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Ed Winters

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Ed Winters
NationalityBritish
Other namesEarthling Ed
Years active2016 – present
Known forAnimal Rights Advocacy & Viral Speeches
MovementAnimal Rights & Veganism
Websitewww.earthlinged.org

Ed Winters is a British animal rights activist, filmmaker and lecturer. Winters is known for his book This Is Vegan Propaganda: (And Other Lies the Meat Industry Tells You), published in 2022,[1] after building a following on YouTube and Instagram.[2]

Personal life

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Winters turned vegetarian in May 2014 after coming across a news article[3] about a chicken truck crashing near Manchester.[4] Upon reading that many of the birds had died, he reflected on their suffering and desire to live without pain.[4] He then became vegan in 2015[5] after watching the documentary Earthlings.[6][4]

Animal rights advocacy

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Winters started his YouTube channel in 2016, alongside co-founding the animal rights group Surge.[5][7] His Earthling Ed channel brought him to fame with videos of him having friendly talks about veganism with non-vegan passerbys.[2]

He has co-lectured about animal rights activism as a Media and Design Fellow at Harvard University.[8][9]

Winters has given speeches in one-third of U.K. universities in 2018 and 2019[10] and across college campuses in America.[11] Winters has appeared on live television such as on This Morning[12] debating the ethical and environmental arguments for veganism. In September 2018 he opened an non-profit vegan restaurant in London called Unity Diner.[13][14] In 2021, Winters co-founded another vegan restaurant, the No Catch Co., in Brighton.[15]

Winters was also one of the guests at the 2018 Montreal Vegan Festival.[16]

In early 2019 he gave two TEDx talks.[17]

In March 2019, Winters, along with 200 other activists of the animal rights campaign group Meat the Victims, stormed a pig farm in Laughterton, Lincolnshire and videotaped the happenings, which received national coverage.[18]

In 2019, he toured the United States and gave vegan lectures at Cornell, Harvard,[8] Brown, Columbia, Yale, and Rutgers Universities.[2] In his talk at the Cornell University on "The Ethics of Pet Ownership", he argued that the concept of having animals as pets is unnatural because viewing animals as "pets" and ourselves as "owners" instills a sense of property and devalues the lives of the pet animals.[19]

After Priestlands School in Lymington, Hampshire presented its students with piglets to teach them how to "fatten up pigs for slaughter", and dismissed concerns, Winters launched a campaign which reached 37,000 signatures within days of its launch.[20]

In March 2020, Winters posted an image on his Instagram account stating that "COVID-19 started because we eat animals" and "would not exist if the world was vegan".[21] The post was discussed by PolitiFact[22] and USA Today and was censored by Facebook as "partly false".[21] The Guardian published an article by Laura Spinney on 28 March 2020 titled "Is factory farming to blame for coronavirus?" which mentioned the censorship of Winter's post and concluded, "But the claims are also partly true. Though the links they draw are too simplistic, the evidence is now strong that the way meat is produced – and not just in China – contributed to Covid-19."[23] Spinney also recalled[23] a scientific controversy on whether domesticated horses may have played a larger role than poultry as intermediate hosts for poultry flu at some point in human history, as suggested by Worobey.[24]

Winters wrote and co-produced the 2022 animated short film Milk, which focused on the dairy industry. The film was the 2023 People's Voice Winner in the Video—Animation category at the 2023 Webby Awards.[25]

Other media

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Ed Winters has authored two books published in 2022 and 2023, namely

  • "This Is Vegan Propaganda: (And Other Lies the Meat Industry Tells You)"[26][27] (2022) ISBN 978-1785044243[4] and
  • "How to Argue With a Meat Eater (And Win Every Time)"[28][27] (2023) ISBN 978-1785044489[29] in contribution to the spread of veganism and its ethical basis.

This is Vegan Propaganda was reviewed as being a "digressive but well-researched introduction to veganism" by Freddie Hayward of the New Statesman.[1] In 2025, both books appeared in the suggested reading for Veganuary published by Hertfordshire Council.[30]

Surge

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Animal liberation marches

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In 2016, Surge co-founded The Official Animal Rights March,[31] which grew from 2,500 participants in London in 2016 to 10,000 in 2017.[32][33] The events also took place in New York, Los Angeles, Miami and Bucharest[34] in what the activists described as "a consolidated global effort to make the vegan voice heard."[32] In 2019, the number of activists rose to tens of thousands, who marched in 42 cities around the world, including Cologne and Berlin in Germany.[35] In Cologne, around 1,000 activists conducted the event, marching 6 kilometres (3.7 mi)[35] and conducting 'die-ins' and fake blood protests.[36] In London, around 12,000 activists participated in the march, up from 10,000 in 2017 and 2018.[33]

