Before becoming involved with PETA in 1996, Bruce Friedrich spent over six years running a shelter for the homeless as well as Washington D.C.'s largest soup kitchen. Once in PETA, Bruce spearheaded some of the most successful campaigns against fast-food restaurants engaging in animal cruelty. In 2003, Detail magazine rated Bruce Friedrich as one of the “50 Most Influential People under 38.” Bruce Friedrich is now on the governing board of the Catholic Vegetarian Society and was a founding member of the Society of Religious and Ethical Vegetarians. Some of his more radical acts of protest include streaking in front of Buckingham Palace shortly before the arrival of then-President George W. Bush and attacking an F-15 fighter plane with “a ball-peen hammer.”

Stanford Progressive: So what is your involvement with the PETA [People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals]?

Bruce Friedrich: I am PETA's Vice President for Policy and Government Affairs. Mostly, that entails working on a range of special projects, dealing with the media, coordinating some of our legislative efforts focused on decreasing the number of animals used in vivisection in laboratories, and changing the way the US government operates vis-a-vis factory farms.

SP: When you refer to animal rights, you obviously don't mean the exact same thing as human rights. For instance, there is no voting. Do animals have inalienable rights, and if so, what are they?

BF: That's an interesting eventual philosophical discussion. Obviously, with animals rights we don't mean the same as human rights like liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Attempting to figure out precisely how one would apply those as inalienable rights to animals is going to be very difficult. What PETA has focused on and what the animal rights movement has focused on is the right of animals not to be eaten, worn, or experimented on (unless it is in their own best interest—similar to experiments which involve human beings), and not to be used as a mean of human amusement. And there are going to be some grey areas. One of the big grey areas right now is the fact that about 8 million animals are dropped off at shelters every year but there are only homes for about 4 million of them. So what do you do with the other 4 million animals? We know that if they were turned loose on the streets most would die horrible deaths. There aren't old feral cats, and thus, right now, until we can create a world in which people are not breeding animals and selling animals, in which everyone is going to a shelter to adopt an animal, it is in those animals best interest to be humanely euthanized. So there are some grey areas, there are some dicey discussions to be had, but at the end of the day eating animals, wearing animals, experimenting on animals—those are pretty easy philosophical and scientific discussions to have.

SP: So we're going to talk about an ideal PETA world in order to peel away some misconceptions. For instance, PETA is not a no-kill shelter due to constraints of society. Let's talk about what the world would be like if PETA could change anything it likes. In an ideal PETA world, would there have been any animal research even if it lead to cures or treatments?

BF: That's sort of like “do your friends know you beat your wife?” Isn't it? If you don't beat your wife how do you answer that question 'yes' or 'no?'

SP: Well, I mean, basically, you could say that you would-

BF: The hypothetical where animal research leads to a cure for things takes a leap. But no, the reality is similar to saying “if you could take back the learning that came from experimentation on human beings would you take back the learning?” You wouldn't take back the learning but you also wouldn't replicate the experiments on human beings, and science has. Look at the [Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments] or you look at the Nazi doctors experimenting on Jews and gypsies. Those experiments were morally reprehensible regardless of what we learned from them.

SP: Should PETA members boycott the use of products derived from animal research—even in the cases of artificial hearts, insulin injections, or radiation therapy?

BF: Well, regardless, there are artificial hearts and insulin and radiation therapy. There isn't any practical value to boycotting the outcome of animal experiments. You're not going to bring back a single animal, you'll just perhaps make your life a little less pleasant. Obviously, from any reasonable evaluative standard...our goal isn't to make some aesthetic point and our goal isn't to be philosophically pure; our goal is to make the world a kinder place. It would be like saying “the white house was built by slaves, should Barack Obama figure out someplace else to live?” Of course not. He would prefer it had not been built by slaves, but the fact that he lives there does not mean he supports slavery.

SP: Alright, well, since I guess you aren't as fond of counter-factuals, we can stay away from the ideal PETA world. You actually addressed a question earlier I wanted to get into. When I was going around campus and talking to people, what they always brought up was a report filed by Daphna Nachminovitch, PETA's Vice President of Cruelty Investigations, which says that PETA took in around 8,362 pets during 2007. The majority of these animals, 6,361 were taken to be sterilized and held until claimed by their owner. In terms of releasing animals, 75% of animals were reclaimed by their owner. Less than one percent, 17 animals, were adopted in 2007. Of the remaining 1,896 animals, 95% were euthanized. You already addressed this a little, but what societal pressures have contributed to PETA taking this policy?

