Famous Vegans - Lynda Stoner

Lynda Stoner and Minty, 2011

Lynda Stoner

Born September 10, 1953. She is an Australian actress and animal rights activist. She played on several Australian television shows, including The Paul Hogan Show, The Young Doctors, Cop Shop, Prisoner: Cell Block H. and Chances. She also had a role in the 1982 movie Turkey Shoot. She is the author of the cookbook Now Vegan!.

She left acting to be able to focus on animal rights and works for Animal Liberation, an Australian animal rights charity founded in 1976, based on the philosophies of Peter Singer, as set out in his book Animal Liberation. As their Communication Officer, she researches animal rights issues and writes about them for brochures, the website and other avenues.

Quotes by Lynda Stoner:

"I began in the animal rights movement in 1978 not long after Peter Singer's momentous book Animal Liberation was released. Some months prior I had seen coverage of Harp seal pups being slaughtered for their fluffy, baby fur. ... I began researching areas of animal exploitation and took up volunteer work with the Wilderness Society. What they do is terrific but I felt a sense of urgency in wanting to focus on animals that are subjugated in the name of food, clothing and entertainment."

"The book [Animal Liberation], for me, was an epiphany. It shocked and distressed me but it was as though the book was calling me home. I cannot describe it any other way. I immediately stopped eating meat and over the next couple of days threw out all my leather goods and binned any cosmetics that had been tested on animals. I knew I would spend the rest of my life working for animal rights."

"I was much slower about adopting a vegan diet. I believe that the dairy industry is perhaps the cruelest form of animal exploitation and wish I'd done it much sooner."

"If you eat meat and dairy products and wear animal skins you are directly responsible for the ongoing suffering of animals. The bonus of opting out of this misery is that your health will improve and so will our environment."

"I continue to be perplexed by people who believe compassion for one needs to be at the exclusion of the other. Surely we have sufficient compassion to encompass caring for all life forms."

"Compassion toward animals is a symbiotic relationship. By respecting and nurturing the rights of nonhumans it seems a natural extension to respect and nurture all life."

"I am disturbed that most people still view fish as not being sentient and therefore needing no consideration. For a fish to die out of water is no less agonising than for us to drown, it is the same process."

"Never, ever go to a zoo or a circus because all you will see are animals that have been sublimated into what humans have done to them. ... You will see stereotypic behaviour and animals that are as physiologically damaged as any human would be who was kept confined and deprived of normal behaviour and environment."

"People's awareness comes from informed discussion not from being heckled or told they're not good enough to play in your sandpit. We need for the sake of non-human animals to encourage people not send them running."

Quotes are from her 2000 interview with June Bird and a 2010 interview with Katrina Fox.