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296- "Quick! The inspector's coming; let the chickens sleep for a bit!"
1 Playsin 8 hours
Sadly, this is almost exactly what a Mercy for Animals investigation has found was the rhetoric in one 'high-welfare' organic Costco-approved chicken farm. Break the rules, but pay them lip-service when the person who gives the high-welfare accreditation comes a-knocking. Shane & Anthony discuss this, as well as several other news stories in this week's round-up of animal rights & vegan headlines from around 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://www.thegrocer.co.uk/news/hilton-food-group-sells-dutch-vegan-business/721942.article
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/matthew-glover_people-have-been-asking-when-were-bringing-share-7484554803382149121-PTrY/?utm_source=social_share_send&utm_medium=ios_app&rcm=ACoAADQ10lsBHSMYQIMDem7Wt-QlmrxeoiL_jGM&utm_campaign=copy_link
https://sustainabilitymag.com/news/lidl-gb-uk-overshoots-planetary-health-diet-targets
https://www.idausa.org/campaign/farmed-animal/latest-news/watch-animal-liberation-message-reaches-thousands-at-marin-parade/
https://vegconomist.com/agriculture-agribusiness/iowa-hog-barn-becomes-mushroom-farm-transfarmation-opens-second-demonstration-hub/
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/496846/costco-chicken-cruelty-investigation-pilgrims-pride?view_token=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpZCI6ImxSak52T2IxSHciLCJwIjoiL2Z1dHVyZS1wZXJmZWN0LzQ5Njg0Ni9jb3N0Y28tY2hpY2tlbi1jcnVlbHR5LWludmVzdGlnYXRpb24tcGlsZ3JpbXMtcHJpZGUiLCJleHAiOjE3ODY1NTU0MjEsImlhdCI6MTc4NTM0NTgyMX0.IxbghIU8DcDkbCKfAlh0iqdNZRcLfrbYqmJAkTXTmRY&utm_medium=gift-link
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/07/29/scotland-poised-ban-guga-hunt-after-animal-rights/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5ywg3e479no
https://capitalpress.com/2026/07/30/animal-rights-activists-take-aim-at-no-drone-zones-over-farms/
https://vegconomist.com/company-news/vegan-society-redesign-vegan-trademark-as-eu-green-claims-rules-take-effect/
https://www.vegansociety.com/trademark?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=14500666510&gbraid=0AAAAADkXsOGF4MSa4WUsI006tOr-2vVJ8&gclid=CjwKCAjw1bvTBhBbEiwAzbP8L6x9gzWjpBCUpx4RYNXfly4ps5qFuNJWvzNj4huVQs0gjxbj5RCJ0BoCc_UQAvD_BwE
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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!
Shane & Anthony
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Transcript
Introduction and News Roundup
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello everyone, it is vegan and animal rights news time. In our last episode we told you we were on holiday. Well, we've come back to pick up the toothbrush that we left behind. There's just enough time for a quick roundup of news with me, Anthony, my good pal Shane. But that is enough of the falafel, it is time for Vegan Week.
00:00:18
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.
00:00:31
Speaker
Should I call the medium and say, hi, sorry. True education. younger generation are getting know how brutal these practices are. That leaves a lot of pizza delivery companies in problems with things.
00:00:42
Speaker
What is this? What kind of movie is this? It's comedy. Go on the media. Any form of social injustice.
00:00:51
Speaker
another. As long as you don't get the wee brunions with the horns you'll be alright. Does veganism give him superpowers?
00:01:01
Speaker
cannot fly around the city. I don't have laser vision. Welcome to Vegan Week and thank you so much for listening to the show. I'm Shane. If you're new, this is our weekly news show where we cover vegan and animal rights stories from the last week or so. Yes, indeed. And remember, if you're the kind of person that doesn't just like to take our word for it, but you want to look at the articles yourself in the show notes for each of our Vegan Week episodes, you can see the links to articles that we have got the
Vegan Business Sale and Market Challenges
00:01:32
Speaker
stories from.
00:01:32
Speaker
But that's enough of the falafel. Let's hear what's been going on this week. Okie Coke, quick headlines time. We have got four for you this week, starting with, we've taken it from foodmanufacture.co.uk, but it's been reported pretty wildly, wildly widely possibly wildly in some news sources, I don't know. Hilton Food Group are selling a vegan business for £5.4 million, pounds or the equivalent of they're selling it to Live Kindly Production.com.
00:02:03
Speaker
Some reports are saying, well, they've been having a difficult time with it. This isn't a sort of, oh, we've built it up and now we're selling it for a great profit. um But either way, I thought that was quite a large amount of money for a vegan food company. Perhaps I'm being very naive. If you follow Matthew Glover in any kind of social media, including LinkedIn, in, where we've got this from, you'll have seen this week that Project Slingshot, which you might have heard of before, is poised to hit America. At some point it was a project that piloted, it seems, in London. It wasn't the start and the end of it, that was just the testing ground and this
00:02:43
Speaker
advertising campaign with provocative stuff that's been doing the rounds in London is going to make it over to San Francisco later this year.
Dietary Targets and Health Discussion
00:02:54
Speaker
Exciting stuff. Lidl have released a press release this week saying that the UK has overshot planetary health diet targets. So they're saying that there are gaps in fruit, veg and fibre issues intake. This is a bit of research that they have commissioned themselves indicating that we reached our 2026 planetary health diet overshoot day just past the midpoint of the year in the UK. So that date marks the point at which a country exceeds its recommended annual balance of foods for a healthy and sustainable diet. I'm not quite sure why Lidl are doing this but I don't know. It's It seems to me they're doing a bit of finger wagging. And last time I walked into a little, there was quite a lot of non-fibrous, non-nutritious food for sale. So I don't know. Maybe maybe it's a realisation. Who knows?
