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 is a very
special episode because we are going to talk about discrimination against vegans. And did you know
that there was a word for that? It is called a vegaphobia and it is a very important issue to
address because a world where vegans are marginalized and excluded is a world where it is much harder to
fight for animal rights. In order to shed more light on this problem, I'm excited to announce
a partnership with the New York City chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. You see, they are
organizing a webinar on Tuesday, October 17. It is called Expanding Vegan Rights and it will feature
vegans from all over the world who are the victim of discrimination and who decided to fight back
against this injustice. For the very first time ever, they will meet each other and share stories
of what they went through. I invite all of you to register for the webinar, follow the link in the
description and don't miss out on that amazing conversation. So this week and the next, I will
be extensively covering this topic. Next Tuesday, I will be joined for an exclusive interview with
Astrid. Astrid is a participant of the webinar and she is in the middle of an epic legal fight
against the French Board of Dietitians. Tune in next week for more details. But this week,
I'm joined with the organizer of the event. Tamara received her master's degree from New York
University and her law degree from the University of Virginia. She has been a member of the National
Lawyers Guild, the New York City chapter for 10 years. She's a chair of the New York City Animal
Rights Comedy and a member of the Guild's Executive Comedy. Tamara has successfully represented animal
rescue groups pro bono. As an employment attorney, Tamara champions women in the workplace under Title
7, the Family and Medical Leave Act and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. Her special focus
is sexual harassment and retaliation claims. Tamara, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so
much for being here. Hi, thank you so much for having me, Ryan. It's a pleasure. So let me start
with this question. Why did you decide to devote your career to fighting discrimination? Well,
when I was 9, 10, 11 years old, I was the victim of a bully in school. And it wasn't just me who
was being victimized. My best friend Dawn was being victimized and my other very good friend,
Tara. So all three of us were suffering. And the bullying was not just ridicule, but it escalated
to theft and physical physical intimidation. And it just felt so horrible. It just felt awful. I
dreaded every single day as did my friends. And I decided very early on that it was not something
I wanted to tolerate and that when I grew up, I would do something about it. So I did. Amazing.
Amazing. And we're happy for that. We're not happy that you had that experience,
which I also had. It is horrible. And we don't often talk about how negatively it impacts even
adults. You know, when you grow up, you still have some of that, you know, fear or some of those
psychological hurtfulness. It still with you in some cases. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. That just that terror that you feel every day, you know, and hating
school and hating particularly after school because you knew the bully would be waiting for you. But
in my case, I think I was lucky in a way because I watched how it impacted other people and
subsequently found out that the bully herself came from a very troubled background and a troubled
home. And so really early on, I got a very broad picture of how violence and the threat of violence
and those kind of injustices work. It wasn't just me and it didn't it did have its own source. And
that source was an older brother who was a firm dealer. So this was a very troubled single parent
family. And I learned about all of that in its complexity, you know, before being a teenager.
So, yeah. And did you ever just by curiosity, did you ever receive apologies from your bully?
No, no. Years later, I saw her pushing a stroller. I said hello, she did a double take. She said
hello. And that was it. That was it. I, you know, I hope she's okay, wherever she is.
Yes. So how did you find your way to the National Lawyers Guild, the New York City chapter? Why did
you decide to start volunteering for the organization? And what attracted you to this institution?
Wow. Well, okay. I really, I really thought that law was a wonderful tool to fight for injustice.
I had graduated from a great school, took the bar exam, passed the bar. Bar exam is a three day
examination in New York. It's just horrific. It's two days and then there's an additional ethics
section that you could take previously. But in any event, it's an enormous kind of rite of passage.
And having done all of that and having gotten myself six figures in debt,
I was on my way up Broadway to a Toys R Us to purchase gifts for a baby shower. And apparently
there was a protest going on to the left of me. I was unaware of the protest. I wasn't part of the
protest. I had no connection with the protest whatsoever. And suddenly there was a loud noise.
It was raining. I was carrying my umbrella. I looked to my left and I saw a white man.
I looked to my left and there was a stampede of people running at me. And I just kind of froze
in the middle of the street and I was arrested. I was arrested because the police were chasing
all of these protesters who were running away. They had apparently been given multiple warnings
to disperse. But of course I was none the wiser. I wasn't part of the protest. I was going northward.
And suddenly I found myself in a van with other people who were part of this protest. And I was
like, what is happening? Why am I being arrested? Who are you? What were you protesting?
And it was the worst possible time because having put in so much time, effort, energy,
and money into getting this degree, I was now staring at a character in fitness interview,
which is sort of the last box to check before you're sworn in. So I was staring at this
character in fitness interview and I had just gotten arrested. I was besides myself.
