Fur Special: Fur and loathing with Peta

From dropping a dead raccoon into Anna Wintour's soup to distributing 'Unhappy Meals' outside McDonald's, Peta's shock tactics have made it one of the most effective protest organisations in the world, says David Usborne

When three uninvited guests rushed the catwalk at a Victoria's Secret fashion show in New York last week, eyeballs instantly rolled in a celebrity audience that included Donald Trump and Tina Brown. You could guess what they were thinking. "Oh God, it's those pests from Peta again. When will they ever give up?"

Peta, in case you didn't know, stands for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. With stunts such as last Thursday's – the event was taped for broadcast in the US this week by CBS Television – it has made itself into one of the most effective protest movements anywhere in the world. Unsurprisingly, it has also earnt itself many enemies, who accuse it of everything from abetting terrorism to behaving like a cult.

The fur industry has long been a favourite target. Before being unceremoniously hauled away by security guards, the three Peta activists screamed insults at Gisele Bundchen, the super-hot supermodel from Brazil, because of a deal she has signed to appear in Blackglama fur advertisements. In a beaded black bra and panties, Bundchen remained composed as the female trio blurted, "Gisele: Fur Scum!"

Headed by Ingrid Newkirk, who is English, and headquartered in Norfolk, Virginia, Peta has, over the years, managed single-handedly to make the wearing of fur an act of bravery. Anyone in the fashion world with the slightest connection to the fur business lives in fear of its tactics. Ask Anna Wintour, the editor of US Vogue, who once had a dead raccoon dropped in her soup at a ritzy New York restaurant by Peta provocateurs.

The genius of Peta, founded in Ms Newkirk's Maryland front room 22 years ago, has always been to attract attention with a combination of pranks, civil disturbances and in-your-face advertising campaigns that mix shock-value with humour. Not long ago, some of its members disrobed outside the White House and chanted, "I'd rather go naked than wear fur", now a mantra for the anti-fur brigade.

Newkirk, 52, who has been arrested, by her own reckoning, almost 50 times for her activities, once took to the catwalk herself in New York and showered the audience with blood-smeared banknotes. The gesture was not pretty and caused plenty of offence. But that was precisely the idea.

This is no ramshackle band of troublemakers, however. With about 700,000 members and an annual budget of more than $30m (£19m) – generated through fundraising, membership fees and the marketing of T-shirts and other merchandise – Peta's four-storey office in Norfolk is home to more than 100 staff. (And not one of them will be wearing or eating animal products of any description today. No leather belts, no milk in their tea and certainly no beef burgers for lunch.)

Moreover, Peta's reach is now global. It also has offices in London, Rome and Bombay. Last month, two of its members – one a dog-shelter worker from London – stripped in a Beijing shopping centre and covered their embarrassment with banners reading, "Compassion is the fashion. Fur is dead!" Fur coats that Peta manages to separate from their owners are distributed to the poor and homeless around the world. A shipment of minks and ermines was recently dispatched to the people of Afghanistan.

But battling the fur trade is only one of its obsessions. Peta says it is committed to protecting animals from all acts of "unnecessary" human exploitation. It relentlessly pressures the big burger chains and runs an underground operation to spy on the animal-research community and expose its laboratory practices. It wants us to stop eating animals, wearing animals, going to the circus and even drinking milk.

Famous for her media-friendly turns of phrase, Newkirk, who was born in Surrey and raised in India before going to the United States when she was 18, once went so far as to compare the poultry industry to the Holocaust. "Six million people died in concentration camps," she intoned in one interview. "But six billion chickens die each year in slaughterhouses."

With the burger companies, Peta can count some notable successes. Two years ago, the group started handing out "Unhappy Meals" outside American franchises of McDonald's – a take-off of its "Happy Meals" trademark. Peta's version featured gory plastic toys for children and cut-outs of "Son of Ron", who, in contrast with a clown-faced Ronald McDonald, was shown in a bloodstained shirt and bearing a bloody knife.

