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Puppy Justice Wins! -- Beagle Rescuers NOT GUILTY · UNCHAINEDTV'S Truth Files with Jane Velez-Mitchell

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of England, the Animal Rising Trial.
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And we are live with Wayne Chung, who's
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considered the founder of the Open Rescue Movement,
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talking about this not guilty verdict that has
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just come in.
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There you see the four defendants.
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This is a huge animal rights victory, and
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it concerns basically a series of trials which
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formed the first open rescue trials in the
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United Kingdom.
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This is all happening near Cambridge University.
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You can see they're probably 50 minutes or
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less from London, England.
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The first group of defendants, there's so many,
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18, that they did several trials.
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The first trial resulted in guilty verdicts, but
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now we're learning that the newest trial, the
0:54
latest trial has resulted in not guilty verdicts.
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Wayne Chung, you were in court.
1:00
Tell us the entire thing.
1:02
I mean, this is huge, huge news for
1:05
the animal rights movement.
1:06
Yeah, Jane, it was a complete rollercoaster because
1:08
frankly, the prosecutor's pretty effective, and he made
1:11
arguments about how the entire society was gonna
1:14
break down, social order would break down, that
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there would be anarchy on the streets if
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the jury quit it.
1:20
He did everything he could to paint these
1:22
people as extremists, and frankly, I think the
1:25
judge was on his side.
1:26
There was a point where the judge indicated
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to the jury that everything MBR did was
1:30
legal, which I thought was biased and just
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frankly incorrect, legally and factually.
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MBR does lots of illegal things.
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MBR is the vivisection facility at issue in
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this case, but the lawyers did just an
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extraordinary job of breaking down the legal arguments
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and arguing effectively that the defendants all acted
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honestly, which is one of the elements of
1:49
a theft charge or a burglary charge in
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the United Kingdom, and then the self-representative
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defendant just knocked out of the park.
1:55
There were tears in everyone's eyes when he
1:56
gave his statement, and I think the key
1:58
moment for him was when he directly challenged
2:01
the prosecution's argument that the dogs were similar
2:05
to a can of beans.
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That's literally what the prosecutor said, just like
2:08
you can't steal a can of beans, you
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cannot steal a dog from a vivisection facility,
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and Tom stated very directly, I just do
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not agree with that, and I don't think
2:17
you do either, because dogs are not cans
2:19
of beans.
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They're living beings who deserve love, and so
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many of us said just tears in our
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eyes at the end of his statement, and
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honestly, I felt like even though the prosecutor
2:28
was pretty effective, even though the judge was
2:29
biased against us, when I looked at the
2:31
jury's faces, I thought we were gonna win,
2:34
and that's exactly what happened.
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Well, you're looking at video of some of
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the beagles who were rescued.
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There they are.
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You see the feces.
2:41
You see the, just, well, the innocence of
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these animals.
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Approximately 20 beagles were rescued from this breeding
2:50
facility.
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Two were, you might say, recaptured by authorities,
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and 18 rescuers went on trial.
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This is the first open rescue group of
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trials in the United Kingdom, and what's very
3:06
interesting is that the first trial resulted in
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guilty verdicts, and people were devastated.
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The second trial, which just ended, resulted in
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not guilty verdicts, so what was the difference
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between the two cases where one is guilty
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and the other, the jury facing, well, the
3:27
same situation, they're dealing with the same rescue,
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finds not guilty?
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Yeah, I think there were two big things,
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and for the record, I was not there
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at all in the first trial, and the
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second trial, I was only there for one
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day, closing argument, but I have been very
3:39
much in touch with the support team, some
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of the lawyers.
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We did a big debrief after the first
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animal rising trial, and I think the first
3:47
big factor, frankly, was the judge just came
3:49
to his senses a little bit.
3:50
In the first trial, the judge literally shouted
3:53
down some of the defendants, and shouted down
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and cut off one of the attorneys during
3:56
closing argument, because they were trying to appeal
3:59
to people's emotions.
