Natalie Portman makes controversial video for PETA

In 2009, a German court banned PETA from comparing eating meat to Nazi atrocities. It also prohibited the animal welfare group from using photos of concentration camp inmates and other images of Nazi genocide.

But Natalie Portman praised the Nobel Prize winning author for thinking “far ahead of his time” by writing “of individuals who dared to challenge cultural norms” such as championing women’s rights, gay marriage and articulating “the plight of animals so boldly that the modern world could not ignore him”.

Quoting from Singer, the Jewish actress said: “I did not become a vegetarian for my health. I did it for the health of the chickens.”

The video concludes with a final quote from Mr Singer, who wrote Yentl the Yeshiva Boy which became the film Yentl starring Barbara Streisand, and died in 1991.

“As long as people will shed the blood of innocent creatures there can be no peace, no liberty, no harmony. Slaughter and justice cannot dwell together.”