PETA's New Tactic to Help Animals: Buying Stock
A helicopter flies over as High Park fire burns on Stove Prairie Road and Highway 14 in Poudre Canyon, as seen from Glacier View Meadows, west of Fort Collins, Colo. on Tuesday, June 12, 2012. The fire has now burned more than 40,000 acres encompassing more than 65 square miles. (AP Photo/The Denver Post, Aaron Ontiveroz) MAGS OUT; TV OUT; INTERNET OUT / Aaron Ontiveroz
An animal rights group known for sending out scantily clad demonstrators to protest fur and other provocative stunts has gained influence in boardrooms with a more traditional tactic: buying company stock.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has been buying shares for seven years and now owns a piece of at least 80 companies, including McDonald's and Kraft Foods. It hopes to influence their animal welfare policies on such things as how chickens are slaughtered or buying pork from suppliers that keep pregnant sows in small crates.
By buying stock, PETA is guaranteed the right to present its ideas directly to officials and other shareholders, many of whom would otherwise would likely pay little attention to the group.
"It gives us a new forum in which to present the research we've done to company executives, their shareholders and the public," said Ashley Byrne, a senior campaigner for PETA.
PETA tries to negotiate agreements with companies behind closed doors, but if that fails, the group submits shareholder resolutions with its proposed changes at shareholder meetings.
Companies don't always change their policies, but Byrne said the effort has paid off. After PETA bought stock, Safeway grocery stores and restaurant companies Ruby Tuesday, Sonic and Burger King agreed to give purchasing preference to suppliers that abide by what the group says are more humane rules, such as not confining chicken and hogs in small cages, she said.
In many cases, shareholders were "horrified" when they learned of some of the production methods used by their companies' suppliers, Byrne said.
"Many shareholders are average people who are compassionate and who don't want to be supporting practices that are inhumane," she said.
Meridith Hammond, a spokeswoman for Ruby Tuesday, said the company is "pleased to cooperate with PETA and are grateful for their advice, help with resources, and information about suppliers."
Hammond said listening to shareholders' ideas is a "normal and necessary part of doing business."
Burger King said in a statement it is committed to "maintaining open-dialogue with PETA and various other animal welfare experts."
Kraft Foods wouldn't comment on PETA, but said all shareholders are free to express their opinions to management and the board. Safeway didn't respond to telephone messages.
Byrne said PETA's attempt to work from within companies didn't signal an end to its more visible, and often outrageous, protests aimed at improving the condition of animals and encouraging people to stop eating meat. Those events include PETA members stripping to protest the fur industry, nearly naked women taking showers on busy street corners to demonstrate the amount of water used to produce meat, and people squeezing into cages to focus attention on livestock confinement.
Hayagreeva Rao, a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, said PETA runs the risk of alienating some supporters by working with companies while also protesting their actions.
"If you're extreme, you draw a certain set of supporters. If you become an investor, you're moving to a more moderate position and that could change your identity and confuse initial supporters," Rao said. "But you could gain new supporters."
Byrne said she doubted PETA supporters would object, arguing they're focused on getting results.
That's how Barbara Hegedus, a PETA supporter from Parkesburg, Pennsylvania, saw it.
"I think if they're able to influence in the boardroom rather than go through the demonstrations, it's pretty good," Hegedus said. "It's a more progressive way of doing it."
Michael Lent, chief investment officer for New York-based Veris Wealth Partners, said other shareholders have tried to influence corporate policies from within.
Some high-profile examples include the Rockefeller family, which in 2008 introduced shareholder resolutions pushing Exxon Mobile on climate change issues. Earlier this month, the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility introduced shareholder resolutions at a Goldman Sachs board meeting calling for an immediate shift in the way the embattled investment company conducts business on Wall Street.
Under rules established by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, shareholders must own at least $2,000 in stock for at least a year before they can introduce a shareholder resolution.
Success often depends on whether a group can attract other shareholders with similar values, Lent said: "PETA alone may not be able to, but in concert with others may be able to accomplish something."
Lent, whose firm works with foundations and endowments with an emphasis on sustainable and socially conscious investments, also said a shareholder resolution should be a last resort.
"Generally speaking, if you start out and engage them first, to start a dialogue and see how far you can get, that's usually met with a better response than going right to a shareholder resolution," he said.
That's exactly what PETA does, Byrne said.
"Very often, this takes away the need for a campaign because we're able to resolve things behind the scenes," she said. "It's a very effective way to do things."
© 2010 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has been buying shares for seven years and now owns a piece of at least 80 companies, including McDonald's and Kraft Foods. It hopes to influence their animal welfare policies on such things as how chickens are slaughtered or buying pork from suppliers that keep pregnant sows in small crates.
