S4. E7: Leah Garcés: To Prevent The Next Pandemic Our Food System Has To Change

“…This [pandemic] is not a surprise in many ways and, for decades, not just animal rights activists, but public health experts have been sounding the alarm bells about this kind of risk. And you know, my concern is in many ways people are referring to this as a once in a century event or the black swan or something, but it's like rolling dice and rolling snake eyes once doesn't have any effect on rolling. And in fact, we're rolling the dice even faster now.

The main reason is because we are in so much contact with animals through factory farms. So the way to think about pandemics is that we know that emerging zoonotic infections come from places where animals and humans are in close contact. Well, where is that? Live animal markets, we know that. And the other place is industrial animal farms and slaughterhouses. That is the most obvious place for that connection to happen.”

Leah Garcés

 
 

The New Coronavirus has done a superb job at exposing the numerous vulnerabilities and holes in many of our systems and industries, but none are as gaping or dangerous as the chasms in our food system. 

Our food system is in crisis. We are seeing it right now: meat shortages, mass killings of animals because of shut downs and overflow, and workers getting sick and dying. It’s a fragile system that desperately needs a complete overhaul. By exposing these vulnerabilities, the pandemic is also giving us an opportunity to demand that the system change and, while we are at it, to think about changing the way that we eat. 

If we don’t, if we ignore the scores of red flags waving from the factory farms and slaughterhouses across the country, then not only will the crisis deepen, but we are also putting the entire globe at risk for another pandemic that could, and probably will be, much worse than the one we are currently experiencing. 

Factory farms are breeding grounds for viruses and bacterial resistance. We cram millions of animals into filthy, confined spaces. Their immune systems are stressed because of their living conditions. This is the perfect environment for viruses to grow and to mutate. And, to transmit to humans – it’s happened before and, yes, it will happen again, and next time could be much worse. 

Leah Garcés’ mission is to end factory farming. She is the President of Mercy for Animals and has spent much of her life leading the animal protection movement in exposing the hidden and horrible worlds of factory farming - and, changing them. 

Her approach has been unusual and it has created change in a system that in many ways seemed unchangeable. She has worked with whistleblowing farmers to expose industrial chicken farms and has partnered with some of the world's largest food companies to improve conditions for factory-farmed animals. 

Leah learned that she could make considerable progress by working with her adversaries in the meat industry instead of battling against them, something I think that all of us can learn from. Her story is one that makes us rethink how we change broken systems and repair destructive industries. She wrote a book about it called, Grilled, Turning Adversaries Into Allies to Change the Chicken Industry.  It's an incredible read – not only does it expose the horrors of our food system, it’s also explains how to make change happen, how to fight for justice, and how to remain empathic, optimistic, and hopeful in the fight for a much better world. 

Leah is a hero to millions of animals, to humans across the planet, and to me. She thinks big, she gets things done and creates massive impact in the process. I hope you are as inspired as I am.

Learn more about Mercy for Animals

Read “Grilled: Turning Adversaries into Allies to Change the Chicken Industry

Watch Leah’s TEDx Talk About Turning Adversaries into Allies

Follow Leah on Twitter

Follow Leah on Instagram

Follow Mercy for Animals on Instagram

Like Mercy for Animals on Facebook

Follow Mercy for Animals on Twitter


Transcript:

Leah: [00:00:00] So the way to think about pandemics, the one we have now is we know that emerging zoonotic infections come from places where animals and humans are in close contact. Well, where is that? Well, live animal markets, we know that, and the other place, it's industrial animal farms and slaughterhouses. That is the most obvious place for that connection to happen.

Elizabeth : [00:00:35] Hi. I'm Elizabeth Novogratz. This is Species Unite. Today's conversation is with Leah Garcés, the president of Mercy for Animals. Leah's mission is to end factory farming, and her approach has been unusual. She's worked with whistle blowing farmers and has partnered with some of the world's largest food companies. She's been a leader in the animal protection movement for years, exposing the hidden and horrible worlds of factory farms. She knows that the risks of those farms affect far more than just the animals inside them. They also cause many problems for humans, which we're seeing a lot of right now with COVID 19. But the truth is, the crisis in our food system has always been there. The pandemic is just exposing these vulnerabilities. If we don't start talking about and changing our food system right now, then we're in really big trouble, not just because of what's happening today, but for the future, because the next pandemic very well could and probably will come from a factory farm. Leah is also the author of Grill'd Turning Adversaries into Allies to Change the Chicken Industry. Thank you, Leah, so much for today. I'm really excited to talk to you not only about chicken, which was the original point of our conversation, but now since we're in the middle of a pandemic, to hear your thoughts on factory farming and pandemics. So let's start though. Will you just tell me about how you got started working on animal issues?

