Interview with Mira Tweti

Award-winning journalist, book author, filmmaker, and vegan Mira Tweti has a lot to be thankful for this holiday season. In 2008, Tweti published two books on a topic close to her heart—parrots—and her latest film project, Little Miss Dewie: a Duckumentary, was accepted into nine prestigious film festivals. While traversing North America promoting her projects, Tweti took a moment to speak with VegNews about ducks, vegetarianism, and, of course, Thanksgiving.

VegNews: Who is Little Miss Dewie?
Mira Tweti: Dewie is a duck bred for egg-laying that ended up as someone’s pet. She was abandoned at just a few weeks old, left in the lagoon in front of my apartment building in Playa del Rey, Calif. The people who had her may have thought it was a great place to leave her because there are wild ducks here, but it was actually a death sentence. I found her starved and stinking of urine.

VN: How is Little Miss Dewie’s story emblematic of the billions of birds killed for food each year?
MT: If she hadn’t been sold as a pet, she’d likely have been confined in a small cage like an egg-laying chicken or crammed with other females in an over-packed concrete duck house. The most popular pet ducklings are Pekins. White like Dewie, they are bred for meat and grow so large they dwarf any species of wild duck in nature. They commonly run into serious health problems when they live longer in homes than they would in a factory farm. Even as backyard pets, factory-farmed ducks and geese are plagued with the repercussions of the compromises humans have wrought on their species.

VN: What has been the most rewarding experience for you while promoting your film?
MT: Movie Magazine film reviewer Joan Widdifield said a lot of wonderful things about the film, but the one that meant the most and validated making it was, “When I watched Little Miss Dewie with my sister Elin, she said quietly, ‘I’ll never eat duck again.’ That?s the effect that Dewie has.”

VN: When and how did you become vegetarian?
MT: One day six years ago my parrot was walking around on the dining table while I ate chicken for lunch. For some reason, I had a moment of clarity and made a heart connection with what was on my plate. I’d known intellectually that it was morally wrong to take the life of another sentient being, but that day I realized that the bird on my plate was no different from the one I loved and pampered as a member of my family.

VN: How will you celebrate Thanksgiving?
MT: I’ll be at the annual Vegan Picnic at the park in Cheviot Hills, Los Angeles. Everyone brings a vegan dish. There’s a table or two with entrées, one for appetizers, another for desserts. The last couple of years there’s been a raw-food table, too. Everyone there is cognizant of the suffering of the holiday but each year more people show up. It’s giving thanks with every taste and in every moment through the day.