Welcome to The Vegan Report. My name is Ryan and two months ago in Austin, Texas, the American
Veterinary Medical Association held a convention where its house delegates voted to codify
ventilation shutdown mass killings as part of its new principles of veterinary medical
ethics. By doing so, they basically gave their blessings to Big Ag for killing hundreds of
pigs or poultry at once by shutting off air supply and driving up temperatures to cook
them alive to leave them agonizing for hours before dying from suffocation or organ failure.
This, for the representation of the veterinary profession, was deemed not only tolerable
but ethical. How can people who have been trained to heal animals come to vote for this
abominable practice? What is up with veterinarians? To get some answers, I talked to three amazing
vegan veterinarians, Dr. Crystal Heath, Dr. Niki Gianni, and Dr. Aaron Zamso, and a big
thank you to Aaron, who was the one who came up with this idea of a group conversation.
They convinced me to suspend my judgment of veterinarians and instead try to understand
why the veterinary profession is the way it is and how veterinarians could become the
key powerful allies the animal rights movement needs.
My first question for you is what makes you different from other veterinarians? What differentiates
you from the veterinarians we know? Those who treat and care for our dogs and cats or
who visit our local farms? Let's start with Crystal.
I would say with anybody, if I lived their life and had their experiences, I would do
exactly as they're doing and say that I would be acting different or saying things different.
I would say I'm somehow better than them or worse than me. That's just not true. We're
all, I for one, am very fortunate. I've given my life experiences and who I've met in my
life and how I grew up. It gave me a certain perspective on life and I think it made me
see things for what they are and saw how veterinarians are often in our training were normalized
to violence against animals and were conditioned into the system. My certain personality traits,
I'm just one who's willing to not go along with the flow. I never felt like I needed
to be popular or needed to fit in or any of that. That allowed me to take a step back
and look at the whole problem and see what our profession was doing to animals.
I think that is what led me down this path to speaking out about the abuses of animals
in our society and how veterinarians have become complacent in that and what we can
do to help inform and educate and empower veterinarians to see this for themselves too.
Hopefully I can be that person in other veterinarians' life that I benefited from growing up so that
we can educate more veterinarians and help them wake them up to what our profession has
been complacent in.
Thank you, Crystal. What about you, Erin?
Yeah, I definitely agree with Crystal that it's a life experiences, interpersonal relationships,
things that you encounter along your journey all shape your perspective. I didn't start
out in veterinary medicine thinking that I would be an animal activist per se. I think
to a degree every person who goes into veterinary medicine, they're going in it because they
really want to help better the lives and well-being of animals. From that standpoint, a lot of
us start from a very similar place.
I've also never been a huge rule follower from that standpoint, just always questioning
things. But I had an experience in veterinary school. I was fortunate enough to have a classmate
I became very close to, we became very good friends that was more aware of the issues,
both with animal farming and things like the terminal surgeries that we were going to be
asked to do, how we were taught surgery and different procedures, emergency procedures.
I really have that person to thank for encouraging that awakening. I would say a lot of it started
even my freshman year of veterinary school just learning how animals were raised in production.
That sparked a lot of curiosity, a lot of frustration, sadness, outrage. It really shifted
my perspective. I would say it was a turning point in my life. Also because I had a relationship
with someone that I trusted and that I cared about, that helped to shift that. There were
times when I didn't feel very brave going through veterinary school, challenging the
status quo and having that person in your corner for me, for my personality, really
helped. It's just taken off from there. I would say also, and I can say this as someone
who went to veterinary school in the 1980s and a lot of things have changed since then,
a lot of perspective that are much more mainstream were not so much back then, that I can speak
from experience from things that I have done that I would not do at this stage and that
I wish I hadn't done, even in pre-veterinary school and life. It comes from that personal
reflection and growth and evaluation as you go through life of, hmm, wow, why did I do
that? I think it's really important not to put anyone who is passionate about a
certain area or is active in trying to change things in a certain area on some kind of a
moral pedestal because it is all about our journeys and we need to be able to have these
conversations and be real. I think that's a big criticism of veganism to begin with.
That's why I said, well, it's not like it's cruelty-free because you're killing bugs and
you're killing rodents in those fields and all that and that's true. There's no such
thing as a cruelty-free lifestyle. I think that's important. Different life experiences
and just the machinations of the brain and the mind and the direction that feels like
is where I need to go. Thank you, Erin. I hear a lot of humility in both of your answers.
What about you, Nikki? Hopefully I can be as eloquent as these two. I think I came from
a slightly different perspective in terms of veterinary school as I was already well
into my activism and veganism and had to cover it a little bit, if you will, to get into
vet school. I wasn't sure how deep of a dive they would do into their applicants. Although
I can tell you that one question that I was asked at the interview, and I don't think
this is a secret, it's available on Google and any sources for those prepping for interviews,
but was what was the difference between animal rights and animal welfare? They're at least
curious where you stand on that. It's not to say you wouldn't get in if you said maybe
you were leaning animal rights, but I think the conservative nature of vet schools prefers
if you perhaps lean animal welfare as of at least when I was interviewing 10 years ago.
When I was a kid, well, when I was real young, my family was like every other American family
going to circuses and we bought our puppies all from the pet store and just a nice little
Italian family that made meat in every food that we ate, meat in the salad, meat in the
dessert practically. My kind of changing point was with Lolita the orca. I don't know if
you can see behind me, but I have a giant wall of Lolita the orca from Miami Seaquarium,
pictures and posters from throughout the years. To keep it brief, my mom was planning a trip
to SeaWorld because it seemed like that's where you take kids in the 90s and kids love
whales and it's just like the two other doctors have mentioned already. I think people who
want to go to SeaWorld or they want to become a veterinarian, they want to do those things
because they love animals. It's not that they want to go there to support any kind of oppression
or be a bad guy. We were looking into this trip to SeaWorld and even in the 90s, my mom
was able to find very much pre-Blackfish and pre-the-cove days. There wasn't a lot of resources
online about captivity for orcas and how detrimental it was, but she found some sources that said,
oh, okay, maybe going to SeaWorld isn't the most ethical trip we could take. We went whale
watching in Seattle instead. That was beautiful and I think that changed the course of my life
because she told me about Lolita, one particular orca who is suffering for 50 plus years in a
very, very tiny cramped concrete bland, boring enclosure who unfortunately passed away last
year in the same enclosure. That got the spark going for me. While we certainly did not go
vegan right away, my mom and I became passionate about whales and captivity and then it transformed
into like, okay, maybe we should protest the circus when they come to town. Maybe we should
get our dogs from the shelter. Then lastly, because food is closest to your heart and usually most
personal and when you're a child living under your parents' roof, it is difficult to go vegan or
vegetarian. But then eventually we did go vegan in 2007 and then I went to vet school in 2015.
