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 journalism and animal rights.
So many stories related to animal rights just fly way below the radar.
And with this podcast, I always try my best to bring up stories that deserve your attention,
but don't get much cover.
But there are real reporters and not humble podcasters like me who have made animal rights
front and center of their journalism.
And our guest today is one of those people.
Marina Baloknikova is an award-winning journalist who covers factory farming
and the criminalization of activists who fight it.
She works as an editor for Vogue's Future Perfect section,
where she covers the world's big moral and technological problems.
In the past, she has written for The Guardian, The New York Times, The Intercept,
and lots of other places you will find in the description below,
a link to her website, where all of her great reporting is accessible.
Welcome to the podcast, Marina.
Thank you so much for being here.
Thank you.
Yeah, I'm so glad to be here.
So, Marina, I first heard from you, of you from Dr. Heath.
I interviewed her on episode 12 of the podcast.
Basically, she's a veterinarian who spoke up about animal abuse and got this huge backlash.
And she was basically cancelled.
And you wrote about her in an article called
The Bithur Civil War Dividing American Veterinarians Back in January.
So, as a nice breaker question, I was wondering if you could maybe reflect back on that article
and maybe share with us some details that did not make the final cut.
Yeah, thank you for calling out that story.
That was one of my favorite stories I worked on.
And I think it's so important.
It was about how the veterinary profession and the institutions of veterinary medicine,
the American Veterinary Medical Association, is the biggest one,
are basically structurally and systematically aligned with factory farming
and the interests of the meat industry.
It came out of, in early 2020, I was doing a lot of reporting on
the rise of about the 2022 bird flu, which resulted in the mass extermination of
nearly 60 million chickens and turkeys over the course of about a year.
And I wrote about what was happening to these animals that had to be mass killed
whenever there was a bird flu outbreak detected at a factory farm.
And I wrote a lot about the rise of a method called ventilation shutdown.
You've probably heard about it if you know crystal and it's been very topical in the animal movement.
The last couple of years, the ventilation shutdown basically means mass exterminating
animals through heat stroke.
So they literally, the factory farms literally rent industrial heaters and pump in heat.
Sometimes steam is used in the pork industry, like pump in heat to the sheds to quickly
mass kill animals.
So you can compare it to a dog dying in a hot car.
It's literally death by heat stroke.
And this takes hours for animals to die from this in the poultry industry.
So it's like, in case it's not obvious, it's basically the most inhumane and the most excruciating way
to call animals, despite the euphemism that you sometimes hear the industry using calling
this a kind of euthanasia.
So I did a lot of writing and reporting on that and through that I picked up on how important
the veterinary profession was in validating and providing a justification and basically
like a scientific and medical and moral cover for it.
And it made me, like the more and more I learned, I was like, I thought this is really interesting
and I think would be surprising to a general audience.
We associate veterinarians with our cats and dogs.
I feel like that's such an evocative association in people's minds.
And yet the veterinary profession is actually very closely connected to the institutions
that are responsible for animal torture on a massive scale.
I was just so fascinated by that and the political and intellectual history of veterinary medicine,
how it came to be that way.
And so, yeah, and I decided to turn it into a story.
I was actually, so I was, I started working at Vox last November.
Before that I had been freelancing and I pitched the story around to, so back when I was a
freelancer, I pitched the story idea to so many outlets.
I had a spreadsheet, you know, tracking everywhere where I was sending a pitch.
And this pitch had gone out to literally 17 different places and I just couldn't get it
picked up but I was so baffled because I think it's so interesting, so important,
there's so much there.
It's like, it's, you know, obviously it's such a real story.
And, you know, it was discouraging and then, you know, I started my job at Vox in my section.
We write a lot about factory farming and animal rights.
And so it was, you know, it was a no-brainer for this veterinarian story to fit there.
So I ended up writing it, you know, for Vox.
It was published this past January of 2023 and it did like, you know, audience, traffic-wise.
It did like very well because, you know, like, you know, the headline, the Civil War,
dividing veterinarians.
I think people want to read about that, you know, even if they don't have a special interest
in factory farming, I think that that that subject is so intriguing.
Yeah, so I'm really happy I did it and I want to continue reporting on the veterinary profession
for sure.
In terms of stuff that didn't make the final cut, that's a good question.
It's a little bit like, since this was kind of a while ago, it's a little hard to remember.
But I think that I wish, like, if I were doing it again, I think I would emphasize more just how
influential the American Veterinary Medical Association is in the halls of power,
you know, in influencing federal and state policy on how animals are allowed to be treated.
