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#025_ The Dark Truth About Chicken Farming · INSPIRE STORY

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Well, delighted to have you here. Thank you for making
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: the trip out here.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: I'm excited to be here.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's going to be cool. So so many things
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: to talk about. But why don't we just why don't
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: we just start at the beginning. And I'm going to
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: ask you questions I already know the answer to, but
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: the people that listening don't. All how did you get
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: started in this whole world of animal advocacy and activism?
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: To begin with, like the beginning, the beginning, beginning.
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: Let's let's like, you know, set the stage.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Set the stage. Well. Like most human beings, my first
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: encounter with animals was as a child, and I grew
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: up in the swamps of Florida, where there were ducks
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: in my backyard. And if anyone is to blame or
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: to thank for my life of animal activism, it is
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: a family of ducks.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: And they would hatch in my mother's prized flower bed,
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: which we were not allowed to touch, of course, but
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: the mother ducks were and they would come in and
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: you know, push around all the flowers and make a
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: nest and this these eggs would hatch, and it was
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: right on the other side of a screened in porch.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: So my brother, sister and I used to lay in
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: our bellies and watch the lives of these ducks unfold,
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: hatch go out for their first swim, and all the dramas,
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: and there are dramas when it comes to ducks that unfold.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: So I grew up with no question in my mind
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: that animals that we were not talking. We were just
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: talking about degrees of difference between us and ducks and
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: dogs and cats and cows and pigs, and they were
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: worthy of good lives and worthy of protection. And when
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: I grew you know, I always had this great appreciation
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: for nature. But when I grew up in around fifteen,
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: discovered that animals are horribly abused in our food system,
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: totally disregarded as sentient beings. Rather than be really sad
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: about that, I became just a fire was ignited in me.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: Help do something about it.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: What was your upbringing like with your parents that did
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: they instill in you a sense of you know, responsibility
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: or you know, how how did that engine come about?
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: Was that something that you saw in you know, the
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: way that your parents conducted themselves.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: Yes, so two examples related to the ducks. Of course,
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: my father, you know, This was in the eighties, and
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: he would dressed in his suit and tie. The first
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: time the ducks would go out into the canal. He
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: would be very concerned about this because it is not
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: a happy place for ducks necessary duck lings. There's otters
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: and gaiters. And he used to follow them in an
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: aluminum canoe with a net and if one of them
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: kind of got too far behind, he would scoop up
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: the ducks, careful not to touch them, get his scent
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: on them, and make sure that they got reunited with
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: the pack and the flock of you know so. Yeah,
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: And on the other hand, and my mom also sometimes
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: the ducks would lay the eggs out of season and
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: in the winter it sometimes gets cold in Florida, and
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: she they would vury that my mom and the mother
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: ducks had this thang going on, and she would lay
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: the eggs underneath the dryer event. And my mom if
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: the mother duck went out to get food or do
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: her thing and have a break, my mom wulturn on
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: the dryer event and make sure it was like her
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: personal responsibilities.
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: It is like, you know, an extended family.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they really were an extended family.
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: I knew about the ducks. I didn't realize it was
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: so intense.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: It was.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: It was, well, there was this thing where you move
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: away from Florida and then you move back a couple
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: years later or something like that, right, And then suddenly
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: the ducks were no more. Right.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: I moved to Spain and then moved back when I
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: was seventeen, and I remember them. I was looking around
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: and I didn't quite know what I was looking for,
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: and I realized the ducks weren't there anymore. And in
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: that time, the chemicals that are put on lawns to
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: keep them green and weed free had run into this
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: canal and turned it into a pea soup. It was
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: just algae and alcaea, and the ducks had left, And
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: in some ways I was very sad, but I was
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: also very glad that they could leave, because later that
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: I would discover not all animals have that choice.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: Right, And your first kind of stab at activism had
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: to do with manates, right, Yes, the beloved manatee.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: If I could be any animal, I would be a manateeh.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: You just get to chill on the Florida waterways and
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: eat vegan food, and yeah, they're the best. Manatees are they,
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: you know, I've I love the Florida waterways, I love
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: the wildlife and the nature, and manatees are this unlikely
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: animal to be in these waterways, these giant sea cows
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: that just hang out. So I worked for Save the
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: Manatee Club is my first job, and that's where I
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: discovered policy makes a difference. Government policy makes a difference
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: because the battle for the manatee was also the battle
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: for prime real estate in Florida, which is waterway real estate.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: And the law was that in danger, they were classified
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: as an endangered species and therefore, if they were on
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: a property, you cannot build a marina there, and that
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: was valuable property.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, that seems to sort of pressage or set
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: the stage for your particular perspective.
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: On advocacy.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: Being one of working in cooperation and partnership with these
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: institutions to shift them from within, which is considered by
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: some to be a radical departure from the traditional methodology
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: of trying to you know, win the hearts and minds
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: of the individuals and consider these institutions as you know,
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: emblematic of the enemy.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah right, Yeah, I think I very quickly realized that
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: if you want to change things, you have to convince
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: the enemy to join you and get on your path
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: with you, even if you start a little further back
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: than you'd like. It's a more sustainable, long term change
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: that ends the battle. It really, you know, you don't.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: I think when you're early on in activism, the battle
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: feels great, like you're so angry and you want to
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: be angry and you want to blame someone. But you
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: get worn out that way, and at some point you
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: take a step back and it doesn't feel good anymore,
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: and you realize you're not making as much progress. You're
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: just being angry and just spinning your wheels.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: Get probably getting angrier and angrier because you're facing more
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: and more resistance because there's a there's a certain futility
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: to it as well.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: I think definitely, And and I still get really angry.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: It's not I think that the mistake is that I'm
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: not endorsing what's happening, and engaging doesn't mean endorsing, And
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: that's an important distinction, right.
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: I think people get confused about that.
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: They do, and I get I mean, I get plenty
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: of you know, the hate that really and I get
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: where it's coming from. It's a fear that we're degrading
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: or losing our position, but that's not what it is.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: Engaging is at worst, you're going to understand better how
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: to fix the problem, and at best, you find a
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: common ground that you can build from.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: Right, Well, it seems it seems elemental to me that
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: understanding is foundational to creating change. If you don't understand
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: the playing field and the players and you don't find
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: a way to, you know, at least empathize with them
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: in some way, then you're starting from, you know, behind
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: the starting line in terms of your ability to really
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: you know.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: Right, I mean the change you see, I mean the industry.
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: We're trying to change factory farming. It's super secretive. But
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: the people who do it, the industry, the farmers, they
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: know everything we want to know, but can't know unless
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: we get to know them about changing it. And that's
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: what as I started to work with these farmers, all
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: of the questions I had wanted to know were being answered.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: Just by befriending these people and trying to understand their
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: perspective and then giving me open tours of their factory farms.
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: I could ask the questions like how often are these
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: chickens dying? Is this normal? You know? How often do
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: these disease outbreaks happen? What happens when the disease outbreaks
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: happen in your farm? Helps you do these go onto
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: people's plates? Like all these questions you just can't know
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: the answer to unless you step inside the problem.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: You can't even get the opportunity to ask them though,
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: unless you engender some level of trust.
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: That is a good point. And that's that probably for
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: a decade was the most frustrating thing for me is
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: we would have these questions and we couldn't ask anybody.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: Nobody would even pick up the phone answer an email.
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: And that's when we started switching from when I started
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: switching really from hardcore advocacy to more engagement and more
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: let me just write a nice email instead of an
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: asty one.
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: I know, imagine that. Imagine Yeah, well, let's work our
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: way up to that.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, first you you go to college and then
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: you go to London right to get a graduate degree
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: and like sustainable development. Yeah, and was there was part
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: of that motivated by just trying to learn as much
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: as you could about agriculture and farming or was it
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: our sense that this was going to be your path.
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: I feel like the path shows me. Probably a lot
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: of people feel that way. I'm not. I felt pulled
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: towards something and I didn't know what, but I was
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: just following the doors as they opened. And when I finished,
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: I did a zoology degree at University of Florida, and
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: I really cared about the waterways of Florida. I really
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: thought that's what I was going to do, that I
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: was going to do environmental protection. I thought I needed
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: to be a vet. Maybe I would do veterinary wildlife rescue,
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: you know, be doing really fun wildlife marine rescue work.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: And my mentor at the time took me aside and
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: he said, Leah, that's not what you want to do.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: Vets are plumbers. They fix animals once they're already broken.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: You're more interested in getting to the root of the problem,
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: the root of the suffering. And that was probably the
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: most important thing anyone's ever said to me in terms
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: of defining my half. He doesn't probably even know that.
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: And it was doctor Lewis Gillette, and that made me
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: look at master's degrees. At the time, there were not
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: really sustainable development. That was just an emerging concept. Really.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: It was nineteen ninety nine and there were two degrees.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: One was in London, we were the first batch of students,
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: and the other one was in Boston University. And I
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: just looked at the cost of those and I was like, Okay, London,
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: and I went to London.
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: There's probably a lot of those programs.
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: Now there are tons, and the program now has a
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: thousand kids in it and it's part of University of
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: London King's College that I went to. But there were
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: seven of us in the program and we kind of
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: got to define it a little bit ourselves and it
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: was fantastic. But the of all places, England, right, I
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: chose a kind of random place, a random country. I
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: had been born and grown up partially in Spain. I
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: wanted to get back to Europe, and when I got there,
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: I discovered this whole farm animal movement happening that I
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: had no idea that aligned exactly with my values, and
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: I just I had no idea that was a possible
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: career option. So more than getting my master's degree there,
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: I was exposed to compassionate world farming, the Royal Society
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: for the Protection of Animals, a bunch of really hardcore
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: groups like VIVA or other animal rights farm animal rights
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: organizations that not only were they were professional, they were
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: a professional movement of like CEOs and communications specialist and
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: lobbyists fighting for farmed animals. And they had already won
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: lots of things, like they had banned the worst practices
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: which we still haven't banned in this country, like battery
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: cages and these crates that mother pigs are kept in
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: and veal crates banned, and they had succeeded, and I
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: just got I fell in love, and then you just you.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: Ended up working with them for a while, right, and
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: then coming to the United States and kind of opening
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: up the satellite office from one Gainesville to another.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, I apparently have a thing for Gaines bills. Yeah.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: I'd worked for ten years in Europe in London, I
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: worked for Compassionable Farming, and then I worked at World
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: Society for the Protection of Animals, where I oversee oversaw
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: all of the global campaigns and programs. And during that
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: period of my life I went to thirty countries before
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: I was thirty and saw every form of suffering that
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: human beings inflict on animals, whether it be dolphins and dolphinariums,
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: bare bile farming, stray dogs, horses being used for working
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: horses used in Colombia, and then farm animals, and I
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: really thought after the birth some of them. My son
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: was born in London, and when he was born things
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: really switched for me because I really thought about the world.
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: I wanted to hand him and I thought, my time
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: is also very precious now because he's precious, and you know,
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: when your kids are born, you have this moment where
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: you're like, time is now really precious, like in eighteen years,
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: eighteen years, you got eighteen years.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: You seem to have a very finely acutely calibrated clock.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: Though like your you know, like you're you don't have
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: a lot of patience and you're very you know, sensitive
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: to how time is passing and time is short.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is, much to the annoyance of many people
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: around me. I just did this like three we just
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: did this three sixty degree review internally for Mercy for
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: Animals and it was all very positive from my team,
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: but all of them were like, can we please slow down? Please?
