S7. E3: Amy Jones and Paul Healey: Moving Animals
Today’s episode is sponsored by Culture and Animals Foundation. The Culture and Animals Foundation aims to advance animal advocacy through intellectual and artistic expression.
“I think every time we release a story, there's this sense of like almost like legal danger, the legal implications that can come from releasing stories. We've had times where a story has been released and we haven't slept that night because we're scared of what the repercussions are going to be.”
- Amy Jones, Moving Animals
Amy Jones and Paul Healey are the founders of Moving Animals, a photojournalism and media project that connects the world to animals’ stories through photography, film, and journalism.
Amy is a photojournalist and writer. Paul is a journalist and he’s responsible for Moving Animals’ video content. Their work has allowed people to see for themselves animal and human rights injustices that are happening globally. Only when people are made aware of injustice, do they take action to stop it.
Amy and Paul have brought massive awareness to the masses who have, in turn, fought injustice all over the world. What they do is not only a powerful agent for change, it’s an essential one.
Amy and Paul are a very essential part of the team at Species Unite. Paul is our news editor and Amy is a writer, editor, campaign manager, tech person, social media person, and any other person who we need at that moment. She wears many hats. I’m grateful every single day to have Amy and Paul on the team.
There are also two of the kindest human beings that I've ever had the privilege to know.
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Transcript:
Amy: [00:00:15] I think every time we release a story, there's like this sense of almost like legal danger, like the legal implications that can come from releasing stories. We've had times where, you know, a story has been released and we haven't slept that night because we're scared of what the repercussions are going to be.
Elizabeth: [00:00:38] Hi, I'm Elizabeth Novogratz, this is Species Unite. This episode was made possible with a grant from the Culture and Animals Foundation. They're a non-profit organization whose mission is to support artists and scholars in advancing our understanding of and commitment to animals. For the month of November, we are asking you to join us in our mission to change the way that the world treats animals and become a member of Species Unite. The benefits of joining are pretty awesome. For a monthly donation of any size, even two bucks, you will receive access to exclusive content, outtakes, bonus podcast episodes, updates and newsletters, priority access to all Species Unite events and a welcome pack from yours truly. So go to our website SpeciesUnite.com and click Become a member. This conversation is with Amy Jones and Paul Healey. Amy and Paul are the founders of Moving Animals, a photojournalism and media project that connects the world to animal stories through photography, film and journalism. Amy is a photojournalist and a writer, and Paul is a journalist, and he's responsible for their video content. Their work has allowed people to see for themselves animal and human rights injustices that are happening all over the world, and once people see those injustices, then they can take action to stop them. Amy and Paul are also an enormous part of the team at Species Unite. Paul is our news editor and Amy is a writer and editor, our tech person, our social media person and she wears a bunch of other hats as well. Without them, we'd be lost. They're also two of the kindest human beings that I've ever had the privilege to know. Hello, Amy, and hello, Paul.
Amy and Paul: [00:03:03] Hi Beth.
Elizabeth: [00:03:08] It is very nice to be in your new flat.
Amy: [00:03:06] Nice to have you here.
Elizabeth: [00:03:08] I want to talk about how this started because in one way it really started by accident. But in another way, both of you had like these lives that led you here, no matter what. Talk about first how you met.
Amy: [00:03:20] We met when we were working for an animal charity in London. I was working there in the digital, the digital production side of it all, mainly the videos. A lot of the investigation, undercover videos I would then edit to make them digestible to an extent. Obviously, it's horrible stuff, but so they could then go on social media or various other channels of communication to try and spread awareness about all the things that are happening to animals. And Paul, where you worked in the corporate side of things, didn’t you.
Paul: [00:03:51] Yeah, I worked on the corporate team and we would outreach to businesses, to some of the biggest companies in the world really to try and convince them to do practices that were more animal friendly, remove animal products from their menus or their catalog. So when they had fur in their collections, we would show an investigation of a recent slaughterhouse that was producing the fur. Oftentimes they weren't aware of their own supply chains. So it was really eye opening for us to see how effective this sort of footage and this imagery was in creating change for animals in that way. I think whilst mine and Amy's jobs were quite different, we were both seeing how effective images of animals were in our day to day work.
Amy: [00:04:41] One of the things that really got us thinking was when we were at work one day and one of our colleagues had been to Indonesia, and she had saw how the tourist industry was affecting the horses over there because the horses and are used for essentially driving all the tourists round. Heavy luggage in the middle of the day, scorching heat. She just filmed it on her phone, really casually brought it back, gave it to me because I was doing the video stuff and said, Look, can you please do a video out of this? And we did, and it did really, really well. I got, you know, I think it was like a few million views, like raising awareness to tourists of this issue that's going on. It made me realize that like how, it is so important to get this footage. But like, there's not again, not that many people are doing it, just like being in these places and having the inclination to film when you see something.
Elizabeth: [00:05:33] I think when people are in places and see injustice or see things they don't like, even if they do take the steps to like, Oh my God, that's horrible, I'm going to film it. They don't do anything with, I mean, they might show their friend right, but most people, nothing really happens with it. How did you understand the power that would be behind this?