Animal Liberation Parade Message
00:03:49
Speaker
And the final story we're bringing you in our quick roundup comes to us from In Defence of Animals. um And they are reporting on an animal liberation message reaching thousands at Marin Parade. That is Marin County, San Francisco Vegan Society. Am I in the right part of the country, do you think? Yes, that's correct. San Francisco. Yeah, lovely. So they did 4th of July parade, activists marching peacefully before thousands of spectators, amplifying the message that all animals deserve the right to their own bodies, babies, and lives. So well done,
Transitioning from Animal to Plant-Based Farming
00:04:27
Speaker
Daphne.
00:04:27
Speaker
them. That's our quick roundup this week. Like I say, you can follow the link in the show notes to read more about those articles. If you would like, Shane and I are and now going to get our teeth stuck into some articles in a bit more detail. Now, this first one is coming to us from Vegconomist. This is from, well, I was going to say your neck of the woods, Shane, but actually Iowa is probably a very long way away, isn't it? Yeah, I've never even been to Iowa. Oh, What are you missing? Goodness me, you should you could be getting specialty mushrooms now because the headline is that an Iowa hog barn has become a mushroom farm as transformation, transformation, it's a play on words, open second demonstration hub. ah Obviously, Shane, this isn't this hasn't happened in the last week. We report news as if it's just happened, but this seems to be when it's it's coming to fruition. Quite a positive story to start the show with. Yeah, and I think this is the second time that we've covered this transformation program from Mercy for Animals where what they do is they take a farm and they that participates in animal agriculture. The other one is in North Carolina. It was ah chicken farming and this one was hog farming and they help those farmers grow. transform into a another type of crop. And I think in both cases, it was mushrooms. So this was called the 1100 farm because they had two barns that housed 1100 pigs each, which meant that they rose and slaughtered 8,000 pigs a year.
00:06:06
Speaker
And now they are creating mushroom tinctures, jerky, coffee, and hot chocolate blends. Yeah. I mean, it it's obviously lovely to see folk who have been exploiting animals having an economically viable livelihood through growing plants, using the land, using the space for something different. If I was to be cynical, I would say that those things that they are now making seem quite niche. They're not things that are on everyone's shopping list. Yeah. But, you know, that that that that's fine. At this stage, that's fine, isn't it? But ah it's it's not too much of a leap for an animal farmer looking at this story to go, well, we can't all start making mushroom coffee because people don't want it. Yeah. You know, what else I think is interesting? I mean, I think this is a great program by Mercy for Animals, but I i feel like whenever people bring up animal rights issues, like, well, you know, the far these people who are doing factory farms, they should stop raising animals. Or we say, oh, they should stop having carriage horses in New York.
00:07:14
Speaker
Then the argument is, but what about all those people and their jobs? You know, they in and that's what Mercy for Animals is tackling. Well, we can help farmers have different jobs, but There's people that lose their jobs every day, all the time, especially now with AI. There's a lot of people that are losing low-level jobs that AI is just taking over.
00:07:35
Speaker
And you know we're not all like, oh no, we have to find them another job. So you know I just, I don't know. I just think it's kind of, is this really necessary to do? yeah i I know what you mean. And it's...
00:07:50
Speaker
it It seems to me that that that some folk that can switch what they're farming from animals to plants,
Misleading Organic and Humane Claims
00:07:59
Speaker
that's great. like We want to facilitate that. But I mean, both you and I have changed our careers doing one thing, going to do something completely different. It is possible transferable skills from being an animal farmer will lead you to all sorts of different other things. So i I wonder whether this maybe seems to be an example of something where you can say, well, look, this could happen, but i don't think this is necessarily the solution for all animal farmers, probably, nor is it claiming to be. No, because as you're pointing out, it's is it really a scalable project? you know I mean, as far as mushrooms, it's probably not, but maybe they can move ah these people into other things. But then the land that they would have to raise pigs is probably not as much land as they would need if they were going to grow watermelons or something. Well, as well, I was just wondering why the couple of instances that we have focused on the show have both been mushroom based. And I imagine that there's something in terms of the infrastructure that's needed and the speed with which it can be constructed probably makes it quite a low cost way of doing it. Because I mean, if you've had pigs
00:09:15
Speaker
on a piece of land for, it was basically 30 years, wasn't it? yeah That land is not going to be suitable for growing anything anytime soon, is it? So you're going to have to build on top of it. you know So in terms of growing, I'm thinking of any other plants you would need to be putting beds in, greenhouses in and and and and things like that. It's not a case of, oh, we'll just put some seeds in in the ground and and it will grow. So that might be a ah reason why mushrooms are being preferred. I wonder if it's because they grow mushrooms indoors and then they can repurpose these barns that were used for the hogs as to grow mushrooms if with some refurbishment. so Because i don't think the pigs were out actually out on the land, but they do have these structures already in place.
00:10:06
Speaker
I mean- you know ah neither of us have been ah evangelical about this but but but some folk really like mushrooms i mean you know cultural change brings about uh you know different lifestyle patterns and behaviors and things like that so maybe if this was the way forward maybe we would be more mushrooms in our diet and yeah there they're super foods in many different ways aren't they so Well, i remember you telling me that one time you were having mushroom coffee, right? Yeah. Was it mushrooms or was it? Yeah. No, no, no. what It was mushroom coffee. I think the fact that I was indicating that it happened indicates how infrequently that is ah ah part of my diet. But there we are. but I try mushroom hot chocolate if it was vegan. Yeah, absolutely. And in the in the world that we are in, actually, we we don't need to have a mushroom farm in every town or village. Actually, you know, just a ah a few people transitioning and then Amazon can send their drones out, can't they? And and pick them up and drop them off anywhere in the world and all will be well. Something we can get evangelical about is an article by Kenny Torella, Play the Jingle. um and
00:11:20
Speaker
ah We've got another great bit of of Kenny writing this week. He's talking about Costco and their organic chicken that isn't what it seems, Shane. oh No, it never is. um I think what's notable about this investigation is that it's really exposing two problems with words and ideas that everybody likes to think are great, which are um Costco. And if you don't know, Costco is like a big... ah Do you have Costco in the UK? Yeah. to a small extent. Okay. I'm not a member of Costco, but it's big. It'll be a huge warehouse and you go in and you can buy items in bulk.
