The anti-human organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), recently commenced a truly odious vegetarian proselytizing campaign called “Holocaust on Your Plate,” in which PETA made an explicit and invidious comparison between Jews killed in the Holocaust and animals killed for food. As I wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle, the advocacy even went so far as to state that “Like the Jews murdered in concentration camps, animals are terrorized when they are housed in huge filthy warehouses and rounded up for shipment to slaughter. The leather sofa and handbag are the moral equivalent of the lampshades made from the skins of people killed in the death camps”
Now, the head of PETA, recognizing the PR losses PETA inflicted on itself with Holocaust on Your Plate, has “apologized.” But she only apologizes for the “pain” the campaign caused, not for the odious link PETA made between animal husbandry and genocide. Indeed, much of the statement is devoted to justifying PETA’s claim.
Here is the truth about PETA as I see it. The group still believes the comparison is apt. But being one of the most brilliant propagandists around, they finally recognized that the comparison was doing more harm than good to the cause of animal liberation. Hence, Newkirk’s issuance of a non apology, apology.
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