- 8 hours ago
All the World Is Green
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00:21This counter displays the worldwide total of poultry, cattle, pigs, sheep and fish slaughtered
00:00:29for human consumption, in real time.
00:00:38This is how our story is due to end.
00:00:42A tale of the smartest species doomed by that all-too-human characteristic of failing to see the bigger picture
00:00:51in pursuit of short-term goals.
00:00:54Now the global population officially passed 8 billion people today.
00:00:58That number has more than doubled in the past 50 years.
00:01:02Last year was the hottest year since records began.
00:01:05Global sea levels rose by more than expected last year.
00:01:08Temperatures were 1.6 degrees, higher than the pre-industrial average.
00:01:13UN scientists are one we are on course.
00:01:15One catastrophic 3.1 degrees Celsius of warming this century.
00:01:19Bird flu is at a dangerous point.
00:01:22H5N1 has taken root in US dairy farms and now it's a jump species.
00:01:26With evidence that climate change has played a significant role in the less than this fire.
00:01:31The abundance of microplastics.
00:01:33270 trillion pieces of the ocean.
00:01:35Human-made chemicals known as forever chemicals.
00:01:38Toxic chemicals.
00:01:40Consuming a single serving of fish would be equivalent to a year of contaminated water.
00:01:45Merely half of humanity is living in a danger zone now.
00:01:48Drought, floods and fires.
00:01:51Elevalized.
00:01:51So the line is almost down.
00:01:53At the point of looking good, we are way off target when it comes to how dire things are.
00:01:58And those impacts are getting worse and it would potentially be irreversible.
00:02:02It isn't too late.
00:02:04Yes, now or never.
00:02:22People must be capable of caring about things.
00:02:27Beyond, is my belly full and am I dry when I sleep at night?
00:02:37Otherwise it is all lost.
00:02:44We are biological creatures and we live in an ecosystem.
00:02:50The ecosystem that we live in is partly what we have inherited over history from 3.8 billion
00:02:59years of life's evolution on this planet and partly what we have done.
00:03:05The choices that we have made, the things that we've engineered, the things that we've
00:03:09destroyed and the things that we've protected.
00:03:12It's an intellectual challenge to try and figure out what that would look like.
00:03:16Whether there would be a final collapse or whether this planet would just continue to drift through
00:03:24the universe containing human engineering and almost no other form of diversity.
00:03:35We should be concerned about that final, a handful of species on a dying mud ball floating
00:03:41through the universe that used to be planet Earth.
00:03:45That's what we should be concerned about in the immediate sense.
00:03:52For the last 15 years or so, there's been a series of papers published in scientific journals
00:03:59saying we really don't like the look of what's happening to the food system.
00:04:03It looks a bit like the financial system in the approach to 2008.
00:04:07The food system itself could collapse.
00:04:11It's dominated by just a few huge companies, like the financial system was before 2008.
00:04:17So, for example, just four corporations control 90% of global grain trade.
00:04:23That's really dangerous.
00:04:24One of those corporations fails and it could just bring down the whole system.
00:04:29People starve then.
00:04:30Huge numbers of people would starve.
00:04:33Everyone's doing the same thing.
00:04:34They're all producing crops in the same way, with the same chemicals, with the same seeds,
00:04:39from the same companies.
00:04:40That's very dangerous.
00:04:41It's stripped the diversity out of the system.
00:04:44Everyone's doing it with maximum efficiency.
00:04:46That strips the redundancy out of the system.
00:04:49These things like diversity and redundancy, they're essential for the resilience of a complex system,
00:04:55which is what the food system is.
00:04:56No one seems to know this.
00:04:58No government is prepared to talk about it.
00:05:00They're not interested.
00:05:01So, food system just refers to the fact that it's an interconnected web of connection between the food chain
00:05:10and basically everything that is along that food chain and how it has external outputs onto the world.
00:05:15We think about the food chain.
00:05:16We think about getting food from, let's say, the grocery store.
00:05:19But what are all of the significant points that made it possible for that food to come onto our plate
00:05:25and for us to get into the grocery store?
00:05:27And then the politics of how land is used.
00:05:30Then that goes into how livestock are treated, how they're fed, infective farms, the antibiotics,
00:05:36so that we have the pharmaceutical part as well.
00:05:39Finally, how that food is packaged and brought to the grocery store.
00:05:42Every single part of that chain is interconnected.
00:05:44It's this flow, and that's why, actually, it's so challenging to change it.
00:05:53Where are we heading?
00:05:54In my lighter moments, I think maybe we will be heading to a future where we can live sustainably.
00:06:01In my slightly darker moments, I think we're heading towards the world of Mad Max.
00:06:06Because we have converging threats, existential threats, that will impact on our food system,
00:06:14they will impact on our water security, they're going to impact on our well-being in general.
00:06:21The major players within the food industry, they abide by regulations.
00:06:28The question is, are those regulations the ones that are best for our health?
00:06:32I'd love to see regulations that help to make us healthy,
00:06:36while also yielding profits for those who are involved in the production of food.
00:06:41We have a food system today that is focused on profit.
00:06:47Food corporations are selling food in an extremely competitive environment.
00:06:52Many of them are privately held, which means that their stockholders have the power.
00:07:00So the agricultural system, like any other, is focused on immediate and higher returns on profit.
00:07:08And it really doesn't matter what is being sold or the health or environmental effects of what is being sold.
00:07:16What matters is how quickly the companies are making money.
00:07:20The system of food production today is based on an industrial and intensive model.
00:07:26Intensive meaning what?
00:07:28All the components, the input and the animals within it, even the workers,
00:07:34they are all used to the utmost intensity in order to produce the maximum possible profit in the shortest time
00:07:41and within minimal cost.
