Is PETA weirder than i thought?!
Is PETA weirder than i thought?
I got this off the PETA website:
Are there skeletons in your closet? There is no difference between fur, leather, and wool when it comes to cruelty to animals. Every fur-trimmed jacket, leather belt, and wool sweater represents the intense suffering and gruesome deaths of millions of animals each year. Find out more at the following Web sites:
FurIsDead.com
SaveTheSheep.com
CowsAreCool.com
OK and i would like to point out I am VERY against cruelty to animals, but wool is NOT the same as leather. wool is shaved off...the sheep arent killed. what am i not seeing?
2 months ago
uhh to the scuba dude...im not in PETA...wtf is with all the rambling? u make no sense. have u ever heard of periods and commas...you know, stuff u should have learned in first grade?
Answers:
2 months ago
uhh to the scuba dude...im not in PETA...wtf is with all the rambling? u make no sense. have u ever heard of periods and commas...you know, stuff u should have learned in first grade?
As I design knitwear professionally .. I would like to comment ..first their are many natural fibers you can wear or use today they in no way use or abuse animals ..cottons, linens, hemp , soy, bamboo, and this year kelp .. and some partial synthetics as rayons and viscose .. I was just reading an article ..not my own on sheep and although I have read a lot about them years ago ..I would like to share it as I feel this is written well.. I am glad you asked instead of assuming ... it is long but worth the read: .......................... On the surface, it appears that wool is a benign product because, at least theoretically, it can be obtained without harming the sheep. However, upon closer inspection, we find that the wool industry is actually very similar to the egg and dairy industries. While animals such as laying hens, dairy cows, and wool-bearing sheep are not immediately killed to procure their salable products, they suffer tremendously for years prior to their ultimate and unavoidable slaughter.
Most people believe that sheep are overburdened with too much wool and therefore need to be shorn. Although today's wool-bearing sheep have thick, heavy coats, it is the result of selective breeding over thousands of years. These animals are descended from wild mountain sheep, still found in some remote regions of the world, which shed their fine woolly hair naturally. Wool provides sheep with warmth and protection from inclement weather and sunburn. Because our "modern" wool-bearers are extremely vulnerable to the elements without their wool, many sheep die of exposure shortly after being denuded.
From the earliest of times there was complicity in the use of wool. Merinos, which were originally from Spain, are the most efficient wool producers. Mutton breeds, which primarily originated in England, are used predominately for meat. Cross-breeds are raised for the dual purpose of meat and wool. Nevertheless, Merinos also yield mutton and mutton breeds also yield wool. No sheep escapes either function; it is just a matter of emphasis. Essentially, all wool is a slaughterhouse product.
Wool is classed as either "shorn wool," that which is shorn from sheep annually, or "pulled wool," that which is taken from sheep at the time of slaughter. Horrors abound on sheep farms, including mutilating, painful surgical procedures that are performed without anesthesia. These entail mulesing, the cutting of large strips of flesh off the hind legs to reduce fly problems, and tail docking, designed to preserve the salable condition of wool surrounding a sheep's anus, among others. A large percentage of the world's wool is produced from Merinos exported from Australia. These sheep are crammed onto ships by the tens of thousands, crowded into filthy pens, and packed so tightly they can barely move. As a result, thousands of sheep die each year from suffocation, trampling, or starvation.
Sheep shearers are paid by piece rate, meaning that speed not precision guides the process. Consequently, most sheep are roughly handled, lacerated, and injured during the process. The production of wool, as with all industries that consider animals as mere commodities, is rife with cruelty and abuse. In addition, the purchase of wool supports the continual slaughter of millions of lambs and sheep each year.
Vegans do not use wool or any other materials obtained from animals. Fortunately, there are many alternatives to wool that are cruelty-free, nonallergenic, quick-drying, easy to clean, environmentally- sound, and provide warmth without bulk. Therefore, for most new vegans, the question is usually not what can they substitute for wool but what should they do with the woollen items they already own. In many instances, this is a matter of economics.
It can become cost prohibitive to replace an entire wardrobe of sweaters, slacks, suits, and coats all at once. Some new vegans continue to wear their wool clothing until it wears out and then replace it with non-woollen items piecemeal. Others feel that wearing woollen garments, regardless of how old they may be, lends credence to their acceptability. Often new vegans sell their animal-based attire to thrift shops or donate items to shelters for homeless or battered people. Some people choose to donate any money they collect from the sale of their old animal based goods to charitable organizations that support vegan-related causes. What you do with your woollen clothing is a matter of personal choice. There are many conscionable options that can help align your apparel with your ethics.
Source(s):
this is what PETA is referring too ..and I do get info in my profession as the recent letters sent out (not by Peta) ..it was by people involved in the knitwear business .. regarding a practice in Australia of herding sheep onto boats , what the consider useless sheep (too old to produce good wool any longer and too expensive to keep alive ) ..these sheep were not given food or water for days on end ..and brought out to the open seas and thrown alive overboard .. many designers as myself wrote the Australian gov't and even those who do use wool in their profession were appauled at this barbaric practice .. we are hoping it ends but with these useless (so to speak sheep) ..you can see what problems this and the above quote shows ..yes?