I was pretty well on my journey, but everybody's at a different part of their journey as these other
two have very eloquently said. Hopefully that covers it.
Thank you, Nikki. It's fascinating how the three of you have had such different experiences of
getting to where you are now in your reflection and in your advocacy work. Erin, you wanted to
intervene. It was interesting that you made the comment about the veterinary school interview.
Nikki, I was just talking to a pre-veterinary student yesterday that's been shadowing me on
some things. It's really neat to see this person doing a lot of different kinds of shadowing and
getting these experiences, but also being very open to learning about the issues in veterinary
medicine that we're grappling with and the animal rights, animal welfare. She asked me about that
question. She's like, I'm just not sure. How do you see that? I said, I think the way I could put it
most succinctly is that animals have rights to welfare. If we look at the five freedoms and how
the welfare is really defined, they have rights to that. Also, how can you say a living being does
not have some inherent rights? If there's any pre-veterinary students out there, I don't know
if that would be helpful or if they would get press for more information, but I feel like it's
such a common sense thing. It's like they have rights to welfare, and we have the obligation to
provide that and ensure those rights. I don't know if that would be helpful or not.
Well, I think we're getting to the heart of the problem, which is vet school. I feel like this is
the conditioning you were talking about, Crystal, of other vets and that force for shaping
the normal standard view of what are animals and how they should be treated.
I think it's all coming from the schools. Crystal, I start with you. What do you have to say about
the schools? Are they broken? Are vet schools broken? What are they teaching to most vets out there?
Well, this is just the inherent problem with medical culture in general, and we've seen this
with the human medical profession as well. Carl Elliott just wrote a really brilliant book called
The Occasional Human Sacrifice, and it's all about the atrocities that happened in human experimentation.
He talks about, of course, Tuskegee is the most famous story, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study,
where doctors allowed Black people with syphilis to not be treated, even though there was a known
treatment for syphilis for 40 years. This study was stopped in the 1970s, and it wasn't until
the 90s that we really started to address the issue. Alison Coppola wrote this brilliant essay
about this in the British Medical Journal, about how medical culture conditions us
to be susceptible to committing mass atrocities. It's the hierarchy. It's our desire to get ahead
and be successful. It's the use of euphemisms in our training, and it's the normalization to pain.
We have to see patients who are in pain, and we have to often inflict pain upon them in order to
help heal them or in experimentation in order to increase our medical knowledge.
That becomes really problematic. Then there's the additional problem of when you have an institution
that is very prestigious, everybody thinks that and has the cause of doing good. Everybody has
the idea that our cause is good, this institution is very prestigious, has a high barrier to entry,
it's very hard to get into, so all of our decisions that we make must also be good.
It's often these institutions that are very prestigious and have this high, this moral good
aim that are often the last to realize that they have committed atrocities, that they have been
complacent in causing harm. That's just the inherent problem with the whole structure.
But there is hope, because Stanley Milgram's studies really pointed this out. This famous
shock studies where a student was asked to repeatedly shock somebody until they died,
and they would do this because we have this inherent desire to do what is expected of us.
It's our default, we do what is expected, especially by an authority figure. But when there
was another authority figure who voiced concerns about what was going on, that tipped the scales
for students to obey their conscience. I think that's what we are doing, and that's what we're
trying to do, is be that authority figure that is voicing concerns, saying, hey, this is a problem.
That will, even if it's just one voice, will tip the scales to allowing and enabling others to
listen to their conscience. We just want to encourage everybody, if you're in that room and
you're feeling pressured to stay silent and not say anything as something bad is happening,
speak up and be that voice to tip the scales to allow others to listen to their conscience.
Thank you, Crystal. Nikki, does this point resonate with you?
Yeah, I think the prestigiousness of the universities, especially, or I guess I shouldn't
say especially, but when you think of veterinary medicine, I guess a lot of folks probably aren't
aware, but I think at this point, there's maybe 30 vet schools in the United States and maybe
three to five in Canada. They are very difficult to get into. There's this air of, okay, well,
hey, they can do no wrong because this is where all the vets have to go. There's no alternative
school, basically, but I think the schools have made a minute bit of progress in that hopefully,
Crystal would probably know better on this statistics, but hopefully we're seeing less
terminal surgeries. That was not something that we had to do in vet school, at least.
A terminal surgery would be, for instance, like a dog spay where then the animal is euthanized on
the table and doesn't wake up afterwards. At my vet school training, we adopted the animals out
to a shelter afterwards, though I'm sure there are still significant trainings where maybe they're
doing something a little bit more intense like removing a kidney or something like that where
they probably do euthanize on the table. I think that is a good example of what we're seeing.
I think that is still obviously very problematic and hopefully we're moving a little bit further
away from that. I think a lot of the times with these vet schools, it's like, well, this is how
we've always done things. Although the medical schools, you could say the same thing. Maybe their
grandpa was a doctor, their dad was a doctor, they're a doctor, and this is just how we do
things. Medicine itself has advanced, but maybe some of the ethics are a little bit more gray area.
CB Thank you, Nikki. Erin?
EW Yeah, I wanted to speak to the point about
it was really hard for me to speak out initially and I'm glad I had that friend. I had friends and
family and people when I was in veterinary school being, don't rock the boat, get out, you can do
so much good once you have that degree. At that time, I was threatened with being like, goodbye,
you can't stay here if you're going to do that. It took a bit of doing to get our program through,
get through with our little semblance of our conscience and soul intact, but that was back
in the 1980s. But I think a lot of people don't, it is really, really hard to speak out against the
tide for some people and some personalities. But I think even encouraging, just questioning,
just having that reflective conversation where people have to explain why this is okay.
And then if you have some data or you have some information, well, I actually know veterinarians
who trained and didn't do these terminal surgeries or have successful practices and they don't do
declives or ear cropping. So it's questioning. And we have these ethics classes in vet school
and I remember it was Bernard Rollins that came to do ours. And I feel like we had all these
conversations and then everybody just sort of like, okay, that's great. You know, and didn't apply it.
