Welcome to The Vegan Report, my name is Ryan
and today I am happy to talk with John Sanbonmatsu,
the author of the new book, The Omnivore's Deception,
which is a fascinating guide into who are the
intellectual handmaiden of the animal exploitation
world. To put it simply, think the carnest version
of Peter Singer or Gary Francione. People like
Michael Pollan, and if you don't know who Michael
Pollan is, you're in for a surprise. The Omniform
Deception is available for order. I highly, highly
recommend it. Link in the episode notes. We had
the chance to discuss some really interesting
passages of the book, like the myth of humane
meat, or how farming animals is empowering to
women. But first we talked about John's position
against cultivated meat. He thinks that cultivated
meat is a profound strategic miscalculation for
our movement. I had the chance to hear him make
the case against cultivated meat in a debate
against none other than Léa Garcès, president
of Mercy for Animals, and Bruce Friedrich, CEO
of the Good Food Institute. And he did that dressed
as a pirate. It is an epic debate that deserves
a listen, and you are in luck because it is available
as a bonus episode of the podcast. You are welcome.
And as always, if you want to support a podcast
that does not shy away from questioning the status
quo and covering the under -reported struggles
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So feel free to leave a good review. Thank you.
So John, welcome to the show. Thank you so much
for being here. I'm delighted to be here. You
have a great show. Thanks for having me. So I
discovered you through the debate you've done
about the cultivated meat thing. And I have to
say Before hearing you speak, and before talking
to Miyoko Shiner a few episodes ago, I thought
that cultivated meat was the messiah. I thought
that this was the end of the animal rights movement,
that it is the solution to every one of our problems
and the end of factory farming of slaughterhouses
of the whole deal. And you just opened my eyes
to the hidden, you know, face of that whole world
and the whole push to make it legitimate and
make it front and center of the movement. Why
have I not ever questioned the narrative that
cultivated meat is the answer to all of our questions.
It's a really good question. I mean, I think
there are a few dimensions to this. One is it's
sort of like, why is everybody talking about
AI all of a sudden? Why is this technology being
shoved down our throats in academia, in industry,
in daily life? And it's not because AI is good
for us. It's because you have these extremely
wealthy, powerful, unscrupulous people, mostly
men, billionaires who have decided that they
want this because it will make them richer and
give them more control. And so it is taking over
society. Well, the cellular me technology is
not as powerful or hegemonic, but it's coming
from the same place of people with a lot of resources
and not necessarily the best of intentions who
want to make this happen. So that's number one.
Number two, though, for those of us in the movement
who felt who feel demoralized by the fact that
no matter what we do or say, after centuries
and even millennia of descent to the animal system,
to our violence against animals, after centuries
of this resistance, things are worse for animals
than ever before. The animals of the earth are
being wiped off the face of the earth in the
mass extinction crisis. the number of animals
being killed every year is increasing. Even the
number of animals being consumed or the amount
of meat being consumed is growing per capita
in the United States and elsewhere. I don't know
if you know the expression, a Hail Mary Pass,
but it's the idea that, okay, nothing else is
going to work, so we're just going to try something
completely different. So you have these guys
who were part of the animal welfare wing of the
movement, particularly Bruce Friedrich, who used
to work with PETA, people like Paul Shapiro.
So kind of cast -offs of the mainstream animal
welfare organizations, the lobbying organizations
who've just glommed onto this idea, and they
have sold the movement a bill of goods, telling
them that, oh, well, this is going to solve the
problem. But it isn't going to solve the problem.
And it isn't even meant to solve the problem,
actually, because the same people who try to
tell the animal advocates, oh, well, this is
how we're going to get rid of animal agriculture,
out of the other side of their mouth, they're
telling the animal industry people, the factory
farming people, don't you worry. This is only
a supplement. to what you already do. We think
about the future, we're going to have a diverse
protein portfolio that's going to include insects,
cellular meat, regenerative animal agriculture,
smaller farms, and conventional agriculture,
meaning factory farming. So there's just so many
problems with this technology and anyone who's
interested, I would urge them to go to a website
that I curate called cleanmeathoax .com. And
I wanna note, just to start to go on this one
last thing. Bruce Friedrich, of course, runs
the Good Food Institute, which promotes both
vegan, plant -based foods, as well as cellular
agriculture. And they're bringing in millions
of dollars to lobby for this stuff. the cellular
meat stuff in particular. And when I and a group
of animal rights scholars created this website,
cleanmeathoax .com, the Good Food Institute created
a fake shadow site called cleanmeathoax .com,
but with a slightly different URL to steal traffic
from our website and to send it to the Good Food
Institute. And what was so striking to me about
that is that we were paying like $20 a year for
this website or something. And the GFI has millions,
tens of millions of dollars. And yet that was
such a threat that they did that. And it was
only when I threatened to expose this publicly
and take the possible legal action that they
took that down. But it just goes to show, I mean,
this is not... This is a complex thing and an
untested technology that many people don't think
is even feasible. So there's a lot to be said
about it, but it's not good. I mean, how did
United Poultry concerns even got Bruce to debate
you? That's what I want to know. You know, what
was it like? Because that debate was epic. I
actually contacted United Poultry concerns and
asked them if I could release that. debate as
an episode of the of the show. And I think I'll
release it at the same time as our episode. But
I want to know, you know, what it felt like,
what was the tension like in the room? And, you
know, do you have any insight on how they were
able to bring Bruce, you know, to debate you?
You know, to be honest, I was looking at that,
I hadn't looked at that debate a long time. And
I looked at it again, recently, and I'm a bit,
I just, you know, I'm a bit embarrassed because
I was so upset. It's interesting. Karen Davis,
who of course founded and until tragically she
died a couple of years ago, was the director
of United Poultry Concerns. She had reached out
to me a few years back and said, John, what do
you think of this? just in the cellular meat
stuff and I didn't know anything about it. So
I looked into it briefly and I was so upset by
it I wrote her a note and then she published
my letter and being Karen she didn't even bother
to ask and she just put it in you know the newsletter.
And so Karen and Hopa Hanek I think was involved
too organized this debate and with Leah Garces
from Mercy for Animals, and my friend Vasili
Stanescu, who's a wonderful scholar in animal
ethics and an expert on animal agriculture. And
to answer your question, I don't think Leo or
Bruce had ever heard of me. And honestly, they'd
never had pushback that I can tell from within
the movement. So they weren't expecting anyone
to like I don't think they were expecting anyone
to really challenge the fundamental premises
of what they were doing. That's how I think how
that happened. But it makes me so upset even
now because, I mean, my God, the violence that
we're committing to other animals is so vast.