Leah: [00:02:13] Sure. I'm really pleased to be here. I'm sorry we can't meet in person as we planned, but such is the way of the world right now. So for me, my beginning in this world is like many others. As a child, I loved animals and I had a dog. But more remarkably, I had ducks in my backyard. I grew up in the swamps of Florida and we had a canal and the ducks would come up from the canal and lay their eggs in my mother's prized flowerbeds. My brother, sister and I would lay on our bellies on the other side of the screened in porch and kind of watch the lives of these ducks unfold. It was remarkable and amazing. We'd see like the little feet and the beaks come out first of the eggs and we'd see them as they go out into their first trip out in the canal, and we'd see them grow up and we'd see the whole thing start again. So I grew up with a very acute sense that these animals had families, had dramas, had lives and deserved good lives and were worthy of protection. So that really pushed me into a direction of wanting to protect animals. I went and did a zoology degree in college and I thought I wanted to be a vet, but at the end of my degree, my mentor at the time and the zoology department said, Julia, you don't want to be a vet, you're much more interested in getting to the root of the problem because he said vets are plumbers in a sense, because they fix animals when they're broken already. But you seem more curious about getting to the reason they're broken in the first place and stopping that.

Elizabeth : [00:03:55] Right. Did that change you? Did that really hit you when he said that?

Leah: [00:03:58] Oh, it was probably the most important thing anyone has said to me in my career in terms of changing my path. I really didn't even know that that could be. A career and I went searching for what that career would look like? What how do you get to the root of suffering? How do you get to the root of suffering of animals? That sent me on the path of animal protection and advocacy.

Elizabeth : [00:04:22] Wow. What a gift that you had him to put you in that direction. So then you went to college in London?

Leah: [00:04:30] Yes, I went to do my master's in London. That is where I discovered this whole professional world of animal advocacy. My undergraduate was in zoology and then my masters was in environment and development, sustainable development. And straight out of there, I started working for a group called Compassion in World Farming, where I discovered there was a professional world of farm animal advocates and animal advocates. That is where I started and probably to my dying day will be working.

Elizabeth : [00:05:05] That's amazing. Now you are running Mercy for Animals. Your husband is at the CDC, correct?

Leah: [00:05:12] He was at the CDC and now he's at Emory School at Emory, the School of Public Health. So he's an epidemiologist. Yeah. And that's how we got to Atlanta, though, as he was recruited by the CDC.

Elizabeth : [00:05:25] The reason I'm asking is because right now, since we are in the middle of a global pandemic and COVID 19, I'm just curious about your dinner conversations.

Leah: [00:05:33] Because my poor children are going to therapy. We're either talking about suffering of animals or global pandemics.

Elizabeth : [00:05:42] It's got to be nuts?

Leah: [00:05:45] Yeah. I mean, the other day, if you check out my Instagram page, you'll see a photo of this but of my husband explaining they are not to my six year old which is you know and like herd immunity thresholds. He was trying to explain to them with a marker on a mirror, when we're getting out of this pandemic and how math will help us do that. He was trying to show real applications of math in the world. So, yeah, our dinner. That was dinner. That was a real Friday's dinner.

Elizabeth : [00:06:14] That is awesome. So for you, I'm sure this is no surprise in the sense of animal farming, whether it be wet markets, live markets or factory farms. Pandemics have been brewing and have been happening for as long as this has been going on. So what is it like from your perspective, though?

Leah: [00:06:35] Yeah, I mean, this is not a surprise in many ways. For decades, not just animal rights activists, but public health experts have been sounding the alarm bells about this kind of risk. My concern is in many ways, people are referring to this as like a once in a century event or the Black Swan or something, but it's like rolling dice and it doesn't really, you know, rolling snake eyes once doesn't have any effect on rolling in again. In fact, we're rolling the dice even faster now. The main reason is because we are in so much contact with animals through factory farms. So the way to think about pandemics, the one we have now is we know that emerging zoonotic infections come from places where animals and humans are in close contact. Well, where is that? Well, live animal markets, we know that. The other place, it's industrial animal farms and slaughterhouses. That is the most obvious place for that connection to happen. While it's really painful to even think of this, there are so many reasons why this particular pandemic is not as bad as it could have been and might. There might be a worse one, a more menacing one out there. One of the things, if you look into the literature at all, that public health officials are really, really worried about is something called highly pathogenic avian influenza, which is avian flu, but it's got a very high fatality rate. And fortunately, human to human transmission right now has been really low. But the flu virus is really good at swapping genes, and that's how it kind of mutates and it moves through different vectors and gets better and better and better until it figures out how to move through a population at lightning speed like we're seeing with this new one. And the true nightmare will be for us if something like this highly pathogenic avian flu mutates and becomes deadly to humans.

Elizabeth : [00:08:47] The avian flu has just re-emerged.

Leah: [00:08:51] In North Carolina, South Carolina, we have this exact one. The highly pathogenic avian influenza is happening in the south of the United States right now. They are killing turkeys right now to try to get rid of it. That's for the fact that it's spreading through the flocks. But the place where this. Kind of gene swapping. This mutating can happen very rapidly, on a factory farm because all of these animals are side by side in an immune stressed situation in these factory farms. So these viruses can just move very easily, it's a real concern. The most obvious place the next pandemic would emerge from is a factory farm. It's one of the biggest places of risk for us.

Elizabeth : [00:09:33] It could be viral or bacterial next.

Leah: [00:09:36] Definitely, I mean, the two biggest risks to our health in that sense are the viruses in terms of pandemic viruses. Then second is bacteria, the thing that public health officials really worry about from factory farms is antibiotic resistance. So a bacteria emerges that is resistant to all the antibiotics that exist and then that's spreading very rapidly.

