Another interview of a few years ago from my archives of writers and musicians, this time with Ingrid Newkirk, author of the recently published The PETA Practical Guide to Animal Rights: Simple Acts of Kindness to Help Animals in Trouble
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Hate mail, vegetarianism, vivisection, fur, rodeos, activism, euthanasia, neutering, ethics, and compassion: the daily life of the world’s best-known activist for animals, PETA’s controversial founder and president. Ingrid Newkirk is a celebrated animal rights activist who campaigns internationally, the author of numerous books, and the president and cofounder of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the world’s largest animal rights organization. She was born in England and from age seven lived in India for eight years where she helped her mother, a volunteer with Mother Teresa. Several life-changing experiences after the age of twenty-one led Ingrid into a life of animal rights, vegetarianism, official service as a deputy sheriff and director of cruelty investigations, and ultimately the creation of PETA in 1980. For almost three decades, her impact on behalf of abused animals and their rights has been widespread and enormous. Like all active critics of the status quo whose ideas challenge long-held practices and thinking, she inspires controversy and is often criticized with vehemence, a subject with which we began this recent interview.
James Strecker: The HBO documentary, I Am an Animal, begins with your reading hate mail that you have received because of your work on behalf of animals. What is it about the writers of these letters, or about you for that matter, that inspires such uncontrollable rage in some people and makes them want to hurt you?
Ingrid Newkirk: I realize that they see me as the messenger and need to try to shoot me. The message doesn’t go down with them because it encroaches upon their lifestyle, their habits, the ugly things that give them guilty pleasures, and that I am calling them out on those dirty habits. They know that if they agree with the reasonable idea that animals feel pain and that as powerful beings we should be kind and not inflict it upon them when not necessary, they will have to stop eating and wearing and shooting animals and so on. They know that I am exposing them as cruel which is not the image of themselves they want. Tough, yes. Cool, yes. Cruel, no. I am about to blow their cover and change their lives and it makes them lash out. This is a purely defensive reaction to the truth, I believe.
JS: Food, scientific research, fashion, entertainment –I know that the horrors animals endure are endless in each of these industries. But could you clarify briefly what is it about each one that you are working to change. Let’s begin with food, since some people in Canada have recently died from eating Maple Leaf meats.
IN: PETA and I wish to change the very idea that animal flesh and excretions are food. Perhaps if you were starving in a wilderness and there was no plant matter, no nuts, no fruits, nothing else, and you came across a dead animal, you might eat the flesh to survive, as the passengers in the Andes did to their fellow passengers in that infamous case years ago. But, and I don’t mean to be Biblical here, the human body flourishes on every living seed, fruit, vegetable, legume, nut, pulse, grain and withers inside and out and becomes sick and diseased when it is fed flesh and milk and those cholesterol bombs, eggs.
JS: What about the scientific research industry? I’ve always been troubled by the carte blanche given to the scientific community and the lack of ethical accountability demanded of them.
IN: Science has achieved some useful and spectacular things, but animal experiments have not contributed at all to these gains as any honest medical historian will admit. The breakthroughs in medicine like anaesthesiology, sterilization, the new vaccines, have all come without animal use as animal use takes us in the wrong direction. The search for a magic pill to obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer, to name a few, allows people to ignore the cause of those diseases, i.e. their meat and dairy based diets and lack of exercise and fresh air, and yet the pills only abate symptoms. Animal experimentation isn’t science, it’s like witchcraft, the dark and dirty side to exploration for knowledge, and it is patently dishonest and a waste of resources. While human drug addicts go without treatment, the elderly go without adequate care, the blind have to make do unless they are rich, and so on, the government gives welfare handouts to animal experiments to blind, addict, and otherwise harm animals who, while like us in being able to experience pain, fear and the desire to get out of a metal cage, are unlike us physiologically in almost every way. Wonderful researchers like those at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (pcrm.org) conduct ethical research with human patients and make life-saving findings.
