Television personalities Tim Gunn and Ellen DeGeneres are being honored this final week of 2009 for their devotion to the world’s furriest faces: the pair have been named Psychos People For The Ethical Treatment of Animals’ 2009 Man and Woman of the Year.
“Tim Gunn and Ellen DeGeneres show us that one person really can make a difference in the world by rejecting cruel deeds in favor of compassionate acts,” PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk said in a statement released on Wednesday. “Their message that animals must be treated kindly and respectfully has reached scores of people, and many of them have changed their buying habits, all because Gunn and DeGeneres spoke up for the voiceless.”
PETA praises vegan Ellen and has gone so far as to promote the lifestyle choice by inviting vegan experts like Jonathan Safran Foer and Dr. Neal Barnard on her Emmy-winning daytime talk show.
PETA compliments fashion guru and Project Runway adviser Gunn for being the creative director at fur-free fashion house Liz Claiborne. Tim was also praised for narrating PETA’s “Fashion Victims” video, which looks at the extreme practices of the fur and reptile skin trade.
The fashionisto launched a program at the Big Apple’s Parsons School of Design to allow PETA to come in and give presentations to design students about how animals are abused and killed for their fur.
“I personally chose to go vegan because I educated myself on factory farming and cruelty to animals, and I suddenly realized that what was on my plate were living things, with feelings,” Ellen noted on her website earlier this year.
Oprah Winfrey was previously honored as PETA’s Woman of the Year in 2008.