P.E.T.A. can't be all crazy right ?

[Death's Spook]

Um. Yeah. I didn't have much of an opinion before, but when I saw this and then looked at the PETA website, I was…concerned.

From what I've seen of their website, PETA uses a high amount of emotional appeals. This in and of itself is not very worrisome: after all, this is what many moral arguments do. However, for an argument to be substantial, there needs to be logic behind it.

I don't see much in the way of logic with PETA's appeals.

For one, the scant number of statistics PETA uses are not substantiated. They at no point seem to cite any credible source for their facts. In addition, PETA uses very strong diction, talking about how fur is "ripped from rabbits' skin" and how pillows are "products of misery." This strong diction appears to be designed to invoke emotional appeals so that people are off balance and forget to be skeptical of the information they are processing until they can verify.

But most worrisome about PETA?

PETA clearly crosses the line between emotional appeal and outright scare tactics. In their recent article "Give Turkeys a Reason to say Thanks," PETA published a video involving putting a boy through a simplified version of what turkeys go through before being slaughtered. The imagery in the video is not supported through any factual evidence, and the use of a child to demonstrate their point appears to be designed to invoke a sense of terror, which discourages logical thinking. The piece after the video confirms this by pointing out that "it's hard to watch this video without thinking, 'What if someone did this to me?'" This question exposes the fact that PETA is deliberately trying to manipulate the issues by framing it as an issue of a child or the viewer being the target of this treatment, instead of focusing on the animals. Most worrisome is that the end of the video has a turkey cutting down a support beam in the factory and causing destruction, making it seem that PETA advocates the use of violence in the name of their cause. This is especially disturbing in light of rumors of their links to domestic terrorist groups and the fact that the FBI has files documenting various threats they've made.

Now, I do not believe that animals should be cruelly treated. However, I am a logical person at heart. I believe that we should be humane to animals, but that doesn't mean completely cutting them out of my diet. I eat meat. I enjoy meat. Meat is easily the best source of complete protein; although plants have some protein, one has to be extremely careful when using plants to supply proteins, as they do not contain every essential amino acid and not getting necessary amino acids can cause developmental and growth issues in children, along with the breaking down of muscle tissue in adults. Although some may argue that it's worth it to balance these plant sources carefully to avoid eating meat, the fact of the matter is, there is a very large amount of food deserts in America alone, as shown by this map:



(The green marks food deserts)

This marks the areas in the /US/, a relatively wealthy country, where it is difficult to find food. When one considers the difficulty of attaining food already in addition to the hardships involving making sure that one consumes the proteins their body needs, becoming vegan becomes clearly impractical. Therefore, I would instead suggest supporting the causes of people such as Dr. Temple Grandin, who has tirelessly campaigned to ensure that animals are treated humanely when they're going to the slaughter. Instead of cutting meat out of our diets and advocating the use of terrorism in the name of animal rights, taking a less extreme view point than PETA seems to be far more practical.

Sources:

http://vault.fbi.gov/People%20for%20...%20of%201/view

http://vegetarian.lovetoknow.com/Pro...iency_Symptoms

http://grist.org/list/this-sobering-...-food-deserts/