Podcast Transcript
Hope
Welcome to Episode 3 of the Hope for the Animals Podcast sponsored by United Poultry Concerns. I’m your host, Hope Bohanec, and you can find all our shows at hope for the animals podcast.org and I welcome questions and feedback on the show. My email is hope at UPC – online.org.
In this episode, I’m going to examine the Farm System Reform Act, a bill that was recently introduced by Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren, that has been promoted as ending factory farming. And then I will have a conversation with Dr. Sailesh Rao, from the organization, Climate Healers.
So first let’s dig into the Farm System Reform Act. So the Farm System Reform Act was introduced by Cory Booker back in December. And as some of you know, he is vegan. Not the first vegan to run for president though. I believe that was Dennis Kucinich back in the 90s. Does anyone remember what the year was for that? Maybe you could tell me, I can’t recall. And just recently, Senator Elizabeth Warren announced that she would be co-sponsoring the bill. And there’s also going to be a companion bill in the House. And this bill says that it is going to ban big animal ag. The headlines that we’re seeing in the news about this bill say that it would ban factory farming.
So under the Farm System Reform Act, the largest CAFOs, concentrated animal feeding operations, is the language that they’re using in this bill, and the acronym is CAFOs. So that when I say that, that means concentrated animal feeding operations. So the largest CAFOs would have an immediate moratorium placed on building any new ones. And existing CAFOs would be phased out entirely by 2040. In just 20 years. Medium and small sized operations would not be prohibited, although voluntary buyouts and grants for farmers would be offered for you know, growers that want to cease factory farming. The bill would also invest $100 billion over 10 years to help CAFO owners transition to quote more sustainable forms of agriculture. So we’re going to dig into all of this and see what what’s really going on and what it means.
So there are only four companies that control nearly 85% of the US beef market, and pork and chicken suppliers are similarly consolidated. This legislation directly targets multinational meat producing giants like Smithfield Foods, and Tyson and JBS all of which have had severe Coronavirus outbreaks among their workers in the last several months. And I go into great detail about that in the beginning of Episode 2.
Here’s a quote from Cory Booker about this bill, “The farm system Reform Act would massively reform this broken system by among other things, cracking down on the monopolistic practices of multinational meat packers, and corporate integrators placing a moratorium on new factory farms and investing heavily in more sustainable food production.”
So here’s just some bullet points of what this bill would do. And we’ll get into some more detail in a minute. It would hold corporate agribusiness responsible for pollution and other harms caused by CAFOs. It would provide a voluntary buyout and grant program for farmers that want to transition out of operating a CAFOs. It would create market transparency and protection for farmers and ranchers from predatory purchasing practices. It would restore mandatory country of origin labeling requirements for beef and pork. So I guess those had been taken away and it would expand that to dairy products. It would also prohibit the USDA, the US Department of Agriculture, from labeling foreign imported meat products as products of the USA. So I guess they are currently doing that.
So what they are trying to do is break up the current system of big ag integrator and contractor. I’m going to give a little history of how this works.
In the last few decades corporations have really taken over much of animal agriculture. There are two entities in the bill that are called the integrator and the contractor. Okay, the integrator is the corporate animal agriculture industry. And the contractors are the growers, are the ranchers, the farmers. So how it works is that the contractor or the grower or the farmer, they have the land. They supply the housing and equipment for the animals, the supervision and maintenance of the animals and they are responsible for the disposal of the dead animals, all the waste products, the massive amounts of manure-soaked wood shavings and sawdust that the animals lived in.
