Why was Grant Lingel in Washington, D.C.? For the same reason that he stopped by PETA’s office in The District.
To talk about animal rights.
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Lingel is cofounder of Sentient Media, a San Francisco–based nonprofit dedicated to bringing transparency to animal rights and animal welfare issues. His team has written about the toll that animal agriculture takes on animals, the environment, and our health; the cruelty of the meat, dairy, and fur industries; the suffering of geese and ducks during the production of foie gras; the growing popularity of plant-based meats; and the way vegan eating can help end cruelty to animals.
So when the Animal Rights National Conference was held recently just outside D.C. in Alexandria, Lingel was on hand to join PETA’s Kathy Guillermo and Shalin Gala, United Poultry Concerns President Karen Davis, and other advocates from all fields at the rostrum.
He also visited the Nanci Alexander Center for Animal Rights, where he had lunch with PETA President Ingrid Newkirk and other staffers and sat in on a staff meeting.
There was plenty to discuss.
Sentient Media recently started Animal Matters, a series of video interviews featuring Lingel and Glenn Greenwald—a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, cofounding editor of The Intercept, and founder of Abrigo Hope, an animal sanctuary in Rio de Janeiro—that addresses “the political, moral, cultural, and economic considerations” of any issue involving animals.
Speciesism—the focus of a nationwide PETA campaign—has been on Lingel’s radar, too.
In a post titled “Speciesism: What It Is and Why It Needs to End Now,” he wrote, “The very nature of a speciesist attitude or someone that, actively or not, is a speciesist, contributes to the use of animals as if they are on this planet specifically for humans.”
Now that’s food for thought.
