Farm sanctuaries offer a safe forever home where animals are free to enjoy their lives.
Farm sanctuaries are vital havens for rescued animals, providing them with safety, care, and a chance to live free from harm. They also serve as powerful spaces for education and advocacy, inspiring compassion and helping people connect with the stories of individual animals.
In this month’s episode of The Informed Animal Ally, Janeanne from The Alice Sanctuary, Diane from the Happy Herd Farm Sanctuary, and Yvonne and Lianna from Kitchensink Rescue Farm & Sanctuary share the ups and downs of running a farm sanctuary.
Janeanne: Hi, my name is Janeanne and I am the founder and guardian of the Alice Sanctuary. We’ve been an active farm animal sanctuary here in Alberta for just under 11 years now.
Successes
Throughout the period of time that we’ve been here, there have been multiple successes and highlights. But the one that I really would like to acknowledge here would be the idea that two thirds of our rescues or surrenders have come directly from farming families reaching out to find resources or alternatives for one or more of their animals living on their farms.
Now, this can be for a number of reasons. It could be aging of the individuals who are caring or tending the animals. It could be medical needs of the animals themselves and they cannot afford them, but they still want to see these individuals come to a safe landing or a loving place. For that, I would perceive sanctuary becoming more legitimized in a province that’s really engrossed in animal agriculture.
I like the idea that when we have companion animal rescues, many people know that they can have friends or relationships or conversations if something happens to one of their companion animals, they know that they can take them to another place and hopefully find a new home for those companion animals.
What we don’t have are resources for farm animals. And I would love to see sanctuary become a place where it is non-judgemental and a safe environment for families who are in farming to find a soft landing for one or more of the individuals that they have connected with. And so that’s really important for me to discuss and to recognize.
Challenges
Challenges in sanctuary are abundant. If they’re not day to day, then they’re, you know, accumulating to month to month to year to year. Seasonal challenges are always things that we need to face too, especially now that we’re seeing climate change really impact our environment and our weather systems, which then impact our ability to find feed and source out hay and source out bedding like straw.
All of these things are interconnected with one another because it’s not like going to a grocery store and knowing that a tomato is going to be on the shelf, right?
So when we are feeding round bales and for the Alice Sanctuary, we do need to order at least 300 round bales a year now because we are feeding hay year round due to poor pasture and grazing environments because of the shorter grass that we’re experiencing because there’s not a lot of rain. So, it’s incredibly harder to source out hay that isn’t also exponentially priced.
For instance, last year, we did get all of our hay from Montana because they had a better season than what our province had here. And when you did try to find hay here, it wasn’t existent because there just wasn’t a good hay crop, hay field this year.
So, these are all challenges that we have to navigate and thankfully we have a few people on our team that help us out with finding the hay. We have a great hay broker that we’ve been working with for years. Things like this are really beneficial.
Other challenges that I think all of us are facing would be the fundraising aspect of rescue and sanctuary.
Economy is becoming more and more unpredictable. Household incomes are becoming lower and tougher to manage on a week to week basis. So extra dollars usually are kept so there’s a form of safety and security in the home. Whereas before, if you had an extra $5 or $10, donating it to your favourite charity or not for profit wouldn’t be as scary, right? So now incomes and economy has become a little bit more insecure.
So fundraising has become tougher. It’s been something that we’ve had to adjust to. Thankfully as a charity, we also have access to grants when you can find them. And hopefully people who operate foundations can also help you out in that and encourage you in that area too.
Opportunities
I think as years go on, I have accumulated many, many conversations and I really like to talk to people about personal responsibility and accountability for the choices that we make on a day to day basis and how this really impacts not just the world for animals and sentient beings, but also impacts our communities and the health of our communities and it impacts our neighbours and it impacts, you know, newcomers and temporary foreign workers and it impacts our environment and it impacts our planet on a large scale.
It even impacts our economy because again, billions of dollars are being spent to prop up multiple failing industries that are also very misleading, misguiding and damaging most of the structures that we are in and that in turn affects our pocketbooks because that would be our tax dollars.
So these are the kind of conversations that I am really looking forward to having with people going forward into the world of sanctuary as well as immersing myself in the love and the joy that we have with our residents here and the people who want to come in and volunteer with us and enjoy the time that they have with us when we do tours.
Those are things that are really quite motivational because you know that there’s an impact to it all. And it’s bringing happiness to people. It’s bringing love and healing to animals that have been immersed in trauma. And also being able to open up to aspects and perspectives that are around you that typically in the past, many people would be not willing to have.
And it’s been really kind of a good move for us to move into our future idea about sanctuary
Diane: This is Diane from the Happy Herd. For those of you who don’t know us, we’ve been in operation for about 12 years.
Successes
Lots has happened. There’s so many ups and downs in this field. And we’re going through one of our up days.
We have a little Icelandic sheep named Noodles, who came to us last spring at two weeks of age. His mother had abandoned him because he has a neurological issue. The vet looked at him, said there was nothing they could do, and gave us probably one to two months of life. He’s going on 19 months.
And he still falls down. His back left leg doesn’t work all the time. He makes a lot of circles. But he’s the happiest little boy you’ve ever met, and he loves children. When children come, he comes running as fast as he can. Sometimes he doesn’t stop, but he’s just happy to be around.
Challenges
So those are your highs when you have an animal like him come into your life, and the hard times are when you have them leave, like this spring we lost both Lucy, one of our first pigs, she was about 800 pounds, and Baby the donkey, who had been with us for 26 years. So losing two animals like that and close together just rips you apart and it takes a long, long time to heal. And I don’t know if you ever do heal. But you look at Noodles and you still smile.
Opportunities
So, what are we looking forward to in the next year? We’ve got a big project that we want to undertake. We want to pave most of the driveway and some paths and make the farm more accessible. We get busloads of seniors drive through and they all have mobility issues so they stay on the bus.
And then we have kids who are in Canuck Place come out and get to hug an animal. We have health care workers who bring their clients with them to meet farm animals. And we’re transitioning more to that because it means so much to everybody and seeing a kid smile.
So that’s where we’re going and that’s where we’re so happy to have you joining us and being part of our Happy Herd family.
So looking forward to doing the Giving Tuesday with you again and just looking forward to being around. Thanks very much.
Diane:Yvonne: Hi, my name is Yvonne Lewis, and I’m a board member from the Kitchen Sink Rescue Farm and Sanctuary in Roberts Creek.
Lianna: And my name is Lianna Corsini, and we want to acknowledge that we are currently recording from the unceded territory of the Skwxwú7mesh and shíshálh Nations.
Yvonne: We’re here to talk a little bit today about some of the challenges and highlights of running a vegan sanctuary in the Lower Mainland area.
Successes
Yvonne: One thing that we would say is that this year, and it’s almost complete, we’re really excited. It’s a big dream come true, is that we have been able to successfully build a barn. Thanks to some grants that we wrote, and we’re funded by Vancouver Foundation, and also the Sunshine Coast Credit Union, and also some of our successful fundraising events that we’ve had over the last couple years.
We’ve had some significant challenges, through the heat dome and needing to allocate some resources to some different things with COVID and cost of living, prices of lumber, all those kinds of things. So it’s been quite the challenge to get this barn complete and we are so close. Animals are living in it and some of the rest of them will be moving into it very shortly and it is an absolute dynamite dream come true.
Lianna: It’s pretty exciting and it couldn’t be more timely today as we’re speaking to you. We’re experiencing very high winds that have caused a lot of debris and damage on the farm today. So, the earlier part of the day has been spent cleaning up and making sure that all the animals have a safe place to be and stay.
And as well, we’re experiencing record high rains. So, having a barn really is a dream come true. And it’s just such a wonderful space for the animals to be able to shortly move into before the actual weather arrives this winter.
Challenges
Lianna: One of the things that is a bit of a challenge in sanctuary work is having consistent volunteers.
We so appreciate everyone that has come out and continues to come out. We have a lot of inquiries and unfortunately a lot of those inquiries don’t always amount to regular and consistent volunteering. I think it’s really important to remember that there are a lot of different jobs that people can do on the farm.
Yvonne: And it’s really about not overtaxing yourself. So if you think you can do one afternoon every two weeks, we would be grateful to have you and any help is great help. And I think people get really keen and maybe sort of burn themselves out or whatever. So just any farm that you go to and any sanctuary that you help out with, just, you know make sure you’re not putting yourself under too much pressure, but also being able to enjoy the work and have a bond with the charity that you’re giving your time to because it’s so important.
One of the other things that we would say is definitely a challenge sort of as a charity and definitely as a farm charity is just ongoing sort of stable financial support, monthly donorships and things. I mean, we understand that that stuff changes for people and it’s not always possible. But even just thinking to yourself, like, you know, five dollars here and there or five dollars a month would just be fantastic or once a year let us be your Christmas thing and I mean to know that some people are thinking of it and kind of constantly being able to do it is just, it’s a huge help to us, it’s a huge stress reliever and it helps us know what we can afford and how many animals we can take in and feed and continue to help with sort of our ongoing funding needs.
Lianna: I think people don’t realize that even, like, one Starbucks really, over a long period of time, can amount to quite a bit of funding for the animals.
Yvonne: Absolutely, yeah, that would mean, average bag of feed is about, you know, between 20 to 25. So, if five people gave up one Starbucks drink a month, that would buy one of my bags of food for the animals and that would totally help.
Lianna: Would you say it’s about $3,000 to feed the animals over a month?
Yvonne: About that. Approximately about $3,000.
Lianna: One of the campaigns that we’re running right now is fill the barn with hay for winter. So, if you are thinking of how you might support, as Yvonne mentioned, some Christmas gifts or holiday gifts.
You can do that and you can find that info on our website.
Yvonne: And of course we’re a registered charity so there is a tax receipt applicable to any donations that come our way.
Opportunities
Yvonne: One of the big main events that we’ve been able to put on is our gala that we do every year in July. It’s the second week of July.
This year it will be July 12th, which is Saturday afternoon. It has been growing and it is wonderful for community partnerships, for community awareness, for animal awareness. for highlighting, you know, what these animals go through and how you can help and what ends up happening when somebody does rescue them.
What does the rest of their life look like? So it’s, it’s a great sort of education piece as well as being able to have people come to the farm, spend the afternoon, hear the stories meet some of the animals and see what their day to day life is.
It’s also a really fun event. We’ve had Persephone’s Brewing and also Gourmet Girl supporting us for the last two years. They continue to do so, but that’s something that it gives a community members and also community businesses an opportunity to join in and everybody speak up for the animals together. So it’s a wonderful event.
We encourage anybody who wants to come, the tickets will be on our website, you know, probably mid May.
Lianna: It’s a really fun afternoon and the gala itself is also a dream come true. It was put on hold by the pandemic. So when we were finally able to host it felt really great to welcome everybody onto the farm again and to be able to socialize.
And it’s just really fun to dress up and put on your gumboots for an afternoon. And meet with the animals and meet other people who are just simply like minded.
Yvonne: That’s about all. We don’t want to take up too much of your time, but we wanted to say thank you very much for having us.
Thanks for listening. If there’s any inquiries for us, please reach out.
Next episode
Please join us next month as we discuss the importance of polling data, and how it can be used in animal advocacy!
Emily Pickett from the Vancouver Humane Society discusses the tragic life and death of Jenga the giraffe, who died at the Greater Vancouver Zoo on October 23rd, as well as ongoing welfare concerns at the zoo. Originally aired on The Early Edition from CBC News; shared on The Informed Animal Ally podcast.
On October 23rd, Jenga the giraffe died in his enclosure at the Greater Vancouver Zoo.
The Vancouver Humane Society’s Emily Pickett sat down with Stephen Quinn from The Early Edition on CBC Radio to share the heartbreaking story of Jenga, a giraffe who died at the Greater Vancouver Zoo. Interview shared with permission.
Stephen: Another animal has died at the Greater Vancouver Zoo. This time, an eight year old giraffe called Jenga. Now the zoo called him an iconic member of the Greater Vancouver Zoo family. According to the zoo, Jenga was found dead in his barn stall on Wednesday afternoon.
Jenga is one of four young giraffes to die at the facility since 2006. And for more on this, we’re joined by Emily Pickett. She’s the Campaign Director for the Vancouver Humane Society. Good morning to you, Emily.
Emily: Good morning.
Stephen: We don’t know all of the details yet. The zoo says it is still awaiting the results of a necropsy.
But what has been your reaction to this news? This was an eight year old giraffe.
Emily: Well, we at the Vancouver Humane Society are deeply saddened to learn of the death of yet another animal at the Greater Vancouver Zoo. And certainly we were surprised. The giraffe Jenga was only eight years old when he died, which is really a fraction of the lifespan for giraffes in the wild where they can live for up to 25 years.
The lives of captive giraffes
Stephen: Right. And tell me more about Jenga’s life in the zoo, or I guess the lives of giraffes generally there, because this is one of four young giraffes to die at that facility since 2006.
Emily: Giraffes are very sensitive animals that we know do not fare well in captivity. In fact, they can have shorter lifespans than their wild counterparts.
The life of Jenga was very different than the life of a wild giraffe, and I think that really points out the concerns that we at the Humane Society have.
In the wild, giraffes live in large herds, they have a large home range. Their natural habitat is typically arid and dry. They’re browsing animals that are adapted to foraging and feeding predominantly on on leaves and stems of trees and shrubs.
But at the Greater Vancouver Zoo, Jenga lived a very different life. He lived with only a couple of other giraffes in a pretty small and barren enclosure, with little to no opportunity to engage in many of those natural behaviours, and certainly in a very different climate than what his wild counterparts would be in.
Stephen: And when you’re talking about that warm, arid climate, it’s exactly the opposite here, especially through the wintertime, I would imagine.
Emily: Yes, absolutely. And that’s a big problem for giraffes, too. They struggle as a species to regulate their body temperatures. And so the colder winter months can be a real problem for them in these environments.
Ongoing welfare concerns at the zoo
Stephen: Tell me about the Vancouver Humane Society and the reports that you have commissioned by Zoocheck. I guess the last one would have been in 2019. Is that right?
Emily: That’s correct. Yeah, the Vancouver Humane Society has had longstanding concerns around the welfare and conditions of animals at the Greater Vancouver Zoo.
And we’ve commissioned reports by Zoocheck as experts in this area for a number of years now. I think our first report on the Vancouver Zoo was back in 1997, and the most recent one, as you mentioned, was in 2019.
The report found a number of key issues overall.
A lot of the issues zoo-wide were about a lack of environmental and behavioural enrichment for the animals, which we know is very important for wild animals. They need to engage in these natural behaviours.
Another concern was inappropriate housing for social animals and indoor enclosures that were really basic and barren.
There were water issues, issues with groundwater and waterlogging of their enclosures, specifically for the giraffes.
Our 2019 report found similar issues as well.
Zoo accreditation doesn’t reflect welfare
Stephen: The zoo is an accredited zoo. Is it not?
Emily: It is, yes, through CAZA. The concern is that it is really a private industry association of zoos and aquariums. They represent their members and the accreditation is really kind of the zoos and aquariums accrediting themselves.
So, that’s a bit problematic for us. It certainly sounds good on the surface, but it isn’t necessarily an indicator of best practices or high animal welfare standards. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the animals are doing well.
And as you mentioned, the number of deaths and incidents, including in recent years, we think really illustrates the issues.
Calling for change
Stephen: And Emily, is the Humane Society calling for any particular action right now as a result of this?
Emily: We’ve been asking the zoo for many years to take action on its own. We obviously have not seen the changes we would like to see, over the number of years and the number of reports that we’ve drafted and shared with them.
We are still calling on the zoo to do more, but also urging the B. C. government to do more. They are responsible for issuing the permits to the zoo to be able to keep these animals.
So, what we would like to see is the zoo stop keeping exotic animals entirely – as illustrated, they’re not appropriate for these conditions and these environments – and to shift to a sanctuary model where they can focus on rescue, rehab, and release of native species from B.C. and to provide sanctuary for those animals that can’t be released.
Stephen: Emily, thank you for the time this morning. We appreciate it.
Emily: Thank you so much.
Next episode
Please join us next month as we hear perspectives from people who operate farm sanctuaries.
What is the most common argument you’ve heard against going vegan?
As a vegan organization, the Vancouver Humane Society regularly advocates to make plant-based eating more accessible and reduce the demand for industrial animal agriculture. Plant-based advocates often hear arguments from people who disagree with veganism. This episode will delve into some of those arguments and ways to respond to them in a manner that is reasoned, thoughtful, and kind.
Amy: The first argument is that plant-based foods are overly processed.
Chantelle: Yeah, I hear this one a lot. I think sometimes people mistake the term plant-based foods for commercial plant-based meat substitutes or dairy substitutes.
But when we use the term plant-based, we’re really just referring to any foods that are made from plants without animal products. That includes things like vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts, seeds.
Of course, you can also find processed plant-based foods, just as you can find processed animal-based foods.
Why do people eat processed plant-based foods?
Chantelle: Processed foods also have their place. Some people enjoy them as a treat or as a quick option. Some people use them as they’re transitioning from an omnivore diet to make the shift easier.
I personally really enjoy some of the meat alternatives; they’re one of the proteins in my meal rotation. And so are lentils, and so are beans, and tofu, and nuts, and seitan, and soy curls, and all those other whole foods.
I basically eat how I ate before I went vegan, but thinking a little more now about getting all my nutrients. I also have a little bit more variety in my diet, just because there’s more plants out there than there are animals that humans eat.
