Model and 2023 Future Lister Richie Kul partners with PETA Asia during Thailand’s Jae Festival to promote year-round compassion and a vegan lifestyle.

As Thailand celebrates the annual Jae Festival, known for its focus on mindfulness and plant-based eating, model and influencer Richie Kul, one of Koktail’s 2023 Future Listers, has partnered with PETA Asia in a new campaign that calls for kindness beyond the nine-day event.

In the campaign, Kul appears nude to symbolise vulnerability and purity, echoing the festival’s core value of living without causing harm to others. He urges people to extend the Jae spirit throughout the year by choosing a vegan lifestyle.

In an accompanying video, the Bangkok-born model reflects on his decision to go vegan nearly 30 years ago, describing it as a simple choice once he became aware of the suffering caused by animal industries.

“We can live healthy, gratifying, fulfilling lives without harming animals–the question is, why don’t we?”

he says.

Kul’s message aligns closely with the principles of the Jae Festival, when devotees abstain from consuming animal products as a form of spiritual and physical cleansing. His campaign reinforces that compassion can be more than a seasonal practice, it can be a daily commitment to living with empathy for all beings.

PETA’s message adds further context, noting that cows develop friendships over time, chickens form complex social structures, and pigs recognise their own names, yet continue to suffer in industrial farming systems. By adopting a vegan diet, individuals can reduce their impact on the environment, protect their health, and prevent the deaths of hundreds of animals each year.

As Kul puts it,

“When you know better, you do better. And it’s the best thing I’ve ever done for my health, the planet, and the animals.”

You can read more about Richie Kul’s vegan journey by visiting the link here.