AR Evangelism

[In My Memory]

Oh noooooos! t3h crazy vegan has started a thread on how great it is to be craaaaaazy!

 

I dont usually start theads like this, but I thought it was in the interest of all the pet owners on this forum:

 

Iams breeds dogs and cats for testing their petfood, and their tests consists of forcefeeding dogs to the point of sickness and death, the animals are treated without any respect from the animal handlers, dogs are trapped in cages and neglected to the point that they display stereotypical behavior for hours on end. The cages in particular are small and have nothing to stimulate the animals, the cage bottoms are lined bars spaced too far apart for the animals to stand on them comfortably (its done like that to minimize the cost of clean up, when the dogs go to the bathroom, the waste falls right through -- usually on top of any dogs in the cages below), and many times the dogs legs will slip through the cage and make it impossible for the animals to free themselves.

 

An undercover video of the IAMs animal testing facility was shot and released. A shorter version of the video consisting of a few dozen it consists of a few dozen short excerpts of the facility is available here:

 

Watch Video: Iams Cruelty

 

Please boycott IAMS petfood.

[the tree]

Honestly I don't know why people keep pets at all. I am not responsible for the welfare of any animal and I don't ever intend to be so I am not in a position to boycott this.

[Mokele]

Why not report this to any of the numerous government agencies in charge of laboratory practices? They're mammals, so if I recall, there's at least 7 different organizations (some governmental, some private & non-profit) that regulate this stuff. The USDA would be one place to start.

 

Mokele

[Martin]

Proctor and Gamble

high visibility target

 

http://www.iamsco.com/en_US/jhtmls/iamsco/about/sw_ia_About_page.jhtml?pti=IA&li=en_US&bc=C

 

the Iams company was started by Paul Iams (Dayton Ohio) in 1946

 

It was bought by Proctor and Gamble in 1999.

 

This little piece of P&G still has the web-appearance of a small company with an enlightened humane small company ethos----look at the idealistic MISSION STATEMENT and the statement of OUR BELIEFS.

 

I would say that Proctor and Gamble is responsible if there is an hypocritical mismatch between the idealistic humane web-appearance and actual practice. P&G has a lot to lose from bad image. This might be a case where "activist" tactics could succeed.

 

(often times, according to what I have observed, activist methods do not accomplish anything, or they backfire----like people taking off their clothes in front of Gap clothing stores to protest the alleged sweatshop manufacture of Gap merchandise, which I don't think hurt Gap sales)

 

I would advise writing to the top Proctor and Gamble management and pointing out that there is highly graphic evidence of P&G filthy atrocity to animals.

If they know what is good for them they will fix it fast. They sell soap for cripes sake, they should have a clean wholesome image.

[mike90]

That is horrible, maybe we could get a letter writing campaign to P&G started on here? It certainly seems like a worthy cause, would anyone object to having Iams address posted here for that purpose?

[bascule]

Weird, I buy IAMS pet food for my cat.

[ecoli]

I always wonder why stories like this don't attract more political attention. Has PETA opened up a lawsuit?

[gcol]

Gathering evidence, publishing it, starting lawsuits, rousing the indignation of pet-lovers, that is the sort of campaign I could go along with. I dont see quite how such activities improve pet food, unless it is to enhance profits by seeing just how low in basic ingredient quality they can go without actually killing pets. All in all, not a justifiable activity for animal experimentation. It benefits no-one and nothing except the corporate bottom line. If the business were to fail in the face of stricter regulation, I would lose no sleep. (But then I am not a shareholder).

[ParanoiA]

I don't think we've been buying Iams. Beneful, I think is what my wife likes to get. We have two yellow labs, and one little rat dog my wife calls a Papillon.

 

This is a disgusting video, from what little I saw. I'm all for boycotting them.

 

That is horrible, maybe we could get a letter writing campaign to P&G started on here? It certainly seems like a worthy cause, would anyone object to having Iams address posted here for that purpose?

 

Sounds cool to me...

 

Gathering evidence, publishing it, starting lawsuits, rousing the indignation of pet-lovers, that is the sort of campaign I could go along with.

 

Same here

[Dak]

Gathering evidence, publishing it, starting lawsuits, rousing the indignation of pet-lovers, that is the sort of campaign I could go along with.

 

unfortunately -- for me, at least -- groups like peta have done too many crazy/stupid/dishonest things for me to trust them. they have a belief to spread, and they will lie to spread it; they have objectives to achieve, and they will lie to achieve them.