00:11:59
Speaker
So if you want to buy 48 rolls of toilet paper or 64 cans of Coca-Cola, you can go there and do that. I never want that much. But one of the things that they have there is they are really proud of their chicken.
00:12:14
Speaker
And so they are touting how it's organic and it has higher welfare standards. And so the organic is the other thing that is supposedly everyone loves to talk about. And what this article is showing is that what we consider organic and what we consider higher welfare welfare standards is just basically a lie.
00:12:35
Speaker
It's not. i I fell for this myself. it ah Definitely it was less than 12 months from me. going vegan. So something latently was there waiting to to to sprout. But I remember deciding I was only going to buy organic dairy milk. I don't think I extended that to cheese, but maybe I did. I can't remember. But it was definitely like, ah oh, I can't just get the normal milk. I need to get the organic milk because they do all sorts of horrible things to the cows in in non-organic things. And I mean, that the popularity of organic as a as a standard yeah does suggest that I don't believe that everyone that buys organic stuff is doing it because they believe in you know the soil being cultivated properly and and everything like that. It's just a kind of spurious, oh, well, this is a bit better.
00:13:34
Speaker
This is a bit nicer. But I don't know that people
Systemic Failures in Animal Welfare Certifications
00:13:37
Speaker
could necessarily put their finger on what it is about it. They'd be they'd be making guesses, which this report, it's some Mercy for Animals that did the yes investigation. There was an undercover investigation at one of the suppliers.
00:13:51
Speaker
for Costco where they uncovered all of these um abuses. So organic livestock operations are supposed to give their animals organic feed. They're required to give them outdoor access, more barn space, cleaner air,
00:14:06
Speaker
And then euthanasia must also be humane. And so what the undercover investigator found is that, I don't know about the feed, if they mentioned the feed, that may have been organic. But as far as the outdoor access, the safe ammonia levels, the amount of darkness these chickens were getting, and the humane euthanasia, none of that was happening at all. and And there was very clear transgressions of the rules and the guidelines. I mean, from a ah vegan and animal rights point of view, we're not going to say, oh, well, so long as they're getting eight hours of darkness a day in in the chicken barn, that's okay. Of course, we're not saying that's okay, but that is the standard and that's needed. And the owner of this unit basically said to the undercover worker, we're going to give them three to four
00:14:57
Speaker
hours of darkness a day, that will do. But on the day that the inspector comes, we'll increase it to eight, which is much... Do you have a ah system of school inspections in the US?
00:15:11
Speaker
school inspections? Yeah. You mean like coming into classrooms or something? Yeah. Well, I think um each district has its own principals that would come in and like do evaluations, but... Sure. So in in the UK since 1988, I think it was, there has been Ofsted who can inspect your school at... The amount of notice has changed. So when I was at school, um As a child, you got several weeks notice. And I genuinely remember when our school got noticed that the inspectors were coming, the the doors were put back on the toilets.
00:15:51
Speaker
The toilets didn't have doors until that point because people would vandalize them and be stupid and what have you. So Ofsted coming in a few weeks. We'll put the doors back on. But the amount of notice now has gone down, down, down, down. down And now they can turn up within hours. And it's not just it's not just working in schools. It's social care and things like that. So I've worked in lots of settings where you've got this looming, like, oh, when Ofsted come, we need to say this. We need to do this. And that was, in a sense, one of the recommendations from this report, wasn't it? It's it's like, actually, that you could...
00:16:26
Speaker
you could check that people are doing what they're supposed to be doing by turning up unannounced. Like, why is it you know when they're going to turn up? Like, why is that acceptable? Well, because the USDA, who does these inspections, are they're all buddies with the people who are raising the animals. And not only that, there's not enough inspectors. So, I mean, these places may get inspected once a year, once every couple of years. There's not enough inspectors.
00:16:55
Speaker
One solution to that that Kenny also mentions is um the CCTV cameras. But you know I don't think any of them are going to want to do that because then you're going to see how they're feeding the chickens to death instead of humanely euthanizing them.
00:17:10
Speaker
so i mean I thought the biggest joke of this whole article was that the American Humane Society certified this farm and these other ones as humane. i mean It's like your red tractor scheme. it' just What are they considering humane? Yeah, it it really doesn't take too much probing at all to see that it's a broken system. Because actually, if it was a system that could take the duress of food is important, animal welfare is important, therefore we're going up the budget and we're going to make sure there's more inspectors and we're going to inspect them properly and blah, blah. Like they'd all be found to be wanting, they'd all be found to have substandard practices. And so it it wouldn't work. And I i think like you say, they're not just pally in a kind of conspiratorial way, they're pally in a kind of, we know that you can only do this in a cruel way. So so let's not let's not look under that rock. Let's not cry too deeply. Because if they did that, then they'd have to actually make changes and they don't want to do that. And not only that, a lot of- They can't do it. They can't do it. Right. Because it would cost so much money and you just cannot, and you also, you just can't really can't raise these animals humanely. But also because the companies, this,
Ethical Debate on Scotland's Guga Hunt
00:18:28
Speaker
Kenny was pointing out that 80% of chickens in the United States are farmed by some 10 companies.
