Species Unite

“ As we were driving from Jackson, Wyoming, towards the entrance of the park, I was in the passenger seat, Charlie was driving and I saw a bison and I'll never forget it. I grabbed him so hard on the arm and I screeched, “BISON!” It was the first bison I'd ever seen in the wild. We stopped the car and we were a good distance from the bison. But we could see it unimpeded with the windshield and just let it walk and do what he was doing. And I don't know, something in my heart turned over.” – Barbara King     Barbara King is emerita professor of anthropology at William & Mary and a freelance science writer and public speaker and the author of seven books. She is an expert on animal cognition and emotion.   Barbara has been on the podcast before to talk about how animals grieve and love. If you haven’t heard that episode, take a listen.     She is back to talk about her 7th book, Animals’ Best Friends: Putting Compassion to Work for Animals in Captivity and in the Wild.   There are many reasons that I love this book, but mostly because Barbara delves into and shares how we can be better humans to all other animals on this planet. Her work helps us better understand and advocate for the rights of animals. The more that humans know about animal’s intelligence and emotional lives, the harder it becomes to harm them.    Barbara is a storyteller and through the stories of the individual animals as well as her own personal accounts, she makes us care.

Today we are re-sharing one of our favorite episodes, a conversation with Helena Husseini.  I usually live day by day. I always live every day like it's going to be the last day. We learned that during the war. We don't know when we're going to die. So, you live every day like it's going to be the last day. That's what I do.” – Helena Husseini Helena Husseini is the vice-president of BETA, Beirut Ethical Treatment for Animals. BETA is the first and largest shelter in Lebanon with 850 dogs, many cats, a few horses, and a couple of monkeys. Helena is also an architect. She has been with BETA since 2006, a few months before the Lebanon War started. As bombs dropped nearby, she drove around in her Jeep saving the injured and abandoned dogs that had been left behind.   Since then, she has been rescuing animals during the too many crises and catastrophes that have plagued Lebanon, including the 2019 financial collapse, the riots, COVID-19, and the blast that decimated Beirut.   This conversation is really one that's about resilience, about grit, about what it means to show up every day, even when bombs are dropping, when there's no access to money, when people are starving, and no one knows what tomorrow will look like.  It's a conversation about what it means to choose the meaningful life. I hope that you are as completely floored by Helena and her stories as I was.  Learn More About BETA  Like BETA on Facebook Follow BETA on Youtube Support BETA’s "Surviving in Lebanon" fundraiser to provide shelter to their hundreds of rescue animals before they are left without a refuge.

Rich Hardy is a former undercover investigator. He spent 20 years doing over 100 assignments in 30 countries. He's been on the podcast before to talk about his time undercover. If you haven't heard that episode, you should go back and listen.   He is back today to talk about his latest adventure.   After a couple of decades of incredibly intense investigative work, and living a double life, Rich decided that he needed a massive change. Instead of campaigning against the horrors of animal agriculture, he and his partner Pru are now campaigning for solutions.   Last year they started Lazy Meadows Farm and became a couple of vegan farmers. I didn't even know that vegan farming was a thing until Rich filled me in on it. And what surprised me even more, was learning that almost all fruit and vegetable farming everywhere isn't vegan.   LINKS: Lazy Meadow Farm: https://www.lazymeadowfarm.com/   Rich on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/notasnatureintended/?hl=en   Rich’s book:  https://www.bookdepository.com/Not-Nature-Intended-Rich-Hardy/9781789650631?ref=grid-view&qid=1614899278046&sr=1-1

“The reason that you should accept our client as having rights is because we're showing what an extraordinary being she is. These beings have mirror self-recognition, they know that they are elephants. In fact, we listed 42 different, highly complex cognitive abilities that elephants have. If you didn't know it was an elephant, you’d think [I was] talking about what a human being does.” - Steven Wise     There is an elephant who lives all by herself in a small enclosure at the Bronx Zoo. Her name is Happy. She arrived at the zoo in 1977, a few years after she’d been kidnapped from the wild in Thailand. The Bronx Zoo claims that Happy is Happy. The best elephant cognition scientist in the world have argued that she's anything but. And most of us regular human beings can see that an isolated elephant in a tiny enclosure is not living a good life. Steven Wise is the founder and president of the Nonhuman Rights Project. In 2018, the Nonhuman Rights Project brought a petition for writ of habeas corpus on Happy’s behalf. Habeas corpus is a common law right that protects against unlawful and indefinite imprisonment. In Happy’s case, the NhRP are seeking recognition of her fundamental right to bodily liberty and transfer to an elephant sanctuary. Last spring, the New York court of appeals, the highest court in the state of New York, agreed to hear Happy’s case. This is the first time in history that the highest court of any English-speaking jurisdiction will hear a habeas corpus case brought on behalf of someone other than a human being. In a story for the Atlantic, Jill Lepore called Happy’s case, “the most important animal-rights case of the 21st Century.” Steven Wise has been working toward this since 1980. LINKS: The Nonhuman Rights Project  https://www.nonhumanrights.org/ Instagram  https://www.instagram.com/nonhuman.rights.project/ Twitter  https://twitter.com/nonhumanrights FB  https://www.facebook.com/NonhumanRights Steven’s TED Talk   https://www.ted.com/speakers/steven_wise

