Hello everyone, my name is Ryan and you're listening to The Vegan Report.
If you're vegan for the animals and you care to do more for animal rights, but you're not sure
where to start, then this podcast is for you. Every week, let yourself fall in love with
passionate animal rights leaders who will inspire you to find your voice, your own special
contribution to the animal rights movement, however small or big it is. Today we are going
to talk about animal welfare in Vietnam. Vietnam is a land gifted with beautiful scenery, a rich
culture and warm people, but it is also a country plagued by the dog and cat meat trade, bad vet
care and the growing consumption of animal products. To discuss this topic, I have with me
Catherine Besh, a lifelong animal lover and animal advocate. Kat left the US in 2007 and she gave up
her life riding horses and managing stables in Virginia. Since graduating from Washington
State University with a bachelor's degree in international politics and a master in disaster
management focused on animals in disaster, and she wrote about that. I will leave a link to one of
her articles in the description below. Kat has lived in several countries around the world,
working as an English teacher and traveling in Europe, Asia and South America. Kat started
Vietnam Animal Aid in 2013. It is Vietnam's first and only animal sanctuary. In 2016, she opened
the first non-profit international vet clinic in Vietnam, which ran for several years before
closing due to lack of funding. But the vet project will be reopening in the not so distant future
as a mobile vet clinic and anti-species vet training program. Her work in rescue and vegan
advocacy on the ground in Vietnam and Europe has given her a first-hand understanding of the
political, cultural and economic context of animal rights in the global South. Thank you very much,
Kat, for being a guest on this podcast. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Let's dive right in.
My first question for you is what circumstances led you to live in Vietnam? It's something that
puzzles me a bit. Could you explain? Yeah, it's sort of a strange story. I had no intent. This
was all a totally unintended experience to run an animal rescue in Vietnam. Basically, Vietnam is
something I've always grown up with, though. My dad was a Marine officer in Vietnam who was shot in
1966. He and my mother came back in 1971 to 1973. I'm actually a legacy in Vietnam. This is the
country I've known about since I was born. My dad used his time in the CIA, my mom in the U.S.
embassy, they use it as a shopping trip, essentially, because the government has to bring home all your
household goods. My house was surrounded by Vietnamese furniture, Vietnamese art, Vietnamese
ceramics, Vietnamese everything. I was the four-year-old who could find Vietnam on a map.
It's just always been like that. My parents are quite older, as parents, quite a bit older.
I kind of, they were getting older and I had left Mongolia the year before. It was horribly cold,
if you're wondering. It's the coldest capital city in the world, Ulaanbaatar. I was like,
you know what? I need some sunshine. This is a time in my parents' life where I want them to see
what had happened to the country. They loved so much. I wanted to kind of bring that experience
to them before they died. We're not real close as a family, but I thought this was something that
would bring that to us. I mean, it didn't really work exactly, but I came and I fell in love with
the place. I planned to stay only six months. I was doing my master's degree in disaster management
online. I could kind of be anywhere in the world and I really wanted to follow international
disasters. But Vietnam to me, it wasn't volcanoes and earthquakes, but we have seasonal flooding.
I kind of took that as, okay, well, this is my disaster to write about. I got typhoons and
flooding. I'm kind of looking at how that works in the developing world and how Global South.
And that's just kind of what kept me here initially was that I was able to kind of
sustain myself with my master's degree and some freelance writing while I was here. And then poof,
I ended up with an animal rescue for the past decade and I never left.
Yeah. Oops.
I mean, the whole story is amazing. I did not realize how profound your relationship with
Vietnam was. My whole life. Yeah. You have this childhood link with the country. Do you speak
Vietnamese? My Vietnamese remains bad. Surprisingly bad considering the amount of time I've been here,
whereas I could go to Italy for two weeks and speak better Vietnamese or speak better Italian
than I speak Vietnamese after a decade. It's just one of those languages that requires quite a bit
more effort than others and I've been rather busy. But yeah, I do speak Vietnamese. I, in fact,
I say this in Vietnamese all the time. Khoi noi, thang Viet luon luon, yung ma kong hiu,
which means I speak Vietnamese all the time. I just can't understand.
Because people think it's a small country. I mean, if you really look at the country, it's
actually rather large and there's a lot of dialects within there and they change significantly from
province to province. And so it's not just as easy as like learning some words. It's like you've got
to really understand the accents and that can be quite difficult. Yeah. But no, I'll admit,
I haven't spent enough time fixing it. Well, that's a good segue to my next question.
For someone who doesn't know much about Vietnam, how would you describe the place?
Gorgeous. It's gorgeous. It's a really beautiful and extremely green country. And the food as a
vegan is, in my opinion, the best in the world. I haven't been to some countries that I know are
known for their vegan food like Ethiopia as well. But I can guarantee you that we have
our, you know, we're pretty damn good here. So eating is definitely not a problem. I would say
Vietnam is full of extremely friendly people. They call Thailand the land of smiles, which I think is
crap. I don't think anybody smiles there. You come to Vietnam and you can see that they're just like
a really friendly, outgoing sort of people. I think it's just warm. They're generally just really
warm. I don't know. It's kind of, it's diverse. It's a very diverse country and people don't
really give it that much credit for being so. I mean, we have four climate zones in the country.
So that alone should show you that there is quite a bit of diversity. You know, like in the North,
it's typhoon season, for example, you know, and we won't get ours until October. And like, you know,
it just kind of varies throughout the year. So yeah, I think the diversity, the mountains,
everything are just really different, but it is very beautiful country. And it never,
I never stopped being surprised. You know, I think there's always more to discover,
just getting on my motorbike and driving into the mountains. And I always feel
a sense of wonder here. There's no escape from that. Yeah. I know. Because one of my very best
friend, her boyfriend is Vietnamese and she recently visited Vietnam and she showed me
some of the pictures of the place. And I was like, I need to visit this place. It's so stunning.
It's stunning. There are beaches, there are the food, like you said, looks so yummy. Yeah.
And the weather. We don't suffer for food. I can tell you that. Yeah. I mean, like,
I don't want to paint a perfect picture though. Okay. Let me, let me, let me wipe the shine off
what I just said real fast. Okay. It is a single party state with an, not an independent judiciary.
It is highly oppressive to its own citizens. It is heavily censored. There are a lot of things. If
you were a Vietnamese citizen, you are not living a great life in all cases. I mean, they are
considered one of the happiest people in the world though, which is interesting. But as far as like
having any, any, any ability to be part of the democratic process, that's not really a thing.
It's very rare to be, to have anybody involved in the political situation here. That's not like
a, already a suit. I call them suits, you know, the people, the people in suits, you know. So it's not
particularly egalitarian in a lot of ways. I think women, you know, domestic violence is prevalent. I
think animal abuse obviously is something that's a problem or I wouldn't be doing this. I think
there's a lot of things that are negative about the traffic can be horrible. The honking is annoying.
The karaoke makes me want to kill myself. There, you know, like I love to hate Vietnam and I hate
to love it. It is my home in every possible sense, but it's not, it's not all shiny and pretty. I'm
not going to, I'm not going to lie about that. I live a parallel existence as a foreigner in many
ways, because we're kind of to Vietnam, we're a bit of like walking ATMs being that we have a lot
of cash to input as foreigners into the system. I have a, I have a fully foreign owned business license.
So there, there's a lot of things that give me privileges that I wouldn't have otherwise if I
were actually from here. So I don't, I, it's important to recognize the bad with the good.
Yes. Well, you know, I had the view of a tourist, basically someone who was, you know,
planning my vacation and about Vietnam, but you know, even when I travel and I have traveled in
many places around the world, I have every time witnessed a lot of displays of animal cruelty.
Sure. Everywhere in the world. Yeah. Yeah.
Exotic animals on leashes in South America. I visited Greece and I was...
Oh, Greece is awful. Yeah. I was just there two weeks ago. I mean, the cats on the streets.
I was shocked by the number of dogs just in Athens, their capital city, welcoming you every time you
went on a stroll. And yeah, Turkey and the situation there. You know, I was thinking
about my time in Turkey and with the number of cats outside, I wonder how are the birds doing there?
You know, right. Not great. Probably not great. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I'd say the same for
Greece. I mean, those are probably... Italy is the same population, a high population of domestic
cats. People are not sterilizing them. I mean, there are a lot of organizations in Greece,
at least, because they've got a lot more help because they're in that part of Europe,
but... And they have a lot of tourists and they have, you know, still in spite of all of Greece's
economic problems, they still have a lot of people that are putting money into those projects,
including one of our staff, our director of operations. She lives in Greece and she does TNR,
trap, neuter, release of cats. And so she's trying to help with getting that population down, but
it's an endless cycle and there's not a lot... I mean, it's just so much work to keep that population
down. And I believe those initiatives are the exception and not the rule. Yes. Yes, absolutely.
