Nathan Runkle Has Mercy for Animals — The Power of Compassion To Make A Difference

Reared on a farm in rural Ohio, Nathan Runkle's connection with farm animals runs deep. So deep, he always knew his life would center around the protection and care of these sentient beings. After a local farmed animal abuse case involving a piglet slammed headfirst into a concrete floor during an agriculture project at a nearby high school, Nathan founded Mercy For Animals to give “food” animals a much-needed advocate in his local community. He was just 15 years old. Today, Nathan is the very person he was always meant to be: a world renown animal rights advocate; a nationally recognized speaker; and the man who has tactfully shepherded Mercy For Animals from that high school project into a leading international force in the prevention of cruelty to farmed animals and the promotion of compassionate food choices and policies. Named one of the country’s “Top 20 Activists Under 30 Years Old” and the youngest person ever inducted into the U. S. Animal Rights Hall of Fame (he was 25), Nathan has been featured in hundreds of prominent media outlets and has spent decades working alongside elected officials, corporate executives, heads of international organizations, academics, farmers, celebrities, and film producers to pass landmark legislation and implement animal welfare policy changes. Nathan is also the author of the new and aptly titled, Mercy For Animals. A fascinating call-to-action memoir, the book chronicles Nathan’s personal story from grassroots activist to global animal rights leader while elucidating the history and current state of U. S. factory farming and animal welfare; the environmental and human health implications of food policy; and the compassionate future he envisions. Today I go deep with someone who always knew exactly who he wanted to be and what he wanted to do with his life. We dig into Nathan's early interest in animal welfare, the founding of MFA in his teens and the undercover work that followed. We discuss the current state and implications of factory farming on animal, human and planetary health. And we review the regulatory landscape that governs our food systems and the implications of the clean meat movement on the future of food. But ultimately, this is a conversation about being who you are. It's about turning compassion into action. It's about the ethical and environmental implications of our daily food choices. And it's about the power we all hold to create change and forge a more compassionate and sustainable world for generations to come. For the visually inclined, the video version of the podcast is also available on YouTube. I sincerely hope you enjoy the exchange. Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 1:05Speaker 01

  What's going to save us or kill us is the choices that we all make. The choices that we make in our everyday food choices, but also the choices that we make whether we're going to become part of the solution or not. Whether we're going to find our own unique voices and skills and talents and use our resources in a way that is moving us towards a humane and sustainable future, or moving us in an accelerated path to destruction.

• 1:34Rich Roll?

  That's Nathan Runkel, and this is the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:49Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:52Rich Roll?

  Hey everybody. How's it going? What's happening? How are you? Welcome to the show, to my podcast, the show where each week I dive deep with the most interesting, trailblazing thought leaders across a wide swath of specialties, including wellness, fitness, medicine, mindfulness, addiction recovery, sports, entertainment, athletics, entrepreneurship, and in the case of today's guest, social advocacy. My name is Rich Roll. I am your host, and today I'm sitting down with Nathan Runkle. Nathan is an animal rights advocate. He is the founder and executive director of Mercy for Animals, which is an organization that he founded when he was just 15 years old, that has grown into this amazing,

• 2:35Rich Roll?

  leading international force in the prevention of cruelty to farmed animals and the promotion of compassionate food choices and policies. Nathan is a nationally recognized speaker. He's presented at many prestigious universities and conferences. He's been featured in hundreds of prominent television, radio, and newspaper outlets, and has spent decades working alongside elected officials, corporate executives, heads of international organizations, academics, farmers, celebrities, and film producers, all to pass landmark legislation and implement animal welfare policy changes. Nathan was named one of the country's top 20 activists,

• 3:15Rich Roll?

  under 30 years old, and at the age of just 25, he became the youngest person ever inducted into the US Animal Rights Hall of Fame. And he's got a new book out. It's aptly titled, Mercy for Animals, and it not only chronicles Nathan's very interesting personal story as a grassroots activist, but it also provides a quite compelling look at the history and the current state of animal welfare and the industrial complex known as factory farming, and the implications of factory farming on not only animal well-being, but planetary well-being, environmental well-being, and human health as well. Got a couple of things I want to say about Nathan and this conversation before we dive into it, but first...

• 4:07Rich Roll?

  Okay, Nathan, Nathan Runkle. This conversation is great. It tracks Nathan's personal story as a guy who really knew what he wanted to be and what he wanted to do with his life from a very early age, I think as far back as he can even recall. Again, founding Mercy for Animals in his early teens. And we discuss all kinds of things. We discuss the current state and implications of factory farming on animal, human, and planetary health. We talk about his undercover work. We talk about the regulatory landscape that governs our food systems. And also, we get into the implications of the clean meat movement on the future of food. And that's a really fascinating discourse.

• 4:51Rich Roll?

  So with that being said, without further ado, let's talk to Nathan. Nathan, it's super nice to have you in the podcast studio. Thanks for making the trip out. Excited to talk to you.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  It's beautiful out here. Yeah, it's my honor. Thanks.

• 5:10Rich Roll?

  Good. Well, there's so much to unpack here. But first, before we even get into it, I wanted to hear a little bit about you being honored by the L.A. City Council the other day.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was quite an honor. I have been at a lot of government buildings, usually outside protesting things.

• 5:28Rich Roll?

  They actually let you in the front door?

• 5:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. Or, you know, fighting charges for being arrested for fighting on behalf of animals. So to be honored by the City of Los Angeles for my nearly two decades of work was pretty phenomenal. And they said some really nice things about me and the organization. And L.A. has led the way in many regards for animal protection issues. The same city council that gave me this award voted unanimously to ban bull hooks, you know, these weapons that are used against elephants and circuses. That really was the beginning of the end for circuses in Los Angeles and the U.S., across the U.S.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  So, yeah, it's nice to be recognized.

• 6:16Rich Roll?

  That's cool. And like Eric Garcetti was there and everything?

• 6:19Speaker 01

  He was, yeah.

• 6:20Rich Roll?

  You got the photo op?

• 6:21Speaker 01

  I got the photo op with the mayor, yeah.

• 6:22Rich Roll?

  You're legit now.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 6:25Rich Roll?

  It's all come full circle for you. It's amazing. Well, let's go, let's go back to the beginning. I mean, this, you know, your, your life as an animal rights activist is not something that, you know, it's not a bandwagon that you jumped on because it was Vogue. I mean, this is like born and bred and, you know, heavily wound into your DNA from almost day one for you. I mean, it's crazy how far back this goes with you.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  I think it does, it very well could be in my, my DNA. I talk in the book about the fact that I was delivered by a veterinarian. My dad, Mark, graduated vet school from OSU and met my mom at a horseback riding camp that my dad used to run. So both of my parents were very hands-on with animals. And for me, I have a fly friend who knows that he's not going to be attacked. Very curious about what's happening here. But for me, you know, being born on a farm in rural Ohio, a village of less than 2,000

• 7:33Speaker 01

  people, I was surrounded by animals from my earliest childhood memory. And I always was drawn to them. I always loved animals. I could always sort of put myself in their place and imagine even for a moment what life must be like for them. And that instilled a great level of empathy within me for, for all animals. So that was, that was sort of the, the basis. And then this fly really is quite interested.

• 8:07Rich Roll?

  I don't know what to do about that, but we'll, we'll work it out. Yeah. I mean, I think you, you just came out of the womb very sensitive to that, almost like it's a past life thing. Like, you know, there was never any question about what your life was going to be about.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  It's true. It's true. And reflecting back on starting the organization when I was 15 and becoming a veteran when I was 11, it all just seems like it was always meant to be. And people will say, oh, my gosh, that was so young. That's so amazing. For me, it never felt like that. It just always felt like a natural calling. I was always being pulled in that direction. It wasn't really a choice. It was the only option.

• 8:54Rich Roll?

  Right, the calling. And your parents, particularly your mom, was super supportive. I mean, it seems like from the book, she was your champion from day one.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I was fortunate enough to have two parents who, I think their philosophy on raising children, my sister and I, was it's your life, make your decisions, and we'll be here to support you. And being a vegan, or becoming vegan, starting an animal rights organization, I think was something that my mother, at least initially, was very proud of. I think it took my dad a while to sort of come around and fully understand the scope of the work and why it was so meaningful. But yeah, a lot of pride from the family.

• 9:45Rich Roll?

  So you grew up on this farm in rural Ohio, coming from a long line of Ohio farmers that date back generation after generation. So you grew up with all these animals, and you're the kid who's bringing home every wounded animal you can find. And we have Caesar, the rat, who becomes your best friend. And so you're that guy, right?

• 10:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:08Rich Roll?

  From the beginning.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  From the beginning.

• 10:10Rich Roll?

  And around livestock animals from a very early age, too. But it was a very different time in terms of how those animals were raised and treated.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  That's right. So I...

• 10:21Speaker 01

  Would rescue, you know, birds that would fall out of trees. I'd find, you know, feral cats in the barn and we'd get them adopted. There were just always animals around that I was sort of nurturing and taking care of. And Caesar, the rat that you mentioned, was this rat that I rescued from our neighbors who bred animals to be used in laboratory experiments. And he came home with me when I was six years old and he would sit on my shoulder and just became my best friend. And it was Caesar who really taught me that all animals have personalities and minds. They feel loneliness and joy and they have

• 11:04Speaker 01

  a sense of curiosity and they crave freedom. It's not just dogs and cats. And I would, I would have friends come over and I would be so excited for them to meet Caesar because he was so important to me. But most of them would be really sort of terrified of him and they would shriek in horror at the sight of his tail. Like, people couldn't get over the sight of a rat's tail. And so at this young age, I started to see that we bring a lot of prejudice to the table with animals and we arbitrarily call some pests and others pets. And so Caesar challenged that notion for me of why we extend our consideration for some animals but not others.

• 11:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah, specieism is a very bizarre, weird psychological phenomenon, you know? And as somebody who was raised around pigs and cows and these animals had names, it was not unusual for you to observe the bond that transpired between human and animal, but that didn't extend to the rat, right? So it's kind of your first exposure to that idea and that differentiation that we kind of psychologically and mentally have, which is, which is weird. But the thing, you know, this whole kind of path that you're on seems to have crystallized around this one event that takes place around a dissection.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 12:31Rich Roll?