Paul: [00:05:51] One story I think of was, what is the very first story, really that we were in Sri Lanka and completely incidentally, we were walking to our hostel that night and alongside the road we were walking was an elephant. This was a busy road with traffic and the elephant was walking along, carrying tourists on its back. We'd never seen anything like this. We hadn't been to Sri Lanka before, and so we got our phone out and filmed it. We walked alongside the elephant, filmed this elephant.
Amy: [00:06:24] We could see this elephant heavily chained, all you could hear was like the chains and the cars, and then the floor was burning as well. So like this idea that this elephant was just walking on this burning road, tourist on his back, mid day heat, chains, the threat of this really sharp bull hooks.
Elizabeth: [00:06:40] For people who don't know, what's a bullhook?
Amy: [00:06:42] It literally looks like a spear. So it's like a really sharp metal tip that is attached to this pole. Over the years, we've seen a lot of elephants slightly scraped with it or prodded with it. It's really common.
Elizabeth: [00:06:57] And the chains are around his legs?
Amy: [00:06:59] Chains around the legs. Yeah, so you know how when you walk, almost like a prisoner, you know, like how people walk and they can't quite fully walk.
Elizabeth: [00:07:06] Like so there's chains to like his front legs? Connected?
Amy: [00:07:09] Yeah. Like Paul was saying, we saw this, didn't we? We just whipped out our mobile phones. I think I had a really old camera there as well. It was like half broken. We recorded it and then we pulled it into this video and we sent it out to animal organizations and the UK press. It got millions of views raising awareness of this issue and it got celeb engagement. You know, this really strong outpour of people being able to see what we saw when we saw the elephant in the chains.
Paul: [00:07:40] I think that was this point that made us realize because It was looking at it through a different lens, essentially because when we were filming it, there was other people filming it, but they were filming it as tourists, filming this what they saw as a happy elephant and this incredible experience. We were looking at it in a different way as someone that was maybe slightly more aware of what the elephant may have gone through to get to that point.
Elizabeth: [00:08:10] A lot of tourists, like you're a tourist in Sri Lanka, you have no real awareness about, you know, you're like, Oh, look, we can ride an elephant too. People don't even think that's bad and it's not because they're bad.
Amy: [00:08:22] Exactly. Yeah, it's not.
Elizabeth: [00:08:24] It’s because they've seen other people do it.
Paul: [00:08:26] Exactly. That's what really inspired us to carry on this work after that first story that we told because we were seeing so many comments saying, Oh my goodness, I had no idea I did that when I was on holiday or I've always wanted to do that, and now I'm not going to do it.
Amy: [00:08:43] Even friends of ours, friends that are animal lovers, you know, and it's just making that connection.
Elizabeth: [00:08:48] And so how many people didn't ride elephants because of that, right? I mean, the number, it would be awesome if you could, but no one knows what happened with that elephant.
Amy: [00:08:57] Well, I think obviously in a very sort of horrific end to the story a year later, the elephant on that trail, we're pretty sure it was the same one. He he collapsed and he died.
Paul: [00:09:13] Overworked.
Amy: [00:09:14] Overwork, Yeah and that's one thing that's really hard in our work. We see it like this all the time as in oh, it never necessarily directly saves an individual. It's about changing the tide to try and prevent these things from happening to other animals in the future. Because all this stuff is legal. Remember, like, everything is completely legal.
Elizabeth: [00:09:31] When you realize the power of this footage and millions of people saw it, and hopefully millions of people chose not to ever ride an elephant. Was this the moment? Did the lights go on? Hey, this is what we need to be doing.
Paul: [00:09:43] Yeah, very much so. I think for me, on a personal level, probably the same for Amy as well. It felt like almost we had taken on a responsibility then because we had seen that, OK, what we've just done has raised awareness and it did do what we wanted in getting that story out there. I think there was this responsibility then that, OK, we should keep doing this because, you know, this is a chance to really make a difference. We could keep telling some stories.
Amy: [00:10:12] Yeah, I think the responsibility as well, it was like us, as in like it's us that are causing this, like tourists from the West are going to places that are causing these animals to suffer. So we felt like a personal responsibility in that sense as well.
Elizabeth: [00:10:28] Did you designate roles at that point because were you like, OK, I'm going to be the photographer and I'm going to be the video guy? How did that all go down?
Amy: [00:10:36] Yeah, it happened supernaturally. Like, I always wanted to sort of learn more and more about photography, particularly at the time wildlife photography. So I sort of naturally started taking the photos and you, you started taking the footage didn't you.
Paul: [00:10:52] Amy would photograph whilst I would take the filming sides of things, so that every shoot we would be able to either put together a video or be able to supply photos to a news article at the very beginning. We always had that focus of making sure that we'd have the material to get the story out there effectively.
Amy: [00:11:12] We started like initially, I think it was for two reasons one, to sort of gather evidence of what's actually happening to the animals behind the scenes and then second, to try and bring these to the mainstream conversation.
Elizabeth: [00:11:23] When you got this footage out and you realized the power. Did you ever have a normal vacation again? Or it was like, Oh, you're famous, but it's not the end of it. Was that the end of traveling being a vacation.
Amy: [00:11:25] Yeah for sure.
Paul: [00:11:36] It's very much that. That very much was the start of moving animals then. I think because that sort of consumed us in what we wanted to do because we'd seen it was effective.
