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222- UK Government to end animal testing?
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Well, that's perhaps what they'd have you think. But it doesn't take much digging to reveal that the champagne needs to stay on ice for quite a while, before animal advocates can truly celebrate.
And where's James Herriot when you need him?! Perhaps taking on the persona of an AI Bot, is the answer! UK Vets are concerned that AI might not be the best placed to advocate for farmed animals' welfare...either that, or they're worried that their jobs are under threat. But what do three long-in-the-tooth vegans think?!
As well as these stories, Mark, Julie & Anthony discuss five other bits of news from the vegan & animal rights space over the last seven days across the world.
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Enough of the Falafel is a community of people who love keeping on top of the latest news in the world of veganism & animal rights. With the Vegan Week podcast, we aim to keep listeners (& ourselves) informed & up-to-date with the latest developments that affect vegans & non-human animals; giving insight, whilst staying balanced; remaining true to our vegan ethics, whilst constantly seeking to grow & develop.
Each week we look through news stories from the past 7 days in the world of veganism & animal rights.
If you spot any news stories that might catch our fancy, or have an idea for a discussion topic, get in touch via enoughofthefalafel@gmail.com.
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This week's stories:
https://animalrising.substack.com/p/one-community-versus-big-ag
https://www.fwi.co.uk/news/crime/pig-farmers-warned-over-surge-in-activist-incursions
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/reindeer-christmas-events-festive-season-animal-welfare-b2863010.html
https://www.frontiersin.org/news/2025/11/11/frontiers-nutrition-plant-based-diets-reduction-carbon-emissions-land-use
https://www.farminguk.com/news/vets-warn-ai-revolution-must-not-undermine-livestock-welfare_67537.html
https://www.theanimalreader.com/2025/11/08/2900-cows-stuck-on-ship-spiridon-ii-for-over-2-months/
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/animal-testing-to-be-phased-out-faster-as-uk-unveils-roadmap-for-alternative-methods
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2lpekjeg9o
https://www.peta.org.uk/blog/roadmap-end-animal-experiments-uk/
https://crueltyfreeinternational.org/latest-news-and-updates/government-launches-bold-new-plan-replace-animal-testing
https://www.humaneworld.org/en/issue/cosmetics-animal-testing-FAQ
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_testing_regulations
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Thanks everyone for listening; give us a rating and drop us a message to say "hi"; it'll make our day!
Mark, Julie & Ant
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Transcript
Introduction to Vegan Week
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello everyone, if you are on the search for vegan and animal rights news, you need search no further, you are in the right place. So sit back and enjoy this discussion of the last seven days vegan and animal rights news with me, Mark and Julie.
00:00:17
Speaker
I think vegans go looking for trouble even when they're not looking for trouble. That's not what butt is used for. Brrr! Take your lab grown meat elsewhere. We're not doing that in the state of Florida. What about your protein and what about your iron levels? Should I call the media and say, hi, sorry. They're arguing like, oh, poor woe is me.
00:00:36
Speaker
Hang on a minute. You always pick.
00:00:44
Speaker
social injustice has connection another that's just what people think vegans eat anyway as long as you didn't get the wee brunions with the horns you'll be all right does veganism give him superpowers
00:00:59
Speaker
no i cannot fly around the city i don't have laser vision hello everyone you are listening to mark welcome to the show thank you for being here Hello everybody, Julie here. Welcome to Vegan Week.
00:01:13
Speaker
This is our new show where we look through the last week or so's vegan and animal rights news. But that's enough of the falafel. Let's hear what's been going on this week.
00:01:26
Speaker
For more details on the upcoming news stories, including links to our original source material, check out our show notes for this episode, available on your podcast player.
Anne's Campaign Against Pig Unit Expansion
00:01:37
Speaker
Okay, Julie, Mark and myself are going to go through six stories to get the ball rolling on this week's show. And we're starting off in the UK. This story comes from Animal Rising Substack.
00:01:48
Speaker
And it is a story about a person called Anne who lives in a small Norfolk village called Stowe Beden. It's about an hour's drive from where Kate lives. in the east of England and effectively she has been living in the shadow of an industrial pig unit owned by the meat giant Cranswick.
00:02:10
Speaker
It started off as a quote small holding but then it's got bigger and bigger and the the signs that things were not great were more and more palpable with horrible smells, physical side effects and Anne did her best to rally local residents, ah the council, the environment agency, often met with silence or little to no cooperation. But the great news is that with many people's help, Anne And the activists who have been working with her have basically got Cranswick's retrospective planning application to expand refused. So basically, Cranswick extended the site without the appropriate planning permission
00:02:56
Speaker
They then applied retrospectively to have this accepted and it has been turned down. Julie, I'm sure I've got some of the details wrong there because I very often do, but effectively this is a great victory, not just for Anne, but goodness me, potentially for many, many sentient beings.
00:03:14
Speaker
Yes, yeah, absolutely. There's nothing to stop Cranswick from appealing this though and it's very likely that they will do so. They've got very good legal team, I'm sure.
00:03:25
Speaker
They do seem to have the Environment Agency on their side as well, which is very unfortunate because I read the Environment Agency's report on this site and they seem to be saying, well, they were asked to make these certain changes and improvements and they have done just that and you know they They were sounding supportive, which was a bit disheartening.
Challenges in Reducing Factory Farming Demand
00:03:49
Speaker
Best case scenario, though, if we think about that, if then it means that this a farm either has to go back to its original size or becomes financially unviable if it's forced to return to its original size.
00:04:06
Speaker
And even if it closes down, it saves certain animals perhaps, ah ha but does that mean if demand stays the same, then that demand will just be met elsewhere?
00:04:20
Speaker
So one of the things that I found disappointing and discouraging was when I joined a campaign also in Norfolk against Cranswick, against a mega farm that was proposed, I was in direct contact, even in phone contact, not just messages, with the leaders of that campaign And they were, of course, absolutely against this mega farm getting consent to be built close to their houses.
00:04:48
Speaker
But when I gently had the conversation with them about looking at their own consumer behaviour... And its connection with fueling the demand for and the products of factory farming, they were, not all of them, but the majority of them were horrified.
00:05:07
Speaker
And i ended up being asked not to comment on their Facebook page because I was upsetting people. People want other folk to do what they would like, but they're not... And they want people to change or to do different, but they themselves are not prepared to do different always. And that's that's not really helping things because the danger is, yes, one factory farm doesn't get to be a certain size, but like I say, if the demand is still there, it'll be met either in this country elsewhere, we're in the UK here, obviously...
00:05:41
Speaker
Or, you know, by imports from places that will produce in this cruel way. So it's it's a bit it's a bit of a... we We need to do something about the demand as well as the supply in this thing.
00:05:55
Speaker
But there's certainly shout out to Animal Rising because they are the organisation that really stepped in. And they have a branch called Communities Against Factory Farming. And you can join in with the campaign. They've got 13 of them going at the moment against factory farms in the yeah UK.
