http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/10/18/wpeta18.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/10/18/ixportal.htmlTwo employees of a militant animal rights group endorsed by celebrities including the American style guru Martha Stewart and the actress Pamela Anderson have been charged with multiple counts of animal cruelty.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) said its staff in North Carolina did nothing wrong when they allegedly took animals from local shelters and injected them with fatal doses of pentobarbital.
The charges state that Peta employees Andrew Cook, 24, and Adria Hinkle, 27, then dumped the corpses in the bins of a supermarket in Ahoskie, North Carolina.
Peta said it drew the line at the bin dumping, but the group's president, Ingrid Newkirk, defended the practice of killing animals. She told a newspaper that "for some animals in North Carolina, there is no kinder option than euthanasia". The group, which is paying Cook and Hinkle's legal expenses, said that it had helped out "in a dire situation where animals were being gassed and shot in cruel ways in these local shelters". Cook and Hinkle face 22 charges of animal cruelty and three charges of obtaining property by false pretences.