Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 13, 1991 TAG: 9104130181
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The news that PETA put to death 18 rabbits and 14 roosters it had previously "rescued" from allegedly inhumane conditions, first reported Thursday in the Montgomery (Md.) Journal, came as PETA petitioned the Supreme Court to block the euthanasia of two of the remaining four monkeys now housed at a research laboratory in Louisiana. Friday, the Supreme Court denied the petition and the two animals were killed.
The rabbits were part of a group that PETA removed from a Montgomery County school last summer, and the roosters had been confiscated from a private home in Washington where they were kept for use in religious ceremonies.
Ingrid Newkirk, director of PETA, said that her group has never been opposed to the humane killing of animals and that she saw no inconsistency between its opposition to euthanasia of the Silver Spring monkeys and its own euthanasia of the rabbits and chickens.
"We will not overcrowd our animals," she said. "We really didn't have anything else to do. And so euthanasia was carried out with a great deal of concern."
Newkirk said PETA objected to euthanasia for the monkeys because it believed government researchers were lying about the animals' poor health and the group wanted an independent panel to check the monkeys.
"Euthanasia means mercy killing," she said. "What we are opposed to is unnecessary slaughter of animals for frivolous reasons. If they [the monkeys] need euthanasia, we have always said we would go along with that."
Peter J. Gerone, director of the Tulane Regional Primate Center where the monkeys were housed, accused PETA of imposing a double standard. "With the $10 million that they brought in last year in revenue, they couldn't build some hutches for some rabbits to keep them alive?" he said. "I find it incredible."
Gerone said he allowed PETA to send a veterinarian last year to examine one of the monkeys, named Billy, and the veterinarian recommended that the animal be killed. "They still blocked the euthanasia with court action," he said. "They are going to fight very hard for every monkey because the more publicity they get, the more money they bring in."
Newkirk said PETA removed 76 rabbits from the Montgomery Village Intermediate School in Gaithersburg, Md. last year, where they were used in an animal husbandry course, because they were being neglected. She said PETA found homes for 28 of the rabbits and placed 29 at an animal sanctuary in New York State.
She said a PETA worker tried unsuccessfully last summer to get the Montgomery Journal to run a story about the remaining rabbits, telling a reporter that if homes could not be found, they would have to be killed.
She said the roosters were confiscated by the Washington Humane Society from a house where they had been kept for use in ceremonies by the Santeria cult. She said PETA could not find homes for them and could not let them run free at its eight-acre sanctuary because they attacked other chickens there. "We didn't want to send them to the slaughterhouse," she said.
In a fund-raising solicitation that PETA sent out last year on behalf of its sanctuary, it called the facility a "safe haven."
"For some of these animals - ticularly `farm animals' who are living targets of abuse - sanctuary is a permanent home," the letter assured potential donors.
by CNB