It's really important that we not throw them
under the bus. And that's what the GFI, Good
Food Institute, has done. Bruce Friedrich has
given interviews, like with the New York Times,
where he says, we're taking ethics off of the
table, quote unquote, when we're going to talk
about how delicious meat is and how everybody
needs meat, but it just should come from the
technology and not from the animals. Well, if
you're going to reinforce the dominant narrative
that eating flesh, whether it's grown in a laboratory
setting, or it's from an animal that's slaughtered,
if you're going to reinforce that narrative that
it's an eternal, benign commodity, you've given
the game away. And also, if you're going to say
in the same breath, oh, we're not going to talk
about animal ethics anymore. And then if you
can even go further and make fun of vegetarians,
which is what these people also do, because they're
trying to appeal to the mob, which is the same,
to meat eaters. So we can all poke fun at those
pesky vegans by telling you, here's clean meat.
Here's meat that's sustainable. Here's meat that's
healthier for you, meaning, you know, cellular
meat. And you don't have to change your behavior.
You don't have to question human domination over
nature and animals. You can just keep doing what
you're doing and just have another delicious
commodity. And we just know that that's just
not going to work. In my view, anyway. Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, the more I learn about this movement,
the more I meet people and see how many initiatives
exist out there that are dying to get resources
and funding that could do so much good. And to
see that all of those resources and funding are
going to this you know, Frankenstein situation.
It also makes me a bit mad, I have to say. How
do you explain that there is a lack of debate
in the animal rights movement? Because I think
that I've come across just this once debate,
you know, on the appropriate strategy going forward.
I've organized a debate myself. uh called you
know i think can we do better or something like
that but i don't know of any other you know debate
that gathers different activists and we're just
there talking about what is the the right way
forward wow so yeah you're asking such important
questions i mean my first book uh which was called
the postmodern prince really looked at the crisis
of left intellectual thought and you know i went
to grad school in the 90s, because I just didn't
understand why things always seem to get worse
all the time. And that the left is just completely
disorganized and marching in circles and preaching
to the choir and all of that. So in my first
book, I was trying to understand that. So there's,
first of all, that context, which is social movements
and the question of praxis or theoretically informed
collective action, how we go about changing the
world? It's as simple as that. And what are the
cultural forces and economic forces that get
in the way of our having an effective activism?
Because we're really trying to change the whole
civilization. We're trying to change the norms
and values and social practices and institutions
that give rise to these problems of domination
and violence. But there's another part, and it's
related, but there's a part of this which has
to do with capitalism and money. I mean, the
reason that so many grassroots movements or organizations
are struggling is they're being starved of funds
by effective altruists. So effective altruism
is this philanthropic movement that's been inspired
by Peter Singer's brand of utilitarianism. And
the effective altruists, well, who are they?
Well, they're Tony professors at elite institutions
and backed by billionaires. So the billionaires
are on board with this. Sam Bankman Fried, of
course, is now in federal prison for... his role
in the effective altruism movement. These people
are dangerous and they're not just dangerous,
they're destroying the animal justice movement.
I've spoken to several people in the movement,
activists who run nonprofits, and they say the
same thing, which there's this kind of McCarthyist
chilling atmosphere in animal advocacy. because
people at the grassroots understand that the
effective altruists have all the money, and they
have the power, and they can and do act as kingmakers
to decide who gets to live and who gets to not
live in the movement, I mean, in terms of resource
allocation. So this is a serious problem, and
it's just not spoken about. I haven't seen any
press coverage about it. Why? Because the nonprofit
leaders I've spoken to are afraid. that what
little money that they can scrounge will be taken
away from them. There are a whole lot of strings
that get attached to the effect of altruism money.
They're basically not abolitionists. They're
welfareists. They're pro -capitalism, explicitly
pro -capitalism. You've got to understand open
philanthropy, which gives a lot of money to critique
of animal agriculture and so forth. they are
very clear they're pro -growth, pro -neoliberalism
really is the only word for it. So there's a
disconnect between the message of open philanthropy
and effective altruism, of the joys of the free
market and blah, blah, blah. And then the fact
that the entire terrestrial food web is shutting
down and we're in the middle of an ecological
collapse deepening every day because of the free
market, complete disjuncture. So again, it isn't.
And I think for hardworking people who volunteer
with animal groups and struggling nonprofits,
what can they do to resist this? And I think
ultimately it's that we need to call this stuff
out and form alliances with other movements and
outside the animal movement too to chip away
at capitalism because this system is anathema,
it's inimical to animal interests, the capitalist
system. And that's just one example. Well, let
me push back a little on the capitalism thing.
Don't you think that the problem really here
is not free markets, but the opposite the monopolies,
the, you know, you talked about neoliberalism,
but the governments, you know, being weaponized
by corporations. You know, if I talk to someone
who believes in free market, like a libertarian,
this is not the different the definition of capitalism.
Well, I mean, you know, I think that Marx Karl
Marx laid this to rest 150 years ago. Because,
you know, Marx pointed out that so called free
markets, that's what people call them then to
laissez faire economics and so forth. he pointed
out that it's simply part of the DNA of capitalism
to create larger and larger monopolies. So the
idea is you start with free competition, right?
You know, this group, this company competes with
this one, and somehow everybody, you just have
multiple small companies all giving the consumer
better choices and blah, blah, blah. That isn't,
we know just empirically that's false, okay?
That what happens is the bigger a company gets
because of competition, The more powerful it
gets, and it gobbles up another company and another
company. And so, in my classes, I show a chart
of this process of mergers and acquisitions and
monopolization. And you see this in every industry.
You see this in the media industry, entertainment.
You see this in the defense or military industry.
You see this certainly in the animal industry.
