Dressed in “grotesque” fur coats, smeared with symbolic red paint, the former Thurso High School pupil and her fellow volunteers from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) took over the Burberry store in an anti-fur protest with the message “Burberry: Death for Sale”.

With a clean record, Joanne told the John O’Groat Journal this week that she had not realised that being arrested would be a consequence of the demonstration, but remarked that she is “a lot wiser now”.

Twenty-two-year-old Joanne’s exploits to promote animal rights have been making headlines both in this country and abroad since she moved to Edinburgh three years ago to join one of Scotland’s foremost animal protection agencies, Advocates for Animals.

There she works as campaigns assistant, co-ordinating volunteers, working on the organisation’s website and contributing to its quarterly campaign update magazine. The pressure group focuses primarily on the protection of animals and played an integral role in influencing the new Animal Health and Welfare (Scotland) Act 2006.

Born and bred in Thurso, Joanne’s interest in animal rights began at an early age when she became involved in collecting signatures for petitions and doing sponsored silences to promote the cause. She turned vegetarian when she was 11; despite early attempts by her mother to make her eat fish, her diet has remained strict and she is now a vegan.

Joanne explained: “I was like, 'No, I’m not going to eat any animal.’ It doesn’t matter if it’s a sheep, a cow, a pig or a fish, they all have the ability to feel pain and suffer.”

In her early teens Joanne began reading literature on factory farming and animal testing, and expressed an interest in becoming a vet. However, she realised there was more she could do to promote animal rights through peaceful demonstrations and campaigns.

“The more I’ve grown up, I’ve realised the more I can do to help animals through education, public campaigns and speaking to friends and family. There’s so much a person can do, but whether they take the steps to do that is their own choice.

“Animal rights, the environment, it’s interconnected – it’s the way I live my life each day.”

Joanne has been volunteering with PETA, the largest animal rights organisation in the world, for three years, and in that time has been involved in a series of publicity stunts and demonstrations.

One of her early campaigns was against Procter & Gamble’s pet food company Iams, a major sponsor of the Crufts dog show. During 2005’s annual awards presentation Joanne interrupted proceedings during a live television broadcast.

“I leapt the fence, unfurled my banner that was stuffed up my sleeve, and started shouting, 'Please drop Iams as a sponsor...’ I was just sort of this blonde blur running across the TV.”

Joanne said that an earlier undercover investigation carried out by PETA had purported to reveal the bodies of discarded beagles at the company’s laboratories in the USA, following experiments into the effects of the pet food on muscle strength. Footage of the investigation was later broadcast on PETA’s website.

Joanne commented: “They are a really controversial pet food company, and it’s a shame because they are the ones that have all of the adverts on TV and have so much in the supermarkets.

“They’ve claimed since that all of their experiments are carried out with companion animals in people’s homes, but the video footage is there – you can’t deny that this is Iams and this is what they do.”

However, the industry-leading pet food producer claims to promote the long, healthy life of animals. Iams’ website states that its global animal studies policy ensures the care and welfare of every dog and cat participating in feeding studies, and says the company is committed to the elimination of laboratory feeding studies as scientifically valid alternatives become available.

Joanne explained that watching footage of animal cruelty can be brutal, but she believes that it reinforces the activist inside of her and reminds her of why she dedicates her time to the cause.

She is sympathetic to those who do not wish to see graphic evidence, but suggests that they should take time to find out about her work.

“Generally the public are really great. Even if people stop to oppose what we’re campaigning for then that’s great because you get the chance to speak to somebody, to put your opinion across,” she said. “There’s bound to be some crazy person who’ll shout something at you in the street, but that’s probably because they don’t understand what we’re doing.”

Joanne admits that at times it can be tiresome to keep fighting her corner, but realises that it is always another opportunity for people to listen to what she does.

In 2005 she took part in the fourth annual Running of the Nudes – a “cool” and “crazy” alternative to the Running of the Bulls, which takes place before traditional bullfighting in Pamplona, northern Spain.

Joanne remarked: “The media goes wild over it every year – they all think we’re crazy. It’s fantastic the amount of people that actually say, 'Hey, I don’t agree with bullfighting, I’m going to take this on and make a stand.’ It shows there’s no need to be cruel, we can still have fun as human beings and not torture animals at the same time.”