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: Can we go slower?
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: Well, it's an interesting dynamic because my sense of what
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: it must be like to try to shift to these
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: gigantic institutions from within requires you know, a deaf hand,
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: and you know a sort of mature diplomatic disposition, and
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: with that, patients, right, these these things don't turn around
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: on a dime. So how do you reconcile, like the
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: patients that that demands with your impatience to see the
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: change that you know you envision in your mind in
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: the world.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: That's a very stude observation that I have never thought about.
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: I guess I think it's worthy of my patients if
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: it's going to move a large number of individuals from
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: and reduce their suffering. So I have patients for if
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: I'm working with a company and I know they're in
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: charge of half a million animals, and if I so
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: working with Purdue, for example, they produce, they raise, and
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: slaughter six hundred and eighty million animals every year. So
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: having patients with is worth it because even a tiny
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: step is a monumental reduction and suffering for those animals,
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: and that makes it more worth it.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: Do you have to go into those meetings thinking, Okay,
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: I have to be patient, I have to clamp down
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: on my impatience a little bit.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, I stay very goal oriented and come up
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: with two or three things and I'm like, these are
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: the things I really want to move them on. And
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: staying focused like that helps me stay patient. I guess.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: So your husband gets a job offer from CDC, right,
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: so this is going to take you to Georgia. Yes,
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: And at that time, were you thinking, well, this is
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: going to you know, allow me to explore the belly
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: of the beast in terms of the chicken industry or
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: you know, how did that? It seems perfectly aligned, right
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: that he would get this job offer and it would
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: sort of intersect perfectly with this thing that you're super
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: interested in.
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Like I said, I feel like the path pulled me.
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: And I had proposed to the Compassionate Old Farming CEO
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: this satellite office, and I said, we're probably gonna move.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: It's going to be Georgia. But here's why it should
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: be Georgia. Georgia is the largest producing state of chickens
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: in the entire country. They produced one point four billion
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: chickens every single year. It's where factory farming was born, essentially,
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: chicken factory farming in particular. And what's the point of
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: being another nonprofit that's pointing fingers from the city, not
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: really getting it. Let me be in the thick of it.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: And he didn't say yes right away, and we moved anyway.
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: But I started working despite.
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: That, I's doing it.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I just started exploring, and I got on
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: the board of the George Animal Rights and Protection and
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: just started getting into it. And then about a year
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: after I'd moved there, he called me and said, oh,
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: remember that proposal. I found the money. Here's two days
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: of pay and a laptop.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: Go, oh wow, so you were doing You were kind
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: of on your own for a whole year before that
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: kicked in.
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: Well and then two days a week.
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, well that's you know, it's not for you. Yeah, yeah,
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: you know, a lot of a lot of us believe
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: that it's just you know, you just handle laptop and
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: a work right. It does half the time, so it's
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: worth trying.
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: And here's where things get really interesting.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: You know. I knew that Georgia was a was a
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: large poultry producer. I didn't realize the extent, you know,
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: to which it's responsible for all the chickens that Americans eat.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: So just to kind of canvas the landscape in the
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: United States, nine billion chickens a year are slaughtered for
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: human food, so one point six of those billions come
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: out of Georgia. It's like a huge percentage of their
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: sort of state GDP. Right, Yeah, it's like the number
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: one industry in Georgia. And what's really interesting, and you
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: go into this in detail in the book, is the
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: history of how industry allized chicken farming came to be
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: and really the roots of animal so conventional factory farming
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: can be traced back to their origins in rural Georgia.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there was this gentleman named Jesse Jewel, and he
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: owned a feed mill and he wanted to figure out
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: how to sell more of this feed. So this is
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: like the grain that we feed animals. So his idea,
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: and this was during the depression, was that he would
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: get farmers to rent chickens from him, buy his feed,
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: and then he picked them up at the end and
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: send them off to slaughter and this would help him
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: grow his feed business. And it worked. And this was
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: in Gainesville, Georgia, and this was this is essentially how
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: the system works today. So he got enough money that
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: he also bought the processing plant, the slaughterhouse so he
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: ended up owning the whole system, which is a vertically
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: integrated system that we see today. And why the farmers
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: that I worked with later, you know, are essentially indentured servants.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: They can't get out of this system them they are
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: not They don't own, they don't own those chickens. The
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: chickens are dropped off their chicken babysitters and then they
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: grow them and then someone else picks them up and
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: sends them up to slaughter. And that was Jesse Jewel.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: Then it's Purdue enticson today.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: So I think a lot of people, I mean, I've
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: talked about this on the podcast before and we've gone
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: into this, but but not to the detail with which
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: you kind of unpack it in your book. Like I
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: think it's worth really trying to understand the predicament that
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: these farmers find themselves in from a financial perspective, Like
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: you have a well meaning individual who wants to hold
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: onto their land. They take these loans out so that
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: they can build these, uh you know, basically warehouses for
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: these you know, to breed these chickens, and they become
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: indentured servitudes because although they're promised like this pathway forward
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: in terms of being able to pay down this loan.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: They keep getting hit with requirements to improve their facilities,
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: et cetera, and are required to continually take take out
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: loans and they could barely make ends meet. And it's
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: really it creates a legitimate socioeconomic problem where these people
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: are trapped in a situation that quickly becomes something I
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: never would have predicted it would become.
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I collectively chicken factory farmers in our country, Oh
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: five point two billion dollars. Wow, that's how much depth
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: that they have. And as you said, so, just the
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: example that I learned, like the really rock to my world,
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: was one farmer, Craig Watts. He lives in Fairmont, North Carolina,
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: and when he was about twenty two years old, he
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: was dreaming for a way to stay on the land
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: that had been passed down five generations in his family.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: And many of the farmers are like that. They just
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: want to stay there for either way life or because
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: this was their family's house land farm for one hundred years.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: And in this case, tobacco industry bottomed out North Carolina,
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: chicken industry rolls up right behind it and offers Craig
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: this contract, and it seems like a dream come true.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: He can stay on the land, he can pay his bills,
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: he can raise his family. And he takes a quarter
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: of a million dollar loan out, which at twenty two
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: in the poorest county of North Carolina seems to me crazy,
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: but he can. The system allows that to happen, and he.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: Raises These loans are guaranteed by Purdue, Right, so.
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: Somebody, they're guaranteed by US as taxpairs. They're part of
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: our agricultural system, and if they fail, they are backed
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: by the US government. Oh wow, Yeah, this is a
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: whole other story.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: So a young individual with no credit has no problem
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: getting one.
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: Of these loans, right, and you know, no degrees, like,
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: no problem. And that's added up to five point two
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: billion dollars of debt in our country. And so you know,
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: he took out this loan. He builds these warehouses and
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: at first it goes great, and then the birds start
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: to get sick because it's a factory farm. And these
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: are birds that are stuffed wall to wall in a
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: windowless warehouse, living on their own, feces, ammnulate and air,
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: stressful circumstances, and some of them die, and you don't
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: get paid for dead birds, and so he starts to
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: fall behind on the payments he's supposed to be paying
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: them off. This loan off like a mortgage. Every month,
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: the same amount every month is due. But if he
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: doesn't raise x number of chickens, he doesn't, he gets
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: a smaller paycheck, right, and he starts to fall behind
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: on that loan, and he has to take out more
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: money or he has to do something else. He has
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: another job to make ends meet, and pretty soon he's
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: realized he's made a mistake, but too late, and he's
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: an indentured servant and he can't do anything about it.
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: And that is the typical circumstance.
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: In his case.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: It was going good initially, and so then he kind
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: of doubled down, right, Like he had two warehouses and
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: he went to four.
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: So he took out more.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: Debt exactly subsidized that, and the problems then kind of
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: started to creep up then.
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: And the way it works is you take out these lines.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: Perdue is responsible well for getting you the chicks right,
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: and you kind of cover everything else right. You raise
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: these birds and then they basically come and pick them up,
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: and you get paid for whatever ones are usable to
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: use it.
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: You know, the farmers get paid today five cents per
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: pound of bird of flesh, and we pay at the
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: supermarket if you eat chickens a dollar that's the commodity price.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: So the farmer is getting five percent of that dollar.
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: And there are many, many, many of them are living
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: on the edge of poverty.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, there was like a crazy statistic something like
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: seventy one percent of them are at or below the line.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's you know, it's serious. And that was you know,
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: I was like, I'm a vegan animal rights activist before
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: I met Craig Watts. This was the person who symbolized
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: everything I fought against my whole career. This is a
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: person who I hated, I blamed, I was angry at,
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: I wished ill, I did not want him to succeed
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: in life.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: But he becomes the flashpoint in your career and in
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: this movement, right, there's a decision to try to engage
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: him from his perspective, from his point of view.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, being really honest, I didn't when I
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: went to meet him. That was not my intention. My
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: intention was to go in there and get footage because
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: as you and your listeners will be aware at AGGAG
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: is a growing problem where it's illegal for us to
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: get footage inside of a lot of farms. So here
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: was a guy offering me to film freely in his farm.
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: And we hadn't seen through at that time, and this
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: was six years ago. There had not been footage from
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: inside a chicken factory farming farm for a decade.
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: Oh is that right?
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: Wow?
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: No one had been able to get in. It just
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: was impossible. So this offer was like gold to me.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: I had to get inside, get footage and get it
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: out to the public. But when I got there, something
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: else happened completely, you know.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: But there was a lot of email back and forth
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: and you know, like trying to feel each other out,
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: and he had to get to a certain comfort level
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: before he said, Okay, why don't you come on over.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we were texting, we were emailing, and you know,
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: I remember it was like it was like a Sunday
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: and my family were eating in the other room, and
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: I kind of finally worked up the courage to say
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: can I come kind of bring a camera and he
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: just said.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: Sure, which had never happened before.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: Really, No, I had been writing and trying to contact
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: these companies saying can I get a tour, like very
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: openly trying to legally and openly see these places without
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: doing undercover work, and they don't even respond. They wouldn't
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: even respond.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: So one of the things that's interesting you were talking
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: to as Reclined about this, and he pointed it out,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: and I don't know that I had fully which was a.
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: Great conversation, by the way, I loved it.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: He pointed something out that I'm not sure I really
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: fully appreciated, which is the fact that due to these
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: aggag laws and the system being the way that it is,
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: we've kind of normalized that, oh in this industry, like
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: we're just not allowed to know what's going on with
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: our food, and we've sort of accepted that on some level,
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: which is very odd because that would be anathema in
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: any other industry. And yet here we are prevented from
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: the free right to really get a transparent perspective on
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: how our food is made. Yeah, and that you have
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: the only source of information are these underground undercover pursuits
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: where people sneak in the middle of the night and
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: capture this footage.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: It is unfathomable to me that this is our current
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: food and farming system, that all of the animal protein
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: comes from systems that are out of sight and out
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: of mind for a country and for the world. That
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: how can that be? I this is what really drives me,
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: is this insistence in my head, in my mind and
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: my soul that if people really knew, if they really saw,
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: I just don't think anybody would would want that to
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: be where their protein came from. And it's a whole
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: system that's hoodwinking everyone in the process, even some of
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: the executives, even they are removed from it, who are
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: running these companies I.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: Feel, I mean, this is the result of you know,
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: gigantic political and lobbying forces, like moving the tectonic plates
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: at the highest level.