You know, AVMA, if you do like public records requests,
if you're, you know, at the USDA, you, you know, like, quickly pick up on how AVMA officials and
also officials from other veterinary organizations like the American Association of Swine Veterinarians,
that's basically pork industry veterinarians, they are in regular, you know, close contact with USDA
officials who do rulemaking on animal, you know, animal disease and animal welfare.
You know, and I think that, like, I did talk about that in the story, but I, you know, I could have,
I definitely could have gone into more depth on it and emphasized it more, like how
close these connections are between politicians and the veterinary profession and,
you know, and the industry, like the National Court, which is, you know, which is a quasi-federal
organization. I want to ask you about why exactly so many media outlets rejected your pitch and why,
in general, the topic of animal rights is not a popular one, is not very well represented in
the media landscape? Yeah, with, but that's only being rejected. I was, like, I was surprised by it.
I think it was probably because, you know, factory farming is already a niche subject. And then,
when you're going, like, even, like a layer deeper into that, into it, like, you know, like, talking
about messy, like, intra-veterinary profession, politics, I think that editors might be like,
what, like, what is this about? Is this super obscure? Who, who's going to care about this?
Even though I thought that I was present, you know, I thought that I made it, like, I thought I was
clear about why it's actually important and, you know, it rises to the level of being a big story
that people will be interested in. I guess I, you know, I wasn't convincing to those 17 editors.
I, yeah, I think it might seem obscure and niche and, you know, editors are really busy. They, like,
I'm an editor now and I'm absolutely flooded with freelance pitches. I think that, you know, editors
are busy. They want to be, like, you know, assigning stuff that they're, you know, confident will do,
do well and get readers. And that's really, like, relevant to big, you know, national conversations.
And sometimes, you know, and sometimes I think that they can be afraid to pick up stories that might
be off the beaten path, even though that's exactly what you should be doing, you know, as an editor,
like, finding the big stories that, you know, no one has uncovered yet. Yeah, and with, you know,
factory farming and animal rights in general also is, is, is way under covered. And when I was
freelancing, I was, like, focusing on the places that I knew were interested in covering it, but many
more are not. And I think that, you know, I think it's for the same reason that society at large is
carnest and doesn't want to think about, you know, what goes into, you know, what goes into making food,
you know, animal derived foods. Yeah, and they also might, and a part of that, as a part of that,
I think they also may not realize that there's actually a lot of reader interest in this subject, you
know, a lot of like, ad box, a lot of our factory farming stuff does really well, certainly when I say
really does well, I mean, in terms of like traffic, you know, it does not necessarily have, you know, draw
less interest than in any, than any other beat, because there's a really, there's a really dedicated niche audience.
You know, and they're often also people from outside the niche audience who might be, you know, peripherally aware
of factory farming, and, you know, they stumble on a story and are horrified and are like, this is the thing that,
you know, I'm not, I'm just going to, I'm no longer eating poultry that happened to me a lot with a story I did
on ventilation shutdown. Yeah, I wish that I always say this, I really wish outlets and editors understood that there's
there's a lot of interest in this beat and they should all be, they should all have at least one reporter on it, you
know, like the big, big outlets have like reporters whose entire job it is to cover like Google and Apple, you know,
and so, you know, of course that we should like, you know, there should be at least one factory farming reporter at, at a big newsroom.
I agree in that story about veterinarians. When you think about it, there's vets are everywhere, even in the smallest of towns.
I mean, just from that point of view, I would think that this is an interesting story. This is a relevant story for, for people
because who never had an interaction with the vet. But yeah, yeah, totally.
But I want to maybe take a few step backs and ask you about your vegan journey, which is the source of this passion for factory farming, for animal rights,
and for writing about all of this. So how did your vegan journey start?
Yeah, I was so I was pretty young. When it started, I think I was maybe, I think I was fifth grade, which would have been, which I would have been 10, maybe I was 11, and I would have been in sixth.
I decided I wanted to become vegetarian. That was before I even knew anything about factory farming. I just, and you know, how contemporary animals, agriculture works.
I just decided that, you know, I like animals and I decided kind of on a philosophical level that if we don't have to eat them to survive that it's, it's wrong to do that.
It was only later that I read books and, you know, I watched all of the factory farm documentaries like I watched earthlings in my probably in my early teens, and and really became exposed to the like, you know, the hard reality.
And, you know, and decided to go that I wanted to be go vegan in high school.
I feel like most of my life has been a, you know, a journey of trying to, you know, trying to understand why like, why I'm in such a small minority for being, you know, obsessed with this and being so passionate about it and like, you know, trying to, to draw other
people's attention to it. Yeah, and it wasn't, you know, I've been working in journalism post college for for over nine years. And it actually wasn't until, you know, for most of my career in in this industry, I really didn't focus on animals or factory farming
at all. I think I thought that it would be too traumatizing and I would just be miserable if it was if I had to think about it all day as part of my job. So I avoided it for a while.