I find that generally when someone shifts to a plant-based diet, if they ate processed foods made from animals, generally they’ll also have some processed foods made from plants in their diet. And if they ate mostly whole foods as an omnivore, they’ll do the same as a vegan.
Switching to a plant-based diet almost never looks like switching from an organic chicken breast and steamed vegetables and organic brown rice on a plate to like a plate of imitation meat and Oreos.
“Processed” doesn’t mean “bad”
Chantelle: I think it’s important to note that processed foods are not bad foods. There are some foods that feed your soul more than they feed your body, but also a lot of imitation meats have a nutrition profile that’s comparable to the meat that they’re imitating.
We have a really good blog post about understanding meat alternatives on our Plant University website that looks at a nutrition profile breakdown of meat alternatives.
Amy: Personally, I like to think of food as a spectrum. So from eating raw vegetables to a processed plant-based burger, they all have a place in our diet.
There’s a few things that I’ve been surprised to learn as a vegan. There’s just myths out there about food.
Microwaving vegetables has been tested as keeping more nutrients in them than boiling them. Cooking method and ingredients in food can impact the amount of nutrients your body gets from the foods.
Focus on a variety of foods you enjoy
Amy: Variety really makes the biggest impact on nutrient intake. I try to think of that in terms of how I eat.
In one day, I might eat cereal and oat milk that’s fortified with vitamins and minerals. I might have a smoothie with fresh frozen fruits, hemp seeds, chia seeds, flax seeds, maybe even a plant-based collagen booster powder to strengthen my tendons that has greens and probiotics in it. I might have chips with pre-made salsa, an avocado, and then homemade cashew queso made with raw ingredients like nutritional yeast, lemon juice, salt, chili powder, and then maybe some vegan chocolate to make sure I get all my iron.
Half of that is processed, half of it isn’t, but my focus is on foods that taste good, promote muscle and tendon strength, are really easy, and promote brain and blood health.
The other day I had a microwavable vegan gluten free lasagna from Amy’s Kitchen, and another day I bought vegan pizza and pre-prepared samosas, and another day Daiya vegan pizza because I don’t necessarily have a lot of time in my day.
They’re all quick, they tasted good, and that’s what keeps me enjoying plant-based foods. So as long as I’m not eating the same thing every day and I try to switch it up and include fruits and veggies here and there, I know I’m doing alright on nutrients.
Make plant-based eating fun
Amy: When folks are thinking about this and talking about this, I think it’s about acceptance. I think it’s about making eating plant-based foods fun and enjoyable and easy and having less judgement on like what that looks like for an individual person; because that’s going to change over their lifetime, given their mental health, time capacity, energy levels, activity levels, all of those things.
Chantelle: Yeah, I think that’s a really good way of looking at it.
Does plant-based eating drive monoculture crops?
It takes more crops to feed animals than humans
Chantelle: We talk about how plant-based eating is better for the environment, but sometimes we hear from people that they believe veganism is bad for the environment, particularly because it drives monoculture crops.
A lot of people talk about the impact of growing things like soy as monoculture crops. We know that’s a key protein that you can eat on a plant-based diet, but more crops are needed to feed animals for human consumption than would be needed to feed humans directly.
The demand for meat and animal products is actually a driving factor in the use of monoculture crops because the vast majority of animals grown for food spend some or all of their lives in an industrial farming environment or a feedlot. It’s not all grazing on pastures.
In Canada, corn is mainly used for animal feed and ethanol.
In the United States, 12% of corn is used to feed people, but 60% goes to feeding animals raised for foods.
About 77% of the world’s soy is used for animal feed.
So we’re seeing that by and large, more of these proteins and grains are being used to feed animals than if they were feeding humans directly.
Amy: It’s amazing how much farmland is being used to grow food to feed animals, which in any kind of logical way of thinking is a huge inefficiency when it comes to feeding a population of more than 7 billion people.
We’d be doing a lot better for the environment if all those fields grew food directly to feed people.
Approach with curiosity
Amy: I think if this is brought up and someone is talking about it, the best way to meet them is with compassion, kind of sharing, I hear that you care for the environment and you’re concerned about monoculture crops. And I’d love to learn more about this alongside you because I’m not an expert in it.
And then going someplace you can trust the output of it and research it together and come at it with that idea of learning and growing alongside them, rather than trying to prove that they’re wrong or make it seem like they have no idea what they’re talking about.
It’s okay to walk away
Chantelle: There’s two different sides of this coin of people using these arguments. There’s people you might be talking to in real life who often are speaking in good faith using arguments where they really feel they’re making the best decision for the environment or for what they really care about.
Sometimes there’s people on the internet saying these things who are really just going to throw whatever spaghetti at the wall they can to dispute your point. And sometimes you just have to walk away from arguments like that as well.
Shouldn’t I just eat local instead?
Eating local helps, but pair it with other changes
Amy: This next one, I think it’s a really good argument. I’m really curious to hear what you have to say about it, Chantelle. The argument is that shipping plant-based foods from far away is bad for the environment. You should just eat local, humanely raised, animal-based foods.
So I imagine this is things like palm oil and coconut coming on planes from places far away.
Chantelle: One thing people talk about is the impact of shipping plant-based foods a long distance as opposed to eating local animal based foods. And they’ve done a lot of research on this.
It’s certainly important to prioritize local, sustainable plant agriculture. I think we can all agree on that.
But, the research shows that ending all international food transport would only cut food miles emissions by 9% worldwide. Researchers have said that other choices like eating seasonal produce and reducing meat consumption could have a greater impact in reducing the climate impact of your food.
We can’t move to local, more “humane” animal foods while meeting current demand
Chantelle: Another thing is that eating local the way that some people talk about isn’t possible for most people. A lot of people who use this argument are talking about rural communities where they’re picturing a small scale animal farm with animals out on the pasture, and you can walk over to meet your local farmer, and then you can buy some meat from your local butcher, and that’s not what’s really happening.
The reality of the world we live in is the vast majority of people are living in cities, and we don’t have the space to be raising animals like that to feed all those people.
If we go farther out into nearby rural communities, we don’t have the space to have every animal roaming the pasture to meet a really high demand for animal products for every person who lives in the world right now.
That’s why industrial animal agriculture developed: to fit more animals into a smaller space for a lower cost and meet that really high demand for our growing population.
We don’t have a world of Old McDonald farms. We have a world where about 90% of farmed animals and 74% of farmed land animals are being raised in factory farms.
Locally raised animals can still be transported long distances to slaughter
Amy: With how few slaughterhouses there are, animals, even ones that are raised locally, are being transported huge distances to be killed.
For example, something I learned when I lived on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia is that animals have to travel in vehicles, on a ferry, and then on the highway again, going to the Lower Mainland.
Then the meat, after the animals are killed and processed, goes back on the highway, on the ferry, on the highway again.
And that’s a short distance compared to some of the really long distances animals are being shipped. That uses just so many greenhouse gases, not to mention the suffering of the animals.
Plant-based foods skip the slaughterhouse
Amy: So the benefit of plant-based products is they skip that in between step. They’re going to on farm or nearby processing facilities and then they’re getting to the consumer more directly.
This is an argument that can be shared and at the same time it’s something that can be researched together, discussed together, and making sure that you hear where someone’s coming from.
Absolutely, coconuts are shipped from far away, but what are some other things we can consider? It’s all about having that conversation and building trust with the other person who’s putting that argument forward that you understand where they’re coming from.
Chantelle: Yeah, that’s a really great point. The animals are shipped from the pasture to the feedlot to the slaughterhouse and the crops to feed the animals are shipped from wherever they’re grown to the feedlot. There’s a lot more steps involved in animal agriculture than there are in plant-based.
Does veganism cause more animal deaths than animal agriculture?
True: Wild animals die as a result of agriculture
Chantelle: Another argument that we hear is veganism causes more animal deaths than animal agriculture.
I have a really hard time with this one, but I think a way to approach it compassionately is just to kind of lay out the facts.
First of all, do animals die from growing plants? Yes. Some animals die unintentionally from the machinery that’s used to grow and harvest crops, and some animals are killed intentionally to protect crops.
Some animals are also killed intentionally to protect farmed animals raised for food; that’s just across the entire farming system.
More crops are needed to feed animals than to feed humans directly
Chantelle: First of all, it’s not just vegans eating plants. Every human needs plants to meet their nutrition requirements.
But it’s not just humans eating crops; crops are used for animal feed.
About 36% of the world’s crop calories are used for animal feed compared to 55% feeding humans directly. If we look at the calories consumed globally, about 17% of the global calorie supply comes from animal foods, and then plant-based foods make up the other 83%.
When you look at the fact that animals are eating almost as many crops as all humans, you see that it takes far more crops to feed animals for humans to eat than it would to feed humans directly.
So while it’s not possible to eliminate all animal suffering entirely, plant-based diets are the best option to dramatically reduce it.
Respond with understanding and empathy
Amy: Yeah, this one’s interesting. I mean, animals die from all aspects of human existence.
With the need to protect crops, pesticides and rodenticides are being used.
Going to a restaurant, there’s likely rat and mouse traps set up all over the place. Grocery stores as well.
These are existing with any kind of food. It’s not a problem specific to veganism.
The best thing to do when someone brings this up is not to deny it, but to acknowledge it. It’s sad. It sucks a lot that animals are dying so that humans can live and can consume plants, but eating a vegan diet still has a far less impact on animals in the environment overall.
Can plant-based foods meet your nutritional needs?
You can get all the nutrients you need from plant-based foods
Amy: This next one I think is a really common one that comes up, and it’s that plant-based foods won’t meet all your nutritional needs.
Chantelle: Yeah, I think that we’re getting to a place where there’s a broader scientific consensus that eating more plant-based foods is healthier for you.
When we look at the specific nutrients, you can get all the nutrients you need from plant-based foods.
There are a few that are more difficult to get or that only come in fortified plant-based foods. If you don’t want to keep track of all the nutrients you’re consuming directly from foods every day, you can take a supplement. I personally take iron pill and a B12 gummy every day. I sometimes also take omega 3 gummies.
But I get plenty of protein and calcium and iron from plants. And those are the ones that I see people worry about the most often.
You can’t get all the nutrients you need from animal foods alone
Chantelle: Another thing to note is I see carnivore only diets popping up sometimes where people are just eating animal-based foods. And you cannot get all the nutrients you need from that.
You can only get fibre from plant-based foods. So people on a carnivore only diet are getting zero fibre.
Nutrition is no mystery
Chantelle: One of the first things you learn as a kid is you’ll be healthier if you eat your veggies, and it holds true.
There’s this impression that nutrition is such a mystery, and everything is just a trend. But really, the vast majority of nutrition experts have reached a consensus that eating a wide variety of whole plant-based foods is good for your health, and it’s a good idea to limit red meat intake.
Amy: Absolutely. And just to add to some of those things you said, Chantelle, oat milk has a lot of B12 added into it already. Dark chocolate is so full of iron. Beans have a lot of calcium, but so do fortified plant milks, figs, leafy greens. Potatoes have a bunch of potassium and vitamin C.
Nutrition education has been influenced by industry
Amy: I’ve realized that most of what I’ve learned about nutrition growing up was influenced by food manufacturers and producers such as the dairy industry.
We know now that kids can thrive on plant-based diets.
The beauty of scientific research means that we understand it isn’t dairy milk that’s preventing osteoarthritis. It’s the combination of consuming calcium and a magnesium together in good quantities. You can get those in combination together from greens, seeds, beans, brown rice, quinoa. The list goes on and on.
So this is one of those myths that I find really fun to chat about with people because they start to realize how much what they grew up with is not the reality and how much opportunity there is to learn about what a body needs to thrive and be well.
And again, the most important part is to approach it with excitement and intrigue and compassion.
Talking about these topics with a judgment or know it all attitude will just sour someone’s experience and have the opposite impact.
Chantelle: Absolutely. That is always something really important to keep in mind.
Is soy bad for you?
Soy does not increase estrogen levels
Chantelle: We’re keeping in the trend of health related topics; sometimes you hear that soy is bad for you because it increases estrogen.
Soy gets a bad reputation because it has something in it called phytoestrogen, which is a naturally occurring compound in plant foods that has a similar chemical structure to our body’s natural estrogen, but it behaves differently and it’s about a thousand times weaker.
According to research, phytoestrogens don’t increase our body’s estrogen, and some experts have suggested they may have a balancing effect on our body’s natural hormone levels.
But if you are worried about extra estrogen in your diet, your real concern should be dairy, which is the source of about 60 to 80 percent of estrogens consumed in Western diets.
Soy is does not increase estrogen or decrease testosterone levels
Amy: This was actually a really big one that came up when I was dating someone who was concerned about veganism. The bottom line that I figured out after researching it is that soy foods are a good source of protein and a healthy part of a balanced diet.
The concerns I heard most are related to men and children. So I’ll speak more to that.
As far as men, research has shown that eating soy foods does not lead to increased estrogen levels or decreased testosterone levels in men. Some studies have even shown that soy consumption may have a significant health benefit for men, such as lowering the risk of prostate cancer and improving heart health.
Soy has many nutrients for healthy development in children
Amy: As far as children goes, soy is a really great source of protein, providing all the essential amino acids required for growth and development. Soy foods contain fiber, vitamin K, folate, some B vitamins, iron, calcium, and magnesium. It also contains polyunsaturated fats, including omega 3 and omega 6 fatty acids, which are important for brain development.
So knowing these facts and more about plant-based nutrients can really help when those challenging questions come up from parents who think a vegan diet is abusive to children.
Are dairy cows dangerous to their calves?
A calf and mother at Sanctuaire pour animaux de ferme de l’Estrie in Quebec. Photo: Jo-Anne McArthur / We Animals Media.
Dairy calves are removed so their mothers’ milk can be used and sold
Amy: The next argument is that the dairy industry takes calves from their mothers so that the mother cow doesn’t accidentally kill them.
Chantelle: Dairy farmers and sanctuary owners have spoken out against this myth, but it’s still one that persists.
Dairy is produced by impregnating cows and then the baby calf is typically removed within a few hours so the milk can be used by humans.
And then the calves are fed milk, which is sometimes waste milk from the dairy industry or a milk replacer. And then they go on to be killed for veal if they’re male or raised as dairy cows if they’re female.
Are the calves removed for their own safety? No. They’re removed because the human animal agriculture industry wants to use the milk. They would be removed regardless, because we have a dairy industry and humans want to use milk for their own consumption.
Dairy cows and calves suffer when separated
Chantelle: But even if dairy cows had lost some of their maternal instincts through the years, through generations of having their babies removed, it wouldn’t be an excuse to continue breeding them and continuing the cycle.
We see that cows mourn when their babies are taken away. They cry. They chase after them. They try to stop the farmers from taking the calves.
The dairy industry continues to do this so the milk can be used and sold for humans, and it doesn’t need to be. We have plant-based alternatives for this.
Cows and calves form a close bond
Amy: I’ve spent quite a bit of time with mama and baby cows. And it’s so incredibly far from reality, I’m not even sure how it got spread as a myth.
The bond between cows and their babies is one of the most beautiful motherhood bonds I personally have ever experienced.
I’ve noticed that cow moms are just so protective of their little ones. I got to be around just a couple day old calf and mama put her horns around me. I was providing some supplemental milk to the calf to make sure that he was getting enough and she watched me every second of the time I was there with him.
They feed calves from their udders for years, not just one year, but sometimes more. Past the point where the calves start to be painful and annoying and they bother their mums. Their mums still keep feeding them and giving them love. It’s pretty special.
The dairy industry is emotionally painful for animals
Amy: I’ve heard the call of calves and their mums calling for each other on multiple different farms who are separated from each other. And it’s really sad.
If you really think about the dairy industry and how it’s all set up, to me, this is in a way the most emotionally painful and complex animal industry.
And yet it’s the one that people love cheese and they have a really hard time giving up milk because they just like how it tastes and it’s addictive.
And yet this is the one that has such a massive emotional burden on so many. It’s something that we can move away from and, and take a stand for the mamas and the babies and what they deserve.
Chantelle: I hear a lot from people who say they would have a hard time giving up cheese. I was one of them once, and I think a lot of people who are vegan now were once that person.
And once I gave it up, I honestly didn’t find it difficult. But I find it really difficult to see the realities of the dairy industry.
If we stopped farming animals, would they go extinct?
Selective breeding in modern farmed animals poses welfare concerns
Chantelle: So this next argument is when I have a really hard time believing that people are making it in good faith, but maybe they are. The idea is if we stopped farming animals, those animals would go extinct.
I don’t know where this idea came from, that animal agriculture is some sort of conservation movement. Keeping animals alive so that we can use and slaughter them at a fraction of their natural lifespan is not about conservation.
Modern farmed animals have also been selectively bred for the maximum meat production or byproduct production, like eggs or dairy, and that has been detrimental to their health. It leads to so much suffering.
Broiler chickens raised for meat grow so large that their legs cannot support their bodies.
Egg laying hens lay eggs far more often than they would in the wild, which uses up the calcium they need in their bodies, and it leads to bone fractures.
There are genetic defects in cattle and sheep and pigs from selective breeding for growth and from inbreeding.
Animal agriculture is harmful to wildlife conservation
Chantelle: If we’re talking about conservation, industrial animal agriculture has also been extremely harmful for wildlife.
Wild animals are killed to protect farmed animals.
We see habitat loss for raising and feeding animals.
Agricultural runoff is harmful to waterways and to animals who live in them and depend on them for drinking water.