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not the farmer's decision.
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: Right, And the lobbyists are you know, our politicians unfortunately,
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: are being quite often paid by these lobbyists these It
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: makes it very difficult. We don't have one piece of
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: federal legislation protecting farmed animals on farm in this country.
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: That's crazy, it's unbelievable, it is, but it's necessary to
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: continue this this blindness that we that is instilled on
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: us that.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: What is the lobbying budget of the Purdues and the Tysons.
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: I don't know that off the top of my head,
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: but it's a lot, yeah, because sometimes we think about that.
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: We think about like what is the advertising budget we
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: need or what is the lobbying budget we would need
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: to outcompete, and it's really we can't.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: You can't even yeah, you can't then entertain that question. No,
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: So when you're when you're communicating with Craig before he
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: invites you over, was there was there a sense like,
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: I mean, you kind of had to approach this more
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: from a journalist perspective than an activist perspective, right, So
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: was there a sense like, oh, this guy, you know,
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: is having some second thoughts about how he does what
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: he does and there's a little opening here. Did you
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: think like, oh, he's gonna he could be a whistleblower,
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: or you're just thinking I got to get in here
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: before he changes his mind and get this footage.
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: I think I was genuinely curious, like who is this person?
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: Why would he trust me? And I wanted to get
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: to know him. I wanted, you know, also to get
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: this footage because I thought it was the last opportunity,
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: a rare opportunity to find it, to find to get
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: this footage out into the world that can't usually see
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: how the chickens are being produced. And I don't know
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: why Craig and I met or how that we were
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: introduced by a journalist, but I did go into it,
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: I think because of that with a bit of a
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: journalist's you know, perspective.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: Really well, the way it happened was was Craig slipped
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: a bunch of information to a journalist about the feed, right,
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: which is kind of proprietary information, and then you met
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: with the journalist and you're like, where did this come from?
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: So there was evidence like hey, this guy, you know,
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: he wants people to know what's really going on here.
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it really surprised me.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: I went to the coffee shop in my town and
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: this journalist from Reuters, Brian grow, he asked me to
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: meet because he heard I knew about this stuff, and
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: he's like, what is all this? And I was like,
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: what do you have here? He had a bunch of
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: he had like ten years of the antibiotics that are
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: put into chicken feed, like the exact records from the farm,
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: and I thought he was going to say I snuck
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: it out, I had an undercover and he said, no,
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: this farmer gave it to me. It's like, who, what
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: would he meet with me? And I definitely thought the
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: answer would be no, I'm not doing that. I'll break
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: my relationship. And he was like, let me text him,
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: and he texted him right then and there, and that's
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: how we got connected.
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: The surprising thing for me from that story was that
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: that's confidential, Like the feed that they're giving the chicken
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: is something that they don't want anyone to know.
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they act like it's their secret recipe that they
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: don't want their competitors to know about. That's how they
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: excuse that, But.
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: It's really a vail to prevent the public from right
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: knowing what's going on.
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: Eighty percent of our antibiotics are given to farmed animals,
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: and this isn't a time when they're becoming in effective,
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: Like we are quickly and rapidly approaching a time a
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: post antibiotic period again like before penicillin, and that's frightening,
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: and we're wasting it on farmed animals.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: I mean, we're right now, we're in the midst of
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: this coronavirus, you know, outbreak, and so it's very much
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: on my mind the impact of all of these, you know,
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: antibiotic fed animals and the downstream impact of that and creating,
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: you know, a situation in which we're we're we're producing
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: a scenario where an outbreak like that is almost inevitable,
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: like some kind of you know, anti biotic resistant strain
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: of something will emanate out of all of this that's
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: going to create like havoc.
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean the coronavirus is very frightening, and
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: it came from an animal market and.
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: That's like a bat bats I think.
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: It's Yeah, and it's been spread.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: The recommendation if you look on the CDC's page is
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: don't eat any of it. Don't eat animals for markets,
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: don't eat animals right now from this region. We're not
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: precisely sure. And why can't that be the general advice
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: from the CDC.
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: In general animals?
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And a lot of the disease outbreaks we've seen,
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: avian flu or you know, they have come from the trading,
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: the eating, the production of animals in a totally unhealthy
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: and unsustainable way.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: So you get slipped this information. You got this opening
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: from Craig and you go visit him, So tell me
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: what happens.
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: Well, we drove there with my friend Reagan Hodge, she's
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: a filmmaker, and in the whole way there he is
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: writing really strange text messages to us. It turns out
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: he's a very jokey kind of guy, but we didn't
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: know him at this stage, so we just thought maybe
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: he is like.
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: Screwing with us, unhinged.
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: He's unhinged, And here we are two women like headed
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: into god knows where and we're meeting with this man who,
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: by all you know, any other scenario would be my enemy.
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: That's the normal. The media pitches us that way as
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: sworn enemies. I I remember I sent my husband the
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: address and said, I'm going here. If I don't come back,
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: look for me buried in the chicken letter. I might
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: actually be rotting away. That's where I might be. And
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: it was like, not a joke. I really thought, this
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: is a little scary. And we showed up and he
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: led us into his living room and we sat there
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: for hours and hours and hours, and he was showing
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: me everything, and I had this as he's telling me
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: his story you know, it was waiting for the right
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: moment to say, can we go to your houses? But
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: it just didn't come for hours, because I was so
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: enthralled and engaged by his story as a human being.
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: How he was showing me footage of the disease inside
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: of his houses, how he had tried to get rid
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: of it, how there was no help and no answer,
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: and all the while he's falling behind on his payments.
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: How he had been awarded as a top grower. He
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: showed me is like hats for being at the top
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: of the tournament system they have where they get growers
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: to compete against each other. Showed me the pictures of
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: his children, of his parents, his grandparents. He talked about
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: the deed of the land from the Queen of England
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: that had been given to his aunt, and this is
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: the land, you know. He showed me the gravestone. We
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: walked on the property to his gravestones of his family
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: and I just, you know, sitting there, I remember looking
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: out out the window and thinking, if I had been
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: born Craig Watts, would I had done anything different? I
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: don't know. We you know, it just seems you have
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: these moments where you're when you meet people who are
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: very different than you, where you realize it's really chance
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: that you were born where you were born, and how
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: unfortunate that he was born into a situation where there
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: were very few options, and I genuinely believe he chose
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: the best one for himself and his family and it
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: was a mistake and he can't get out of it now.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Wow. I mean to have that kind of awareness
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: I think is super important. You know, the cornerstone of
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: the vegan movement, the animal rights movement is compassion right,
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: and if we can't figure out a way to identify,
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: you know, with the person that we're communicating with, if
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: we can't develop compassion for that person, how do you
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: expect to create sustainable change? Yeah, And I think it's
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: really powerful, you know, to understand that these farmers are
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: people and they're living in you know, they have These
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: people are not the enemy. They're just trying to live
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: their lives and make good choices, and they're dealing with
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: the deck that they've been given.
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: Right And it's the same as slaughterhouse workers, Yeah, very similar.
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: Where a lot of these are immigrants or migrant workforces,
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: immigrant workforces that are coming from Central America with very
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: few choices, and they're the jobs nobody else wants because
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: they're deemed especially LATINX women are abused in these processing plants,
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: these slaughterhouses. So it's it's the system is not just
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: about the suffering of the animals, it's also about the
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: suffering of the people that are producing our meat. And
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: it's immense, right.
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: But what was different about Craig?
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, he's in a community where there's lots of
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: people doing what he's doing who are in the same
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: situation that he's in, essentially, So what was it that
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: tipped him over and compelled him to, you know, make
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: this decision to want to share this his plight and
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: the kind of systemic things that he was dealing with.
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: He was towards the end of his debt, he was
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: getting close to it, and I think he said so
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: he says, said to me that the thing that really
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: made him switch was he was watching a commercial on
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: TV and it was a Purdue commercial, and it was
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: Jim Purdue saying in a pickup truck, like all our
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: chickens are super happy, and all our farmers are super happy,
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: and yay eat chicken. And he like something blew up
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: in him, right, and he's like, I just can't. I can't.
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: I have kids, Like I cannot look them in the
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: eye and be a part of this. And he and
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: the funny thing is I watched the same commercial and
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: it became the subject of our video because it was
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: I was like, you cannot call this humanly raised. I
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: know it's not. You're not being transparent, there's no information this.
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: I had gone probably at the same time as him,
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: in a parallel explosion in my head about being mad
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: that the consumers were being led too.
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because in parallel with all of this, there is
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: a sensibility that consumers, you know, nobody wants to think
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: about the fact that these animals are killed for their food,
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: let alone you know, harmed or you know, treated poorly,
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: and so to address that rather than kind of you know,
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: wrecked a that in a real way. There's a lot
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: of green washing going on and a lot of labels
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: getting thrown around that you know aren't regulated and aren't
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: you know, if defined it all are poorly defined. And
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: you talk about that in the book, right, like going
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: in the store and saying, tell me what this means,
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: and like nobody being able to actually, you know, give
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: you a proper definition, because truly there isn't one. It's
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: just marketing.
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's playing on the good intentions and goodwill
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: of the public, who, like you said, they don't want
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: to buy a torture Nobody wants to buy or eat
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: a tortured animal. Nobody. They want to believe and will
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: go to great lengths to convince themselves that the animal
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: had a good life. So it's not very hard. You
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: just have to put a green a green logo on
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: there that makes it look modern, and maybe say the
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: words cage free chicken on there. Now, mind you, all
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: meat chickens are cage free, so they're also then you
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: can see that on labels a lot they're playing off
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: the fact that people want cage free eggs and most
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: of the eggs we're coming from cage tens, and so
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: they look for these labels that you know, are really
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: tricking people and the companies. There's a lot of they're
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: doing it legally in a lot of cases. So the
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: case of calling chicken cage free was brought to a
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: judge and the judge said, well, it's a fact they're
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: cage free, but people are buying it because they think they're.
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: A pastor, right right.
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: It's not the technical, you know, definition of it, it's
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: the intention behind it, which is to convince people that
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: these animals are living happy lives.
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And unfortunately, our legal system is more on the
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: side of those companies than on the side of what
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: are the consumer consumers really seeing here? What are they
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: really intending?
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: Why is it so hard to get effective labeling laws
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: and some appropriate regulation here? Like what is the relationship
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: between the USDA and the industry, And you know, where
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: does political will sit and how difficult is it to
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: move that needle.
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: It's a revolving door between animal agg and the USDA.
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: You can actually see and I forget the percentage, but
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: a large percentage of the people that are in USDA
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: used to be in industry. The people in industry used
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: to be in USDA, and they just go between the two.
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: They know each other well, they're all buddies. They hang
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: out and the financing of the campaigns of the politicians
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: is done by the egg industry to ensure later when
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: they're on the AG Committee, they're resisting the progressive laws
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: and they're keeping the laws that maintain the status quo
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: in place.
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: It's disheartening to hear that because you want to believe,
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: and I feel like it would be you know, expected,
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: as a consumer and a citizen that the USDA is
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: the regulatory body and they're providing the oversight to make
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: sure that everything is copasetic so that when it ends
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: up on the place, it's safe and everything is kind
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: of vetted. Yeah, you know, tell me the reality of this.
