NAPALM DEATH Frontman Discusses Vegetarian Lifestyle

NAPALM DEATH frontman Mark "Barney" Greenway recently sat down with PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) to discuss his lifelong dedication to a vegetarian diet. An excerpt from the interview follows:

Q: How long have you been vegetarian?

Barney: "I've been vegetarian since I was 14 years old, which is 21 years now. When I became vegetarian, it was still very much in the minority — in England, of all places, which is renowned for having a fair percentage of vegetarians in the population. The reason why I became vegetarian was I was kind of shocked into action. The school was mindful enough to show a video of an abattoir and from that moment on, I just couldn't bring myself to think about eating meat again. And I went vegetarian overnight literally, and I haven't looked back since. I'm absolutely 100 percent certain I will be vegetarian for the rest of my life. Once I became vegetarian, it was a lifelong decision for me."

Q: If someone hasn’t seen the videos and they’re not familiar with what happens on factory farms, could you just describe what they do to the animals?

Barney: "Even all those years ago, it still really wasn’t any different from what there is now. It was the footage of cows being shot to the head with bolts. That was the main image for me really, but there are all kinds of the associated images like the rivers of blood where they drain off blood down channels and feed it into sewage tanks, which was really pretty disgusting."

Q: How do you think that animal rights is related to other social justice movements?

Barney: "Everyone’s always going on about civilized society … I mean, I do not understand in this day and age what pleasure and what good can be gained from hunting. I kind of understand the ecological arguments of the past, but that doesn't work anymore because there are modern ways of preserving the environment, ya know? I just have a lot of respect for animals and people, and I think neither animal rights nor human rights are properly observed."

Q: Animal testing is another issue that’s important to you …

Barney: "For many, many, many years, I’ve never used any kind of tested products. I was a PETA member in the really early days, and I got a lot of that information from them so it was always very helpful to me. One of the good things about England is that a lot of the supermarket products aren't tested. And a lot of the smaller chain stores have products that aren't tested, as well. There are plenty of options in England, so it's easy to not use any tested products at all."

Q: Where can people find alternatives to leather?

Barney: "Well, there's all sorts of things, but they come up in the unlikeliest places, and I say that because they actually are not necessarily targeted as animal-friendly clothes — they just are by their very nature. I mean, there's a shop in Brighton on the south coast, which is quite famous actually, the name of which is called 'Vegetarian Shoes'. … It just does exclusively nonleather shoes and also Doc Marten's as well. They actually do a full range of nonleather stuff, which a lot of people don't actually know about. But there certainly are places, and of course, like I said, just because something isn't necessarily being absolutely trumpeted as being nonleather, it doesn't mean you can't find them — you just have to go out and look. I mean, most sport shops on the high street will do trainers … that are completely free of leather or animal suede or anything like that, so they are fairly easy to find."

Read the entire interview at this location.