00:07:45We need to be looking at the whole system and what I began to see, reluctantly, because I did not
00:07:53want to see it, I still don't want to see it, but I can't unsee it now,
00:07:58but I think it's the biggest threat.
00:08:00The biggest threat to the living world is food production.
00:08:04Food production is the primary cause of wildlife loss, the primary cause of habitat destruction, the primary cause of species
00:08:14extinction,
00:08:15the primary cause of freshwater use, the primary cause of soil erosion and the primary cause of land use,
00:08:23which is the most important issue of all, and it's also one of the biggest causes of both water pollution,
00:08:33air pollution and land pollution and climate breakdown.
00:08:37All of these things together.
00:08:39I mean, it's up there, it's worse than the fossil fuel industry.
00:08:45Today's food system is not just impacted by animal agriculture, but dominated completely by it in the sense that, take
00:08:56for example, land occupation.
00:08:58So you have two types of land, you have fine cropland and you have rangeland.
00:09:04In the cropland, the predominance of corn and soy for feed production results in most of the cropland occupation.
00:09:15And that is the key asset that we need to feed ourselves.
00:09:20Use the cropland to produce corn and soy, feed them to livestock, and then eat the products of the livestock.
00:09:28And that has efficiency of somewhere between, you know, 10 or even 15 percent, all the way down to about
00:09:393 percent, which is beef.
00:09:41And what that means is that of 100 kilograms of protein in feed, in corn, wheat, oats, etc., that you
00:09:52feed to beef,
00:09:53you get only 3 kilograms of edible beef protein.
00:09:59A hundred in, three out.
00:10:04The most important environmental issue of all is the amount of land we use.
00:10:10Because every hectare of land that we use for our own purposes is a hectare which can't be occupied by
00:10:16wild ecosystems.
00:10:18Now, the great majority of species on Earth need wild ecosystems for their survival.
00:10:23They can't survive in ecosystems which we've manipulated.
00:10:27But also the Earth system itself, the whole planetary system, is totally dependent on wild ecosystems.
00:10:34And the less wild ecosystems you have, the more likely that Earth system is to collapse.
00:10:40Now, what's the major reason why we don't have enough wild ecosystems?
00:10:44Cattle ranching.
00:10:45It's outdoor cattle keeping is the biggest cause of the transformation of wild ecosystems into a man-made, human-made
00:10:55ecosystem, which is cattle pasture.
00:10:58Cattle ranching.
00:11:00So whether it's irgendwo in an unknown or livestock fuera, it's an unknown device that is to allow us to
00:11:25rage.
00:11:25And, like for example, one of our own myths and it's wildcción, which 있어 that it's hurt which a lot
00:11:25of importance affects us to generations,
00:11:25So today's podcast is over homepage.
00:11:26And, after that eating conditions, cannot increase amongst the other animals.
00:11:26You can get the name of our soul, but like little food and testimonies or others, except for dogs with
00:11:27his nose.
00:11:30Animal agriculture impacts climate change primarily through two, two and a half, let's call it, major greenhouse gases.
00:11:40The trickiest to handle is methane, and that's mostly from what we call enteric fermentation, which is basically burping by
00:11:50ruminants, especially beef, cattle, and dairy as well.
00:11:53Then there's CO2, which mostly is incurred in the production of the feed that goes to feeding those animals.
00:12:05And then there's nitrous oxide, a third greenhouse gas, which is mostly the result of manure management, not exclusively, but
00:12:14mostly.
00:12:15And they account somewhere between 25 to 30 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions.
00:12:23By far and away, the biggest impact of food production on land is meat, dairy, and eggs, is animal products.
00:12:30That hits ecosystems harder than anything else we do on land.
00:12:36And at sea, by far and away, the biggest impact is commercial fishing.
00:12:39That hits marine ecosystems harder than anything else we do at sea.
00:12:47I think the sea is always somewhere else, somewhere other than the place that we consider to be home.
00:12:56At best, we think of the planet as three-quarters ocean and water and a quarter land.
00:13:04But in fact, the ocean makes up something like 97 percent of the volume of living space on planet Earth.
00:13:11The assumption that we always made was that the sea was wild and intact, and you could take as much
00:13:17as you liked from it with no consequences.
00:13:21We've come late to this understanding about the impact that we've had on the ocean.
00:13:28That just as on land, the underwater world has been transformed by human action.
00:13:34The ocean has absorbed something like 30 percent of the carbon dioxide that human activities have emitted since the industrialization
00:13:44of the planet.
00:13:45What we realize now is that that carbon is not necessarily safe, particularly the carbon in shallow seas.
00:13:52And those are the seas that we exploit most intensively because they're the most productive.
00:13:57They supply about 95 percent of the seafood that we eat.
00:14:02And much of that seafood is gathered by dragging trawl nets and dredges across the seabed.
00:14:09And as they pass across the seabed, they kick up lots of sediment and mud and the stored organic carbon
00:14:16inside those sediments.
00:14:18And when it's released into the water column, it can then be turned back into carbon dioxide.
00:14:24And some of that carbon dioxide can end up back in the atmosphere.
00:14:29There was a study that was published in 2021 that estimated that the amount of carbon which was being released
00:14:37from these disturbed seabed carbon stores was equivalent to emissions from the world aviation industry.
00:14:44Can we perpetuate this forever while not accruing ever rising environmental degradation?
00:14:55No, the answer is no, we cannot do that.
00:14:58Scientists have long worried about progressive change in things like, you know, the temperature is rising like this as carbon
00:15:06dioxide builds up in the atmosphere.
00:15:08But actually, the world doesn't act in linear ways all the time.
00:15:13And what we are beginning to appreciate more is that there may be tipping points in the Earth system.