  Can you like walk us through that story?

• 12:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I was 15 years old and, again, farming community, 2,000 people at the high school. There's an agriculture class and the teacher of the class is a pig farmer. His name's Mr. Jenkins. And he raises out 11,000 pigs. So he has a very large scale operation that he's running. Now, one May morning in 1999, Mr. Jenkins decided that they're going to do a dissection project and he's going to kill some baby piglets on his farm to use. Now, he arrives to the school with this bucket filled with baby piglets that are supposed to be dead. He goes into the classroom, he sits the bucket down, and a student walks

• 13:17Speaker 01

  over and notices that one of the piglets is still alive. In fact, she's standing on top of the others in this bucket. So, the teacher instructs the student to do something about it. He grabs the piglet by her hind legs and slams her headfirst into the ground. Now, this is a senior in the class who did part-time work on Mr. Jenkins' pig farm. Now, this piglet still didn't die. Her skull was now fractured. She was bleeding out of the mouth. She was just in horrible distress. So, a few of the students were just sickened by what they had seen. They took this baby piglet and they left the classroom. They went down the hall to another teacher's room. Her name is Molly Fearing, and she was a

• 14:02Speaker 01

  first-year teacher at the school. She was known as being the vegetarian who cares about animals. So Molly, with this baby piglet cradled in her arms, left the school and went to a local veterinarian about 10 minutes away and had the piglet euthanized. Molly's next step was to the sheriff's department, where she said, "Look, this piglet was just killed in this horrible way. There should be animal cruelty charges filed." And eventually, charges were filed against Mr. Jenkins, not the student himself. It went to court, and it was a big deal in this agriculture community, as you could imagine.

• 14:39Rich Roll?

  Right. It becomes this big news story that like, kind of polarizes your town.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  Right. So, it's in the paper. I mean, local TV stations are doing stories about it. There are letters to the editor of the local papers. It's just, you know, the tensions are rising.

• 14:56Speaker 01

  And the first day of that trial, the benches are packed at court with pig farmers that show up to rally behind Mr. Jenkins. They don't want animal advocates telling them what to do. They don't want, you know, this type of criticism for their practices. In the very first day of that trial, those charges were dismissed. And the reason that they were dismissed is because in Ohio, like at least 30 other states, if something is considered, quote, "standard agricultural practice," it's exempt from cruelty prosecution. And this practice of slamming piglets into the ground headfirst is standard practice.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  It's deemed legal, and we still find it all across the country when we go into factory farms. So that case illustrated to me that there needed to be an organization that would give a voice to farmed animals. And it was really clear to me that if this had been a puppy or a kitten, the outcome would have been very different of that. It wouldn't have been tolerated. There would have probably been perhaps jail time. Certainly psychiatric evaluation would have been suggested, probably a prohibition of owning animals. But because it was a piglet, it was just deemed common business, standard practices.

• 16:18Rich Roll?

  Right. Like if a teenager or a preteen did that to a dog, they would say, "This is the, you know, this is, this kid's a potential serial killer."

• 16:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:28Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean?

• 16:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 16:30Rich Roll?

  We should pay attention to what this kid is doing. And it's interesting, the differentiation in the treatment and the way we think about these things. And also the lack of, you know, defined terms when it comes to standard agricultural practices, right?

• 16:43Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 16:44Rich Roll?

  Like, what does that mean? It casts this broad net, and so much can fall underneath that. And that's still... You know, a battle that I know, you know, you and MFA are waging.

• 16:53Speaker 01

  It's it's true because what it does is it hands over the authority to decide what is acceptable and what is legal to the very industries and individuals that profit off of these animals. And so they're always going to to do what's the cheapest and the fastest, not what is in the best interest of the animals. So to me, it's similar to handing over authority to chemical companies to decide what's an appropriate amount of toxic chemicals to put into the groundwater or, you know, into the air, like, most people would consider that to be ridiculous, there has to be some sort of regulation or oversight, but for animals, that's what's happening.

• 17:35Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally.

• 17:36Rich Roll?

  So you're

• 17:37Speaker 01

  Fox watching and all.

• 17:37Rich Roll?

  You're how old at this point?

• 17:40Speaker 01

  Fifteen.

• 17:40Rich Roll?

  You're fifteen?

• 17:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:41Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 17:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. I can't even drive yet.

• 17:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And

• 17:45Speaker 01

  And there's no Facebook or social media yet.

• 17:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah, none of that's online yet, although it was soon to come.

• 17:51Speaker 01

  Soon to come, yeah.

• 17:51Rich Roll?

  Right, because you're you're young. But it's interesting that not only are you kind of carrying this frequency of already, you know, pursuing this path and being interested in this world, this huge thing happens that you find yourself right in the in the middle of. It's like this, you know, perfect storm of events from which to birth, you know, Mercy for Animals, which you created at age fifteen, which I did not know. I mean, that's, you know, at fifteen, you create This organization now, you have, what do you have, one hundred and thirty employees in like sixty countries or something? How many countries?

• 18:24Speaker 01

  Six countries.

• 18:25Rich Roll?

  Six countries.

• 18:26Speaker 01

  But big ones.

• 18:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, big countries. I mean, this was this was created when you were fifteen years old. It's unbelievable.

• 18:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's it is it is a little bit unbelievable. It's been it's been my life's work. It's been eighteen years now since since starting the organization, but it has been the most fulfilling work, the most meaningful work, challenging work, but

• 18:52Speaker 01

  You know, I, the organization, and obviously, there are so many people that are part of the organization. I'm, you know, one person, sort of, holding space and doing what I can for it. It's, it's, it's, the organization is made up of, you know, thousands of volunteers, thousands of people that donate money, undercover investigators, like, it's, it's a, it's a wide network of really incredible individuals. But the progress that we've helped push forward is, is really shifting the game for farmed animals.

• 19:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there's no question about it. So, you know, we'll get back to the timeline, but I think it would be worthwhile to kind of explain the mission statement of Mercy for Animals, and also to try to contextualize the role of MFA in comparison to the other organizations out there, like PETA, and Compassion Over Killing, and Humane Society, you know, and the like.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  So, the, the mission of Mercy for Animals is to prevent cruelty to farmed animals, and promote compassionate food choices and policies. So, we do that through four program areas. One is undercover investigations, and this is one of the things that we're most known for. Sending people into factory farms, slaughterhouses, livestock auctions, hatcheries, wired with hidden cameras, and then working, sometimes for months on end, in documenting how these animals are crammed in cages where they can't turn around, mutilated without painkillers, separated from their families, have their throats slit while they're conscious in slaughterhouses. And using that evidence to then support our other program areas,

• 20:30Speaker 01

  the second being legal advocacy. So, one, enforcing the very, very few bare-bones state laws that are on the books to protect farmed animals, but more importantly, pushing for stronger laws. You know, as I said, we have these common farming exemptions that mean that you can essentially do anything to farm animals, as long as a lot of people are doing it.

• 20:53Speaker 01

  Things that would be illegal if they were dogs or cats. And we have most of the animals kept in confined systems where they can't engage in natural behaviors, they have no access to the outdoors. So pushing for more legal protection for these animals. The third area is corporate outreach. So getting big companies like Walmart and McDonald's to end the worst forms of abuse that animals endure on factory farms, adhering to the internationally accepted five freedoms. So like freedom from hunger and thirst, pain and discomfort, freedom for natural movement, those types of things. But in practice, that meaning an end to battery cages for egg-laying hens where five, six,

• 21:37Speaker 01

  seven birds are kept in cages the size of a file cabinet drawer, can't spread their wings, can't walk, can't perch, roost, dustbathe, anything natural. Ending the confinement of mother sows in gestation crates where they can't turn around, and confinement of baby calves in veal crates. Ending the mutilation of animals, so no tail docking, no castration without pain relief. And changing the genetics of these animals. These animals are now really Frankenstein animals. They've been bred to grow so large and so fast, they can't even walk naturally oftentimes. And ending the really horrific slaughter of chickens, which have no federal protection at slaughter. There's not a single federal law for any farmed animals during their lives on the farm.

• 22:22Rich Roll?

  Right. I don't want you to just gloss over that fact, because that's really kind of amazing and illustrative of where we are. I mean, there's a bunch of state laws, and those state laws vary, of course, but there's no federal legislation on how we regulate how these animals are treated, which is, it just seems weird and bizarre.

• 22:42Speaker 01

  It is. So no federal regulation for how farmed animals are treated on the farm. There are two laws. One regarding transportation, which is the last day or so of the animals' lives, and that law is just so poorly enforced and almost meaningless.

• 23:00Rich Roll?

  Right. Like 28, they can't be in a truck for longer than 28 hours or something like that.

• 23:05Speaker 01

  That's right. That's right. And then there's the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, which... Completely exempts 98% of the animals that are killed for food, land animals, almost all, because it doesn't include fish either. So, that, that basic law says that these animals are supposed to be rendered unconscious before their throats are slit. But, for, for birds, the typical way in which they're killed is they're dumped out of crates onto these moving conveyor belts. Workers snap them into shackles by their fragile legs. Many of them have broken bones and bruising. And then they go through an electrified vat of water, which paralyzes the birds, and then they have their throats slit by, by spinning blade. And a lot of these, these birds are still alive when they go into scalding tanks of water.

• 23:50Speaker 01

  The USDA, on their own estimates, which are entirely, you know, too low, say that at least a million animals a year are scalded alive at the slaughterhouse. And then the fourth program area is education work. So, this is really focused on informing, informing people about where their food comes from, and who they're eating, and the fact that, that farmed animals, again, they have rich emotional lives, they're intelligent, they, they matter. Their, their lives matter, the treatment of them matters. And that we can, we can make compassionate food choices when we sit down to eat.

• 24:31Speaker 01

  So, a lot of our education work is based on promoting a plant-based diet, encouraging people to crowd meat off of the plate and, and really eat plants as a way of, of sparing animals from the suffering that, that we're talking about.

