Animal rights activists target BP

[Ed Barrow]

Source: USA Today

Animal rights advocates are pushing prosecutors to go after oil giant BP with a new weapon: animal cruelty charges.

People for the Ethnical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, sent a letter recently to each of the Gulf Coast attorneys general who have been impacted by the massive Gulf oil spill, urging them to open criminal investigations on BP officials based on state animal cruelty charges.

"As a direct result of BP's reckless acts and omissions, each of these animals has suffered and endured a tortuous death," Jeff Kerr, PETA's general counsel, said in the letters to the attorneys general of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

Under Louisiana law, cruelty to animals is a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail, a $1,000 fine or both for each hurt or killed animal. Tallying up the seabirds, turtles, dolphins and other animals that have been impacted by the spill, that could mean serious jail time for individuals, Kerr said.



Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/2010-06-21-peta-oil_N.htm

[lonestarnot]

1. Good luck. Yachting doesn't allow for doing time.

[flvegan]

2. Ingrid Newkirk recently published an op-ed in The Guardian about this, I think.

I agree with her.

[Jamastiene]

3. PETA is actually a good organization.

I thank them for their tireless efforts working on the cruelty in North Carolina. Locals have been putting up with it for years despite how much we wanted to change things here. We just didn't know how to fight the cruelty. Thanks to PETA, it is getting somewhat better. They have done a lot of good work in this state. They aren't miracle workers, but I thank them for helping. It's much more than the rest of us could figure out how to do.

In this case, I thank them again. They are trying to do what they can for the critters who have suffered so much down there.

[Omaha Steve]

4. K&R!

[Blue_Tires]

5. rec'd