You know, and then it really wasn't until like, a few years ago that I stumbled on like a story I really wanted to do. And as a result of that, I realized like, obviously this has to be my beat. And it's actually like, it hasn't been as traumatizing and terrible on a daily
level as I feared. You know, I there is like horrible stuff out there that it definitely still affects me but I think that it, it's actually less, less hard to, you know, to engage with it like in a creative and productive way than to, you know, then to like try to push it out of my mind, or
like, you know, and I've also probably become desensitized in some ways.
Well, I want to ask you a bit of a strange question because that's a question that is always in my mind, because of this podcast.
I think that there is some, there are some innate qualities that make someone want to choose a vegan lifestyle. I believe that we're born with different levels of empathy, but I always hear this story again and again of people being children and being naturally attracted to not eating meat, avoiding animal
and just thinking about animals in compassionate terms. So I was wondering, do you think that there is something like you're distant to be a vegan or not about our journeys?
I don't know. I mean, I think that, I think there are definitely some, some characteristics that, you know, seem like they're innate that make people amenable to, you know, to this, right? Like, I think that I was, I wasn't still am like not afraid of being kind of counter cultural or, you know, or, you know, or, you know, or different or odd or like being even like a little like
confrontational that social norms that I think are ridiculous. When I was that age, you know, a preteen becoming an interested, becoming interested in lots of things in the world. You know, it wasn't just vegetarianism, but, you know, lots of things, like, you know, around that time.
I remember, I think, like, you know, same sex marriage was a big political issue in the US. It was long before, you know, the Supreme Court declared it legal across the country. And I was like, I became really, you know, radicalized around that I was like, it's outrageous that gay people can't get married and I was really,
I went to school in a, you know, a very observant, you know, traditional Jewish community, it wasn't Orthodox Jewish school. And so I was definitely like, I was the weirdo when having all of those views and, you know, and it's just kind of how I always was.
And I think, I empathy, you know, you mentioned empathy, and I think that this is something I feel like I've been thinking about lately is I think that
yeah, I think that it's hard for, I feel like many, if not many people I feel like are almost even wired to kind of to like to be unable or to even like struggle to understand ethical ideas if they are, you know, if they're if they're inconsistent with
with what we with what we do with, you know, with the rules of our society, or, you know, our struggle to empathize when doing that, you know, struggle to empathize with others, when doing that would mean like really like going against societal norms.
You know, I think like my, you know, I have, I have family members who, you know, like older members of my family who, you know, love animals on a day on a daily level, they love like their cats and dogs but like struggle to understand what veganism like why what the point of
veganism even is like, and, you know, why someone would even choose to do that out of, you know, an ethical obligation to animals I think they I think I think that they literally don't understand it.
And that is that's it that's hard for me to understand, you know, but I think that that's actually more the norm that people like don't. I think people are wired to like not understand and just kind of, you know, knee jerk reject ethical ideas that are, you know, at odd that would make them like a weirdo if in society if they like, you know, if they really considered the implications.
And it's interesting because I always hear people talk about how it is important to gain people's hearts for our cause, and to have, you know, if I think about earthling ed, I think his name is, all he does is convince people of going vegan.
But for me, the true important question is how many stay vegan. And I think there are studies out there showing that the vast majority of people abandoned the vegan lifestyle after a few years.
And I think that the fact that it is not normalized, and that you lose friends invitation to restaurants or barbecues and things like that and you become kind of going, you go against the grain basically that creates a mental weight.
And you just can't sustain becoming vegan for social reason. I think it's a big part of that. And I talked with some people who label themselves as a vegan conservatives.
And they mentioned how being vegan is difficult for a lot of conservatives, although they accept the vegan argument, because it is not part of their, the culture of their community.
So, do you think there should be more work on, because I don't know what we should do about it? Have you ever thought about this?
Yeah, I totally agree that I know I think the fact that this is our, this has to do with our food, you know, is a really big part of it. You know, food is so like intimate, it connects with our, you know, memories of our childhood and, you know, like our social interactions that we have in with people every day.
And, you know, when you're like eating with your friends and family, you don't want to be like thinking about horrible stuff and making, you know, and, and making your loved ones feel like you're pressuring them to think about horrible stuff or judging them, you know what I mean.
I think, I think that's a big part of it.
Yeah, and in terms of, like, I have something that has stuck with me is, you know, at like Ezra Klein and the Ezra Klein show, he and his, and his wife are vegan and he has, he's talked on his show about how his, his wife influenced him to become interested in veganism and animal rights.
