PETA

I've noticed recently that many people have a 'They're all crazy environmentalist vegans' viewpoint on PETA. I can't say I agree with this viewpoint. I don't necessarily agree with EVERY message PETA sends, and I don't agree with people trying to make a non-issue into something huge because they're misinformed, but, as a vegetarian, I do agree that animals deserve to be treated fairly. If you ask me, the problem comes from two places. The first is ridiculous PETA sponsored stunts that make them look like nutcases, as well as misinformed animal activist viewpoints against things like, for example, making certain cells of a cat visible and traceable under a fluorescent light, which does nothing to harm the cat and has quite important scientific uses, like furthering our understanding of how mammalian creature develop.
The second source is that people dislike what they perceive to be a goal of PETA: making them not eat meat. People in this country like their meat and don't want to have to give it up. I'm sure you've heard it, people talking about how they love their meat and how you couldn't make them eat tofu because it would taste terrible. Well, I've heard it if you haven't, at least, so whatever,
For these people I have some things to say. First off, tofu doesn't actually taste all that terrible. It's just different and you've seen it portrayed as a disgusting thing would be my guess. I doubt you've actually tried tofu, and if you have and didn't like it, that's fine, but that once again it's probably being different from meat that you dislike. I know I didn't like tofu at first, but it's okay once you get used to it. Secondly, animal rights don't necessarily mean the abolishment of meat. I don't eat meat because I don't have to and because I'd rather not kill animals for my food. You can, however, kill and eat animals and be ethical about it. Raising, say, a cowl from birth and giving it no choice but to go to a slaughterhouse to be brutally killed (do you have any idea where that McDonald's meat comes from? Disgusting.) is unethical. Killing a cow and using it for food is perfectly fine. In other words, the slaughtering en masse of an animal is bad, but the individual killing of an animal for food in a (hopefully) not very painful way is fine.
And that's all I wrote.