• 24:46Rich Roll?

  Right. And why did you decide to focus exclusively on farmed animals?

• 24:51Speaker 01

  Well, they are the 99%. You know, we, we talk so much about companion animals and dogs and cats, half of us share our homes with them, half of those animals will receive Christmas gifts this holiday season, you know, we spend billions of dollars on their care and elective surgeries. We live in a, in a, in a, in a world, in a, in a country of people who love animals, but- Really, when people say that, they're mostly talking about dogs and cats because those are who we know as individuals and those are who are most present in our lives. We come home to them. But when we're really talking about animals, we're talking about farmed animals.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  3,000 times as many farmed animals are killed in the United States than dogs and cats are euthanized in shelters. 3,000 to 1. You know, we're talking about over 9 billion of them every single year in the US. It's almost 300 every second. So why farm animals? Because, because all of these animals matter and we only have so much time and resources and energy, so we should direct it to where there's the most suffering and where we have the opportunity to do the most good.

• 26:05Rich Roll?

  When you look at factory farming and the number of farmed animals, I mean, the statistics really are staggering. I mean, 9 billion in the US alone, and that doesn't include fish, right? So it could be, you know, because they do that by weight and not by individual. And globally, you had estimated somewhere between 50 to 100 billion land animals alone.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 26:26Rich Roll?

  It's insane, right?

• 26:27Speaker 01

  It's insane.

• 26:28Rich Roll?

  So, one of the things I thought was really interesting about your book is you kind of give this primer, this history of how, of how factory farming evolved. Like, nobody is super enthusiastic about factory farming, but this is the world in which we live and this is how we've, you know, created a way to feed the planet. But I think it would be instructive to kind of take a step back and look at how we got here as a way of contextualizing how perhaps we can solve this problem and create better ways. The fly is back.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  The fly is back with a vengeance.

• 27:02Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I, I think like a lot of things throughout history, our ancestors were trying to do the best that they could with what they had under the, the current circumstances, so, or under the circumstances that they were, were living in. So I'm not, I'm not here to, you know, condemn those that came before me. I think they, they were doing what they thought was necessary, but certainly in this day and age with a, a global population racing towards almost 10 billion by 2050 and the, the threats of climate change and, and all of the knowledge that we have, it's clear that the old way of doing things just isn't going to be.

• 27:47Speaker 01

  Sustainable for us, not to mention it's just completely cruel and inhumane to the animals that are victims of it. But, you know, we, people didn't always eat this much meat. You know, this is a relatively new phenomenon throughout human history. And, you know, factory farming as we know it is something that my, my great grandfather was in the middle of when he was, he raised pigs the way that a lot of people still think pigs are raised out, you know, out in the field. And I talk about it in my book, how it was, it was in that time in the early, you know,

• 28:29Speaker 01

  1900s, when these factory confinement systems started to come about in the US, these things like gestation crates and like faring crates. And my, my great grandfather said, I'm not going to use them because they're too hard on the cells. But, you know, beginning of World War I, there was a push to need to produce a lot of food and a lot of protein. And, and there was this push to produce a lot of chicken especially, specifically. And, and with that, at the same time, you know, around the 40s or so, we started seeing places like McDonald's and KFC, you know, rise.

• 29:09Speaker 01

  And so you can look at a chart of meat consumption in the United States and you can see, you know, just this incredible spike in meat consumption and the slaughter of chickens, mostly chickens, you know, starting back in the 60s or 70s or so, it was just this dramatic incline. So, you know, it was taking these, these factory models and taking animals from the outdoors, putting them inside, giving animals vitamin D and things so that they didn't need as much sunlight, manipulating their diet, manipulating their like lighting cycles. And then, of course, we had penicillin and antibiotics, so we were able to keep animals in conditions that otherwise they wouldn't naturally live in.

• 29:55Speaker 01

  Because they're too filthy and it's too stressful. And now we start feeding animals these routine, you know, non-therapeutic antibiotics. And of course, we all know the problems with that now as well with, you know, superbugs and what some say at least 70% of antibiotics now being fed directly to farm animals. So it's just a total mess. It's a, it's a system that's out of control and it's not sustainable on every measurable level that we look at. So again, I, I, and part of writing the book was a lot of reflection about the history of how we got here.

• 30:37Speaker 01

  But I, I think that we have an opportunity to be really intentional about what the future of food looks like. And I talk about that in the book, too.

• 30:47Rich Roll?

  Right. And we're going to get to that.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 30:49Rich Roll?

  The pioneering clean meat movement, which is super fascinating. And as you probably know, I had Bruce Friedrich on.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  Oh, good.

• 30:56Rich Roll?

  To talk about that in the past. So, yeah, and I love talking about that stuff.

• 31:06Rich Roll?

  But in the context of, of factory farming, give us a lay of the land of what we're currently kind of looking at in terms of how the typical cow and chicken are treated.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. So there are really two main breeds of chickens that are used. And one is the egg-laying chicken, the white Leghorn. And they have been bred to be rather small birds who produce a lot of eggs. So the, the, the modern chicken that's used for, for food production or eggs originate from jungle fowl from Southeast Asia. And in nature, these birds, you know, would lay about two clutches of eggs a year, so about two dozen eggs the entire year. They'd spend much of their time, you know, running around, building nests, exploring,

• 32:01Speaker 01

  looking for insects, had a really rich, rich life, would live to be over 10 years old. We domesticated these birds and started manipulating their genetics.

• 32:13Speaker 01

  So now for the egg laying breeds, they lay over 200 eggs every year. And this takes a big toll on the birds' bodies because these eggs take up so much calcium for the shell and what's in them. So a lot of these birds suffer from osteoporosis and a lot of them suffer from broken bones by the time they're pulled out of their cages and are slaughtered.

• 32:36Rich Roll?

  Right, and their legs can't really sustain the weight, right? So they can't even really walk?

• 32:40Speaker 01

  So that's the broiler chickens, the meat type birds. And these are birds that have been bred through genetic selection to be really big because the characteristic that they're being bred for is breast meat or thigh meat because that's what the companies want. And in order for that to happen, there are of course unintended consequences, which are the birds can't walk naturally. Studies show that about 90% of them are essentially lying down in the last few days of their lives because it's just so incredibly painful for them to walk. They have joint pain and they suffer from heart problems, lung problems.

• 33:21Speaker 01

  Similar things that you would see with really obese children, the same sort of joint pains and everything you're seeing with these birds because they are babies. And if you listen to them, they're essentially chirping as if they're babies because they are. They're only 45 days old when they're slaughtered.

• 33:37Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 33:39Speaker 01

  The egg laying birds, the males, so for broiler chickens, both male and female birds are bred and they're kept in these huge windowless sheds, packed in there by literally tens of thousands, living in their own excrement. They suffer from sores on their legs, on their breast blisters. They really don't have access to natural light, so they're and they do that intentionally so that the birds will grow faster. So they don't even have a natural activity schedule.

• 34:15Rich Roll?

  They grow faster without the light?

• 34:18Speaker 01

  Because they don't want them moving around as much because, you know,

• 34:21Rich Roll?

  Expending any energy.

• 34:23Speaker 01

  That's right. That's right. They just want them to eat, grow, and go to slaughter. That is the business model for these broiler operations.

• 34:33Speaker 01

  They're then taken to the slaughterhouse and are killed in the way that we discussed earlier. Now, on the egg laying side, it's only the females that are used. The males, because they're not this breed that grows really large and they don't produce eggs, they're useless. So they are killed right away. And I tell the story in the book about an investigation at Highline Hatchery, which is one of the largest hatcheries in the entire world. They hatch hundreds of thousands of birds every single week. And we documented what happens to all of these males. And what happens is there are these people called "sexers" and they, there are these conveyor belts with the chicks on them. And it gets to this area where there are people that sit around and their job all

• 35:18Speaker 01

  day is to grab chicks by their wings, look and see if they're male or female, and then toss them in one of two directions. One is where the females go and the other is a chute. And they go down this chute and then the conveyor belt takes them into this room that most people can't get into. And what's in that room is a huge macerator where the conveyor belt of the birds are dropped into and then they're ground up alive. So the males are just ground up right away? They're ground up alive, yeah. Yeah, that's how, that's how they're killed. And it's just all day, there's just chicks being dumped into this macerator. And, and in some ways, they're the lucky ones because the fate is so horrible for, for the females.

• 36:01Speaker 01

  So if they go, if they're female and they go down the other chute, they will have their beaks burned off, either with a hot blade or with a laser. And then they'll be trucked off to a facility where they'll be put in these tiny cages that are stacked on top of each other. They'll never feel the grass under their feet, they'll never see sunlight, they'll never breathe fresh air. And they live in these cages for usually about two years. And then their egg production starts to decline and they're considered worn out. And they're also killed. Sometimes they're thrown into gas carts right there on the farm, they're gassed with CO2. Sometimes they're sent and slaughtered for low-grade products like chicken soup or something.

• 36:43Rich Roll?

  And what happens to the masticated chickens and the feces and the waste? Like, how is that managed?

• 36:50Speaker 01

  Well, it's similar to all factory farms. And pig farms and dairy farms are huge, you know, literal polluters. In the sense that the waste of these animals is not regulated in the same way that human waste is. And, you know, you have a situation where, for example, with cows and pigs, they produce, you know, more waste, one animal, than perhaps, you know, multiple humans would be producing. And they'll go into these huge, essentially manure lagoons. And they will sit there collecting, you know, bacteria. It's a huge environmental hazard. They try to spray some of it on nearby fields.

• 37:34Rich Roll?

  Right, there was that scene in What the Health?

• 37:36Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 37:37Rich Roll?

  Where you see that happening.

• 37:38Speaker 01

  That's right. And this happens all over the place.

• 37:40Rich Roll?

  They're spraying, they're literally spraying them on fields like it looks like it's fertilizer, or they're irrigating crops, but it's just fecal matter and waste.

• 37:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. And a lot of these farms are in, you know, communities of color, you know, underprivileged communities. So there's like, there are so many issues that are really embodied in what's happening here.