Elizabeth : [00:09:58] Well, you talk about that a little bit. You really talk about it well in your book about when you give the examples of your dad and his finger, that story makes you shudder. Will you tell us about that? Yeah.

Leah: [00:10:11] I mean, there are so many examples and it's happening at scary levels. The World Health Organization has noted that one of the biggest threats to our existence is that we enter a world, a post-antibiotic world, where antibiotics don't work or a scratch on your finger could end you up dead. I know that sounds dramatic and propaganda, but it's really not. That's what used to happen before we discovered penicillin. Somebody could get a scratch, it would turn into infection, it would infect your blood and you would die. We're starting to see signs of that in the population. So, for example, my dad, he got a scratch on his finger. It became infected. It turned out it was some kind of multidrug resistant bacteria that no drug was able to fight. The infection started to really start to move up his hand and into his arm. The worry was what if it gets into his blood, then he gets blood poisoning. He could be fatal. What they ended up having to do was this is disgusting and horrifying, but they had to mechanically dig out the infection.

Leah: [00:11:19] So they had to open his finger and dig out his flesh with the infected flesh and do that and then stitch it really horribly back so that it could be healed. That eventually worked. I think three months and different courses of antibiotics. You could hardly eat. You couldn't use his arm because of the pain around it. I'll tell you what else. I actually talked to a farmer this week who worked in the chicken industry. The farmers in the chicken industry suffer from antibiotic resistance as well and being infected with this bacteria. So I met with a farmer from Texas through Zoom and he put up his left hand and showed me his finger and the top part of his digit was not there. He told me a story of how he got a paper cut on his finger and he ended up nine days in the hospital from an infection. It was multidrug resistant. Once again, the only way to get rid of that infection was to chop off the top of his finger.

Elizabeth : [00:12:16] Oh, my God.

Leah: [00:12:16] Yeah, it's horrifying. This is the risk we are putting ourselves at now. Something like 70% of all the antibiotics that we have available that we use in the world are given to farmed animals instead of us. They're given to farm animals because they're living in really unhealthy environments that they need these antibiotics to survive. The industry's figured out antibiotics promote growth and make them grow really, really fast. So we're totally wasting our arsenal for protecting our health on a system that delivers cheap protein. Yeah, sure. But it also puts us at risk from entering a post antibiotic world and all the other things like we've been talking about in the pandemic risk. Not to mention it's incredibly cruel and inefficient as a food.

Elizabeth : [00:13:07] Source for the conditions for chickens that they're living in this. I had no idea about the flaws until I read your book. I thought I knew a lot about factory farming, and then I read your book and realized there's a lot I didn't know because that is why they're giving them so many antibiotics. One of the reasons is conditions and just how horrific these conditions are. But tell us about the flaws, because that. Oh, it is shocking to me.

Leah: [00:13:33] It is. I mean, just to kind of describe it to the listeners, the first time I stepped into it I called it a warehouse. It's not a farm. It's not a barn. It's a warehouse. It's a warehouse where animals are raised and are kept. In a chicken house, you open the door and the first thing you're hit with is this horrible smell. It stings your nose, it makes your eyes water, you cough, and you're physically very uncomfortable. And when you step into it. To the actual warehouse. The floor is squishy and spongy, and it is a layer of what they call litter. Litter is made up of chicken feces, feathers, wood shavings and feed and whatever else. That has come off of the chickens. The thing that people don't know about is that litter is not changed between flocks. So I remember speaking to my mom about this and she was thinking it was like a bird cage or something where you changed the bottom of the bird cage, like every couple of days, right? Like one bird living in one cage. You change the birdcage every single day maybe, or every other day. Well, imagine 30,000 chickens in a warehouse on top of litter. That has never changed. Not just for their lives, but for the next flock and the next flock in the next flock and the next. I've talked to farmers who haven't changed their litter for years, if ever. What they do in between is they'll kind of scrape off the top layer of poop and feces and feathers, and then they'll push it in the middle and they call it composting. So it kind of heats up and they say that the bacteria builds up and kills a bunch of the bad stuff, I don't know. Then they spread it back out and then they put the new flock back in.

Elizabeth : [00:15:28] The conditions that these birds have to live in and on top of this, and they can't move a lot of them. Right. So they're just stuck in this kind of hot poop. That's what their food's on. So giving them all these antibiotics, I mean, the whole thing is so insane. It's just it's like it's like it just makes no sense whatsoever that this is how it's evolved. I want to talk about Craig, what's the story and your relationship with Craig, how it evolved, what happened? Because I really think this is one of the best stories of our decade. I think when people go back and look at the beginning of the end of factory farming, this will be a very important story in the history books.

Leah: [00:16:08] I hope.

Elizabeth : [00:16:08] So could you tell for people who don't know the story of, first of all, how you even got in contact with Craig and what happened?

