Alex Pacheco (activist)

Alexander Fernando Pacheco ( born August 1958 in Joliet, Illinois) is an American animal rights activist. He is co-founder and former chairman of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA ), founder of All American Animals and 1-800- Save-A - Pet.com.

Life

Pacheco was born in 1958 in Joliet, Illinois, the son of a doctor and a nurse, but soon moved with his family to Mexico. They left Mexico when Pacheco visited the Middle School and attracted only to Ohio, then to Indiana and Illinois. Kathy Snow Guillermo writes in Monkey Business that Pacheco showed an early interest in animals.

His original plans to become a priest, he rejected when he is dealing with the animals saw during a visit to a meat factory. A friend gave him a copy of Peter Singer's book Animal Liberation, which led him to become a vegetarian diet. Pacheco visited then the Ohio State University, where he started first actions against the exploitation of animals.

On 20 March 1995, he was honored by The Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience with the price.

Actions

Pacheco was the first major public attention in 1981 when he tried to stop the use of 17 cynomolgus monkeys for animal experiments at the Institute of Behavioral Research in Silver Spring. In the bio lab monkeys were the nerve connections to limbs removed and this then forced through electric shocks from the limbs ( which they could not feel ) to make use of. Pacheco, who was an employee, was the responsible psychologist Edward Taub on because of breaches of animal welfare laws. Police raided the lab and confiscated the monkeys. Taub was tried, convicted, but acquitted after an appeal partly for technical reasons. The dispute over the animals went to the Supreme Court and made for a great feed at PETA. The judgment had influence on legislation in the area of animal welfare, the Animal Welfare Act of 1985 was passed on the case because of hearings.

Oliver Stone later said that the animal rights movement was born in the United States by Pacheco's campaign.