 

is this film representative? is it even from the Iams lab? who knows?

 

i suspect that some of the things that look disturbing in the video aren't. they show some pictures of anethetised dogs... anethetised dogs are allways spredagled, and allways look odd to the point of being disturbing. and, iirc, slapping them is the correct vetinary way to resurrect them if they stop breathing under anesthetic; strapping them on their back aids their breathing whilst under anesthetic.

 

my main question: if the labs were that bad, why did it take a full 9 months to get just over 8 minutes of footage of 'mistreatment'? that's less than 1 minute/month... maybe the 'cruelty' is not that common in the lab, and they had to hold out for ages to find enough for a film. if not... if the cruelty is that prolific... why, after 9 months, is the worst phisical injary just a minor one? why are all the cages clean? could they not find anything more disturbing to show, try as they might?

 

bottom line: this could easily be bull-shit, and the peta certainly dont have a good enough reputation for me to trust them to have accurately represented the situation. as mokele said, why dont they hand their evidence over to a relevent authority? if they are not willing to do so -- espescially as it would effectively protect the animals -- then i can only assume that it is because they don't have enough evidence, even after 9 months, to make a case, or that -- in a fair forum -- they could point out that, for example, maybe the cages are only 'observation cages' for just after treatment, with their main cages, where they spend most their time, being much larger?.

 

i'd suggest that people dont let peta damage the buisness of a company for no reason. don't boycott Iams unless it can be proven (ie, in a court of law or to a neutral regulating body, where it will be ensured that the evidence is not one-sided and unrepresentative) that they are acting unnaceptably. then, by all means, boycott away. but not untill then.

 

one thing that allways sticks in my mind when viewing 'animal cruelty' videos is a leaflet i got given once, about cruelty to rats in labs: it had a picture of rats all squished up on top of each other, and said 'look how little space they have'.

 

rats. like. being. squished.

 

if you give 20 of them a cubic metre cage, they will all squish in one corner. they feel safe when squished. my rats used to prefer bedding-down under my bed (ground-clearance of about an inch) to their spacious cage. and these were big rats. when i finally got them in their cage after having them out to play, they used to squish into a house which was approximately the size of 1.5 rats. i genuinely don't know how they both fit in. their cage had four, spacious levels. rats like being squished.

 

'aww, look at the poor squished rats'...

 

when dealing with organisations like peta, it's healthy skeptisism time imo.

[Sisyphus]

Excellent post, dak. If any of this was legit, it would be a very simple matter to shut them down by bringing a lawsuit, or just showing their evidence to the relevant authorities. The fact that they're relying on carefully produced propaganda to go directly to the public and start a boycott, well, I can't help but think it's just PETA as usual...

[ParanoiA]

Damn Dak...I feel cheated now. I wish I would have read your post first. I guess human's crazy love with fluffy animals can misguide them.

[YT2095]

we use Iams for our cats, I even eat them myself sometimes, I`m not even considering boycoting them until I see evidence.

[mike90]

Hm well now I am unsure also. where did you get the information you supplied in the OP Imm? Id like to look into it more and see if theres some solid information.

[In My Memory]

Dak,

 

Come on, be serious.

 

I hear the line that "PETA does too many crazy things to be trusted" too often, and so far 100% of the time I've heard it from people who cant even answer the question "what crazy/stupid/dishonest things have they done" with even a single example. It wouldnt surprise me if you had to google and search for a website listing off a few dozen mundane examples like "PETAs 'Holocaust on your plate' campaign was dumb!; feminists object to their Lettuce Ladies, take that PETA!" I wonder how much your dislike for PETA is influenced by what you actually know about them, rather than your intuitional preconceptions.

 

IAMSCruelty.com is a very wellknown website and has been actively updated for years, and theres no doubt at all that the president and legal department of IAMS / Proctor & Gamble have seen it. Can you imagine just how quickly P&G would sue PETA for monumental misrepresentation and slander (and potential loss of profit) if they hadnt actually been filming an IAMS lab?

 

Believe me, IAMS acknowledges the video and that animals were being treated very cruelly, according to Envirolink.org, after the video appeared, an IAMS representative went out to the Sinclair research facility for a surprise inspection and found "problems with the air temperature and ventilation in the cage rooms, a lack of resting boards for the dogs and inadequate socialization for the animals" among other things; the violations were apparently severe enough that IAMS severed its ties with the Sinclair research facility. So, the video shows cruelty at an IAMS lab, that much about the video is true.