Leah: [00:16:17] Well, I remember I was sitting at my desk in my office and I got a call from a journalist who asked me to meet him at a coffee shop and look at some papers. So I went and met him as I do, and he had a pile of these dirty papers, maybe 50 or 60 pieces of paper that had the exact makeup of the feed that was being used on a farm, including the antibiotics, which is very rare to find. That's like a proprietary secret. And I asked him, where did you get this? I expected him to say something like, Oh, I snuck it out. Or I have an undercover investigator take it, I have a really good researcher. He said, Oh, this farmer gave it to me. I went, What? Like this farmer is willing to speak to you about these things and give you this information? Yeah. Can you put me in touch with them? He did. I didn't expect the farmer to want to speak to me because every time I'm asked that they say no. This one did. His name is Craig.

Elizabeth : [00:17:12] What was the original conversation like?

Leah: [00:17:17] Very short. It was me asking questions. I was so curious. The industry is so secretive that finding out even basic information about how it works is difficult for somebody from the outside. So I think he was maybe impressed or interested or curious too, like, what is this person doing asking all these detailed questions about how the industry works? He was happy to share his knowledge and I really wanted to hear his story. I eventually worked up the courage to ask if I could bring a camera and come and film inside his house. To my surprise, he said yes. So my friend and I, who's a filmmaker, her name is Reagan Hodge. We got in the car and drove west. Sorry, East. I live in Atlanta to his home in Fairmont, North Carolina, and I did not know what to expect. I mean, this was the person who, for my entire career, had really been defined as an enemy, a person who is a factory farmer. I'm an animal rights activist, and I didn't know exactly why he wanted me to be there. Also, there had not been footage collected from inside a chicken factory farm for a decade, so I knew this was like, I got to do this. I just got to get the footage. I gotta get out of there. I'll see if I can get him to trust me. And when I arrived there, he had his overalls on. I mean, he clearly was not concerned about us. He invited me into his home, and we just sat on the floor of his living room, poring over his documents and his records and hearing his story. I had expected to sort of get in and get out, but instead I got really in. I got deep.

Elizabeth : [00:18:59] Did you know why? Why did he wanted you to come in? I mean, he was obviously struggling, right?

Leah: [00:19:05] I had a sense he also felt there was some connection between us over there's something wrong with the system, there's something wrong with this. We each have a role to play in fixing it, even though our roles are very different. I think we came together on that point. He had seen a commercial that Perdue had put out which told a story of all of our chickens or Sunny. It was a picture of a barn with sunshine and clean litter and clean birds that were walking around with lots of space. Then it was talking about all the farmers are so happy and the chickens are happy. I think we had both seen that commercial and been like, This is crazy. The consumer's being hoodwinked, they're being lied to. We have a duty to tell people about this. This is not okay. We wanted him to have access and I knew how to get the story out. So together we became this very formidable force.

Elizabeth : [00:20:04] So then what happened after you went back numerous times?

Leah: [00:20:07] I went back a lot of times, but I did really have a kind of transformation myself while I was there. So. I, as I said, had started the journey, had been my whole career up until meeting him, had painted him in my mind as the enemy, as the one to blame for factory farming. But he also started to tell me his story of despair. So Craig Watts, when he was 22 years old, had been looking for this way to stay on the land which had been in his family for five generations and raised his family. Tobacco had fallen out. There were very few other industries there. So when the chicken industry rolled up into town and offered him a contract to raise chickens, he thought, this is a dream come true. He took out a quarter of a $1,000,000 loan, which was enabled by this contract with Perdue. He built these chicken warehouses, the idea was that Perdue would give him chickens, then they would pick them up at the end and then he'd get a paycheck. With that paycheck, he would pay off this quarter of a $1,000,000 loan like a mortgage. But after a time it started to go wrong. So he made the farm bigger, but the profits didn't get bigger, and he started to get disease in the barn and problems and you don't get paid for dead chickens. So he started to fall behind on his loan and pretty soon he realized he'd made this big mistake. But he was trapped now, because he had this giant loan linked to the land that was the original reason he wanted to stay and do this work. She's an indentured servant now. That's the idea.

Elizabeth : [00:21:46] It's a lot of money. His situation is pretty much the situation for all chicken farmers in the United States.

Leah: [00:21:53] Or they're all in debt. Nobody starts off without this debt. You start off with hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars of loans. I know farmers who have two, three, $4 million worth of debt and they're never going to pay it off. It's never going to happen.

Elizabeth : [00:22:08] They can't get out.

Leah: [00:22:10] They can't get out. If they get out, they lose. They go bankrupt. I know plenty of farmers who are declaring bankruptcy as well.

Elizabeth : [00:22:17] So, I mean, on some level, it's a miracle that Craig came to you, and it's on another level. It's kind of shocking that a lot of others hadn't in the sense of the desperation that must be in.

Leah: [00:22:29] Yeah, well, I think a lot of farmers felt like and still feel like if they speak out, that they'll lose their contract with the company. It's happened and has been noted to happen in the past where a grower speaks out against the industry and then they get either like sick chickens, chickens that are problematic or they don't get a flock for some reason. There's a great book called The Meat Racket that details this that I'd recommend if anybody's interested in that.

Elizabeth : [00:22:56] So you're in Craig's story, the story that comes out and Nick Kristof writes an article in the New York Times It's incredible. What happens?

