BY NIMMI RAGHUNATHAN
Fiery and feisty, Ingrid Newkirk has changed the way the world thinks. The founder of People for Ethical Treatment of Animals has rammed home the idea that animals have feelings just like you and me and when we put them on our dining tables its akin to murder. ...
Fiery and feisty, Ingrid Newkirk has changed the way the world thinks. The founder of People for Ethical Treatment of Animals has rammed home the idea that animals have feelings just like you and me and when we put them on our dining tables its akin to murder. ...
She strives to shock: she has hung naked next to slaughtered animals, created headlines with attacks at fashion shows using leather and fur, burned cars to stop GM from working with animals and shut down labs testing on animals. When she is gone, her will, among things, directs that one of her eyes be mounted and delivered to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a reminder that PETA will be watching until the agency ends useless tests on animals. She has asked her liver be publicly displayed in France to protest the force-feeding of geese and ducks for foie gras.
It all began innocuously enough in 1980 when a burning desire for justice and a fellow activist Alex Pacheco led to her founding PETA. They shot to fame when their work led to the first ever police raid ever in the US on an animal research lab which ballooned effectively into an amendment in the Animal Welfare Act. Years later, she now presides over a more than a $50 million budget with interests around the world.
Newkirk has a strong India connect. Born in Britain, she moved with her family to Delhi when she was seven. Her mother volunteered for Mother Teresa and little Ingrid helped. At 18, with her family, she moved to FL where she met, married and later divorced her husband Steve Newkirk.
India has remained in her radar. In recent years she has met with those in the sugarcane industry to urge them from using exhausted bullocks to using efficient tractors; trying to ban elephant rides; urging Delhi police to seize spiked bits used to control horses in weddings; working to see the Madras High Court confirmed a ban on tail-docking and ear-cropping mutilations of dogs.
At 70, for all her shock and awe activities, Newkirk is not universally liked. To meet her is to know the other side – slightly built, perfectly spoken and at 70, bright, active and charming.
Q: Have things changed a bit? Instead of provocation do you think the switch over to vegetarianism can be made by appealing also to one’s health or speak of environmentalism to stop animal cruelty?
A: We still need to get people’s attention and that’s where being provocative comes in, so using humor, shock, showing what really goes on, that’s all still important. Groups like the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a doctor’s group, has done a first-rate job of waking people up to the health benefits of a vegan diet, and we have a campaign called “You can’t be a meat and dairy eating environmentalist!” Chennai’s devastating water shortage exemplifies that. It takes just 322 litres of water to produce 1 kilogram of vegetables – but it takes 1,020 litres of water to produce 1 litre of cows’ milk, and 15,415 litres of water to produce 1 kilogram of meat. For World Water Day, a PETA supporter took a bath in public to remind passersby that to produce 1 kg of meat can require the same amount of water as 75 baths.
Q: Do you agree veganism is rising in popularity in Europe and somewhat in the US?
A: Oh, there's no doubt whatsoever. The Economist said 2019 is the “Year of the Vegan” and you see it with vegan labels on foods in the shops everywhere, and with recipes and articles and cookbooks on line and in stores. According to the article, interest in veganism has skyrocketed with “fully a quarter of 25- to 34-year-old Americans declaring to be vegans or vegetarians.”
Vegan clothing as well as vegan eating, of course. The United Nations has said that meat and dairy production is killing the planet; medical studies show that vegans live far longer and healthier lives and are not as prone to heart disease, diabetes, stroke, high blood pressure, and various cancers as meat and dairy eaters, and people have taken that advice seriously. Of course anyone who cares about animals, now sees that they cannot continue to subsidize slaughter through their food choices. When the UKs largest bakery chain, Greggs, recently introduced a vegan "sausage" roll after more than 20,000 people signed PETA’s petition asking for it, sales topped £1 billion for the first time ever and the chain experienced a 9.6 percent rise in like-for-like sales in the seven weeks after the launch. There has been more than half-a-dozen all-vegan festivals in India in the past year or so, including one in Mumbai with 200 vendors.
Q: When a Shahid Kapoor or Jacqueline Fernandez pose for PETA ads, what do you expect to happen?
A: They call it star power for a reason. When a celebrity shows their heart for animals, it makes all their fans, and everyone who watches what stars do, pay attention to the important message. Both of these stars drew zillions of eyes to the page. They often think, "Maybe I should get involved, too." Sports stars, too: Cricketer and PETA pal Virat Kohli, who captains India's national team, says going vegan has helped his game, so many young athletes will surely follow his example.