4:00
They were trying to, I think the line
4:02
that actually led to the judge shutting down
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and closing argument was one of the attorneys
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said, imagine you had lived for 18 weeks
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of your life in conditions like this, and
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frankly, the defense should have been entitled to
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make that argument, but instead, the judge told
4:16
the jury to leave the room, screamed at
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the attorney, threatened him, and said, you're not
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allowed to appeal to emotion at all, and
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which is just not true as a legal
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matter, and more importantly, one of the elements
4:27
of the case is dishonesty, and for any
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of the defense lawyers, or the defendants themselves
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to make the case that they were acting
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honestly on the day of this rescue, they
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had to describe the reason for being there.
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They had to describe their concern about the
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abuses that were being inflicted on the MBR
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dogs, and so my perspective is the judge
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got this wrong, and frankly, the judge may
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have realized that himself, because in this case,
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he gave the defendants a little bit of
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a longer leash in terms of what they're
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allowed to say about the conditions at MBR,
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the experimentation that happened to these beagles, and
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some of the stuff that happens is just
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evil.
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You know, basically bleeding out these beagles to
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every last drop of blood, slowly taking all
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the blood away for experiments, so using this
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blood for various things, and then harvesting all
5:09
their organs, bio-harvesting all their organs for
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various experiments, so just bleeding these dogs out,
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then selling the dog's organs to all sorts
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of experimentation facilities.
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So that's one big factor.
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The judge kind of came to his senses
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and realized, look, I have to give these
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people the right to defend themselves, which includes
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talking about the reasons for being there, but
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the other big factor is I think that
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there was a lot more personal storytelling, that
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in the first case, it was too logical,
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too rational, and you and I know in
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the persuasion business, in the media business, in
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any sort of communications business, it's all about
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emotions and stories, and frankly, I think one
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of the reasons they relied on just reasons
5:44
and abstract arguments in the first trial is
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because the judge was so hardcore about not
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allowing any emotion in the case, but in
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this case, it was extremely interesting.
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The prosecutor said at one point, there's no
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room for sympathy in the courtroom.
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He literally said those words, and I was
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kind of shocked because it's the sort of
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thing that you think of a villain from
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some movie, like an action movie villain would
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say, there's no room for sympathy in this
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courtroom.
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There's no room for, because sympathy is a
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good emotion.
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It's a good thing for our legal system
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to have, to imagine what it's like to
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be in someone else's shoes, but the defendants
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themselves did an extraordinary job of generating sympathy,
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not like directly appealing to sympathy, but just
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describing why they were there, describing how they
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felt, describing their backgrounds in a way that
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I think really moved the jury to very
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quickly render a verdict of not guilty.
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And I want to say, this is like
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a record verdict.
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I mean, I've been a lawyer for almost
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20 years now.
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Actually, it's over 20 years now.
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I've never seen a verdict come out this
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fast, and it came out this fast because
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the defendants did a good job of storytelling.
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You mentioned something that I thought was really
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interesting, that the prosecutor compared these dogs to
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a can of beans, and you, despite being
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a constitutional law professor and the founder or
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the inspiration of the open rescue movement in
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the United States, we are getting some comments,
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and people say, well, somebody was doing it
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in Australia.
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Absolutely, it's a joint team effort, but certainly
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you've been arrested and served time for involving
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open rescues in the United States.
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And one of the acquittals that you won
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involved a prosecutor using the same argument when
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it came to the rescue of little pigs
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from the Smithfield factory farm.
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Let's hear that prosecutor make that same comparing
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animals to inanimate objects argument in court.
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Analyze for just a moment the reasoning being
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demonstrated here tonight.
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I think it's clear that the pigs were
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stolen, they were taken, and they were not
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returned.
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In fact, Mr. Shum stated he didn't want
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to return them.
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That's that.
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Imagine the use of the word rescue in
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some other context.
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Suppose you were in the grocery store, and
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you saw a can with dents in it,
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and you thought to yourself, oh my goodness,
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that can has a dent, it has the
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potential of going bad.
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I better rescue that can, put it in
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my purse, take it out of the store.
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Or imagine your DQ, you see a dripping
8:22
ice cream cone up there, the clerk just
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put it on the counter, oh dear, that
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cone is dripping off the side.
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I better take it so that it doesn't
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make a mess on the floor.
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So that was the argument that was used
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by the prosecutor against you.
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You won that case, and the British prosecutors
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used the can metaphor analogy again, and they
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lost.
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So what's your takeaway there?
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The first thing is my jaw just dropped.
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I couldn't believe what I was hearing.