And the other entity is the corporate animal agriculture industry like Tyson or Purdue. And they own all the production sectors of the operation, including the animals, they own the animals, they own the hatcheries. They own the feed mills, they own the transportation services, the medications, and the slaughtering, and processing plants. And this is how big ag has dominated the growers, the farmers in the system, because it favors the corporations and the actual farmer, they have the burden of major capital investment, as well as having to deal with the waste disposal, the land and water pollution, they make a very small portion of the profit, and most of the profit goes to the corporations, they have very little legal protection, and the company can terminate their contract pretty much anytime they want. So the growers are really wary of complaining for fear that the company won’t send them more chickens and therefore they will go out of business. It’s really a corrupt system that props up the corporate entities. And this bill is trying to break up that system, that very broken system. And it is also trying to put more power in the hands of small growers, and we’ll talk about that in a minute. But what it does, this is really, really amazing. It would require the integrators like Smithfield and JBS, the corporate entities to be responsible for the disposal of dead animals, the disposals of manure and other waste, the discharge and release of any air pollution, including greenhouse gas emissions from any source or any activity on the farm. It would make the corporations responsible for the discharge of any pollutants into the groundwater, or surface water, including from the production areas, the manure storage area, the manure land application, which is where they just spray liquid manure, all you know from sprinklers all over acres and acres of land because there is so much of it, they don’t have any other way of getting rid of it. It also puts the burden on the Corporation for any adverse health effects, or property devaluations from the neighbors due to the operation of animal farms. I mean, proposal is really huge. Whether it passes or not in this form or not, just this being proposed, this system is being targeted and called out. I would think that big ag would be shaking in their Gucci shoes over this. I mean, I would think that, you know that the investment in that plant based pork company is looking pretty good right now.
Of course, you know, the animal agribusiness lobby is very powerful. So this bill will certainly be fought at every level and with everything the industry has.
But what we’re seeing with this bill could be the beginning of the end of industrialized animal farming. We need legislation, we are going to need laws that ban the breeding and confining and killing of animals. Grassroots efforts to change consumers’ buying habits is part of that. It’s gaining sympathy from the consumers. It’s creating the will of the people. But ultimately, there will need to be policy to end farmed animal suffering and killing. But this could be a really exciting first step. However, with this particular bill, and at this stage in the game, we also need to be careful, because while this is demonizing big Ag and factory farms, as it should, it also makes the small farmer look like the victim and like they are doing it right. And there is no right way to do the wrong thing…breeding and confining and killing sentient beings. No matter the scale, no matter the label can never be ethical or honorable.
Ultimately, we need to help these farmers transition to plant farming. And, you know, that would truly curb climate disruption and bring about total animal liberation. But that’s not what this bill does, but it is a step. Even though I certainly support this bill. We also need to be critical of it. I had a look at the bill, because I wanted to see what they would define, how they defined a CAFOs. So those numbers you would have to have more than 55,000 turkeys 125,000 chickens who are bred for meat, 82,000, egg laying hens, 30,000 ducks, 10,000 sheep, 10,000 pigs, 1000 dairy cows and 1000 veal calves.
So what that means is an operation with 124,000 chickens, or 54,000 turkeys will likely be exempt from the phase out and not considered a factory farm. And those are still huge numbers of animals in one operation. This bill will not end animal farming by any stretch.
So another interesting quote from Cory Booker, he said, “Our food system was not broken by the pandemic, it was not broken by independent family farmers. It was broken by large multinational corporations like Tyson, Smithfield and JBS that because of their buying power and size, have undue influence over the marketplace and over public policy,” end quote. So what I want to point out here in this quote is that he says, “Our food system was not broken by independent family farmers.” So small farmers, small animal farmers, what are considered family farmers are going to be seen as the good guys. If you remember I said earlier that the bill also invests $100 billion over 10 years to help CAFO owners transition to more sustainable forms of agriculture. I looked at the bill to see what they meant more specifically, by quote, “more sustainable agriculture.” And one of the things they listed was growing specialty crops. So transitioning to plant foods, plant crops. It also said organic commodity production. And I wasn’t sure what they meant by that. But after a Google search, I think they just mean transitioning to organic, either animal or plant products. And one of the other things they listed, in fact, the first thing that was listed is raising pasture-based livestock as one of the things that can be considered transitional to as being more sustainable. So again, this is not getting rid of animal farming. This is encouraging transitions to different kinds of animal farming.