Leah: [00:23:08] This story goes viral. So we put together a short five minute video and within 24 hours, a million people had seen it. People were livid. They were livid that they were being lied to. First of all, that this chicken was literally being labeled it had a label on it that said humanely raised. So that was the first point, which is now not labeled that they removed that label.

Elizabeth : [00:23:32] What are people seeing in the video?

Leah: [00:23:34] They're seeing the normal growing conditions, the normal conditions of chicken factory farming, which no one had seen. They are also seeing production. This is a wonderful situation for the birds.

Elizabeth : [00:23:46] But so they're seeing these sick, filthy, crowded farm.

Leah: [00:23:50] Yeah, they're seeing the farmer talk about it live with good cameras, not undercover, not me sneaking into his farm and exposing him, but him speaking out and standing shoulder to shoulder with a vegan animal rights activist and talking about this like this is not okay for anyone. This really, really put the issue on the map. It really made it so that no one could ignore it. It really received widespread coverage and it made it so Perdue couldn't ignore it. To their credit, they've made a lot of progress after this.

Elizabeth : [00:24:26] Were you stunned when it went viral? what was your reaction?

Leah: [00:24:30] Oh, yeah, I really remember I was sitting. I was on the phone with Craig and we were and he was going, are you watching what's happening? I'd really like to reload it and be like, what is going on here? Then I remember waking up the next morning and going, oh, my goodness, what is happening? It was shocking. It was really shocking.

Elizabeth : [00:24:53] Did Perdue start to change right away or was that a process? 

Leah: [00:24:57]  It was definitely a process. 

Elizabeth : [00:24:59] Of course.

Leah: [00:25:00] Their first response was defensive. They sent inspectors to go out to Craig's farms and say, like, hey, you're just a bad farmer. That's what's happening here. You've done a bad job managing this farm. We actually had set him up with a lawyer to protect him against that kind of retaliation. Amanda was hit by a government accountability project. Also it looked terrible to the public like they were not responding to the concerns. They were blaming a farmer when we had clearly made the case that this is a systemic issue. This is an issue that there's a there's a you know, there's a wider systemic problem here. You cannot blame an individual. The breeds that are used are very sickly, the crowding, the warehouses, the lack of lighting, the lack of space. These are systemic problems the farmer can do nothing about because this is all dictated by the industry. So that is where I think people finally kind of broke through and latched on to like there's a systematic problem here. You can't blame a person, a farmer, which is what Perdue tried to do. Then after about a year I had seen a media piece on Purdue talking about antibiotics.

Leah: [00:26:19] But then at the very end of the piece, Jim Purdue made a statement like that, saying, we need happier birds. To me, that was an opening. So I wrote to their PR team and said, Look, it seems like maybe after a year you're reflecting on this and I'd really like to sit down with you again. Let's talk about this. Maybe we're not as far apart as we thought we were. They, to their credit, took the invitation and we started meeting and talking. At first I was very cautious. They had lawyers present, for example.Then they invited me to a private gathering with their leadership. Then as time went on, we began to trust each other, find some common ground. In 2016, they came out with their first animal care policy, which laid out doing some that the changes they wanted to make, including some of the things we had criticized them for not doing, like putting windows in their warehouses so that the birds had some natural light and thinking about things like space and the breed of birds they're using, and also talking to farmers and giving farmers more credit and consulting with farmers more in the process.

Elizabeth : [00:27:27] Which is incredible.

Leah: [00:27:28] It's crazy.

Elizabeth : [00:27:30] The whole story is nuts, especially if this was the enemy of all enemies, especially after you put this video out. So to become allies with Purdue, that's where all the progress came. It's also very metaphorical in the sense of what's happening in this country right now. People are so divided and no one talks, those conversations just aren't happening. I think one thing your book does, it's such a guidebook in how we start changing as a country in terms of how we start talking to each other. Were you surprised at every kind of step of the way here or was this more thought out? Did you think, Hey, if I work with them, I can make a lot more progress?

Leah: [00:28:24] I had a very adversarial concept of the relationship. That was how you made progress. You shouted from the rooftops, you were angry, you pointed the finger, you put out media releases, and that's how you make progress. But it was after I've been working in this field for 20 years, but it was after 15 years of basically beating my head against a wall and making little progress that way. That led me, I think, to this point where I became clear that if you want to do systematic change, you have to involve the people who are in charge of the problem. If you don't involve them, then you'll never get to the root of the problem. The root of the problem is getting the people in charge of the problem to care about, understand, and get on the journey with you rather than you trying to beat them down as the enemy.

Elizabeth : [00:29:18] Which is exactly what you've done with Purdue. But it's also a way of pushing progress forward in any relationship where there's a huge wall, whether it's within individuals or someone fighting an entire system or industry like you, it's a way of actually pushing progress forward.

