INGRID NEWKIRK

Alongside her partner, Ingrid Newkirk founded People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. You might recognize this group better as PETA. The organization has been around under Newkirk’s leadership since 1980. It is the world’s largest vegan organization and serves to advocate for and defend the rights of animals. They oppose speciesism and shed light on animal suffering in the food industry, laboratory testing, the clothing industry, and entertainment. The organization is big on activism and bringing publicity to the pain and suffering animals face at our hands. Ingrid has written many books that reflect her stance on animal cruelty and provide solutions to combatting it.

PETA President Newkirk wasn’t always an animal rights activist. A British American, she grew up in England and later lived in Florida and Maryland. Her formal introduction to animal rights took place during her twenties when she became an animal protection officer, and later head of the animal disease control division in DC for the Commission of Public Health. After her awakening, she dedicated her life to dissolving the horrific abuse animals face across a multitude of industries, and advocating for veganism.

I was a very slow learner and so I have a lot of understanding for people who don't get it initially. It took me a while. I grew up with a father who was a gourmand and together, we basically ate our way through the animal kingdom. I have to tell you that liver and onions, I would go anywhere for it; I used to take a raw steak and put a raw egg in it and mix it up and eat it. So, I am not somebody who grew up as a vegan or a vegetarian, or anything near that. But a series of events changed me, and it was one at a time. The very first thing was snails. I used to eat snails. I'm a bad cook, but I bought some live snails in a market, this Italian market, they said, "Oh, they're easy. You can just take them home. You soak them overnight. And then you sauté them in some Chablis and garlic." And I thought, "Well, I can do that."

I had them in a paper bag in my car. I was driving through the countryside to my house and I got the feeling I was being watched. And I thought, there's no one here. I looked over and the snails had forced open the top of the bag, in my book I talk about this in another way. But they came to the top of the bag and pushed open the top. And they were all up there looking at me with their little horns, you know, looking. So I took them and let them go in the bottom of my garden.

I probably violated some federal law, but I wasn't going to eat them, so that was the end of snails. Next came lobsters. Somebody took me for a gorgeous dinner for my birthday. I think I was 19, in Philadelphia, a lobster restaurant. And they brought two or three lobsters to the table on a silver platter, alive. You had to pick your lobster, and I did. The lobsters were waving their antennae at you. And I said, "I'll have that one." and they said, ‘‘grilled or boiled?’’ Back then I was so oblivious, I had no idea that if you say broiled in a restaurant like that, they slit open the live lobster's back, put butter all through it, salt and pepper and shove it under the grill.

I said broiled. That lobster came back. We were having a great time. We had some beautiful wine and it was a lovely event. I took that first bite of lobster and something must have triggered, something must have hit me subconsciously. I burst into tears, because I realized the only method of communication those lobsters had was to waggle their antennae. They didn't speak English. They don't have voices like anybody else. And I had taken his life for my birthday. That was the end of all shellfish, of molluscs, that is gone. And the next thing I'll just leave you with the one, because this is the slow learner's story.

I was a law enforcement officer in Maryland and I went to a farm where the people had moved away and they had left the animals behind. The animals had starved. They'd had a party and they had broken glass in the stalls and the animals were cut up, but they were all dead except for one little pig. I took that little pig outside and I put his head under the water pump and held up his head so he could drink, and he made these little sounds of gratitude. That's all you can say. And then I sent him off to the veterinarian. I was going to prosecute those people for failure to pay rent, for abandonment, and so on. Driving home that night, and this was before we had microwave ovens, I thought "Oh, I'm starving. What have I got to eat?" and then I thought, "Oh great. I defrosted the pork chops."

Then, ding, ding, ding. I thought, ‘‘hang on a minute.’’ I'm going to prosecute those people for what they did to that little pig. And yet I know in my heart, and now I know with my eyes from later, as we all do, that a slaughterhouse is a hideous place. The pork chops came from a slaughterhouse, from a pig who couldn't have wanted to die, so that really was the beginning of that. And later, somebody razzed me terribly and said, ‘‘what are you putting in your tea?’’

Every morning I had a cup of tea with condensed milk in it. So I said it was condensed milk. And he said, ‘‘Well, you don't eat veal, do you?’’

I said of course not. I would never take a baby cow away from his mother for veal. He said to me, ‘‘So how do you think you get the milk? Don't you have to take away the baby cow, isn't there a bit of veal in every glass or drop of milk?’’ And I said, but they don't kill the cow, do they? They kill the cow. Oh, how mortifying. And today, if someone says that to me, I always say, "Oh, really where is this massive retirement home for cows, because I've never seen one." They all get kicked and prodded down the ramp to their deaths. The same as the beef cow does, except those mother cows are in worse condition, so that was the end of the milk.