Q: Who are the celebrities, in your opinion, who are the worst when it comes to wearing fur?
A: I would have said Kim Kardashian but PETA Honorary Director, Pamela Anderson, wrote on our behalf to Kim and begged her not to wear fur, and she has now replaced all her furs with faux fur replicas and sworn off it forever. Almost no celebrity wears the stuff anymore.
Q: India is among the world’s largest exporters of beef. Have you talked to the government about this?
A: Shamefully, India is also the largest producer of milk in the world. It is therefore no coincidence that it is also among the largest beef exporters. Where do people think all the cows/buffaloes the beef industry kills come from? The dairy industry is the primary supplier of animals for the beef industry to kill. If we want to stop beef, we must switch to soya, almond and other milks that are ahimsic, animal-friendly, good for the environment and definitely for our health.
PETA India has written to the government, and we ask that, at a minimum, animal transport and slaughter laws be enforced, because animals are dying on the way to market and slaughter by having their noses tied together and suffocating each other when they fall on a turn in the road due to overcrowding. We have also appealed on the Supreme Court level, but enforcement remains an issue because so many people buy milk and leather and do not take responsibility for their personal habits when it’s so easy to just stop doing that and reduce suffering.
Q: Japan has begun whaling again…..
A: Yes, to the world’s disgust. However, that is small potatoes compared to the slaughter of equally sentient beings for the table, for research, in India and the rest of the world.
Q: Which country has been most intractable in resisting animal rights?
A: Every country contains people who care and those who don’t, and regrettably most governments are money-driven, not ethics-driven, e.g. Zimbabwe allowing trophy hunting by paying tourists. That said, many countries are banning wild animal circuses, prohibiting the use of primates in experiments, and banning cosmetics tests on animals, banning fur farms, requiring government agencies to serve vegan meals at functions, and so on.
Q: Tesla has vegan leather seats – what was PETA’s role in this?
A: PETA has been talking personally to Elon Musk, attending shareholder meetings at Tesla, and showing the company the wide choice of vegan leathers.
Q: When you announced your will did you meet with resistance from your staff? Friends? Do they expect outrageousness from you or do they try to talk you out of it?
A: This idea came to me after a near fatal airplane incident. I asked my mother if she would object if I turned my body into kebabs, a skin purse, and so on after I no longer need it, and she did not. PETA staff thought it was a great idea that I can live on via activism for animals. To me, it would be more outrageous to fail to think of ways I can continue to make point that flesh is flesh, and that mine is voluntarily given, theirs is stolen from them.
Q: In your activism - have you ever been scared, feared the outcome, the law?
A: My knees have knocked when I had to seize the microphone at a fur show for the first time to ask people to consider how those skins belonged to someone else, their original owners. I’ve been arrested as many people throughout history have been in the quest for social justice, but I go willingly because the victims of persecution are locked in prison cells in laboratories and on factory farms for committing no crime and someone has to draw attention to their plight, and the remedy.
Q: You have seen so much horror; have you had moments when you felt desensitized when you saw a bird hurt or animal killed?
A: It only hurts more as time goes on and I see more suffering. I cry often and I never stop aching for the animals who are so sorely and wrongfully treated, although I discipline myself not to wallow in such feelings but to get out and do something to stop their pain.
Q: Do you worry that PETA won’t be effective after you?
A: At PETA, we are lucky to have a bevy of bright sparks with enormous talents and huge commitment. I was in that plane incident where we all thought we were going to die, all I could think of was how lucky it is that I’ve found these wonderful, hardworking people who will carry on the good work.
Q: What is your best achievement/s?
A: Motivating the largest youth movement in the world to act on their innate kindness and do things to change the world for the animals, like go vegan, not dissect, influence their parents, and more. However, stopping all the car crash experiments in the world and getting car companies to switch to computerized crash mannequines is a big one! I also love that within the first year of our campaign against India's gruesome, and secret, leather trade, an international boycott, protests around the world and letters from Sir Paul McCartney, Arun Gandhi, Jackie Chan, and other celebrities got loads of public attention, and forced officials and corporations to take notice. Adidas, Gucci, Gap, Liz Claiborne, Kenneth Cole and about 40 other leather retailers around the world decided to boycott leather from cruelly treated Indian animals. Top fashion designers, including Anita Dongre, Stella McCartney, Hemant Trevedi, and Marc Bouwer, , also refuse to work with leather.