 

Unfortunately though, while IAMS severed ties with the Sinclair facility for its own its sake, its still not that easy to submit the videos to a judge and have the facilities shut down immediately. People have this idea that that any lab animal has the same legal protection as your everyday house pet... but if that were true, all animal experimentation would be illegal. ... but we both know that isnt even close to being true (a lot of extremely cruel animal experiments are performed everyday with no intervention from the government on animals behalf). However, PETA did initiate a lawsuit against IAMS for numerous breaches in its own animal testing policy, namely its claim that it wouldnt euthanise animals or use lethal animal tests...

 

...however, the IAMS research facility didnt stick to that. You are basically correct that "anethetised dogs are allways spredagled, and allways look odd to the point of being disturbing". Here is the context of the opening scene, where all the dogs are laying out on the floor: 60 dogs are incapacitated and have tubes inserted into their throats in order to force them to injest some kind of food or liquid (the undercover PETA investigator identifies the substance as vegetable oil), this could be a metabolic study or a toxicology study. The animals are anesthetized and large chunks of tissue cut out of their thighs which is visible in at least one dog in the video, then they are subjected to a muscle biopsy. The animals are put in cages with bars so that fecal matter can fall through (possibly for nutritional analysis), however the procedure was apparently very tramatic, because according to this insane AR website:

Two of the dogs were later found dead in their cages. One of them had been suffering intensely for at least 11 days prior to her death. Her report read: "pyometra [infection of the uterus] possible, bloody discharge from vulva–foul odor present. Lethargic, not eating well, dehydrated."

 

Twenty-seven of the dogs subjected to the muscle biopsies were intentionally killed, even though Iams claimed that it would not conduct any experiment that resulted in the deaths or euthanasia of animals.

So, you're right that the video shows dogs coming out of anesthesia who look odd, but because you actually havent heard the commentary that accompanied each scene when PETA submitted a formal complaint to the FTC, you get the wrong impression that PETA is trying to turn some mundane event into a trajedy. But images of dogs laying on the floor isnt the objectionable part, its the process of forcefeeding the dogs a toxic substance, cutting chunks of their thighs, and caging them in conditions where become sick and die of untreated illnesses. The short 8 minute video is, as I said in my opening post, excerpts from a much longer video.

 

IAMS fully acknowledges the claims made by PETA, as evidenced by the emails passed back and forth between PETA and IAMS spokemen, and excerpts from the letters contain descriptions of other experiments which show that the IAMS abuse in the video isnt just a single isolated event:

Diane Hirakawa

Senior Vice President of Research and Development, Iams

 

In one experiment, she intentionally put 24 young dogs into kidney failure, removed their right kidneys, conducted numerous painful invasive procedures on the dogs over a matter of months, and then killed the surviving dogs.

 

White JV (University of Georgia), Hirakawa DA (The Iams Company), et al. Effect of dietary protein on functional, morphologic, and histologic changes of the kidney during compensatory renal growth in dogs. Am J Vet Res 1991 Aug;52(8):1357-65.

 

Dan Carey

Director of Technical Services, Iams

 

He once removed 31 dogs’ kidneys to increase their risk of renal damage, keeping the surviving dogs alive for 48 months to study them, then killed and dissected the dogs. In a private meeting, he referred to dogs as "specimens."

 

Finco DR (University of Georgia), Carey D (The Iams Company), et al. Effects of aging and dietary protein intake on uninephrectomized geriatric dogs. Am J Vet Res 1994 Sep;55(9):1282-90.

 

Gregory Sunvold

Director of Clinical Research and Intellectual Properties, Iams

 

In an Iams experiment, he surgically forced 28 cats into kidney failure. The cats either died during the experiment or were killed by Sunvold to study the effects of protein on their kidneys.

 

Finco DR, Sunvold G, et al. Influence of protein and energy in cats with renal failure. In: Reinhart GA, Carey DP, eds. Recent Advances in Canine and Feline Nutrition, Volume II: 1998 Iams Nutrition Symposium Proceedings. Wilmington, Ohio: Orange Frazer Press; 1998. p. 413-24.

 

Gregory A. Reinhart

Vice President, Strategic Research and Communications Research and Development Division, Iams

 

He chemically damaged 18 male beagle puppies’ kidneys, fed them experimental diets, inserted tubes into their penises, and then killed them.