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: Well, I'll give you a really very concerning example that's
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: happening right now, which is the USDA just approved allowed
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: for slaughterhouses to speed up their line speeds.
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: So right, that's a that's a this is this is
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: in this is recently right in the Trump administration.
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: Correct sets.
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they've what used to happen, and this is still ridiculous.
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: It's one hundred and twenty five birds per minute can
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: go on a line. Now they've allowed you could go
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: up to one hundred and seventy five birds per minute.
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: That is three birds a second, So one two three,
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: that's nine birds that just got slaughtered. That's insane. Not
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: only that they have the USDA are saying, you know what,
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: we don't need to police these places anymore. We're not
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: going to check for food safety and they're allowing companies
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: to police themselves grade their own papers.
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: That's super insane.
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: It's going to have human health repercussions. There will be outbreaks,
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: there will be campbell abactor, Salmonella e. Coli. That's the
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: USDA's job is to stop contaminating meat from getting into
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: our food system, mostly because we don't have laws to
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: protect farmed animals, chickens especially, so their job is mostly
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: one of making sure they're following health and safety regulations.
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: So also the people that are working there that they're
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: being treated safely and in a healthy in work environment.
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: So we actually and this is the same for pigs. Also,
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: they just allowed the line speeds to be increased for
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: pigs and we are suing. Mercy for Animals is suing
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: the USDA over this.
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: Oh wow. When we think about animal rights and animal welfare,
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: the typical you know, what typically comes to mind are
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: cattle and pigs. We kind of overlook chickens, right and
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: fish for reasons. I want to, you know, explore with you.
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: But the truth of the matter is, like chicken is
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: the number one protein in the country, if not the world, Right,
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: how do we before we even get into that, like,
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: how do we get to this point where chicken is
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: like overwhelmingly the number one animal product in the United States.
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: Unfortunately, the animal, the chicken, lends itself to the industrial
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: setting and is a victim of its survivability, of his
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: or her survivabilities. So they're able to grow through selective
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: breeding very fast, very large birds. So the birds we
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: eat are forty to forty five days old babies, they're
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: obese babies, and they can do a ton of them
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: in these warehouses, these darkened warehouses, all in a row,
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: thirty thousand birds in a house. A typical farm has
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: two to four of these houses, and they're doing that
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: five or six times a year. So it was just
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: more scalable than anything else.
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, I think I read that if it was
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: a human So how old are the chicks when they're
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: slaughtered About forty two days two days, right, So if
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: it was a human baby, that baby, it would be
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: the equivalent of like blowing up a human baby to
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: like six hundred pounds by the time they're like six
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: months or something.
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: Two years old. Yeah, it's insane. Yeah, So, like how
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: we breed dogs for qualities that we like in dogs.
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: They did the same with the birds. So and the
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: thing that they bread for was giant breasts, because that's
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: what we like to eat. That's the kind of part
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: that people enjoy eating, and everything else was an unintended consequence.
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: So we selectively bred these birds till they were bigger
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: and bigger and bigger and bigger, and grew faster and
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: faster and faster. But their lungs and their heart did
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: not get selectively bred for. And they can't keep up
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: with the muscular skeletal demands of these strange frank of chickens.
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: They collapse under their own weight. Three percent when they
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: get to only four forty days of age, can't even walk,
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: and about a quarter of them have great difficulty walking.
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: And I've seen the birds. So sometimes birds fall off
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: of trucks and people will adopt them and try to
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: get them better. They'd never live beyond six or nine
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: months because they die of heart attacks, big turkeys. They're
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: just normal, and the industry has created a bird that
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: they only want to survive to forty days, and they
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: can't even do that. So there's in a flock of
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: thirty thousand birds in one of these warehouses. About fifteen
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: hundred of them are guaranteed to die. They won't make
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: it about five percent.
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: So when you make this video with Craig, which.
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: We're going to get into, I mean, one of the
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: shocking things is, first of all, like he has to
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: kill so many you know, there's so many sick ones.
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: But then because they can't support their own weight, they're
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: just they're lying on their stomachs and kind of shuffling around.
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: They get chafed and all the feathers are are are
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: rubbed off their belly and they have these open sores
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: all over them.
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and those are the considered how that's like normal.
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: Those are the ones we will we Yeah, and that's
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: very normal. So a lot of people think. I remember
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: talking to my mom about this and trying and telling
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: her like this is how it is, and she said, well,
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: they changed the litter right like every day or so,
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: like a bird cage. And I was like, mom, no,
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: they never change the litter. Many many flocks live and
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: poop and die on that litter that's on the bottom.
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: So we were talking about like wood shavings that are mixed
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: with like feed and feces and what they do is
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: they're living on a composting bed of stuff of feed
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: and shavings and feces and feathers and all kinds of
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: other things, and that starts to compost and heat up.
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: And when I was with Craig at one point I
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: asked them for a thermometer, and I put the thermometer
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: in the bedding and it was about eighty seven degrees,
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: so then on top, So the chickens are sitting on
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: top of an eighty seven degree bed of bacterially decomposing
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: stuff and they can't get up then. And they're also
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: stuffed walled wall, so every time one of them moves,
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: it's shift shift shift shift, shift, shift, shift, shift, shift shift.
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: So that's happening all day, the slight rubbing of their
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: chests on hot litter, and they can't get up very easily.
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: They get up very with great difficulty to get food
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: and water, and then they sit back down and so
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: the rubbing becomes constant. And I don't know why, but
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: I had this impulse to pick one up and look
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: at her, and it was a raw, red belly with
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: sores and easily where bacteria can enter, where they definitely
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: are feeling sick and hot and uncomfortable and in pain.
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: And then they take that run off and then they
• 48:59
  Speaker 3: just spray it on.
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: The fields, right yeah, and it gets it becomes almost
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: like an aerosol.
• 49:05
  Speaker 3: It's in the air.
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: Well.
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: Maybe that's more pigs you're thinking of.
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking of this scene and conspiracy where they're spraying that,
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: and that's more surrounding. You know, families are like inhaling
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: this stuff.
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the pig the pig manures are the manure lagoons.
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: I don't know why they call it that, Like it's
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: something beautiful and like you pull a beach chair up
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: to and relax, But they call them manure lagoons. And
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: they are lagoons next to big pig factory farms. And
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: that's just liquid slash going into a pool. And then
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: they don't have a way to deal with that, so
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: they spray it onto our crops and onto our fields.
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: Which is when you have, uh, a lettuce outbreak of E. Coli.
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: It's not because lettuce produces E coli. It's because that
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: lettuce has been sprayed with feces from a farmed animal.
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: That's so disturbing, it's horrible. But with the chickens. They
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: so they don't do that with the chicken manure, so
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: they stays there.
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: They tend to compost it so that what they do
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: is after each flock clears out and goes to slaughter,
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: they push it all into the middle. They take they
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: cake it. There's a cake on the top, and they
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: take the cake off, and then they put that aside
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: into a kind of pile that they're composting out. Then
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: they put it in the middle. They let it get
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: really really hot and compost, and then they spread it
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: back out and they say, oh, that's really good. It
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: kills the bacteria and all of that, and then they
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: put new chickens on that same right, that same.
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: Well, looking at at how this has scaled up, like
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: you're talking about how it was you know, it was
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: the animal that lent itself to be able to be
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: vertically integrated in that way. But at the same time,
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: there has to be a corresponding consumer demand, right, So
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: I would imagine these things, you know, dovetail with this
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: idea of chicken being a healthier alternative to beef and pork,
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: right where suddenly people are like getting off the red
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: meat but eating more and more chicken.
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and in no way do I want to blame
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: the animal for like saying that they lend themselves. I'm yeah,
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: I want to be right.
• 51:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, thank you for that.
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: No, I think I thought it was not that. No,
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: I think I said that and I realized it's you know,
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: it was an unfortunate result of them being able to
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: survive horrible circumstances. But yeah, one of the big shifts
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: that happened is the nugget, the chicken nugget that McDonald's created,
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: and this shifted the convenience factor of eating animals, where
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: before it was on a bone and it had to
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: be produced like whole chickens. Where chicken used to be
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: something that we ate on a Sunday as a roast,
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: and we roasted the whole chicken. It was special and
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: we ate the whole thing. And then the nugget came
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: around and that was a McDonald's invention, and this changed
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: the landscape for how chicken could be produced. It drove
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: that white meat that breast meat demand, and that changed
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: a lot. And the other factor was you know, KFC
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: doing the fried chicken buckets, like being able to bread
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: and fry it and these deep fryers that allowed for
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: the convenience factors. The fast food industry had a lot
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: to do with the explosion of chicken and then people
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: demanding and wanting this convenient fast food and that really
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: changed things.
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: Right, we've all seen the pink sludge videos of how
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: the McNuggets get made. I mean, is it they just
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: take all parts of the chicken and grind it up? Like,
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: how does that work? Well?
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: It depends because after that pink Sledge video, companies changed
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: their tune a little bit. And so some companies say
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: they don't do that, and they mostly use white meat.
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: And you'll see we use one hundred percent breast meat,
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: but a lot of nuggets you don't know what's in there.
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: You know, it's like a hot dog. You also don't
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: know what's in there.
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: On top of that, chickens suffer from speciism, you know,
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: because you know we you know, we love our dogs.
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: And if you spend any time with cows or pigs,
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: you can see their you know, inner personalities and their
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: character and you understand that they have empathy and feelings
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: and they experience joy and pain and suffering.
• 53:19
  Speaker 3: And all of these things.
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: But human beings have a harder time identifying with poultry
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: in the same way.
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And you know, getting back to our first part
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: of our conversation, I because I had this first you know,
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: hand encounter with ducks, I knew them, I had looked
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: into all of their eyes and maybe had this this
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: sense of their sentience more than the average person because
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: of this first day knowledge.
• 53:51
  Speaker 3: Will you talk in the book about some crazy superpowers
• 53:54
  Speaker 3: that chickens have that I did not know about, So
• 53:58
  Speaker 3: explain that.
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: Well, they can see colors that we can't see, which
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: blows my mind. I saw an advertisement the other day
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: like is there a color you haven't seen? And I
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: was like, chickens have Chickens have seen colors.
• 54:11
  Speaker 3: On top of that, chickens.
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: Have seen colors you haven't seen. And they can see
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: far away and close at the same time, whereas we
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: have to do one or the other, which is why
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: they can spot, you know, a bug in the grass
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: and move for it real quick, which you know I
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: think often. My joke is I can't even find my
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: keys most morning, right, there's no way. But the coolest
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: thing I think they do is they can orient themselves
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: in a magnetic field of the planet, which.
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: That's really what does that mean?
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: They can we need a compass to tell us which
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: way is north and they don't essentially, And they can
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: sense direction and find places without without Google Maps, Right?
• 54:57
  Speaker 3: What about joy?
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: And and you know a sense of belonging to a
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: community like all of these, you know, anthropomorphic experiences that
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: we think are innately human, like what is the what
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: is the chicken experience? Yeah?
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: And I talk about this a lot in my book,
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: this idea of anthropomorphism being bad or that we've been
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: And I feel like that concept is really being rejected
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: because it assumes that humans aren't animals, and of course
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: we are, and therefore these are degrees of differences, not
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: kinds we're not. We've evolved with emotions and therefore they
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: have emotions too, and these help them in social settings.
