The landscape of veganism has changed dramatically since the 1980s when Ingrid Newkirk co-founded the American animal rights organisation PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) with fellow activist Alex Pacheco.
For one, people no longer think that vegans are people from Las Vegas. For the past four decades, Newkirk has placed herself at the centre of the fight for animal rights, running onto a field in Pennsylvania to stop an annual pigeon shoot and flour-bombing fashion designers to protest their use of fur— among a vast array of other performances.
Her tactics have been described as ‘radical’ and ‘extremist’ — a label which Newkirk calls “backwards”.
“It’s pretty radical to take a chicken who’s sensitive and sweet, who values her freedom and life, and slit her throat for a snack,” Newkirk told Women’s Agenda.
“It’s pretty extreme to seize a mother monkey from the forest and use her to produce babies who will have electrodes put in their heads for psychology experiments.”
The controversial founder celebrated her 75th earlier this month by driving through Chicago in a life-size pig transport truck covered with images of real pigs crammed into crates on their way to slaughter. The truck blared real-life recorded sounds of pigs screaming — in true PETA style.
“We disturb people’s comfort to show them how their habits are exploitative and get them to realise that they may be – even inadvertently – contributing to harm and slaughter,” Newkirk said.
“That may be met with censure or defensiveness from some quarters, but so be it. Time has shown us that eventually, they’ll accept that they can do better and be kinder.”
It’s this hope for a kinder planet that keeps Newkirk motivated.
“Those who push against the status quo are, at first, usually mocked and derided,” she said. “But we’re not here to win a popularity contest. We’re here to stop suffering and spread understanding of why all living, feeling beings deserve our respect and consideration. We push against the status quo because it’s based on animal exploitation.”
Below, we share our recent interview with Newkirk, where she discussed her long legacy of animal advocacy, gendered differences in veganism and her hopes for the future.
You’ve been campaigning for animal rights and veganism since the 1980s. What strategy changes have you made over the years in trying to bring awareness of PETA’s mission to the public?
A picture is worth 1,000 words and a video a million, and we went from openly taking photographs in the 1980s to gathering footage through hidden cameras and posting videos to YouTube and TikTok – each shift improving how we reach the public. We went from handing out leaflets on street corners and setting up tables outside grocery stores (which we still do) to utilising the internet to send out hundreds of thousands of vegan starter kits, which are now downloadable, too.
The media landscape has changed: once, we were able to debate an issue for an hour in an appearance on a national TV talk show, but today, there are dozens of networks and specialised news outlets. We must compete to appear before audiences using quick soundbites instead of in-depth discussion. And our campaigns progress. We used to lie down in front of fur stores, but now fur is dead, so we’re pushing fashion shows to go completely animal-free by banning wool, leather, angora, and feathers.
We take time to analyse, brainstorm, and deliberate over our approaches and make adjustments where needed. We use humour, sex, and gimmicks – whatever is effective – to get eyes on animal suffering and provoke discussion at the dinner table, in schools, and in industry and academia.
Fighting for animal rights is evidently emotionally and psychologically taxing – how do you, as a woman, stay optimistic and motivated in your fight for a vegan planet?
I have the luxury of being able to look back a long way, as I’m 75 now. I was one of the first female deputy sheriffs in the United States, and all my colleagues were men who lifted weights. I was the first female poundmaster of the DC animal shelter, and all my employees were male. It’s never bothered me, because when you’re right, you’re right, and I have the same conviction that I had in those jobs as I have in this one – that animals are not ours to abuse in any way.
I do think that women are stronger emotionally than many men, and while perhaps less robust physically, we make up for it in perseverance and long-haul stamina. I’m very optimistic, having seen all the changes that we’ve made and that society has made in all areas of women’s, civil, and animal rights, so I’m determined to make more!
Some research has shown that veganism tends to be a lifestyle practised by more woman than men. Why do you think this is?
Even though the world is changing, some insecure or unthinking men still cling onto the old-fashioned idea that they need to eat meat to be macho. They can be afraid to change or even consider it. I have to laugh when a man says he loves meat too much to give it up, invariably in a deep, bass voice and striking a pose as if he’s in a drama and this is his role. We tackle this “traditional masculinity” by poking fun at it and pointing out the serious consequences of a non-vegan diet, like erectile disfunction at an early age – just look at Viagra sales!