00:15:20And if you cross those tipping points, then you can get very rapid change.
00:15:25So, for example, loss of ice from Greenland or West Antarctica, you know, once warming progresses sufficiently, then, you know,
00:15:34warming from beneath the ice sheet from the sea,
00:15:37it's actually melting it from below, which speeds up the rate of ice loss off the continent or the island
00:15:45of Greenland.
00:15:45And if the rate of ice loss accelerates enough, then you could see massive deglaciation happening.
00:15:52And loss of ice from the Greenland ice sheet alone would raise world sea levels by seven meters or so.
00:16:03Is it wise to sink ever deeper into environmental debt?
00:16:09To me, the answer seems no. We should strive to act in a judicious, timely fashion, well ahead of a
00:16:22pending catastrophe so that we have the latitude and the flexibility to choose the kind of response that we are
00:16:31comfortable with.
00:16:34I don't think there is enough attention to environmental problems.
00:16:38And there have been five mass extinctions in planetary history, which wiped out more than 75% of species at
00:16:45the times.
00:16:46But the sixth mass extinction, which we're in right now, is unfolding around us and we're not doing enough about
00:16:55it.
00:16:56There isn't nearly enough public attention, there isn't enough resources being put into protection of the environment.
00:17:03And so we're sort of sliding towards a time of reduced biodiversity and increasing instability for the planet.
00:17:13To be around us we're launching the planet.
00:17:18To be around us it's about 150 quantities.
00:17:54it's about education all the time and that's where we fall down all over the world on so many
00:18:01fronts kids are not genuinely educated climate crisis may come up a bit here and there and they
00:18:06feel a bit scared by it you know from something they've heard in geography
00:18:09who is actually genuinely telling them how animals are farmed how they are killed and what the
00:18:17consequences of that are for them their family's health for the those animals themselves and for
00:18:25the planet because we are now in the sixth mass extinction this is serious and if we care about
00:18:34our future then we have to take this seriously and stop farming billions of animals in the most
00:18:40appallingly cruel ways now we all love animals don't worry
00:18:51big ones the little ones maybe not the ugly ones
00:18:59my favorites are the old meat and dairy animals burgers and shakes never going to go short
00:19:05because apparently there's now 70 billion of them we're eating the earth
00:19:18believe it or not they eat so much they need 80 percent of all the agricultural land in the world
00:19:23and horror of horrors we've now run out of it
00:19:26we're eating the earth
00:19:30we're eating the earth
00:19:34we're eating the earth
00:19:42someone just told me that we're in the sixth mass extinction
00:19:45and that a million different species are going to be wiped out
00:19:49ha that's the bunny harvest for me
00:19:54we're eating the earth
00:19:57we're eating the earth
00:20:01we're eating the earth
00:20:05if you want to keep hold of our creamy ice creams and bacon butties
00:20:08we're just gonna have to chop down more forests
00:20:11and that's fine with me
00:20:14if we are serious about the survival of the species and about our own so-called civilization
00:20:20there needs to be a radical rethink in the way in which we behave
00:20:24and the way in which we treat others and other species as well
00:20:32I used to be a merchant banker specializing in corporate finance
00:20:37and I went out to see a client who had interests in many different industries
00:20:40it was a conglomerate
00:20:43and one of the operations that they had turned out to be a slaughterhouse
00:20:48now we should bear in mind that at the time I was a meat eater
00:20:52and my favorite food was filet mignon and lobster
00:20:56a fact for which I'm so profoundly ashamed today
00:21:00well that day in that slaughterhouse I was absolutely terrified
00:21:05so I moved out of my profession
00:21:08and decided to become involved in a process of learning as much as I could about this
00:21:16these industries but I call them atrocities
00:21:18and as a consequence of that
00:21:21today we support about 850 projects in 54 countries
00:21:29as I travel around the world
00:21:30I give talks to sometimes small groups of 100 people
00:21:33and sometimes 5,000 people
00:21:35and they're all good caring loving people who genuinely want to change the world
00:21:41as long as they don't have to change themselves
00:21:49animals must be off the menu because tonight they are screaming in terror in the slaughterhouses
00:21:55in crates and in cages
00:21:58vile ignoble gulags of despair
00:22:008 billion people are alive today
00:22:04and we humans torture and kill 2 billion sentient living loving animals every week
00:22:1110,000 entire species are wiped out every year
00:22:16because of the actions of one species
00:22:19if we were killed at the same rate
00:22:21we would be wiped out as a species
00:22:24in one weekend
00:22:26this is a crime of unimaginable proportions
00:22:31meat is still holding a symbolic status of power
00:22:36partly because throughout history it was the food of the kings of the higher class
00:22:41it holds an inspirational element
00:22:43as we can see in our society
00:22:45when they reach higher sources of income
00:22:48the first thing we observe is an increase in meat consumption
00:22:54everybody agrees that China is a country with huge impact on the rest of the world
00:23:02so China's food systems have shared many similarities with food systems elsewhere
00:23:10and for the last few decades
00:23:13meat consumption was on the rise
00:23:16and capitalist production of food and consumerism made people just want more
00:23:25even they don't need more
00:23:27but with all the risks that come with this increasing consumption of meat
00:23:33in a country with huge populations
00:23:37we can see that the risks are pronouncing themselves much more clearly now
00:23:46this is a matter of scale
00:23:48the scale at which animals are raised for food for people
00:23:55the industrial scale husbandry of livestock
00:24:01huge pig operations
00:24:03huge poultry operations
00:24:07tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands
00:24:09in some cases millions of chickens on a particular chicken farm
00:24:14where you have thousands or tens of thousands of pigs
00:24:18in a particular pig operation
00:24:20spring operation
00:24:22cool
00:24:22down
00:24:23the
00:24:24this
00:24:24moment
00:24:49is
00:25:05I think like 99% of the animal products that we eat are produced in factory farms and factory
00:25:11farms are these concentrated, you know, operations where I don't think any of us, whether we're
00:25:18vegan or not, can ethically stand by what happens in factory farms, where animals are treated,
00:25:23you know, as objectified commodities rather than as beings.
