Ingrid Newkirk's Profile
Animal Rights Activist Co-Founder and President of PETA
Ingrid Newkirk is one of the most active animal rights advocate. She has dedicated her life to stop animal abuse around the world.
A passion for animals
Born in England on June11, 1949, Ingrid Newkirk moved early on to New Delhi, India, because of her father’s work. She spent her childhood there and moved in the United States when she was a teenager. She said that she always has felt a strong affinity with animals but only became an activist for animal rights in 1980 when she cofounded PETA with Alex Pacheco one of her colleague from an animal shelter.
Her first encounter with animal abuse came in 1972 in Maryland, when she went to an animal shelter to give away abandonned cats and dogs that she had found and then discovered that only minutes later they were euthanized. She decided to take a job there to help out. She didn’t like the conditions at the shelter and the way that the animals were disposed. She also witnessed a lot of mistreatments to the animals while she was there. She worked at the shelter for a short period and then became an animal investigator for the county and then moved on to become Chief of the Office of Animal-Disease Control in Washington, for the Public Health Commission for the District of Columbia.
The birth of PETA
While working at the shelter she met Alex Pacheco who volunteered there. He gave her a copy of Animal Liberation, a book by Peter Singer. She was inspired by it and they decided together to create PETA (People for Ethical Treatment of Animals). The main goals of PETA was to investigate, publicize and end animal cruelty of all kinds. The first PETA office was located in Ingrid’s basement.
One of the first action of PETA was to do an undercover investigation with an hidden-camera in a research laboratory in Silver Sprin Md, wich leaded to the first-ever arrest and conviction of a scientific under animal cruelty charges.
Since then PETA,under the leadership of Ingrid Newkirk, has exposed thousands of cases of animal cruelty and ran campains against fur, animal testing, animal used for entertainement and many other animal rights issues. Also, Ingrid Newkirk has helped created the first spay/neuter clinic in Washington,DC., and also has helped achieved the first anti-cruelty law in Taiwan.
In 1999, Alex Pacheco, who was the director of the organization, decided to leave PETA but Ingrid Newkirk stayed as President and also as the main voice of the organization itself. PETA now counts 1.6 million members around the world and is the largest animal rights organisation.
Eye opening actions and books
Ingrid Newkirk has always been known as a colurfull caracter. In 2003 she decided to published her own testament and last will in wich she stated that she wanted to have as a final request that part of her flesh according to the press release to be cooked in a “humane barbecue” with the intention to “remind those who eat meat that it is flesh and that no one needs to eat it”.
Ingrid Newkirk is also the author of many books concerning animal rights including “Save the animals! 101 Easy Things You Can Do”; “The Compassionate Cookbook”; “Free the Animals” and “Making Kind Choices” among others.
You can visit her website at www.ingridnewkirk.com
