"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.'

Perhaps this is what ought to be done with street people.
This is exactly the pet disposal industry's ages-old defence... that death is better
than life in one of their "shelters". Then it calls the unsold "unadoptable" and kills them.
It does not change the shelters in any meaningful way, it does not spend much money
on rehabilitation, it does not spend much money on medical care, and it cleans its hands,
while blaming the unsold for their own deaths, by saying they were "unadoptable".

"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."

With the use of the words "euthansia", "merciful", "uncaring", and "broken",
this pet-disposal justification wins the "Dead Weasel Words Award" hands down!
The word "euthanasia" is typically used by pet disposers to fool the public.
It doesn't ever mean the killing of the healthy or the recoverable. Anyone,
or any organization, that misuses the word euthanasia ought to be examined
carefully for other clues that honesty and transparency are missing.

This "Angels of Death" defence is the most revolting of all. The killers wear halos
and actually say they are merciful! How twisted is that?

"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."

Avanzino is one of many very credible sources whose views
support AAS's view that killing healthy, or even the treatable, animals
is not animal welfare. Not only is it not animal welfare, it is pet disposal,
just as it was when PETA did it.

"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."

This is exactly the argument that most animal welfare organizations
that also contract to do animal control/disposal (the dog catcher) have used for over fifty years
-- that it kills more humanely than the other guys. In PETA's case, it did (though that does not excuse the killing).
But in most cases, the so-called "humane society" killed just as brutally and cheaply as any other animal disposer:
Gas boxes, electrothanators, guns, bludgeoning with blunt instruments, and throwing straight into the furnace.
The only way this cruelty by humane societies has been stopped is when brave people spoke up and told what they
knew. If the resulting P.R. is so bad that it means a loss of donations, the policy will be adjusted.

Read more about Richard Avanzino:
http://www.maddiesfund.org/aboutus/avanzino.html

http://www.bestfriends.org/nomorehomelesspets/weeklyforum/bioravanzino.cfm