00:06:12
Speaker
You can join in with that and join the protest. Yeah, I think there's a lot of mileage in doing that. they've got a good Facebook page as well. But also just being mindful of letting your friends who are consuming meat and animal products know what it is they're supporting and funding with things that are quite, they seem quite remote from factory farming when they're just packages in a supermarket.
00:06:37
Speaker
Yeah, it's the double-edged sword, isn't it, of getting more folk on board with your campaigning. That's a great thing. But if the reasons that they're getting on board are not for animal rights reasons, then very often, yeah, things will fall down the cracks like that or you you'll kind of expose ah ah a nimbyism, I suppose, it is in the case you're describing there, isn't it? Where it's sort of saying, well, I do want to keep eating my pig.
00:07:04
Speaker
I just don't want it to be killed and and living near me, have it live near someone else, which is is obviously not the point. But as you say, Julie, Credit to Animal Rising. They're not going to be any making any arguments like though that. they They're going to be arguments on on behalf of the animals.
00:07:21
Speaker
And as Julie said, there are ways to get involved, which you can find by just following the link in the show notes for this article. Down towards the bottom of the article, there is a link to to join that campaign, which we would obviously recommend folk to do.
00:07:35
Speaker
Talking of different ways that people might be wanting to get behind a vegan campaign, often we find that environmental reasons might lead somebody to follow a plant-based diet. And there's been lots of reports this week about a study that has been published in Frontiers in Nutrition that has been along those lines talking about the carbon footprint that a plant-based diet, or this particular headline says a vegan diet, there's a conversation we've had many, many times before, the carbon footprint that a plant-based diet can have when compared to a non-vegan diet.
Environmental Impact of Vegan Diets
00:08:15
Speaker
Researchers from the University of Granada and the Spanish National Research Council looked at four ideal weekly menus with equal energy value and following international recommendations for daily intake of macro and micronutrients, they were comparing a plant-based diet, an omnivorous Mediterranean diet, a pesco-vegetarian diet, an ovo-lacto-vegetarian diet, and like I say, the the plant-based one,
00:08:46
Speaker
The great news in terms of vegan advocacy and plant-based diet advocacy is the results showed that the plant-based diet reduced carbon emissions by 46%, water use by 7% and land use by 33%. The vegetarian diets, incidentally, cut carbon emissions by 35%, so not as much.
00:09:11
Speaker
The only sort of slight downside, I suppose you could say, is the three plant-based diets um did have small deficits in vitamin D, iodine and vitamin B12. But as the study cites, those three things are very easily supplemented.
00:09:26
Speaker
Mark, I've got a little quibble with part of the way that this study has been reported, but i'd be interested in hearing your Initial take and I wonder whether you might have the same quibble that I do, but let's give the floor to you.
00:09:39
Speaker
Okay, so the Mediterranean diet is is one of the the top diets um recommended by Non vegan doctors by sort of across the board the health industries and health research uh generally zeros in on the mediterranean diet or a variety of that in terms of the optimum diet for for a human health and it's been it's been sort of there for a while and how much um animal flesh and bovine secretions that you can include in that diet for it to still be healthy has been the outstanding question so it's so it's interesting to see them do a
00:10:18
Speaker
research but specifically in this i would take issue with some of the the stats that they come out with it says here that the vegan diet reduced carbon emissions by 46 46 water use by a mere seven percent now i do know here in new zealand that there was research done that there's there's a guy here called mike joy who is a tv personality who um looks at the impact of the water quality of of New Zealand, the rivers and lakes, which is shocking and which is ah ah result of dairy farming.
00:10:52
Speaker
Now, it all depends on how you quantify certain stats. So a lot of research into the amount of water use that the dairy industry needs ah focuses only on the amount that they need to to ah produce their viable product.
00:11:07
Speaker
not how much of the effluent needs to be diluted by for it to be considered safe to be to be to be put to to be put back into the river. So there's the clean water and the grey water usage, the before and after usage of the water.
00:11:20
Speaker
I'm sorry if I'm going toill it into the ah long grass here, but the outcome of that is shocking. So if you include all the water that the dairy industry uses, not just to produce, but also to doubt dilute their poisonous effluent,
00:11:35
Speaker
for enough for it to be considered safe to be pumped back into the rivers. 11,000 litres milk. So 11,000 litres per litter of milk so eleven thousand litres of water are used to produce one litre of milk.
00:11:48
Speaker
If you only look at the productive side rather than the effluent side of it, it's about 400 or 500. If you it in total, it's 11,000. So I would say that the vegan diet reduces water use by a hell of a lot more than 7%. Again, it depends on where you stop counting. Well, as well, it's the it's the Mediterranean diet they're comparing with.
00:12:10
Speaker
which typically doesn't contain beef or doesn't contain pig meat. You know, it's it's is typical animal flesh is fish, isn't it? in a and And chicken.
00:12:21
Speaker
In a Mediterranean diet. So they're comparing it with the, in a sense, the kindest animal. water figures. I wondered what you made, Mark, of the of the headline that it's halving your carbon footprint. And it wasn't just frontiers ah that we've taken this from that reports it like that. Pretty much every news site said, oh, it can halve your carbon footprint, which isn't technically true, is it? that they They're saying it will halve it compared to other diets.
00:12:50
Speaker
But it's it it's not it's not comparing it to how much you drive or things like that. So in that sense, I felt like it was kind of exaggerating the impact. not Not that we want to kind of downplay the impact, but I i felt that was a bit disingenuous.
00:13:06
Speaker
Yes, sure. I mean,
Misconceptions About Vegan Nutrition
00:13:07
Speaker
it's it's a clickbait and it's you know it isn't taking in the the entire lifestyle of someone's behavior. But also, i would take issue with the the three plant-based diets were nutritionally balanced, except for small deficits in vitamin D, iodine and vitamin B12. Vitamin D you can get from the sun, from from a few minutes exposure in the sun.
00:13:27
Speaker
There's your vitamin D. that's your vitamin day Vitamin B12, this is as though ah where the, where do you get your protein of the modern day, right? Vitamin B12 is in all the fortified plant milks that that I drink.
00:13:41
Speaker
I get a blood test taken every year to see where I stand with all of these things. And vitamin B12, I'm always right there in the middle. if i've never i've never I've never been low on viin vitamin B12 and I've never taken a supplement for it.
00:13:56
Speaker
So if if if you if you didn't know anything about the ah vegan diet, you would you would be left concerned about your vitamin B12 rates from from reading this article. and And as I say, it's the where do you get your protein idiocy.
00:14:11
Speaker
that that that i've stopped hearing for for the ah for the last few years because everyone knows now where you get your protein yeah and vitamin b12 is not an issue the only thing that i would say might be hard to come by in in the average diet for the for the average person is two parts of the omega-3 fatty acid chain which is the epa and dha and that is found in algae It's the only thing that actually produces it. It isn't found in fatty fish.