00:18:34
Speaker
And- These people who own these are very rich and they're contributing to political campaigns. And, you know, so the politicians and the government, the people in charge are incentivized not to look too closely.
00:18:47
Speaker
think the other thing about this article that we've talked about a lot um as far as um the EU is those fast growing chicken breeds. And they basically, all of these companies are also using those fast growing chicken breeds.
00:19:02
Speaker
So just the kind of to chicken that has been bred to be in these barns and in these intensive situations, is there's no way to raise them humanely because they're just in constant pain all the time.
00:19:14
Speaker
I was really surprised that graphic that, listen if you follow the link to the article, is probably the most striking graphic. There are there are pictures from the undercover workers' operation too, which I don't want to downplay. They're very powerful images. But the yellow background graphic that shows chicken size more than doubling between 1950 2023 is
00:19:41
Speaker
really shocking. And I looked at it and I thought, I wonder if they've taken a bit of license there with making them look fatter. I know they're, you know, two and a half times bigger, but but perhaps, perhaps there's been some artistic license from whatever organization, whatever animal rights organization put this together. I look, the source is the USDA and the National Chicken Council. Like they're producing this themselves. It's like, so what are you, are you proud yes that you're getting more meat off your chicken? What the hell?
00:20:10
Speaker
Yes, they're, they tell, I've seen that graphic before and they tell that as a, like, look at this great thing that we've done. We can get these monsters. right yeah Because they don't think people are going to think about it like we are about, wow, that chicken's body is not equipped to deal with that.
00:20:26
Speaker
Yeah. Well, you know, some people won't, a lot of people won't, maybe most people won't, but some people will. And I think that's the, unfortunately, that's the game we've got to play with, with the vegan movement and the animal rights movement. It's, we're just going to be taking a small proportion of people over to a more enlightened way of doing things bit by bit Thank you for that one, Shay. I think you were you guessed, ah whats what's the phrase? Guest what's the guest article? What's it called?
00:20:54
Speaker
Where you share an article. You share a Vox article. it A gift link, yes. You gift link that article to those of us in there in the little WhatsApp group where we're putting together the running order. So thank for that one. And it's worth us just pausing for a moment, listeners, because you might not know that as well as listening to me and Shane talking about things, you can also read about what we have to say about the week's news articles.
00:21:19
Speaker
That's right, you can just go to zencastr.com, Z-E-N-C-A-S-T-R.com slash vegan hyphen week, and any show you click on will have a written transcript beneath it. So these transcripts are AI generated, so they will not be 100% accurate, but nonetheless, they make our shows more accessible, and we're delighted that they're available to anyone who is interested in consuming our content in this way.
00:21:44
Speaker
And if you listen to Spotify, you well if you listen to us on spotify you can also read the auto-generated captions within their app yeah don't go using spotify for anything else just enough of the falafel then they are they're very good at at captioning our show i've got to say got to give them the credit that you you know they they break it down into chapters and it's like whoa there's there's a little man or woman just listening to the show there they've got it spot on Anyway, let's talk about some more news. We're heading to Scotland this time. We've put two links in the show notes for you, one from The Telegraph and one from the BBC, just in case you have difficulty accessing one of them. I'm reading from the BBC here. The headline is that Scotland's centuries-old Guga hunt could be refused licence. I think, Shane, we reported in some of the protesting that
00:22:36
Speaker
that was going on here. And indeed, lower down the article, and there is a picture of one of the protests held outside Nature Scott's headquarters in Enverness a month or so ago.
00:22:50
Speaker
Listeners, if you're not aware of of what... this whole thing is a Guga. It's a young seabird. So like a young gamut, basically. So were a bird that lives by the sea. And there is an uninhabited Hebridean island. It's like pretty much as far north and a bit west of Scotland as you can go. And there has been an annual hunt for for years and years and years, dating back to the 15th century. Generally, it's only been bird flu that has stopped this happening. However, Nature Scott officials have recommended that board members refuse granting a license for this year's hunt due to the potential impact on sulaskiers, pronounced that wrong, I'm sure, their gannet population. And the officials also said that animal welfare concerns were considered.
00:23:46
Speaker
What do you make of that last little bit, Shane? animal welfare concerns were also considered is that them saying to the protesters we did listen to you or is that them saying to the hunters things have changed like we've got a mounting i think it was over 100,000 signatures they got yeah on a petition wasn't it like am I reading too much into that Well, I wondered about that too. And so I like looked up what is it actually that happens in this hunt? Because i I'm reading this article from The Telegraph and you're reading from the BBC, but in The Telegraph, it didn't say what happened in the hunt. So i looked that up and what happens in this hunt is there, it's not a lot of people. They only give about 10 licenses.
00:24:30
Speaker
And so they, hunters from Lewis Island, go to this a little island and they get about two weeks and they use poles and nooses to catch the flightless baby gannets because they can't fly yet at this point.
00:24:46
Speaker
And so they go and they get them from directly from the steep cliffs. So, I mean, first of all, this is not even, i mean, not that any kind of hunting with from humans is fair, but this is like not even whatsoever.
00:24:58
Speaker
And then I, i mean, i assume they, you know, kill them and them. do all the whatever else they do. So I think that might be part of the consideration is that this is not, it's the welfare consideration that this is not a humane thing to do. And then of course, the argument from the people who live on Lewis Island and whose grandparents and great grandparents have been doing this for years is that this is a tradition and you want to take away our tradition.
