How I Learned to Love Shrimp – Details, episodes & analysis

Dawn was one of the first people in Asia working on cage-free reforms  – she started working on Asian farm animal welfare 10 years ago, often as one of the few individuals talking to major food companies about improving the welfare of animals in their supply chain.

Dawn Neo is the director of corporate engagement at Global Food Partners. She works with food and hospitality businesses as well as various stakeholders in the industry to improve farm animal welfare. Prior to joining Global Food Partners, she was the lead for Humane Society International’s farm animal welfare program in Asia. 

Today, we cover lots of important things: Major trends in Asian farming, the 2025 cage-free deadline, how to deal with countries with large informal markets, cultural differences in campaigning and negotiation and much more. 

Chapters:

(00:00:00) - Cold Intro 

(00:00:50) - James' intro and Dawn's background

(00:08:12) - Why Asia is critical for farm animals

(00:12:15) - How countries differ in production systems and why this matters 

(00:17:55) - Who is on track for their 2025 cage-free commitments?

(00:23:17) - What if companies can't meet their commitments? & how do cage-free credits work?

(00:31:13) - Which Asian countries are doing well?

(00:36:48) - Rising egg consumption in Asia 

(00:41:09) - How to tackle informal markets? Should we get new commitments or hold companies accountable?

(00:43:30) - Cultural differences in campaigning

(00:57:09) - The need for patience & self-care in advocacy 

Resources: 

• Global Food Partners LinkedIn
• Global Food Partners podcast
• Global Food Partners contact page
• Jason Hickel – Less is more 

For sending recommendations of future guests: 

• hello@howilearnedtoloveshrimp.com 
• James’ LinkedIn: James Özden

With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - it means a lot to us!

Vicky Bond has done lots of impressive stuff in her career – she started working as a vet and later ended up running a 100+ person organisation, The Humane League (THL), which many of you might be familiar with as one of the key organisations campaigning to get chickens out of cages. She is now the CEO of Madre Brava, an international climate campaigning group focused on food. 

Given Vicky’s extensive leadership and management experience, managing teams ranging from 5 to over 110, I wanted to pick her brains about leadership and management in the animal advocacy movement. I would highly recommend it for people who are leading teams of any size or want to learn more about how to do it well!

Podcast news:

• We now have a Substack where we’ll soon be sharing summaries and key takeaways from all episodes! We’ll also be doing polls where you can vote on the next guests. Sign up here.
• After our last episode with Sjir from Giving What We Can, we’ve had some people take a pledge to donate between 5-10% of their income to effective charities – this is incredible! But I said I would give up to £1000, and most of this is still up for grabs. So if you’re considering pledging, now is a great time as I’ll be donating £50 to Giving What We Can’s effective animal advocacy fund for each person who takes the trial pledge of 1% or full 10% pledge, up to a total of £1000. So, if you sign up via the links below, there is a special tracker that will let me know how many people take it, and I’ll donate accordingly. 
  • The 🔹Trial Pledge
  • The 🔸10% Pledge

Chapters:
00:00:00 - Cold Intro
00:09:38 - Challenges and lessons in being a first-time CEO 
00:20:40 - Vicky's experience running 100+ person THL
00:26:45 - Challenges in running large organisations 
00:39:02 - Misconceptions around running large teams 
00:42:55 - Advice for running 20+ person orgs 
00:46:41 - The downsides of scale 
00:56:04 - What makes a good leader 
01:02:05 - Overcoming self-limiting beliefs and imposter syndrome
01:05:55 - Madre Brava's strategy on protein split ratios

Resources:

• Entangled life: How fungi make our world 
• Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown podcast
• Rich Roll podcast
• Madrebrava.org and LinkedIn
• The secret thoughts of successful women 

With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - it means a lot to us!

There is an age-old debate within animal advocacy on the importance of educating the public. Is it simply enough to tell people about the harms of industrial animal agriculture and then they will change their behaviours? Sadly, not it seems. Many people have been disappointed about the amount of behaviour change that’s actually happened over the past few decades due to education, as seen in relatively stagnant numbers of people going vegetarian or vegan. 