• 38:03Rich Roll?

  It becomes a socio-economic problem.

• 38:04Speaker 01

  Absolutely. So, and then, and then, you know, it'll rain and our unused waste will get into the nearby creeks and streams and groundwater. And I talk in the book about an egg farm in Ohio. And at the time, Ohio was the largest egg-producing state in the entire country. Now it's still, you know, in the top, the top bracket. But there was the largest egg farm there called Buckeye Egg Farm. And it was run by this man named Anton Pollman, who was actually banned from owning chickens in Germany because of cruelty to animals. But Ohio and the US said, hey, come on over. We want you to build your operation here.

• 38:45Rich Roll?

  And I'm sorry to interrupt you, but you go through kind of a laundry list of the things that he did in Germany, and it's just, it's unbelievable. Right?

• 38:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:54Rich Roll?

  He could just pack up and come over here.

• 38:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:56Rich Roll?

  And set up shop after what he had, what he had done there.

• 39:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then he did the exact same thing in the United States. So it was environmental violations, fly infestations of local schools and communities and people's property values plummeting because nobody, nobody wants to buy a house surrounded by 10 million chickens and manure and flies and, and everything from child labor issues and violations at the farm. It's just, I mean, these are, these are dark, sad places in every way that you can imagine. So, so that's, that's sort of the, the aerial view of what life is like for, for hens.

• 39:44Speaker 01

  You mentioned what life is like for, for, for cows. You know, the, the worst treatment is of, in the dairy industry, actually. And a lot of people don't really think about animal cruelty in the egg industry or in the dairy industry because we think, well, you know, an animal doesn't directly need to die for that, so it must be okay as long as they're living good lives. But the, the truth is that oftentimes it's just prolonged cruelty for these animals and they are slaughtered. There's not, you know, a big sanctuary where, where millions and millions of animals go.

• 40:23Rich Roll?

  Happy pasture to live the rest of their lives.

• 40:26Speaker 01

  There's, there's, there's no happy pasture for these animals. So in the dairy industry, you have, again, a situation that's based off of the reproductive manipulation of animals where the males also aren't useful. So they're also considered useless byproducts and that's where the veal industry comes from.

• 40:49Speaker 01

  Cows used for dairy are just like any other mammal. You know, what makes us mammals? Well, a number of things, but one is that we feed our young through milk. And cows are the same. They only produce milk to feed their babies. Not, you know, because of a dairy company wants to, you know, make profits off of them. So they have to be artificially impregnated, then give birth. Those babies, obviously, if they were drinking the milk, then there wouldn't be any milk to be sold to people. So the babies are literally dragged away within a few hours of being born.

• 41:28Rich Roll?

  Right, there's all those videos that are heart wrenching of the calves being separated from the mother and the mother whelping. And, you know, it's awful to watch.

• 41:37Speaker 01

  It is awful to watch and that is, that plays itself out countless times a day in the dairy industry. Those videos aren't, you know, some exceptional thing that's happened. Somebody just, you know, filmed it. But that is, that is the emotional heartbreak that these animals suffer every single time that their babies are taken from them in the dairy industry. And, you know, I think any, any mother could relate to what that must be like on some level.

• 42:10Speaker 01

  And I, I tell a story in the book about the sort of Sophie's Choice situation at a very small, actually, family farm in New York, where there was this cow who had given birth out in pasture. And she had, she'd been used by the dairy farm for, for a number of years now. So she knew what happened when she gave birth. She knew that her baby was going to be taken away from her.

• 42:39Speaker 01

  And they took, they took the baby away, but she kept coming back from the field to be milked without much milk to give, or to be taken, really. And they didn't understand what was wrong because she seemed like she was in good health. One day, they followed her out into the field and, and realized that she in fact had given birth to twins and that there was another calf that was out in the field that she was protecting because she knew that they would take one of her calves away.

• 43:11Rich Roll?

  She literally like hid her baby.

• 43:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And she made this heartbreaking choice of giving up one of them to save the other because she knew from past experiences what was going to happen.

• 43:23Rich Roll?

  Right, which sheds a light on the interior lives and the intelligence of these animals.

• 43:28Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely. And they, they remember, they think about the past, they think about the future, they plan. You know, Jane Goodall, she, she once said that we have to understand that we're not the only beings on this planet with personalities and minds. And it's basic, but it's true. So, so that's, that is, that is the beginning for these, these animals in the dairy industry. The, the females will then be kept in, in factory conditions where some of them will be chained by their necks, others will just be confined indoors. About

• 44:11Speaker 01

  three, four times a day, they'll be taken into a milking parlor area and hooked up with electrical sucking devices. Now, a physical abuse to these animals is really extreme inside of these environments because you'll have people working inside of these operations that are tasked with moving hundreds, thousands of animals a day in a very short period of time in really brutal conditions. And so people become desensitized to what's taking place there. And violence quickly follows. They'll take out their frustration and their anger on the animals in front of them. And we've documented dairy farms, workers using

• 44:55Speaker 01

  pitchforks to stab cows, breaking their tails, using crowbars to beat them over the head, just really the most heartbreaking type of abuse that you could imagine.

• 45:05Rich Roll?

  It's interesting, that phenomenon. And it makes you wonder.

• 45:12Rich Roll?

  Did these employees come in with that disposition? Or did the experience of working there and having to kind of repress their own compassionate feelings lead to that kind of behavior?

• 45:26Speaker 01

  This is something that I really struggled with, and I feel like I have a much deeper understanding of it because Mercy for Animals has done over 60 undercover investigations. And I think that there's a small, small number of individuals that work at factory farms that are sort of sadistic and enjoy abusing animals and use their place of power there to fulfill this really sort of sick desire to torture animals. We see that every once in a while.

• 46:04Speaker 01

  But the norm is that you have an underprivileged, vulnerable community of people, mostly undocumented immigrants, who take these jobs in factory farms and slaughterhouses. Very few people grow up wanting to work at a slaughterhouse or in a factory farm. That's not what people aspire to. So this is the work that most Americans will not take. So we have people that take these jobs, which are some of the most dangerous in the entire country. Slaughterhouse is one of the most dangerous jobs that you can get.

• 46:44Speaker 01

  High rates of amputation, carpal tunnel syndrome, back injuries, everything physically dangerous. But then you also have an emotionally traumatizing job. I mean, you can imagine, it is someone's job for eight hours a day to sit with a knife and slit the throat of chickens who missed the automated blade. Somebody sits there with an iPad, an iPod, listening to music, slitting the throats of animals.

• 47:11Rich Roll?

  Right, and having to sublimate that somehow, day in and day out. Like, there's just no way that that is not taking a huge emotional toll on a human being.

• 47:21Speaker 01

  Exactly. And so, we see, and there's been studies done on this as well, but our investigators see all the time, really high rates of alcoholism and drug abuse, especially methamphetamines, inside of these operations. So you have people, one, really physically demanding work, and then, two, as you said, there's emotional trauma that they're suffering. And I talk in the book about perpetration-induced traumatic stress, which is a form of PTSD, where you take people who are put in positions of jobs to carry out acts of violence that they normally wouldn't do in good consciousness.

• 48:05Speaker 01

  And that's exactly what the jobs are at slaughterhouses. You have people who come in, take these jobs out of desperation, are filled with compassion, care about animals, but within a day or a few days, imagine what a month or a year would do. You know, these people have to numb themselves, have to disconnect, have to not care about what they're doing and what's taking place in front of them. And there was a study that looked at the Sinclair effect, this theory that Upton Sinclair put forward 100 years ago, when he noticed that there were rates of violent crime much higher around slaughterhouses than in other areas.

• 48:49Speaker 01

  And the research shows that that is, in fact, a phenomenon. And you have higher rates of violent crime with homicides, in some cases, being carried out in the same way that animals are killed, that people's throats being slit in that manner, in communities where there are slaughterhouses. So, animals are definitely the biggest victim in terms of number and duration of suffering, but they're not the only victims of these industries and systems as well. And to me, it's a simple question. Do slaughterhouses have a place in a civilized, moral, ethical, enlightened, conscious society? To me, the answer is no.

• 49:30Rich Roll?

  Right. Uh, yeah, and Upton Sinclair, what was it 1904 when his book came out?

• 49:36Speaker 01

  1906, yeah.

• 49:38Rich Roll?

  1906.

• 49:38Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 49:39Rich Roll?

  And that book had a huge impact.

• 49:41Speaker 01

  It did.

• 49:41Rich Roll?

  It's still taught in schools and it had, uh, you know, it, it had a pronounced impact on the administration and legislation at the time. It was kind of a sensation, right?

• 49:51Speaker 01

  It was.

• 49:51Rich Roll?

  And yet the long-term impact of that was unheeded, right? Cause here we are today and people like yourself are putting out books on the same subject and advocating in the way that you do. And yet it seems, although culture is shifting and we're in a new era and that's very exciting. And I have a lot of optimism around that.

• 50:14Rich Roll?

  You know, there's still a lot that needs to be heard that is not like, it's not landing, right?

• 50:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:20Rich Roll?

  And when we talk about, you know, the oversight and the regulation, and we'll get a little bit more into, you know, what that regulatory landscape looks like.

• 50:31Rich Roll?

  It doesn't seem like anything is really being handled properly, right? Where, where is the oversight? Where is, you know, where is the USDA in all of this? And why is there not more hands-on governance in terms of policing what is okay and what isn't? At least in the construct of accepting that this is how we're feeding the planet at the current moment.