00:25:26
Speaker
But I think I've said before that just because something is a tradition does not mean it's sacred or ethical or moral. And I don't think that humans should preserve traditions that involve animal cruelty any more than we should preserve traditions that are cruel to humans or dangerous to humans. That's the argument. Yeah. If this was a genuine food source that was needed in 2026 by a very remote community of humans, and it was really needed, I don't think there would be an argument for coming down and and and campaigning. um There's, you know, there are so many examples of animal exploitation in the world.
00:26:08
Speaker
closer to home for for all of us, you know, let's focus on that. But this is, is just needless. Like if you really needing to, such a roundabout way of getting nutrition, isn't it? Like that that one of the arguments that they make is they say, look, this is a lawful act. It's making a specific provision for ah the purpose of providing food for human consumption. It's like, have you heard of food banks?
00:26:35
Speaker
Like, if you're that hungry, like, why what we going to do? We're going to sail miles and miles off the coast of Scotland. We're going to do, I mean, presumably quite dangerous. And I imagine that's part of the custom and the heritage of it. It's quite an unusual thing to do. It's quite edgy. Yeah.
00:26:53
Speaker
And yeah, like you say, there's there's no defence for it from from an ethical point of view. And it's really interesting hearing the arguments in favour of keeping it Somebody from the Save Our Guga Harvest, one awful phrase. Save Our Google Harvest campaign said that there'd been a toxic nature to the opposition to the hunt, which might be referring... Was there some vandalism done on the Nature Scott building? I seem to remember. Yeah, they said that they allegedly smashed a glass door and windows at the offices and sprayed graffiti. And then apparently they had to spend...
00:27:34
Speaker
84,708 pounds employing an on-site security guard and 5,800 pounds repairing the damage. And then they also had to apply anti-climb paint and upgraded to CCTV and legal fees. So this was pretty expensive for Nature Scott, which by the way, I didn't know what that was, but it's like the EPA in the United States or I guess natural England in the UK. it's basically their environmental or ah organization. Yeah. I'm thinking on on the fly here, but there is something that I feel quite ironic about them complaining about the amount of money they need to spend on defending themselves from a few activists smashing a window and a door and using a bit of spray paint when they're the ones who are going to pursue a flightless bird.
00:28:23
Speaker
on a small island that lives you know tens and tens of miles out into the middle of the ocean like nowhere near where they live it's like ah so you understand like injustice and like attacking people that that seems like a ah huge amount of money to be spending on a security guard as well 84 000 that's a lot of money for a security guard to make What are they doing? i They must be eating a lot of Guga. I might be in the wrong profession. Yeah. yeah Well, like I thought that too. But um yeah, we we it remains to be seen what happens. What we haven't mentioned is that um as well as just not giving the license to further options that have been tabled as possibilities would be a smaller hunt. So a hunt of either 500 or birds.
00:29:12
Speaker
birds I guess we'll keep a close eye on it and and we'll report on on what happens. But I think from my point of view, it's good that this is getting more coverage, that it's getting the petition going. There's awareness, there's resistance to it. We've seen from the hunting in the UK, the inland hunting of of foxes and such like, that there are going to be some people that are just bloody minded and just like, you're not going to tell me what to do. But the harder you make it, the more opposition, the more likely it is that...
00:29:42
Speaker
you know, one group will shut down. And I mean, in this case, there is just one one island. There's one, quote, harvest that's happening. so yeah But if you convince a few people to stop doing it or it doesn't feel viable for them anymore, then you
Transparency and Surveillance in Farming
00:29:57
Speaker
never know. But well done to everyone involved. I did want to say one more thing about the one of the people who was arguing for their tradition, whose i you know father and grandfather participated in it, and his name was John McLeod.
00:30:11
Speaker
And he did make a good point because he said, most of the people who signed that petition, this is a petition to ban it, think nothing of eating chicken from fast food restaurants raised in the most appalling conditions.
00:30:23
Speaker
I was like, absolutely John, ah can't argue with you there. i've i don't think you should do either of those things. But yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that was the only kind of bit of ic I suppose, that I got from the animal rights argument in in in the same way that I get it when folk are saying, look at this Yulin dog meat festival in China. that's It's awful. And it's like, well,
00:30:48
Speaker
Fair enough people that live there, you know, campaign against it. But there's there's loads of stuff happening in our backyard. But I mean, this is just so needless and so cruel. I think of a few folk getting together to campaign against it is is reasonable. yeah So we've mentioned there in in passing the hunting of foxes and other things like that. And one thing that is a relatively new tool for activists who are trying to shed a light on that, catch people in the act,
00:31:18
Speaker
expose it, get more prominence to these horrible things that are going on, is the use of drones. Now in the US, animal rights activists are asking the Federal Aviation Administration to let them continue flying camera-equipped drones over farms. Their claim is, well fairly obviously, that banning overhead surveillance would shield animal agriculture from public oversight. Why are they needing to to ask this? Well, the FAA, the Federal Aviation Administration, have proposed allowing producers to seek the agency's permission to ban drones over farms as part of a broader effort to protect sites critical to national security It's the same thing, Shane, that we have had recently in the last year or so in where we've got this whole
00:32:09
Speaker
key national infrastructure argument that it's like oh well that's far too important to the day-to-day run to the country so you're not allowed to film it you're not allowed to go there you're not allowed to question them you can't say anything against them it's far too you know essential you you can't even think bad things about it which is quite a dangerous precedent to set but we're seeing it again here Yeah, I agree. And um the other thing I noted was that the FAA identified agriculture as one of those 16 sectors of critical infrastructure, but they didn't develop criteria for determining whether a particular farm qualifies as critical infrastructure.
00:32:50
Speaker
So right now, we don't even they don't even know if they fly a drone over a farm. Is that a critical infrastructure? Is that not critical infrastructure? What makes a farm critical infrastructure?