Because there's still so many people... I was out trapping with her. I love cat trapping. I used to
do it in Alabama and when I was living there. And it's frustrating because a lot of people think
that it's unnatural to sterilize animals. They still have that very traditional and conservative
mindset that it's just like, we shouldn't sterilize animals because we are taking away their natural
right to give birth. We try to explain to them that we're trying to prevent suffering and whatever.
And this just happened, I guess, in the past couple of weeks here as well, trying to sterilize a dog.
And the guy was like, no, we just want her to have puppies again and again and again. And I give the
puppies to my friend. And so we weren't allowed to... Free sterilization, we weren't allowed to do it.
He's not interested in the wellbeing of the animal. He's interested in making sure that he is
capitalizing upon another's reproductive system, just like you would in say the dairy industry or
any other industry, breeding horses, for example, or breeding dogs. It doesn't really matter. It's
all kind of part of the same vein of exploitation. Well, every time I witnessed those displays of
cruelty toward animals or just bad, just neglect of the animal population,
when we're talking about, like you said, cats or dogs, what frustrated me the most was the feeling
of being powerless. I'm not my country. I don't understand this country. I don't know how to help
those animals. And even if I had the will to do so, I can't. I'm going to leave in a few days.
This is an impossible situation. So I just have to close my eyes, to look away, to just be in denial.
It's hard. It's really hard. I live in a tourist town. It's the same thing. We get all these
messages from people saying, I found this kitten on the side of the road. I'm leaving tomorrow.
What can you take the kitten? No. Well, I mean, we can't because you're one of nine this week
that have sent me that message. And I know you feel powerless and helpless and whatever, but like,
I don't own an island to put all these cats on. Let's get this straight. There is just no place
for them to go. And you have to get used to the idea that you can't help everybody. And I think
that's one of the worst parts of being a compassionate and empathetic person is being able to close your
eyes and say, I understand the big picture. I'm doing everything I can on a daily basis,
particularly as vegans, to eliminate my part in exploitation, torture and murder. And that's
bigger than what everybody else around here is doing. So I kind of, you can't help every single
individual. There's not the resources or the homes or the space or the veterinarians. And it just
isn't like that. I mean, I can say that after 10 years running a rescue, but ultimately it is what
led me to run a rescue, this idea of like, I'm not going to stand for this. I won't stand for this.
I will do something. I am somebody who can do something. Well, I want to ask you about that.
Because contrary to me or others who have visited other countries or stayed there and
did nothing about animal suffering, you did something. And I want to know, how did it start?
How did the feelings of wanting to do something translated into actions?
Yeah. Coffee. Yeah. Coffee. It's extremely strong here. This stuff's like jet fuel. Yeah, no,
I mean, it really is. If you just go to your local Asian market, pick up some Vietnamese coffee,
and you won't even have to ask that question. This stuff is like, I don't know, it's stronger
than your average cocaine. Yeah. It really messes with your idea of like, it makes you feel like a
superhero. It's a little bit like, yeah, it makes you feel like you can fly a little bit and start
an animal rescue. And for that, I deeply regret that. But no, I mean, at the time, I'd been here
six months. I guess I'd been here a year before, almost a year before I started the organization.
I lived in one city for six months, and then I came to Hoi An for six months. And I had met some
people. I met another girl who was willing to start a rescue with me. I was like, we've got to
do something. She had like four cats at the time. And people kept giving me animals. So I ended up
with all these animals. And I'm just like, because I'm just somebody who's always taking care of
animals. I used to work with horses for 20 years. And then now I've got this whole thing going on.
This is just what I do. I'm just the person that people give animals to. I've always been like that,
even when I was just a little kid. And so I kind of had this moment. There was this dog,
Blair, who's still with us now. And she was on the side of the road. And she was mostly bald.
And she just was laying there. And I have this picture of her that I'll never forget. And she
was terrified. And I just was like, you know what? No, no, not today. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done
looking at this stuff and driving by. I can't do this anymore. And so the reason I started the
organization was like, I realized that I couldn't afford a vet bill like that. Like, this was going
to be out of control. And we needed to have some sort of public funding for this. So I took her to
the vet. She was there for like a week, paid the vet bill. And then within the next couple of weeks,
we put the organization on Facebook. And we kind of got started. And then we had a fundraising
party and got some money. And just kind of it went from there. I had no idea how far it would go.
I had no clue that it would end up just being we would be bombarded with animals over the next
couple of years, particularly because we were the only people in the area doing anything.
Central Vietnam, there was one foreign owned rescue in Saigon. But there was still none in
Hanoi. And there was none in central Vietnam. And we were just like, we were it. And so we just
ended up being bombarded with animals, most of them were dying anyway, and the vets were absolute
garbage. And so they couldn't help us much. I luckily had worked with vets by working with horses,
you know, working with horses is not the same saving kittens, by the way. I mean, the principles
are kind of the same. But you essentially have to become a pharmacist slash drug lord, you've got to
be able to you've got to be able to and we can get all of our we can get everything over the counter
here. You don't have to have a prescription for anything. So we can get our antibiotics. And as
long as you've got a formulary for you know, your dosages and can Google it. Basically, I was a
Google vet. Because like, there's a lot of things that the veterinarian knew nothing about nothing.
No, it wasn't that he knew nothing. It's that he made up shit. And that made it much, much worse. So
it was it was horrendous. So within the first year, I was like, we've got to start our own vet project.
Because it was just so bad. Well, let's start first about the state of animal welfare in Vietnam.
You know, the reason why you felt like you needed to create your organization.
So you talked about the care in the health care of animals. Why are the vets in Vietnam
not skilled to deal with the current situation or with anything that has to do with, you know,
healthcare to animals? Right. So I mean, the connection, we can't ever eliminate that connection
between the public health care system and the veterinary industry. Right. People like to divorce
the two and they think they're completely separate. And I think that's just ridiculous. We're doing
that to our own detriment. So we're like 98th in the world and public health care. It's not a good
place to be. It's not a great ranking. Just the general health care of the humans in this country
is pretty bad. So when we talk about like being able to have animals get decent health care,
you're starting from a horrible system that simply like they just don't understand pharmacology. They
just don't. I mean, they'll get we have the second highest antibiotic resistance in the world. It's
not, I mean, they'll give antibiotics out like TikToks. I mean, like it's, there's just the
basic medicine. For people who don't know what it is. Great. So antibiotic resistance is basically,
you know, there's all these bacteria that are becoming used to all the antibiotics that we're
giving them. And so they evolve. They evolve to be resistant to them. And if you keep giving
antibiotics for all these bacteria, what happens is that you're just going to end up with antibiotic
resistance. And that becomes a huge problem for hospitals and for people and for animals and the
entire ecosystem for that matter. It's not limited to just humans and doggies and kitties. It goes
far beyond that. Particularly when we're talking about farmed animals and going into the food
system and all of that. I mean, it's very, very dangerous. You know, that means if you hurt yourself,
and it's infected, we can't cure that. Normal treatment will not have any effects because the
bacteria is causing the infection are resistant to any kind of drugs we have. It's terrifying.
It is absolutely, it's absolutely apocalyptic. You know, people aren't realizing that. And I mean,
predominantly the over antibiotic use is in the animal agriculture industries. So, I mean, we do
it with people here too, but the animals and they're all getting it way more than the people are
even. And of course, that just creates this massive antibiotic resistant, like playground in farms and
things like that. So, but it's the only way people know how to cure anything because the conditions
are all really dirty. So, basic sanitation is just something they don't understand. When we had our
vet clinic, and so eventually what happened was we had to open our own vet clinic. It was just a
matter of like time. I mean, I saw a vet give a cesarean section without any anesthesia and I was
like, you know what, I'm actually done with this crap. I'm not going back there. This is really
fucked up. Pardon my French. So, we went kind of all in on the veterinary project and we hired a
veterinary intern who had never learned how to wash her hands, who had never seen the inside of
an animal dead or alive, who had been in veterinary school for five years, mind you, had only five
years, never seen the inside of an animal dead or alive, never did any anatomy work, never did
anything like that, never watched a surgery. She'd never seen a cat neutered, you know, that was
never discussed. Did you ever ask her what she did during those five years? Oh yeah. I mean, it was
predominantly things like studying chemistry and microbiology. It was kind of like in the US,
we have like, you have to get a science degree and then you go to vet school. It was kind of
like all those little things, but just books that, you know, like the veterinary books and
that were in their veterinary library, which was tiny, it was like smaller than my tiny house.