Anti-fur campaigns

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Under Winter's co-directorship, Surge conducted anti-fur demonstrations at the London catwalk events attracting more than 250 people in September 2017, a rise from 120 the previous catwalk season and 25 in September 2016.[37] The protest included petitions and a video with Lucy Watson calling on the BFC to ban fur.[38] In 2018, Winters gathered anti-fur campaigners and protested at the Burberry, Mary Katrantzou, and Christopher Kane shows, besides 180 The Strand, the official home of the event.[39] Protests included animal rights activists covering in fake blood, wearing costume, and bearing signs outside of 180 Strand.[38][40] Winters and fellow activists called upon the British Fashion Council (BFC) to ban all fur from London Fashion Week.[38] The London Fashion Week eventually went fur-free in 2018.[41][42]

Other activism

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Surge brought to light cruelties in United Kingdom's dairy farms after taking footage of them, which according to Winters "shows not only a flagrant violation of the safety of these animals, but points to the wider systemic issues found throughout the whole dairy industry."[43][44] In 2017 he also produced the documentary Land of Hope and Glory (2017), considered to be a UK equivalent of the US Earthlings documentary.[45][46] Land of Hope and Glory contained undercover footage of violence to animals at a RSPCA Assured farm,[43] to which the RSPCA responded.[47]