Q: What is the good and bad you remember of your days growing up in India?
A: Growing up in India was very happy with the sounds of the crows, the sight of the hoopoes, the huge numbers of industrious people on the street and in the marketplaces where I often cycled and had my bike fixed and hung out, and, most of all, being taught a lesson in living by a disciple of Rabindranath Tagore, who asked that we not place so much value on material things but respect nature, be compassionate, help others, respect and protect animals. Convent boarding school in Shimla and Kodaikanal was very harsh and disciplinarian and non-vegetarian, except for “pepper water” from tamarin roots, which I loved. My childhood volunteer experiences in Delhi—packing pills and rolling bandages for people who were suffering from leprosy, stuffing toys for orphans, and feeding street animals—are what led me to believe that any living being in need is worthy of concern. My mother who worked for unwed mothers cast out of their homes in India as well as for other charities always said "it's not who suffers, it's that they suffer." I've carried her words with me my whole life. I was eight when actually stopped a man from beating a bull who had collapsed with exhaustion from pulling a heavy cart in the sun.
Q: What are your favorite vegan dishes? Anything Indian?
A: India has the very best selection of vegan foods in the whole world, from different kinds of dals and curries and chutneys and breads to exotic (to Westerners) vegetables, samosas, exquisite fruits from mangoes, papayas, super-easily peel-able oranges, lychees and custard apples -my favorites, and now soya milk dishes, too. Late at night, I crave the hot pakoras from the Souk's deep fryer inside the Taj Hotel, Mumbai. Oh, and I love sweet paan!
Q: Which is your favorite animal? Why?
A: I respect them all, but I feel particularly deeply about chickens because I have looked after an abandoned flock and know that each has a distinct personality, with emotions, likes, dislikes, and fears so to see them chopped up for a fleeting taste is upsetting. I also feel for the little mammals so few people understand or care about: the rats people call pests when they are just trying to scrape out a simple existence and look after their children. India of course has more crows than humans and they are truly extraordinary. A mother crow comes to visit my office every morning. She has one foot—two legs but only one foot. I know she’s a “she” because she had a very noisy baby. I hear her, or the noisy baby, and I call out to her. She lands on my windowsill, and I put out her breakfast. She loves blueberries but hates falafel. I know that because she once spat it out onto a man walking by beneath the window.
Q: Most modern-day presidents have had a pet in the White House but not the incumbent. Does that make him better in PETA’s view?
A: Not at all. PETA urges anyone with the time, patience, and funds (vet care can be expensive), to adopt a homeless animal and share their lives with them, in fact to adopt two so the two can keep each other company. We oppose breeding more dogs and cats while any go wanting for love and protection.
It all began innocuously enough in 1980 when a burning desire for justice and a fellow activist Alex Pacheco led to her founding PETA. They shot to fame when their work led to the first ever police raid ever in the US on an animal research lab which ballooned effectively into an amendment in the Animal Welfare Act. Years later, she now presides over a more than a $50 million budget with interests around the world.
Newkirk has a strong India connect. Born in Britain, she moved with her family to Delhi when she was seven. Her mother volunteered for Mother Teresa and little Ingrid helped. At 18, with her family, she moved to FL where she met, married and later divorced her husband Steve Newkirk.
India has remained in her radar. In recent years she has met with those in the sugarcane industry to urge them from using exhausted bullocks to using efficient tractors; trying to ban elephant rides; urging Delhi police to seize spiked bits used to control horses in weddings; working to see the Madras High Court confirmed a ban on tail-docking and ear-cropping mutilations of dogs.
At 70, for all her shock and awe activities, Newkirk is not universally liked. To meet her is to know the other side – slightly built, perfectly spoken and at 70, bright, active and charming.
Q: Have things changed a bit? Instead of provocation do you think the switch over to vegetarianism can be made by appealing also to one’s health or speak of environmentalism to stop animal cruelty?
A: We still need to get people’s attention and that’s where being provocative comes in, so using humor, shock, showing what really goes on, that’s all still important. Groups like the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a doctor’s group, has done a first-rate job of waking people up to the health benefits of a vegan diet, and we have a campaign called “You can’t be a meat and dairy eating environmentalist!” Chennai’s devastating water shortage exemplifies that. It takes just 322 litres of water to produce 1 kilogram of vegetables – but it takes 1,020 litres of water to produce 1 litre of cows’ milk, and 15,415 litres of water to produce 1 kilogram of meat. For World Water Day, a PETA supporter took a bath in public to remind passersby that to produce 1 kg of meat can require the same amount of water as 75 baths.