It’s also really telling to see who has endorsed the bill. It’s a long list of agricultural organizations. And some of those are Family Farm Action, American grass-fed Association, as well as numerous public health and environmental groups. But again, it’s really encouraging small scale and transition to different kinds of animal farming with different labels. So my conclusion on the Farm System Reform Act is that I’m actually very supportive. I’m actually kind of excited about it, it’s an important first step. However, as animal advocates, it makes shifting our message away from end factory farming and shifting it to end all animal farming even more imperative. This underlines why I have been saying this for years about our language and that we need to retire the term, factory farming when we’re talking about a vegan world because we we’ve practically won that battle. Most everyone is against factory farming but they see humane labeled products as something different. The humane hoax must be exposed and we need to be sure that our message is that all animal farming is cruel. All animals suffer in animal agriculture. Saying end factory farming is not necessarily a vegan message. It used to be, but it’s not anymore, because the industry has offered an alternative with cage free and grass fed and free range where the animals still suffer. But it’s seen as a humane alternative. It’s the humane hoax. And we need to be even more adamant about exposing the humane hoax and show that inherent cruelty is abounds in all animal agriculture. No matter the scale, no matter the size. If an operation wants to be profitable, they must use confinement, separation of families, body mutilations, slaughter at a very young age, that is industry standard, no matter the label on the package or the carton. No matter if the grower owns the chickens, no matter if there’s 100 chickens or 124,000 chickens. The commodification of animals’ bodies leads to cruelty, suffering and death.
We need a law to ban all commodification and killing of animals. I do believe that this bill, the Farm System Reform Act is an important start. We need to support it. We do need to bring down the numbers of animals on farms.
But we need to remember that this is just the first step. And ultimately, we must end all suffering and commodifying and killing of farmed animals and promote a vegan world.
Hope
Okay, so I would now like to take us in a different direction and introduce our guest for today’s podcast. Dr. Sailesh Rao is the founder and executive director of Climate Healers, a nonprofit dedicated towards healing the Earth’s climate. Sailesh got his PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford University, and he worked on internet communications and infrastructure for 20 years. Then in 2006, he switched gears, switched careers and became deeply immersed, full time in solving environmental crises affecting humanity. Dr. Rao is the author of two books, Carbon Dharma, the Occupation of Butterflies, and Carbon Yoga, the Vegan Metamorphosis. And he is the executive producer of numerous documentaries, including Cowspiracy, and A Prayer for Compassion. And I am just thrilled to have Sailesh Rao here with us today. Welcome Sailesh.
Sailesh
Thank you for having me, Hope.
Hope
Recently, you challenged someone, someone from the leadership from Extinction Rebellion, and Extinction Rebellion is a kind of a direct action, environmental organization. And you challenged them about their support of grass fed beef, regenerative grazing methods. Why is the environmental movement still embracing animal agriculture? You know, with these supposedly new techniques? And what are these techniques? And how are they harmful?
Sailesh
Yeah, I challenged Dr. Gail Bradbrook because the framing that they do about extinction, the extinction problem, to me is completely wrong. Because they’re trying to frame it as a fossil fuel issue. And we know that the leading cause of extinction is really animal agriculture. It’s what we do to the earth, what we do to land use.
And by promoting regenerative agriculture, there, literally it’s as if an organization that’s fighting lung cancer is promoting smoking, you know, Marlboro lights or something like that.
Hope
Right.
