Podcast Transcript
Hope
Welcome to episode nine of the Hope for the Animals podcast, sponsored by United Poultry Concerns. I’m your host, Hope Bohanec. You can find all our shows at Hope for the Animals podcast.org and I welcome your feedback. My email is Hope @ UPC – online.org.
On the podcast today we have an interesting interview with Kelsey Eberly. Kelsey is a staff attorney with the Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF) and she will share her experiences exposing humane washing in animal agriculture. She helps ALDF file lawsuits against false advertising and illegal and unfair business practices. These lawsuits uncover the cruel farming practices, especially in products that are labeled humane.
But first, I want to answer the question, is there an ethical egg? A lot of people are learning that farming hens for their eggs is incredibly cruel. They’re even questioning humane labels like “cage free” and” free range”. They know that they are not telling the whole truth about the treatment of the animals. But they still believe that there are these other ways to find ethical eggs like from a farmers’ market or from a backyard or small farm or from a neighbor or friend. Are these eggs ethical to eat? I want to explore that question. Up until this pandemic year, I spent a lot of my activist time tabling. One of the most common questions that I’ve gotten over my decades of tabling is people asking, what are the most ethical eggs to eat? Where is there an ethical egg? People are always cooking up these potential scenarios like, well, what if it’s from my local natural food store? They research all the eggs and only buy the best of the best. Or if there are eggs from the farmers’ market, then that’s okay, right? Or if it’s a neighbor’s chicken, or if I know that chicken and I know she had a good life and won’t be killed? Can I eat those eggs? the answer to all these possible scenarios is no, you really shouldn’t eat those eggs. And here’s why.
As long as eggs are considered food, hens will be considered a food production unit, a commodity, even if there is this implausible, rare, ideal circumstance, where the hen is actually in totally humane conditions. If you’re buying the eggs, it’s almost assuredly that that is not the case. There’s no way that we could feed over 7 billion people this way, it simply can’t be done profitably. We have to stop looking at chickens’ eggs, and her flesh for that matter as food. We cannot consider animals as commodities any more. No matter how ethical one operation even wants to be. There will be mistreatment in another, there will be abuse confinement in another, there will be misery and corruption in another.
If we truly want all farmed animals free of suffering, then we must end the use of farmed animals as food across the board.
Let’s look at some specific examples. First, we’ll start with buying eggs from the natural food store or from a farmers’ market. Then I’ll also talk about backyard farms or getting eggs from a neighbor in a minute. But starting with buying eggs from your local Co Op or even from a farmers market, no matter the size of the farm or the label on the carton, there are hidden cruelties that are economically necessary to making income on eggs.
Egg farms cannot profitably hatch their own chicks. They purchase chicks from huge heartless hatcheries. I go into great detail about the hatchery industry in the “Reason for Vegan Series” one the egg industry exposed. I encourage you to go and listen to that podcast if you haven’t already and learn more. Just to summarize, in these hatcheries, the baby birds are not hatched in a warm nest with a mother hens love and affection the way it should be naturally, what every baby chicks desires and deserves, but rather they’re separated from their mothers. They’re born in metal drawers and thrust into a frightening world of conveyor belts and metal machinery and workers tossing them about roughly like inanimate objects. The male chicks in the egg industry don’t grow fast enough to be profitable for meat, so they are killed just hours after hatching by the millions. Thrown away alive in dumpsters outside the hatcheries, they slowly die of dehydration and exposure, or their ground up alive and maceration machines. These horrors don’t go away with the humane label at the co-op or a farmers market.
A small cage-free or free range farm will not be able to feed the chickens whose egg production has waned, just like a large farm, they can’t retire hundreds of hens. So birds that are only a couple of years old will be killed by brutal methods like slow and painful gassing, throat slashing, sometimes the chickens are buried alive.
Just because there is a label on the eggs at the farmers market that says “humane”, “free range” or “pasture raised”, or even no labels, so they look kind of home steady. Almost certainly those chicks were hatched in heartless hatcheries, and will go to a bru3tal death at a very young age. Do not be fooled by the pastoral images and benevolent words on the labels. The truth is hidden. Even the supposed best of the best farms are still a nightmare for chickens.