They were all from like decades and decades and decades ago and only one was, I remember looking
through her library, there was one that was on canine surgery in English, of course, where
nobody spoke any English, which is hilarious. And the book was written in 1955. That was their most
recent book on canine surgery, 1955. I don't know about you, but we, I think, I think we can imagine
that there's a lot that has changed since 1955 and canine surgery. So, so that was, that was a telltale
of like a really poor education system. I've heard now that the better, the better universities are
doing things like they have to be able to do a sterilization before they leave, but they have to
do a sterilization before they leave the university. But frankly, nobody's learning proper sedation
protocols at all. They're just not getting it. Their, their understanding of basic animal anatomy
and biology is piss poor, to say the least, but their practical skills, they don't have any animal
handling skills. They fundamentally don't believe that pain management is something that should be
discussed. And it's not because they're bad people, predominantly the, the people going into veterinary
medicine or those that are, that are going to work in the animal agriculture industry. So they're
going to be either paper pushers in the animal health department that are putting their stamp at
at slaughterhouses, or they're working in the pharmaceutical industry, which is basically just
making antibiotics to keep farmed animals alive until we murder them. So you're not really learning
like basic care. So it's not even just cats and dogs. I mean, you have to look quite holistically
at the veterinary industry and where its failures are. But I think in the beginning, I didn't really
understand how bad that was. I knew practically how they were failing. But I mean, they fundamentally
didn't, you know, my vet here did not understand the difference between a steroid and an antibiotic
and its function and, and applications. And it just, that's a big deal. You know, that's a really
big deal. Yeah, it's scary. Because, you know, I have a cat and she's old. And I don't know what
I would do if I did not have, you know, her vet. Amazing vets. Yeah. Yeah. And thinking about, you
know, the whole animal industry, they rely a lot on the care of vets. And so you have a whole, you
know, the frontline, the frontline information is wrong. Yes. So what do you do? And not only that,
you have to put it in perspective of how Vietnamese culture works in terms of hierarchy. So they're
very much like there's a lot of deference towards people of a higher rank, right. And so they're
ranking is like, okay, well, you have a doctor, doctor's degree. So you are the word of God. And
I'm not going to question you. Doctors, veterinarians here won't even tell you what medication they're
giving your animals. They'll be like, oh, they have a liver infection and they get, and I'm giving him
an injection injection of what never know. Right. So they just won't tell you that because that would
make them lose face and they don't want to give away the information so that you'll just go to
another vet and tell them what they've done. So it is very like, it's really sick in that way.
And that's true in a lot of parts of the global South in terms of the, and the public health system
is exactly the same. They won't tell you what they're giving you. They won't give you information.
They're just like, I am, I am the doctor. This is the word of God. And this is what's going,
this is what it comes out of my mouth. And so it must be right. Do not make me lose face by
asking any questions or by questioning my ability to provide you with great care.
So if nobody's asking you questions and if they do ask questions, they'll just make something up. If
they don't know the answer, which is most of the time. So those pet owners, those people that really
want to help their animals are not able to help their animals because the veterinarians aren't,
aren't capable of providing just that basic care. And their, their information is, is so like, it's,
it's the last word. Right. So, so there's, it's kind of a give and take sort of situation that
just won't improve until the veterinary industry itself improves. And people are like, you should
rescue animals and you should give, you know, help more animals with who, with who specifically,
with what vets did you intend for me to rescue all these animals? And so the first few years
or two years before we opened the vet clinic was all about just like having all these animals that
we were watching die from things that were, that could have been treated because we simply didn't
have the veterinarians that knew how to deal with it, could diagnose or talk to us even about what
was going on. You know, we had hardly any diagnostics and if you don't have diagnostics,
you don't have treatment. Okay. Like it begins with like, you have a blood machine. Well,
do you know how much a blood machine costs? No, you don't have a blood machine, but could you do
a blood smear? Could you look at it under the microscope and give us some answers? Well,
they don't know what they're looking at. They weren't taught that. Right. So you're not going
to get it. You're going to get sort of a vague, oh, they got a liver infection. Really? Are you
sure about that? How do you know? Can you tell me why you said that? You know, oh, I'm going to give
them an injection of B12. Well, B12 doesn't solve everything. Give them B12, atropine, ampicillin,
and say, you know, like saline essentially. Those are these things that they just throw at every
single animal. And they're like, surprise, animal's dead, you know? And, and we just,
it's kind of like a situation you expect at some point to not have your problem solved when you
go to the vet. So animal, people bring their animals to a vet knowing that it's probably like
the last minutes of their life. So when the animal dies because of veterinary malpractice,
it's not really surprising. Their interaction with the healthcare system as humans and with animals
is just so negative that there's not like, they don't really expect miracles to happen at a
veterinarian, you know, just like they wouldn't expect miracles to happen when their grandma's
dying or to get any real help. You know, I was born in North Africa and the culture there is,
you know, when I talk with family who still lives there and I tell them about my cat and how I
bring her to the vet and the treatment I purchased, you know, for her, for her old age,
they feel like it's a joke because it's just a cat. Why are you spending your money on a cat? And
you know, an animal doctor, what is that? Right, right, right. Absolutely. I mean,
there are people here that I've met that didn't know that a vet was a job. They didn't know that
was a thing. So if we're saying like, you know, like the media attention of course is focused on
that Asians are cruel to animals. I think we're missing a whole lot of that picture. This whole
idea that there's this like savage anti-animal thing is just such a raging line of bullshit.
It sells well. It sells well to dumb white people. But I mean, the marketing is excellent.
But it's just a lie. It's just like they lack access. It's not like I ran a vet clinic that
had predominantly Vietnamese staff, Vietnamese clients for almost three years. I guarantee you,
nobody walked into that clinic thinking, I just don't care about this animal. We were
constantly busy. You know, this idea that they don't care about animals or cruel to animals or
whatever all the time just doesn't make any sense. I would say there's a, it's just stupid. I mean,
they're humans, humans and animals have had a close relationship for a pretty long time.
Well, you know, I mean, before getting into the cultural differences, and I want to get to that
because it's such an interesting discussion. I want you to continue your description of the
state of animal welfare in Vietnam. We talked about the healthcare and how it is completely broken,
to say the least. What about, and we touched on that, the stray population, you know, stray cats
and dogs. Would you say that the country is in a state of crisis in terms of the number of-
Great. That's interesting. Yeah. No. No. Do you know why? The dog meat trade, the dog meat trade
and the cat meat trade. Yeah. People don't really want to acknowledge what this is. People are all
boohooing about the dog and cat meat trade and they forget that that's our population control.
The vast majority of animals in this country are called roaming-owned dogs. So we don't have,
we don't have a stray population. If we do, it's tiny. It's tiny, you know? And pretty much every
dog and cat has a place it goes to get food and shelter from the rain and whatever. Are they
taken care of there? Not necessarily, but it's not like a whole bunch of animals roaming. It's not
like Cambodia. It's not like Laos. It's not like Thailand. It's not like, you know, it's not like
a lot of other countries that have a large stray population where animals just literally exist
without a person's direct care. That's not how it is. So we don't have a population control
program in the sense that like the reason the animals still aren't lasting more than a year
usually is disease, dog theft, animals being sold into the meat trade from people who own them. So
it's not, so they have like a medical problem that the people aren't able to fix or whatever,
or the animal gets old or the animal bit a kid or something like that. They're going to sell it to
the dog meat guy. So that's always going to happen. So that's behavioral medical issues that goes in
to the dog meat trade as well. The cat meat as well. Cat meat is quite a bit smaller, but
cats are harder to catch to be fair. Dogs are always, cats are a little shifty, you know,
but I would say, you know, people aren't looking at the fact that like, if you get rid of the dog
meat trade, you have to replace that with a functional population management system. And
what's going to happen in Vietnam is that they're going to use culling. If there is no sterilization
program that is widespread, the Vietnamese government, no doubt in my mind will cull the
animals with strychnine, will shoot them, whatever, which is what other countries like Myanmar have
done and Cambodia, they just blanket kill them, you know, Egypt. I mean, there's a lot of countries
that cull them like that, right? Because they're dealing with, you know, zoonotic diseases,
particularly rabies. And if a kid gets bitten and gets rabies and dies, I guarantee you that entire
population of that region is going to be culled, you know? So these are all things that like,
we have to consider. Plus there's a lot of infectious disease they get, because animals
aren't being vaccinated. So vaccination and sterilization have to come together, right?
If we're going to improve the population, or the lives of the population of the existing animals,
and prevent more from being born that are going to be born into a horrible life, we have to have
sterilization and vaccination. Preventative care is the only care here, right? Otherwise,
it's going to be culling and it's the dog meat trade. That's how we manage the population,
because stray populations, man, that's how you have a lot of problems with human interaction.
