1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:06,640 Hello everyone, my name is Ryan and you are listening to The Vegan Report. 2 00:00:06,640 --> 00:00:09,960 Today I offer you hope. 3 00:00:09,960 --> 00:00:16,340 What if I told you that some smart people came up with a viable strategy to end factory 4 00:00:16,340 --> 00:00:18,000 farming for good? 5 00:00:18,000 --> 00:00:24,040 A way to channel all our activism in the most impactful way. 6 00:00:24,040 --> 00:00:29,260 A roadmap telling you where this animal rights struggle ends. 7 00:00:29,260 --> 00:00:35,840 This master plan comes in the form of a legal article titled A New Age of Animal Law written 8 00:00:35,840 --> 00:00:38,240 by three animal rights lawyers. 9 00:00:38,240 --> 00:00:45,360 Jereb Klekel, a staff attorney for Animal Outlook, Grace Brasovsky, a public defender 10 00:00:45,360 --> 00:00:49,640 and Cheryl Lihi, director of Animal Outlook. 11 00:00:49,640 --> 00:00:55,960 I welcomed on the show one of the co-authors, Jereb, and we discussed the good and bad of 12 00:00:55,960 --> 00:01:00,360 animal welfare before getting to the core of his paper. 13 00:01:00,360 --> 00:01:05,260 Then I challenged him on some of the points and assumptions he makes. 14 00:01:05,260 --> 00:01:10,720 If you want to read A New Age of Animal Law, you will find a link in the description for 15 00:01:10,720 --> 00:01:14,520 a longer and shorter version of the article. 16 00:01:14,520 --> 00:01:18,560 I also left a link to Animal Outlook's website. 17 00:01:18,560 --> 00:01:24,960 Think about supporting a non-profit powered by such talented and passionate attorneys. 18 00:01:24,960 --> 00:01:27,280 Hi, Jereb. 19 00:01:27,280 --> 00:01:32,680 Thank you so much for having accepted my invitation and welcome to the show. 20 00:01:32,680 --> 00:01:33,680 Thank you for inviting me. 21 00:01:33,680 --> 00:01:37,240 I'm very excited to be here, talk to you. 22 00:01:37,240 --> 00:01:41,940 My first question for you is, what's the point of your article? 23 00:01:41,940 --> 00:01:48,160 Why did you decide to publish it and talk about it publicly? 24 00:01:48,160 --> 00:01:53,460 This article, A New Age of Animal Law, I think comes from, for better or worse, just being 25 00:01:53,460 --> 00:01:58,320 a people pleaser and wanting to try to take a lot of really smart perspectives in the 26 00:01:58,320 --> 00:02:02,720 animal law movement and to combine them and to put them together and to create a synergy 27 00:02:02,720 --> 00:02:06,840 that I think can and should exist in the movement. 28 00:02:06,840 --> 00:02:09,120 We're a small movement of animal lawyers. 29 00:02:09,120 --> 00:02:15,120 By that, I mean lawyers who are litigating on behalf of animals. 30 00:02:15,120 --> 00:02:20,400 But historically, there's been a surprisingly sharp divide in the movement between abolitionists 31 00:02:20,400 --> 00:02:23,840 on the one hand and welfarists on the other. 32 00:02:23,840 --> 00:02:28,880 I think there is opportunity for that to change and to evolve and to grow and for really smart 33 00:02:28,880 --> 00:02:34,880 minds on both sides to work together as opposed to against each other as historically it's 34 00:02:34,880 --> 00:02:37,920 maybe seemed necessary to do. 35 00:02:37,920 --> 00:02:43,600 That's the basis of this paper is how can we create this unified system, this unified 36 00:02:43,600 --> 00:02:49,280 thought for advancing animal law so that everybody is working together to achieve the same goals. 37 00:02:49,280 --> 00:02:55,480 That's exactly what I got from the paper. 38 00:02:55,480 --> 00:03:04,200 It feels like something unifying and it feels like it's like a strategy for the movement 39 00:03:04,200 --> 00:03:12,360 and it gave me clarity in what are the next steps and how to be consistent in what we're 40 00:03:12,360 --> 00:03:18,800 doing as activists in the activism space. 41 00:03:18,800 --> 00:03:27,400 It also gave me a goal, a light at the end of the tunnel. 42 00:03:27,400 --> 00:03:34,440 Here is the plan, here's the strategy, and here's how we could get to the kind of world 43 00:03:34,440 --> 00:03:39,240 we wish was a reality. 44 00:03:39,240 --> 00:03:45,960 Was this also an aim and intention you had while writing the paper? 45 00:03:45,960 --> 00:03:46,960 Absolutely. 46 00:03:46,960 --> 00:03:51,920 In a lot of ways, I see it almost as more of a starting point because there's a lot 47 00:03:51,920 --> 00:03:56,440 of smart people in this movement and I'm sure that as people read the article, they will 48 00:03:56,440 --> 00:04:01,800 see things, parts of the strategy that they can tweak for themselves or add to or subtract 49 00:04:01,800 --> 00:04:03,480 from. 50 00:04:03,480 --> 00:04:08,680 I think having this outline in my head, this framework gives me some kind of purpose going 51 00:04:08,680 --> 00:04:13,840 forward and some structure as you said and hopefully can be a bit of an educational tool 52 00:04:13,840 --> 00:04:19,120 for young lawyers who are coming up in the movement, at least in terms of seeing the 53 00:04:19,120 --> 00:04:22,800 different perspectives and how they want their role to fit in. 54 00:04:22,800 --> 00:04:26,880 And hopefully also for non-lawyers because we can talk about this a little more later 55 00:04:26,880 --> 00:04:31,520 if it's interesting to you, but I think that people who aren't lawyers and people who are 56 00:04:31,520 --> 00:04:36,480 activists also play a very big role in the legal side of the movement as well. 57 00:04:36,480 --> 00:04:40,920 And so I hope the paper kind of fits all of that together. 58 00:04:40,920 --> 00:04:46,560 So let's get into understanding some of the words that are used in the article, some of 59 00:04:46,560 --> 00:04:50,640 the concepts starting with animal welfare. 60 00:04:50,640 --> 00:04:58,680 Now I have to say before starting this podcast, before really starting this activism journey, 61 00:04:58,680 --> 00:05:07,960 I did not give lots of thoughts about this divide between abolitionism and welfareism. 62 00:05:07,960 --> 00:05:15,280 For me, animal welfare was just part of the animal rights movement in the sense of I would 63 00:05:15,280 --> 00:05:26,600 see some of my favorite pro-vegan organizations like Mercy for Animals pushing animal welfare 64 00:05:26,600 --> 00:05:37,200 policies, laws, supporting them, being active around that, launching campaigns, animal welfare 65 00:05:37,200 --> 00:05:38,960 campaigns. 66 00:05:38,960 --> 00:05:41,520 And I would think, yeah, it's just consistent. 67 00:05:41,520 --> 00:05:48,440 As a vegan, I would support animal welfare as much as animal rights. 68 00:05:48,440 --> 00:05:59,800 I feel like I did not truly realize the difference between this divide and what it meant really. 69 00:05:59,800 --> 00:06:07,120 So for the other ignorant people in my audience, what would you have to say? 70 00:06:07,120 --> 00:06:12,480 Well I started very much in the same boat, not even realizing when I first became vegan 71 00:06:12,480 --> 00:06:16,000 and got into the movement that there was this divide. 72 00:06:16,000 --> 00:06:18,320 But the divide, historically, it makes sense. 73 00:06:18,320 --> 00:06:20,760 I don't think it just comes from an unnatural tension. 74 00:06:20,760 --> 00:06:24,560 So I'll take a step back and start with the definitions that you asked for. 75 00:06:24,560 --> 00:06:28,960 And when we talk about welfareism, of course I'm painting in broad brushstrokes here, but 76 00:06:28,960 --> 00:06:34,040 welfareism is the idea of improving welfare for animals, improving their living conditions. 77 00:06:34,040 --> 00:06:40,960 Now for a pig at a factory farm, that might mean a slightly bigger cage size or eliminating 78 00:06:40,960 --> 00:06:43,840 a certain practice that's especially painful. 79 00:06:43,840 --> 00:06:46,840 All of those would be considered welfare measures. 80 00:06:46,840 --> 00:06:51,840 On the flip side, you have what I call the abolitionist perspective. 81 00:06:51,840 --> 00:06:59,480 And that comes from a place of animals have inherent rights and at least the right to 82 00:06:59,480 --> 00:07:04,680 a continued life and to be free from harm and free from exploitation and to not be treated 83 00:07:04,680 --> 00:07:05,840 as property. 84 00:07:05,840 --> 00:07:12,320 And so the idea is that you shouldn't be exploiting them for food or for other purposes. 85 00:07:12,320 --> 00:07:16,360 And you might think they do go hand in hand and in a lot of ways they do. 86 00:07:16,360 --> 00:07:19,760 Improving conditions for animals is trying to improve the lives for animals the same 87 00:07:19,760 --> 00:07:25,520 way you would be improving their lives by no longer exploiting them altogether. 88 00:07:25,520 --> 00:07:30,400 But when you look a little closer at those positions, you see a pretty big dichotomy. 89 00:07:30,400 --> 00:07:37,120 You can talk a little bit about why that dichotomy has evolved, but Professor Gary Francione 90 00:07:37,120 --> 00:07:42,880 is really, I think, the first or at least one of the main people to point out why that 91 00:07:42,880 --> 00:07:45,760 dichotomy is important and why it exists. 92 00:07:45,760 --> 00:07:50,000 And he's now more of a dissenting viewpoint, I would say, in the movement, but very much 93 00:07:50,000 --> 00:07:55,440 one of my idols and role models in the movement because he asks the hard questions, right? 94 00:07:55,440 --> 00:08:02,200 Which is if we are just taking these incremental steps to improve the lives of animals by making 95 00:08:02,200 --> 00:08:07,760 their cages bigger, are we actually reaching a more abolitionist angle like we want to 96 00:08:07,760 --> 00:08:08,760 in the long run? 97 00:08:08,760 --> 00:08:14,120 Or are we actually fighting against ourselves in one way or another? 