When we look at all of the mammals on earth, farmed animals make up 62% of the world’s mammal biomass, whereas wild animals are just 4%. Farmed animals are really not struggling to be conserved right now.
How grazing impacts conservation
Amy: I appreciate this one because I think it comes up really commonly with the beef industry. Particularly it’s one I’ve seen the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association put forward a specific version of it, which is that there’s areas of the North American plains that only cows are able to graze to maintain, and that it would be problematic if these areas were not grazed.
There’s truth to this statement. And I think that’s important to acknowledge. It’s true that there are benefits to grazing. There used to be huge amounts of bison ranging the land and grazing.
Well managed grazing mimics the natural processes that once involved those wild herbivores. It maintains plant diversity, supports soil health, and regulates species composition.
But on the flip side, we’re talking about well managed grazing. And when it comes to the volume of animals being produced for farming, there’s often overgrazing or poor management of that land, which can degrade the ecosystems.
So, if cows were to stop grazing in many of these areas, there’s benefits that could be experienced such as without the pressure of domestic livestock, the ecosystems could be more natural. There could be new plant diversity and more wild animals coming back into the spaces. And then it can also improve the soil structure, reduce erosion, and increase soil carbon sequestration, which benefits the ecosystem and climate change mitigation.
So, there’s sort of this, this nuance and this balance, but when it comes to wild animals, they move differently than farmed animals over sections of land and these areas were really intended for wild herbivores to travel across them.
What would happen to farmed animals if everyone went vegan?
The shift to a plant-based world is gradual
Chantelle: I think this one is kind of a different side of the same coin, which is if we all go vegan, the farmed animals would all be killed, or would take over, or would have nowhere to go.
And first of all, a lot of these questions come from the idea that everyone on earth will somehow go vegan all at the same time and that all farmed animals will suddenly be rendered economically redundant. I do not see that happening.
I think it’s much more realistic that people are going to gradually shift toward a plant based food system and fewer animals will be bred for food over time.
A compassionate world would not make life worse for animals
Chantelle: But even if we did have this suddenly vegan world, farmed animals are already headed to slaughter. Farmed animals are already regularly being culled because of things like shifts in the economy or disease spread.
So a world where all people suddenly care very deeply about animal welfare and are doing our best for the animals can’t be worse than the system we have in place right now.
Animal consumption continues to grow
Amy: This myth sounds like it’s coming from someone who was on their last limits of trying to have an argument against veganism.
The consumption of animals is continuing to grow on our planet. Which makes me really sad, as someone who spends my life trying to advocate for these animals.
Even with the number of people going vegan and vegetarian growing, it isn’t enough to match the population growth. The volume of animals being killed and consumed is still larger than ever.
It’s remarkable how much change is going to be needed to make a drop in the bucket when it comes to reducing animal consumption.
That degree of gradual change is not going to have any of the suggested impacts listed in this myth.
If we all go vegan, what will cats and dogs eat?
As the food system shifts for humans, we work on solutions for pets
Amy: And we’ve got one more. If we all go vegan, what will dogs and cats eat?
Chantelle: I think that’s a good question. I think as we move toward a plant-based food system for humans, we’ll also be working toward a similar shift for animals.
And it’s an important question to ask what our companion animals who eat an omnivore or carnivore diet can eat besides other animals.
If our goal is to end farmed animal suffering, two important steps are shifting human diets toward plant based foods and then working on solutions for non-human animals who eat meat to not be relying on food from other animals.
Some ways we can do that is to support researching nutrition needs and developing cultured or lab grown meat. We talk more about what pet food looks like in a vegan future in our episode, Is my pet happy.
Cultured meat (lab-grown meat) and plant-based options
Amy: I would love to see cultured meat become affordable and available for pet food. I think that is the absolute way of the future. It’s unfortunate that we’re just in a time right now where it’s still in development, but I think it’s going to become the norm very soon.
And there’s also vegan pet foods. Which many animals right now are thriving on and enjoying. I just think how great would it be to lower our impact and consumption of animal products because of continued technological innovation. And to me, that seems like something everyone can get on board with.
Next episode
Please join us next month as we hear perspectives from people who operate farm sanctuaries.
As consumers, we have the power to make compassionate choices that align with our values. More people are choosing animal-free products and services and helping to reduce the demand for industries that exploit animals. Meanwhile, vegan businesses are on the rise to meet the demand for a kinder, more ethical marketplace.
In this month’s episode of The Informed Animal Ally, Kyla and Audrey from Vegan Supply and Paula from Compassion Ink Studio share perspectives on operating a vegan business.
Kyla: Hello, this is Kyla and Audrey from Vegan Supply.
Kyla: My name is Kyla and I am the executive assistant to our lovely owner and founder, Jason Antony. And with me is Audrey.
Audrey: Hi. I’m Audrey. I’m the operations manager here at Vegan Supply, overseeing two physical retail stores, our e-commerce business, as well as the distribution side where we sell to other businesses.
Kyla: Audrey is definitely hands on and can speak a lot about successes, challenges, opportunities within the business. And I can more speak to Jason’s side of things. So Audrey, what have you found to be a success?
Audrey: I think definitely a highlight for me is being able to offer vegan solutions to people who might not otherwise have them.
Whether that’s offering products that they don’t have access to where they’re from, on the e-commerce side of things, where we’re able to ship all over, or even just having unique solutions that somebody coming in our store who never heard of soy curls before, and how can they cook with them and how is that a great substitute for their protein and really being a bridge to get people to think differently and help them in their vegan journey if they’re on one, or even just if they’re vegan curious and want to learn a little bit more.
Kyla: And it is something to be said that with this business, we have the means to get anybody vegan products, literally anywhere in the world, which is a really great thing to be able to do.
Audrey: Absolutely. And also working with bringing really exciting and new innovative products to market.
Some of my favorites from this year that we’ve brought in are Juicy Marbles and Yo Egg.
I think when I first went vegan, I didn’t dream of a world where I had a vegan poached egg that actually had a runny yolk. And today is the day that we are able to access that now as vegans. So it’s incredibly exciting.
And Juicy Marbles is another one where it’s a vegan steak. Some of those things that people say like, “Oh, I could never give this up.” There’s a lot of stuff that people don’t have to give up anymore. And it’s because of brands like this doing really cool things in the food science area.
Kyla: That’s right. Yeah. Bridge the gap. We’re here for it.
With all this great stuff though, there are challenges. So what are a few of the challenges that you’ve noticed within the business or being in this space?
Audrey: Yeah, I think so from the start, you know, we’re a vegan business and our name is Vegan Supply.
And there’s a lot of feelings out there in the world to that word vegan. And I think a challenge is overcoming that perception that we are just for vegans because we sell vegan products exclusively. Yes. But our goal is to have more vegan products available, but that could be somebody who is an omnivore looking to reduce meat in their diet or any kind of area like vegan products can be good in and of themselves of their own merit.
Trying to break that barrier while also still holding true to our values is definitely a challenge. I think we start from a little bit of a disadvantage, but it’s just a challenge for us to overcome.
Kyla: Yeah, that’s right. It’s definitely the bias with the word vegan and it is our very name, but we move forth.
So on that note, what is something that you’re looking forward to in the future? Some cool opportunities coming up.
Audrey: Yeah, well, I’m mostly looking forward to being more collaborative with a lot of different organizations. I think in the last few years, we’ve worked a lot with different sanctuaries or different organizations to shed more light on them or collect donations.
And I think we do better as a whole when we lift each other up. So I’m just looking forward to the different partnerships in the community in the coming years.
Kyla: Definitely. I will just do a quick little plug that a few years ago, Audrey and I created a monthly donation program within Vegan Supply, and we feature two sanctuaries, rescues, anywhere that anybody is honestly helping animals.
We will feature you on our website and in-store and raise funds and allow you to keep doing the important work that you do with animals on that note.
If you’re listening and you haven’t been featured, or you know somebody that you would love to see featured, please let us know. Reach out to info at vegansupply.ca.
Any final notes about the world of business and vegan spaces?
Audrey: That we just need to support vegan businesses. I think there are few of us and you know, it’s a cliche, but we vote with our dollars and when we buy a product, we’re telling those businesses that we want to support them. So I think now more than ever, it’s important to support businesses that align with the values that you have.
Kyla: That’s right. Money talks. So let’s use it for good.
Paula: Hey everyone. My name is Paula and I’m a tattoo artist in Burnaby, B.C.
On Instagram, I am @inkbypaula and my tattoo studio name is Compassion Ink Studio.
A little bit about myself. I’ve always been very sensitive person, always been an animal lover. As a child, I loved art class and I loved our family dog or family hamsters and you know, I was that kid, and I still am, like many of us, that person who will pick a worm off the sidewalk to help it across.
In high school, I took home this baby chick that was going to be fed to a snake and ended up rehoming it.
I’ve always been an animal lover, and honestly, it wasn’t until I was an adult that I really started thinking about the impact of my choices on animals.
My partner and I decided to unlearn a lot of the habits that we grew up with, and we started with our diet. A lot of vegans usually start by switching to a plant-based diet.
But we also, beyond our diet, try to divest from animal exploitation. And we know it’s not possible to live a completely harm free life in this society, but we do our best. And I think that’s all we can do.
So when I launched my tattoo business, making it vegan was a no brainer.
People will ask me, you know, what’s a vegan tattoo? What makes it different than a regular tattoo? And, the main difference is that I ensure that every part of the tattoo process is animal-free.
Most tattoo shops nowadays actually use vegan ink, just by default, which is great. But for me, I take it a step further. So for example, the soap I use in my studio will be vegan. The transfer paper that I use is vegan because not all stencil paper is vegan.
My shop doesn’t have leather furniture. I don’t have like animal skulls hanging on the wall or framed dead insects on the wall.
If you’re an animal lover, going to a vegan tattoo artist will sort of ensure, beyond the ink, that your experience is going to be as animal-free as possible.
Another big part of my business is fundraising. I’ve had the privilege of fundraising for animal sanctuaries and fundraising for animal activists and human rights activists as well. It’s really rewarding too be able to offer a service like tattooing that blends art and community and activism, which was really cool.
When I first started tattooing, it actually was the vegan community that really helped me build on my portfolio because the support was there. So as soon as I started tattooing and put out there that I’m a vegan tattoo artist, I had a lot of vegans come and be like, Hey, this is awesome. I want to support you.
I’ve met a lot of incredible people through tattooing. Some tattoo sessions are hours long and we share stories. Being an animal lover is a big part of who I am, so I’m just grateful to be able to share my passions and the things I care about with my clients.
That leads me into the next thing I wanted to bring up, which is, I’ve had people question whether it’s a good idea to bring in my politics and sort of combine it with my business Instagram accounts, you know, posts, not only about tattooing, but posts about the things I care about.
And I think that sure I may lose some clients or followers who don’t align with whatever my stance is. But I also believe that a big part of my success as a vegan business owner comes from me being transparent and sharing what I care about. I think a lot of people nowadays do want to support businesses that align with their worldview.
Despite whatever challenges may also go along with that, I think it’s worth it in the end.
One thing I love with my tattoo business is collaborating with other businesses. So for example, I’ve collaborated with Mila Plant-Based restaurant or Zimt Chocolates. We do this to bring the community together and then donate a portion of proceeds to a cause.
I recently organized a raffle with several vegan businesses to fundraise for two families in need. Collaborating is something I really enjoy. And even collaborating with Vancouver Humane Society to share a little bit about me is such an honour. So thank you for listening and I hope to tattoo you one day.
Next episode
Please join us next month as we discuss common arguments people use to oppose veganism and ways to respond.
“Only if we understand, can we care. Only if we care, we will help.” – Jane Goodall
In this month’s episode of The Informed Animal Ally, Alistair Schroff of Lakes Animal Friendship Society discusses the importance of education for animal well-being, and other successes, challenges, and opportunities in animal organizations.
Featured Guest: Alistair Schroff
Founder, Lakes Animal Friendship Society
Alistair Schroff helped create Lakes Animal Friendship Society with teacher Valerie Ingram and former RCMP officer Hayley Nielsen in 2008. LAFS focusses on education about animal care, compassion and dog bite safety as well as supports for pets from lower-income families including spay / neuter, pet food and all-weather outdoor shelters. Alistair’s roles include community cat trapper, handy person, chauffeur, proposal writer, dishwasher, bookkeeper, and dabbler in children’s book writing.
Note: This written discussion has been edited for length.
Hi, my name is Alistair Schroff, and I work with a group called the Lakes Animal Friendship Society. Most of our activities are delivered around the town of Burns Lake, which is in the central interior of British Columbia. In talking to you about some of the good, the bad, and the ugly of what we do and what we’ve experienced, I’ll go with two themes, which I hope you’ll find at least somewhat interesting and informative.
First of all, I want to talk about education because that to us is one of the cornerstones that should be in place for any animal welfare group and programs pretty well anywhere that one should care to help animals, their families, and the community.
And on the topic of education, Jane Goodall has a good quote, which goes, only if we understand, shall we care only if we care, shall we help. And only if we help shall all be saved.
And that’s a good little prompt, which basically says we have to know more about what it means to care for animals and even why should we care about animals?
And that’s where education comes in. And that is truly one of our biggest successes as a society.
The Lakes Animal Friendship Society is small with only a few key volunteers. Of course, we get help from others, but it’s a fairly small group. Yet we’ve managed to create education programs that are becoming known as being quite comprehensive and effective in helping children in particular, learn about what it means to be more caring, more compassionate and safe around animals.
And to that end, we’ve created a number of picture books, activity books, things like coloring books and miscellaneous stuff like teaching guides and even how to build dog houses to help animals that might be left out in the cold. So those programs that we’ve delivered are really what we think is our biggest success.
And we are very proud of the thousands of students that we’ve been able to visit directly, often with Valerie Ingram, our volunteer who’s a teacher and who has taken a dog into the classroom and helped kids learn a lot more about what it means to even see that animals have feelings and that their needs are so similar to those of the students and those messages have really helped open the eyes of the students.
And of course, through their communication with their families and them going out into the community, they’ve been little ambassadors of change.
And we are really proud of everything that they’ve done to kind of elevate the care for their own animals and also create a more normalized environment where animals are known to have feelings and are worthy of care. They’re not sort of a misunderstood nuisance or a threat as they were before we started our programs, when they’re coming on to the school yards and stealing children’s lunches because of lack of proper care, overpopulation issues that really come back to a lack of understanding of what animals need and what we can do about it.
Practical resources for people and pets
So in addition to providing these education opportunities, we also were very careful to provide access to the tools to implement that new knowledge. And that was where we’ve had our spay/neuter programs to help animals from lower income families. And we’ve also worked with pet food programs which now we operate in cooperation with the local food bank.
And basically if the children and the families feel that it’s a better thing to have their pet spayed or neutered that they can in turn find access to that service in a manner they can afford and they can actually get it done.
So through those programs, that’s our second big success is the actual results of the education being implemented, the tools being there and actively spaying and neutering over a thousand animals in a fairly short period of time. Offering houses like shelters for animals that could not be brought into the house, even though indoors is best, if they can’t be inside, at least they have proper four season shelter.
And of course, access to the pet food they need. So nobody goes hungry, either the families or the animals themselves.
Making a difference in the community
And what we found is after we implemented our programs for a few years, the results were really, really amazing. And when I say that, I mean impoundments of the local village pound dropped to perhaps 10 percent of what they were before.
And this is a savings of tens of thousands, now adding up into the hundreds of thousands of dollars for the local village for the animal control area. Further to that, and this is really important children not getting bitten by dogs. Often it’s children who suffer dog bites. Often they get bit on the face and it can be very serious.
Many children in Canada have sadly been killed in dog attacks. And we found that after implementing our programs for a few years, that the number of dog bites reported to the local ER dropped to about half of what they were previously. And so that’s many, many more kids that are not being scared, bitten, seriously hurt by dogs, often the family dog, often a friend’s dog.
So it’s a much healthier relationship for all, and we want to keep everybody safe.
And we get encouraging stories, people on the street saying, Oh, they saw some kids that were looking at a dog across the street and they asked their mother, you know, may I please pet the dog or ask their uncle or whichever adult they were with to make sure they had permission, getting permission from the guardian and really implementing the safe behaviour.
So the whole point is to normalize what is helpful and healthful and safe for all. So those are some examples of our successes, but there are some challenges as always. And on the education front it’s been interesting to us.
Challencges in animal organizations
We’ve had some big success, but you know, some slow uptake in our own community, adjacent communities even though our programs have been kind of proven, sometimes education is not given the priority that it should be, and from our experience, not just what we think, but what we know from our programs.
So typically, sheltering gets most of the funding in animal welfare, spay and neuter assistance, those kinds of programs, a lesser amount. Education is by far the most under resourced and under supported, under implemented programs that we see in animal welfare.
And so that continues to be an issue that we see in Canadian and really animal welfare in many places. Education is the last priority and really it needs to be the first.
The other issue we’ve seen is regression as many societies have reported. Very recently we heard Victoria Humane Society and others on Vancouver Island saying what we have found in the interior which is demand for services increased, costs have increased, and we feel a large regression.
And we’re seeing similar types of animal overpopulation, danger, and nuisance to the community. So there is some definite regression there. So that has been a challenge.
COVID has accelerated that, but interestingly, we were seeing the trends before that even. We were a victim of our own success to some extent, because as the overpopulation issue became more under control, then we made a very, very lucrative market for puppy mills and backyard breeders.
