My Interview With Peta 1

I recently had a modest interview with Ingrid Newkirk, founder of. It  is for a bilingual, English and Chinese, vegan magazine in Hong Kong, called GoVeg. The interview will be in the next issue scheduled to be published in a few weeks.(I will post a link to the online version of GoVeg with the article later, so keep posted if you are interested.)

When you write something, you always keep in mind the readers. For who do you write, and what is the purpose of the article. In the case of this interview, the readers are average vegans and regular non vegan people. And the purpose of the article is simply to write a general positive article about world’s most famous animal rights group Peta, and so promote vegan issues and animal rights in general to a Chinese speaking audience.

This interview wasn’t meant to be an in depth interview with critical questions, simply because there was no space for such a long interview, and it wasn’t the purpose of the article. And I also prefer to write a positive and stimulating article to a big audience, and not some intellectual critical article that easily can be misunderstood and be viewed as anti Peta, which in turn has a negative impact on animal rights in general.

But here on my personal blog with only a few visitors a day and visitors that are more up to date and 

informed about vegan and animal rights issues, I really want to write more about Peta and the interview.

Why? For starters, Ingrid urges us, vegans, to go and eat veggie burgers in McDonalds. And not only eat but also “buy them (veggie burgers from McDonalds) for all your friends and people you know in business or at school.” HOLY CRAPOLA!!! 

Silly me was hoping that Ingrid would promote vegan restaurants but instead she urges the readers of a vegan magazine to go next time eat at McDonalds!! 

If all vegans out there seriously take Ingrid’s advice, vegan restaurants would be out of business in a few months. Not theoretically but. Literally.

Again, it wasn’t supposed to be an in depth interview and also the space for the interview in the printed version of GoVeg is limited, so I didn’t ask some follow up questions to dig deeper, but I feel I have to go deeper on this issue (“should we spend our vegan dollars in non vegan restaurants that serve one or more vegan dishes?”) on my personal blog here.

So I decided that I won’t take a critical attitude about Peta when writing to a general audience, because that would be misunderstood by the general public who have little background or knowledge about veganism and animal rights, and so could harm animal rights in general, but that my own blog that is only visited by serious vegans who know the issues, indeed would be the right place to “dig deeper” on certain issues.

For the next weeks I intend to write more about my recent thoughts about Peta, like, the AMAZING advice from Ingrid to eat at McDonalds (I am confused, doesn’t Peta has a campaign called “McCruelty” that urges us to BOYCOT McDonald???), and like, instead of donating to big professional organizations like Peta who are high in the sky and are financially secured by rich and famous sponsors who donate millions, maybe it is time to send our modest donations to local grass roots groups who financially struggle, who don’t have friends in high society with a big wallet, who are “naive” and “idealistic”, but would jump in the sky when you donate 100us$. Back To Grassroots, that is what I say, in one of my next articles. If you are one of those vegan people that regularly donate to Peta or other established animal rights organizations, I dare you to read the article and agree with me and next time send your pesos to your local grassroots, OR come with counter arguments and convince me to send MY donation to Peta next time.