Back to Paw One!
There hasn’t really been anything big going on in the animal world for me this week so I will hold off on that until the end of this post. So I will be starting a 2 part post as of today. Part 1 being this week and part 2 being next week. This series is going to focus on two main animal rights groups. Today I am going to focus on one of the more extreme organizations called PETA, which stands for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. PETA was founded in 1980, by Alex Pacheco and Ingrid Newkirk. Their headquarters are located in Norfolk, Virginia. This organization has made huge movements. They have stopped the undercover badger brush industry, closed many animal testing businesses and have stopped situations where animals were left as victims of abuse. I will admit that they have done many good acts, but some seem a little excessive. For example, I will check on their website once in a while to see what’s going on and what they are trying to accomplish. One day I came across a campaign they they started to rid all swine farms of farrowing crates (image below). Now while they might look horrible they are very purposeful. Farrowing are used by nursing swine. This is due to their large litter sizes, because swine tend to not have a very high mothering instinct. Therefore, they tend to crush their infants when they adjust their position. They will let the mother out 2-3 times a day to stretch and eat. Swine are a pretty lazy species that do not require much exercise anyways. So, as one could tell after some minor research, the farrowing crates are not really an issue, but yet they still want them to be nowhere near the animal industry. It is a matter of opinion though and some people still believe that it isn’t humane. On a different note, there is a love it or hate it theme with this organization. There has been problems with many of the organization's members in the past that have given this organization a bad reputation such as a man setting a dairy on fire...with all the cows in it. But the actions of some shouldn’t draw others away from the purpose of the organization. Anyways, that is my little overview of PETA. The link to their website is below.
https://www.peta.org/features/
Okay, now for my personal update. I am fostering two new beagles Joelleco and Cindy. Joelleco was a previous foster from my first blog post who has heartworm and we also received CIndy who has heartworm. They are both very sweet girls but they will have a long recovery; they are on a strict exercise restriction for the next few months until they are worm free. They have meds that they have to take twice a day. Cindy is a little nervous and I can tell that they had to fight for their food back where they came from because they do experience some food aggression. We are going to be working with them to ensure that they are more suitable for adoption once they are adoptable. It is going to be so fun to see how far these ladies will come!