And he talked about how people kind of reason, we, you know, we do moral reasoning socially, you know, if you know a lot of, if you, if you, if it's like, you know, if you know a lot of people who, who are vegan, it just kind of, it's almost like contagious, you know, it can't, it can't not rub off on you and, you know, conversely, if you're like, you know, if a part of you feels like, you know,
there's, there's, there's, if a party is like, yeah, there's probably something very wrong with this food system, but it's so, you know, there's a hostility, you know, there's a taboo on thinking, you know, thinking in that direction among everyone, you know, I think it's,
you know, I think it's like everything is, everything is militating against, you know, like someone thinking those thoughts.
Yeah, like, you know, what do we do about that?
I'm not sure.
You know, I wish I had, wouldn't it be great if, if I had the answers?
Part of me doesn't like questions like those because I don't know the answer and who likes a question that is an answerable, but another part of me thinks this is why I'm doing this podcast, maybe this is something listeners can think about and maybe this is their contribution to the animal rights movement.
So another of your passion is writing, and I'm thinking about maybe the listeners who want to contribute to the animal rights movement by writing reporting on what is happening in terms of animal exploitation.
So can you share with us your writing process? How did, how did you become passionate about writing? So yeah, your journey around that.
Yeah, I became, so I joined my college paper when I was a freshman.
And I really, really took to it. I joined the, I joined, I joined the editorial section, which was, meaning the opinion section.
I did a lot of opinion writing and editing, because I, you know, I have a lot of opinions. And that was kind of my way into it. And it was only a little bit later that, you know, that I got into actual, you know, actual reporting.
Yeah, and it's the only thing that I feel like it's the only thing that I'm capable of doing.
I tried out, I did a little bit of animal activism in college, I worked on my school's cage free ed campaign, and it was actually successful. It was so cool to have that victory after like a 10 month long campaign, but I did not.
I really didn't like working on it. I felt like it was bad at it. I didn't like bothering people and going door to door and feeling like I was trying to sell people something or just, you know, convince them to sign a petition.
So I think I realized pretty early that that that wasn't for me and, you know, and writing and like reporting in a way that felt true to me and the world I was much more comfortable with.
And yeah, in terms of my writing process, I feel like it is very chaotic. Some people, you know, some people have a process where they they really like to outline, do a lot of planning in advance about how their piece is going to be structured.
And I don't really do that at all. I feel like I, you know, I'll throw down a few bullet points about stuff, you know, points I want to make sure I hit and then just sort of start, you know, once I start to start writing the, you know, the, the piece will sort of just like flow from there and take, you know,
kind of naturally take shape without me like trying to figure out what the, you know, what the structure will be from the top down and, you know, and I think that some some people have a process like that some people are much more structured.
And by the time I get to the end, I often, you know, I think this also is common by the time I get to the end of the draft, I realize like, oh, this, this point that I just, you know, that just occurred to me in my head, once I got to the conclusion of the piece should actually like be worked into the, into the beginning as like my my thesis of that should come earlier.
It's interesting because I'm thinking about podcasting. And it reminds me of that in a way, because you cannot control the flow of a conversation or where it's going. It's not like, you know, I can plan with a few questions, but then I have follow up questions and I feel like I should ask them.
What about posting your articles and then waiting for people's feedback. How does that feel like.
Yeah, it's so I'm active on Twitter. And, you know, I have been quite active on Twitter and yeah, I don't want to say about that, like, you know, Twitter is, Twitter is being destroyed by Elon Musk and that's really, that really sucks like that is one of the reasons I've become, I'm becoming more active on Instagram and posting stuff that I work on there and to
Instagram is obviously a very different experience that you got to, you know, because it's image based you can't read, you know, you can't really retweet there. And so I feel like I'm still figuring out Instagram.
I feel more at home on Twitter. Yeah, I, you know, I have I've gotten a ton out of Twitter, I feel like I've made a lot of really authentic like life changing connections on it with other people in the in journalism and the animal rights community.
And, yeah, I think any, you know, I think any journalists will say that posting their stuff on Twitter and, and, you know, engaging people, you know, engaging with people on it is really, you know, it's really gratifying to be able to, you know, to have like a live conversation there.
You know, unless you're, you know, unless you're getting your pieces is getting piled on to and everyone like, you know, hates it and you become the, you know, the Twitter main subject of the day.
That actually kind of did happen to me once and it was, it was horrible.
But, you know, in hindsight, like, so when people say that hate, you know, hate clicking on a story that that you think is like terrible is actually just good for it's actually just good for the outlet.
Like, more traffic is really good for us. Though a few months ago, I think it was Laura in Ingram tweeted, you know, tweeted like a, retweeted a box story and was like they're trying to, you know, they're trying to take your beef away and, you know, and it like provoked a lot of her, her, her right wing followers,
but that's actually good for us. Like, every reader that Laura Ingram sends to our site means more money for us to do our work.