“Vegan 1.0 Didn't get us where we needed to go. It didn't turn enough of the country on, it didn't turn enough young people on, didn't make it into… the mainstream in the way they wanted it to. …it was kind of pushed to the edge and marginalized and it was weird, the food was good, but not great and not accessible or kid-friendly. … I didn't think that was the way to capture the 97% of the world or the country that doesn't identify as vegan who would otherwise, maybe try it once in a while, but not really make a change. Where Vegan 2.0 is specifically designed to expand the tent to the 97%..” – Adam Weiss   Adam Weiss is the CEO and director of Honeybee Burger, a plant-based fast-food restaurant with locations in Southern California, and more coming soon to other parts of the country, including New York City (hooray!). Honeybee’s mission is to promote the benefits of plant-based food on the environment, the planet, and the animals with the most delicious food and the best plant-based proteins on the market. And, it’s working - they were just named the best vegan burger in Los Angeles by Veg News.   Before entering the plant-based space, Adam had a long career in finance, and I was very curious to know how he went from hedge fund guy to vegan restaurant guy.   “When people come in and they're going to get a cheeseburger, fries and a shake, which is our most common order, it’s not so much that they don't care about their health, but they know, “okay I'm about to indulge here.” We just give them a tiny bit of good feeling, like, you know what, “you're indulging, you’re going to pack on some calories, but no animals will die, you're making an impact on the future, and ultimately it's probably better for the environment than if you didn't do it…” And that resonates with consumers today unlike any time in history.” – Adam Weiss   Links: Honeybee Burger https://honeybeeburger.com/ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/honeybeeburger/

“Historically some of the leading airlines in the world were responsible for transporting these monkeys. So, you had national flag carrier airlines, such as such as British Airways, American Airlines - all of these big airlines were involved in transporting these monkeys in the hundreds and thousands every year on commercial passenger airlines. And, rightly the public were very concerned, there was a growing swell of, public opinion that was opposed to not just non-human primates being transported by airlines, but other animals as well. So there has certainly been a big move away from passenger airlines transporting monkeys, which has caused problems for the research industry in being able to obtain the monkeys.” – Sarah Kite     Sarah Kite is co-founder of Action for Primates, they campaign on behalf of non-human primates globally.   Despite their status as our closest living biological relatives, non-human primates continue to suffer and be exploited by people across the globe, whether in their native habitat, in trade and transportation, in research laboratories, in private homes, in zoos, as entertainment, or as food and body parts.   Sarah has been doing this work since the 80s and although much has changed since then – we no longer test on chimpanzees, much hasn’t changed. According to PETA, in the US, more than 100,000 nonhuman primates (mostly monkeys) are used in research laboratories every year. These are highly intelligent, social animals and we know and have known for decades that almost every single bit of this research fails in human trials. A report from Faunalytics shows that,“approximately 100 vaccines have shown effectiveness against HIV-like animal viruses, but none prevent HIV in humans. Up to 1,000 drugs have shown effectiveness for neuroprotection in animals, but none for humans. While the biomedical research industry is quick to claim victories, the reality is less glamourous: nine out of ten drugs fail in clinical studies because they cannot predict how they will behave in people; only 8% of drugs tested on animals are deemed fit for human use; one meta-study found that animal trials overestimate the likelihood that a treatment works by 30% because negative results often go unpublished. Fortunately, using animals in scientific research is not a foregone conclusion. On the contrary, there is a burgeoning field of alternatives to animal research, and many such alternatives are already in use today.”      Not only are we breeding thousands of non-human primates in labs, for testing here in the USA, but we also import them from Asia and Africa by the planeload, meaning that they are in cargo holds for as long as 24 hours, some die before they make even it to the lab. As horrible as that sounds, I'm pretty sure that those are the lucky ones. For her entire career, Sarah Kite has been fighting for primates and asking humans to do and be better. I think we can. 