98 00:08:14,120 --> 00:08:19,280 So I can go into a little bit more detail if you want about how those emerge, but that's 99 00:08:19,280 --> 00:08:23,840 broad strokes the overview of the welfarists who want to incrementally improve the lives 100 00:08:23,840 --> 00:08:30,160 of animals and then you have the abolitionists who want to end the exploitation altogether. 101 00:08:30,160 --> 00:08:38,680 Sometimes how this is presented is, welfarism is a more realistic approach and abolitionism 102 00:08:38,680 --> 00:08:40,960 is more of an idealistic one. 103 00:08:40,960 --> 00:08:43,160 Would you agree with that? 104 00:08:43,160 --> 00:08:45,760 I think that that's definitely how it's presented. 105 00:08:45,760 --> 00:08:48,380 I agree that that's how it's presented. 106 00:08:48,380 --> 00:08:53,160 So I think welfarists will say, listen, we live in a world where people eat animals. 107 00:08:53,160 --> 00:08:54,760 That's just the reality. 108 00:08:54,760 --> 00:08:59,120 We're not going to overnight wake up and see that all animals are freed and we no longer 109 00:08:59,120 --> 00:09:00,120 eat them. 110 00:09:00,120 --> 00:09:03,440 So we might as well do what we can for the animals, right? 111 00:09:03,440 --> 00:09:06,920 And they will critique an abolitionist by saying, listen, you're wasting a lot of your 112 00:09:06,920 --> 00:09:12,440 time and resources when you could be taking these tangible steps to help animals. 113 00:09:12,440 --> 00:09:17,160 And I think that's maybe a position that more people intuitively are drawn to. 114 00:09:17,160 --> 00:09:21,520 But from the abolitionist side, what someone like Professor Francione would say is you're 115 00:09:21,520 --> 00:09:26,520 actually fighting against yourself because if you take these incremental steps and you 116 00:09:26,520 --> 00:09:30,360 start celebrating that, say, now cages are bigger for animals. 117 00:09:30,360 --> 00:09:32,080 Look, we won this huge victory. 118 00:09:32,080 --> 00:09:34,560 They have more space to move around. 119 00:09:34,560 --> 00:09:38,280 Then you're just reinforcing the idea that there is an ethical way to consume and to 120 00:09:38,280 --> 00:09:39,280 exploit animals. 121 00:09:39,280 --> 00:09:43,440 And you have consumers who will then look at supermarket shelves and see cage free and 122 00:09:43,440 --> 00:09:45,000 be like, oh, look, the animals are happy. 123 00:09:45,000 --> 00:09:46,440 I'm going to keep eating eggs. 124 00:09:46,440 --> 00:09:50,920 And it prevents them in a way from confronting the bigger picture question of should we be 125 00:09:50,920 --> 00:09:52,720 doing this in the first place? 126 00:09:52,720 --> 00:09:56,100 And so that's a lot of the pushback you get on either side. 127 00:09:56,100 --> 00:09:58,940 And that's kind of where the divide starts and how it's framed. 128 00:09:58,940 --> 00:10:08,440 In preparation for this interview, I watched one of your lectures online and there was 129 00:10:08,440 --> 00:10:15,320 those three animal welfare laws, policies that you identified and that were applied 130 00:10:15,320 --> 00:10:23,080 in the US, namely the 28 hour law and then the Humane Metals of Slaughter Act and the 131 00:10:23,080 --> 00:10:25,000 Animal Welfare Act. 132 00:10:25,000 --> 00:10:32,040 And I guess those three are considered like big victories by animal welfareists. 133 00:10:32,040 --> 00:10:35,200 Could you maybe expand on what they are? 134 00:10:35,200 --> 00:10:41,520 And I think that will give us a better idea of concretely what is animal welfare. 135 00:10:41,520 --> 00:10:46,760 So I apologize to you before the podcast and we'll again here now that we're reporting 136 00:10:46,760 --> 00:10:50,080 about my limited knowledge of American law. 137 00:10:50,080 --> 00:10:55,760 So this focuses on US law, but there's really only three federal statutes. 138 00:10:55,760 --> 00:11:01,480 And by federal statutes, I mean the laws that apply to the entire country as a whole. 139 00:11:01,480 --> 00:11:05,080 There's three federal laws that Congress enacted to protect farmed animals. 140 00:11:05,080 --> 00:11:09,040 I'm sorry, two statutes they've enacted to protect farmed animals. 141 00:11:09,040 --> 00:11:12,920 And I start pretty much every lecture or every topic you'll see me give to law students or 142 00:11:12,920 --> 00:11:14,160 anywhere else this way, right? 143 00:11:14,160 --> 00:11:18,300 There's the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act and the 28 hour law. 144 00:11:18,300 --> 00:11:21,040 And you can tell by the names exactly what they do. 145 00:11:21,040 --> 00:11:25,720 The Humane Methods of Slaughter Act regulates in some ways how animals are slaughtered and 146 00:11:25,720 --> 00:11:29,760 it tries to eliminate some of the cruelest slaughter practices. 147 00:11:29,760 --> 00:11:32,600 And then the 28 hour law is a transport law. 148 00:11:32,600 --> 00:11:37,200 And this law I think is probably most shocking when I explain it to people because it means 149 00:11:37,200 --> 00:11:43,360 you can't transport animals for over 28 hours in the back of a transport truck. 150 00:11:43,360 --> 00:11:46,840 And when you think about that as the baseline, that's pretty crazy because it means that 151 00:11:46,840 --> 00:11:51,040 under that law, you can have an animal in the back of the truck and create for 27 and 152 00:11:51,040 --> 00:11:53,600 a half hours and that's compliance, right? 153 00:11:53,600 --> 00:11:56,040 So that's the level of baseline that we're dealing with. 154 00:11:56,040 --> 00:12:00,920 And that's why protecting farmed animals through the law can be very difficult, right? 155 00:12:00,920 --> 00:12:02,100 That's the baseline. 156 00:12:02,100 --> 00:12:08,000 So if you think about those two statutes and what they protect, right? 157 00:12:08,000 --> 00:12:13,360 Slaughter and then hopefully less than the 28 hours leading up to the slaughter during 158 00:12:13,360 --> 00:12:14,640 the transport. 159 00:12:14,640 --> 00:12:19,160 And I usually stop there and I say, okay, so who can tell me what's missing from those 160 00:12:19,160 --> 00:12:20,160 protections? 161 00:12:20,160 --> 00:12:22,440 And people have various answers. 162 00:12:22,440 --> 00:12:27,400 And then when they realize, oh, it's the rest of their lives, it's everything that they 163 00:12:27,400 --> 00:12:33,200 experience up until that point of transport to slaughter, they go, oh, wow, these baselines 164 00:12:33,200 --> 00:12:35,880 are really, really well at the federal level. 165 00:12:35,880 --> 00:12:39,040 And so that's kind of where we're starting. 166 00:12:39,040 --> 00:12:45,000 And some of those laws, they do protect animal welfare to a degree, but you see how low the 167 00:12:45,000 --> 00:12:46,280 federal baseline is. 168 00:12:46,280 --> 00:12:49,820 Now you asked me about the Animal Welfare Act and you may have noticed that I didn't 169 00:12:49,820 --> 00:12:55,740 mention it in saying that Congress enacted laws to protect farmed animals. 170 00:12:55,740 --> 00:13:00,440 And that's because also as a surprise to many people, the Animal Welfare Act does not protect 171 00:13:00,440 --> 00:13:01,880 animals, or it's radical culture. 172 00:13:01,880 --> 00:13:03,760 It doesn't apply to farmed animals. 173 00:13:03,760 --> 00:13:09,040 So your biggest federal animal welfare statute in the country doesn't apply to farmed animals 174 00:13:09,040 --> 00:13:10,040 at all. 175 00:13:10,040 --> 00:13:11,680 That's the baseline we're dealing with. 176 00:13:11,680 --> 00:13:24,040 And something that you raise in the article is that it's one thing to have those laws. 177 00:13:24,040 --> 00:13:28,520 It's something else to enforce them. 178 00:13:28,520 --> 00:13:32,680 And there's no such thing as animal police. 179 00:13:32,680 --> 00:13:37,640 And I have witnessed some acts of animal cruelty. 180 00:13:37,640 --> 00:13:45,380 And I have witnessed how the police has its limitations in addressing those behaviors 181 00:13:45,380 --> 00:13:51,440 and the social acceptability. 182 00:13:51,440 --> 00:13:59,680 I will edit this out, but how socially it is acceptable for those acts to occur. 183 00:13:59,680 --> 00:14:06,140 So people don't even have the instinct of calling the police when they witness. 184 00:14:06,140 --> 00:14:16,120 So yeah, there's this dog, for instance, who is outside all the time, even in winter. 185 00:14:16,120 --> 00:14:21,840 It goes against animal welfare laws, protecting companion animals. 186 00:14:21,840 --> 00:14:23,800 You call the police, they're powerless. 187 00:14:23,800 --> 00:14:25,860 What are they going to do? 188 00:14:25,860 --> 00:14:30,560 You call different agencies, shelters, or whatever. 189 00:14:30,560 --> 00:14:32,320 They are overwhelmed. 190 00:14:32,320 --> 00:14:35,800 So basically you have this law that was adopted. 191 00:14:35,800 --> 00:14:40,680 You had activists behind it who worked hard to craft that law. 192 00:14:40,680 --> 00:14:43,760 But then it's not enforced. 193 00:14:43,760 --> 00:14:56,800 And so my question is, how many of those laws are enforced in the world of factory farming? 194 00:14:56,800 --> 00:15:09,440 And then is it worth pursuing, creating those laws and establishing them if they will not 195 00:15:09,440 --> 00:15:10,440 be enforced? 196 00:15:10,440 --> 00:15:14,200 There's a lot of pieces to that question, I'm going to try to hit all of them. 197 00:15:14,200 --> 00:15:20,760 And I will start by saying, I agree with you entirely that enforcement is a very big issue, 198 00:15:20,760 --> 00:15:23,800 or lack of enforcement rather. 