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It was like deja vu all over again,
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because I thought it was such a terrible
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comparison to make in our trial.
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We actually talked to all the jurors in
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that case, which no one thought were gonna
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win.
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My attorney in Utah thought this case is
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hopeless.
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This is like 90% Trump County.
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One third of the people in the entire
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county work for Smithfield Foods, the company that
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we had quote unquote stolen the pigs from.
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And I think one of the reasons we
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won is because the absurdity of the industry's
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position becomes apparent once you actually are forced
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to deliberate about it.
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And the reality is for them to actually
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effectively accuse any animal rights activists who rescue
9:26
animals of theft, they have to compare these
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animals to property, including a dented can.
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And that's what the prosecutor did today.
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He said, well, look, you might not agree
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with this industry.
9:35
And I'll know this industry does treat animals
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like commodities, kind of like a can of
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beans.
9:40
And I think he was trying to basically
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preview the personification we're gonna try and do
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and say, look, no, don't buy this idea
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that this is the same relationship that you
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have with your dog or cat at home.
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This is more like the way a company
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would see a can of beans.
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But the jury just revolted against it.
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And I actually was taking notes during the
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closing argument.
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I noted a number of the juries kind
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of like looked away and it wasn't as
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obvious as in my case.
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In my case, I think when Von Christensen,
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the prosecutor you just saw made that argument,
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I could just see the jury's eyes roll.
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And I was like, all right, I mean,
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I don't think we should be able to
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win this case, but I think they just
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kind of had an own goal.
10:14
They just shot themselves in the foot.
10:16
But in this case, it wasn't quite as
10:18
obvious, but a number of the jurors were
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like rolling their eyes, looking away, just clearly
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not that engaged with the prosecutor's argument and
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went down that direction.
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And this has much bigger implications than two
10:27
acquittals, because the idea behind this comparison is
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that animals are property.
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In contrast, what the animal rights movement believes
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is animals are persons.
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And this shows time and time again, that
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when jurors are actually forced to deliberate, they
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sided those who see the animals as persons
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and not property.
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So there's a couple more trials coming up.
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And I don't know if we're allowed to
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mention that you have a personal relationship with
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one of the defendants.
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You're married to one of the defendants.
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Is that okay to mention?
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Yeah, the best part, yeah, no, for sure.
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Yeah, and they have talked about how, well,
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what's at stake with this trial?
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Again, this is the first set of open
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rescue trials in the United Kingdom.
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So I'm gonna queue up when they're talking
11:21
and let them talk for a little bit,
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because I think that there was a lot
11:25
of optimism and shock after the first verdict.
11:29
First optimism, yes, this is a no brainer.
11:32
We had the best of intentions.
11:34
We weren't going to steal property.
11:37
We were going to rescue animals.
11:38
And then there was shock when that didn't
11:40
happen.
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But now there's a resurgence of optimism, I
11:44
would hope.
11:44
So let's listen to Ben Newman, the co
11:47
-founder of Animal Rising and Rose Patterson.
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Both of them, Ben was, they're both part
11:54
of this case.
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This is the first open rescue trial ever
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in the UK.
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So it's a historic event.
11:59
And yeah, just a huge moment for the
12:01
animal movement to draw more attention to animal
12:02
testing and hopefully see the closure of NBR
12:06
Acres very soon as the first step in
12:08
ending all animal testing.
12:09
And we're calling for the facility to be
12:11
closed, long story short, and put animal testing,
12:16
originally the concept of animal testing on trial,
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because we actually, I did it once in
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June, 2022, with three of us who did
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it accountably.
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And then the Crown Prosecution dropped the charges.
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They said, huge lack of evidence.
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So then we went back again in December,
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2022.
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And so what we're hoping is that we'll
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be found, obviously it's not guaranteed, but hoping
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we'll be found not guilty by a jury.
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And then, yeah, and that will significantly, hopefully
12:41
undermine the animal testing industry in the UK.
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So there's 20 of us going on trial
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over a period of about three or four
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months.
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So yeah, Ben's in the first trial that
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starts on the 1st of December.
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And we've been split into groups of four
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or five and mine's the fourth trial.
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So my trial's in February.
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I'm not too worried about it at the
13:00
moment, to be honest, I'm quite hopeful.
13:02
It seems so common sense.
