Ivy Pepin
Kristin Bauer talks about how her love of animals inspired her plant-based journey.
The artist, activist, and "True Blood" actress joined us for a conversation about how her love for animals began in childhood—and sparked her lifelong animal activism.
Throughout your extraordinary acting career, you've always managed to make time for animals. As a pillar in the animal rights movement, you've been a prominent voice for animals over the years. What has inspired your stewardship of animals?
It’s a combination of head and heart. The more I learn about what happens to the workers and the animals behind the walls of factory farms, when I see photos of the forests that are now gone to make room for beef, when I see dairy cows cry when their babies are taken from them to sell their milk—how does one remain silent? It’s no different than if a puppy were being kicked in front of me.
Have you always been an animal lover?
I grew up with horses, cats, dogs, and chickens. As most of us grew up, I loved some and ate others. We do what our caregivers do. We learn from those around us. I feel that I learned to love trees, rivers, and lakes and all their creatures from my mom and dad, as we spent so much time with them. But I’m the only member of my family who is a true animal lover.
What are your earliest or fondest memories of animals?
I loved a cat named Spooky (I got her on Halloween!) and a dog named Heidi. We also had the sweetest horse named Star. She was all black, but she had a triangle on her forehead, and she was endlessly patient with me. I could just sit on her bare back braiding my doll's hair, or lying back with my head on her rump, looking up into the trees while she ate the grass on the lawn. No bridle, no tether. She was a sweet gal.
Was making the decision to no longer consume animals a difficult one? What was that transition like?
For me, it was very slow. I think habits are hard to break, and change is difficult. Of course, my greatest regret is not having faced it sooner. And by “it,” I mean the person I really am.
My whole life, I have said, “I love animals!” The more truthful statement would have been that I pay others to kill some animals for me. I buy dogs from breeders while other non-designer dogs die in shelters. And I actually treat some other animals like I do love them.
I would also have said I was a truthful person—but I wasn’t paying attention to who I really am. We all do this, in many areas. It took slowly making the decision to align my actions with who I think I am, more and more, to have the courage (and it takes courage!) to look at the facts of how animals are treated. And what effect that has on our bodies and on the Earth.
Eight billion people can’t eat meat every day without killing Earth. Why I say it takes courage, and true healthy selfishness, to change is that—for me, I had to do this to heal my own relationship to myself. Am I a liar? Am I kind? Am I brave enough to look at what my actions cause, unseen and seen?
It also took having a spiritual belief that, whether or not I look at the chicken I killed, I am culpable. There’s no difference between killing anything myself or hiring a hitman to do it. This is about me with me, and no one else. I need to love myself and the force that created this miracle of a planet more than I want to fit in. We vegans are largely made fun of and vilified. Does not matter. I have to do what I think is right.
I will try to do better—as best as I can, in as many areas as I can, for my own immortal soul. What we eat is the easiest and fastest way to do better today.
You regularly use your immense platform to advocate for animals. Are there any animal welfare issues in particular that resonate with you the most?
I get particularly panged in the heart by dairy. It seems people don’t get that cows are like humans and every single other mother on Earth! To make milk, there has to be a pregnancy. And so where are all the babies? Dead is where. And Mom will be meat when she is “spent” and can’t even stand any longer after so many births.
That may be the cruelest and silliest thing I have ever seen humans do. And all for addictive secretions that aren’t even good for you! Dairy increases the risk of cancer and heart disease—and animal agriculture causes climate change.
Designer dogs are just another bizarre way that humans entertain themselves at an unseen expense, paid for with lives. Before you buy a dog, go look in the back of any animal shelter and look at the pile of dead dogs and cats waiting for the rendering truck to show up. I have done this. It took courage, and I will never ever buy a dog again.
Keep up with Kristin on her Instagram or her website. And for inspiration and tips on switching to a plant-based diet, check out our Plant-Based Starter Guide.
