Passion, EThics, and Action

Peta's Ingrid Newkirk: making the fury fly | World news | The Observer: "There's something maddening about arguing with Ingrid Newkirk, but then she's a provocateur. It's what she does. And it's what Peta, built in her image, does. It's why battery chickens are depicted in concentration camps and why last year she launched a legal case that named five Orcas as plaintiffs and sued SeaWorld for enslavement. (It failed, but she's surprisingly upbeat about it. The judge, she says, didn't simply throw it out, as he could have done. He was very "respectful" and heard the lawyers out. "It failed, but all the slavery cases fail when they're first brought.")

Newkirk's argument is that if you're against slavery, it doesn't matter who is being enslaved. She is completely confident that one day we will look back on this as the dark ages. And, when she gets in full spate, describing the way that chickens are crushed en route to slaughter, their wings broken, the pain and inhumane conditions that they suffer, I find it hard to deny that she has a point.
What have you made of the horsemeat scandal, I ask her, and her eyes light up. "There's this sentimental view that we don't want to eat horse. I've been in horse slaughterhouses, chicken, cow slaughterhouses, a dog slaughterhouse in Taiwan and none them wants to go down the ramp. They all kick. They all struggle. They're all petrified. It's purely sentimental.""