Celebrity confrontation impolite or necessary?
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals - PETA
July 14, 2006
By Ingrid E. Newkirk
If a woman were beating a dog to death in the street, would people passing by be justified in asking her to stop? What if the woman were paying someone else to beat the dog to death? What if the woman were famous?
These are the issues surrounding PETA’s recent confrontation of singer Beyonce. When we learned that a dinner with Beyonce was being auctioned on a web site, we saw an opportunity to show the star the cruelty she was paying for by selling fur in her clothing line. We put in a bid, won the honor and when Beyonce finally made good on the bid (after almost a year’s worth of insistence) sent two young women equipped with a camera and a video to show her of animals being killed for their fur.
In the public debate that followed, some pundits have suggested that PETA took advantage of Beyonce. Nonsense. Neither Beyonce nor her entourage has bothered to respond to our letters or a full page ad addressed to her in Billboard, so we found another way to show the singer what she is paying for by using fur in her collection. It’s at least as bad the scenario above and I’m guessing that most people who see someone beating a dog will intervene.
It’s likely that the fur Beyonce sells came from China. Not that any fur is a pleasant business, but in recent years, China has eclipsed all other countries combined to become the world’s largest supplier of fur, thanks in part to its cheap labor and lack of regulations—China has no laws governing fur farms or slaughter methods, so farmers house and kill animals in appalling ways.
Undercover investigators who toured markets in China’s Hebei Province documented workers grabbing foxes, dogs and cats by their hind legs and slamming them head-first against the ground in a crude attempt to kill them. Other animals were bludgeoned with metal rods or wooden sticks, which only kills some animals, leaving many others merely stunned. In their report, the investigators wrote that injured animals were seen “convulsing, trembling or trying to crawl away. Workers made no attempts to ensure that animals were dead before skinning.”
The investigators filmed animals who were kicking and writhing as workers ripped –there is no other word for it - their skin from their bodies. If they struggled too much, workers stood on the animals’ necks with their full weight in order to strangle them. Or they beat the animals’ heads with knife handles until the animals stopped moving.
After the fur was peeled from their bodies, the animals were tossed into a pile like so much trash, some still alive, breathing in ragged gasps and blinking slowly. One investigator recorded a skinned raccoon dog, tossed onto a heap of carcasses, who had enough strength to lift his bloodied head and stare into the camera.
Cats and dogs in China are routinely bludgeoned, hanged, bled to death and strangled with wire nooses, so that their fur can be turned into trim on a coat sold in U.S. and European stores. PETA investigators saw dead cats on top of cages, dying cats in cages and dogs and cats with open wounds. Some still wore collars.
You can see the video we showed Beyonce at www.peta.org. I challenge anyone who looks at this footage to question the ethics of our desire to talk to Beyonce in person about the animals’ plight. A little unpleasant, albeit polite, conversation over dinner is nothing compared to such appalling cruelty. If we haven’t yet persuaded Beyonce to rethink her use of fur—and we don’t know yet that we haven’t—we have at least given her, as well as her fans, food for thought. The abuse isn’t occurring in a public street but we still have an obligation to step in and try to stop it.
Ingrid E. Newkirk is president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), 501 Front St., Norfolk, VA 23510; www.peta.org.
If a woman were beating a dog to death in the street, would people passing by be justified in asking her to stop? What if the woman were paying someone else to beat the dog to death? What if the woman were famous?
These are the issues surrounding PETA’s recent confrontation of singer Beyonce. When we learned that a dinner with Beyonce was being auctioned on a web site, we saw an opportunity to show the star the cruelty she was paying for by selling fur in her clothing line. We put in a bid, won the honor and when Beyonce finally made good on the bid (after almost a year’s worth of insistence) sent two young women equipped with a camera and a video to show her of animals being killed for their fur.
In the public debate that followed, some pundits have suggested that PETA took advantage of Beyonce. Nonsense. Neither Beyonce nor her entourage has bothered to respond to our letters or a full page ad addressed to her in Billboard, so we found another way to show the singer what she is paying for by using fur in her collection. It’s at least as bad the scenario above and I’m guessing that most people who see someone beating a dog will intervene.
It’s likely that the fur Beyonce sells came from China. Not that any fur is a pleasant business, but in recent years, China has eclipsed all other countries combined to become the world’s largest supplier of fur, thanks in part to its cheap labor and lack of regulations—China has no laws governing fur farms or slaughter methods, so farmers house and kill animals in appalling ways.
Undercover investigators who toured markets in China’s Hebei Province documented workers grabbing foxes, dogs and cats by their hind legs and slamming them head-first against the ground in a crude attempt to kill them. Other animals were bludgeoned with metal rods or wooden sticks, which only kills some animals, leaving many others merely stunned. In their report, the investigators wrote that injured animals were seen “convulsing, trembling or trying to crawl away. Workers made no attempts to ensure that animals were dead before skinning.”
The investigators filmed animals who were kicking and writhing as workers ripped –there is no other word for it - their skin from their bodies. If they struggled too much, workers stood on the animals’ necks with their full weight in order to strangle them. Or they beat the animals’ heads with knife handles until the animals stopped moving.
After the fur was peeled from their bodies, the animals were tossed into a pile like so much trash, some still alive, breathing in ragged gasps and blinking slowly. One investigator recorded a skinned raccoon dog, tossed onto a heap of carcasses, who had enough strength to lift his bloodied head and stare into the camera.
Cats and dogs in China are routinely bludgeoned, hanged, bled to death and strangled with wire nooses, so that their fur can be turned into trim on a coat sold in U.S. and European stores. PETA investigators saw dead cats on top of cages, dying cats in cages and dogs and cats with open wounds. Some still wore collars.
You can see the video we showed Beyonce at www.peta.org. I challenge anyone who looks at this footage to question the ethics of our desire to talk to Beyonce in person about the animals’ plight. A little unpleasant, albeit polite, conversation over dinner is nothing compared to such appalling cruelty. If we haven’t yet persuaded Beyonce to rethink her use of fur—and we don’t know yet that we haven’t—we have at least given her, as well as her fans, food for thought. The abuse isn’t occurring in a public street but we still have an obligation to step in and try to stop it.
Ingrid E. Newkirk is president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), 501 Front St., Norfolk, VA 23510; www.peta.org.
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