00:25:27They find it difficult to think that animals deserve to have equal consideration for their rights.
00:25:35It is a difficult thing. It's also very difficult, using the laws of supply and demand and economics,
00:25:42to get companies and businesses and farms and institutions to change as well.
00:25:48We accepted and allowed the removal of a control system on a political level and that they would become privatized.
00:25:57All of this dates back to the 70s and 80s with the rise of neoliberal ideologies and politics.
00:26:06So the current system whose function is forces people to buy and eat what is produced.
00:26:11Is it functional and motivated by its own existence and survival?
00:26:18Corporations have an enormous amount of political power.
00:26:23And they use their money to get governments to do what they want.
00:26:27That's it. To do things that are good for business.
00:26:35When I visited a small river in this county in Devon, which was famous for its wildlife.
00:26:42And I turned up with a friend and you could tell straight away something was very wrong.
00:26:49And we stepped up to the bank of the river and it was dead.
00:26:53And it stank. It was a really powerful stink.
00:26:57And so I thought, what's happened here? I couldn't understand.
00:27:02And eventually I found this pipe coming into the river.
00:27:05And even though it was a dry day, there was shit pouring out of this pipe into the river.
00:27:11And you could see below the pipe everything was dead.
00:27:14And so I thought, what is this pipe? Where has it come from?
00:27:17And so I followed the pipe up the hill to a dairy farm.
00:27:22And it came straight out of one of the slurry pits.
00:27:26And I looked at Google Earth and I saw that a few years before the size of the dairy unit
00:27:32had been doubled.
00:27:33And I later found it had twice as many cattle as it had before.
00:27:36But they hadn't bothered to build any more slurry lagoons, any more shit pits.
00:27:42Because it was cheaper just to build a pipe going straight down into the river and literally pour the shit
00:27:47straight into the river.
00:27:48So I thought, well, look, I'm a Guardian journalist.
00:27:51You know, I'm a well-known environmentalist.
00:27:53I'm about the most empowered person there could be when it comes to making a complaint.
00:27:57So I rang up the Environment Agency's pollution hotline.
00:28:02And they said, oh, this is very serious, sir.
00:28:04A few days later, I phoned up the Environment Agency again and said, um, so what are you going to
00:28:09do about it?
00:28:10They said, well, we decided not to take action, sir, because it's not a serious incident.
00:28:14So we went and had a look and we didn't find any evidence of a fish kill.
00:28:18So it's not a serious incident.
00:28:20I said, of course you didn't find any evidence of a fish kill.
00:28:22There aren't any fish left to kill.
00:28:25And then I got this massive response from people all over the country saying our rivers had the same problem.
00:28:30But I also got two whistleblowers from the Environment Agency came to me and said,
00:28:38this is inevitable because we've been told from the top, from the Secretary of State for the Environment, not to
00:28:46prosecute dairy farms.
00:28:47So then I looked into it further and found that dairy farm pollution is one of the biggest forms of
00:28:52pollution in the whole country.
00:28:54Chicken farm pollution is another one. They don't prosecute that either.
00:28:57Pig farm pollution is another one. They don't prosecute that.
00:29:01And I thought, if they're not going to regulate this industry, I'm not going to eat its products.
00:29:10There's an expression, what goes around comes around. You can't escape the consequences.
00:29:17The amount of plastic entering the ocean every year has been estimated to be around 14 million tons.
00:29:24Of course, anything that doesn't degrade over time very fast is going to build up.
00:29:30If you keep adding 14 million tons, 14 million tons year after year, then it all accumulates.
00:29:38So the ocean now has up to an estimated 200 million tons of plastic embodied within the water and the
00:29:46sediments of the seabed.
00:29:47As plastic breaks down, it forms smaller and smaller particles.
00:29:51So it then is ingested by marine life. But those particles also attract nasty chemicals, forever chemicals they're called.
00:30:00Things like DDT and PCBs and the plastic additives that are added in agrochemicals.
00:30:06And those attach those plastic particles. And as they're ingested by marine life, they build up in the tissues.
00:30:14So when you catch a fish which is at the top of the food web, like a tuna, the tissues
00:30:21may be laden with toxins,
00:30:23some of which is being absorbed from plastics that they've eaten.
00:30:27And if we eat that fish, then we then become the carrier of those toxins.
00:30:32Change is difficult for everybody because animal agriculture forms such a significant part of our gross domestic product, of our
00:30:44cultures.
00:30:45In fact, a lot of our best memories occur from sitting around the dining table.
00:30:51And many of the bad habits that we live with today, we learned when we were babies in the arms
00:30:59of our mothers.
00:31:01And we associate the comfort food that our parents gave us, because they loved us, with safety and security and
00:31:08care.
00:31:09So it is almost hardwired into our systems that this is something that is good for us.
00:31:16As well, you know, there is this feeling about people and livelihoods that this is a heroic way of making
00:31:25a living.
00:31:25And instead of seeing the dragging of trawl nets across the seabed as incredibly destructive and impacting on the sea
00:31:37in an industrial sense, you know, this is just as destructive as clear-felling forests.
00:31:45It's seen instead as being part of the culture and the history and the heritage of a country and that
00:31:53these people are going out and they're wresting a living from the sea.
00:31:57They're bringing back good quality food for people to eat.
00:32:00And we celebrate that without understanding the impacts that it's causing.
