Brothers Justin and Jared Goodman are the architects behind some of PETA’s biggest victories.
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Justin and Jared Goodman didn’t talk much about championing animal rights when they were growing up.
The foundation, though, was nevertheless being laid.
Both had an affinity for animals—a cat named Marbles and parakeets Sam and Elton shared their Long Island, New York, home—and the brothers became vegetarians together for ethical reasons in the mid-’90s. At a young age, they both started listening to bands like Gorilla Biscuits and Earth Crisis—artists who advocated for animal liberation and the then-nascent vegan movement.
“When we went to see our favorite bands play, often local animal rights groups would have tables set up with literature and videos like ‘Meet Your Meat’ playing,” says Justin. “It just seemed like common sense and a movement that stood for everything I felt was right in my heart. Until then, I just didn’t know what to call it or that other people felt the same.”
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Justin, 36, is now the director of government relations in the Laboratory Investigations Department of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. He has helped PETA expose abuse and violations of federal animal welfare laws in laboratories, modernize government and corporate testing policies, and stop countless cruel, archaic experiments on monkeys, cats, dogs, rats and other animals.
Voted “most radical” by his high school graduating class (among his array of tattoos is “Wolf Fire,” a reference to a book about animal rights and environmental activists that’s inked on his knuckles), Justin took up animal rights first.
In 2004, as a graduate student in sociology at the University of Connecticut, he started an animal rights group and led a successful three-year campaign to end invasive brain experiments on monkeys at a school laboratory. To this day, the monkey lab remains closed.
It was also the first time he worked with PETA. A scientist with the animal rights organization showed him how to file Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain laboratory documents, which helped him expose the fact that UConn faculty had injected unapproved substances into a monkey’s brain as well as an incident in which a monkey was dragged so roughly by his metal collar that his eyes bled. After the monkey laboratory was shuttered, Justin joined the PETA staff full-time in 2007.
Last year, following a lengthy PETA campaign led by Justin, the National Institutes of Health announced that it was ending its decades-long maternal-deprivation experiments in which infant monkeys were torn from their mothers, terrorized with fake snakes, addicted to alcohol, and forced to live isolated in tiny cages. Later this year, NIH will conduct its first-ever ethics review of experiments on primates following a mandate from Congress prompted by PETA’s campaign and Justin’s work on Capitol Hill.
With the support of his team of scientists and researchers, Justin has also spearheaded campaigns to get Kikkoman, the soy sauce maker, to end its tests on animals and to persuade the world’s major airlines to stop shipping primates to laboratories. In February, he organized and led a briefing on Capitol Hill with California Rep. Ted Lieu and other military veterans that showed members of Congress that high-tech human-patient simulators can prepare military medical personnel for the battlefield better than antiquated training in which thousands of live animals are still shot, stabbed and killed each year.
Justin’s work has been featured in the influential journal Science, and his team also won an international award from cosmetics company LUSH for its effectiveness at raising public awareness of animal testing issues.
“What keeps me motivated are the victories that we achieve for the mice and monkeys we’re trying to protect and also seeing how dramatically and quickly public attitudes are changing,” says Justin, who works from Washington, D.C., where he lives with his wife, a fellow animal advocate and psychology professor who studies mental illness in abused primates rescued from laboratories.
“Now our charge is to translate these shifting societal attitudes about animals into changes in government and corporate practices and policies.”
“What keeps me motivated are the victories that we achieve for the mice and monkeys we’re trying to protect and also seeing how dramatically and quickly public attitudes are changing,” says Justin.
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His brother, Jared, 31 and a cum laude graduate of Brooklyn Law School, where he started the school’s chapter of the Student Animal League Defense Fund, is the PETA Foundation’s director of animal law. He was instrumental in this year’s historic decision by SeaWorld to stop breeding orcas; helped secure 164 criminal charges following an investigation of pigeon-racing in Taiwan (the most ever stemming from a PETA investigation); and is spearheading legal efforts to release a 50-year-old orca named Lolita from her minuscule tank at a Miami theme park where she’s been held since she was captured from her ocean home in 1970.
