Species Unite

“We'd never worked in this industry. We'd not got any prior experience in fashion ourselves. But we thought, how hard could it be? Famous last words. How hard could it be to design a handbag? Turns out very hard, very hard.” – Natalie Deana Natalie Deanna is the co-founder of Frida Rome, a conscious luxury brand that makes stunning vegan handbags, handbags inspired by and designed for, “bad girls who do good things.” “’Bad Girls Who Do Good Things,’ was a tagline we came up with even before the brand really started to flourish… And it was, I guess the cheekier side, the more kind of out there arm to what we want to grow as a big empire. Essentially, we want to take over the world with cruelty free brands.” – Natalie Deana Please listen, share and check out FridaRome.com

“It's very disappointing when I see these menus that are from starter to main courses, all animal proteins… How can you not have like 30% of the menu be plant based? For what reason? Do you need to have animal proteins in every single dish? There's no need for it… People don't need that. The planet doesn’t need that.” - Verde Camilla Parmigiani Verde Camilla Parmigiani is the founder of Vegan Set. She helps hotels create successful plant-based experiences. She founded Vegan Set in 2016 with the aim of showing that a vegan lifestyle can be synonymous with luxury.  Camilla and I met a couple of months ago. Before I met her, it just didn't really occur to me that I could and should be asking way more from hotels when it comes to not only vegan food, but the whole package. veganset.com

“So, if you listen to the experts, we're to be raising dramatically more animals for food in the future. The only way around that, I think, is through technologies that will render the exploitation of these animals obsolete. I mean, technologies have changed so much about how we live here on Earth today. Instead of whipping horses, we now use bikes and cars. Instead of harpooning whales, we now use electricity. You know, instead of live plucking geese for their quills, we now tap on glass screens to write messages to each other. And all of these technologies at first seemed very foreign." - Paul Shapiro       At Species Unite, we get a lot of email and comments every time we do a news story or a podcast on cultivated meat or new alternative proteins. I think in part because the industry is changing and moving so fast and I think in part because I always assume people know more than they do.   So, we thought it’d be helpful to invite some of the leaders in the space onto a panel to explain where we are, where we're going and what the road to one day having an animal free food system looks like.   This conversation is a live panel that we did a couple of weeks ago with some of the top leaders who are shaping the future of how we eat: Paul Shapiro, the CEO of the The Better Meat Co., and Anne Palermo, the CEO of Aqua Cultured Foods., who both work with fermentation. Isha Datar, the Executive Director of New Harvest, whose work is focused on cultivated meat. Shannon Falconer, the CEO of Because, Animals who is developing cultivated meat for pet food. And Albert Tseng, the CEO of Dao Foods joined us from China, which as a single country consumes 28% of the world’s meat. Albert invests in innovators to find solutions for China’s food system.   These are a handful of the people who are changing our food system into a much kinder, healthier and planet friendly place, a place without animals, but also one that doesn’t require much change on the part of humans who don’t want to give up meat. This is the future of food.   Links: The Better Meat Co New Harvest Because, Animals DAO Foods Aqua Cultured Foods  Isha Datars TED Talk 

“What I did not expect to see from farmed monkeys being bought and transported into the US,  were monkeys who were coming in with things like Ebola like viruses, malaria, tuberculosis, simian retrovirus, herpes viruses, salmonella, Yersinia, Campylobacter, unnamed deadly diarrheal diseases. They were coming in with Tier 1 Select agents. I mean, we're talking pathogens so deadly that the government has identified them as potential bioterrorism threats.” – Lisa Jones-Engel   In 2022, 1000 long-tailed macaques were stolen from the wild in Cambodia. They were then illegally imported to Charles River Laboratories in Texas. Illegal because they were wild caught and not born in captivity, which is the law for importing primates into the US for research and experimentation, they are required to be captive bred.  These macaques are now caught in the middle of an ongoing federal investigation into primate importers. Charles River wants to send them back to Cambodia, which means that from there they’ll go to labs in other countries. PETA is fighting hard to get them sent to Born Free’s Primate Sanctuary in Texas. One of the leaders in this battle is Dr. Lisa Jones-Engel. A couple of weeks ago, Lisa came on the show for a live episode to talk about the fate of these monkeys and what could be the beginning of the end of importing primates for experimentation.  Because we did this interview as a webinar and Lisa was in a remote part of Alaska, the sound isn’t the best, but this is a super important episode.  Lisa spent many years working in biomedical laboratories with primates. She knows everything that goes on on the inside of these facilities and knows first-hand that no one in there is looking out for these animals.  In 2019, when she couldn't take it anymore, Lisa left the biomedical world and joined forces with PETA. She's PETA's Senior Science Advisor, and not only leading the fight to save these 1000 monkeys, but also to end all imports and then, to end the use of primates in animal research and experimentation period. I think that she can do it. Links: PETA Petition https://support.peta.org/page/50306/action/1?locale=en-US PETA https://www.peta.org/media/news-releases/trafficked-monkeys-still-stateside-peta-pledges-1-million-for-sanctuary-placement/ PETA: https://headlines.peta.org/primatologist-perspective-monkey-experiments/ Guardian article: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/31/primates-monkeys-scientific-experiments-peta-stop-testing

“I also heard the sounds of killer whales. They were calling to each other loud and clear. these melodious whistles and calls which went right into my ear pieces. I realized that even if I couldn't see them, they were there somewhere beneath me in the ocean. They were communicating with each other. They were staying in contact. It was like a big family.” - Hanne Strager   Hanne Strager is a biologist, whale researcher, and author. She is the co-founder of the Andenes Whale Centre in Norway and she has served as the Director of Exhibitions at the Natural History Museum of Denmark. She's written many books. Her most recent, The Killer Whale Journals, was released on April 3rd. It's a compilation about killer whales, killer whales in Hannah's life and killer whales throughout history. And it is extraordinary.     Links: Hanne Strager  The Killer Whale Journals 

