In 2025, 1,718 animals — roughly five animals a day, every day — were killed by PETA, with hundreds more sent to local pounds.
PETA has been killing animals for decades. It has been reported on by newspapers such as the New York Times and the Boston Globe, television news outlets such as CNN and Fox, and magazines such as Newsweek and The Atlantic.
PETA is also required to report the number of animals it kills annually to the Virginia Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services (VDACS), which makes those statistics public. And PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk admits that they “do not advocate ‘right to life’ for animals,” admits they kill animals, and even admits they kill healthy and adoptable animals.
None of this is new. Still, most people are unaware of it.
So it should also surprise no one that the vast majority of PETA supporters over the years are/were likewise unaware that their donations not only paid to kill those animals, but helped pay for the roundup and killing of healthy kittens and puppies, the theft and killing of beloved dogs, efforts to kill more animals in pounds, the defense of abusive “shelter” workers, and a mobile death van.
The question, of course, is why? Why does PETA kill? And why is it so monomaniacal about it, even in the face of adoption and other non-lethal alternatives?
Why PETA kills animals
PETA officials believe that sharing one’s home with an animal subjects them to bondage and oppression:
Let us allow the dog to disappear from our brick and concrete jungles — from our firesides, from the leather nooses and metal chains by which we enslave it.
Employees also reported that they were made to watch “heart-wrenching” films about animal abuse designed to brainwash them into believing that people are incapable of caring for animals. They are then told that animals cannot survive outside a home. Thus, the animals are damned either way, and killing them is a “gift.” In the words of Ingrid Newkirk, PETA’s founder, it is “the greatest gift of all.”
To that dystopian end, PETA’s known death toll topped 50,000 by 2024, with thousands more killed at local pounds. The number may be many times higher. According to an employee whose job it was to acquire animals to kill:
I was told regularly to not enter animals into the log, or to euthanize off-site in order to prevent animals from even entering the building. I was told regularly to greatly overestimate the weight of animals whose euthanasia we recorded, in order to account for what would have otherwise been missing ‘blue juice’ (the chemical used to euthanize); because that allowed us to euthanize animals off the books.
A second PETA field worker also admitted that PETA routinely rounded up and killed healthy animals, including lying to people to acquire their animals.
With the recent release by VDACS of 2025 animal “shelter” statistics, one thing remains clear: killing at PETA continues unabated.
Mass killing continued in 2025
In 2025, PETA reported killing 938 cats. Another 179 were transferred, primarily to pounds that also kill animals. Historically, many of the kittens and cats PETA has taken to those pounds have been killed, often within minutes, despite being young (as young as six weeks old) and healthy. And despite millions of “animal-loving” supporters, a staff of hundreds, and annual revenues of over $85 million, PETA also admitted that they found homes for only 14 — an adoption rate of less than 1%.
It is not just cats who face oblivion at PETA.
They also killed 719 dogs, while adopting out only 21.
They killed 90% (18 out of 20) of rabbits and other small pets.
They killed roughly half of all “farmed” animals and 76% of all wild animals.
And though PETA tells the media and the public that all the dogs, cats, and other animal companions they kill are suffering when criticized, they do not tell VDACS that. Only wild animals are listed as “critically injured/dying.”
The cats are not.
The dogs are not.
The rabbits and other small animals are not.
The chickens are not.
And they are not listed as “critically injured/dying” because, if history is any guide, they weren’t.
Fudging the numbers
Running what appears to be the functional equivalent of a slaughterhouse has not earned PETA accolades. How could it? Who loves a political death cult outside of the people in the cult? So it is unsurprising that when reporting their 2025 statistics to VDACS, PETA opted to categorize the numbers in a new way that appears designed to deflect criticism by making their killing rate appear lower than it may actually be.
In 2025, PETA reported that despite only taking in six stray cats, 443 were “reclaimed by owner.” They likewise reported that despite taking in only four stray dogs, 303 were reclaimed. That is not just improbable, it is impossible within the accepted meaning of the reclaim category. Reclaims are for strays and, on rare occasions, owner surrenders when the person has a change of heart. PETA understands this.
Compare the 443 cat and 303 dog “reclaims” with those from past years.
In 2023, for example, PETA took in four stray cats and four stray dogs, reporting no cats and only one dog reclaimed.
In 2022, PETA took in 10 stray cats and seven stray dogs, and reported that one cat and three dogs were reclaimed.
How did the number jump by orders of magnitude to 443 cats and 303 dogs reclaimed without dramatically increasing the number of strays impounded? Is PETA reporting animals taken in for spay/neuter or similar reasons as intakes and then listing them as “reclaimed by owner” to pad their numbers?
The inflated reclaim rate coincides with PETA’s unilateral addition of a new intake category. PETA informed VDACS, which collects annual statistics, that its Community Assistance Program (CAP) took in a number of animals roughly comparable to those listed as reclaimed. CAP is the agency within PETA primarily responsible for its spay/neuter program.
When I was a criminal prosecutor, we referred to this type of misinformation as “consciousness of guilt.” We presented it to the jury as evidence of intent — that the defendant knew their conduct was wrong. But when it comes to PETA, calling their conduct “wrong” does not adequately explain how egregious it is.
Beyond sterilization, CAP has a more sinister mission. It is also responsible for the roundup and killing of animals. The two staff whistleblowers noted above, who reported lying to people to acquire and kill animals and killing animals “off the books” worked in CAP. Other whistleblowers I interviewed for Why PETA Kills, my book, also worked in CAP. As did the PETA representatives who stole Maya, a little dog, from her home, and then illegally killed her.
I considered requesting the intake and disposition records from PETA, but they have never responded to my previous record requests. And even if they did this time around, I could not ignore their history of lying — lying to people by promising to find homes only to kill animals within minutes, lying to the public by claiming all the animals they kill are suffering, and lying to a young family that they didn’t steal and destroy Maya, until confronted with surveillance video of the theft.
Enter the PETA apologists
While the thousands of animals they killed — over 52,000 — is enough to turn anyone’s stomach, it is not likely to convince people whose identity on social media is wrapped up in support of PETA to condemn them for it. In previous years, these individuals argued that criticism is unfair because PETA does “so much good.” Indeed, PETA tries to convince people of that.
At the same time they report the mass killings for the year, they add notes apropos of nothing relative to the state’s reporting form about the spay/neuter surgeries they offer and the free doghouses and straw bale bedding they give out. By this same logic, were a slaughterhouse owner to donate a percentage of his profits to a vegan advocacy organization, or a dogfighter to donate some of his winnings to a companion animal rescue group, the killing and cruelty they inflict upon animals would be rendered acceptable, with the harm canceled out by the good. This is an obvious absurdity, but time and again, self-professed animal lovers, animal rights activists, and even PETA itself postulate this exact scenario to defend the killing. People who genuinely love animals should have none of it.
Because for all we do not know about PETA, this much appears certain: PETA is letting loose upon the world individuals who not only believe that killing is a good thing and that the living want to die, but who are legally armed with lethal drugs, which they have already proven — at least 52,694 times — that they are not averse to using.