They are a cult. Thats why. They try and put people on a guilt trip and ****......i used to be a vegan for a lil while but i was a vegetarian for a year. i was into peta and all that **** but...I'm not one to support cultish-type things. I dont even like jehovah's witnesses to come to my door anymore
okay pictuere this if you will thousands of years ago we needed to keep warm and we also needed food well well we might not need the warmth anymore( but i agree with you wool is just fine most people take care of there sheep i hope cause if they didnt it would be a poor descion and you wouldnt get the fluffiest of coats) but we still need the food
thats right food we evolved from eating meat and the only to keep evolving is to continue to eat meat. well i think you shouldnt worry about it and focus on baby seals that way you can keep eating and wearing clothes and protesting againest crueltey to animals afterall were not apes anymore and we do need more than fruits and berries okay tofu fine but seriously the way thingd sre going your going to need alot of protein and the way some of the more refined methods are done well.. you just better eat your meat anyway and yah no what i think their point is we really dont need real fur or skins anymore its really just waste i think thats petas point we have other means to cloth ourselves and feed ourselves even though DOMESTICATED LIVESTOCK is around for that reason but hey who iam to complain nobody cares what i have to say... okay watch this WE NEED TO GET RID OF MONEY< AND SOCIAL STATUS AND REALLY GET BACK TO THGE BASICS RIGHT NOW NOT 15YRS FROM NOW AND ITS VERY POSSIBLE AND IHAVE IT ALL WRITTEN DOWN AND DOCUMTED IN A LIBRARY BESIDE MY COMPUTER THAT I DONT NEED RIGHT HERE EVEN IF IWASTED MY WHOLE LIFE IT WOULD NT MATTER BECAUSE ITS SOMETHING THAT EVERYONE HAS TO AGRREE ON EVERYONE>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>... k dear nobody cares and were screwed okay someone is always going want control. so drop the rabbitfood and live your life
PETA has a policy that anything that contains animal products is bad. The sheep may be "mistreated" as a wool producer which is not in the "ethical treatment of animals" clause.
just because you don't agree with everything peta says doesn't mean your a bad vegetarian/vegan.
I don't know. It may have something to do with the way they treat the sheep, but I don't see a problem with wool personally.
Are they weirder than you thought? Depends on how weird you thought they were.
Actually, PETA is not unlike many other social-political movements. You can find the NRA, the Libertarians, and both sides of the abortion debate taking extreme positions. For some it's a perceptual distortion--those who aren't extremists are compromisers! And for others it's a negotiating position; they personally might be happy with a more moderate view than the one they present, but they think that it's a negotiation and the first one who gives in a little will lose.
Overall a counterproductive strategy, in the long run.
You don't have to agree with everything they say.
The reason why they believe its wrong is because its not for us to take from any animal. Another being the cruelty involved with hoarding the wool.
http://www.veganviews.org.uk/vv77/vv77wo...
http://community.livejournal.com/veganis...
http://community.livejournal.com/veganis...
http://community.livejournal.com/veganis...
Its the conditions the sheep are kept in. I read an article on PETA about how they are shipped from australia to some middleeastern country and they lie in there own feces, given no food or water, beaten, ect. check it out further on the web, its terrible and disgusting!
I am also against animal cruelty. But PETA does go overboard sometimes. Actually, they just sent me some magazine the other day. Oh wow I wish you could have seen it. It was directed to very young children. It was designed like a "teen beat" or some fashion magazine. It had pictures of celebraties and all the famous. One article had the comedian Andy Dick telling kids to skip school on "frog disection day". Pretty much the point of the magazine was "You'll be just like Avril Lavingne if you join PETA". I understand they want kids to be AWARE, but this particular zine was very manipulative. Also my boyfriend was once in PETA, and he said he went to one of their "marches" and it scared him. He said there were naked people in cages acting like animals, and so many fights broke out over almost nothing. Again, I understand they want people to be aware of the cruelty that happens but they just step way over the line sometimes.
Wool.
From sheep. Used in clothing. Ram lambs and old "wool" sheep are slaughtered for their meat. Sheep are transported without food or water, in extreme heat and cold. Legs are broken, eyes injured, etc. Sheep are bred to be unnaturally woolly, also unnaturally wrinkly, which causes them to get insect infestations around the tail areas. The farmer's solution to this is the painful cutting away of the flesh around the tail (called mulesing). "Inferior" sheep are killed. When shearing the sheep, they are pinned down violently and sheared roughly. Their skin is cut up. Every year, hundreds of thousands of shorn sheep die from exposure to cold. Natural predators of sheep (wolves, coyotes, eagles, etc.) are poisoned, trapped, and shot. In the U.S., overgrazing of cattle and sheep is turning more than 150 million acres of land to desert. "Natural" wool production uses enormous amounts of resources and energy (to breed, raise, feed, shear, transport, slaughter, etc., the sheep). Derivatives: Lanolin, Wool Wax, Wool Fat. Alternatives: cotton, cotton flannel, synthetic fibers, ramie, etc.