That's how you have the bites, and that's how you have the zoonotic transfers. And we just,
I want that to be understood very, very clearly about the dog meat trade, that it is our population
management system. And if you erase it, if you ban it, which I don't believe is going to happen
in a country with such weak rule of law to begin with, but if you ban it and it actually works,
then you're going to have a whole lot of strays and it's going to be a different problem. But
they're going to die one way or another. It's just, you have to choose which way it happens.
Well, this is a strange economical activity, because if there is a dog meat trade,
why is there no dog farms? Why are they doing after-stray dogs?
Right. It's not really a thing here.
After-stray dogs.
It's not really straight. I mean, they'll come and they'll steal them or people will sell them
or whatever, they'll pick them up. So dog theft is a really big problem for sure. And,
but I mean, it's so, I mean, to be clear, there's about, we estimate around 5 million dogs killed for
meat every year. And predominantly that happens in the North, but it's really like in every village,
the dog catcher, I just saw yesterday, same guy I've seen for the past 10 years, they do the same
job. They just drive around slowly in the middle of the day and they can pick up animals that people
don't want anymore and they can get, you know. And they're called dog catchers.
This is the dog catcher. Yeah. I mean, he's just, yeah. And he'll take it to a restaurant and
whatever. So, or they'll put them on a truck to Hanoi, something like that. I mean, the North
eats a lot more dog meat than the rest of the country, but still, so 5 million dogs are killed
every year, but let's compare that to the numbers in animal agriculture. So 551 million chickens are
killed every year. That's a factor of 105 more, right? Yeah. Multiplier, 105. That's not a small
amount. 44 million pigs are killed. So we're looking at the, if you, if you look at the whole
picture, dogs are actually like 0.7% of the animals killed in this country, not including
sea life. It's a tiny, tiny amount. And people just absolutely lose their minds. 5 million is a lot.
And if I think of them, you know, like you said, if there was no dog meat trade, we would have 5
million dogs in the streets. What? Yeah. Oh, and that 5 million doesn't stay 5 million for very long,
does it? You know what they're doing in the streets. They're shagging. Yeah. Yeah. It's not just,
they're not just hanging out, not making babies. That 5 million is going to be 25 million within a
year. Right? So like you want, and what are they going to do with that 25 million? I guarantee
you're going to find a way worse way than the dog meat trade to kill them. Guarantee it. 100%.
That's the way the Vietnamese government works. So that's their version of, you know, protecting
the public health. So yeah, I mean, it is, I mean, 5 million is a lot. We are a country of 97, 98
million people. It's a very large, densely populated country. So if you kind of put it into
perspective, I think people, people still are thinking this is a tiny little country, you know?
I mean, it's really not. And it's very densely populated as well. So it's Asia. It's Asia. It's
Asia. I mean, but we're so much more densely populated. Like Laos has like 6 million people in
it and there are neighbors. It's super weird. Nobody lives in Laos. I don't know why I've never
been to Laos, but there doesn't seem to have people in it. It's a strange exception to the
so weird. So I can't wait to go because maybe it's actually quiet because Vietnam is not.
So yeah, I mean, I think, I think people need to put it into the larger perspective of how many
animals that is by comparison. Am I saying the dog meat trade is a good thing? And I think this is
where it gets confusing. No, I am firmly against the dog meat trade. I have stopped dog catchers
myself. I have taken animals from the dog meat trade. I have been to the restaurants. I have
been, I've done all of this stuff. I see how they're killed. I see all of this. The dog catcher is
in my neighborhood every single day. I don't have to wonder about the dog meat trade. This is a real
part of my daily life. I'm not some, you know, talking head in Los Angeles or London. That's
like, Oh boohoo, the dog meat trade. Yeah. Okay. Well you were on vacation here at the freaking
Hilton for two weeks. You don't know diddly dick about, sorry about the, about the dog meat trade,
but it's really true. It's just like they, all the people that cry about it are also non-vegans.
Anyway, you can't talk about the dog meat trade. If you've got bacon grease dripping down your chin,
I'm sorry. Like I'm just not buying it. Well, if I wasn't on a trip in Vietnam and I saw, you know,
a scooter with a dog in a cage and someone, probably lots of them stuffed in it actually is
what you would see, which is pretty horrible. Yeah. You know, I would look at that. I would think,
Oh, that's what is that? And then that's it. That it's revolting. Well, I would not have,
you know, the idea of those are going to a restaurant and people are going to eat them
would not even register in my mind because I have this cultural bias of, Oh, the dogs are not for
food. Dogs are, you know, our best friends. So yeah, I think there is also this bias of, you know,
you don't really notice until you notice until you notice. And it is, it is revolting for the
first couple of years of the organization. We talked about dog meat endlessly. I mean, it was,
it was something even though I was vegan, I would, but I mean, I was vegan. So it kind of like,
I feel like vegans are allowed to talk about a little more. If you're not vegan and you're
talking about the dog meat trade, I need you to shut up. Like, it's just, I have no patience for
that. But, but I would say, I would say in the first couple of years, it is something that you
see and it, and it, and it shakes you to your core. You know, I remember even just in November,
I was in Cancun, which is a big city, one of the biggest cities in the south. And, and there was a
whole bunch of dogs just packed like there, there's no way they could have put any more in this time,
in this small cage that they put on the back of a motorbike. And, and it really is even after all
these years, it makes you sick. Even though I have seen, so I've seen one dog truck on the highway,
where all the animals were stuffed in cages and they were going north. And in that time, in 10
years of watching, of this organization and looking at animals in horrible situations, I've seen one
dog meat truck, I've seen lots of dog catchers, but in that time I've seen thousands upon
thousands upon thousands upon thousands of chicken trucks, duck trucks, goat trucks, cow trucks,
pig trucks, all of these animals that are being slaughtered in such larger numbers than the dogs.
And yet the only thing people focus on when we talk about Vietnam and when we talk about animal
cruelty and animal welfare in general is the dogs. And you know, the thing is, I'll admit like you
see them more. You just see them more. Dogs are such an integral part of human life in every part
of the world. Where can you go into the world where there's not somebody with dogs? They're a big
part of our lives. So we focus on that and I get it. They are wonderful. I love my dogs. I love dogs.
I love animals, you know, but ultimately their suffering is an extension, not an exception. It's
an extension of the existing industries of animal exploitation that exist all over the damn planet,
everywhere and every country. And in fact, the Vietnamese eat one third of the meat that an
American does. One third. That is a fraction of what Americans are producing in dead bodies.
Do you mean like an expert?
No, consumption. So in consumption. Yeah. So Americans eat three times as many dead bodies
of animals that suffered and died for no good reason than the Vietnamese. Right? And I mean,
that varies throughout the country, of course, depending on poverty levels and whatever, but
still, yeah. Let's get into that because the best friend I mentioned, she, yeah, the food she showed
me, you know, it looked really good, but it was also, you know, packed with meat. There was meat
everywhere, animal products everywhere. And I was really... Is that different from Canada?
Yeah. Well, no. No. Go to a restaurant. I mean, I come back from Alabama and I'm like, where's all
that? How am I supposed to eat here? True. You know, like I come down, I go to Alabama and be
like, I can't even go to a restaurant because they put butter on every damn thing. They put butter
and cheese on steamed vegetables. I just want some steamed vegetables. Throw me a salad that doesn't
have cheese and egg in it or chicken on top of it. You know what I mean? Like I would say,
I would say it's much worse in other countries than Vietnam. There is a lot of cheese in
Western, you know, cooking, but, you know, I saw a lot of meat, just lots of meat.
But they're little pieces. Yeah. Okay. Cause you have to eat them with chopsticks,
right? So it may look like a lot of meat, but fundamentally, if we're talking about weight,
it's actually a tiny amount of meat by comparison to others because we don't use knives here.
So here, I mean, in the, in the West, you have big chunks of meat that you cut with a fork and
knife, right? Here we have to be able to get these little pieces out with chopsticks. That's right.
Yeah. So just like the actual volume is significantly smaller. Is it in a lot of dishes?
Yes. But here's the thing about vegan food, because we are a Buddhist country in which the
Buddhists here, this type of Buddhism is where they are vegan twice a month, full moon and half
moon. Some people are vegan only for two days. Some people are vegan for four days. Some people
are vegan for 10 days. And some people are vegan all the time, right? So as a result of that, that
is all over the country, those, all of those things that you saw that were meat, they replicate in
vegan food, right? So every single dish is made into a vegan version of that to be fed to people
on full and half moon. Which are called, I think, upasatha days. But that's where the surprise
came from. The fact that, you know, I was not expecting that from Vietnam, because in my mind,
Vietnam is a Buddhist country. So why are they eating so much meat? Why are they, you know,
exploiting animals so much? Because you look at China and there's this big vegetarian movement
in China. And you look at India, same thing. And you can see, you know, the influences of
Buddhism and Hinduism and such. So I was expecting the same from Vietnam. But no, not exactly.