That’s why I’m excited that this week’s guest, Katie Cantrell from Greener by Default, is trying a new approach to get people to change their behaviours – by changing their diets with them barely even noticing. Stick around for a great discussion on the importance of nudging, choice architecture and making the plant-based option the default path.

For those who didn’t listen to our special 50th episode (which I think was awesome – go check it out!), this is a reminder that it will just be me hosting the podcast for the foreseeable future, as Amy sadly had to take a step back. 

Resources

• Greener by Default (website, LinkedIn)
• Research on the effectiveness of nudges (and another by the Food Climate League)
• US bans animal testing for certain drugs
• Eve by Cat Bohannon
• The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Naylor

With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - it means a lot to us!

To mark our 50th episode, we're bringing you something special: Five movement leaders talking about some of the biggest developments for animals in the past two years as well as what advocates should focus on next for the next two years. 

Highlighting advancements in policy, corporate campaigns, alternative proteins, and investment in overlooked species, this is an information-packed episode so don't miss out! 

Our guests:

• David Coman-Hidy from The Navigation Fund
• Carolina Galvani from Sinergia Animal
• Alex Holst from The Good Food Institute Europe
• Carley Betts from The Open Wing Alliance
• Karolina Sarek from the Effective Altruism Animal Welfare Fund

Please give the podcast a positive review on your podcast provider of choice. You can also find us on YouTube if you want to see these podcasts in beautiful color and video.

With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - it means a lot to us!

Kelvey Vander Hart from the Wilberforce Institute joins us to share her approach to animal advocacy from a politically right-of-center view and how her Christian faith guides her activism.

• The importance of bipartisan approaches to engage the masses in animal advocacy
• Why animal welfare should be a cross-cutting issue that transcends political affiliation
• How political coalitions can be built around specific animal welfare issues rather than comprehensive platforms
• Reforming government subsidies that prop up factory farming and removing barriers to innovation
• The connection between Christian values of mercy, compassion, and justice and animal welfare
• Ways to engage faith communities in animal advocacy through shared values
• The pragmatic necessity of working with people across the political spectrum to achieve progress
• The story of William Wilberforce, who helped abolish the slave trade and founded the world's first animal welfare organisation

Next week is our 50th episode where we'll be interviewing five guests and reflecting on the last two years since the podcast launched. Watch out for this special celebratory episode on April 15th.

Resources:

• The Wilberforce Institute’s website 
• The Wilberforce Institute’s newsletter sign-up page
• The Wilberforce Institute’s X account 
• Kelvey Vander Hart’s website 
• Kelvey Vander Hart’s LinkedIn 
• The Saltwater Chronicles
• Media recommendations 
  • How to Be a Good Creature by Sy Montgomery
  • Blackfish 
  • Fear Factories by Matthew Scully 
• Some articles I’ve written related to bipartisan animal advocacy, limited government animal advocacy
  • “Cut Government, Save Animals: Here Are 3 Awful Agencies and Programs DOGE Can Eliminate Entirely”
  • “Big Government Won’t Protect Animals” 

With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - it means a lot to us!

David Kay shares his experience as the first employee at Upside Foods, offering a deep dive into the cultivated meat industry's challenges, successes, and political landscape. As an animal advocate who entered the alternative protein space, he provides unique insights on depolarising the conversation around cultivated meat and building bipartisan support.›

• Difference between focusing on environmental/health versus animal welfare messaging
• David's journey from animal advocacy to becoming the first employee at Upside Foods
• How cultivated meat differs from plant-based products as "real meat" grown from cells
• Where hundreds of millions in investment funding goes in cultivated meat startups
• State-level bans on cultivated meat and fighting political polarisation
• How industry is organising through trade associations like AMPS Innovation
• Importance of elite institutions in normalising animal advocacy
• Recent FDA approval for Mission Barns' cultivated pork fat

Add David on LinkedIn to follow his work and learn more about his perspectives on the alternative protein industry.

Resources:

• Animal liberation book
• GFI website 
  • State of the industry reports 
• AgFunder – Elaine Watson
• Mission Barns FDA Approval
• David Kay LinkedIn

With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - it means a lot to us!