• 50:52Speaker 01

  Well, it comes down to money and power and the agriculture industry, and most specifically the meat industry, the dairy industry are really powerful lobbies and they don't want oversight and they don't want regulation. They want to, and we're seeing that more now than ever. And they want to be able to, to cram more animals in smaller cages. They want to run production speeds faster than ever. In fact, they're trying to increase the speed of, of poultry slaughterhouses now. They're already moving at a rate of, you know, every second essentially hanging a

• 51:32Speaker 01

  bird and they're trying to double the line speed. So the industry, if there is no oversight or there is no public scrutiny, would continue to go down this path. That obviously is bad for animals, but it's also bad for consumers as well. And, you know, we're seeing more and more of these ag gag type laws that are being proposed, which, which really seek to stop the type of work that Upton Sinclair did, which led to the first two federal laws regulating slaughterhouses in our country. And, you know, these ag gag laws, which, which

• 52:13Speaker 01

  essentially see are intended to criminalize whistleblowing. They, they want to make it illegal to take a photograph or a video inside of a factory farm. They are intended to intimidate people from stepping forward and really pulling back the curtain and showing people what, where their food comes from. And, you know, you see the meat industry and the dairy industry step forward and put their entire weight behind bills like this and then fight tooth and nail against regulations that would even require animals be able to turn around in their cages. So it's really clear, you know, where the industry's

• 52:55Speaker 01

  focus is. But these ag gag laws are, are dangerous to democracy as well.

• 53:01Rich Roll?

  It's amazing to me that they withstand constitutional scrutiny. Like, I don't understand, like, I feel as a lawyer, like, I feel like I need to educate myself a little bit more about this world because it just does not seem like it has a place in an open democracy.

• 53:19Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 53:20Rich Roll?

  To erect these laws that are preventing consumers from understanding, you know, where their food is coming from. Is there anything more fundamentally, you know, needed from a consumer than to have an educated understanding of the mechanics behind, you know, what they're getting at the supermarket?

• 53:37Speaker 01

  Right. You know, the, the Washington Post tagline right now is democracy dies in darkness. And that's exactly what the meat industry is trying to do is keep people in the dark. And So most of these ag gag laws started popping up around 2011. About half of the states considered them. Most of them were defeated. But big ag states like Iowa, who are bowing to the interest of the agriculture industry, not doing what consumers really want. And consumers in Iowa didn't want an ag gag law passed these bills. And now a number of them have been challenged in federal court as being unconstitutional. And a number of them have been overturned.

• 54:20Speaker 01

  And the judges have said, yes, this is a violation of freedom of speech, freedom of press. And in their ruling specifically compare mercy for animals investigators to Upton Sinclair. And they do say exactly what you said. What is more important than a right to know about where our food comes from? So there definitely is a challenge. But to me, it says a lot about this industry that instead of seeing the issues that animals face and the fact that consumers oppose what they're doing, which is true. I mean, you look at national polls and over 90% of Americans say, yes, animals, including those raised and killed for food, should not be tortured.

• 55:05Speaker 01

  But then you look at what's actually happening, and these animals are being tortured. So the industry has sort of two paths to go down. One is they start to address what the animals are enduring, or the other is they just try to stop the discussion. And they want to create a one-sided discussion where only they can put forward these sort of staged white-glove tour images of what their facilities look like. And they want to crowd out the images that our investigators gather when the industry doesn't think that they're being watched.

• 55:36Rich Roll?

  Right. It would be like if you went to North Korea.

• 55:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:39Rich Roll?

  You were guided around.

• 55:40Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 55:41Rich Roll?

  And shown the whitewashed version of what it's like to be there.

• 55:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 55:44Rich Roll?

  Versus the reality of what it's really like. But you said something interesting a minute ago that I didn't want to gloss over, which was that you're seeing more of these laws come online. So my understanding was that we're kind of sounding the death knell for the ag gag law era, but are you saying that's not the case?

• 56:00Speaker 01

  Well, 2011- Eleven is when a lot of them came up.

• 56:05Speaker 01

  There's not more this year than there had been before. And I think that the industry sort of walked away with a lot of black eyes and sort of beaten up in the press. Because what AgGag did is it really attracted a lot of national media coverage to what was happening in our food supply. And, you know, what are these industries so desperate to hide? Most businesses are excited for the media and for customers to come and see what they do. But it's the opposite in the meat industry.

• 56:44Rich Roll?

  And just so we're clear, the way the law deals with somebody who violates one of these AgGag laws is to treat that perpetrator as a domestic terrorist.

• 56:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, and in some situations, the penalty for just snapping a photograph while someone beats a pig, for example, carries a harsher penalty than beating the animal does.

• 57:06Rich Roll?

  Right, so they go after the documentarian.

• 57:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, shoot the messenger.

• 57:11Rich Roll?

  Not the abuse that's actually been perpetrated. And for you, I mean, this goes back, your first sort of undercover investigation was like 2001, right?

• 57:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So I was 17 when we started, which gave me a bit of some legal cover because I was still a minor. But, you know, nowadays, we have people that get hired at these facilities. They work alongside everyone. They have high-tech camera equipment that's designed by the same people that make equipment for the FBI and CIA. But in the early days, we used a tactic known as open rescue, which started in Australia about 30 years ago. And it's a combination of investigations, animal rescue, and civil disobedience all wrapped up into one. So we would send certified letters to egg farms in the state.

• 58:02Speaker 01

  And we'd say, we're concerned about what's happening with the animals there. We want a tour. Will you give us a tour? We never received any responses. So we would then move forward and we would go in at night, you know, 2:00 AM, dressed in black with spelunking lights on. And we would essentially go through these unlocked doors. We weren't there to damage property. We were there to document, to help animals. So we would go in through the manure pits of these huge factory farms. Sometimes these manure pits are seven, eight feet high. And then we would climb through broken cage wire and get to the second floor because egg farms are two

• 58:45Speaker 01

  floors high. The manure is on the ground floor and then the second floor is where the birds are kept. And we would spend hours at a time in there documenting with handheld cameras, birds that were impaled by a cage wire, birds that were thrown away into trashcans while they were still alive, birds with broken bones. And we would take some of them with us to go to veterinarians to be treated and then to animal sanctuaries. So by doing this work, we were risking literally decades in prison. One lawyer told us it was 30 years that we were facing for doing this work. I would still be in prison right now.

• 59:24Rich Roll?

  The first one, after you've sorted out the camera equipment, after a couple sort of naive attempts, you do this exploration, you do all this documentation, and you're still 17, right? You call this press conference, you get all this media attention, and you unveil these videos and the documentation, and it causes quite a stir. I mean, you're 17 and you're, I mean, that is like ballsy, man. I mean, seriously, that takes like a lot of, I mean, I think about what I was doing when I was 17, you know, basically, you know, creating, creating a media event around this cause that is not just important to you, but something that, you know, all consumers should be aware of, and actually

• 1:00:08Rich Roll?

  catalyzing the appropriate effect. And what I thought was interesting about that, that story was that the, so the chicken farm is coming after you, right? They're going to sue you and you're going to be the victim in all of this. But then they realize the media shitstorm that would ensue from something like that. You know, to be in open court would just give you an even broader platform to speak more vociferously about what was actually going on. And then the whole thing just goes away.

• 1:00:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, and we did four of these open rescues. So we kept sort of pushing the envelope as years went on. We went them through from 2001 to 2004. And we knew that we were taking legal risk. It wasn't our preference to go to jail because we knew you could help more animals outside of jail than we could behind bars. But we were willing to to take that risk because people didn't know what was happening. Again, this was really before the rise of social media. So to get people to even see a few seconds of what inside of a factory farm looked like,

• 1:01:18Speaker 01

  we would need to sort of take some some pretty, you know, drastic measures to get the media, national or local media, to pay attention just long enough to to put these images on the local news.

• 1:01:31Rich Roll?

  So you got to crack the code on marketing, right?

• 1:01:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:35Rich Roll?

  In a pre-social network era.

• 1:01:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:01:38Rich Roll?

  Interesting.

• 1:01:45Rich Roll?

  Let's talk a little bit about labels. I mean, you mentioned earlier, there is growing consumer concern and compassion around these ideas.

• 1:01:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:01:56Rich Roll?

  And when, you know, the average human being or consumer actually gets a glimpse at what is actually going on, they don't like it. Like, we're inherently compassionate. Like, nobody wants this to be happening to the animals. We just sort of accept it. And I think the term you use in your book is, you know, there's a, or I read an interview somewhere where you were asked, you know, why do we allow this to continue? And there's, there's a level of willful ignorance, which is a phrase you use. And I think that's, that's right. You know, I think there is. It's not that we want it to be this way. It's just that we're either uneducated or because we're so disassociated from the process of where our food comes from, that it's easy to be willfully ignorant, to choose

• 1:02:40Rich Roll?

  not to watch those videos. Like, you know, oh, don't show me that. Or like scroll quickly through your Facebook feed when, you know, Nathan's latest video comes on. You know, I'm following him because I want to know, but like, I don't really want to know. You know what I mean? Like, that kind of thing.

• 1:02:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:02:56Rich Roll?

  And so, industry is aware of this, and we live in a capitalist society. And as consumer habits begin to shift, and issues like wellness and, you know, humane, the humane treatment of animals become more of a cultural priority. We have kind of stepped into that as a society to deal with it, not necessarily by redressing the cause and getting to the root of the matter, but by kind of placating people with these labels, whether it's cage-free, or grass-fed, and now there's so many of them. Like, some of them more worthy than others, but it's almost so confusing now that, because there's like 10 labels on every food product, like, what does any of this mean?

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:03:41Rich Roll?

  Is this real? You know, beyond just the picture of the pasture on the, on the, on the thing of eggs that makes you feel good without any meaning whatsoever. So walk us through like, what these labels are, the main ones, what they actually mean, the reality versus like, the proposition.

• 1:03:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, there's a lot of what I call humane washing that's, that's happening. You have a lot of people who, as you just said, are becoming more aware of what's happening. They know that factory farming is bad, that animals suffer, they don't want to support it. Now, we believe that at Mercy for Animals, the best thing is to move towards a plant-based diet. It's really the compassionate choice that we can make. So, we don't endorse any of these animal products, because there is always inherent cruelty that goes with it. Whenever you're gonna make an animal a commodity and view them as a production unit, their welfare is always going to be secondary or further down the line to the, to the bottom line.

