At PETA headquarters, at the request of this reporter, Ms. Nachminovitch led the way to a cinder-block building in the back and then to a windowless room where the dogs and cats are killed. It looked like a well-maintained examination room in a doctor’s office. There was clean bedding on a countertop where the dogs and cats are placed for the intravenous shot from a certified euthanasia technician.

“It’s a humane exit from a world that’s treated them like garbage,” said Ms. Nachminovitch, a vegan who does not use animal products. “It’s very sad, but in these cases, it’s the best we can hope for.”

Death is not “the best” we can hope for. That is bullshit. Whatever happened to the notion that we actually help those “treated like garbage,” assisting them in ways that show them what not being “treated like garbage” actually looks and feels like? The exploitation defeatists that head PETA are breathtakingly wrong on this golden rule.

Simply take their backwards philosophy and apply it to a 12-year-old girl that’s been kidnapped and then repeatedly raped by someone that keeps her in their basement. Apply it to a 15-year-old boy that’s been sold into the sex trade. Apply it to a 24-year-old girl that’s been forced into doing prostitution after becoming homeless. Apply it to a 35-year-old guy that’s been tormented by a serious mental illness since graduating high school. Apply it to a 40-year-old housewife that’s endured a decade of domestic violence. Apply it to a 42-year-old man that’s been addicted to hard drugs ever since losing his entire family to a fatal car accident. You get the picture. Do we just kill them to rid them of their “suffering”? I think not.

PETA, on issues of shelter animal killing and Pit Bull extermination, are like the satirical people in the “Mercy Killers” skit from a 1978 episode of Saturday Night Live.