00:32:14Most people imagine that the meat and the milk and the eggs they eat come from these little farms with
00:32:19a few cattle, a few chickens, maybe growing a few vegetables at the same time.
00:32:24And all the marketing suggests that the advertisements, the packaging, you know, yeah, you know, look, a few chickens scratching
00:32:31outside.
00:32:32If people knew the reality, they would be absolutely horrified.
00:32:37These enormous steel factories, which might have tens of thousands of chickens crammed into them, thousands of pigs, hundreds of
00:32:45dairy cattle, all in one huge, great steel factory living in horrendous conditions.
00:32:51It's totally different to the public image.
00:32:54So, for instance, Tesco, one of our big supermarkets here in the UK, it's got a brand called Willow Farms.
00:33:01And if you buy the eggs, you'll see, you know, Willow Farms and these chickens scratching about outdoors and there
00:33:08might be flowers and butterflies and stuff like that.
00:33:11There's no such place as Willow Farms.
00:33:13Willow Farms does not exist.
00:33:15The eggs come from these huge factories.
00:33:18Willow Farms is just a brand.
00:33:20Those drawings aren't based on reality at all.
00:33:24It's the story they tell because it's the story we want to hear.
00:33:29And if someone like me is rude enough to say, actually, it's not like that.
00:33:34That's not the reality.
00:33:36It's not just the farmers in the supermarkets that hate you.
00:33:40It's the consumers as well.
00:33:41People don't want to hear that story.
00:33:44They don't want to be told the reality.
00:33:45The food industry has followed the tobacco industry playbook to the letter.
00:33:52Cast doubt on the research.
00:33:54Blame personal responsibility.
00:33:56Fund your own research so you get the kinds of results you want.
00:34:02Fund groups that will support you.
00:34:06Fund nutrition societies so they won't say anything bad about your product.
00:34:11Insist on being at the policy table.
00:34:14And when all of that fails, lobby and litigate.
00:34:19That's the tobacco industry playbook.
00:34:22It staved off concerns about cigarette smoking for 50 years.
00:34:27And the food industry is doing much the same.
00:34:40So, Chris, bringing you up to date with the litigation and the court case.
00:34:44Well, we won the first round.
00:34:47There's no injunction granted on the footage.
00:34:49Right.
00:34:50They had a 28-day appeal period.
00:34:53We should have decided to appeal.
00:34:55It seems like they want to drag this whole thing out as long as possible.
00:34:59And by the time we're able to release the footage, if ever, it's going to be old.
00:35:05And they'll be able to say that's not relevant anymore.
00:35:09So, it's a difficult position, but I don't think we have a choice.
00:35:11But, uh...
00:35:13That's a rather cynical abuse of power and money, isn't it?
00:35:16Very much so.
00:35:17Yeah, I mean, they're a massive multi-million dollar company.
00:35:20And at least we know one thing.
00:35:22What you do is on the right side of history.
00:35:26Yeah.
00:35:27And, uh, I often say that, uh, one day when animal rights is enshrined not just in the human heart,
00:35:36but also in legislation and our behavior, your fingerprints are going to be on every page.
00:35:45And I can't wait for that beautiful day to go on.
00:35:51It is such an enormous empire that we're up against that has many billions of dollars at their disposal.
00:35:58They have the status quo at their disposal.
00:36:00You know, it's considered normal to eat animals and extreme to not eat animals,
00:36:06to not pay for animals to be abused and killed.
00:36:08So, we're up against all these social norms
00:36:11and an industry that is able to spend billions of dollars upholding those social norms.
00:36:17When I walk inside an intensive farm, I think that I'm going to get used to it
00:36:22because I've been doing this for many years.
00:36:24And I use the camera to protect myself, really, to try and distance myself.
00:36:29And then you just can't.
00:36:31You know, you'll see an animal who's in pain, who's lying on the floor.
00:36:36Not a rare sight.
00:36:37And, um, this animal is clearly in the last throes of life.
00:36:41Whether that be a chicken who's collapsed because they're forced to grow far too fast.
00:36:46Or whether that's, um, you know, a pig who's writhing around in agony.
00:36:50Whoever it is, I just feel their pain because how can you not?
00:36:56They're right there in front of you and you feel an obligation to do something about it.
00:37:01And so you times that by the number of animals who are being factory farmed across the planet.
00:37:06And wherever you look, whether that camera's in Italy, whether it's in Australia,
00:37:10whether it's in Saudi Arabia, wherever that camera's pointed,
00:37:14it's the same over and over and over again.
00:37:17It's kept so secret, and the industry relies entirely on this secretness,
00:37:23on keeping consumers in the dark.
00:37:26I think that most people are opposed to animal cruelty.
00:37:29They just don't know that they're paying for it
00:37:31when they're buying meat, dairy, eggs and other animal products.
00:37:36A lot of the time we were going into farms and slaughterhouses,
00:37:40middle of the night, knowing that we could be caught, we could be charged.
00:37:45And we would put in hidden cameras and try and capture what was going on.
00:37:52You good?
00:37:56I've been to a number of turkey farms, egg farms, chicken farms,
00:38:00which are bad enough as it is, but there's something about pig farms
00:38:04that are a whole other level of hell.
00:38:16The moment you step into these places, you smell...
00:38:20I mean, it's a smell that just never leaves you.
00:38:22It never leaves your clothes. It never leaves your skin.
00:38:25It is the smell of death. It's the smell of fear.
00:38:29It's the smell of waste,
00:38:30because these animals are living in their own faeces and urine.
00:38:33They are packed tightly together in small, barren concrete pens.
00:38:37Oh, my God.
00:38:44Oh, my God.
00:38:48Oh, my God.
00:38:48Yes.
