I think that PETA, like other organizations and so many people, confuse ethics and morals. It is, in most cultures, immoral to eat other people, and yet ethically it is (under certain circumstances) permissible. It is unethical to kill another, but permissible under certain circumstances. Theft is unethical, but if you are starving...?

Morals are what our cultural beliefs have told us is right and wrong. Ethics are those practices which are universally right or wrong. It is very easy to confuse the two, as they often overlap.

In one of the South Pacific cultures the groom was required to kill his mother-in-law on his wedding day. Morally, given the culture, this was just fine. Ethically, it was taking another's life.

Was it suicide or a praiseworthy act for an elderly Inuit to walk away from the group and freeze him/her self to death so that the communal food supplies would stretch a while longer? Moral or immoral? Ethical or un-?

You decide; I can't decide for you.