26 Facts About Ingrid Newkirk

Ingrid Elizabeth Newkirk is a British-American animal activist and the president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the world's largest animal rights organization.

Ingrid Newkirk is the author of several books, including The PETA Practical Guide to Animal Rights: Simple Acts of Kindness to Help Animals in Trouble and Animalkind: Remarkable Discoveries About Animals and Revolutionary New Ways to Show Them Compassion.

Since then, Ingrid Newkirk has led campaigns to stop the use of animals in crash tests, convinced companies to stop testing cosmetics on animals, pressed for higher welfare standards from the meat industry, and organized undercover investigations that have led to government sanctions against companies, universities, and entertainers who use animals.

Ingrid Newkirk is known, in particular, for the media stunts that she organizes to draw attention to animal-protection issues.

Ingrid Newkirk has been criticized for her support of actions carried out in the name of the Animal Liberation Front.

Ingrid Newkirk spent her early years in the Orkney Islands, Scotland and in Ware, Hertfordshire.

Ingrid Newkirk's father was a navigational engineer, and when she was seven, the family moved to New Delhi, India, where her father worked for the government, while her mother volunteered for Mother Teresa in a leper colony and a home for unwed mothers.

Ingrid Newkirk attended a convent boarding school in the Himalayas for well-to-do Indian nationals and non-natives.

Ingrid Newkirk tells the story of an early experience of trying to rescue an animal, when she heard laughter in the alleyway behind the family home in New Delhi.

Ingrid Newkirk asked her servant to bring the dog to her, and tried to get him to drink some water, but someone had packed his throat with mud, and he died in her arms.

Ingrid Newkirk told the Financial Times that it was a turning point.

Until she was 21, Ingrid Newkirk had given no thought to animals rights or even vegetarianism.

Ingrid Newkirk took a job in the kennels, witnessing the mistreatment of the animals, including physical abuse.

Kathy Snow Guillermo writes that Ingrid Newkirk disinfected kennels by day, and by night studied animal care, animal behavior, and animal-cruelty investigations.

Ingrid Newkirk blew the whistle on the shelter and became an animal-protection officer, first for Montgomery County, Maryland, then for the District of Columbia.

Ingrid Newkirk became DC's first female poundmaster, persuading the city to fund veterinary services and to set up an adoption program, an investigations department, and a pet sterilization program.

In 1980, Ingrid Newkirk met Alex Pacheco in a DC shelter where he was working as a volunteer.

Ingrid Newkirk has said that Singer had put into words what she had felt intuitively for a long time, and she called Pacheco "Alex the Abdul", a name given to messengers in Muslim stories.

Ingrid Newkirk was older, practical, and very organized, whereas Pacheco spent his time in white painter's overalls eating vegetarian hot dogs straight from the can.

In mid-1981, Pacheco took a job as a volunteer inside the Institute of Behavioral Research in Silver Spring, Maryland, so that he and Ingrid Newkirk would have some firsthand knowledge on which to base their campaigns.

Ingrid Newkirk had cut sensory ganglia that supplied nerves to their arms and legs, then used physical restraint, electric shock, and withholding of food to force them to use the limbs.

Ingrid Newkirk lay crouched on the back seat of a car outside, hidden under a large cardboard box with holes for her eyes, using a walkie-talkie from a toy store to alert Pacheco if anyone else entered the building.

Ingrid Newkirk has been criticized for publicizing actions carried out in the name of the Animal Liberation Front.

Ingrid Newkirk has been accused of having had advance knowledge of one ALF action.

Ingrid Newkirk has had celebrity friends and admirers who have spoken highly of her.

Ingrid Newkirk has been accused of employing a double standard for her organization's practice of euthanizing animals for which it has neither the space nor resources to shelter.