00:14:39
Speaker
Fish eat the algae and then it's in their bodies. It's the same way that that cows eat grass and and that's where they get their protein. So again, it's it's coming from a place of deep ignorance. The ah person that that wrote that I wrote this clearly hasn't hasn't done a deep dive into the vegan diet and where we get all of all all of things.
00:14:58
Speaker
if if if if if ah If any listener out there is is that concerned about whether they might be ah deficient in anything, go and get a blood test. It's free or as cheaper or as or as near as free and get it done once a year and it will put it will put your mind at ease as to where you you you stand on proteins calcium iron folates and all of this sort of stuff so again i would say it's it underestimates the impact of the vegan diet it says here that a vegan diet cuts land use by 33 less than one percent of land in new zealand i'm talking about specifically here is used to grow all of the nation's fruit veg and berries
00:15:36
Speaker
less than 1%, it's 0.8% of land here produces all of our basically plant-based foods besides grains. The rest is the dairy industry and beef and lamb, which takes up about 80 or 90% of all the agricultural land here, either directly or indirectly for the food grown to to ah keep these animals alive.
00:15:59
Speaker
So I'd say it wildly underestimates the positive impacts on the environment that a vegan diet has. Yes, yes. Which, you know, can considering all of that, the fact that the the headlines have generally been really positive, i I think we have to take. But yeah, like you say, Mark, there is a ah big lag on on people's general education on these things and it's heartening to see that yeah where do you get your protein is is is fading into the distance and hopefully these other dietary misconceptions will fade too with a ah lot more education like this.
00:16:33
Speaker
I must say about a year or two ago I was at a function it was a family an extended family thing that was going on in the middle of the North Island so in real sort of rural former a country and I was chatting to someone who I hadn't met before. We were just talking about this and that.
00:16:49
Speaker
And we ah stumbled across the in fact that I was plant based, that I was vegan. And she did ask me where I get where i got my protein from. And I assumed that she was just having a laugh and I just laughed and just moved on. and and And then she asked me again a few minutes later, no, I'm serious. Where do you get your protein from? And I just had to walk away. I was like, this is unbelievable. It's like back in Ireland in 1977.
00:17:12
Speaker
But yeah, it was the first time I've been asked that question in probably about 10 years. Yeah. Okay. Well, so crumbs of comfort. ah Yeah. No, thank you for that one.
Animal Rising's Activism Against Pig Units
00:17:22
Speaker
So Mark and I were talking last week about farmers in Northern Ireland who were being warned against animal activists and their nefarious ways of, oh,
00:17:32
Speaker
just collecting information on what's actually happening and this trend is continuing this week julie has got a story from farmers weekly which is saying that pig producers across the uk are being urged to remain vigilant after animal rights groups and they name animal rising in this launched a major campaign to disrupt permitted pig farming operations through covert investigations, media pressure and private prosecutions.
00:18:01
Speaker
Julie, I was really impressed with the scale of this. ah could I'd not read this anywhere else. um Apparently, Animal Rising are planning to investigate more than 80% of the UK's 234 pig units, labelled as intensive, by the end of this year.
00:18:17
Speaker
That's incredible. Yes, and produce two documentaries, one for the people who stream these kind of things and one for the people who watch things on BBC or whatever you do. I don't know.
00:18:29
Speaker
It's going to be busy in those pig farms, you know. Because Animal Rising aren't the only folk that go in. They might have the Animal Justice Project goes in. what they What's the other one called?
00:18:41
Speaker
Freedom for Animals or whatever. They do undercover stuff. that You know, one of these days there's going to be an undercover worker in one of these places worrying about the presence of another worker only to find that they're in cahoots, they're on the same side.
00:18:58
Speaker
We kind of need Project Phoenix here to coordinate all this because isn't a shame that these efforts are possibly a little bit scattered? Because imagine if they combined resources. One of the things that the National Pig Association folks were feeling threatened by was they've got you know they're coming in with high tech stuff and a camera that's five thousand pounds and planting this 5g equipment in our farms and things like that well do you know what
00:19:31
Speaker
you You've probably got more expensive tech than that in your buildings already. But what's what's the worry? I mean, it's surely high high quality video footage of your manufacturing progress. People going about their day to day jobs innocently.
00:19:47
Speaker
Yet if they have nothing to hide, there is no reason for them to be too worried about it. And if they're so sure that the people who consume the end product of this industry that they're involved in know all about it, know all the facts anyway, are complicit and happy to be so, then it's not going to put them off.
00:20:08
Speaker
You know, if they're thinking, well, everybody knows, you know, that pigs are bred and then we rear them, you know, in little pens and then we slaughter them for food and they're fine with that.
00:20:18
Speaker
Well, if that's the case, again, they have nothing to worry about, but they are clearly very worried. And it's kind of fun. I kind of like this article.
00:20:29
Speaker
It is sort of the trash taking itself out kind of scenario in their sort of admitting how upset they are. I like the quote from the so-called pig producer in Lincolnshire.
00:20:42
Speaker
He's not a pig producer, people. He doesn't actually produce pigs unless he's giving birth to piglets himself. He is saying... everyone who cast a camera Everyone must make sure that they follow all the red tractor guidelines and rules to the letter.
00:21:03
Speaker
dear. you know what What's the problem there? And another person is saying the threat of hiring undercover employees is making recruitment more difficult. They're saying recruitment's difficult enough.
00:21:16
Speaker
but they're having to check candidates two or three times over. Well, you know what? That shouldn't be a big deal. What's the problem with that? did Were they just letting anybody in through the back door? Because I think they were.
00:21:28
Speaker
And now they can't get away with, you know, cash in hand or whatever because they don't know who they're employing. But in my favourite person, I think, out of this was Lizzie Wilson. She's the chief executive of the National Pig Association.
00:21:42
Speaker
She gets it. She's clever. She says, it's not about improving animal welfare. Their ultimate aim is to end all livestock farming.
00:21:54
Speaker
Yes, you're right. She was like, you know, oh, and they're doing all this sophisticated stuff and it's not even about animal welfare as if that was a criticism. But that's the power of this. It isn't about that. You're absolutely right. You're on the money there, Lizzie Wilson.
00:22:08
Speaker
It's not about animal welfare. It is about ending all livestock farming. So yes. um And final word goes to Rose Patterson um of Animal Rising saying, you know, we're against industrial factory farming, low welfare imports, both of which undermine British farmers.
00:22:28
Speaker
We're working towards a sustainable plant based food system and it needs to be farmer led and properly supported. she's not just saying, oh, you're all bad people. She's saying there's a better way to feed ourselves here and we would like to work with you to to support you in doing that.