I think there's a lot of, I mean, as they get richer, then this is true around the world.
As, as countries get richer, they are also increasing the amount of dead bodies in their
food. That is, that's just the standard graph, you know, like it just goes up together. So Vietnam is
becoming wealthier. And they don't have like a vegan movement in that regard. They don't,
the Buddhists don't really, I mean, they're all, you know, the all the pagodas are all vegan,
you know, all of that. But like, ultimately, they're not like spreading the word of veganism
on its own. It's about compassion and whatever. But ultimately, that doesn't mean that they're
not raising animals. It doesn't mean, you know, they're not like it hasn't, or their family members
or whatever, they're not, it's just a very different version of like the vegan movement from like the
UK, for example, you know, but but I don't see it at all in Thailand, frankly, you know, I don't I
mean, I mean, as far as vegan food in Thailand, I mean, I'd give a big thumbs down to that. I mean,
like, you know, of course, like in Bangkok and stuff, it's fine. And there are lots of places
throughout the country, but it's not at all like in Vietnam, where you can get vegan food any place
you go. You know, there's always a chai place, chay chai. Yeah. How do you explain that disconnect
that, you know, twice a month, they eat vegan for they get it? Yeah. Yeah. Because then all of a
sudden, nothing. I don't get it. I don't get it. I don't get it. It makes me endlessly angry. I am
constantly pissed off at foodists for being like, I mean, I live in a constant state of like, what
are you missing here? Because they get it. It's like full and half. And their food is great. And
they're eating the same stuff. And like all these great dishes and this beautiful, you know, the
why don't you do it all the time? Exactly. You have the cultural basis, the religious spaces,
and you have vegan food, great vegan options. So yeah, why is there no, you know, support? I
think a lot of it is nutrition. A lot of people have this idea and are brought up with the idea of
just like Americans that you need meat to survive, that meat makes you strong. And without it, you
are weak, right? So I think a lot of it is nutrition based. And that's just wrong information,
the same wrong information I was given as a child, you know, so the broken healthcare system.
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And they're like, you know, it's just trying to feed people meat
in order to be healthier. And when in reality, it's quite the opposite. But it just doesn't make
any sense. I get it. I mean, it makes me really, it makes me really angry. I get pretty pissed off
at foodists. Yeah. So how do Vietnamese people perceive your sanctuary? Um, that's complicated,
because I live, you know, I live in a tourist town, right? It's a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
So it's an old, an old city that was built by the Chinese and Japanese in the 15th century. And so
we have this beautiful old town. And so we have a large influx of foreign influence, right? So it's
not like I'm some weirdo for doing this. But in the beginning, it's taken a long time for them to
to accept it. But they're still like, I'm still about three kilometers from the center, which is
like countryside here, which I think is really funny. And, and so there's still a lot of people,
the people that live here may have gotten wealthier from from work in town, but their education
hasn't changed. And their experience with the world hasn't really changed that much. So I think
I think people think it's ridiculous what we do. You know, but, but in general, but then there's
a lot of people that really support it as well. You know, I mean, there's a lot of people, a lot
of Vietnamese just love doggies and kitties, which is standard around the world. But the idea of being
a vegan organization, I've been specifically like anti speciesist is something that is kind of really,
really brand spanking new to this country. And we are the only farm sanctuary in the country.
We're the only anti speciesist organization, we're the only vegan rescue. So that makes us
from being an animal rescue, which they only kind of get anyway, to being a farm sanctuary
is is a big leap, you know, and to be like somebody who loves dogs and doesn't eat pigs, like that's,
like, why would you do that? You know, like, but that's true in every country. I don't feel like
that. We get that same problem. And whether I'm in France or in, you know, Costa Rica, they're like,
so wait, you love dogs, and you don't eat other animals? Are you sure that's normal? Are you okay?
Yeah, no, I mean, really, so we are freaks in a lot of ways, not just to the local people.
Which again, is very strange to me, because if we're talking about the West, I understand from,
you know, the Christian Judeo Christian heritage, even, you know, in Islamic countries,
the perception of animals has always been, you know, this is food for you. Right. And this is
sustenance for you, you know, and there's nothing more to that. And then there are, even then there
are a few exceptions, you know, like, who's that St. Francis of? Yeah, of Assisi. Assisi, you know,
there are a few notable exceptions to that. And some, and of course, veganism is born in the West.
We could say that. But if I think about Asia, and its Buddhist, you know, background, cultural
background, and when I think about countries like India, or China, where being vegetarian and caring
for the animals is pretty, you know, it's understandable. It's recognized. And yes,
and no. Yeah, but yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, my favorite mock meat is Taiwanese, you know,
right? Exactly. Yeah, get about beyond meat and the rest, you know, yeah, get my mock meat from
a Taiwanese supermarket. They understand, you know, the palette, and they have been doing this for
a long time. So, you know, it's so strange to see a country that has all the recipe for expanding
their circle of compassion to every animal, exercising that kind of discrimination, you know,
you know, dogs and cats in one category and the rest in the other. And we're going to treat
one category as food and the other as friends. And yeah, it's just strange. I have this strange.
I mean, there are people after all, though. And I mean, I think unfortunately, they're just kind of,
they realize that, you know, particularly here, if you have big meat restaurants and hot pot and all
of these things, then you get a lot of foreigners to come, you make a bunch of money off that. And
that's kind of, you know, you also have to realize that Vietnam hasn't opened up for very long. I
mean, it was still just in the mid to early, early to mid 90s, you know, that they finally just opened
up after decades closed off from the world. And so they really just kind of focused on where do we
make money? And how do we spend our money looking flashy and meat just as part of that as well?
But it is crazy that there is sort of this like, ability to kind of separate the two. And I mean,
like, look, I'm not going to say that people all treat animals well. I mean, they throw rocks at
dogs. I mean, it's a huge, it's a huge difference from how you see people treating animals in other
countries in a lot of ways. Particularly men, I would say it all comes down to patriarchal nonsense
and that, and that they are very much like men don't do nice things for animals, you know, men
aren't like that, you know, men, we throw rocks at dogs, we don't pet doggies, you know, that's stupid,
you know, and so that crap just, I can't take that. I can't take any of that. But, but I mean,
predominantly, like most of our dogs end up hating Vietnamese men. And there's a good reason for it,
you know, I would say kind of your average country bumpkin. It's a lot like in the States as well,
though, you know, this is my farm dog. He's my, I'm gonna keep him on a chain and he's gonna
protect the property and whatever he's gonna bark when something happens, but I'm not gonna give him
any basic medical care and whatever. I mean, this happens around the world and a lot of it is related
to like, kind of, you know, socioeconomic status, for the most part, and the culture that goes with
that socioeconomic status. Yeah. And we, like you said, we also find that in North America, I knew,
I know shelter dogs who don't like men. They just don't, you know, they're scared of men.
And, you know, that idea, it's not an accident. It's not an accident. Men have been the abusers
in most of our abuse cases. And, and also this idea that if you become vegan and you're a man,
you're doing something on manly. Yeah. You know, that we could link that to the treatment of
animals you described from Vietnamese men. Absolutely. Yeah. It's very interesting. It's
machismo. It's machismo and machismo exists around the world. It's not, it's not something
exclusive to Vietnam. It's not something exclusive to Guatemala. It's not something exclusive to
Turkey. Machismo is just kind of what is preventing, I think, a lot of otherwise decent men from
becoming compassionate, empathetic people unable to understand that we shouldn't harm other living
beings. Well, it's, it's interesting to see how, you know, it's like two sides of the same coin.
Like you have animal abuse, animal exploitation, and it's common to all cultures, just like you
have veganism and people who are compassionate to animals. Absolutely. It goes both ways. Yeah. It
takes the form of veganism. It takes the form of Hinduism, Buddhism, all of, you know, multiple
practices. And sometimes, you know, it roots itself in the land or sometimes I guess it doesn't like
in Vietnam. Sure. But hopefully things will change. I mean, yeah. Yeah. But I mean, yeah, but at the
same time, it's like, I think the one thing that has been very clear over the past decade is that
like I'm a white American woman. I am not going to change this country. I can pick up the mess and
I can do, I can do the fundraising that gets something to help the veterinary capacity building,
but ultimately social change is not up to me. It will never be up to me. I think the whole white
man's burden crap just doesn't play out. I don't have any, any illusion as to my influence in
Vietnamese people's lives, you know, and the way this country is going to change over the decades.