By buying stock, PETA is guaranteed the right to present its ideas directly to officials and other shareholders, many of whom would otherwise would likely pay little attention to the group.
"It gives us a new forum in which to present the research we've done to company executives, their shareholders and the public," said Ashley Byrne, a senior campaigner for PETA.
PETA tries to negotiate agreements with companies behind closed doors, but if that fails, the group submits shareholder resolutions with its proposed changes at shareholder meetings.
Companies don't always change their policies, but Byrne said the effort has paid off. After PETA bought stock, Safeway grocery stores and restaurant companies Ruby Tuesday, Sonic and Burger King agreed to give purchasing preference to suppliers that abide by what the group says are more humane rules, such as not confining chicken and hogs in small cages, she said.
In many cases, shareholders were "horrified" when they learned of some of the production methods used by their companies' suppliers, Byrne said.
"Many shareholders are average people who are compassionate and who don't want to be supporting practices that are inhumane," she said.
Meridith Hammond, a spokeswoman for Ruby Tuesday, said the company is "pleased to cooperate with PETA and are grateful for their advice, help with resources, and information about suppliers."
Hammond said listening to shareholders' ideas is a "normal and necessary part of doing business."
Burger King said in a statement it is committed to "maintaining open-dialogue with PETA and various other animal welfare experts."
Kraft Foods wouldn't comment on PETA, but said all shareholders are free to express their opinions to management and the board. Safeway didn't respond to telephone messages.
Byrne said PETA's attempt to work from within companies didn't signal an end to its more visible, and often outrageous, protests aimed at improving the condition of animals and encouraging people to stop eating meat. Those events include PETA members stripping to protest the fur industry, nearly naked women taking showers on busy street corners to demonstrate the amount of water used to produce meat, and people squeezing into cages to focus attention on livestock confinement.
Hayagreeva Rao, a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, said PETA runs the risk of alienating some supporters by working with companies while also protesting their actions.
"If you're extreme, you draw a certain set of supporters. If you become an investor, you're moving to a more moderate position and that could change your identity and confuse initial supporters," Rao said. "But you could gain new supporters."
Byrne said she doubted PETA supporters would object, arguing they're focused on getting results.
That's how Barbara Hegedus, a PETA supporter from Parkesburg, Pennsylvania, saw it.
"I think if they're able to influence in the boardroom rather than go through the demonstrations, it's pretty good," Hegedus said. "It's a more progressive way of doing it."
Michael Lent, chief investment officer for New York-based Veris Wealth Partners, said other shareholders have tried to influence corporate policies from within.
Some high-profile examples include the Rockefeller family, which in 2008 introduced shareholder resolutions pushing Exxon Mobile on climate change issues. Earlier this month, the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility introduced shareholder resolutions at a Goldman Sachs board meeting calling for an immediate shift in the way the embattled investment company conducts business on Wall Street.
Under rules established by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, shareholders must own at least $2,000 in stock for at least a year before they can introduce a shareholder resolution.
Success often depends on whether a group can attract other shareholders with similar values, Lent said: "PETA alone may not be able to, but in concert with others may be able to accomplish something."
Lent, whose firm works with foundations and endowments with an emphasis on sustainable and socially conscious investments, also said a shareholder resolution should be a last resort.
"Generally speaking, if you start out and engage them first, to start a dialogue and see how far you can get, that's usually met with a better response than going right to a shareholder resolution," he said.
That's exactly what PETA does, Byrne said.
"Very often, this takes away the need for a campaign because we're able to resolve things behind the scenes," she said. "It's a very effective way to do things."
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1) According to government documents, PETA employees have killed more than 19,200 dogs, cats, puppies, and kittens since 1998. This behavior continues despite PETA?s moralizing about the ?unethical? treatment of animals by farmers, scientists, restaurant owners, circuses, hunters, fishermen, zookeepers, and countless other Americans. PETA puts to death over 90 percent of the animals it accepts from members of the public who expect the group to make a reasonable attempt to find them adoptive homes. PETA holds absolutely no open-adoption shelter hours at its Norfolk, VA headquarters, choosing instead to spend part of its $32 million annual income on a contract with a crematory service to periodically empty hundreds of animal bodies from its large walk-in freezer.
2) PETA president and co-founder Ingrid Newkirk has described her group?s overall goal as ?total animal liberation.? This means the complete abolition of meat, milk, cheese, eggs, honey, zoos, aquariums, circuses, wool, leather, fur, silk, hunting, fishing, and pet ownership. In a 2003 profile of Newkirk in The New Yorker, author Michael Specter wrote that Newkirk has had at least one seeing-eye dog taken away from its blind owner. PETA is also against all medical research that requires the use of animals, including research aimed at curing AIDS and cancer.