And yeah.
Well, that was my next question. You know, how do you deal with anti vegans.
And they're out there and they're dedicated to just hate on whatever vegan content you put out there. I had to deal with some of them, you know, just getting my posts on Instagram, getting lots of comments with pictures of meat, basically, you are
people quoting some obscure studies on how if you're vegan, your, your brain loses cognitive capacities and things like that.
So how do you deal with the anti vegans.
I mostly just ignore them, like, you know, I, this, this has happened in the last couple days in response to some things I've tweeted, like, they've attracted a lot of like, you know, carnest, you know, reply guys who are, you know, who are like, oh, I, you know, now I'm going to go to Buffalo Wild Wings now.
Just ignore those people, you know, I think I really, really think that is the best possible response to these losers because they are, you know, make them feel like a non entity, because you know they're doing that to get a reaction.
Yeah, and yesterday, you know, I don't always avoid getting pulled into that kind of stuff because it's so, it's so maddening, but generally I do. Yesterday, one of my, one of my like Twitter friends was responding was getting got into a back and forth with someone who like, kept denying that
that a plant based diet would require like vastly less agriculture and less resources than a meat based diet and he kept like sending this person like, you know, actual facts peer reviewed peer reviewed literature like this is a basic, you know, fact about the world that we would devote a lot less of the
to to agriculture and monocropping on a on a predominantly plant based diet and this person just like you know this person was, you know, a total idiot and just kept responding with something nonsensical like I know someone who studies this and you're wrong it's it's
really very analogous to climate denial and, you know, and I was, I DM to this DM to the Twitter friend and was like, don't you know don't waste your time on these people you will you'll lose your mind trying to deny you'll you'll lose your mind trying to, you know, explain
the facts about reality. And I, you know, and I think that the reply guys who are doing that often are, you know, they're doing it because they're defensive right and there is like a seed of doubt in their minds, you know, about meat consumption
and factory farming. And, you know, I don't think it's our responsibility to waste time on them, but that is a good thing to, to keep in mind and just like, you know, let them keep getting exposed to the animal rights message, you know, in these things that they're obsessed with
and so I don't even block, you know, unless someone is doing something like truly like threatening or really concerning I don't block anyone who, you know, who, you know, or unless they're I think maybe on Instagram or Facebook it's a little different because you have like comments, you know, a more
the comment section is structured kind of differently and you don't want everyone, you know, you don't want it to be dominated by trolls. So I think that's different on Twitter I rarely block anyone, because I think that blocking also kind of is a provocation, and it is the kind of like
what they're trying to get. Oh yeah, they're proud. If you block them, it means yeah, that's why I love the function of restricting accounts on Instagram, which is, which is what I always do I never block those accounts, I restrict them, I can read their
accounts, but no one else can. And it's, I get lots of satisfaction from that. Anyway, so I wonder, do you then consider yourself a militant reporter, do you want your articles to positively impact the fight for animal rights, are you trying to
change people's minds around animal rights and veganism? Yeah, this is something that we I think we kind of think a lot about at work because my section is it's kind of mission driven, you know, future perfect exists because we think that there's a lot of bad stuff in the world that should be better.
So in, you know, factory farming is definitely one of those things. In that sense, like, you know, definitely a huge, a huge part of my work is to, you know, to to draw attention to, you know, to bad stuff with the hope of improving it, you know, getting, getting the message out, shedding
light on, you know, on what the factory farm industry is doing that, that, you know, that they would rather no one talk about.
I think I see that as very, I see that as different from like, I definitely don't see myself as a, you know, a partner to any specific animal rights organization, you know, or, you know, like, don't don't write stories with, you know, in a way that is meant to like just mirror the narrative of any one
organization or, you know, or like help them do the work that they're doing, I think that we like, we're, we are an important part of what we do is being independent from the actors in the movement so that we can be like critical when they think that they're
doing something wrong or their strategy is not, not good or, you know, that's, that's a really important, like part of that part of it being totally, totally independent from the, the, the animal movement and, you know, and seeing and seeing
activists as sources, rather than, you know, someone that you're advocating for, or, you know, trying to, just to, you know, spread their preferred narrative, if that makes sense.
Yeah, I think people talk a lot about how they want reporters or journalists to be objective. And I think they're just conflating objectivity with independence. I think what they really mean is they want independent reporters and journalists, not necessarily objective because I mean then you get
philosophical, what is objectivity, is it even possible, and so on. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a good way of putting it that I think that people can flate objectivity and independence and those are those aren't the same things and I think that like, I've, I feel like I've gone in my soapbox about this on like multiple podcasts now but the idea of the concept of objectivity
and journalism is, is widely misunderstood, it doesn't mean that you should pretend to not have values, you know, or that what like Tyson is saying is as valid as, you know, as what its critics are saying.