Sailesh
It’s just outrageous, you know, so that’s why I asked her to join me in a debate. Just talk about, let’s talk about this. Because you see, the UN identified three major environmental problems in 1992. Extinction was one. Biodiversity loss. That was one. The second, was the collapse of ecosystems. And the third, was climate change. It is really the third problem, right? So the major problems were human life was dying out, and ecosystems are collapsing. And those first two have been slowly sidelined in the UN. And they are focusing more and more on just climate change, as if those two problems are no longer such big problems. And no, they are. In fact, they are getting worse. You’re actually killing animals even faster. Ecosystems are collapsing even faster. All of the objectives that they had for those first two conventions of the UN have not been met. So extinction rebellion is looking at one of those problems and trying to frame that also as a fossil fuel problem. You know what I mean? So they are literally saying that we can continue with the current system of extraction and consumption, provided we just shift to clean energy. And that’s the framing that we are trying to do. Like everyone is trying to do this framing in the current system, because they don’t want to let go of the system. And so I was just, as an engineer, I know that if you don’t address the root cause of problems, you will never solve the problem. And that’s one of those fundamental things that we were taught as engineers, because we have to build things that actually work. Right. So that’s why I challenged her and of course, she did not accept the challenge. But I wanted to put that out there so that people see that there is something wrong with the way they’re framing the entire movement.
Hope
And what if you can explain a little what the regenerative grazing is and why they think it’s better. But really, it’s just the same thing repackaged.
Sailesh
It’s actually worse. So what regenerative agriculture does, regenerative animal farming? Okay, I’m not talking about regenerative veganic farming. That’s different. And that should be promoted. But regenerative animal farming the way they are promoting it and the way they are planning to implement it, it’s like saying, okay, you have grazing lands, and on those grazing lands currently, every year, there is a slash and burn that happens normally throughout the world. So anything that’s growing that our cows did not eat, people go and slash that down and burn it. So it becomes fertilizer for that our cows eat. Right? So when we do that, what happens is the carbon sequestration on that grazing land keeps declining every year, the soil gets worse and worse and worse, because, you know, you’re not allowing the forest to regenerate. And eventually, it becomes desert. I guess it’s a spiraling process. So what regenerative agriculture says is, we won’t do that anymore. We won’t slash and burn anymore, we’ll let it grow. Okay, but then, we need more land for our cows to graze. So we are going to take more land from forests and turn that into grazing land for animals. And that’s the last thing we need to be doing right now. Yeah, because wild animals are literally dying out at an exponential rate. So we need to stop that. So this is why I think regenerative agriculture, regenerative animal agriculture is such a destructive idea. That’s the last thing we should be promoting at the moment.
Hope
Yeah, yeah. Similar to free range where, you know, you’re using the same number of animals in a confinement situation. Now you have acres and acres and acres more land. We just don’t have the space to spare.
Sailesh
Yeah, I mean, the space is going to come from the wild animals because there’s no one fighting for them. Right.
Hope
That’s right.
Sailesh
So we just go and take it from them, and, and basically destroy the planet in the process. For what? So I think that’s why we have to now you know, fundamentally rethink who we are as a species and what are we doing here?
Hope
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. So you have written about the concept of Dharma, from Eastern traditions and Eastern religions. How has this concept informed your activism and your worldview? And what is it? Just briefly explain dharma.
Sailesh
Oh, Dharma says, what is the right thing to do? There is no exact English equivalent for that word. So, but we kind of, you know, we grew up with that word around. And dharma is asking, what is the right thing to do at any level? So you talk about what is the right thing to do as a species? What is the right thing to do as a community? What is the right thing to do as an individual? So what are our actions that are informed by this concentric circles of Dharma? Okay, to start with what is the right thing to do as a species. Make sure that what is the right thing to do within the community is compatible with what is the right thing to do as a species. And then make sure that what’s right, what is the right thing to do as an individual is compatible with who we are, as a community. So it sort of informs our actions, right, as to how we respond to external circumstances. So you start with the top. So I’d say, what is the right thing to do as a species? And it’s obvious; stop killing, you know, like, we are killing like, there’s no tomorrow, and animals are dying out. Life is dying out in front of our eyes. When will we stop killing? Isn’t this the time to stop killing? So stop killing. So that’s the first step. The next is, heal. What can we do to heal the planet? So how can we become guardians? Right, as opposed to destructors of the planet? So I think that is the right thing to do as a species. So then I look at so what is the right thing to do as a community, as vegans? What should we be doing? Because that’s the community that I feel so close to now. That I belong to. Right. So then I started framing it as, you know, we need to start being guardians of animals and nature, as opposed to owners of animals and nature. We don’t own them. You know, we don’t own beings, we don’t own others. We don’t own property. We don’t own the earth, we are guardians of the earth. So I started framing everything as guardianship. So it goes from a rights based discourse about our presence in the world, to a responsibility based discourse. What is our responsibility? And then you look at, okay, how, what do I do as an individual to help this happen? And I am a system specialist in that I’m an engineer. So I said, Why don’t I create a standard process for what would this new world look like? Right, and, and how do we each contribute to that new world? So that was the vegan world 2026 project that I started.