JS: It’s always seemed perverse to me that animals must suffer so people might wear some usually asinine fashions and cosmetics -and I read recently that fur might be becoming a popular item again. How’s it going on that front?
IN: Most kids today wouldn’t touch fur with a 10 foot pole. It is also no longer a luxury item. It is something prostitutes wear. We get tons of coats sent in from people who haven’t worn them in years, out of shame that they ever had them and are digging them out of storage to donate as wildlife bedding and for us to send to refugees in Afghanistan and Serbia for the winter. With the exception of bad boy designers who love to titillate and shock by putting whole animals on their models’ heads and so on, and some of hip-hop’s excesses, the biggest threat is really from China producing cheap fur that many people don’t even know is real fur. Because China is the biggest producer of fur (meaning the largest killer of animals for it), no matter what the label says (for fur that originates in China may be made into a garment or glove lining in Italy or Mexico), much of the fur on the shelves and racks of stores in North America – bits that you think are just a bit of fake around a coat cuff or jacket collar or made into a cat toy – is from real dogs and cats and other animals slaughtered in China. It’s quite frightening really!
JS: Toronto and our own Hamilton have each allowed a rodeo in the past year. So please explain to our citizens how animals suffer in rodeos and other forms of entertainment.
IN: We have a poster with a sexy Dallas cheerleader on it and the slogan, “No one likes an 8 second ride.” Well, that goes double if you have a strap cinched around your genitals, I’d imagine. I’ve inspected rodeos and seen what goes on behind the scenes, especially that electric shock prod that makes the “bucking broncho” buck just as he comes out of the shoot. One of the most pathetic events is goat roping or calf roping: these small animals, attached by a person on horseback armed with a lasso, get slammed to the ground at about 30 plus miles an hour, tearing their cartilage and their skin loose from their bones and causing massive hemorrhaging. They break limbs. All the animals with broken and chipped bones exist without pain relief, they are simply sent to the slaughter. The rodeo began when cowboys with nothing looked around, saw the animals and thought, “Hey, let’s make a game out of harassing them!” Today, you’d think a person would be embarrassed to amuse themselves in the same way, knowing what we know about animals’ feelings.
JS: Where does hunting fit in? Because the hunter risks nothing, it seems so gutless, yet we have this macho aura attached to an alleged sport that doesn’t allow one side to retaliate.
IN: You know it is just permission to be violent, to act out aggression, to feel big about yourself. I have to laugh seeing the trucks hunters drive and their bumper stickers. They are such obvious statements about the need to compensate. If you read hunting magazines, as an outsider, it is disturbing how they have to puff themselves up in the face of…a dove who weighs a few ounces, or a vegetarian grazing deer who can only flee when shot. I believe they all need urgently psychiatric counseling and looking after, I honestly do. Of course, recent studies have shown that some people’s brains do not develop the “empathy centre,” or “mirror neuron” necessary for them to feel empathy, and that means trouble for us all. I’d give hunters a wide berth and try to outlaw any such activity near your home, schools, anywhere living beings of any species congregate.
JS: In fact, let me quote last week’s Sunday Observer to you: “Paedophiles are increasingly targeting babies and children too young to speak…Police say the scale of the threat is ‘massive.’” It seems that one thing some humans seem to prefer, and this certainly proves true in all forms of animal abuse, is a helpless victim who won’t fight back, one whom they can torture and thus fulfill, without consequence, some sort of need in them. Your turn….
IN: Yes, of course. We see that with all the school shooters and serial killers, they first picked on animals, decapitating cats, shooting dogs with BB guns, hunting was their passion. The problem we are told is that no one stopped them early on. That’s why there must never be a shrug and “boys will be boys” attitude about cruelty to animals at an early age or any age.
JS: How do you compel members of our society to consider the ethical treatment of animals when many people prefer cliché to difficult truth, escape to encounter, easy simplification to complexity, conformity of all kinds to personal courage, and diversion to self-awareness?
