Longtime Animal Advocate Mary Tyler Moore Dies

Iconic actress and animal-rights advocate Mary Tyler Moore died this morning at the age of 80 in a Connecticut hospital. Moore was best-known for her role as strong career woman Mary Richards on 1970s television series The Mary Tyler Moore Show. In addition to inspiring young women to take leadership roles, animal-rights activists remember Moore for her work with Farm Sanctuary in bringing awareness to the cruelty behind factory farming. A longtime vegetarian, Moore appeared in the 2002 Farm Sanctuary documentary Life Behind Bars in which the actress passionately narrated footage of animal cruelty captured at factory farms. “Throughout her life, Mary challenged the status quo,” Farm Sanctuary founder Gene Baur told VegNews. “As a woman, she fought to wear pants in her TV role in the early 1960s, and as an animal lover, she realized that eating animals didn’t align with being kind, so she became vegetarian.” Baur added, “She was determined to make a difference and to speak for those who otherwise didn’t have a voice.” Moore was also an advocate for Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and co-founded Broadway Barks—an annual animal adoption event held in New York City. “Mary will be remembered as a fearless visionary who turned the world on with her smile,” Moore’s representative Mara Buxbaum told the Huffington Post.