199 00:15:23,800 --> 00:15:27,740 Now when we were just talking, I talked about federal laws. 200 00:15:27,740 --> 00:15:32,280 Part of the reason the legal system in the United States is a little weird and different 201 00:15:32,280 --> 00:15:35,540 and complicated is because of the federalist structure. 202 00:15:35,540 --> 00:15:40,340 So there's federal laws that apply to the whole country, but then there's state laws 203 00:15:40,340 --> 00:15:45,320 and states act as their own separate sovereigns and can establish their own laws. 204 00:15:45,320 --> 00:15:51,120 And it's really states that have a lot of the stronger laws that are out there for protecting 205 00:15:51,120 --> 00:15:52,920 animals. 206 00:15:52,920 --> 00:15:57,880 And those are the ones that can be enforced a lot more and that are often under enforced. 207 00:15:57,880 --> 00:16:03,480 And states also have a lot of flexibility to pass some of the stronger laws for protecting 208 00:16:03,480 --> 00:16:04,480 animals. 209 00:16:04,480 --> 00:16:10,280 So California's Proposition 12, which we can talk about a little later too if you want, 210 00:16:10,280 --> 00:16:13,480 is one of the biggest examples that people think of, right? 211 00:16:13,480 --> 00:16:18,160 This gestation crate ban or the ban on the sale of meat that comes derived from pigs 212 00:16:18,160 --> 00:16:21,900 that were kept in gestation crates, right? 213 00:16:21,900 --> 00:16:26,320 And so there are these state laws that can actually do more, at least for animal welfare, 214 00:16:26,320 --> 00:16:27,320 right? 215 00:16:27,320 --> 00:16:30,320 And the problem that we see a lot is the lack of enforcement. 216 00:16:30,320 --> 00:16:34,820 So this comes back to your question and to exactly what you're asking. 217 00:16:34,820 --> 00:16:39,060 But sometimes it's because there aren't laws on the books and sometimes it's just because 218 00:16:39,060 --> 00:16:43,560 of practice where people don't think about enforcing the law that way, even though they 219 00:16:43,560 --> 00:16:47,000 very clearly should based on the text of the law itself. 220 00:16:47,000 --> 00:16:48,000 So I'll give you an example. 221 00:16:48,000 --> 00:16:53,520 We have a case in Maine right now, the state of Maine, where we're litigating against Maine's 222 00:16:53,520 --> 00:16:55,720 Department of Agriculture. 223 00:16:55,720 --> 00:17:02,600 And our big issue with the department is that they are not protecting animals kept in the 224 00:17:02,600 --> 00:17:04,320 state's aquaculture facilities. 225 00:17:04,320 --> 00:17:08,960 And the aquaculture facilities, the aquaculture industry is blowing up, it's expanding exponentially 226 00:17:08,960 --> 00:17:16,480 and it's like the Wild West because there's no animal welfare measures at all in that 227 00:17:16,480 --> 00:17:17,480 industry. 228 00:17:17,480 --> 00:17:22,200 Now, Animal Outlook, where I'm an attorney, did one of the first investigations into the 229 00:17:22,200 --> 00:17:26,920 aquaculture industry in the US and it was in Maine and we saw just horrible cruelty, 230 00:17:26,920 --> 00:17:30,040 everything that you would expect and more. 231 00:17:30,040 --> 00:17:34,400 Because anything that people will do to animals, they'll do tenfold to fish because it's just 232 00:17:34,400 --> 00:17:37,600 like, oh, they're just fish, right? 233 00:17:37,600 --> 00:17:41,600 And we go to the Department of Agriculture, which has the state's animal welfare program 234 00:17:41,600 --> 00:17:46,040 and we say, hey, you have to protect the animals in this industry. 235 00:17:46,040 --> 00:17:50,600 And before we even got to this point where we are in litigation, the first thing the 236 00:17:50,600 --> 00:17:53,500 agency said is, oh, that's not our job. 237 00:17:53,500 --> 00:17:55,100 And that blew our minds. 238 00:17:55,100 --> 00:17:58,960 It just blew us out of the water and you wouldn't think that it would because we see stuff like 239 00:17:58,960 --> 00:18:04,340 this all the time, but the agency has the animal welfare program and animal is defined 240 00:18:04,340 --> 00:18:08,680 to include every living sentient creature that's not a human being. 241 00:18:08,680 --> 00:18:11,560 So we say, so your job is to protect these fish, right? 242 00:18:11,560 --> 00:18:12,560 And they say, no. 243 00:18:12,560 --> 00:18:14,800 We say, well, your job is to protect animals. 244 00:18:14,800 --> 00:18:15,800 Yes. 245 00:18:15,800 --> 00:18:17,000 And animals is defined. 246 00:18:17,000 --> 00:18:18,000 Yes. 247 00:18:18,000 --> 00:18:20,320 Every living sentient creature that's not a human being. 248 00:18:20,320 --> 00:18:21,320 Yes. 249 00:18:21,320 --> 00:18:22,320 Fish or animals. 250 00:18:22,320 --> 00:18:23,320 Yes. 251 00:18:23,320 --> 00:18:24,320 And fish are sentient. 252 00:18:24,320 --> 00:18:25,320 Yes. 253 00:18:25,320 --> 00:18:26,320 And fish are living. 254 00:18:26,320 --> 00:18:27,320 Yes. 255 00:18:27,320 --> 00:18:28,320 And fish are creatures. 256 00:18:28,320 --> 00:18:29,320 Yes. 257 00:18:29,320 --> 00:18:30,320 So you have to protect the fish, right? 258 00:18:30,320 --> 00:18:31,320 No. 259 00:18:31,320 --> 00:18:32,320 And you're like, where's the disconnect here? 260 00:18:32,320 --> 00:18:33,320 What has happened? 261 00:18:33,320 --> 00:18:34,320 Right. 262 00:18:34,320 --> 00:18:39,040 Because there's some animals that are just, you know, the government is not doing its 263 00:18:39,040 --> 00:18:44,200 job to enforce the law and protect these animals, even though it very clearly can under the 264 00:18:44,200 --> 00:18:47,000 letter of the law, right? 265 00:18:47,000 --> 00:18:52,280 Whenever Animal Outlook does investigations, a lot of investigations, we see law enforcement, 266 00:18:52,280 --> 00:18:53,280 we see prosecutions. 267 00:18:53,280 --> 00:18:57,960 And typically we want to prosecute either the corporation or like the owner manager 268 00:18:57,960 --> 00:19:02,040 of the facility rather than just, you know, individual workers. 269 00:19:02,040 --> 00:19:03,520 And that's for a few different reasons. 270 00:19:03,520 --> 00:19:08,480 But one for the animal purposes is you start going after individual workers. 271 00:19:08,480 --> 00:19:12,320 You're kind of sending this message that, oh, it's just a few bad apples who are hurting 272 00:19:12,320 --> 00:19:15,240 animals in these unusual circumstances. 273 00:19:15,240 --> 00:19:19,240 When really it's systemic, it's companies themselves that have these conditions and 274 00:19:19,240 --> 00:19:22,760 practices that are inherently cruel to animals. 275 00:19:22,760 --> 00:19:29,000 And in a lot of states, the cruelty laws should be applied to those facilities by prosecutors, 276 00:19:29,000 --> 00:19:32,980 by law enforcement, the same way they would be applied to a cat and dog. 277 00:19:32,980 --> 00:19:36,240 But when you tell a prosecutor that, they go, what do you mean? 278 00:19:36,240 --> 00:19:37,880 Like, no, that's not what we do. 279 00:19:37,880 --> 00:19:40,960 We don't prosecute, you know, agriculture industries. 280 00:19:40,960 --> 00:19:45,160 And so part of Animal Outlook's work, part of my work as an attorney there is trying 281 00:19:45,160 --> 00:19:50,560 to actually work with prosecutors to get them to enforce these laws against the corporations, 282 00:19:50,560 --> 00:19:54,880 because there are sometimes these laws on the books that are just being under enforced, 283 00:19:54,880 --> 00:19:56,840 like you said. 284 00:19:56,840 --> 00:20:00,320 And we've been very successful in that in the last couple of years and getting these 285 00:20:00,320 --> 00:20:04,000 prosecutions against owners and managers of facilities. 286 00:20:04,000 --> 00:20:09,240 And I think the more the law actually starts to be enforced the way it should be, the more 287 00:20:09,240 --> 00:20:12,200 you'll actually see this kind of systemic change in the industry. 288 00:20:12,200 --> 00:20:17,240 And the more the public will recognize, oh, this is these practices, the way these companies 289 00:20:17,240 --> 00:20:19,600 are operating is just inherently unawful. 290 00:20:19,600 --> 00:20:20,600 It's just cruel. 291 00:20:20,600 --> 00:20:25,680 Let's talk about what I find the strongest argument for animal welfare laws. 292 00:20:25,680 --> 00:20:30,840 And that is the driving up prices of exploiting animals. 293 00:20:30,840 --> 00:20:37,600 In many ways, I find that veganism is about driving change in the market. 294 00:20:37,600 --> 00:20:45,320 So it's more or less something that has to do with influencing the economy. 295 00:20:45,320 --> 00:20:51,280 And I learned about this driving up prices animal welfare argument from your article. 296 00:20:51,280 --> 00:20:54,140 I was completely ignorant about it. 297 00:20:54,140 --> 00:21:03,260 So could you please explain what the argument is about and how much is it realistic? 298 00:21:03,260 --> 00:21:06,680 Is it a goal that has been fulfilled in the past? 299 00:21:06,680 --> 00:21:14,040 Do we have historical data to back up this claim of animal welfarists? 300 00:21:14,040 --> 00:21:15,040 Yeah. 301 00:21:15,040 --> 00:21:21,800 So historically, the argument from welfarists have been if you add regulation to an industry, 302 00:21:21,800 --> 00:21:28,160 then the costs go up to the industry and it costs them more money to operate and they 303 00:21:28,160 --> 00:21:30,000 can't make as big a profit. 304 00:21:30,000 --> 00:21:32,880 It's a very simple kind of economics argument. 