Hope
Wonderful. And I definitely want to get into that in a little bit. But first, I want to ask, we’re of course living through this global crisis right now with the Coronavirus. How do you think the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting the vegan community?
Sailesh
Yeah, the COVID-19 pandemic, to me is, is actually nature sending us a signal saying, you’re done with the extractive phase of your existence. So we are done with a caterpillar phase. And now we need to move on to the chrysalis phase. So I’ve always used the butterfly metaphor for what is happening to us, because I fundamentally believe, you know, the, as a Hindu, that we are part of something much, much larger. Right? That we are, this is all God’s work, and we are just an instrument of God. So when you look at it from that perspective, you say, well, this is a signal from nature, which is external input to human beings, saying you’re done with your phase, extractive phase. And now you need to move on to the chrysalis phase where you think about what you’ve done, and how are you going to clean this up? How are you going to restore nature? So this is the time for us to plan how to become butterflies. So when we come out of this, we need to prepare to be like the butterfly species. Right? Because a butterfly is a very discriminating consumer, butterflies are about regenerating life, you know, pollinating plants. So that’s where we need to move to. See in any culture, like veganism to me is part of a cultural shift, that happened, right among human beings. It’s a bunch of us saying, hey, we can live without hurting animals. So that’s the first step saying we can live without hurting animals. The next day. Then say, how do we heal them? How do we help them? So then you have sanctuaries popping up, right? People are trying to take care of them. So this has to happen now at a much larger scale. And so I see the COVID-19 as part of this progression of nature. Because we don’t know how a caterpillar knows when to go into the chrysalis right? Now we know. A little virus can do it. Right?
Hope
Yeah, I love that metaphor. It’s so true, we are literally forced to go inward now to be inside, indoors, in our, in our own world, with no outside stimulus, and it’s true. It’s like a chrysalis. It’s like cocooning and forcing us to look inward. That’s a really amazing metaphor. So I know you, you’ve got your degree in engineering. Why do you think that civilization or society is an engineering problem? You’ve said this before.
Sailesh
Right, I see a society is made up of a culture and a civilization. Culture says, this is how we treat each other, this is how we treat nature. And this is how we are going to live forever. So that is the sustainability built into the culture idea. The, you know, immortality, that the culture idea and say, in a way, it’s a set of values, right? Civilization is an implementation of that culture. And so it’s an implementation saying, okay, this is what you want it to be. And this is how we are going to get there. Right? So innovation is implementation. And in that sense, we have in our current society, we have really messed up the implementation from an engineering perspective, okay. Because engineers, that’s what we do, we take a specification, and then we implement it. And we try to make sure that the implementation matches the specifications that we started with because that’s what we were trying to build. So if we have to send a man to the moon, you know, the man has to be on the moon, right? How do you want to implement what you said you’re going to implement? So in that sense, I think if you look at our current society, we started off by saying, all men are created equal, right, for this American experiment of America. And we have created one of the most unequal societies in human history. We said, you know, we have an inalienable right to life. And we have been at war forever. So we are sort of killing life, you know, constantly. And we say that we have the right to liberty, and we have the most incarcerated population in human history. Then we say we have the pursuit of happiness. And we have one of the most medicated populations in human history, you know, almost half of Americans are taking anti-anxiety medications or antidepressants or illegal drugs on a regular basis.