13:04
Yeah, in 2022, there was the opportunity to
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go into MBR Acres and do this.
13:11
And yeah, of course, to save those individuals
13:13
that we did, those 23 puppies, I think
13:17
that in and of itself is a really,
13:19
really good thing.
13:20
But also we did this openly and accountably,
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and we wanted it to go to trial
13:24
to raise awareness about what's happening to beagles
13:27
in animal testing labs still in the UK.
13:35
I guess we're just got muted there.
13:38
So I'll unmute both of us, but that
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is your wife, Rose Patterson.
13:41
Her trial hasn't happened yet.
13:43
Ben Newman, the gentleman who was speaking was
13:46
convicted, I believe in the first trial.
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So where does that leave the other trials
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and where does it leave the appeal?
13:54
Yeah, I mean, I think, okay, so a
13:57
couple of things.
13:57
One is, again, the first trial was done
14:00
under such extraordinary circumstances where the defendants are
14:04
getting interrupted in their closing argument.
14:06
Lawyers are getting yelled at for just citing
14:08
basic facts.
14:09
There was such extreme bias.
14:11
I don't think you can say much about
14:12
that first trial in terms of what that
14:14
represents for the future.
14:16
The second thing is I think the animal
14:17
rights team is just learning.
14:18
I think there was a lot of debriefing,
14:19
a lot of skillsharing, a lot of conversations
14:21
that were had, including across the Atlantic Ocean.
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And we had some of the top lawyers
14:25
in the United States meeting with some of
14:27
the top lawyers in the United Kingdom and
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some of the defendants in the United Kingdom
14:29
to make sure we understood how to tell
14:32
the story of animal rescue.
14:34
And the primary line they've been using, I
14:36
just think fell flat in this case.
14:38
This is the argument that, one, that there's
14:41
gonna be some sort of social breakdown if
14:44
we don't kill animals.
14:45
I mean, it's kind of silly, especially when
14:47
it comes to dogs and experiments.
14:49
You really think our entire society is gonna
14:50
collapse.
14:51
And those of us who are vegan who
14:53
know this, because we've talked to our non
14:54
-vegan friends and they say, oftentimes, this could
14:57
be one of the little silly things about
14:59
the future of veganism and what veganism would
15:01
do to threaten the food supply, to threaten
15:02
our way of life.
15:04
It's actually not that bad.
15:05
Eating tofu instead of beef is just not
15:07
that big of a deal.
15:08
But the second argument they used over and
15:10
over again was this idea, this is just
15:11
a publicity stunt.
15:12
It's all just crazy, deranged activists who are
15:15
trying to tell you what to do.
15:17
And I thought the counter that was used
15:18
this time, which frankly is just the truth
15:20
about who we are, was humility.
15:23
The activists did a just extraordinary job of
15:25
showing vulnerability and showing, we're not trying to
15:27
tell you what to do.
15:28
We're not saying we're better than you.
15:30
We just wanted to help some dogs.
15:31
And the reason we needed this publicity wasn't
15:33
because we're narcissists who just want attention.
15:36
It's because we knew the only way we
15:38
could convince the public that something has to
15:40
be done for these dogs is to show
15:42
you the truth.
15:43
The government's not willing to tell you the
15:44
truth.
15:45
The industry certainly isn't willing to tell you
15:46
the truth.
15:47
We will tell you the truth.
15:48
And that made the jury feel like we're
15:50
all on the same side here.
15:51
And I thought it was extraordinarily effective.
15:52
It's one of the reasons we got the
15:54
not guilty verdict we got today.
15:55
The good thing is in the longterm, that
15:57
is the way all these trials are gonna
15:58
run.
15:59
I don't think the prosecution has any way
16:00
to counter that because when one side is
16:02
all about transparency and truth, the other side
16:04
is all about, no, no, no, no.
16:05
You can't hear anything about the experiments.
16:07
You can't even hear about the defendant's motivations
16:09
for what they did.
16:11
Then the side that's transparent is gonna win
16:13
in the longterm.
16:14
Just wanna ask you, of course, as this
16:17
is going on, we also have Zoe Rosenberg,
16:19
you're seeing here, who is a Berkeley University
16:26
graduate, a straight A student, and she rescued
16:31
four chickens.