You see this in the newspaper industry, et cetera,
et cetera. People chart this out, economists,
right? You start with 100 different competing
companies in the 1980s, and then by the 90s,
there are like 50, and then by the 2000s, there
are 12, and now, right? So that they're just
a hand, it's like publishing, right? I mean,
Penguin Books is now owned by, I don't even know,
if you look, it's like Penguin Random House Knopf,
it's like one gigantic company. And so what does
that mean? It means that you're seeing a homogenization
of information and literature, just in publishing,
where the people who get published are celebrities,
you know, YouTube influencers, books are becoming
shorter and shorter, as the attention span of
the public gets attenuated through digital capitalism
and da da da da da. So the idea that capitalism
can be regulated and controlled and made into
a benign thing, I mean, you know, after five
centuries of the system, it's not like we don't
have something to look at. And what we can look
at is the way it actually functions, not the
idealized version. Of course, I mean, this is
the standard thing, going back to the founding
of what we call political economy, which is the
way that pro -capitalist economists depict how
capitalism works. There's always an idealized
the chemist and the economist in the lifeboat.
You ever heard that story? No, never. Well, it's
worth listening to very briefly. So there's an
economist, a chemist, and a physicist in a lifeboat.
And it's been shipwrecked, but they're just in
the ocean. And they have all these cans of food,
but they have no way to open them, open the cans.
So the physicist says, OK, well, she takes off
her glasses and focuses the sun's rays and when
the can explains it by focusing the energy on
the can, it'll build up and then the can will
explode and they'll be able to eat the food.
So they try that for a while, it's clear that's
never gonna work. So the chemist says, okay,
I'm gonna, we take the can and we'll put it outside
the boat in the water and the salt will lead
to rust and then it'll weaken the metal and we'll
get the food. So they try that, clearly it would
take like 50 years. So then they turn to the
economist, and the economist says, first, assume
a can opener. Yeah, sure. If you had a can opener,
then you could open up the cans, but you don't
have a can opener. So, you know, bourgeois political
economists always assume that there's a can opener.
In other words, if you make certain assumptions,
yeah, capitalism and the free market all works
out well. But no, and actually, because the whole
system depends on a division of labor where one
group of people is able to control the labor
and the means of life of 90 % of the other people
who don't have property. So that is just the
nature of the system. And I understand people
who might be listening to us who think, oh, this
guy is just some radical nutcase. I just want
to be clear. I'm not saying I'm not a radical
nutcase. But I've come to these ideas, honestly
enough, from someone who, of course, like everybody,
was pro -capitalist and believed all these myths
about the market. But honestly, if you look into
it and you study it, it's just a lot of hooey.
Let me give you one example, which is vegan food
products. You think, well, the free market is
creating impossible burgers and beyond meat.
And that's true. But for every vegan product
that it produces, it produces 100 new animal
products. So now you can get bacon flavored potato
chips, and you can get this and you can get that.
And there's something even worse, which is what
the capitalist system says, is that all of these
commodities are equal in status. Everybody has
a right to their bacon and to their vegan burger.
You know, the market doesn't care. And so the
message that the consumer gets is, you know,
who cares? Do what you want to do. Fulfill your
heart's desire. And that's why cellular meat
will never outcompete meat from living animals,
because the meat from the living animal is perceived
and marketed as authentic, as real. And people,
if they have the choice between something that's
real and something that they perceive as fake,
guess what? They'll even pay a little more for
it, if necessary, to get the authentic thing.
So again, I mean, I go on and on about this,
but capitalism is absolutely, in my view, it's
contrary to animal interests, like it in every
possible way. You reminded me of my economy classes
in college, they would always say that Latin
phrase, citrus paribus, you know, so in this
imaginary ideal world, this is how things would
work. So yes, you're right about that. Let me
mention something that is very much covered in
the vegan community, which is how conservative
states in the US respond to cultivated meat.
And they often will ban, you know, cultivated
meat from being available in their state. And
this is often presented as You see, if this was
not threatening animal agriculture, as we know
it animal exploitation, then they would not try
to ban our products from their state. What do
you make of that claim? I don't think Yeah, it's
a really interesting question. I don't like when
Ron DeSantis issued an actual government an order
from the government's office, accusing a the
global elite of trying to force people in Florida
to eat insects and cellular meat. He has this
conspiracy theory about a liberal elite trying
to do away with animal agriculture, which is
of course funny, but also ridiculous. This is
my reading of it. My reading of it is not that
they're taking this stance. It's true that maybe
some of them do think this is potentially a threat
to live animal farming. I grant that point. But
honestly, what I really think it is, is that
any technology or any sensibility that rakes
with the dominant narrative about animals and
meat and our natural right to exploit them is
seen as a threat. In other words, it's not that
cellular meat technology is showing so much promise
that literally it's going to put animal farmers
out of business because that's not true. It's
that even to question the self -evident status
of meat as a commodity from a living being is
a threat. That is true. As I said, in my view,
the cellular meat lobby is robbing Peter to pay
Paul in the sense that it's often enough throwing
ethics out the window and saying, oh, don't worry
about the animals. Think about how much healthier
this is for you, consumer. But I do grant the
point that from the paranoid location of the
far right, anything that challenges the standard
conventional way we have of thinking about animals
in the food economy is perceived as as a threat
to be attacked. Well, to be fair, it is not very
appetizing, you know, the idea of eating that
lab grown meat. I also believe that, you know,
normal animal muscles and flesh is not appetizing.
But you know, the idea of having something grown
in a lab and eating that is just So far away
from gastronomy and food culture and all of that
Not something I was, you know raised with and
that is culturally And you know, we before this
conversation we were talking about conservative
podcasts Aren't you know those cultivated meat
people? Aware that as soon as the their product
is available commercially every one of those
big platforms and podcasts will take position
against them and will do bad PR against them.
I don't see Joe Rogan going on on his podcast
about how delicious live -grown meat is. I mean,
how are they going to win the public with this
obstacle in the way? Have they not thought about
that? Well, on the one hand, it's amazing what
a powerful corporation and powerful economic
interests can do to manipulate human mass psychology,
and desire, and so forth. So, in theory, you
know, if there were major capitalist interests,
wanted to convince the public to switch to synthetic
meat, you know, they have powerful weapons at
their disposal to do that. But the problem is
they'd be they'd be on the other hand, they'd
be up against centuries and millennia of tradition
around meat. And as I say, in my book, meat is
not just another commodity, it's very closely
tied into all sorts of cultural ideas, including
and especially masculinity. You know, eco feminist
theorists like Carol Adams, Josephine Donovan,
Marty Keele, and others have pointed this out
for decades that meat has a gender. strangely,
at least meat eating does and it's been seen
for centuries that men need to eat more and dead
animals than women so they can be strong and
still to this day like 80 percent of hunters
and fishers are men and men are the guys who
fire up the barbecue in the summer and they're
not going to be making a tofu quiche in the kitchen
because that would be a sign of their femininity
and the right wing calls liberals soy boys so
they associate veganism with effeminacy. PETA
charged back with an advertisement of a woman
who was so battered by the sexual pleasure she
got from her vegan boyfriend that she was wearing
a neck brace and was bruised. Really disgusting
misogynistic ad by PETA, by the way. But they
were doing that because there's the currency.