So when you have an implementation that does not match the specification, there is something wrong with our understanding of reality. So that’s what we know, as engineers. Okay. This is why the Challenger blew up. The Challenger blew up, because we said, you know, the engineer said, the Orion cannot meet the temperature of the launch. And the marketing people said, No, we have to launch it anyway. Because otherwise we’re going to lose face. And it blew up. So when and so now we are doing that with our entire civilization, right? So we don’t want to keep going with this current implementation of our culture until it blows up. So we have to fix it, right? So I’m saying, we can actually take the original culture, the idea that all beings are created equal, yes, all beings are created equal, not just all men, right? Let’s make it all beings are created equal. And all beings have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. So that should be a given. Right? And then we have to now frame our civilization in a responsibility mode, right? It’s not about rights anymore. Rights have all been given to all beings. So it’s our responsibility. What is our responsibility as guardians. So this is why I define vegan, as vitally engaged guardians of animals and nature. So that’s V-E-G-A-N. That’s why I call it capital VEGAN.
Hope
Would you repeat that? Say that again?
Sailesh
So vegan is vitally engaged guardians of animals and nature.
Hope
Ah. Beautiful.
Sailesh
Right? So then, you know, when you associate yourself as a vegan, you say I’m labeling myself as a vegan, then you’re assuming a responsibility as a guardian of animals and nature. Right? And so that frames it differently, frames the whole vegan world project differently, frames the whole vegan movement differently. It’s not just about meat, you know? That’s a given. I am only consuming plant-based foods, and I’m not going to consume anything that hurts other beings. That’s a given. Beyond that, you say, I’m a guardian. So now I have to have a responsibility. Okay, so then we can start looking at how do we create a society in which we are implementing this? How do we create a civilization in which we are implementing this? And that is the vegan world 2026 project.
Hope
Well, yeah, Silas, you are certainly a visionary. You don’t look at the micro, you look at the macro and the system as a whole. And I really love that about you. So what do you think it will take to create a vegan world?
Sailesh
Yeah, it is a, you know, the vegan movement is growing, right? And as it grows, and as it becomes closer and closer to a majority, right, people are going to ask fundamental questions about the way you’re living right now. Right? About if you are not willing to hurt other animals, then why would you hurt other human beings? Obviously, we don’t want that to happen either. So we have to now think of a different way of living in which we are not forcing people to do things. So veganism in a vegan world is a world of freedom. A world of freedom has to be built on science and the truth, it has to be based on the truth. So there can be no marketing, and lies going on. So it’s not a world in which we are advertising to people. In fact, it’s a world in which we are, we are fulfilling people’s needs. So if the other way around, everything is reversed. Okay? Currently, we have corporations creating products and then convincing you to buy that product. Whereas, in the future, in the vegan world, you can imagine people saying, I need this to take care of this problem. And corporations or, you know, groups of people are going to say, I can supply that to you. Because I know how to do this, right? So it will be it’ll be more like Indiegogo campaigns, it will be more like, you know, Kickstarter type campaigns where people are saying, I will make that happen for you. Sure. It’s a reversal of the current system, completely, COMPLETE REVERSE, because it’s no longer about rights. It’s about responsibilities. That’s also reversed, right? So how do you imagine an entire world like that? And that’s what we started doing in the vegan world 2026 project, first asking questions about what would the world look like? And then forming study groups and task forces to come up with white papers to solve these questions, to address these questions. And it’s, it’s basically like what we did in the internet. You know, the internet, when I started working on it in the 90s, mid 90s. It was, I mean, hardly anyone was using it. I mean, it was growing, but it wasn’t common, in the mid 90s. And there was a lot of a lot of problems with the technology itself. And there was even an article in Newsweek saying, the internet is going nowhere. Who’s going to buy things on this thing? And who’s going to read stuff off the internet? It’s going nowhere. And so what we did was we came up with standards, and this is all done by volunteers. So we all came together. And we wrote, wrote standards for how to make connections happen robustly. And we gave it away. So it was done through the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. And it was a public service that engineers were doing. And we gave it away. And so people then started building according to our standards, and they said, well, we know if you build according to their standards, it actually works. You can connect with each other, and it works robustly and everything is fine. So then the internet took off. Right? It grew. I mean, it just grew like, like a weed. By 2003, I overheard someone say I cannot live without the internet. So, in eight years, it went from something like who needs this? To I cannot live without it. Right? So I think we have to do something very similar with the vegan movement. You know, we need to sort of put these things together. We need to structure things together and give it away.