00:22:47
Speaker
Absolutely. But yeah, bring on the cameras. Yeah, bring on the cameras. and ah I would suggest that if if the Farmers Union war, true to the word and British farming was the peak of quality standards around the world, and they'd be more than happy to allow these people in openly, and they would welcome them in with their cameras to prove to the consumers that they have the highest welfare standards in the world, as they claim, which they don't. And even if they are the highest welfare standards, they're still woeful.
00:23:17
Speaker
and um not And that's why they're terrified about being found out. Yeah, indeed. Indeed. Well, like you say, Julie, good for everyone pushing forward this campaign, it really drove it home to me. It's like, do you know what?
00:23:30
Speaker
Every little effort that goes into sabotaging these insidious industries makes a difference, even if it means they've got to be more scrupulous with their recruitment. If it means that every... Because they don't know which farm that these campaigners are going to target.
00:23:46
Speaker
So if it means every farm has got to put in more effort towards this, they've got to pay more attention to that or what have you, it makes it less and less viable as a business. So I think kudos to anyone who does anything to make this more of a difficult operation for the folks behind it.
00:24:03
Speaker
And those who are interested in hearing more from Rose Patterson, there is a great episode of the Species Unite podcast released about summertime 2023, I think, where Elizabeth Novogratz, the host of Species Unite, talks to Rose Patterson so you can hear more from her there.
00:24:22
Speaker
Now that story had a link to last week's show and our next one does too. Mark was talking to us about the fact that the number of vets, veterinarians in the UK was 10% lower than it needed to be functional and lots of vets were considering leaving the profession.
00:24:39
Speaker
Vets are back in the news this week. This comes to us from Farming UK.
AI and Ethics in Animal Farming
00:24:43
Speaker
Vets are warning that the AI revolution must not undermine livestock welfare. There's going to be a session titled AI on Farms. Is it good for vets and animal welfare at this year's London Vet Show, where, quote, experts will explore both the benefits and ethical challenges of using AI on a farm. So I don't suppose they're going to covering just the ethical challenges of farms and that could be another discussion for them perhaps but for those who are unaware AI is currently already being used on farms um to track milk yields to see the movement of animals detect early signs of illness check animals behavior amongst other things Mark it's interesting that
00:25:35
Speaker
Many vets feel positive about AI, but none nonetheless, from from an animal rights point of view, it raises it raises many issues, and I don't really know where to begin.
00:25:48
Speaker
It is bizarre. The more I'm finding out about vets, the less I like them. There was a series on BBC from years back. It's actually been repeated now called Old Creatures Great and Small, and it was ah this very light-hearted sort of middle-class video presentation of vets in the the World War II period. This was the 1940s and fifty s in rural Britain. And it was about the trials and tribulations of a bunch of vets that were sharing a house together, i think somewhere in new Yorkshire.
00:26:17
Speaker
and And it was very twee. It was James Heriot and Mark. James Herriot. That's the one famous vet, a real life man. Yes, that's right. um And it really portrayed them in the best life possible, really.
00:26:30
Speaker
And I remember watching that as a kid and it didn't make me want to be a vet or a farmer or move to Yorkshire, but it it did portray them in as good a light as you could get. The more I read about them now, the less the less I like them and the more they've moved away from that James Herriot, sort very pastoral, very kind natured.
00:26:48
Speaker
approach I would suggest that their main concern their their main involvement really in the animal exploitation trade is to fight back diseases and the risks of zoonotic diseases breaking out in the human population.
00:27:02
Speaker
And that's where it ends really. They they talk here about animal welfare. I challenge anyone to walk through a form of any description, a factory form or otherwise, and tell me that these animals are are being well looked after or that animal welfare is anywhere near the agenda of the person operating these places.
00:27:20
Speaker
And I can't really see how AI is going to help that because surely what would happen is that artificial intelligence would pick up the signs that an animal is ill sooner than a human being and it would say,
00:27:33
Speaker
ah cow number 2432 is lame and it would just mean that that cow's killed that it it's not going to result in oh all of a sudden oh let's let's you know look after these animals or what have you it's it's surely going to be like a more advanced screening system and the more I'm learning about animal agriculture the more I understand that it's it's just like well if a if an animal is not worth it financially then you just kill them sooner Absolutely. I mean, the the very fact that they're condensing all these animals and they're in in the same place, they're separating them from their natural environment and their natural social structure. Diseases are going to break out and spread much faster than than they would in nature.
00:28:16
Speaker
and that And that's what this all about this this is all about. So the vet's part in this is to be as complicit as the farmer or the abattoir worker or the person buying these vial products.
00:28:28
Speaker
in this whole process, they aren't there for animal welfare. They're there for the farmer's welfare and for profit welfare. and And the way that they disguise this is quite sickening, really. It's pure propaganda.
00:28:38
Speaker
AI is going to affect everyone's lives, farmers, truck drivers, teachers across the board. Their only concern is the amount of money that they will or will or or will not be making on the back of this and how much money that they'll be making for their clients, the farmers as well.
00:28:54
Speaker
Yes, indeed, indeed. It it doesn't doesn't seem like a an advance in and situation on on an animal ag farm either way. Where is James Herriot when you need him? Indeed, there that that could be the title of this week's episode.
00:29:10
Speaker
um Now, in our theme of throwing back to previous episodes, I'm going to throw us back almost a year ago.
Opposition to Live Animals in Events
00:29:17
Speaker
I remember Julie talking about a successful campaign where some activists had removed the opportunity for folk to go to a live reindeer campaign.
00:29:29
Speaker
wasn't a show, was it, Julie? But it was it was an event where one the big yeah polls was, oh, look, we've got live reindeer. Well, well, that one-off, and it wasn't a one-off, there were other campaigns last year, but there has been a Project Phoenix-esque collaboration between several organisations, One Kind, Animal Aid, Born Free and Freedom for Animals have launched a an open letter um along with many organizations two that thirty organisations 30 organisations plus individuals
00:30:02
Speaker
in total, have written this open letter and it's been dispatched to hundreds of event planners across the UK calling for an end to events involving live reindeers, which I'm sure all of our listeners are aware, but just in case you're not from the UK or or ah you don't have practices like this in your country, um that that can be a traditional part of Christmassy celebrations with a reindeer sort of being synonymous with this time of year. And of course, Julie, these innocent animals do not want to be stood in a shopping centre or at a garden centre or doing anything else really other than what they would like to do for themselves rather than meeting a ah superfluous human need.
00:30:48
Speaker
Absolutely, absolutely. Because I think that's the bit that you need to remember in all of this is that it's not just about the impact of the events themselves having on these animals. It's about the fact of how they live for the rest of the year when they're not being used in this way.
00:31:08
Speaker
So how they are bred, how they are farmed, how they are transported, hundreds of miles in some cases, and how they are then used and put in these awful environments.
00:31:20
Speaker
And then obviously how their lives are prematurely ended when they are no longer of any, you know, financial worth. So the whole story obviously is one of exploitation.