“It’s really about bringing the skills and the tools and the techniques that we've already developed and addressing other forms of transnational or international crimes - and applying them to this area that had long been forgotten.” – Olivia Swaat-Goldman   Olivia Swaak-Goldman is the executive director of the Wildlife Justice Commission, an organization that goes around the world fighting transnational organized crime against wildlife — like an animal-focused justice league, with a mission to disrupt and help dismantle organized transnational criminal networks that are trading in wildlife, timber, and fish. Wildlife trafficking is the fourth largest illegal trade globally, after drugs, humans, and arms. Before the Wildlife Justice Commission was formed, governments were not focused on going after the heads of these trafficking organizations. There was a lack of prioritization on wildlife crime.   And since they formed in 2015, the Wildlife Justice Commission has helped to secure the arrests of 155 wildlife criminals and taken down 35 criminal networks.   The Wildlife Justice Commission’s work is more important now then ever, as we are losing species at alarming rates and there are so many more at risk of extinction within our lifetimes. “The Wildlife Justice Commission was created in order to go after high-level criminals. It's the same thing with drugs in a way, if you just go after the dealer on the corner, you're not going to be tremendously successful. You’ve got to do that but you need to go after the masterminds of the networks in order to get them arrested and successfully prosecuted and, also important… a seizure of assets… make it hurt, make them feel it. Then they're going to think twice about doing this, especially in an area where we are losing so many species and at risk of losing so many. The quicker we can get them to be doing something else, that the more biodiversity we can save.” – Olivia Swaak-Goldman LINKS:  Wildlife Justice Commission: https://wildlifejustice.org/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WildlifeJusticeCommission/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/WJCommission

“I think we we've prioritized certain things in education and in culture, but we're really deprioritizing curiosity. The joy of going into a research hole and just digging… I still do that every day.” – Sonalie Figueiras   Sonalie Figueiras is the founder and chief of Green Queen, the award-winning media impact platform advocating for social and environmental change. Green Queen started as a blog in 2011 and now it's Asia's largest plant-based media platform.   She is also creating a marketplace to source organic and natural foods. She’s the founder of Ekowarehouse, a global sourcing platform for certified organic products, with a mission to make safe, quality food accessible and affordable for the whole planet.   I’ve been following Sonalie and Green Queen for years, it’s one of our go-to sources for information and breaking news for all things related to the future of food.   Green Queen: https://www.greenqueen.com.hk/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/GreenQueenHK Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/greenqueenhk/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GreenQueenHK/ Eko Warehouse: https://www.ekowarehouse.com/

“… a lot of the platform technologies do not make sense from a food perspective, and there's just never been a reason to do things a different way. So, for example, cell culture is very expensive and very resource intensive because the medical field doesn't really need those things to be done in a very cost-effective manner - because people, have a high cost thresh hold when it comes to paying for their own healthcare and drugs… But it's totally different when we're thinking about food.” – Natalie Rubio - Natalie Rubio Natalie Rubio recently made history as the first person on the planet to complete a PhD in cellular agriculture, which is the production of animal-sourced foods from cell culture or meat that is grown in a lab without using animals.  Her thesis: Entomoculture: Insect Cell Cultivation for Cellular Agriculture, makes the case for growing meat from insect cells. (Natalie also coined the term "entomoculture.") All of the above is beyond exciting for 8 million reasons, for Natalie and for all of humanity. Every milestone in the world of cellular agriculture, academically or as an industry, is a massive step toward building a food system that is sustainable and humane, a food system that does not involve factory farms, slaughterhouses, cruelty, and suffering.  

“When you talk to the vegan community, you know, it's people who know exactly why they should or shouldn't purchase something. But being able to reach people through design… like why couldn't someone test veganism through fashion before they started with their diet? That's kind of my story.”  - Casey Dworkin   Casey Dworkin is the founder and designer of plant-based luxury footwear brand Sylven NY . When I first discovered Casey's boots and shoes, they were half vegan and half animal leather, meaning half their shoes were made from animal leather and then the exact same pairs were available in apple leather. A couple of years after that, I noticed that all the animal leather shoes and boots were gone, Sylven was now a straight vegan brand. Not only did I want to know what happened and how it happened, but I also really love Sylvan's boots. So I called Casey and asked her to share her story. “For me, it started with vegan for the environment… I was already working with these plant-based, vegan leathers and wanting to make sure I can lessen my environmental impact through my shoe production. And so I was like, well, why don't I try to reduce the amount of meat and dairy that I consume? And then through that process, I was like, well, why am I consuming any meat or dairy? Why am I producing with anything leather? And, it brought me down this very positive rabbit hole.” – Casey Dworkin