Amy: [00:11:48] Initially, though, like we thought, OK, right we will focus on the negative side of wildlife tourism. That's what we'll study because you can do a lot of that. You can sort of see it going around. It's like almost on the tourist trail that we were doing anyway.
Elizabeth: [00:11:59] And it's everywhere.
Amy: [00:12:00] It's literally everywhere, it's like, you think whale shows in the United States, you know, to monkey performances in Thailand, they're all linked. It's all part of this really dark wildlife tourism that is this multi-billion pound global industry essentially completely propped up by those who are paying for the experiences, which is us. But then behind these scenes, many of these animals, they're subjected to these horrific living conditions, super far from their natural habitats and these abusive training methods in order to condition them to entertain people. If that's the right word with tricks and rides and going back to this idea of like, by taking off these bucket items like backpackers and tourists and holiday makers like, they're turning these coggs in this industry. So we all sort of want to, almost like remove these coggs. So that it can't run anymore. One of the strongest ways we've seen to do this is awareness.
Paul: [00:12:50] Something we encountered so many times when we were talking to tourists. If we did happen to mention some of the impact that these industries were having on the animals, they were surprised and no tourist wants to support something that harms an animal. It's just that they're not aware of it. As you say about whales in America, for example, the orcas at SeaWorld, so many people weren't aware of that. When they become aware of it, they no longer want to support it because they're going for their love of animals. You know, I think we saw that a lot when we were traveling. The idea that you ride an elephant because you love elephants. It's not until you learn a bit more about that issue that suddenly you don't ride an elephant because you love elephants.
Elizabeth: [00:13:36] And well most people don't know until they know.
Paul: [00:13:40] Right, exactly.
Elizabeth: [00:13:42] Since we're talking about elephants and other elephant stories I would love for you guys to tell, it is about Dumbo. Was this soon after Sri Lanka?
Amy: [00:13:50] A year later? So we've been moving animals for a year. Everything about the project had developed and changed completely by then. It wasn't sort of like an encounter that we happened to come across. It was deliberate. We were searching and seeking out these places, whether it's elephant performance venues, slaughterhouses, fish markets, we were just everywhere we could get into.
Elizabeth: [00:14:10] And were you just like, were you traveling all over at this point?
Amy: [00:14:13] It was literally like documenting three or more places a week. Move on to the next place. It was, you know, it was continuous. We were doing it because because we thought that, you know, we think that it works and we could see, like, you know,
Elizabeth: [00:14:25] It was working.
Amy: [00:14:26] It was working. Yeah, it was getting this awareness out there. Dumbo was probably the first time we focused mainly on an individual animal. We visited Phuket zoo, which is a zoo and animal performance venue on an island in Thailand. When we were walking to the venue, we stopped to get a drink at this cafe and we said where we were going, just to the lady who gave us some food and some drink, and she said, Oh God, that's like a horrible place. Which sort of like, really got to us that people in Phuket didn't want these places here. It's the tourists that want these places here that are holding these places up. So we got there. We were just, you know, we were documenting. We were trying to sort of document behind the scenes and all the things that the tourists could generally see. Then we came across this tiny little baby elephant. He was miniscule. He was absolutely tiny and he was standing with two of the elephants. So the zoo had three elephants. The three elephants stood in the line chained up. Tourists were there, loads of children were there trying to feed this baby elephant and stroke this baby elephant. He just stood there with his eyes closed. Just, I can really see it now when I think about it just sucking on his trunk. That is something that elephants do to comfort themselves, particularly when they're not with their mothers. The little baby Dumbo was there just sucking on his trunk, and then half an hour later, he was taken into a ring with the other elephants to perform shows with blaring music.
Elizabeth: [00:15:52] Were there a lot of people in the audience?
Amy: [00:15:54] It was Packed. It was like the whole stadium was completely packed. Yeah, I think it's hard as well to see like children there, because children naturally have so much empathy for animals, and it's such a they're really being taught a lesson, aren't they? We're saying, Oh, it's OK to use these animals in this way, it's okay to see animals as entertainment.
Elizabeth: [00:16:09] Well, I mean, that's kind of why we're all so messed up, right? Like, we grew up going to zoos, eating meat like, you're so conditioned that this is how the world works.
Amy: [00:16:18] Yeah and that it's OK.
Elizabeth: [00:16:20] Yeah, that you have to unlearn.
Amy: [00:16:22] Yeah. So these elephants were forced to do tons of tricks, kicking footballs, hitting drums with their trunks and just really awful stuff. And he just kept his eyes closed and would just like, follow around. Another thing he was just skeletal, like the bones sticking out of his body and how people didn't realize that. I have no idea. I've got this really vivid image of taking a photo of his back, and all you could see was just the bones. I sort of knew I was like, People aren't going to be happy about it. His condition, his horrific condition, is going to make change as horrific as it is. So we documented the zoo. We got out of there and then we released his story.
Elizabeth: [00:17:03] And where did you release it?