00:33:01
Speaker
So that's that's part of what the animal rights activists are arguing. Well, yeah, and... I don't necessarily agree with the concept of, oh, well, if it's national infrastructure, then you can't protest it or or anything like that. ah Yeah, that doesn't sit well. But in the instance of a train line, for example, there's only one train line from this town to this town. I can see the argument of like,
00:33:29
Speaker
look, i I get that you have the right to protest, but if you protest by blocking that one train line, that's really screwing a lot of people over. Whereas no one farm...
00:33:40
Speaker
is supplying any one human being, are they? you know what I mean? like if you Yeah. if you let let's Let's say that that they completely disrupt this farm and it it can't operate. Let's not think from an animal rights point of view here. Just like people need food and some of them are getting it from that farm.
00:33:59
Speaker
They just get it from a different farm. that you know The supermarket would buy from a different farm that week and that's fine. So, yeah, it it's... It seems like a ah clever bit of wording that is going to make people go, oh, well, if you phrase it like that, then yeah, I suppose people oughtn't to to protest these things. it It gets to a point where protesting on a high street would be like, well, people need to walk down that high street. You can't protest there. How will people get to shops?
00:34:27
Speaker
Well, that's the whole point of protesting is to as to inconvenience people so that they pay attention to what's happening. If a protest didn't inconvenience, you just could stand in your living room and protest, then what's the point of it? So that's the whole point of protesting.
00:34:44
Speaker
But this isn't even a protest. This is just photojournalists wanting to document and expose animal rights and environmental abuses.
00:34:56
Speaker
And I think it's just right along the lines of all the other ag-gag rules where they are trying to prevent people from knowing the truth about what happens. It's not about critical infrastructure. It's about we don't want people to know what's really happening.
00:35:12
Speaker
and And I mean, the Ridgeland Farms case in the in the last few months, what struck me was... perhaps a perception of we're losing control if if just a bunch of activists can can turn up and just walk out of a research facility with loads of dogs just because they've decided to. That looks like a really weak state, doesn't it? It's kind of like, well, you can't even just stop a bunch of hippies marching in and doing what they want. So I i wonder whether there's an element of
00:35:44
Speaker
that too of, you know, if if we don't clamp down on this, then who's to stop X, Y, Z happening, a sort of slippery slope argument, perhaps. Well, and then once the activists did make such a big protest, and they were at the in such great numbers at Ridgeland, then all the videos that they had made years before, exposing what was happening inside, became more visible, and then the public started really paying attention. Do you think there could be an argument, just thinking back to a couple of stories ago, our conversation about there not being enough funding allocated for for folks to inspect farms? Could there be a ah line that, and I mean, maybe they are taking direction,
00:36:33
Speaker
this line here, but but just saying, look, all we're doing is showing whether or not these organizations are sticking to the national rules with regards to agriculture. and We're not going to do anything invasive. We're not going to look at anything other than just them doing their work because we know it's an underfunded thing and you know we we thought you'd want to know if if things are not being done properly. Do you do you think that could be a a legitimate line of argument?
00:37:07
Speaker
I think it could be a legitimate line, yeah. I don't know if it's going to go anywhere because the press is under attack in the United States. you know All of these civil liberties are under attack.
00:37:18
Speaker
and As we were talking about before the Costco story, The government does not want to actually make any changes because you can't do this humanely.
00:37:28
Speaker
So all this footage of huge lagoons of manure or miles and miles of cows and CAFOs, that's going to upset people, but none of it's going to, they're not going to want to change. The government doesn't want to change it.
00:37:44
Speaker
No. ah Have there been cases of footage being obtained illegally and then that coming back to affect negatively the folk who got that footage? Because I'm i'm just thinking there's there's loads of footage out there in documentaries that has argued, well, not arguably, it has been illegally obtained because it's involved trespass or or what have you. I'm not aware of any times where that's got back to bite people in the bum. I'm i'm just wondering whether this is more like a if a farm sees somebody flying a drone, they can say that's illegal, you can't do it. But actually, once you've got the footage, like can folks still be prosecuted? I don't remember if that was part of the Ridgeland case. Was it that they got went in and got illegal footage or if it's just because they took the dogs?
00:38:34
Speaker
But I'm sure that there have been charges for going in and taking footage because then they would say trespassing. And then if you're not allowed to film, then they would prosecute for that. But isn't that's why a lot of these and these undercover inspectors go in secretly and film.
00:38:50
Speaker
Yes, but again, there's ways of protecting those folk. But then the organization that would publicize it, like Mercy for Animals, who would put it on YouTube or PETA or somebody, they I guess they could be charged for disseminating that.
00:39:04
Speaker
i don't I don't know. Listeners, do you know? Do you have examples? i just I just don't think I've ever heard of it. and And yet most undercover footage that you see has been involved with an element of deception. You know, that last story we were we were covering, and well, a couple stories ago earlier in this episode, there's somebody who's not giving their name. Right.
00:39:27
Speaker
in the Vox article, um and they've gone in under false pretenses, haven't they? you know they were being I obviously don't agree with this standpoint, but they were being paid to do work and some of the time they weren't doing that work. They were filming and documenting and blah, blah.
00:39:42
Speaker
I don't know. i I just think if the repercussions were real, then perhaps folk wouldn't be doing it as much. it It just makes me think that this even if this legislation goes through, you've just got to fly your drone and not get caught.
Vegan Society's Trademark Compliance
00:39:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:59
Speaker
what What do you not agree with about the undercover investigator? ah No, sorry, sorry. That must have come out wrong. i i ah do agree with the principle of doing it. I was saying I don't agree with the standpoint that they were being paid to work, so they should have been working. He can work and...
