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220- Humans have created this problem, so it's up to humans to...
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Sort it out? Or stay the heck away! In this week's pod, we put the spotlight on New Zealand's attempts to go 'predator free' by 2050 to help out their 'native' flora & fauna...by destroying more-or-less everything else. A complex issue, with no real winners, but certainly an interesting context to ponder. As well as this story, Mark, Shane & Anthony discuss six 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://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/us/nearly-60-americans-eat-vegetarian-or-vegan-meals-says-study-check-the-difference-between-vegetarian-and-vegan-diet-and-the-key-reasons-driving-change-in-eating-habits-across-the-us/articleshow/125107683.cms?from=mdr
https://isthmus.com/news/news/animal-rights-activists-score-big-win-in-ridglan-farms-case/
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/years-after-argentina-shut-notorious-zoo-stranded-animals-127041563
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15260437/Vets-quitting-trauma-having-dogs-shortages-nations-health-risk.html
https://www.farminguk.com/news/union-urges-farmers-to-stay-vigilant-as-activist-threats-resurface-online_67495.html
https://www.majorcadailybulletin.com/news/local/2025/11/04/137781/investigations-continue-into-the-deaths-hunting-dogs-animal-protection-law-mallorca-blamed.html
https://www.npr.org/2025/09/08/nx-s1-5507110/new-zealand-conservation-experiment
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/05/science/iguanas-mexico-invasive-species.html#:~:text=Reptiles%20on%20a%20Mexican%20island,hundreds%20of%20thousands%20of%20years.&text=On%20a%20Mexican%20island%20in,seafaring%20ancestors%20has%20been%20vindicated.
Also see...
https://www.theanimalreader.com/2025/11/04/us-senate-rejects-effort-to-stop-plan-to-kill-450000-barred-owls/ which is from this week & has a similar flavour to our main story from NZ.
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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, Shane & Ant
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Transcript
Introduction to Vegan Week
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello everyone, if you are on the search for vegan or animal rights news, you need search no further. You are in exactly the right place. Sit tight and enjoy myself and Mark and Shane talking about vegan news in this episode of Vegan Week.
00:00:17
Speaker
So I think vegans go looking for trouble even when they're not looking for trouble. That's not what butter's used for. Brrr! Take your flat grown meat elsewhere. We're not doing that in the state of Florida. 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 the
00:00:44
Speaker
of social injustice has connection with another. That's just what people think vegans eat anyway. As long as you don't get the wee brunions with the horns, you'll be all right. Does veganism give him superpowers?
00:00:56
Speaker
No, I cannot fly around the city. I don't have laser vision. and Hi everyone, this is Mork here. Welcome to Enough of the Falafel. Thank you for being here.
00:01:08
Speaker
Hi everyone, this is Shane. Welcome to our news show where we look through vegan and animal rights news from the last week or so. But that's enough of the falafel. Let's hear what's been going on this week.
00:01:21
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.
Study on Plant-Based Diet Adoption
00:01:34
Speaker
Okie-kokie, it is another world news special this week. We're doing our very best to cover as many different countries as we can with our news stories. And we are starting this story. We're nailing two in one because this story comes to us from and Indian country.
00:01:51
Speaker
news publication, but it is talking about American, as in US of A, people and their eating habits. The headline, nearly 60% of Americans eat vegetarian or vegan meals, says study. So this is a poll that was done as far as I can work out earlier this year. That's when the the data came from.
00:02:14
Speaker
And yeah, the these numbers, 60%, basically that corresponds to people saying that they always, usually, or sometimes eat vegetarian meals, including vegan options.
00:02:29
Speaker
So i my first question, I'm wondering whether Shane's had a look at this one. um I'm wondering whether the other option was never In which case, Shane, the headline could be 40% people never eat.
00:02:42
Speaker
never vegan meal. Was that your take? that but Yeah, that's what it said. It said 41% of people do not eat vegetarian or vegan meals at all.
00:02:53
Speaker
yeah And all I can assume from that is that these people don't realize that like peanut butter and jelly is vegan. Macaroni and cheese would be vegetarian. I mean, ah fruit smoothie. i i i think sometimes people don't know what a vegan meal is. Yeah, yeah. So it it's perhaps...
00:03:12
Speaker
reflecting, I don't know, self-reported identity as much as actual eating habits. But there there were, i mean, think it's one of these stories, one of these studies where it almost depends what mood you're in, in that for me, that that it was reporting around about 4% vegan diets in the US, which to me was higher than I perhaps would have guessed.
00:03:34
Speaker
what What were your takeaways from it, Shane? Well, what I found was interesting, this was basically about 2,199 American adults that were surveyed between the end of June and the very beginning of July from a company called YouGov, which is like a survey company for hire.
00:03:49
Speaker
And they kind of broke it down also by race age, gender, and they didn't find any difference between male and female who were always vegan. About 5% of the people who were always vegan were male, 5% female.
00:04:02
Speaker
Basically, no difference in locations between like the North, the South, the West, and It was um a little bit more people ate vegan, which makes sense because you've got California, Oregon, Washington State, on the West, Colorado. Race, I thought, was interesting because only 4% of white people repeated reported always eating vegan, but 6% of Hispanic and 8% of black people reported. so And then, of course, everything else, i think, is what we would expect.
00:04:29
Speaker
18% to 34% were the ages that were the highest percent of people that ate always vegan, and the people who lived in the city. income didn't really make much of a difference. So I think, I mean, I think overall, it's good news. You've got, you know, about 60% of people who are, oh i I mean, i I would argue you have like probably 95% of people who are sometimes eating a vegan meal. but Yeah. I mean, you would have thought you'd have to be explicitly trying to incorporate animal products into every single meal. if if you were to never accidentally, just like you say, have...
00:05:03
Speaker
Maybe beans on toast isn't a particularly ah American meal, but that's that's almost my classic that I say to people. You do realise beans on toast. You do realise when you go to the chip shop and get, you know, just some fried chips and a pint of Guinness or whatever. You know that's vegan, right?
00:05:17
Speaker
We'll take it. We'll take it. i'm I'm feeling your positive spin as well, Shane. So... One thing, if the if the world was more vegan, we might expect a larger proportion of people to be upset at the thought of animals
Challenges for UK Veterinarians
00:05:31
Speaker
dying. And that seems to be a trend that is happening in the UK, as this story from the Daily Mail is stating that vets, and this is as in veterinarians rather than ex-army personnel, vets are quitting over the trauma of having to put dogs down as shortages also put the nation's health at risk.
00:05:52
Speaker
So this warning was issued by the Public Accounts Committee, who said that a shortage of vets was putting the country at risk of a serious outbreak of animal disease, such as bird flu or foot and mouth. And actually, when I was researching the show, I kind of found this press release under these two different guises. So one is taking the stance of, oh, well, loads of vets are are not wanting to put animals down. So, you know, that there's a shortage of vets.
00:06:18
Speaker
And the other one's saying, actually, we're at a greater risk of zoonotic disease outbreak because there are fewer vets. Mark, either way, if this is a trend, this is interesting. If ah the cited reasons, the the the thought and the process of having to regularly end animals' lives against their will is turn-off for qualified people. That's got an interesting impact, hasn't it?
