there are many reasons, some of which are listed in the article, why PETA does not function like ordinary animal shelters do. One that you do not mention is that the organization has an active Cruelty Investigations Department, which identifies abused and ill animals, many of whom cannot be rehabilitated, because of illness or injuries, and so require euthanasia. Regular shelters do not have anything like that, so comparing their euthanasia stats with PETA's is really apples and oranges.

Position within the animal rights movement

Again, way too much prominence is given to the opinion of one individual, Francione. Did he or his disciples edit this section? And again, what kind of hands-on achievements on behalf of animals does Francione have by comparison with this group? The focus on Francione's opinion here is completely disproportionate and should be edited down to a size that is reasonable for an article of this length and the significance of the topic (which is extremely low, really).

And much more acknowledgement needs to be given to PETA's achievements and the way that it has defined the cutting edge of campaigns and actual accomplishments within the animal rights movement.

Other views

This is an extremely weak concluding section. It references a single campaign from years ago in support of a generalization about "pseudo-science." Unless some pattern of "pseudo-science" can be documented, this is simply not a legitimate criticism, and the prominence given to this discussion is way out of proportion with other areas of the article. For instance, PETA is heavily invested in opposing animal testing and fur and has many accomplishments in these areas, and yet the discussions of those subjects receive far less space than this one of something that is absolutely not central to the organization's work, history, or mission. Something is clearly wrong here, and it creates an overall false, unfair, and misleading impression. The article definitely needs a much stronger and less arbitrary concluding section.

The problem with neutrality and balance is highly evident if we characterize the content of each paragraph in terms of being NEUTRAL, NEGATIVE, or POSITIVE. I score the four paragraphs of the intro like this:

NEUTRAL NEUTRAL NEGATIVE NEGATIVE

And the conclusion of the article is like this (with paragraphs in which PETA itself is merely being cited in defense of accusations as "NEUTRAL"):

NEUTRAL NEGATIVE NEGATIVE NEUTRAL NEGATIVE NEUTRAL NEGATIVE NEGATIVE NEUTRAL NEGATIVE NEGATIVE NEGATIVE

That's extremely unbalanced, obviously.

Many critical viewpoints from outside the group are quoted, across a range of perspectives, but virtually no positive opinions from outside the group's leadership are quoted, even though supporters of the group include many prominent figures, such as Jane Goodall, Peter Singer, Thich Nhat Hanh, Paul McCartney, and many, many others.

I would like to see the organization receive more balanced treatment on your supposedly unbiased site. Instead, what I am reading often looks like industry propaganda against the group. Especially glaring are the two paragraphs focused on controversy in the intro and the very weak and unbalanced conclusion. And why don't you have a section that covers PETA's rescue of animals from roadside zoos and other sorry facilities and how it helps transfer them to first-rate sanctuaries such as The Wild Animal Sanctuary in Colorado? See, for instance: http://investigations.peta.org/bfbp-bear-rescue/ and also http://www.petaindia.com/blog/sunder-next-steps/. Those are just two cases out of a huge number. Surely, the subject of rescuing abused animals is vastly more important and integral subject matter for this topic than much of what the article currently contains.

Thank you for considering my points.

174.22.190.144 (talk) 02:02, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

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