IN: You can only do your best. We know society is besotted by sex, conflict and so on, so we use the scantily clad Lettuce Ladies, in the “mock fights” in which our bikini babes wrestle in tofu, etc., to carry the messages that a saner world would be one where we could discuss with people sensibly. That said, we have everything from scientific papers to billboards to speeches on DVD to peta.org and peta2.org for younger people with videos and recipes and freebies to replace dissection, leather, you name it, facts, the works, something for everyone. The important thing when you have a social cause is to keep plugging away, to try almost anything, to put up materials on bulletin boards, talk to people, people what they don’t know via your email.
JS: How do you get individual people to take on the ethical issues you present as personally relevant to themselves and significantly change their behaviour accordingly?
IN: You remind them that they say they believe that might doesn’t make right, that kindness is a virtue, that they care about the Earth and that there is no reason for them to lose control over their lives. I write books like Making Kind Choices, and PETA gives out videos and has massive resources it distributes.
JS: Speaking of clichés, India has a reputation as a spiritual country that reveres life, yet some of your own transforming experiences that made you an activist happened there when you witnessed cruelty to animals. What exactly happened and how did you change as a result?
IN: I grew up from the time I was 8 to 16 in India and saw hideous cruelty on the street, in the open, unlike here where it is hidden tidily away. I rescued dogs who were sorely abused, one whose mouth had been packed with mud and tied shut; bullocks who had sticks rammed up into their rectums to keep them moving when they were too tired to go another step but the pain moved them on. In India, where most of the leather you see in North America originates, the cruelty to cattle transported for slaughter, and in the slaughterhouses where dull knives are used to saw through their throats and even children participate, is beyond anything you can imagine. To say there is reverence for cows in India is true, but it is like saying Christianity forbids adultery and theft and rape and murder and so there is none of that in our countires.
JS: One could hypothesize many reasons why humans need to feel superior or special and thus free to use or abuse other forms of life. In my own experience, I’ve had native elders, academics, and followers of several religions tell me that “animals were created for man’s use.” Why is it so hard for people to see that they are one species among many and not as special as they pretend or assume?
IN: Of course, whites used to think and be proud to say so that blacks were made for their use and could be kept in chains; that they were dumb and unfeeling. People with disabilities were openly mocked on the street by educated people. The gentry lined up to see “freaks” in traveling shows. It’s the same ignorance and wish not to recognize that we are like them, the same fear that it will debase us to be like others. Just as many men panicked at the thought of women doctors because it would rob them of their superiority, at women voting, etc., so now many humans panic at the thought that they will be somehow no “better” than these others. It is demoralizing to them, reduces them in their own eyes, but very sad and silly, as history shows us so well.
JS: Man often puts himself on a pedestal of sorts as a creature of reason as compared with other animals who supposedly function by instinct alone. At the same time, this rational creature has contributed immensely to the ecological disasters we are about to face. I guess I am asking about the myth of human superiority and the assumption of reason as a human driving force.
IN: The rest of the animal kingdom lives on earth without despoiling it, we are the only animal who has taken a buzzsaw to our own nest. Look at Alaska, inhabited for millennia by billions of animals from tree frogs to bears and was pristine, now….
Nothing really to say except people need to open their eyes, stop consuming, take responsibility, or just carry on as they have and it will all be gone, gone, gone.
JS: PETA has been criticized for euthanizing animals for whom it could not find acceptable living conditions. Please clarify PETA’s position.
IN: I would rather euthanize any animal than put them on the street, give them to a slow death in research, “adopt” them out to “live” on a chain in a backyard with no companionship and no one noticing their illnesses, etc. We adopt animals out when we can, like all the little hurricane dogs, because people rallied, but usually we refer all placeable dogs and cats and other animals to shelters. We take in the broken, unadoptable, unsocialized, aged, diseased animals when people no longer want them, no one wants them, they are tired and worn down and sick and want only a peaceful release in the arms of a loving person. We deal with people who cannot afford the astronomical vet fee for euthanasia as well. But, we save more animals than almost anyone as we also run two mobile spay/neuter clinics for the indigent, and we pay for life-saving surgery for some guardians who do love their animals but who can’t truly afford to pay, and so on.
