by Sally MacMillan, from thesundaynews.com.au
IN less than a year she's cleaned up at ARIA and in top-selling album charts, toured the US and UK and has been nominated for the Australian Jack Awards for live music.
Along the way the Missy Higgins, 22, has added a special ambassadorship to her CV, joining PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) as a spokeswoman.
A recent photo session in the US with Jake the piglet is about to sweep the world as Higgins joins fellow Australians in the band Something For Kate and models Sarah Jane and Imogen Bailey in anti-cruelty campaign ads.
Photo: Sarah Jane in PETA anti-KFC campaign
For the singer, speaking out against animal abuse is just as important as learning her debut album, The Sound of White had gone platinum eight times (600,000-plus sales) and swept all away to be the top-selling album in Australia for 2005.
"Animal rights is important to me because my whole life I felt that animals are on a par with us," she said.
"Rather than the people ruling the Earth and stomping around and treating everyone below us like, uh, animals, I've just always thought that we should treat animals with more respect and more like equal beings, rather than beings that are below us – and treated cruelly."
This isn't a new passion for the Melbourne-born singer/songwriter. While her singing ability came to the fore in high school – winning the Triple J Unearthed competition – she has been committed to animal welfare since primary school.
"There was this one teacher when I was in Grade 3 or 4 who just taught us all about respecting animals, and I became really connected with it. I didn't want to kill mosquitoes and I didn't want to swat flies. I was just one with every being on Earth."
Higgins made a full commitment to vegetarianism a few years ago and swears she's never felt better.
"I much prefer eating green vegetables rather than meat," she says. "I just feel much healthier on the inside. I just feel like I'm doing something that's much better for my body."
Her mission is to build awareness of how cruel sow stalls are for pigs.
Meeting Jake in Atlanta brought it home to her.
"This little piggy would have actually been raised in a sow stall," she says, eyes brimming. "That's a cage that's only big enough for him to grow to his full capacity, and there's no more, so eventually he wouldn't even have had any room to turn around. He was rescued from that just recently. So I guess I just want people to see that first-hand and relate to that, because it's something that's going on and people have to realise that.
"I think in order for people to be able to help causes like this, there has to be knowledge about what actually goes on in the slaughter houses and the sow stalls."
Not to forget battery hen farming.
"I think people just have to spread the word and try everything that they can do to stop this from happening and to stop big companies like KFC from encouraging this kind of thing. I think knowledge is the key.
"I visited a battery-hen farm once, and it was a shed as long as you could see and as wide as you could see. It was just wall-to-wall with chickens with absolutely no room to move. They were just completely cramped in next to each other, and they were being used just to get fat and basically to be slaughtered.
"KFC is the largest fast-food restaurant in the world that hasn't implemented an animal welfare policy. There's fast-food chains like Burger King and McDonald's that have already implemented it, and KFC just refuses to."
Back to Jake. "It was my first experience holding a pig," she laughs. "I've never held a baby pig before, and he was really smelly, but really cute. I think that he warmed to me after a while."
Now Higgins is hoping her large fan base will support her mission.
"I'm hoping the reaction that my fans have is an intense one. I'm hoping that it will make them think about what they're eating and what they're doing.
"I'm hoping that if they haven't thought about this issue before, then it will make them think and maybe evoke something inside them to do something about it."
Just like Missy Higgins.
Photo: Supermodel Imogen Bailey
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