00:06:46
Speaker
ah Okay, I found this article quite confusing on a lot of different fronts, really. and It does specify that that v vets are getting distressed about having to put dogs down. It doesn't mention other animals.
00:06:59
Speaker
um Now, there is there is a a notion around vets. there There is a very famous vet with the same surname as I have, a guy called Noel Fitzpatrick. And he's, I think he's Irish, but he's based in the UK. I think there's been BBC documentaries about him, maybe even a whole series sort of following his practice.
00:07:17
Speaker
And it very much plays into the image of the vet being ah person who who you bring your puppy to if if the puppy has a broken leg or something. And it's really, it's really saccharine sweet. And it's very family friendly stuff. And it's very, it really pulls in your heartstrings.
00:07:35
Speaker
And he he's at number one. he writes books every year and he's regularly at the top of the bestseller in animal rights and welfare list. And I know because I compare where my book is in comparison to him because the two of us the same surname.
00:07:51
Speaker
And he's always at number one, two or three. And I'm always way down in four or five hundreds and I hate him for it. But there is this image around vets being these very wholesome family pet pet dog or cat sorts of characters.
00:08:05
Speaker
that That is half the story. The other half of the story is that vets are frequently employed by the animal agricultural industry and they're vital cog in that wheel, basically. And their main job there, I think, is to do their best to and prevent or stimmy the spread of zoonotic diseases created by the overcrowding of animals in factory farms and sheds. that there's There's two sides to vets.
00:08:30
Speaker
One is the Noel Fitzpatrick side. The other is quite almost quite a sinister part of the death machine of animal agriculture. And they're there trying to do their best to and uh hold back the tide of the inevitable zoonotic outbreak that is going to happen that has happened before and that will happen again rather than address say animal welfare or cruelty issues it's about giving them enough drugs to make sure that there isn't a spread of avian flu or something like this so there's two very different sides to vets it is a bit head scratching about vets getting distressed about having to put down dogs
00:09:05
Speaker
Surely that they they were aware of that part of their job but ah was once they were going into studying to be vets. I would find it very distressing to put to put down animals as well. But i'm I'm a vegan animal rights activist, so of course I am. But it's, yeah, as I say, it is it is sort of a strange article. It doesn't mention the...
00:09:25
Speaker
the The sort of fact that there's a vet in every abattoir. I was down ah at an animal rights conference just two weeks ago in Christchurch and I was talking to a person there who's a fellow activist whose sister is a vet and her her main job is this this ah sort of thing. that And she was saying that ah most vets in New Zealand at least are employed by abattoirs and factory farms to pick up the pieces basically of the factory farming system.
00:09:52
Speaker
And that working in and out in and in an in an abattoir for vet is quite a common ah source of employment. It's good pay, apparently. And something that I thought would be anathema to vet going into an abattoir and seeing this daily brutality around them.
00:10:10
Speaker
ah No, in fact, it it seems to be part of the course. And it's it's one of the main employers of of ah vets, at least in this country. So my image of vets has changed dramatically recently because i've been for it was it was a it was a job I never thought much much of before. But we've touched this before, or about particularly about vets working in abattoirs. And I was thinking, oh, my God, I must do their head in and the quitting rate must be huge and must be highly distressing for them.
00:10:37
Speaker
It seems that it isn't. there they They generally eat eat meat and drink milk themselves. I don't think a lot of them see anything wrong with what they're doing or particularly distressing. And it really it really shook my image of vets from the Noel Fitzpatrick type of vet to something a lot more dark, actually. So, yeah, it is distressing to see drop in the amount of vets. Yeah, and I i suppose whatever...
00:11:01
Speaker
whatever the motivations or what's leading someone to that kind of work, that these statistics, you know, they are significant. 48% of vets in the UK working with farm animals have said that in the last year they would like to quit.
00:11:16
Speaker
And just in terms of pragmatics, the number of vets is 10% lower than than needed to meet Britain's demand according to this article. Interesting stuff. We'll see how that
Animal Rights Activism Success
00:11:27
Speaker
develops. And I should just say as well, I've not put a ah story in the running order this week talking about avian flu, but that is this is kind of linked to it and avian flu definitely on the rise in the UK. so but doubtless we'll be hearing more stories about that we're going to go back over to the us with our next story this is i think this is a positive story but there are many different facets to it and it's a legal case which always leads us to have grounds for confusion so me and shane are going to do our best with this one the headline is animal rights activists score big win
00:12:01
Speaker
in Ridgeland Farms' case. So a settlement is forcing the facility to stop most of its beagle breeding operation. If you just pop into Google Ridgeland Farms, you have a very basic and very transparent, in some respects, website just basically saying, yep, we breed beagles and they're experimented on.
00:12:25
Speaker
and we're good at it, and that's what we do. I say transparent, there's not much more information than that, but they're certainly not hiding what they do. As I say, a settlement agreement has been reached between Ridgeland Farms and the prosecutor. It's calling for the facility to surrender its license to operate as a dog breeder that sells purpose-bred beagles to outside researchers. This needs to happen by the 1st of July, 2026. I'm just gonna check in with Shane straight away to check I've got this right.
00:12:56
Speaker
Basically, they've agreed to do this so that they don't get a whopping great fine and law case at their doorstep. That's my understanding. Was that your understanding too, Shane?
00:13:06
Speaker
I don't think the fine is as big of an issue as that they were gonna have criminal charges brought against them. Because the the fine isn't that big. But yes, they want to avoid criminal charges being brought against them. And they've been trying to avoid that for some time. Yeah. So the deal is basically we won't bring these criminal charges, but you need to stop doing what you're doing, which is a big deal because they're the second biggest breeder of of beagles for experimentation in the country. Yeah, there are only two left. There were three at one at one point.
00:13:37
Speaker
Animal activists got the one of them shut down. So now this one's going to be shut down. I believe this one is in Wisconsin. And there's one other, which is in New York, which is will now be like the only and the largest beagle breeder. But this has been going on since 2017.
00:13:53
Speaker
Direct Action Everywhere broke into Richland Farms. In 2017, they took a lot of films. and they rescued, they did an open rescue of, I think, three beagles.
00:14:04
Speaker
They were then charged with felonies, and they were about to go to court, and Ridgeland Farms dropped the case against them. And they objected to that, which usually people who are on trial or accused of a felony don't object to that, but they objected to that because they wanted to present the evidence of what they had seen at the breeding facility.
00:14:26
Speaker
So then they fought to have a prosecutor or I think it was a district attorney um assigned to the case and to investigate. And then some local groups, a group called Dane for Dogs. And Dane, D-A-N-E, is the county that Ridgeland is located in. I think it's in Wisconsin.
00:14:44
Speaker
And they ah worked really hard over all these issues like what, eight, nine years to expose the cruelty. And government was going in, they were saying, oh, no, everything's fine.
00:14:56
Speaker
But I think there was another group that went in and finally found some cruelty and and were racking up charges. The local group, speaking of going back to what Mark was saying about veterinarians, the local group actually got the veterinarian there to lose his license.
00:15:11
Speaker
Because the veterinarian at the facility was allowing the staff who did not have any veterinary training to perform surgical procedures on the dogs without anesthesia, without any pain mitigation, anything like that.