So when we as either, you know, in veterinary school, out of veterinary school, experienced
veterinarians of whatever, wherever we are in our, in our circles, can question and speak out. It does,
it sparks thought. And especially if you can have a nice, I was with a couple of veterinarians
yesterday, equine veterinarians, and this pre-vet student was kind of shadowing and working with us.
And I brought up about the ventilation shutdown and the changing of the ethics committee and
wording and all that. These two vets had no idea and they were in complete agreement, complete
agreement. And they're like, you know, one of them is mixed animals, these farm animals, small
animals, you know, horses, all about one another one's exclusively equine and they both completely
agreed that like, what, what's going on here? You know, why would, why would we not condemn this as
an organization? Why don't, why aren't we doing more to ensure? And of course, we talked about the
corporate influence and the, you know, money that drives so much of our, our unethical practices.
So questioning and building relationships with people just as in their vet and a human being
without putting that initially forward, you know, finding your commonalities first, you know,
your commonalities first, I think can be very helpful. Thank you, Erin. Crystal, you wanted to
react to Erin's point. Yeah, I'll just say like, as far as questioning, it's really hard to question
when you're a vet student, because they have answers to all of these common questions, like,
oh, you know, there are successful practices that don't be caught. Well, then they'll say, well,
then, you know, are people euthanizing their cats because they're scratching them or scratching
their furniture? You know, they have rationalizations for this. And we have, you know,
it's a long conversation because, you know, yeah, there are studies now that show that when in areas
that cat decline is, is banned, they, they don't actually have increased euthanasia rates, but
students might not have all of this data in front of them. So they don't know how to retort to that.
And it's, it's hard when you have a professor who has the platform, and you question them, and then
they respond back, you can often look foolish or, you know, just give them another platform to
legitimize and further entrench their belief system to 138 members of the class. So it is very,
it is very, very challenging to do this. So I will just say that. And as far as
the corporate influence in our veterinary schools, you have to remember, like, a lot of veterinary
schools are these land grant universities. That was the, the purpose of these universities was
to expand agriculture back in the 1800s. And corporations fed a lot of money into these
universities and their purpose was to increase the productivity of American agriculture.
And the animal rights movement sort of kept away from the veterinary profession for all of these
years and didn't engage with them. And I think that was a huge detriment to the animal rights
movement for not getting more veterinarians on board. They easily, and especially the, the violence
with which some animal rights activists engaged with veterinarians. There's all these stories of
veterinarians being bullied and harassed and getting death threats from animal rights activists,
which I don't think a true animal rights activist would threaten the life of another human being,
because humans are animals, so it doesn't make sense. But there are, you know, people who are
unstable out there who do that sort of thing. But then all animal rights activists were painted with
this broad brush and no veterinarians had a good experience with animal rights activists. I remember
first getting involved into the animal rights movement and getting a lot of hostility from
animal rights activists who are like, what's wrong with your profession? And like questioning,
spaying and neutering and things like that. And I, just because of who I am and me feeling totally
comfortable not fitting in, but knowing that their goals are good and I could help shape this movement
to better work for animals instead of work against animals, I felt like, oh, here's a problem we need
to address within the animal rights movement. And a lot of people are, are, are animal rights activists,
not because they love animals, but they, because, and especially, unfortunately men realized, oh,
this is a group of women who are very empathetic. And now I have this argument where I can be morally
superior to other people. I'm going to, you know, get involved with this movement, get access to all
of these women and become like a thought leader in this movement in order to gain some sense of power
in society, which is very problematic, which is something else that we need to address in the
animal rights movement. But yeah, I'll just add that. And now I think it's time for animal rights
activists to engage empathetically with the veterinary profession and together we can really
move things forward. Yeah. And so to continue off that, I actually found a little photo from
when I was in vet school, we had a day of, you know, ethics based talks, like Dr. Aaron had
mentioned as well. And, you know, a day devoted to ethics, as opposed to your four years of education
in vet school and like your four years of pre-vet and all the other years of training you have.
But nonetheless, for this day of ethics, we had a computerized vote where you could vote from a
clicker device from your desk. And it was anonymous, but the professor asked, which of the
following is the greatest concern to animal welfare? And this was in 2016. And the options
were obesity in pet dogs, dehorning cattle without anti-inflammatories, castrating piglets without
local anesthetic, keeping free ranging carnivores in zoological collections, or another issue.
And the overwhelming response was 53% of students voted obesity in pet dogs as the number one animal
welfare issue in 2016. And, you know, it's hard to say because 11% voted that another issue was the
most important. I think that was probably me and a few of my friends, you know, and the second most
common option, neither of the two farmed animal related options was of course, free ranging
carnivores in zoological collections as another issue. Dehorning cattle without anti-inflammatories
got 5% of the vote and castrating piglets without local anesthetic got 11% of the vote. So, I mean,
you know, fairly concerning numbers. I think a lot of it is just very institutionalized for us by
even that point. So that was two years into my vet school experience. You know, a lot of folks had
been shadowing at farms, or maybe they grew up again at their mom or dad's vet clinic. And these
were kind of the ways that they had seen things done. And yeah, I mean, I think dogs being obese
is a concern that I see every day at work. But I don't think it's probably like the number one
animal welfare issue in the entire country. Thank you, Nikki. You all raised so many good points I
want to get back to. But first of all, I want to ask you, do you think there is a difference,
like a fundamental difference between veterinarians who work for the big ag industry,
and the rest of veterinarians? Erin, you were talking about, you know, those veterinarians
friends who reacted quite with shock on the decision related to ventilation shut down.
And I was thinking, you know, is this push to treat animals the way we treat objects?
Is it more coming from, you know, vets who are working in the big ag industry? Are they the ones
you know, carrying that ideology and that perspective? And the rest of veterinarians
are more sympathetic to your views, but feel, I guess, overwhelmed by this majority or powerful
minority, you tell me, of farm vets? I'm not sure I can adequately answer that, because I feel like
every, everybody is, has the capacity to, to shift their perspective, and, you know, know better,
and, you know, know better, do better, and, and that sort of thing. I actually do consult with,
so at the Sanctuary, we have three cattle, we had four, now we have three Jersey cattle that came
from Farm Sanctuary, California. And I consult with cattle, veterinarians and large animal vets,
so veterinarians in the industry frequently. And there are some that have been, like I was on a
cattle vet, you know, discussion group, and that was like, why would you have cows in Sanctuary,
you know, that kind of thing. But I would say, for the most part, you know, I say,
I explain myself and say, these are, think of them as pets. Think of them as how you would treat a pet
horse or, or something. So I qualify that. And, but I, I'm, I consult with a very prominent cattle
veterinarian that does, I believe she's at Oklahoma, that does a lot of education. She has
large animal continuing education service. And she's fantastic. She completely understands my
perspective. So I'm probably not answering your question at all. I don't, it's, it's an industry.