Women are the common degradation of women is
a common currency in our culture. And as people
like Carol Adams pointed out for years, that
intersects with our degradation of non -human
animals. You know, they often overlap, right?
So women are degraded by being called bitches
and cows and etc. pigs and so forth. And then
farmed animals are often feminized. So it's not
an accident that the very same moment that right
historically that we're seeing the rollback of
civil rights, the rollback of rights for gay
and non -cisgender people, and this incredible
misogyny, that that is all happening during a
period of resurgence of meat culture with per
capita meat consumption going up. There was just
an article in the Atlantic Monthly, I don't know,
five weeks ago, called America has stopped, Americans
have stopped pretending about meat. And the journalist
argued that, you know, there was this moment
during COVID when people were eating beyond meat
and impossible burgers and stuff. And then that
moment kind of went and now meat consumption
is the highest it's ever been. It's going up
and people just don't give a shit about animals.
That's kind of what the, person, the journalist
was saying, yeah, people know somehow it's not
right, but they sure taste good. So that is that
is the cultural moment. But it's again, it's
part of a larger shift towards fascism and the
decline of liberal democratic institutions in
our society, the attack on a free society is
bound up with a defense of the animal economy.
I've been thinking a lot. um, lately these past
few months that, um, the problem here with, um,
the problem of animal exploitation comes back
to religion. I feel like, and it is weird coming
from me since, you know, I platform lots of religious
leaders who make the religious argument for going
vegan. And I do approve of that and encourage
that and supports that effort. But I feel like,
you know, historically and philosophically, it
all started with religion in a way. And that
having made that part of our culture, so humans
become have dominion and animals are less than
and all of that. Well, you had business interests
appearing so merchants or businessmen looking
at that and thinking, oh, this is my way in.
This is how I can I can exploit that concept.
I can exploit those ideas and beliefs then religion
has imposed on animals to create factory farms
and slaughterhouses and so on. So I feel like
this is where the responsibility lies. Not so
much on the merchants themselves on you know,
their economic system. What do you make of that?
Well, you know, there's so many different religions,
but certainly, especially monotheistic religion,
but not just monotheistic religion. I mean, you
know, in Buddhism and Hinduism too, even though
vegetarianism is a big deal in both of those
traditions, you also find certain ideological
conception of animals as degraded and inferior,
right, so that you get reincarnated as if you're
a bad person, your bad karma. uh as part of the
larger cycle you end up being reincarnated as
a quote lower animal so those religions also
have a problem i grant all of that so uh and
but as you said you know there are certainly
resources within pretty much every religious
tradition that can be used and have been used
by some religionists in favor of animal justice
and animal rights although the preponderance
of the scripture is very much against animal
interests but um So that's absolutely right.
But I think that what happens when you move to
a commodity system, which is what capitalism
is, is before, for thousands of years, humans
more or less produced what they needed. And by
that, I mean to say even, I don't mean that they
lived necessarily simply. I don't mean that there
weren't differences of wealth. different classes
of people, but basically the point of production
of animals and other goods was to maintain a
certain homeostatic state of a culture, of a
civilization, you know, so that you would continue
to worship your gods and you would continue to
celebrate the harvest. And so it was cyclical,
right, cyclical time. You've returned to where
you started. That was human culture for thousands
of years, right? commodity production does is
it basically with capitalism it basically says
the the only reason to produce anything is to
create value in the form of profit so people
have this idea that well the reason that we are
raising animals is to feed people nothing could
be further from the truth that has nothing to
do with it at all i mean except that you for
any commodity there has to be a market for it
But it doesn't mean that that commodity is even
healthy for you, as we know. You can buy tobacco
or whatever. So animals are being produced today
not to feed people, but in order to create profit.
So as long as that is a structural imperative
of the system, you're going to continually have
the overproduction of animals to achieve that
ends. So I totally agree with you that, you know,
if we look at the idea of domination, which isn't
in every religious tradition, I mean, if you
look at indigenous cultures, they didn't have
an idea of domination per se, that really is
a monotheistic thing that you can trace back
to the Old Testament, right? When God gives Moses
dominion over everything that crawls and everything
that swims and Peter Singer, by the way, in animal
liberation, although I'm a critic of Singer's
philosophy in a variety of ways, he has a very
good chapter in animal liberation called Man's
Dominion, where he traces back some of this idea
of domination. So I totally agree with you that
that's part of it. But today, if you ask a scientist
how he or she justifies tormenting some animal
in the laboratory, they're not going to say,
well, God said I can do it. Instead, they're
going to revert to some crude conception of natural
supremacy like, well, you know, either that well,
it's just, it's other animals eat other animals,
and we're just kind of using other animals to
and, and other animals are machines, right, which
is, which we get that idea of animals as machinic
comes from Rene Descartes, chiefly, Francis Bacon
in the 17th century. Well, that idea of animals
as machines is itself an artifact of capitalist
development. No one for thousands of years, even
the religionists, they never thought that animals
were just stuff, machines. They thought that
God had created man, quote unquote, in his image,
right? But they also thought that God created
in his wisdom all these living beings. And ancient
peoples understood that these were beings with
consciousness and feelings. They weren't stupid.
But by the time we get to early mechanization
and then finally industrialization, animals lose
a kind of status in capitalist culture where
they just become things, commodities. Which isn't
to say that they were ever treated well before
but now it's worse because if you look at the
sheer numbers of animals being exploited It's
just you can't we can't even get wrap our minds
around it 80 billion Land animals every year
and up to almost three trillion marine animals
being killed every single year and that's growing
Well, why is that that isn't because of Christianity
or Buddhism or Islam? That's because of capitalism
Yes, I would admit that if you showed Christians
from even a hundred years ago, what is what we're
doing, what we're up to in terms of animal exploitation,
they would be really shocked. I do believe that
they would not be, they would not be agreeable
with, you know, the ways we, we have brought
things, you know, in terms of scale. Yeah. So
I do admit that that's true. You mentioned quickly,
disbelief that there is a natural hierarchy.