Amy: [00:17:04] We started with sort of like the UK press. So we have some amazing contacts, journalist contacts, who are just super open to publishing a lot of different animal stories, which is like, it's just so important. We released it with one of the journalists and it just took off because people do have empathy for these animals, people do want to, want to help them, and it led to, I think nearly 400,000 people in the end spoke out for Dumbo trying to get him rescued and taken to a sanctuary. We were convinced weren’t we, that he was going to be OK and that he was going to, he was going to be free and have some peace. So, the investigation led to officials checking in on Dumbo, and they demanded that a vet be seen. It turned out that he had a digestion issue which was causing him to just become incredibly weak and incredibly skinny and very, very sick. So the zoo was meant to be caring for him. But we found out a little while after, like a few weeks after, while people were still calling for him to be freed, was that he had got stuck in some of the mud at the zoo, and as he'd tried to get free, his legs are broken because he was so weak from this infection that he had. Not only that, but the zoo didn't notice for three whole days. So this baby elephant, horrifically sick anyway, had broken legs for three days, and they didn't even realize and they're meant to be caring for him. I mean, there were thousands of animals there at that zoo. It was eventually realized what had happened to him, and he was taken to an elephant hospital. But he did pass away. He was, yeah, they didn't do anything. He did die. Which is horrific, and especially when there was so much hope. I honestly felt like the world was rooting for Dumbo.
Elizabeth: [00:18:56] Oh God. It's heartbreaking
Amy: [00:18:58] Yeah. It was really sad.
Paul: [00:19:01] Yeah, so Dumbo's end was completely tragic. One thing that stuck out to us was that. His story would have gone untold completely had we not documented it.
Amy: [00:19:15] It highlights just how many of the animals are going through this sort of thing.
Paul: [00:19:20] Yeah.
Amy: [00:19:21] It's not, you know, why it needs to be documented. You know, think of Dumbo's story and times it's by like goodness knows how many thousands, hundreds of thousands.
Paul: [00:19:27] For the animals and their stories that aren't told.
Amy: [00:19:31] In a wonderful turn of events the two elephants that were with Dumbo. So the zoo has had a lot of heat. The zoos had heat for years, but particularly after Dumbo and then with COVID on top of that, the zoo was forced to close and the two elephants have now been rescued and they are living in a sanctuary.
Elizabeth: [00:19:49] That is awesome.
Amy: [00:19:51] In Thailand. Yes. We worked with the sanctuary on a story, actually to get there, the elephant story out. It was this beautiful story of hope and we made sure that Dumbo was spoken about within that story as well, because he should have been with them like he should have been well and he should have been treated, and he should have been free with them. But we always say, don't we, that we heard Dumbo story like does serve as this reminder of what should never happen
Elizabeth: [00:20:14] And it's still happening?
Amy: [00:20:15] Oh god yeah.
Elizabeth: [00:20:19] And there's no good zoos, but there're so many horrific zoos.
Amy and Paul: [00:20:25] Mmhmm. Yeah, yeah, sure.
Elizabeth: [00:20:27] So now you guys, I mean, you're in it like, this is this is life now, right? You're traveling all over the world. Is there a plan? Talk to me a little bit about what's happening behind the scenes?
Paul: [00:20:35] So one thing that we always rely on is to talk to local activists wherever we are to understand the sort of issues that are going on for animals in the area and also what they feel would be the most effective way to help. For instance, we met with local activists in Cambodia and asked them what the issues were and what issues would be best to tackle to help the situation. One of them said to us, Oh, we actually have a slaughterhouse nearby where we live. We can take you to it if you want.
Elizabeth: [00:21:11] Was this your first slaughterhouse?
Paul: [00:21:13] Yeah, yeah, it was. I think it was something that for the first time, It was something that was incidental. It's something we hadn't quite planned.
Amy: [00:21:23] So slaughterhouses and animal agriculture was something we wanted to document. That was really a really important thing that we wanted to start documenting. But we kind of fell into it as well. So we were in Cambodia, in the capital city. We remember we visited this area of the city, it was very far from the tourist trail and we were able to rent an apartment that actually overlooked the slaughterhouse floor.
Elizabeth: [00:21:50] Like if you looked out your window?
Amy: [00:21:53] Literally looked out your window, you could see the slaughterhouse floor. So you can imagine we weren't the only apartment there. There were like hundreds, like the walls of the slaughterhouse were literally made up of the apartments.
Elizabeth: [00:22:04] So basically, the slaughterhouse was like the courtyard of a giant apartment complex.
Amy: [00:22:10] Yeah, yeah.
Elizabeth: [00:22:11] That's horrifying.
Amy: [00:22:12] Yeah. So for all the families that live there, their children every night were just punctuated by the screams of these animals that were being slaughtered to provide pork and food and stuff. We rented an apartment and we went there that night and these apartments here, this is like a really struggling area of the city.
Elizabeth: [00:22:32] It's poverty.
Amy: [00:22:33] Yeah, exactly. Yeah and because who would want to live next to a slaughterhouse? We got there about nine o'clock at night, pitch black. We walked up the stairs and I really vividly remember, like tripping on the children's shoes outside one of the apartments next to us. It sort of made us realize like, Whoa, whoa. Like these children that were playing outside when we first saw this area, they are now asleep in these rooms, like meters away from where these pigs are sleeping, who were about to be slaughtered. So we got into our room. It was just like a single, dusty, empty room, just like littered with broken furniture or broken bottles. The workers, when we looked out the window, were all just lying in hammocks and the pigs were just lying there below, likely just exhausted from what would have been a goodness knows how long trip from neighboring countries, perhaps like Vietnam or Thailand. We set up our camera from above or outside the barred window, and we covered a black cloth over it so that if they happened to look up, they wouldn't see us. We waited in that apartment and eventually at about 10 o'clock, the men in the hammocks got up and they picked up their knives. Then it all began like this silent environment. Just, it was like a flick of a switch. That's the screaming.