00:38:59and i came out of that place on fire i had never seen anything like that in my life and
00:39:07it
00:39:08it just changed me you know i wanted to go to all of these places and just show people what
00:39:13hell was going on we were going to pig farm after pig farm dozens of them and showing the exact
00:39:20same
00:39:20kinds of conditions in all these farms across the country something else that we captured as part of
00:39:27that film was the largest slaughterhouse for pigs we'd heard that they were gassing pigs that was
00:39:34their method of stunning them before slaughter they would send them into these carbon dioxide gas
00:39:39chambers there was no footage anywhere in the world that i could find the only information i
00:39:45could find about it was the industry saying that it was the most humane method of killing pigs
00:39:50i am currently inside the top of the gas chamber
00:40:20how this could possibly be legal how this could be the standard how the industry can turn around
00:40:28and say to people that they care about their animals that they treat their animals well
00:40:35it it goes so deep everything from what's sprayed on the crops that are grown for feed for animals
00:40:44the preventative use of antibiotics on factory farms because of the terrible conditions animals are in
00:40:50the way the pharmaceutical industry is involved providing those antibiotics which is then having
00:40:55huge downstream effects with possibly like antibiotic resistance meaning we won't be able to take
00:41:00antibiotics if we have like an infection in the future which would have huge and our consequences of
00:41:06for it antibiotics have two purposes in intensive farming first they prevent the spread of diseases
00:41:14this is because we have many animals in crumpet spaces next to each other while sharing the same genetics
00:41:20by the way second the antibiotics is facilitating growth because the body is able to spend less
00:41:29energies to protect itself since it's supported by medications you might think you're getting
00:41:35seafood from a wonderful pure water fjord in norway but actually you know that that salmon might be being
00:41:47dosed with antibiotics it might be being treated with various kinds of antifungal compounds the kind of
00:41:57chemicals that go into the aquaculture industry would make your hair stand on end in scotland for example
00:42:06huge oil drum sized quantities of formaldehyde are being added to salmon pens to control sea lice infestations
00:42:16and that formaldehyde is known carcinogen
00:42:21so
00:42:24so
00:42:30so
00:42:36so
00:42:37so
00:43:00people are actually eating the meat from those animals
00:43:04animals they're bacon they're ham they're sausages as coming from these typical factory farms
00:43:08where animals are in such diseased and ill states and you'd think that covid would have waken us up
00:43:15wouldn't you three in four infectious diseases cross from animals to people so that is the majority
00:43:22of new infectious diseases are coming across that way among the most dangerous things that we are doing
00:43:30is raising livestock for food on these industrial scale poultry pig and cattle operations
00:43:41as one point of extreme jeopardy to emerging diseases i graduated from veterinary science in 1984
00:43:52and avian influenza was considered a very rare disease however as human population has increased
00:43:59the population of intensively raised chickens has also increased and that's facilitated the
00:44:06amplification of avian influenza causing extremely high mortality in chickens but the concern there is
00:44:13that can also mutate cause illness in people and now with we're seeing with the expansion and spread
00:44:20of h5n1 that it's mutated such that it's now causing deaths in wildlife and it's entered the dairy
00:44:27herd in the u.s new cdc report on the first severe human case of bird flu in the u
00:44:34.s new cases of the bird
00:44:35flu are raising alarms among health officials 53 confirmed human cases across seven states this year alone but
00:44:41this week the first person has died from bird flu in this country in that state the question then
00:44:47comes up okay given that this happened what is the risk for everybody else the spillover of a virus from
00:44:53a wild animal into human happens because of opportunity it doesn't happen because the virus seeks us out
00:45:02the virus can't walk it can't run it can't swim it can't fly it rides inside the cells of a
00:45:07cellular host
00:45:08meaning an animal and how does spillover occur it occurs because usually because human activity
00:45:15brings humans into contact with wild animals that carry that particular virus we hunt them we trap them
00:45:23we kill them we butcher them we eat them or we take them alive and we ship them around and
00:45:30in doing
00:45:31that the virus has an opportunity to spill to tumble into the human host and then if the virus is
00:45:39lucky or
00:45:40it's very adaptable it can take hold in a new host a new kind of host and when a virus
00:45:47does that and
00:45:48succeeds in transmitting from human to human and passes all around the world the way
00:45:54um sars cov2 has that virus has achieved extraordinary evolutionary success it has won the darwinian sweepstakes
00:46:06it has gone from a virus that had only a little bit of habitat hiding in these relatively rare animals
00:46:13into a virus that is infecting humans all over the world
00:46:26do we feed ourselves in a sustainable and healthy way today in the developed nations uh no absolutely not
00:46:36uh it is clear that there is um a huge proliferation of uh degenerative diseases essentially people
00:46:45choosing implicitly by the way they choose to eat they choose to have degenerative diseases from the
00:46:52environmental standpoint it is very similar no we we are very much not sustainable you just asked a
00:47:00question about whether uh dietary advice is influenced by food corporations the simple answer is yes of
00:47:07course uh the best example is the meat industry which for decades has fought against any suggestion
00:47:18that eating less meat would be better for health or the environment and has done that quite successfully
00:47:24is meat consumption going up it absolutely is and it's set to go up even further if you look at
00:47:31the targets around
00:47:32the meat industry and if you look at the tactics um amongst the meat industry they are working
00:47:40with retailers to target consumers with precision going after consumers who are actively reducing their meat intake
00:47:49so there is no um mandate at the moment within the meat industry to actively um reduce uh meat intake
00:47:59and switch across to
00:48:01more of a plant-based horticultural strategy
00:48:24so
00:48:34so
00:48:35so
00:48:35so
00:48:35so
00:48:49High meat consumption is an environmental problem without question.