(and for the record I am not a huge supporter of peta..there are better ways of getting through to people than threats and guilt tactics)
Well I am not a Peta supporter,
I would not support their organization, because just like any other organization... I tend to believe that there is some kind of ulterior motive. I do however, like the information that they give on their websites, I think that they give tons of useful info on becoming a vegan/ vegetarian and have no problem using it, or suggesting their links to anyone.
So to your question... There are 2 reasons that I (personally) don't wear wool...
1) It is something from an animal, I would feel hypocritical to say, "I do not wear leather because it comes from an animal, but the sheep don't die when wool is obtained so I wear wool." It still comes from an animal... Therefore in my opinion it is automatically not vegetarian. 2) and even though sheep don't necessarily die when their fur is sheered off, that doesn't mean that some don't get hurt from being cut, some do even die in the whole process... they are being held captive, and something is taken from them, to me... that is enough to stop using wool... also most people think that sheering the wool off helps the sheep... But the sheep would actually be fine w/o human interference... they, like any full- grown animal, are capable of handling themselves.
This is kind of like the, "taking milk from a cow doesn't kill it" argument. Even though the cow doesn't die when it produces milk for human consumption... it is imprisoned and tortured all of its short life, then made to suffer a horrible death.
-for more info on the dairy thing... I like this website:
--- http://www.torturedcows.com/dairy/23/mil...
Did you go the save the sheep website that you listed? Peta explains why they are against wool there.
(opps, I answered this question as if you were a vegetarian... you're not, right?... I don't know...lol... anyway hope this helped.)
Its kinda the same as why vegans don't eat honey. It isn't necessarily cruel (unless the sheep are slaughtered for meat at some point). The wool belongs to the sheep (like the honey belongs to the bees) and it isn't ours to take. Like rape or robbery is what they're getting at. That being said: I think thats crazy. But thats what they mean.
It involves factory farming. Shaving the sheep is just *one* of the things they do to them. It's illogical to support shaving of the sheep, and be against slaughter, because those two are part of the same idea. Imprisonment and taking advantage of an innocent animal that ends up dead.
Just imagine, if someone shaved off your hair without asking you... and not to mention all the other things they do to farm animals. Why do people assume that animals are here for us to use? Farm animals can take care of themselves just like all other animals. Their meat is FLESH, their milk is for their babies, their fur/wool is for their own skin.
Wearing wool IS like wearing fur, because the animal it came from is doomed; a victim of a selfish, needless human desire-
All animals should live free. Why do we take it for granted that only humans need to be free?
Sheep are abused and tortured and do not like what is being done not them.
How we get wool is another ideal that (unfortunately) people are still imagining the old ideals of "Farmer Joe" and his happy farm animals. Most U.S. wool comes from hideous factory conditions. Click the link if you would like to know
http://www.petatv.com/tvpopup/prefs.asp?...
And then click "watch it."
"the most commonly raised sheep are merinos, who are specifically bred to have wrinkled skin, which means more wool per animal. This unnatural overload of wool causes animals to die of heat exhaustion during hot months, and the wrinkles also collect urine and moisture. Attracted to the moisture, flies lay eggs in the folds of skin, and the hatched maggots can eat the sheep alive. In order to prevent this condition, called “flystrike,” Australian ranchers perform a barbaric operation―mulesing―by carving huge strips of skin and flesh off the backs of unanesthetized lambs’ legs and around their tails."
Regardless of whether leather comes from or does not come from meat cows, how those cows live, are tortured and die is simply deplorable.
I am a vegetarian and I do not wear animals.
:)
The sheep are treated badly and are locked away for their whole lives. How can you NOT be against that?
Yes. PETA probably is much weirder than you thought. They have a track record of funding convicted terrorists, funding terrorist organizations, and they even publish comics to try to brainwash children into hating their parents if the parents consume meat. The nutballs at PETA would even deny blind people seeing eye dogs if they had their way!
See the link below for an example of a terrorist PETA has funded. While that article is not a real deep study on the topic of PETA's involvement with terrorist activities, it does give some concrete examples that an open-minded person can use as a starting point to do further research on the irrational excesses of PETA.
Yes, PETA is very weird. I was a member a few years ago and I gave it up because I realized how ridiculous it really was. They would send me like 3 emails a day and I would receive at least 1 letter a day in my mailbox telling me what I had to protest and stuff. I mean yea I don't believe in fur either but PETA takes it to the extreme. I finally quit when they emailed me their new form of protest that was just terrible. They had made some pamphlets for children and wanted to pass them out to children whose moms were wearing fur or something. Then they expected us to give these children the pamphlet that was called something like "Why Mommy is a Murderer" and had some disgusting image of a woman slaughtering some animal in the cover. What a way to traumatize children. Right then I emailed PETA and told them to take me off their mailing list because they had gone to far.
PETA is wrong to be advocating "force neuter and spaying"...