“Our cultures are built around stories, right? We connect through stories, we learn through stories and stories are often stronger when they have characters, characters we can connect with. And I think that that been a struggle for many, many animals, all kinds of animals, that they don’t have a face or a character that people can connect with.” – Mark Elbroch   Before I met Mark Elbroch and read his book, The Cougar Conundrum: Sharing the World with a Successful Predator, I thought I knew at least a little bit about mountain lions. After meeting him and reading his book, I realized that I had actually known very little and much of what I thought I knew was wrong. Mark on the other hand, knows a lot about mountain lions, more than just about anyone on the planet.   Mark is an ecologist, author, storyteller and the Director of the Puma Program for Panthera, the global wild cat conservation organization. He’s also an animal tracker working to preserve ancient skills and elevate their applications in our modern world. His research has challenged everything we thought we knew about the social lives of mountain lions.   Maybe you know a thing or two about them, but I would bet that just about anyone who listens to this conversation learns a great deal about these mysterious and extraordinary animals.   LINKS:  Mark Elbroch  Panthera  Mark’s Books Cougar Connundrum 

“Our bodies have co-evolved over millennia with the help of all these other beautiful animal species, with the millions of species of bacteria, fungi, and viruses that live on our bodies and inside our bodies.” – Parneet Pal   This episode is a little bit different than what we usually do at Species Unite. We are still talking about an animal, but this time it’s the human animal.  Parneet Pal is an educator, science communicator and wellbeing expert working at the intersection of business, lifestyle medicine (nutrition, exercise, sleep, stress management, mental and emotional health) and behavior change.  A Harvard- and Columbia-trained physician, she looks for the connections and interdependence within human and planetary systems that make them resilient and regenerative. Her work is focused on solutions for business leadership that architect the future of an equitable society: a wellbeing economy where health is the default.   Parneet is the very first guest to come on the show to talk about humans. In many ways I don't find it all that much different because we're in just as much peril as most of the non-human animals across the globe. We are in a massive crisis, well, many of them and just like our non-human animal friends, we are also in desperate need of solutions.     LINKS for Parneet Pal: https://www.parneetpal.com/ LinkedIn Twitter

“And then instead of heroes, we started being referred to as terrorists. But that made no difference to us. I mean, we kind of carried on regardless, and we started trying to do as much damage as we could to inflict economic loss on these companies.” – Ronnie Lee    Ronnie Lee founded the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) in 1974. The Animal Liberation Front is a global movement dedicated to the liberation of animals from human oppression. They engage in and promote non-violent direct action in protest against incidents of animal cruelty.   Ronnie served three prison sentences in the 70s and 80s for actions he took against places like animal testing facilities and breeding facilities for testing.   He has been vegan for 51 years and is still out there every day fighting for animals.

There's a fundamental mismatch between how we make plant-based meat and the facilities that are making it. When you're using the wrong tool, when you're trying to use a spoon to cut a piece of vegetable, it just doesn't work. It's the same kind of thing for making plant-based meat.” – Christie Lagally   Christie Lagally is the founder and CEO at Rebellyous Foods, a food manufacturing technology and production company. They make delicious plant-based chicken, but they also make production equipment. Up until now, almost all plant-based meat has been made in animal meat production facilities, which just don't have the capability or function to make plant-based meat.   Five years ago, Christie left her job as an engineer at Boeing so she could transform everything that we know about producing plant-based meat. She’s done it and later this year, Rebellyous is launching the Mock Two, production equipment that is not only going to transform the entire plant-based meat space, but it’s also going to allow for price parity with animal meat. A game changer for the entire industry.   Rebellyous Foods: https://www.rebellyous.com/

“But what the tour guide told us, was that eventually, as they grew, they now have their own octopus catchers. They called them the octopus whisperers, and they said that these people know exactly where the octopuses are going to be and when, so they know how to go get them and bring them back to the facility.”  – Laura Lee Cascada     In October of last year, Laura Lee Cascada published an investigation into the Kanaloa Octopus Farm on the Big Island in Hawaii. The Kanaloa Octopus Farm was capturing wild Hawaiian Day octopuses and keeping them in these tiny, isolated tanks while also conducting breeding experiments, under the guise of conservation.   What made it even more bizarre was that they were also a tourist attraction. People could pay to come to the octopus farm and see and touch and pet the octopuses in these tiny tanks. So, it was like an octopus petting zoo/breeding farm.   What they were really doing was trying to figure out how to breed these octopuses, which is really difficult to do in captivity. But it's the first step to US octopus factory farming.   In January, they received a cease and desist letter because they did not have the required permits for the above. So, for the moment, their octopus program is temporarily shut down. We need to keep it shut down and we need to ban octopus farming in this country before it really starts.   The world’s first octopus factory farm is set to open in the Canary Islands this year, adding to the very long list of cruel and abusive industries across the planet. Let’s not let that happen here.   I asked Laura to talk about her investigation and what all this really means for octopuses and for the future of farming them for food.   Links: Laura Lee Cascada: http://www.lauraleecascada.com/   Every Animal Project: https://www.everyanimalproject.com/2022/10/09/octopus-farming/   Articles on Kanaloa Octopus Farm: https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2023/02/08/state-serves-kona-octopus-farm-with-cease-and-desist-order-lack-permits/   https://bigislandnow.com/2023/02/04/kanaloa-octopus-farm-in-west-hawai%CA%BBi-receives-cease-and-desist-letter-from-state/   https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-02-15/hawaii-says-octopus-farm-operated-without-proper-permits