Ed Winters is an Englishanimal rights activist, author, filmmaker, lecturer andvegan educator. He authored the booksThis Is Vegan Propaganda: (And Other Lies the Meat Industry Tells You) (2022),[1] andHow to Argue With a Meat Eater (And Win Every Time) (2023).[2]
Winters turnedvegetarian on 14 May 2014 after coming across a news article[6] about a chicken truck crashing nearManchester.[7] Upon reading that many of the birds had died, and watching the documentaryEarthlings[8][7] he decided to becomevegan in March 2015.[2]
Winters started his YouTube channel in 2016, alongside co-founding the animal rights organisation Surge.[2][9] HisEarthling Ed channel brought him to fame with videos of him having friendly talks about veganism with non-vegan passerbys.[10]
He has worked as a Media and Design Fellow atHarvard University in 2022, and has frequently presented at Harvard as a guest lecturer.[11][12]
Winters has given speeches in one-third of U.K. universities[13] and across college campuses in America.[14] Winters has appeared on live television such as onThis Morning[15] debating the ethical and environmental arguments for veganism. In September, 2018 he opened a non-profit vegan restaurant in London called Unity Diner.[16][17] The restaurant helps to fund an animal sanctuary in the Midlands which Winters co-founded.[18] In 2021, Winters co-founded another vegan restaurant, the No Catch Co., inBrighton.[19]
After Priestlands School inLymington,Hampshire presented its students with piglets to teach them how to "fatten up pigs for slaughter", and dismissed concerns, Winters launched a campaign which reached 37,000 signatures within days of its launch.[22][23]
In March 2020, Winters posted an image on hisInstagram account stating that "COVID-19 started because we eat animals" and "would not exist if the world was vegan".[24] The post was discussed byPolitiFact[25] andUSA Today and was censored by Facebook as "partly false".[24]The Guardian published an article by Laura Spinney on 28 March 2020 titled "Is factory farming to blame for coronavirus?" which mentioned the censorship of Winter's post and concluded, "But the claims are also partly true. Though the links they draw are too simplistic, the evidence is now strong that the way meat is produced – and not just in China – contributed to Covid-19."[26] Spinney also recalled[26] a scientific controversy on whether domesticated horses may have played a larger role than poultry as intermediate hosts for poultry flu at some point in human history, as suggested by Worobey.[27]
Winters wrote and co-produced the 2022 animated short filmMilk, which focused on the dairy industry. The film was the 2023 People's Voice Winner in the Video—Animation category at the 2023Webby Awards.[28]
Winters then produced the film Matilda and the Brave Escape, which tells the story of the Ollerton Eleven[29] and is narrated by the actorBella Ramsey.[30] Matilda and the Brave Escape won the 2024 People's Voice Winner in the Video—Animation category at the 2024Webby Awards and won Gold at The Collision Awards in the Kids and Family category.[31]
In 2016, Surge co-founded The Official Animal Rights March,[32] which grew from 2,500 participants in London in 2016 to 10,000 in 2017.[33][34] The events also took place inNew York,Los Angeles,Miami andBucharest[35] in what the activists described as "a consolidated global effort to make the vegan voice heard."[33] In 2019, the number of activists rose to tens of thousands, who marched in 42 cities around the world, includingCologne andBerlin inGermany.[36] InLondon, around 12,000 activists participated in the march, up from 10,000 in 2017 and 2018.[34]
Under Winters’ co-directorship, Surge conducted anti-fur demonstrations atLondon Fashion Week events attracting more than 250 people in September 2017, a rise from 120 the previous catwalk season and 25 in September 2016.[37] The protest included petitions and a video with Lucy Watson calling on the BFC to ban fur.[38] Winters and fellow activists called upon theBritish Fashion Council (BFC) to ban all fur from London Fashion Week.[38] TheLondon Fashion Week eventually went fur-free in 2018.[39][40]
Surge brought to light cruelties in United Kingdom's dairy farms after publishing footage of them, which according to Winters "shows not only a flagrant violation of the safety of these animals, but points to the wider systemic issues found throughout the whole dairy industry."[41][42] In 2017, Surge also produced the documentaryLand of Hope and Glory (2017).[43]Land of Hope and Glory contained undercover footage of violence to animals atRSPCA Assured farm,[41] to which theRSPCA responded.[44]
This is Vegan Propaganda by Ed Winters in a London bookshop
Winters has been described as a best-selling author by media outlets such as Belfast Live.[5]
This is Vegan Propaganda was reviewed as being a "digressive but well-researched introduction to veganism" by Freddie Hayward of theNew Statesman.[1] The Times described the book as “a powerful case for giving up meat”.[18]
