August 13, 2026

Letter: PETA protest commendable but tactics may backfire

As a vegan (a vegetarian who consumes absolutely no animal products including dairy and eggs) I am in complete agreement with the principles advocated by PETA. However, I find it difficult to understand people spending so much time, energy and money protesting injustice and cruelty directed toward animals by humans when there is so much injustice and cruelty directed by humans toward other humans.

I also believe that some of the confrontational tactics used by radical animal-rightists in the past have only served to anger people and thus perhaps made them more entrenched in their convictions. That could have hurt rather than helped the animal-rights movement.

There are three questions I'd like to direct to the smiling mom who described herself as feeling "pretty sassy" for ignoring the demonstrators from PETA. Why do you feed your children food that knowing the truth about would give them nightmares? What do you tell your children if they ask where the meat originates? You don't give them mushrooms, do you?

Matthew A. Roman

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