PETA Founder Ingrid Newkirk On Euthanizing Animals

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A viral Facebook meme contained some unflattering statements attributed to the controversial animal rights activist Ingrid Newkirk.

Dan MacGuill

Published Nov. 19, 2018

Claim: Four quotations attributed to PETA president and co-founder Ingrid Newkirk in a viral November 2018 meme are authentic. Rating: Mixture

About this rating

Ingrid Newkirk, the president and co-founder of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), is one of the most high-profile animal rights activists of the past few decades.

She is also a controversial figure, frequently attracting criticism over the group's famous publicity meme containing four separate statements attributed to Newkirk on the subject of killing and caring for animals gained popularity on Facebook, as posted by the Florida Greyhound Association:

"I would go to work early, before anyone got there, and I would just kill the animals myself...I must have killed a thousand of them, sometimes dozens every day."

"Euthanasia is the kindest gift to a dog or cat unwanted and unloved."

Ingrid Newkirk, PETA President and Co-Founder.

PETA IS NOT ABOUT SAVING ANIMALS

"We do not advocate right to life for animals."

"We are not in the home finding business. Our service is to provide a peaceful and painless death to animals who noone wants." Ingrid Newkirk, PETA President.

The meme was no longer publicly available, as of 16 November.

"I must have killed a thousand of them, sometimes dozens every day": MISSING CONTEXT

This is an authentic quotation by Newkirk, taken from a 2003 interview she gave to the New Yorker magazine. However, the meme presents it without proper context, grossly misrepresenting the full sense of her remarks.

In the relevant section of the article, Newkirk was outlining how she first became an animal rights activist, after dropping off some abandoned kittens at an animal shelter near her home in Maryland, only to find, to her profound shock, that they were immediately euthanized. She switched careers from studying to become a stockbroker to working in that very shelter, but she became even more dismayed by what she claimed was the treatment of animals there, setting her on a path to founding PETA:

What she saw at the shelter affected her profoundly. "I went to the front office all the time, and I would say, 'John is kicking the dogs and putting them into freezers.' Or I would say, 'They are stepping on the animals, crushing them like grapes, and they don't care.' In the end, I would go to work early, before anyone got there, and I would just kill the animals myself. Because I couldn't stand to let them go through that. I must have killed a thousand of them, sometimes dozens every day. Some of those people would take pleasure in making them suffer. Driving home every night, I would cry just thinking about it. And I just felt, to my bones, this cannot be right. I hadn't thought about animal rights in the broader sense. Not then, or even for a while after. But working at that shelter I just said to myself, 'What is wrong with human beings that we can act this way?'"

It's true that Newkirk did once recount having euthanized many animals every day during a certain period of her life, but the quotation included in the meme left out some important context: spurred into action by a desire to care for vulnerable animals, Newkirk was working at an animal shelter where her colleagues allegedly mistreated the animals very badly and put them down without proper reverence. It was in this context that she took it upon herself to euthanize the animals.

The meme also selectively excerpted from Newkirk's remarks, leaving out the line "Because I couldn't stand to let them go through that."

"Euthanasia is the kindest gift to a dog or cat unwanted and unloved": UNPROVEN

We were not able to verify that this is an authentic, direct quotation from Newkirk, despite its having been widely shared online as such for around a decade. The earliest instance of it we could find was from a June 2005 acquitted of animal cruelty but fined for improperly disposing of the corpses.) This is how the Best Friends Animal Society reported on the arrests in June 2005:

Since these two people will be going to trial, it would be inappropriate for us to comment on their particular situation. However, we can certainly comment on the policies of PETA and their public remarks and actions. PETA runs some very effective campaigns and we support much of what they have done to help bring an end to some of the worst abuses of animals in laboratories, factory farms, at sporting events, and fur farms. But in the area of companion animals, we have some fundamental disagreements.

At a press conference following the arrest of those two employees, PETA president Ingrid Newkirk said that PETA believes euthanasia is the kindest gift to a dog or cat unwanted and unloved. We simply couldn't disagree more. The kindest gift to a homeless animal is a good home. The kindest gift to an unloved dog or cat is a loving, caring place to go.

The Best Friends editorial did not link to any video or transcript of the press conference, and we were unable to find any source material which would support this characterization of Newkirk's remarks. A spokesperson for PETA told us in a statement: "We don't have a source for this quote."

Furthermore, other newspapers and agencies did cover PETA's response to the arrests (including a 17 June 2005 press conference), but none of their reports included Newkirk's professing her belief that euthanasia was "the kindest gift" for an unwanted animal. For example, the Associated Press reported:

Dumping the bodies of dead dogs and cats in the garbage is wrong, but the president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said Friday that animal cruelty charges against two employees won't stick. "It's hideous," Ingrid Newkirk, president of the animal rights group, said of the dumping. "I think this is so shocking it's bound to hurt our work."

But she told a news conference there was no indication of "pain or suffering" among the 18 animals that police in Ahoskie, N.C. found in a shopping center garbage bin or the 13 found in a van registered to PETA. The animals received lethal injections, Newkirk said.

While we could not find proof of Newkirk saying euthanasia was the "kindest gift" for an unwanted animal, it's clear that she, PETA, and some other animal rights activists and veterinarians do support a policy of putting down animals who would otherwise face severe neglect or cruelty, or for whom a stable home or space in a shelter cannot be found.

On their web site, PETA explains their policy:

More than 6 million animals are handled by animal shelters in the United States each year. Even though some are reclaimed or adopted, nearly 4 million unwanted dogs and cats are left with nowhere to go. Shelters cannot humanely house and support all these animals until their natural deaths—they would be forced to live in cramped cages or kennels for years, lonely and stressed, and other animals would have to be turned away because there would not be room for them.

Turning unwanted animals loose to roam the streets is not a humane option. If they don’t starve, freeze, get hit by a car, or die of disease, they may be tormented and possibly killed by cruel juveniles or picked up by dealers who obtain animals to sell to laboratories.

Because of the high number of unwanted companion animals and the lack of good homes, sometimes the most humane thing that a shelter worker can do is give an animal a peaceful release from a world in which dogs and cats are often considered “surplus” and unwanted. PETA, The American Veterinary Medical Association, and The Humane Society of the United States concur that an intravenous injection of sodium pentobarbital administered by a trained professional is the kindest, most compassionate method of euthanizing animals. The American Humane Association considers this to be the only acceptable method of euthanasia for cats and dogs in animal shelters.

This policy is vehemently opposed by other animal rights activists who strongly support what are known as "no-kill" shelters, where animals are only euthanized if they face irreversible pain or illness. This philosophical conflict has given rise to something of a schism between animal rights activists, and PETA's failure to adopt a universal "no-kill" approach at their animal shelters has attracted fierce criticism.

"We do not advocate right to life for animals": CORRECT ATTRIBUTION

The source of this quotation is a