So therefore there were hardly any dogs to be found. It’s difficult. There are shelters, but they’re not right in the community. People want easy access to whatever they want. And so in the case of pets, it made a market for backyard breeders and puppy mills.
So that was an unforeseen circumstance. And so therefore we see that you need to have the bylaws, the enforcement tools that don’t seem like a big priority when everything is going well.
And so that is something that we’ve learned and would like to share with others is having good plans in place to keep things on the right track, even while things are going well. So that’s a cautionary note.
Opportunities for the future
On the topic of hope and good things coming for the future, we have had some great success in working with other groups. For example, this activity book was updated and revised in cooperation with the San Diego Humane Society.
We’ve worked with a local translator. And we’ve done similar groups with adjacent community of Prince George and their aboriginal education department producing materials not just, showing diverse communities and northern themes but also even in the local carrier dialect in Burns Lake or the carrier dialect of the Lheidi T’enneh in the Prince George area.
And Veterinarians Without Borders have even translated some of the same materials into Inuktitut for local dialects in the Arctic. So we’ve managed to work with some groups to extend the reach of these education materials and get them out there.
And the adoption of those materials in other parts internationally has far exceeded even in British Columbia or Canada. So we’re very encouraged because ultimately they’re in the hands of children. I want to also talk about other things about partnerships.
So when we talk about encouraging things happening in other aspects of our animal welfare programs, we’re working with a group called the CARE Network out of Tofino. And so we do very similar programs to each other. So we’re working on teaming up and joining forces and making our resources and efforts go further in the areas of animal care, veterinary services, education.
So we both have strengths that we can bring to the table and we need to do more of that as animal welfare groups , find out who is similarly aligned, just go for it. Roll up your sleeves and go to work.
And on the education front, a similar thing, we don’t always have success with the communities that we would like, but if we run into teachers or librarians or homeschoolers or other groups anybody that is sort of aligned with wanting to get resources in the hands of children, we want to support that.
And so if you basically find people who are pushing the same direction as you are, get together, go for it, make it happen. And you might have bigger goals you shouldn’t lose sight of.
A woman by the name of Colleen Patrick-Goudreau, very well spoken, has a great saying which is just because you can’t do everything, don’t do nothing. Do something, anything.
And that means, find out what you can do today that is workable. Don’t lose sight of the bigger picture, but just get to work and do what you can.
Some of you may have seen some YouTube videos of a fellow known as the guerrilla gardener. And he says, you know, you want to help bring a shovel and yeah, that’s the kind of people you want to work with.
People who are ready to make things happen. So find them, get teamed up, make things happen in your communities and yeah, just find out who’s willing to work with you and go for it. And that’s really the essence of Lakes Animal Friendship Society.
And we hope that you will take advantage of the free materials that are available on our website, lakesanimalfriendship.ca/resources. There’s materials, songs, links to videos, and that’s all available for free. We also have other materials available for order, but you can also contact us for free samples. And also we have worked with groups to get their logos on materials or adapt them like we did with Marika and Vets Without Borders.
There’s some stuff that didn’t quite fit an arctic environment and it was modified to fit. So we love working with folks and getting consistent quality materials out wherever they are needed. And so see what we can do to work with you. So if you have some ideas for translations, changes, whatever, we’ve got the flexibility to do those things and would like to see them in the hands of children and their families.
So being able to give children something tangible that they can take home and share with their families is really important and allows, if you are doing classroom programs, it gives something that the teachers can use and expand on lessons or expand on messages that have been shared and then ultimately go home to share with the whole family which ripples through the community.
So, it’s all about spreading that ripple of care and compassion. So, thank you very much for listening to my very long discussion. And I hope that everybody listening and watching this is enjoying their efforts to help the animals. And even when there are setbacks or problems, you can always dust yourself off and find a new way to get things done.
You just have to keep soldiering on. So thank you and have a lovely day.
Next episode
Please join us next month to learn about successes, challenges, and opportunities from vegan business owners!
British Columbia is currently in the middle of its annual rodeo season. In Alberta, the Calgary Stampede wrapped up earlier this month with the deadliest rodeo and chuckwagon racing events of the past five years.
On the whole, polling and public discourse demonstrate that people are more aware than ever about the harms rodeo events cause to animals. However, supporters of rodeo continue to use the same arguments to justify these events. In this episode, the VHS’s Amy Morris and Chantelle Archambault break down those arguments and share some ways to respond to them.
Note: This written discussion has been edited for length.
Rodeo animals are valuable and would not be mistreated
Amy: The first argument we hear is that rodeo animals are valuable, so they would not be mistreated or put at risk because they’re a financial investment.
Chantelle: I think this is really strange logic. Even though we know as allies of animals that their lives have inherent value, the thing that makes them financially valuable to the rodeo industry is that they’re successful in rodeo. There’s inherent risk to those events.
It’s kind of like saying that race car drivers wouldn’t put their valuable race cars at risk in motor racing. Of course they do, because the financial rewards outweigh the risk.
The same is true with pro rodeo. Contestants can win really large cash prizes. The events are generating significant revenue. We saw in this year’s headlines, rodeo contestants were flying in private planes between rodeo venues for a chance to win more money.
It’s very financially motivated.
Amy: Yeah, certainly what we is that there’s sort of a difference in ownership of animals. So there are rodeo contractors who have all of the animals for rodeo. That would be the calves from calf roping, the steers and steer wrestling. And then the bucking animals, both cows and horses.
And so there are contractors who are keeping these animals.
We know that they don’t want the animals to be euthanized because they do want to continue to use them. That said, they also see that as the cost of doing business. And so the amount of animals that end up passing away or being killed in the process of rodeo are built into the cost structure.
And while, of course, no one would want that to happen, there is an understanding in the financial model that they can have a certain number of animals and be able to financially sustain their business. They put a price point at what it costs to have animals at an event that allow for that kind of loss.
The reality is that breeding animals, while it has a cost, can be inherent in the business. So when an animal is lost, it’s not a significant challenge to have a new animal join the team.
Chantelle: I think it’s built into the way that people talk about animals. These animals are called livestock; and stock is a financial asset.
I used to work in retail and it’s very strange to think of animals being considered the same way that items would be considered, where if a piece of stock is spoiled, then you’d write it off in the business model.
But these are animals with lives and feelings.
Rodeo animals are just like athletes in other rough sports
Chantelle: Another argument that we hear is rodeo animals are just like athletes in other rough sports.
And I think that one’s really easy to refute because human athletes choose to be in events. Animals aren’t given choice.
The tools and practices that are used in rodeo are essentially prompting a fight or flight response so that animals flee, they run really fast; or they fight, they buck really aggressively like they would if a predator was jumping on them.
Human athletes don’t have coaches sitting at the starting line twisting their ears. The hurdle jumpers don’t have someone sitting on their back scraping their skin with spurs every time they need to jump.
Supporters will also say that you can’t force an animal that large to do something they don’t want to do.
But we’ve seen what happens when animals try to opt out by standing still instead of bucking or “performing”. The handlers will smack them in the face and then they get further agitated in the chutes.
Many animals will do what it takes to avoid the pain and the stress and the discomfort that they face when they don’t do what’s wanted and expected of them.
Amy: I think this is a really interesting argument as well, because I think there are some animals that are more perceived as athletes and some that are not as much, but they all get grouped together that way.
If you think of the horses in wild pony racing, their entire persona is to be wild, to be trying to get away.
Same with the calves and steers in calf roping and steer wrestling.
And so I think there’s this sort of double standard that exists where they get called athletes, but their job is to be afraid. And it’s important to highlight that because I don’t think a human athlete’s jobs are to be afraid.
When it comes to some of the other activities like barrel racing or chuckwagon racing, I understand how these can be seen more as athletes because it’s comparable in the sense of, humans race, animals race.
And I think that’s where you have to go back and think about what is motivating the animals to race.
Is it that they’re being kept from moving or being active until their racing opportunity? And also is the race meeting their needs, or is it so short that they basically spend the rest of their lives being really bored and having their legs not really conditioned appropriately to their daily needs?
These are the kinds of things that we need to think about when we think about human athletes. They’re able to make choices about what they do outside of the sport.
We don’t see that with animals. Their entire lives are dictated for them and they don’t get to make choices.
Chantelle: I also think that it’s interesting to keep an eye on kind of how announcers and rodeo talk about animals. The announcers will talk about animals as if they’re equal participants and comment on the behaviour of the animals.
They’ll say a bucking horse, if they’re not bucking high enough, is being too nice.
Or they’ll say a calf, if the calf tries to escape from a rope after being roped, is being nasty.
And I think that it’s really interesting how these traits are attributed to animals when so much of what they’re doing is responding to these really terrible things that are happening to them.
Rodeo is a valuable part of our western heritage and tradition
Amy: Another argument that maybe goes along with that is this sense that rodeo is a valuable part of our western heritage and tradition, or rodeo shows what happens on real ranches. What do you think about this one?
Chantelle: Most rodeo events bear little or no resemblance to real ranch practices, historic or modern. There’s no real reason why a cowboy on a ranch would ride a bull. There’s no real reason why a cowboy would want to make a horse buck using a flank strap that’s agitating them.
The key issue that’s different is these rodeo events are timed, whereas real ranch practices are not timed. Timing the events makes them faster. It makes them more stressful and more dangerous to the animals. And the animals are agitated beforehand to make them run as fast as possible into these events.
They’re fundamentally at odds with how we should be handling and treating animals. In fact, they contradict industry requirements and best practices for the handling of farmed animals. The Code of Practice for beef cattle states that quiet handling techniques must be used as a requirement and an abuse of handling is unacceptable.
But we do know through undercover investigations over the years that farmed animals are often put through harms that violate the rules.
And the difference is the animal agriculture industry has gone to great lengths to hide what happens to animals before their bodies make it into the grocery store.
That’s why we see the industry pushing for ag gag laws and industry leaders pushing back against measures that would make sure welfare laws are being followed, like random inspections and video monitoring.
But in rodeo, it all happens in front of an audience and it all happens for “entertainment”.
Amy: Yeah, I think this one’s really interesting because if we think about traditional practices, it’s all about keeping animals calm.
When you have frightened animals, they are harder to work with.
While learned helplessness can play a role, I see that a lot in horse training.
We know that using this definition of tradition is not necessarily meaning that something is good. It’s interesting how sort of this concept of tradition gets equated with what is good, and modern or new practices are kind of meant to be seen as the opposite.
And while there are some traditions that hold meaning and have a lot of beauty for the people who are involved in traditions, the real question that needs to be asked about any tradition is who does it harm and how does it harm?
If the answer is no one, and it doesn’t, then great. A tradition has value.
And if the answer is, Oh, actually there are people and animals that are harmed by this and here’s how that’s happening, what is the onus for maintaining that tradition? And what is the beauty in a heritage that is harmful?
These are hard conversations to have. And certainly I’m sure sharing that can result in some challenging responses, but the bottom line is any tradition that is about care and love for others, that’s a tradition to uphold.
A tradition that is grounded in harm to others, maybe that’s a tradition to let go of.
Chantelle: That’s a really great point, Amy.
I heard a kind of tongue in cheek quote recently that I’m going to paraphrase; it said that tradition is peer pressure from the dead. And it’s silly and it’s goofy, but it’s also kind of true because what is the value in doing something if the only reason to do it is because that’s what’s always been done?
There are lots of things that we have changed because we know better now.
Rodeo animals are big and strong, with thick hides
Chantelle: Another argument that we often hear is that rodeo animals are big and strong, and they have thick hides. Or simply, it doesn’t bother them.
Just because an animal is large or has a lot of strength doesn’t mean that they can’t suffer.
The injuries and deaths that we see at many rodeo events from many rodeo animals make it obvious that they experience pain and suffering.
We’ve been tracking deaths at the Calgary Stampede since 1986. It’s a 10 day event out of the whole rodeo season. And just at that single event, there have been at least 109 animal deaths since we started tracking.
Animals’ thick hides might obscure bruising, but they don’t do much to protect animals against things like broken limbs, the pain of tail twisting or spur scraping against their skin.
Injuries like muscle damage can take 48 hours to present. So as an audience member, you might not know if an animal has been injured right in front of you.
Another important point is that, as animal behaviourist Temple Grandin has stated, it’s likely that fear might be more stressful for animals than pain. And fear is what we’re seeing in rodeos again and again.
Amy: Yeah, this is a good point. I think about this time that I was on foot behind a person on a horse with a whip.
And they whipped the whip in the air, really not knowing what they were doing. And the tail of the whip came back and it hit the backside of the horse and immediately lacerated the horse.
And I thought, You know, that’s not thick skin. Yeah, they have fur and we don’t have fur, but their skin is still mammal skin.
What’s below their skin is still that of a mammal. They still bruise. They still have all the harms from like taking a tumble and being dragged a distance and everything that would happen to us if we were wearing maybe a slight protective layer. We would still be bruised and broken.
And as are they.
You can see from the facial expressions that the animals are having a rough time. They are not doing something that’s natural to them. They’re doing something that is scary and that they want away from.
This myth is one that, I tried to believe when it was first told to me.
I really tried it on and considered it and thought, yeah, maybe that’s true. People wear leather when they’re riding motorcycles so they don’t get as bad of road rash and things like that.
But the reality is that, sure, maybe they don’t get as many obvious wounds. But they still are injured and they still are in pain.
The animals are going to be slaughtered anyway
Amy: So the next argument is that some animals are dying, but maybe that’s okay because they’re going to be slaughtered anyway.
Chantelle: The fact that some animals will eventually be slaughtered for food is not a justification for causing them unnecessary fear and stress and discomfort and pain before they’re sent to slaughter.
We have seen farmed animals being pulled off some farms and put into rodeos. That’s not super common. In many cases, animals used in rodeo events are purpose bred by rodeo stock contractors to be used in rodeos.
And even if they will be slaughtered for the food system, an increasing number of people who eat animal products have an expectation that animals will be treated as humanely as possible.
Suffice to say that what we see in rodeos is not in line with how animals should be treated.
Amy: Yeah, I think the other point is that these individual animals are purpose bred for experiencing fear, and they actually wouldn’t be slaughtered otherwise. Maybe that’s the case with a select few, but for the most part, the animals used in rodeo are purpose bred.
And that’s what we have essentially a challenge with, because it seems absurd to purpose breed an animal to subject them to fear over and over in their lifetime, solely for the purpose of entertainment and people making money.
Chuckwagon horses are retired racehorses that would be killed otherwise
Chantelle: We’re going to pivot a little bit because chuckwagon racing isn’t technically part of rodeo, but it is in the same realm of the use of animals and entertainment at the same kind of events.
So this one is about chuckwagon horses specifically. And a lot of people say that chuckwagon horses are retired race horses that would be killed otherwise.
Amy: What’s the reality on this one, Chantelle?
Chantelle: Chuckwagon horses generally are retired racehorses, but the use of retired racehorses is actually one of the major problems that causes risk to the animals in these events.
It puts animals at risk of leg injuries because thoroughbreds are typically bred for speed, not skeletal strength. This has been pointed out by animal expert Temple Grandin as an ongoing welfare issue.
At this year’s Calgary Stampede, out of 27 teams racing over just 10 days, three horses died. So we’re talking about an extremely high level of risk compared to other sports
Putting horses at that kind of risk after they’ve already been subjected to a risky and stressful racing industry is not the answer.
If the horses are bought from auctions to be raced, we’ve heard from people who operate horse sanctuaries that every horse coming from that environment of the auction is experiencing trauma So it’s just so many different levels of horses being put through stress.
And essentially by buying horses for chuckwagon racing, the industry is providing the option of kind of a dumping ground for horses in the racing industry, so that the industry doesn’t have to take accountability for the animals it breeds.
The racing industry can now make money off of these horses again, rather than having to take accountability for the horses that it has bred.
Rodeo animals are treated like family
Jo-Anne McArthur \ We Animals Media
Amy: The next argument is that rodeo animals are treated like family.
Chantelle: I really hope not. I hope that’s not how people are treating their families. I’ve seen so many comments from rodeo supporters in the same comment section saying, yum, veal, when a calf is being roped and showing obvious signs of stress.
These animals are going through really stressful, uncomfortable, painful, risky situations.
Amy: Yeah, this one kind of breaks my heart to be honest.
And I think that’s the way to approach it when people talk about it, is if someone says that, or you see that in a comment, I think it’s an opportunity to say, like, what does that mean? And what does that look like?
There’s a difference between being treated like family as in you give them food and you give them water and you give them a roof over their heads.
Because I think that’s what’s being insinuated here is that they’re given like the “good life”; they’re well taken care of. And then sort of like ignoring the activities that they do or the experience they have in the activities they do.
And so I think having a sort of honest question of, you know, what does family look like?
I think one of the other arguments would come up. Something like animals are athletes or they’re treated well; it’s sort of this like circular logic that comes up when something like this is argued.
If we think about it, probably family is thought about as like the family dog. And it can be that the family dog is given food and given water.
And then the question is, but what is the family dog’s responsibilities? What is their job?
Is their job to be loved on? Is their job to work? What kind of work do they do? Do they enjoy their work?
And so even if the comparison isn’t to a human, it is interesting to talk about, what is work and what does it look like to enjoy your work? And what is athleticism? What does it look like to enjoy your athleticism?
That’s where I think this one can be so hard. It’s easy to be like, whoa, you’re way out of left field.
But then it’s about trying to understand the person and where they’re coming from. And then after gathering that understanding, looking at, okay, what do I want to do?
