My pet hate: Animal campaigners who prey on the good-natured elderly and grab their money

Why me? I thought. I don’t even have a pet.

Yet there it was, a big white envelope that told me on the front I had been “selected to represent London” in a national survey.

It came from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and purported to be a national opinion poll.

I examined the A4 envelope with great suspicion. I have always regarded PETA followers at best as misguided eccentrics, and at worst, full-on crazies.

They are everything I loathe in campaigners: zealots who are smug in their own moral righteousness, intellectually blinkered, aggressively devoted to their cause.

I have absolutely zero credentials to expound on the treatment of animals, except for my common humanity.

My parents had a yappy poodle, a rescue dog they acquired when an old lady died. She called it Tiddles and it was too old to answer to anything else.

More recently, we looked after a beautiful long-haired Chihuahua, which we grew to love. Damned thing ruled our lives and did much to ruin the furniture. But we loved her anyway and were bereft when she died.

I sometimes fish for trout and kill my catch for the table. I have shot birds, mostly ducks and geese but also pests, such as buzzards.

So, why was I “selected” to take part in PETA’s survey? I wasn’t, of course; my name was randomly pulled from a hat.

My age, 78, might have had something to do with it. But the more likely truth is that this “opinion poll” was aimed at a dear old biddy somewhere in the depths of  Dorset.

She is probably about my age, lives alone, has a couple of cats and a bird box nailed below the eaves of her cottage. She scatters stale bread for the sparrows every morning.

She looks benignly on badgers that dig up her lawn or that baby fox that has a den behind the rhododendrons and toys playfully with her shoelaces as she dozes in a deckchair in the afternoon sunshine.

Yes, she’s the one PETA wants to fill in its questionnaire. It does pose questions – simplistic, leading ones with only one possible sane answer, despite the choice of Yes and No boxes to tick.

It starts with this one: “Mr Dismore, before reading this letter, were you aware that animals on ‘Origin Assured’ fur farms are often crammed into filthy wire cages alongside the dead and dying?”

That would set the old lady thinking and possibly leave her distressed. Each following question Is carefully designed to ratchet up that process.

“Did you know that many of these animals are left to suffer from severe injuries and infections without treatment?” I can see the old lady’s eyes misting over as she reads this.

More and more extreme are the images the questionnaire conjures up: “Before today, were you aware that some animals are still conscious while their fur is ripped from their bodies?”

Then the killer question: “Do you believe it is ever morally justifiable to kill animals for their fur? Yes? No?

PLEASE TURN OVER…

And there it is, the naked pitch for money, which is what it was all along, masquerading as a “National Opinion Poll” but leading up to this:

“Would you support PETA today to help stop minks, rabbits and other animals from being killed for their fur? If your answer is Yes, please tick the box below. We are deeply grateful.

Bada Bing! Our dear old duck in Dorset is signing over £10, £20, or, most sinister, “Other” of her meagre pension to a bunch of misguided, single-minded fanatics who trade on people’s innate decency to indulge and subsidise their zealotry.

There is no excuse for cruelty to animals. It is wicked to throw a dog from a car on the M4; or toss a sack of kittens into a river; or neglect pets so that they die of malnutrition or disease.

I even have some sympathy for the revulsion PETA feels towards the fashion industry when it returns, as it occasionally does, to using real fur, rather than fake.

But I suggest they address their question about whether “it is ever morally justifiable to kill animals for their fur” to an Inuit who clothes himself and his family in the fur of seals, or Arctic foxes or polar bears to keep out the cold and has done for centuries if not millennia.

We have all seen stories on TV of abattoirs where animals facing death were shown no compassion or respect and they are dreadful markers of human cruelty.

But animal welfare should not be a crusade or an obsession. It is about everyday kindness, thoughtfulness, common sense.

Otherwise, we end up with an idiot marine biologist stealing a crayfish from a tank in a restaurant in Weymouth. She thought it was destined for the pot, when actually it was used to teach children about the mysteries of the sea.

She threw the crayfish into the harbour where, it is feared, it may have died from shock in the cold sea water. Days later, its “lonely” mate died in the tank.

Then there is the well-meaning chap who reported a farmer to the RSPCA after seeing a dog chase sheep in his field. In fact, it was a sheepdog rounding up the farmer’s flock.

Or consider the over-protective members of the Nottingham Animal Coalition who howled in outrage at a planned snail race in the city and got it banned.

Coalition member Kerry Kane, 33, told the BBC: “It was really irresponsible because of the potential injury you could cause to a snail by picking it up wrong.”

All a bit over-wrought and animal crackers, isn’t it? But at least they are not deceitful and insidious like the phoney “opinion poll” PETA sent me.

*****

Another whimsical tale burgled, I admit, from the best book ever written about Fleet Street, The Happy Hack, by former Daily Mirror editor Mike Molloy.

One night, Molloy’s astrologer, Patric Walker, was enjoying dinner with a friend in Langan’s Brasserie in the West End when fabled columnist Keith Waterhouse walked in with his wife.

“There’s Keith Waterhouse with Stella,” Walker told his companion. “He’s very shy but I’ll see if I can persuade them to join us.”

They did, but not much merriment ensued until Peter Langan, the famously drunken proprietor, joined them along with a jeroboam of champagne.

Waterhouse made some scornful remarks about Irish dancing and Langan challenged him to demonstrate a clog dance.

Moments later, Waterhouse was hoofing away on the tabletop. Walker’s friend watched for a while, then said: “I can see what you mean about him being shy, dear.”

*****

Phew, made it! The last sticker – the elusive No. 44, since you ask – has been placed in the Panini World Cup album lovingly compiled by my youngest grandson.

We have been collecting the little packets of stickers given away by Marks & Spencer with every £20 spent in the store and the closer you get to completing the collection, the harder it gets.

Friends and neighbours have kindly joined in but we just could not turn up the missing entry, Lauren James, of the England Women’s team.

Fearful that the promotion would end before we had found it, my wife went on eBay and picked it up it for £1.60. Naturally, the day after she bought it, we found the sticker in our latest haul from M&S.

Now we just have to get rid of the dozens of doubles, or swaps, collected along the way.

By my reckoning, it has cost us and our friends hundreds of pounds to fill the album. Except, of course, that it hasn’t, really. We would have bought all that food anyway.

But the whole palaver has brought back happy memories of how we went through exactly the same self-inflicted torture with Oliver’s dad when he was aged about six. Panini has a lot to answer for.

RICHARD DISMORE

17 June 2026