Ingrid Newkirk

Ingrid Elizabeth Newkirk (born June 11, 1949) is a British-American animal rights activist, author, and co-founder of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the largest animal rights group in the world. She started PETA in March 1980 alongside fellow activist Alex Pacheco. The organization first drew widespread notice in 1981 through the Silver Spring monkeys case, where Pacheco photographed 17 macaque monkeys being used in experiments at a Maryland research facility. That case resulted in the first U.S. police raid on an animal research lab and led to a 1985 change in the Animal Welfare Act. Since then, Newkirk has pushed campaigns against using animals in crash tests, convinced companies to stop testing cosmetics on animals, and conducted undercover investigations that brought government penalties against companies, universities, and entertainers who use animals.

Newkirk has faced criticism for supporting actions taken by the Animal Liberation Front. She and PETA have also been criticized for euthanizing many animals in PETA shelters, including healthy pets, for opposing the concept of pet ownership, and for her statement that “There’s no rational basis for saying that a human being has special rights. A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy,” which some see as advocating for eradication. PETA has responded to these criticisms.

Newkirk was born in Kingston upon Thames, England, in 1949, the only child of Noel Oswald Wodehouse Ward and Mary Patricia Ward. She spent her early years in Scotland’s Orkney Islands and in Ware, Hertfordshire. When she was seven, her father, a navigational engineer, moved the family to New Delhi, India, where he worked for the government and her mother volunteered for Mother Teresa in a leper colony and a home for unwed mothers. Newkirk attended a convent boarding school in the Himalayas for wealthy Indian and non-native students. She later said she was hit and starved by nuns there. She helped her mother at the leper colony, packing pills, rolling bandages, stuffing toys for orphans, and feeding strays, which she says shaped her belief that anyone in need—including animals—deserves concern, along with her mother’s advice that it doesn’t matter who suffers, but how. She recalls an early turning point: hearing laughter behind her family’s home in New Delhi, where a group had bound a dog’s legs, muzzled him, and lowered him