Energy

Ex-Employee: PETA ‘Routinely Euthanizes Healthy Puppies and Kittens’

(Shutterstock/ Noi1990)

Daily Caller News Foundation logo
Andrew Follett Energy and Science Reporter
Font Size:

A former employee of the famed animal rights group, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), said her former employer intentionally euthanized healthy and adoptable dogs and cats.

Ex-PETA employee Heather Harper-Troje filed an affidavit, obtained by the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF), alleging her supervisors asked her to euthanize healthy dogs and cats for ideological reasons.

Harper-Troje said her former supervisors instructed her to ask low-income people to relinquish their pets to PETA under the promise that dogs and cats would find good homes. She did this knowing the animals would be euthanized.

“PETA is always acting like it is on some mission of mercy,” Will Coggin, a research director at CCF, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “What Heather is saying is that putting animals down is what PETA was obsessed with doing when she worked there. Putting animals down is what PETA all about.”

PETA did not return requests for comment to TheDCNF.

PETA euthanized 1,411 cats and dogs last year, while only 57 were adopted, according to a report by the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (VDACS). Of the 2,007 animals acquired by PETA last year, the group only returned 10 dogs and cats to their owners and successfully placed only 57 with adopting families. On the other hand, PETA put down 557 dogs, 854 cats and 17 other companion animals.

The additional animals euthanized last year brought PETA’s death toll to over 36,000 since 1998. Most of the animals put down were processed at PETA’s headquarters in Norfolk, Va. PETA’s official blog states that killing dogs and cats, helps them “escape an uncaring world without trauma or pain.”

“This just show that killing animals isn’t some unfortunate thing that PETA has to do,” Coggin said. “This is part of their business. They’ve had different justifications like overpopulation and illness, but what Heather is alleging is that the real reason is ideology. They think if an animal would suffer in the future, it is better to put them down now.”

Harper-Troje’s filed the affidavit over a lawsuit stemming from an incident in November 2015 where two PETA employees stole a family’s pet chihuahua off their porch and ultimately euthanized the animal. The family captured video of this occurring on their home surveillance system. When caught, the PETA workers apologized by giving the family a fruit basket.

State law requires that animals be held for five days before they are euthanized to allow people to recover their animals in situations like this. An investigation by the VDACS found that PETA violated the law and imposed the largest fine it could, at $500.

Follow Andrew on Twitter

Send tips to andrew@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel