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 chickens. And let me set the table by quoting an article I found preparing for this episode.
It is from the Weather Network and it is titled, Why Chickens Might Be the Biggest Legacy We Leave
on this Earth. It says, before you throw away that chicken bone, you should know, it may wind up on
our permanent record. A study released by researchers in England last December showed that
our lasting legacy here on Earth may be just that, as the sheer number of the world's most popular
foal stands to leave its mark on this slice of the geological record. At any given time,
there are an estimated 23 billion chickens on Earth, about 10 times more than any other bird
species. They've got us outnumbered too. That's about three chickens for every person on the
planet. According to the study's authors, the world's domesticated chicken is likely to be
the largest standing population of a single bird species in Earth's history. Of course, reading this
as a vegan, I think about the horrendous scale of chicken exploitation. Yes, chickens will be part
of humans' legacy, but this is a dark and shameful legacy. To talk about this topic, I have with me
the team behind the Truth Organization, the two co-founders Nigel and Julie. What is the Truth
Organization? It is the non-profit behind the Egg-Truth.com initiative, which educates the
public about the true nature of egg production, from hatchery to plate. Julie and Nigel,
welcome to the podcast. Hi. Thank you. Hi, how are you doing? I'm great. Thank you. How about you?
Good, good, good. Would you like to first introduce yourself and talk about your role with
the Truth Organization? I might just go first. Hi, I'm Julie, I'm Prismaster. I go by Julie,
and I'm the newly appointed executive director of the Truth Organization, where we host the Egg-Truth
and the Day Earth-Truth websites and social media channels. I started off as a marketing and social
media manager and started to transition into executive director this year. And so this will,
from just outreach, I'll take on more strategic work and look at how we can grow and how we can
become a key player in the vegan movement. And that's basically the plan for the coming year and
years, I think, for me anyway. My name's Nigel. I'm the founder of the Truth Organization and its
various incarnations, egg-truth.com and dairy-truth.com. And I started the organization
around 2018, set up the social media platforms, obviously the websites, and developed a lot of
the content. And then as Julie mentioned, I brought her on to manage social media,
which is a big role and a pretty fundamental role these days in any organization, whether you're
for-profit or non. And she did such a great job. I wanted to promote her up into executive director
and I could then focus a bit more on fundraising, on being a bit more strategic and look at
developing some more content while she ran the front office and social media and so on.
And that's it. So I'm sorry I gave you both the title of founders, but Nigel, you're the sole
founder of the organization. Is that right? Yes. Okay. So I assume both of you are vegans.
Am I correct? Yes. So please talk about your journey from being, I guess,
raised like everyone else with a loose understanding of our impact on animals to becoming vegan, to now
running a vegan organization. Right. So as you just mentioned, I was like everyone else, raised
meat, meat and three vegetables, our usual dinner or weekend food. I always had a dislike for meat.
I just never liked eating it. I just did because your parents tell you to eat up. So I did, but
always disliked it. And as I got older and then moved out, I started eating less and less meat,
just naturally because I just didn't like it. And at some point I just decided, okay, today is
the day I'm going to go vegetarian. And this was when I was a student. And then it took a long time
to actually go to veganism. I never thought about it for me. Like for many, I think veganism
always felt like a bit extreme and it felt restrictive. And the only people I would know
as vegans would be the people that are out in the streets with the screens and with the
horrible pictures of animals and blood and tortured. And so I never really thought about it until
I became a mother when certain things click in terms of milk and nursing. And because my child
was diagnosed with lactose intolerance, I had to give up dairy because I was nursing and the lactose
gets through my milk as well. So I stopped dairy. And because that was such an impactful
thing I had to do, I started researching on dairy and I started, that was like, I had one blog post,
but I started a blog about the dairy industry and dairy. And when I finished my maternity leave,
I was looking for a job and I found Egg Thruz. And so I technically was a vegetarian that didn't
consume dairy. I would still eat eggs. And when I found the posting for Egg Thruz, I started then
reading about the website and everything they put out. And I'm like, oh, I guess, I guess I'm going
vegan. I guess we dropped the eggs too, because that was just awful. The things I read. So ever
since I joined Egg Thruz, which was in 2020, I completely stopped eating any animal products.
And then the other aspect, because people most, or often just think of food, but obviously goes
beyond that. It goes to the cosmetics, to other products we use, like laundry detergent, dish soap,
like all the little bits and pieces. And that took a little longer just to find products and
something that's affordable, that's available. But bit by bit I made my way to hopefully fully vegan,
and at least in my house. Yeah. Nigel?
I've been vegan, I guess, for around 16, 17 years now. But I think like a lot of people,
there was a couple of years of transition. I had met my wife in 2002. And when we met,
she was a vegetarian. And of course, I knew lots of people who were vegetarian. Vegetarian is,
and the term has been around for a long time. And we were dating, obviously, and then inevitably
conversations would evolve to, why vegetarian? And we would learn and discover about one another.
And that was always a topic on the table. And I understood intuitively and understandably that,
I get vegetarianism. They take the animal, they slice its throat, or knock it unconscious,
and then they dismember it. It sounds like a pretty ghastly and bloody process. And so you're
kind of like, yeah, I get that. And my wife did a lot of cooking, and she was a very good cook. And
to me, food is either good, or it's not good. There's good vegan food, and there's bad vegan
food. There's good omnivore food and bad omnivore food. It either tastes good to you or it doesn't.
So, but then the conversations would evolve and I'd have questions. I would pose the same
questions that I get all the time now, whether online or through talking to family and friends.
So it's that cognitive dissonance working its magic. And my wife would answer as best she could.
And if she wasn't sure or thought it would be better, just here, read this or watch that.
And I would. And so I kind of went through the process myself. There was no coercion. There was
no, hey, you have to be, if you were going to keep carrying on this relationship, you've got to be
vegan or vegetarian. And it was none of that. And really, at the end of the day, if you're going to
make any commitment to a philosophical position, you got to get there on your own, because otherwise
it's not, you know, it ain't going to stick, so to speak. So, and yeah, I gave up meat.
I got rid of it. I understood it. I was glad to get rid of it. Then I thought, oh, I felt pretty
good. You know, I thought, Hey, I've gotten to this place where I'm feeling good about my decision,
my choice. Then I discovered about eggs and dairy. And I'm like, Oh, come on, really? And, you know,
and then I realized how horrendously bad it was. It was worse, you know, than, you know, often what
the meat industry would produce in terms of, you know, the suffering and from a welfare perspective.
So I started to eliminate that from my diet and never to go back. I think eggs was probably the
last thing I abandoned. And I think my experience, my transition, I think for most vegans,
that is a very common story. I will say that actually, no, not eggs was the last thing. Cheese
was the last thing. And at the time, not realizing that cheese was actually addictive because of the
case of morphins in the milk that mother cows pass on to their infant calves to help the bond. This
is passed on through the food that we consume. And sure enough, I think if you talk to most vegans,
they'll say, yep, cheese was the last thing to go. So, and then, you know, I think like a lot of
people, I started out in life eating like most other North Americans, my family's from the UK.
They immigrated to Canada in the 1950s. So I grew up eating a lot of British food, which was pretty
bad, you know, blackened meat, boiled vegetables to a mush and potatoes, and a salad was a ripped
up, you know, iceberg lettuce, and there was some sliced up tomatoes. So, you know, that's what I
kind of grew up on. So trust me, I didn't, I don't miss any of that for a whole host of reasons.
Forget veganism. So what's your favorite vegan cheese brand?
Go ahead, Julie. Yeah, I think I don't really have a favorite as in like, that's the best and don't
taste the difference. But I just get what's in the supermarket. And this is a day, I think you
pronounce it. And sometimes video life. But yeah, I try just the way I cook is then it's not focused
on the cheese. It's added maybe, but it's not the focus. It doesn't carry the flavor kind of. So
I think cheese still has a long way to go. If we really try, if we keep comparing it to dairy
products, and if we keep asking for the same experience, I think there's still a long way to
go. And let's see what happens to all the lab created cheeses. I'm very excited about those
coming out and trying them. But yeah, I just that that's my way around, just to, you know, take
cheese out of the equation and not focus the food too much around it. What about you, Nigel? Do you
have any recommendations? I have my fast food cheese and then my gourmet cheese. My fast food
cheese is day of shreds for melting, whether you put it on pizza or something. It's such a great
melting cheese. I like the day of block cheddar cheese. I think that is really probably the
closest thing to a, you know, your grocery store supermarket cheese brick you'll get.
I think it's a little better to be perfectly honest. But for gourmet, hands down, no question.
Miyoko's Mount Vesuvius Black Ash. The best ever. Of course, especially with fresh bread and baked
garlic. Amazing. So let's get to the launching of the Truth Organization. How did that happen?
And how did the world welcome your initiative? I think it was 2017. My wife, Dr. Krista Hedema,
had been involved with Mercy for Animals here in Canada. She had undertook probably 11 or 12
undercover investigations on farm in transport and slaughter. In the early years, I certainly
would help and support her on that from a social media standpoint. And she was exceedingly busy,
her exceedingly active in exposing what was on in the animal agriculture here in Canada.
She went out to get a lot of corporate commitments. And I was proud of her and I admired her for what
she was doing. But as the years went on, I felt I needed to do my own thing. I needed to have
something, some contribution that I could make directly. And eggs, like I said, one of the last
things I gave, one of the things when I found out, I just, it was a head shake. It was like,
oh man, this is terrible. This is really, really bad. And most people think, well, birds, chickens
lay eggs and cows give milk. What's the harm? Well, plenty. And so I thought, okay, as a graphic
designer and a web designer, I decided, well, the first thing I'm going to do is develop the focal
point, which is the website. So I spent a lot of time developing the website and the content. I had
to educate myself on a lot of the information. I had to write it, had to get an editor, because
I'm not a professional writer by any means. And the last thing that I contemplated doing is
addressing the issue of human health and egg consumption, which I struggled with because
a lot of times you want to focus on the animals, the welfare issues, the use, philosophical
issues with just using living sentient beings and treating them as a commodity.
You know, the health and nutrition side of things is such a complex thing. And it's even,
it's one week, it's coffee's bad for you. The next week coffee's good for you. Alcohol, this cholesterol.
So I thought, well, the egg industry, like the dairy industry, are really unchallenged in that
area. So I thought I'm going to find out, find a source that is not a vegan source, not a plant
based doctor source, but somebody who, you know, has been critical of the egg industry and egg
consumption and cholesterol. And I found Dr. J. David Spence, University of Western Ontario
professor of pharmacology and neurology, I believe it is. And he has written and has been interviewed
by the media around the world. He's written for the World Health Organization and he's very,
very critical. I reached out to him one day just on a whim thinking, maybe I'll see if I can get
him to respond. And he did. And he sent me so much information. I was overwhelmed, but I poured
through these studies and research and I started to coalesce in my mind what the issues were.
So I formulated that on the website and it's a pretty big part of the website.
I don't, we don't necessarily focus on it anymore, or not anymore, as much as the others or any less.
Julie will tell you that a lot of the content that she's programmed over the years for social media,
again, is on the animal side of things, the welfare side of things. But I'm
proud of that component of the website because it was the hardest to write and understand.
And I really sort of, I'm pretty good at it now. If I were to get into a debate with somebody,
I think I could handle my own. So it was good for me to know that. Don't focus it on it too
much because like I said, the welfare stuff is really central. Because we often in the vegan
movement go down these rabbit holes of talking about, well, what if the cage was this size? Or
if a barn has this many birds and it's multi-tier aviaries and the litter is properly clipped.
You get into these conversations and you're like, we get sucked into it. I do sometimes too. And
we have to be careful not to do that too much. So then did an ad campaign in, I think it was 2018,
July or 2019, an outdoor ad campaign in Toronto at 45 transit shelter posters put up around the city.
I designed and printed an eight page full-color booklet that went into the Toronto Star,
17,500 inserted in Saturday home delivery skewed towards a specific area and demographic.
And we did some collaboration with Anonymous for the Voiceless and Vegan Outreach to leaflet
and run a campaign in Dundas square all within this four week period and social media ads.
And so there was this multi-pronged approach and you could really see the impact it was having.
And one of the most memorable responses I received was an email from a young woman
who was a refugee from Syria, from the war in Syria. And she had seen the poster in the transit
shelter and she said, I didn't know what was this egg truth. So she went literally sitting in the
shelter, she went to the website and she couldn't believe what she was seeing. One of the first
videos on the homepage shows, it's a high definition video filmed in Australia by Animals Australia,
great organization. And they had filmed maceration and high definition.
And it's barbarism. And she saw that for what it was, especially coming from Syria.
And she commented, she says, I thought when I saw the cruelty that humans inflicted on other humans
in the war in Syria, and then I come here to a peaceful country like Canada, and here we are
doing the same thing, but to animals. And she said, she cried, she was in tears. And that was like,
wow, that was pretty powerful. So through that experience, I thought, well, dairy truth next,
it's got to be dairy. And those are the two areas that I wanted to focus on because everyone
focuses again on the welfare and the slaughter and the killing of the animals. But these are
slaughter industries. And they're worse because they prolong the suffering of these animals,
dairy for five years, the male cast into the veal production and the hens, the male chicks,
day old and 18 months, confined or even not confined, but producing an egg almost every day.
And now they're producing up to almost 500 eggs per hen before they're slaughtered. It's horrendous
what we're doing to them. And that was the focus and the purpose. I think to come back to the
reception, because you ask how did the world receive Act Truth. And I think what's unique about
Act Truth is that we really focus on that one industry because there's obviously there's many,
many organizations out there, bigger and smaller one. And usually they talk about all of the animals
used for food. And then eggs are usually not an afterthought, but it's on the side. It's usually
not really focused on. And then if you see big campaigns, it's often about cage free, but
obviously this is not helping anyone, not the hens. And so Act Truth is the first one that really
focuses on that. And what I see through my work on social media is that many vegans say, hey,
they say a video where someone shares say an egg recipe or something related to eggs. And they're
like, Hey, did you know that eggs are actually terrible for the animals? Check out. And then
they link us Act Truth. And then that's all they do. They don't start citing all the bad things.
They like go to Act Truth and then you learn. And I think that's what's happening. And that's what
we really want to push for and focus on that Act Truth is that one step source that people go to
when it goes to act to help educate people, help themselves get more in depth knowledge. As Nigel
said, we do focus on nutrition as well, even though it's not our main focus, but it's all there. We
got the environment bit, we have the health bit, but obviously also the animals. And we also
are beyond that have resources that help people. Okay. I learned all this crazy stuff. What do I
do next? What's happening now? And I think that's what is unique about Act Truth. And then with
their rituals, we try to go down a similar route. It looks very similar to Act Truth if you compare
those two. But I think that's what's the main effect that people now had a resource at hand
they can use to educate people and point people towards to learn. What I love about Act Truth.com
is you can personalize your approach education to the reality of egg production. You don't have to
sit there and have to watch one hour of footage like you would do with Dominion. You can really
take your time. And also it is referenced. And like you said, there are different arguments for
different people. Nigel, you were talking about the health arguments. I'm one of those people who
don't believe that the health arguments are very convincing, but I've met vegans who were very,
you would not have made them vegan with ethical arguments, but the health arguments resonate with
them. And then later on, they educate themselves on the ethical aspect of the whole vegan movement.
And yeah, I think it's a great initiative and it is a great idea. Julie, why were you attracted
to working for the Truth organization? I mean, this is a job where you're exposed to lots of footage
of animals being literally tortured. It's tough on your mental health. So what attracted you
and why did you decide to get engaged professionally with the Truth organization?
Yeah. So as I mentioned, I started off dropping dairy first and that's when I started doing
research and that's when you automatically end up with all these organizations that educate yourself
and you end up with the animals. And then through my job search, I found Act Thruz and
How does with many vegans that you have this aggression, passionate first, where you learn
all these cruelties like, oh my God, I did not know we have to change the world. How do I help
change the world? Kind of like that mindset. I think that happens to many vegans. You want to
help change it. And obviously with the job posting that I found with Act Thruz, it looked like an
opportunity to be part of that change, to help put it to an end. And I liked Act Thruz for the
reasons I mentioned earlier, it focuses on one thing because especially if you start out new,
it's overwhelming. Like all the different aspects of food, the food industry and all the different
animals involved and tortured, it's just so complex. So having it reduced down to the
chickens and to the eggs was very helpful for me to then also educate myself on that topic.
And they kind of were a gateway then to learn about all the other aspects. And you're right,
the footage you see every day is horrendous. It's awful. And especially me in the position
where I post, where I try to educate people and where you learn that people react to the
cruel ones more than to the cute ones. You are then also always on the search for cruel images.
Like I have to look, I can't say, okay, I've seen enough. That's all I need to know. And
I can go out and educate. No, I have to keep going back. I have to find new investigations to keep,
you know, that in people's minds, like this is still ongoing. Like you saw this one, but it's
still happening. And all these campaigns, there's still cruelty happening. They're still tortured.
If there's a cage or not, it's still horrible. So I have to go back to all this footage every day.
And as bad as it is, to be honest, you know, what's worse that you tell people all this,
you show them the images and they don't care. This is so much harder than it looks.
You show them the images and they don't care. This is so much harder and so much traumatizing
to me, especially when it comes to friends and family where you think they're on your side,
they take your stand. They understand. They would totally agree that abusing and exploiting an
animal should not be done under any circumstance if it's not needed. And we do not need X to survive.
And then they're like, yeah, but I like it. And that's the end of it. And you're like,
and that makes it harder and more traumatizing, to be honest, that you are against those walls.
And that's the cruel part. But that's also a part that motivates me to do a better job and to look
at it from different angles and to find different ways of presenting the information to get through
to people, because it's a very individual choice and a very individual journey for everyone. And
people respond to different messages differently. And sometimes it's just a tiny seed you plant,
something that just stays in the back of their head. And you keep bringing back messages.
But yeah, that's the challenge. But definitely, yeah, you have to take a step back sometimes,
because you can what they call over witness. But it's also what brings me back and what keeps
me going and what keeps me motivated and what will hopefully keep me going until we see actual
change. Well, let's talk about the negative reaction to your initiative. You know, I recently I was
posting on Instagram and the algorithm just put me on the radar of a lot of, I guess,
let's call them anti vegans. And all of a sudden, you know, my posts were flooded with people,
you know, posting images of meat and talking about obscure studies on how my brain would shrink
because of my vegan diet. And, you know, it felt ridiculous. It felt a bit funny, but it was also,
you know, a bit disturbing. So did you have any of that?
Honestly, it's it's actually more happening on our dairy through platforms.
People feel more threatened if you tell them to, you know, stop eating cheese. But when it comes to
eggs, it's what what happens more is that people come forward, say, oh, but I have backyard chickens
and I'm nice to the chickens. So I have have good eggs. So that comes out first. And that really
isn't isn't helping in our argument, because from our point of view, is it still exploiting the
animals, you still use an animal that has been bred to lay eggs more than is necessary for
for them in nature to like, you know, keep their their group and their species alive. So you still
like abusing them and you're still helping the egg industry making eggs looks like a natural and nice
and like cute little food, you know, from the cute little hen. So that's more happening on
X-Ruice. Of course, there are sometimes people that say, oh, yeah, I love to eat chickens. And
they post a picture of a roast chicken. But I mean, it's understandable if you
if you confront people with something like this, something they've grown up with. And I see it in
the children books that I read to my son, like you see the cute little farm and there's a hen and
there's a cow and there's a pig and they're all happy there. And you know, they eat and they're
just there there. And there's nothing else to it. But that's how we grew up. We learned that those
animals, they live on farms. And they're happy on that farm. And then as you grow older, you never
give it a second thought because those pictures kind of continue throughout the supermarket, right?
It's on the labels, it's on the pictures above the shelves. So it's just a continuum. If then
someone comes out, yes, look at that picture. That's the actual truth. People obviously feel,
you know, offended. It's like, you know, we're not one to point fingers and say you are the cause of
and because of you just take and die because I don't think it's very effective. But that's how
people feel if you're threatened in their food choices and what many people do if they feel
threatened, they fight back. Right. And usually it comes in with those crazy arguments and they
find those ridiculous studies or whatever argument they bring forward just that they're able to hold
on to their world feels like no, I'm right. I'm right. And here, this is why. And sometimes it
looks very desperate, especially for us vegans who have been in this fight, so to speak, for many
years. You've seen it repetitively brought up certain crazy arguments. But yeah, as I said,
it's more it's people feel more threatened about their cheese than about their eggs. So we have
bigger problems on dairy truth and bigger arguments. And for some reason, more farmers come forward
that feel threatened because obviously we say that their industry has to be stopped, shouldn't be
subsidized and so forth. And then the farmers come forward and they tell you all about it and that
you have no idea. And because you're not a farmer, you are not allowed to speak about cows and what
makes them happy and not. So that's more happening on dairy for some reason. Yeah. And we will talk
about dairy truth later. But this is a great segue for my next question, which is what do you think
of the clean and innocent image of the egg production industry? You know, this when I go
to the supermarket and I look at the place where they put all the eggs, you know, it's white,
it's clean. There are cute images, like you said, of chickens in the farm. And it's such a contrast
with what you can find on eggtruth.com. So what do you think of that, of that whole marketing to
just sell the eggs and that cultural image of the egg production? Nigel, would you like to comment?
Yeah, I think it's great marketing, smart marketing, clever advertising. They are literally taking
something that is ugly and violent and where there's immense suffering. And they have turned
it into something that is welcomed, happy, wholesome, family oriented. I mean, you could go on
with all sorts of adjectives. This is not by accident. This is by intention. The egg industry
as the dairy industry have access to millions of dollars, not only in government subsidies, which
they'll deny tooth and nail they receive any, which is an outright lie. And through checkoff
programs, which is a hidden fee inside the eggs and dairy and the supply chain between the
wholesaler and the retailer. Some of that money goes back to the national or provincial lobby
groups to spend money on advertising. They go into schools, they develop educational programs.
It's all by design. It's not by accident or anything. So, and to be quite honest, if I was
head of an ad agency or head of creative for an ad agency or the lobby group, and I have a product,
I have a product, there is a problem with it. How do we get people to consume it? And how do we get
people to consume more of it next year than they did this year? And so you have to sanitize it in a
way that people aren't going to think that you're trying to pull the rug over their eyes, but you're
going to position it in such a way that, you know, encourages them and makes them feel good about
buying it. And, and you know, it's interesting. I remember many, many years ago, I'm going to be
dating myself here, but I used to get TV Guide magazine in the home, like millions of households,
and it had your entire TV schedule for the week and TV Guide, but there was always BDS articles
in there. And there was an article in there, one issue, and it was by an orthopedic surgeon.
And the orthopedic surgeon described what would happen if you saw, if two men got into a fist fight,
just like what you see on television. So the topic was violence on television and what you're seeing
on television. And he would describe a television fight as this endless brawl with fists flying,
it would go on for several minutes, chairs, and you know, and then he said in real life, what would
happen, he would describe it clinically. He would refer to the bone in the hand that would crack,
it might protrude through the skin. He depicted this ugly reality of what a simple fist fight
would look like. And it would be over in 30 seconds, less so. And he said, the problem is,
is that we as a culture take violence and we sanitize it because we want to sell it to other
people en masse, whether it's in the form of entertainment, whether it's in the form of food,
it doesn't matter. You show people the truth, the reality, they don't want to know. Show, lie to me,
and show me something else. And I'll feel good about consuming it, whether again, whether it's
watching violence or, and look, I consume entertainment like most people, but I know
it's, you know, when I see, I know when I see real violence, you see the war in Ukraine,
that's really disturbing. That's really upsetting and it should be, but we've sanitized it in our
society. And so it's natural that they would do the same thing in terms of food. So, you know,
through social media, through social media advertising, and we, you know, pockmark the year
with small social media ad campaigns, but they're out there. We do do them. And occasionally we do
some bigger campaigns if we can, you know, get the fundraising or the funds to execute a bigger
program. But, and that's what we try to do sometimes is go into their domain, which is the
advertising realm where they are have unfettered access and no one ever challenges them to go
there and say, uh-uh, that's not what it's like. This is what it's like. Go to egg-truth.com or
dairy-truth.com, learn the truth. And, um, and like Julie said, you're going to get people who,
um, you know, will fight you tooth and nail, uh, you know, and, you know, I, I even, I remember I
had somebody recently on egg truth, uh, posting about, uh, maybe it was, I shared the website.
So I always see when I see anything news or posts, I'll share the website wherever again.
And somebody said, well, it's, you know, they were talking with such authority that there's no way
that a chick can be sexed. It's impossible. They can't sex a child. They can't have sex with a
child. It's impossible. They can't sex a chick. What are you talking about? You're lying. And I'm
like, dude, that's exactly what they call it. Sexing. There's a room where, where people sit
around a table, a table where the chicks come in, they pick up the chicks, the male goes down one
shoot and the female goes down another shoot. They're trained to sex the chicks, you know, so
the people will, will just, just, just pull out the complete opposite reality and present that as
if that's just a indisputable fact. Um, so, but again, like you said to your question, um, uh,
I don't fault the industry for presenting it the way they do. Uh, their job is this is, this is,
this is what it's about. It's about money. It's about their members. It's about supporting industry,
growing in the industry, and they're doing what they should do as a for-profit industry to promote
it. Um, uh, you know, moral and ethical issues aside, but in a free and open society that needs
to be challenged. It should be challenged. And we do get pushback. Like when we, I can tell you lots
of stories about outdoor ad companies who, who really, you know, um, um, refuse to run ads, you
know, are antagonistic, outright belligerent because they, they don't want to give, they don't
want to give an opportunity for another voice to come into the marketplace and present something
that the only, the one side has had, you know, uh, generations, uh, an opportunity to do unopposed.
What, what I find interesting, um, when you started a podcast, you brought up that, um,
that, that article that talks about that if many years from now we would dig up the earth,
we would find so many chicken bones that it may seem that chickens must have ruled the world at
that point, which is our point right now. And that's the crazy part. How many chickens do you see in
your daily life, considering the billions of chickens that are out there that are raised for
meat that are used for, for eggs you don't. And even if you, um, go to the supermarket, there's
one chicken on that packet, right? And even if you go beyond that and you go on their website
from the egg industry with certain egg farmers, it's mostly about the egg farmer. They might show
the farm and then a couple of hens, but the sheer size of it, the millions and millions of hands
that are locked away for this industry, you'll never get to see this. And that's, and that's the
crazy part, um, that we never get to see them, you know, like, um, I think, um, Ed Winters, the
earthling at said, uh, posted the other day that, you know, people mostly meet those animals, what
we call farm animals on a plate. They never see them in real life. They never touch the hen. They
never see a hen or a cow or a pig or whatever it is. And, and that is the crazy part. And it's
obviously used in our marketing scheme and used to keep the narrative alive, the narrative of like,
this is a farm animal and this is one we keep at home. This is okay to eat because of the
because of that. And, and yeah, you see that on the packaging and it helps people as much as that
to feel good about it. You feel good about buying eggs because it feels wholesome. It feels natural.
Um, yeah. I always say I can forgive the consumers for, you know, the cultural, uh, conditioning for,
you know, that marketing, but what about the executives, you know, the, the people running
those ads, uh, the people running those, uh, industries from their, uh, offices. Um, have you
ever had any interactions with them? And do you know if they are aware of the harm they are causing?
So me personally, I have spoken to someone. Um, and the crazy thing is they grew up with the same
narrative. They grew up in the same cultural setting where this is a farm animal and this is
why it's okay. That what you do to them. Um, and obviously as I said, they are, they are with an
economical interest, right? They want to make money. And so that will always be their point of
view. That will always be the set of glasses they look through and they look at the hands.
And, um, the question is, do they even think it's cruel? Do they even think it's bad to do that to
the hands? Um, does it matter? Um, and then, you know, they also have cognitive dissonance, you know,
um, they also can compartmentalize this. They might even call themselves a good farmer if they
implement a couple of more welfare, uh, rules on their farm. Um, so I think they fall for the same
cultural and narrative, uh, upbringing that the consumer falls too. Um, and the economic
investment that they have in a farm probably helps to keep them there. And it's hard to,
to move away in that if you invested your life savings on a farm and now it has to, you know,
pay the bills and help raise your children and maybe they even step up to take over.
So there's so many aspects to it that kind of help them to stay and keep doing what they're doing.
I think, um, there are a few farmers that do kind of have this epiphany and wake up one day and say,
what am I doing? And that's very single cases and they're out there and they speak
about the cruelty that's going on and what's really happening and, um, what it means for the
animal that, but that's a minority and, um, probably often not heard and not, you know,
pushed out there in, uh, in the public media. Well, let's, yeah, I, I, sorry, I'll just add,
you know, um, when you mentioned executives, you know, there's the ad execs and there's the,
the execs of these companies. Um, you know, my wife, when she was with mercy for animals,
they did an investigation of West. Um, and it was, uh, you may recall it, it was where
they had video of the farm workers who catch the chickens and put them in the slam them in the
crates and put them onto the trucks. And there's a firm that whose business is, is as, as a
contractor to do that. And there was workers caught on camera, literally slamming the, picking up
the chickens by the legs and slamming their heads against the wall and on the ground. One was, uh,
uh, emulating or mock copulation with a chicken. Um, you know, just really horrible things.
And the company was, um, I believe it was the brand was Lilydale, but the parent company was
Sofina foods, which is located in Burlington, Ontario. Well, the owner of Sofina foods is Michael
Latifi and Michael Latifi lives in, uh, the bridal path or Rosedale somewhere in Toronto,
when a very wealthy neighborhood on a large estate, very wealthy, his son, Nicholas Latifi
ended up racing for the Williams F1 racing team for three years. Um, and Sofina foods was
sponsorship on, on, on the car for the team. Um, it was funded by Michael Latifi and you know,
in many of my wife's previous investigations, when they go to the corporate company and say,
Hey, this is what we've done. Some have stepped up and said, okay, I want them out of our supply
chain done until that's fixed, you know, but even them, they all think it's an isolated incident.
And Michael Latifi made no response. He left it to his PR people. They took the position. It was
an isolated incident, even though there was another investigation involving Lily, Lilydale,
brand turkeys also in BC. Um, uh, when you're in a Julie alluded to it, when you're that wealthy,
when your livelihood and the income and, and, uh, is, is so dependent, um, uh, you either,
you probably don't spend a lot of time visiting your suppliers. You don't walk into chicken
barns. You probably don't go. Why would you, you know, that's for, that's for underlings to do.
You know, you, you know, you were, you have this cognitive dissonance, the same as farmers do to
some degree. Um, and it's a philosophical position, you know, um, some people are animals
are for food, period. That's it. It'll never change in their minds. Um, like Julie said,
sometimes you'll get the odd farmer who breaks away and says, I can't do this anymore. Um,
there's lots of examples of that. And, um, I don't know, maybe the wealthier you become as a result
of this exploitation of animals, uh, the more invested you are in maintaining that power
structure, because it's, it's made you very, very wealthy. And, um, uh, I don't know, maybe it's
a greater level of, of cognitive dissonance. Maybe it's not, maybe you just simply don't care.
It's probably a number of things, but, uh, you know, it's a good question. And I, I don't know.
I often wonder what goes through those people's minds because they do inevitably, they're going
to see something on the news. They're going to see something, or even their kids, their kids got to
come home at some point and say, dad, did you know this? You know, my friends at school said that
this is what you do. This is, this video is one of your farms out in wherever, or maybe the kids,
I don't know, maybe private schools, they know they don't do that so much. I don't know. But,
uh, you know, they've, and look, there are examples of where an executive will change.
Look at Canada goose, look at the protest they used to do outside of that guy's home, the owner
of Canada goose. And I may be mistaken, but recently I think that they're in the next several years,
they're going to eliminate, um, uh, coyote fur from their, from their coats, from their clothing
wear. Now they haven't gotten to the goose down yet, but they're looking at getting rid of fur
from coyote. So there are examples of those who were intransigent and then there are those who
just, you know, do bow to public pressure. So got to keep it up.
I used to be a volunteer for Oxfam and I remember Oxfam America would always target the employees
of corporations they would go after. And I think that's something lacking among, uh, you know,
vegan organizations and vegan activists to really target the employees and, uh, not just, you know,
the, the consumers. Um, but let's get to the life of those chickens we have been talking about,
uh, since the beginning of this episode, eggtruth.com has a section called life of a hen.
And I would like to know, you know, what is the fate of the chickens exploited by this industry?
Uh, what is, uh, their life like and why, yeah. And are they sentient? You know, this is something,
um, I think at the most basic level, there are some people who don't even believe that
animals are sentient. They don't think that they can experience pain. They think of them as machines.
Um, so are they sentient? What is their life like in this, uh, industry? Um, yes, go ahead.
Um, uh, to answer the first question, yes, they are sentient. Um, they are mammals. They have brains,
they have central nervous system, they have pain receptors, they're conscious, they have memories,
they have, um, uh, exhibit all the cognitive functions that we would describe as sentience.
Um, on our, one of our blogs on egg-truth.com is, uh, one called the Cambridge declaration
of consciousness. And this is a group of scientists and neuroscientists who had, uh, had had had
an event a number of years ago at Cambridge university in the UK, in which all these scientists
came together and basically said animals are sentient, even cephalopods. Um, and they, they
have, they meet all the requirements for what we, what we deem to be sentience. And they actually
pointed out, they singled out, uh, cephalopods and birds. And we've seen, you can go to YouTube and
find countless examples of birds exhibiting extraordinary behavior from making tools and
memory and so on. There's no question that they're sentient and ask anybody who rescues these animals.
They form relationships, they purr when you pet them, just like a cat, they, um, and they,
they respond to stimuli, compassionate, friendly stimuli versus aggressive and hateful stimuli,
just like all living beings. So when people say these animals aren't sentient, they, they are
just, they are, they either they're lying or they're, or they're fools. One of the two, I don't
know which one it is in terms of their life. You know, 18 months is typically cited as the last
of a female hen. Um, they're obviously all bred in commercial hatcheries. Uh, they're sexed,
the males into the macerator, which is a giant stainless steel hopper with high speed spinning,
spinning blades at the bottom. They all get dumped in there because males don't lay eggs and
they're not ideal for raising for meat. Uh, what they call broilers are genetically engineered,
selectively bred to produce large breasts and reach slaughter weight in 45 days. Those are not
male chicks as in the egg industry. Females will get d beat often, uh, to prevent predatory behavior
in confined spaces. Um, they'll get, sometimes they'll get their toes clipped. Usually the
roosters do cause they'll tend to be aggressive when copulating with the, um, the females. Um,
but, uh, they'll get vaccinated and they'll be sent to, um, uh, uh, temporary housing until
they're mature enough, uh, to, uh, lay eggs, which they'll then be either on the same farm or shipped
to another farm where they'll be housed for egg laying and that egg laying will take, you know,
uh, they'll lay an egg every, you know, 24 to 30 to maybe to 36 hours.
Um, they will, you know, often in Canada, certainly, uh, they'll often be finding confined
in cages, maybe six or eight to a cage on a wire floor. Um, they'll defecate and urinate through
the cage wire cage floor. They're usually built in a shape like this, so everything can fall down
into the manure pits, but inevitably it gets in on the other cages and the birds beneath them.
Um, they will, uh, have suffered feather loss, um, inactivity and, uh, being stationary for so long,
they'll often develop fatty liver syndrome. Um, they can experience egg impaction where the egg
gets stuck in their overduck, uh, their ovary, um, and, uh, the shell will soften, it'll get infected.
They could have, um, prolapses where literally the reproductive organs just fall out of their body.
They'll often die in the cages and then they'll end up, you know, workers will come along and,
and, um, uh, take them out, throw them in the garbage. Um, they'll, like I said, they'll lay
anywhere between 320 to 350 and some farms will lay about 300 to 350. Um, they'll lay about,
um, 350 and some farms, there's one in Iowa now, one in Germany that have reached 518 months. Um,
and you know, for clarity, birds lay eggs for reproduction only, uh, like in nature,
look at your birds in the spring. When they come out in the spring, they may lay a clutch or two a
season. That's it. Laying an egg every 30 hours is not natural. They have been selectively bred and
genetically altered to do that. And that is a horrendous burden on their reproductive systems.
Um, despite being supplemented with calcium, their bones will still become brittle in, in,
in, in housing before they get transported and slaughter. Um, uh, I think compassion for world
farming in the UK found that one third of all hands that go to slaughter either go to slaughter
with either broken bones or have had broken bones that have healed improperly as a result. Um,
then of course, the birds are hung upside down, throats are slit, put into scalding hot water
tanks for de-feathering. Some of them are alive when they go into the scalding tanks and they come
out and then go through the, um, have the dismemberment phase of the slaughter process.
Um, some will argue that the male chicks have it easy because they're day old, but they're conscious
and alive and aware. Uh, they're, they're what I think I may get this word wrong. They're coccicidial
so that they're, when they're hatched, they're fully conscious and aware. Their eyes are open.
Unlike, you know, other mammals where their eyes will be closed for a period of time and they'll
squeak and you know, the mother has to make sure they all get milk. Chicks are born conscious. They
even can communicate with the mothers in, while they're in the shell, they have, there's that
evidence of communication. Um, so it's really the female hands that have, you know, uh, have the
greatest duration of suffering and, and they're ultimately sent to slaughter. So it's, it's, um,
uh, I don't know that if I sat around for a few hours, if I could think of anything worse in terms
of my goal was to impose as much suffering and torture on an animal, you know, than what they
do in the egg industry. Uh, maybe dairy, uh, you know, it's academic, whether you want to discuss
whether dairy or eggs are worse, but they're both horrendous in my view, but eggs in particular is,
um, is very nasty. Yeah. I think you can summarize by saying that the egg is sorry, not the egg,
the hen, obviously the hen and all the other things are commodified. So from the first day
is like, you know, naturally you see this fan on her nest sitting on her eggs until they hatch.
But what do you have in the egg industry? You have crates and crates full of eggs. There's no mother
hen around and they're in incubators. And that's where they, how their life starts. And that's
goes from that tray to the next tray to the sorting to the cage and so on. It's just a commodity from
day one, um, until their last day. And even the other aspect of the industry that people usually
don't talk about are what they call the parent flock. So who lays these eggs, who, you know,
someone has to lay these eggs that make the hens that layer eggs. And that's another aspect of the
industry. That's absolutely cruel where you put a couple of roosters with lots of hens and they're
like, you know, aggressively breeding to lay eggs, um, that then become our layer hens. And that
aspect is just as cruel and they have just as a short of a lifespan and are what they call
depopulated when they stop producing enough fertilized eggs. Um, and that's all part of the
industry. And, and as you mentioned, we have that page on our website called the life of a hen. And
this is one of the most visited pages on our websites. And there we obviously go into greater
detail as a Nigel outline. We look at, um, the different housing systems and what that really
means, um, for the hens and, um, to help people understand what's going on behind, uh, those sheds
and, uh, to make a better choice and see that certain labels don't really make a difference
in the lives of those hens. Yeah. Going back to that point on sentience, um, I had a guest, uh,
Kennedy little from, uh, farm transition academy. And she made the point that a lot of those workers
have a distorted view of animals because the animals they see have been broken. Um, their
spirit has been broken. You know, they're traumatized creatures. And so they look at them
and they don't see, uh, signs of, uh, you know, sentience, vitality or, or something like that.
They see just the, this poor creature. And so maybe that's why they, they get the idea that
this is just a machine. This is nothing more than, uh, an object. Um, I think also on that point,
Brian workers often, especially if you're new, you're getting into chicken catching,
you're a summer university student, or maybe you're living in a rural environment and your
job opportunities aren't very broad. Um, you go working on a farm, there's almost, um, a necessity
for those workers who have to desensitize themselves to the plight of the animals because
they can't function on a daily basis. And we know from studies and research, um, that, you know,
I'll cite Smithfield Foods down in North Carolina, a massive pig slaughter facility. It's now owned
by a Chinese firm. Um, but workers there, you know, um, uh, managers of the company, they would have,
they would have African-American employees, Indigenous American employees, and poor white
employees. And they would literally pit the groups against one another. So there was racial conflict
within the workplace. So certain groups would work in another area. One ethnic group would work in
another area, but all eventually, you know, they wouldn't report their, their injuries because they
would get taken off the line, fired. There was no medical support. So they would suffer some of the
highest workplace injuries occur in slaughter facilities of any industry, anywhere. And they also,
um, they also, um, uh, there are excessive crime rates, domestic violence in these communities
where these massive slaughter factories are. This is no coincidence. These are people, again,
some who have no other options for, for employment, go to work in these places and
have, suffer either from PTSD, a lot of them do, unrecognized, undiagnosed, and, you know, they come
home and, and they have this level of irritation and aggravation and even aggressiveness. Uh, they
come home and, you know, you come home and the kids are screaming and the wife hasn't made dinner
or whatever, you know, traditional households. You come home and you blow, you blow a fuse and somebody
gets smacked around, somebody gets hit. These things, again, no coincidence. And these large
companies, you know, um, they are responsible for the social ills that come out, come out of
this industry. And there are many from health to mental health, um, workplace injuries and so on.
And many of them, you know, especially in the United States, less so here, but it still happens
here. Um, they have a responsibility for that. And, you know, even if you look at something like,
uh, immigration issues, which in the States, it's all they ever talk about, build the wall,
immigration. Well, you go down to Mexico or Central America, you can hear recruitment ads in print,
on radio, in Spanish, all these massive slaughter companies trying to get people to come up to work
and they'll even, they won't outrightly help them to get into the country illegally. But,
you know, if you come in undocumented, they're not going to spend too much time asking you for
your documentation. They are one of the biggest recruiters of illegal immigrants into any,
many countries to work in these, in these slaughter facilities, because most American
born citizens, as most Canadian born citizens, they don't want to do these jobs. They don't
want to do this kind of work and undocumented or temporary foreign workers. They don't care. The
employers don't care about them. They don't care about their PTSD. They, they're going to, um,
they're going to use them up and spit them out because they know next season, they're going to
get a whole new crop of temporary foreign workers or illegal immigrants. And that's where the,
the connection between human rights and animal rights is, is, is very, very clear. I know that's
a little off topic, but I just wanted to get that in there. It's, it's a pertinent point. Uh, you
know, I always, I'm always shocked by how this industry is just bad on every level, you know,
environmental level, human level, uh, of course, animal welfare. And, you know, sometimes I'm,
I'm stuck with using some religious language, like this is evil. You know, this is an evil industry.
Like there, there's no better word to describe this, uh, activity that, that we're, um, uh,
doing as humans. Um, do you think it's possible? And you brushed off on that, uh, Julie, uh, do
you think it's possible to have a humane egg production industry as, uh, many companies, uh,
you know, market themselves to be, uh, you know, this, uh, chicken was raised, uh, free range and,
uh, it was happy during its life. Um, and things like that we can read on, uh, on the packaging of
those products. Well, question back, how would you define the humane aspect of this? What is humane?
Do you have a definition? Well, we would need to ask them what is really humane. Why are they
saying it is humane? Um, but I understand your point. So the problem is that it's not like many
other labels or certification. There's no, uh, no official definition or official, um, regulation
about it. And what I like to say when it comes to agony, I can choose like there is no right way to
do the wrong thing. Right. Um, no, I don't think there is a humane way to produce eggs because it's
intrinsically wrong to exploit that animal. As Nigel hinted earlier that the amount of eggs
they lay, no matter the setting where she lays them, that is already the cruelty because she's
been bred to do that. Um, hence develop over in cancer because of the over overly activities of
their, um, in our organs. And there's just no way to do it. Right. Um, even if you look at backyard
situations, they still rely on that breeding, uh, that came initially. They often also rely on,
um, getting the chicks from hatcheries, which is still a cruel place where they kill the male chicks.
Um, many, um, if you stay with the backyard situation are probably not willing to care for
the animals that goes beyond them laying enough eggs, say they get, they get sick. First, they
might be hard pressed to find a vet that has any knowledge about how to treat a chicken. Second,
are they ready to spend say $500 on one vet bill? If they find one that treat them, are they ready
to do that? I'd say many wouldn't because then they look at, okay, how many X does this hen produce?
Is that worth the $500 for that one treatment? And then you go back to the commodification
and you end up in the same situation, even if it's dialed down to a backyard. Um, and the worst is
that even if the people that have those many Instagram accounts that, you know, share their
perfect picture, perfect life of the few hens roaming around in their garden and being part of
their little garden ecosystem, they just help people to feel good about eating eggs. They still
feel good about if they buy the cage free supermarket egg, because they remember that video where that
hen was so happy. And isn't that the same? Isn't that that where that came from? So I don't think
there's a humane way to do it. And you know, the thing is we don't need to eat eggs. There is no
reason why we have to fight for this industry to survive. We don't need eggs to survive. We don't
need eggs to be healthy. We don't need eggs to have a complete, um, diet. So if we keep fighting
for our eggs, then really what we're doing is saying, I like eggs and that's why I want to eat
them. And that's why I'm okay with those animals going through whatever they're going through.