And the National Lawyers Guild came in and they represented me pro bono and my case got dismissed.
And I went ahead and told my interviewer about it. And he was a little nonplussed, but I swore that
if I became a lawyer, I would turn around and volunteer for this organization that had stepped
in and helped me in this moment of crisis. And I got sworn in and I looked them up and I began to
volunteer. And my initial activities within the National Lawyers Guild were as a legal observer.
Legal observers are lawyers, law students, paralegals who go to protests as neutral
observers and they're just watching the police and how the police are handling the protests in
the crowd. Because we've seen in the past and historically whenever there are large social
justice movements that the police can be unnecessarily brutal against protesters. And so
we keep tabs on that and we call the police to account if and when that happens.
This is a crazy story.
You asked.
I mean, it's also an inspiring one. But what was the protest about?
Turns out that we had just started bombing a Middle Eastern state. I think it was Iraq
under the first President Bush. And that's what they were protesting. I distinctly remember
two protesters. One was a Columbia professor of Middle Eastern art and the other was a 70-year-old
or 80-year-old woman who had somehow fallen while people were running away. And she was complaining
in the holding cell how much her knee was swelling up. She was an elderly person and the fact that she
had been arrested and was in this holding tank with the other women, we had been segregated from
the men. It was just dystopic. I mean, I had never been arrested obviously in my life and
there I was and it was just a really, I don't know, it was a bewildering experience.
So what is the National Lawyers Guild exactly? Why they got interested in your case? What is their
goal?
Oh, okay. Well, the National Lawyers Guild began in the 1930s and it began as a splinter group
from the American Bar Association. And here's why. By the 1930s, there were particular law schools
that were accepting women applicants and that were accepting people of color. So there were
African-Americans as well as women who were going to law school and more importantly, graduating
from law school. And once graduated, they wanted to join a professional organization that was a
national professional organization. Unfortunately, there was one, the American Bar Association. But
unfortunately, the ABA, American Bar Association, in its infinite wisdom decided that women and
people of color were not qualified to join the national professional lawyers organization.
Well, within the ABA, there were progressive white men who had been lawyers who were already
members and who were saying, hey, these women are completely qualified as are these people of
color. What is going on here? And there began to be sort of an internal struggle within the American
Bar Association and the leadership would not relent and the progressives eventually split off
and formed the National Lawyers Guild. So that's how the guild started. And of course, the first
thing they did was embrace the applicants who were of a different gender and of a different race.
So the guild began in the late 30s. It was relatively small, but it really expanded in the
50s and 60s because in the 50s, 60s and 70s, we had large social justice movements, first the
civil rights movement and subsequently the movement against Vietnam, the anti-war movement,
the war resistors, and many, many, many protests related to both of those social justice movements.
And in the course of these protests, lawyers from the National Lawyers Guild were watching
an incredible amount of police brutality to sort of suppress the social justice movements. Why was
this happening? We had water cannons used against protesters. We had police dogs, you know, let loose
on protesters. We had people shot at Kent University. We had all kinds of, you know,
authoritarian repression in a country that prides itself on First Amendment rights. So as lawyers,
what were we going to do about this? We couldn't just sit back and watch it. Right? And that's how
legal observation began. We needed to be out there. We needed to be able to take the police,
you know, to account because what happens when a policeman beats the heck out of you is six or eight
months later, you're in front of a judge and you're saying, yeah, this is what he did. And
the judge is saying, did you do that? And the police officer can say, no, I didn't do that. I
never saw this man before in my life. And it's the police officer who's going to be believed,
unless there's an officer of the court who was also present and who also saw it and who has
contemporaneous notes. That's what legal observers do. So we stand back from a protest. We're not
part of the protest action, but we're watching and we're taking notes. And those notes at
contemporaneous to what's happening. And then, excuse me, and then if we should see police
brutality and there is a court case down the road, yeah, we can come in and testify. And we are
officers of the court. So our word is going to be taken very, very seriously by the judge.
Of course. And that's amazing. Now, the National Lawyers Guild has got, became interested in
the animal rights movement. And we're getting back to this. But first, I'm curious about,
you know, you're vegan. I'm curious about what has been your vegan journey so far. And why did you
decide to get involved in the space of animal rights?
Well, I had been involved. I don't really have a progressive vegan journey. I hated milk,
even as an infant. You know, I don't remember six months old, but there are stories how at six
months old, I was already rejecting milk and milk byproducts, you know, dairy byproducts. And my
grandparents at the time who were caring for me had no idea what to do with this infant who just
screamed and maybe I was lactose intolerant. I don't know. But I didn't give up meat until I was
18. And that was because of Peter Singer's book, Animal Liberation. So I don't really have a, you
know, classic vegan journey. But my animal rights journey also sort of sporadic. I would go to
for a free Friday protests after Thanksgiving. I would shout at Macy's for having a first salon.