00:48:53It's a health problem only in countries where people have enough money to buy a lot of it.
00:49:00Whether people choose to eat meat is another question entirely.
00:49:05And you don't have to eat meat.
00:49:07You can eat a perfectly healthy diet without it.
00:49:14With all the problems in the world, it's so easy to get overwhelmed.
00:49:17Like, what can I do as one person to make a difference in global warming, in hunger, in deforestation in
00:49:24the Amazon?
00:49:25And what people need to know is that what we put in our mouths every day can make an important
00:49:30and meaningful difference in all of these things.
00:49:33It's why Vice President Al Gore, who owned a cattle ranch, became a vegan.
00:49:37Because he realized that's where you can really make a difference.
00:49:40That it takes 14 times more resources to make a pound of meat-based protein than plant-based protein.
00:49:46That's 14 times more people that can be fed for the same amount of resources.
00:49:52I've been doing research now for almost 50 years.
00:49:55And we were able to show that when people change their diet, when they eat primarily a plant-based diet,
00:50:00fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, soy products, and so on, as close as possible to how they come in nature.
00:50:06Low in fat, low in sugar, low in refined carbs.
00:50:09That our bodies have this remarkable capacity, in many cases, to begin healing if we stop doing what's causing the
00:50:15problem.
00:50:16If you are going to have a predominantly whole food, plant-based diet, we're going to shift the dial in
00:50:24terms of our health and that of the planet.
00:50:27And that really means at least 80% of our diet needs to be whole foods, plant-based.
00:50:34And there's no limit to how you can push that.
00:50:39You know, so being vegan is the ultimate.
00:50:41And organizations all around the world, dietetic organizations, nutrition organizations, medical organizations, the WHO,
00:50:49it's all acknowledged that for all stages of life, you can achieve on your nutrition.
00:50:55A lot of athletes are finding that when they go to a plant-based diet, that they perform at a
00:50:59higher level.
00:51:00So it's a complete myth that you need to be strong. In fact, it may be the opposite.
00:51:04I think healthy diets are really simple. So simple that the journalist Michael Pollan can explain them in seven words.
00:51:13Eat food, not too much, mostly plants. That's really all you need to know.
00:51:18A plant-based diet provides all the nutrition that you need, with the exception if you're on a strict vegan
00:51:23diet,
00:51:23that you need to supplement that with B12. But other than that, it provides all the protein, all the nutritional
00:51:30value.
00:51:32And also, it's low in the things that cause disease and high in the things that are actually protected.
00:51:37What's good for you is good for the planet. What's personally sustainable is globally sustainable.
00:51:41People have to be taught what to eat. The ancestral humans ate whatever was available.
00:51:48But we're not hunter-gatherers anymore. We're supermarket gatherers.
00:51:53And if you're in a supermarket where there are 50,000 products available, you have to be taught which ones
00:51:59to choose.
00:52:00And people who are not taught eat junk food, because it tastes better to them.
00:52:0586% of the $4 trillion that we spent in the U.S. last year were for chronic diseases.
00:52:12Half of the American population today is diabetic or pre-diabetic.
00:52:16Big multinational corporations spend billions of dollars to try to find the right combination of fat and salt and sugar
00:52:22that are really going to activate all those taste buds.
00:52:25Statistically speaking, eating plants is far better for the human body certainly than eating beef, eating meat, and eating animal
00:52:36products in descending order of emphasis.
00:52:40Red meat, especially processed meat, has been linked with a significant increased risk of prostate cancer, breast cancer, colon cancer,
00:52:49heart disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes.
00:52:52So if there's one area that people can make the most difference in, it's cutting out red meat from their
00:52:57diet.
00:52:57So if there's one area that is making the most sensibleEs, which is the following буд
00:53:35You know, these biological mechanisms that cause chronic diseases
00:53:39are common to all of these different chronic diseases.
00:53:42So the dietary recommendations are not like,
00:53:44here's your diet for heart disease, here's your diet for prostate cancer,
00:53:48here's your diet for type 2 diabetes, here's your diet for Alzheimer's.
00:53:50It's the same diet and lifestyle program
00:53:52because they all share the same underlying biological mechanism.
00:53:56Things like chronic inflammation, oxidative stress, changes in the microbiome.
00:54:01You know, we have 100 trillion cells in our guts
00:54:03that can cause a healthy gut or a harmful gut.
00:54:05And we're learning more and more about how this is part of the underlying cause
00:54:09of so many chronic diseases.
00:54:10And so when we change all of these diet and lifestyle factors,
00:54:14it affects all of these underlying biological mechanisms
00:54:17in a way that allow our body to heal.
00:54:19And because these biological mechanisms are much more dynamic than we once realized,
00:54:23you can get better quickly and you can get worse quickly,
00:54:26depending on what you eat and how you live.
00:54:28You know, when you're transitioning from having a meat-based diet,
00:54:32it can feel overwhelming.
00:54:36But actually, it's about how we learn to fall in love with food again.
00:54:41And I think everybody really needs to be doing that.
00:54:43And once you do that, you realize you put a bit more effort into the planning of it
00:54:49and give it time to become second nature.
00:54:53A plant-based diet is the way that people have been eating for thousands of years
00:54:58before they had refrigerators, before they had factory farms,
00:55:01before they had the prosperity to be able to eat meat several times a day.
00:55:04So the paradox is that when people are starting to eat like us and live like us,
00:55:10they're starting to die like us.
00:55:11If they go back to their older patterns of eating,
00:55:14they're going to be much healthier and it's a much more affordable way to eat as well.
00:55:18The single most important problem is that people eat too much of it.
00:55:23It's calories.
00:55:25Calories from everything.
00:55:27I mean, 75% of American adults are overweight or obese,
00:55:3320% to 30% of American children.