00:15:24
Speaker
So they got him to lose his license. And then finally, they, instead of going to court and being charged with these cruelty charges, they decided that they are going to shut down. They are not going to be breeding any more beagles. They are allowed to sell off the beagles that they do have. And I think it's 20...
00:15:43
Speaker
twenty 300, 3000, something like that. 2300 dogs that they are allowed to sell off to various labs or facilities that test on dogs. And then they have 84 animals that they will keep there to test on themselves, but they're not allowed to breed more.
00:16:01
Speaker
I think that the activists are still working because um the bad news is that these dogs aren't going to be a allowed to be adopted. And they want to they want to get these dogs out and get them adopted. There are so many positives.
00:16:12
Speaker
And it's not ah it's not a clear cut thing, is it? Like you say, there's 84 animals that that's still going to be their life. Animals aren't numbers. But if we do just look at the numbers, quite recently, this facility had just over 3,000 dogs being experimented Well, though that they were breeding them. readinging Breeding them for experimenting on. yeah yeah Yeah, exactly. And there was nothing stopping that continuing on into the future. So, you know, we i think we've got to take this as as a victory, haven't we? As you say, Shane, there is still this facility in upstate New York, which currently has about 18,000 people.
00:16:50
Speaker
beagle So still still work to be done. But yeah, hats off to those people who've been pushing forward to to get this win and particularly good news considering what happened to to Zoe Rosenberg last week where she was unsuccessful in in a court case.
00:17:08
Speaker
that was about open rescue. But I suppose we hope that further down the line that is exposing and and shutting down similar horrific facilities in in the chicken industry. As we're on the topic of beagles and and experiments, just want to do an update for all the listeners out there ah about MBR beagles in, think they're in Cambridgeshire in the UK.
00:17:28
Speaker
and they've had a permanent protest camp led by a wonderful activist called John Curtin, who's in his 60s now and who's been living in an army tent outside the breeding facility for about four or five years. I was listening to an interview with them just yesterday, and apparently they they've been managing to stop and talk to all the deliveries of fuel to MBR acres and convincing the drivers to turn around and not deliver the fuel.
00:17:56
Speaker
and MBR acres are running out of fuel to supply their equipment and for heating and all the rest of it. And they've only got about a week of fuel left. And apparently if they don't get if any fuel, then they will be forced to close. So as as unlikely as it seemed at the start of this campaign, it looks like MBR acres could end up being closed down, which would be wonderful news. And fair juice to John Curtin for for continuing to put on pressure. He broke into into the facility years ago and helped to liberate about 82 Beagles back in the 90s, I think. So he's changed his tactics, and but he's still still hard at it. It's fascinating that the playbook of the single issue campaign, isn't it? Like the
00:18:39
Speaker
the way that you can just say, well, okay, we're going to stop anyone delivering toilet roll to your facility. Try working there now. that Now let's see if you can do it And then it can be something like that, that can be the, be the thing that tips the balance. But yeah. And I suppose listeners can, can go onto Facebook and for the most ah up, up to date stuff from the NBR Beagles in in particular. I know I'm part of a group there that tracks things. And yeah, as you say, Mark, there will, By the time this episode goes out, there will just be a few days left, according to the current timeline, for them to find a new supplier. So let's hope they don't.
00:19:13
Speaker
Thank you, Mark. Thank you for that story, Shane. So we've been talking about potentially animal exploiting organisations quaking in their boots at the thought of people coming in and seeing what they're
Farmers Respond to Activist Pressure
00:19:25
Speaker
doing.
00:19:25
Speaker
And that brings us on to our next story. This one comes to us from Farming UK. It's from Northern Ireland, where the Ulsters Farmers Union... have issued updated guidance to help farmers, quote, protect their property, livestock and families after several years of disrupted trespass incidents aimed at filming or live streaming farming operations.
00:19:47
Speaker
um So they're being urged basically to remain vigilant following renewed online activity from, quote, activist groups planning coordinated farm incursions across the UK. Mark, you've had a look at this article. Unsurprisingly, it's all going down the lines of woe is me. with You know, this is very upsetting when people come onto our property. It could it could be a biosecurity threat. The animals could be upset and things like that. But but really, our takeaway here is surely got to be that that the animal rights activists are are getting some headway here. If there's a need for this to be issued, that's that's a positive sign, surely.
00:20:27
Speaker
Yeah, of course, it is ironic for a factory farmer to be worrying about the welfare of his animals and biosecurity. I mean, come on. So I was talking to some people again at this annual rise conference here a few weeks back, and there is a group here called Farmwatch, and their whole method of operation is to go in often at nighttime to to a farm. It's which are often incredibly easy to get into. I was unaware of of the fact that a lot of these sheds and buildings that animals are kept in are rare are rarely locked at night.
00:20:55
Speaker
And they're going in getting excellent footage. And similar to the Ulster Farmers Union, it it keeps these farmers on their toes and ah regulations and rules that are ah easily ignored on farms, are suddenly being tightened up because they think that so that as someone is looking over their shoulder. And often they are because activists go in at nighttime and install hidden cameras.
00:21:15
Speaker
know that Joey Carbstrong did something very similar with Cathedral Cheese. And there was a huge fallout after that. So by putting pressure on the supermarkets who buy these products, by making them have sort of code of conduct around the quality of animal welfare of the farms that they buy from,
00:21:33
Speaker
It's possible to put pressure on the whole supply chain when you get footage that is ah usable and presentable to the supermarkets that buy these products and then they stop buying them because of the footage that you you you've shown them. so it it really is It really is an excellent tactic. I know that that civil trespass over in the UK is non-police issue. if If you are apprehended on a farm and the farmer says to go away, as long as you go away and you haven't broken or stolen anything, then they have no right to apprehend you and the and the police aren't going to get involved unless it's aggravated trespass. which And interestingly, you don't even have to take the shortest route off the property.
00:22:17
Speaker
either okay um according to ah a book called trespass that i'm reading at the moment i'm a very polite proper english boy and i would never do so myself of course but um yeah it goes into quite a lot of detail and basically says yeah your obligation once asked is to leave the premises but kind of how you do so is more or less up up to you yeah okay so you could you could just take in a few few extra arms and stables on your way out And of course, with ah modern technology, um you you at can say like if if you are apprehended on a farm and the farmers say perhaps had a gun or a dog or whatever, if you can say to the farmer that everything the farmer is doing has been live streamed on Facebook as you speak, it really takes the wind out of their sails. Whether it's true or not, they have no way of proving that. If you have a bit of equipment in your hand and saying this is recording everything you're doing,
00:23:05
Speaker
And it's been live streamed as we're doing it really takes the, puts them on the back foot. So it was really interesting. in This article, it says, it says activists often live stream their actions.
00:23:16
Speaker
So any interaction can be broadcast instantly and taken out of context. And I thought, Surely a live stream is impossible to take out of context. that's That's the most in context you can have.
00:23:28
Speaker
um that So it it is an incredibly easy or ah a lot easier ah tactic than people might have thought to go on to a farm at night time. It says here at the top of the article to...
00:23:40
Speaker
farmer has been advised to lock gates, install CCTV and so on. Gates are easy to climb over and CCTV is sort of useless at night time. If a farmer does apprehend you, as long as you leave sort of within a reasonable timeframe, then there's nothing they can do and the police won't won't get involved.
