Species Unite

“Fashion is a really easy way to get in because it doesn't really involve any sacrifice, does it? I think for a lot of people, the thought of going vegan food-wise just seems like a really big deal. Whereas buying a vegan handbag, you get to buy a beautiful handbag and it's vegan.” Annick Ireland   Even though it’s 2023 and it feels like much of the world is at least dipping their toes into all things plant-based, it can still be a challenge to navigate the world of vegan fashion.   Shoes, boots, bags, coats and anything else that was once made with animal products, are now being made with sustainable, cruelty-free and stunningly beautiful materials, but because this industry is still in its infancy, finding the brands can be tricky.   Enter Annick Ireland, the co-Founder & CEO of Immaculate Vegan, an online vegan marketplace that is changing the world for animal loving shoppers.   Immaculate Vegan was launched in 2019 by Annick and her co-founder, Simon Bell because they wanted to help people to make better choices that positively impact animals, people and the planet when they shop.   They offer a 100% vegan, highly curated collection of premium fashion using the most innovative and sustainable materials — all made ethically, and amplified by original content and an engaged community of changemakers. LINKS: ImmaculateVegan.com SpeciesUnite.com 

“Ultimately, this is a dumping ground. The industry is not going to be spending money on horses that are going to be killed for human consumption, so ultimately, in their last six months, they suffer. They suffer terribly.” – Gemunu de Silva     In the United States we do not eat horse meat and we do not slaughter our horses, but we seem to be fine with letting other countries slaughter and eat our horses. We send our live horses to Mexico and Canada to be slaughtered and their meat is then sent to Europe and Japan for consumption.     This makes zero sense for a horse loving country. What are we doing? Why are we letting other countries torture, kill and eat our horses?   There's a way to stop this madness. A bipartisan bill called the Save Americans Forgotten Equines Act (SAFE) that has been introduced to Congress. If it passes, it will not only ban horse slaughter in the US by law, but it would also prohibit the exportation of our horses for slaughter.   This conversation is with Gemunu DeSilva. Gem’s been on the podcast before, this is his fourth appearance. I asked him to come on the show this time because his organization, Tracks Investigations, recently conducted their fourth investigation into Canada’s largest horse slaughter plant. Gem explains what happens to these US horses once they arrive in Canada. It’s worse than you can imagine.   LINKS: Tracks Investigations: https://www.tracksinvestigations.org/   SAFE Act petition https://www.speciesunite.com/save-american-horses-from-slaughter   SAFE Act https://www.safe-act.org/   SpeciesUnite.com

“When we do polls on this, we've got all political parties high support for ending cosmetics animal testing, from Republicans, Independents, Democrats - age gaps between the boomers and the zoomers, everybody is in agreement. You know, it's one of those issues that you cannot get more unity on a single issue.” – Monica Engebretson   Monica Engebretson is the North American head of public affairs for Cruelty Free International, the leading organization working to end animal testing worldwide. They are working to end all animal testing, but for this conversation, we focused on cosmetics – for two reasons: we’ve done many episodes on animals used in medical research and experimentation and not enough on cosmetics and because I think many people are unaware that even we still test for cosmetics.   In the US, it’s no longer required by law that cosmetic companies test on animals, yet we are still doing it. It makes no sense that we have not banned cosmetics testing. Canada has. Mexico has. In fact, 44 other countries have. I wanted Monica to explain how and why this is still happening – and the answers are complicated.    The good news is that last month, the Humane Cosmetics Act was reintroduced and if passed, it would end safety testing of cosmetic products on animals and prohibit the sale of products developed using animal testing in the United States.   Please listen and share and then, if you live in the US please make a phone call to your Senators and Representatives and politely ask them to support the Humane Cosmetics Act. Find yours here: usa.gov/elected-officials   Links:  SpeciesUnite.com www.crueltyfreeinternational.org

“I understand that when you have been [going to] a restaurant for many years, for some customers, it's normal to think that somehow you own it a little bit, like, ‘Oh, this is my table, this is my restaurant.’ And, then when the restaurant changes completely, you feel really betrayed… I invited them. I invited a lot of people, a lot of my regular customers. I said, ‘don't worry, we have changed. But nothing has changed, you know, just come. I invite you and your family. You come and eat just like you used to do, and you are going to love it.’ And they did not. And they took revenge. Took revenge.” – Alexis Gauthier   Alexis Gauthier opened his first restaurant in London when he was 24 and he received his first Michelin star a couple of years later. He’s a French chef who has run Gauthier Soho for many years. And for a great part of that time his restaurant served traditional French food.   But, in 2016 Alexis became vegan and in 2021 he removed all animal products from his restaurant menus. This created quite the uproar.   Alexis and I met in London last week and I had dinner at Gauthier Soho the day after we had this conversation. The food is even better than what he describes, truly, it was one of the best meals I've ever had.    Please listen, share and then sign up for the Species Unite 30 Day Vegan Challenge.   Links: Species Unite: SpeciesUnite.com Gauthier Soho: https://www.gauthiersoho.co.uk/ Studio Gauthier: https://www.studiogauthier.co.uk/  123V: https://www.123vegan.co.uk/  123V Bakery: https://123vegan.co.uk/bakery.php  

“The truth is that in between all of those wonderful events was huge debt, maxing out 20 different credit cards and absolutely annihilating my credit, moving from that little half acre backyard into where we are now in Santa Clarita, refinancing the house five times, having people show up in the middle of the night to repo our cars, the bank trying to take the house, my parents doing literal intervention, saying, ‘Ellie, stop your nonsense.’” – Ellie Laks   Ellie Laks is the founder of The Gentle Barn, a sanctuary that houses and heals some of the most traumatized animals around. And in turn, those animals heal the humans who come there. It's a pretty remarkable place. It started out on half an acre in Ellie's backyard, and it grew to many many acres and multiple locations. There's one in California, one in Tennessee and a third in Missouri. Since its inception, The Gentle Barn has saved thousands of animals and been host to over 500,000 people.