At the basis, when we have those that we care about, when do we put them intentionally in situations where they are fearful and then we don’t give them support? It starts to fall apart there.
Someone could say, well, my child was really scared when they first learned to ride a bike. They experienced fear. But in that case, you’re there to catch them. You’re there to provide emotional support.
You can have a one on one talk about what they’re doing and why they’re doing it and what their goals are. There’s a process where they’re trying to get from the beginning of something to being fully autonomous and to enjoy an activity.
With rodeo animals, it’s the same thing over and over. There’s no end goal of enjoyment. It’s always going to be fear.
Chantelle: I completely agree. And providing basic necessities of life to an animal doesn’t justify what happens to them in rodeo.
There are welfare standards in place and changes have been made to improve
Jo-Anne McArthur \ We Animals Media.
Chantelle: There’s one more argument that we hear; that there are welfare standards in place for animals at rodeos and changes have been made to improve.
Now I think it’s really important to look into that and examine what kinds of changes have been made and what kinds of welfare standards are in place.
First of all, there’s no proactive enforcement at most rodeos.
So if there’s someone violating the rules, it’s up to either people within the industry to monitor each other or an audience member to witness and report it. So not all of those violations are going to be caught.
There was an interview recently on CBC with the WA Ranches director at the University of Calgary, who works with animals used in rodeo, talking about water at the Calgary Stampede and providing animals with water.
Basically, animals used to be transported from the ranches where they’re kept full time to the rodeo in this really high heat summer event. They go through this really rigorous exercise. They were not provided water. They were put back on transport trucks and taken back where they live with no water.
And then somebody said, Hey, why don’t we try giving them water? And lo and behold, they did drink the water. So now the animals are provided water.
And that’s the kind of changes we’re talking about.
When the standard is so low to begin with, even providing basic necessities is an improvement, of course. But you wouldn’t run a soccer game in the middle of summer without having a water bottle at the side of the field.
Giving water animals in the scorching heat of summer when they’re stressed and forced into high activity levels is kind of the minimum.
And even with changes, animals are still experiencing stress, and they’re still experiencing injuries, and they’re still experiencing deaths almost every single year.
Amy: Yeah, this one I find really interesting because the Calgary Stampede rodeo and chuckwagon organizers have really tried to work on what we call public trust. They’ve tried to put out an image of the Stampede rodeo and chuckwagon events as being animal-friendly.
They do have a veterinarian on board. Some things maybe are different, like where electric prods can be used has changed, for example. Some of the types of torture tools have changed, how they’re shaped, how they’re applied.
But what it comes down to is the law, the generally accepted practices of animal management, are developed by industry only. And they get an exemption from the law because of that standard existing.
And so, whatever the rodeo industry says, this is okay, this is how animals are treated, that is the standard.
And so it’s pretty easy to comply with a standard that you created yourself. It’s sort of nearly impossible not to.
But what we’re seeing is that the standards do not line up with the science on what animals need and how animals should be treated.
And that’s where it’s sort of this like discrepancy in wording because it’s easy to say, yeah, we’re meeting all the standards when the reality is that the standards that they’re referring to are not the basic standards of what science says animals need. They are something completely different from that.
We don’t really see a change in the facial expressions, the eye whites, the defecation, the broken limbs, broken legs, broken necks, snapped horns, the legs getting caught in the stalls while they’re waiting to come out.
All these things that happen because animals are stressed and they’re freaking out. That hasn’t changed. We saw that before and we still see that now.
And that’s what we’re looking towards is why are we doing that? And how can we change that?
How do we not see eye whites anymore? How do we not see broken limbs anymore? How do we not see an animal defecate in fear or get their limbs stuck?
Those are the real changes that need to be made for any use of animals.
Chantelle: I think it’s also really interesting to see, similarly to the animal agriculture industry, when there are these minimal changes being made, there’s pushback from the industry.
Going back to the animals are treated like family, if I learned something about cat behaviour that’s, Here’s something that you can do to make your cat much happier, I would want to do that.
But we keep seeing pushback every time there’s a change made that is supposed to be for the safety and welfare of animals.
We saw it a few years ago when the chuckwagon races went down from four wagons on the track to three wagons on the track at the Calgary Stampede. A driver came out and said, this is going to be boring to watch and I don’t want to do it.
So I think it’s very interesting to see what the industry is saying about these changes.
Story from the Stampede
Jo-Anne McArthur \ We Animals Media
Chantelle: I’m going to finish off by reading a story that someone shared with us.
This is a story from Donna Friend who shared that she had been to the Calgary Stampede when she was younger.
When I was 14 years old, I’m now 79, I saw a horse hobbling on three legs taken out of sight after a truck wagon accident. Then we heard the shot that ended its life. It was awful. I’ve never forgotten it. Don’t try to tell me horses love chuckwagon racing.
And we keep seeing these deaths happening and it’s absolutely devastating every year. I am really hopeful that as people learn more about this, this is going to be something that has a very short shelf life into the future.
Next episode
Please join us next month as we discuss the sucesses, opportunities, and challenges faced by animal shelters and rescues in British Columbia.
Have you experienced challenges in your animal advocacy?
You’re not alone. In this month’s episode, the Vancouver Humane Society’s Amy Morris, Chantelle Archambault, and Emily Pickett discuss challenges commonly experienced in advocacy work. They delve into some of the difficult feelings that come up in advocacy work, the barriers there are to making change for animals, and personal experiences shared by listeners.
Note: This written discussion has been edited for length.
Featured guest: Emily Pickett
Campaign Director, Vancouver Humane Society
Emily joined the VHS team in 2014, after completing her degree in Political Studies from the University of Saskatchewan and a campaign internship with the Humane Society of the United States. She has worked in the non-profit sector ever since and her life-long love for animals has guided her work in the animal protection and conservation movements. As VHS’s Campaign Director, Emily manages the organization’s campaign strategy around issues including farmed animals; animals in captivity; animals in entertainment; and co-existence with wildlife.
Chantelle: One thing that we hear from people is that they watch video footage of animal suffering and they feel very disturbed and hopeless.
This is something we’re really cognizant of in our own advocacy work. So we don’t share extremely graphic videos and images and we try to include content warnings on any images that might be upsetting.
But at the same time, some people consider it an important part of advocacy work to bear witness to what animals are going through and to show others the realities of what animals endure at the hands of humans.
So what advice would you both give to people who feel hopeless or upset about footage like that?
Amy: Yeah, it’s certainly a really big and challenging part of our work. I have witnessed animal suffering both in person and through video footage, and I think they have impacted me, each in their own way.
In person, it has its own challenges; the guilt of what should I have done and things like that. But then with the video footage, it is that helplessness of, I can’t do anything about this. Now I just feel really bad.
Visualize the help you would provide
Amy: So one of the ways that I’ve heard guidance from Animal Justice Academy is to think through the situation, put yourself in it, get yourself really calm and then breathe into it. Visualize what’s happening and then make a choice. Do something to help the animals, whatever that is. Talk to the farmers, take the animals away, give food, provide enrichment.
Basically visualize those animals that you witnessed and provide them in your mind what you want to provide them and have that be the peace that you can find with having witnessed that suffering.
Share your feelings with others
Amy: And then the other piece is talking with people about how you’re feeling, because in a way, it’s its own kind of advocacy that’s very personal; if people are open to it.
You have to ask, do you have capacity for me to share about this?
Because some people don’t and you won’t get the response that you want and then you’ll end up more frustrated. But if someone does have the capacity, if you say, I witnessed this, or I worked on a farm and I saw this.
It can be a real experience or something observed online. Share what you saw happen and how it impacted you and what you have done so far and how you’re still affected.
Part of that is you’re advocating for those animals in that moment of sharing, but you’re also being vulnerable. And that’s the best state that you can communicate the reasons that you’re so affected by this footage.
And the person on the other end, especially if they’ve consented, they’ve said, yes, I’m, willing to listen to this, this can motivate change on their end, potentially. Or it can have them reflect or work through something that they find challenging. It might give them some tools to learn about what you’ve already done. So there’s a real community connection and co-regulation that can happen there.
I find that I often have to tell a story five times before it sits a little bit further away from me. It’s not just once. And it’s still with me. You know, the stories are there, but they don’t sting as much as they once did.
Emily: Yeah, I think it’s such a major challengethat advocates deal with. For me, I think a big thing that I’ve learned to do is to really take time for self care. And obviously that looks really different for different people.
Spend time with animals
Emily: For me, I like to take breaks when I’m hitting that point of overwhelm where I can feel it in my body. So I’ll take a break and I’ll go cuddle with my dog or take her for a walk or just go sit out in nature. Try to do the things that kind of just help bring my system back down and make me feel a little more grounded.
One other thing you can do that I’ve found helpful is to volunteer at a farm sanctuary or anywhere that you can spend that in-person time with animals. You’re spending time with animals and seeing them in a better environment.
Amy: That’s so healing.
Channel your feelings into action
Emily: Another thing that I like to do is focus on how I can channel my feelings into action.
So what can you do in response to the footage?
Maybe you could write to a decision maker and share it with them.
Maybe you can share aspects of what the issue is without sharing the footage. If someone else isn’t in a place to be able to watch that footage, in the past the VHS has summarized what happens in some of the videos or we’ve put it in different formats that can make it accessible to people at their different capacity levels and encourage them to take action.
So think about ways that you can kind of break that up into mini actions without overwhelming yourself or overwhelming others.
Those are the kind of the two approaches that I take. What do I need? And then, how can I kind of make this approachable for someone else wherever they’re at?
Share writing about the footage
Chantelle: I completely agree with everything both of you said.
Usually when I’m watching those videos in our work at VHS, it’s because I’m going to be one of the people who’s summarizing the footage for op-eds and writing. I channel my frustration and my anger and my helplessness into those pieces of writing to make that accessible for people so people actually know what’s going on.
And then my self care is definitely talking to people. I think that all the people in my life who I’ve spoken with who have either gone vegan or have seriously reduced the amount of animal products that they’re eating are people who I’ve spoken with kind of to offload those feelings and who gave me the space to talk about what’s happening to animals in that footage.
So I definitely think that’s a really important part of advocacy.
Difficulty changing legislation
Chantelle: Another challenge that people can run into in advocacy is they learn about the processes that go into changing a law, and they do all this work, and then they find that legislation is almost impossible to change.
Amy: I find this one maybe even worse than the footage for burnout
Because it’s like, okay, footage gets me fired up, but finding out that it’s hard to change something, then I’m like, don’t you understand that there’s so much suffering happening?
So really anyone who’s, who’s experienced this, I get it.
Consider other ways to make change
Amy: I think it’s an opportunity to get creative because the classic thing to do is say, this thing is bad. This thing should be illegal. I’m going to try to make it illegal. I think that’s a normal way to think. That’s the immediate reaction. In a way that’s like the kind of the non-realistic reaction.
It’s just, change this. So then you have to get creative and go back to, okay, what is the change that I want? Not to think what is the solution and say, it’s this solution or nothing. Instead, think, what do you want to stop from happening? And how do you get there without legislative change or with legislative change being the final step?
Speak with people who are harming animals
Amy: So a couple examples would be to talk with people who are harming animals and find out what motivates them.
Has it been in the family a long time? Do they not maybe have an understanding of animal suffering or they don’t see another path forward?
This one’s hard. I wouldn’t say I’m successful at changing people’s attitudes necessarily, but coming to a place of more understanding and coming to a place where they’re more willing to consider changes to their industry is a place that I’ve gotten to.
So maybe it’s not that they give it up altogether, but maybe they have more compassion towards animals and put a policy in place, put more monitoring in place, things like that.
Advocate for public support
Amy: And then the other is, Okay, why isn’t legislative change successful?
The government doesn’t include animals as part of the constitution the same way that humans are included. And so the government has to do what people want, but it doesn’t have any kind of obligation to do what animals want.
So if you want to get people to change their businesses and you want legislative change as a way to do that, then you need to get the majority of the public on your side to understand what animal suffering is.
And that takes so much time. It doesn’t happen overnight. It happens over a long period of time, decades sometimes.
It’s a collaborative process; maybe there’s a television program that gets popular that helps educate people, while another organization is doing advocacy, while another organization is boots on the ground.
Seeing yourself as one part of a bigger advocacy picture and knowing that if you’re as strategic as you can be, you will work towards that change.
Look for opportunities outside of legislation
Emily: Yeah, I think to your point as well, looking at those other routes for creating change. While legislation change might not feel like it’s achievable at a certain moment, there are other strategies that you can kind of look at and levers you can kind of pull that can help move the needle on the issues.
For example, maybe it’s a corporate policy campaign. Sometimes government won’t make change, but if they feel that kind of pressure from, retailers around something like cage free egg campaigns, that can be a way to increase the pressure.
As you’ve mentioned, looking at public awareness campaigns to really kind of build that public pressure and reflect that this is an issue that the public cares about.
Look to different levels of government
Emily: And sometimes you can look at other levels of government. So maybe you’re trying to get something passed federally and you’re just kind of hitting a wall there.
But what about a municipal bylaw or even just looking at municipal purchasing policies and practices? Something that can help set that precedent that is just the foot in the door and help others see that it’s doable and that people are taking that action.
Don’t lose hope
Emily: And the other point I think that’s really important to keep in mind is that legislation change can sometimes seem impossible until it isn’t.
We’ve seen issues kind of hit a tipping point. It seems like you’re doing the same work, your same ask, talking to the same people over and over, and then all of a sudden, things line up.
Like you mentioned, maybe it’s a documentary that tells a great story, and then there’s a campaign associated with that and there’s coalitions of organizations; and everything just kind of lines up just so in a way that hits that tipping point.
We’ve seen that on issues like the grizzly bear hunt in B.C., where all of those things just kind of lined up. People were doing a lot of really hard work behind the scenes for a long time.
So I think it’s always just continuing to look at different ways that you can continue to advocate for change and also looking at that bigger picture. And what are those other levers that you can pull in the meantime?
Public opinion sways decision-makers
Chantelle: Yeah, I think both of you had amazing points. We touched on this last week, but two of the things that motivate government decision-makers are unfortunately not always compassion for animals.
Although there are a lot of decision makers who care deeply about animals, on a large scale, that’s often not what makes it into the legislation; it’s money and public opinion (votes).
So public opinion campaigns are so important because you’re changing public attitudes enough that there’s pressure on the government to make that change, or you’re changing public opinion enough that there’s fewer people supporting the industries that are harming animals, and it becomes unprofitable for those harms to happen.
People don’t acknowledge the problem
Chantelle: Something else you may run into is that you put time and energy into a change, and you’re just finding that the people you talk to don’t want to acknowledge the degree of suffering that animals go through. So, what would you say to folks running into that barrier?
Change your audience
Amy: Personally, I think you can reach further to find people who do care.
There’s always people who are busy or burnt out or both of those things. Often, it’s not that they don’t care or they don’t want to care. It’s just that they’ve got so much going on that there’s no space for anything beyond it.
You’ll have those people, but if you stay with it until you come across someone who can respond with empathy, then you’re making positive movement.
And you have to kind of know that conversion rates, even for online campaigns, are 1 in 10. That means that only 10% of people who get your email even visit the website. And then 1 out of 10 of those put the energy into signing.
Sometimes it’s better, but if you make your reach bigger and you will have an impact out there at some point.
Follow up with people later
Amy: There are some people who you may have reached out to at one point and they were burnt out or busy. And if you reach out again and say, Hey, do you have time to talk about this? They might be open to it.
Reflect on how you approach people
Amy: That said, that’s only if they have a positive attitude towards you. And so it’s also about recognizing your own impacts of maybe you said something that was harmful or judgemental or just didn’t feel right for that person.
Recognize that we all have different communication styles and sometimes we can be brash and we can be judgemental. And that might be it for that person. They might not have capacity beyond that.
So, a mix of keep trying and self reflect.
Emily: Yeah, I agree. I think it’s a big part of it. I’ll often reflect on what got me to change my mind about any given thing. How did someone engage with me on a topic that allowed me to feel like I was open to changing my mind or my opinion or my actions?
Really considering and reflecting on how you’re sharing the information. Are you coming off as preachy? Are you making the person feel like they’re attacked or they’re defensive? Can you find some common ground with them? What motivates them? And really just meet your audience where they’re at.
It should be a discussion, learning together and growing together around these things, as opposed to trying to convince somebody or trying to convert them or anything like that.
What I really try to do when I’m in situations like this, is I try to focus on sharing the science and the evidence as well that really kind of supports how animals suffer when exploited.
And I think that kind of adding sort of an element of a third party; it’s the science that’s showing this, it’s not me telling you that what you’re doing is wrong. Or that what I know is wrong is fact and what you know is fiction. But really trying to bring in the science and the evidence that just supports that and can help people come to that conclusion as well.
Changes are scrapped during an election year
Chantelle: Yeah, absolutely. So this next one is something that I’ve seen happen with an act about cosmetic testing. Something else that can happen is you can be working on a project for many years and that project basically gets tanked last minute because it’s an election year.
Use your progress and consider new angles
Amy: Yeah, this is a huge bummer.
The good news is you have this work material that you’ve put together. It’s not going anywhere. It still has value.
You have to wait for government to reorganize themselves, but that gives you a chance to consider new angles and regroup.
There’s a reason legislation doesn’t make it.
Sometimes it’s just timing, but sometimes there’s other aspects. So what got things stuck? What is something that you were willing to accept, but you didn’t feel good about? How can you talk to the right people about that to get a shift in place so that when you go back and government’s back in place, you have a better ask than before? And it’s more palatable to the people that it’s going to have an impact on?
