I have to be honest and let you know that I don’t like PETA. I like their message but I don’t like their tactics. At some point they lost their way and have become a parody of themselves with all their antics. Because of this it’s hard to take seriously the organization’s core premise – the ethical treatment of animals – with PETA’s various stunts and rhetoric.

The latest example of PETA’s over-the-top activism is a controversial decision to give young children, some as young as three years old, a pamphlet showing mutilated cows. Excuse me?

The pamphlet, which looked like a comic, was meant to be kid-friendly and educational but parents thought otherwise:

“My 6-year-old daughter was handed one of these comics, saw the insert of the mutilated cow that I ripped away right away, she started flipping through it and saw pictures of baby cows being electrocuted, factory farms with machetes, I mean, just graphically horrifying images for a 6 year old,” Borsheim said.

“The images are pretty graphic,” parent Shawn Belschner said. “They’re of mutilated cows, infected cows, cows being dehorned, cows in bad conditions. I don’t think it’s good for any child.”

The graphic leaflet showing cows being dehorned and cows with infected udders was PETA says is a kid-friendly pamphlet about dairy cows – literature they say is meant to be educational.

PETA chose to hand-out the pamphlets the day that a baby cow was scheduled to be at the school for a lesson about dairy farming. No doubt a deliberate effort to make sure that the literature had an impact on the children. That is just unforgivable.

What do you think about PETA’s actions?