• 1:04:44Speaker 01

  And as you said, the, the labels really do very dramatically. You have some that are essentially rubber stamping what the industry's already doing. So, those are labels like United Egg Producer Certified. If you see those, if you see that label on an egg carton, that means that those eggs are from a factory farm, and the birds are kept in cages, and they can't spread their wings. Means there's an egg in this box. That's right. And the Primary Trade Association for the egg industry acknowledges that there's an egg in that box. And I talk a little bit in the book about how the initial label was called the Animal Care Certified Label.

• 1:05:22Speaker 01

  That was also put on egg cartons with hens that were kept in these battery cages, but MFA, another organization, said, this is consumer fraud. You need to change this. And the Better Business Bureau got involved in the Federal Trade Commission. And they changed it to now United Egg Producers Certified. Then you have labels like American Humane Certified, which is from the American Humane Association, which is also completely meaningless. This is the same organization that's behind the No Animals Harmed and Making of This Film labeling that you see on films, which has come under scrutiny because they will put that label on films where animals have died or been killed or nearly drowned, abused, just terrible things. So.

• 1:06:07Speaker 01

  So what's going on over there? What is the purpose of that organization? Well, it is essentially, it has become almost a front group for animal use industries. The American Humane Association finds themselves on the opposite end of animal welfare issues than pretty much every other animal organization. And Bull Hooks is an example of that. They actually came out in support of these sharp metal weapons that are used to beat elephants in circuses. No other animal protection organization would do that because it's not in the best interest of elephants. So you have an organization that has a really wonderful sounding name

• 1:06:49Speaker 01

  that has essentially been co-opted to just fall in line with what animal use industries are doing. So it's incredibly misleading. They're now. Almost like a lobbying group. Yeah. Like a super, like these super PACs where they have these names. That's right. Great. And you have no idea what they're actually. Exactly. Exactly. And this American Humane Certified label is now appearing on Butterball Turkey, Foster Farm Chicken.

• 1:07:16Speaker 01

  And I talk in the book about an investigation that we did at Foster Farm Chicken Operations here in California that actually led to criminal animal cruelty convictions at one of these American Humane certified facilities. So you have that on one end and then on the other end, you have things like the Whole Foods program where there's a tier, you know, five tier and you can actually see what the different labels mean, you know, one through five. And then in the middle, you have cage free, which, you know, is arguably better than keeping hens in battery cages, but it's a far cry from what most people think. Right. Like, what is cage free?

• 1:07:58Speaker 01

  So cage free means that the birds are not kept in these individual cages that we talked about earlier, but they're essentially caged by the bodies of other animals. They're kept in these same oftentimes windowless sheds like broiler chickens or meat type birds by the tens of thousands and they don't have access to the outdoors. And there are serious problems associated with that. You have cannibalism. You know, birds can only establish a pecking order with up to about 100 other birds. That's how many birds they can recognize, they can determine, you know, who's in charge, what the social hierarchy is supposed to be. If it gets much larger than that, it's chaos and there's no social

• 1:08:41Speaker 01

  order and the birds start to cannibalize and attack each other. So you have a lot of issues with that. And then, of course, you have the male chicks that are still killed and the birds are still killed when their production declines. There's no, you know, cage free sanctuaries either. And then you have free range, which is essentially what I just described, but the birds should have access to the outdoors. Now, the problem is, is that there's not very clear definitions of what that means. So the birds might have a small amount of access to the outdoors for a large number of birds. And then you have pasture based and sort of a varying degree of freedom that the birds are supposed to receive, but there's

• 1:09:24Speaker 01

  not very strict regulation of what the terms are or who's overseeing it. So, you know, as you can see, there's, there are a lot of labels that are aimed at making people feel good about what they're buying, but oftentimes it's not really clear what they mean and what they mean is much less than what people expect.

• 1:09:45Rich Roll?

  Right, I think it's super instructive what you had to say about the American Humane Association. I mean, just seeing that word humane on a label, on a box, or packaging, and you know, the average consumer would just be like, "Oh, it's humane. It's humane. I'm good."

• 1:10:03Speaker 01

  Great, yeah.

• 1:10:04Rich Roll?

  Because it's about guilt alleviation, right? As much as anything else. Like, as long as I see that, then I have no internal conflict.

• 1:10:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you know, I know people who say, "Oh yeah, you know, I only eat, you know, free range, animals that are free ranged." And the truth is that's not true, because it's very difficult to, you know, eat on the go, and eat in all these places, and actually know where any of your food is coming from. Like, it's under such sort of limited set of circumstances where you actually would be able to know where your food is coming from. And that's why I say, even if you don't have a problem eating animals, and you're okay with eating animals if they're raised under certain conditions, the truth is that

• 1:10:53Speaker 01

  it's just not as practical to live in line with those values as it is to eat plant-based. It's always, you know, it's much easier to eat plant-based food, knowing that you're not supporting animal cruelty, than pretending that you're only gonna, you know, eat meat raised under, of animals raised under certain circumstances, because you just, it's just not available to people.

• 1:11:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's a very interesting psychological and philosophical discussion and argument to have, because someone like Gary Francion would say that this, you know, this sort of grass-fed movement, and this explosion of, at least the idea, if not the reality, of humanely raised meat, is actually harming the movement, because it is going to the heart of that guilt alleviation. It makes people less likely to ultimately abandon meat or go plant-based, because they feel better about the choices that they're making.

• 1:11:49Speaker 01

  I don't believe that that's the situation that we're in for a number of reasons. One is, I think, we have to look at the ethics that are at hand and say, the animals that are unfortunate enough to be raised into the food system, because like it or not, there are people that are eating meat. Most people are eating meat right now. And most people that eat meat aren't sitting down and thinking about the lives that these animals lived. They're going to the drive-through, they're getting meat. You know, this is not an ethical-

• 1:12:18Rich Roll?

  Came from the patty, the hamburger patty tree.

• 1:12:21Speaker 01

  That's right. Unfortunately, it's just not on most people's radar, that this isn't like the front of their mind. So the animals that are being raised and killed in these conditions, I believe it is our moral and ethical responsibility to ensure that they are not tortured, to do what we can to alleviate the worst forms of abuse that they are subjected to. And anything short of that, I think, is in line with species' views, to say, no, we shouldn't advocate for these animals to live better lives. To me, is to say, let them suffer, and let them suffer in the worst way possible. And following that sort of argument, you could say, well, if it's just about argument sakes, and people not feeling

• 1:13:06Speaker 01

  good about eating meat, then treat animals worse. Make sure that all of them are skinned alive. Then you can tell people that every animal's skinned alive, and isn't that terrible? Then it will wait on their shoulders. But nobody would say that, hopefully, because that's so absurd. And if you look at countries where there's a higher rate of vegetarianism, especially like in Western societies, these are also the places where there are higher animal welfare standards and higher laws protecting animals from abuse. So I think, when we have laws and policies that move the ball forward for how farmed animals are

• 1:13:46Speaker 01

  treated, it says, these animals matter. We can't just treat them any old way. Like, we have to acknowledge that they have feelings. And even if you're gonna use them- They can't be treated in the worst way possible. And I think that that is a step forward in ethical evolution in our relationship with animals. It's not, it's not the end game. It's not a place where we're having a completely respectful relationship with animals by any means. But I think that it does move the needle, needle forward. But I think the movement, and certainly Mercy for Animals does this, needs to be clear about what's actually happening.

• 1:14:30Speaker 01

  You know, and when there, there is a move of getting animals out of cages. We say, this is progress, but this is not good enough. This isn't the end game. This doesn't mean that, that cage free is cruelty free, for example. And, and I think that there are some, some organizations that do rubber stamp and endorse these animal products. Mercy for Animals is not one of them. We never have be, we never will be because we don't need to be eating animals. And, and because of that, it will always be unnecessary suffering and unnecessary violence that these animals are being subjected to for our food.

• 1:15:09Rich Roll?

  Where are the battle lines currently being drawn? Like where is the, where is the war? Where does it sit right now? Like where, what needs to be addressed first? And where are the resources and the energy and the focus being directed?

• 1:15:23Speaker 01

  In terms of, of animal welfare campaigns or just the movement overall?

• 1:15:26Rich Roll?

  Or just in, in kind of canvassing the legislative regulatory landscape of what is actually happening right now?

• 1:15:33Speaker 01

  So a lot of the, the change that we're seeing in terms of, of how animals are treated on farms is happening on the corporate level. And you have companies like Walmart that sell a quarter of the groceries in this country. They have more power to change the fate of animals than most states do.

• 1:15:53Speaker 01

  And you have McDonald's, you know, buying billions of eggs every year, et cetera. So. We've been able to help drive change through corporate policies. We've gotten over 200 companies to change their policies to the tune of over 1.2 billion animals that will be affected by those policies every year. It started out with gestation crates, getting pigs out of gestation crates, then it moved to battery cages and getting hens out of battery cages. And now, the primary focus for us is the treatment of broiler chickens. So again, they are like the 99% of the 99%. Like 300 a second or something like that are being killed? Right.

• 1:16:38Speaker 01

  It's astronomical. So, right now, we're focused on addressing the slaughter of these birds because they're killed in a way that would be prohibited if we even killed cows or pigs in that way. So, trying to get it so that these birds are not dumped out of crates while they're alive, snapped into shackles while they're still alive, using inert gases to put the birds to sleep so they're never handled and they never have to endure that cruelty. Changing the genetics of the birds so that they grow slower and not so large, giving them access to natural light so that they can have that semblance of a day and the natural energy and the natural activities that come along with that. Giving them environmental enrichment.

• 1:17:22Speaker 01

  These are animals with minds and curiosities and they should have things to do with their days. So, those are some of the things that are being pushed forward for chickens. The next real battle is for fish. They are raised in much the same way on factory farms now. And some of these fish, it takes them a number of years to reach market weight, what's considered market weight. So, the duration of their suffering is very long. And they're kept in these concrete tanks crowded together. You've got poor water quality, you've got mites, essentially parasite infestations that the...

• 1:18:08Speaker 01

  The fish suffer from, they suffer from blindness, then you have handling the cruelty and the way in which they're slaughtered. So we're starting to lay the foundation for doing work for fish probably in the next year or so. On the legislative front, I think it's pretty exciting what's happening, actually. In Massachusetts last year, voters overwhelmingly passed an initiative that would prohibit hens from being kept in cages, pigs in gestation crates, calves in veal crates. But what was most meaningful was that it also prohibited the sale of products from animals kept in these restrictive cages.