305 00:21:32,880 --> 00:21:38,480 If you tell an aquaculture industry, it can treat fish however it wants and they can have 306 00:21:38,480 --> 00:21:43,000 free reign, then they're not going to implement measures to take care of the fish. 307 00:21:43,000 --> 00:21:47,400 And if you start implementing them and all of a sudden they need bigger tanks and cleaner 308 00:21:47,400 --> 00:21:51,320 water and all of these other measures, their costs are going to go up. 309 00:21:51,320 --> 00:21:53,760 That's the historic argument. 310 00:21:53,760 --> 00:21:58,440 From the abolitionist side, there's really been two counters to that and I will take 311 00:21:58,440 --> 00:22:00,000 them in turn. 312 00:22:00,000 --> 00:22:04,960 So the first, and this is really where I think I would disagree most with Professor Francione's 313 00:22:04,960 --> 00:22:11,640 approach is that these welfare measures inherently make the industry more profitable all the 314 00:22:11,640 --> 00:22:13,560 time no matter what. 315 00:22:13,560 --> 00:22:19,440 That by increasing animal welfare, you're actually making the animals live longer and 316 00:22:19,440 --> 00:22:26,280 do better and the industry will ultimately make more money because there will be, I don't 317 00:22:26,280 --> 00:22:31,640 know, fill in the blanks, less need for antibiotics, less recalls, et cetera. 318 00:22:31,640 --> 00:22:34,800 It'll just make the industry operate more efficiently. 319 00:22:34,800 --> 00:22:38,880 And I think that just has to be wrong. 320 00:22:38,880 --> 00:22:44,240 And without kind of weighing in on the back and forth debate about which measures is that 321 00:22:44,240 --> 00:22:50,240 true about, which measures is it not, I think you can just look at a couple of basic hypotheticals 322 00:22:50,240 --> 00:22:53,080 and see that it can't be true across the board. 323 00:22:53,080 --> 00:22:58,120 If cages for chickens are three feet and you implement a measure that means the industry 324 00:22:58,120 --> 00:23:02,120 has to then go and make them four feet and then has to go and make them five feet and 325 00:23:02,120 --> 00:23:07,160 six feet and 10 feet and 12 feet, the industry has to keep spending more money to build bigger 326 00:23:07,160 --> 00:23:10,520 cages and to expand them. 327 00:23:10,520 --> 00:23:14,160 And then it takes up more space and they need more land and they can have fewer animals. 328 00:23:14,160 --> 00:23:18,160 So you can very easily see how a welfare measure can increase costs. 329 00:23:18,160 --> 00:23:22,980 So I start from that premise that regardless of what you may think of welfare measures 330 00:23:22,980 --> 00:23:27,320 that currently exist and whether they're driving up costs, there certainly are welfare measures 331 00:23:27,320 --> 00:23:29,320 that will drive up costs. 332 00:23:29,320 --> 00:23:37,960 And I think to say that there's not, it's just too much of a blanket statement. 333 00:23:37,960 --> 00:23:41,760 And I think that's one of the responsibilities of animal organizations if they're bringing 334 00:23:41,760 --> 00:23:45,840 litigation or proposing legislation is to make sure, yeah, this is the kind of measure 335 00:23:45,840 --> 00:23:47,840 that will actually drive up costs to the industry. 336 00:23:47,840 --> 00:23:52,360 But I'm going to set that aside now and assume that there are measures that can actually 337 00:23:52,360 --> 00:23:54,520 increase costs for the industry. 338 00:23:54,520 --> 00:23:59,840 And this is where you get to the second counter argument, which I think historically has been 339 00:23:59,840 --> 00:24:04,520 the more persuasive at least to me, which is that animal products like meat, I'm just 340 00:24:04,520 --> 00:24:09,080 going to take as the example, are inelastic. 341 00:24:09,080 --> 00:24:14,880 If you look at basic economics and you look at supply and demand, if you have a necessity, 342 00:24:14,880 --> 00:24:22,160 a product that's a necessity, if you cause the industry to increase its costs, it doesn't 343 00:24:22,160 --> 00:24:25,440 really matter because it's going to pass that cost on to consumers. 344 00:24:25,440 --> 00:24:29,440 An example I always give is if you're wandering through the desert and you haven't had water 345 00:24:29,440 --> 00:24:34,360 for two days and you come across somebody in the desert who's selling a bottle of water, 346 00:24:34,360 --> 00:24:37,180 you will pay whatever they ask for that bottle of water. 347 00:24:37,180 --> 00:24:42,520 Maybe a bottle of water costs $2 in the real world, but you will pay 10 or 20 or 100 because 348 00:24:42,520 --> 00:24:43,520 otherwise you will die. 349 00:24:43,520 --> 00:24:47,800 So if it's a necessity good, then you will pay more for it. 350 00:24:47,800 --> 00:24:54,040 And historically, the agriculture industry for animals has done a great job of persuading 351 00:24:54,040 --> 00:24:57,080 the public that animal products are necessities. 352 00:24:57,080 --> 00:24:59,960 You grow up with them in the food pyramid. 353 00:24:59,960 --> 00:25:06,240 And I think abolitionists, that's one of their big roles is putting a dent in that and saying, 354 00:25:06,240 --> 00:25:08,160 these products aren't necessities. 355 00:25:08,160 --> 00:25:11,000 Actually you can live a vegan lifestyle and be perfectly healthy. 356 00:25:11,000 --> 00:25:13,640 And if you do it right, you can be even healthier. 357 00:25:13,640 --> 00:25:15,520 And meat can actually be unhealthy. 358 00:25:15,520 --> 00:25:19,840 And you kind of change that narrative in a way that aligns with the science. 359 00:25:19,840 --> 00:25:21,920 But historically, it's been viewed as a necessity. 360 00:25:21,920 --> 00:25:27,040 So if we pass a welfare measure, costs go up for the industry, they just pass those 361 00:25:27,040 --> 00:25:30,920 costs on to the consumers and they say, all right, well, now your stake is $12 instead 362 00:25:30,920 --> 00:25:33,840 of 10 and people just pay it. 363 00:25:33,840 --> 00:25:36,760 And that's kind of the end of the story because they say, well, we have to eat meat. 364 00:25:36,760 --> 00:25:39,620 It's just part of life. 365 00:25:39,620 --> 00:25:41,480 So that's the necessity piece. 366 00:25:41,480 --> 00:25:47,960 And I think abolitionists really in charge of tacking that piece. 367 00:25:47,960 --> 00:25:52,760 Then you have the substitutability prong. 368 00:25:52,760 --> 00:25:56,960 So when products have substitutes, they're more elastic. 369 00:25:56,960 --> 00:25:59,600 And so I give you an example there to make that a little more concrete. 370 00:25:59,600 --> 00:26:04,720 Just say you have a type of chewing gum you really like, like a fig gum. 371 00:26:04,720 --> 00:26:06,480 I don't even think I don't know why I said fig gum. 372 00:26:06,480 --> 00:26:07,480 I don't know if that exists. 373 00:26:07,480 --> 00:26:08,640 My antler has been growing figs. 374 00:26:08,640 --> 00:26:10,960 So I have figs on my mind. 375 00:26:10,960 --> 00:26:13,120 But say you have fig chewing gum, right? 376 00:26:13,120 --> 00:26:15,000 And you're like, there's nowhere else I can get this. 377 00:26:15,000 --> 00:26:16,200 It's not a necessity. 378 00:26:16,200 --> 00:26:18,320 So I'm not going to spend $8 on gum too often. 379 00:26:18,320 --> 00:26:21,520 But when I want to treat myself, spend $8 on gum. 380 00:26:21,520 --> 00:26:22,520 It's great. 381 00:26:22,520 --> 00:26:25,800 OK, so you pay it because there's no substitutes for it. 382 00:26:25,800 --> 00:26:31,160 But then if other companies start coming out with it and it's $6 and $5 and $4, now you 383 00:26:31,160 --> 00:26:32,960 have options. 384 00:26:32,960 --> 00:26:38,040 So if you think about the fig gum company that's charging $8 a pack, somebody sues them 385 00:26:38,040 --> 00:26:41,600 and they have to up their cost to $9 and there's no other products. 386 00:26:41,600 --> 00:26:44,840 It's probably not going to change the demand that much because people who want the gum 387 00:26:44,840 --> 00:26:47,660 will pay $9 if they would pay $8. 388 00:26:47,660 --> 00:26:51,040 But now if there's other products, there's another product that comes out and they charge 389 00:26:51,040 --> 00:26:52,760 $8.50. 390 00:26:52,760 --> 00:26:55,080 And that company has to go up to $9. 391 00:26:55,080 --> 00:26:56,440 Now people have an option. 392 00:26:56,440 --> 00:26:58,700 They can switch. 393 00:26:58,700 --> 00:27:01,880 And that's, I think, what we're seeing for the first time in history with these really 394 00:27:01,880 --> 00:27:07,000 realistic plant-based products that really replicate the taste and the texture of animal 395 00:27:07,000 --> 00:27:08,000 products. 396 00:27:08,000 --> 00:27:13,800 And hopefully, at some point, relatively soon at a cost-effective level, cell-based products, 397 00:27:13,800 --> 00:27:18,200 fermentation-derived products, you see all of a sudden there are substitutes in the market. 398 00:27:18,200 --> 00:27:22,800 And so I think what that means is for the first time now in history, as welfare measures 399 00:27:22,800 --> 00:27:28,000 start to drive up prices for the industry, it's no longer going to just be like, oh, 400 00:27:28,000 --> 00:27:30,040 we'll pass this on to consumers. 401 00:27:30,040 --> 00:27:31,840 The industry will then have two options. 402 00:27:31,840 --> 00:27:38,760 They either take the hit and it cuts into their profit margin or they pass those costs 403 00:27:38,760 --> 00:27:43,080 on to consumers and it gives consumers more pause in thinking about the substitutes that 404 00:27:43,080 --> 00:27:44,080 are out there. 405 00:27:44,080 --> 00:27:48,360 And maybe they switch over to plant-based products because of that change in price parity. 406 00:27:48,360 --> 00:27:49,480 Fascinating. 