It's, it's a system. And so yeah, there are going to be differences in, in perspectives, but I don't
think because you work in the animal agricultural industry, that you're immune to seeing animals as
individuals and, and caring for them. I think most people just see it as an inevitability, maybe,
or, or see that we may need to increase welfare in farming and are against like corporate animal ag.
So I'm not, I'm not, it's not probably not really
answering your question, but I see it as a, as like a system problem. And I don't see veterinarians
as, as being the drivers of that system. I see capitalism and the commodification of animals
as a business model, as drivers of that system. Thank you, Erin. If that helps at all. Well,
Crystal, you wanted to react? Yeah. So I've read a lot of the internal emails of veterinarians who
legitimize ventilation shutdown. So I think I have unique insight into their thought processes
going, leading up to this. And there's a lot of things that they, they, there's a set of beliefs
that they have been led to believe. And one of their main concerns was, oh, these producers
are not able to put food on their tables. Like if this were to happen, this work would threaten food
security if, you know, they aren't able to get bailouts for the loss of their animals. And also
they believe that demand for meat is rising because of consumer demand, because people want to eat
meat. And because when people, when a nation gains the enough wealth to eat meat, people naturally do
when they can afford to. They believe that it's a consumer driven thing. It's, it's inherent in
humanity to want to eat meat when they can afford it. And we know that's not true. We know now from
economics, it's the industry when the industry is trying to upsell basically cheap grain into a more
valuable commodity. And Cargill has a lot to do with it. Cargill, one of the biggest agribusiness
companies in the world has 21 billionaires. They are, and the industry is working very hard to
increase demand for meat. So it's the industry driving demand. It's not people driving demand
for meat. But they view it as, you know, it's just something inherent in human nature that
people want meat. We have to feed 10 billion people. And the only way to do it is to legitimize the
intensification of animal agriculture. And in this system, you have to sort of diminish and
deprioritize the well-being of animals in this system and prioritize the well-being of people.
And they view it as you have to trade off. Humans are more important than animals is something they
view. They don't view, you know, the one health model that I view as if we hurt other people,
view as if we hurt other animals, we're hurting ourselves. They kind of only see the short term.
It's a choice between human welfare or animal welfare. And we're choosing human welfare.
So that's the set of beliefs that their culture is teaching that has allowed this to happen.
And I hope to tell more about this into the profession and hopefully show them that there's
another way to look at this. And we have to make some producers not so reliant on
slaughter-based protein production, you know, and have to be complacent in this system.
I hope that makes sense because it's very complicated.
Thank you, Crystal. Nikki, did you want to add something to Crystal and Erin's answers?
I don't really know that I have that much to add. I guess I'll just reiterate that, yeah,
I don't think the veterinarians are necessarily the part of the system that is broken or at least
the most broken. It's really just this constant drive and demand. And I guess you could probably
say that throughout any animal industry, you know, not just the food industry slash factory farming
slash, you know, farming in general, animal experimentation, you know, the mass breeding
of animals for the pet industry, you know, things like that. It's tough because at the end of the
day, you know, any facility, generally speaking, that has animals being used for human use,
whether that's a circus or an animal testing laboratory, I mean, they employ veterinarians
at those places. And it's the dichotomy of certainly we need someone there who's going to
be an advocate for the animals and treat their health as long as these industries exist. You
know, I want the elephants in the circus to get good veterinary care. It's just tough when perhaps
the provider is very entrenched in the industry themselves and, you know, maybe can't see past
the elephants living a different life or the pig a different life or something like that, you know,
because it's just, it's how they how they do it. And what they're expected to do in their role is
just give medical advice and maybe not extrapolate on the welfare. Thank you, Nikki. You all talked
about the hardship and the level of difficulty to speak up. And that pressure that pressure to
conform to the standard view in the veterinarian profession. What's the price tag that comes with
speaking up for animal rights? Nikki, would you like to start? I think a lot of it is probably
just how your peers view you, you know, job availability. I think if you're going to be a
I think if you're going to be a squeaky wheel and known as such, especially early on, you know,
jobs may say, Oh, I don't know if we want like a rabble rouser here working for us. I would say
small animal clinics are probably less concerned about that. I'm fortunate to work at a small animal
general practice where we, you know, we're the Illinois representatives for the paw project.
So anti-declying, we have quite a few vegan veterinarians on staff. I think it's a pretty
ethical clinic and they were not at all opposed to my animal rights inclinations when I was hired.
But I think for a lot of folks, that would be something they would consider maybe not bringing
up at interviews. And it would be great to see if we could change the thought process surrounding
that so that people could be a little bit more free with their thoughts, you know, Oh, hey,
I'm applying to work at this pig farming operation. And I do lean a little bit more animal welfare or
I am vegan. But I am, I have the animals best interest in mind or something like that. I have
no idea if that would even be possible. I think it probably just wouldn't fly honestly, but that
would be, that would be a nice change. Thank you, Nikki. Erin? Yeah, I think I can mostly speak to
my experience in veterinary school, which was just opting out of, which wasn't an option,
refusing to participate in like the terminal cardiology lab and being threatened. And a lot
of actually students in the class wanted to opt out of that. And a few others did refuse to do it.
And the professor threatened to reduce our grade, which I don't even know is like legal or I,
at that time, I was just like, go ahead, whatever, you know, I'm not killing the dog.
And then during we learned surgery, our junior year, and my two, my good friend classmate,
and then one student in the year behind us created a, we just said, we're not doing this,
we have to figure something else out. And that was a really long drawn out process. We got a lot of
pushback from the other students in the class. We did create an alternative track for ourselves
to get through. We ended up graduating late. We did not walk with our class. We didn't get our
White Coat ceremony with them. We created our own small private graduation several months later. So
our graduation was actually delayed. We had to do a lot of work to get that, the training that
you know, to check all the boxes before we graduated and a lot of extra time. We had
classmates that wanted a special designation on our diploma that we were not trained in surgery,
which is, you know, is ridiculous because I think in both my friends and mine, in our externships,
we were like doing surgery. And, you know, it's like my first, I didn't have to practice a
splenectomy. My first splenectomy, you know, it's like, you learn your skills and you go forward,
right? And you have a mentor there or, you know, I mean, back in the day, we literally had our
surgery book open on the counter, you know. And that's true with human medicine too.
