Comment by busterarm
4 years ago
From their own website:
We at PETA very much love the animal companions who share our homes, but we believe that it would have been in the animals’ best interests if the institution of “pet keeping”—i.e., breeding animals to be kept and regarded as “pets”—never existed. The international pastime of domesticating animals has created an overpopulation crisis; as a result, millions of unwanted animals are destroyed every year as “surplus.”
This selfish desire to possess animals and receive love from them causes immeasurable suffering, which results from manipulating their breeding, selling or giving them away casually, and depriving them of the opportunity to engage in their natural behavior. They are restricted to human homes, where they must obey commands and can only eat, drink, and even urinate when humans allow them to.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/religion/at-petas-sh...
https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-peta-responsible-deaths-...
It's interesting though -- all of this is easily searchable online. If you really read into their own literature and statements of people behind PETA, you'll find some real radical takes. People hear all this, but still choose to disbelieve and not do their own research. They don't hide anything. They're open about all of it.
I agree mostly with their two paragraphs. I rescued an exotic parrot and while I certainly had mixed feelings before I got him, I now know that parrots, for example, should not be pets whatsoever. It's not fair to them, and we breed them pretty much entirely out of selfishness.
So that, by itself, doesn't really convince me of much. I do appreciate the links, however. Thanks.
> all of this is easily searchable online.
Searchable, yes, but only within an ocean of hot takes, tabloids and tweets.
I don’t think there’s much difference for my cat, except that they know where they can always return for food and a dry place to sleep.
I’m not convinced they’d be better off if they’d been born in the wild.
Domesticated cats live, on average, twice as long as wild cats.