"Animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment."
Website: www.peta.org
This campaign of PETA features topless girls painted as lizards.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is an animal rights organization based in Norfolk, Virginia, USA. With two million members and supporters worldwide, it claims the status of the largest animal rights group in the world. Ingrid Newkirk is its international president.
Founded in 1980, the organization is a nonprofit, tax exempt, 501(c) corporation with 187 employees, funded almost entirely by its members. It focuses on four core issues: factory farming, fur farming, animal testing, and animals in entertainment, and also campaigns against fishing, the killing of animals regarded as pests, the keeping of chained backyard dogs, cock fighting, dog fighting, and bullfighting. It aims to inform the public through advertisements, undercover investigations, animal rescue, and lobbying. Its slogan is "animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment."
The organization has been criticized for the style and content of its campaigns, and for the number of animals it euthanizes. It was also criticized in 2005 by Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe, who said it had acted as a "spokesgroup" for the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front, after those groups were listed in a draft planning document as domestic terrorist threats by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
