Stossel Takes on PETA

Feb. 7, 2003 -- -- What's up with the animal rights activists? They'd rather save a lab rat than allow potentially lifesaving research into diseases that kill us humans. And they spend money on legal fees for people who've done things like firebomb research centers.

PETA President Ingrid Newkirk says we shouldn't drink milk, and PETA is suing the Milk Board for what it calls deceptive advertising. PETA says the ads are deceptive because they show happy cows in green meadows.

"Almost no cows have a blade of grass or a tree," Newkirk said.

"Some of them are on mud," Newkirk said, "which means when it rains, they're living up to their hocks in manure."

But in nature, cows walk around in mud. If there weren't farmers taking care of them, the cows' living conditions might be worse. And many cows do live in green fields. You see them all over America.

Farmers want healthy animals — a healthy chicken lays more eggs, a happy cow gives more milk. That's why some dairy farmers even give their cows waterbeds to sleep on. Newkirk says that only a "vast, vast minority" are treated that well.

Still, it shows that the farmer wants a healthy cow, too, right?

"It's economics, that's all it is. If it ruins the leather …" Newkirk said.

Economics is OK. A happy cow, a healthy cow, more milk, more meat.

‘Concentration Camps for Animals’

PETA also wants us to stop eating turkey, because, according to Newkirk, the turkeys have nothing but "stress, pain, disease, fear, and in the end, a traumatic death." She says turkey farms are "like concentration camps for animals."

I think that's an insult to the people who were in concentration camps.

She told me: "If you go to these turkey farms, turkeys are crammed together so tightly, and they're transported in all weather conditions, only to be hung up by one leg and have their throat slit. That's not kind."

But nature isn't kind either. Lions hunt down zebras and start to eat them while they're still alive. And while life on a turkey farm is no picnic, wild turkeys have tough lives, too. In the wild, they would fight, and die slowly, suffering as much pain as turkeys on a turkey farm.