And that is something I want to get to get back
to because you bring up so many myths that have
been built by carnists. But first, you know,
let me ask this. What you're saying, you know,
about capitalism, about hierarchies and liberal
democracies, That should be very appealing to
a progressive audience. So why do we have so
many progressives right now who are not only,
you know, in majority not vegans, but many of
them are against veganism and oppose this movement?
How do you explain that? Back in 1989, I wrote
an article for Z Magazine, a leftist magazine
here in the US on animals in the left and why
the left ought to care. I'll tell you, when I
wrote that, I braced myself for what I thought
would be an explosion of outrage by the left.
Nothing, because the people on the left care
so little about animals. They were like, they
shouldn't even read it, let alone care about
what I had to say, you know. So, you know, I'm
not alone anymore. There are some excellent thinkers
in critical animal studies who are Marxists,
who are writing on animal issues. My friend Dinesh
Wadiwell, Marco Morizzi, an Italian theorist,
and so forth. So, there's a lot of work that's
being done by leftists on the animal issue, but
you're absolutely right that not only are most
leftists not vegans, they're actually hostile
to anyone who brings it up. Now, okay, so why
is that? Well, in the first instance, it's because
they're like every other human on the earth,
which is that they defend themselves psychologically
and existentially against the knowledge of their
own complicity and an injustice, and they don't
want to confront that. It's cognitive dissonance,
because I know these leftists, and they have
cats and dogs who they would sacrifice their
lives for, some of them. So it's total hypocrisy.
But worse than that, it's an ideological bind
that they're in. They're not able to see past
their own egoistic interests, and they're not
able to see that they're behaving in ways that
are Surely at odds with the Emancipatory Project,
like how can you support enslavement of other
beings, torture, killing, violence, degradation?
Is that what you mean by socialism? Is that what
you mean by feminism? What are you talking about?
So on the one hand, leftists are like anyone
else. Stupid, I'm sorry if I can say, can I say
that on the air? They're ignorant, they deceive
themselves, they're in bad faith. Now, I think
there is this other dimension to the problem,
which is that the left tradition is staunchly
humanist. And there's a way in which there's
what I would call when others have called Promethean
Marxism, which is the idea that nature should
be democratized. And so Marx's view of nature
really is that it's privatized and that its goods
are not being not available to everybody. And
Marx actually calls nature, quote, man's inorganic
body, unquote, man's inorganic body. In other
words, rather than a separation between me and
the trees, like that's my body. Well, I mean,
that's kind of imperialist, isn't it? And anthropocentric.
So you can't get around the anthropocentrism
of the left tradition. It's always been there.
write the idea that only humans have history,
the only only humans have self consciousness,
only humans struggle against power and blah,
blah, blah. But it's if you examine it, it's
a silly position. And again, I do think it, you
know, you get the right down to it. And it's
simply about privilege and not wanting to confront
the facts out of defensiveness. That's what I
think. By the way, having those conversations
about how You know the world is completely against
us makes me feel optimistic weirdly enough not
you know glue me because it just I'm in all wonders
of the miracle of us being vegan and having Kind
of waken up to this reality despite this world
being against us okay, a bit of Difficult question
I was really curious about your opinion on John
Mackey, the founder of Whole Foods. What do you
think of him? He's one of the most prominent
vegans out there. And he at least labels himself
and is perceived, I think, as very much on the
progressive left. At the same time, he's at the
head of Whole Foods, and he's a billionaire.
And, you know, so his, his character intrigues
me. What do you make of him? I think he's a,
I think he's a person without any moral scruples
whatsoever. I'm a very bad person. That's judgmental.
I shouldn't say that. Let me just say that he's
played a very destructive role in a variety of
ways. First of all, he no longer owns, I believe,
I don't think he owns Whole Foods. He sold that
to Amazon. So Amazon is owned by Jeff Bezos,
another billionaire. Mackey, of course, is a
union busting pro -capitalist kind of fanatic
who wrote a book called Conscious Capitalism,
which he had, I remember going into Whole Foods
and they were all the Conscious Capitalism books.
And so he has this I want to say naive faith
in the free market, but it's not so naive, really,
because he's a ruthless businessman who is actually
one of the largest traffickers in the bodies
of animals. I mean, he is part of this myth of
the enlightened omnivore. He promoted that. You
go to Whole Foods and you see animal compassion,
this big sign and the global animal partnership
program, which he helped create, which papers
over and legitimizes mass violence against animals.
I think it's really good that you raised it because
there's a certain sense in which we think of
politics in identity politics terms. Well, like
I'm holier than some of my neighbor because I'm
a vegan, and that now I've done my job because
I don't eat animals, so I'm a good person. That's
just the wrong way I think of it. of looking
at the system and how we're going to change it.
I don't care if John Mack is a vegan. Why on
earth would that matter to me? It doesn't matter
to me at all. It matters to me that he's engaging
in violence against animals and legitimating
that. It matters to me that he's exploiting workers
and ruining the environment. That stuff matters
to me a great deal. And I think that confusion
that people have within the vegan movement, I
think the problem with even just talking about
veganism in isolation is that it ends up mystifying
the social relations that give rise to these
institutions. What do I mean by that? I mean
that I don't even like to think of myself as
a vegan. Now I have been a vegan for over 30
years. Is it almost 40 years? I don't know, a
long, long time. But really, I'm an animal justice
advocate. I'm for animal liberation. When people
hear the word vegan, they just think it's another
food choice, like being gluten free. They don't
think that to be a vegan means to be opposed
to animal experimentation, for example. They
wouldn't think that, well, since I'm a vegan,
I'm against cargill. for destroying the rainforests
of Borneo and the habitat of the orangutans.
So there's a delinking, right, between the vegan
kind of lifestyle movement and ecological politics
that would name the destruction of all life on
earth by these systems. And it's just so peculiar
to me. Like, how can I, why should I care about
a pig or a chicken, which I do obviously? and
not about the lemurs and the avians who are on
the brink of starvation because of global warming,
which is a function of the market economy. It's
all one totality. I think of our job as really
showing that totality to the public, really explaining
how it works. Because in my experience, no one
in the public realm knows anything about the
animal system. I'll tell you, when I was researching
and writing this book, which took me a very long
time, people would ask me, what's your book about?