I hated the fact that animals were tortured in laboratories. So I was on the very fringe of
stop hunting to an animal cruelty. So I would go to occasional protests. But contemporaneous with
this, I had been an animal rescuer and I had started rescuing animals in imitation of my dad,
who would see an injured bird or a bird that was caught in bad weather. And he would bring the bird
home and the bird would sort of rest and recuperate in our bathroom, free flying, until the weather
was better or until the bird recuperated. And then we would release the bird from the bathroom
window. It would just kind of leave on its own. Obviously, some, most of these birds were pigeons.
Some were sparrows. A few starlings came through our house. If the bird was really in need of
assistance, we would find an avian vet. There were very few who would want to handle a wild bird.
But that all changed with the Wild Bird Fund. God bless them. They are on 565 Columbus Avenue and
they are a free avian hospital. Did I say they were free? They are free. So if you are in New York
and if you spot an injured bird, please take it to the Wild Bird Fund. They will treat that bird
for free and release it in Central Park. And now is an especially sensitive time for birds. Why?
Because it's the autumn migration. And thousands of them are hitting the glass of our various
skyscrapers and are falling to the ground. And if the glass strike in the fall don't hit them,
don't kill them, please put them in a brown paper bag and bring them to the Wild Bird Fund.
Besides birds, I also rescued cats and the occasional dog. And it was when I rescued my second
dog, a pit bull that displayed all kinds of weird behavior. I ended up learning through her
about dog fighting. I had never in my wildest thought about dog, like the people did that,
but apparently they do. And then I also heard about bully bans, laws that say you can't have
a certain kind of dog. So it was in 2007 when I found Honey and could not rehome her and decided
to be her companion myself. That was when my sustained animal rights effort started. So it
had been sporadic previously. The animal rescuing was actually quite consistent, but the animal
rights was, especially the protesting was sporadic until 2007. When I found Honey and when I realized
what was happening to pit bulls especially, and this was thanks to a great friend, John Moore,
when I found that out, then I was just like, okay, no, no, no, no, no, no, we don't want this. We
don't want particular breeds to be banned just because some individual dogs are aggressive.
And that was when the sustained effort started. And what do you say to vegans who want to do more,
but are on the fence or they don't really know how to engage, how to contribute? What would be
your message to those people, to those listeners? Well, I think that everyone can contribute.
You mentioned yourself that you're an introvert, but you're contributing in a way that you can,
but you're contributing in a way that you can and that is comfortable to you. There are millions of
examples of how people can get involved or get more involved if they want to. Certainly they can
listen in to our webinars. We do a free webinar bimonthly. In October, you mentioned the webinar
about vegan discrimination and how vegans are fighting back, but we deep dive different
intersections of animal rights in the law about every two months. And I mentioned that because
when vegans become aware of the wide variety of animal rights campaigns that are out there,
then they can really hook into something that is particularly important to them. So that's what I
would say, keep exposing yourself to the wide variety of work that's happening and make sure
that the work suits your temperament and feeds your passion. Whether that's a passion for fish
or for pit bulls or for laboratory animals or circus animals, there is space for you and you
will be welcome. Keep listening to the podcast. Keep listening to this podcast. Yes. Okay. So
this is a great segue for talking about the webinar. The webinar is at the intersection
of two of your passions for fighting discrimination and fighting for animal rights. Now,
when was the first time you heard about vegans being discriminated against?
Okay. Well, I read, oh, sorry, go ahead. Yes. And what was your reaction?
Well, I read Jory Kasimichana's success story in 2020. I think it was January. I think I might
have read about it the previous month. He was in front of the tribunal and it was amazing that he
won. And I was elated that he won, but subsequently I discovered that there were some cases in America
where the vegans were not so fortunate, like Jerry Friedman's case against Kaiser Permanente.
And I also found out that there were cases that were pending. For example, Astrid's case,
Astrid Prevost's case in France and Martinez's case in Switzerland. And of course, there's Adam
Knopf's case in Canada. So these cases are in different stages. And as a discrimination attorney,
it kind of makes sense because whenever there is a social justice movement, there's going to be
pushback. And now as vegans and vegetarians are coming to be 2%, 3% of the population in some
countries, they're 5% of the population, there is an inevitable pushback. And some of that pushback
is just out of ignorance, fear, and of strangeness. Some of that pushback might be quite deliberate
by the overwhelmingly wealthy dairy industry and meat industry who are watching
milk alternatives inch up to 7%, 8%, and 9% in various supermarkets. And so there are all of these
sort of cases throughout Europe about whether or not you can use the name or label milk, whether or
not you can use the label butter. Who has exclusive rights to these nouns in the English language?