00:23:55
Speaker
if you're taking footage, I don't think that's illegal ah in itself. And it seems to be one thing that they're really scared of. So times have changed. And it's actually with modern day technology and a little bit of legal know-how, it is it is quite easy and safe to go in and get footage from these forms and then present it to people along the supply chain or to the customers themselves out on the street and change the sort of nature of the game that way. So I think the Ulster Farmers Union and ah Farming UK have again given very good advice and some good information to it to us activists without them even knowing.
00:24:33
Speaker
So I would encourage people to sort of look to look into that if they're interested in exposing the reality of factory farming or farming generally. it's actually easier than a lot of people might have thought. Easier, but still kudos to where anyone who does it because it's certainly far too frightening for me to do.
00:24:50
Speaker
Shane, I don't know if you know off the top of your head, like trespassing on ah on a farm in the US, I mean, does it maybe vary state to state as to- Yeah, I would think it varies state to state. it would I mean, with all the ad gag laws and everything, I don't know what might happen in certain states if you were to video.
00:25:08
Speaker
Even drone footage, I think, is can be problematic. So I don't have any legal advice for anybody wanting to do that here. No, definitely not. Enough of the falafel does not dispense legal advice. Check it out yourself before before acting, listeners. I'm sure you would anyway.
00:25:24
Speaker
Thank you for that one, both of you. So our next story comes from ABC News. We have reported quite a bit over the last few months of facilities, particularly aquariums, but also some zoos where there has been threats of closure or of animals being removed and and and things like that. And Generally speaking, of course, our stance will be, well, it's good that zoos and marine parks and things like that be shut down. But very often the lingering question is, well, what happens to the animals then? It's all well and good ending people's jobs and shutting it to the public. But there are still sentient beings in there who don't want to be there.
00:26:01
Speaker
And it's not as straightforward as releasing them into the wild or or or taking them to sanctuaries or other countries. There can be a lot of red tape. That was the case in a zoo just outside Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina.
Rescue Efforts for Abandoned Zoo Animals
00:26:15
Speaker
It was shut down in 2020. This zoo was notorious for letting visitors handle and pose for pictures with tigers and lions, despite mounting safety concerns.
00:26:27
Speaker
The reason that this is in the news this week is because um an organisation called Four Paws, they're an animal rights charity, they first visited the zoo in 2023. Basically, since the zoo shut, keepers and and zoo staff who had lost their jobs basically kept going in to keep feeding the animals and doing their best to look after them.
00:26:48
Speaker
unsurprisingly not all animals survived and are still with us however many of them are and this four paws organization are basically have been given the go-ahead by argentina's government to take over responsibility for them which it looks like shane involves immediately giving them vet care and then looking at rehoming them that's the long and short of it isn't it Yeah, I mean, it's just it's wild that they had no provision for these animals, and they were just sitting there for five years. I don't i don't know why there was no provision for them. But thankfully, this four paws has stepped in.
00:27:25
Speaker
They've started assessing the animals, caring for them. They've got, out of 136 62 have survived. sixty two have survived and also two brown bears. And um I think as soon as they're healthy enough, they're going to transfer those animals to, it says in article, expansive natural homes around the world. So I'm hoping sanctuaries, you know somewhere that they don't have to be um in cages and they don't have to be used as props.
00:27:52
Speaker
Four paws is actually... a group that was in Syria and Iraq and Gaza ah during conflicts there and helped get animals out. But I think this is the largest group of animals that they've ever had to um rehome. Yeah, I mean, the the biggest two takeaways for me from this story or things that that struck me the most is A, like you say, how on earth...
00:28:13
Speaker
Like are these animals just been left at this zoo for the last five years. It's remarkable that any of them are still alive. And be like, yeah, four paws, the work they seem to do, they seem to take pride in putting themselves in the most difficult positions, arguably even more difficult for the animals that they're looking to help and and trying to.
00:28:34
Speaker
turn things more positive so all credit to them and um yeah i guess we hope that they're able to to have some happier endings for some of those animals really quite yeah quite unusual story that one thank you shane our last story before we go on to our feature story for the week comes to us from the very small island of mallorca and it's quite a confusing story initially but but i think the the takeaways from it are relating to legislation and loopholes that hopefully might get closed up because of this very sad case the bottom line is that 27 dogs were found dead in an adapted van that arrived on the island in a ferry but last saturday now one of the reasons this particular story has reached the headlines is because
00:29:25
Speaker
The president of the ABADA, Association of Lawyers for Animal Rights in the Balearic Islands, is saying that they think that the animal protection law that was drafted and three or four years ago has got a big old loophole in it, which...
Legislative Loopholes in Animal Protection
00:29:44
Speaker
seems to have led to this in in their opinion. Basically, and Mark's had a look at this too, so he might be able to shed more light on it. This bit of animal protection law excluded hunting dogs from the general protection and welfare standards, seemingly to appease and give in to pressure groups such as hunters. But it seems like in this case, Mark, that has, I mean, whether or not it would have made a difference to these animals, but it's allowed a loophole where there's less scrutiny it would seem for for this particular these particular species of dog yeah so as the animal rights lawyer said the law protected dogs other than hunting dogs in the animal protection act that was passed over in malarca recently as you say anthony at the behest of hunters their dogs were excluded from the protections that would otherwise have been afforded to them so
00:30:36
Speaker
I don't think they have a leg to stand on when they're complaining about what has happened to so-called their dogs. But if you look at what what what the hunters are doing, and i mean, it's quite obsessive. They had driven these dogs and themselves 3,000 kilometers from Spain to Lithuania.
00:30:53
Speaker
so that the dogs who get specialist training in hunting down a particular bird, the woodcock, because the woodcocks are a migrating bird that that um ah spend a bit of time in Mallorca around this time of the year.
00:31:04
Speaker
So they wanted to train their dogs from a specialist trainer in Eastern Europe in order to to continue their sport. So it's quite obsessive. and they're They're putting a lot of work into it.
00:31:15
Speaker
But these dogs had already traveled essentially 6,000 kilometers across Europe there and back again, and then faced a nine-hour ferry trip from Barcelona to Palma. And most of them died on the ferry because of asphyxiation. there were there were They were down in the the hold of the ship. It was probably incredibly hot.
00:31:35
Speaker
It is Spain, even though it's autumn time, it's still incredibly hot there. And after a 6,000 mile trip on on land, there they were then facing a nine or ten hour trip in the ferry and as we know a lot of them died. Look, the ah hunters have nothing to complain about. It was them that insisted that these dogs be exposed to risks like this because they wanted to treat the dogs as objects and not as individual sentient animals.
00:32:00
Speaker
Hunters frequently bang on about how much they love animals. They don't love animals. They love what and what certain animals can do for them and they and they treat them as objects and as soon as they aren't useful anymore say in the case of hunting dogs over in the UK with fox hunting, as soon as those dogs are and past their expiration date, as far as the hunting is concerned, they're shot in the back of the head and thrown into a skip.
00:32:25
Speaker
they They aren't ah treated kindly or as individual animals with rights or sentience. So as much as these as as the hunting community will bang on about how much they they love animals,
00:32:35
Speaker
They clearly don't. Their incompetence and hypocrisy just just is staggering. And I can't imagine the pain and fear of those dogs that had suffocated to death in basically a tin can.