 

Grauer GF (Colorado State University), Reinhart GA (The Iams Company), et al. Effects of dietary n-3 fatty acid supplementation versus thromboxane synthetase inhibition on gentamicin-induced nephrotoxicosis in healthy male dogs. Am J Vet Res 1996 Jun;57(6):948-56.

 

A.J. Lepine

Research and Development Division, Iams

 

He removed the ovaries and uteruses of 56 dogs to study the effects of beta carotene on their “reproductive performance.”

 

Weng BC (Washington State University), Lepine AJ (The Iams Company), et al. Beta-carotene uptake and changes in ovarian steroids and uterine proteins during the estrous cycle in the canine. J Anim Sci 2000;78:1284-90.

In addition to the examples above, you can see a press release from PETA where they expose experiments where beagles gums are artificially repeatedly cut and sutured back to induce gingivitus.

 

I can understand if you're skeptical of PETAs claims, but seriously, I think your skepticism isnt based on anything.

[ParanoiA]

Well my first thought is why? I don't understand what is to be gained by forcefeeding dogs and taking chunks out their thighs. Without understanding why, critical thinkers are left wondering what the "catch" is. And I think Dak has a good point in that if there was a good reason for doing this, but PETA still didn't agree with it, then PETA isn't going to share that reason - kinda like lying. I do believe that.

 

My second thought is, if this is happening at Iams, then what about the other dog food and accessory manufacturers? I would have a hard time believing Iams is the only one. So, it could actually be worse than what you've presented here. Which leads me to, how in the hell do I feed my dogs without empowering this kind of animal treatment?

[Dak]

I can understand if you're skeptical of PETAs claims, but seriously, I think your skepticism isnt based on anything.

 

my skeptisism doesn't have to be based on anything. my trust of peta would have to be based on something, and it's something that i dont feel peta has -- trustworthyness: honesty, inclination to be representative, accuracy etc.

 

ultimately, it doesnt matter if im skepticle, all it means is it's harder to convince me, not inpossable.

 

I hear the line that "PETA does too many crazy things to be trusted" too often, and so far 100% of the time I've heard it from people who cant even answer the question "what crazy/stupid/dishonest things have they done" with even a single example. It wouldnt surprise me if you had to google and search for a website listing off a few dozen mundane examples like "PETAs 'Holocaust on your plate' campaign was dumb!; feminists object to their Lettuce Ladies, take that PETA!" I wonder how much your dislike for PETA is influenced by what you actually know about them, rather than your intuitional preconceptions.

 

skeptisism is, by it's nature, an assumption neccesarily made before knowledge, so the fact that it's semi-intuitive is not incorrect (says the person who usually hugs logic like a teddy-bear).

 

however:

 

PETA support the ALF, who are, imo, dicks.

 

also, pertinant to the case in hand:

 

PETA was criticized by the OPRR for having edited the film in a misleading way. Twenty-five errors were identified in Newkirk's voiceover, including a scene where she described an accidental liquid spill over a conscious baboon as an acid spill, with no evidence to suggest it was anything but water. The film also gave the impression that a scene involving the hydraulic equipment smashing against a baboon's head represented several baboons being damaged, whereas subsequent examination of the 60 hours of original footage showed that the same scene had been constantly repeated

 

and, ultimately, they have an agenda -- and, as with any organisation that has an agenda, their PR releases should be taken with a pinch of salt.

 

IAMSCruelty.com is a very wellknown website and has been actively updated for years' date=' and theres no doubt at all that the president and legal department of IAMS / Proctor & Gamble have seen it. Can you imagine just how quickly P&G would sue PETA for monumental misrepresentation and slander (and potential loss of profit) if they hadnt actually been filming an IAMS lab?

 

Believe me, IAMS acknowledges the video and that animals were being treated very cruelly, according to Envirolink.org, after the video appeared, an IAMS representative went out to the Sinclair research facility for a surprise inspection and found "problems with the air temperature and ventilation in the cage rooms, a lack of resting boards for the dogs and inadequate socialization for the animals" among other things; the violations were apparently severe enough that IAMS severed its ties with the Sinclair research facility. So, the video shows cruelty at an IAMS lab, that much about the video is true.

 

or, rather, a lab that iams hired to do research on it's behalf.

