Television icon Bob Barker has been full-on for animal rights and has helped PETA every step of the way for 10 years.
To mark the milestone, PETA has named a horse rescued from India’s carriage-horse industry in The Price Is Right host’s honor. Named “Mr. Barker” — “Bob” to his caretakers — the lucky horse has “come on down” from hard labor on the streets and is now retired, like his namesake human, although in his case that means spending the rest of his life at a tranquil sanctuary.
“We love this man, but what do you give someone who has everything and gives his all to animals? The answer is a rescued horse named in his honor,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA is celebrating 10 years of Bob Barker’s generosity and activism, which have brought about major changes for animals.”
PETA — whose motto reads, “Animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, use for entertainment, or abuse in any other way” — is sharing Bob Barker’s Top 10 Actions for Animals:
- He made a generous multimillion-dollar donation that enabled PETA to open its Los Angeles headquarters, an art deco–style building in Echo Park named the Bob Barker Building.
- He was one of the first stars to announce that he was vegetarian over 30 years ago and more recently starred in PETA’s “Go Vegetarian, Prevent Alzheimer’s” video and “Vegetarian Icons” stamp series.
- Because of his disgust at the confinement of marine mammals in tawdry shows, he’s called for the release of the orca Lolita from the Miami Seaquarium and has urged families to stay away from SeaWorld.
- His “Caring Consumer” public service announcement calls on shoppers to buy personal-care products that weren’t tested on animals.
- A Navy veteran, he has called for the end of military medical drills on live animals — a practice that is now on its way out. The U.S. Coast Guard has abandoned it, and other branches of the military are following suit.
- He has called on CBS to stop using wild animals in shows like Zoo (which has since been cancelled).
- He helped defeat an “ag gag” law — designed to criminalize eyewitness exposés of cruelty in the meat industry — in Wisconsin.
- After he narrated a video exposé that showed bears subjected to miserable conditions in North Carolina roadside zoos, six of the bears were moved to sanctuary homes.
- He starred in a PETA video urging Congress to cut all funding for the National Institutes of Health’s maternal deprivation experiments on baby monkeys — tests that have since been ended.
- And, of course, he closed every broadcast of The Price Is Right, a show that never allowed fur, with a plea for people to spay and neuter their dogs and cats.