Leah: [00:29:36] Yeah, and I think with Purdue as an example, they would hold these annual summits and they've I've been to five or six of them now and at the very last one that we had, they had this. Tell us anything you want. So I sit on a panel and they're like, you can say anything you want to us now. They have a lot of 100 people in the room. Last one, I said, you know what? You need to start thinking about plant based and you need to think about which is you think, why would a chicken company think about that? You think, well, their job is to create protein, right? They just want to keep their employees with their paychecks coming and keep the business running. The bottom line is what really matters. It came from a conversation with Jim Perdue. We were standing in the buffet line and he said, you know what? We are a premium definition and we're a premium protein company. But really nothing about that says it has to come from animals. It could come from plants if that's what consumers demand. We'd still be meeting our mission as a premium protein company. Lo and behold, only I think six months later they introduced a plant based product. Big meat companies are starting to do this where they're diversifying their protein sources. That's to me where the possibilities become endless. If you build that trust and you find common ground, then you can start really innovating and problem solving together. That's where we want to get companies to. I think they're institutions, they affect millions of meals. If we get them on the right path, we get them thinking about how to reduce the suffering of the animals. The system, how can we get them to consider plant based options into their portfolio? We're really going to move the needle in a way I could never do as an individual advocate.

Elizabeth : [00:31:21] There were a lot of other companies jumping on board.

Leah: [00:31:23] Yeah. Tyson Cargill. Cargill is producing this just came out yesterday. Cargill is producing a plant based chicken nugget for KFC in China right now. They just introduced it yesterday. The news came out.

Elizabeth : [00:31:37] That is amazing. That's awesome.

Leah: [00:31:41] I went to KFC and is experimenting with plant based nuggets around the world right now. So in the United States, they did their first trial right here in Atlanta of a plant based chicken nugget that was made out of Beyond Chicken, which if you've heard of the Beyond Meat products, it's one of the most successful IPOs of 2019. It was crazy. It was very successful as an investment. Now KFC is using that as their base product for their nuggets. In Atlanta, I went to the event, it was a one day trial, and I got there at 10:00 when it opened with a film crew. They had painted the whole thing lime green like a KFC went from red to lime green to be like, hey, we're, you know, trying veggie stuff out, which is crazy. It was so crowded. There was police orchestrating the traffic, there was the drive thru wrapped around. They had people wrapped around the building on the outside and there was traffic stopped in all directions. It was fantastic. This is KFC, which is nuts.

Elizabeth : [00:32:50] Yeah. Yeah. Are they going to start doing them regularly then?

Leah: [00:32:56] Is that so? They were doing a trial in Charlotte, in Nashville, which has been successful, and their concept is they keep trailing it in these places. As it succeeds and shows that it's successful, which it has been wildly successful, then they will be expanding it nationally. If it turns out to be the success that we think it will be. That's just so exciting. They're not the only ones. So Burger King introduced the Impossible Burger, the impossible whopper this year. Last year, sorry. It's been wildly successful. It's outselling the regular whopper. We also have Subway, which is introducing plant based product products. Dunkin Donuts has a beyond sausage breakfast sandwich now, too. So every fast food chain except McDonald's, which we could talk about, right. Is experimenting with introducing plant based products because consumers are demanding it. The producers from Cargill to Tyson to Perdue or all diversifying their offerings and offering this into their normal offerings. So it's becoming normal and in fact, demanded by consumers.

Elizabeth : [00:34:07] It's not the vegans, you know, who are.

Leah: [00:34:09] Oh, it's not for me. No.

Elizabeth : [00:34:11] That's what I mean. It's one of my brothers. I told them about Atlanta and he said, I told them I saw a picture of how many people were outside. He said, Well, there's a lot of vegans. I said, No, no, no, that's not the vegans.

Leah: [00:34:23] Yeah, this is Atlanta. Like, this is not like L.A. or New York. Exactly. Atlanta, which is why they you know, I think they were really smart when they tested it. They're testing it and think about the cities, Nashville, Charlotte and Atlanta. These are not hot spots for vegans necessarily.

Elizabeth : [00:34:39] No, they're not. What about lab based meat? Yeah, the future there, that's what I think is so incredibly exciting.

Leah: [00:34:46] I think it is too. So this is meat that is cultivated. Like we brew beer in these very sterile settings and they take the feather or a stem cell from some kind of cell from an animal, and the animal is unharmed in the process and then they grow the cells into the meat you would have eaten from like a burger to a fillet or whatever it is. And it sounds like the stuff of sci fi, right? But it is really not. It's happening right now. And I actually got to try a sausage that was made out of duck. Ironically, since my journey starts with duck and it is it's not like fake meat. It's not plant based or imitation meat, it's actual animal cells. And that, you know, the impact on the environment is far lower and it has no potential of any of the pandemic or health risks that we have seen resulting in all of the things we discussed earlier. And there's no bloodshed or suffering.

Elizabeth : [00:35:55] Involved and there's no duck, really.

Leah: [00:35:58] There's yeah. I mean, there's so you could you could take and this happened with one company put out a video to demonstrate this and they said they had taken the cell from a feather of a chicken and then they made the chicken nugget and then they ate the chicken nugget while the actual chicken, whose name was Ian, was walking around below them. It showed that no animal is harmed literally in this process and the animal continues to live as you're eating. The cells that came stemmed from this.

Elizabeth : [00:36:25] Animal when you tried to duck. Was it weird for you because you hadn't eaten meat in so long? Did it feel like crossing a line or did it feel like the most exciting thing on earth?