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: So any animal that needs to communicate to survive, they're
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: going to need to have things like empathy and to
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: understand if they're fellow flockmate is suffering. And there have
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: been some really great studies like Joanne Edgar from University
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: of Bristol did a really great study to show that
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: mother hens have the ability of this empathy, have empathy
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: and what she did is she did these puffs of
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: air on the chicks, on the babies, and they would
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: be very distressed. The babies didn't like the puffs of
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: air in their face. They didn't enjoy that. And then
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: the mothers would have a reaction to that. And then
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: it became very clear that just by showing the device
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: that the mother would start agitated. Like and when I
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: was with Ezra Cline came up with a great analogy
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: of like, it's like when you see your kid about
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: to get a shot and your heart, your heart beat
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: goes up. It's the same thing. This is empathy. This
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: is your ability to understand the suffering of another, which
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: we often think is our unique skill. And on the
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: same you know, on the same, on the flip side
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: of that coin, if you can have empathy, if you
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: can have sadness, if you can have suffering, of course,
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: you can have joy, of course. And for a long time,
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: animal welfare study just studies just looked at suffering and pain,
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: and more recently they're like, well, the other side of
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: that is joy, Yeah, And animals can also have joy.
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: And our objective should be if we're going to eat
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: or raise animals, is to give them lives worth living
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: where they get to enjoy themselves, and that's very controversial.
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: Qut we also don't we don't really want to believe that, right.
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: Like the other thing that as we're pointed out is like, oh,
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: I feel like like he started to tense up, Like
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: he had this sense that everybody's going to start tuning out, right,
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: because it's like we clench up when we start hearing
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: this because we're on the receiving end of information that
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: is at odds with our you know, innate you know,
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: the compassion that is innate to all human beings, and
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: we don't like the idea that we're making choices that
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: contravene our inherent value systems.
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Is it's a very hard one to navigate because essentially,
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: because the vegan vegetarian is about five six percent of
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: the population, essentially every one is engaging in this behavior.
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: Everyone is allowing this to happen and is part of
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: it and paying for it. And that's a really hard
• 58:09
  Speaker 2: discussion to have. It's very hard to have it with
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: your friends who you like and you care about and
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: they're progressive and they're good people, and it's hard to
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: navigate a world like.
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: That, yeah, because the minute you bring it up, there's
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: a sense of defensiveness or a feeling that somebody is
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: being you know personally assailed or attacked for yeah, and choices,
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: and you know quickly becomes uncomfortable.
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And over the years, I swing between My main
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: way of behaving is the way I behave with these companies,
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: which is I'm just trying to find one step forward,
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: because one step forward means a lot less suffering. So
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: even with friends, family, any discussion I have, it's not
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: go vegan all or nothing, like a lights switch, it's
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: a conversation about what can you do, what could be
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: your next step.
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: Well, it feels like cultural awareness is at an all
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: time high in terms of, you know, people being open
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: to these ideas making personal changes in their own lives.
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: Like everywhere you go there's vegan options. They're a fast
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: food industry, which we're going to get into is really
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: you know, moving in the right direction in terms of
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: providing alternative you know, plant based options. And yet at
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: the same time, like the meat, the meat consumption is
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: also at an all time high, right, Like there's this
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: kind of you know arms race going on totally.
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: It is so you know, we're talking the weekend of
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: Super Bowl Sunday on Sunday, and one point four billion
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: wings will be eaten on Sunday just in one day alone,
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: one day. That's you know, seven hundred million birds, right.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: I think you say in the book like if you
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: were to put line them up end to end, it.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 3: Would go across the globe a couple of times.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: Three times. Yeah, it's And this is I And that
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: stat I get from the National Chicken Council website where
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: they are advocating. They're very proud. They're like Sunday is
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: on national holiday where we should be called National wing Bay,
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: you know, because so well, yes, there's awesome things happening,
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: like the impossible burger at Burger King or all of
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: these products Beyond me.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: It carls Junior, right, you know, yeah, I mean THERE'SFC
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: is doing a pilot program right now, right, and you
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: did something with Popeyes recently.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: Yes, that was so that made that was a happy
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: day for me. So in Atlanta they trialed the Beyond
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: Chicken nugget and they it was one day only, and
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: we got the notice from Beyond meet the night before.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: They're like get there, we'll have you press with you
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: and you can do a whole video on it. I
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: get there at ten o'clock when it opens and there's
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: like mines wrapped around the corner the trap. They have
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: police like directing traffic. They've painted the KFC green like
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: lime green. I saw that it was insane. You would
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: think they were giving out free Beyonce tickets or something.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: It was it's so interesting that that that's happening. I mean,
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: who would have predicted that?
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 3: It's crazy? So clear, Like I think.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: It was a Burger King that said their launch was
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: like the it's like the most successful like new product
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: launch that they've had in decades or something else that.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: Bring customers back to an industry that if it would
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: have gone the way of the dinosaurs, like it was
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: on its way out right and there. This is the
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: argument that we make about plant based products is look
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: at the demand. People are ready for this shift. They
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: want it. Meet them, or you're going to go out
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: of business because people are going to find another way.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: They're going to move away from this right.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: I think it's such an important message and I get
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: disheartened when I see I think there was the saw
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: that like somebody sued burger King because their their burger
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: was on the same grill as meat products or whatever.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: I feel like things like that are counterproductive to the
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: broader mission of what I think we can all agree
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: we're trying to accomplish here.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's not for vegans.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: Right, it's yeah, you're that burger is not for that guy.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: He should be doing his own thing like burger king,
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: Like these offerings are for the meat eater.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I can't tell you how often I get, like
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: a text from somebody who was like, Hey, I was
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: in the middle of nowhere and I got the Beyond
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: sausage at Dunkin Donuts. It was good. I'm going to
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: get it again. My cousin who's like, he's in the Marines,
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: you know, not the kind of guy you would think
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: who would be interested in vegan products at all, he
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: wrote me the other day, I tried the impossible burger
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: burging was actually good. What's in it? Yeah, you know
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: it's it's It is an important I feel like we're
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: at the initial stages of a real protein revolution where
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: we totally reframe our concept of where protein comes from
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: and what it constitutes. And these moments, while not significant,
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: really in the moment for farmed animals because it's not
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: affecting that many animals are the precursor to our total
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: paradigm shift.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and the smart move and this is something that
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: you're very involved in that we're going to talk about.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: The smart move if you're sitting on the throne at
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: the Purdues and the Tysons and all of these gigantic
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: animal agriculture conglomerates, is to shift your business plan away
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: from this unsustainable protein source that's creating all of these
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: problems and also requires an unbelievable amount of land and
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: resources and creates environmental havoc and untold amounts of suffering
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: to these plant based alternatives that are very much the future.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: And you know also you know look better on the
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: on the P and A, the P and L R right,
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: like they make more sense. And this is where the
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: consumer demand, you know, is leading them. So either get
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: on board at that and survive and innovate for the future,
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: or I think these other companies that are that are
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: kind of racalcia trying to reluctant to do that, are
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: going to go the way of the Dodo, right.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: And you know the thing that happened with Craig where
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 2: I look. I started to look for the win win
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: instead of just trying to destroy him. That started to
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: happen with companies too, in our movement more widely, and
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: the idea was, instead of trying to put these companies
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: out of business, let's try to help them evolve into
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: the business we do want, right, because they already have
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: all the machines, they have all of the brand, they
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: have the money. If they get on board, it's going
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: to accelerate that.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 3: That's how you shift everything, right.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: So just walking us up to that point, you know,
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: Craig ultimately takes you onto the into the you know,
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: into the chicken farms. You're able to film all of this,
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: and you put a video out, and you're able to
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: get Nick Christoff at the New York Times to you know,
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: kind of align himself with what you guys are doing,
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: and and he ends up writing two op ed pieces, right,
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: which really, you know, kind of blow things wide open.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he wrote this op ed and we're watching the
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: video numbers and in twenty four hours it was a
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: million views. It was insane. Never expected it. People were
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 2: so upset about what was happening and as I said,
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: this was a unique moment because it had been so
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: long since we had seen inside of a factory farm
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: where chickens are being raised. And not only that this
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: was not grainy undercover footage, these were professional filmmaking cameras
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: that were catching the real, up close suffering of these birds,
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: and then the suffering of this man, and then the
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: tricking and hoodwinking of this company, and then these two
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 2: unlikely advocates working together. It was a very powerful story
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: that really spoke to people that it had to be true,
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: that this was not okay, and this really put the
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: put chicken on the map in terms of this is
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: a problem we have to solve, and that began a
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 2: lot of organizations working on that and moving toward what
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 2: we now are. We have a coalition campaign to change
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: the way that chickens are raised in this country.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: But initially, in reaction to that first piece, the Purdue
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: response was to point the finger at Craig and say
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: that he's mismanaging, this is his fault, this is not
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: you know, we don't this is not about us, and
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: that really backfired because the public's all right through that. Yeah.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 2: I mean, the first thing they did was send out
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: these sort of Purdue police to come out and you know,
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 2: write him up and say you're a bad farmer. And
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: then they said you can't have any more chickens.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 3: So you were not going to pay you until you.
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 2: Retrain on animal welfare, which was clearly a retality to
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 2: give him in line right, it was a retaliatory behavior.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: And so I had hooked him up with Amanda hit
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: who is an attorney, and he had pro bono legal
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: counsel from her, and they count they did a lawsuit,
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: active lawsuit in which they sued Purdue for that, and
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 2: the public were What kept happening is Purdue wanted to
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: act like nothing had happened. So they would put up
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: on their we were monitoring their Facebook site and they
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 2: would put up like, oh, here's a great new recipe
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: for chicken. And then people be like, what's wrong with you?
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: Like this is happening right now, stop talking about recipes
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: and what are you doing about this? And they wouldn't
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: respond in any way. But people were relentless. And these
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: were not people Mercy of Animals or any group.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 3: Were putting up to doing this, just average consumers.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it really reached people, and I you know. I
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 2: that speaks to my core belief that if people knew,
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: if they really really, if it got through to them,
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: it got through all the noise that is in our world,
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: it wouldn't be like this, And that really drives me
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: and many advocates.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: So how do you how did you go from that
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: moment to the relationship that you have with Jim Purdue
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: today and the changes that they've I mean they've to
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: their like they've really changed.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: They have, they have, And so for about a year
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: they totally wouldn't say stonewall me, they would not speak
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: to me. And then I remember reading an article again
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: in the New York Times about how around antibiotics and Purdue,
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: and at the very very end of the article it
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: said that Purdue had sent someone named Bruce Stewart Brown
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 2: over to the UK to look at what chickens need
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 2: and want, and then Jim Produce saying we need happier birds,
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: which was a very strange statement coming from a chicken company.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: So I knew that when this article was referring to
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: needs and wants, they were referring to a framework by
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 2: a vetnarian called Her name is Marian Dawkins, who is
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 2: one of the leaders in chicken welfare in the UK,
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: So I knew they were talking to her and that
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: was a good thing. They knew they must be talking
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 2: about to change their practices. And at the time, Mercy
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 2: for Animals had come up with two, maybe three undercover
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 2: investigations on farm showing them like again and again, you're
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 2: still not okay. And I wrote to their PR person
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: and said a very emotional raw letter saying, I don't
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: think we're that far apart on this. Can we talk please?