Chantelle: That’s a great point. And that’s, exactly what happened with the cosmetic testing law. In 2019, we had an election year and the Cruelty Free Cosmetics Act was scrapped, but that groundwork had already been done. So that change was reintroduced as part of a larger bill, Bill C-47, and Canada finally did ban cosmetic testing on animals effective this past December.
So just keep trying, and you will get there eventually.
Make it an election issue
Emily: I think another thing as well is if you have the time and capacity is, how can you make it an election issue for the parties?
This is something I think that we’ve learned as an organization and have worked around, how can you kind of get those things on parties’ radar beforehand.
And then of course, revisit it with the new government and work with them to keep that on that radar. Did they make a campaign promise around an animal protection issue?
And now you want to circle back and say, Hey, now that you’re elected, we would love to work with you on this. You’re just reiterating, they made this commitment.
In the past, VHS has done election surveys of different candidates asking them for their position on different issues.
So that’s a way you can kind of roll it into the election as well. And just think about how can you really establish that issue or that project to make it a top priority for the new government.
Chantelle: That’s a great point. There are so many challenges and opportunities around election years. And I think it’s great to look at the opportunities as well.
Truth about animal suffering is hidden from children
Chantelle: For these last questions, we asked people on social media what their challenges were in their advocacy work. So we have some submissions from our listeners.
One person said, a challenge is people not wanting to hear or learn about the facts when it comes to the violence, suffering, and cruelty inherent within animal agriculture. Why aren’t children taught these basic facts and the truth in school? Had I known any of these basic things about animals used in agriculture, I would have been vegan as a child.
Resources for peer learning
Amy: This one’s really challenging. One of the things that we’re working on at VHS is programs for schools, a toolkit for student clubs, so that kids who are vegan, who are interested in plant-based eating, can share about it with their peers.
Because often, the biggest impact that kids have is on each other. Kids aren’t super motivated by adults. They want to do what their peers do.
Working with schools and teachers
Amy: I think part of it as well is the entire institution of schools is essentially built around relationships with the animal agriculture industry, around how food is distributed.
And so some of those changes have to involve working with school cafeterias. That is hard because it’s individual. It’s not like there’s “the school system in Canada”, one big entity. It’s broken down school by school in many cases.
How do you change a system that, even in B.C., their only thing standard to the curriculum now is rightly so focused on kind of Indigenous learning and information about the history of the land that we’re on, and for everything else there’s guidelines to follow, but it’s not very specific.
And so teachers are given a lot of leeway to decide what they want to teach. And people talk about what matters to them. Teachers who are vegan are going to talk about being vegan. And teachers who care about the environment are going to talk about that. And teachers who care about antique cars are going to talk about that.
So in terms of challenges here, I think the biggest thing is when you come across people who do have an influence over children, have meaningful conversations with them about the power that they have in their classroom. And feel free also to refer them to our materials at VHS.
Resources for families
Chantelle: And even further than being broken down school by school, I think it’s broken down family by family as well.
I would say that compassion is something that’s inherent in most children. If a child sees that an animal is suffering and that the way that they’re eating causes animals to suffer, a lot of kids will inherently want to stop that suffering.
So giving families the resources that if their child is interested in eating more plant-based foods, that they can support that, is really important. We have a recent post on PlantUniversity.ca that talks about resources for plant-based families and how to help your kids enjoy more plant-based foods.
Chantelle: That was something that I definitely ran into as a kid. I think I was nine the first time I talked about wanting to go vegetarian and my family in my home life just didn’t have the resources to know what to do with that, so I didn’t have that option.
But there’s a lot of resources available now and a lot more options in grocery stores.
Making those resources available to families is going to be really important to helping kids be supported in the choices that they’re making.
Find opportunities to share the message
Emily: Yeah, I think there’s a lot of opportunity to work with teachers, with students, with schools to raise awareness around these issues. And it’s not necessarily that it has to be ingrained in curriculum.
There’s just so many opportunities to work within that system.
The VHS has been invited to do presentations to social justice classes. A lot of schools have clubs. Maybe it’s an animal focused club, maybe it’s a green team or an environmental club. There’s a lot going on in school communities that you can kind of tap into and build on.
And I think what’s really exciting is that young people are increasingly aware and active when it comes to social justice issues. So finding those opportunities to connect and really build the awareness around animal protection is really important. And I think there’s so much opportunity out there to support teachers, giving some resources to them to help work on some of these topics or raise them in their classrooms.
So it’s a big one.
Chantelle: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for writing in with that question.
People unwilling to make personal change
Chantelle: Our next comment was a person who talked about being frustrated with people calling for institutional change without being willing to make personal changes, particularly for farmed animals.
Lead by example
Amy: This one stumped me for a minute because it is a fair thing to be frustrated with.
Like, we want to see people live up to their values. We want people to put their actions where their thoughts and beliefs are.
But at the same time, we are humans, we’re not perfect, and we’re all at some place in learning. So as much as this is sort of a frustrating thing, I think the way I’ve dealt with this is making change within myself rather than asking other people to change.
And so a big part of it is recognizing that people will have some reason and justification for why they think things should be the way they are.
If I disagree with them, the question is, number one, what’s happening here? Is it my ego? Is it because I think my ethics are better than them? Or is it because there’s a gap in information?
A small change is better than no change
Amy: And if it’s just that a person isn’t at the place where they can be comfortable with the personal changes, if they’re doing any work towards institutional change; even if it means cows get a brush that they can brush their bodies against and before they didn’t, it’s still something for the cows.
Their lives are still really horrible. I’m not going to say they’re not, but they’re slightly less horrible.
And if someone wants to put a lot of energy into that and that happens, versus nothing happens, then the cows are somewhat better off.
So trying to think of it that way as keep chatting with people, keep living your values, and know that at least they’re talking about it, at least they have some kind of care, and they may be where you are in five years.
They’re just not there yet.
Chantelle: I don’t know anyone who has always been vegan. Everyone I know who is vegan has once been a future vegan, and I think it’s really important to remember that doing something is always going to be better than doing nothing.
And that comes to personal choices too.
If you can make a small change, that’s better than making no change at all. If everyone made a small change, it would make such a big difference.
Emily: I agree. I think it’s really about progress over perfection. You know, things can take time. People can find one avenue, one way into the world of animal advocacy and then continue to move along in their journey and to align their actions with their values.
Recognize the journey
Emily: And I think it’s a big thing to just lead by positive example. For my own journey, I started off as advocating for institutional change before really feeling like I was taking the personal action.
I was calling for changes around how animals are raised and calling for institutional change, but I wasn’t changing my own behavior very much, but the more that I did that, the more that I felt there was more I could keep doing and I needed to move along that spectrum.
That’s what I wanted to do. And I felt like if I’m advocating for this, I’m at a point now I can start making my own individual changes too.
But if someone had come to me and told me I wasn’t doing enough, that would have been pretty disheartening. And maybe I would have just thrown my hands up and said, I’m not doing anything then.
So I do think it’s about meeting people where they’re at, doing what you can. For the most part, people will start to embody those values and think, okay, what else can I do, and what other actions can I take to help animals?
I think everybody doing a little bit is better than only a few people doing things perfectly.
Experiencing backlash to advocacy
Chantelle: This next person spoke about backlash in advocacy; people reacting poorly to their advocacy work about companion animals like welfare in dog training or unethical breeding practices.
Would you have any advice around that?
Calling in vs. calling out
Amy: This one has broken me down to my core. This one has burned me out really hard. So, I definitely identify with it.
I had a dog breeder say to me that tails could be docked because the dog needed to swim, and if it swam, its tail would get stuck in the reeds in the water. That was being told to me as if it was really sound science.
And so we do have people who are completely convicted in how they think things should be. And, like, The reasons that have been told to them and the things they’ve witnessed and the stories they’ve heard.
And absolutely there’s going to be people who you won’t be able to change their minds. And that’s where sort of like legislative change standards, one on one conversations are all going to play a role.
I listened to this. radio program once about calling in and calling out. When things are not ethical and you witness something, the first thing that would be good to do is to call in, try to connect, have a really meaningful conversation, do your best.
But sometimes calling out has a role. I have called out before. I have witnessed people hit their dogs. I’ve witnessed people shock their dogs and I got angry and I just would say something like, did you just do what I think you just did?
In person, I think this can have an effect sometimes, or you can just make the person really angry. But when people have called me out, I think at first I’m defensive, but then later I’m like, Oh, maybe they had a point about that. Maybe that wasn’t the best thing to do or the most ethical.
So there’s this sort of fine balance between shaming and people, which can just have a negative outcome, and holding people accountable for their actions.
And it is trickier online, I would say, because people just hide behind their screens.
Cite the science
Amy: And so I think the biggest thing you can do is turn towards science at that point. Any time you’re doing any kind of communication online, find the really good sound science and share it far and wide. Get it out there: Hey, there’s science around this; we don’t need to be sharing opinions back and forth.
There is change. I mean, talk about dog training, Cesar Millan did a lot of damage. And we’re just trying to recover from that damage. Every time I hear someone make that sound that he would make in his training show, I’m like, are you kidding me? That sound is still being used?
But at the same time, I’m seeing a lot more dogs wearing harnesses instead of collars. I’m seeing a lot of middle aged men carrying treats in their pockets or in little treat bags. So I do think we are seeing a shift. It’s gradual though.
Emily: I think I fully agree with your comment there, Amy, about centering the science.
This is an area where there’s so many competing and polarizing opinions, but there’s a lot of science out there that we can point to.
And I think the other thing I really try to do in this area is I centre the animal’s experience, rather than, I think training needs to be done this way.
It’s what are the animals experiencing in any of these situations and really making them the focus rather than the particular opinions or stances or training styles. And I think centering the animals and centering the science is a more impactful way of addressing this issue, but it’s also a really big one.
Receptive people are listening
Chantelle: I totally agree. I think that backlash to advocacy comes in a lot of different flavors.
There’s whataboutism, where people basically say if you can’t solve everything, Why bother with anything? You know, you’re trying to advocate for one thing, and they’re saying, what about these other problems?
If you try to address every problem at the same time, you’re not going to be able to address any problem. You need to address the problems that are achievable and make the progress that you can make.
Back to the progress, not perfection, there’s people who say, if you can’t do everything, why bother with anything? Why are you vegan? You might step on an ant going to the mailbox.
I think it’s important to remember that there’s a lot of people, especially on the internet, who will basically use any argument they can against making a change.
And those people are pretty set in their views. But there’s also a lot of people who aren’t commenting because they don’t feel strongly. And those are the people who are seeing all these other comments, and they’re going to be persuaded by the side that’s more reasonable, that’s leaning on compassion, that’s leaning on evidence, and those are the minds that are going to be changed.
Feeling hopeless about others’ indifference
Chantelle: This next person talked about feeling hopeless that friends and family and people in the wider community just don’t care about the suffering of animals.
Find your niche
Amy: This is one that I think about a lot. There are things that I don’t care about. Certainly I care lots about the suffering of animals, but I think about maybe sometimes I don’t do a great job recycling, or maybe sometimes I don’t do a great job with lowering my consumption of fossil fuels.
Everyone has a cause that matters the most to them, whatever that cause is. I am doing something that someone is going to go, Oh my gosh, like, can you believe that?
We all know animal suffering matters because animals are sentient and it’s harmful, but harvesting oil from the earth is disturbing a lot of wildlife areas. Harvesting materials for batteries is also destroying a lot of wildlife.
Pretty much any kind of consumerism we do is having a really big impact. And yet we all partake in that in some way.
And so recognizing that we are in a place of learning, a place of doing our best.
The most you can do is to really just have meaningful conversations and give yourself that self care when you get frustrated that other people don’t care.
Chantelle: Yeah. I think it’s important to remember that none of us have infinite capacity to advocate for everything. We can care about lots of things and not have the capacity to learn all about a topic and to advocate for it and to make direct changes in every area.
I’m really grateful that there are other people out there who are making those things their area of expertise. We can also make change in our area of expertise.
So it’s just finding your niche and finding the things that you’re really passionate about, and then kind of relying on other people to help make changes in other areas as well.
Others are on their learning journey
Emily: Also just continuing to lead by example in those areas where you’ve got friends and family and other people in the community who may not appear like they care.
But you may find you’re surprised by the people who are actually listening and learning in the background. Maybe they’re not responding right away. Maybe they’re processing things and going on their own learning journey around it.
I can think of times when I felt really low and hopeless, like this just doesn’t seem to be making a difference or no one seems to be listening or changing.
And I’ve had people reach out, often people I would not think would ever be paying attention, and thank me for sharing a certain article or a story or a campaign.
You just don’t know the impact that you can have. So I think just continuing to lead by example and kind of be that change that you wish to see is more powerful and more impactful than you can sometimes imagine.
Introduce easy entry points
Emily: And sometimes if you’re sharing with this community and you want to help people create change, how can you kind of create those different entry points based on where people are at?
Maybe it’s Meatless Monday. That’s someone’s foot in the door to start thinking about meat reduction. Maybe they’ve never considered that in their life. Does it make sense to ask them to go vegan overnight? Or does it make sense to ask them to consider meat reduction even one day a week?
And next thing you know, they’ve got some more meatless options in their recipe book. And now they’re having a couple of times a week. And then every dinner.
So I think it’s just kind of creating those entry points and those ways for people to take small actions, or a whole range of different actions. So people wherever they’re at can kind of find that entry point.
Change in opinion is gradual
Chantelle: For sure. And the more times people hear a message that’s told with understanding and compassion, the more they’re going to be receptive to those messages.
No one’s going to make a change on the first time that they’re hearing something. Maybe the conversation you are having is the first time they’re being introduced to this, but maybe on the 10th time they hear about it, they have learned about it and they care a lot more. And maybe they’ll be more open to making a change then.
It’s all going to be a process, but that’s why it’s so important to be practicing self care and making sure that you find those ways to ground yourself and to process your feelings of frustration and hopelessness so that they don’t turn into burnout. Because we need you. We need advocates in the community.
Challenges gaining visibility for a cause
Chantelle: This last person talked about difficulties gaining visibility and traction for their cause. And that’s a person who worked on the They Took My Dog documentary and a petition on Change.org to reform B.C. dog laws.
Amy: Yeah, there are so many causes and needs. I could sit here and list a hundred different laws that need to be changed.
So I understand that some take off, some don’t. When you have one cause that you care a lot about, you have to really dedicate yourself to it.
We spoke to Barbara Lapointe, who essentially has been working on the same thing for more than a decade. And has made some changes, but not the specific change that they’re asking for.
I think what’s challenging is, in this case specifically, some of the laws that need to be changed are municipal. There can be provincial change, but for the most part, these laws are municipal.
There’s 160 or something different municipalities in B.C. So, it’s going to take time.
Certainly, I think the more there’s legal cases where the lawyers make it clear to the courts what the challenges are, and then those courts communicate that to the municipality and the costs associated with those cases, I think that’s where you’re going to see a lot of change. The more things cost society, the more change could happen, and I think that’s the case when it comes to laws around dangerous dogs.
Reassess your efforts
Emily: Yeah, I think generally just the question of how do you gain visibility and traction for a cause is sometimes stepping back and reassessing. Because things change as well, right?
Who is your audience? Who’s adjacent to your key target audience? And how can they help amplify the issue to a new audience?
That could be someone who has a platform that there’s some alignment. It could be looking at how to translate into different languages and to reach different communities.
Also looking at different ways to raise awareness. Can you engage offline? Say it’s writing an op-ed or taking out a billboard or engaging with people in person.
And I think also having the discussion with as many people as possible, asking for their feedback, for their thoughts, what do they think can help create change?
People like to be a part of the solution. So looking at ways that you can bring them into the fold and get their perspective. Maybe they have a connection somewhere that you hadn’t thought of, or maybe they have some input that would help bring that campaign or cause to another level.
Just diversifying things as much as possible.
Chantelle: Yeah, that’s a great point. We talked last week about partnerships are so important and how you never know where you’re going to find support. You can find allies in the most unexpected of places. So the more people you talk to about this, the more you might find other people to help amplify your cause.
Next episode
Please join us next month as we discuss the most common arguments in support of rodeo and ways to respond as an animal ally.
Grassroots advocates have the power to mobilize communities and influence policies to improve animal well-being.
In this month’s episode of The Informed Animal Ally, two grassroots advocates share their experiences and the lessons they’ve learned in calling for change for animals.
Note: This written discussion has been edited for length.
Featured Guest: Barbara La Pointe
Librarian
Barbara has volunteered her time to several animal welfare projects in Canada and the United States since 1998. She is responsible for a national campaign asking Canada’s largest classifieds site to ban the commercial sale of animals on its site. This campaign has gained national media attention and the support of 464,000 individuals, 8 major corporations and 31 animal welfare organizations.
Featured Guest: Tessa Vanderkop
Director, Vancouver Humane Society
Tessa is a Social Purpose Strategist with the United Way Social Purpose Institute where she is helping business to become an engine for good in society. She is also a passionate conservationist and led the Ivory-Free Canada campaign with Elephanatics, which received support from more than 700,000 Canadians.
Amy: To start us off, I’d love to hear more about how you both became interested in animal advocacy.
How Barbara began advocating for companion animals
Barbara: I lived in the U. S. for seven years. And when I came back to Quebec in a small town located on the island of Montreal, I was floored to see that puppies and kittens were still being sold at the pet store at my local shopping center. So I wanted to change things.
That’s where it started for me.
