Species Unite – Détails, épisodes et analyse

“There are more native crocodiles living in cages and concrete pens that are owned by Hermes or supplying Louis Vuitton than live in their natural habitat. So, that is so clearly not conservation. And we're talking like hundreds of thousands of crocodiles.” – Emma Hakansson

 

We are destroying the planet, killing billions of animals and making life insufferable for humans all over the world, all in the name of fashion. But, Emma Hakansson is on a mission to change all of it. She is the founding director of Collective Fashion Justice, an organization dedicated to creating a total ethics fashion system which prioritizes the wellbeing of people, our fellow animals and the planet, before profit.

 

And some of the bags are even like Nile crocodile and crocodiles from different parts of the world and the level of exclusivity is based on like how rare that skin is. And it seems to not even connect in their mind that, like, maybe if an animal is rare, it means that they should be being protected rather than made into a bag that you think is special. And I think that's where a disconnect from nature comes into play. Like if we really connected with nature and saw the beauty of it, we would want to protect it more in its natural state, and we would see higher value in fashion that appreciates nature and takes inspiration from nature, but that doesn't take from it and destroy it or kill it.  – Emma Hakansson

 

Emma has consulted on passed progressive fashion legislation in New York City, spoken at the European Parliament, been invited to provide expertise in Parliament inquiries in Australia, and offered her expertise to global brands and fashion councils seeking to improve their ethics and sustainability.

Her latest book, Total Ethics Fashion, explores the namesake term that she coined to guide the fashion industry forward.

Please listen and share and if you do purchase something this week, please shop consciously. 

"I cannot put enough emphasis on this. I have seen so many things that are so weird that even when I would show it to law enforcement at first, before there were like a lot of these cases coming out, law enforcement would look and they'd be like, “what? Why would someone do this?” Right? As if what I'm showing them wasn't real. And what I learned to say to get past that is, I would say to cops, “how many times have you seen someone do something for reasons they can't even explain to themselves?" - Pete Paxton 

For the past 23 years, Pete Paxton has been working undercover in puppy mills, factory farms, slaughterhouses, pet stores, and on-board commercial fishing boats to document horrific cruelty. Some of these high-stress, horror show jobs last for weeks while others go on for months at a time - months of ten-hour days, doing hard, heavy labor, witnessing animals being abused or killed and watching your co-workers hurt the already abused animals even more. 

Pete does it because he is good at it, because he loves animals and because his work has often resulted in big change for animals.

 What perplexes me the most about Pete, is that after 23 years of working in hellish places like slaughterhouses and factory farms, he hasn’t become dark and dour. Instead, he is the opposite. He's extremely funny, super engaging and seriously joyful. He doesn’t allow this work to take him down. Most people I know, me included, would be a shell of a human being after a couple of hours in his world.

Pete is also the author of Rescue Dogs and has had two HBO documentaries made about him and his work, Dealing Dogs and Death on a Factory Farm.

“He called me into his office and he said, ‘you see that picture above my desk?’ I said, ‘yes.’ It kind of looked like an animal that reminded me of a squirrel. He said, ‘that is a lemur that we think is extinct in the wild. If you can, please go to Madagascar and find out if it's extinct or not.’” – Patricia Wright

 

Dr. Patricia Wright is an anthropologist, a conservationist, and a professor at Stony Brook University in New York, and she's probably the world's leading expert on lemurs. 

There are over 100 species of lemurs, which are prosimians - a type of primate and they only exist on the island of Madagascar.

Patricia spends half her time, six months a year in Madagascar studying lemurs, and has done so since the 80s, when she discovered a new species of lemur, the Golden Bamboo Lemur, and she also established Ranomafana National Park. It is almost an understatement to say that Patricia is a trailblazer— she has done the impossible again and again.

Her story is will astound you.  

 

 

 

This week we are re-sharing one of our favorite episodes, a conversation with Jonathan Balcombe. 

 

“…gazing up to the night sky saying, ‘are we alone?’ …well, wait a minute, look around, there's tons of fascinating life forms. We're so lucky to have all this amazing panoply of life on the planet. 

I get the question… are there other humanoids out there? Or, are there other conscious beings? But we ought to be pretty grateful for what we have on this planet… there's a lot of amazing creatures and phenomena that we get to enjoy living with, if we can.”