So as volunteers, we need to just give it away and say, okay, hey, if you really want to get vegan food to people, how do you do that? Okay, I mean, people want to eat vegan food, but they don’t have vegan food available to them? How do you make sure that they do have vegan food available to them? Especially in food deserts and places like that, because that’s where the people are suffering the most, even from COVID-19. You know, because they have no choice but to go out and work, and they’re getting infected. So they don’t have a good food system so that they don’t have good immunity. So we need to make sure that they get really good, immune boosting foods available to them. So how do we create that? So these are some of the practical problems we need to address in a systematic way for the vegan movement to grow. And if we do that, I really believe that it has the potential to grow very quickly. It’s just like an infection, you know, it can grow really fast. And then we have identified what are the parameters that make it reach a peak and then stagnate. Right? And how do you make sure that it stagnates at the highest level possible? As close to 100% as possible? So, it turns out that the number one thing you need to do if you want to maximize the uptick of the vegan movement, is you have to minimize the recidivism. Minimize the people who go vegan and then say, nah, I think I’m gonna go back. Right? We need to minimize that. We need to give people all the tools they need to stick with it. Okay, so we have to facilitate that for people. It could be educational material. You know? Telling them why it’s not just about the animals, it’s about the health of the planet, it’s about your own health, it’s about the health of the community. Because look at where COVID-19 is being spread the most – I mean, slaughterhouses. Right? It’s very poetic. It’s the animals saying you’re done. You know? Stop killing us. So, so why are we making other people go and kill for us and contract all these diseases? Just so that we can eat our burgers? I mean, come on! So, it’s become an immoral act now almost.
Hope
Yes.
Sailesh
In fact, some people are framing it as an immoral act. And I think when it is framed as an immoral act, that’s when it becomes an exponent—I mean, truly an exponential process of growth.
Hope
Yeah. So get into your wonderful project, the Vegan World 2026 project. What is the vision there and what are you doing to implement your Vegan World 2026 project?
Sailesh
Right, so the vision is to create a vegan world by 2026, okay, which is only 6 years from now. So how do you create something really fast? So it’s a little bit like President Kennedy saying we want to have a man on the moon by the end of the decade, right? He just gave a goal and a vision and then the mission was much more specific. Right? So we are saying we need to do whatever we have to do to make sure that at least 50% of the people in rich countries self-proclaim to be vegan by 2026. Okay? So, that’s our minimum goal. Maximum goal, of course is 100% of everyone should be vegan. So, it’s like putting a timeline and then saying, okay how do we now get there from where we are? So it’s an engineering project at that point. Right? Once you put a timeline and specific objectives, it becomes how do you achieve it? How is always an engineering question. How do you do something? It’s an engineering question. So in the moon landing, for example, you know, NASA broke down the problem into little bits and then they identified how to solve each bit, and then they put it together and a man was on the moon by 1969. Right? Within 7, 8 years. So by setting a goal like that, and setting a clear objective as to what we want to do, we are just letting the universe come and say, yes we want to help you or no, we will try to impede you, right? The people are trying to impede us too. But enough people who come along and say we are going to help you. And then we give away things. So it has to be done in this open source process. Then I think it will become clearer for people. You know? How can I contribute to make this happen?
