A Big Loss: Brigitte Bardot, Animal Rights Champ, PETA’s True Friend
Brigitte Bardot, who passed away on December 27 at age 91, rose to fame as a cinematic siren in films such as And God Created Woman, but her most important and enduring role was that of a committed animal defender. At the height of her popularity, she abandoned acting to champion animal rights. Bardot’s decision came at a time when few people had even heard of that concept. “It’s what I dreamed of,” Bardot later reflected. “It’s what I always wanted.”
In 1986, she established the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the Welfare and Protection of Animals, funded by auctioning her own jewelry and other belongings. The Bardot Foundation campaigns against the Canadian seal massacre, bullfights, the pet trade, and factory farming, among other issues, while supporting rescue efforts and sanctuaries in France and abroad. Bardot remained active with the organization until her death.
A longtime vegetarian, Bardot would say to meat eaters, “Animals are my friends, and I don’t eat my friends.” She lived surrounded by those friends—dogs, cats, horses, goats, chickens, pigs, and many others, as well as mice, boars, and other wildlife who found a safe haven on the grounds of her home in the south of France.
Bardot seized every opportunity to raise awareness and push for change. For her 80th birthday, she wrote an open letter which appeared in several French newspapers, asking the government to shut down horse slaughterhouses and to end ritual slaughter as two of her final wishes.
She also frequently supported PETA and PETA entities’ campaigns, including by teaming up with PETA UK to urge the British department store Fortnum & Mason to stop selling vile foie gras (it later did!). Never one to tiptoe when it came to speaking out against abuse, Bardot called out Fortnum & Mason’s then managing director, Ewan Venters, for his complicity in cruelty: “Mr. Venters seems to be one of those imbeciles who, just for a fleeting moment of flavor, is willing to ignore the overwhelming scientific evidence that force-feeding ducks and geese to produce grotesquely enlarged livers for foie gras is horrifically cruel,” she wrote.
A staunch opponent of Canada’s annual seal slaughter, Bardot supported PETA’s call for a boycott of Canadian maple syrup until the massacre is ended. In a guest article on PETA’s website, she wrote, “Each spring, this vision of horror returns: The ice floes become an open-air slaughterhouse, where some pups are left in agony, their mothers trying desperately to revive their small bloody bodies … This is why we must act and make Canada understand that it would be criminal, irresponsible, and economically suicidal to continue with the commercial seal slaughter.”
Throughout the years, Bardot championed many other campaigns for PETA and PETA entities, including calling for the release of Mali, an ailing and solitary elephant at the Manila Zoo; opposing NASA’s cruel Bion project, in which monkeys were implanted with electrodes, strapped into restraint pods, and blasted into space; speaking out against Premarin, which is made from the urine of horses who are confined in tiny stalls and repeatedly impregnated; and calling for her native France to “lead the way” in boycotting imported horse meat following a PETA investigation that showed what Bardot called “the dreadful agony of American horses destined to be sent to European butchers.”
Bardot contributed an essay to PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk’s book, One Can Make a Difference, in which she said, “I think animals help us live; they’ve helped me live. It was only when I began to devote myself to protecting animals that I blossomed completely. Taking care of them, looking out for them, has given my life true meaning, a meaning I hope future generations can experience. Young people are always a hope. More of them must realize that the animal is not an object for profit, not a toy for our amusement, hunted for sport, not some thing to be cut up for his fur. They may see that the animal has the right to live, just as we have the right to live. We, the animals, the plants are the whole, and the whole makes a chain, and if we break that chain, all of humanity will pay. ”
PETA is grateful to Brigitte Bardot for speaking out so beautifully for animals, and we know that her foundation—and all of us who were inspired by her commitment—will continue to advocate for them with her heart and voice.