00:32:47
Speaker
Absolutely. it's I mean, it's certainly not a story that we can immediately derive positives from. And I suppose our ah hope would be that... folk like Manuel Molina, this particular lawyer, and and others can, and and lobbyists can push for loopholes like this to to be closed up and and and start nudging the needle in the direction that we want to see.
00:33:09
Speaker
So, We have had our first six stories of the week from Mark and Shane and I've chipped in too. Listeners, we know that there'll be things that we've missed. We've tackled some controversial things, some quite technically difficult things.
00:33:22
Speaker
Maybe there's a a complete story that that you think should have been in the news this week or moving forward you would like us to talk about. For that, you will need our email address. Here it comes. To get in touch with us, just send us an email at enoughofthefalafel at gmail.com.
00:33:40
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.
00:33:52
Speaker
Go on, send us a message today. Enoughofthefalafel at gmail.com. Okay, so it's normally at this point in the show that we would look at the guest's picks of the week. Shane found a story and it was from New Zealand and we kind of thought, well, do you know what? This is quite a quite a thorny one, so why don't we just amalgam it everything and go into a bit more depth with this story. So this is going to be our final story for the show, but it's ah it's quite the interesting one. So we'll go into it in a bit more detail.
Predator Free 2050 Controversy
00:34:25
Speaker
What I know I certainly did, and I think Shane did, and I'm not sure whether Mark did as well, there is actually a podcast on this very topic. um NPR, you might have come across their work before. they They don't just do animal rights and vegan news, but they they do lots of journalism and and and stories about the world and what's going on in it.
00:34:45
Speaker
at the moment. So do check them out and we'll put a link in the show notes so you can go directly to this episode. As I say, it's is focusing on something that has been going on in New Zealand for a little while and it's starting to get a bit of coverage outside of New Zealand too.
00:35:04
Speaker
It centres around the kiwi and also other native or quote native birds from New Zealand. which despite being national icons, very cute, making fun noises and and having, of course, their own right to live, are generally not animals that many people have seen before.
00:35:25
Speaker
Many of them are endangered or indeed becoming extinct. So 62 native bird species are now extinct. and New Zealand, more than 80% of the remaining birds that breed in New Zealand are at risk.
00:35:41
Speaker
The biggest cause according to this article and according to lots of people are invasive species, so animals brought to New Zealand by humans. So obviously things like rats can arrive on boats, but also people might have brought animals for food or for fur or just as a reminder of whatever country the humans bringing them came from.
00:36:06
Speaker
This initiative that New Zealand have taken as a ah ah response to this is called Predator Free 2050. twentyfi the idea being that invasive predators would be eliminated from the country by 2050.
00:36:25
Speaker
fifty This has been successful on very, very small islands, like like many countries by the coast. New Zealand has some very, very small islands where basically the idea of trapping, killing, poisoning, basically doing anything to interfere with and generally speaking, kill. Although in some instances, it's it's just stop reproducing these these predator animals of these birds.
00:36:55
Speaker
And like I say, there's a really great podcast on this. It's about 25, 30 minutes. um You can listen to it with ah a host with a wonderful accent that I very much enjoyed. Very informative too.
00:37:06
Speaker
Let's start talking about this and and um our feelings on this. And we can share some more details about it too. Mark, You are obviously living in New Zealand.
00:37:18
Speaker
Was this something that's generally on people's radars? Is this scheme well known? I mean, the the podcast featured a group of local children setting up these traps so that, you know, it's ah there must be some traction.
00:37:30
Speaker
it's It's a huge issue. It's controversial, as you can imagine. There is no happy side to this. If you don't get involved, animals die. If you do get involved by trapping the so-called invasive species, animals die.
00:37:43
Speaker
Either way, animals die. and looks So just just just to give a bit of historical context, okay, so the three islands that make up and New Zealand, the North Island, the South Island, and a much smaller island called Stewart Island at the very south of the South Island.
00:37:57
Speaker
They split away from what is now Australia about 85 million years ago. They drifted across the sea towards where we are now and they remained isolated for about 85 million years.
00:38:08
Speaker
There was no people there at all. Around 1250, AD, Maori came and from the Cook Islands, which is sort of halfway between New Zealand and Hawaii.
00:38:20
Speaker
They were excellent navigators and they came over here in a series of what are called waka, which are outrigger canoes that that are ocean-going canoes. and Apparently there was about seven waves of emigration from the Cook Islands to here from 1250 to about 1300 AD. I think there was i think there there may have been more, but but the the sort of consensus is is that there was about seven waves of of ah tribes came over from the Cook Islands and set up shop here in in a New Zealand.
00:38:52
Speaker
As soon as human beings arrived here, it was like a meteor hitting the islands. okay The impact was immediate and and as severe. it It ramped up when the Europeans started to settle here en masse around 1840 onwards.
00:39:05
Speaker
But from the very beginning, from the first humans to to a set foot on these islands, there was an immediate impact, very negative impact on the environment, on the flower and fawn here.
00:39:16
Speaker
So the initial Maori and brought rats and dogs with them, and it was the rats rather than the dogs that contributed to the decimation of a lot of the bird life which had flown over here and had evolved into not being able to fly, but had had much stronger legs rather than neck bones that enabled them to fly. So they didn't need to fly because it was not did they the only mammals that are native to here are two species of bat, very small bat, the long-tailed bat and the short-tailed bat. The long-tailed bat is more common. It's it's a carnivore, but it only eats insects.
00:39:52
Speaker
The short-tailed bat eats insects. It's an omnivore. It eats insects and fruit. Neither of them had much of an impact on the avian life here, for sure, or any of the bigger life.
00:40:04
Speaker
Birds like kiwi and moa ah evolved into ah nesting on the ground, became de facto mammals almost really, and had no defences against animals like rats or dogs or cats.
00:40:16
Speaker
As soon as the rat arrived around 1250, and human beings as well, with within about 200 years, about half of all the lowland forests had been disappeared by slash-and-burn farming techniques, and all the moa, which are like massive animals,
00:40:30
Speaker
sort of ostrich type birds had been killed as well there was nine species of moa they were all gone so within and between 1250 and the 14 1400s there was a huge impact and a decimation of all the big mammals and most of the lowland forests here so ah sea lions and seals gone or almost gone.
00:40:51
Speaker
Moa, completely gone. Kiwi almost pushed to the edge of extinction. What saved a lot of the wildlife was that there wasn't as many people as then as there are now. there was it varied, ah but by the time that human being the Europeans arrived, there was about 100,000 here.
00:41:07
Speaker
split up into various iwi. They didn't refer to themselves ah as as Maori until the Europeans arrived. Maori is a Maori word for ordinary. Pakia, which is what I am, is a Maori word for pale-skinned person, whitey.
00:41:21
Speaker
okay So there was various waves of extinction. The first wave was when the iwi, the tribes from the Cook Islands, arrived before they were Maori. And they kicked they kick-started the decimation of the forests and the the larger mammals that they hunted for food and feathers and and clothing and decorations with their bones and so on.