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: Can I talk to Bruce? Can I talk to him
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 2: about what he's learning? I think there may be more
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 2: in common than we realized. Simultaneously, Mark McKay at the company,
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 2: who's now the president, he said when they got the
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: Mercy for Animals footage, they all looked at it and
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 2: were horrified, and they all said, does anybody think this
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 2: is okay?
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: No?
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 2: Has anybody talked to Mercy for Animals? No, we need
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: to talk to them. We need to talk to these advocates.
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 2: And they took me up on the offer, and that's
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: when things started to turn around. And I didn't meet
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 2: Jim Purdue until a good few months later, and I
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: didn't know I was going to meet him. When I
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: met him, decided to bring me on a tour of
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: their facilities. And when I kind of came down the
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 2: stairs there he was like I had no idea.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: He was first of all, when they invite you to
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: come over for a tour, what's going on in your head?
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 3: Like how is this going to go.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 2: Again? I don't know why I'm invited and I don't
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: know what's going on, but I say yes anyway, And
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 2: that seems to be the standard in my life where
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: I just go with it and see what happens.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 3: So what happens with him when you meet him?
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 2: He was really kind and very human and he I had,
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: you know, he asked me about myself and I had
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: missed something some invitation earlier, and it was because I
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 2: was adopting my daughter, and he remembered that and it
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 2: just showed a real human side of him that I
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 2: had not expected. And I know the difference, like I
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 2: have met many many poultry executives or food excit kives
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 2: who are they hate me? They see me walk in
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 2: the door and the body language just says, I don't
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 2: want to talk to you, like there's no opening here.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 2: But Jim Purdue was was his energy said, I'm open
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 2: like I would. This is something I genuinely want to
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 2: talk about and to produced credit, they've made a lot
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 2: of progress, and I do believe it's because Jim Purdue
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 2: honestly remembers his grandfather's way of raising things. He remembers
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 2: a time when chickens were outside in free range, and
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: today twenty five percent of produced chickens are actually free
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: range outside access and they've shift. That's a rapid shift
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 2: from when we started.
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: Right. The one of the big changes was putting windows
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: on all of these housing facilidies for the chickens.
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 2: Right, And that's really important for the chickens to experience
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 2: the day and night differences and getting six hours of
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 2: consistent sleep. Normally in the industry they might get an
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: hour where the lights are turned off and they want
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 2: to keep them awake and the light's on not too bright,
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 2: so they're constantly eating, so they're getting fat faster, but.
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: Also simultaneously investing in plant based alternatives right. Right, Because
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: he said something like, you know, we're a protein company
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: and we're not a meat protein company.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 3: I mean, that's like a that's a big statement for.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 2: It's shocking heat somebody like that. He said, we went
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 2: to They now hold these annual summits where they bring
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 2: stakeholders together and their customers together, and I've gone five
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 2: of them now, and at one of them they asked
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: me I go on a stage and they get's like
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 2: a Q and A and they're like, okay, here's your
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: You get to say anything to us. What are you
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 2: going to say? And I said, you need to explore
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: moving into the plant based direction. It you know, you're
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 2: you're not going to be able to afford so raising
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 2: chickens in this way costs more money, and therefore people
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: are going to eat less of it because the most
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 2: the driving reason for purchasing chicken is because it's cheap,
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 2: and as the price goes up, so we're going to
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 2: eat less of it, which is a good thing. So
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 2: if you want to keep your business going, why don't
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: you explore some plant based even do blended, even do
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 2: half chicken half and moving that direction half plants. And
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 2: within six months of a conversation, so then I was
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 2: in line with him and he said, huh, well, you
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 2: know nothing about our brand says that we're premium protein brand,
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 2: doesn't say anything about premium chicken brand, so if that's
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 2: where consumers are going, we can follow that. And then
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 2: he made an actual announcement later and to a newspaper,
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 2: to Bloomberg and talked about that that's a seismic change
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 2: from where we started, where they were defending that this
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 2: horrible practice was humanly raised and they had a controversial
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 2: label that was tricking consumers to saying, hey, maybe we'll
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 2: try out plant based The arc of that journey, to
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 2: me was the one I just never would have expected.
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: But on the subject of being controversial to some that
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: move you know, your moves would be considered controversial, like
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: I'm certain, and there's a wing of the animal rights
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: movement that isn't happy with all of this collaboration, right.
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: There's a tension between cooperation and this avenue that you're
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: devoted to pursuing and complicity, right, So how do you
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: reckon with those two worlds?
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's that concept of engagement doesn't mean endorsement.
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 2: And for me, the driving factor is my job on
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: this planet while I'm here, is to reduce suffering of
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 2: these farmed animals. And while I would like there to
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 2: be some kind of secret on off switch that I
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 2: can just make everybody vegan. That's not happening tomorrow. And
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 2: so my job in the meantime, as we move towards
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 2: that world is to reduce the suffering of the eighty
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: billion farmed animals that are raisin slaughter every year in
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 2: this world.
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: Right, let's focus on the big problem.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And the analogy I often use because I get
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 2: this a lot, it's the main it's to some people,
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 2: it's why my approach is unacceptable because they want the
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 2: on off. They just want and I get it. I
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 2: want that too, I really do. But the analogy I
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 2: use is, imagine you're a prisoner in a horrible prison
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 2: on death row. Would you just want someone advocating to
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 2: end the death penalty only, or doing end the death
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 2: penalty and improve my prison conditions? You would want both.
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 2: And that's what the animals want from us. The one
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 2: that's stuck today in the factory farm. They're never going
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 2: to see the benefit of the vegan world. So today
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 2: we need to help them. And there is no evidence
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 2: that in doing that we are getting people to eat
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 2: more meat. In fact, there is the opposite evidence, because
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 2: the price goes up. That is the driving factor. When
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 2: we improve the conditions of the animals, or we do
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 2: reduce their suffering, it means in that square box they're
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 2: being raised in, it's less economical. You can raise less animals.
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 2: Those animals cost more to the consumer, and people buy less.
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 2: They buy based on price. It's the main thing people
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 2: buy on is the cheapness.
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 3: How do government subsidies work with chicken.
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: Well, the biggest factor is the feed, So soy and
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 2: corn are the biggest factor affecting chicken prices, and the
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 2: subsidies related to that are what drive the cheap chicken prices.
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 2: And if we could somehow impact that, we would be
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 2: in a whole other economic situation.
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: I think the other big avenue to pursue, and I
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: know you're already doing this, is to help these farmers
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: find different ways of using their land that are more
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: economically viable and free them up from this indentured servitude
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: debt structure. So talk to me about you started this
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: new initiative called what's it called transformation, right, And I think.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 3: This is super cool.
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: Like there's the example of this one guy who basically
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: switched his chicken farm into a hemp farm.
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 3: Right, I would imagine that if you can.
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: Provide these farmers and create the incentives and make it easy.
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: I know there's like a lot of barriers and it's
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: very difficult to do this, But to create an incentive
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: structure that makes this not just feasible, but more beneficial
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: for them, that that would be a massive way to
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: influence this whole thing.
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah. My strong belief in terms of theories of change
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 2: is we can't just be destructive forces in the world.
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 2: So as advocates, we can't just come in and say
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 2: destroy factory farming. We have to construct something better. We
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: have to come in and be constructive forces. So transformation
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 2: is a constructive force. It is where we are coming
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 2: in and saying, instead of doing this.
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: The farmer is the enemy, right, the farmer is now
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: our partner.
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 2: The farmer can be our partner, and that's the win win.
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 2: And that's the kind of when I say we want
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 2: to create a compassionate food system for everyone, I mean
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 2: that farmer too. And this transformation idea is to get
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 2: farmers who are raising chickens in warehouses to then transfarm,
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 2: transform into hemp, hydroponic, lettuce, mint, basil, any of these
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 2: kinds of options. And there are farmers doing. When we
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 2: put out this project, we were kind of shaking the
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 2: tree to see what was in there and see what
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 2: fell out. And there's a lot of people doing this already.
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 2: So we just discovered a farmer in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. They
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 2: were chicken farmers and now they're doing hydroponic basil and
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 2: peppermint and they did it on their own. They just
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 2: there's farm and they want more.
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 3: They do it and really meet their revenue needs.
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 2: More than Wow, more than because the system of chicken
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: factory farming does not benefit of farmer. Like I said,
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 2: they're making five cents a pound on a bird with
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 2: an astronomical debt that can never get out of the
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 2: trouble is finding for us right now. We're we launched
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 2: this project in November. The challenge is that debt.
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 3: Is that five point two that first before you can.
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 2: Even have that, And that's going to take policy change.
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 2: And so Corey Booker just put out a new initiative
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 2: to ban factory farming by twenty forty and part of
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 2: that is a federal fund for debt forgiveness for these
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 2: farmers and that.
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 3: Would be amazing.
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's it's the right amount to get farmers
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 2: out of this, and that's what we're going to need.
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 2: We need some kind of debt forgiveness for these farmers
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 2: to move away from this system. And I'm really excited
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 2: that this conversation is starting to happen. The time has
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 2: come for this initiative. And when I see Corey Booker
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 2: coming out with something like that, and I see a
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 2: farmer who's doing it on his own, it feels really
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 2: hopeful to me.
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: I would imagine, you know, the psychological burden or trauma
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: that a lot of these farmers, you know, weather as
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: a result of you know, raising these chickens and having
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: to kill so many and just the conditions of all
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: of it, that it would be, you know, such a
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: relief to be able to not have to do that.
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: I mean, what is your sense of the toll that
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: they pay, you know emotionally.
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 2: Really it's not good. We have this through transformation. We
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 2: have a way farmers can get in touch with us
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 2: and tell us their story. And we're trying to find
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 2: the right combination of lower debt and ability to speak
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 2: out to become part of our transformation project. Our goal
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 2: is to start with a small group and connect them
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 2: with businesses that plant based businesses that want to help
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 2: them transform. So through this we're hearing a lot of
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 2: stories and talking to farmers who talk about the sadness.
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 2: One farmer referred to himself as a mass murderer and
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 2: he felt there's nothing he could do about it, that
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 2: this was his job. And when I followed Craig around,
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 2: his job was to pick up dead and dying birds
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 2: and to dislocate their necks. And he did that every flock,
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 2: every house, about fifteen hundred birds over forty day period.
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 2: That's his basic job. And then make sure the computers
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 2: are running. That's it, and that's a horrible job. It's
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 2: a horrible job that nobody should have to do, and
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 2: we're kind of paying someone else to do that. That's
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 2: what I hate about it most is consumers. And I
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 2: struggle some days where I'm sitting in the airport and
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 2: I'm watching everyone around me tear into their chicken and
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 2: I'm thinking back and back and back and back to
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 2: where that chicken came from, came from, and they are not,
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 2: and it's yeah.
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: Well, it's that gap between information and action. It's not
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: about facts and information. I would imagine most of those
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: people if you pin them down and said, do you
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: know where this comes from? They might they very well
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: may be able to tell you yeah, but there's still,
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: you know, a big difference between that awareness and yeah
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: and actually behavior modification.