In fact, it means it means the opposite of that like the opposite of pretending that you don't have a point of view. And I think that I wish more, I wish that those nuances were better understood among the general public.
But I think that the, I think that media has been, you know, in the last like few decades, I think media has been moving beyond a model of objectivity that, you know, hasn't really served anyone and that's been hastened by like the rise of Donald Trump and, you know, bigger national trends.
Yeah, I mean, you're so right about that.
So, let's talk about some of your recent articles.
And let's start with how cars ruin wild animals lives, which combines your interest for the car industry, and also your passion for factory farming.
So can you walk us through your writing process for this article from getting the idea to publishing the article?
Yeah.
I like that you picked up on my, my interest in like transportation and urbanism. That's one of my big passions after animal rights.
So that piece was like, that was like a combined, it was, so it was a Q&A with Ben Goldfarb, who is the author of, he's an environmental journalist and author of a new book called Crossings, which is all about how cars and roads have transformed the planet and, and, and, and, you know, and how much they've impacted
wildlife and wild animals ability to do the basic stuff they need to do to survive.
And I, so I first became this, the subject first came on my radar in 2020.
I wrote a piece for a box that this is before I worked for a box, I wrote a piece for boxes of freelancer about the rise of SUVs that the US car fleet is, and really all over the world cars are SUV of buying people are buying bigger, heavier and taller cars.
And when I was writing that story, I learned that roadkill, you know, the issue of roadkill animals being being killed by cars is massive. The scale of it is something that I was really surprised by and I think that most people would be surprised by.
So, according to an estimate that is widely cited, it's used by the federal government a lot. A million land land vertebrates meaning like, you know, land animals other than bugs and worms and stuff like that are a million are killed every single day just in the US by cars.
It's a crazy number. And so I read, you know, I read this paper in 2020 that said that cars are second only to the meat industry in the number of animals they kill like they surpass hunting.
You know, I was just like really stunned by that. And it's really stuck with me.
And now, like, it's almost like kind of hard to believe, you know, but I, for the last couple of years I've been volunteering at a farm sanctuary about an hour for me so I have to drive to a rural area.
Pretty regularly and that has has opened my eyes to it a lot more, you know, when you're like driving in rural areas for a long time out outside of urban areas, the litter the the highway is littered, you know, with bodies of deer and opossums raccoons and stuff like that.
And that like quickly made me understand how, you know, how that could add up to a million a day. And, and a lot of the, a lot of animals killed by cars that we don't even see from inside our cars on highways, you know, their birds and small animals that just aren't visible when you're, you know, driving at 70 miles an hour.
So, anyway, so I became really interested in that and then I found out about this book coming out by Ben Goldfarb that just came out this month.
That's all about like basically this very subject, but not just roadkill but how roads have how how roads ruin and wild animals lives in other ways, you know, that the headline on the piece was, you know, was deliberate it's not just that they mass mass kill animals that make it really hard for them to move to go anywhere.
You know, to, to roads are so loud and wild animals like really use their hearing and need things to be quiet so that they can hear what's going on. It's such a the book just really opened my eyes to, you know, to how to how transformative cars are and I it's such a good read I recommend it to everyone.
So I so I just, you know, I thought that this is this book is a total no brainer for Future Perfect, because it's about, you know, we're really focused on things that have like the biggest scale the biggest impacts and, you know, the fact that cars are such an overlooked killer of wild animals, you know, like remember that, you know, the
estimate that they're the second biggest killer after the industry I just thought it was a set like no brainer for us to cover this. So I decided to do a Q&A with him. And he is a, and I wrote a little like, you know, introduction with some stuff about the book and why, you know, what why we're interested in it.
And is such a good talker, like I think the trans the Q&A reads really, really well. And I recommend it to everyone.
Yes. And also there will be a link to this article and also to the article about the Civil War. In the description. Okay, another article I really, really loved was what if AI treats humans the way we treat animals, where you think deeply about new technologies and how they reveal our
speciesism. That article evoked in me another question which was, what is the future of the animal rights movement?
Yeah, so yeah, thank you for calling out that piece because that was what I really loved working on too. That, you know, that that one came about because we, you know, AI obviously a really big subject in the discourse right now.
It was even, even more so, I feel like kind of earlier this year, several months ago, when there were all these those, you know, statements and open letters coming out by big tech leaders suddenly saying like, oops, the technology we're
building is going to kill everyone. Like, let's be more thoughtful about what we're bringing into the world.
And so, Vox was planning a package around stories around how AI is changing our society and culture.