00:41:40
Speaker
The next and much bigger and more impactful series of extinctions came with the arrival of Europeans who had industrialized the slaughter of animals with guns and who further decimated the forests by slash and burn techniques to to make farms.
00:41:55
Speaker
The idea also every animal here bar a few that are pushed to the very margins of existence, are invasive, including humans, including all the all the animals that are used in farms. So farming is as invasive, and farm ah and farm animals are as invasive as the wild, stowed, and feral cats are.
00:42:14
Speaker
Cows and sheep don't eat other animals, but the land that is cleared to allow them to graze decimates the habitats of wildlife, which further... causes extinction So singling out stoats and rabbits and rats as invasive is a bit misleading. Everything here is is invasive from the cow, the sheep, the goats, human beings, as well as the wild rats and the feral cats.
00:42:38
Speaker
We're all invasive here. was something that all Also strikes me, i I don't know whether, like Shane, this was your takeaway too, was when when this was being explained in in the the news story, as as we kind of accessed it, obviously we we've not got the first-hand experience that Mark has, but there there was a ah mention early on of the fact that actually a lot of these problems that are currently being dealt with are because of earlier attempts to control other species by introducing something else.
00:43:12
Speaker
But there doesn't seem to be a kind of learning of the fact that, well, if we if we tried to do one thing to make it work, and now we're having to do another thing to rectify that, like, has no one gone, but maybe we should just leave things alone? Was that really loud for you, Shane?
00:43:29
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I wrote down a quote. they They said, I think this was in the podcast. They said, humans cause this problems. Humans need to fix it. And I thought, no, humans need to stop trying to fix it.
00:43:39
Speaker
They're making it worse. They keep making it worse. Yeah. and And it was ah absolutely terrifying like the that you mentioned the podcast there. It basically opens with a group of quite young sounding children that just like setting up these traps to to kill these small animals.
00:43:57
Speaker
i think they're I think they're actually taking that the dead animals out of the traps because the traps kill the the stoats or possums or whatever, and they're taking them out. And it it's just very interesting because i don't know what the propaganda or what the government is saying in New Zealand, but if they were the kids were talking about how, well well, this is kind of gross, but it's ethical because we're we're helping this species.
00:44:19
Speaker
And even the language they used that the that the people in New Zealand used and also the podcasters used was very coded because the Kiwi were called wonderful, they love them but the Stoats kept called... but They were called a Terminator, Apex Predator, Killing Machine, The Worst Nightmare, and even the host of the podcast would say, oh, but they look so cute, you know? i mean and so there's really...
00:44:46
Speaker
a campaign going here to convince people that this is ethical, this is what needs to happen. So there there is a school here that that's in the news every year. I'm sure it isn't like it isn't just this school, but it's a it's a secondary school. But schools here are split into into three. There's primary, intermediate and then secondary. So they're the intermediate school kids.
00:45:07
Speaker
I think. So they're between the ages of about 12 and 14, perhaps. And every year they have a competition where a who whoever kills the most feral cats wins a prize. And it's on the news every year.
00:45:19
Speaker
And it's quite controversial because people are saying, are we really Is this really the way to go about things? Are we teaching them best practice with regard to animals? But as far as the school and the kids are concerned, feral cats are the most destructive species um around and they're responsible for eating all the eggs and the young chicks of all the animals.
00:45:39
Speaker
ah birds and this is factually true but the way things so with with with the ah hunting community generally they will all if if there's any if they receive any kickback from animal welfarists or animal rights activists they will all they will always say that the reason i'm shooting deer or the reason i'm shooting duck is because they prey on native species and i'm actually put i'm actually helping the environment The reality is is that the reason that they're doing this they enjoy killing things.
00:46:06
Speaker
They do nothing else for the comp for the conservation of nature other than go out and assassinate animals that they like to then butcher and eat. So whilst what they're saying...
00:46:17
Speaker
isn't untrue. Deer are invasive. Ducks are, and as I say, every and the feral cats are enormously destructive. The way it's got it's gone about... So as I was saying at the top, and if if you don't do anything, and if you don't hunt and kill possum and stoats and the rabbits and so on, they will decimate ah native flower and fauna.
00:46:39
Speaker
if If that's allowed to happen, you will end up with a situation where The rabbits then, or the invasive species themselves, will all die out because they'll have killed and eaten everything that they can kill and eat, and then they will all starve to death.
00:46:52
Speaker
And what you will be left afterwards with is a sort of ruined desert-like environment where there's no animals at all. So if if you don't control the invasive species, and most of the species on this on these islands are invasive, they will end up killing everything, including themselves.
00:47:11
Speaker
because they'll run out of their own food supply. The ones that eat each other will do so. The ones that won't will just will just die off. So it's it's really controversial. There was no happy answer to this.
00:47:23
Speaker
One of the big and campaigns that the government has been doing for decades, and again, it's very controversial. Every step and in this process or in not taking the process is controversial.
Controversial Use of 1080 Poison
00:47:34
Speaker
what What the government do, the Department of of Conservation, one of their main tasks is dropping poison pellets out of helicopters over vast swathes of forest.
00:47:43
Speaker
There is a poison called, it's called 1080. That's its colloquial term. It's sodium something or other. And it's it's deadly to any animal that that that consumes it, including humans or humans' pets.
00:47:56
Speaker
It's very controversial, especially for the hunting fraternity, because it means that they have nothing to shoot. And when they're bringing their dogs, they're theirre hunting dogs out to hunt deer.
00:48:07
Speaker
If the deer have eaten the 1080 and if their dog eats it, so the 1080 is dropped in little pellets. of attractive smelling. So it's like a food that they they get these pellets, they put some food into it and they spike it with 1080 and they drop it like rain over hundreds of kilometers of forest.
00:48:27
Speaker
Now, it's highly controversial, not just amongst the animal rights community, amongst the hunting and farming community as well. There is an anti-1080 political party. one One guy is being shot.
00:48:38
Speaker
ah One Department of Conservation ah employee was was shot once for for doing this. people have been attacked. i mean, it's as I say, it's very controversial.
00:48:48
Speaker
It's very incongruent to think that the Department of conversation of Conservation's main task is dropping poison out of helicopters to kill everything below them because the thinking goes that The only animals that that are left in this in this area of forest that were dropping the 1080 into are invasive species that we're trying to get rid of.
00:49:08
Speaker
The most efficient way of doing that is dropping poison pellets out of helicopters. It will kill everything below them. It doesn't discriminate between invasive species or non-invasive species or birds, pets, farm animals. If humans edit, then they would die too.
00:49:23
Speaker
So they they're they're poisoning the landscape in order to get rid of everything in that given area. in order to allow the reintroduction of native species of birds back into that area because there won't be anything left to threaten them.
00:49:39
Speaker
I'm not sure if there's any other ah big landmass that has such a pronounced problem with this. know that Australia, they introduced foxes into Australia, which then went on to decimate about half of the species of marsupials over in Australia.
00:49:53
Speaker
The reason they were introduced by English landlords was in order for them to carry on their fox hunting tradition. So, you know, the the whole thing is really messed up. You're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't.
00:50:04
Speaker
ah Every community around here has a predator eradication scheme. Everywhere you go through forests, along trail walks and all that, you will see dozens of traps of various types. Some are are wooden boxes with a little gate at the front that the animals go into to eat the bait. And then there's a ah thing snaps down and...