I go into more detail and some personal stories of things that I’ve seen and experienced in the Reason for Vegan Series 3 “Cage Free and Free Range Explained”. I encourage you to listen to that podcast for more information. Now I want to talk about getting eggs from a neighbor, or from a small farm down the street. There may be scenarios where someone is able to get eggs from a neighbor or from a small farm in their area. Perhaps they can even see the hints and they appear to be living the good life on this farm, or in this person’s backyard. So why shouldn’t we eat those eggs? First of all, you don’t know the whole story. Even a neighbor most likely purchased the chicks from a feed store or from mail order. They gave money to the cruel hatchery industry and supported it and may continue to in the future. They are subjecting newborn chicks to the horrors of being shipped through the mail. It’s awful, and it’s deadly. Many of these chicks don’t survive. The only ethical way to obtain a chicken is to rescue her from a sanctuary, a humane society, the local shelter, or from a bad situation. Even if the hens were rescued, and they have a clean and protected enclosure where they’re safe at night, and will be able to live out their lives in peace, which is rarely the case, we still shouldn’t eat their eggs. Such an improbable situation could only feed a very few people in a rural area that are lucky enough to have access to this neighbor or small farm. This operation would not be able to consistently supply the local restaurants or groceries to be profitable enough to have the quantity to provide eggs, even to just a small town’s grocery store. They would have to start purchasing chicks from hatcheries. They couldn’t use rescued birds, they’d have to get rid of chickens who are not producing efficiently, basically killing them when they’re only a couple of years old. They would need to start keeping more hens in a smaller space. So it goes down the same road that led us to industrial large scale farming. It is elitist. Why should a few people who can afford to live in a lovely rural area with farm fresh eggs down the street be able to have eggs, but not the entire city of San Francisco or Oakland? There’s no way we could feed a large city with eggs from hens who were rescued and able to live their lives out. It can’t be done profitably. So it’s, really unfair for an elite few to be able to have this niche market of eggs and not everyone.
This romanticized notion that we can go back to the pastoral days of small ethical farming is a delusion. Farming animals was never humane, never ethical, never romantic. Confining, breeding and farming animals for their flesh and their bodily secretions was never humane. As long as we consider eggs food, the probability for exploitation is 100 percent. We have close to 8 billion people now to feed on this planet. Humane farming of chickens to feed the billions of people on this planet, it’s impossible.
Another factor in this is that it’s important that we identify as vegans, and that we abstain from all meat, dairy, and eggs. A person may only eat eggs that they think are ethical, but then they identify as an egg eater. Let’s say that you’re at a friend’s house, and she baked some muffins. She says, “Oh, well, there are eggs in them, but they’re from a good source.” Because you’re an egg eater, you believe her and don’t think much about it, and you eat the muffin. However, that “good source” could have been from Whole Foods from a cage-free farm where the hens were de-beaked, they never felt the sun on their feathers or the earth beneath them, and they lived a short miserable life. The better scenario is to say, “Thanks, but I’m vegan,” and not eat the muffin. You know, this demonstrates that first, it’s highly suspect that that egg was actually from a happy chicken. And second, that we’re choosing not to exploit animals for their bodies any more. Some people may feel like oh, it’s not going to make any difference if I eat my friend’s muffin, they’re already baked. This one incident isn’t going to save chickens. But there is psychological evidence that it’s easier to adopt a change long term if you’re all in. If you are mostly plant based and we’ll eat the occasional muffin with an egg in it, then you’re more likely to waver and buy something with eggs in it at the grocery store or at a restaurant, where it really does count. Veganism is a boycott of a cruel industry and the products of misery. What you buy and don’t buy tells the market, what they should provide. Identifying as a vegan means that you are all in, you’re not dabbling, and you’re more likely to shop your ethics. So, you can tell your friend that you’re vegan and you don’t eat the muffin, and then you can then bake some delicious vegan muffins to bring your friend next time so she can try them. The bottom line is as long as hens’ eggs are considered food, the potential for abuse is 100 percent. Assuming that we can feed the billions of people on this planet with backyard ethical eggs, it’s a fantasy. The quantity and volume needed are just too big.
If you want to learn more, I encourage you to read my book The Ultimate Betrayal, I go into much more detail about supposedly humane methods of farming and labeling. And for further reading on the chicken industry as a whole, I encourage you to read Prisoned Chickens Poisoned Eggs by UPC’s founder, Karen Davis.