407 00:27:49,480 --> 00:27:56,600 Now we're getting at the strategy, the core of your article, which is, you know, the way 408 00:27:56,600 --> 00:28:01,760 I see it is like a fight on many fronts. 409 00:28:01,760 --> 00:28:09,480 First of all, you need to drive up prices of animal products, bypassing animal welfare 410 00:28:09,480 --> 00:28:13,000 laws. 411 00:28:13,000 --> 00:28:20,320 Then you have to advocate and make alternatives. 412 00:28:20,320 --> 00:28:30,920 So the Impossible Burgers and the lab-grown meat out there make them viable options, accepted 413 00:28:30,920 --> 00:28:42,880 by the public, embraced, and to see them now as great alternatives for those animal products 414 00:28:42,880 --> 00:28:46,680 that are becoming more and more unaffordable. 415 00:28:46,680 --> 00:28:47,680 Yeah. 416 00:28:47,680 --> 00:28:50,000 So I think it's a few fold. 417 00:28:50,000 --> 00:28:56,560 And obviously I have a little bias as an attorney, but I think the law will start to play an 418 00:28:56,560 --> 00:29:00,840 even bigger role in the movement now that there's more options. 419 00:29:00,840 --> 00:29:06,080 And if you're the kind of person who doesn't want to read a thousand page law review article, 420 00:29:06,080 --> 00:29:09,360 you can go right to page 52 and it gives you that roadmap. 421 00:29:09,360 --> 00:29:11,720 And I can walk right through that. 422 00:29:11,720 --> 00:29:17,600 I also might, my co-author Cheryl Lay, he's the executive director of Animal Outlook. 423 00:29:17,600 --> 00:29:22,400 And I published a kind of summary piece on the Brooks Animal Law Digest that walks through 424 00:29:22,400 --> 00:29:23,400 this. 425 00:29:23,400 --> 00:29:26,880 So that's a bit of a shorter summary as well. 426 00:29:26,880 --> 00:29:31,720 But the idea is, right, we've talked about kind of this phase one, so to speak, right? 427 00:29:31,720 --> 00:29:34,760 These alternatives come closer to replicating counterparts. 428 00:29:34,760 --> 00:29:36,720 Consumers start to consider them as substitutes. 429 00:29:36,720 --> 00:29:40,160 They go, oh, maybe the demand curve starts to become more elastic. 430 00:29:40,160 --> 00:29:41,160 Right. 431 00:29:41,160 --> 00:29:46,240 And I've said, it's up to abolitionist activists and lawyers to make the public and not just 432 00:29:46,240 --> 00:29:51,640 a portion of the public, but the entire public, accept alternatives as viable substitutes. 433 00:29:51,640 --> 00:29:54,360 And I think there's a couple of ways to do that. 434 00:29:54,360 --> 00:29:55,360 Right. 435 00:29:55,360 --> 00:29:59,840 One is, as I mentioned before, showing that animal products are not necessities. 436 00:29:59,840 --> 00:30:01,320 Right. 437 00:30:01,320 --> 00:30:05,200 And there's a lot of different ways you can do that as both an activist and a lawyer. 438 00:30:05,200 --> 00:30:09,600 To give you one example of the case that we have right now at Animal Outlook, it's a lawsuit 439 00:30:09,600 --> 00:30:11,800 against the American Heart Association. 440 00:30:11,800 --> 00:30:17,960 The American Heart Association puts its heart check stamp of approval on certain beef products. 441 00:30:17,960 --> 00:30:18,960 Right. 442 00:30:18,960 --> 00:30:23,400 And we're suing them by saying, hey, you're actually, that's a paid endorsement. 443 00:30:23,400 --> 00:30:27,760 You're getting paid by the beef industry to put that heart check on those products. 444 00:30:27,760 --> 00:30:31,800 And it goes counter to the science and even science that American Heart Association journals 445 00:30:31,800 --> 00:30:32,800 publish. 446 00:30:32,800 --> 00:30:37,440 And, you know, and by bringing these efforts in courts, which I think have an inherent 447 00:30:37,440 --> 00:30:44,720 legitimacy to them as, you know, like a serious legal system, you show through the court system 448 00:30:44,720 --> 00:30:47,240 that, oh, these animal products aren't necessities. 449 00:30:47,240 --> 00:30:49,800 They're not even, they're not even necessarily healthy. 450 00:30:49,800 --> 00:30:52,320 They might actually be damaging to us. 451 00:30:52,320 --> 00:30:53,320 Right. 452 00:30:53,320 --> 00:31:01,160 Well, let me just maybe present the, you know, devil advocate, be the devil advocate and 453 00:31:01,160 --> 00:31:06,840 present maybe the opposite side argument, which is, you know, the beyond meat and the 454 00:31:06,840 --> 00:31:11,800 impossible burgers of this world are processed food. 455 00:31:11,800 --> 00:31:22,760 It is hard in the minds of people to present the case that this is healthier than meat. 456 00:31:22,760 --> 00:31:30,840 And you know, just from my personal experience, I use an app called Yuka and it allows you, 457 00:31:30,840 --> 00:31:36,800 you know, to scan the labels of products and cosmetics and it gives you a list of the different 458 00:31:36,800 --> 00:31:38,000 additives. 459 00:31:38,000 --> 00:31:47,360 And also it tells you, oh, those additives are forbidden, you know, in Europe, European 460 00:31:47,360 --> 00:31:54,120 countries or Australia and they link all sorts of study studies around that. 461 00:31:54,120 --> 00:32:00,720 And I won't name the company, but it's a big meat alternative company. 462 00:32:00,720 --> 00:32:02,880 And I tried scanning their products. 463 00:32:02,880 --> 00:32:06,000 I used to be a customer of them. 464 00:32:06,000 --> 00:32:15,320 And then I discovered how bad they were ranking and how many additives were in their products. 465 00:32:15,320 --> 00:32:23,480 And I thought, ooh, this is not good when you try to sell the idea that those alternatives 466 00:32:23,480 --> 00:32:27,760 are healthier than the animal products. 467 00:32:27,760 --> 00:32:28,880 Yeah. 468 00:32:28,880 --> 00:32:34,660 So I think there's a couple of ways to think about that issue. 469 00:32:34,660 --> 00:32:38,100 One is that not all alternative products are going to be made equal. 470 00:32:38,100 --> 00:32:45,240 And I think it would be naive and I hope that vegans don't fall into this trap too often 471 00:32:45,240 --> 00:32:49,880 of just saying, oh, all plant-based products are inherently super healthy for you, right? 472 00:32:49,880 --> 00:32:51,160 Oreos are plant-based products. 473 00:32:51,160 --> 00:32:53,200 They're not healthy for you. 474 00:32:53,200 --> 00:32:55,880 I treat them like they are, but they're not. 475 00:32:55,880 --> 00:32:58,440 And that's going to be the case with alternatives as well. 476 00:32:58,440 --> 00:33:01,080 There's going to be some that are healthier than others, right? 477 00:33:01,080 --> 00:33:06,640 And it's going to depend too on the nutritional criteria that you're looking at, right? 478 00:33:06,640 --> 00:33:09,480 Some products may be healthier because they have lower cholesterol. 479 00:33:09,480 --> 00:33:13,280 And that may be especially important to someone who's trying to cut down on their cholesterol 480 00:33:13,280 --> 00:33:18,280 that like an alternative burger has way less cholesterol than a meat product, right? 481 00:33:18,280 --> 00:33:22,400 But maybe there is a disadvantage in some ways because some of the processed chemicals 482 00:33:22,400 --> 00:33:25,840 in that product aren't great, right? 483 00:33:25,840 --> 00:33:31,800 And I think as consumers, you kind of have to weigh your options and see which of these 484 00:33:31,800 --> 00:33:35,280 products are healthy in the ways that you want it to be and the way that you need it 485 00:33:35,280 --> 00:33:36,740 to be. 486 00:33:36,740 --> 00:33:42,040 But it doesn't change the bottom line that meat products are unhealthy, right? 487 00:33:42,040 --> 00:33:48,920 When it comes to carcinogens, high saturated fat, and so on and so forth, right? 488 00:33:48,920 --> 00:33:52,160 And so it's the job I think of. 489 00:33:52,160 --> 00:33:55,480 And again, here we're not even talking about the substitutability problem. 490 00:33:55,480 --> 00:33:58,280 We're just talking about the necessity problem, right? 491 00:33:58,280 --> 00:34:03,960 If you go after and you show that meat products are not a necessity when it comes to health, 492 00:34:03,960 --> 00:34:09,600 that they are actually detrimental to health, at least if consumed in large amounts, right? 493 00:34:09,600 --> 00:34:13,640 Then you're showing the product, sorry, you're showing consumers that these are not necessity 494 00:34:13,640 --> 00:34:15,480 products, right? 495 00:34:15,480 --> 00:34:20,680 And that's really the first step in making sure that these products no longer have this 496 00:34:20,680 --> 00:34:25,080 inelasticity value, showing consumers that they don't even need to buy them, right? 497 00:34:25,080 --> 00:34:29,760 When it comes to substitutability, you can look at other factors. 498 00:34:29,760 --> 00:34:35,440 And I think that's where the second piece, the ethical piece really comes to play, right? 499 00:34:35,440 --> 00:34:40,340 Because I think it's also up to abolitionist lawyers to show people that these other products 500 00:34:40,340 --> 00:34:45,880 have to be adequate substitutes, even if you don't think they're perfect, because animal 501 00:34:45,880 --> 00:34:48,740 products can never be an ethical option, right? 502 00:34:48,740 --> 00:34:52,240 And as an abolitionist, you have to show why that can be the case. 503 00:34:52,240 --> 00:35:01,160 Yes, I do agree that some people will see animal products and we make the case that 504 00:35:01,160 --> 00:35:02,920 they're unethical. 505 00:35:02,920 --> 00:35:10,240 We show the footage and they understand that this is not the ethical option. 