And those are the kinds of arguments that are being heard on an industrial level, right? Where
you have an industrial giant on the one hand fighting for a monopoly on a particular word.
Simultaneously, you have individual discrimination cases that are moving forward because vegans are
being discriminated against at work, at school, in divorce proceedings, and in the
court proceedings in detention. Well, let's give some concrete examples to listeners.
Sure. Well, all right, I'll start sort of sequentially with the US and Jerry Friedman's
case. So Jerry Friedman was at the time a computer, he was a computer repair person for Kaiser
Permanente, which is a very large hospital chain, and he was working for a pharmaceutical company
repairing their computers, and they were very happy with his work, and they offered him a
full-time permanent position, which he was very happy to accept, or as happy as a vegan in a
pharmaceutical company could be. But he did accept the position, and then they told him that he must
be vaccinated and take the MMR vaccine. And Jerry said, you know, this vaccine is cultured from
chicken embryos, and I don't feel comfortable taking it. Perhaps we can keep me in the
computer repair shop away from anyone who might be a patient and, you know, accommodate me that way.
And they said no, and they rescinded the job offer, the full-time job offer, and they stopped
using his services as a contractor. So they backpedaled quite a bit, and he was horrified,
horrified, and he took them to task on it. Jordi Casamidiana's case, about 20 years later,
18 years later, came about because he was working for League Against Cruel Sports,
and as an ethical vegan, he was curious as to where his pension fund was going. So
pension fund, investing in a pension fund became mandatory, I think, in 2015 in the UK.
So everyone at LACS had a pension fund, and he was just curious as to what he was investing in.
He found out, much to his horror, that he was investing in tobacco, oil, and big pharma that
tested on animals. So he raised this with his managers. They appeared equally horrified.
They told him they would change the pension fund, but in fact they didn't, and despite nudging them
for over a year, they didn't. And in the course of that year, he begged them to at least stop
investing his own money so that it wasn't like his own pension was contributing to animal testing.
It turns out they didn't even do that. So he found a mechanism to change his own pension fund to
something more ethical, and he changed his own pension fund, his own monetary stream,
to something more ethical, and he told his colleagues at LACS about it, and LACS fired him.
Astrid Prevost is an aspiring dietitian in France. To get her dietitian's license,
there was a mandatory cooking class. I don't know why there was a mandatory cooking class,
but there was. They insisted that she use animal ingredients. She requested
to be able to substitute the animal ingredients with vegan alternatives. She even got a doctor's
note. They said no, and that she would risk failing the cooking class and thereby not being
able to pursue her dietitian's degree unless she used animal products. So there are other kinds of
cases as well. There are cases in detention or in hospitals where a person in detention is not
getting vegan food despite the fact that they are quite clear about what it is they eat.
We're hoping that Representative Congressman Ro Khanna opens the webinar. We're waiting for
his staff to give us the green light and we're hoping that they will be able to give us the
green light. Congressman Khanna is very involved in making sure that American servicemen and women
have plant-based and vegan options in the military.
And the congressman of which state?
California.
So there are many, many different examples where
vegans are. I'll give you a sort of divorce example. Imagine if you will, you have two people
divorcing. One is not vegan. One is vegan. The not vegan claims that the vegan is jeopardizing
the health of their child and should therefore be the parent that gets custody.
Now in some places they may or may not be laughed at because we know that it's entirely possible
to have a child that's on a vegan diet and have that child be extremely healthy. But in some
places that's quite a strong argument. And there are some places in the world where to be
is not a good argument. And so we're hoping that there will be a way to make sure that
where to be vegan is to be openly vegan is to be scared of retaliation where vegans are called
terrorists. There's a Italian politician who wants vegan parents to go to jail. Go to jail.
Vegan parents to go to jail because they're jeopardizing the health of their child.
So depending on where you are in the world, your discrimination is going to be different
and more or less severe. When I hear about those cases, my blood starts to boil. It's just the
feeling of injustice is so great. And I want to get back to the case of Jerry and also the case of
and also the case of Jordi, who are kind of like the flagships of this whole fighting back against
discrimination because they decided to sue their employers that decided to seek justice. So what
happened in both their cases? Well, both of these cases, as you rightly point out, are in the
employment context. And in Jerry's case, he argued that his veganism, his ethical veganism,
should be protected the way any secular but deeply held belief system should be protected.
And the American courts that tend to recognize monotheistic religions where there is a central
deity, they were uncomfortable in recognizing ethical veganism as a religion, if you will,
quotes around that word religion. The reason was because they indicated that there wasn't an
other worldly element. There didn't seem to be religious holidays. There didn't seem to be any
kind of priesthood or clergy as if those things are all necessary indicators of a deeply held
philosophy. And of course, they're not. And examples of religions that are recognized in law,
but do not have a central invisible patriarch are Confucianism and Buddhism. Both of those are
recognized religions in the law. You can't discriminate against someone for being Buddhist.