You can easily substitute eggs in baking recipes. There is a lot of information online about how to substitute eggs in baking. Even though there are probably millions of vegan recipes without eggs, you can still use your old recipes and just substitute things like flax seeds and bananas as a perfectly adequate substitute for eggs. I have veganized all my grandma’s dessert recipes. I bake her Christmas cookies totally vegan every year and it calls for about six eggs. I substitute the eggs and the cookies are delicious. They’re just as good as my grandma’s. Straight up egg dishes like omelets and scrambled eggs are a bit harder to replace. There are new, interesting products like the Vegg it’s V-E-G-G, which you can use to make omelets and all those things scrambled eggs. Just Egg has a frozen egg that you can use for this purpose. (I haven’t tried it yet.) But I just bought some frozen vegan egg and cheese breakfast burritos from the company. There are lots of new products to explore. I tell you tofu scramble is so good. You can use nutritional yeast to make it a little a little edgy. There are some great substitutes that are so delicious, so give them a try.
We must stop this cycle of use and abuse of animals and live a truly cruelty-free vegan lifestyle, including stopping eating all eggs. I’ll wrap up this section with a quote from my book. “It’s not our methods of animal agriculture that need to change. It is our unwillingness to give up animal products and animal farming.”
Hope:
I would like to bring in our guest now. Today we have Kelsey Eberly. She is a staff attorney with the Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF) and as a member of the organization’s litigation program, Kelsey works to protect the lives of animals by using civil litigation and regulatory advocacy. Kelsey joined the ALDF in 2014, after graduating from UCLA School of Law. There at UCLA, she was the chair of the Animal Law Society. Her practice at ALDF centers around combating false advertising and illegal and unfair business practices by the animal industry. She works in both the meat industry and pet industry, such as pet stores. Kelsey has litigated numerous cases against animal products and puppy sellers, resulting in resolutions that have helped protect animals and stop humane washing. We’re going to talk more about what that is. Kelsey’s commentary has appeared in national news outlets, including ABC News, Bloomberg, the New Republic, and more. We are really happy to have her here to help us understand more about animals and the law. So welcome, Kelsey.
Kelsey:
Thanks so much for having me.
Hope:
I want to start at the beginning. When and why did you go vegan? How did it lead you into practicing law for animals? What is your story?
Kelsey:
I went vegetarian at a pretty young age, I was in high school and sort of did it without thinking too much about it. I was vegetarian for many years, you know, through college. It wasn’t really until after college that I began to think about why I was vegetarian, and think about, what animals meant to me.
Hope:
That that was your, your undergraduate work? Right?
Kelsey:
Yeah.
Hope:
Before you got into UCLA.
Kelsey:
Exactly. I found myself just becoming more and more interested in animal related issues, and then the many ways that animals suffer. I started a program through the humane societies to have a university program, and I did a graduate certificate and animal policy and advocacy. That was when I really had my eyes open the ways that animals suffer, the myriad ways that they do, but also in particular, the ways that farmed animals suffer. At the same time that I was changing my diet and becoming vegan, I was also becoming aware of the ways that, the law intersects with animals and I wondered what can I do with these discoveries? Can I make a career out of this? That was why I applied to law school, and then went to law school hoping to, you know, practice animal law and use the law to help animals in a way that I really couldn’t pursue when I entered law school, but which has come to fruition in my career in ways that, that I’ve just been really rewarding. That’s my story in a nutshell.
Hope:
That’s great. I love that when I was, you know, considering college and what to study back in like the late ‘80s, there were no options for any kind of animal programs or animal advocacy or anything. But now, people have so many more options to actually do animal advocacy, in school and actually in graduate programs. That’s just awesome. I love that you were able to do that. I also want to talk about humane washing, like the term green washing, which more people probably have heard of. Green washing is when a company markets a product to be more green or ecological when it’s either only slightly better or not better at all. As with humane washing, in the sense that it’s animal industry marketing products as humane, implying that animals were humanely treated. As I’ve written extensively in my book, The Ultimate Betrayal, that is simply not the case with these labels. I know that you’ve also seen this first-hand with the lawsuits that you work on. Where have you seen humane washing in your work? How is it that you’ve exposed humane washing?