• 1:18:46Speaker 01

  Now that initiative is coming to California and animal advocates have started gathering half a million signatures to place it on the ballot for next year, which is essentially builds off of Prop 2, which passed in 2008 with over 63% of the vote. And it also prohibits products from being sold in the state of California from animals kept in these tiny enclosures. So it should have a ripple effect.

• 1:19:12Rich Roll?

  Right. That's amazing. That's pretty cool.

• 1:19:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:15Rich Roll?

  What do you think are the, the big obstacles that you face in terms of trying to get people to understand where you're coming from? I mean, you know, we still have a long ways to go. Like I said earlier, a lot of progress has been made. And you kind of break it down generational, generationally in your book, like the baby boomers, 1% of them were vegan or vegetarian. Gen X, 4%, millennials, 12%. So there's a trend here.

• 1:19:45Speaker 01

  Huge trend, a huge trend.

• 1:19:47Rich Roll?

  Still, you know, most people not on board.

• 1:19:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, and they say that a tipping point is 10%. So if you look at millennials, you know, it's clear that we're over the tipping point and. I'm, I am optimistic at the end of the day. And I say with the work that I do, I see the darkest side of humanity with how people can be cruel, but in the same day, I see the brightest side of humanity. I see the kindness, creativity, ingenuity, you know, and courage that people can have to make the world better for themselves and for animals and for our environment. So I believe that that innovation will help save us from these challenges.

• 1:20:33Speaker 01

  And I talk in the book about how the meat industry is ripe for disruption. It is, it's just outdated. It's inefficient to funnel so many grains through an animal, most of it being used just to keep the animal alive and energy, and then part of it being defecated out to get a small return essentially. So, you know, if you look at the transportation sector, you look at what got horses off of the busy streets, pulling these, you know, heavy carriages and enduring the blistering heat and the freezing temperatures. Yes, there was ethical concern, but it was Henry Ford and the Model T that made riding

• 1:21:17Speaker 01

  horses appear to be just so outdated and inefficient and silly. And the same thing, you know, happened in getting, and driving an end to much of the wailing that was happening. It was, you know, kerosene and other oils. And, you know, we look at the changes in how we communicate and not sending so much paper mail because we can get, you know, a million times more information on our phone. So there's, and you see what's happening in the energy space, moving, you know, towards clean energy and solar and all of those. So the same is happening in the protein space. And I know you talked about, I'm speaking with Bruce from the Good Food Institute.

• 1:21:58Speaker 01

  I talk in the book about co-founding the Good Food Institute because I do believe that innovation in the protein space has the potential to just dramatically change the game. Some of that in plant-based proteins, but also in clean meat, you know, taking a harmless biopsy from an animal, getting a stem cell, growing it in a suitable medium in a bioreactor or brewery, and creating real meat without, outside of the animals.

• 1:22:29Speaker 01

  And I consider this, as others do, the second domestication. The first, you know, 10,000 years ago, the Neolithic period, when we started domesticating animals and plants that essentially led to agriculture, that led to society as we know it today in many ways. The second domestication being cells and us, and I think it being a reflection of our ethical growth and our intellectual growth and our understanding of science. So that we can, you know, get all the benefit without the harm. And to me, that's really exciting.

• 1:23:03Rich Roll?

  It's crazy times. I mean, it's literally science fiction. You know, it's amazing what is happening, you know, specifically with Uma Valletti and his team at Memphis Meats and what they're innovating and, and the momentum that they have right now. And certainly there will be, I mean, this is coming, like this is, this is happening, right? And there will be an acclimation curve, you know, in the same way that we're going to have to get used to self-driving cars and how weird that is and is going to be sooner probably rather than later. Uh, we're going to have to overcome this weird, icky feeling or sensibility that we have around eating what is ostensibly animal flesh without there ever being an animal. Right? That's weird.

• 1:23:48Rich Roll?

  You know, it's weird, you know, let's just say it, let's not pretend that, you know, that it's normal because it's not, but I think this is the future, as crazy as that sounds. And in many ways, it's miraculous. It's a little, I mean, if I'm being totally honest, it's like, okay, like, is this safe? Like, is this the evolution of GMOs? Like, what are we really doing here? What are the long-term implications of human health? And I think all of that hopefully is getting addressed and studied diligently. But presuming that that gets worked out, the idea that we're going to be engineering animal flesh and can kind of attune it to make, make it healthier than, you know, the

• 1:24:30Rich Roll?

  animals that we're raising with the, you know, less saturated fat and whatever, tweaking it and all of that, as weird as it is, um, that's coming online. And that has the potential to literally eradicate factory farming as we know it.

• 1:24:44Speaker 01

  Exactly. And that's, that's what I'm so excited about is. You look and as you mentioned, Ooma and Memphis Meats attracting investments recently from Bill Gates and Richard Branson, but perhaps most excitingly from Cargill, the largest meat companies in the US.

• 1:25:05Rich Roll?

  Who are realizing that in order to survive, they don't want to be like the music industry.

• 1:25:09Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:25:10Rich Roll?

  Get passed by, like they're going to have to get on board with this now, or they're just going to get innovated right out of business.

• 1:25:15Speaker 01

  That's right. So they see that the writing is on the wall. And you know, what I tell fellow vegans is you don't need to eat clean meat, you know, if it's not something that you're interested in, that's totally fine. This is for the 98% of people that are looking for meat. And it's so good for animals. But as we briefly mentioned, you know, we are at a really crucial time in our lives and human society and the health of our planet with climate change, with, you know, racing towards fishless oceans by 2048, like all

• 1:25:58Speaker 01

  of these things, that being in the middle of this, the sixth mass extinction, like things are dire. We have to make some really meaningful changes. And clean meat uses 50% less energy. It uses over 90% less land, 90% less water, emits 90% less greenhouse gas emissions, you know, so it's, it's not only sort of an ethical savior perhaps, but environmentally as well. And as I said, we're going to have nearly 10 billion people here by 2050. So I think.

• 1:26:41Speaker 01

  We can't just wait for the entire population to have an ethical awakening on these issues. We need to have the sustainable and ethical choice be the convenient choice, the default choice, you know? So when the mother in Michigan is going through the drive-through and she's getting a burger, it tastes the same, the price is the same or even cheaper, but it happens to be meat that is grown through cellular agriculture instead of animals that are tortured. You know, then I think we're starting to get to a place where real progress is being made.

• 1:27:17Rich Roll?

  Or a super tasty veggie burger.

• 1:27:18Speaker 01

  Or a super tasty veggie burger, yeah, 100%.

• 1:27:21Rich Roll?

  It's a race against time.

• 1:27:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:23Rich Roll?

  And it's interesting that, you know, we really are running out of time.

• 1:27:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:26Rich Roll?

  Like, when you really look at what's going on environmentally, like, we are running out of time. And it's gonna be down to the wire, I think.

• 1:27:34Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 1:27:35Rich Roll?

  And it's interesting that all of this technology is coming online now, almost like, you know, necessity is the mother of invention. Like, we need it now, and now it's happening. Can we get it up to speed in time? Because how else are we gonna move forward? You know, factory farming, you know, we just can't continue down this path and expect to preserve our planet. We've established beyond a shadow of a doubt the damage that it's doing. And as we escalate towards 10 billion people, we can't continue to do it. And, look, you know, grass-fed beef ain't gonna cut it. And, you know, this idea that we're gonna repasteurize, you know, arid lands through cattle, it's just, I don't buy it.

• 1:28:19Rich Roll?

  You know, that's not how we're gonna feed the planet.

• 1:28:21Speaker 01

  No. And, like you said, we don't have to wait for clean meat to come to market. We can start eating a plant-based diet right now. So, we are the opposite of helpless in this situation. But, as you said, it's going to be down to the wire. The, what's going to save us or kill us is the choices that we all make. The choices that we make in our everyday food choices, but also the choices that we make whether we're gonna become part of the solution or not. Whether we're going to find our own unique voices and skills and talents and use our

• 1:28:58Speaker 01

  resources in a way that is moving us towards a humane and sustainable future, or moving us in... In an accelerated path to destruction. And I talk in the book about some really inspiring individuals that had that aha moment, had the light bulb come on, saw what was happening. And instead of saying, someone needs to do something about that, they said, I need to do something about that. I realize I am a someone. And that's what one of my biggest hopes is from the book and just from Mercy for Animals

• 1:29:38Speaker 01

  work in general, is that people will, at the end of the day, be inspired to help drive change. And there's so many ways in which we can do that, whether that starts out by changing your own diet, whether that's donating to organizations that are having an impact, or whether that's starting an innovative company. I have friends that are artists that use their platform to inspire people to think about what's going on. I have friends that have started vegan bakeries that show people how tasty and easy it can be. I have friends that have stayed in the business world so that they can earn to give, and they now have literally dozens of people around the world that are working full time

• 1:30:23Speaker 01

  on behalf of animals because of that decision. So, the answer to what you can do, I think, is a bit different for everyone, but the truth is that we have to do something. And being an advocate and, I think, sort of living your values is the ultimate expression of love. It's the ultimate way of being present. There's a quote that says, activism is my rent for living on this planet, and to me, that's definitely true. But it's also fulfilling. You're paying double rent. You might need to have a top of your landlord.

• 1:31:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you know, to me, it's it's kind of this this double win. You get to make the world a better place, but you also get to bring so much meaning into your life. And we live in a time where there's this kind of happiness economy and everyone is trying to figure out, how am I hap- how do I become happy, you know? And I think a lot of people realize, once they're down that path, that, you know, a faster car, or a bigger house, or, you know, a nicer kitchen, doesn't quite cut it. It's a matter of living a meaningful life, something that is contributing to the world in a way that's bigger than just yourself.

