Two employees of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have been arrested and charged with sixty-two counts of animal cruelty,?eight counts of improper disposal of the bodies, and trespassing to boot, after law enforcement officials in Ahoskie, N.C., watched them unloading dead animals from their PETA-registered van into the dumpster at the local Piggly Wiggly.? One report said over a hundred dead animals have been recovered from commercial trash bins in Ahoskie the past month.
Remarks from the president of PETA, Ingrid Newkirk, focused on this dumpster issue —
It is not PETA policy to place animals in a dumpster and if that happened we are appalled. For that reason, we have suspended Ms. Hinkle from her duties while we conduct our own investigation and hear from the authorities in N.C.
— and not whether her employees were misrepresenting their intentions at the animal shelters and veterinarians in North Carolina and Virginia:
The cats and dogs were taken Wednesday from animal shelters in Northampton and Bertie counties, police said. Animals had been collected every Wednesday for four weeks, and carcasses had been found dumped in Ahoskie every Wednesday for about a month, Ahoskie Police Chief Troy Fitzhugh said.
Two veterinarians said they were told that PETA would try to find homes for animals taken from their practices …
Among the dead animals, though, authorities found a female cat and her two ?very adoptable? kittens taken from Ahoskie Animal Hospital, veterinarian Patrick Proctor said.
?These were just kittens we were trying to find homes for,? Proctor said. ?PETA said they would do that, but these cats never made it out of the county.?
So much for ethics, I guess – toward animals or people, either.