JS: I started to watch the documentary about you and PETA, and, like many, couldn’t handle the graphic footage of animals being tortured in labs and factories. Naturally I feel overwhelmed, naturally I feel guilty, because I do very little to stop this suffering. What would you say to me and others who feel as I do?
IN: I say you do not have to watch because you do things to ameliorate the suffering, to educate. But anyone who says, “I love my steak too much to watch,” must watch. It is for those who have altered their lives to reduce suffering who must compel others who haven’t to watch. You don’t have to watch, you have to show. Use the videos as an email signature, leave the peta.org site up on college computers, show them outside on the sidewalk when the circus comes to town or just any day you can. That is our job.
JS: You’re an atheist who shows repeated and active courage in your reverence for life while some people, on the other hand, use religion and spirituality as what seems a self-indulgent means of escape from ethical responsibility or as a justification for their own inertia. They say they are pursuing spiritual goals but at the same time do nothing about the cruelty in the world. Any comments?
IN: In my new book, One Can Make a Difference, the Dalai Lama says it best. He says that no matter what your religion, compassion should be your religion. To me, that’s the one that counts.
JS: Tell me about the purpose and progress of your spay and neuter program.
IN: You can’t cure homelessness for dogs and cats by finding this one home, and that one home. The flow of unwanteds is too enormous. We must cut the flow off at its source. That’s where the clinics come in. They are no to low cost. We spay about 30-60 animals a day, every day, and still can’t keep up. There need to be fleets and fleets of clinics. Meanwhile, we pour funds into begging people to spay and neuter their animals for the animals’ sake (it helps prevent cancers, frustration, etc) and also for theirs (puppies and kittens are hard to find homes for, they need shots and lots of care, there may be expensive complications for the mother during birth), and also for all the homeless animals in shelters because every home you fill by breeding a litter means that’s the same number of dogs or cats who will be killed because you took the places in homes they needed.
JS: You maintain that “animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment.” Are all people ultimately capable of getting your meaning here and changing as a result? What about those who can’t or won’t?
IN: There are still people who hate blacks, still people who only behave properly because society compels them to. We don’t need everyone to agree to change an atrocity, we just need to get the fence-sitters to understand the importance of justice for animals and come on over and join those of us who already believe that -then we have the majority.
JS: What matters most to you in life and in the world? How often do you find people who share your views?
IN: Being kind, being kind and being kind. Almost everyone in the world shares some of my views. Only sociopaths have no feelings, the rest of humanity cares about whatever they have been taught to care about, or what they have learned to expand their horizons to care about. When I was younger, although I thought I was kind, I was busy eating my way through the animal kingdom, I wore foxes and even had a huge squirrel coat, and I rode horses. I am grateful to all those who opened my eyes, got me to think about how I was conducting myself and how it did not comport with who I thought I was, opened my heart to the enormity of animal suffering, and showed me the wonderful options we have whenever we buy, eat, clothe or entertain ourselves. I probably have a long way to go but I would hate to have died as the old me.
JS: Because you are inspirational to many people, I wonder who inspires you to continue.
JS: The animals whose eyes show their pain, their hope, their despair, their love, their dependence on our actions. The lonely dogs who will this winter be left out in the freezing cold on their chains. The animals being skinned alive and looking up through their lashes in the Chinese fur markets. The chickens crying out and struggling to right themselves on the slaughter line. And the knowledge that if I can change, anyone can. I am inspired by the poet, Rabindranath Tagore, who wrote, “I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.”
JS: Finally, Ingrid, when are you coming to speak in Hamilton?
One day, I hope!