PETA Kills AnimalsFor all the talk People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) offers on “ethical treatment,” the group does seem to kill a lot of pets in its animal shelter — over 1600 last year, for a kill rate just shy of 90 percent. Our PETA Kills Animals project collects PETA’s animal record summaries provided annually to Virginia state regulators, and they show that since 1998, PETA has killed nearly 30,000 dogs and cats. Now Britain’s Daily Mail is taking notice of these latest figures, as did American news aggregator The Drudge Report. PETA can run, but it can’t hide from its shameful animal-killing record.

And while PETA hides behind its dubious defense that it only takes in hopeless cases, recall that evidence presented at a North Carolina trial showed that PETA employees killed dogs they called “adorable” and “perfect.” With a $30 million annual budget, PETA could make an effort to provide for homeless animals — if it wasn’t too busy harassing farmers, diners, and shoppers with media stunts.

Hopefully, the continuing hypocrisy of PETA — which is, on second thought, perhaps not all that hypocritical from a group whose president has said, “companion animals [pets] would be phased out” — will convince people worldwide to let it go away quietly. Unfortunately, its employees have a history of failing up and finding work at the Humane Society of the United States — which, perhaps mercifully given its allies’ record, doesn’t run a single pet shelter — even if they are responsible for disgusting, degrading campaigns that equate farm animals with Holocaust victims.