And I would say, well, it's about our violence
against animals. And the look of confusion on
their faces, they really, they nodded like, you
mean dog abuse? You mean like when people are
hoarding animals and they do these undercover
rescue? They have no idea that we've organized
our entire economy, society, and existential
identity around dominating, exploiting, and killing
billions, trillions of animals with such insistence
that it's destroying the means of life. No idea.
So surely that is our job is to say, oh, by the
way, take their head and turn and say, hey, look
at that. I mean, that's why right? Vegans have
a reputation as being proselytizers. You know,
how do you know when there's a vegan in the room?
Because they'll tell you. But that is our job.
It is to try to explain to people what's happening
and they don't want to know. Let me get to another
sensitive point that you touch on in the book
and that truly triggered me, which is the plan
to infiltrate the animal rights movement by Big
Ag. Can you talk more about that? And also, if
Big Ag right now is maybe in this infiltration
point, because I do believe, if you're smart,
if you're rational, of course, this gigantic,
this Titan of wealth will think about ways to
destroy your movement because you're a threat.
So why wouldn't they not, you know, think about
ways to infiltrate your movement? And are they
also taking into the equation, this cultivated
meat thing, you know, tying, tying it back to
the first topic we, we discussed? Well, I don't
know about infiltration per se, but there's been
a concerted effort for decades within the animal
agriculture industry to deflect criticism by
environmentalists and by animal rights people.
No question about it. It's really worried, right,
the animal industry. And this is true of the
biotech and animal research industry as well.
I mean, they've created what are called astroturf.
campaigns, as I say, seemingly grassroots movements
to defend consumer rights, but actually their
corporate driven efforts to defeat animal rights
people who are questioning our torture of animals
and laboratories. And so we see the same thing
in Big Ag. And one of the strategies I mentioned
in the book is the hiring of consultants to create
a public perception around animal advocacy in
which abolitionists, people who want to shut
down the animal system, are positioned in the
discourse as crazy radical extremists. And then
the industry appeals to the moderate, practical,
welfare -oriented people who are given incentives
to play along. And we do see this with leading
men in the movement who have become openly allied
with capitalist industry. For example, Wayne
Paselli in his book, The Humane Economy, which
argues that capitalism is a wonderful thing for
animals and it's going to lead to their liberation.
Paul Shapiro, I'd have to look at my book, but
there are others who are working with Purdue
to create hybrid products that have both animal
and vegetable materials in them to blur the distinction
between animals and plants and so forth. So James
Levesque from Tribe of Heart, the filmmaker,
had an article many years ago about invasion
of the body snatchers. You can Google that and
you can see how the industry maneuvered to isolate
ethically oriented vegans and justice people
by presenting them as fanatics. And now that
has become taken up by the capitalist state,
so that the United States has all of these laws.
After the 9 -11 attacks, Congress passed the
Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, which in its
first iteration basically said that if you even
did nonviolent civil disobedience to stop pigs,
say, from being taken out of a facility. You
could be charged as a terrorist under US federal
law and sentenced to prison for 20 years. So
the state, we think of the state, the government
as neutral. It isn't a neutral thing. It's very
much influenced by business, by big corporations,
right? So the FBI certainly has persecuted and
indeed, no doubt infiltrated, I'll say that,
infiltrated animal movements to try to survey
them and disrupt them. My friend Laura Donna
Loy, who is a sociologist, is doing some kind
of cutting edge research on how the cattle industry
manipulated the public and hid the facts that
they were themselves discovering about climate
change and animal agriculture. That link, Jeremy
Rifkin has done work on this too. So there's
a lot on this. So there's no question that when
you're talking about a billion dollar, multi
-billion dollar industry and the government in
cahoots with it, passing ag -gag laws, in other
words, criminalizing undercover investigations
of animal agriculture, that's not an accident
that people in that are being demonized in the
movement as a threat to society. Yeah, why is
the FBI attending big ag conferences? Why, you
know, and we can't, we can see footage of that
of those conferences, transcripts of what was
said in those rooms. It's all kept hidden. Weird.
I do want to say that, yeah, and it isn't even
just economic interests. It's tied in with a
certain conception of masculinity, right? So
a lot of people in law enforcement, particularly
men, are hunters and fishers. And they identify
with a kind of a grieved white rural masculine
project. So again, they're not ideologically
neutral. They're not just police officers or
part of law enforcement, they have their own
identities as human beings. And that identity
is more and more tied to masculine aggression
against immigrants, against women, against animals
and against those who sympathize with those groups.
Yeah, since, you know, reading about that, you
know, the the article and also that passage in
your book, I can't help being a bit paranoid
in thinking, you know, if I was big ag and if
I wanted to infiltrate this movement or derail
this movement, how would I go about it? That's
a weird reflection to have, but yeah, I can't
help it. It's in a way very interesting intellectually
to think about it. Okay, I want to get to the
different myths that your book addresses, and
I just love it so much. I think it's my favorite
parts of your book. You talking about those myths
and then dismantling them. I just absolutely
love that. And let's start with one that just
gets under my skin every time, which is look
-a -verism. I think I'm pronouncing it. right?
Um, what is that about? And why is it wrong?
So local vorvism is a is a movement that began
2005, there were four young women in the San
Francisco Bay Area who coined that term. And
on the face of it, it's it's harmless and even
admirable. It's the idea that by eating locally
grown foods, We keep resources in our community.
We encourage maybe organic or less ecologically
damaging modes of food production. We eliminate,
quote, food miles. So if I eat a tomato, I'm
getting it from my local neighbor. I'm not getting
it from Nebraska shipped in a refrigerated truck
1 ,000 miles and so forth. And that movement,
the local vorism. kind of dovetailed with a resurgence
of agrarianism and the idealization of farmers
as being, you know, virtuous and close to the
earth and that, you know, farms and consumers,
farmers need to be in closer contact with consumers
and so on. And so it was in 2006 that Michael
Pollan wrote The Omnivore's Dilemma, published
that huge bestseller, one of the most influential
books really of the late 20th century in America.
and consolidating this. Now, he didn't use the
word local war in his book, but it was kind of
implicit that it's better to have local stuff
and to not rely on big agribusiness. Now, I go
into great length in this book about why this
whole thing is ridiculous. It's the Latin that
you quoted from your economics class earlier.
