this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2025
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PETA is weird because they're not so much "pro animal rights" or "pro eco friendly" as they are "anti domesticated animals" including pets.
As a result a lot of their messaging is desperate propaganda, like spreading the pseudoscience that milk causes autism, or trying to imply that shearing sheep for wool hurts them somehow.
They've also done some pretty evil things because they believe animals are better off dead than domesticated.
They aren't against the concept of having pets themselves they just don't like that pets are specifically bred for domestication when millions of pets are put down in shelters because they couldn't find homes.
https://www.peta.org/about-peta/why-peta/pets/
And sheep do get hurt being shared because the industry focuses on the end result of as many fleeces as fast as possible rather than the well being of the animals not to mention the fact they have to be shared or else they overheat because we bred them into wool producing machines.
https://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-clothing/wool-industry/
Peta very much are what they say they are. There's just a lot of smear campaigns at them because "haha these crazy vegoons say they're against animal cruelty but they actually kill heaps of animals themselves" is a narrative that drives engagement.
The problem we have here is that PETA has started vicious campaigns and said things that were either untrue or misleading, then pulled them down and posted whitewashed versions on their website.
You're posting their current outward-facing propaganda. And at the moment, their messages are marginally OK. Still a little too far on the gross just to make a point. However, those messages evolve, and their activism evolves. All too often they cross lines, they pull back like it never happened.
https://brian.carnell.com/articles/2000/petas-position-on-pets-and-standards-of-truth-in-the-animal-rights-movement/
PETA started a campaign that Milk causes autism based on a couple of week studies, which they've since removed from the record
https://research.open.ac.uk/news/why-asking-what-causes-autism-wrong-question
They find some bad actors in the wool industry and rightfully go after them, then turn around and say it's all that way.
I did volunteer dog transport for a while, moving animals out of one of their kill shelters to non-kill shelters in other states. Volunteers set up relays to move the dogs, sometimes hundreds of miles away, to save their lives.
It's one of the fundamental problems with PETA, people don't trust their campaigns. They put out a bunch of real information, good causes, then release some false or misleading data, everyone gets stirred up, you go a look into it and the hot button stuff ends up falling apart. The gross stuff doesn't shock people into action; it makes them wary of the organization. Maybe it gains them a few activists, but they could be so much more effective if they played it all straight.
It's hurt their image to the point that it's not just that people don't care, but they don't trust what they have to say.
Back in my 20's I looked into them, actually considered supporting them. I was thinking they couldn't possibly be doing the things people accused them of. Just digging for a while, I couldn't bring myself to support them. There are numerous issues that could be brought to light. Plenty of winnable fights for good causes, * instead the pick Anti-pets, autism milk, trying to take down the entire wool industry like every sheep out there is getting eviscerated. They're absolutely tone deaf to the non-PETA population to the point of being unsavory.
Print stickers of caged chickens and put them on eggs, put dairy farm images on milk cartons. put up booths outside supermarkets with impossible burger sliders. Ohh wait, yeah, they won't support plant based burgers either.
And honestly, that's not even scratching the issue of uncontrolled extremists doing things in their name.
edit: for clarity
Your first link is some guy's website misrepresenting what peta's actual stance on pets is. I already linked to peta's website why they explain the problem is with manufacturing pets. Because there is such a demand for cute pets there's an incentive to produce as many as possible and that leds to puppy mills where animals are forced into baby producing factories all while stray dogs get put down because they can't find a home. They explain this on their website which I linked in the previous comment.
Peta doesn't have a problem with the concept of having a pet, the problem is how such a reality exists. If people have a demand for pets then that means there needs to be a supply for pets. This is what that quote about the vice president meant. She simply doesn't envision a world where pets can be manufactured in any ethical way. I do but I also don't care if she thinks that because what she and peta stand for is treating animals ethically and that's a good thing.
I can't look at the campaign anymore because they've removed it but I found this article which had quotes from their website where it shows they mentioned that more research was needed and that one of the studies only had like 20 kids in it. Of course the media ran with headlines like "Oh peta said milk causes autism!" When they didn't. They used the autism panic at the time and the "got milk" ad which existed to create a narrative that milk was a necessary part of a healthy diet to shift to a discussion about why we think milk is needed for a healthy lifestyle when the milk industry pumps cows full of hormones and shit that wind up in milk, not to mention the fact that cow milk is obviously for cows whereas human milk is for humans. Milk serves a role in mammals to quickly grow their offspring and yet humans don't just continue drinking milk but we also drink milk from other animals. They go over all this on their website: https://www.peta.org/features/peta-ad-cows-dairy-products-disease/
I do take issue with how they framed autism with a frowny face as that normalises the notion that autism is a bad thing and I'm glad it's been taken down. But at the end of the day peta is a charty for treating animals ethically. The way our society treats animals is so evil that holocaust survivors, the event we treat as the ultimate evil, draw parallels to it. There is such an urgency to put an end to this cruelty that I honestly don't give a fuck if such a charity employs the "any publicity is good publicity" method which sometimes results in campaigns that look too goofy or sometimes go a bit to far.
...and yet PETA shelters have higher kill rates than many/most others.
Why?
It's an out of context stat. They run a kill shelter of last resort. It saves hundreds of animals a year who would be killed otherwise, but as it's a last resort, as one would expect it has a higher kill rate than the other shelters they transfer failed adoptees from.
It's shocking how many people parrot the decontextualized fact without ever looking up it's context, which is readily available. Like a half dozen times in this thread alone.
This is yet another example of anti-peta misinformation.
Peta has high kill rates in their shelters because they have a no turn away policy. They will take any animal into their shelter and unfortunately many animals typically the older less cute ones are harder to find homes for and rather than keep them locked up in cages for the rest of their lives they settle for the less cruel option which is putting down the animals that aren't going to find a loving home.
No-kill shelters have a trick up their sleeve where they look good on paper but in reality they turn away animals that aren't likely to be adopted or even send animals that aren't likely to get adopted to peta where they are then put down. In other words peta aren't uniquely evil and bad at their job, the system funnels more animals into their hands because the alternative is leaving animals on the streets or locked up in cages for the rest of their lives.
so.... it's not misinformation
A stat divorced from it's context in order to make a benefit look like a failure certainly feels like misinformation. It definitely results in misinformed people.