Elizabeth: [00:23:54] Is it just like madness? Like are they just stabbing pigs?
Amy: [00:23:57] It's a bit more, almost like regimented. So like, there's two workers for each pen and they work in pairs and they approach a pig. One of them holds the pig down. Then flatten the pigs head and then one of the workers sits on them while the other slits the animal's throat and bleeds the animal out. It sounds, obviously when I say it, it sounds horrific. But it's so important to remember that every animal that is killed has experience like all over the world.
Elizabeth: [00:24:27] Yeah, no no.
Amy: [00:24:28] This is no particular slaughterhouse. Every animal has experienced a terrifying and painful, bloody death like we're so used to seeing animals. I want to say that I'm almost like dressed as meat and slabs of meat.
Elizabeth: [00:24:41] Well, and that's the difference. I mean, it's on a lot of pigs here. Have it a lot worse.
Amy: [00:24:47] Yeah.
Elizabeth: [00:24:48] But we don't see it, nobody's nobody's looking out their apartment window with their children watching it?
Amy: [00:24:54] Exactly.
Elizabeth: [00:24:55] In a really weird way, on some level, at least it's I mean, not that it should be in anyone's face, but like the fact that you guys could even get in there and versus so much in the West where it is just so hidden and people are like literally so conditioned to honestly think like what they buy in the grocery store came like that, and they do not connect.
Amy: [00:25:20] Yeah, definitely. Like so many of us, we interact with certain animals like cows, pigs and chickens when they're literally just reduced to slabs of meat that are wrapped in supermarkets. We're always spared like the details of the crowded, windowless sheds that they spend their short lives in, or the journey to the slaughterhouse that so many then don't even survive because it's that bad, and of course, the killing itself. So that's what we want Moving Animals to be and to do is to be able to redraw those missing pieces of the narrative that the people don't know about. One thing that really struck us when we were filming, was that one of the workers who was sitting on the, he was the one that would be sitting on the pigs, like when the other worker would slit the throat, he would look away. He couldn't physically watch what was happening. That's something also really important to remember because the animal agriculture industry, it literally exploits those in society who cannot defend their rights. So from the animals who are sort of legally deemed as property also to the slaughterhouse workers who were just constantly frequently exposed to trauma and violence and really extreme stress.
Elizabeth: [00:26:30] That's like across the world, right? There's no slaughterhouse where it's like a job somebody wants.
Amy: [00:26:35] Oh my goodness, no. So like in the US, like the industry, often they employ and exploit illegal immigrants. I know that in Britain, 69 percent of the workforce is people from the EU who are relying on these jobs that are just really low paid and that no one wants to do for obvious reasons.The animal agriculture is just like a horrific exploitation machine. It's just really using everything that they can.
Elizabeth: [00:27:07] Yeah, yeah.
Amy: [00:27:08] Make money, this led us on to sort of think more about slaughterhouse workers and the people in these industries who are also being forced to experience violence just like the animals. It's not surprising, probably to hear that this kind of work has been linked to multiple physical and psychological problems, such as post-traumatic stress disorder. Studies have also found that this work is linked to much higher rates of domestic abuse and drug and alcohol abuse, so that in turn then affects families and communities
Elizabeth: [00:27:34] Because violence is so normalized. You've just been killing all day or all night. That's in you.
Amy: [00:27:40] Yeah, yeah. So they're not only as we were sitting in that room. It's not only were these pigs just being their lives, being taken away from them, it felt like this slaughterhouse in this industry was seeping out everywhere into the rooms where the children were. How the community is affected and unlike the lives of the men.
Elizabeth: [00:27:59] When was the first time you felt like you were in any danger on it, on a job, like on an investigation?
Amy: [00:28:05] I think every time we release a story, there's like this sense of almost like legal danger, like the legal implications that can come from releasing stories. We've had times where a story is being released and we haven't slept that night because we're scared of what the repercussions are going to be. But the first physical danger would have been in that slaughter house because we were there watching this violence or watching these knives watching this blood, which heightens your senses beyond belief anyway.
Elizabeth: [00:28:29] It had to be really creepy. Sleeping there. Yeah?
Paul: [00:28:30] It was intense.
Amy: [00:28:35] Yeah, it was. I think it was dark because like, the dark is scary anyway. So that was overwhelming. We weren't sure if someone was going to look up and see us because, like I said, we were meters away.
Paul: [00:28:46] I think for me, that intensity that we felt that night just really drove home how lucky we were that we actually got to leave that night. That's in comparison to obviously the animals themselves who are killed, but also the workers. We felt a lot of sympathy that night for the workers. I think it's so easy to see the footage we shot that night of the workers, this horrific slaughter of these pigs and you instantly have an anger towards the worker. Really, our sympathy just really went out to the workers that night just thinking, Oh my goodness, no one wants to do that work, you know? I think that's something that we knew when we saw that. So we felt very lucky to be going home that night and that really informed how we wanted to get that story out there afterwards that we wanted to highlight the toll not only on the animals that night, but also on the workers and to raise awareness of that line of work and how it affects, as Amy said earlier, that goes on to affect the entire community.