Yeah, if all things were equal, then sure, you
know, it's better for me to eat a tomato that
I just grew than to get one from Florida. Yeah,
yeah, that's true. But I can't grow oranges in
my backyard. So I'm going to have to get some
things from outside my area and that's actually
just called trade right and humans have been
trading across continents for thousands of years
that's simply the way the economy works and now
never more so than under capitalist relations
when we live in a global economy where production
is by nature distributed geographically and the
thing is it's like The myth of food miles, for
example. Yeah, if all things are equal, then
I should get the tomato from my farmer's market.
But in fact, we know that most of the resources
that are consumed, that are applied in food production,
or that are related to food, are at the point
of production, not transportation. So first of
all, that idea of food miles has been more or
less debunked. Second of all, the locavore movement
from the beginning was very animal -centric.
It was very much about rebranding animal products
as benign commodities, as nice to the animals,
as a way to achieve a form of authenticity so
you could kill the animal yourself and feel like
you were not being hypocritical and you were
participating in the great cycle of life. Namaste
to the animal. I've actually sat down with people
who've said a prayer to the chicken at the steakhouse
before they eat the chicken, thanking the chicken
for its sacrifice. Well, all of that comes out
of this moment. of, quote, locovorism and omnivorism.
So there's this huge cultural production. And
it's really important to understand that systems
of power don't get established once and done.
It's not once and for all. You set up slavery.
You set up patriarchy. And then that The thing
just runs on its own. That is never the case.
And same with the animal system. At every moment,
it must be continually reinforced and reinforced
and reinforced. All of the lies, all the myths,
all the self -deception, all of that has to be
reiterated again and again. And then as people
say in the animal movement, the environmental
movement, begin to criticize aspects of that,
it has to be adjusted. All the little messaging
has to be adjusted. It has to be, you have to
have new narratives, new stories, new tropes
to justify the unjustifiable. So the one -two
punch, the one -two punch as it were of Michael
Pollan's omnivores dilemma followed the following,
the next year by Barbara Kingsolver's book, Animal
Vegetable Miracle. which is an account of her
family raising animals on an organic farm. Those
two national bestsellers have been, really I
can't exaggerate, their cultural influence. I
mean, Michael Pollan, it's funny. I just got
a note from a friend of mine who is an animal
advocate in the United Kingdom. And he was at
a nature preserve. in England the other day and
he came across this sign. He took a picture of
it and it was something about getting along with
animals and nature and then there was a long
quote from Michael Pollan. Michael Pollan is
the patron saint of animal agriculture and he's
done enormous damage. I mean his book is even
part of the state mandated curriculum in middle
schools and high schools in different states
around the United States. And his book is taught
at every educational level. Little kids are reading
it, graduate students, PhD researchers, because
he's telling the public what they want to hear,
which is that we can have our meat and our conscience
too. So my book is an attempt to take all that
down piece by piece. Yeah, your book is this
counter book to all of that. I'm sorry for my
language, but bullshit. I ask people to support
your book just for that reason and to also make
this book available in public library. This is
something I try to emphasize. You can purchase
more than one copy and then give it as a donation
to public libraries. Make it available to everyone,
not just yourself. There are also those boxes
that you find outside with book donations and
stuff. You can add them there. So yeah, it is
important to do our share of counteracting this.
culture of exploiting animals. Do you want to
maybe discuss humane meat because it's the center
of Poland's book and contribution to this industry.
So there is this anime where there are those
demons who feed on the brains of humans. And
because they want smart, happy humans, they need
to create the best conditions to harvest those
brains. And so there's a system of farms and
in those farms, those children are stimulated,
you know, they are given so much, you know, woods
to play and all of that. And that's what I think
about when I think about humane meat. And I don't
understand how carnists cannot just feel like
this is weird and spooky. This this whole concept
of humane meat. I personally feel more freaked
out by this label than you know, the usual meat.
It's it's it's this idea of humane meat is pivotal.
I really think it's pivotal to the whole legitimation
of the larger system, right? I mean, so that
so what happens is if you know, people who think
that there's such a thing as humane animal agriculture
or fishing, it gives them an opportunity to distance
themselves psychically from so -called bad meat
and bad fishing. And so that in their heart of
hearts, if they could do it, they would always
get their meat humanely killed, et cetera. uh
so it gives them gives the consumer kind of out
gives them a loophole to continue to participate
in behaviors that are supporting uh factory farms
too so it plays this very important psychological
role the very notion of humane meat right it
it it hides the animal or what carol adams calls
the absent reference in other words we we would
never say happy violence Yes, I'm in favor of
humane violence. I'm in favor of humane exploitation.
I'm in favor of humane destruction of animals.
People would look at you like you were like a
psychopath, which is really what is at stake.
And I argue in my book that the way we treat
other animals as a society is psychopathic. Because
clinically, Clinical psychopaths lack empathy.
They lack sympathy. They lack remorse. They believe
that they have a right to their own aggression
towards others. And that just check through the
boxes, the test for antisocial personality disorder.
And that fits us to a T. So this discourse of
humane meat is doing enormous damage. And the
reason it's doing damage is not only because
it's a lie, because actually there have been
exposés of what happens on these so -called humane
farms, animals being gassed to death and suffering
horribly on organic farms and gas chambers, animals
being brutalized on these farms. But more importantly,
I think it provides a smokescreen. Because as
long as the public thinks, well, there's bad
meat. But there's also good meat Then they can
maintain the illusion That the animal economy
as a whole is getting better and better or every
time all the time. We're making progress And
that in their heart of hearts, they're really
good people because they would prefer the humane
stuff when they could get it But of course, it's
too expensive and plus my kids are hungry. So
we're gonna stop at McDonald's So there's no
work being done. There's no and this is why I'm
against animal welfare ism which is the idea
that, well, we just need to improve the conditions
in which animals are raised. The public has yet
to hear a compelling case for abolition. And
that's one reason I wrote this book, because
in my experience, people, first of all, people
identify animal rights exclusively with one organization,
which is PETA. Well, animal advocacy precedes
PETA. by centuries. They were vegans, Buddhist
vegans, a thousand years ago. So that's number
one. And number two, the way that the cultural
forces are rallying the wagons, circling the
wagons to defend against the knowledge of what
we do is It's not something that people are even
aware of. And so I wrote this book to try to
say, hey, you're enmeshed in a system of deception
without even knowing it. So the title of my book,
The Omniverse Deception, is actually about three
modes of deception when I think about it. One
is just the way the animal industry, restaurants,
and farmers, and cattle ranchers, they all are
deceiving the public about what they do. and
what they are actually doing is engaged in enslavement,
exploitation, and mass violence. The second mode
of deception, which is the newer one that we're
just talking about, is the local vorism enlightened
omnibor discourse, which tells us that there
are two kinds of agriculture, good, mean, unsustainable,
and then, I'm sorry, bad, unsustainable, and
so forth. And then there's the good form of agriculture,
happy meat, compassionate killing. Not true.