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 2: And I've gone through different phases of activism where I
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 2: just think, if only people knew enough, and then they
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 2: know not about the right, and then they know, and
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 2: then I'm super angry because I know everybody knows and
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 2: they're still doing it. And then the point where I'm
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 2: more at now most days is it just progresses. All
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 2: that matters. Reducing suffering is all that matters, whatever it
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 2: takes to get the person there, whether it be I'm
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 2: going to raise the price of chicken and then you're
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 2: not going to eat it as much you don't even
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 2: care and never will where it comes from, or you know,
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 2: making it saying this is unhealthy, the USD is not
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 2: covering it anymore, or making this other product seem more
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 2: exciting and trendy, like plant based KFC nugget.
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: How do you take care of yourself in all of
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: this and not get burned out or despondent when you're
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: kind of on the front lines of this it's very emotional,
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: all of it.
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it takes a lot of work, especially being in
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 2: leadership and having to lead teams through Essentially we are
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 2: witnessing trauma, We're witnessing we are bearing witness to suffering,
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 2: as that's what we do for a living, bearing witness
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 2: to suffering and then putting it into a megaphone and
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 2: shooting it out into the world, hoping for improvement. And
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 2: I was really great about it for a long long time,
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 2: and then over the last year it caught up with
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 2: me somehow, And I think it was a combination, you know.
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 2: I turned forty and like really realized I could be
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 2: a midway point and what have I done? And will
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 2: it stop? And realizing for all my fast moving it's
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 2: still really slow, and feeling really down and frustrated about that.
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 2: And I read a great you know, I went to
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 2: a therapist for the first time and was I had
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 2: found that What I realized is I had totally gone
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 2: into work only all the time, had really almost removed
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 2: myself from all social settings because I couldn't. I just
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 2: get angry at people and I just never enjoy myself.
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 2: I remember sitting with a bunch of friends and going
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 2: out to dinner with them at a farm to table
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 2: rest On, and they were discussing whether or not to
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 2: order octopus and I had to go to the bathroom
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 2: and and I almost walked down. These are my good friends,
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 2: and you know, I know they get talking.
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 3: About environmental sustainability while eating.
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the merits of eating octopus, and all I'm thinking
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 2: of this awesome book I read about how smart octopus
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 2: are and how cool they are and why would you
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 2: eat them? And I just like, you know, and realizing
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 2: I'm not in a healthy place because I could do
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 2: this before, and I could have had a conversation, but
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 2: it adds up. It's secondary trauma. There's a great book
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 2: called Trauma Stewardship, which is a about realizing and it
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 2: was it's really written for anybody who works in spaces
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 2: where your bearing witness is suffering. So it's also people
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 2: who work in the er room or social workers or
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 2: witnessing abuse of children or women and how to cope
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 2: with that because you're not You can't just turn it off.
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 2: You can't. It's in you. It's part of you. And
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 2: what you have to do is take care of yourself
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 2: and as and do self care which is not something
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 2: advocates allow themselves to do, right, because you're automatically.
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: The work's never done, and there's there's there's there's this
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: guilt and this sensitivity, and this sense that while the
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: minute you take your foot off the pedal, another harm
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: is taking place that perhaps you could have done something about,
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: and you could you can drive yourself to insanity, I.
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 2: Would imagine, Yeah, And the most significant part of that
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 2: is you think my suffering is insignificant in comparison.
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 3: But compassion begins with the self. Right.
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: We have to have compassion for yourself, especially if you
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: want to sustain your advocacy over time.
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 2: Right. And I, for some reason had been great about that,
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 2: somehow balancing all of that. But in the last year
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 2: it caught up to me and I realized I had
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 2: seen just so much suffering. I had witnessed the undercover
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 2: investigations and the slow moving change and feeling very frustrated
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 2: and focusing on the negative than the positive. And as
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 2: a result, withdrawing from a lot of social any kind
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 2: of you know, social gatherings, not wanting to do Christmas
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 2: or Thanksgiving or anything. You know. Really, what happened was
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 2: I lost the ability to be joyful in my life
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 2: and I had to work on that.
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, then you're no good to nobody, right, And that's
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: not very much yourself either.
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 2: That's not nobody wants a loss.
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 3: Like what's interesting is it also works conversely.
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: Like I was very I said this to you in
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: an email, but I was very moved by Joaquin Phoenix's
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: speech at the Golden Globes. And then I think he
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: won the same award at like the SAG Awards a
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: couple of weeks later, and right after winning that award
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: at that fancy event, he went straight to the pig
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: vigil in his fancy tuxedo. It's almost as if he
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: needed that counterbalance, right as a dose of humility or
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: to remind himself of what's most important to him, because
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: you know, the rest is ego and its illusion, right,
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: that makes you feel like something that isn't you know,
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: really tangible. And it was like it was like in
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: order for him to ground himself and be who he
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: really is or remind himself of what his values are,
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: he had to show up there and he didn't even
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: take a moment to change. He went straight there. I
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: just thought that was like such a beautiful and powerful
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: symbolic gesture. And I know he goes to those all
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: the time. It's not like it wasn't It wasn't It
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: wasn't a symbolic thing because this is what he does. Yeah,
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: but it's almost as if it works in reverse as
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: it does for you. Like he he has to make
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: sure that he's plugged into that right so that he
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: can be his.
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 2: Best self right right. And for me, I'm trying to
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 2: plug back into what makes me joyful so that I
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 2: can be present for my kids who are growing fast.
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 3: Because you're twenty four to seven on this right.
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 2: It's never not part of how I'm looking at the world.
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 2: It's my filter. And so for me, it was trying
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 2: to identify the areas that help me feel joyful and
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 2: that helps me be a more creative and innovative advocate, right,
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 2: which is critical, Like the transformation idea came from an
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 2: idea a period of my life when I was feeling
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 2: really energized and joyful. That idea came from that period
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 2: of feeling hopeful and joyful about the world. And if
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 2: you don't find that, if you lose that, I think
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 2: you lose a lot of the solutions that you need
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 2: to solve hard problems.
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: How has it been going from you know, being sort
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: of like a DIY rogue, you know agent this movement
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: to now running Mercy for Animals. I mean, you know,
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: you're shouldering a lot of responsibility and you're you know
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 1: a lot of people work.
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 2: It may have had something to do with me having
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 2: like a little meltdown here.
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a lot.
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 2: It is a lot. It's a lot of.
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: Now it's not just the issue. It's like it's managing
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: people and projects.
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 2: And yeah, and it's being in the spotlight, you know,
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 2: which you're the face. Yeah, and that was like what
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 2: the as you were saying, like the ego, it's like
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 2: having to kind of let go realize there's going to
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 2: be this person that people think you are in the
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 2: public and then the person you just have to hold
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 2: on to and separate yourself from that a little bit.
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 2: And that managing an organization this large of Now, this
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 2: is not like a corporation, right, these are this is
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 2: a bunch of warriors, a bunch of advocates who are
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 2: here because they're we get every job, we get hundreds
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 2: of applicants. So these are the best of the best
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 2: of the best of the best people in the organization
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 2: who are here because they believe in this cause and
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 2: they have the skills to do it, they have the passion.
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 2: So these are people. They don't like to be managed,
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 2: like these are advocates and if I don't, you know,
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 2: figure out how to respect them and give them an
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 2: environment in which they can thrive. Their their campaigners they
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 2: know how to get rid of me. You know. This
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 2: is like a collaboration.
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 3: And also it's your job to put the guardrails.
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 2: Up right exactly, And my job is to direct like
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 2: the road and say I've we created it right out
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 2: of the gate. I created a three year strategy to say,
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 2: these are our priorities, this is a big problem. Let's
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 2: let's let's drive it into this. We're going to go
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 2: down this highway and see the progress we make and
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 2: work together on that. And we created that that strategy together,
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 2: and that felt really good because people had to say
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 2: in it and they were part of it. But you know,
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 2: I feel like my job is to create an environment
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 2: in which all these warriors can thrive and be their
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 2: best self for animals. And that's a great privilege, Like
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 2: I get to my actual job, when I'm feeling good
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 2: about it, is to get up every day and help
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 2: farmed animals and help people help farmed animals. And that's
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 2: that's fantastic.
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean you are an optimistic person.
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, ultimately I am an optimistic person.
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: And the book, you know, kind of the latter parts
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: of the book are about that optimism and what we're
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: seeing right now with the Beyond Meats and the Impossible
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: Burgers and the Good Food Institute and the work that
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: Bruce and his team are doing and Memphis Meats and
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: the cell based alternatives like there's you know, it's exciting times.
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 2: It is a great time to be alive. It's you know,
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 2: we haven't had factory farming in this way of eating
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 2: animals around for very long. It's only been seventy years,
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 2: you know, since that's crazy, it is.
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: It is.
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 2: World War two is when we made the switch. Is
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 2: really when we put in the subsidies that allowed for
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 2: the rapid growth of factory farming a consumption of meat.
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 2: And I believe we can undo it just as fast,
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 2: if not faster, if you think about technology and bringing
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 2: in things like Memphis Meat. Just last week got an
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 2: injection of one hundred and sixty one million dollars for
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 2: their Series B, which is a for those who don't
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 2: know Memphis Meat. They are about growing cellular meat. So
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 2: I think we're calling it cultivated.
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 3: Meat now, and terms keep changing.
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 2: I know they do.
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 3: I'm trying to keep it basically, they're brewing it.
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 2: They're brewing cells into nuggets and burgers so that no
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 2: animal is slaughtered ever and you don't have to use
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 2: all the resources. You're just growing the parts that we eat,
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 2: and it has all the same components as the actual
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 2: burger or whatever it is that you want to eat.
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 2: So that's what I think we need for this rapid change.
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 2: And I think I have personally had the opportunity to
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 2: try cellular meat. Yeah, I was going to ask you that, Yeah,
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 2: have you tried it?
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 3: No, I haven't. I know Uma.
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: I keep bugging him to come on the podcast, so
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: he's not ready to. But yeah, no, I haven't tried
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: it yet. Yeah, So I I don't know if I
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: want he doesn't want to.
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: I it's not I'm not the I'm not the customer
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 1: for it.
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 2: We're not the cups.
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: I asked Bruce Friedrich of course he had, you know,
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: like Paul Shapiro also like, you know, you kind of
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: have to. I suppose.
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 2: I went uh in, you know, in the Bay Area,
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 2: and there was a company, there's a company called Mission Barnes.
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 2: There's like thirty companies now that are doing this, right,
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 2: and that's happened really fast. That's happened in five years, right,
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 2: and less Son and they had a duck sausage. And
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 2: to me, this was like the full circle of my journey.
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: All the way back right to the back to Florida.
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 2: You know, I would never eat duck underneath the dryer, right,
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 2: and this is duck. So you know, when I bit
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 2: into that sausage, I didn't know if I was going
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 2: to do it. And I didn't even know when I
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 2: got there they wouldn't offer it to me. And I
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 2: was just wanted to see the lab and here talk
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 2: to the scientist and talk to them for my book
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 2: about their their vision. And they said, oh, we just
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 2: had a testing last night for some of our investors.
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 2: We have a few sausages left. You want to try it?
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 2: And I was like okay, And it was a mushroom
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 2: duck sausage, and I did it. And I'd been into
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 2: it and it felt like the future. It felt. It
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 2: was such a euphoric moment for me because in that
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 2: bite it was all things that are possible, like the
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 2: end of factory farming, the end of torturing animals for
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 2: protein was in that bite to me, and I was
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 2: so happy to be alive for this moment. I know
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 2: that it's happening. And when you think of technological changes
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 2: that have happened in the last ten years, imagine what's
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 2: going to happen in the next It.