Kelsey:
Humane washing is really everywhere, like you say. I think there’s humane washing in terms of what are the claims, the ways that the, the animal product industries in particular try to tell consumers and others that their products did not come from animals who suffered horribly. That is the narrow definition of what humane washing is, the types of claims that these sellers make on their products, whether on labels or in marketing. I think of it in a broader sense of a deceptive way of describing what is happening with every part of how animals are raised, killed, and turned into meat. In general, I think many companies engage in it. But there are certain companies where the gulf between what the company is saying about how the animals are raised and treated, and what is actually happening, is even broader than other companies. In those cases, of really great egregious humane washing, egregious falsity, we have an opportunity to use lawsuits, use regulatory advocacy, and press federal agencies to try to stop that, because there are some laws that protect consumers from false and deceptive marketing and advertising. Those are the tools that we use to combat humane washing.
Hope:
What are some of the claims that you see most often misused by animal product marketing?
Kelsey:
It’s funny, this is always changing, because consumer preference for certain claims changes over time, and also claims that companies use become impossible for them to use due to the threat of lawsuits. Whereas we used to see the claim, humane, I think a little bit more on products and in marketing, you see that a little bit less. Now we’d see claims like, “natural”, which is like ultimate claim, for humane washing that connotes not only a more natural way of raising animals, but also a bunch of things about the product in a way the way the product is made, or what it contains. So the “natural” label is a huge claim that we consider, one, a humane washing claim as applied to the vast majority of meat products. Then also terms like “grain grown”, “farm raised”, “responsibly raised”, “free range”, or “cage free”. There are really so many, but I would say the most common terms are “natural”, which implies responsibility or stewardship.
Hope:
What is an example, specifically in one of your cases? For example, I know that the Fairlife Farm case was a big exposure of the dairy products from Fairlife. I’m just wondering some specifics about what they’re claiming, and what’s really happening on the farm.
Kelsey:
In the Fairlife case, I remember picking up a bottle of Fairlife milk, not to drink, but to look at the claims, because that’s what I’m always doing in supermarkets. I looked at it and it said, extraordinary care for our cows. I thought, what does that mean? That means, objectively, that something above the usual and not only something above, but you know, something superlative, the best care, extraordinary care. It also means treating cows in a better way than other dairy companies do. You don’t have to watch more than two seconds of the undercover video from the Fairlife Farm to see that those cows are not being given extraordinary care. Another example from our cases is that companies have realized that they cannot be very specific about the way animals are raised, because they can’t substantiate them. Some companies use imagery. Another example was Trader Joe’s, which had imagery of hens pecking out on a green pasture with a barn doors long, wide open. That was the imagery that was emblazoned on its cartons of cage-free eggs. In reality, the hens were confined indoors, and they never saw the light of day, nor ever touched a blade of grass in their lives.
Hope:
The undercover video footage from the Fairlife Farm operation was some of the most brutal that I’ve seen in a long time. It’s always brutal and always awful. Undercover investigators never come out, saying, “Oh, yeah, this farm was great, I had nothing to film.” They always come out with horrible footage. But in the Fairlife Farm footage, I remember the calves who were separated from the moms. The workers were bottle feeding the calves and punching them at the same time. They were hitting and slapping the calves in the face, while feeding them! It was so awful to see. Then they dragged the calves behind tractors, I believe. It was some of the most brutal footage I’ve seen. For them to claim that they have extraordinary care of the cows on their packaging, it just shows you how much they lie.
Kelsey:
It’s really amazing. I mean, that and that’s a situation where, on top of the cruelty and the brutality of just typical dairy, you have this egregious abuse. In no way were they giving extraordinary care to the calves.
Hope:
What are some of the specific legal tools that you use to go after the humane washing? How does it work?
Kelsey:
Basically, every state has a version of automation, or sometimes more than one version of an unfair and deceptive trade practices statute. These statutes, in general, prohibit sellers from falsely marketing their products and making false representations in the marketing and sale of their products. Depending on what state the consumer is in, or which one of those statutes we’re using, we represent consumers who have purchased a product, believing the representations that they were shown by the company, whether those were on the label or in in an advertisement, such as a magazine advertisement or YouTube advertisement. We basically say, this is what the company is saying. Then we say, this is the reality, and that’s where we show, examples, such as the Fairlife Farm footage, that demonstrate how their cows are actually treated.