You know, you don't do every procedure. There's always going to be a first time. You learn your
good basic skills and hemostasis and keeping your patients stable and all that. And you don't need
to kill anything to do that. But that was the pushback that we got. And it was very traumatizing
for me at the time because I was not a go along with everything person. I didn't really feel like
I fit in anywhere. And so it was, you know, and we had friends that were like, hey, yeah, yeah,
we support you, but we're not going there. Or we want to do that, but no, you're risking too much.
You know, I mean, we were told to go somewhere else. We were told, you know, so it was actually
kind of had to go to getting some outside support that talked to the veterinary school. And then they
kind of had a change of heart, but it was stressful. It was stressful. I don't even know if any of my
classmates even think about that now. It's not like I'm, you know, good friends with a lot of them,
but yeah, I'd be interested to talk to them now, like, you know, if they're going to be able to
do that, I'd be interested to talk to them now. Like, how do you feel now about that? Like you
still think, you know, have you changed your tune? So if people need to see it can be done and then
see that we go on to be, you know, successful in what we're doing and not compromising our education
and our conscience. Thank you, Erin. I did have pushback in practice as well. Like I would refuse
to do convenience euthanasia and things like that. And yeah, but you know, not now.
Thank you, Erin. Crystal, I know you're a special case of that.
Yeah, I mean, I've, so I personally think like, the biggest price anybody could pay is feeling
like they can't say what they think. But throughout history, like women have had to shut their mouths
in order to just survive because you're going to get killed if you say what you actually think or
you're not like we couldn't even get a credit card until the 1970s. You couldn't open a business
bank account on our own until the 80s. So women throughout history have been like, you know,
balancing this like I need to survive versus say what I actually think. But when even before vet
school, I knew I could always make money. You know, I always just, I had started businesses in the
past. I and but especially like after I paid off my $200,000 in student loan debt, it became really
easy to say what's on my mind. And I also developed like a certain position in the veterinary
profession where people knew I was very good at my job and I love surgery. And I knew I could always
get hired even if I was obnoxiously saying what I think, because I was very good. And I could,
you know, make a practice a lot of money. So it's just like, you know, I was very secure in the fact
that I'd always be hired. And if I couldn't be hired, I'd start my own business. So I would be
fine. The only thing, you know, if I ever become sick or unhealthy, like, you know, and I become
unwell, like, oh, it's a little bit of a problem. But I'll figure it out. Like I just always had
that mindset. So I have, you know, when you be gain a little financial security becomes a very
easy to say what's on your mind. But I, you know, I have suffered consequences because of that
been kicked out of the humane ending symposium banned from the legislative fly in not allowed
to join the American Association of swine veterinarians not allowed to join the American
Association of bovine practitioners. So that, you know, I was very, very, very happy with that.
So that does that decrease my effectiveness. I know a lot of veterinarians out there who are
like, we're going to message a certain way so that we can stay in the room and like actually have
a position of authority. But I'm like, well, I'm happy to be on the outside, sort of expanding
that overturn window for you guys so you can walk through it. But I know I cannot. I am not somebody
who's going to stick to a script and be like, I'm going to temper or tone police what I'm saying.
I just I rather have the freedom to say what I actually think. But of course, there are more
effective ways to say things. And you always have to like think, oh, is there a better way to say
this that's still in line with what I actually think, which is I think that we need to end the
exploitation of animals, ultimately. But I do think we should improve welfare while animals exist in
animal agriculture, but we should ultimately seek to end exploitation as soon as possible.
And I never want to be like, no, I'm not for abolition, just so that people, you know,
accept what I say. I'm like, you should all be on board with, you know, ending some of these most
horrific practices. But ultimately, I see a feature where we don't have to slaughter animals for
protein production. So yeah, I mean, I will just say that, that I think the biggest price anybody
could pay is feeling like they can't say what they actually think. But I also understand that
having that perspective, you have to have a certain level of privilege in society in order
to have that perspective too. Thank you, Crystal. Erin? Yeah, I think,
I think that's true. Not feeling like you can speak out or speak to your, speak your conscience
is very, it's a really awful feeling. And to feel like you're in a situation where you're
compromising your ethics to, you know, earn a living or what, I think there's probably a lot
of veterinarians that are in that position. And I think, I guess maybe, I don't know, it's my age or
having had unsuccessful, you know, oh, I wish I would have done it this way, type conversations,
but I'm just at a place where it's like, it's a, you know, I'm going to speak my mind, I can say,
this is, this is what I think. I realize you may not think that way. And, and so I, I just
say what I think. And I'm very, I'm very honest about it, even in whether I'm very fortunate
that I get to work at a sanctuary as, as part of my job, part of my veterinary practice,
that is pretty much in agreement with all of that. But I do other work and I, I don't hold back
on, on saying what I think, whether it's, you know, docking tails or cropping ears or decline or,
you know, I mean, I do relief work at one practice, sometimes I'm like, I will not see farm animals
in this area because of, you know, I'm just, I'm not going to have that relationship with an animal
that's going to, you know, that is a commodity basically. And so it's like, hey, you think this
way, I think this way, I'm not going to shut up about it, but I'm also not going to expect that,
that you're necessarily going to change your mind. If you change your mind, that's great. But I think
even just saying how you feel in a conversational way, and I hope more people feel empowered to do
that, you know, that it doesn't always have to be this big confrontation. It doesn't have to be this,
you know, your, your opinion versus my opinion or your take versus my take. This is, this is
unapologetically how I feel. And, you know, have a nice day. Thank you, Erin. I think that with
my line of questions, we have identified the problem and brought up many of the nuances of
that problem. But did I miss something? Is there a layer, an additional layer to this problematic
situation that I have forgotten to ask about? Yes, Nikki.
I'll just add one quick thing, which I think Crystal pretty well brought up at the beginning.
