PETA’s Mission Statement
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is the largest animal liberation organization in the world, and PETA entities have more than 10.4 million members and supporters globally.
PETA opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview, and focuses its attention on the four areas in which the largest numbers of animals suffer the most intensely for the longest periods of time: in laboratories, the food industry, the clothing trade, and the entertainment business. We also work on a variety of other issues, including the cruel killing of rodents, birds, and other animals who are often considered “pests,” as well as cruelty to domesticated animals.
PETA works through public education, investigative newsgathering and reporting, research, animal rescue, legislation, special events, celebrity involvement, and protest campaigns.
Since its inception in 1980, PETA has continually won groundbreaking victories on behalf of animals. Explore some of our most significant milestones and our latest victories.
PETA’s Current Campaigns for Animals
PETA is known around the world as a force to be reckoned with, thanks to our determined and creative campaigns. Explore our current campaigns and join one today to help us achieve more victories for animals.
Follow Along With PETA News
PETA’s news page is your source for information about PETA’s campaigns, breaking news about animals, and animal liberation information from around the globe.
How You Can Help Animals Today
Participating in PETA’s action alerts is one of the easiest and most effective online ways to help animals. It just takes a moment—get started now!
PETA brings together members of the scientific, corporate, and legislative communities to improve animals’ quality of life and prevent their deaths.
PETA’s uncompromising, unwavering views may be controversial, but they are always true to our driving mission: to stop animal abuse worldwide.
PETA is a nonprofit, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) corporation funded almost exclusively by the contributions of our members.
Wherever animals are in need, PETA is there, giving a strong voice to those who can’t speak for themselves.
When an animal is in need, Community Animal Project fieldworkers do everything in their power to help. Learn more about their groundbreaking work near our Norfolk, Virginia, headquarters.
You Can Help Animals Too
PETA and the PETA Foundation are looking for smart, compassionate, hardworking people to join our teams, and you might be a great match!
PETA provides a variety of opportunities at headquarters for those in the Hampton Roads area who are interested in volunteering for animals.
Interning at PETA is an exciting and demanding opportunity – learn all you need to become an advocate for animal rights and apply today!
Update: Joshua Moore has been indicted on five felony counts of animal torture, five felony counts of aggravated cruelty, and one misdemeanor count of depicting animal torture. PETA presented the Chicago Police Department’s Animal Crimes Team with a Hero to Animals Award for its swift work in seizing the abused dogs—five dogs and five puppies—and … Read more »
A primate at a Covance primate testing lab. Update: After receiving PETA’s request for an investigation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that Bristol-Myers Squibb was to blame for the hanging death of the monkey and cited the company for violating the Animal Welfare Act. As if being locked inside a laboratory and treated like … Read more »
PETA and other Virginia animal shelters have just submitted to the state the numbers of animals they received, found wonderful homes for, reunited with guardians, had to euthanize, or were able to release back into nature in 2011. Because numbers can’t begin to tell each animal’s story, let me describe one of those animals: Pepper. … Read more »
Sparks flew recently after Congress restored funding for U.S. inspectors to oversee horse slaughter, opening the door for horses to be killed and butchered in the United States for the first time since 2006. But there is hope for a better bill: The American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act of 2011 (S. 1176/H.R. 2966), which would … Read more »
According to a whistleblower, two bearded dragons languished in the back room of a Chicago-area PetSmart store for six months, apparently suffering from improperly treated eye infections that spread to their jaws and caused their faces to rot away. After pressure from PETA, the store’s manager finally took the bearded dragons to a veterinarian who … Read more »
Many of us have had a peek into the bizarre world of hoarding courtesy of reality television. Accumulating piles and piles of household junk is bad enough, but when hoarders collect living animals, the results are extreme neglect, suffering, and death. According to the Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF), “It is likely that up to … Read more »
Animal shelters across the country are overflowing with record numbers of cats and dogs—many of whom were surrendered by people who lost their homes or could no longer afford to care for their animal companions after being laid off.
Picture this: It’s 1773 and the young poet Anna Barbauld is working as an assistant in the laboratory of vivisector Joseph Priestley. In order to study breathing, Priestley tormented live mice, and he did it without giving them any anesthetic (as vivisectors today still do in many cases). Aaron Logan / CC by 1.0 One … Read more »