16:31
You can see the rescue in an open
16:34
rescue because this was distributed to the public,
16:36
this footage.
16:37
She was convicted and she did less than
16:41
a month in physical jail, but now she
16:44
is under house arrest or maybe it technically
16:49
is not the start of house arrest, but
16:51
it'll start soon.
16:52
Suffice it to say, she's not able to
16:54
go out and about her business.
16:58
So how does the UK Beagle Rescue Trial,
17:03
not guilty verdicts affect the animal rights movement
17:06
in the United States?
17:09
I think that this is going to set
17:11
off a chain reaction against vivisection because the
17:16
reality is in many ways, the facts of
17:17
this case are not ideal.
17:20
For example, the UK government has said over
17:23
and over again that the facility is legal
17:25
and the reality is that the audits suggest
17:28
that the facility actually did comply with the
17:30
law.
17:30
In contrast, in the United States, almost all
17:32
the vivisection facilities that issue, whether it's Ridgeland
17:34
or MBR, because MBR is actually a company
17:36
in the United States.
17:37
They actually have a massively larger facility in
17:39
upstate New York.
17:41
There are lots of violations that have been
17:42
documented against vivisectors in the United States.
17:45
At all the facilities, we might want to
17:47
target with an open rescue.
17:49
A second factor is just the evidence of
17:50
the condition of the specific animals.
17:51
In Ridgeland, we had extensive evidence that the
17:54
individual animals we saved, including Julie, this psychotic
17:57
beagle who had been trapped in a two
17:59
foot by four foot cage.
18:00
I mean, these conditions are horrible and awful,
18:01
but frankly, compared to American vivisection, UK vivisection
18:04
is almost like a luxury house, right?
18:06
Because these animals aren't caged in individual cages.
18:09
They're not trapped in two foot by four
18:11
foot metal wire flooring where they have to
18:13
live for seven, eight years of their life.
18:15
And yet in the UK, they've proven you
18:18
can show people conditions like this, which they're
18:20
not great, but they're not as awful and
18:22
just psychotic and terrifying as the conditions in
18:24
US vivisection facilities, and you can still win.
18:27
So I think what this is going to
18:28
do is it's going to set a precedent.
18:30
Frankly, this is not just theoretical.
18:32
There are already plans being made to go
18:34
back to Ridgeland to take all 3,000
18:35
dogs out.
18:36
This case is going to light a fire
18:37
into the movement and inspire more people to
18:39
get out to Ridgeland because if they can
18:40
win at MBR, we can win at Ridgeland
18:42
again.
18:42
We need to get people out there and
18:44
start taking the dogs out.
18:46
And for those who do not have any
18:49
information about Ridgeland, this is in Dane County,
18:54
Minnesota, I believe.
18:55
Is it Minnesota?
18:57
Wisconsin, Wisconsin.
18:58
Sorry, I used to live in Minnesota for
19:00
a couple of years.
19:01
And so it's the next state over, Wisconsin.
19:05
And there's a very large dog breeding facility
19:09
there.
19:10
And you actually went in there.
19:12
I wish I had the video to show,
19:14
but you documented the conditions and you were
19:17
charged.
19:18
Then they dropped the charges.
19:20
And instead of you sort of saying, whoo,
19:23
that was a close one.
19:24
I don't have to worry about being criminally
19:26
charged.
19:26
You went back to that county and you
19:29
managed to get a special prosecutor appointed to
19:35
investigate the facility.
19:37
Will you just give us the update on
19:39
that?
19:39
Because that is something that I believe is
19:41
still ongoing in a certain manner of speaking.
19:44
And it was a huge victory.
19:48
You got that special prosecutor.
19:50
Yeah, not only did we get the special
19:52
prosecutor, but recently Ridgeland announced that they had
19:54
reached an agreement with the special prosecutor to
19:55
shut down the breeding facility by July 1st,
19:59
2026 in exchange for the prosecutor not filing
20:02
any felony charges against him.
20:04
And the special prosecutor simultaneously released a report
20:06
indicating what was just obvious, which is that
20:10
Ridgeland has committed hundreds of felony acts of
20:12
animal abuse against innocent defenseless dogs, including things
20:15
like mutilating dogs, and surgical procedures that were
20:19
done by non-vets without any anesthesia.