But, you know, just overall for veterinarians to be cognizant of others' wellbeing,
because this is such a stressful profession. And I'm not sure if any of your listeners are aware of
some of the very high suicide rates in veterinary professionals. And so, you know, while I see a
fair amount of unfortunate bullying of, you know, maybe you could say like, not to generalize, but
like agricultural vets who are bullying, maybe animal rights or animal welfare leaning veterinarians,
or even veterinarians who work in industries that support animal exploitation, generally speaking.
So, you know, vets who work at theme parks with animals and things like that, kind of talking
poorly, even in a public space, like the internet, about some of their colleagues more akin to us
vets here who have different feelings on it. You know, I think it's a rough profession already,
and we just have to be aware not to make it too much rougher for each other. And so, you know,
even for myself, just being cognizant sometimes that, yeah, I mean, for some of these folks who
are, for whatever reason, indoctrinated or feel forced to work in some of these positions,
you know, we don't want to bully them. We want to extend the olive branch across the aisle.
I think Crystal's organization, Our Honor, is really good at doing that. We don't really want
to make it like us versus them. It's really how we could all work together as veterinary
professionals to make a difference for animals without sacrificing someone's mental health,
hopefully too much in the meantime.
Thank you, Nikki. Crystal, you wanted to add something?
Yeah. And I will just add, like, we do criticize the AVMA and the pork board a lot, but we do
criticize the AVMA and the pork board a lot, but we don't call them names. We just state the facts
about what they did and how problematic this is and who their stakeholders are and all of this.
We don't call people names. And I've seen this problem in the animal rights movement of some
people being like, I will never be friends with somebody who eats meat. And that's really a foolish
perspective, I think, because imagine if, like, I personally want to see a future where we have
access to public transportation and we have walkable cities and we don't have to rely on cars.
But I am not going to be like, if somebody drives a car to work, they're not allowed to support our
car-free future or our campaign to increase access to public transportation because then they're
hypocrites. And it's like we have to realize that we live in a world where the industry has realized
that they cannot rely on the whims of consumer choice to dictate people's food choices. It is
not a consumer choice issue. They have instilled habits into us. And there are only, and the idea
that we have to pit people who are able to free themselves from eating slaughter-based protein
versus those who are not able to for whatever reason is really foolish. And I also see a lot of
vegans and animal rights activists refuse to engage in the industry, refuse to become USDA
inspectors, refuse to work in lab animal medicine or anything like that. And I think they need to
work there. And there's a lot of animal rights activists who refuse to go to zoos because they
don't want to buy a ticket. When it's like, go and film it and show the world what it is through your
eyes. That's what we need. And simply having this purity mindset of like, no, just abstaining is
good enough. Not in this culture. We're all implicated. You are paying for slaughter-based
protein production. You are paying the companies for ventilation shutdown, whether you buy their
products or not with your taxpayer dollars. Jenny Oaks Turkey Store got $105 million of our money,
whether you're vegan or not. We're all paying for this. So we're all implicated and we all have to
engage with it. And this purity mindset is not beneficial and it's doing nothing to help the
animals. So yeah, go vegan. But if you can't, like I'm still your friend because I understand
that a lot goes into it. It's not just a consumer choice issue. Anyway.
Thank you, Crystal. I think this is a great segue to the next topic, which is the solution.
We talked about the problem in depth. Now I want to talk about for the remaining time about the
solutions out there. And I'm a bit of an outsider. I became vegan out of compassion. And then I found
myself doing this podcast and then discovering this whole world of animal rights. And with
all its struggles and I have to say I did find, like you said before, Crystal, then there is a
lack of critical thinking among animal rights activists. And this surprised me because when I
heard people talk about vegans or veganism as being a religion, I always heard it like a criticism,
like a way to just not consider veganism. But now I'm realizing more and more that
there is a kind of orthodoxy among vegans and animal rights activists, which feels like a religion
in a way, feels a bit dogmatic. And so my first question, I guess, is how can we create a bridge
between the animal rights world and veterinarians, the world of veterinarians?
And one of my criticisms I have for animal rights activism is how it does not invest in impactful
actions, not always. And one of the most impactful actions we can make is to turn more and more
veterinarians into advocates or just into vegans. And I don't know why we're not putting more time
and energy in doing that because veterinarians are such powerful allies to have. So I'll let you
answer that. Who wants to start?
I can go first. I mean, I think, yeah, Pareto principle, 80% of outcomes come from 20% of your
efforts. The salespeople understand this and the animal agriculture industry understands this.
They understood how important it was to get veterinarians to lend legitimacy to their
practices. So they invested a lot of time and money into the veterinary profession. And I think the
animal rights movement needs to do the same thing. Like I want to see a bridge between the animal
rights movement and the animal rights movement. And I think that's a very important thing.
Like I want to see why aren't there animal rights activists outside of every veterinary
conference or having a table at every veterinary conference engaging politely with the veterinary
profession the same way the pork board does. The pork board doesn't engage with the veterinary
profession saying, you need to support animal agriculture or else you're hurting the future
if you don't have which Extremism side. Like they do support questioned exhaustive
ORE the family person. And in some areas they address it even through basic Shanahan
supporting them and offering them jobs in animal rights movement,
being open and engaging.
But I also, as far as the animal rights movement and veganism being a religion,
yeah, that's a problem.
The foundations of the vegetarian society back in the 1800s was church-based,
which is the only understanding that a lot of things had.
But there were a lot of people like Anna Besant,
who was the inspiration for Gandhi, was very anti-religion.
So there was that too.
But I think there are a lot of people,
a lot of leaders in the animal rights movement who played on
the emotions of a lot of people in the movement and fostered a lot of anger.
Their videos and the way that they go about getting a lot of social media clicks is by
inciting anger and getting passion about this and wielding that anger against people.
We have to just stay away from all of that.
This shame-based activism is very harmful.
The antidote to shame is empathy.
I think that's our strength and that's what we should be extending to everybody,
in fostering that empathy for those who we view as part of the problem.
They are cult members.
We need to extract them from that cult where
they're asked to betray their conscience and harm animals.
When we know empathy for other animals is
a evolved trait that humans and other animals evolved hundreds of thousands of years ago.
That's our nature. So we just need to get people to go back to our nature.
Fostering empathy is the key to all of this.
Thank you, Crystal. Erin?
I think that covered what I was going to say.
I just think we so often we other and we dehumanize.
People that we see as not aligning with our thought processes or goals or things like that.
We are all human beings and we need to remember that and honor that.
Even if you feel like someone's completely sold their soul or they're being malicious.