And if you can't, and since you can't, why can you discriminate against someone who is an ethical
vegan? There's a case from 1965 called US versus Seeger. In that case, you had conscientious
objectors to the Vietnam War. Some of those men were, there were three, were atheists.
So there was no other worldly component. There was no clergy and there were no religious holidays.
And yet Supreme Court of the United States said, no, these people are deeply convinced
that war is an evil. Despite being atheists, what's at issue is their conviction.
And the military had to accommodate them in non-combat situations, which is the accommodation
that they, that they had requested. And if I think about the case of Jerry, it reminds me of
Jehovah's Witnesses who refuse to receive blood, I think, if I'm right, but this is, this should be
considered like, we should be considered like the Jehovah's Witnesses because they're making a
judgment on our beliefs. That's the thing they're saying, okay, this is a judgment on our beliefs.
This is not valid. This is not comparable to other beliefs when they should be making a judgment about
are we truly holding on those beliefs? Do we truly, do we have convictions in those principles?
I don't know if you also have, you know, noticed that nuance or maybe I'm not sure, but I think
that nuance or maybe I'm wrong in my observation. No, no, you're absolutely right. And fortunately
in Great Britain, that was the major question. You know, the question was how deeply did Jordy
believe in ethical veganism? And he submitted over a thousand pages, I think, of evidence and
testimony that described his ethical veganism straight down to being careful about taking
public transportation because it would kill insects along the way, not eating figs because
there's a relationship between figs and wasps, I believe. Certainly diet, but well beyond diet.
Leather of fur products, obviously down. Jordy's position is one of very deep and thoughtful
concern about every living creature. And fortunately he was able to document that concern
and to sway the tribunal in 2020. His lawyer at the time was Peter Daly.
So together they, or I should say his solicitor at the time was Peter Daly. They were successful
in a way that we in America were not or have yet to be successful.
Now this is America and you have two guests that do not come from America, Adam Knopf
and Astrid Prevot. Now this podcast will have Astrid on as a guest next week. But in the case
of Adam, he's Canadian. So I shared that in common with him. Can you talk about his story,
what he had to face in more details maybe?
Well, unfortunately I'm rather gagged at the moment. Adam has decided that given the
sensitivity, because mind you, he had his hearing with Wade Pozianka several Tuesdays ago and they
are awaiting a decision. So Adam has carefully decided not to participate in the webinar and
instead we have a gentleman from Switzerland whose name or pseudonym is Matthias and he will be
participating in Adam's stead. His case is related to an animal rights activist who was detained,
who was wiretapped illegally, who ended up in detention before he was convicted and that
detention lasted for 11 months, during most of which he ate bread and very few other things
because his veganism was not recognized despite multiple appeals to the prison management system.
He is being represented and his case is in Switzerland and potentially will move up to the
European Court of Justice because it is such a horrible transgression of human rights.
And I'm planning on talking with Astrid about his case because I think he's an acquaintance of...
Okay, yeah and about Adam, it's interesting because if it was not for you Tamara,
I would not have known about these different cases, these different instances of discrimination
against vegans. Why is it the case that it's not more popular even among vegan circles and
then why is it important to talk about this? Okay, well, litigation... My experience when I look at
my clients who have gone through the litigation process, it's a challenging process. It's...
Even if you're completely righteous in your claim,
it's just so psychologically difficult to put that in public.
And I think that many people feel awkward about complaining. Many people
just wish the problem would go away. Many people will suffer and I deal and I have for a long time
with women who have experienced sexual harassment. Many women are just so embarrassed
that they don't want to talk about this, much less go to human resources and then
point fingers and take notes of various instances, dates and times and specifics.
They don't want to tell their boyfriend or husband because they may be concerned that
the men who love them will step in and become agitated and that it will make a bad situation worse.
Many, many vegans are trying to find alternative means of getting what they want, including
declaring themselves to be religions that they're not. Like, I'm a vegan, I'm a vegan,
like, I'm Buddhist, please accommodate my child and don't give them milk
in the nursery school or at school. Or, I'm Buddhist, my child shouldn't have to dissect a frog.