A critical look at the entwined relationship between parenthood and the animal advocacy movement. Julia Reinelt shares her insights on how organisations can become more supportive to parents in the advocacy space.

• Julia introduces herself and discusses her journey in the animal advocacy movement 
• The challenges of balancing advocacy work and parenting 
• Understanding the family-unfriendly aspects of the animal advocacy movement 
• Suggestions on creating more inclusive environments for parents within organisations 
• The impact of geographical location on parental support in advocacy 
• Insights on the necessity of normalising parenting conversations across the movement 
• How advocating for family-friendly policies can foster sustainability 
• The role of the AVA summits in promoting family-friendly initiatives 
• Calls for listeners to engage with these conversations and advocate for change 

www.avasummit.com

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With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - it means a lot to us!

This episode discusses the intersection of mental health and animal advocacy, highlighting the critical need for self-care among advocates. Aarti Bhavana shares her experiences with emotional tolls from animal suffering, corporate accountability, and practical strategies for sustaining passion in the long term.

• Exploring the toxic mindset of 100% dedication in animal advocacy 
• Importance of addressing mental health in nonprofit sectors 
• Underlying emotions of advocates witnessing animal suffering 
• The role and growth of corporate accountability in animal welfare 
• Practical self-care strategies and boundaries for advocates 
• Insights into shifting perspectives on animal welfare legislation

Resources;

• Bharat Initiative for Accountability 
• Marconi Union - Weightless  
• Cupa Larrc Instagram 
• Our world in data – amount of suffering for cage-free based on welfare footprint 
• Jayasimha Podcast Episode - Cage-free credits 
• Heads Up - Creative campaigns newsletter

With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - it means a lot to us!

Haven King Nobles brings us a really refreshing topic this week as we explore high agency and the importance of this particular trait when it comes to entrepreneurship and continuous innovation. 

We talk through Haven’s experience of being a young entrepreneur, the mistakes he made in the early days of founding the Fish Welfare Initiative, and some advice on the skills to develop to really excel in entrepreneurship.

Whilst this week's topic was high-agency, we of course talk to Haven about his experiencing the first organisation dedicated to working on fish, talking about some of their programmes and the challenges of working in India on this topic.

Resources

• Fish Welfare Initiative Website 
• FWI Stunning project
• How to Launch a High Impact Nonprofit
• The FWI newsletter
• The Lean Startup - Eric Ries
• Who Is a Good Fit for a Career in Nonprofit Entrepreneurship? Charity Entrepreneurship Blog

00:00:00:00 | Intro
00:05:41:13 | High agency
00:09:11:20 | Charity Entrepreneurship funding
00:12:49:12 | Fish Welfare Initiative
00:19:01:21 | Is there issue in movement with high agency?
00:25:37:17 | Cultivation of high agency
00:33:59:01 | FWI and India
00:39:19:23 | How to react to negative feedback
00:46:12:07 | Changing the world without qualifications
00:49:20:05 | Expanding to different countries
00:59:29:21 | Where else would high agency be useful
01:15:03:15 | Closing questions

With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - it means a lot to us!

Ben Newman has had a colourful past few years, being one of Animal Rising’s co-directors and being arrested multiple times for various bits of direct action and disruptive protest. 

Now, Animal Rising has turned its attention to campaign against the RSPCA, the world’s largest animal charity, for running the RSPCA Assured scheme. This has been quite a divisive campaign within the animal advocacy movement, with some, including both co-hosts, having fairly big questions about the effectiveness of this campaign.

00:00:00:00 | Intro
00:04:55:02 | Direct Action Rescues
00:10:01:20 | Mass Arrests Strategy
00:13:40:07 | RSPCA Assured
00:19:19:10 | End of Animal Farming?
00:28:24:12 | RSPCA Scheme Shutdown
00:35:19:01 | Public Opinion on RSPCA
00:45:41:18 | Slaughterhouse Investigations
00:50:24:08 | Social Media Controversy
00:55:36:06 | Animal Rising in 2025
01:02:29:10 | Closing Questions

With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - it means a lot to us!