We need to look at how these things develop,
how these processes develop and these systems develop and understand it's not just about animals.
It's about exploitation and commodification in general.
There's that interplay of the economic system.
It's like we can't just put the band-aids on it without understanding the underlying drivers.
Looking at the entire system of what capitalism does to all beings.
And how it indoctrinates us all into thinking there are no other alternatives.
And so in just trying to create a better world for all animals, for human beings, for the planet.
I think it's really important that we stop vilifying and dehumanizing people.
And we just stick to facts.
I don't think you have to go into it being fake and being nice when you're upset about something.
You can do things in it with integrity and honesty and transparency.
I think that's the way I see it.
And I know that more radical activism does get results.
I just don't know if it's really going in the direction that we really need to get to pretty quickly for a number of reasons.
For social justice, for human rights, for the planet, for the animals.
We need to be very careful about our praxis and very focused on it.
Thank you Erin. Nikki?
Yeah, I think that was a very beautiful sentiment, Erin. I agree.
I think ultimately considering all these factors, I kind of call it the PETA principle,
which would be getting more of us in the room with them.
PETA has stock holdings in a number of animal ag companies.
And I think they have stock holdings at SeaWorld and things like that so that they can be a part of the shareholders meetings.
And just be maybe one voice of dissent in the room.
It kind of brings me back to an advertisement that I saw in a magazine, I don't know, probably like 20 years ago.
I would say it was probably from the pork board, but I can't recall exactly.
But it said in the big white letters, big bold letters, who will you believe?
The vegans or the vets?
And it was basically just meant to kind of pit people against each other in terms of like,
well, veterinarians know all the facts about pork production and they are the ones I should believe, not these hippie crazy vegans.
But I saw that and thought, well, I guess I should become a vet now because I'm already a vegan
and I need people to see more legitimacy in my claims that I know are right.
And they just kind of look at you like, hey, you're a kid standing outside Macy's with a sign that says ban fur.
Like, what do you know? And so to come at it from a veterinary perspective is so powerful.
If we could get if we could inspire more vegans or animal activists, more vegetarians to go to vet school,
I'm sure this podcast was not an overarchingly positive view on it all.
I mean, I think that school is like four of the most grueling years of my life in terms of studies academically.
But, you know, if we could get more of us in those rooms, for instance, in my class of 120 veterinary students, I was the only vegan.
I mean, there are maybe 10 to 15 vegetarians, which is great.
But in our vet school throughout the four years of classes, I want to say there were four or five vegans
and 450 vet students. And I think if we could increase those numbers, that would just get more conversations flowing.
You know, certainly I think a lot of people are vegan for health or maybe other reasons than animal based.
But nonetheless, you know, every lunch lecture that we had in school where, you know,
say the university provides you with a lunch and you go learn about, I don't know, a new flea and tick preventative or something.
The options were, you know, you could get chicken, beef, pork or vegetarian, maybe.
And there was not a vegan option. So I would be the one who would just send them an email and be like, hey, actually, I'm vegan.
I want to go to this talk. Can you get me a lunch?
And usually it was like, oh, no. And, you know, just trying to bridge that gap and also, you know,
to just be open to conversing, which these two have said really nicely throughout this whole talk today.
I think it's just a lot of openness and being willing to talk to people.
You know, if I'm out with my friends and they order a cheeseburger and like, I'm not going to smack it out of their hands.
That said, if somebody posts like a Facebook picture of something particularly egregious,
like a fellow veterinarian riding an elephant at a circus, then I do sometimes make a little comment on that.
But, you know, just knowing how to converse in a way that's going to make people receptive.
I find it a compliment when occasionally people will say to me, you know, oh, you're not like other vegans.
In other words, you're not like annoying. But I think I am a little bit annoying sometimes.
You know, I'm very proud to be an activist. I run protests. I've run probably hundreds of protests.
So, you know, loud and proud activist. But I am glad that people don't see me as someone who's so combative that they can't be open with me.
You know, we all started somewhere.
And ultimately, you know, I think if we can extend any offering of peace to them and meet them where they're at,
you know, if they're wearing leather shoes, it's OK, you can still come to my house.
You know, if they bought their dog from a pet store, you know, I usually just say, well, now that you know better, do better.
So I think there's plenty of opportunity for progress.
And if you're a vegan animal activist listening to this and maybe you already have a degree in biology, well, consider applying to vet school.
Thank you, Nikki. Erin, you wanted to react?
I think one of the excuse me, one of the more powerful ways that that we can help with the ripple effect one on one is just by,
you know, simply being being good kind of people, you know, having our sense of humor,
building relationships and friendships and and having not being our activism doesn't always have to be our leading thing going into something.
Right. So it's like then people find out like, oh, oh, you're oh, you're, you know, an animal rights activist and you're vegan.
And because they already have this relationship with me as, you know, the vet that really cares about their dog or cat.
And I've actually found like it's not on a one on one level.
It can be a pretty, pretty powerful because then you don't have to earn that respect.
You have that respect. And then. That it's just seen in such a better light.
So like, Nikki, people saying like, oh, you know, I'm glad you're not one of those vegans, but you're you know, you're Nikki first.
And, you know, you're fun and you're and you have a sense of humor and you can talk about a lot of things and you care about people and and that.
And and I think that helps dispel this idea of the angry activist and the, you know, the one that's throwing, you know, blood on you and shaming you.
And I just I hope so, at least, you know, I think it's always really for me, it's like when I when I see vegan influencers speak out and use their platform
and their voice to to speak out about the oppressive economic systems we have or the, you know, military actions of the United States and and things like that.
It's man, man, my respect level just is like way up because I'm like, oh, yeah, you're really you get in the whole picture here.
You see, you know, how how awful these systems are and you're using your voice and your platform to say something.
And that it makes a huge influence. And and they they get, you know, kick back to I mean, anybody speaking out on, you know, current really, really bad things going on.
It's. Yeah, they get kicked back to, but they get gain a lot of respect and a lot of people's eyes for not being that single focus or just realizing that that that that compassion and that moral compass doesn't.
It's not limited to nonhuman animals.
Thank you, Aaron. I want to quickly end on this question. I was reminded during this conversation of Colin, who was a guest for I think the second episode of this show.
And he told me the story of how he wanted to become a vet and he was doing this internship and during that time he was asked to shot a cow.
And that experience just made him completely turn his back to the vet profession and become vegan.