McDonald's buckled and instructed its chicken-meat suppliers to end the practice of chopping off the beaks of live birds and to double the size of their chicken cages. Under pressure from Peta, both McDonald's and Burger King – or "Murder King" as the group dubbed the company – have also agreed to pay unannounced visits to slaughterhouses to ensure that minimum animal-welfare standards are respected.

Other corporations, including General Motors, have been forced to change their habits. (The car manufacturer no longer uses pigs in impact-crash experiments.) So, too, have numerous medical-research establishments in the United States. Still, today Peta deploys dozens of undercover activists to spy on these facilities, often equipped with hidden cameras and video equipment. The Boys Town National Research Hospital in Omaha, Nebraska, ended a deafness-research programme that involved cutting open the skulls of live cats after it was exposed by two Peta operatives working there as security guards.

In its quest for visibility, Peta has also recruited celebrities to champion its cause, among them Richard Gere, the actor and Buddhist. James Cromwell, who starred as the farmer in the fantasy pig-flick Babe, narrated a Peta video describing cruelty on pig farms in South Carolina. And the organisation tried recently to co-opt Rudolph Giuliani, the former mayor of New York.

The Rudy saga started a couple of years ago, when Peta rolled out a poster campaign called "Got Beer?". It was a humorous play on "Got Milk", a slogan adopted – to huge effect – by the American dairy industry in the Nineties. The "Got Beer" posters, often placed in university campuses, accompanied the assertion that beer is better for us than milk. (And, of course, that drinking cow juice is cruel to cows.) Peta was accused of going too far and, worse, encouraging binge drinking among America's students.

Then came a research report suggesting that dairy products were tied to prostate cancer. Moving fast, Peta fielded new posters featuring the face of Giuliani with a milk stain on his upper lip and the slogan, "Got Prostate Cancer?" The mayor, who had just been diagnosed with the disease, reacted furiously and threatened to sue. Peta withdrew the ads. The brouhaha probably benefited it, none the less.

No one doubts the softness of Peta's collective heart when it comes to animals. Furry companions (never say "pets") roam the corridors of the Norfolk HQ, because leaving them home alone during work hours is discouraged. Staff members even get bereavement days when companions pass away and funerals have to be arranged. In other ways, however, Peta is sometimes portrayed with a far less friendly face. Newkirk, for instance, is accused by outsiders – and even some former Peta disciples – of ruthlessness and a leadership style that verges on tyranny.

"Ingrid rules Peta like a guru cult," Merritt Clifton, a former Peta employee who runs Animal People magazine, recently suggested. "Sooner or later, everyone who questions her or upstages her, no matter how unintentionally, ends up getting shafted." But Newkirk dismisses the faint-hearted. "I'm tough," she says. "I have been called every name in the book. Personally, it's inconsequential if people hate me."

What may have serious consequences, however, is a movement to have Peta stripped of its tax-free status as a charity. It is being driven by foes of Peta, who allege – and the charges have even come up in hearings on Capitol Hill – that it has been abetting domestic terrorism. The allegation rests in particular on a donation of $1,500 (£950) given by the group to the extremist Earth Liberation Front, which has been blamed, or indeed has taken credit, for a series of attacks of vandalism causing damage to the tune of millions of dollars. Peta is hardly al-Qa'ida. Indeed, it has often disassociated itself from violence, although its position on breaking the law is fuzzier. No one in the United States these days, however, can afford the taint of being associated with terrorism.

"The whole notion that Peta supports terrorism is false and defamatory," Jeffrey Kerr, the group's chief lawyer asserted this summer. He called the attacks on his group "desperation tactics" by its adversaries. "They're trying to smear us any way they can."

The people at Peta survived a similar attempt to have its charity standing revoked a decade ago. Assuming they prevail this time, it should be clear to everyone – foes and fans alike – that, no, they will never give up. The day when McDonald's only sells veggie burgers is not close. Nor is the day when Peta lays down its arms.