So I've heard stories of vegans doing all kinds of contortions just so that they would fit in
and make as few waves as possible. And that's why it was very, very hard to find
panelists for October 17th's webinar. And that's why the panelists who are coming forward
are exceptionally brave and really deserve to be commended because they're the ones that are
opening the doors for others. They're the ones that are taking the heat for others. Astrid is
not alone in her fight. There are silent people in Poland and Estonia, Lithuania, Belarus, Russia,
Croatia, who in hearing her story, if they don't find the courage to equally step up, then at least
they will have the sense that they are not alone. There are hundreds of people who feel like they are
alone and hated and they're afraid. There are vegans who have won their court cases, but refuse to
speak out, refuse to be named, insist on remaining anonymous and applaud what we're doing, but cannot
raise their voice in their communities. We want to make more and more people vegan. And that way,
we want to advance the cause of animal rights and stop the exploitation of animals. Now, how can we
reach our goal if being vegan is so hard? You're punished for being vegan in society.
And so yeah, it is a big detriment to our fight for animal rights.
It's definitely a second wave, meaning the first wave is getting people to be vegan,
but there has to be some backup and some support once that happens. You can't just get people to
transition and then, whoop, great, gone, because it's an ongoing struggle. And I have been reaching
out to vegan personalities and asking them what they think about this and can they support this
webinar and can they promote this webinar? Can they participate in this webinar from the audience?
Because it's lovely that they've helped hundreds, if not thousands of people transition.
But this is what some of those people are experiencing having transitioned. What do you
do now? You abandoned them. No, you have to step forward. I always hear about people transitioning
to a vegan diet, but that is not the key data here. What is the key data is how many people
stay vegan after transitioning to veganism. And the studies we have show that not that many people,
in fact, the vast majority, leave the lifestyle. And I was talking to vegan conservatives in one
of my past episodes and they were talking about how if there was more social support around
being vegan, they would have seen more conservatives become vegan. That is the
number one thing that stops a lot of conservatives who accept the vegan arguments to become vegan.
And I think it applies to other people from other parts of the political spectrum. But
yeah, it is. I don't know. Do you want to add something about this?
Yes, Earthling Ed, if you're listening to this podcast, you have to reach out and you have to
help these people after they've transitioned. My email is Tamara underscore bettick at yahoo.com.
Let me know. The fight doesn't stop. The fight does not stop. The more vegans,
the more vegan discrimination. Yeah, very true. Very true. And the trauma,
because part of me wants to talk with some of those ex vegans and understand why they decided
to leave the lifestyle. Now, I don't know if it is my place to do so. Maybe not. But maybe someone,
you know, maybe a listener wants to take that task into their hands. Because we need to understand
what is happening and we need to understand what kind of trauma, what kind of bad experiences
those vegans went through that made them leave the lifestyle and the movement for animal rights.
Right. Right. Yeah. And I think that the rubber really hits the road with diet.
Ethical veganism is far, far broader than just diet. But I think that the most common, that the
nexus and the nucleus of that conflict really with one's family, with one's friends, with one's,
with the crumbling social circle, with the inability to fit in, with having to find new friends,
with having arguments with your significant other, all that kind of revolves around what's on your
plate. Yes. But you know, the detail that truly triggers me personally, it's the fact that many
of those ex vegans don't become vegetarian after a few months or a few years of being vegan. It's
not like they're leaving veganism to become vegetarian. They're leaving everything behind.
Right. And you know, when you asked me earlier, like, what was my vegan journey? And I said,
well, it's kind of scattered. I stopped eating meat. I mean, I always hated milk. So I had my
coffee black, sometimes with sugar, sometimes without. But when I stopped eating meat, I was
unaware of the term vegetarian. So when people would say, oh, you want to have a hamburger? I'd
be like, no, I'm boycotting meat. So in my head, the word was always boycotting meat, boycotting
the meat industry. So I didn't, I didn't, I was unaware of the words vegetarian. I certainly was
unaware of the word vegan. I just knew on the one hand, what I hated and did not want to put it,
you know, did not want to drink or have anything to do with. And I also understood that what was
happening behind slaughterhouse doors was something that I was not going to invest a penny in. And I
was boycotting them for as long as I needed to boycott. I mean, there was never going to be a
time that I was going to say, okay, yeah, this is fine. No, it's not all fine. It's not fine.
It's never going to be fine. It's never going to be fine. I don't need a label. I don't need to
call myself anything. It's never going to be fine.
