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Things You Might Not Know About PETA

Think you know everything there is to know about PETA? Then, you don’t know “ARF”! (Couldn’t resist.) OK, OK, you probably know a heck of a lot about PETA, but here are some achievements that might surprise you.

Let’s Remember Our ‘Firsts’

Carrying out more undercover investigations than all other animal-protection organizations combined, PETA’s investigations have landed these landmark “firsts,” including the following:

  • The first conviction of an experimenter for animal abuse and the first withdrawal of federal research funds from an experimenter
  • The first closure of a government-funded laboratory because of the mistreatment of animals and the first time in U.S. history that a laboratory was forced to surrender animals and close its doors
  • The first U.S. Supreme Court case involving animals in laboratories
  • The first-ever convictions of factory-farm employees for abusing pigs
  • The first-ever felony indictments for the abuse of factory-farmed turkeys—the case led to five convictions and the stiffest penalty ever imposed in U.S. history for cruelty to any farmed animal
  • The first time in history that anyone has been held responsible for illegal conduct associated with cruel pigeon races in the U.S.—following PETA’s groundbreaking 2010–2011 investigation of the U.S. pigeon-racing industry, three pigeon-racing organizers pleaded no contest to charges of commercial gambling

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The Science of Helping Animals

PETA has more scientists on staff than any other animal-protection group, and we have scored some major victories for animals used in laboratories, including the following:

  • Ending all international car-crash studies involving animals
  • Ending the U.S. military’s use of animals in six different areas of medical training
  • Exposing experimenters for their violations of animal-welfare guidelines, leading to the return of tens of thousands of federal grant dollars
  • Sparing as many as 4.4 million animals from a European Union chemical testing program.
  • Stopping a proposed NASA radiation study on squirrel monkeys

Soaring and Scoring With PETA’s Legal Eagles

Our hard-hitting legal team, one of the largest of any animal organization, takes on a new case against animal abuse nearly every week. Here are just at few of its victories for animals:

  • PETA, together with a team of orca experts and former trainers, filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against SeaWorld asking a federal court to declare that its wild-captured orcas are being held as slaves in violation of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
  • PETA won a lawsuit compelling the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to end its 30-year-long practice of secretly issuing hundreds of permits allowing circuses and roadside zoos to breed endangered species.
  • PETA filed complaints with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which required Feld Entertainment (Ringling Bros.’ parent company) to pay the largest fine of its kind in U.S. history for violations of the Animal Welfare Act.
  • In a landmark, precedent-setting lawsuit filed by PETA and allied groups and activists, a federal court struck down Idaho’s “ag-gag” law as a violation of the First and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

PETA for the Save

PETA has rescued thousands of animals from terrible suffering, including the following:

Our Stats Are All That

Here are a number of ways that PETA is spreading the message and the love:

  • PETA’s youth outreach division, peta2, is the largest youth animal rights group in the world. With over 1 million subscribers, peta2 social media alerts have been the key to such progress as prompting universities to open vegan-only dining halls and persuading major retailers to stop selling animal skins.
  • Every month, PETA’s websites receive an average of 10 million page views, and our Facebook posts are viewed an average of 480 million times. And every day, our tweets receive more than 1.4 million impressions.
  • PETA’s fleet of mobile veterinary clinics has helped prevent the births and inevitable suffering of hundreds of thousands of unwanted dogs and cats in deeply impoverished areas of Virginia and North Carolina, all through low-cost or free sterilization surgeries.
  • PETA has also persuaded hundreds of people to allow their “backyard dogs” to live indoors and provided more than 6,200 dogs with sturdy doghouses to shelter them from extreme weather.

Global Goodness

PETA’s outreach is worldwide:

  • As a result of PETA pressure, the world’s largest retailer removed nearly $1,000,000 worth of clothing containing angora rabbit fur from its shelves and donated it to Syrian refugees.
  • PETA has affiliated organizations in the Asia-Pacific (China, the Philippines, and Vietnam), Australia, France, Germany, India, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.


Well, you learn something new every day. But one thing that we’ve always known about PETA is that none of these achievements would be possible without the kind folks willing to get involved to help animals. Please consider becoming a PETA member today.