When a company makes those false representations, they can run afoul of the state’s false advertising laws. We prepare a complaint and file it usually in the state court of the state where the incident occurred and where the consumers are located. We seek a broad variety of remedies. One of these is called an injunctive relief, which is a court order for the company to stop falsely representing its products. This is the beginning of the lawsuit. How the lawsuit turns out is based on whether there is court-ordered judgment or whether the case is resolved through a settlement. The outcome is uncertain, but we’re always using these lawsuits and representing consumers in these ways to try to stop these companies from lying about their products, and to try to help animals by decreasing consumer demand for animal products that are represented in false ways.
Hope:
Why do you think lawsuits are a good approach for combating the problem of humane washing?
Kelsey:
There are many reasons to bring a lawsuit and many things that a lawsuit does beyond just representing the plaintiff and in the civil action against the defendant. With lawsuits, of course, we try to win and get victory through the court, whether through a judgment or settlement. The lawsuit is also, you know, a focal point, a jumping off point for a conversation. We publicize our lawsuits and in that publicity, we try to gain more attention for the problem, the problem of humane washing. These lawsuits are a vehicle by which we tell people not to trust the labeling and marketing that they’re seeing from these companies. The aim is to open people’s eyes about what is happening to farmed animals. Lawsuits are a way of getting attention, a way of holding the seller accountable, and a way of starting a public conversation about this important issue.
Hope:
I want to ask you Kelsey, about the Hormel case. I know that there were numerous different species of animals involved, such as turkeys and pigs.
Kelsey:
In 2016, we brought a lawsuit against Hormel over their Natural Choice advertisements. These were a series of advertisements for their Natural Choice brand of deli meat and bacon that ran under the headline, “Make the natural choice.” Those advertisements were all about convincing people that these products were natural, and all of that that term connotes: naturally raised, treated humanely, no preservatives and such. We knew the pigs and turkeys, to give two examples, the lives that they lead on Hormel’s factory farms, are so far from being natural and so far from being humane, that we had to step in and do something. One way we do that was from an undercover investigation that we conducted earlier that year of a Hormel pig breeding supplier, called the Mashovs. In this investigation, we found pigs trapped in body gripping crates, denied food, denied veterinary care for large open wounds and bloody cysts. It was just the most revolting video. You can imagine that the pigs were suffered horribly. Then of course, with a baby piglets taken away from their mothers, their tails cut off, their testicles ripped out. Piglets who weren’t able to thrive were bashed on the floor by being thumped. Really the most egregious conditions you can imagine.
Hope:
“Thumping” is an industry term for killing the runt piglets, the smallest piglets who they don’t think will get up to market weight. Thumping is where they just will just throw them on against the concrete floor to kill them or against the wall to try to kill them. That’s an industry standard.
Kelsey:
Exactly. Manual, blunt force trauma, basically holding their legs and slamming their heads against the concrete.
Hope:
Yeah.
Kelsey:
The investigation documented these piglets, convulsing and still alive minutes after being thumped. This was the reality for pigs raised for Hormel’s products. Similarly with turkeys, who are packed into windowless sheds, breathing, their sensitive beaks cut off and then sent to slaughter at a very young age. The conditions just couldn’t have been further from the reality that Hormel was trying to paint with its advertisements talking about all natural and 100 percent natural and make the natural choice.
Hope:
People don’t realize that the slaughter for turkeys can be so horrendous because their bodies are so over bloated and overweight, from genetic engineering and breeding, that when they hang the turkeys upside down from their legs in shackles, and their body is so heavy, it dislocates like all the joints and their ankles, legs, all the way down their legs, holding that, that weight and can be incredibly, incredibly painful to be slaughtered, to go to slaughter that way. Then of course, the throat slitting, and bleeding out which can take agonizing minutes. The slaughter of turkeys is just brutal.
Kelsey:
Turkeys aren’t protected by law; at least pigs have some minimal protection from the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, although this act not very well enforced. Turkeys have no protection whatsoever at slaughter and so they can be slaughtered, you know, in any manner.
Hope:
That’s right. All birds are exempt from the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act.
Kelsey:
Exactly.
Hope:
How does your legal work fit into the broader fight for transparency in animal farming?