00:31:33
Speaker
But if that is too hard for some people to get their heads around at the beginning of their sort of engagement with the idea of animal rights, then yes, it probably helps just explain that these are primitive wild animals who aren't domesticated in any way and I don't think I would have understood this concept as well as I do if I hadn't come across there are breeds of sheep that are domesticated and breeds that are not.
00:31:59
Speaker
And, you know, in my little group, there is one lady, Rona, who is is of a non-domesticated breed and her behaviour and her the way she presents and the care that she needs is very different because of her wee wildish nature. She's lovely. I adore her.
00:32:18
Speaker
but she gets more stressed and more upset than the other sheep about certain things. And I think that's where reindeer are at. And although they might be standing quietly, the evidence has shown that actually they're becoming... the you know ill from the exposure to the noise and all of the people.
00:32:37
Speaker
But as prey animals, they don't always outwardly show it because they're thinking. Yeah. And and and actually, like this this open letter details the fact that 75% of the animals display but of animals displayed stress indicators such as trembling or avoidance, And and they're just the things that we can see, yeah like you say, that that so animals mask behaviour, don't they? Yes, and certainly pre-animals do, you know, because it's how they survive.
00:33:06
Speaker
So this issue, it might seem a bit niche. It's not as gory and awful and immediate and obvious as factory farming or whatever, but it really is worth campaigning about in its own right because because it's really simple to oppose it. And it might help some people understand the concept of animal rights and question themselves.
00:33:28
Speaker
If they've got an animal welfare mindset already, it might help them make the jump to animal rights. Or if they've got a kind of no consideration at all to animals, it might just...
00:33:39
Speaker
be an easy way in to shed a bit of light on a different way of thinking about our relationship with animals because they might be the people that just switch over if a gory documentary was on.
00:33:51
Speaker
But this idea of just animals having the right to live their life in freedom and not being a used by us, I think is a nice one to introduce to children as well because often these events are aimed at children.
00:34:04
Speaker
So, you know, get them while they're young. If you want to join in with the campaigning, you can go on any of those or organisations, websites. I think the animal aid one is the best out of the lot for a good section where you can take different forms of opposition to this so you can...
00:34:25
Speaker
Give the organisation themselves a heads up if you hear about an event that's going to have wee reindeer at it. You can write your own letter to your own council so that they will have a policy that they don't use reindeer and other animals at their events.
00:34:40
Speaker
You know, you can do it quite broad brush as well. But there's different actions you can take. None of them cost money. None of them take up a lot of time. It is just quite simple. But basically, these event planners, they want people to show up. And if they think people are going to boycott or have a you know ah negative attitude to what they're putting on, they don't want that.
00:35:00
Speaker
So you know it's just fair to let them know where the demand is and what we think would make a nice event. And animal suffering shouldn't make anybody think it's a nice event. Who would want that?
00:35:13
Speaker
Absolutely. And we've we've seen similar single issue campaigns over the last 12 months be effective in that way. You know, small events that are being hosted at garden centres, shopping centres, what have you. It doesn't take many emails for an end and event organiser to get the heebie-jeebies and think we could do with not having this negative PR. ah So, yeah.
00:35:35
Speaker
Great to know that we can affect things. And be nice about it. Say, well, we'd like to come to your event. We'd like to come and we'd like to enjoy it. And maybe here are some other ideas that you could have.
00:35:46
Speaker
And maybe just even, I know some folk come out with this, well, have folk dressed up as reindeers or, you know, have some thing, oh ah animatronic thing going on.
00:35:57
Speaker
I would say maybe just forget the whole reindeer thing altogether. Because then you might get into, oh, well, but we had real ones at our display. You only had to somebody in a stupid outfit. you know Why not just totally forget that and just do something completely different?
00:36:11
Speaker
And a real positive to to finish on, perhaps, is the fact that in the last seven years, according to this open letter, at least 218 events that previously featured live animals have switched online.
00:36:25
Speaker
away from doing so. So that that's where the momentum's going. So let's that's increase that number, eh? Yes. Indeed, indeed. Now, very often on Vegan Week, we will provide you news that is positive and uplifting, or it might be something that if it's not the most positive story, there's something you can do about it.
Tragic Animal Export Story
00:36:44
Speaker
And then there's also some times where we just feel ah compulsion to report on a story, even if it is particularly bleak and it doesn't feel like there is much hope, just so that people are seen and and that the news is shared. And I would say that our next story does fall into that last category.
00:37:03
Speaker
It comes from the Animal Reader. It's been reported in other places too in the last week or so. And it is the sorry news that nearly 3,000 cows are currently stuck on on a ship, a live export ship. It's called Spiridon 2, and they've been stuck on there for almost two months.
00:37:21
Speaker
They are off the coast of Turkey. that The ship left Uruguay on the 19th of September. They arrived in Turkey, a month later, so they were they were guaranteed to be on that boat for a month as it was.
00:37:36
Speaker
Effectively, they have not been allowed to dock and the animals to be unloaded. Obviously, then they were going to go to their slaughter. The reason that they haven't been allowed off is because around 500 of their ear tags did not match documentation.
00:37:54
Speaker
So the Minister of Agriculture and Forestry in Turkey refused to let the cows be unloaded, told the ship to move away from the port and stay offshore.
00:38:05
Speaker
Several animals have died, at least 48 cows have died on the boat. Food and water supplies are running out. And Mark, it's a real grim situation. I watched a video on this and a vet was, back to vets I'm afraid, was saying that the the kindest thing to do would actually be for the but cows to be euthanized.
00:38:25
Speaker
Whether or not we agree with that, that does detail quite how bleak things are. Sure, this is the this is the end result of a lot of live exports. This Spiridon ship and all ships like it are floating factory farms.
00:38:40
Speaker
that move from a to b polluting the water as they do so i mean where's all that cow shit and piss going straight into the sea and it's full of nitrates i mean the the damage it it does to the to the waterways is bad enough and then they export these poor beasts across the sea polluting the ocean as they go along and the the fear and discomfort of the animals on board this particular ship Must be a horror show. I mean, it's it's it's awful. In New Zealand, the Labour government, the the last government 2021 banned the
00:39:16
Speaker
farm animals because i think 6,000 sheep drowned in a ship that sunk off the air coast of New Zealand. So as a response to that, it was banned. did The new right-wing government under pressure from one of their small... It's a three-party government at the moment, and one of the more minor, more right-wing parties has insisted on re-legalizing the exports of animals.
