PETA shows a picture of a dead horse in its urgent mailing — an image I didn’t need to see any more than tortured puppies or aborted fetuses; I consider all such marketing equally repulsive and unforgivable — and then says 27 animals died. What they don’t tell you is how many of those 27 animal deaths were horses. They’re hoping for the unthinking assumption that it’s 27 horses. They also don’t tell you over what period of time this occurred. This movie was a huge production that lasted over a year and a half. As best I can tell from various reports the actual count is three horses, six goats, six sheep and a dozen chickens — yes chickens.

Of the three horses, one drowned accidentally in a stream while being held on a nearby farm, one was injured on that same farm and euthanized, and one died of entirely natural causes. When the production company learned of the injuries on this particular farm, they investigated, spent a bunch of money trying to improve it, and ultimately dropped it. Some of the goats and sheep died died of injuries, but most died from worms or from complications from changes in feed — both typical problems for animals that relocate and have trouble adapting. The chickens, if you were wondering, were gotten by dogs. (This Entertainment Weekly report gives a pretty good breakdown of the details.)

Do you think if they announced that 12 chickens were killed by dogs they’d get much publicity? Chickens, which are slaughtered by the thousands every day for food in this country. Or even, sad though it is, that two horses died of injuries over the course of a year and a half? I would not be at all surprised if the animal deaths were within the normal range over the course of a year and a half of production of animals being housed and moved around and such. The question here that PETA wants to confuse us about is how much this number 27 over 18 months differs from what would be normal for a film production, or normal for everyday life.