References

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  1. ^ a b Hayward, Freddie (9 February 2022). "Why are vegans so reviled?". New Statesman. Retrieved 25 July 2024.
  2. ^ a b c Lu, Grace (11 April 2019). "Speaker Asks: Why Do We Love Dogs, Eat Cows, and Wear Sheep?". The Cornell Daily Sun. Cornellsun.com. Retrieved 5 April 2020.
  3. ^ "Hundreds of chickens killed in M62 lorry crash". BBC News. 14 May 2014. Retrieved 28 May 2024.
  4. ^ a b c d Winters, Ed (April 4, 2023). This Is Vegan Propaganda: (And Other Lies the Meat Industry Tells You). Penguin Random House UK. ISBN 9781785044243.
  5. ^ a b Bronnert, Rachel (12 March 2024). "'Veganism is about challenging our normality': In conversation with Ed Winters". Epigram. Retrieved 28 May 2024.
  6. ^ Are Militant Vegans Going Too Far? This Morning (YouTube). This Morning. 6 November 2018. Event occurs at 0:12. Retrieved 13 October 2019.
  7. ^ Chappet, Marie-Claire (27 February 2020), "The 50 most empowering Nu-Gen activists you need to know about right now", Glamour Magazine, retrieved 3 April 2020
  8. ^ a b Brennan, Maeve; Parker, Adelaide (20 October 2022). "Meet Earthling Ed, That Vegan Educator | Magazine | The Harvard Crimson". www.thecrimson.com. Retrieved 28 May 2024.
  9. ^ ""This Is Vegan Propaganda" – Das neue Buch von Earthling Ed – Lesetipp". Sounds Vegan (in German). 2021-09-24. Retrieved 2025-02-04.
  10. ^ "Earthling Ed Will Make You Vegan in 30 Minutes or Less". Metiza. 18 September 2018. Archived from the original on 2019-04-20. Retrieved 20 April 2019.
  11. ^ "Inaugural 'Dairy Alternative Day' Features Vegan Activist Earthling Ed and Dairy-Free Food". The Cornell Daily Sun. 9 April 2019. Retrieved 20 April 2019.
  12. ^ Hill, Rose (6 November 2018). "Phil's 'sausage' remark during militant vegan debate shocks This Morning fans". mirror. Retrieved 20 April 2019.
  13. ^ "Earthling Ed's Unity Diner moves to a bigger Spitalfields site". Hot Dinners. 9 October 2019. Retrieved 28 May 2024.
  14. ^ "London's 11 yummiest vegan comfort foods". Metro. 26 October 2019. Retrieved 30 March 2020.
  15. ^ "The No Catch Co: "Our Mission is to Take On the Fish and Chip Shop Industry" - vegconomist - the vegan business magazine". vegconomist.com. 2 December 2021. Retrieved 4 February 2025.
  16. ^ Maret, Elsa (1 September 2018). "2018 Montreal Vegan Festival: What to Expect". Montreal Times. Montreal, Canada: MTLTimes.ca. Retrieved 3 April 2020.
  17. ^ "Earthling Ed Gives TEDx Talk On Veganism In Sweden", VeganLife Magazine, 29 January 2019, archived from the original on 2020-03-29, retrieved 29 March 2020[dead link‍]
  18. ^ Duggan, Joe (6 March 2019). "VEGAN FURY: Farmer accuses militant mob of killing piglets after STORMING her farm". Express. Express.co.uk. Retrieved 3 April 2020.
  19. ^ Campbell, Maeve (21 January 2020). "Animals – Can you eat one and cuddle the other? The owners spoiling their pets". Euro News. Euronews.com. Retrieved 4 April 2020.
  20. ^ Richards, Alexandra (22 January 2018). "School faces backlash after students raise pigs to send to slaughter". Evening Standard. Standard.co.uk. Retrieved 4 April 2020.
  21. ^ a b Brown, Matthew (18 March 2020). "Fact check: Is COVID-19 caused by human consumption of animals?". USA Today. USA Today. Retrieved 27 March 2020.
  22. ^ "Vegan Instagram accounts spread misinformation about COVID-19". PolitiFact. Retrieved 27 March 2020.
  23. ^ a b Spinney, Laura (28 March 2020). "Is factory farming to blame for coronavirus?". The Guardian. TheGuardian.com. Retrieved 31 March 2020.
  24. ^ Worobey, Michael; Han, Guan-Zhu; Rambaut, Andrew (2014-04-16). "A synchronized global sweep of the internal genes of modern avian influenza virus". Nature. doi:10.1038/nature13016. PMC 4098125. PMID 24531761.
  25. ^ "NEW Webby Gallery + Index". NEW Webby Gallery + Index. Retrieved 29 May 2024.
  26. ^ "This is Vegan Propaganda (And Other Lies the Meat industry Tells You)". Ed Winters. Retrieved 2025-01-02.
  27. ^ a b Foreman, Polly (11 October 2023). "Earthling Ed Announces New Book 'How To Argue With A Meat-Eater'". Plant Based News. Retrieved 3 May 2024.
  28. ^ "How to Argue with a Meat Eater (And Win Every Time) | The new book from best-selling author Ed Winters". How to Argue with a Meat Eater (And Win Every time). Retrieved 2025-01-02.
  29. ^ Winters, Ed (December 28, 2023). How to Argue With a Meat Eater (And Win Every Time). Ebury Publishing. ISBN 9781529907001.
  30. ^ Buchanan, Abigail (2025-01-22). "The farmers taking a stand against vegan-pushing councils". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 2025-02-04 – via www.telegraph.co.uk.
  31. ^ "Thousands of vegan activists march through London to end animal cruelty". Metro. 2 September 2017. Retrieved 20 April 2019.
  32. ^ a b Simpson, Fiona (2 September 2017). "Thousands of vegans stage animal rights march in central London". Evening Standard. London: Standard.co.uk. Retrieved 30 March 2020.
  33. ^ a b Hockaday, James (18 August 2019). "Record 12,000 vegan activists take part in London Animal Rights March". Metro. London: Metro.co.uk. Retrieved 31 March 2020.
  34. ^ Woolfe, Sam (4 September 2017). "Crowds have gathered around the world in defence of animals". The Canary. London: TheCanary.co. Retrieved 3 April 2020.
  35. ^ a b Winter, Chase (17 August 2019). "Vegans march in Germany to 'give animals a voice'". DW. Cologne: DW.com. Retrieved 31 March 2020.
  36. ^ Winter, Chase (17 August 2019). "'Die-ins' and fake blood at animal rights protests". DW. Cologne: DW.com. Retrieved 31 March 2020.
  37. ^ Cartner-Morley, Jess (16 February 2018). "Anti-fur protests set to fly as activists target London fashion week". The Guardian. Retrieved 29 March 2020.
  38. ^ a b c Hendriksz, Vivian (19 September 2017). "Anti-fur protesters take London Fashion Week by storm". Fashion United. London: Fashionunited.uk. Retrieved 31 March 2020.
  39. ^ "Anti-fur protesters cause mayhem at London Fashion Week show". RT. London: RT.com. 19 February 2018. Retrieved 30 March 2020.
  40. ^ Cook, Grace (19 September 2017). "Making Sense of the Anti-Fur Protests at London Fashion Week". Business of Fashion. London. Retrieved 3 April 2020.
  41. ^ Conlon, Scarlett (7 September 2018). "London fashion week vows to be fur-free". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 29 March 2020.
  42. ^ "London Fashion Week to go fur-free for the first time". BBC News. London: BBC. 7 September 2018. Retrieved 29 March 2020.
  43. ^ a b King, David (26 February 2019). "Undercover footage of violence at dairy farm prompts RSPCA investigation". The Guardian. Retrieved 29 March 2020.
  44. ^ Dalton, Jane (29 November 2019). "Cows sexually abused, hit and punched at company owned by NFU deputy president, footage shows". Independent. Independent.co.uk. Retrieved 29 March 2020.
  45. ^ "If you think that British meat is more humane than American, you're deluded". Metro. 19 December 2017. Retrieved 20 April 2019.
  46. ^ Earthling Ed (2017-08-01). Land of Hope and Glory (UK 'Earthlings' Documentary). Retrieved 2025-02-04 – via YouTube.
  47. ^ "Land of Hope and Glory film". www.rspcaassured.org.uk. Retrieved 20 April 2019.
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