3) PETA has given tens of thousands of dollars to convicted arsonists and other violent criminals. This includes a 2001 donation of $1,500 to the North American Earth Liberation Front (ELF), an FBI-certified ?domestic terrorist? group responsible for dozens of firebombs and death threats. During the 1990s, PETA paid $70,200 to Rodney Coronado, an Animal Liberation Front (ALF) serial arsonist convicted of burning down a Michigan State University research laboratory. In his sentencing memorandum, a federal prosecutor implicated PETA president Ingrid Newkirk in that crime. PETA vegetarian campaign coordinator Bruce Friedrich has also told an animal rights convention that ?blowing stuff up and smashing windows? is ?a great way to bring about animal liberation,? adding, ?Hallelujah to the people who are willing to do it.?
http://www.animalscam.com/peta_7things.cfm
Most ominously, PETA president Ingrid Newkirk was involved in the multi-million-dollar arson at Michigan State University that resulted in a 57-month prison term for Animal Liberation Front bomber Rodney Coronado. At Coronado?s sentencing hearing, U.S. Attorney Michael Dettmer said that PETA?s Ingrid Newkirk arranged ahead of time to have Coronado send her a pair of FedEx packages from Michigan -- one on the day before he burned the lab down, and the other shortly afterward.
The first FedEx, according to the Sentencing Memorandum, was delivered to a woman named Maria Blanton, ?a longtime PETA member who had agreed to accept the first Federal Express package from Coronado after being asked to do so by Ingrid Newkirk.? The FBI intercepted the second package, which had been sent to the same address. It contained documents that Coronado stole before lighting his firebombs, as well as ?a videotape of the perpetrator of the MSU crime, disguised in a ski mask.? Since Coronado was convicted of the arson, we now know that he himself was that masked man. ?Significantly,? wrote U.S. Attorney Dettmer, ?Newkirk had arranged to have the package[s] delivered to her days before the MSU arson occurred.? (emphasis in the original)
A search warrant executed at Blanton?s home turned up evidence that PETA?s other co-founder, Alex Pacheco, had also been planning burglaries and break-ins along with Rodney Coronado. The feds seized ?surveillance logs; code names for Coronado, Pacheco, and others; burglary tools; two-way radios; night vision goggles; [and] phony identification for Coronado and Pacheco.?
Shortly after Coronado?s arrest, PETA gave $45,200 to his ?support committee? and ?loaned? $25,000 to his father (the loan was never repaid and PETA hasn?t complained). Now free from jail, with an expired parole, and with the benefit of an expired Statute of Limitations on his many earlier arsons (to which he readily confesses in his standard stump speech), Coronado stood before a crowd of hundreds of young people at American University in January 2003 and demonstrated how to turn a milk jug into a bomb. A few days later, ALF criminals tried to burn down a McDonald?s restaurant in Chico, California, using a firebomb that matched Coronado?s recipe.
The following month, Ingrid Newkirk told ABC News that Rodney Coronado is ?a fine young man.?
PETA has repeatedly attacked groups like the March of Dimes, the Pediatric AIDS Foundation, and the American Cancer Society, for conducting animal testing to find cures for birth defects and life-threatening diseases. When asked if she would oppose an experiment on five thousand rats if it would result in a cure for AIDS, Newkirk responded: "Would you be opposed to experiments on your daughter if you knew it would save fifty million people?" In addition to opposing any and all medical research that uses animals, PETA also insults medical professionals by arguing, with a straight face, that animal testing is a counterproductive means of finding cures for human diseases.
PETA openly supports violence and terrorist activity.
PETA has long-standing ties to militant groups like the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF). The FBI calls these criminal groups a "serious domestic terrorist threat."
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals provides aid and comfort for the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and the Animal Liberation Front (ALF). The two groups are responsible for more than 600 crimes since 1996, causing (by a very conservative FBI estimate) more than $43 million in damage. ALF?s ?press office? brags that in 2002, the two groups committed ?100 illegal direct actions? -- like blowing up SUVs, destroying the brakes on seafood delivery trucks, and planting firebombs in restaurants.
The FBI calls ALF and ELF the nation?s ?most serious domestic terrorism threat.? Bruce Friedrich, PETA?s ?vegan campaign director? and third-in-command, didn?t seem to care when he addressed the Animal Rights 2001 convention in Virginia, telling a crowd of over 1,000 activists that ?blowing stuff up and smashing windows? is ?a great way to bring about animal liberation.?
PETA?s connections to ALF and ELF are indisputable. ?We did it, we did it. We gave $1,500 to the ELF for a specific program,? PETA?s Lisa Lange admitted on the Fox News Channel. PETA has offered no fewer than eight different explanations of what the ?specific program? was, but law enforcement leaders have noted that since the Earth Liberation Front is a criminal enterprise, it has absolutely no legal ?programs? of any kind.