So I want the vegan community to come together around this. Right? Because we all want the world to be vegan. So we need to start with that. And then we say, how fast do you want it to happen? Well, as soon as possible. I mean, there are a lot of people who tell me why are you saying 2026? Why don’t we do it by 2020? I said, well, I am, you know, I am an engineer, I need, I need feasibility studies. I mean, when I set out a project, when I set out something to do, I want to achieve it, okay? I want to figure out how to make it happen, right? It was exactly like the internet, right? When I went to the internet community in 1996 January and I proposed that we can actually make the backbone run 10 times faster if we do, if we can work from analog to digital. Right? Everybody laughed at me! Said, you’re crazy, man! You’re having trouble getting the analog to work and you’re talking about doing something totally Greek to us. A digital internet. A digital backbone. And it’ll never happen. We’ll believe it when we see it. Right? That was the reaction that I got. But they were kind enough to let me play. They said ok, if you can convince enough people, you know, and convince the engineers that it can be done, hey, you can have your study group and you can figure out how to make it happen. So that environment was there. Right? The environment of creativity. They allowed this to happen. And that alone was enough for this happen. Ok? So when the vegan community says, yes I think, you know, we think you’re crazy 2026 is too short because other people are talking about 50% reduction of meat by 2050 or 2040, something like that, right? Like way out there. And I am saying, no, world is demanding, nature is demanding that we do it as soon possible and I think 2026 is an aggressive goal even for the engineering mission that we have which is 50% of people should say that they’re vegan, right? Even for that it is an aggressive goal but I think it’s an achievable goal. And just looking at it as an infection as a mathematical modeling it and figuring out how are we now going to tweak this to make it happen? We are trying to get some systematic rigor into the movement. Because otherwise it’s an organic movement, just like the internet was an organic thing that was happening in the 90s, right? But by putting the standards process in play you know and then creating these new standards that were much more robust and they could run 10 times faster, we accelerated it and we made it happen. So the same way, no? It’s a very similar kind if objective. And we now see that it is becoming more and more necessary. A vegan world is more and more necessary. Not only should we stop killing animals, which is the minimum that they’re asking, the vegan movement, should also start helping them. So that’s why I want to reframe veganism as vitally engaged guardians of animals and nature. You know? That we assume some responsibility as vegans.
Hope
So we have to wrap it up now but how can people get involved with your projects and do you have any final thoughts?
Sailesh
Yeah, if you go to our website, ClimateHealers.org, you’ll see a pop-up that will take you to a survey and through that survey, you get involved with the Vegan World 2026 project. And so that sort of puts you into what is your, you know, what is your expertise? And what do you want to contribute towards? And then puts you in the right community. And then we have a basecamp group that is active, you know. And fortunately, I mean, it can be too active sometimes, but a lot of people who are enthusiastic and who are working on things, you will see that. And then we meet quite regularly and I am working on a white paper now on the whole project so that there is more structure to our ideas. And you know, people can also get on facebook and sign up with Climate Healers and Vegan World 2026. There is a group where we have discussions about, you know, news articles about the vegan world and how it is going to get there. So I think these are the ways in which I think people can get involved. We really need a lot of different experts to join right now. So that there is, so that we have solutions that are forming. Because it’s about thinking things differently, thinking about things completely differently. That’s what veganism is. So it is completely contrary to the current system. Because the current system is founded on animal agriculture, it’s founded on exploiting animals.
Hope
Alright. Well, thank you so much, Sailesh for being with us. It was really a wonderful conversation. I’m very inspired. And I’ll say it again, you are a visionary. You really want to change the world from the ground up, system wide and I just love that. Not just everyone eating veggie burgers and all the other violent aspects of society are the same, no! You want an entirely new, better world and I just, I really love that. So, you know, thank you so much for your work. For your dedication to creating a vegan world. I so appreciate you and all you do.
And thank you for listening to the Hope for the Animals Podcast. I welcome comments and questions. You can email me at hope at UPC – online.org. And you can support this podcast with a donation to UPC – online.org. A new world is waiting for the animals and for us. Please live vegan.