How Tessa began advocating for elephants and wildlife
Tessa: I think I was born an animal lover. I mean, even as a kid, I had all my little stuffed animals and I would build veterinarians for them and get my mom’s tea cozies and cover them up and say goodnight every night to them.
So I think it was just the way I was born.
And then I was at work in Toronto and I was at the Toronto Convention Centre and one of the publishers at that time had decided to rent an elephant for a campaign. And this elephant was in this convention centre. When I still think about it, I get quite emotional.
I just remember looking at it and thinking, what the heck is going on here? It was just such a disconnect for me. And then it took me probably a few years to do something with that initial thing.
And then I found out that a circus was coming to Canada. And I remember at that time thinking, well, I know how to write. I know how to do publicity, so I’m just going to create as much trouble for the circus as I possibly can. And that’s what I did.
I just chased the circus across Canada and I would send press releases and information to town councils and the mayor. I’d alert local TV and media. And I’d try and reach out to local advocacy groups.
And that was sort of the beginning of connecting a passion with skills that I thought I had.
Amy: That’s so lovely. What a great start to advocacy, but challenging things to have to deal with.
Campaigning for animals
Amy: We heard both of your backgrounds at the beginning of the episode, but I’d like to ask each of you to speak a little bit more about the campaigns you’ve worked on, provide more details, maybe some challenges and successes.
Barbara’s campaigns for companion animals
Barbara: When my local shopping center was still selling cats and dogsat the pet store, I started to attend every council town council meeting in 2012. Every month I went to encourage my city to adopt a bylaw requiring that dogs and cats and rabbits sold in pet store to be sterilized and be sourced from animal shelters.
So I started in 2012 and the bylaw was finally adopted in 2015. So I had started to learn to be patient at that time.
And it’s during those town council meetings that several town councilors kept coming back with the argument that we could not adopt such a bylaw for pet stores or combat pet overpopulation as breeders will still continue to sell animals online on classified sites.
Advocating to stop pet sales on Kijiji
Barbara: So in the summer of 2013, I decided to research the topic and the problems associated with the sale of animals on Kijiji, Canada’s most popular classified site. And I launched a campaign, so it’s been over 10 years now with Kijiji.
The problem that I found was that classified sites were unable to distinguish responsible breeders from breeders who, without regard for animal welfare and the buyer, profit from the sale of animals.
So over the past 10 years, I’ve collected numerous media stories of sick puppies and kittens sold on Kijiji. I gathered testimonials from disappointed Kijiji users, the comments from veterinarians and animal shelters to demonstrate that yes, there are too many buyers that continue to be cheated by unscrupulous and unethical breeders on classified sites like Kijiji.
Too many animals suffering from health problems, often due to rearing and breeding conditions, are sold on this site. That leads to veterinary costs to new guardians and inflicts them with unnecessary emotional and financial stress.
So that’s what me and 465,000 individuals who signed this petition want; we want the leader of Canada’s classified site, Kijiji, to set an example. Animals should not be sold on this site.
Puppy meals and unethical breeders may continue to exist, even if Kijiji Canada stops the sale of animals, but at least they will not give them an easy platform to thrive on. So that’s the goal of this campaign.
Chantelle: That’s such an important message, especially when we’re seeing so much overpopulation and overcrowding in the shelter and rescue system.
There’s so many animals out there who need homes.
Tessa’s advocacy for wildlife
Amy: Tessa, can you share more about the background of the campaign that you’ve been working on?
Tessa: Yeah, for sure. After chasing the circus around for a couple of years, I woke up one morning and I’d heard about a group called the Global March for Elephants and Rhinos.
They were based out of the United States and they organized kind of a global awareness day about the threats facing wildlife in Africa, so elephants and lions and rhinos and so forth. It was a call to action to organize an event. And so I woke up and was like, I’m going to organize an event.
I just Googled elephant advocacy Vancouver. And I found Fran Duthie, who is the founder of Elephanatics. We joined forces and we organized, along with Leanne Fogarty, a number of those annual marches.
And then it was only after the last one where I think we were like, okay, so this is great. We have people coming out to these, but what are we really doing?
And so that’s when we switched tactics. And we really looked at how Canada was enabling the sale of ivory and what that was doing and rhino horn.
Stopping the import of ivory and rhino horn in Canada
Tessa: We pivoted our advocacy towards getting the government to change the actual regulations around importing elephant ivory and rhino horn.
We started with a letter to then-minister Catherine McKenna and it was actually Marylee Davies who said, well, maybe you could get a couple of signatures from other like-minded organizations.
So she gave me some names of some people. We added those names to the letter, but then my colleagues, Fran and Leanne just kind of went crazy. It’s like, well, if we can get three signatures, why can’t we get more? We got a hundred signatures for that letter globally.
So for every letter we wrote, we had this activated network that was willing to support what we were looking for.
And later on, that ended up being quite helpful.
Fran had started our Facebook page. She went out and learned everything about social media. We have 20,000 followers on the Elephanatics Facebook page.
And then Leanne said, well, why don’t we do a petition? And we’re like, yeah, okay, let’s do the petition. We’ll probably get like a hundred signatures, like a thousand signatures.
And that’s when we really started understanding that Canadians did not want, and did not know that we still allowed the legal trade of ivory. So we ended up getting like a thousand signatures, easily, 10,000, and then 20,000, we were like, holy smokes, what is going on?
And that’s when it just kept growing. That Change.org petition is over 700,000 now.
And so that’s not the end of the campaign. We ended up collaborating with other organizations, but that was definitely when we knew we were zeroing in on something.
Chantelle: Wow, that is so impressive. I think it’s so inspiring that it just takes that first spark of identifying that there’s something wrong and just look how much you can accomplish.
Successes in grassroots animal advocacy
Chantelle: I would love to hear more about the successes that you’ve both seen from your work.
Spayed and neutered rescue pets for adoption
Barbara: Yes. With the pet store bylaw, like I said, after three years of campaigning, going to monthly council meetings and writing open letters in the newspapers, asking residents to send an email to counselors, my city finally adopted the bylaw that dogs, cats and rabbits sold in pet stores must be sterilized and be sourced from animal shelters.
We were one of the first cities actually in Quebec to have such bylaw. So that was a great success.
Trap, Neuter, Return, Maintain for community cats
Barbara: Another campaign I worked on is after adopting three stray cats that were roaming in my backyard, I went again to town council meetings asking them this time to implement a Trap, Neuter, Return, Maintain program (TNRM) for community cats.
Again with the help of residents, same thing, same council meetings, open letters and newspapers asking residents to send letters. The program was implemented in 2019 in my small town and is still running today.
It’s fun to see neighbors who still ask me about the program and want to get their permits and stuff like that.
Progress for classified sites
As far as Kijiji, Kijiji today is still selling animals on its site, but I would say that my petition has gathered over 465,000 signatures so far. I see it as a success because it’s 465,000 individuals who are aware of the issue surrounding animals sold on classified sites.
That’s 465,000 individuals who are discussing this matter with a family member, a friend, or a coworker. And that’s 465,000 individuals not buying animals on classified sites.
It’s day by day driving the public discourse to a point where politicians are increasingly compelled to take concrete actions when it comes to the sale of animals on classified sites.
I would like also to add that the classified site Used.ca, based in British Columbia, banned profiting from household pets in 2015. They commented that the Kijiji petition was one of their motivators behind the decision, so this petition is also helping others, other companies, businesses, and individuals to base their decision on, so to me, it’s a success.
Amy: Thanks so much for sharing those. I think something that I end up having a hard time with in advocacy is when you have big goals, seeing all the intermediary steps as successes. It’s so easy to get a feeling of sort of like, Oh, but this one thing hasn’t happened, but it’s so good to see sort of like the process of getting there.
And particularly what Barbara brought up around public attitude change. The only way you’re going to see legal change is when you have really the vast majority of the public on side.
Partnerships in advocacy
Amy: Partnerships play a big role in getting the public on side. Can you speak to the partnerships you’ve made to advance your work for animals?
Tessa: I think it’s so interesting that Barbara, that you use your town council as the muscle for change, because I used to sit on one of the city of Burnaby’s sustainability committee, and it was really always interesting to me that it does make a difference, I think, using those tools as a way of driving change.
Reaching out to the company first
Barbara: For the pet store, I always ask the company first. I went ahead and I wrote a letter to the pet storeabout the problems and when they said no, that’s where I had to go step up somewhere else. That’s why I went to see my town council for that, but always ask communication first with the company.
I did this same thing with Kijiji before I started the petition. I wrote to them just to make sure that they were aware of the problem and there was no action. Then I said, well, I’m going to start a petition. I warned them in advance. I did the same thing at the town council meeting.
I think I’m really believe in open communication with your decision-makers.
Tessa: Yeah, I completely agree. Make friends, not enemies, right? I think is the key and build partnerships as much as you possibly can.
Finding unexpected allies in advocacy
Tessa: I would just add that we had hit a little bit of a roadblock. By this point, we had actually been approached by Humane Society International, Michael Bernard. They had already done a lot of work behind the scenes and had hit a wall, but our petition and our Facebook page and our letters, I think we managed to sort of build that grassroots kind of awareness for the issue.
I had an MP knock at my door and we ended up building a relationship and I educated him quite a bit about what was happening with elephants and the laws in Canada. He was really amazing. He just said, I will do what I can to galvanize some people behind the scenes; and he did exactly that.
One of the things that I’ve learned is you have to be open to talking to everybody because as an advocate, you’re that voice, and that voice and that story needs to be told. Because how else does it happen?
So you’d find me anywhere talking about elephants in the most unusual situations and you find unusual allies in that way.
Chantelle: Those partnerships are so important.
Tessa: Yeah, we would never have been able to do it. The ivory ban has been implemented by the way, it was implemented this January, but we would never have been able to do it without the help.
We worked very collaboratively with Humane Society International, and we had built a larger coalition with some other grassroots organizations, Global March for Elephants and Rhinos Toronto, Heather Craig and Janine Cavin from Elephant and Rhino Defenders, and Patricia Sims from World Elephant Day.
We all worked together, including initially Jane Goodall Canada. So I would say for us as Elephanatics in a grassroots organization, you would never, ever be able to do it. We could have tried it on our own, but, but I think it really takes collaboration.
Chantelle: Absolutely. And that’s so important because everyone who’s advocated for animals knows that there’s so many barriers to persuading decision makers to prioritize compassion for other species. So just having as many voices as possible doing that advocacy work is so important.
Barbara, could you also speak to some of your partnerships that you’ve made in your advocacy work?
Barbara: Of course. At the beginning, it was easy to get 30 animal rescue groups and shelters to sign up for the petitions like Humane Canada, Humane Society International Canada, the BC SPCA, the Winnipeg Humane Society, all those big societies and small shelters and big shelters.
But sometimes you find support in unexpected places.
Over the years, the Kijiji campaign has been endorsed by some of the largest banks, websites and telecommunication providers in the country because they were publishing ads on Kijiji pet sale pages. So I either directly wrote to those companies or I had the help of signers to write to them.
TD Bank, Royal Bank of Canada, Toyota Canada, Tangerine Bank, National Bank of Canada, and TELUS have all pulled their ads off Kijiji pet sale pages in support of this campaign.
So yes, partnership is very important. And then when write to Kijiji, I tell them that, of course, but also tell the government about this. It also helps that it’s not only individuals, but also big companies and more shelters and rescue groups that support this campaign.
Tessa: Yeah. I can’t emphasize that enough, actually. Like you can find support in such unlikely places. Like for example, Mike Farnworth, who is the Minister of Safety, showed up to our marches and would come and support us and buy t-shirts and make donations. You just have no idea who’s an ally and who’s that real believer in wildlife justice and equity.
So I think that’s really key, just being really open minded, even when you feel beleaguered.
Chantelle: Absolutely. That’s absolutely true. We work with people in all sorts of industries in our work, and there’s so many people across so many types of jobs that are really passionate about animals.
Challenges in advocacy
Chantelle: Could you both speak to some of the challenges you faced in your advocacy?
Be flexible
Barbara: Last summer, when I asked Kijiji to have a human moderation team carefully reviewing at all pets ads and ensuring compliance with the policies, they turned me down again.
So I had to look for another solution. So I read and looked back at my campaign material and saw the comment from Used.ca when they banned the profiting from household pets across the entire network. The comment said that websites like ours are not qualified or capable of regulating the breeding of pets.
So it made me think, no one can better regulate pets. I saw this as a challenge.
I contacted every office of the Minister of Agriculture or relevant ministers in each province and territory in Canada to learn about the laws regulating dogs and cat breeders. I discovered that only the provinces of Quebec and New Brunswick require licenses for dog and cat breeders.
So government permits could be the solution to regulating the sale of animals on classified sites. Maybe breeders permits are the way to go. If breeders are issued permits from the government, it may not guarantee that these breeders are conscientious or ethical, but it provides more protection to buyers since these breeders have licenses and can be easily traced. If a problem occurs, it allows for the government to make these breeders responsible and to comply with a certain standard of care, to inspect them or even sanction them, all of which Kijiji and classified sites cannot do.
So yes, when I’m faced with a challenge, don’t despair, go back, look around, be flexible, and maybe you have to change your strategy for the best outcome.
Find another way through
Tessa: Yeah, I completely agree with that. I always think of it as water over rocks; you’ve got to find a way through, one way or the other.
We were dealing with Mr. McKenna’s office and we weren’t getting anywhere. And I think there are times when you just have to realize that it’s just not going to happen in that way. So what else do you do? And in those instances, you know, we would try and find other allies.
So, you know Terry Beech was super helpful in finding allies and then really focusing on the Change.org petition and really raising awareness.
And then also because we were a grassroots organization, when the CITES negotiations would come up, we would really look at how Canada actually voted on all the different issues and report back out publicly on what that looks like.
I think a lot of the public just doesn’t understand how that world works and why would they, right? It’s not everyone’s job to do that, but there is sort of a systemic kind of way of keeping the world working in a “business as usual” way, and we needed to change that. So I think you just find other tactics to say, let’s take this kind of closed world and make it a little bit more open and share with people what this looks like and what they can do.
So that’s when we ended up using New Mode and doing a big MP letter-writing campaign because we’re like, well, we can’t get anywhere with the minister because they don’t care or they don’t have time or there’s some other issues. So let’s just write letters. And so we ended up getting 7,000 letters written to MPs all across the country.
And so then the minister has to respond because the MPs are writing her office saying what’s going on. So I think, like Barbara said, you’ve got to be flexible, you have to be open minded, you can’t be deterred.
Don’t give up
Barbara: I just want to say that don’t be discouraged. I was talking with a friend, she was talking about the podcast her husband was listening to. I listened to the podcast and brought me somewhere else, brought me to a story about credit cards having a policy cutting off adult sites. So I said, you know, why did they do it for the adult sites? Maybe they could also do it for classified sites for animals.
So I contacted all those credit card companies. It didn’t work out. They didn’t budge.
But even though it was a challenge, you always learn something. You know how to write better, how to influence better, negotiate better, every step of the way.
You learn new things outside your topic. But it brings you somewhere else and you go from there.
Know your audience
Tessa: I would completely agree with what Barbara just said. You have to understand a multitude of different audiences.
And so when I first started, I was marching in the streets with signs. I think that’s super necessary on some level, but I think not everyone is going to respond to that kind of advocacy and you have to be willing to learn and change and develop what I would call, and I find it almost offensive, but you know, the business case for why we should not be trading an elephant ivory. You have to be able to talk to people about numbers.
I think when you believe so passionately in something, it’s hard to strip that back and say, okay, well, this is how we have to approach this. But that’s your job is to do that. You’ve got to be dispassionate in your passion.
Barbara: Yeah, I totally agree with you, Tessa. It worked with me with council.
When I brought the numbers, it made a change. It’s sad, but money drives people. Money drives those cities and businesses and so we have to bring it to that level.
Lessons from animal advocates
Amy: I appreciate all the insights that you’re both sharing. It is absolutely step by step; it’s uncovering every little piece of what makes an issue.
These are some great lessons that you’ve learned. Are there any other lessons you’ve learned that you can share from your work?
Storytelling is key
Tessa: I was just thinking about things that helped us. As you say, Amy, if these are all really complex systemic issues, and how do you distill it to something that continues to engage the public and get that support?
And so I think the communications piece and the storytelling piece is so essential, like, how do you tell these stories? How do you continue to bring people along? Because I think it’s a lot to ask the general public to understand the complexities of everything, but what are ways and tools that we can use?
People in our community came up with these really easy to see graphics that told the story very quickly about what was happening to Africa’s elephant population. And so that became very shareable on social media.
And it’s just those kinds of things. How do we go from us to everyone else and what is the best way and the most compelling way and true way to tell the story that can gain traction.
So I’d say that that’s also something to really think about.
Communicate with the decision-makers you’re working to persuade
Barbara: Communication is very important. No matter how frustrating it can be, it can feel like you’re not being listened to, it’s better to partner with the people you want to change.
I’m proud to have open communication with Kijiji. That communication has led to improvements like the credit card verification requirements they did at the beginning in 2014 or 2015.
Official responses from your decision-makers help show that they are engaged and can guide you in choosing a path forward because you can find information on what they say and always keep learning about your petition topic, in and out and outside your topic.
Without that, you wouldn’t learn about new arguments to take to bring onto the table or know if ending pet sales was necessary and if Kijiji’s incremental changes have solved the problems; and they haven’t. So continue, never stop.
