Was this made by PETA?

I just rented and watched this. Didn't care for it too much (and I'm an animal lover, especially dogs. The death of her first dog definitely got to me). That being said, check out this from TMQ on espn.com. He makes some good points. Basically that the vast majority of animals most of us eat everyday (cows, chickens, etc.) are tortured just as Vick tortured dogs. In fact electrocution and slitting the throat of these animals we eat is legal. Check it out:

"Much more troubling is that the overwhelming majority of Americans who eat meat and poultry -- I'm enthusiastically among them -- are complicit in the systematic cruel treatment of huge numbers of animals. Snickering about this, or saying you're tired of hearing about it, doesn't make it go away. Most animals used for meat experience miserable lives under cruel conditions, including confinement for extended periods in pits of excrement. (Michael Pollan, who enthusiastically consumes meat and fowl, describes the mistreatment in his important new book The Omnivore's Dilemma.) Meat animals don't magically stop living when it's time to become a product; they suffer as they die. One of Vick's dogs was shot, another electrocuted. Gunshots and electrocution are federally approved methods of livestock slaughter, sanctioned by the Department of Agriculture for the killing of cows and pigs. Regulations under the Humane Slaughter Act of 1958 give federal sanction to shooting cows or pigs, or running electrical current through their bodies. Shooting and electrocution are viewed by federal law as humane ways to kill animals that will be consumed. Federal rules also allow slaughterhouses to hit cows in the head with a fast-moving piston that stuns them into semiconsciousness before they are sliced up. Being hit in the head with a powerful piston -- does that sound a bit painful, a bit cruel? It's done to tens of thousands of steers per year, lawfully.


Don't say "eew, gross" about how meat animals are butchered, then return to denouncing Vick. If you're eating a cheeseburger or BLT or steak or pot roast today, there's a good chance you are dining on an animal that was shot or electrocuted. You are complicit. You freely bought the meat, you did not demand Congress strengthen the Humane Slaughter Act. Livestock can be calmed and drugged before being slain. A few slaughterhouses do this, but most don't because it raises costs, and you, the consumer, demand the lowest possible price for your meal. Now about your turkey sub or coq au vin. Federal slaughter regulations apply mainly to large animals, leaving considerable freedom in the killing of fowl. Many poultry slaughterhouses kill chickens by slashing their throats rather than snapping their necks. Snapping the neck kills the bird quickly, ending suffering, but then the heart dies quickly, too. Slashing the throat causes the bird to live in agony for several minutes, heart still beating and pumping blood out of the slash -- and consumers prefer bloodless chicken meat.


Further, the Humane Slaughter Act exempts kosher and halal slaughter. In both traditions, the cow or lamb must be conscious when killed by having its carotid artery, or esophagus and trachea, slashed. The animal bleeds to death, convulsing in agony, as its heart pumps blood, which is viewed as unclean, out of the slashed openings. The delicious pastrami we consumed at a kosher deli, or the wonderfully good beef we could buy at a halal butcher, comes from an animal that suffered as it died."

I'm actually surprised so many people found this film PETA propaganda as I thought in a way it questioned animal rights extremism as much as anything. To me the mass adoption and euthenasia of Valentine showed you just cannot save every animal. Peggy's ideology isn't really a deep, philosophical realization but conspicuously a parroting of what she reads in Newt's suggested books, on PETA's websites, etc. The animal rights she espouses are not so much a message to the audience as an outlet for the grief and guilt over Pencil's death.

I don't think Peggy's choice to join up with the protest was meant to be a call to action so much as what she found fulfilling; as someone with a deep connection with the animals in her life, she could provide a voice for those animals marginalized as she had once been. Despite being generally kind, she clearly has no real gift with people, why would she be gifted at being the mouthpiece of a human charity? The boss was right, IMHO, and not particularly a villain; but the final protest scene is not over some life saving clinical trial, but Draize eye testing rabbits for cosmetics which does seem a bit vain and wasteful. Of course Peggy would never deny available food to a starving child, but as she seems to be doing well enough, can afford it, and finds it morally responsible, why not adopt a vegan lifestyle?

Finally, I don't necessarily understand this either/or treatment of social advocacy. Why can't an individual care about people first but also abhor brutal mistreatment of animals? I personally put human issues first but I still adopted my dogs from shelters, oppose dog fighting and other needless cruelties, and give money to our humane society. I think there's a distinct difference between being an extreme animal liberationist and just caring about animals.

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