PETA: If You Can't Beat Them ... Join Them?

Personally, I have never been a huge fan of PETA and their shock tactics, which tend to tar all animal welfare supporters with the same "crazy animal activists" brush. But surprisingly, I've actually had reason to applaud them in recent years for their more conservative approach to their agenda — working from the inside out. PETA is buying up shares in decidedly carnivorous companies.

This tactic, known as shareholder activism (pdf), is no new thing for PETA, who has been actively buying stock in companies for the past seven years. But it has been healing their reputation among other animal welfare groups and has been given much press as a more responsible stance for the organization. 

PETA first began engaging in this tactic in 2003, when they purchased 240 shares in Tyson Foods, enough to allow the organization to speak at shareholder meetings. The meat industry has been watching with a cautious eye ever since, as PETA's portfolio has grown to include at least 80 companies, including Domino’s Pizza, McDonald's, Kraft Foods and Austin-based Hormel Foods Corp.

"It gives us a new forum in which to present the research we've done to company executives, their shareholders and the public," said Ashley Byrne, a senior campaigner for PETA. When shareholders learned of some of the production methods used by their companies' suppliers, many of them were "horrified." As Byrne says, "Many shareholders are average people who are compassionate and who don't want to be supporting practices that are inhumane."

Shareholder activism isn't successful every time, but the strategy has its share of victories. Meridith Hammond, spokesperson for Ruby Tuesday, said that listening to shareholders' ideas is part of doing business ... and that includes PETA and their ideas about cage-free eggs and other more humane alternatives for sourcing ingredients. Hammond says they're "pleased to cooperate with PETA and are grateful for their advice, help with resources, and information about suppliers."

According to Byrne, however, PETA's strategy to "work from within" does not mean the end of its more visible, and often provoking, over-the-top protests aimed at shocking the public into a more "meat free" society. Those events include semi-naked PETA members taking showers on busy street corners to demonstrate the amount of water used to produce meat, people squeezing into cages to focus attention on livestock confinement, and distributing "Unhappy Meals" (complete with bloodied, cleaver-wielding Ronald McDonalds) to young children.

Sometimes referred to as "domestic terrorism," these acts by PETA are abhorred by many meat eaters, vegetarians and vegans alike; they're often seen as counter-productive to the cause and just gratuitous sensationalism.  Love them or hate them, PETA crosses lines that many of us would never dare go. And they get results. As Jonathan Safran Foer wrote in Eating Animals, when PETA targeted the nation's largest fast food companies, Temple Grandin — the well-known autistic animal scientist who designed the cattle chutes used at more than half the slaughter facilities in the U.S. — said she saw more improvement in animal welfare in one year than she had previously seen in her entire thirty-year career.

Photo Credit: Daquella Manera