Did you know that sheep are far from mindless creatures? In fact, they have remarkable memory and recognition skills – they can recognize over twenty other human beings and other sheep from photographs. Have you heard how sheep in Asia have learnt through observation to operate water pumps using their horns? But have you also heard that humans have bred sheep to grow thicker wool, and that this unnatural overload of wool causes many sheep to suffer unnecessarily, often enduring extremely cruel conditions, all in the name of profit?
Listen as NYK host, Kathryn, and Ingrid Newkirk – British animal rights activist and the president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the world’s largest animal rights organization – reflect on the history and future of veganism, discuss the scale of animals killed for food and products, and speak passionately about the intelligence, sentience and complex behaviours of animals.
Over the last few decades, Newkirk’s contribution to improving animal welfare and protection has been nothing short of remarkable, and has been an inspiration to animal lovers the world over. Newkirk has spoken out on animal rights issues fearlessly, victoriously leading the charge to, among other achievements, end the auto industry’s use of animals in crash tests, securing the first felony convictions of factory farm workers, convincing businesses to stop practices such as near-drowning of test animals, and just recently convincing over one hundred airports to ban the use of glue traps. Newkirk is the subject of the HBO documentary I am an Animal, and is the recipient of numerous awards including the Peter Singer Prize for Strategies to Reduce the Suffering of Animals (2016), the Ahimsa Award (2014) and the Shining World Compassion Award (2007). Her latest book, Animalkind is now available online and in stores, in multiple languages.
Listen as Kathryn and Newkirk reflect on how veganism has entered the mainstream in recent years, making headway not only in the food industry, but as an all-inclusive lifestyle. Newkirk describes the progress that has been achieved since the early days of soymilk in powder form to the present where there are seemingly countless delicious nut milk products readily available in stores, and addresses how this availability has now started to extend to industries beyond that of food, including fashion, furniture, hardware and car interiors.
Newkirk explains the cruelty involved in farming sheep for wool, even in those places that appear to be idyllic. Kathryn points out that life in the English countryside is not representative of the living conditions of the vast majority of sheep bred for the wool industry. Newkirk elucidates this reality by describing what her investigative teams have uncovered: abusive conditions and mistreatment due to the fast-paced nature of the industry driven to produce, above all, slating animal welfare far below the need to make a profit.
Next, Kathryn questions Newkirk about PETA’s choice to use sensational campaigns to get their messages across to the public. Newkirk explains that such campaigns are by design: a necessary tactic and effective political strategy that has successfully exposed crucial issues of animal abuse to the general public and has resulted in an immeasurable reduction in animal suffering on a global scale. PETA’s campaigns deliberately serve to disrupt and shake the very foundations of industries and governments that continue to turn a blind eye to unethical treatment of animals. In fact, Newkirk points out, it is the result of such tactics that led to PETA’s groundbreaking accomplishment of ending the use of animals in crash tests in the car industry.
Next, Kathryn shifts the conversation to the current problem of the industry’s mass use of leather in vehicle interiors. Newkirk opens our eyes to the fact that it can take up to eight cows to create a single leather interior. There is, however, lots of