 

the animals filmed were, apparently, not actually part of the iams-commisioned research 1

 

Unfortunately though, while IAMS severed ties with the Sinclair facility for its own its sake, its still not that easy to submit the videos to a judge and have the facilities shut down immediately. People have this idea that that any lab animal has the same legal protection as your everyday house pet... but if that were true, all animal experimentation would be illegal. ... but we both know that isnt even close to being true (a lot of extremely cruel animal experiments are performed everyday with no intervention from the government on animals behalf).

 

right. not a nice buisness. none of this justifies PETA in misrepresenting the truth, however.

 

also, moaning about iams ditching the lab is a bit unfair. they ditched the lab due to inadiquate ventilation, which they discovered after investigating the peta's claims. what should they have done, stuck with the lab?

 

However, PETA did initiate a lawsuit against IAMS for numerous breaches in its own animal testing policy, namely its claim that it wouldnt euthanise animals or use lethal animal tests...

 

which:

 

a/ was not a law suite, but a request for intervention by the FCC, and

b/ was rejected.

 

unless your referring to the uk complaint, which

 

a/ was not a law suite, but a complaint to the advertising standards commision, and

b/ was about the advertisment of the health benifits of iams pet food, not the treatment of the animals

 

or maybe the third thing on that page, which:

 

a/ was a lawsuite, but it only says it was 'filed': not won, and

b/ was, again, against false advertising, not animal treatment.

 

...however, the IAMS research facility didnt stick to that. You are basically correct that "anethetised dogs are allways spredagled, and allways look odd to the point of being disturbing". Here is the context of the opening scene, where all the dogs are laying out on the floor:

 

bear in mind, at this point, that this isn't an IAMS-commisioned experiment, merely one being done in the same lab as was working for iams on a seperate envenstigation

 

60 dogs are incapacitated and have tubes inserted into their throats in order to force them to injest some kind of food or liquid (the undercover PETA investigator identifies the substance as vegetable oil),

 

peta investigators have previously identified, on film, as acid that which seems to be water (see wiki citation above), so you'll have to forgive me if i maintain my skeptisism. it could easily be a breathing tube.

 

this could be a metabolic study or a toxicology study. The animals are anesthetized and large chunks of tissue cut out of their thighs which is visible in at least one dog in the video

 

alternatively: only one. the above statement comes from the same school as advertisers who scream that their £999.99p product is "UNDER A THOUSAND POUNDS!!!"

 

which is why my skeptesism radar goes 'beepelybeepelybeep' like that stoned bird form the apple advert whenever im talking to an AR-evangelist

 

then they are subjected to a muscle biopsy. The animals are put in cages with bars so that fecal matter can fall through (possibly for nutritional analysis), however the procedure was apparently very tramatic, because according to this insane AR website:

 

which, coinsidentally, correctly identifies it as an iams contract lab, but fails to mention that the research was not iams-commisioned.

 

So, you're right that the video shows dogs coming out of anesthesia who look odd, but because you actually havent heard the commentary that accompanied each scene when PETA submitted a formal complaint to the FTC, you get the wrong impression that PETA is trying to turn some mundane event into a trajedy. But images of dogs laying on the floor isnt the objectionable part, its the process of forcefeeding the dogs a toxic substance, cutting chunks of their thighs, and caging them in conditions where become sick and die of untreated illnesses. The short 8 minute video is, as I said in my opening post, excerpts from a much longer video.

 

excerpts which are intended to make it seem as if iams are being harsh to animals and make them boycot them; the immpression that the mundain event is being portraid as a tradgedy is not, i suspect, an accident -- or else, why not add commentary to clarify, or take some other means to avoid confusion?

 

IAMS fully acknowledges the claims made by PETA, as evidenced by the emails passed back and forth between PETA and IAMS spokemen, and excerpts from the letters contain descriptions of other experiments which show that the IAMS abuse in the video isnt just a single isolated event:

 

 

IMM, that is actually out-and-out untrue.

 

the quotes, which you attribute to 'emails passed back an forth PETA and IAMS spokesmen', all come from one email from alv (animal liberation victoria), an email that starts off "Below is one such excerpt (copied verbatim from a PETA website)".

 

hardly iams 'full acknowledgement', what with the source of your quotes being peta, and not iams. it's more of an accusation.

 

iams, in fact, completely denies the allegations in the emails that you quote (you'll notice this is the complete opposite of 'fully acknowledging')

 

At the Iams company we were greatly concerned by the allegations raised on the PETA website but we don’t accept their allegations as fact. [...]

 

As you are aware' date=' serious allegations have recently been made by animal rights groups of our studies. This information is highly sensationalized and grossly misrepresents our efforts.[...']