Elizabeth: [00:29:54] What happened with that story?
Paul: [00:29:56] We got it picked up in the Guardian.
Amy: [00:29:58] The Guardian is super super ahead in publishing these sorts of stories. That has only happened in the last few years though as well. So we've been doing it. If we started Moving Animals say, like five years ago, you wouldn't have got picked up anywhere, which is, I suppose, testament to show that things are changing.
Elizabeth: [00:30:12] Well and the Guardian's like really leading the way. That's not. But the fact that they publish this and I mean, and that you were able to get this to a lot of people. I mean, you should be immensely proud.
Amy: [00:30:26] That's one thing that we have really honed in on with Moving Animals is that a huge amount of our work is spent thinking of how we can get these stories out there? The media don't want to talk about it. People don't want to talk about it. So in the planning stages, we always try and think of ways how we can tell these stories in really creative ways, which will engage people. We tend to look at things like, OK, what does the media want to talk about and how can we fill that space with animal stories or animal agriculture related Stories? That's how we collaborate with The Guardian on this story. So The Guardian has this really cool area of work that focuses on animals called Animals Farmed, one of the things that we found out through research is that they really do want to focus on this growth of Asia's meat industry. The Guardian also are really cool in that they talk about human rights issues as well. So we thought, OK, this story really fits in with them. It is a horrific, bloody, brutal story of violence. We've also found that like Moving Animals has developed the combining not just the visuals, so the investigation footage or the photographs with data, really. So we almost like to create the stories ourselves, it is a really powerful way to advocate for animals. So one of the things that really comes to mind with that is the frogs.
Elizabeth: [00:31:38] Before you even go into the frogs, were you guys just talking about the frog situation in general and like just a little background on how quickly we are really on this planet going to run out of frogs?
Amy: [00:31:50] Yeah, sure. So we had no idea about this. We'd never really considered frogs and we happened to come across Vietnam at this fish market we were documenting. There were just thousands of frogs in these buckets.
Elizabeth: [00:32:06] Were they alive?
Amy: [00:32:07] Oh yeah, all alive, like some of them were being, who'd managed to get out the buckets were being crushed by motorcycles or people's feet. So we thought, OK, wait a minute. Frogs, we never really thought about that. We looked into it, didn't we? So it turns out that about three billion frogs a year are being slaughtered for food. Three billion frogs a year.
Elizabeth: [00:32:30] Yeah, it's astronomical.
Amy: [00:32:32] Yeah.
Elizabeth: [00:32:33] Who's eating all these frogs?
Amy: [00:32:35] So France and Belgium are currently the world's largest consumers, but the US is predicted to overtake them.
Elizabeth: [00:32:43] Really?
Amy: [00:32:44] Yeah. So the U.S. is eating these frogs.
Elizabeth: [00:32:45] I had no idea people were eating frogs in the U.S..
Amy: [00:32:47] Yeah, it's massive. So in the EU, this is just to give an idea of numbers in 2015. It's an estimate. There was an estimate of eighty four to two hundred million limbs of frogs just in the EU.
Elizabeth: [00:33:05] So we are really arguing there's frogs in this area.
Amy: [00:33:08] Yeah, for sure. Scientists have been warning about it for a long time. Just how, just as with many fish species, we could well be on the way to eating the world's frogs to extinction. So enormous sums of these animals are being taken from the wild, which of course, can only lead to collapse. This appetite for frog legs has already driven the species to the brink of extinction in places like France and India, and they actually now have bans on their capture in these countries in place because of it. So it's almost this idea that, OK, so we protect the native frogs in the EU, but we then barbecue frogs from Indonesia for consumption. So we know it's bad, but still we're still doing it.
Elizabeth: [00:33:46] Some of your footage and your photos of the frogs that I've seen, it's actually some of the most horrific stuff I've seen.
Amy: [00:33:54] It's really bad. The slaughter that we've documented of frogs. It's a case of like these, these amphibians, they have their heads snipped off with scissors and then the bodies are skinned.
Elizabeth: [00:34:08] So it's really, yeah, no, it's horrible.
Amy: [00:34:10] Scientists are also suggesting that even though they've had their heads ripped off, they're still capable of processing pain, right? These animals are so tough.
Paul: [00:34:18] I think with the frogs issue, it was something that. We had come across and realized that people weren't talking about it, and it very much inspired us to look at issues that were overlooked. Of course, there are just so many animal stories out there that can and should be told, but we particularly wanted to focus on those that weren't being talked about. And I guess that idea of raising awareness. So something like the frogs almost putting it on the map as an issue, the fact that the frogs and eating them, you know, to extinction carries so many issues within itself in terms of carrying diseases across countries and eating them to extinction so species are being wiped out. So there's a particular sort of urgency and worry to it.
Elizabeth: [00:35:09] Most of these situations are all of these situations where animals are being abused and slaughtered for food. The humans in one way or another are also being abused and their lives are absurdly difficult. But YouTube did an investigation into leather in India. I want to talk about that because the leather industry, which you also just don't hear enough about, not only is it like, absolutely just horrific in general, but the human toll that happens within it, and it's also one of those industries where, unlike a lot of other Industries in Asia, where it's easier access, it's pretty tough to get in there, right?