00:39:40
Speaker
So there is there is a campaign going on here at the moment. I know that it was a very contentious issue. In the UK, when I was living there, there was a small port town, Brightling Sea, I think it might have been, and near to Brighton, where there was a massive campaign that was going on for months to try and stop the live export of cows from from their area and it got really militant as well and i think it was it was as successful but i can't remember bsc uh the mad cow disease crisis put a lot of that on hold including in ireland where live exports and imports was banned for a while as a result of bsc so it's it's often and always been a contentious issue um my heart goes out to the animals that are stuck on board this this it's a floating hellhole
00:40:23
Speaker
it's madness isn't it like that that if if it was the last nutrition source left on the planet then i could understand in desperation why humans would say okay fine with it's awful but we've got to load these animals onto boats and ship them across the world there are so many things you can eat why why is this a thing yes yeah well it's it's it's money and it's ignorance and it's apathy and to to be frank it's ah wanton cruelty as well. it it is the sort of It is one of these pinch points where a lot of people, even people who quite happily consume the animals that are being exported, have an issue with it. So I'm not sure what the end game of the Spuridan 2 is going to be, but as I say, the the suffering ah mentally and physically of the animals on board must be horrendous.
00:41:11
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And as you cited there, I suppose the tiniest of silver linings is that sometimes these really horrific cases that make multiple media streams, not just the animal reader, but national news, they can be the ones that tip the balance and and get legislation to to reflect a a more humane way of of ah of a country legislating for itself. But um we we can only hope that things like that happen.
00:41:39
Speaker
Thank you for that one, Mark. Right, so those are our first six news stories of the show. Now, you might have an opinion on something that we've not covered. Maybe you disagree with something we've said. Maybe there are some news stories that happened in the last week that we haven't covered.
00:41:54
Speaker
Either way, we really love hearing from you all. Here's how to get in touch. To get in touch with us, just send us an email at enoughofthefalafel at gmail.com.
00:42:06
Speaker
We see ourselves as a collective. our listenership stretches all around the world and everyone's opinions, questions, feedback and ideas are what helps shape the show.
00:42:18
Speaker
Go on, send us a message today. Enoughofthefalafel at gmail.com. Okay, we're going to finish the show with an in-depth focus on what undoubtedly has been the biggest animal rights and vegan story of the week here in the UK.
UK's Plan to Phase Out Animal Testing
00:42:35
Speaker
I can't speak for the rest of the world, but it's been recorded in February. many different news sites and even the government's website, gov.uk.
00:42:44
Speaker
The press release says animal testing to be phased out faster as UK unveils roadmap for alternative methods. I'll pick some bits from this government press release.
00:42:57
Speaker
Obviously that's going to have a certain tone and a certain flavour. We've also pasted in the show notes links to this story being reported on the BBC's website. as well as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals UK and Cruelty Free International.
00:43:13
Speaker
This is something that was promised to an extent in the Labour government's manifesto as when they were campaigning back in 2024 to be the dominating party, which is is what happened with the election results.
00:43:30
Speaker
And as they say in this press release, animal testing in science is set to be phased out faster under a new plan to deliver on the government's manifesto commitment unveiled by science minister Lord Valance.
00:43:45
Speaker
And that was on the 11th of November. They have laid out a greater focus on three particular systems, organ-on-a-chip systems, so tiny devices that mimic how human organs work using real human cells, greater use of artificial intelligence to analyse huge amounts of information about molecules to predict whether new medicines would be safe and work well on humans, as well as 3D bioprinted tissues that could create realistic human tissue samples from skin to liver for testing, providing lifelike environments for studying human biology,
00:44:23
Speaker
and checking if substances are toxic. Now, interestingly, they have laid out some dates for various things. I actually found Cruelty Free International's summary a lot easier to read than the government's press release with regards to these. so I'm just going to pick a sample of them here. Reduce pharmacokinetic studies on dogs and non-human primates by at least 35% by 2030. They are going to fully replace the rabbit pyrogen test by the end of this year, 2025. End skin and eye irritation and corrosion testing on animals by the end of 2026, by which time skin sensitization testing on animals will also be fully replaced.
00:45:09
Speaker
Botox potency tests on mice will be ended by 2027 and selected batch tests for contamination of human medicines will be ended by the end of 2027.
00:45:21
Speaker
Interestingly, and I'll be interested to hear Julie and Mark what your take on this is. the the The date of 2030 is a big one and in terms of reducing those studies on dogs and non-human primates by at least 35%.
00:45:35
Speaker
That 2030 date is after their current term in government would have come to an end. which makes it hard for them to stick to. if Obviously, if they stayed in government, then that's a different matter. But they polls suggest they might not.
00:45:50
Speaker
There is a long time to go. But a lot of these dates are in the next couple of years. So we can have a bit more hope there. We can also have a lot of scepticism. Julie, let's perhaps come to you first. What's your initial response to this news?
00:46:04
Speaker
A lot of scepticism. Yeah. yeah Is there anything that that we can be like, right, this is good? a I'm struggling. I am struggling to see anything that's good.
00:46:16
Speaker
what I will mean, they didn't have to do this, did they? They didn't have to Well, they kind of did. i Well, they said they would. They said they would, but they didn't have to say they would. I think they still would have been elected. This is a big public relations thing.
00:46:31
Speaker
They are saying they're phasing out animal testing faster, but it's at their convenience. absolutely it's once it's viable they are still with their experts giving opinions saying that animal testing is still described as being essential for developing treatments for diseases and they give the examples of alzheimer's and cancer um so in some ways it's almost highlighting their awful view
00:47:06
Speaker
that animal testing for certain things is just absolutely unavoidable, inevitable, and I utterly disagree with that. And yes, I'm not a medical expert in any way, but that narrative about these things being inevitable and essential I utterly oppose and reject that. I also don't believe that drugs are ever cures and searching for cures for certain illnesses, I think probably is a bit of a lost cause.
00:47:37
Speaker
They're treatments. ah no I know it's only a tiny example, but I know that when I was working in nursing and we had drug reps come round to the hospital, you know, peddling their drugs and things to the managers, they They would stop by the wards and chat to us as well.
00:47:54
Speaker
These people are not interested in cures, they're interested in treatments because they want people to keep on needing what they're being given. They don't want it to be, oh well we've had that and now we're fine. But also we're up against human physiology which is way more complex than we'll ever be able to understand.
00:48:13
Speaker
or conquer in that way. We can't overrule it or override it. There are just sometimes ways that our DNA, you know, gets affected by things.
00:48:24
Speaker
it's Our DNA is copying itself over and over and over again. And every one in 10,000, I think it is, time that it copies itself. it makes a wee mistake.
00:48:36
Speaker
And that wee mistake is either a big illness or a little one or you know, something else. I just don't think that that medicine's ever going to be the be all and end all. But I just think this whole idea that there are certain things we're never going to get the answer to unless we use animals. and think but I think we're just never going to get the answer no matter how many animals we kill.
00:48:57
Speaker
And I don't think the prize is worth the fight either. know that's probably extreme. But my worry is... that this news might give people a bit of a false confidence.