Yes. And yeah, you know, going back to my point, it might be hard to be vegan in terms of dieting,
but it is much, much, much easier to be vegetarian. So why do we not have, you know, those
ex vegans becoming just vegetarian or just, you know, saying I'm, I'm going to reduce
considerably my intake of meat, something like that. Anyway, it is, you know, doing this podcast,
you realize how much work still has to be done in this field. So, yes. So what is your goal with
this webinar? We talked about raising awareness. So did you have other goals? Well, for starters,
one of the things that concerns me is that we don't, my opinion is that we don't really have
a umbrella animal rights movement. We have a million and one campaigns. We have a campaign
to end this, a campaign for this purpose. We care about various different things, and then we sort
of silo ourselves into these different areas. And one of the reasons that the webinars keep
changing their subject matter so drastically, for example, the last webinar was on ventilation
shutdown in America's farms. The next webinar might be about, you know, how do we get rid of
rhinoceros horn? These are all very interconnected issues. And if we want to build a movement,
we really need to think globally, and we need to think about the various campaigns and how to
bring people together. So the overarching issue of the entire webinar series, the reason that we do
these webinars at all is to allow people to see both the diversity and to encourage people to
come together under one umbrella. And similarly, the people that will be speaking on October 17th,
they don't necessarily know each other. Jerry and Jordi just met at a podcast that I organized
with Corinne Hardglass. But there's a growing family of vegan, ethical vegan litigants.
I want those people to meet each other, have each other's email addresses, talk about how to pay
their lawyers, talk about crowdfunding strategies, talk about just talk, they need to connect with
each other. And other people need to see them connect. Vegans who are still in the shadows.
Yeah. And also, you know, the industry we're going against is well organized, it is global,
it is well funded. And they are aware of what animal rights activists are doing. And they're
doing their best to counter attack our advocacy work. And to shut us down. Yeah. And to take down
our leadership. For example, right now, the Sonoma trial with DXC, Wayne Shen wasn't even part
of the particular rescue that they're prosecuting him for. Why are they prosecuting a man who wasn't
on the scene? Because he's a leader. And because if they take him down, and Priya, and other leaders
of the DXC movement. And by the way, Wayne stepped away from DXC over a year ago. So he's doing
something else now it's called Simple Heart. And they're prosecuting him, because they want to tear
down a movement, just like they did with the Stop Huntington animal cruelty. I mean, once we become
large enough, and vocal enough, there's an enormous organized opposition against us.
And by the way, the goal is not so much, you know, to destroy that industry, but to really
make it our own in a way. And by that, I mean, you know, one of my favorite mock cheese brand
is Silk. I love them. Their mozzarella, mozzarella cheese is just amazing. For me,
mozzarella cheese is just amazing. Forget about Daya. And Silk is owned by, I think, I think they're
called Danone, or, but they're this big dairy industry company. And I'm glad, I'm glad that
the animal industry is turning into something more plant based, oriented, and vegan friendly.
Why not let's convert them to our cause. So it doesn't have to be, you know, antagonistic.
It's more of like a show of force and an influencing campaign. Do you agree with that?
I think it's all about money. And I think that we have a system called capitalism that makes it all
about money. So the people who are going to be successful in a system called capitalism are the
people that make it all about money. There are ways to oppose what it is that they are doing.
And those ways are fairly secondary and tertiary, like protesting outside,
protesting outside the slaughterhouse, like voting for politicians who are more sympathetic to animal
rights. But ultimately what's happening behind the slaughterhouse doors is about money. And if you
could make it more expensive for them to continue as is, then to transition, they will continue as
is. For example, in this, again, this, this Sonoma trial, they have an army of attorneys
prosecuting these DXE rescuers, an army. Each of those attorneys is charging several hundred dollars
an hour, some possibly 500, some possibly 700, some possibly a thousand dollars an hour.
It's cheaper for these particular people to pay those attorneys than it is for them to change
their way of doing business. And once it becomes clear that their way of doing business is not
supported by their shareholders, then they will change. So long as they are making money and so
long as they are distributing that money and dividends, and so long as shareholders are silent
about where their money is coming from and the exploitation that undergirds that money, they will
continue on. It's just like a criminal enterprise. A criminal syndicate will trade drugs, illegal arms,
tigers, sex workers, children. The commodity is just the commodity, but there's a system of
trading these items because there's a huge black market demand for all of them, whether you're a
tiger cub or a surface to air rocket. I agree. I agree. But I worry that it's going to transform
into, you know, the tobacco industry situation where they still exist, which is crazy. After all
that advocacy, after all the health studies out there, we still let them market their product,
put it on the shelves and do their dirty work. Well, let's learn by what they did. I mean,
look at what they did and how that's affecting the argument around climate change. What tobacco did
in the 60s and 70s is they decided that they were going to market doubt, doubt in the medical
studies, doubt that tobacco and its additives increased the rates of cancer. There's a famous
memo about the American tobacco industry deciding that the tobacco industry is going to market
their product, their product, their product, their product. And they did. And they did. And
they got alternative science. And climate change is using that same blueprint. And, you know,
recently I found out that the tobacco industry, one of their headquarters here in Montreal,
for their Canadian business. And I found out that they were looking for someone in the
fundraising world. And I'm a professional fundraiser. And it was interesting because
you're looking for someone to distribute grants to small nonprofits across Quebec and Canada.