And so quickly, I would love if every one of you could give maybe a few words of encouragement for the Collins of this word and also for other vegans out there who are in a hostile environment,
but doing their share of, I guess, activism or being this beacon of hope and light in this dark and hostile environment, whatever that environment might be.
You know, we haven't touched. I know that everyone of you is in the US.
And when you were talking about how you could say whatever you want, you know, I was thinking of you have freedom of speech.
And that's something that many maybe listeners from other countries do not have in their state, in their nation.
So what would be your words of encouragement for the people out there struggling in a hostile environment?
And let's start with Crystal.
Yeah. And what did you say in the beginning? He was asked to what a cat.
So there was a cow who.
Yeah. And I think she just laid on the floor and she did not want to just rise back up and walk. And they tried everything.
And so they had to euthanize the cow and the euthanizing the cow meant shutting the cow in the head.
So, yeah. Wow. Yeah. I mean, it's I've never had to do that in my career. And I know a lot of people are like, well, I don't want to euthanize animals.
And you know, I rarely euthanize animals now. I mean, I used to work in a shelter where I had to.
But I know many vets who don't want to. And so they don't like you can make your career whatever you want it to be.
And people are also, you know, tell me, oh, I heard you have to do terminal surgeries.
What school should I go to where I won't have to do that?
I'm like, aren't you a vegan? Are you an activist?
Like, don't you want you should want to change the curriculum so that it's not by you abstaining from participating in terminal surgeries or going to school that doesn't do it anyway.
You're making no difference at all. You will make a difference by going to Iowa State or North Carolina State,
some of the worst schools and causing a fuss and a ruckus and changing the curriculum.
And there are attorneys who want to help you.
I know the most famous, the person who's done the most impactful work on this,
Gary Francione, back in the day, would represent that students who were conscientious objectors and who wanted to change the curriculum.
And he really made a lot of difference in schools and one of the reasons why a lot of schools have moved away from it.
But I am publishing a paper very shortly, which will show that most schools still do terminal surgeries.
And there's been a lot of silence over the past 20 years about this.
I feel like the students in the 90s made the most difference.
And then it was like after the 90s, the 2000s to 2020, it was pretty silent.
And there was not a lot of activism in this area. And now is the time.
I know a lot of animal rights attorneys who would want to help students.
So get involved and find support in the animal rights community and like, let's collaborate and work together
and invite me or other veterinarians to your school for a lunch talk or like,
let's figure out how we can table outside of these schools and do outreach to these students and make a difference.
So, yeah, that would be my advice. You have a whole lot of support in all of us here.
Thank you, Crystal. Nikki?
I guess my summary would be for those who are probably the majority of your listeners who are vegans, but not veterinarians,
just knowing that veterinarians are an extremely high demand, not a day goes by where I don't get some kind of LinkedIn email
that's touting a significant sign on bonus because they are just they need to hire DVMs.
They need to hire veterinarians. And so, you know, I think if you are on the fence about going to vet school,
obviously consider it more than just this podcast. But, you know, just knowing that there are great opportunities to work in animal shelters.
You know, you can work in general practice and maybe volunteer at a sanctuary if you're as fortunate as Dr.
Aaron, you know, maybe you'll actually be able to be employed there as well or perhaps volunteering in wildlife rehab or conservation medicine.
You know, just because you don't want to do euthanasia or you don't want to do surgeries.
I have many colleagues who don't do certain X, Y and Z. And, you know, I think you can draw the line at your comfort level.
And, you know, then I think for the probably like 0.01 percent of listeners who are vegan veterinarians,
who are not actively being interviewed on this podcast, but are listening to it,
I think just using our platform as veterinarians to, you know, teach kindness to everyone in your day to day, of course,
but especially focusing on, you know, teaching kindness to children, to teenagers.
You know, if you can have people shadow you at work and just talk to them about empathy, you know, you don't have to like say, go vegan child.
But, you know, if you could volunteer at like an animal shelter or having a camp.
I know in Chicago, a lot of our bigger, well-funded animal shelters have kids camps over the summer where they do a lot of work on,
hey, let's do enrichment for the animals who are here and let's teach kindness.
And I think that's just such a great way to go about it, you know, starting them off from a kind perspective whenever we can,
growing kids who love animals for, you know, more so than just like, oh, I love dolphins.
I want to swim with dolphins, you know, oh, I love dolphins.
I want to free the dolphins, you know.
Thank you, Nikki. And finally, Erin.
Well, first of all, for those people, realize that they're not alone.
And that's one of the main purposes of this organization that Crystal started, our honor is so that there is an outreach.
There is support.
So, you know, connect with this organization, with our honor, with Crystal and those of us that are involved in that so that we can give that support.
And you realize that you're not alone, someone to talk to and strategies for carrying on.
I'm it's unfortunate that it's unfortunate that Colin shied away from veterinary medicine because of that experience.
It's sometimes in, especially with large animals, people always think that euthanasia is, you know, it means good death.
Right. And that's what we always strive for.
But when you're dealing with an animal that weighs over a thousand pounds, quite often, you know, you do your very best to make things as peaceful and comfortable as possible.
But as someone who's euthanized, you know, many horses and and some ruminants and cattle, you it's actually.
If done right, a gunshot is actually very, very quick and humane death.
It feels very violent.
But you got to remember, you know, pushing a lethal drug into veins and, you know, the whole process of euthanasia, while we try to make it very peaceful, we're still ending a life.
So it's unfortunate that that that's what turned them away from from being veterinarian, because, you know, I've learned to carry a firearm.
When when I do that, when I go out on those, it just is something that they don't want to use it.
But if I do, you will actually end up reducing suffering at some points if you need to.
But, yeah, if you're feeling in that dark place and you want to go into veterinary medicine, there are organizations and people here for you now.
So please reach out. Thank you so much, Sharon.
So, again, thank you, everyone, for having taken the time to answer my questions and have this conversation, group conversation.
I love initiatives like this one, which are new, kind of new.
I don't think I come across other group conversations of vegan veterinarians.
And I love, you know, just testing those boundaries of animal advocacy with this podcast,
because why have a podcast if not for those beautiful conversations?
So, again, thank you so much, everyone.
Thank you, everyone, for listening.
I kindly invite you to share this podcast with the vegans, you know, let's encourage more people to take action.
Again, thank you so much for caring.
And I will see you next Tuesday for a new episode.
Thank you.