And that what it comes down to, no matter if they're from a backyard operation or from a large
large industry and cages or cage free situations.
Um, yes, it's a really good point. Did you want to add something Nigel?
Um, um, I, you know, Julie touched on backyard, uh, hence, and I think that's probably
the one scenario where you'll get, um, um,
um, people advocating for more than anything else in terms of this humane sort of scenario.
And, uh, you know, look, do I think a hen living in a small backyard with a coop and
places they can, you know, dust, bathe and pack off the ground and walk around
that are, yes, inevitably going to lay an egg and the person who owns the home is going to
eat that egg. Is that better than, you know, being in a battery cage? Um, yeah, I mean,
let's be honest, it is better. Um, but again, as I may have alluded to earlier,
you know, we can often discuss the issue of treatment and that's what this is about.
When you bring up the issue of humane, it is an issue of treatment, which means
regardless of the scenario, you are accepting that treating an animal as a commodity is using
them as a resource for the sole benefit or utility of us humans. You're, you've already
crossed that line and now you're into this discussion about treatment. So the, the issue
of use is, is really, you know, the treatment compounds the initial harm. The primary harm
is use. And like Julie said, you know, yeah, they're in a backyard, but they're still going
to be laying an egg every 24 to 30 hours because they have 10,000 years of human intervention
acting as an artificial agent for natural selection. And here we are, the 21st century,
the 21st century, they're laying 350 up to 500 eggs in 18 months, which is, which is,
anyways, it's, it's, it's, it's insanity. And, you know, I have this discussion on social media
with people sometimes, and I always say to people, why did you get a backyard hen? Is it for you
or is it for the hen? If it's for the hen, as you say, then my recommendation is, is to find an
avian vet, take your, your hen to the avian vet and have a subcutaneous hormonal implant
and they're readily available or so in Canada and the U S there's issues in the U S with the FDA and
limitations on these hormonal implants, but they will prevent that hen from laying eggs for months
and months. It isn't cheap, but you know, I mean, we all know a visit to the vet with our cat or
dog and ended up with three or $400 just like that. So this was really no different. And that will
result in egg laying cessation. And you talk to people on farm sanctuaries where they do this to
prevent egg impaction, to limit the risks of ovarian cancer, which I forgot to mention in the
life of a hen, Julie mentioned it earlier. So thank you for reminding me on that ovarian cancer,
they had the highest rates of spontaneously occurring ovarian cancer of any species in the
world. And that is because of their manipulated reproductive systems. So this implant will help
them eliminate egg laying for months on end. It has to be renewed every so often, but if the hen
and their welfare is a primary consideration, which they always say they are, and it's really
not thereafter the eggs without the guilt, they want guilt free eggs, but it's, you know, and
farm sanctuary workers will tell you time and time again, the difference in the animal's behavior,
personality is dramatically is altered once these hormonal implants are put in, because
this constant laying, this constant hormonal activity in their bodies to lay eggs almost daily
takes a toll. I mean, and look at a pregnant human being, a woman, look what she goes through in nine
months of gestation, look at the postpartum depression sometimes that they can endure
after giving birth. So look at all the hormonal flux that goes on in a human being's body,
woman's body during, you know, that period of time, think about it for a small animal,
who's doing it every 30, 36 hours for, you know, for the rest of their lives, potentially. So
to stop that would really be to the benefit from their, from a health perspective, and from their
own well-being. So the answer is no, there is no humane scenario. It isn't humane. And you're still
crossing that, that in what is in my mind, an impenetrable moral barrier with you cannot cross
that line into accepting the idea that we can use other living beings for, for our own benefit.
And maybe one last thing to add to that point. People often when they look at nitrocosm,
guilt-free eggs, they think about, you know, the carton of 12 eggs, but eggs are in so many other
products, you know, that you buy and no one looks at those eggs and where they come from. So there's
a big part of that industry that feeds into that. And even if you spend an extraordinary amount of
money to like happy or good eggs, you still are not free of all the eggs that are in those products.
Same as when you go to a restaurant, you do not know where those eggs came from. So the best is
if you really care for hands, if you really love hands, then just don't eat eggs. And we're
recording this conversation, we're in the month of August. And it's often during autumn that we see
people wanting to get rid of their hand, their backyard hand, because it stopped laying eggs.
You know, there's a period of two years for those chickens where they're laying their eggs.
And then after that period, they stop and often their caretaker just, you know,
put them online on social media and try to find someone to take care of them. Yeah.
So we mentioned on that point, Ryan, I'll just interject. You're right. And since a lot of
municipalities across the country are starting to allow people to have and raise backyard hands
and backyard flocks under the guise of, you know, local food, right. That's a good thing. Local,
you know, less than 100 kilometers from your home, produce your own food. So municipalities,
cities are now starting to allow this. And as you said, once they start to develop either health
problems or their egg laying wains after 18 months, two years, I've read stories and Montreal SPCA
was a perfect example saying, we're now starting to see people dumping hens. You know, it used to
be just cats and dogs and the odd reptile. Now they're seeing birds and hens showing up
because people don't want them anymore. So now that's that cost, that burden is now falling
towards the municipality. Their local or regional SPCA body or entity has to deal with that. And of
course, what ends up happening, it'll often get euthanized or sometimes they'll get rehomed. But
you know, it's just the same pattern all over again, different species, but same pattern.
Oh, yes. I'm based in Quebec here in Montreal. And, you know, when I talk to sanctuary, you know,
vegan farm sanctuaries, owners, they often tell me that we're at full capacity. And every year
there is just an army of new chickens, even roosters, looking for homes, looking for
places where to and it started with this whole backyard trend. So yeah, it's a sad situation.
We mentioned that egg truth is just part of, you know, it's one of the initiatives that
the truth organization has launched. There is also dairy truth.com. And I would love to hear you
talk, you know, say a few words about this platform. And I'm very curious about,
is your organization planning on launching a new platform of the sort maybe about pigs this time?
Go ahead, on the initial thought of why launching dairy truth, Nigel.
Okay. Yeah, I guess, you know, again, it was, you know, once egg truth was up and running and,
and, you know, the activities were, you know, in play, the social media channels were set up and
I ended up thinking, okay, well, I can just simply replicate this. You know, I don't have to reinvent
the wheel. So it'll, you know, be a lot easier to, to produce a website and social media platform for
the other obvious, or at least to me, the obvious focus, which was, you know,
the obvious focus, which was dairy. Because again, that whole, you know, transition and the
experience of so many vegans is that is that dairy and eggs, you know, is one of the last sort of
things that we recognize are problematic. And, and sometimes people give up dairy last, sometimes
they give up eggs last, but again, everyone says, I only know when I first started this, I would have
probably started there. So, and so the, you know, the, the, the one thing that I wanted to add to
the, to the, to the dairy truth side of things was the environmental aspect, because dairy has a
certainly much more significant environmental impact than on the egg industry. Both are not good,
but dairy in particular is very, very troublesome. And we, we had a professor who's written on this
subject many times provide the content for that page on our website. And again, as you'd mentioned,
Ryan earlier, that there are some vegans, you know, who come to veganism by way of, you know,
the animal welfare issue, some come from the health aspect, health and nutrition, some come
from the environmental side. So this was an opportunity to, you know, put information out
there that hopefully those who were, you know, whose main concern was environment would could
find their way to a dairy free life as well. So, and having Julie on board, you know, this would
this would double the work. And so I can't even remember now, Julie, whether we had dairy truth
running at the time when you started or... No, you already knew that you wanted to launch it. And,
and then when I was already working with Egg Truth, I think it was just, it just fit the overall theme
that as Nigel mentioned, also the last big obstacles for vegetarians usually become vegan.