- Jonathan Balcombe

Jonathan Balcombe is a biologist with a Ph.D. in ethology, the study of animal behavior. He is the author of four books on the inner lives of animals, including the New York Times bestseller, What a Fish Knows. He has published over 60 scientific papers and book chapters on animal behavior and animal protection.

Jonathan has spent his life studying animals, how they think and feel, and why they matter. Quite often, he focuses on the ones that most of us tend not to think about very much, like fish and in his newest book, flies – Super Fly comes out in May. 

I thought I knew a little bit about fish, but after reading Jonathan’s book and after this time spent with him, I realized that I knew very little. There are 33,000 species of fish and what many of them are capable of is absolutely mind-blowing . 

For eons, we have categorized species by who we deem worthy and who we don’t. Fish are almost always very near or at the bottom of that list. Clearly, that is because most of us know so little about them. Jonathan knows a lot. If you haven’t read his book, read it. It will astonish you. 

Jonathan can most recently be seen in the Netflix documentary, Seaspiracy. 

Visit Jonathan’s Website Read Jonathan’s Books Follow Jonathan on Twitter Like Jonathan on Facebook

“We make everything from a vegan rib, so we got a rib that'll blow your mind. Looks like a rib, tastes like a rib, but guess what? It ain't a rib… it can go on the grill, you can smoke it, you can literally barbecue it and it comes out like mama's ribs that you ate when you grew up.” – Chef Chew

 

 

GW Chew, aka Chef Chew, is a vegan food inventor and restaurateur on a mission is to change lives and to bring holistic solutions to urban communities. He’s developed a of plant protein called Better Chew, which helps meat-eaters transition into a vegan lifestyle.

 

He grew up in rural Southern Maryland to a family of devoted carnivores, and experienced the tragedy of losing close relatives due to diet-related diseases (diabetes, cancer).  When he was 18, he decided to go vegan in pursuit of a healthier lifestyle, but found that many plant-based foods at the time were less than palatable.

 

After nearly 20 years of experimenting with literally thousands of ingredients and cooking techniques, and three vegan restaurants, Chef Chew found the secret to the most authentic plant-based versions of his favorite ethnic and comfort foods and Better Chew entered the plant-based food scene.

 

And he’s done all of this with the goal of democratizing access to healthy, plant-based foods by making them affordable and accessible to all people.

LINKS: 

Better Chew: https://eatbetterchew.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/betterchew

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/betterchew/

 

“One percent of the U.S. is vegan, about five percent is vegetarian… And so if I'm thinking about where can I make the most money, it's not going after the vegans. And if I'm thinking about where can I make the greatest impact, getting a plant based person to switch from one plant based burger to another does zip. And so our focus is how can we help people move the needle with those who aren't on board yet?”

 

 

David Benzaquen is one of the world’s leading experts in the plant-based food industry and he’s the founder of Mission: Plant, a holding company advancing the plant-based sector with strategic investments and consulting services.

 

He has been a part of the plant-based food scene since it really started to take off, and a few months ago he launched an entirely vegan online grocery store called Plant Belly – its stocked with all of his (and my) favorite plant-based foods. It’s absolutely awesome.

 

David is one of the stars of the plant-based movement and I’m extremely grateful to him for making it grow.

 

www.missionplant.com

www.moonshotcollaborative.com

www.plantbelly.com

“ As we were driving from Jackson, Wyoming, towards the entrance of the park, I was in the passenger seat, Charlie was driving and I saw a bison and I'll never forget it. I grabbed him so hard on the arm and I screeched, “BISON!” It was the first bison I'd ever seen in the wild. We stopped the car and we were a good distance from the bison. But we could see it unimpeded with the windshield and just let it walk and do what he was doing. And I don't know, something in my heart turned over.” – Barbara King

 

 

Barbara King is emerita professor of anthropology at William & Mary and a freelance science writer and public speaker and the author of seven books. She is an expert on animal cognition and emotion.

 

Barbara has been on the podcast before to talk about how animals grieve and love. If you haven’t heard that episode, take a listen.  

 

She is back to talk about her 7th book, Animals’ Best Friends: Putting Compassion to Work for Animals in Captivity and in the Wild.

 

There are many reasons that I love this book, but mostly because Barbara delves into and shares how we can be better humans to all other animals on this planet. Her work helps us better understand and advocate for the rights of animals. The more that humans know about animal’s intelligence and emotional lives, the harder it becomes to harm them. 