BF: The thing about those figures is “adoptable animals” we send to shelters. We don't have an adoption program, and there five shelters in a ten mile radius of our office, so if we take in an adoptable animal for something other than spaying or neutering we send the animal to one of the shelters—which is where people who want to adopt an animal will go. The animals who we euthanize are not adoptable. All of the shelters in our area are also euthanizing, so I guess we could send all the animals that come to us to the shelters so we don't have to do the dirty work… but that doesn't make any sense. We have the capacity to euthanize, we can give the animals a humane death, and we adopt a few animals out if somebody on staff decides they want to adopt an animal—or we have PETA members who say “when you get a dog or a cat we'd like to adopt them.” We facilitate that, but all the other adoptable animals go to shelter.

SP: Well, I'm looking at these numbers and along with the adopted list there is a list of animals transferred to either another Virginia leasing agency or somewhere out of state [note: PETA headquarters are in Virginia]. Those numbers still total up to only 35.

BF: That's because through our community animal project, the vast majority of the animals they save…right now on PETA's homepage there is a “why we euthanize” link, and if you click on that link you will see the sorts of animals who come into our care. It is rare that we are in Virginia or North Carolina and we find an animal who is healthy and who the owner wants to surrender. I guess according to those numbers it happened 35 times, but usually the animals who owners want to surrender are emaciated or they are covered in parasites or they have their collars dug into their skin or some other reason. People are not coming to PETA to drop off [healthy] animals. If they wanted to drop off animals, they would drop their animal off at a shelter. The animals who we end up taking in are animals we find in duress.

SP: Alright, but it seems the majority of the animals you take in were taken in for sterilization, and then held to be reclaimed by owners—as opposed to being surrendered by owners. That would be-

BF: Yes, we have a spay and neuter clinic, so the vast majority of animals with whom we interact are the animals who are there for spaying or neutering. The animals who we euthanize, some of those animals come in and are in hideous shape, and we talk to the owners about the fact that they are in hideous shape, and the owners surrender them to us for euthanasia. But most of the animals who are euthanized are animals who we find in the field, or someone makes cruelty complaint and we go to investigate it and we find a dog with a collar embedded in her neck.

SP: According to the same report, over the last three years on average less than 1% of the wildlife, or non-domesticated animals, received by PETA survived to be relocated or released into the wild. It wasn't necessarily PETA that did it, it was the fact that by some chance, either before or after relocation the animals did not make it. What problems do you find with trying to release wildlife back into the wild?

BF: That's not an answer with which I am familiar. I know when I was out bicycling or running, I found fatally injured birds on a couple of occasions personally and brought them into the office and they had broken wings and ended up being euthanized—but beyond that, I'm not familiar with that statistic or why animals would or wouldnt' be released into the wild except those two birds.

SP: When I talk about pet ownership, to be specific, lets call it when someone has the capability to restrain an animal from leaving even if that animal could survive just as easily outside. If PETA was able to change the law, could people own pets?

BF: Well yes, although that's another…with domesticated dogs and cats at least, the animals couldn't live as well outside. There are overwhelming statistics.

SP: Right now we are talking about cases where the animal could viably live outside.

BF: I don't know what case that would be. At least with dogs and cats, that's certainly not a reality anywhere in the world that I am aware of. Our question is what is in the best interest of the animal involved, and companion animal relationships with dogs and cats are pretty clearly in the best interest in the animal involved assuming you really care for that animal.

SP: I believe you were in charge of a media campaign relating to Jesus. What was that about?

BF: Well, it was originally on the basis of a book by Keither Akers called “The Lost Religion of Jesus,” and the introduction to that book is by an established theologian named Walter Wink. Then there was another scholarly tome called “James The Brother of Jesus;” the introduction was by Bishop John Shelby Spong. In both of those books, the case was made that the historical Jesus was a vegetarian. The argument is extremely strongly based on the historical record and based on analysis of the texts. We took [those books] and turned them into a campaign. After a few years of working on that campaign, we changed the campaign from “Jesus was a Vegetarian”—mostly because so many Christians are fundamentalists, and aren't interest in historical scholarship—and we changed it to just “Blessed are the Merciful.” That campaign still exits, you can read about it at JesusVeg.com.

SP: When you were faced with fundamentalist Christians, what was one interesting fact or reason that you or the books had for thinking Jesus was a vegetarian?

BF: Well, God's ideal in the Garden of Eden, Genesis 1:29, is vegetarian. God doesn't allow meat-eating until humanity has descended into violence in Genesis 9, and that isn't exactly humanities finest hour; it is the same chapter where slavery is commanded by God. So God's ideal is non-violence, if you look at the Garden of Eden, if you look at the vision of the prophets of the Eschaton, Isaiah, Mica, and Jeremiah, again, even the carnivorous animals go back to vegetarianism. Jesus walked the earth as a human being, but he is also god. Fundamentalists believe that he is perfect, so he would be living according to what God intended in the garden and in the end times. He also gives us the one prayer “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” and we know heaven is going to be the non-violent vision of the prophets and the garden.