PETA Statement re China Reclassifying Dogs as ‘Pets’

For Immediate Release:
April 9, 2020

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

Below, please find a statement from PETA President Ingrid Newkirk in response to China’s proposed new guidelines to classify dogs as “pets,” rather than “livestock,” in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic:

There’s a lesson for us in China’s laudable decision to view dogs as family members. If China can reexamine its relationship with dogs, then the West can reexamine its relationship with chickens, cows, pigs, and turkeys. PETA urges everyone to see all animals as the thinking, feeling individuals they are and move toward a vegan world in which people respect life in all its varied forms.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat or abuse in any other way”—opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. More information is available here.