20:22
Imagine performing a surgery on a living, conscious
20:25
being without anesthesia by a non-vet.
20:28
All those steps of the process are totally
20:30
illegal.
20:32
So the downside is- And by the
20:33
way, I just want to say that Unchained
20:35
TV was the pool camera and had a
20:38
camera in court.
20:38
And we were there as somebody took the
20:40
stand and testified that they themselves saw it.
20:43
It's not you just saying that you heard
20:46
this, that there were people who were there
20:48
who testified in court to that effect.
20:50
There were people who were part of those
20:52
procedures.
20:52
Matt Reich and Scott Gilbertson both testified that
20:54
we were employees.
20:55
We didn't know what we were doing.
20:56
We didn't know it was illegal, but we
20:57
were forced to do this as a matter
20:59
of employment.
20:59
And they told even more horrible stories.
21:01
Matt Reich told a story about seeing a
21:03
newborn puppy who was kind of sick, just
21:05
thrown into a freezer bag, being sent into
21:07
the landfill, right?
21:08
This is a living puppy that was sent
21:10
into a garbage can.
21:11
And he said, what are we doing?
21:12
Don't we have to do something about this
21:13
puppy?
21:14
But because the puppy was sick and they
21:15
didn't want to waste money on trying to
21:17
care for this animal because it's a business
21:18
and every $100, $200 they're spending cuts into
21:22
their bottom line, they literally just threw an
21:23
animal away into a landfill.
21:25
And they did prosecute us initially for exposing
21:27
this facility and rescuing some animals.
21:28
We turned the tables on them, mostly because
21:31
of you.
21:32
I mean, not literally you, Shane, but you
21:34
and all your audience and all the other
21:35
animal advocates around the world who came out
21:37
to Wisconsin and said, this is not okay.
21:39
You can't cover up animal abuse for decades,
21:42
attack the people who expose it, and then
21:44
prosecute them for rescuing a blind beagle puppy
21:47
from a cage.
21:48
And partly because of the outcry, the court
21:51
not only had to drop charges against us,
21:53
but appointed this special prosecutor who has said
21:55
now they're going to shut down by July
21:56
1st.
21:57
Now, the wrinkle that is a very bad
21:59
one for us is twofold.
22:01
One is technically Ridgeland can continue to sell
22:04
and torture and kill dogs until July 1st,
22:07
which means all the thousands of dogs there
22:09
may end up dead, even though the government
22:11
has now acknowledged there are victims of felony
22:13
animal abuse.
22:14
That makes no sense.
22:15
If this were an animal cruelty case involving
22:17
anyone other than a big, powerful, wealthy industry
22:19
the dogs would have been confiscated a year
22:22
ago, right?
22:23
But the second piece of this is extremely
22:24
problematic is when we first got a copy
22:27
of the stipulation, the agreement with the prosecutor,
22:30
we wrote back to him and said, look,
22:31
this doesn't stop the company from just rebranding
22:34
under different entities' names.
22:36
They can reincorporate a new entity, could be
22:39
exactly the same one, and just shift the
22:40
entire facility to this new ownership.
22:42
And he completely blew us off.
22:44
I can tell you as a corporate lawyer,
22:45
this is exactly what evil corporations do.
22:47
That's what they do all the time.
22:48
Because I sued corporations because of this sort
22:49
of thing.
22:50
I know a lot about this.
22:51
And he completely ignored the email.
22:53
And initially I thought, honestly, it was just
22:55
laziness and incompetence.
22:56
But after we got a filing a couple
22:58
of weeks ago, and we looked at it
23:00
very carefully, that indicated what the basis of
23:03
his declining filing of felony charges against Ridgeland
23:06
was, what the basis was for him deciding
23:08
not to seize the dogs.
23:08
We realized he has unlawfully been collaborating with
23:12
the industry this entire time.
23:14
He should have had no context with the
23:15
industry, no context with anyone who was adversarial
23:18
to the interests of the victims of this
23:19
case, the dogs.
23:20
And instead, while he was denying us the
23:22
opportunity to share our facts, he didn't even
23:24
talk to the employees who saw this abuse.
23:25
He didn't talk to our expert veterinarians who
23:28
opined on this abuse.
23:29
He had been spending all this time talking
23:30
to factory farming interests in Wisconsin.
