Northern People: PETA activist

Crawford County

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Amanda Fortino helps serve nondairy desserts at a music festival. Special to the Record-Eagle

May 16, 2010

Controversial animal rights group still draws ire from some

By MARTA HEPLER DRAHOS mdrahos@record-eagle.com The Record Eagle Sun May 16, 2010, 07:30 AM EDT

TRAVERSE CITY — Amanda Fortino grew up surrounded by fishing, hunting and trapping in an area picture postcards called "The Sportsman's Paradise."

"It was always difficult just because I hated dead animals everywhere during hunting season," said the Grayling native, who recalls being upset by animal corpses on the tops of cars and by the gutted deer she often saw hanging. "Grayling is infamous for its buck poles, which always made me cry whenever we had to pass."

Instead of becoming hardened to animal suffering, she became more and more sensitive to it. Instead of getting a "tougher skin," as some of her classmates suggested, she decided to save some skins by becoming a vegan and then an animal rights activist.

Now Fortino, 28, is a top campaigner for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, perhaps the world's best-known — and most controversial — animal rights organization.

"She has done everything from dressing up as a cow in Washington, D.C., to hand out soy hot chocolate during President Obama's inauguration, to stripping down to her underwear to protest fur to commandeering the floor at a meeting of McDonald's franchisees to demand that the company switch to a less cruel chicken-slaughter method," said PETA senior publicist Michael Lyubinsky.

The 2000 Grayling High School graduate also has showered nearly naked on major city sidewalks to draw attention to the amount of water used on factory farms and in slaughterhouses and distributed nondairy frozen desserts in a lettuce-leaf bikini at a music festival featuring vegetarians Paul McCartney and Morrissey.

Such work can be dangerous. Last September the 120-pound Fortino was nearly knocked down by a circus worker almost twice her size while videotaping an elephant being led from a Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus train to a Portland, Ore. arena.

Undercover videos, like those Fortino said document circus workers beating elephants with bullhooks and electrocuting baby elephants, have been among PETA's most effective methods for bringing animal abuses to the forefront.

But the organization has been criticized for other attention-getting stunts and for advertisements like the controversial "I'd Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur" ad meant to underscore animal cruelty in the fur and fashion industries.

"They use the millions of dollars donated to them by people who love animals and use the money for ludicrous marketing campaigns instead of pro-active projects to actually help animals," said Jennifer Isbell of Pet Friends Magazine, an online northern Michigan "pet community."

"People's money is better spent with their local shelters and rescue groups where they can see real work being done and can hold them accountable for their actions," Isbell said.

Fortino said PETA's aim is to end animal abuse, even if it means calling people's attention to that abuse in sexy, funny or quirky ways.

"PETA works every different angle, and I think that's why we're so successful," said the former Grand Valley State University political science major, who gets back to her hometown about twice a year. "We can get people's attention around the world, and we can also work in people's back yards to stop animal abuse.

"I really believe most people don't know what happens to animals at the slaughterhouse or behind the scenes at the circus. Once they know, they don't want to support that kind of abuse," she said.

Meanwhile she'd like to see more people open to adopting a vegan diet.

"Vegans save close to 100 animals a year, by not eating meat, and an acre of land. It's one of the best things you can do for the environment and for your health," she said.