00:50:25
Speaker
Breaks their necks. They're constantly inventing new ways of killing animals. For instance, the latest way is by attaching a sort of laser gun to the base of a tree with some bait inside it.
00:50:38
Speaker
so that when stoats or possum come to put their head into this sort of laser thing to this sort of like a torteless drive. But you know those things that a posh women, when they're getting perms done in hairdressers, they have this sort of like a ah helmet over their head. I don't know much of that.
00:50:56
Speaker
be able see photographs around it. It's hairdryer. A hairdryer, is that what it is, right? It's like a massive hairdryer helmet thing that the possum or targeted species will put their heads into to try and get to the bait. And then a laser at the... a laser go at the at the back of this hair dryer helmet thing will shoot them into the back of the head and they will flop down dead and it's it's a trap that doesn't need to be emptied every time one animal is killed it'll just go on killing animals over and over again it's like a sniper rifle
00:51:27
Speaker
it It sounds like tech companies are doing very well out of this in terms of like, oh, we've good news, everyone. We've found a new way of killing the animals. So something we've not mentioned yet, there there was a segment in the podcast, though I'm struggling to see it in the written article, where they talked about an area that had been set up with very, very high fences and it was sort of like controlling...
00:51:53
Speaker
Like a gated community for endangered birds, it seemed. Shane, that gave me some grounds for hope. Did I miss something? Or does that seem like a far more vegan-friendly version of of doing this? What did I miss?
00:52:08
Speaker
No, I think it that I remember hearing about that too. And they were saying how... That was keeping all of the other species out, except one time there was a snowstorm, and I guess some stoats managed to get over and wiped out one species that was in there.
00:52:22
Speaker
ah The other thing that they mentioned, the only animal rights group they mentioned, well, first of all, in the podcast, they said several times that this is not controversial at all in New Zealand. So... Mark is obviously saying that it is controversial, but they kept saying, no, everybody's fine with this.
00:52:37
Speaker
And then they cited one animal rights group, and that was the SPCA and how the SPCA is advocating for nonlethal measures. I don't know what the SPCA is like in New Zealand. This is a question for Mark, but in the United States, the SPCA is not...
00:52:53
Speaker
an animal rights group. I mean, they're like a welfare group, they help dogs and cats, and they rescue animals from cruelty, but they're not, i wouldn't call them an animal rights group. Yeah, it's the it's the ah same over here. they They're their are an animal welfare group that exists to enforce existing legislation around animal cruelty.
00:53:12
Speaker
They do make statements around broader issues. They don't necessarily get involved, but they do give their opinion around this. They're probably a bit more radical than other SPCA groups around the world, but they're not an animal rights group.
00:53:24
Speaker
The prominent animal rights group here is called SAFE, Save Animals from Exploitation, and they'd be going for decades, and they're an animal rights group. And they oppose the spreading of poison around forests and so on.
00:53:36
Speaker
They don't get much traction because most people do follow the line that you need to get rid of ah whole bunch of in invasive species in order to give room and time for the natural animals here or too and flowers and flowers so like it isn't just animals it's also the vegetation so possum which are an endangered and endangered and protected species in australia and they're native to australia are over here in new zealand as well and they're very much not a protected species they are considered ah target that species for eradication. And they they eat the eggs of birds and they also chew on the so some some specific trees here as well and cause the death of those trees. So it's double whammy. So it is controversial among certain sectors of the population. i would say on the whole, people are behind these schemes.
00:54:26
Speaker
So ah most neighborhoods will will will have a a pest eradication program where they will give you free traps to set up in your back garden or wherever to target particularly stoats and possum.
00:54:40
Speaker
ah Rabbits are also ah consider considered to be a huge problem. As I say, there isn't any happy side to this. Either way, animals will die. It just the depends who's doing the killing and which animals are going to die, whether they're the so-called invasive invasive species or the or the or the protective species.
00:54:57
Speaker
I will say again that the farming industry has probably done at least as much, if not more, to
Ethics in Conservation Prioritization
00:55:04
Speaker
de to decimate the environment here than as have possum or wild cats.
00:55:10
Speaker
Apparently, after human beings, cats are responsible for the the eradication of of other as species. So number one, it's humans who have caused most extinctions.
00:55:22
Speaker
Number two is cats. They are voracious hunters. They're very good hunters and they target birds particularly. As I say, if these birds are nesting on the ground, they they had no protection from these rats and cats particularly.
00:55:34
Speaker
i'm I don't know where I stand on this. It's it's controversial even within the animal rights community. some Some people are really opposed to hunting any animal and that all individual animals have a right to exist.
00:55:47
Speaker
Some think that unless you get rid of specific species, it won't give the native flower and fauna any space to grow. As I say, either way animals are going to die. If you don't do anything, animals will die. If you get involved, animals will die.
00:56:02
Speaker
I have no answer to this. There there is no, it's it's hard to, theyre there there are arguments on both sides and flip between both of them. But from ah from a vegan animal rights standpoint, wouldn't it be considered speciesism?
00:56:19
Speaker
to put one animal above another animal. So to say we need to kill these animals to keep these animals alive. So I mean, I think, I mean, i think that my position is that we don't interfere and we don't kill them. Or if we do interfere, we have to do the least harm.
00:56:40
Speaker
Yes, and absolutely. from From an animal rights philosophy point of view, you're absolutely right. The end result of that might be a decimated landscape. yeah and and Yeah. And that's that's my that's my kind of quandary, I suppose, because in a sense, this is a great combination of people to be talking about this because actually...
00:57:00
Speaker
I can give an opinion, but it's not my home. You know, Mark is one of the plants and animals that live in this place. So it's it that that balances things slightly differently, doesn't it? But yeah, I would.
00:57:13
Speaker
My instinct on this, similar to to what you're saying, Shane, would be non-interference is... is always going to be my default, my starting point as as a vegan.
00:57:25
Speaker
But also i have real issues with, we' if we're looking at the impact and we're saying, well, you know if if we don't do anything, the impact is going to be a decimated landscape.
00:57:37
Speaker
but But actually, if we if we interfere, it's not like saying the one impact is going to be fewer stoats, more kiwi or whatever. that the The impact that's loudest for me is is one of, yeah, speciesism, but but just generally discrimination in terms of like you're bringing up generations of people who say, we want you in this space and we don't want you. And the the people that we don't want Anything is, nothing's off the table. You can kill them, you can poison, you can string them up, you can torch them, you can starve them.
00:58:15
Speaker
i I don't want my community to be to to be talking in that way about anyone or anything. And for me, like I can envisage a world, and I appreciate I've got the privilege of this not being my home that I'm talking about. These are not species that are wandering around.
00:58:33
Speaker
in my neck of the woods. But I can imagine a situation in the future where, hooray, the Kiwis have been saved and these, what were they called? it They had a phrase for stoats. It wasn't monster stoats. It was like hardy stoats or like the real- Or hardcore, yeah.
00:58:48
Speaker
Hardcore stoats. The hardcore stoats have been eradicated. Hooray. The Kiwis are saved. Hooray. And we've got a population of people who think it's absolutely fine to decide who lives there, who doesn't, and is horrendously racist and, you know, will just indiscriminately just start shooting things because they don't think it should be there.