“I think the thing revolves around the control of nature. You know, I mean, you get way back to that. Some people are really uncomfortable around nature existing as it should, and they feel that we need to fix things." - Dr. Chistopher Servheen   Grizzly bears are protected under the federal Endangered Species Act. But Republican lawmakers in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming are trying to change that. They are pressing the Biden administration to turn management of grizzly bears back over to the states, which would mean there would be a hunting season for grizzly bears, which would probably look something like what we're doing to wolves in those same states, which is nothing short of a massacre.   Dr. Christoph Servheen spent 35 years, from 1981 until 2016, fighting to bring back grizzly bears. In 1981, they were on their way out. There were only 30 breeding females in the greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Most people thought that there was no way to save them.  But, because of Chris and people like him and because of The Federal Endangered Species Act, a conservation miracle occurred. They brought the bears back, an act that many consider to be one of conservations biggest success stories.  But now, in 2023, because of politicians in the Northern Rockies, the future for grizzly bears could be very bleak.

“…people say, okay, recycle, and then somebody sees you throwing out a little candy wrapper. Nobody's going to point at you say, ‘Huh, I saw you threw away a recyclable piece” Right? But if I say I'm vegan and then I eat a slice of halal and halal is made with eggs, somebody will say, ‘Oh, it has eggs, you're not really vegan.’ And so that's just kind of weird. – Galina Hale    Galina is a professor of economics at UC Santa Cruz. She's also the co-founder and Chief Research Officer of FSI— Food System Innovations, where her husband, David, is CEO. David was on the podcast a couple of weeks ago.    Galina served as a Research Advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, and as an assistant professor of economics at Yale University.  Galina’s current research interests focus on attracting mainstream finance to climate solutions, the sustainability of the global food system, and international financial stability, especially with respect to climate risks.  Galina has published over 30 articles in leading economics and finance peer-reviewed journals.  She serves on multiple editorial boards and presents her work regularly at scholarly and policy meetings worldwide.    Galina is also a long-distance athlete. She's completed multiple marathons, triathlons and the Ironman. Links: Speciesunite.com FSI - https://fsi.org/ Galina Hale - https://sites.google.com/view/galinahale/

”We’re already starting to see this happening, like there's a leather tannery in Vietnam called Isa TanTeck, where leather runs through the blood. That's what they specialize at. They came out with their own mycelium material. A leather tannery has come out with their own mycelium material. Are they in it? Are they in it for the passion of saving animals and the vegan kind of philosophies? No, they're in it because they're smart people and they've got good scientists and they've been able to create a new a new product line.” – Joey Pringle    Joey Pringle is the founder and co-owner of Veshin Factory, an original equipment and design manufacturer specializing in luxury bags and accessories made from leather alternatives. They work with brands during product design and manufacturing stages to help them make the switch to next gen materials.  Veshin was founded with the goal of helping brands go animal free, but because of a partnership with Natural Fiber Welding, maker of Mirum, it’s fast become a leader in plastic-free manufacturing too. Currently, Joey lives in Colombia where he is piloting Veshin Factory's second factory.    

“And it's true that as much as online makes things much more accessible in so many ways, sometimes it's the feeling and seeing that actually really gets people over the line, because they're like, ‘Oh, wow, that feels really… that looks really good. Oh, look at it on me. Oh, you can style it like this as well. And oh, you can go over the shoulder like, yeah…’ the touch is really important for consumer goods” – Jessica Kruger   Jessica Kruger is the founder of a vegan handbag company called Shaker. They had a rebrand in June, they were originally founded as LUXTRA in 2018. With the rebrand, came new design and new material. Shaker’s handbags are made with MIRUM® - the first high-end leather alternative that is 100% plastic-free, which is a HUGE deal. I spent time with Jessica in London and saw Shaker’s bags in person. And they are absolutely stunning. Jessica originally started her journey of building cruelty-free businesses in 2014 when she opened ETHOS – one of London’s best loved meat-free restaurants - after her mother volunteered at Farm Sanctuary in California.   speciesunite.com https://shakerlondon.com/ https://mirum.naturalfiberwelding.com/  

“We're the first species that has enough mixture of intelligence and capabilities to actually screw it all up. That is our distinction. You know, there's a lot of species on the planet who are now looking to us to say, ‘Well, okay, you're the first to be there. Do you screw it up for everybody or do you figure out how to transcend this?’” David Meyer   David Meyer is co-founder of Food System Innovations, and co-founder and CEO of Humane America Animal Foundation. He has worked in animal advocacy since the ‘90s. He founded and ran Adopt-a-pet.com for over two decades. He eventually sold it so that he could focus on Food System Innovations, where the mission is to remove animals from our food system. He has been a vegan for decades and has won NINE world championships in Brazilian jiu jitsu, all on a plant-based diet.   LINKS: Speciesunite.com Fsi.org humaneamerica.org