And also for that person to communicate what they're doing, you know, their good work to
their employees. So, you know, they have that inner communication going on, which makes competition
to the messaging outside. So the employees are actually in an echo chamber. They're creating an
echo chamber around their employees, talking about tobacco as something good, look at all the great
stuff, the positive impact we're making in the community and things like that. And I guess for
an employee who already feels, you know, a bit maybe marginalized for being part of this industry
that is recognized universally as being evil, prefers to believe the lies that their employers
are telling, then confront the truth that is out there. And yeah, it goes back to something I said
in the past episode. I want to see vegan activists doing some work targeting employees of
slaughterhouses and tizen and the big, I'm not talking about the poor immigrant employees
working as meat bankers. I'm talking about the executives, you know, the people in the offices,
who we need to reach them to break that echo chamber they're in and show, to demonstrate why
we're right and they're wrong in their thinking. So yeah.
I absolutely agree with you. And, you know, it reminds me very much about who gets caught
and who gets the grunt work. We had a webinar on elephant ivory. And for the elephant ivory webinar,
we invited prosecutors from six different East African countries to come to the webinar and to
talk about their prosecutorial styles and their prosecutorial methods. And of course, there was a
lot of overlap between Tanzania and Malawi, South Africa, Uganda, Kenya. There was a lot of overlap
because same problem, same mechanisms. However, one of the shared complaints of all of these
prosecutors was that they were constantly finding and sentencing and convicting their own people
who were carrying a piece of luggage, not knowing what was in it from point A to point B on their
bicycle. And they were earning five bucks or some amount of money that was considerable to
a bicycle runner in Uganda. And they had no idea that there was a tusk in there. They just knew
that they had to take this from point A to point B on their bicycle. That was the person who was
getting caught. That was the person who was getting sentenced to six months, for example.
The middle level people and certainly the people who were higher level traders,
you never got them. Mostly because they're offshore. They're not even in Africa. They're in Asia.
You can't reach them. So you're prosecuting your own people. You're taking fathers from their kids.
You're sentencing them to jail time and you're never really getting the heads of these syndicates.
I'm thinking now about the Sackler's family. I think that's their name. There was a documentary
on that medication. I forget the name. Oxycontin?
Oxycontin, yes. And the addictions that it created, how it destroyed so many families across
North America in the US, of course. And now their name, the Sackler's family, is synonymous with
that, with the harm they have made on this world. And I think that's the reason why they're
on this world. And I want to know who are the big families behind the animal industry who are
profiting from the exploitation of animals who have blood money. I mean, it's the definition
of blood money. You're profiting from the death of sentient beings. So yeah, why don't we know
their names? Well, we do in the case of the animal industry. For example, you had Crystal Heath.
You interviewed Crystal and she will be the first to tell you that the very people who are
extracting large figures from animal exploitation are investing a fraction of their money
in things like conferences for veterinarians, in things like laboratories at vet schools.
So you'll walk into a laboratory as a vet student and you'll see on the wall a plaque
that this particular laboratory was paid for by Cargill or was paid for by XYZ laboratory.
Yes. Charles River, right? And these are the folks who are paying for large conference halls
where veterinarians can sort of get together and continue to support either explicitly or be
complicit with some hideous forms of animal cruelty like ventilation shutdown in the US.
Yeah, I think it should turn into a Sackler's family situation and hopefully maybe there will
be a documentary produced around those people. So Tamara, before we end this conversation,
I would like to ask you, did you have anything more to add?
No, I think you were very, very thorough.
But it was lovely chatting with you and I really appreciate your time today and your patience with
my early morning escape artist. I'm referring now to my cat who made it his business to, you know,
ruin my Wednesday morning. But fortunately, he's now satiated and napping, continuing to
somewhere as cats will. Well, that's life for you. I mean, you should meet my cat. She's a demon. I
mean, she's old and all and I love her. But oh my gosh, you need lots of patience with her. And
her name is Misha. Misha. Excellent. Yeah.
Yeah, she's a real princess. So Tamara, it was a pleasure. Thank you so much for having accepted
my invitation and for all of your good work. And yeah, thank you.
Thank you, Ryan. Thanks for having me today. Bye now.
Thank you, everyone for listening. Let me read you a little bit about your life.
Let me remind you that the webinar will be happening on October 17th.
There is a link in the description for registration and more details.
Thank you to the National Lawyers Guild for hosting the event.
As always, please tell your friends about the show and why you love it so much.
Let's inspire more people to take action.
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And finally, you can always reach out to me on Instagram at veganreportpodcast.
Thank you again for listening, take care and see you next Tuesday for an exclusive interview
with the Brave Astrid.