00:59:10
Speaker
Like, that's a far more frightening future to me than one where, oh, these birds aren't there anymore. But I also think there's there's some hubris in people thinking like, oh, this time we're going to fix it. In the past, we made all these mistakes.
00:59:25
Speaker
But this time it's going to be different and we're going to fix it. and we We don't know what's going to happen if they eradicate all the – if they ah even can do that. I mean this is like they're saying $100 million dollars a year and that's a conservative estimate. What what ah could you be spending that money on other than this?
00:59:43
Speaker
So you were i mentioning out that there was there was an alternative scheme where they literally fence off areas of land. And so they therefore deny the invasive species any access. and So they are they are like going not going into a a prison. I've ever been to many of these.
01:00:00
Speaker
And you can't bring in your pet dog, even if the dog's on a leash or anything like this. They're highly controlled. and There's CCTV cameras everywhere. It is like going into a high security prison.
01:00:12
Speaker
and But they mentioned Jurassic Park on the podcast. yeah was referenced several times it It is very similar. In order to get to that so situation, first of all, they have to eradicate all the invasive species in the bit of land that is ah going to be sealed off, first of all.
01:00:30
Speaker
and then they will seal off these massive fences which are protected by security, ah people and CCTV, very high fences. And then within this little oasis ah you will have a flourishing of native birds and flower and fauna.
01:00:46
Speaker
They are a more benign response but in order as I say in order to get to that and ah situation where you can seal it off they have to kill everything that they don't want in there which is most animals in the in the in the first place. So As I say, either way, animals will die.
01:01:01
Speaker
One solution could be, and again, it's it this this is controversial, but it's it's less murderous. it Would it be too, and and there was talk about this, about having a chemical that you can drop instead of 1080 a your poison, you can drop a ah chemical that that will i make the invasive species infertile so that they can't breathe, so that they slowly sort of die out.
01:01:23
Speaker
So without having to kill them, you stop them from having any more babies. And again, this is controversial. It's if you want an animal rights sort of ah philosophical level, it's a violation of of the infertile animals rights.
01:01:38
Speaker
I think in this case, the end results is the thing to keep the eye on. And it depends what you want the end result to be. And As I say, personally, a vegan and someone who adheres to the animal rights philosophy, I'm in two minds about it because, as I say, either way, animals die. Do you want the decimation of unique species at the um big because of the rights of stoats and possum? Or do you want to get rid of all the possum and stoats and allow the Kiwis their right to live and thrive in a world that was made for them?
01:02:14
Speaker
and not for all the other invasive species. And I just want to come around to the point again that farming and farm animals are as invaded. The farming system is a lot more predatory than a bunch of wild cats if they were to remove animal agriculture from here. There's 24 million cows here. There's 10 million sheep.
01:02:32
Speaker
They all need massive amounts of deforested land to graze on. They produce millions of tons of carbon emissions, including methane. ah Fonterra, the ah dairy industry here, the sort of dairy collective for all the dairy farmers here, is the most polluting industry by a long shot.
01:02:52
Speaker
Every year, the ah government release a ah list of the top 10 polluting companies in New Zealand. Fonterra are at the top every single year. and they And they produce as much carbon emissions almost as the the nine companies below them.
01:03:07
Speaker
all of which are either animal agriculture, oil or gas. When you're talking about the decimation of the landscape here, it isn't just what is considered invasive species, it's also invasive technology and invasive ways of of producing food.
01:03:21
Speaker
And and if if we were to take all the land used for animal agriculture, and rewild it, it would give native flower and fauna a really good chance of flourishing and and coming back. So it isn't so they've they've they've narrowed it down to ah people shooting cats sort of thing wild cats or trapping possum.
01:03:41
Speaker
They are ignoring the bigger picture of the invasive technologies of food production, which is animal agriculture. and That is never talked about. Or if it is talked about, you are considered to be an extremist. Not the guy who goes out and kills or it teaches his kids to shoot cats.
01:03:55
Speaker
It's the animal rights activist who's who's who's there complaining about the vast amount of land that has been cleared to graze farm animals on so that they can be tortured and then butchered. then So it's it's a controversial ah ah topic and it it always will be, ah um unfortunately. And I don't know where the right answer is. And as I say, i come down on either side depending on the side of the bed I get out of.
01:04:20
Speaker
And I'm delighted that you've mentioned there, Mark, something that was not covered on that very good, I thought, um NPR podcast on this, though the the impact that animal agriculture has and and other human activity.
Environmental Impact of Animal Agriculture
01:04:33
Speaker
So,
01:04:34
Speaker
NPR, well done on, ah you know, doing the first podcast on this, but I think we've got a few more hot takes than you on on that one. So, yeah, good try. Excellent. Thank you, Shane, for bringing that story to our attention. And yeah, Mark, thank you for your vulnerability talking about your home country in such emotive detail.
01:04:53
Speaker
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01:05:13
Speaker
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01:05:29
Speaker
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01:05:39
Speaker
Shane, I've just been closing my tabs after we've finished talking about that story and realised that we hadn't mentioned the brilliant story you shared on a similar topic from Mexico about the folk that found out the that the iguanas predated the humans. Do you want to and educate our listeners on this? Because it's along the similar vein and it it rather demonstrates one of the points you were making.
01:06:02
Speaker
Yeah, so this was from the New York Times, and apparently there's a small Mexican island, it's called Clarion Island, where there are two kinds of lizards, and the spiny-tailed iguana had been assumed to be invasive on Clarion Island, and they were eradicating them. They were had a big program to eradicate them, similar to, i imagine, what's going on in New Zealand.
01:06:23
Speaker
So some researchers got involved, they compared the mitochondrial mitochondrial DNA um from the clarion iguanas to the mainland spiny-tailed iguanas. They found out there was enough of a difference so that they those iguanas could not be invaders from the mainland and that they were actually there nearly half a million years ago before humans were there.
01:06:44
Speaker
And so then the researchers are saying, oh no, we have to tell them to stop this program of eradicating them because they're not actually invasive species. And I'm assuming that the humans haven't ah withdrawn from this ah island now and and kind of identified themselves as the invasive species and therefore removed themselves. No, no, not the humans are not the, never the invasive species. No, no, no, no, no. no Of course. But yeah, it does.
01:07:08
Speaker
As, as you were saying in our discussion before, before that little jingle, it shows that generally speaking, we don't know what we're doing, do we? As a species, despite our ah but the rhetoric we might put out.
01:07:23
Speaker
However, I think one thing we do know is when the next episode from Enough of the Falafel is coming out. Mark, tell us when it's going to be. and The next episode of Enough of the Falafel will be coming out on Thursday, the 13th of November, and will feature the indomitable Dominic, myself, Julie and Ant, and we will be discussing the wonderful Project Phoenix.
01:07:42
Speaker
Anyway, that's enough of the falafel for this episode. Thanks to Anthony and Mark for your contributions, and thanks again to everyone for listening. I'm Shane, and you've been listening to Vegan Week from the Enough of the Falafel Collective.
01:08:00
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.
01:08:15
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.
01:08:41
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...
01:09:02
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.
01:09:16
Speaker
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