Q: Do you agree veganism is rising in popularity in Europe and somewhat in the US?
A: Oh, there's no doubt whatsoever. The Economist said 2019 is the “Year of the Vegan” and you see it with vegan labels on foods in the shops everywhere, and with recipes and articles and cookbooks on line and in stores. According to the article, interest in veganism has skyrocketed with “fully a quarter of 25- to 34-year-old Americans declaring to be vegans or vegetarians.”
Vegan clothing as well as vegan eating, of course. The United Nations has said that meat and dairy production is killing the planet; medical studies show that vegans live far longer and healthier lives and are not as prone to heart disease, diabetes, stroke, high blood pressure, and various cancers as meat and dairy eaters, and people have taken that advice seriously. Of course anyone who cares about animals, now sees that they cannot continue to subsidize slaughter through their food choices. When the UKs largest bakery chain, Greggs, recently introduced a vegan "sausage" roll after more than 20,000 people signed PETA’s petition asking for it, sales topped £1 billion for the first time ever and the chain experienced a 9.6 percent rise in like-for-like sales in the seven weeks after the launch. There has been more than half-a-dozen all-vegan festivals in India in the past year or so, including one in Mumbai with 200 vendors.
Q: When a Shahid Kapoor or Jacqueline Fernandez pose for PETA ads, what do you expect to happen?
A: They call it star power for a reason. When a celebrity shows their heart for animals, it makes all their fans, and everyone who watches what stars do, pay attention to the important message. Both of these stars drew zillions of eyes to the page. They often think, "Maybe I should get involved, too." Sports stars, too: Cricketer and PETA pal Virat Kohli, who captains India's national team, says going vegan has helped his game, so many young athletes will surely follow his example.
Q: Who are the celebrities, in your opinion, who are the worst when it comes to wearing fur?
A: I would have said Kim Kardashian but PETA Honorary Director, Pamela Anderson, wrote on our behalf to Kim and begged her not to wear fur, and she has now replaced all her furs with faux fur replicas and sworn off it forever. Almost no celebrity wears the stuff anymore.
Q: India is among the world’s largest exporters of beef. Have you talked to the government about this?
A: Shamefully, India is also the largest producer of milk in the world. It is therefore no coincidence that it is also among the largest beef exporters. Where do people think all the cows/buffaloes the beef industry kills come from? The dairy industry is the primary supplier of animals for the beef industry to kill. If we want to stop beef, we must switch to soya, almond and other milks that are ahimsic, animal-friendly, good for the environment and definitely for our health.
PETA India has written to the government, and we ask that, at a minimum, animal transport and slaughter laws be enforced, because animals are dying on the way to market and slaughter by having their noses tied together and suffocating each other when they fall on a turn in the road due to overcrowding. We have also appealed on the Supreme Court level, but enforcement remains an issue because so many people buy milk and leather and do not take responsibility for their personal habits when it’s so easy to just stop doing that and reduce suffering.
Q: Japan has begun whaling again…..
A: Yes, to the world’s disgust. However, that is small potatoes compared to the slaughter of equally sentient beings for the table, for research, in India and the rest of the world.
Q: Which country has been most intractable in resisting animal rights?
A: Every country contains people who care and those who don’t, and regrettably most governments are money-driven, not ethics-driven, e.g. Zimbabwe allowing trophy hunting by paying tourists. That said, many countries are banning wild animal circuses, prohibiting the use of primates in experiments, and banning cosmetics tests on animals, banning fur farms, requiring government agencies to serve vegan meals at functions, and so on.
Q: Tesla has vegan leather seats – what was PETA’s role in this?
A: PETA has been talking personally to Elon Musk, attending shareholder meetings at Tesla, and showing the company the wide choice of vegan leathers.
Q: When you announced your will did you meet with resistance from your staff? Friends? Do they expect outrageousness from you or do they try to talk you out of it?
A: This idea came to me after a near fatal airplane incident. I asked my mother if she would object if I turned my body into kebabs, a skin purse, and so on after I no longer need it, and she did not. PETA staff thought it was a great idea that I can live on via activism for animals. To me, it would be more outrageous to fail to think of ways I can continue to make point that flesh is flesh, and that mine is voluntarily given, theirs is stolen from them.
Q: In your activism - have you ever been scared, feared the outcome, the law?