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 1: Just it blows it wide open, you know. And for
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: people that are listening, this is not a plant based
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: version of duck sausage. This is legitimate duck meat cells
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 1: grown in a fermented way like this proprietary way.
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 3: But it's basically it is me, yeah.
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 2: My imagination about animal right. The animal is never slaughtered.
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 2: And so the just the company that does the mayo
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 2: and the egg, they're also exploring they too right. And
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 2: they put out a great video that I felt really
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 2: explained how exciting and strange this is like the stuff
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 2: of sci fi for and it was called Ian the Chicken,
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 2: and they had this farmer say this is Ian and
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 2: you think maybe this slaughter this chickens about to be
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 2: slaughtered or something like what's happening. It's like a farm
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 2: to table situation maybe, And he has a feather from Ian.
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 2: He's like, this is Ian's feather. And then it goes
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 2: into breaking down the components of the feather into the
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 2: cellular level, taking out the stem cells of this, you know,
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 2: the cells that can grow into anything, and growing that
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 2: in the lab. And then next shot is them eating
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 2: this chicken nugget made out of em cells as Ian
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 2: is walking around next to them, and it's.
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: Well, it's yeah, it's bizarre. I mean, I think there
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: is there will certainly be a consumer adoption period phase
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: because there's there's a lot of bristling like, oh, this
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: isn't natural. Truly, what's not natural? I mean, go to
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 1: a slaughterhouse that's not natural, Like there's nothing natural about that.
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 1: There's nothing natural about moving down a highway at eighty
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: miles an hour either, you know. And this is I
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 1: think unanimously. You know, anybody who knows anything about factory
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: farming is is is appalled by it. It's an a
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: born system and to the extent that we can do
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: away with it, I think I think public sentiment would
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: be completely on board with that. And when the Memphis
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 1: Meets of the world figure out how to create these
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: things at scale at an affordable price point, it's going
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: to be game over.
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I have every faith that the public will fully
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 2: adopt this once the price point is right. And like
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 2: I said, the all of the marketing research is people
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 2: buy on price. That's the fun, that's the main thing. So,
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 2: same as the paste, convenience, Convenience, price, and taste are
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 2: the three factors that we have to meet if we're
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 2: going to compete with meat. And I think that if
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 2: you're essentially if you're producing the same product, the taste
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 2: is going to be the same. So these are just
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 2: cells made into the same thing. So then it's going
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 2: to be about convenience and it's gonna be out price,
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 2: and that's tough, but it will happen because if you
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 2: think of things like the flat screen TV right that
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 2: at one point, with thousands of dollars now is in
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 2: everybody's home, you can purchase it easily, or the car,
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 2: like all of the technological advances, the phones, we have
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 2: all of them. The prices start off ridiculous and then
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 2: they come right down and they become in every day.
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 1: At first Hasla was two hundred thousand dollars and now
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: you know, there's Model threes all over the place. I mean,
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: this is the way this stuff works exactly, and it's
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: super exciting. Yeah yeah, I mean it's it's a crazy future.
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, I wouldn't have thought you'd think flying cars,
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: but you didn't. No one thought like they were making
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 1: food this way, So it's super interesting. I mean, if
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: I was Jim Purdue, I would have written the one
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: hundred million dollar check to you know, send a Memphis Meats.
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 2: I hope they will one day, you know. I think
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 2: they should do it themselves, and I've definitely told that
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 2: to them. I think they should be investing in clean meat,
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 2: cultivating meat. I think they should, you know, be investing
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 2: in this world because it is the way of the future.
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 2: And it's the most wonderful part about it is that
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 2: it doesn't just stop all that suffering. It saves our species.
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 2: It saves our planet. And that's that's such an exciting
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 2: thing because on the flip side, you see everything that's
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 2: happening on climate change, and it causes widespread panic. You know,
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 2: there's just just panic feeling in our kids growing up
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 2: where the climate change is just a part of the reality.
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 2: I've never known a time my kids when we're not
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 2: talking about the catastrophic trajectory we're on as a planet.
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 2: And my hope is a technology like this is going
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 2: to come in and take out a big factor. It's
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 2: going to take out factory farming. And our advocacy continues
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 2: to be important because we have to pass the laws,
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 2: we have to educate people, we have to raise public
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 2: awareness to drive these technological advances faster and ensure that
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 2: the trajectory this progress won't happen on its own. We
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 2: have to be there to push it and pull it
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 2: and fight for it as well.
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think we need we need policy changes
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: and like I said earlier, incentive incentivization programs for these farmers.
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: You've got to take care of these farmers and figure
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: out a way forward for them so that they can
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: transcend this system that they're in and make use of
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: their land in a more productive, environmentally conscious, sustainable, and
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: compassionate way.
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And I think when I think of the why
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 2: this could happen faster in the relationship between animal rights
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 2: advocacy and these technologies and these advances and the farmers.
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 2: I can't think of many other products like the Beyond
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 2: product or the Impossible where you have like an army
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 2: of advocates saying we want this to win, and you know,
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 2: putting it all out on their Instagrams and all their
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 2: social media channels and doing videos and in droves, going
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 2: to support a product to succeed for social justice.
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: The consumers, yeah, they become the they're like fans.
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're like fans. And I think that you know,
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 2: you think of the the IPO of Beyond being so
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 2: successful this year, Well, there was an army of advocates
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 2: that got the market really excited about this. And that's
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 2: where the relationship between the animal advocates, the technology, and
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 2: the market will drive this change fast if we collaborate,
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 2: if we get it right, if we get that formula right.
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 3: What's going on with McDonald's.
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: How come they're all these other all the other franchises
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: are tamping on board. They seem to be talking about patients. Yeah,
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 1: I know they're dancing around it, they're thinking about it,
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: but they haven't actually offered a product yet. I think
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 1: they did a small pilot right, But.
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 2: In Canada, is that what it was? Yeah, And I
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 2: mean McDonald's is behind the times and they're suffering for it.
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 2: And they will continue to suffer if not go out
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 2: of business if they're not careful. So we have a
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 2: big campaign we've been running with the Coalition on Chickens
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 2: on the way they treat their chickens, and it's the
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 2: Better Chicken Commitment. We're trying to get them to give
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 2: the birds more space, natural light, change, the genetics, all
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 2: these basic things. We're not asking them to go vegan.
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 2: We're asking them to just give the birds a little
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 2: more space.
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: Are they vertically integrated so they're not getting their chickens
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: from Purdue, They're basically responsible for getting their own.
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 2: Their suppliers Tyson and Tyson is the main is their
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 2: main supplier in the United States, and they have We
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 2: launched a big campaign against them. We've done on the
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 2: ground in person meanings. They are not budging and their
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 2: competitors are so. Popeye Is last week announced their first
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 2: big chicken chain, said we're going to make these commitments.
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 2: We're going to do all these things you're asking us
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 2: to do. Burger King did it, Subway did it. McDonald's
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 2: is refusing mc KFC not yet, but I'm hopeful, and
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 2: KFC at least is exploring some plant based options. In fact,
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 2: I think today they're doing trials in for their plant
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 2: based nugget in Nashville and Charlotte and the same one
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 2: that they did in Atlanta. So it's super exciting. But
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 2: McDonald's is behind the times and their leadership needs to
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 2: wake up. It's not okay to ignore the very obvious
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 2: suffering that they're responsible for. McDonald's in this country is
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 2: responsible for half a billion chickens in their supply chain
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 2: per year they purchase.
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: Is it just an old guard management team like the
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 1: C suite is just out of step with the times.
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 2: Or their leadership keeps changing. They have a new president
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 2: this year, and I find it difficult to understand how
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 2: they're maintaining their position. I mean they are. Their argument
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 2: is something like nobody else really believes what they're doing.
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 2: They're just telling you that they're going to move in
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 2: this direction to get you off their backs, and you know,
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 2: we're really looking at it, and that's just that's nonsense.
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 3: Get on, at McDonald's, come on, what.
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: Are you doing?
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah? And I mean, I think the excitement over burger
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 2: King doing the impossible burger is not something to be ignored.
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: No, not at all. Yeah, I mean that's a huge deal.
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 2: And you know, Popeye's just made this commitment, and that's
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 2: exciting because Popeye'es, you know, is one of the first
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 2: big chicken chain and I think that will cause other
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 2: more of their competitors to say, Okay, we can't keep
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 2: treating chickens like this. We have to give them more space.
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 2: We have to do these basic things that we all
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 2: agree and the science agrees that are necessary that the
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 2: birds as a minimum should have.
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 1: Right. All right, well, we got to round this out.
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 1: But the the final thing I kind of want to
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: explore with you is, you know, living inside the mind
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: of somebody who's listening to this, perhaps this is the
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: first time they've heard any of this. They're like, holy cow,
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: Like the chicken industry does what? Like I didn't know, Like,
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: I'm you know.
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 3: I need to change.
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: What is the advice that you give to somebody or
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: how do you direct that person, you know, to start
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: to make changes in their life with perspect to the
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: diet choices that they're making, especially if they're Look, I'm busy,
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: I'm on a budget, I work two jobs. I got
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 1: a bunch of kids. Like you know, I'm not going
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: to be able to just snap my fingers and make
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: the whole family go vegan overnight. But I really like, wow,
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: you know, this is not.
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 3: Okay with me.
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 2: The advice we always give is one step at a time,
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 2: do one day, one meal. If it's too hard to
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 2: do one day, and move incrementally in the right direction,
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 2: and every step is progress. Every one of those steps
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 2: is progress, every one. Every time you're choosing not to
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 2: eat the animals, you are contributing to reducing their suffering,
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 2: to increasing happiness, joy on this planet. And so you
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 2: don't have to do it all just one meal. You
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 2: can do one day, one week, one month, and then
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 2: it can turn into what you can achieve, what you
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 2: can do. I think it's more about what start with
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 2: what you can and do that first, not what should
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 2: I do? But what can you do?
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, don't let perfection be the enemy of progress.
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 2: That is my motto for sure.
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 1: One step at a time, and you know, go get
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: your beyond chicken.
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's available like everywhere now. It's exciting, you know,
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 3: it's cool.
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 1: And pick up grilled, pick up grilled, that's right, yeah,
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: at your independent bookstore or on Amazon.
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 3: Is really a great read.
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: You did a really lovely job with the book because
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: it's sort of part memoir but also kind of investigation,
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 1: you know, like thriller for a little bit, and then this,
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 1: you know, painting this picture.
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 3: For you know, the future that we all want to
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 3: live in.
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: So I loved it. You did a really amazing job,
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: and you are a here in this movement. I have
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: so much respect for the work that that you've done,
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 1: that you are doing, and that I know that you
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 1: will do and nothing but love and support and please
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 1: consider me a resource. I want to help out in
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: anything you care.
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 3: Very much.
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: Thank you for your advocacy and your and your hearts
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 1: and your passion.
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 2: Well, thank you for giving them the animals platform for
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 2: these issues.
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 1: It's my point.
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 2: Great that your.
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 3: Heart cool, all right?
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 1: Peace Peace Plans