Ask any mainstream animal rights/environmentalist group leader what, in his or her opinion, is the greatest threat to the on-going success of this tightly networked movement, and you will hear a surprising answer: "Extremism". Mainstream animal rights and environmentalist NGOs are always wary of the bizarre antics of PETA and of PETA's surrogates and field troops, the ALF and the ELF thugs who burn, bomb, and terrify the rest of society. They know that the "animal rights" and "environmentalist" labels, which they themselves bear, are diminished by the extreme acts of these extremist colleagues.

PETA's antics in the past year have included accosting children whose mothers wear fur coats, while parents and children attend theaters and public events. These direct confrontations make the rest of the movement quite uncomfortable.

More recently, PETA billboards in western Canada have deeply offended people whose female relatives have disappeared and are presumed to have been murdered by a pig farmer. This person is alleged to have dismembered dozens of women and may have mixed their remains in with the pork products of his farm. PETA billboards show a pig and a woman and the words, "Neither of us is food". On April 8, an editorial in The Globe and Mail covered this distasteful matter, and discussed the utter disregard that PETA's leaders appear to have for the feelings of those people whose relatives are thus missing. The Globe and Mail editorial states that "PETA clearly wants to use the outrage over the Pickton case as a mirror for what it sees as society's hypocrisy: that people are horrified by women being killed, but not by pigs being killed."

Clearly, PETA thrives on being the extremist organization that people love to hate. IWMC repeats our opinion that the US government must take steps to seriously review the charitable status of this organization, which uses its tax exempt donations to commit these offensive atrocities as well as to actively support the illegal acts of ALF and ELF in both countries.

No society should have to be subjected to the public, egregious behavior of this anti-human, scofflaw group of opportunists. "