Ingrid Newkirk
Ingrid Newkirk
Ingrid E. Newkirkis an English-born British-American animal rights activist and the president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the world's largest animal rights organization. She is the author of several books, including Making Kind Choicesand The PETA Practical Guide to Animal Rights: Simple Acts of Kindness to Help Animals in Trouble. Newkirk has worked for the animal-protection movement since 1972. Under her leadership in the 1970s as the District of Columbia's first female poundmaster, legislation was passed to...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionActivist
Date of Birth11 June 1949
When I hear of anyone walking into a lab and walking out with animals, my heart sings.
Even painless research is fascism, supremacism, because the act of confinement is traumatizing in itself.
That's what the Nazis did, isn't it? Treated those "others" they thought subhuman by making them lab subjects and so on. Even the Nazis didn't eat the objects of their derision.
PETA's campaign should be included in school curricula. If we can open children's hearts and minds to animals' needs, teach them to treat a dog or a chicken as if they feel fear and love and pain - as they do - then they will grow up to understand that we are all worthy of respect.
[I believe] that animals have a worth in and of themselves, and that they are not inferior to human beings but rather just different from us, and that they really don't exist for us nor do they belong to us...it should not be a question of how they should be treated within the context of their usefulness, or perceived usefulness, to us, but rather whether we have a right to use them at all.
One hates to be absolute, but in my view, there is no such thing as humane meat.
U.K. citizens fleeing the Middle East and Japan have been allowed to take their animal companions with them on evacuation flights. The U.S. is not so civilized, and that's a blot on our national copybook.