Last year Joanne returned to Thurso to protest against the use of real fur in Buckingham Palace guards’ ceremonial hats when Prince Charles visited the Environmental Research Institute. Advocates for Animals and PETA had united over the campaign to urge the Queen and the Ministry of Defence to ban the use of real fur and introduce a new synthetic material.

Joanne Sim protesting against Burberry as part of a PETA campaign.

In January this year, Joanne undertook a three-month internship with PETA in the USA where she took part in various campaigns across 14 east coast states. Anti-fur protests attracted widespread media attention when Joanne joined two other PETA campaigners outside the Washington outlet of Burberry.

In sub-zero conditions, the trio took part in a naked demonstration with a banner draped around them reading “I’d Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur”.

Other campaigns involved leafleting KFC fast-food outlets and “un-dressing” as a human barbecue at an event in Nashville to highlight the vegetarian cause.

Joanne was also involved in leafleting outside Ringling Brothers’ circus shows which featured performances from 10 Asian elephants. Volunteers from PETA filmed circus workers transporting the elephants to and from the venues to ensure that no acts of cruelty took place.

Joanne said: “When you actually see 10 elephants under the control of a human being, too scared to put a foot out of place for fear of the bullhook [a solid metal bar with a hook on the end, used to control the animals] crashing into their legs, it’s just so surreal.”

She recalled one emotional day at a show in Norfolk, Virginia, when she was following the elephants back to their trailers during a torrential downpour. “They [the elephants] were just so happy to be out in the rain. All they wanted to do was to play and have fun and squirt water on each other, but they weren’t allowed to.

“Any time a hand was raised, these massive elephants turned away in fear – it was just ridiculous. These elephants should be in the wild, they shouldn’t be standing there in the middle of a city centre, fearing for their lives from a human being.”

However, through her experiences overseas, Joanne believes that the UK is much more advanced in terms of its animal welfare laws. She reflected: “I actually felt really lucky to be living in this country because we do treat our animals a hell of a lot better than they do in other countries. There is still a lot to be improved on, but at least we’ve got up-to-date legislation where you can prosecute if someone is cruel to an animal.”

Joanne would, however, like to see more money invested in researching the alternatives to animal testing. She believes that animals do not make suitable human models and that other methods such as human volunteers, computer modelling and tissue sampling should be used as a means of testing.

“Animals aren’t humans. We don’t have the same cells, the same structure. When alternatives are out there, where you don’t have to cause pain or suffering to an animal, then why test on an animal?”

Joanne, who also studies environmental science through the Open University, supports an end to the factory farming of all animals, but has encouraged people to eat local produce.

“Meat is pumped full of antibiotics and growth hormones... I wouldn’t want to change the whole world and say that you must go vegetarian – there are steps that you can do to build up to that, like cutting down on your meat intake and making sure that you don’t eat factory-farmed food like battery eggs.”

She added that there is now a range of faux-meats available with an alternative to “everything apart from a boiled egg”.

She called for stricter regulations on food labelling and warned that the public should be wary of claims made by manufacturers that animals have had a happy existence.

“You might think 'barn fresh eggs’ are from chickens that have roamed free, but these are from battery-caged hens. A lot of it’s down to the labelling – it’s not clear to the consumer what they are buying,” she said.

Ideally, Joanne would like animals to have a life free from pain, misery and suffering, and hopes that her endeavours with PETA have not fallen on deaf ears.

“PETA are really good at communicating a message to the public. They really get people to stop to look and to think,” she said. “It’s a cruel world but I think eventually people will realise that animals are sentient beings – it’s just going to take a while, just like it took a while to realise that women were equal to men and blacks equal to whites.”

* Later this summer Joanne will be taking part in a sponsored parachute jump to raise money for Advocates for Animals’ Save the Battery Cage Ban. In 1999 the EU Laying Hens Directive was passed which provided a Europe-wide ban on conventional battery cages by 2012. However,

Advocates for Animals claims that, despite having had 12 years to prepare for the phase-out, some EU member states and industry bodies are pushing for the ban to be delayed, or even dropped.

To find out more about Advocates for Animals, or to sponsor Joanne, visit www.advocatesforanimals.org

e.mackay@nosn.co.uk

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