I mean, I think, I think I have more of a global reach in that regard for English speakers around
the world because we write most of our posts in English. And to be like, this is what's going on
here. And this is my perspective from being a, you know, a vegan in Vietnam who happens to also be
American, who was the daughter of a, you know, Marine officer and CIA agent, you know, and this
is my perspective is not like we're the oppressors, you know, like we're the, we were the colonizers
that they kicked out. I don't have any illusions as to what I'm going to be able to do for this
country. My goal is to motivate the Vietnamese themselves to create that cultural and social
change and to be back up and to support them in that change. But I can't do it myself.
Well, you know, you, you would be surprised because when I first became vegan and I told
the elders in my family, my grandma, the first thing she said was, oh, you're eating like
the elders, the ancestors of the family used to eat. Oh, really? Yes. And it was very touching
to hear that because I understood there that I think part of the reason why in my culture,
meat and animal products became very common was because of colonialism. You know, North Africa
was colonized by the French. Vietnam was also colonized by the French. I don't know if maybe
their food was influenced by the French people. I know. Yes, definitely. Very much. Yes. Well,
yeah, absolutely. Might be the reason here because I know my native culture, you know, was very much
in terms of food influenced by the French and a lot of, you know, meat, eggs, butter and things
like that are not common to and they became common with. Right. Well, I mean, colonialism is one
start, but like, let's not ignore the FAO, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the UNDP, United
Nations Development. What am I? Development program? Why do I forget that? It is six o'clock in the
morning. Oh, it's just like, why, great. I need another cup of coffee at this stage. Sorry. So the
UNDP, the FAO, all of these organizations that are and universities that are injecting their influence
and their money into increasing animal agriculture in this country. So the World Bank also has projects.
You know, these are all people, these are all large organizations that are using animal agriculture
as a development process and using that as livelihoods development. And I say that with
air quotes for a really good reason. So I mean, like the idea that you can improve somebody's
life by giving them an opportunity to exploit and kill somebody else to me is just not. I mean,
that's that's that's insanity. That's absolute insanity. Well, it's fascinating. I did not make
this link, but makes me think of it's absolutely international organizations and their development
process. Yeah. And, you know, in Canada, we had the National Dietary Guide. And then and I remember
in school, we would learn, you know, the different, you know, kind of groups of food you needed in your
diet. And yeah, those animal products were there always meat and, and that guide, you know, we
discovered very recently that it was sponsored by the animal industry. And there was this.
Same in the US. Yeah. A lot of dietitians, you know, were saying in the country,
this, this is not scientific. This guide should not should not be taught in school. And
it just disappeared overnight. And I was thinking, well, this was such a, you know,
a big part of my education, like, we were lied to. Yeah. And we were lied to. So I can't imagine how,
you know, that influence must be great in countries where, like Vietnam, where the health
care system is so broken. So yeah. Yeah. So I mean, we're adding animal products to a country
in which the health care system cannot handle what happens when you add animal products,
which is obviously increase in cancer. It's an increase in obesity. It's a, you know,
they're feeding what they, what their main thing is doing is trying to put dairy into everything.
The dairy industry is one of the strongest in the world. And in terms of animal agriculture,
I mean, their marketing is exemplary. If you want to learn about good marketing,
you learn about how to sell breast milk to an adult, you know, like that's, that's your,
that's your best example. So they, you know, they're really pushing it on yogurts. They do a lot of,
like milk teas and all of these things. You're putting milk in like a ton of different products
that they never did before. And the Vietnamese have a huge lactose intolerance problem. But these
international companies have come in and they're pushing it and pushing it and pushing it. These
aren't usually funded by Vietnam. They're funded by international companies. One of them, one of
the biggest ones is Thai and, and, and it's just, and Dutch and there's just all these sorts of,
and they're like marketing is like, this is this wholesome, happy dairy cow that's out in the
fields. And we're just playing, you know, this natural happy family playing, like you should see
the commercials. It's absolute garbage, but they do it in, in, before a movie, you know, they have
dairy and they have the dairy company commercials at the cinemas. I mean, it's incredible marketing
campaign, you know, but they give them to kids all the time. And so these kids are actually becoming
obese for the first time in the history of this country. You got fat kids all over now. Vietnam is
the second least obese country in the world. And that's very quickly changing with the new generation
of children being brought up on high sugar content yogurts, right? All these little things that
they're, I mean, the Vietnamese put sugar in everything. Okay. Don't get me wrong. They love
sugar. They're huge sugar fans. Um, but they have just packed that yogurt full of sugar. Why? Because
that is addictive. They're getting those kids hooked on dairy early because it's sweet, right?
You're not eating natural yogurt. If you're giving kids plain yogurt, they're not going to,
they're not going to get excited about it. I can tell you that. Um, so, I mean, it's just this whole
like push for these things, these animal products that I find it very difficult to stop, you know,
if we don't have a social, a social cultural revolution, that's like, we've got to stop putting
animal products in the mouths of all of these people. We have to stop producing it. We have to
stop importing it. We have to stop eating like this. It's not healthy. We're supporting like
environmental destruction. Not only that you're having a whole bunch of these like
CAFOs built concentrated animal feeding operations that are built in places where there's just no
environmental regulation, right? So all of these things that come with CAFOs, which is the water
pollution, particularly, which is really bad, especially considering this is a country that
is a big fishing country. You've got a whole bunch of water pollution. You're going to have dead zones
up and down this, this coastline. Um, all of these things are coming from these massive investments
into the dairy industry, particularly, and pig farms that are huge and chicken farms and whatever.
So we're intensifying agriculture, even though I think it's only about 70% of, uh, 70% of animal
agriculture in Vietnam right now, 70 to 80% is small holder farms. So that's 20 animals and under.
So it continues to be like that, but that means most people have an animal.
Most people have a farmed animal. This is something that you have a couple of cows,
you have a couple of pigs in your backyard, you always have chickens running around.
It doesn't mean that that's nicer exploitation. It's just that it's not fully, it's not making a
whole lot of money. And it's just kind of, you know, the poorest people in the world happen to be
animal farmers, you know, this idea that we, we are increasing their livelihoods or protecting
them by ensuring that they're able to have access to the exploitation and murder of another sentient
being doesn't make any sense to me, you know, with all of the run of the externalities that come with
that, it's they're shooting themselves in the foot and the FAO is absolutely not going to say anything.
Um, UNDP, IOM, World Bank, they're not going to do anything because they're run by people who think
that farming animals is right. And that's how we increase it, you know, economic productivity.
Yeah. Well, maybe briefly, but we're doing so much other damage and we're harming so many more
animals. You, you gotta kind of look at the whole picture and those international organizations
don't do that.
Well, honestly, Kat, um, if the West is doing such a negative impact right now on Vietnam in terms of,
you know, introducing animal products, I say, it's good that you're here.
Yeah. Yeah. Kind of importing something good now. I hope so. Yes. And yeah, so let's talk about this.
Let's talk about your sanctuary. Who are the residents there and what are your current projects?
Right. So, I mean, currently we're trying really hard to get our veterinary project restarted,
but we've been trying for like four to five years at this point. It's very difficult to get the money
for it because people here veterinary and they just don't think that it's worthy of, um, any funding.