506 00:35:10,240 --> 00:35:18,560 I hosted the debate recently between different vegan activists and they were all in agreement 507 00:35:18,560 --> 00:35:32,160 that people are selfish and that going about trying to appeal to their morality was not 508 00:35:32,160 --> 00:35:33,960 that efficient. 509 00:35:33,960 --> 00:35:37,960 So how do you address that weakness? 510 00:35:37,960 --> 00:35:42,280 So unfortunately, I am not going to be the person who comes on the show and argues that 511 00:35:42,280 --> 00:35:47,120 people are not inherently selfish because I tend to agree with every one of your other 512 00:35:47,120 --> 00:35:49,720 panelists. 513 00:35:49,720 --> 00:35:55,160 Unfortunately in saying that, or I should say fortunately in saying that, I think that's 514 00:35:55,160 --> 00:36:01,720 the advantage to kind of the roadmap that I've tried to lay out here is that people 515 00:36:01,720 --> 00:36:08,240 are selfish to a point, but they're also self-conscious beings, right? 516 00:36:08,240 --> 00:36:11,480 And so maybe if you think of meat as a necessity, right? 517 00:36:11,480 --> 00:36:15,040 And you say, okay, this is a necessity product. 518 00:36:15,040 --> 00:36:18,160 People are like, well, of course I'm going to eat this, it's a necessity. 519 00:36:18,160 --> 00:36:19,160 Maybe they should, right? 520 00:36:19,160 --> 00:36:24,440 Maybe it's natural and healthy and evolutionary to be selfish to that point. 521 00:36:24,440 --> 00:36:28,480 But then as you start to chip away at that necessity approach, right? 522 00:36:28,480 --> 00:36:33,400 And you start to see the prices go up and you start to see substitutes that are more 523 00:36:33,400 --> 00:36:35,740 on parity price-wise, right? 524 00:36:35,740 --> 00:36:40,840 Maybe somebody is selfish enough to say, I'm not going to eat a plant-based burger. 525 00:36:40,840 --> 00:36:48,140 I'm not going to eat a veggie burger for $11 if I can eat a cheeseburger for four, right? 526 00:36:48,140 --> 00:36:53,000 But are you selfish enough to say, I'm not going to eat a veggie burger for six, I'm 527 00:36:53,000 --> 00:36:55,520 going to eat a cheeseburger for 450? 528 00:36:55,520 --> 00:36:58,000 What about five and 550? 529 00:36:58,000 --> 00:37:02,420 And then if you're really ingrained in your ways, you know, and we've talked a lot about 530 00:37:02,420 --> 00:37:03,700 plant-based meat, right? 531 00:37:03,700 --> 00:37:09,040 What happens when cell-based meat, if cell-based meat hits the market and is the exact same 532 00:37:09,040 --> 00:37:13,600 food product as meat from a slaughtered animal, you know, maybe people will say at first, 533 00:37:13,600 --> 00:37:14,600 oh, this is gross. 534 00:37:14,600 --> 00:37:15,600 I wouldn't eat this. 535 00:37:15,600 --> 00:37:20,440 It comes from a lab, even though everything they consume comes from a lab. 536 00:37:20,440 --> 00:37:24,960 And then they will turn and they will say, oh, well, now the cell-based product is $3 537 00:37:24,960 --> 00:37:27,040 and this hamburger is $7. 538 00:37:27,040 --> 00:37:31,160 Maybe I should give it a try, you know, until eventually I think it just starts to become 539 00:37:31,160 --> 00:37:32,160 the norm. 540 00:37:32,160 --> 00:37:37,560 And so I agree with you that people are selfish, but I think there is a tipping point in there 541 00:37:37,560 --> 00:37:43,520 somewhere where people are like, am I this selfish? 542 00:37:43,520 --> 00:37:46,560 And I think selfishness can be a spectrum, right? 543 00:37:46,560 --> 00:37:47,760 Like most things. 544 00:37:47,760 --> 00:37:51,720 And so I think that's where these strategies come together. 545 00:37:51,720 --> 00:37:56,580 And that's why these substitutes, I think, become so valuable because historically, right, 546 00:37:56,580 --> 00:37:59,560 it's made abolitionist jobs easier, right? 547 00:37:59,560 --> 00:38:03,360 We used to have to say, oh, you should stop doing this for ethical reasons. 548 00:38:03,360 --> 00:38:05,120 And it sounded like a sacrifice. 549 00:38:05,120 --> 00:38:08,480 I still don't think it was, but you could think of it that way, right? 550 00:38:08,480 --> 00:38:10,800 You're giving something up, right? 551 00:38:10,800 --> 00:38:15,880 Now you're just saying you have to have a good enough substitute and here's why. 552 00:38:15,880 --> 00:38:18,880 And it makes the argument a lot easier. 553 00:38:18,880 --> 00:38:24,640 And so I think you have to play off the degrees of selfishness that people have. 554 00:38:24,640 --> 00:38:28,480 If you can always cut this out, if it bores you, but don't me for a second. 555 00:38:28,480 --> 00:38:33,960 This is kind of my big picture theory to animal rights. 556 00:38:33,960 --> 00:38:39,080 It's a simple minded theory and that's why I like it. 557 00:38:39,080 --> 00:38:44,200 Is that killing and torturing and hurting animals is just always wrong. 558 00:38:44,200 --> 00:38:49,120 And I don't think it takes a really deep philosopher to figure that out. 559 00:38:49,120 --> 00:38:52,960 I think you can take an animal like a rat that a lot of people don't like to say, I 560 00:38:52,960 --> 00:38:53,960 don't like rats. 561 00:38:53,960 --> 00:38:57,280 And you say, all right, well, do you think it's okay to just pull that rat's toes off 562 00:38:57,280 --> 00:39:00,880 one by one or pull its feet off or light his tail on fire? 563 00:39:00,880 --> 00:39:01,880 And then they'll stop. 564 00:39:01,880 --> 00:39:03,320 Like, why are you saying these things? 565 00:39:03,320 --> 00:39:04,320 Why are you doing that? 566 00:39:04,320 --> 00:39:05,320 Right. 567 00:39:05,320 --> 00:39:06,320 That's horrible. 568 00:39:06,320 --> 00:39:07,320 Right. 569 00:39:07,320 --> 00:39:09,600 So you don't really have to convince somebody that it's wrong to torture an animal. 570 00:39:09,600 --> 00:39:11,760 It's a harm an animal. 571 00:39:11,760 --> 00:39:18,040 And then you think about these whole grass fed free roaming myths and you think, all 572 00:39:18,040 --> 00:39:24,800 right, well, if you have this lovable dog and she grows up in your house and she cuddles 573 00:39:24,800 --> 00:39:28,880 and she gets everything a dog could want with the walks and the running and the playing 574 00:39:28,880 --> 00:39:31,000 and food. 575 00:39:31,000 --> 00:39:33,600 And then one day you just shoot her in the face. 576 00:39:33,600 --> 00:39:34,600 Well, that's not right. 577 00:39:34,600 --> 00:39:35,600 Right. 578 00:39:35,600 --> 00:39:36,760 So everybody knows like you can't just, just because an animal had a good life doesn't 579 00:39:36,760 --> 00:39:38,000 mean it's ethical to kill them. 580 00:39:38,000 --> 00:39:39,000 Right. 581 00:39:39,000 --> 00:39:40,440 This is all intuitive stuff for us. 582 00:39:40,440 --> 00:39:45,360 You know, people think of veganism as extremism in some ways, but when you think about it, 583 00:39:45,360 --> 00:39:46,960 it's really a simple principle, right? 584 00:39:46,960 --> 00:39:52,040 Don't torture and don't kill an animal that has a life and feels pain and the sentience. 585 00:39:52,040 --> 00:39:53,920 It's pretty basic. 586 00:39:53,920 --> 00:39:57,640 I think most people will agree with those premises if you're actually confronted with 587 00:39:57,640 --> 00:39:58,800 it head on. 588 00:39:58,800 --> 00:40:01,280 And then the question becomes, is it justifiable? 589 00:40:01,280 --> 00:40:02,280 Right. 590 00:40:02,280 --> 00:40:08,440 And there's a concept in the walk, the justification defense where, you know, the idea is not that 591 00:40:08,440 --> 00:40:11,720 something is ever right, but can it be justifiable nonetheless? 592 00:40:11,720 --> 00:40:12,720 Right. 593 00:40:12,720 --> 00:40:14,600 So a robber is always going to be unethical. 594 00:40:14,600 --> 00:40:16,240 It's never ethical to rob a store. 595 00:40:16,240 --> 00:40:17,800 Nobody would be like, oh yeah, it's great. 596 00:40:17,800 --> 00:40:18,800 Go rob a gas station. 597 00:40:18,800 --> 00:40:20,480 That's a great thing to do on a Saturday night. 598 00:40:20,480 --> 00:40:21,800 It's just not okay. 599 00:40:21,800 --> 00:40:22,800 Right. 600 00:40:22,800 --> 00:40:27,400 But it's worse if Bill Gates does it than if, you know, there's a homeless pregnant 601 00:40:27,400 --> 00:40:30,320 mother who needs to feed her family of three. 602 00:40:30,320 --> 00:40:31,320 Right. 603 00:40:31,320 --> 00:40:34,920 It's not that it becomes ethical for her to rob the store, but it's justifiable. 604 00:40:34,920 --> 00:40:41,080 And I think that's how I view the animal rights issue and consuming animals and animal agriculture 605 00:40:41,080 --> 00:40:47,640 is, you know, if Ben Gunn is a vegan, right, Ben Gunn being a artist stranded and marooned 606 00:40:47,640 --> 00:40:51,400 in Treasure Island, right, and he needs to catch and kill an animal to survive. 607 00:40:51,400 --> 00:40:52,400 Like, okay, right. 608 00:40:52,400 --> 00:40:55,680 But he doesn't have to put the animal's life above his own. 609 00:40:55,680 --> 00:41:00,080 He can still survive and I think he'd still consider him to be an ethical vegan if he 610 00:41:00,080 --> 00:41:02,200 leaves it as a vegan. 611 00:41:02,200 --> 00:41:04,640 But then it becomes, you know, what justifies it? 612 00:41:04,640 --> 00:41:09,080 And I think the more substitutes we start to see, more people start to see that these 613 00:41:09,080 --> 00:41:14,320 aren't necessities, the more people will start to realize like, oh, this is unethical 614 00:41:14,320 --> 00:41:17,160 and it is also unjustifiable. 615 00:41:17,160 --> 00:41:22,840 And I think that's where the movement needs to push people is this is not justifiable. 