Leah: [00:36:36] Honestly, it was very exciting. I they said to me as they gave it to me, more people have been in space than have tried. This product and have tried lab meat at this stage. I felt really special and I felt like I was getting a taste of real hope. The light at the end of the tunnel of factory farming and of the abuse of animals in this way. So for me, it was nothing but pure joy to to have a bite of the future and know there's an answer. There's an end.

Elizabeth : [00:37:07] Wow. How far do you think we're away from that kind of stuff being on shelves?

Leah: [00:37:12] I don't know. When you talk to some of the people involved with this, they say anywhere from 5 to 10 years and they once it catches hold, it could be like cell phones, you know, smartphones. We didn't have the technology we had ten years ago. So imagine how fast things are going to change. We can't even.

Elizabeth : [00:37:33] Imagine. We can't imagine. Yeah, it could be a really fast end to factory farming.

Leah: [00:37:37] Yeah, it could be. It could be.

Elizabeth : [00:37:40] One thing that confuses me and I would love to hear your thoughts on AR so right now it feels like there's more vegans and more vegetarians than ever, and it's never been easier to be vegan. But the numbers of animals being slaughtered are higher now than ever. How is that?

Leah: [00:37:59] Yeah, that is a very good point to bring up. The main reason for that is that the population of humans is exploding and by 2050 they're supposed to be 10 billion people on the planet. Currently we are raising and slaughtering 80 billion land animals. The UN predicts that if meat consumption continues as it is, we will double that number. That will double to 100 and 5060 billion animals. So we have to have people not just eat a little bit less animals, but a lot less animals if we want to make even a dent in that number. So we're up against it. We really are.

Elizabeth : [00:38:42] Do you think the pandemic will have any real life in the sense of change and it feels like this should be the wakeup, the wake up before the next really bad thing, right? It's bad with wild animal markets. There's some change starting to happen. But do you think this will have any effect at all on factory farming?

Leah: [00:39:02] I do. The system is ripe for disruption. First of all, it's had devastating consequences for a long time. But I think the pandemic may be the motivation that we needed to rebuild and reevaluate the system. I think coming out of this, we're going to be a lot sharper at analyzing the landscape and identifying the biggest risks for the next pandemic. We would be challenged to find one greater than factory farming, and we are advocating right now that there's a lot of stimulus money, there's a lot of relief money going out, and we don't want it to go to the same old, same old business as usual. We want that money to go to rebuilding the food system and creating something that isn't so vulnerable and abusive to workers, to animals. So our big push right now, the opportunity I see, is ensuring that the stimulus or relief money that comes out of this doesn't go back into propping up a system that treats animals like trash and has no problem with creating this kind of pandemic risk that big ag creates through animal agriculture. It's tough, and I think we know from this pandemic, though, that we're capable of big behavior change all at once. That gives me a lot of hope that people will be like me, I can change my diet, I can change what I choose to do. I can do something different and I can do it in a sweeping way all at once. I think I hope that when we are on the other side of this pandemic, that this is a permanent connection people have made between animal agriculture and the existential risk this creates for our species.

Elizabeth : [00:40:43] Oh, me too, what about right now with all the slaughterhouses that are shutting down because of COVID and workers getting it? Which is horrific?

Leah: [00:40:53] Yeah, it's quite awful. First of all, it just shows how fragile the system is. But what's happening is all of us are being told you must be six feet apart. You have to stay at home. That is not the case. In slaughterhouses and slaughterhouses, people are still standing shoulder to shoulder. So it's no surprise that they have become the nation's hotspot for the spread of COVID 19 infections. So, for example, in South Dakota, at least 40% of the state's infections have occurred at a single pig slaughterhouse, a Smithfield pig slaughterhouse. The mayor had to order it to be shut down because of the number of workers that were infected. It soared and that is awful. But the thing to also think about is there are animals that were destined for those slaughterhouses that are now on the farms and they were supposed to be slaughtered. What's happening to those animals? There's a ripple effect in the meat industry because of this. It's a backlog, a bottleneck of animals. In the chicken industry, it's the same. The pig industry it's the same. Every single chicken company has reported shortages of workers at the processing plants, meaning somewhere back up the chain. There are animals that are on the farms that were supposed to be slaughtered that are not being slaughtered.

Leah: [00:42:12] Now, you might think, oh, great animals get to live longer, but that's not the case because chickens especially are not bred to survive. They are bred to grow really, really big, really fast. A lot of them can't even walk properly, and are in pain because of their fast growth by the time they're supposed to go to slaughter. So it's not an option to just leave them on the farm and keep feeding them. So the industry has found itself between a rock and a hard place where they have no workers at the processing plants and then they have chickens that are on a farm. What they are doing and what is happening and has happened is they're doing mass uniform slaughter of the chickens inside the warehouses using a foam based material where they suffocate the birds all at once. Oh, it is awful. What we don't want to see is tax dollar money going to pay for this. Right. So what we're having the the industry is now doing is they're saying we're going to have to kill all these animals and these mass killings and we want to be paid for it by the taxpayers money and through these relief efforts. So literally, the National Pork Producer Council said we are going to start killing baby pigs on farms if the government does not intervene. He was quoted saying that like a totally open statement that he said to the media proudly. This really shows the kind of vulnerability of the system. I mean, we are our message to the industry. So I have been in touch with the National Chicken Council, all the chicken producers saying, first of all, you should have planned ahead. We know certain companies have certain companies. This is not happening in every company. You should have planned ahead. In the meantime, planning forward, take eggs out of the hatcheries, take the breeders out of production. No more animals should be entering the system until you're certain all of your processing plants are full of workers. So that's our message. So we have to basically stop production right now, don't put any more chickens into the system. The second is taxpayer money cannot go to the system. We cannot have a bailout for this mass slaughter. Instead, we are advocating for the bailout to go to creating a better system, a more resilient food system. I think we have a very rare opportunity and we can't let that moment slip.