Kelsey:
We view these lawsuits. Obviously, we’re trying to win, we’re trying to represent our client and get victory for them. We also view them as a communications tool as a campaign tool as a way of shedding light on the travesty that is industrial farming. These lawsuits and our work against humane washing are just one part of a broader fight for more transparency into what is happening to animals on farms. Other examples include our lawsuits against ag gag laws, for example that criminalize whistleblowing undercover investigations inside farms and slaughterhouses, you know, because we need again, we need the investigations to tell us what is happening inside farms to demonstrate the falsity of the representation. So-
Hope:
I actually wanted to ask about Ag-Gag laws, I’m glad you brought them up. I know that one just passed in Canada, but I think one was overturned in North Carolina. First of all, what are they maybe explain exactly what they are? What’s going on with them and why they’re problematic for animals?
Kelsey:
Ag-Gag laws criminalize or create civil causes of action for private parties to sue investigators and whistleblowers who go undercover inside farms and slaughterhouses and document the reality of what animals are suffering. These laws work in a variety of ways. Many of them criminalize deception, or gaining access by false pretenses because one of the sort of necessities of an undercover investigation is someone saying that they’re not affiliated with an animal rights organization so that they can get a job at a facility, and thereby document the conditions inside. These laws were passed in, in many states, and we’ve been attacking them, state after state. We are currently litigating in Arkansas and Iowa, and defending a win in Kansas. We go where the fight takes us. We just got a victory in North Carolina. For every victory, we have to ensure that states are not passing new laws or trying to find creative ways to criminalize this incredibly important tool that animal advocates have for showing the reality of what’s happening inside farms and slaughterhouses.
Hope:
It is really a scary prospect, because the undercover investigating is so important. It’s the only way that we can see what’s really happening to these animals. They will not let anyone in, not journalists, not anyone. It’s the only way that we’re able to get the truth out. I hope very much that these Ag-Gag laws can get shot down. Thank you for working on that.
Kelsey:
It’s an incredibly important fight and one that I’m proud to be to be part of. We’ll continue it.
Hope:
Good. Is there any connection between these legal efforts to combat humane washing that that you’re part of, and the rise of plant-based meat products, with all these animal-free meats that mimic meat? There’s such an incredible rise and surge in this plant-based meats. Is there a connection?
Kelsey:
Definitely, we have seen as companies try to describe their products and in ways that are false and misleading. Now, companies who were making these products can actually describe their products as humane or more sustainable, or cruelty free. That has prompted a pretty massive backlash against these innovative new companies. This has come in the form of efforts to restrict those companies from using the terms that consumers recognize. Using terms such as meat, or burger, or sausage, to describe these plant-based products, and laws banning or restricting plant-based companies from using those terms have been passed in a lot of states. We are now fighting in a filing constitutional challenges against some of those laws. At the same time, plant-based meat companies have tried to lobby the Federal government to restrict these kinds of terms in labeling, and in general just to attack the competition rather than compete on a fair playing ground. We’re very disturbed by that. We know it’s is because these companies see plant-based meat as a real threat, and they know that they can never be humane, so they resort to hamstringing plant-based meat companies.
Hope:
Yes, that’s interesting. Like you said, knowing that they can never be truthful, they can never be humane, they can never be cruelty free. It’s inherent in the animal agriculture industry. And that’s what I found through writing my book, The Ultimate Betrayal and researching it. Even companies that want to be more human cannot because there are inherent cruelties that you have to commit to make a profit. Taking the babies away from the moms, separating families in no matter the animal and performing body mutilations. All these things that they just wouldn’t make a profit if they didn’t do these horrible things. That’s really interesting that you say that, that they know they can never really be humane, they can never really be cruelty free. They are trying to stop the plant-based meats from advertising the truth, what they really are, the truly cruelty-free burger.
There was an interesting development in Costa Rica recently. The city of Curridabat gave legal personhood to pollinators, such as butterflies, bees, as well as some native plants and tree species. I thought this was really interesting. It kind of goes along with work that the Non-human Rights Project, the work they’ve done, trying to move the status of animals from property to personhood and protection. What do you think about that? How is that movement going?
Kelsey:
I can’t speak about the Costa Rica effort, because I’m not familiar with it. But we have seen an amazing explosion of developments around the world recognizing animals as not just property, but as individuals who deserve rights, protection, and recognition under the law. We are pursuing work at a variety of levels and through litigation and policy to expose that animals are not things, they are not a chair, they’re not a car, they’re not a piece of personal property, they’re individuals, sentient individuals with their own lives, their own feelings, their own senses of being, and that the law should recognize that. Whether it’s bringing cases like our case on behalf of Justice the horse in Oregon. To try to get him justice after he was abused. Or other efforts to try to recognize animals as individuals in state legislatures. These efforts can take a lot work.