00:55:35That's a calorie problem.
00:55:37When you switch from a typical American diet or a typical European diet
00:55:41to a whole foods plant-based diet, you're actually getting a double benefit.
00:55:44You're not only reducing the intake of foods that are harmful,
00:55:48but you're also getting thousands of other substances that are protective,
00:55:52that have anti-cancer, anti-heart disease, and even anti-aging properties.
00:55:56For a long time, public health advocates have advised against eating a lot of meat.
00:56:04The advice is not to stop eating meat, but just to eat less of it.
00:56:08And the meat industry opposes that quite forcefully and effectively.
00:56:14Theoretically, we do have a chance to mitigate the impact of climate change,
00:56:18but we have to act soon.
00:56:20We can't wait too much longer because we're starting to set changes in systems
00:56:25that it's going to be impossible to reverse unless we act quickly.
00:56:29And we really need our politicians and our very big corporate entities
00:56:35to work together for the benefit of all of us, including the environment.
00:56:46There's no way we would have a livable future.
00:56:50We would have a sustainable planet.
00:56:53We would have meet our climate goals without reducing our meat, dairy, and eggs.
00:57:01There's no way.
00:57:02That is very clear, scientifically.
00:57:05The question is, how do we make this happen culturally and politically and economically?
00:57:15That is the challenge.
00:57:18Changes have to mostly begin from the bottom up.
00:57:22You have to persuade people.
00:57:23Anybody who does anything that involves persuasion or talking about the world
00:57:27has to think about these things and help people be persuaded to make choices for themselves.
00:57:33It's like throwing a pebble into a lake.
00:57:37You don't realize where the waves are going to end or what impact it's going to have.
00:57:43In the 70s, for example, my friend Peter Singer wrote a book called Animal Liberation.
00:57:50And that book didn't make a big impact immediately.
00:57:56But now, I can't think of anybody in the activist movement who hadn't read the book
00:58:02or who hadn't been profoundly affected by it.
00:58:07I spent most of my life either studying or teaching or writing about philosophy
00:58:13and, more specifically, ethics.
00:58:16I'm probably best known for my book Animal Liberation,
00:58:21which was first published in 1975.
00:58:24There was almost nothing that was ever published up to 1970 about factory farming.
00:58:32I know that there were people who read it and were influenced by it.
00:58:36For example, Ingrid Newkirk, co-founder of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals,
00:58:40the largest radical animal organization in the world.
00:58:47When you're in a community that doesn't do anything much for animals is hard to break.
00:58:54And I think it's important now there are communities of people who are vegans
00:58:58and who are affective altruists.
00:59:01That's another movement that's important here.
00:59:03And that makes it easier for any individual to be a vegan
00:59:06or to be an animal activist or to be an affective altruist.
00:59:11We have changed people's attitudes about what they wear,
00:59:14what they eat, what they buy, and how they entertain themselves.
00:59:17We've stopped all car crash tests internationally on animals.
00:59:22They used to slam them into walls.
00:59:23We've stopped NASA sending live animals into space.
00:59:28We have introduced all sorts of vegan products into the marketplace.
00:59:33And we have stopped a lot of experiments that were absolutely pointless, fruitless,
00:59:39but we have a lot to go.
00:59:41But I do think everyone is on that journey.
00:59:43Whether they want to be or not, everyone's kind of on that journey.
00:59:46And I think certain things like, you know, environmental crisis will push us,
00:59:50will push more people to thinking, well, what can I do?
00:59:54And there's not that many things you can do as an individual that have a very big impact.
01:00:00We've been around 80 years.
01:00:03Our founder, Agdonald Watson, actually coined the term vegan.
01:00:06And since that point, obviously, we've kind of done a lot of work
01:00:09to build veganism as a concept.
01:00:14We also do a lot of political lobbying, talking to policymakers,
01:00:19trying to encourage them to choose vegan, kind of compassionate solutions.
01:00:26In 2021, on the Earth's Day, we launched in Yunnan province in China,
01:00:34the China Vegan Society.
01:00:38One important thing we did was to try to come up with the Chinese word for veganism.
01:00:46And this character has been around for, like, centuries and centuries,
01:00:49but nobody used it yet.
01:00:51This actually means thriving plants.
01:00:54So we used this as the departing point for us
01:00:59to promote an entirely new narrative on veganism in the 21st century.
01:01:08Going from 25 members to, say, 2 million people in the UK is big growth,
01:01:14and I think it will always be hardest at the beginning.
01:01:16While it's a fringe idea and a fringe philosophy,
01:01:19many people go, oh, I don't want to be difficult,
01:01:21I don't want to be strange or unusual or on the sidelines.
01:01:25And the more people that do it, the easier it should be.
01:01:28So I would hope that when we get to the kind of 5%, 10% mark,
01:01:32we'll see quicker change because it will become more normal.
01:01:35That's my optimistic, idealistic vision.
01:01:39We need to keep fighting for the better world, which we know is possible.
01:01:43And there are just so many people in the world who want that and who need it
01:01:48that I'm not assuming that we're powerless.
01:01:52I think that's wrong.
01:01:54I think that individually we can each make a small contribution,
01:01:58and collectively that can be extremely important
01:02:02and can really turn things around over the next decade.
01:02:06That's right.
01:04:02And the reason being so that as an individual, they improve their health and medical conditions.
01:04:10Secondly, so that as a global citizen, they contribute to the environment and stave off the threat of severe global
01:04:19warming,
01:04:20leading to so many natural calamities.
01:04:24And thirdly, so that as a person of conscience, they alleviate the horrible suffering and cruelty to millions of animals
01:04:33that are slaughtered every day to satisfy the desire of human beings for meat and fish.
Comments