Elizabeth : [00:44:35] Absolutely. just give me a couple like what this system looks like, the better, more resilient.

Leah: [00:44:41] Yeah, we have kind of three three aspects. One is to improve, the other is to diversify, and the other is transition. So improving means giving the birds more space, like tending to their animal welfare in a way that matches basic requirements. Very basic. So no cages, no crates and transitioning. The second is to diversify. Farmers shouldn't rely on one type of industry that leaves them under the thumb of that industry vulnerable and the entire agricultural system, frankly, vulnerable and transitioning is towards the plant based. So we have a program called Transformation, which is about getting chicken farmers to transition their warehouses into growing other things, because it turns out those warehouses are really good for growing other things like hemp, mushrooms and leafy greens and hydroponic lettuces. We want stimulus money to go to transitioning some of these farms that don't want to be factory farmers anymore and want to do something else. So it's for us, it's an improved diversify and transition toward a plant based agricultural system that is more resilient and ethical and sustainable.

Elizabeth : [00:45:55] Oh, man. Okay. So my last question, it's not really a question, but one of my favorite parts of your book, and there were a lot, but the epilogue was incredible because it's in 2050 and what the world looks like. So will you just give us just an idea of what you said in the epilogue of what we're eating in 2050 or what we hopefully are eating in 2050, and what your kids and grandkids diets look like. I mean, I know what your kids' diets probably look like. You know what I mean?

Leah: [00:46:30] It's exactly the same.

Elizabeth : [00:46:30] But it's just so hopeful and it's so possible. My work has been a major reason why this is so possible. So it makes it all the more beautiful and compelling. So, yeah. Could you just.

Leah: [00:46:46] Sure. Well, the epilogue is set in 2050, and I'm imagining it's all this time after the book has been published and what the world looks like. It kind of starts with me talking about driving through North Carolina with my grandkids and they point to these dilapidated warehouses and they go, what were those things? They're pointing to old chicken houses. I think about it and I say, like, what were those? Those were a very brief, wrong turn we took in our food system. I tell them that's where we used to be. For some reason, we thought it was a good idea to stuff animals wall to wall and produce protein. They kind of look at it like, That's weird. Then I talk about how the world has changed. So over the years it became clear that factory farming was the biggest risk to the survival of our species and to food security. It was identified as a huge risk at the UN level and like how we have the Paris Treaty on Climate Change, it became a global united action to get rid of it and get rid of animal agriculture in this factory, farming that was decimating the planet and our health and our future and countries and counties and cities and individuals all started to adopt these meat reduction targets, real meat reduction targets, until it was almost gone. My daughter is shopping through an app and she's picking out cultivated meat, the lab meat, bluefin tuna, and she's picking out some cashew based cheese and a plant based nugget. My children are all eating this kind of array of the menus and the grocery stores have really changed. They look different and they don't have any factory farms. At the same time, the planet started to transform. So I talk about bees that we thought had gone extinct, returned from the mountains and the field fields filled with flowers and birds we thought were going extinct, came back and started thriving again. I talk about closing down mercy for animals and having a great party because we succeeded. So it's a very hopeful story.

Elizabeth : [00:49:08] Oh, it's the best. It's the best. Leah, thank you so much for this. It's inspiring. Everyone should read Grow old. It will change your life. If you do eat chicken, I don't think you will anymore after you grow old. Thank you very much. This was wonderful.

Leah: [00:49:25] My pleasure. It was lovely to talk to you.

Elizabeth : [00:49:37] To learn more about Leah and to get behind Mercy for Animals and support their work. Go to mercyforanimals.org. You really should take a look, they are truly one of the most impactful, incredible organizations on earth. We will also have links to Leah's book and work on our website at Speciesunite.com We're also on Facebook and Instagram at @speciesunite. If you'd like to support the podcast, we would greatly appreciate it. You can do so in one of two ways: subscribe, rate and review wherever you listen to podcasts. We're also on Patreon. It's Patreon/speciesunite. I would like to thank everyone at Species Unite, including Gary Knudson, Natalie Martin, Caitlin Pierce, Amy Jones, Paul Healey and Anna O'Connor, who wrote and performed today's music. Thank you so much for listening and have a wonderful day.


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S4. E8: Aaron Gross: How To Change The Story Around How And What We Eat

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S4. E6. Rich Hardy: Not As Nature Intended