Hope:
Tell us more about Justice. What was his story?
Kelsey:
Justice was a horse who was egregiously abused by his owner. His owner was charged and found guilty, and Justice went to live at a horse sanctuary. Justice had chronic medical conditions. He was suffering and required a lot of care to be restored to health. We filed a lawsuit on his behalf naming him as the plaintiff against his abuser, alleging that she had engaged in negligence and not given Justice the care that he deserved and as a result, he should be compensated for the harm that he suffered. The case is really simple. His abuser violated the animal cruelty law. Her violation of the animal cruelty law resulted in damages to Justice and so we’re trying to get those damages. The case is now up in appeal. It was dismissed in trial court and we’re bring the case up on appeal now. We’re hopeful that the Oregon court will recognize that Justice is not some piece of personal property, but is an individual who should have the wrongs done to him redressed by the court.
Hope:
Justice has a very ironic name. I love that his name is Justice. But I’m curious, so, you were able to get justice for Justice because of anti-cruelty laws. But what about the animals in animal industry? In animal farming? Why is it that you can’t, have cases with animal cruelty for farmed animals? I believe that there is exemptions, right? That farmed animals aren’t covered under the basic animal cruelty laws that we know for dogs and cats and horses. Is that right?
Kelsey:
That’s mostly right. I mean, it’s true that a number of states do have exemptions for farmed animals. They either exempt farmed animals entirely, or they declare that the cruelty that is done to farmed animals is not covered by the animal cruelty law, the state’s animal cruelty law. It is true that a number of states do leave farmed animals entirely unprotected. But many states don’t. Many states cover farmed animals and so it’s a matter of ensuring that those laws in the states where farmed animals are included in the law and that animal farming is not exempt, that those laws be fully enforced to protect farmed animals. California is a great example. California does not have an exemption for farmed animals and so the cruelty that’s happening on farms is illegal and should be stopped. That’s why we try use a variety of legal tools to advocate for prosecution, to try to support prosecutors when faced with cases of farmed animal cruelty, but also to use civil means, civil lawsuits to try to ensure that these laws are fully enforced
Hope:
Another reason why the Ag-Gag laws are so dangerous is because if you can’t see the cruelty, if you can’t prove the cruelty on video, then those anti-cruelty laws are useless.
Kelsey:
Video really doesn’t lie. It’s hard to defend, even if it’s a common industry practice. It’s hard for these industries to defend a piglet who is having his tail cut off and his testicles ripped out. That is why we’re so intent on defeating these Ag-Gag laws. The investigations are so important for telling the truth and getting the changes in policy and law that we so desperately need for animals.
Hope:
What gives you hope for the future?
Kelsey:
A lot. People are starting to wake up. People are seeing what really can’t be denied. So many undercover investigations, so much imagery in videos that really shows the reality. People don’t want any part of that. I am definitely given hope by the number of people who reject animal products and go vegan. I’m also hopeful about animals’ evolving place in the legal system. I think we’ve seen some amazing changes in how animals are viewed in society and under the law. That really gives me hope for my own work through the legal system to protect animals. The rise of products that can take the place in people’s diets of these cruel animal products. That’s another thing that gives me tremendous hope and makes a vegan world seem a little bit less far off, a bit little less crazy. I have a lot of sources of hope as I think we really have to continue to confront animals suffering in this magnitude, day after day.
Hope:
We need to wrap up now. But I wanted to ask if you have any last words, any final thoughts, and how can people get in touch with you if they have questions or would like to talk to you about the work you do?
Kelsey:
Thank you so much for having me. This has been a really illuminating discussion. It’s funny the question I am often asked, which is how can I find the truly humane products? And how can I know what labels to trust? It’s such a difficult question for me to answer because I don’t want to say, you can’t! Although sometimes that’s the truth. I mean I can tell people what labels are more likely to be false than others. But really, as you were saying, we can’t trust what these companies are saying and so if I have one overarching thought: don’t trust what your listening to, what you’re seeing, what you’re reading when it’s coming from these companies who are trying to sell you animal products.
Hope:
Absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Kelsey. It’s been great.
Thank you for listening to the Hope for the Animals Podcast. You can support this podcast and help us out by leave a rating or a review wherever you listen to your podcasts, and please, do your part to help make the world a better place for animals and live vegan.