00:49:09
Speaker
So they might think to themselves, oh, well, you know, and I love animals. I'll still donate to the British Heart Foundation because I think all this stuff's kind of going into history. I think they're not really testing very much on animals anymore. So I think it's okay. Or, oh, well, I'm a vegan runner and my pal is running for Cancer Research UK.
00:49:32
Speaker
I'll just, I'll run with them and I'll support them and wear their little t-shirt because they must, they're doing that reduce and replace thing. They're trying their best. It's all, it won't, it'll be fine, you know. And that, I'm afraid, I ah hate that.
00:49:45
Speaker
I hate that people, as it is, don't question these medical charities enough as it is and hold them to account. But if people get this idea that, oh, I think these tests have been banned now. Oh, the government's phasing them out. You know, don't worry, everything's fine.
00:50:00
Speaker
ah You know, it's not fine, in my opinion. yeah i I think your scepticism is well placed, Julie. And Mark, I don't need to ask you if you are all sceptical of the UK government.
00:50:14
Speaker
But I wonder if we can place ourselves in the position of an animal tester.
The Future of Animal Testing and AI Alternatives
00:50:21
Speaker
or somebody who works in that industry, this fact the fact that the number of tests that are being conducted on on animals is is going down. The last 10 years it has, it's not quite halved. It's it's sort of dropped by about 60, 70%.
00:50:37
Speaker
And now this has been said by the UK government. That's surely going to feel like a threat. That's surely going to feel like, ah okay, we need to start moving if we haven't already.
00:50:48
Speaker
Does it not? Okay, so so we've we've been here before. and When Tony Blair was storming into an number 10 in 1997 or something like that, they had a manifesto pledge. It wasn't an off-the-cuff response to a question put forward to ah random minister on a TV camera.
00:51:06
Speaker
It was a manifesto pledge. I think it was called a New Labour and a New Deal for Animals. and the pledge included setting up a Royal Commission to look into, amongst other things, the vivisectioner industry with with the view to reducing as much as possible the same sort of language as they're using now to reduce as much as possible the amount of animals used in testing and the extremity of the of the experiments. And it it was it was taken as a really positive sign by the animal welfare community, by large sections of the animal rights community.
00:51:36
Speaker
As soon as they came into power, They did nothing of the sort to to the extent where there was a guy in prison at that time, a guy called Barry Horn, who was serving an 18 year prison sentence for setting fire to ah shops that were involved in animal in animal exploitation.
00:51:52
Speaker
And he decided to um to force the issue and go on hunger strike to get the government to commit to the pledge that they had said that they would do. And he died on his fourth hunger strike as the government continuously failed to live to to live up to their own promises.
00:52:09
Speaker
So I'm not sure if this is more of the same. If this is them just and announcing grand words that that i sound very positive, perhaps, but let's let's wait and see what they actually do.
00:52:22
Speaker
because the Labour Party in the UK particularly have a long-running history of making promises that they have no intention of fulfilling as soon as they get into the corridors of power.
00:52:33
Speaker
Vivisection generally has been one of these issues that actually helped kickstart the animal welfare and animal rights movements back in the 19th century. when when When vivisection wasn't, when there was no regulations on animal experiments at all, when it when it first became into vogue at the end of the 19th century, when doctors could grab stray dogs off the street and nail them to boards and then slice them open in front of student doctors to see what the inside of a dog looked like, that helped kickstart groups like the Band of Mercy, which would go around ah liberating animals from these places before.
00:53:10
Speaker
of before the ah doctors had had a chance to crucify them and slice them up without any anesthetic. The Band of Mercy, of course, then went on to inspire what became known as the Animal Liberation Front in the 1970s, whose main target initially was the fur trade and the vivisection industry. If you want to not sleep at night and have bad dreams if you do go to sleep, I recommend you look into a guy called Harry Harlow,
00:53:38
Speaker
who was an American behavioral scientist who was the epitome of the mad evil scientist who designed the most psychopathic types of and experiments to be used, mainly on baby monkeys, around the theme of what what happens when you socially isolate a baby from his or her mother and what are the impacts on the baby and the the adult that that ah comes out of that baby. and They are the most disturbing, tear-jerking, I'm not even going to call them experiments, examples of humans' cruelty to non-human animals that I've ever come across. ah Peter Singer used to talk a lot about him.
00:54:17
Speaker
This guy, Harry Harlow, was so insane that he kick-started the animal liberation movement in America as soon as details ah of ah of of his behaviour broke out into the into the into the general public. Well, it's interesting your you're detailing that sort of stuff, Mark, because like that ah I was listening to a BBC science podcast a couple of days ago reporting on this. it It came out two days ago as we're recording now, ah BBC Inside Science.
00:54:44
Speaker
And there there was a panel of three scientists, including the host, talking about this news that, oh, well, what's the current state of animal testing in science? Like, what are the equivalents like?
00:54:55
Speaker
Can we see this being a thing? And it really struck me the cold way in which they were talking about the animals. And then ah obviously, you know, I could be accused of living inside ah a vegan bubble. i mean, I don't think I am, but obviously i I will hear a lot of people talking compassionately about sentient animals.
00:55:14
Speaker
So it was quite a shock to hear that. And similar to what you were saying, Julie, in terms of like the, is the juice worth the squeeze? that You didn't use those exact terms, but in in in terms of like, is all of this that we are doing to animals worth it? Because we are all still going to die. We're all still going to be ill. And i'm i'm saying that from a privileged position of someone who is reasonably healthy and not you know I'm not befallen by any sort of diseases or disabilities or anything like that.
00:55:43
Speaker
But the I think there's a real danger, isn't there, that you can end up being in a scientific animal testing bubble where it just becomes normalised and it just becomes okay. And when you you don't have to dig too deep to to find cyclical arguments that that don't really make sense. On the government's website press release website,
00:56:08
Speaker
mentions understandinganimalresearch.org.uk. And we have covered them on the show before. It's not about understanding animal research. It's it's complete biased PR ah saying why it's necessary and and it should be done.
00:56:23
Speaker
And some of the arguments that they're making on there are really, but they they they don't take much pulling apart at all. I would say a a relatively educated secondary school student could do it.
00:56:35
Speaker
But it's it's the fact that it's normal that these this dispassionate ways of of relating to to our animal cousins can be seen as okay.
00:56:45
Speaker
If you want to truly understand animal research and look at the history of the last 100, 120 years of animal research, go onto YouTube and tap in Into the Shadows by a guy called Simon Whistler, who details over half an hour, if you can stomach the half hour, of Harry Harlow and his associates and what they did.
00:57:05
Speaker
They were so psychopathic and evil that they instigated the Committee for Animal Ethics, a group of other scientists who would look at ideas of research going forward in order to stop people like Harry Harlow from ever existing again.