A: My knees have knocked when I had to seize the microphone at a fur show for the first time to ask people to consider how those skins belonged to someone else, their original owners. I’ve been arrested as many people throughout history have been in the quest for social justice, but I go willingly because the victims of persecution are locked in prison cells in laboratories and on factory farms for committing no crime and someone has to draw attention to their plight, and the remedy.
Q: You have seen so much horror; have you had moments when you felt desensitized when you saw a bird hurt or animal killed?
A: It only hurts more as time goes on and I see more suffering. I cry often and I never stop aching for the animals who are so sorely and wrongfully treated, although I discipline myself not to wallow in such feelings but to get out and do something to stop their pain.
Q: Do you worry that PETA won’t be effective after you?
A: At PETA, we are lucky to have a bevy of bright sparks with enormous talents and huge commitment. I was in that plane incident where we all thought we were going to die, all I could think of was how lucky it is that I’ve found these wonderful, hardworking people who will carry on the good work.
Q: What is your best achievement/s?
A: Motivating the largest youth movement in the world to act on their innate kindness and do things to change the world for the animals, like go vegan, not dissect, influence their parents, and more. However, stopping all the car crash experiments in the world and getting car companies to switch to computerized crash mannequines is a big one! I also love that within the first year of our campaign against India's gruesome, and secret, leather trade, an international boycott, protests around the world and letters from Sir Paul McCartney, Arun Gandhi, Jackie Chan, and other celebrities got loads of public attention, and forced officials and corporations to take notice. Adidas, Gucci, Gap, Liz Claiborne, Kenneth Cole and about 40 other leather retailers around the world decided to boycott leather from cruelly treated Indian animals. Top fashion designers, including Anita Dongre, Stella McCartney, Hemant Trevedi, and Marc Bouwer, , also refuse to work with leather.
Q: What is the good and bad you remember of your days growing up in India?
A: Growing up in India was very happy with the sounds of the crows, the sight of the hoopoes, the huge numbers of industrious people on the street and in the marketplaces where I often cycled and had my bike fixed and hung out, and, most of all, being taught a lesson in living by a disciple of Rabindranath Tagore, who asked that we not place so much value on material things but respect nature, be compassionate, help others, respect and protect animals. Convent boarding school in Shimla and Kodaikanal was very harsh and disciplinarian and non-vegetarian, except for “pepper water” from tamarin roots, which I loved. My childhood volunteer experiences in Delhi—packing pills and rolling bandages for people who were suffering from leprosy, stuffing toys for orphans, and feeding street animals—are what led me to believe that any living being in need is worthy of concern. My mother who worked for unwed mothers cast out of their homes in India as well as for other charities always said "it's not who suffers, it's that they suffer." I've carried her words with me my whole life. I was eight when actually stopped a man from beating a bull who had collapsed with exhaustion from pulling a heavy cart in the sun.
Q: What are your favorite vegan dishes? Anything Indian?
A: India has the very best selection of vegan foods in the whole world, from different kinds of dals and curries and chutneys and breads to exotic (to Westerners) vegetables, samosas, exquisite fruits from mangoes, papayas, super-easily peel-able oranges, lychees and custard apples -my favorites, and now soya milk dishes, too. Late at night, I crave the hot pakoras from the Souk's deep fryer inside the Taj Hotel, Mumbai. Oh, and I love sweet paan!
Q: Which is your favorite animal? Why?
A: I respect them all, but I feel particularly deeply about chickens because I have looked after an abandoned flock and know that each has a distinct personality, with emotions, likes, dislikes, and fears so to see them chopped up for a fleeting taste is upsetting. I also feel for the little mammals so few people understand or care about: the rats people call pests when they are just trying to scrape out a simple existence and look after their children. India of course has more crows than humans and they are truly extraordinary. A mother crow comes to visit my office every morning. She has one foot—two legs but only one foot. I know she’s a “she” because she had a very noisy baby. I hear her, or the noisy baby, and I call out to her. She lands on my windowsill, and I put out her breakfast. She loves blueberries but hates falafel. I know that because she once spat it out onto a man walking by beneath the window.
Q: Most modern-day presidents have had a pet in the White House but not the incumbent. Does that make him better in PETA’s view?
A: Not at all. PETA urges anyone with the time, patience, and funds (vet care can be expensive), to adopt a homeless animal and share their lives with them, in fact to adopt two so the two can keep each other company. We oppose breeding more dogs and cats while any go wanting for love and protection.
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