And my boss asked me to write for it in May, and to write specifically about the AI and animals, that, you know, the connections between those subjects, how our anxiety around what AI is going to do to humans is like directly parallel to an
anxiety around how what we're doing to non human animals. And, and I'm really glad that he asked me to write about it because I actually had like I found that I had a lot to say.
And that pieces, it is, it's hard to, it's hard to summarize, especially hard to summarize in a headline. Like that, you know, that headline would have AI treats humans the way we treat animals, it's sort of without that but not quite.
I would just really recommend everyone. I really hope people read it and I would love your feedback on it. You know, it's about how, you know, that baseline question around how our fears of AI are so resonant with what we've already done to non human animals.
But then also about like the philosophy of AI and transhumanism, which is the, you know, a movement and desire to, to, to transcend our human bodies and basically merge with computers and it is about like that movement and how it reflects a hatred of our animal selves and
all, you know, all the ways that that does violence to us and animals. Yeah. And, and I think people like, there is also a bit at the end about, are you familiar with the wild animal welfare movement.
A little bit.
Yeah, so wild animal welfare, just trying to think like what is like the quickest gloss on it for people who may not have heard of it. But while then welfare is basically, you know, it's a movement sort of within effective altruism that thinks about how to, you know, how do we make wild animals lives better when they, you know, they suffer so much from starvation and disease and
you know predation by predators. And the most, the most like maximalist version of that philosophy says that we should just we should literally get rid of carnivores, maybe even get rid of wild, the, you know, wild animals and nature itself, because wild animals suffer so much.
And so, I, I'm not very sympathetic to this at and, and so, and I think a lot of readers like may not have realized because it's sort of it's a long piece and this comes pretty far into it but there is some stuff about the wild animal suffering movement, how I see it as related to all of that stuff about our bodily bodily
life, like, you know, certain certain strains of philosophy that want to remove on, you know, any kind of unpleasant, unpleasant experience from from life.
And the hope is that, you know, I think the future of animal rights has, you know, will have a lot to do with the future of the climate movement, whether climate activists, you know, whether like climate activists choose to ally with the movement against factory farming
and that is such, you know, it's an essential part of, you know, of mitigating climate change. I think that like activists outside the US have had more more success with with bringing together those two movements and I would I would love to see that emerge more in in the US
where not me but when my colleague who I edit is working on kind of thinking about working on on something on on that on that subject like why, you know, why aren't these wise hasn't been so hard for these movements that should be natural allies to work together.
And I think that'll be a big piece of it like, you know, I think that it's pretty it's mainstream and climate science now that, you know, that we can't sustain our current level of beef consumption and dairy consumption.
And I think that, you know, and, and I have, and I'm, you're starting to see like as a result of that you're starting to see discourse saying like, oh, we need to switch from beef and the like large animal meat to poultry because it's so much that you know it's more climate friendly.
And but that is an animal welfare disaster. And I hope that, you know, I really hope that the like the animal movement is better able to like intervene in that, you know, to like help us and poultry is also terrible for the environment.
You know, it's, it is, it's better than beef but then like that bar is is very low it's subterranean like poultry is also terrible for the environment and plant based, you know, food is better than all of these.
I hope that, you know, that that animal advocates are able to, to better influence that conversation and, you know, and, and spark like a broader realization that we can't like it's not acceptable to just trade beef for for chicken and, and that's not a choice that we have to make.
I think lab meat will be a game changer because the way I think about it is it will end factory farming, as we know it to be, and maybe most of the advocating work around that out there will just be unnecessary because of lab meat.
So do you think that this is how things will unfold.
Yeah, I'm really like really really not sure.
You know, this.
It's not my area of expertise. I know that, you know, I know the technological challenges are immense and I know that some people have doubts around whether it'll work at anywhere, you know, close to the scale that we need anytime soon.
You know, but I also know that like huge technological breakthroughs happen in the history of technology and things that we saw as, you know, as impossible like actually can, you know, can can work and we can have a breakthrough in them.
You know, more quickly than expected, I don't really, yeah, I don't know how to, you know, I don't know how I reconcile like those two things I feel like, you know, no one really knows what the ground truth on that is.
I think we definitely need, you know, like definitely need a mass public investment in, you know, R&D for this technology like all of the money that the USDA is giving to, you know, to the meat industry for, you know, fake, you know, fake climate solutions like we just just a couple weeks ago,
and I think that Fox wrote about this totally ridiculous climate friendly beef label that has been approved by the USDA and that is what's developed with with taxpayer funding.
That's ridiculous all of that money should be, you know, poured into plant based and and cellular alternatives. So yeah, I really don't know I you know I don't think it's just going to be.
I don't think it's just going to be a magic, you know, a silver bullet. But I certainly hope that it can, can make some difference, because it sometimes it can be hard to, it can be hard to be optimistic about, you know, about people just changing on the just on the
morals are on the environmental case.
