Interview Transcript
Question: How do they compare?
Ingrid Newkirk: To me asking how to compare human life to animal life is asking the same question of the ‘60s – is how to compare a woman’s life to a man’s life. It used to be that people said, “Women will never be doctors. They’ll faint if you ever showed them into an operating room. They can’t take the sight of blood. And they’re too stupid to make a decision. You can’t give them the vote.” And these sorts of things that used to be thought. It used to be editorial comment in some of the finest newspapers in the land. So I believe that we have to step away from saying, “What’s the competition here?” and say, “What’s the cooperation here?” It’s that animals aren’t things. They aren’t inanimate. That’s where animal comes from – anime, the Latin for “life”. And they have feelings like us. They’re emotional beings. So we’re all into this together.
You know you don’t have to step across a homeless person to feed a starving dog. You don’t have to beat your wife in order to be kind to an animal in a lab. Just look at the whole gamut, the whole array of options and think we are one animal. They’re one animal. A man may not be able to do everything a woman can. A woman may not be able to do everything a man can. Maybe physical strength is one. But you can’t circumnavigate the globe the way some birds can without instrumentation. You can’t find your way home without a map the way some animals can. You can’t sniff out a hidden truffle under the ground and nourish yourself. You know we all have different talents and abilities. But the core interest is we all want to live without pain. We all want to live.
We struggle against the knife. We don’t want someone to mug us, capture us, hurt us, take our family away. Those are the things we share. We all fall in love. Birds flirt. You know animals; life mate. Many of them have a better fidelity rate than the moral majority, so we have to think we’re all in this together, not that it’s a competition. And maybe we do have to give up some things that we’ve become used to doing, but that’s a good thing not a bad thing.
Recorded on: November 12, 2007
Human Life v. Animal Life
President, PETA
How do they compare?
February 21, 2008 | In Truth & Justice, Environment
Discuss
Amber Ford on July 4, 2008, 9:20 PM
I agree in theory with what Ingrid is saying, I simply do not believe that PETA practices what Ingrid is preaching. The PETA "victory" against KFC Canada proves this. Here we have a campaign where the "victory" was instead of slitting chickens' throats to kill them, they are gassed to death. Is this taking animal interests seriously PETA?
PETA should be advocating veganism, and stop worrying about how to make animal industries more efficient. Effectively that is what controlled atmospheric killing of chickens does. The CAK method of killing chickens was sold to the chicken killing industry on the premise that it would save the industry money and produce a better product.
I ask, can you serve the interest of animals and animal exploiting industries at the same time? I don't think so. The only effective way to serve animal interests and to be true to the idea that animals deserve the right not to be used as a means to an end by us, is to go vegan. Let the animal exploitation industries try and figure out how to make their own model more efficient.
Amber Ford on July 5, 2008, 1:20 AM
I agree in theory with what Ingrid is saying, I simply do not believe that PETA practices what Ingrid is preaching. The PETA “victory” against KFC Canada proves this. Here we have a campaign where the “victory” was instead of slitting chickens’ throats to kill them, they are gassed to death. Is this taking animal interests seriously PETA?
PETA should be advocating veganism, and stop worrying about how to make animal industries more efficient. Effectively that is what controlled atmospheric killing of chickens does. The CAK method of killing chickens was sold to the chicken killing industry on the premise that it would save the industry money and produce a better product.
I ask, can you serve the interest of animals and animal exploiting industries at the same time? I don’t think so. The only effective way to serve animal interests and to be true to the idea that animals deserve the right not to be used as a means to an end by us, is to go vegan. Let the animal exploitation industries try and figure out how to make their own model more efficient.
Jonathan Frank on August 26, 2008, 8:23 PM
I agree, Ingrid.
To the commenter above me:
PeTA thinks that CAK is better for animals because it minimizes the pain and suffering that the animals have to endure. The fact that it's more efficient and less costly to the industry is just something that helps to switch over to it.
I hate that the animals have to die, however, preaching vegetarianism for all, and ignoring the fact that chickens are have their throats slit and are scalded to death and have to die such a horrible death, but not looking into more compassionate ways of killing them, isn't a very intelligent thing to do.
PeTA is doing everything in their power to reduce the amount of suffering that animals go through and are helping to phase in an era of compassion where NO animals have to suffer, NO animals have to die, NO animals are exploited, etc…
-Rocko
Jonathan Frank on August 27, 2008, 12:23 AM
I agree, Ingrid.
To the commenter above me:
PeTA thinks that CAK is better for animals because it minimizes the pain and suffering that the animals have to endure. The fact that it’s more efficient and less costly to the industry is just something that helps to switch over to it.
I hate that the animals have to die, however, preaching vegetarianism for all, and ignoring the fact that chickens are have their throats slit and are scalded to death and have to die such a horrible death, but not looking into more compassionate ways of killing them, isn’t a very intelligent thing to do.
PeTA is doing everything in their power to reduce the amount of suffering that animals go through and are helping to phase in an era of compassion where NO animals have to suffer, NO animals have to die, NO animals are exploited, etc…
-Rocko
Add a Comment
You must be logged in to comment. Log in or Register