Last October, the California Coastal Commission met in Long Beach to vote on a plan by SeaWorld to expand the orca facility at its San Diego theme park, which, the company admitted, would allow it to breed and confine more orcas to its tanks.
Jared had met with commissioners before the hearing to explain why it should be turned down: A new concrete tank is still a concrete tank. When denied their freedom and the opportunity to interact with other orcas naturally in a dynamic environment, captive orcas suffer physically and psychologically, breaking their teeth by chewing on the metal bars and concrete sides of their tanks, attacking other orcas and trainers, swimming in endless circles, and becoming so stressed and frustrated that they are given psychotropic drugs.
The plan was approved with the stipulation that SeaWorld would stop breeding orcas. “Seeing the commissioners vote one by one to ban breeding as they went down the table after so many hours of testimony—it was a surreal experience,” says Jared.
It proved to be a pivotal moment. The theme park at first angrily appealed the decision, but months later, in a total about-face, SeaWorld dropped its expansion plans and announced that it would no longer breed orcas. Jared calls the decision his “most significant victory,” one that he attributes to an intensive PETA campaign combined with the efforts of other groups and individuals.
Like his brother, Jared has seen a shift in the public’s attitude toward animal rights. Because science and technology have broadened our knowledge of animals and methods to replace their use, there has been an “unprecedented shift” in public opinion about the use of animals for entertainment, he says.
That changing sentiment makes it all the more frustrating when a big corporation or government agency digs in its heels and refuses to budge, says Jared, who lives in Los Angeles. “I’m happy to dig my heels in, too, and confront those issues, but it shouldn’t take lengthy campaigns to make animal abusers do right by animals.”
And while those campaigns have taken the Goodmans to the front lines—Justin has led protests against laboratories around the country, and Jared was the spokesperson for several protests against the abuse of elephants by Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus—they say that anyone can easily help animals by buying only cruelty-free personal care and household products and by avoiding entertainment venues—theme parks, circuses, aquariums—that abuse and exploit animals.
As for those pitched battles, Justin and Jared agree that they are a last resort.
“There’s a slogan I love that goes, ‘Respect existence, or expect resistance,'” Justin says. “We always try to work with companies or government agencies behind the scenes to resolve issues collaboratively to everyone’s benefit, but when that fails we have an obligation to the animals to bring public pressure from PETA’s 5 million compassionate and dedicated members and supporters to bear.”
Don’t like ads? Become a supporter and enjoy The Good Men Project ad free“These things never progress as quickly as we want them to, but the recent historic victories with Ringling, SeaWorld and NIH prove that change for animals is not just possible but also really taking place.”
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Photo credit: Getty Images
Impressive! The Goodman brothers are truly good men–compassionate, committed, smart and successful! I’m sure they’ll inspire many others to help animals, too.
The Goodman brothers for president/vice-president! (they can fight that one out).
Seriously, these are two inspiring men. I so respect and admire them both.
The Goodmans are Good Men, indeed, for dedicating their careers to securing animals’ right to live freely without being abused or exploited. And their tremendous success proves that compassion and tenacity can change the world for the better. Thank you for this interesting and inspiring profile!
So inspired! These brothers are the definition of compassion in action. Thank you for all you do.
The snowball effect, the tipping point…is that what’s going on here? Oh, thank you Justin and Jared. Keep pushing. You make us all want to do more. Success breeds success! An extremely hopeful article. Thanks to Justin’s wife too!
I really enjoyed this article – thank you! Thank you to Justin and Jared for dedicating your life to animal rights. You are doing incredible work and your stories are really inspiring. Just when i think one person can’t possibly make a difference, I read this, and think, yes, one person (or two brothers) can indeed make a difference and change the world!
Thanks for the kind words, Lynn! And thank you for everything you do to make the world a kinder place.
Justin Goodman