And some I should also add like some animal rights philosophers are really against cellular meat, you know, you might be familiar with this and I like one of them, you know, one of them I'm very close with and know well and and I you know and I totally respect.
Okay, there's an argument that some people make that. Well, cellular meat doesn't sell cultivated me it doesn't really change.
It doesn't really challenge the idea that animals are edible. And so it won't bring about the end of factory farming, it'll just like augment factory farming.
I feel like that I understand the argument. I think that that's that's a prediction about the future that is that like, no one is in a position to make like who's to say that that's true.
And I think that this is, this is such a hard problem that we need to be pursuing.
We need to be pursuing every possible solution from different angles, I think it would be stupid, you know, to not to not pursue the cell cultivated meat approach.
In addition to everything else, I mean, why not do everything in our power to fight this and have a fight on every front.
I would love to talk with the people behind the lab meat initiatives, or read about them in one of your future articles.
I'd like to know, is there any article you are particularly proud of that in your eyes is worth, you know, people's attention more than another.
Yeah, you I like that you called out like some of the ones that I that I'm proud of.
I'm just like scanning my website for, you know, for what I can bring up here. I mean, the one that one that I just recently won a National Press Club Award for was this story in the intercept about the about the rise of ventilation
down and about, you know, in the poultry industry at the start of the bird flu, it's about a set of really disturbing experiments at a public university that, you know, that were involved in
developing and validating the ventilation shutdown method and there's we have video footage directly from those experiments that are in this story and I think that that was it was like, it was so impactful to be able to have that I saw a lot of
readers, you know, reacting really strongly to the footage and there were people who were like, I'm, you know, that I'm done eating poultry after that.
And I guess the other, you know, the other one thing that I've that I would call out that we haven't talked about at all is that I've done a lot of, I have a strong interest in the open rescue trials that have been happening with DxC.
And this is a piece I wrote for Vox about a recent victory they had in March, which came after like the huge historic Smithfield trial last October, which we're coming on up on the the one year anniversary of really soon.
Yes.
Amazing.
And what project are you currently working on? And what should we be looking forward forward?
Yeah, that's a good question. There's always like so many things in the works and so many things I would like to have in the works that don't have time that I don't have time for.
I.
So, and my name, my job is to be an editor now I'm actually not supposed to be writing very much but I kind of am anyway as much as I can because I will always want to do my own writing.
But I am I have become really interested in this, you know, there's this movement called animal welfare and economics, which is, you know, like a set of approaches to trying to include animal welfare and animal suffering in policy through cause benefit
analysis and kind of like, you know, basically, you know, like basically quantifying quantifying animal suffering as a, you know, as an important cost in policy making in the same way that we do like costs to humans.
And I'm really intrigued by that and I have a lot of like questions about it and I think that there is risks. There are there are like definite risks to it and
then like, you know, slowly trying to to research it and write a story about it because I think it's really important and interesting.
Yeah, there are radical ideas out there, like killing all of the predators in ecosystems.
But they're shocking, but you don't believe that they will ever be applied. However, ideas like the one you just talked about, they are more nuanced and it is harder to capture what consequences they're going to make.
And what makes them more important to to focus on is that they are applicable and they might become real life policy in a more realistic way than killing all the predators.
Marina, did I miss something from this conversation? Did you want to add something before we end our discussion?
I don't think so. I thank you so much for for taking an interest in my work. I'm so like honored by that. And, you know, I mean, I guess one thing like I'm keeping an eye on right now I haven't mentioned yet is there is a there is an open
rescue trial with DXC happening like right at this moment in California. I may or may not write about that once it's over in October.
We'll see. It kind of depends on whether I, you know, I see something important in it that's worth talking about or an angle.
You're a new angle, but this is basically like the third major open rescue trial after to the two that they won within the last year and the judge seems.
This seems like from it from the animal from the activist perspective this is the worst judge that they've had, like for sure. And I think it'll be so I think it'll be really interesting to see what happens will they get, you know, acquitted again despite all the restrictions the judge has has put in
place. And yeah, there's some of these trials are so interesting and exciting. And there's so much that we, you know, we can can learn about that about how the law, the law can be used for animal rights, you know, how juries of ordinary people are are responding
to really radical, you know, kinds of activism. So, yeah, so I might have something on that.
Amazing. So thank you so much, Marina, for having taken the time to answer my question. And thank you so much for your inspiring work. I love reading the articles that you publish. So yes, thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you everyone for listening. Let me remind you that the links to Marina's articles are in the description below. Make sure to support her great work by becoming one of her readers.
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Thank you again for listening. Take care and see you soon.
Thank you.