PETA drew fierce backlash Thursday after tying a deadly Washington, DC, shooting to its campaign against foie gras at a nearby restaurant.
The animal rights group posted on X that “an active shooting has been down the block from Mallard restaurant in DC, which is planning a foie gras dinner tonight,” alongside a photo of police cordoning off the street near the Vida Fitness gym where Dr. Matt Lambert had shot five people, killing one. PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk was “on scene,” the post noted, before asking whether the restaurant would “show its neighbors the consideration it’s refused to show ducks.”
Celebrity chef Jose Andres fired back on the same platform with blunt outrage.
“You should be so ashamed of this tweet,” he wrote. “People dead and injured and you tweet this?”
Fox News reporter Jacqui Heinrich shared the PETA post with the caption: “*picks up jaw off the floor*”
Journalist Yashar Ali weighed in with his own condemnation. “There is something deeply wrong with this organization,” he wrote in response.
Another X user put it more directly: “My gosh, read the room. It’s food. Irrelevant to today’s tragedy.”
PETA deleted the original post but declined to apologize, instead defending its stance in a follow-up statement that also took aim at its critics. “The shooting this morning in DC was in PETA’s neighborhood, and these were our neighbors who were impacted. We canceled a protest scheduled today in front of Mallard restaurant for its despicable sale of foie gras out of respect for the victims of the shooting, and in our tweet, we were calling on the restaurant to help eliminate violence by pulling the cruel item from its menu,” the group said.
The organization then pivoted to accusing its detractors of distortion. “We took down our tweet because people who support and take part in the violent killing of ducks and geese for foie gras, like Chef Jose Andres, were twisting it,” the post continued. “Yet we encourage everyone to remember that it is possible to care about more than one thing at a time and to respect all life.”
The shooting itself had unfolded Thursday morning inside a Vida Fitness gym in the capital, where Lambert, a physician, opened fire on his building manager, James Stuart, during a dispute over mold. From the balcony of his apartment, he shot four additional people before barricading himself in his penthouse. Following an hour-long standoff with police, Lambert killed himself.
The violence left Stuart dead and multiple others wounded, with law enforcement sealing off the area that PETA would later reference in its culinary protest.