Some men may try to show other men that they’re tough. They feel threatened at the thought of appearing more sensitive (even though sensitivity is actually a sign of greater awareness), so they try to show that they are bullies by trophy hunting, rodeo riding, and telling stories of how big the fish they caught was. But we meet this with facts and spotlight the exceptional athletes, like Lewis Hamilton, who are thriving eating vegan. Of course, women are often the ones doing the shopping and cooking and feeding their children, so it makes sense that women – traditionally the nurturers – are more apt at making good decisions regarding food.
In the early 2000s, roughly between 1-3 per cent of the planet’s population followed a vegan diet. Some recent studies have revealed similar figures. Is this a useful metric upon which to measure the impact of PETA?
I think a better metric is to consider what was available to eat, wear, buy, and entertain ourselves with a decade ago compared to now.
Elephants were still used in circuses, there was no leather made from pineapples or mushrooms or organs-on-a-chip technology or whole human DNA available on the internet, and interactive virtual reality was in its infancy. Ever greater numbers of people are choosing plant-based foods to benefit animals, the climate, and their health – whether they identify as vegan or not, and I think most do not. And as more and more people ditch animal-derived foods, ingredients, and materials, we’ll continue to see companies launch new products, clothing, and make-up that are animal-friendly – and consumers will be more inspired than ever to choose them.
Having fought for a vegan planet for decades, has your own personal relationship to its ideologies shifted over the years?
Today, I’m grateful to anyone doing anything good. I’m incensed that career experimenters view other animals – we are animals, too – as theirs to abduct, stick in a metal box, and experiment on, depriving them of everything important to them, causing them stress, operating on them, and eventually killing them, just because they’re not human. Science shows that animals feel fear, grieve over the loss of their families, and crave freedom and comfort, yet these experimenters ignore all this as if it weren’t fact.
I’m more determined than ever to revolutionise how research is conducted and expose the hideously callous, ethically devoid people who conduct animal experiments. Of course, there are numerous issues that I’m passionate about, such as getting people to ditch their cheese addiction – cheese contains casomorphins, which cause cravings – as it supports an industry that subjects mothers to lives of desperation and misery and orphans calves.
What is your general response to those who accused veganism of being a lifestyle inextricably linked to class and race privilege?
This is total twaddle, on both counts. First, governments support the meat industry by giving it subsidies to fund its operations and mandating that schools and other public institutions buy its products, but it’s still more expensive (and boring!) to buy animal-derived foods than what many call “peasant food” – beans and rice, spaghetti and sauce, rice and curry, and other such foods that people all around the world embrace.
There’s no need to buy ludicrous things like asparagus water at $12 a pop. And a recent survey showed that more Black people than white are eating vegan and sharing vegan recipes and spreading the lifestyle in other ways. Second, dairy is a major factor in anaemia, and plant foods like spinach, kale, broccoli, and nuts have more digestible calcium than cows’ milk.
People say or believe things because they want an excuse to carry on doing something they know they shouldn’t or their doctor is too ignorant of nutrition to set them on the right path. You can get sick on a vegan diet if it’s all fried foods, processed cakes, and fatty vegan cheese, but if you eat halfway reasonably and include veggies, fruits, grains, legumes, and beans in your diet, you are miles ahead of anyone eating cholesterol-laden, fat-filled, and fibreless meat, eggs, and dairy!
What gets you up in the morning?
The offices that wake up hours before the US opens and have a list of questions they want answering. Plus, I know opportunities to change things for animals await me, so I never sleep in. Never!
What are you hoping to achieve in the next decade?
Getting all young people to realise that they never have to experiment on a single hair on an animal’s head to work in science, research, or medicine, because that is primitive and speciesist – and they must progress or be left in the dust. I see clothing made from animals going the way of the fur industry: one day, no more crocodiles will be kept in stinking pits of their own waste and hacked apart for a pair of boots or a watch strap and no sensitive young ostriches will be killed for feather boas. The rise of plant milks will continue until there are no dairy factory farms full of grieving cow mothers and crated calves.