• 1:31:46Speaker 01

  And for me, helping animals who are really the weakest and most vulnerable amongst us in our society is as meaningful of a mission as I could imagine. It's, to me, really telling how those in power treat those that are at their mercy. And certainly, you know, farmed animals literally have no choice, and they have no voice in our system. So I think that when we're able to extend our circle of compassion, to include those that we might know nothing about, or relate to the least, we benefit from it, they benefit

• 1:32:30Speaker 01

  from it, and our entire society benefits from that.

• 1:32:33Rich Roll?

  That's really beautifully put. I love that you said that. And I think that the idea, or placing focus, or putting a lens on on how this journey has girded your life with meaning, is part of the discussion that doesn't get enough attention, I think. You know, there's a perspective that someone like yourself is a martyr, you know, that you're torturing yourself, and... And miserable, right? Because you're putting yourself in these dire situations.

• 1:33:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:10Rich Roll?

  Um, for a greater cause, but the truth is very different from that. And I've experienced my version of that, which is when you get outside yourself and you do align your actions with your values and you make your life about something greater than your personal agenda, that you achieve that elusive goal that you have been seeking, which is to be contented and fulfilled and purposeful.

• 1:33:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:36Rich Roll?

  You know, and, and, and, you know, it's beautiful to hear you say that. And I think that, that, um, you know, it is an environmental cause and it is an ethical cause and it is the evolution of civil rights, you know, it really is. It's the next thing that we need to start paying attention to. We've done a good job of sort of, you know, in a serial way, you know, working our way through the various categories of people that have been treated unfairly. And, and, you know, this is where we need to put our, put our focus on, on now. And you're doing a beautiful job of that. The work you're doing is not only extraordinary, it's impactful. Like you are making a huge difference. The book

• 1:34:17Rich Roll?

  is beautiful. Everybody should pick it up. Mercy for Animals, available wherever you buy your books, right?

• 1:34:23Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:34:24Rich Roll?

  And if somebody wants to learn more about Mercy for Animals, the organization, uh, I presume the best place to do that is to go to the website. But how else can people get involved?

• 1:34:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can find us online, mercyforanimals.org. You can find us on all the social media platforms, simply at Mercy for Animals. Yeah, I hope that you will find us, that you will follow us, that you will support us, that you will get the book for yourself and for others for the holiday.

• 1:34:53Rich Roll?

  It's a great holiday read. No, it is. I love the book. And I think, I think, you know, we didn't, we didn't, uh, get into it perhaps in as much detail if we had more time. But what I love about the book is the personalization to it. We were talking a little bit before the podcast. Um, you know, it's very, it, it sort of opens with your story. Well, it's a kind of Dramatic event and then it segues into your personal story, which I found to be very compelling. And you had said, well, I don't really want it. I didn't really want it to be about me. It's about the cause and this. And I'm like, yeah, but your, your story is actually super interesting. And it allowed me to more deeply engage with, you know, the things that you're passionate about and the things that you talk about in the book and, and you did a beautiful job with that.

• 1:35:35Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:35:36Rich Roll?

  And I think everybody should check it out. And the stories that you tell about the investigations and, and, you know, the people that you've worked with is, is really quite touching.

• 1:35:45Speaker 01

  Thank you. Yeah. It's, um, as I told you, it was a vulnerable, it's a vulnerable experience to write a book about yourself. Um, there were things in the book that I hadn't even shared with my therapist. Seeing for 10 years.

• 1:35:59Rich Roll?

  I know that feeling.

• 1:36:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, but it was also really, um, important to me to share the stories of these undercover investigators who operate in the shadows, um, intentionally not having their, their stories told so that it can be focused on the animals. It's really the, the first book of its kind that really, I think, humanizes who the people are that go undercover that are driving so much of this change. It is a, it is a story based book. Um, and as you know, it, it closes looking at the future of food and, um, Uma's story and others who have found their voice

• 1:36:40Speaker 01

  um, in a way that is redefining the relationship that we have with food and with animals and.

• 1:36:46Rich Roll?

  Right. The two Joshes at Hampton Creek and Ethan Brown at Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods and the like.

• 1:36:52Speaker 01

  And Miyoko's, yeah.

• 1:36:53Rich Roll?

  And Miyoko's, that's right. Yeah. Cool. Um, before we close though, can we talk a little bit about Circle V?

• 1:36:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:00Rich Roll?

  This weekend.

• 1:37:01Speaker 01

  It's sold out.

• 1:37:02Rich Roll?

  I know you sold it out. Second year.

• 1:37:04Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:37:05Rich Roll?

  What was the idea behind kind of creating this event and what is it all about? I mean, by the time I put this podcast up, it will have passed, but people can get excited about this year.

• 1:37:14Speaker 01

  That's exactly right. I'm really excited about Circle V. It is, so it's a food and music event that celebrates animal rights. So it's. It's the vision is sort of the vegan Coachella. And I believe that that music and art is a powerful platform to inspire change and to open people's hearts and minds to think about the world and think about others in a way that maybe oftentimes we don't. So Circle V is just this fun event that has world-class artists.

• 1:37:52Speaker 01

  I mean, this year, Moby is headlining Walk a Flock of Flame, Dream Car, Rory, Reggie Watts, and others. And then we have incredible speaker panels, which you will be on.

• 1:38:04Rich Roll?

  I get to be on a panel for the second year in a row. I'm excited about that.

• 1:38:08Speaker 01

  So like, just world-class speakers, you know, packed on these panels, and then awesome vegan food. So you get something of everything wrapped up into one. And like you said, this is the second year. It's growing every year. CircleV.com. And hopefully, people can join us in 2018 for Circle V. It's held here in Los Angeles.

• 1:38:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so last year, I attended and I was on a panel. And I just loved it because as somebody who, I've gone to a lot of vegfests, you know, I know the drill. A lot of them are very similar and they're great. I love all of them and I love the community. I'm not disparaging anybody. Like, I think it's all amazing. But there was something very different in the tone and tenor of Circle V. Like, it's super rock and roll. You know, like, you ain't playing around.

• 1:38:56Speaker 01

  No, it's not a vegfest.

• 1:38:57Rich Roll?

  No, it's not. It's like, tattoos and like, rock and roll. Like, there's a different energy to it. That's very Hollywood. Not in a glitzy Hollywood way, but like, when you, like, if you live in Hollywood, like, oh, this is, these are people in Hollywood. You know, like, it's very like, it's very cool. Like, I love the energy and the vibe and all about it. So I'm super excited about it.

• 1:39:18Speaker 01

  I'm super excited about it as well.

• 1:39:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah, cool. Right on. Well, like I said, keep doing what you're doing.

• 1:39:23Speaker 01

  Thank you, you as well.

• 1:39:24Rich Roll?

  Changing, changing hearts and minds, man. I love your message and your work and I wish you well. Thanks for talking to me.

• 1:39:31Speaker 01

  Thanks so much.

• 1:39:32Rich Roll?

  All right. Peace.

• 1:39:34Speaker 01

  Plants.

• 1:39:37Rich Roll?

  All right. Hope you guys dug that. Good stuff. Food for thought. Be sure to pick up Nathan's new book, Mercy for Animals, wherever books are sold. And please check out the show notes for this week's show on the episode page at richroll.com. Lots of links to take your edification beyond the earbuds. We also have a full video version of this podcast available on my YouTube channel, youtube.com/ richroll. Perhaps after listening to Nathan, you're finally ready to pull the trigger and go plant-based, go vegan, or at least get more plant-centric. But I don't know, maybe you don't know how to cook. Maybe you don't have cookbooks. Maybe you don't like cookbooks. Listen up, people. My mission in life is to help you experience your version of what I have experienced eating and living this way. Everything that I do,

• 1:40:22Rich Roll?

  from the books to podcasts, this podcast, to public speaking, to my athletic endeavors, are all designed to advance this purpose. And intellectually, I think you all get it, yet still so many people struggle with how to implement a plant-based, plant-centric lifestyle. What do I eat? What if I don't like this or that? What if I'm allergic to nuts? Where can I buy this stuff? I get these kinds of questions, these kinds of emails every single day. And it's for all of these reasons that we decided to create this meal planner, the Plant Power Meal Planner, which is something I'm so proud of. It's an incredibly powerful, robust, online, mobile-friendly resource tool that takes all the mystery and all the guesswork out of this whole affair at an incredibly affordable $1.90 a week,

• 1:41:07Rich Roll?

  which is basically like loose change. When you sign up, here's what you get. Thousands of plant-based recipes, thousands, unlimited meal plans and grocery lists. Everything is metric system compliant. And it's completely personalized and customized based on your specific goals, food preferences, allergies, time constraints. All of the recipes can be scaled depending upon how many people there are in your family, how many you're preparing your meals for. We have amazing Customer support from a team of experts available to you seven days a week. People who live and breathe this stuff, people with graduate degrees, athletes, moms. And we even have grocery delivery in about 60 metropolitan areas.

• 1:41:47Rich Roll?

  So essentially what that means is, once you've selected the recipes that you like, that you prefer, it will create a grocery list. You can go to your grocery store and purchase those items, or you can just have those items delivered directly to your home. So you have everything you need to make these recipes. Basically, we've removed all of the barriers, all of the obstacles towards accessing and maintaining this kind of lifestyle. I'm so proud of it. So to learn more, go to meals.richroll.com or click on Meal Planner on the top menu at richroll.com. If you want to support my work and this show, easiest way to do it, share it with your friends and on social media. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts. The main thing is subscribe on Apple Podcasts.

• 1:42:32Rich Roll?

  That one is huge. And we also have a Patreon set up for those who want to support my work financially. And thank you to everybody who has done that. What else do I want to tell you? I just want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, interstitial music. Sean Patterson for graphics. David Zammatt for photo portraits and video. And theme music, as always, by Analemma. Hope you guys are doing great. We're heading into the holiday season. Make sure you seal your field. Make sure you're investing in your personal well-being. You gotta be your best self to be able to navigate all the insanity that this time of year brings.

• 1:43:13Rich Roll?

  So I'm saying this as much to remind myself as I am to remind you, because we're all in this together. All right, I'll see you guys back here soon. Peace, plants, namaste.