For instance, in 2003, ELF set fire to an unfinished, 200 unit condominium complex near San Diego. The arson caused $50 million in damage, and according to a San Diego Fire Captain: ?It could have killed someone.? ELF left its calling card in the form of a twelve foot sign that read: ?If you build it -- we will burn it -- the ELF?s are mad.?
PETA also has given $2,000 to David Wilson, then a national ALF ?spokesperson.? The group paid $27,000 for the legal defense of Roger Troen, who was arrested for taking part in an October 1986 burglary and arson at the University of Oregon. It gave $7,500 to Fran Stephanie Trutt, who tried to murder the president of a medical laboratory. It gave $5,000 to Josh Harper, who attacked Native Americans on a whale hunt by throwing smoke bombs, shooting flares, and spraying their faces with chemical fire extinguishers. All of these monies were paid out of tax-exempt funds, the same pot of money constantly enlarged by donations from an unsuspecting general public.
Sign the petition to have PETA's tax-exemption status removed
Take a Bite out of PETA Despite its deceptively warm-and-fuzzy public image, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has donated over $150,000 to criminal activists -- including those jailed for arson, burglary, and even attempted murder. In 2001, PETA donated $1,500 to the North American Earth Liberation Front, a criminal organization that the FBI classifies as "domestic terrorists." And since 2000, rank-and-file PETA activists have been arrested over 80 times for breaking various laws during PETA protests. Charges included felony obstruction of government property, criminal mischief, assaulting a cabinet official, felony vandalism, performing obscene acts in public, destruction of federal property, and burglary.
And PETA's leadership openly advocates breaking the law. Click here to listen to PETA vegetarian campaign director Bruce Friedrich encouraging activists to commit arson against restaurants, medical laboratories, and banks.
Like millions of other nonprofit groups in the United States (e.g., universities , houses of worship, social service organizations), PETA pays no federal taxes on its income. But few of these other tax-exempt groups share PETA's total disregard for the law. In 2003 PETA collected over $24 million from Americans, avoiding over $3.5 million in federal income taxes. Because this tax break amounts to a huge subsidy, every American taxpayer is footing the bill for PETA's behavior.
PETA's tax-exempt status was granted by the U.S. government on the basis of the group's willingness to conduct itself in a lawful fashion. We believe that PETA has failed to live up to its end of the bargain, and that the Internal Revenue Service should cancel PETA's tax-exempt status.
http://activistcash.com/organization_overview.cfm/o/21-people-for-the-ethical-treatment-of-animals
In the past, PETA has handled the press for the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), a violent, underground group of fanatics who plant firebombs in restaurants, destroy butcher shops, and torch research labs. The FBI considers ALF among America's most active and prolific terrorist groups, but PETA compares it to the Underground Railroad and the French Resistance. More than 20 years after its inception, PETA continues to hire convicted ALF militants and funds their legal defense. In at least one case, court records show that Ingrid Newkirk herself was involved in an ALF arson.
PETA has even begun to adopt the tactics of an ALF offshoot known as SHAC (Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty). This group is notorious for taking protests outside the boardroom and into the living room, attacking their targets at their homes.
In 2001, three masked SHAC members brutally bludgeoned a medical researcher outside his home in England. The lead attacker was arrested and sentenced to three years in prison. A few months later, SHAC attacked another research industry employee on his doorstep with a chemical spray to his eyes, leaving him temporarily blinded and writhing in pain. The following year, Newkirk was asked her opinion of SHAC in the Boston Herald. Her response? "More power to SHAC if they can get someone's attention."
PETA collected almost $29 million in donations in 2004 alone, but few donors understand exactly where their money is going. During the past ten years, PETA has spent four times as much on criminals and their legal defense than it has on shelters, spay-neuter programs, and other efforts that actually help animals.
From both a moral and a legal standpoint, there are far too many objectionable things about PETA to list here in detail. But the following "top ten list" is a good start:
* PETA is not an animal welfare organization.
PETA spends less than one percent of its multi-million dollar budget actually helping animals. The group euthanized (killed) more than 1,900 animals in 2003 alone -- that's over 85 percent of the animals it received. In fact, from July 1998 through the end of 2003, PETA killed over 10,000 dogs, cats, and other "companion animals" at its Norfolk, Virginia headquarters. That's more than five animals every day. On its 2002 federal income-tax return, PETA claimed a $9,370 expense for a giant walk-in freezer, the kind most people use as a meat locker or for ice-cream storage. But animal-rights activists don't eat meat or dairy foods. So far, the group hasn't confirmed the obvious -- that it's using the appliance to store the bodies of its victims.
The very fact, they are doing nothing to reduce human populations, says they are just so much BS.