The trial of the North Carolina PETA workers who dumped and euthanised dozens of animals starts today. Over 80% of animals
taken in by PETA are euthanised. This group took in over $27 000 000 in 2005. Do their donors really know that this type of thing is going on?

http://www.courttv.com/news/2007/0118/peta_ctv.html?print=yes&page=3>http://www.courttv.com/news/2007/0118/peta_ctv.html?print=yes&page=3
---------------------------------------------------------------------------­-----

Updated Jan. 19, 2007, 2:12 p.m. ET

Trial set to start for PETA workers caught euthanizing, dumping cats and
dogs
By Harriet Ryan
Court TV
The dog carcasses always appeared late on
Wednesday nights, wrapped in black trash bags and
stuffed in the Dumpster behind the Piggly Wiggly supermarket.

Over a period of three weeks in the summer of
2005, police officers in the small town of
Ahoskie, N.C., pulled the bodies of 80 animals
from the trash bin. Some were puppies, some were full-grown. Most were
mutts.

On the fourth week, officers set up a stakeout,
and when a white van pulled up to the dumpster, they pounced.

If the van's cargo ­ 10 dead dogs and three dead
cats in black bags ­ was to be expected, its
occupants were not. The driver and the passenger
were employees of People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals (PETA) and the vehicle was
registered to the organization.

The workers, Adria Hinkle, 28, and Andrew Cook,
25, were arrested and later indicted on 24 felony
charges, including 21 counts of animal cruelty,
for injecting lethal doses of an anesthetic into
strays they had just collected from county
shelters and a veterinarian's office.

For PETA, the largest animal rights organization
in the world, it was a public relations
nightmare. The group, whose many celebrity
supporters include Pamela Anderson and Alec
Baldwin, made its name by obtaining and
publicizing disturbing images of torturous lab
experiments, blood-soaked fur farms and shocking abuse of circus animals.

Andrew Cook still works for PETA.
Now it was confronted with photos of a graphic
scene of its own employees' making: a lifeless
cream-colored puppy being lifted out off a pile
of trash. A dead Dalmatian sprawled on its back.
A jet-black cat and her two kittens cinched in a trash bag.

"It's hideous," the president of PETA, Ingrid
Newkirk, acknowledged two days after the arrests.
"I think this is so shocking it's bound to hurt our work."

Despite this assessment, Newkirk and PETA stood
by Hinkle and Cook in the coming months,
consistently advocating for their innocence and
hiring the legal team that will represent them at
the trial that begins Jan. 22 in Hertford County Superior Court.

"As the trial is about to start, we remind all
interested parties that there was absolutely no
cruelty involved in this case, that PETA has only
ever helped animals in dire straits in North
Carolina, and that if justice is served these
facts will be made clear," a spokeswoman, Erin
Edwards, wrote in an e-mail Thursday.

Although only Hinkle and Cook, two low-level
staffers, are facing charges, the policies of the
entire organization are on trial.

Critics have charged that many of the group's
loyal supporters will be shocked when details of
PETA's euthanasia policy emerge. The
Virginian-Pilot reported that the group
euthanized more than 6,000 animals between 2001
and 2003, about 83 percent of those it collected.

Officials with the group maintain that while
Hinkle and Cook may have exercised poor
discretion in dumping the animals behind the
supermarket, they and other employees who did
similar work were acting humanely when they
euthanized animals removed from shelters.

Those who say otherwise, PETA claims, are not
realistic about the future of the estimated 6 to
8 million dogs and cats left at U.S. shelters annually.

Statistics compiled by the national Humane
Society indicate that only about half of the
strays will be adopted. The rest will be put to
death. PETA insists that in the case of the
"unadoptable" ­ the old, sick, antisocial or not
housebroken ­ it is more compassionate to
euthanize them immediately than to let them live
in shelters, where they may be mistreated.

"Critics may condemn PETA for supporting
euthanasia, but we are not ashamed of providing a
merciful exit from an uncaring world to broken
beings," Daphna Nachminovitch, PETA's director of
domestic animal issues, wrote in an editorial in
the San Francisco Chronicle shortly after the arrests.

That stance is controversial in the animal rights community.

"The responsibility we have to animals doesn't
mean giving them a painless death. It means
coping with their challenges like we would a
family member or a child," said Rich Avanzino, the president of Maddie's
Fund.

His organization, endowed with $300 million by
PeopleSoft founder David Duffield, advocates
making the United States a "no-kill nation,"
where animals are only euthanized if they are
dangerous or suffering from an incurable condition.

The trial, which is scheduled to last a week,
will focus on PETA's involvement with three rural
counties in the northeast part of the state.

According to PETA, the group first became
involved with North Carolina strays several years
ago when they received a phone call from a police
officer outraged at the conditions in county shelters.

"Some of the counties were euthanizing animals by
shooting them in the head with an old rifle.
Others were using a leaky and ineffective gas
chamber," Cook's lawyer, Mark Edwards, said.

PETA agreed to collect animals several times a
week and take them to their headquarters in
Norfolk, Va., about 50 miles away. What was
supposed to occur there is disputed. County
officials say they were under the impression that
the group would try to find loving homes for the animals.

One veterinarian, Patrick Proctor, said that when
he handed the black cat and her kittens to Hinkle
and Cook, they cooed over the animals and said they would be easy to place.

"They were saying, 'My, what beautiful animals.
We will have absolutely no trouble finding homes
for these,'" the veterinarian told CNN.
PETA officials contend that everyone involved
knew that the animals would be euthanized, and
its role was to provide a less painful death at
their lab in Norfolk than they would have
experienced by a gun or gas chamber death in the shelter.

"These animals were going to be euthanized,
either by PETA or the state of North Carolina," Edwards said.

Newkirk has said that Hinkle and Cook deviated
from PETA policy by disposing of the bodies in
the Dumpster rather than cremating them.

Hinkle, who was more senior than Cook, normally
assigned to the group's Web site, was suspended
for 90 days, but both defendants continue to work for the group.
<http://groups.google.com/group/AR-News/browse_thread/thread//group/AR-News/attach/4e04eeabc3eb6119/tobie1-include.jpg?part=4&hl=en>

Jean Martin
Lantzville BC