616 00:41:22,840 --> 00:41:29,280 I also wanted to address the fact that, you know, we talk about those products, those 617 00:41:29,280 --> 00:41:37,240 meat, you know, lab grown meat and the impossible burgers of the world and the just eggs as 618 00:41:37,240 --> 00:41:39,440 alternatives. 619 00:41:39,440 --> 00:41:44,800 But why should they be the alternative? 620 00:41:44,800 --> 00:41:50,440 Why people would not have the instinct of purchasing both, you know, animal products 621 00:41:50,440 --> 00:41:54,160 and those alternatives, so to speak? 622 00:41:54,160 --> 00:41:55,160 Yeah. 623 00:41:55,160 --> 00:41:57,360 I mean, I think you identify a real problem. 624 00:41:57,360 --> 00:42:01,560 I think that we're seeing that in the market now in large part. 625 00:42:01,560 --> 00:42:07,480 And that's something the article talks about is where people don't look at it as an alternative, 626 00:42:07,480 --> 00:42:10,760 but they look at it as in addition to. 627 00:42:10,760 --> 00:42:12,240 Right. 628 00:42:12,240 --> 00:42:15,320 I think that's only true with some products and some industries. 629 00:42:15,320 --> 00:42:18,800 And maybe that talks for product quality and price and where things are. 630 00:42:18,800 --> 00:42:19,800 Right. 631 00:42:19,800 --> 00:42:25,960 I mean, products like oat milk put a huge dent into the market for dairy milk. 632 00:42:25,960 --> 00:42:29,680 And so I do think there is the opportunity to get there. 633 00:42:29,680 --> 00:42:34,000 But you're right when it comes to products like just egg or beyond burgers, impossible 634 00:42:34,000 --> 00:42:35,000 burgers. 635 00:42:35,000 --> 00:42:36,000 Right. 636 00:42:36,000 --> 00:42:41,300 You're seeing more of an in addition to rather than an alternative kind of approach. 637 00:42:41,300 --> 00:42:43,800 And that's where I think a couple of things have to happen. 638 00:42:43,800 --> 00:42:44,800 Right. 639 00:42:44,800 --> 00:42:48,820 You have the economic side where you have to keep pushing for that price parity, because 640 00:42:48,820 --> 00:42:53,600 right now plant based products are largely more expensive still across the board. 641 00:42:53,600 --> 00:42:58,760 And as the companies work to bring down those prices and on the other hand, as lawyers are 642 00:42:58,760 --> 00:43:05,360 working to kind of litigate up costs for the animal industries, whether that's through 643 00:43:05,360 --> 00:43:10,520 litigation or attacking subsidies from the government, you'll start to get that price 644 00:43:10,520 --> 00:43:11,520 parity. 645 00:43:11,520 --> 00:43:15,800 And that's when I think you'll see more of a substitute than an addition to. 646 00:43:15,800 --> 00:43:21,280 And on the other side, to the extent you can give people that ethical argument, even if 647 00:43:21,280 --> 00:43:25,600 you can't convince everybody ethically, I think the more it becomes out there and the 648 00:43:25,600 --> 00:43:29,700 more people start to think about it, the more they'll be like, all right, these other products 649 00:43:29,700 --> 00:43:30,700 aren't that bad. 650 00:43:30,700 --> 00:43:31,700 I can switch over. 651 00:43:31,700 --> 00:43:33,440 So I think it's both. 652 00:43:33,440 --> 00:43:35,000 I think it's a twofold response. 653 00:43:35,000 --> 00:43:40,520 And I think right now we're not seeing it yet, but hopefully we will get to the point 654 00:43:40,520 --> 00:43:46,920 where we are seeing that if you can reach that price parity there. 655 00:43:46,920 --> 00:43:50,560 And what are the indicators of this strategy working? 656 00:43:50,560 --> 00:44:01,200 Well, I mean, I think you kind of have your stereotypical statistical indicators, right? 657 00:44:01,200 --> 00:44:07,360 Which are, is the quantity of animal product sales going down and the product of plant 658 00:44:07,360 --> 00:44:11,320 based sales going up, right, and you can try to kind of quantify everything. 659 00:44:11,320 --> 00:44:16,880 And then I think there's indicators that just aren't really quantifiable, right? 660 00:44:16,880 --> 00:44:23,520 You can kind of start to see shifts in society and judges that are hard to quantify at first 661 00:44:23,520 --> 00:44:25,920 and aren't really obvious until they take hold, right? 662 00:44:25,920 --> 00:44:30,640 The non-human rights project had a case on behalf of Happy the Elephant in New York, 663 00:44:30,640 --> 00:44:31,640 right? 664 00:44:31,640 --> 00:44:36,680 A habeas case about saying that the rights of Happy the Elephant were being infringed 665 00:44:36,680 --> 00:44:45,120 by being kept in the Bronx Zoo and ultimately lost in the highest state court in New York. 666 00:44:45,120 --> 00:44:50,080 But there were seven judges, I believe, on that panel and two of them wrote very strong 667 00:44:50,080 --> 00:44:53,600 opinions, disagreeing with the opinion as cultural dissent. 668 00:44:53,600 --> 00:45:00,360 And they wrote two very strong dissenting opinions, which maybe shows you like, oh, 669 00:45:00,360 --> 00:45:05,520 these kind of off the wall ideas, as we would call them, are now becoming a lot more on 670 00:45:05,520 --> 00:45:06,520 the wall, right? 671 00:45:06,520 --> 00:45:11,080 So you get these kind of subtle indications along the way that the thought is starting 672 00:45:11,080 --> 00:45:12,080 to change. 673 00:45:12,080 --> 00:45:16,000 You now have these very kind of prestigious judges sitting on the bench who agree with 674 00:45:16,000 --> 00:45:20,560 this as a theory, who believe that animals should have legal personhood. 675 00:45:20,560 --> 00:45:25,680 And 20 years ago, you know, you barely had lawyers who would agree with that, let alone 676 00:45:25,680 --> 00:45:26,680 judges. 677 00:45:26,680 --> 00:45:29,200 So you get indicators like that that show there's progress. 678 00:45:29,200 --> 00:45:32,880 You have your quantitative indicators, you know, and then you kind of have your indicators 679 00:45:32,880 --> 00:45:38,360 of your own, which is difficult because n equals one is always bad statistically. 680 00:45:38,360 --> 00:45:42,400 But you can go and you have conversations with people and you see how people are thinking 681 00:45:42,400 --> 00:45:44,840 about things and have they heard of veganism? 682 00:45:44,840 --> 00:45:48,320 You know, a lot of you know, just a few years ago, you hear people going like, oh, are you 683 00:45:48,320 --> 00:45:49,320 a vegan? 684 00:45:49,320 --> 00:45:52,400 Or are you a, you know, and they wouldn't even know the word. 685 00:45:52,400 --> 00:45:56,720 Now I think most people know the word and maybe that's an indicator of progress. 686 00:45:56,720 --> 00:46:05,560 I wish there was something like a doomsday clock of veganism, something that could, you 687 00:46:05,560 --> 00:46:13,680 know, measure, have this overview measure of the progress of the cause and just, you 688 00:46:13,680 --> 00:46:22,880 know, instruct the movement to, you know, hey, you should be critical about what you're 689 00:46:22,880 --> 00:46:33,080 doing right now because in the past three years we had a 5% increase in our universal 690 00:46:33,080 --> 00:46:35,320 vegan cause indicator. 691 00:46:35,320 --> 00:46:37,320 And this year we had like 3%. 692 00:46:37,320 --> 00:46:39,260 What happened? 693 00:46:39,260 --> 00:46:45,360 Something like that, some kind of universal way of, oh, we're making progress towards 694 00:46:45,360 --> 00:46:46,360 our end goal. 695 00:46:46,360 --> 00:46:49,040 Yeah, I listen, I would love that. 696 00:46:49,040 --> 00:46:54,120 And I think everybody in the movement would because you love to see some indication that 697 00:46:54,120 --> 00:46:57,040 what you're doing matters and makes a difference. 698 00:46:57,040 --> 00:46:59,520 And I'm guilty of the same thing, right? 699 00:46:59,520 --> 00:47:03,880 Like when Animal Outlook, when we put out our New York Times article about the Holden 700 00:47:03,880 --> 00:47:09,720 Farms investigation, you know, you can get the media imprint numbers and see like this 701 00:47:09,720 --> 00:47:13,160 story has reached so many hundreds of millions of people, right? 702 00:47:13,160 --> 00:47:15,920 And it's quantifiable and it makes you feel good. 703 00:47:15,920 --> 00:47:18,000 You think, okay, this is getting out there. 704 00:47:18,000 --> 00:47:23,520 But I think we also have to be pretty cautious and circumspect about relying too much on 705 00:47:23,520 --> 00:47:26,040 that short-term positive reinforcement. 706 00:47:26,040 --> 00:47:30,840 You know, like we live in a world of social media where it's a lot of times about likes 707 00:47:30,840 --> 00:47:35,360 and clicks and, you know, how many people have seen your posts and things along those 708 00:47:35,360 --> 00:47:37,160 lines. 709 00:47:37,160 --> 00:47:40,720 And it can obfuscate, I think, the long-term goal sometimes. 710 00:47:40,720 --> 00:47:46,800 It certainly has an intrinsic value to it, you know, but I think, you know, if we look 711 00:47:46,800 --> 00:47:51,440 back historically, it's like when people were fighting for whatever cause they were fighting 712 00:47:51,440 --> 00:47:54,560 for, they were doing it just because it was the right thing to do. 713 00:47:54,560 --> 00:47:56,920 They had no idea if it was going to make an impact. 714 00:47:56,920 --> 00:47:59,080 They just knew, this is what I know. 715 00:47:59,080 --> 00:48:00,480 This is a black and white issue. 716 00:48:00,480 --> 00:48:05,480 I, you know, I would like to make some impact in my life and whether I win this fight or 717 00:48:05,480 --> 00:48:09,080 lose this fight, I'm doing it because it's the right thing to do. 718 00:48:09,080 --> 00:48:16,720 And I think that mindset is sometimes difficult to keep in a world where you want to quantify 719 00:48:16,720 --> 00:48:17,720 things. 