Um, especially because we're a vegan vet clinic and an anti-speciesist project, which ruffles a few
feathers, I'm not going to lie. Um, I am, I was built to ruffle feathers. That's kind of what, what
my whole life purpose is, but, but anyway, it's difficult to get funding for. So we have a sanctuary
where the only, like I said, the only farm sanctuary in the country, um, as far as we know,
there is another one, nobody's been able to find it for us. Um, but we, um, so we've got two pig
residents that are eight and 12, so basically the oldest of their breed in the entire country. Um,
we've got four chickens who are lovely. They came to us just this spring. Um, come on, we've got nine
kittens, which is so many. I can hear the one screaming behind me. There's four in the room,
just behind me. Um, I fed you, be quiet. Um, I wanted them to be quiet during this podcast. Anyway,
so, and then we've got another five that were just sterilized yesterday. Um, and we've got, I think,
15 other cats. And then we've got, we're really reducing our number of dogs. We're really working
hard to reduce the number of animals as much as possible because we need to put all of our funds
into the veterinary project, which will ideally be a mobile veterinary clinic. So reaching the people
that don't have access to veterinary care and providing vaccinations and sterilization. So
ongoing preventative care in the rural regions in central Vietnam, and also being able to train,
um, Vietnamese veterinarians that are fresh out of graduate or fresh out of school. So we get them
before they've learned anything really stupid. And then we train them up so that they're being
trained by our international veterinary staff. So this is a big project we wanted to get started
in January, 2024. Um, but yeah, at the moment we have something called kitten miss, which is getting
rid of all the kittens, getting them all re-homed by Christmas. We want all those babies to have
homes by Christmas. Um, because, you know, people don't realize that every single animal is a real
drain on our ability to do preventative work. Um, not only on our time, but also on our financial
resources and physical space. Um, so we really want to get all those babies out as quickly as
possible to safe and loving lifelong homes, which is far harder than you'd ever imagine it to be
here. Um, so we can also export, we have, I guess, three animals going in September, um, to the, um,
to Paris, and then they'll go to the UK. Um, so we do international exports as well. So if you want
to adopt animals, we, we definitely can do the rabies titer test and microchip them and get them
sent over within 90 days. Um, yeah, so we're able to get some animals out, but it's just a matter
of like, that is a hugely expensive process that is so, so inefficient in terms of like the number
of animals in need here. The biggest problem is that it takes so much. I mean, like I'm happy they
all have homes. I'm really happy that I've been able to provide that. I just did three last month
to the UK and Paris, and I'm super happy about that. They, they deserve lifelong loving homes,
but it took so much money and so much time and effort to get them on those planes and then to
get them transported. And I had to rent a car to drive across the UK to bring them to Wales in the
middle of nowhere. I mean, like it was some serious work. Um, I'm super happy they're there, but like,
we have to be a lot more efficient if we're going to address the problem that exists, right? Like I
said, 5 million dogs are killed for dog meat every year. If we could sterilize a thousand a year,
you know, like we're making a huge dent on it, but we can't do that. If I'm, if, if my time and all
of my staff time is spent just trying to maintain the sanctuary, trying to just keep our heads above
water in terms of funding our overhead, um, which is just been really hard. Um, and, and trying to
move forward with a project that's actually going to do the amount of work that we need to do for
the number of animals that are actually in need. My job is to go out of business, right? And it's
to, I, I did my whole job. It's to have no more animals to rescue, right? How am I supposed to do
that? If I'm focused on, on getting a puppy to Paris, you know, how am I supposed to focus on
that? If all of our time is taking animals and rehabbing them and paying vet bills and then
putting them on airplanes to someplace else because local adoptions are so rare. Um, yeah.
You're not actively looking for them. I mean, sometimes come and just
dump them. Yeah. Yeah. Most of them are being dumped on us. Um, you know, one of the poodle
that went to, to Wales, she was locked in a, she was zipper tied in a beer crate and left at the
end of our driveway. The four kittens that we just got right here, they were dumped on, um, at the,
at the, um, shelter on the other four. They were also dumped. Um, we had to bottle feed them every
three hours when we got them. That wasn't fun. Um, that takes all of my energy and sanity to do.
Um, so, so yeah, I mean, like most of them, I mean, there are some that we find for sure. Um,
there are some that were like, basically most of our animals that came to us came from major
medical cases. So they were animals that were like in a, like actively dying and we intervened,
you know, but unfortunately people, people get quite excited about that on the day that they're
rescued and don't understand that the vast majority of them are going to end up not being adoptable
or having very major difficulties being adopted, particularly when it comes to cats and that we're
going to have them for the next 15 years, but paying those expenses for like the existing
residents in a sanctuary is unbelievably difficult. People do not want to, they want, they're happy to
be like, Oh, I'm going to help you pay this vet bill for this animal you got today. Okay. Well,
what about the next 15 years? What are you going to do about that animal? That, um, so ongoing
expenses tend to be very difficult for all rescues around the world. Um, people, it's just not, it's
not sexy. Overhead isn't sexy. Um, paying vet bills for a nine year old cat that never got adopted
when we got him as a kitten, um, not sexy. So, um, so unfortunately just the entire business model
of sanctuary and shelter and rescue here does not function because locally it's so difficult to get
adoptions. It's not, we're not in California. We're in Vietnam. Most people here, like I said,
have owned roaming dogs. So the animals are not safe. We do not adopt to anybody that lets their
animals roam around. So everybody that has a dog will have to have it safe indoors and in a
protected garden, which 99% of people here don't have. Um, otherwise that animal is going to get
stolen and killed, or it's going to end up getting an infectious disease. It's going to end up being
in a traffic accident. So we don't adopt to people like that, which eliminates the entire
local population for that matter. Same with cats, cats, we only will adopt to indoor homes,
but it's a very hot country. Everybody has their windows open. Everybody has doors open all the
time. So we can only adopt to people living in apartments and those apartment buildings have to
allow cats. So that is just in general, like our ability to take animals is hampered by the fact
that they got to go somewhere. You, you can't just take them. It doesn't, it actually doesn't work
like that. The math doesn't work out, you know, because the amount of animals that need to be
taken, we simply just don't have the capacity to just keep adding more and keep adding more and
keep adding more while we're ignoring the preventative work that prevents those more from coming.
Right. So that balance has to rebalance. It's way off at the moment. Well, local shelters here,
you know, North America have a hard time finding homes for your residents. So you're in Vietnam,
you're not in a friendly environment for, you know, animal welfare and you have to do the same job.
It's 10 times harder. So you have all of my admiration. No, but you're doing some miracles
here. So it's, I mean, truly amazing. And it's sad to see how, you know, even on the international
scene, you know, sometimes it feels like Westerners and people in richer countries have like,
have more values and medias and, you know, everyone pays more attention to what happens in the West,
even if it's something minor. Absolutely. There's a catastrophe and it's taking the lives of,
I don't know how many people in a poor country and nobody pays attention. But that,
that same dynamic applies to animals. There are also animals in Vietnam and in other parts of the
world who are suffering. And, you know, we're so focused on animals here, which is understandable.
But what about the rest of the world? Because it's in their community. So it's in your community
and you're paying attention to the ones there. Well, imagine that you live in a country in which
nobody pays attention to that. And the people here don't pay attention to it. And the only people
that pay for us to do this work live like 7,000 miles away. You also have to consider that our
funding is not coming predominantly from the poor residents of the country that we live in,
and a community that does not understand or care about the work that we do. Right. So they don't,
they don't get what's going on predominantly and they don't want to participate in it in terms of
philanthropy. So, so not only are we ignored by people abroad, because the only thing that people
think about here is the dog meat trade or the Vietnam war, but we also just don't have access
to the funds to keep going in terms of like rescue and rehabilitation, rehoming, you know, we just
don't, I mean, it's very difficult to get people to connect to Vietnam. Most people couldn't find us
on a map. So we're really in a major disadvantage. And then you add to it, the fact that we are an
anti-speciesist vegan organization, which pisses everybody off, you know, like we are outspoken
and absolutely will not stop talking about abolitionism. And I guarantee you that does
not make us any friends. So you take a giant pool of people that otherwise would support us,
even amongst the local population, because we're helping animals in general. And a lot of the
Buddhists find that to be valuable. But then you then you're like, oh, but we're vegan. And they're
like, oh, I don't know. That's really confrontational for me. Yeah. Why? Because you kill animals? Yeah.
Yeah, you do. So we actually don't kill anybody. And I'm not going to judge you and be mean to you,
but I'm not going to lie about it. You know, my son is a pig. My real son is a pig. I know that
sounds insane, but he is my son. And I love him more than anything in the world. And if you think
he's edible, you don't support our work and you don't love animals. If that gets you all hurt
because of the, because of the fact that it confronts you, you need to look at yourself,
not at me as being somebody judgmental or whatever. You need to step back and be like,
am I harming animals? Yeah. We rescue animals from you. If you're not vegan,
that's a hard thing for people to take in. We rescue animals from non-vegans.
That is mind blowing. You are a sanctuary. What are you protecting your residents from?
It's right. Local population. People that eat them, which is 98% of the human population.
Right. So like it's insane that we're like, we're really having to defend ourselves against people
that think my son is edible, you know, and our chickens belong on a Caesar salad. Yeah. Because
they couldn't figure out that like plants have protein. I'm like, I don't know. Like stop talking
to the marathon runner, Ironman Triathlete, who doesn't think that you need to murder an animal.
You know, like, I'm sorry, we're not in the same boat. So like we do, we are confrontational on
that degree, but it's like in that regard, I think, but that's just kind of who I am as a person.
And I'm never going to stop being that. I mean, I was kind of a virulent meat eater before I was a
vegan as well. I hated vegans. I told people I wanted to put them on an island in napalm.
Like I just was super anti-vegan. Yeah. I was a fox hunter and I worked for the national Turkey
Federation in Washington, DC. I was, I worked for the farmer's lobby. I mean, like people change.