 

Barbara is a storyteller and through the stories of the individual animals as well as her own personal accounts, she makes us care.

Today we are re-sharing one of our favorite episodes, a conversation with Helena Husseini. 

I usually live day by day. I always live every day like it's going to be the last day. We learned that during the war. We don't know when we're going to die. So, you live every day like it's going to be the last day. That's what I do.”

– Helena Husseini

Helena Husseini is the vice-president of BETA, Beirut Ethical Treatment for Animals. BETA is the first and largest shelter in Lebanon with 850 dogs, many cats, a few horses, and a couple of monkeys.

Helena is also an architect. She has been with BETA since 2006, a few months before the Lebanon War started. As bombs dropped nearby, she drove around in her Jeep saving the injured and abandoned dogs that had been left behind.  

Since then, she has been rescuing animals during the too many crises and catastrophes that have plagued Lebanon, including the 2019 financial collapse, the riots, COVID-19, and the blast that decimated Beirut.  

This conversation is really one that's about resilience, about grit, about what it means to show up every day, even when bombs are dropping, when there's no access to money, when people are starving, and no one knows what tomorrow will look like. 

It's a conversation about what it means to choose the meaningful life. I hope that you are as completely floored by Helena and her stories as I was. 

Learn More About BETA  Like BETA on Facebook Follow BETA on Youtube Support BETA’s "Surviving in Lebanon" fundraiser to provide shelter to their hundreds of rescue animals before they are left without a refuge.

Rich Hardy is a former undercover investigator. He spent 20 years doing over 100 assignments in 30 countries. He's been on the podcast before to talk about his time undercover. If you haven't heard that episode, you should go back and listen.

 

He is back today to talk about his latest adventure.

 

After a couple of decades of incredibly intense investigative work, and living a double life, Rich decided that he needed a massive change. Instead of campaigning against the horrors of animal agriculture, he and his partner Pru are now campaigning for solutions.

 

Last year they started Lazy Meadows Farm and became a couple of vegan farmers. I didn't even know that vegan farming was a thing until Rich filled me in on it. And what surprised me even more, was learning that almost all fruit and vegetable farming everywhere isn't vegan.

 

LINKS:

Lazy Meadow Farm: https://www.lazymeadowfarm.com/

 

Rich on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/notasnatureintended/?hl=en

 

Rich’s book:  https://www.bookdepository.com/Not-Nature-Intended-Rich-Hardy/9781789650631?ref=grid-view&qid=1614899278046&sr=1-1

“The reason that you should accept our client as having rights is because we're showing what an extraordinary being she is. These beings have mirror self-recognition, they know that they are elephants. In fact, we listed 42 different, highly complex cognitive abilities that elephants have. If you didn't know it was an elephant, you’d think [I was] talking about what a human being does.” - Steven Wise

 

 

There is an elephant who lives all by herself in a small enclosure at the Bronx Zoo. Her name is Happy. She arrived at the zoo in 1977, a few years after she’d been kidnapped from the wild in Thailand.

The Bronx Zoo claims that Happy is Happy. The best elephant cognition scientist in the world have argued that she's anything but. And most of us regular human beings can see that an isolated elephant in a tiny enclosure is not living a good life.

Steven Wise is the founder and president of the Nonhuman Rights Project. In 2018, the Nonhuman Rights Project brought a petition for writ of habeas corpus on Happy’s behalf. Habeas corpus is a common law right that protects against unlawful and indefinite imprisonment. In Happy’s case, the NhRP are seeking recognition of her fundamental right to bodily liberty and transfer to an elephant sanctuary.

Last spring, the New York court of appeals, the highest court in the state of New York, agreed to hear Happy’s case. This is the first time in history that the highest court of any English-speaking jurisdiction will hear a habeas corpus case brought on behalf of someone other than a human being.

In a story for the Atlantic, Jill Lepore called Happy’s case, “the most important animal-rights case of the 21st Century.”

Steven Wise has been working toward this since 1980.

LINKS:

The Nonhuman Rights Project  https://www.nonhumanrights.org/

Instagram  https://www.instagram.com/nonhuman.rights.project/

Twitter  https://twitter.com/nonhumanrights

FB  https://www.facebook.com/NonhumanRights

Steven’s TED Talk   https://www.ted.com/speakers/steven_wise