Tessa: I would completely agree with everything that Barbara said. When we started, Terry Beach, our MP, reached out to Minister Wilkinson and basically brought all of his senior policy people to a meeting with Terry and the minister to meet with Elephanatics and Humane Society International Coalition to talk about the elephant issue.
There were some really tough questions and the minister had to ask those questions. I totally understand that, but it’s collaborating with like minded people on all sides of the table, that’s how you make it. happen. You have to bring people along.
And to that point, there was a local a sale at an auction house of wildlife parts, including ivory and rhino horn. And people were outraged. They said, you have to talk to them.
I ended up just having this incredible conversation with the person who owned the auction house. And I think when we both left that conversation, I would say that we both would be able to have another conversation again and be able to continue that conversation because you can’t alienate people. You have to bring them along with you as best as you can. And so I think that’s really key.
Find support where you can
Chantelle: That’s an amazing point. My mind keeps coming back to your water over rocks analogy, Tessa, because there’s so many points where you can encounter resistance to change. And the more you take other routes and change public opinion and change policy and laws, the more these resistant sectors are going to have to keep up. It’s kind of like you’re slowly eroding the rocks.
Tessa: Oh, absolutely. And I think most people want to do the right thing. I don’t think everyone knows how systemically complex it is or why. And so you have to build that kind of emotional, I can do something and I will do something, and keep that conversation going and you’ll win more of those people over.
It’s a long process, but it’s really important to keep your eye on the ball.
Chantelle: Yeah. Just very slowly bringing the practice around; “this is the way things have always been done” isn’t a good enough reason to keep doing them that way.
Thinking of becoming a grassroots advocate?
Chantelle: Is there any final advice that you would give to people who are interested in taking those first steps into getting involved with grassroots advocacy?
Ask for support
Barbara: Ask support from anyone, people, companies, businesses. Like Tessa said, we never know where we’re going to find support in unexpected places.
Create Google alerts
Barbara: Create Google alerts relating to your campaign. You want to be aware because you can’t read all the news everywhere, but Google alerts have been really helpful for me.
Never give up
Barbara: And most importantly, never give up. I’ve been at this for a decade, but every minute of it has been worth it for the animals and the people who love them.
I always think about this at times when Kijiji says, no, no, no, no, no. I go to bed and I think of all the people who signed this, I’m going to back them up. I’m going to be there. I’m going to continue. So think about the people and the animals behind the petition. Never, never stop. Don’t give up.
Tessa: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more.
Remember your “why”
Tessa: I think what has motivated me, although I’ve worked on ivory and not elephants in captivity, but that elephant in the Metro Toronto Convention Centre changed me fundamentally as a person. And so everything I do for that poor elephant.
I think it’s not work if you’re passionate and you match it with your skills and you say, I’m going to do one thing every day.
Next episode
Please join us next month as we discuss the sucesses, opportunities, and challenges faced by animal shelters and rescues in British Columbia.
One animal cruelty investigation tells a story. A decade of investigations reveals a pattern.
Important action: British Columbia is currently updating its Farmed Animal Welfare Framework. Can you support major changes to protect farmed animals in B.C.?
In this month’s episode of the Informed Animal Ally, Vancouver Humane Society Campaign Director Emily Pickett discusses what she has observed in her decade of working with the organization. What patterns have there been? What’s changed? And, armed with a growing body of information about animal well-being and newly released recommendations for B.C.’s Farmed Animal Welfare Framework, where do we go from here?
Note: This written discussion has been edited for length.
Featured Guest: Emily Pickett
Campaign Director
Emily joined the VHS team in 2014, after completing her degree in Political Studies from the University of Saskatchewan and a campaign internship with the Humane Society of the United States. She has worked in the non-profit sector ever since and her life-long love for animals has guided her work in the animal protection and conservation movements. As VHS’s Campaign Director, Emily manages the organization’s campaign strategy around issues including farmed animals; animals in captivity; animals in entertainment; and co-existence with wildlife.
Emily: Undercover footage taken by a worker at Chilliwack Cattle Sales showed dairy cows being subjected to horrific cruelty and abuse. The case and the subsequent trial came to dominate the media cycle.
While those in the industry argued that the case represented a “bad apple” and was the exception, not the rule in terms of how animals are treated in the animal agriculture industry, the unfortunate reality is that there have been near-annual undercover investigations that have taken place over the last decade.
Amy: What were the outcomes of those investigations?
Emily: Generally speaking, charges in these kinds of cases are quite rare.
The 2014 Chilliwack cattle sales case was a first in terms of a B.C. company itself being held accountable for farmed animal cruelty. The company’s president and a director pled guilty to animal cruelty, and the company was fined about $345,000. Several employees also pled guilty and they received varying jail sentences ranging somewhere from about seven to 60 days, and these were served intermittently.
They also received probation, fines, and there were also some prohibitions handed out against caring for animals for a certain amount of time.
Some went through an appeal process as well.
In the case of the 2017 Elite Farm Services investigation, six employees were fired as a result of that, and the chicken catching company itself was fined about $300,000 and put on three years probation. But in the time that it took for the company to be charged in 2021, Elite Farm Services was accused of cruelty again in two other investigations in 2018 and 2020.
So both the Chilliwack Cattle Sales and the Elite Farm Services cases took several years to result in charges and fines. And we’re still waiting on updates about some of the more recent investigations.
Chantelle: It’s so frustrating that animals are suffering while we wait for justice to be served. As you mentioned, charges in these kinds of cases are rare and the outcome can be just business as usual. And that’s just the cases that come to light.
Challenges enforcing cruelty laws
Chantelle: In general, it’s difficult to investigate and enforce animal cruelty cases. Could you talk about some of the challenges that are involved in investigating and enforcing cruelty laws in British Columbia?
No government-funded enforcement for thousands of farms operating in province
Emily: Yeah, there are a number of challenges starting with the fact that there are thousands of animal farms across British Columbia, which really makes oversight and enforcement just more difficult.
Another issue is that the B.C. government doesn’t fund enforcement of its own Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act. Enforcement of the act is primarily done by the BC SPCA, which relies on donations to conduct this really important work.
Investigations are complaints-based, but industry is hidden from public view
Emily: Investigations by authorities are based on a complaint-driven system rather than being proactively conducted.
This is of course, quite problematic when we consider that farmed animals are increasingly kept confined behind closed doors and ultimately hidden from public eye.
This is why undercover investigations have played such a significant role.
Many undercover investigations not admissible in court
Emily: The other factor to consider is that if footage is obtained illegally, it’s then not admissible in court.
And that’s something that we’ve seen in these investigations in some of these cases as well.
Individual workers blamed for company issues
Emily: In the rare event that charges are laid, we have seen that it’s often employees who are typically held accountable, while management and companies often can escape blame.
“Slap on the wrist” penalties not an effective deterrent
Emily: Another issue is ensuring that penalties are effective enough to deter animal cruelty in the first place and hold those who abuse animals accountable.
We can’t have fines that are just seen as a cost of doing business.
Patterns in cruelty cases
Chantelle: Could you talk about some of the commonalities and trends that we’re seeing in these cases?
Cruelty is endemic in animal agriculture industry
Emily: I think the fact that we see these investigations across all types of farms, from dairy farms to egg farms, chicken farms, pig farms, and even slaughterhouses, this tells us that that these problems are systemic within the animal agriculture sector.
It isn’t just a case of a couple of bad apples, as is sometimes suggested.
And while company management and owners often claim to have not known about cruelty issues taking place on farms, we often see that undercover investigators and whistleblowers have reported concerns to management and owners, but no action is taken to address these issues.
So I think there’s a lot more of an issue of a toxic culture and environment in many of these places.
Same companies are repeat offenders
Emily: Another trend that we’ve seen is that it’s often not the first time that a company has been accused of cruelty or neglect. For example, we see that prior to the 2014 Chilliwack Cattle Sales investigation, the company was in court after a number of cows were injured while being transported to slaughter in 2008 (link opens as PDF).
Meanwhile, the chicken catching company Elite Farm Services is accused of cruelty in several instances over a number of years.
The company involved in the Meadow Valley Meats slaughterhouse investigation was previously known as Pitt Meadows Meats, which pled guilty in 2015 to selling E. coli tainted meat and deciding not to recall that meat.
More recently, there’s also the Excelsior Hog Farm case where the farm was accused of cruelty in a 2019 investigation and then again in late 2023.
Animals treated as products, not beings
Emily: Without getting into detail about what’s captured in the footage of these undercover investigations, we ultimately see that these animals are being treated as cogs in a machine or parts in a factory rather than the living, feeling beings that they are.
Not only are they handled and treated in this way that we see in the footage, but they’re kept in this way throughout their entire lives. They’re warehoused in these industrial environments that prevent them from engaging in even some of the most basic behaviours.
When we see animals behave like animals at all, when they react or they resist, what we see in the footage is they’re not treated kindly in response.
Amy: There’s so much work that goes into getting this footage that the organizations and people that are gathering the footage are releasing what they have.
Every time there is an undercover recording operation that goes on, that footage is being released.
That footage is going out for recommendations for charges, at least by the people who took the footage. They’re asking the government to put forward charges. And I think what’s so striking about it is that we see a consistency that when people are recorded behind the scenes, they aren’t treating animals well.
And particularly it’s most common when it comes to handling animals. I saw this firsthand working on farms myself. These were really amazing farms with organic or free range. And still, when it came to the handling, I saw animals being hit and poked and prodded and verbally abused and demonized.
And that’s what comes out in all of this footage year after year.
Growing public awareness
Photo: Jo-Anne McArthur/We Animals Media
Amy: How has public awareness and perception of animal cruelty evolved over the past decade in British Columbia as a result of these pieces of footage being released to the media?
More people calling for change
Emily: I think the last decade of undercover investigations has really contributed to growing public concern around farmed animal welfare and around the lack of transparency just surrounding our food system in general.
In fact, around this time last year the National Farm Animal Animal Care Council released its updated Dairy Cattle Code of Practice. These codes of practice provide guidelines for the care of dairy cows on farms across Canada. The code’s public comment period reportedly received a record setting number of comments from more than 5,800 individuals, many of whom indicated they were participating as a concerned citizen or animal welfare advocate.
It was exciting to us to see such strong public involvement in a consultation about the specific day to day care and handling of dairy cows.
Growing awareness of animal sentience
Emily: More generally speaking, we are also seeing stronger awareness and support of concepts like One Welfare, which recognizes the interconnectedness of the well-being of animals, people, and the environment, and our collective understanding of animal sentience. This is the concept that animals have the capacity to experience feelings like happiness, joy, pain and suffering.
I think that’s also really expanded in the last decade as well. As we as a society have continued to learn more about the welfare and well-being of animals, we’ve seen public sentiment shift on many topics and the impact that that’s had on government regulations.
There was the example of significant restrictions announced by the B.C. government in 2022 around the use of some of the most dangerous and inhumane rodent poisons. We’re seeing government regulations evolve as well, slowly but surely.
As the B.C. government reviews its long outdated Farmed Animal Welfare Framework, now is really a crucial opportunity for the province to bring into alignment public values and the demand that the public has for the humane treatment of animals on farms as well.
Chantelle: It’s so promising that we’re seeing the public awareness growing around animal well being.
It’s not only awareness, we’re really seeing that people care deeply about animals. So often, when people know what’s going on with animals, there’s a strong drive to change it. But then, unfortunately, on the flip side, that means we have the industries who profit off of animal suffering trying to keep that suffering more and more hidden.
Ag-gag laws combatting public awareness
Chantelle: As you mentioned, we have more animals than ever that are being raised in these industrial farms behind closed doors. And in B.C., welfare requirements aren’t proactively enforced on a large scale.
There are trespassing laws that prevent activists and journalists from entering onto farms.
And then taking that a step further, there’s a rise in ag-gag legislation that punishes people who expose animal cruelty on farms. That’s making the industry even less transparent to the public by preventing undercover footage that shows how animals are being treated. So how are people going to know?
Recently, on April 2nd of this year, Animal Justice, Jessica Scott Reed, and Louise Jorgensen struck down significant parts of an ag-gag law in Ontario by showing how it violated charter protected freedom of expression.
I’m really excited about seeing where that goes in the future and how that can help with transparency across Canada.
Amy: Thanks for sharing about that, Chantelle. I worked a job in the past that brought me inside chicken barns inside pig slaughterhouses, chicken slaughterhouses, on dairy and beef farms; cows live in all different circumstances.
And it’s amazing to think that that’s a unique thing that I have seen more than most of the public. And yet people are consuming these animals and their products without really understanding what their experience is.
Chantelle: I think it’s very telling that in every fully vegan space that I’ve been in, there’s been at least one person there who’s previously worked in animal agriculture.
So seeing what happens behind closed doors is a real motivation not to be consuming animals.
What’s next?
Amy: I’m curious, Emily, with your experience working on farmed animal welfare, what would you like to see change in the way that farmed animal welfare regulations exist and are enforced?
Proactively enforced regulations based in science
Emily: Well, to start, regulations really need to be based on the best available animal welfare science, and they need to be proactively enforced with independent third party audits of farms and of slaughterhouses.
There should be consistent video monitoring in place in these facilities too, along with publicly available reports of all these audits and inspections in order to provide real transparency.
That’s something that the public just doesn’t have, and it’s really important that that be changed.
Make cruelty prevention a priority
Emily: Appropriate deterrents are also a must to prevent animal cruelty in the first place. This should include unannounced inspections and effective penalties for those who commit animal cruelty.
And I think for all of this to be effective, the government really needs to properly fund the oversight and enforcement of this work and to make it a top priority.
Meaningful action is long overdue
Emily: These are the kinds of requests that the VHS and many other animal protection organizations have been long advocating for. I remember seeing this when I first started with VHS after the very first investigation when I joined the organization that the Chilliwack Cattle Sales case in 2014, seeing calls for video surveillance in these facilities. It’s long overdue.
And the recently released advisory committee’s recommendations report, which is part of the farmed animal welfare framework review that’s currently underway, touches on some of these themes. So I know we and many others will be watching very closely to see how the minister responds to that recommendations report and many of these specific recommendations.
We’ll certainly be continuing to advocate for those much needed changes as well.
Public transparency is key
Amy: I think the piece around transparency is the one that I see as the most valuable because government has incentive to essentially maintain a food system for the public that is affordable and that contradicts with some of the values around making sure animals are treated well.
And so given this sort of juxtaposition, the most important part is that all of the government work is immediately transparent so that it doesn’t need to be requested or need someone spending hours pouring over documents to know exactly what information to ask for.
What we need to see as a result of all of the recommendations made by this advisory committee is that the information that comes out of it is intentionally made public.
I think the biggest impact, and essentially on what industry and government might call “eroding public trust”, is the reality of what the investigations and audits find. And so if that information is continuously made available, then we will see improvements in how animals are treated.
But if that information is kept as securely and as private as possible by the government, we’ll essentially not see any drastic changes.
How you can help
Amy: So given all of the recommendations you’ve made, Emily, and also my emphasis, how can listeners help prevent farmed animal cruelty and move towards the system that we’re suggesting?
Stay in touch with decision-makers
Emily: I think one of the most impactful things that people can do is to reach out to decision-makers about this kind of an issue and let them know that it’s a top concern for them as a consumer, as a resident, as a voter.
Write to your MLA, your Member of Parliament, to ministers. Ask to meet with them, ask them to support these much-needed changes to better protect farmed animals and thank them when they do, that’s a really important part as well. And continue to stay in touch and keep the issue on their radar and ultimately continuing to speak up for animals.
Amy: I think this is all really critical. And the more of a broken record you are, the more likely change is going to happen. That’s what we’ve seen with animal welfare, because there isn’t a lot of money behind the work that we’re doing compared to the amount of money that industry has to put into advertising, to put into building what they call “public trust”.
And so what we have is the squeaky wheel. We have the ability to just keep talking to the same people saying, Hey, this really matters. Hey, it still really matters.
And then we have the ability to make choices ourselves in the grocery store to show essentially politicians that we put our money where our mouth is and we buy products that don’t affect animals and cause animals to suffer.
And we do as much of that as we possibly can, wherever we are on our journey of changing our diet, that we’re prioritizing products that don’t harm animals.
Choose plant-based foods when you can
Chantelle: Yeah, absolutely. We say this in almost every episode, whether it’s farmed animals or fishes or wildlife, because it’s such an integral part to making really significant change. But one of the best things that you can do on an individual level is choosing plant-based foods whenever you can.
And if you’re not at that stage, advocating for plant-based foods to be available and accessible.
The greatest animal suffering comes from the demand. There’s so much demand for animal products. If you imagine someone whose job it is to send thousands of animals to their death every day, that would be an impossible task if you were seeing each animal as an individual. So it’s so critical that we’re decreasing the demand for industrial animal agriculture and moving toward more of a plant-based, less animal-based food system.
Next episode
Please join us next month as we discuss the last ten years of farmed animal investigations in B.C.
Do you remember that one animal who touched your heart in a way that you’ll hold dear for a lifetime?
For many animal allies, our personal connections with animals have shaped the way we see the world and advocate for compassion. In this month’s episode of the Informed Animal Ally, the Vancouver Humane Society team and allies discuss animals who have changed their lives.
Would you like to be featured in the next episode like this?
You could be on the next episode about animals who touch our lives! If your story is selected, you will be contacted before the next stories episode and invited to share a short audio and video clip (about 2-5 minutes long) about an animal who has made a difference in your life.
Next episode
Please join us next month as we discuss the last ten years of farmed animal investigations in B.C.