I get it. And I'm just, but people don't change unless you talk about it. So vegans that run
vegans that run animal rescues that don't talk about veganism, they really upset me the most
because the animals don't need silent vegans. They need people who are willing to stand up for all
species. And it's not going to be the ones that are doggy loving pig eating animal rescuers. It's
not going to be them. It has to be us. And we just have to stand up in it. And I guarantee you're
going to lose a lot of money doing it, but ultimately we've got what 2.8 trillion animals
that are unnecessarily killed every year. And I'm pretty sure if they had to choose between
somebody who was just going to keep their donors happy and somebody who was going to stand up for
them, they would take somebody standing up for them and taking a hit. Well, you know, at least
we worked for animals. I don't work for, I don't work for the public. And at least you want to
support someone who is wholeheartedly in the fight, you know, someone who looks at your sanctuary
and knows that you're here for the good reasons, you know, and you're not going to,
you know, this is not something about you. This is not your really, you know, you believe in your
cause and if I were greedy, this would be a horrible place to be. This would be the worst
possible job. You do it for the money. Really? Show me the money. Show me. I would love to see
that. Well, at least people should appreciate it. Did I just forget my pin code to my ATM? Is that
where the money is? Oh, no, no, no, no. We don't get anything out of this. I guarantee you there
is no joy in this work. It is all about the animals and we do the best we can. I mean, it kills us all
the time, but you know, we're trying to improve that. Like I said, people should at least appreciate,
you know, your feelings, your sincerity in what you're doing. Sure. At the very least, you know,
they know that you're not bullshitting here. Definitely not. So if listeners want to support
your sanctuary, what should they do? We definitely can use the funds, but more than funds, I would say,
you know, like donating is great, but so is helping us get animals adopted so that we can move on to
the veterinary program. I would say being able to share our work is really nice and to be able to
say, hey, there is a morally consistent animal rescue in Vietnam who loves and does not kill
animals. We should support them. I would say also, you know, you can always do fundraising for us,
which would be really great. Things like running a race, because I'm a big runner or I was until my
foot fell apart. But I really love it when people do athletic events and they fundraise for us in
that way, because that's really good for us for not only for the funds, but for marketing in general,
getting the word out about us. We are in kind of a dark space in the sense of we have very small
reach for the organization and just getting the word out is really, really helpful so that we have
a wider reach for our work. And that gives us availability of more resources to do the work that
we need to do and to get more animals adopted and to be able to get more staff, to be able to get
the veterinary project rolling again and have just a wider reach to be able to do that is invaluable.
And the idea of, you know, fundraising for your organization, you know, make it fun,
make it something, you know, it doesn't have to be, you know, like a whole sporting event. It can be
just a good fun, but it can be just not everybody like sale. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Going
door to door or having a dinner party, have a dinner party. Yeah. Or a table at the entrance
of your supermarket, something like that. And, you know, talking with people, you know, gather
with friends and do a game night and for your sanctuary. So yeah, it can take so many forms and
it can be so fun. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So to end this conversation, Kat, did you want to add
something? Yeah, I mean, there's just one thing that I think people forget is that compassion
fatigue is a big subject for me. And I think people, I want people to be a lot more compassionate to
people that work in this field. Because we go through and see a lot of things that we can't
necessarily always share, and we shouldn't have to share. And it can be very dark and isolating. This
is an unbelievably isolating job. Even when we weren't, you know, being I think, I think being
where we are, and being a vegan organization, and all of that makes it very isolating. But I think
even if you're in California, it can be very isolating if you run a farm sanctuary, or a
veterinary project or whatever, particularly as vegans. And we see such horrible things. And I
want people to just really understand where people are coming from and to not be so, I need the peanut
gallery to shut up. I would say, I would say to acknowledge that people that work in this field
need days off. Not all of us can be volunteers. To be a volunteer is a financial luxury that the
vast majority of us that are professional caretakers don't have. I don't have a partner,
I don't have family money, I don't have, you know, like a big credit card limit. I, you know, like,
we, I can't be a volunteer, I do take a very small salary. We have a hard time even justifying that
we pay our staff. And I think that's insane. Not everybody's in the same situation in every part
of the world. And we have to be really mindful of that. But just in general, like, understand that
this is a really traumatic job. And when you send people pictures of the dog meat trader, whatever,
you're constantly re, like, we see plenty of horrors. Like, we don't have any, any lack of that
in our, in our brains. And it's very, very stressful. And we also have to say no to a lot of animals.
And that, that sticks with us our entire lives. I mean, I, I remember every time I said no to an
animal, because I know that certain death. And people get very, very, very pushy online with
rescues. And it's just like, you have to take this animal, or I'm going to put them to sleep, or this
person's going to get it and whatever. And sometimes people don't understand the lack of resources.
Sometimes we just don't have quarantine space. Sometimes we just don't have the staff, or we
don't have the money, we don't have the vets, we can't help. And we have to acknowledge and accept
that we can't save everybody. And I think as long as everybody has that sort of understanding of the
individual humans that do this work that I do, we can all be a lot more compassionate towards them,
and ensure that they do have real breaks, that they do have a living wage, that they do have,
you know, adequate staff to make sure that they don't burn out. Burn out, I mean, in the United
States, the average person working in animal welfare and any sort of rescue is five and a half years.
I've done double that in Vietnam, I assure you it has taken its toll. Right. So I think people need
to really understand that this is a burnout job, and to be kind to the people, and not just be like,
oh, you're an angel, and whatever. But then the moment we want to take a vacation, you're like,
I can't believe you're taking a vacation. Yeah, well, yeah, I'm gonna, I'm going to museum today.
What are you gonna do about it? You know, as someone who works in the field of fundraising,
let me add to what you said, you know, you want the nonprofits, the causes that you,
you are supporting to be run by professionals that are well paid, and that who have the same,
you know, standards of employment that you have, because you want the best people behind your
cause. You don't want, like, anybody coming in, and just doing whatever. This is not how
things get done. You need professional conditions. And that's something very counterintuitive. And
intuitive and it comes from, you know, this Christian background of, you know, sacrifice.
Yeah, you're not doing the God's work or something like that. Right. We're being
No, we're people that have student loans. Yeah, we're humans that have health insurance.
We have to, we have to drive something, we have to have friends, we have to,
we have to participate in the world like everybody else, or our job suppers. And I know that more
than anybody, because for most of this 10 years, I didn't have any of that. And, you know, for the
first three years, I didn't take a salary at all, because I was doing my master's, and I had a small
income from student loans. And then I started my PhD. And so, which I had to quit because I
didn't have time for. But ultimately, yeah, I got nearly 200 grand in student loan debt. It's not
like, I'm in deep trouble. I'm in deep trouble for being in this job. But I live far away,
come and get me America, you know, like I'm not paid it. Don't tell them I'm here. But in general,
I mean, I think that we need to professionalize the nonprofit world in the sense that like,
people aren't going to do good if they can't live a normal life while doing good. We can make so
much more money in the private sector. If I just ran a vegan business, I would be rolling in it
with the amount of effort and passion that I put into it. But instead, I'm working in a nonprofit,
and I get nothing and people think I deserve nothing. And that is very frustrating.
And also, I want people to think about what you are against, you know, the
industry, but also the big problems that you're going against. You said,
David versus Goliath situation, I try to get through a day without punching anyone. That's
actually like if I get to the end of the day, and I'm like, you didn't scream at anybody,
you didn't pull a knife on anyone, nobody got kicked in the face, you're doing great,
cat. Keep it up. Well, that's my job here. All the possible, you know, best resources
behind you, you need everything in your arsenal to go against that big giant. So yeah, amazing.
So let's stop this conversation here. Okay. And I would like to express truly how
I respect what you do, and I admire what you do. And I think you're so strong for doing what you're
doing. And truly, thank you. Thank you for advancing the cause of animal welfare in Vietnam.
And having taken the time to answer my questions and to explain to listeners,
you know, what is happening there, and share your insight and experience.
It's been a valuable 10 years. I learned a lot. Yeah.
Exactly. You're an expert now on this topic. Yeah, definitely. Your voice on that is truly
precious. So thank you very much, cat. Thank you for letting me voice that I think it's not it's not
often I get to express like the things that have happened here and discuss kind of the realities
on the ground. So I appreciate it. Thank you everyone for listening. Make sure to spread the
word on the good work of Vietnam Animal Aid by sharing this episode with family and friends.
Next week, I have a very special episode for you. I'm going to be talking with William Lowry,
legal counsel for Animal Partizan, an organization labeled as a major extremist group by the animal
industry, an organization suing the FBI. Subscribe now and don't miss out on this episode, which was
a lot of fun to record. Finally, you can always reach me on Instagram at vegan report podcast.
Thank you again, everyone for listening. Take care and see you next Tuesday.