00:40:18
Speaker
ah It was just in his little camera. why the i mean, basically look like he was standing behind the guy beating the like there's a photo of the guy beating a chicken with a rake and look like he's standing behind filming that.
00:40:30
Speaker
was And he said his main job was to pick up dead chickens from, you know, so he could be sitting there picking up dead chickens and still filming that. yeah Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. No, it's just... Yeah, obviously animal agriculture is going to say that, you know. Yeah. And in and in fact, the the nonsense that they say is highlighted by this article where you have got folks saying, farmers and farm groups say that activist drones harass producers, annoy workers and startle livestock. Cattle were hurt in a drone-triggered stampede, according to Central California Cattle Company. And there's things later on saying, oh...
00:41:06
Speaker
pigs can be pigs are really sensitive they can be upset by any kind of unusual sight or sound i don't know what kind of drones are being used but they're not that loud you know i yeah but but but but come on the hypocrisy of like these are really sensitive animals says the industry that only exists to exploit and kill them yes we don't want to startle workers or annoy anyone Yeah, yeah. Well, let's let's finish on a positive, Shane. it's where It's a question I've got for you. Will you be attending the Hazelnut Growers Bargaining Association annual meeting on August the 26th at West Salem Roaths? No, I do not know.
00:41:48
Speaker
and No, i don't even know what that is. Well, it was advertised twice on the page of of the article here. um So we've got it from capitalpress.com. And um in three places, the Hazelnut Growers Bargaining Association have got that annual meeting advertised. um And there is also two ads for the sixth annual Oregon Ag Prayer Breakfast.
00:42:11
Speaker
Ag prayer, okay. Ag prayer, yeah. Free breakfast. so Yeah, they love a prayer breakfast. yeah That's what they say about Oregon. um Not necessarily Oregon, but politicians love a prayer breakfast. Oh, do they? Yes, it's a very popular thing here. Oh, well, I mean, ah our shows are scheduled to come out at 6am UK time every morning. So if you want to have us as part of your prayer breakfast, then um feel free. Well, thank you for commenting on those last two stories, Shane.
00:42:45
Speaker
Listeners, remember, if you want to read more about these stories, we've said there's the links in the show notes, but there's brightly coloured, easy to click links on our social pages, which are a great place to hang out, Shane. That's right, Anthony. You can go to at Enough of the Falafel on Facebook and Instagram.
00:43:03
Speaker
And each of the stories that we cover is going to go up on our Facebook account. So if you follow us, you'll get those in your feed too. And also if you want to reach out to us and maybe tell us if you have questions heard of anybody being prosecuted for taking drone footage or undercover footage social media is a really easy quick way to contact us i manage the social media and so if you send us some a note i will get back to you you will indeed you're a very hard-working person and we're very lucky to have you our last story is from the vegan society
00:43:37
Speaker
And I'm going to admit to having read this a few times and still not quite understood what's at the nub of the issue. I've got a guess. I'm going to see if my guess matches Shane's interpretation. So again, we've included two links in the show notes for this one, one from the Vegan Society and one from Vegconomist.
00:43:58
Speaker
So the headlines are that the vegan society are refreshing their classic vegan trademark design. This isn't just ah a rebrand in terms of we're doing a new logo is is my understanding. It's part of an ongoing commitment to clarity, credibility, and consumer confidence. Try saying that at a prayer breakfast with your mouth full of cornflakes. So there's an implementation of the EU's Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition Directive or EMPCO.
00:44:30
Speaker
So basically, if you're a consumer facing environmental or sustainable project, You need to use third party certification schemes if you're selling in the EU.
00:44:45
Speaker
So this is my big guess, Shane. I guess what's happening here is some folk have come up with claims of, oh, it's our sustainability scheme. Yes, it's got the rubber stamp from the sustainability scheme. And then people are saying, well, that's not sustainable at all. Who says it's sustainable?
00:45:02
Speaker
ah We do. Okay, does anyone else? Nope, just us. Right, well, you can't really call it sustainable then. You can't really call it environmental. So it's adding an extra layer of scrutiny. Was that your understanding?
00:45:16
Speaker
That was mine. And I was wondering, is the Vegan Society trademark well known in Europe? Is it like something that they put on products, like kind of like PETA has the leaping bunny to show that it's cruelty free? And so that's a common thing you might see on a lotion or shaving cream or something. Then you would be like, oh, okay, this is got the leaping bunny. So it's cruelty free. So is that what the Vegan Society trademark is used for?
00:45:44
Speaker
Yeah, ah that's that's the idea. And i am but one man, but I would say that it carries a good deal of credibility in in the UK. Obviously, not everyone is a huge fan of the vegan society, but I think generally speaking, if you see that vegan society logo where the V is sort of turning into ah a sunflower, then you could be like, right, this isn't just Tesco saying, yeah, we reckon this is vegan. and This isn't just a quick scanning of the ingredients and you go, well, I can't see anything that looks like it's the result of animal exploitation and there. There's ah a good deal of reliability that, okay, proper vegans who know what they're talking about have added some scrutiny to this.
00:46:30
Speaker
And therefore I can trust that it's vegan. I know some folk who say that they won't buy anything unless it's got like a proper certification like that. They don't necessarily trust supermarket, you know, biscuits that just say, oh, it's suitable for vegans. But I think that's unusual, I would say. So i I think this is a good thing, isn't it? That like it will be harder for folk to say, oh, this is environmental. Oh, this is sustainable. I mean, that said, it's not necessarily to do with animal rights there, is it? No, I could i think it it's going to be relevant to a lot of different groups. But well like you know we were talking in the story, in the Costco story, about how the Humane Society was certifying the Costco chicken as humane.