23:32
That is illegal, that is unconstitutional.
23:35
And so our ask now to the government
23:36
is, get all of those dogs out or
23:39
we will.
23:41
Well, I know I've worked with other organizations
23:44
like Beagle Freedom Project that has actually gotten
23:50
dogs that have been taken from labs, adopted.
23:53
So there are people out there who will
23:55
adopt these dogs.
23:57
Indeed, Beagle Freedom Project got Meghan Markle and
24:00
Prince Harry to adopt a dog that had
24:03
been experimented on or in a laboratory breeding
24:07
facility for laboratory dogs.
24:10
So I just wanna thank you, Wayne.
24:12
I know you're a very busy person.
24:13
I know it's very late in London.
24:16
Final thoughts.
24:18
Here we are sort of maybe back on
24:21
our heels a little bit as a movement.
24:23
You have the new food pyramid that emphasizes
24:26
meat and dairy that came out of nowhere
24:28
with a lot of meat industry influence.
24:31
You have a media war against veganism going
24:34
on with a master's in beef advocacy where
24:37
they're churning out these social media influencers to
24:40
pump up meat.
24:41
You have the fact that the first Animal
24:44
Rising group was convicted and poor Zoe Rosenberg
24:48
is in, she's lost her freedom and had
24:52
to wear an ankle monitor.
24:54
Given all of that, I know you're a
24:57
person who sees big picture long-term.
24:59
How strong is our animal rights movement?
25:03
The movement is stronger than it's ever been.
25:05
And not just because of this verdict.
25:07
Frankly, even the things that we see as
25:09
defeats like Zoe's case, there's a boomerang effect
25:12
where you pull back and suddenly when the
25:16
industry pulls back too far and we realize
25:19
that the public is actually not down for
25:21
a lot of the industry practices.
25:23
It's not down for lying to people about
25:25
the health costs of red meat.
25:27
It's not down for trying to lie to
25:29
people about how cultivated meat or beyond meat
25:31
is somehow dangerous.
25:32
And it's certainly not down for putting animal
25:34
rescuers in trial.
25:35
When they overreach and push back, the slingshot
25:39
effect of that boomerang, that whiplash actually propels
25:42
us forward.
25:43
And I can say this as someone who's
25:44
lived through that experience because back in 2009,
25:47
2010, I was a lawyer advocating for animals
25:50
back then as I am today.
25:51
And the entire movement felt like it was
25:53
in collapse because of the ATA, all the
25:55
actives who had gone to prison in the
25:56
United States in the 2000s, because the Ag
25:59
-Gag laws that are being passed across the
26:00
country, veganism was in free fall.
26:02
No one seemed to be doing anything successfully.
26:05
And I told folks back then, and I'll
26:07
tell folks again today, just you wait, because
26:09
it's always darkest before the dawn.
26:11
And in fact, sometimes the contrast of the
26:14
vileness of the industry, the repression the industry
26:16
is inflicting on ordinary people is precisely what
26:19
propels us forward.
26:20
And I think that's what we're gonna see
26:21
in this case.
26:22
Well, from your mouth to God's ear, as
26:24
the saying goes, it's so great to talk
26:27
to you.
26:27
Thank you for taking the time at this
26:29
late hour, live from England, everybody.
26:32
Wayne Chung talking about this incredible, incredible positive
26:37
outcome in this trial, namely the acquittal of
26:43
these four defendants.
26:46
And we'll have to see what happens with
26:48
the next case.
26:49
We will stay on top of it.
26:50
We will see you next time.
26:52
And thank you for watching Unchained TV.
26:55
Please support the Simple Heart, Wayne Chung's blog.
26:59
It's an incredible blog.
26:59
And go to Animal Rising's website.
27:01
Absolutely.
27:02
And Animal Rising, we must support Animal Rising
27:05
in the United Kingdom.
27:07
See you next time.
27:09
Awesome.
27:09
So it's a vegan Netflix.
27:12
Okay, that's the craziest thing I've ever heard.
27:14
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27:15
Unchained, Unchained TV.
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Your life will change.
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It's just that easy.
27:19
Unchained TV has all sorts of content for
27:22
everybody.
27:23
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27:25
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27:28
I love Unchained TV.
27:30
Unchained TV is my go-to.
27:32
Unchained TV.
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27:34
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