00:57:19
Speaker
Thankfully, he's dead. He was completely unrepentant for the torture and mess that left behind. So when these people, and I'm not accusing all animal experiments as of being as extreme as this guy, he was an extreme example. But when these guys are left to to do whatever they want, this is where it ends up. You have it Auschwitz sort of situation for animals, and it is as disturbing as you will get.
00:57:46
Speaker
in terms of what they were doing. And the reason that they were doing it, it was stuff like, it seems so obvious. If you've if you've if you've ever had had ah had a child, if you're a parent, you will know that so like ah social of a small child or a baby is extremely damaging for that baby in the present and in the future.
00:58:06
Speaker
the The very fact that these people felt the need to put that to to the test underlines how far removed they were from humanity and from the real world. These people were the equivalent of Joseph Mengele in Auschwitz or what the Japanese Imperial Army set up a unit called Unit 731 where they were experimenting on on Chinese civilians, poisoning gas and electrocution and so on.
00:58:32
Speaker
These people can be absolute psychopaths. When they have the whip in their hand, the stuff that they will do is unbelievable. The reason that we have halved the amount of animals, so when the animal liberation movement kickstarted in the UK in the 1970s and focused, and not entirely, but a hell of a lot on animal experiments, there was about six or seven animals per year in the yeah UK being experimented on.
00:58:58
Speaker
Now it's down to under 3 million. That is because in large part of the exposure that these people helped to bring to the public eye about how bad these experiments were, and they were truly evil.
00:59:10
Speaker
So you really have to look at the broader picture and at the history of this. And it is imperative that we stop using animals in in these experiments because they're beyond evil. there is ah There is a group here called Beyond Animal Research, which is the which was the rebranded version of the Anti-Vivisection Society of of a New Zealand. And what they're trying to do, it's a different tack rather than attack them sort of head on They're trying to work with them in order to encourage them away from animal experiments and use AI and stuff like that instead. I think that AI could prove to be very, very useful in ah enticing these these ah people away from animal experiments.
00:59:49
Speaker
But bear in mind also that a lot of the end results of the research of and of and of animal experiment experimentation like like the case of the drug thalidomide, have caused immense suffering to to a humans when the experiments on animals proved that they weren't harmful.
01:00:06
Speaker
Well, that's the thing as well, in that we need to have a look at the whole medical scene and science scene altogether and think about what we're doing to the planet and what we're doing to people in all of this as well.
01:00:20
Speaker
You know, maybe we should be thinking more about preventative health care and lifestyle medicine, things that don't need to be tested on animals. They're likely to have better results for people.
01:00:32
Speaker
The only good thing, I have thought of one good thing about this stuff that's coming out, is that even having this conversation going... Talking about the reduction in animal testing might highlight for people who just don't have a clue. And I know tons of people who don't have a clue because I meet them all the time when I don't do races that where the proceeds are going to a medical charity.
01:00:55
Speaker
And people say, you doing that race, Julie? And I'll tell them why. And they'll say... but But, you know, do people test on animals still? You know, I have to explain it really carefully to people because they just don't know.
01:01:06
Speaker
So this will bring animal research into people's mind. It will let them see how many animal experiments are still going on. and what it actually involves. Because I think a lot people just don't realise and they don't think about the bigger picture. It's not even just about what happens when these animals are part of an experiment.
01:01:28
Speaker
It's how they're bred. Again, it's bit like the reindeer. It's how they're bred. It's how they live. It's how they're killed. Because, you won't go into it all, but they're killed the cheapest, quickest way. It's not a vet coming and putting them down, put it that way. It's just...
01:01:42
Speaker
horrific it's as bad as the meat industry in terms of abusing and killing animals and yet there's plenty people out there wouldn't eat meat but they will run for or or support cancer research or whatever Yeah, absolutely.
01:01:57
Speaker
I have to say that I think the fact that this is being aired and talked about by the UK government, for whatever reasons, whether it's a cynical vote grab, whether it's a genuine desire to move ah away from certain things, but they haven't quite got the balls to follow through with it,
01:02:18
Speaker
you know, because it results in confronting pharmaceutical companies or whatever. The fact that it's being raised, a few months ago, we had the US government saying that they wanted to move away from animal testing too. Those are just two countries, but if I was...
01:02:36
Speaker
you know the president of France or ah you know the prime minister of wherever. And I've heard that, oh, the UK have said this now. And previously the US said it as well. Like it just starts to put pressure on. And I think we're absolutely right to have cynicism saying, yeah, but how many how many times have governments promised to do things for animals and they haven't followed through in the way that we want to see?
01:03:00
Speaker
Of course, we should have that cynicism and we should call that out. And I'd rather they're talking about it than they're not. So we'll keep a close eye on this. Yes, no, I think it's really interesting that that that they're talking about it at all because it isn't as hot a topic as it used to be.
01:03:15
Speaker
But we all know that that our prevention is better than the cure and so many cancers and diabetes and so on are caused by eating animal body parts. So prevention is better than the cure.
01:03:26
Speaker
Absolutely. Absolutely. Good stuff. For folk who are interested in learning more about those preventative dietary ways of keeping healthy, there are our friends at the In A Nutshell podcast. they That comes from the Plant-Based Health Professionals UK, as well as Nutrition Facts.
01:03:45
Speaker
ah with good old Dr. Michael Greger. Both of those I would thoroughly recommend. Right, well, we've had a jolly old time talking about things, sometimes not the most pleasant things, but important it is too.
01:03:56
Speaker
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01:04:13
Speaker
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01:04:29
Speaker
That will also help the show pop up when people search for vegan or animal rights content online. Thanks for your help. And thank you everyone for listening. the next episode of Enough of the Falafel will be vegan talk and it will be available from Thursday 20th of October with Dominic, Kate and Anthony.
01:04:51
Speaker
It will be the ah listeners mailbag episode, by the way. Anyway, that's enough of the falafel for this episode. Thanks to Anthony and Mark for your contributions.
01:05:02
Speaker
Thanks again, everyone, for listening. I've been Julie and you've been listening to Vegan Week from the Enough of the Falafel Collective.
01:05:17
Speaker
This has been an Enough of the Falafel production. We're just a normal bunch of everyday vegans putting our voices out there. The show is hosted by Zencaster. We use music and special effects by zapsplap.com.
01:05:32
Speaker
And sometimes if you're lucky at the end of an episode, you'll hear a poem by Mr. Dominic Berry. Thanks all for listening and see you next time.
01:05:58
Speaker
This episode may have come to an end, but did you know we've got a whole archive containing all our shows dating back to September 2023? twenty twenty three That is right, Dominic. There's over 100 episodes on there featuring our brilliant range of different guests, people's stories of going vegan, philosophical debates, moral quandaries, and of course...
01:06:19
Speaker
around a dozen news items from around the world each week. So check back on your podcast player to hear previous episodes. And remember to get an alert for each new episode, simply click like or follow and also subscribe to the show.
01:06:34
Speaker
Thanks for your ongoing support wherever you listen to us from.