720 00:48:17,720 --> 00:48:22,720 And again, I don't say this standing on like my high horse over here, you know, like I 721 00:48:22,720 --> 00:48:27,520 think we're all guilty of it, myself included, of wanting to see these tangible short-term 722 00:48:27,520 --> 00:48:28,520 results. 723 00:48:28,520 --> 00:48:29,800 And I love statistics. 724 00:48:29,800 --> 00:48:32,760 My most influential legal paper was not a legal paper. 725 00:48:32,760 --> 00:48:36,360 It was a scientific statistical paper. 726 00:48:36,360 --> 00:48:39,000 And I think it has a ton of value. 727 00:48:39,000 --> 00:48:43,560 But I also think there's something to be said for just saying, this is a black and white 728 00:48:43,560 --> 00:48:45,760 issue, exploiting animals is wrong. 729 00:48:45,760 --> 00:48:51,840 I'm going to just fight this out till I, you know, and that's, that's what I'm here to 730 00:48:51,840 --> 00:48:52,840 do. 731 00:48:52,840 --> 00:48:56,120 And I think that'll move the movement forward as well. 732 00:48:56,120 --> 00:48:57,120 Yeah. 733 00:48:57,120 --> 00:48:59,720 Let me just say something a bit shocking. 734 00:48:59,720 --> 00:49:10,600 You know, I think maybe if those past successful social justice movements were using maybe 735 00:49:10,600 --> 00:49:16,960 more indicators or more data and more, you know, you know, measures of impact, maybe 736 00:49:16,960 --> 00:49:25,360 they would have had more success and, you know, at a quicker rate than they had. 737 00:49:25,360 --> 00:49:32,720 And also, I do believe that the animal protection movement is its own thing. 738 00:49:32,720 --> 00:49:39,960 I think, yeah, it is helpful to compare to other social justice movement up to a certain 739 00:49:39,960 --> 00:49:41,160 point. 740 00:49:41,160 --> 00:49:49,840 This is, this is in every way you look at it, a different ballgame, you know, in terms 741 00:49:49,840 --> 00:49:56,880 of how big it is, you know, what we're going against this industry, but not just that, 742 00:49:56,880 --> 00:50:04,480 the ideology behind it and how much it is has been established for thousands of years 743 00:50:04,480 --> 00:50:12,960 and how it is universally adopted by every culture and how it's not a divide between, 744 00:50:12,960 --> 00:50:21,920 you know, gender or race, but different between species, you know, divide between species. 745 00:50:21,920 --> 00:50:22,920 It's crazy. 746 00:50:22,920 --> 00:50:24,360 I agree with you completely. 747 00:50:24,360 --> 00:50:29,040 I think, you know, on the one hand, if you ignore history and don't learn lessons from 748 00:50:29,040 --> 00:50:34,680 history, then you're, you know, you're being naive and not learning lessons that you can 749 00:50:34,680 --> 00:50:35,680 learn. 750 00:50:35,680 --> 00:50:37,960 And, you know, like one of my favorite books I remember reading is What Can Animal Law 751 00:50:37,960 --> 00:50:40,160 Learn from Environmental Law? 752 00:50:40,160 --> 00:50:43,320 And I'm blocking on the author's name right now, which is mortifying. 753 00:50:43,320 --> 00:50:48,280 But you know, you get these kind of analyses that compare it up to their movements and 754 00:50:48,280 --> 00:50:51,280 how they've evolved and they're very helpful. 755 00:50:51,280 --> 00:50:56,200 But also, you don't want to stick to a rubric because everything does work in its own way. 756 00:50:56,200 --> 00:50:59,960 And this is, like you said, you know, no pun intended, a different animal. 757 00:50:59,960 --> 00:51:07,280 And so, you know, you know, it's we're humans, we're inherently imperfect, and we're winging 758 00:51:07,280 --> 00:51:10,640 it a little bit as we go. 759 00:51:10,640 --> 00:51:14,760 But it's, you know, maybe I've just been a lawyer too long where I keep giving wishy 760 00:51:14,760 --> 00:51:15,800 washy answers. 761 00:51:15,800 --> 00:51:21,040 But I think when you don't know the answer, you have to be open to all strategies and 762 00:51:21,040 --> 00:51:23,140 you have to be open to pulling from the past. 763 00:51:23,140 --> 00:51:28,080 And you also have to be open to, you know, to taking risks of your own. 764 00:51:28,080 --> 00:51:31,760 Think can actually move things forward and make a difference. 765 00:51:31,760 --> 00:51:33,880 And they're not inherently contradictory. 766 00:51:33,880 --> 00:51:37,480 No, it's a good answer. 767 00:51:37,480 --> 00:51:43,640 And you're at the forefront of this fight, which I'm not. 768 00:51:43,640 --> 00:51:46,760 So no, you definitely are. 769 00:51:46,760 --> 00:51:53,960 And I think, you know, we all it's I don't know, I guess maybe we all struggle with this 770 00:51:53,960 --> 00:51:59,320 of, you know, wanting to you want to know you're making a difference, but also have 771 00:51:59,320 --> 00:52:03,560 the humility to know that you're one small piece of a wheel. 772 00:52:03,560 --> 00:52:08,160 And yeah, I mean, I think that we what you're doing is incredibly valuable. 773 00:52:08,160 --> 00:52:12,680 I mean, when I was in law school, we didn't have an animal law class. 774 00:52:12,680 --> 00:52:15,880 I learned animal law by listening to the Animal Law Podcast, right? 775 00:52:15,880 --> 00:52:17,320 I'm Mary Ann Sullivan's podcast. 776 00:52:17,320 --> 00:52:20,480 That's how I taught myself animal law. 777 00:52:20,480 --> 00:52:25,640 So people like you who are getting ideas like this out there that wouldn't otherwise be 778 00:52:25,640 --> 00:52:29,360 out there, I think is as valuable as anything that can be done. 779 00:52:29,360 --> 00:52:35,560 And if nothing else, it's certainly nice to hear intelligent people like yourself asking 780 00:52:35,560 --> 00:52:41,080 intelligent questions and making people think and, you know, making the movement reflect 781 00:52:41,080 --> 00:52:42,080 and think. 782 00:52:42,080 --> 00:52:46,360 I certainly can't say that I have all of the right answers or good answers or certainly 783 00:52:46,360 --> 00:52:47,680 not the best answers. 784 00:52:47,680 --> 00:52:52,320 But you know, when we start having these conversations and thinking it through deeply and taking 785 00:52:52,320 --> 00:52:57,480 the issue seriously, I think that's in a lot of ways the most we can ask of ourselves. 786 00:52:57,480 --> 00:53:02,240 And so I am very grateful for you for doing this and for inviting me on for challenging 787 00:53:02,240 --> 00:53:03,240 me. 788 00:53:03,240 --> 00:53:07,040 And yeah, I think it's I think it's very valuable. 789 00:53:07,040 --> 00:53:08,040 Thank you, Sherb. 790 00:53:08,040 --> 00:53:10,680 And did I miss something? 791 00:53:10,680 --> 00:53:15,400 Is there a question I should have asked and I missed? 792 00:53:15,400 --> 00:53:18,360 No, I mean, I don't think so. 793 00:53:18,360 --> 00:53:20,280 I'm happy to answer anything else you have. 794 00:53:20,280 --> 00:53:25,400 I mean, some of the questions I get a lot are like, oh, what should, you know, law students 795 00:53:25,400 --> 00:53:28,720 do if they're looking to become animal, you know, things like that, which I think are 796 00:53:28,720 --> 00:53:31,600 probably a little bit more off the mark for your podcast. 797 00:53:31,600 --> 00:53:32,600 I'm a legal nerd. 798 00:53:32,600 --> 00:53:35,800 If there's like nuances, I'm happy to go into them. 799 00:53:35,800 --> 00:53:39,520 But I think we've hit a lot of, you know, the big points. 800 00:53:39,520 --> 00:53:44,200 Well, let me now thank you, Sherb, for for this wonderful article. 801 00:53:44,200 --> 00:53:49,560 And you know, not just you, but also the other two co-authors. 802 00:53:49,560 --> 00:53:55,880 It's wonderful to have this not mindset, but to be able to conceptualize what we're doing 803 00:53:55,880 --> 00:53:59,720 and to have this clear view of, you know, here's the plan. 804 00:53:59,720 --> 00:54:02,680 Yeah, I loved that article. 805 00:54:02,680 --> 00:54:08,760 And thank you so much for having written the article and for your activism work. 806 00:54:08,760 --> 00:54:10,400 Well, thank you. 807 00:54:10,400 --> 00:54:16,720 And thank you to you as well for all the reasons that I said and for having me on to talk about 808 00:54:16,720 --> 00:54:17,720 it. 809 00:54:17,720 --> 00:54:20,720 And, you know, like I said at the beginning, I hope it gives a good roadmap. 810 00:54:20,720 --> 00:54:22,880 And I also think it's a starting point. 811 00:54:22,880 --> 00:54:28,180 And if people see ways to improve it or to tweak it, I think, you know, that's always 812 00:54:28,180 --> 00:54:29,680 a very positive thing. 813 00:54:29,680 --> 00:54:32,320 It helps to move us forward. 814 00:54:32,320 --> 00:54:37,080 And I hope that, you know, putting it out there serves some sort of a unifying force. 815 00:54:37,080 --> 00:54:43,680 But I also hope that it encourages people to critique me and to put ideas out there 816 00:54:43,680 --> 00:54:45,680 that are even better and stronger. 817 00:54:45,680 --> 00:54:50,240 And, you know, I obviously would not have been able to write it without my co-authors, 818 00:54:50,240 --> 00:54:51,520 without Brace and Cheryl. 819 00:54:51,520 --> 00:54:55,400 Brace is my best friend from law school who got me into Adam along in the first place. 820 00:54:55,400 --> 00:54:59,000 So I was very happy to be able to write the article with her. 821 00:54:59,000 --> 00:55:00,880 Thank you everyone for listening. 822 00:55:00,880 --> 00:55:05,240 I kindly invite you to share this podcast with the vegans you know. 823 00:55:05,240 --> 00:55:08,200 Let's encourage more people to take action. 824 00:55:08,200 --> 00:55:36,760 Again, thank you so much for caring and I will see you next Tuesday for a new episode.