Published October 28, 2026 by PETA Staff.

Labor leader and civil rights icon Dolores Huerta, who died this week at the age of 96, was an advocate who never accepted oppression and injustice as inevitable, and she carried that conviction from the picket line to her own plate by refusing to eat animals.

Her decision to shun animal flesh is hardly surprising when you consider that the exploitative jobs on animal factory farms and in slaughterhouses represent what she fought against. Human Rights Watch has called meatpacking “the most dangerous factory job in America.” Killing animals who do not want to die is inherently unsafe work. As chickens and turkeys are hung up by their legs to be killed, they fight back—beating their wings and scratching and pecking workers. Cows and pigs who are still conscious when they are hung up by their hind legs kick and thrash. But the meat industry refuses to create more humane or safer working conditions by slowing down the killing lines.

Huerta was a trailblazer whose empathy knew no bounds, and PETA and PETA Latino encourage everyone to honor her legacy by challenging exploitation in all its forms, because a kinder world for all is within our reach: ¡Sí, se puede!