 

As is common in the scientific community, we have published our findings in reviewed, scientific journals so that other researchers- including other pet food manufacturers, wouldn’t need to repeat the studies, but could instead utilize our findings. [bonus points][...]

 

In short, we only conduct research that is equivalent to nutritional or medical studies acceptable on people, and only when the research will help pet owners and veterinarians nutritionally manage important pet health conditions.[...]

 

Earlier this year, PETA placed an “investigator” in a facility that we (and other pet food companies) used for nutritional studies. This persons role at the facility was the Iams Animal Welfare Specialist, funded by Iams to ensure that the facility was in compliance with our strict research policy guidelines. Unfortunately this person had a different agenda, and many of the guidelines that were within her responsibility to implement, including environmental and socialization requirements were not carried out to our satisfaction. When we became aware that the facility was not incompliance, we ended all research there.[...]

 

To give you a feel for the degree of misinformation that has been circulated, the same animal rights group accused Iams of de-barking dogs kept for our research studies. Our research policy is clear: we do not conduct any studies involving surgery to create or mimic diseases, or intentionally damage organs. We do not use, in any studies animals that are already induced with disease or surgically altered. De-barking is not acceptable, and we do not condone such procedures.

 

There are may other examples that demonstrate the ease with which misinformation can be spread via the internet and fringe magazines which are often published with little editorial control.

 

note their claim that the investigators job was to prevent what the peta are winging about, and that, then, iams claim is that:

 

the investigator shirked her juty

the investigator filmed the results of her shirking her duty

the investigator published the film, and blamed iams for it.

 

I can understand if you're skeptical of PETAs claims, but seriously, I think your skepticism isnt based on anything.

 

it's apparent that peta have in the past misrepresented facts. there is ample evidence to suggest that they are doing so now. there is little/no evidence to suggest actual mistreatment of animals to an extend inpermissable by law. there is a perfectly reasonable claim by iams that explains the situation satisfactorally. lots of people who i trust more than peta seem to think iams is ok.

 

in short, i see no reason to accept petas claims, nor boycott iams.

[Pangloss]

The phrase "consider the source" comes to mind. Here we see the problem with ideology -- it ruins your credibility. Even if everything being claimed about Iams on any of the above web sites is true, we can't determine it objectively based on the information provided. The sources have agendas, and therefore their information is not credible.

 

I am not opposed in theory to anything IMM brings up in this thread, from the starting of the thread itself, to working with animal rights activists to shut down offenders, to boycotting companies. But I can't support any of the above (except for the starting of this thread) without unbiased information.

[Mokele]

Am I invisible or something? I'll repeat:

 

In the US, there are *NUMEROUS* governmental organizations that regulate laboratory animal treatment for *all* labs, private and academic.

 

Why the hell hasn't anyone simply alerted these organizations? USDA, for one. They *will* inspect the lab (not that they don't regularly inspect anyway), and if there's a violation, it will be shut down.

 

Seriously, where is this flat-out erroneous assumption that there's no regulatory agency to turn to coming from?! My university's Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee reports to SEVEN, count 'em, SEVEN different governmental and non-governmental oversight organizations, most of which also regulate private agencies and *ALL* of which heavily regulate mammals.

 

If this is a legitimate issue, why hasn't anyone simply picked up the phone and reported it? It really is that bloody simple.

 

Mokele

[Pangloss]

Yeah no kidding. Some guy lost his poor pooch off the back of his pickup truck the other day and you'd have thought Al Qaeda had just penetraded NORAD, there were so many law enforcement units and reporters on the scene. Accusations of animal abuse were flying faster than Mark Foley instant messages at a congressional page convention.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

we use Iams for our cats, I even eat them myself sometimes

You eat your cats?!

 

I can understand if you're skeptical of PETAs claims, but seriously, I think your skepticism isnt based on anything.

Skepticism is based on the concept of "burden of proof," and not necessarily any evidence against something. We skeptics just take a look at the evidence to see how valid it is.

[Mokele]

You eat your cats?!

 

I am having tremendous difficulty restraining myself here. You've just set yourself up so perfectly, but what I want to say, while funny, is probably way beyond the boundaries of good taste on this forum.

 

Plus by now I think everyone's figured out what I was going to say. If not, well, I'll tell you when you're older....

 

Mokele

[Pangloss]

Clearly the reptile has a phobia about trying new things!

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Oh dear