00:47:22
Speaker
i mean... It'd be nice if you had some third party that was... i guess the Humane Society could be a third party. But if you could say... Somebody saying, like well, this is what humane means and not just the Humane Society saying, oh, sure, you gave us a donation. So we'll say... i mean, I don't know if that's what happened, but I suspect... you know we'll say it's humane.
00:47:43
Speaker
I don't know how much work or how much money this is going to cost the vegan society to work towards the full compliance because I think they have to redesign their trademark was a big part of the story. No one's seen the redesign yet.
00:47:55
Speaker
And they have to, i guess, go through a bunch of steps to get to compliance. Yeah, it it it's an interesting one because actually on the face of it, you say, oh well, that's that's good that the companies can't just say we're environmental, we're sustainable anymore.
00:48:13
Speaker
But actually, that's not what the vegan society is saying. like ah ah They might say that, but actually for something to be certified vegan... Does it have to jump through any environmental or sustainability hoops? Surely it just needs to not involve animal exploitation. In which case, why is it being subjected to this green transition directive? I mean, I don't doubt that they will be able to, but like you say, it will come at a cost for them. I would, ah I would imagine it wouldn't be huge or prohibitive. You know, if you think of the kind of organizations that will have these schemes, like if it costs millions and millions of pounds to do, then, then that would be unfair on,
00:48:57
Speaker
on companies within that sector. But it's interesting that it's falling under this umbrella, despite the fact that i like surely to get a vegan society accreditation, you just have to say no animal products.
00:49:10
Speaker
Right. That's a good point. I don't know why it's considered under the eco label certification. I mean, maybe there's some sort of bracket that it has to fall under just from an administrative point of view that then everything under there gets attributed to. I remember when I was running a vegan cafe on Facebook, we always appeared as a vegetarian slash vegan cafe and we couldn't change it. We couldn't get it to just say vegan. was just like, why? We're not vegetarian, but that was their bracket. Um, so I don't know, maybe there's, maybe there's something there, but, um, yeah, we know any ideas for, um, you know, what you think, what you think that the logo should look like Shane, you've got any, I mean, I love sunflowers as actually my favorite flower, but I feel like the logo now is maybe got a lot going on and they could probably just simplify it with like just the V with the leaf or something, you know, that's kind of a lot. Yeah, I'm thinking of some sort of prominent aggressive vegan and it could just be like a cartoon avatar of them like sticking there giving the V signs to someone or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why not?
00:50:22
Speaker
Why not? Well, we will see. You'll hear about it first from us, but perhaps not as a story that we go into too much depth over unless it's really controversial. But we'll we'll try and let you know if and when. If your if your design is what you choose, that it will be controversial. It will. It will get its own episode, for sure. For sure. Cool. Thank you for that one, Shane, and indeed for being on the show. At such short notice, listeners, Shane had other plans, other plans for today, but... with a few hours notice, here she is. So yeah, very grateful for that one, Shane. Listeners, you might be listening to what Shane said though and think, na no no, no, no, you've got it all wrong. Or even me you might have thought that about something I said. I can't think what it would have been though. Goodness, perished the thought. Anyway,
00:51:08
Speaker
You know that we love hearing from you, whether it's feedback, whether it's ideas, whether it's suggestions. We've been getting loads of suggestions from you over the last few weeks of content for future episodes. You're going to need our email address for that.
00:51:21
Speaker
Shane, what is it? It's enoughofthefalafel at gmail.com, all one word. And we read and respond to every email sent by listeners. And we're going to feature them on our upcoming mailbag show. I can never say that word. On our upcoming mailbag show. um unless you tell us not to in your email. Yes, indeed. I will say, I've said this before, I sometimes take a little while to respond when an email comes in. i'll I'll read it and I'll like star it to respond to, but I don't want to rush an email to any of you lovely people out there. So apologies if you're thinking... Has he seen that? Is he, is he replying? If you want a quick response, get in touch with Shane on social media. She's, she's much better. Then I'll say, Hey, did you get this person's email? Are you going to ever respond to it? I'll prod him for you listeners.
00:52:11
Speaker
yeah He does see him because I will often send him something and then he'll say, Oh yeah, I saw that. And he just hasn't responded yet. So. Yes, apologies. Apologies. We all have our idiosyncrasies, don't we? If you are still listening, you might enjoy what we do and you might want to support us financially. If you can't, that's fine. If you don't want to, that's fine too. But ko-fi.com forward slash enough of the falafel goes towards buying new microphones and things like that. In fact, Mark, this very day, has bought himself a new one courtesy of you lovely people listening. So um we'll be hearing him crystal clear all the way from New Zealand anytime soon.
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:52:48
Speaker
You can also rate us or leave a review on your podcast player. You can serve subscribe to the show, which tells your podcast player that we're a great show, as well as giving you alerts when new episodes drop. And you can tell people about the show or you can share it. Indeed. Well, thank you everyone for listening. We very much appreciate you all. The next Enough of the Falafel episode is coming out on Thursday.
00:53:14
Speaker
Shane's there, Paul's there, and Kate is there. And the three of them are talking about ex-vegan appeal to nature fallacy and Gaz Oakley in general. I edited that episode earlier today.
00:53:27
Speaker
It was great. I loved it. The three of them did a fantastic job. I thoroughly recommend you listen to it. Anyway, that's enough of the falafel for this episode. Thank you, Antony, for your contributions. And thanks to every one of you out there, listeners. We appreciate you. I'm Shane, and you've been listening to Vegan Week from the Enough of the Falafel Collective.
00:53:50
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.
00:54:01
Speaker
We use music and special effects by zapsplap.com. 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.
00:54:31
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...
00:54:52
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.
00:55:07
Speaker
Thanks for your ongoing support wherever you listen to us from.