Bob Barker: Animal Activist and Price Is Right Legend Retires

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by paige June 4, 2007
Categories: Film/TV.

0_61_barker_bob.jpgWhile Bob Barker’s famous calling “come on down” will forever be remembered, his closing message at the end of each showcase showdown for the past 35 years of “don’t forget to get your pets spayed and neutered” is equally consistent. Bob Barker has been making dreams come true for over 3 decades and more importantly bringing animal rights advocacy to the forefront of public awareness. Barker was an activist in Hollywood long before it became the thing to do and has been a vegetarian since 1979. In an interview Barker describes his first involvement:

About 20 years ago I was chairman of Be Kind to Animals Week in LA. I was invited by different organizations to participate in their activities. As I did, I began to become aware of the terrible exploitation of animals in the world and felt compelled to try to rectify the situation. And that’s what I’ve been doing ever since. My wife who died in 1981 had been a vegetarian for years. When I became a vegetarian I gave up red meat and fowl, and gradually fish and dairy products as well. I did it out of concern for animals, but I have certainly learned why so many people are becoming vegetarians out of concern for health reasons. I can control my weight better than before, I feel better, I have more energy, and I think that it is certainly a healthful way of life.

Bob Barker is clearly a man who lives by his convictions and at age 83, his vegetarian lifestyle speaks for itself. He will be missed on the airwaves, but clearly will continue to make waves in the world of animal rights. Farewell Bob!!


Categories: Film/TV.
  • Mike Mccarthy

    Farewell Bob. We will all miss you immensely. I used to watch you show practically EVERY DAY !! You are the best.
    Regards,
    your fan,
    M.McCarthy

  • http://dodabopyahoo.com Hank McCoy

    Bob barker has made so much fun just to watch such a gameshow on T.V.watching “The Price is Right” on T.V. has been so much fun for so many people.Bob barker has it so much just to watch such a great gameshow on T.V. from Hank McCoy of Dallas,Texas!

  • Andrea

    You got to admire those pioneer vegetarians! He also helped encourage the Miss America pageant to stop giving away real fur coats to pageant winners in the 1980s.

  • wordster

    In a touching article by Joy Williams in Harper’s AMgazine, she said:

    “Humans don’t want to enter into a pact with animals. They don’t want animals to reason. It would be an unnerving experience. It would bring about all manner of awkwardness and guilt. It would make our treatment of them seem, well, unreasonable. The fact that animals are voiceless is a relief to us, it frees us from feeling much empathy or sorrow. If animals did have voices, if they could speak with the tongues of angels…it is unlikely that they could save themselves from mankind. Their mysterious otherness has not saved them, nor have their beautiful songs and coats and skins and shells, nor have their, strengths, their skills, their swiftness, the beauty of their flights. We discover the remarkable intelligence of the whale, the wolf, the elephant – it does not save them, nor does our awareness of the complexity of their lives. It matters not, it seems, whether they nurse their young or brood patiently on eggs. If they eat meat, we decry their viciousness; if they eat grasses and seeds, we dismiss them as weak. We know that they care for their young and teach them, that they play and grieve, that they have memories and a sense of the future for which they sometimes plan. We know about their habits, their migrations, that they have a sense of home, of finding, seeking, returning to home. We know that when they face death, they fear it. We know all these things and it has not saved them from us.”

    So sad!

  • http://www.all-creatures.org Laura Slitt

    Our abominable treatment of animals dies, however, show itself in every last fiber of the global human condition. From incidence of rape, domestic violence, predatory acts against children, preying on children by corporations, preying on children by using welfare tax subsidies for the most unhealthy, cruel, disease inducing commodity food programs….The domination and oppression of other animals taught humankind all too perversly well, how to dominate one another.
    It’s all in three books: Will Tuttle’s, The World Peace Diet, Dr. Charles Patterson’s book, Eternal Treblinka, Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust, And Jim Mason’s book, An Unnatural Order, why we are destroying ourselves and the planet.
    Acting as some high species, judge and jury over the rest, with the brutality required of SS soldiers who were ” just doing their jobs,” exterminating human beings reduced to swine, we show our true colors in that our species has done more damage in a few short industrial age generations, than the animals in billions of years. Go figure…. What we laud in our technology, is pathetically vacant in morals and our sense of place. We are truly a LOST species.

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