Amy: [00:35:52] Super tough. Yeah, when we were in India, we visited several of these. They're literally called leather towns because they produce so much of the country's and the world's leather. We were able to get access to three processing farms out of the four that were there.
Elizabeth: [00:36:07] How did you get access?
Amy: [00:36:09] We were able to say that we were students. So the interest in the fashion industry. They reluctantly let us in. But they did not let us go be our own or anything or document a single thing. It was just impossible. There was like razor wire all around the edge. You couldn't climb it and you couldn't. You couldn't go back at night and get access. It was so heavily guarded.
Elizabeth: [00:36:31] Do you know why that is?
Amy: [00:36:32] I think it is, again, because of this human element. So what we ourselves saw in there was the two of the three leather factories that were just clear abuses of human rights. So workers had no protection for their hands or lungs as they worked with all these really dangerous chemicals.
Paul: [00:36:49] I think it's maybe worth explaining the sort of leather process because I don't think people were aware of it. So the animal skin is delivered to these places, and to turn the leather you dip it and soak it in these very, very strong and dangerous chemicals to make it last.
Amy: [00:37:08] Yeah, prevent it from decomposing because it's skin leather, it's literally the skin. So there's got to find a way to prevent it from decomposing.
Paul: [00:37:14] I think one of these factories in particular, I remember my chest feeling like it was on fire because of any chemical, whether it's your household bleach, if you breathe it in.
Amy: [00:37:31] It’s bad for you.
Paul: [00:37:32] Yeah, you really feel the impact of it, but this was a big room full of tanks of tanning chemicals, really strong chemicals.
Amy: [00:37:39] It goes through a process where most leather is chrome tanned and all of the waste containing chromium is actually considered hazardous by the US Environmental Protection Agency. There's been incidents in the US of residents near a Tannery in Kentucky, where the incidence of leukemia was five times greater than the U.S. average, like it's just killing people and animals.
Elizabeth: [00:38:03] Well, in Bangladesh, I read a while ago the average age of a leather. I don't know if this is just Bangladesh or it's all leather tanneries, the people that work in tanneries, It's something like forty seven, the life span.
Paul: [00:38:16] Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So, yeah, that makes sense. When we were doing these tours, you had these completely dangerous chemicals that, as I mentioned, I was struggling to breathe in, in the room, but we were actually seeing these workers knee deep in the chemicals. They didn't have any gloves on. They didn't have any protective gear on, not even a mask. And they were knee deep needing these skins into the chemicals, that really drives home why we weren't allowed to take any pictures. Because images like that, it's it just shows the danger and the
Elizabeth: [00:38:58] It's total human rights abuse.
Amy: [00:39:03] Oh yeah, 100%.
Elizabeth: [00:39:04] A lot of times there's kids in those towers. I didn't even think about that. They wouldn't let you in. I mean, they wouldn't let you film or take photos because of the people. So I was wondering because not many countries like here, like the U.S. and here getting into slaughterhouses and whatnot. I gag clauses, especially in the U.S. and Canada, and now too, they don't want people to see what happens to the animals. But in a lot of countries in Asia, people aren't as concerned about people seeing what happens to the animals. But seeing the human rights abuses is a different story.
Amy: [00:39:33] Yeah, it's interesting as well. Something we've learned with our work is that the places that we document a lot of the time, there's not a huge amount of pushback to necessarily the animal cruelty. But if there's anything touching on like food safety, that's where you just get walls lifted up straight away.
Elizabeth: [00:39:51] Really, like how so, as in?
Amy: [00:39:55] We were documenting an egg farm intensive egg When we were in India as well. We were able to gain access actually quite casually as they let us in and they gave us a tour. We started asking questions about the food safety side of things, the health aspects of things like these, this environment where the chickens were being kept, the hens were being kept and walls up straight away had to leave. With our work as well we speak to a lot of other investigators and people that are going really deep undercover, you know, like working in these places. Whenever they release an investigation, they have to be super careful for legal reasons to mention anything about food safety because that's when they get the lawyers because they know that's what scares the public. Because then it's actually impacting the people who are consuming these products, not just the animals and the people who are making the products. I think, is where some real damage can be done to these industries.
Elizabeth: [00:40:51] Well, in the craziest thing about that, and this is every country on the planet, the food safety is so bad. I mean, there's diseases in every factory farm on earth, but it's so well covered up.
Amy: [00:41:07] For a reason.
Elizabeth: [00:40:51] Yeah, yeah. You guys are still pretty early on in this organization, but you've been doing it for three and a half years. One of the real benefits that the two of you had was because you'd spent time before all this working in an organization that really involved the media. You knew the power of getting this stuff out there and ways to get it out there and the better your photography was, the better Paul's footage. Yeah, the more chances of getting it out. So you had a real drive in the sense of I need to get better, I need to get better.
Amy: [00:41:41] Definitely. I think as well because we saw what these animal organizations wanted and what the, where the gaps were. All of our stuff that we do. Most of it, we film completely for free so that this stuff can get out there. We do take on assignments from animal organizations or media platforms, and we do have grants. But one of the key things that removes the barriers to our footage and our photos is that it's completely free to use, and we do that intentionally for a reason. One thing that really struck me the other day and I was thinking about it because we're currently editing all the photos that we've taken over the last three years to go on our Moving Animals archive is that looking at these photos, you do just feel like you're looking at ghosts, like you're sort of like collecting ghosts almost with the camera, which is really heartbreaking.