And again, with the idea that really single out that one industry, because to every of these
industries, there's so many layers, so many aspects to it that we mentioned the workers,
we mentioned environment, there's so many parts of it. And I find it hard to give it justice and the
space it needs and the information it needs on a website where you just put in all the farm animals
and maybe then even animals for entertainment and, and so on and so forth. And I think that was the
idea to have the basically the, yeah, the look and feel of the Egg Truth kind of, so people were
familiar with that. And then just do that for dairy as well. And I think we had great responses. I
think people really, really took to it and really liked it again as a source to share and point
people to, but also to educate themselves on various aspects of the dairy industry. And there
are so many, so many parts to it that are just so cruel and not even known to most people that
don't even know that cows not continuously give milk. So we educate on a very basic level, but we
also go really down into detail. And again, we also help people then to transition out of dairy. Like
what do I eat and study? We're asking about our favorite cheese. We have a long list of products
that are not to promote, they're not sponsored. It's just like here, if you want to replace it,
if you can't give it up, those are great products you might look at and use. And that's on there.
And what we also try is to highlight and share sanctuaries, which are a bit an important part
of the vegan movement, a big part of educating and sharing animals and animals as individuals and not
animals of like a mass in a crowded shed where it's easier to not care. It's harder to not care. If
you see that one that has a name, but it has a story that has feelings, that has preferences
and that you keep seeing on social media. And we're trying to give them space and to have their
animals shown and heard and just help people to like fall in love with those animals. And if it's
sometimes feels hard to not eat cheese, then go back to those animals and then you get reminded
why you're doing it, why it's important to not eat that cheese that is made of dairy.
And then so for the future right now, we're really focused on growing what we have right now,
because I think there's still potential. We really see ourselves as that one step
place where people go to educate themselves on eggs or dairy. As I said, usually they're just like,
oh, just check egg throughs or just take dairy throughs. And I think there's still a place for
us to grow that people see us at that resource. And then who knows what the future holds. I think
it would make sense to stay in the space of maybe food, but not food that obviously is caused in
slaughter. So I could think honey would be something like that, but there's nothing of this planned
yet. It's just, as I said, I think it would make sense to stay in that part of the food industry.
But as for now, we're just trying to push egg throughs in there, through out there,
and try to be more present, find different ways of presenting the information and make people care
and hopefully become vegan. And I encourage people to visit those two websites, eggthrough.com and
dairytruth.com. I just want to correct you on that, Ryan. It's egg-truth.com and dairy-truth.com.
I did try to get the other URLs and I couldn't. I've got some other ones too, like eggtruth.ca
or dairytruth.ca and so on. I've got so many URLs that redirect to our website, but the eggtruth.com
one actually was, I think it was a pig farm in Iowa, had that URL. For some reason, I have no idea
why. I did try to get it, but I couldn't. So I had to put the dash in there. And like I said,
we have other iterations of the URLs that redirect there, but yeah.
Well, the links will be in the description. And I know that they are essential tools for me.
Like you said, Nigel, earlier, I like to just post the link instead of starting to argue my way with
people. I wish it was translated in French because I have many friends here who speak French and
would benefit from reading egg-truth.com in their native language.
Well, it's interesting that you should say that. And Julie's right. We're going to just stay focused
on egg-truth.com and dairytruth.com for now, continue to grow those social media platforms,
try to create awareness about those resources. But yeah, having the website in other languages
is certainly something that's down the road. Interestingly, when I did the
outdoor ad campaign back in 2018 or 2019, spring, the number of inquiries I had from around the world
where they wanted the poster that was created, but they wanted it in their language. So I said,
okay, you send me everything in, whether it's Spanish, I think we did Spanish, Italian,
Polish, and we didn't do a French one, but we did a number of them. And I basically recreated the
posters in those languages and sent them to creative that they could print however big or small
they wanted. And so one of the languages that we may look at doing initially is, well, certainly
French, but Spanish, because Central and South America is massive markets. And yeah, that's
something that certainly should be in the pipeline. And even although Australians speak English too,
the brochure that we had for that campaign, I had a couple of farm sanctuaries in Australia,
who wanted it. And I said, well, I said, you can have it. I said, but it actually references a hen
that lives at Happily Everest or farm sanctuary in Campbellville, Ontario. And it mentions
famous celebrities in Canada who were vegan, Brian Adams, and the hockey player, George LaRocque,
and some other ones that, and a figure skater came figure skater. So I'd have to go to the
Australianize that for you. So they sent me information and pictures of a hen that they
had at a sanctuary and mentioned some Australian celebrities who were vegan. So I Australianize
the brochure and just sent it to them to give it to them to print and use however they wish.
Because at the end of the day, collaboration and sharing of all this information is really
an important part of what we do. And when I see an egg truth post, like I'll see,
I'll remember even before Julie came on board and I was doing memes every day and designing memes,
I designed a meme and I put it out there. And two years later or three years later, I see like,
I don't know, Jean Bauer from farm sanctuary sharing it with a comment. And of course,
Jean Bauer is going to get like, you know, 15, 20,000 likes and reactions to it.
That's that makes me feel great because, you know, I love to see it. Other people posted
people I don't even know some I do some I don't. But our goal is to as a resource, like you said,
you use it as a resource for people who were either active animal rights activists and advocates or
people who were passive and on social media and don't always have the right media to share it.
And on social media and don't always have the right words or how to argue or take a position.
You can just simply say, here, I think you should read this, you know, and that's that's great.
As long as, you know, it can be a resource for resharing.
That's tremendous. I can reach so many people.
I love hearing that. And I'm so grateful that you're working so hard on those two initiatives,
you know, it's so it's done by experts. And it's not, you know, we see a lot of pseudoscience in
vegan circles, you know, a lot of unfiltered articles and things said about the industry.
And I like to see to have trust in a in a tool like yours. So thank you so much for working
so hard on egg-truth.com and dairy-truth.com. And before we end this conversation, did you want to
add something? Well, as you said, we have the website, but we also very active on social media
because for the website, people actively have to want to educate themselves. But I think we're also
out there to get the people that might need a little push. And so we're very active on social
media. We're on all the known platforms on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and now the new
threat. We're all out there so people can find us there same name. And we're happy for people to
check us out to share us to just reference us. And that's a big part of our advocacy to like
actively go out and actively put the content in front of people, hoping that even if they don't
reply, even if they don't share their story, but hoping to plant some seeds in the back of the
heads and hopefully convince people that it might be better if we leave eggs and dairy off our plates.
I hope so. I truly hope so. I'm rooting for you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you both of you
for having taken the time to answer my questions, share your insights. Thank you so much. Thank you
Ryan very much. It was a pleasure. And we're hoping to do something a bit more
public in the fall. We're working on some things right now that hopefully we'll certainly let you
know or give you the heads up if it happens. And so you can actively share and promote that with
your listeners. But again, yeah, thanks for having us on. Thank you everyone for listening. What an
amazing conversation this was. I am so grateful that the truth organization exists. I invite you
to share this episode with your community. They need to learn what is happening behind the scenes
of the egg industry. And finally, let me know if you liked this conversation, leave me a good review
or reach out on Instagram at vegan report podcast. Thank you again for listening. Take care and see
you next Tuesday for a new episode.