You are probably charter members of PETA...
For a number of years I was a member of PETA but only quit when we hit a rough patch financially. However I do still speak up for their good work at educating the public on how badly animals are treated and for the good work that they do directly.
Did you know that in their 'home' city, they give away new built and cozy dog houses to neglected, chained back yard dogs every winter? They also run a couple of fully equipped motor homes to go into the disadvantaged communities to do free spay/neuters on the many pets that are owned by the poor. They contact and work with multiple corporations to get them to change the way they handle the tragic animals they slaughter and they do under cover operations to bring to the light of day, the horrendous treatment that elephants get in circus's, labs around the world, dog meat markets in Asia, slaughterhouses in America and farm operations where animals are daily abused. They've also contributed funding to continued research into ways to do medical testing without the use of animals and how to produce real 'meat' without using live animals but in fact to produce that type of protein in an industrial lab situation.
Through the years, they have made a couple of missteps in their communication efforts but without fail, it was not meant maliciously but only and always with the welfare of animals in mind. Ingrid Newkirk who is the President of the organization actually takes one of the lowest wage that I've seen of most charities that I've seen. For example, in 2014 she made $40,000.00. Their financial statements are posted online every year as a matter of fact and an outline can be seen here:
http://features.peta.org/annual-review-2014/year.aspx
Their mandate is to educate the public, protect animals by changing laws and hearts and to expose abusers. As far as I can see, there is nothing wrong with any of that.
And Ralph, well-loved pets are put down gently but in many shelters they are thrown in a sealed box, often a dozen at a time, to be gassed where they wind up fighting and hurting each other in their panic to escape or they get what is commonly called a heart-stick which simply means being stabbed in the heart with a huge hypodermic. Gently.....not so much.