Elizabeth: [00:42:27] I think that pretty much almost all animals that you've photographed are gone.
Amy: [00:42:33] Yeah, yeah.
Elizabeth: [00:42:35] So they are ghosts.
Amy: [00:42:34] That's heartbreaking, isn't it? Even if we had been able to free them like the chains and the cages, they just fill up again because there is this demand there for these animal industries.
Elizabeth: [00:42:48] I started doing this run during COVID and it was kind of this run so I could spy on a lot of different neighborhoods just to see what everyone else was doing. There's one neighborhood that I would run through every day for over a year, which was a chicken slaughterhouse. By the time I got there, the birds had usually been dropped off and they would be in these plastic crates that were way too short for their heads. So they all had their heads bent way down. They're like white, six month old chickens and like hundreds and hundreds of them. It became like every morning I would be getting closer to the chickens and I'd be like, Oh, I don't want to run by the chickens. The smell was horrendous and I would do what all the investigators tell me they do and just say, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry as I ran by and I'd look at them all and I tell you just doing that, like just that awareness that these guys are alive right now and they're going to be dead in an hour and they've had horrible lives up until now. Having it in your face like that changed me. Like, there's just something about knowing I'm going to see these chickens every morning and not being able to do anything about them. I always go through this moment of hating the people that are eating them and killing them, then I'm like, No, the whole world is doing this. Then this big forgiveness is kind of for conditioning. And it's literally like this ridiculous kind of routine I did every morning for over a year, but it really makes me like what you guys do and you're just going into a horrific scene after. I think a lot of those things probably come up like, who's doing this? Why are they doing this? Do you want to get defensive or angry? And then you realize now this is like, it's these things, it's those photographs. It's that footage Paul is taking. It's the stories you guys are writing. This is how you create change.
Paul: [00:44:33] Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
Amy: [00:44:34]. That's definitely what keeps us doing it. The way I see it, we see it is that globally there are countless trillions of animals who are confined for entertainment or slaughtered for consumption. Then when confronted with these huge numbers, it can be really hard to picture these individuals that are actually behind the stats. We found in our own work and from looking at other people's work is that photographs can really help bridge that gap and allow others to witness this injustice and violence that is so often so carefully hidden from us, so it's like you're saying with chickens when you're running and you go past them every day, like all of a sudden, it's not billions of chickens that are being slaughtered. It's these these individuals that you've just seen there.
Elizabeth: [00:45:21] Yes.
Amy: [00:44:22] We're about to be killed. It creates another kind of connection. Yeah. So that is one of the reasons we focus so much on animal photojournalism to try and get people to connect with the stories and the animals themselves.
Elizabeth: [00:45:30] It's true, like when you see the individuals and you say and you see, like these beautiful photos that you've taken and you see their eyes and you see all of a sudden they become an animal, not an industry.
Paul: [00:45:43] I think it's something that is often just so difficult to do when you're in the moment. I think for me personally, I know that I have to tell myself, OK, I can't help this particular animal or rescue this particular animal right now, but the best I can do is try and raise awareness of their life, of the issue that claimed their life, and that to me just gets me through that moment, that difficult moment of being there in that horrible situation, just knowing that I'm doing the best I can and trying to help in a way that I can to hopefully help others like that animal in the future. So it is really difficult work.
Elizabeth: [00:46:23] I think, to the beauty of doing this now in 2021 versus even twenty years ago, is that when people do recognize this and they see this in your work, there are a whole lot of solutions and already right now, right? Like you don't have to be wearing leather, you don't need to be eating cheese, you don't need to be doing any of this stuff and it's not like you're going to suffer. There is amazing solutions.
Amy: [00:46:48] Right now in the process of essentially starting work in the UK and across Europe. That's going to be our main focus for the next few years. But we also really want to document solutions. So the solutions to all of these issues, not just the horrific stuff, but showing people that there are so many ways that it doesn't have to be like this and just showing as well how taking animals out of the diet equation will help so many other issues like the environment. People's rights, people's health, like it's all interconnected and we really want to try and amplify that. We always say that being vegan, it's not a sacrifice. It's literally a joy. Yeah. Remove all the negative connotations we may have from the word vegan, but all it is at its core is just like trying to remove suffering from so many different parts of the world.
Elizabeth: [00:47:37] So I think it makes your life like it expands your life in so many ways. It doesn't. It doesn't make it smaller.
Amy: [00:47:46] Not in the slightest.
Elizabeth: [00:47:49] Amy and Paul, you're the best you are. Thank you so much, both of you, for everything.
Amy and Paul: [00:47:53] Thanks so much. Thanks for having us.
Elizabeth: [00:47:55] To learn more about Amy and Paul and Moving Animals, go to our website, Speciesunite.com. We will have links to everything. We're on Facebook and Instagram @SpeciesUnite. If you have a spare minute and could do us a favor, please subscribe rate and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. It really helps people find the show. If you'd like to support species unite, we'd greatly appreciate it. Go to our website speciesunite.com and click Become a member. I would like to thank everyone at Species Unite, including Gary Knudsen, Caitlin Pierce, Amy Jones, Paul Healey, Santana Poky, Bethany Jones and Anna Conner, who wrote and performed today's music. Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful day!
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