And then finally, there's self -deception. I
begin the book with a quote from Herman Melville's
novel, Moby Dick, because it's this wonderful
quote where the narrator Ishmael is talking about
how if I'm involved in some matter, and I know
deep down it's not right, I hide that truth from
myself. And that's what the philosopher Jean
-Paul Sartre called bad faith. It's like, because
if I confronted something that I know is bad,
that I'm doing, then I would have to take responsibility
for my freedom, for who I am, for the choices
I make. So instead I pretend I'm not doing what
I'm doing. And so the consumer can think, Oh,
well, I, again, I'm a guy can pat myself on the
back. I'm a good person. I don't I don't hate
animals. I don't want to hurt animals. Well,
while continuing to harm animals, and in fact,
treat them with a kind of contempt for their
very lives. Yeah, freaky. It is freaky. It's
like a like they're playing a magic trick on
you on on society as a whole. Okay, quickly.
Um, and this is maybe one of the most shocking,
um, myth you, um, uncovered this belief that
they have, uh, which is that animal exploitation
is female female empowerment. Now this, you know,
this took me a while to wrap my mind around this,
you know, how did they come up with that? Um,
can you say a few words about that? So for about
20 years, I've been tracking this in the media,
maybe 15 years. And it's quite striking. I mean,
on the one hand, the animal industry is patriarchal
in structure, in origin. It's men who control
these industries. It's men primarily who hunt
and fish. Masculinity is really tied in closely
with domination of animals. So it was very odd
to see that there are dozens and dozens of women
who maybe hundreds, who have been giving up well
-paying jobs in the city to buy animal farms
or to take up hunting. And then in dozens of
cases, writing memoirs about their experiences
hurting animals, dominating, controlling, hurting,
killing animals as a form of empowerment, self
-empowerment. In, I think it was 2010, the New
York Times journalist Peggy Orenstein wrote an
article in the magazine section referring to
these women as, quote, Femivores. And the title
of the article was the Femivores Dilemma. It's
like, well, why are women taking up the gun and
the knife against animals and justifying that
as a form of empowerment, and even in some cases
as, quote, feminist empowerment. So I read, unfortunately,
I forced myself to read dozens of these books.
And by the way, these are not marginal books.
If my book has half the success of any one of
these books, I will consider myself fortunate.
These books are published by the top presses
in the United States, the biggest publishing
houses out of New York. They're read by millions
of people, mostly women. around the country.
So what is this about? And I come, you know,
having thought about this, I go into this in
great depth, as you know, I, you know, I have
two kind of theories. And one of them has to
do with what happened to the women's movement
and the fact that, you know, the early promises
of the second wave feminist movement, particularly
for white women, were frustrated, have been frustrated.
I mean, right, so you're seeing a rollback of
women's equality. And so this is a way for some
women to feel like of feeling a sense of power,
but power over others, power over the animals
themselves, right? So there's that dynamic culturally.
But at the same time, you know, we've been talking,
speaking in this conversation about humane meat.
It's really important that the animal, for the
people in the animal economy to present this
image of animal agriculture as benign and compassionate,
and that we can nurture the animals and then
kill them. And so women are playing this really
interesting and disturbing role culturally in
giving justification to this violence. Temple
Grandin, who I talk about, is the perfect, she's
the poster child for this, right? I mean, I mean,
there's been these Hollywood pictures, a Hollywood
picture biopic about her. She was called praised
as a quote, animal rights activist by the Museum
of Modern Art in New York. She was like time
as she was, I mean, whatever she's like a celebrity.
And what has she done? She spends her whole life
trying to find more efficient ways of animals
to be killed in the millions and billions, and
to go to their deaths uncomplainingly. And she's
called an animal rights activist. Well, Grandin
is simply one of many, you know, she's the leading
figure, but it's the same idea that if you can
feminize this violence, then that, again, it
gives the public an out. They can think, oh,
well, you know, well, Temple Grandin respects
animals. and I like Temple Grandin, therefore
I respect animals, so I'm going to keep eating
them. It was hard to write that chapter and it's
hard for readers to read because there's such
sadism in these accounts. On the one hand, the
women describe the animals on their farms in
loving terms as infants and children and they
help them in the middle of the night and then
they just slit their throats and they practice
violence against other animals who wander onto
their farms, and they do so in this kind of bloodthirsty
way. But the point is not to vilify these particular
individuals who wrote these books, it's to open
a window onto the entire culture and the way
that we live with this contradiction where we
think we love animals, you know, and then at
the same time, we treat them with utter contempt
as worthless beings whom we can kill in the billions
and trillions. forever without harming their
interests and without doing violence to our own
moral souls. And so the book is about the myth
of that. I think it's really helpful to know
who are the people behind this animal expedition
business, who are the enablers, who are the intellectuals
who support this activity. um and and the culture
makers um i think it's it's truly revealing to
know who are those people and what are they thinking
and luckily enough they do write about it they
are vocal about it we just have to read what
they're um talking about and you did that you
did that and you created this book which is a
wonderful book again the omnivore's deception
um the counter book to the evil book the omnivores
uh dilemma um i do i i am so happy to participate
in promoting it and i'm uh really um happy to
have you on and as a as an intellectual of this
movement um it is you know we are lucky um to
have so many great bright minds in this movement,
and you are one of them. Did you want to add
something before we stop the recording? Oh, first
of all, thank you. That's very, very flattering.
Indeed. I just appreciate the work that you are
doing. And I just want to say that for those
of us who care about animals, it's a very difficult
time. It's a difficult time for others who are
concerned with elemental claims of justice and
we just, you know, I am not an optimist by nature.
It's just not me, not my temperament, but I'm
sorry to say something as banal as this, but
we really have to continue the struggle and we
have to, I learned this from Karen Davis of United
Poultry Concerns, never to apologize in defense
of animals. You know, you can do that without
necessarily being self -righteous and getting
up in people's faces, but never apologize for
standing up for them. You know, it's so vital
that we do it. And yeah, so I do hope that people
begin to challenge more forthrightly this humane
narrative. And as you say, look at the intellectuals
who are promulgating it. 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.