OVO

As we all know, human beings often don’t think before they act. We don’t condemn President Obama for acting on instinct. When the media began contacting us in droves for a statement, we obliged, simply by saying that the president isn’t the Buddha and shouldn’t be expected to do everything right—if not for that, we would not have brought it up. It’s the media who are making a big deal about the fly swat—not PETA. However, we took the opportunity, when asked, to point out that we do offer lots of ways in which to control insects of all kinds without harming them, including the humane bug catcher we sent President Obama. There is even a chapter in PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk’s book The PETA Practical Guide to Animal Rights about how to rid your home of “uninvited guests.” [...] We support compassion for all animals, even the most curious, smallest, and least sympathetic ones. [...] We can’t stop all suffering, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t stop any. Our wish is for all people to act wisely and mercifully toward animals.

[Article continues at link. No media opportunity is too small for PETA to jump onto. Their press statements concerning President Obama killing a fly are further evidence. What PETA would prefer the media not discuss is the 95% kill rate of animals donated to PETA, or that according to the Vegan Society "B12 is the only vitamin that is not recognised as being reliably supplied from a varied wholefood, plant-based diet with plenty of fruit and vegetables, together with exposure to sun," or that flies spread diseases. What does nature offer up as evidence of its compassion for itself? There's the traumatic insemination of bedbugs in which the male pierces the female's abdomen with his penis and injects his sperm through the wound into her abdominal cavity. In Xylocaris Maculipennis the male impales and inseminate other males: the rapist's genes enter the bloodstream to be carried to females by the victim. In this way, the rapist conceives by proxy. Wasps perform roach-brain-surgery to make zombie slave-roaches... don't miss this video of the Jewel Wasp. All animals, as a species and as individuals, either consume other living things (including other animals or plants that fed on the decayed bodies of other animals) - or they perish. As part of nature, man does the same. The means to optimally reduce one's impact on the Earth is ever present, but few PETA-types carry their argument through to its necessary and inevitable end. Nature is at best indifferent to any of her children. We have short and difficult lives that can occur at all only by predation on other living things. Does PETA know what it's talking about? While PETA might support compassion for all animals, flies are not animals. - Trevor Blake]