Within Reason - #9 — Earthling Ed | Veganism Can Be Complicated

Episode Date: September 13, 2019

Ed Winters, known online as Earthling Ed, is a vegan educator and public speaker, co-founder and co-director of Surge, which founded the annual Official Animal Rights March, producer of the documentary Land of Hope and Glory, and my most requested podcast guest to date. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode of the Cosmic Skeptic podcast is brought to you by you. To support the podcast, please visit patreon.com forward slash cosmic skeptic. So welcome back, everybody, to the Cosmic Skeptic podcast, an opportunity to break away from the snappier style of videos. I usually make and have some long-form conversations with interesting guests. And today, I'm incredibly excited to have Ed Winters, more commonly known as Earthling Ed in the studio. Thank you for me, Ed. Thanks for having me, Alex.

It's a pleasure to be here. A lot of people have wanted you to come on the podcast. It's really exciting to have you here because I've been watching your stuff for quite a while. people kept sending it to me and I'd come across it and you have a style of in the kind of atheist skeptic community there's this popular form of conversation known as street epistemology which you may have heard of it's like you know going out it's kind of like the socratic method asking questions trying to get people to to evaluate their own beliefs and it seems that that's kind of what you're doing it's slightly different to the kind of thing

that people like Anthony McNabosco would do who's kind of the big name of street epistemology because it's a little bit more, here's my opinion, I want you to agree with me on something. But it's a similar kind of approach. And I think a lot of people really respect that. But aside from just doing that kind of thing, which I think you're probably most known for, just the videos where you're kind of talking to people in the street, they're probably your most popular stuff. As well as that, according to your About page, and you can tell me if any of this is wrong. You are a vegan educator, public speaker and content creator based in London. You're the co-founder and co-director of Surge.

You also produced the documentary Land of Hope and Glory, which was a kind of exposee of English factory farming. Yeah, that's right. Which has been a very affecting film on people, I think. And it says here you've spoken at over one third of UK universities. Is that true? Yes, yes. That's amazing.

That's a lot of universities. How many is that? Oh, I think it's like 50. Christ, man. That's really great. And you've also spoken. at six Ivy League colleges. And recently were at Harvard and a few other colleges

doing like guest lecturing. Yeah. And you opened in 2018 Unity Diner. I'm just amazed at how much stuff there is here. Like, how do you keep it all up? Plant, plants, eating plants. Where did the energy come from? Where's the protein?

Yeah, so for those listeners who aren't familiar with Ed, Ed is one of the kind of up-and-coming faces of YouTube veganism. And I've spoken a bit about veganism recently, as regular listeners will know. We've just recorded a podcast with Peter Singer, which is probably out by the time this one's come out. And I made a video not that long ago called a meat eater's case for vegan. And just after that, I went vegan. And I've been vegan for three months now. So I think we're pretty much in agreement on the ethics of that. But I wanted to break down your story, why you went vegan, and what you think kind of the future of it is. Because a lot of people who are

listening are very sympathetic to the veganism arguments, but they haven't quite taken the step, and I want to kind of figure out what it's going to take to get people to take that step and whether they really should be doing so. So you've been a vegan for how long now? Four and a half years, or thereabouts. Four and a half years. And you were a vegetarian, briefly. Yeah, for about eight months beforehand. Before that. And so what, like, what happened? I know you've spoken about this a lot, but for those who are unfamiliar with the story. That's a good question. So I was, obviously, like, most of us raised eating meat, dairy and eggs and never really questioned it. For me growing up in my family, it was always kind of the brunt of

the joke being vegetarian. We'd always have a laugh about it. And I remember one of my earliest memories was at school. I think I was probably in year seven or year, right? And we were doing English literature. And I can't remember what book we were looking at. It might be in the whincing, gosh. But anyway, in the book they mentioned being vegetarian. And so my teacher had asked about, oh, you know, what do you think of vegetarians? And so I kind of rather abruptly put my hand up in the air quite brashly. And so the teacher was like, yes, Edward. And I said, all vegetarians are pale, weak and skinny, because I thought that that was the right thing to say. I mean, it was kind of ironic because, you know, I'm not like Hulk Hogan or anything over here,

but it was kind of this irony that was lost on me, and I thought that was true. And so it was just something I was raised to believe. Anyway, about five or six years ago, I came across a story. It was just probably a vegetarian, it's about five years ago, about a truck, a big slaughterhouse truck carrying 8,000 or so chickens to a slaughterhouse near Manchester. And I was really shocked by it because the truck had actually crashed on the road. And that's why it was in the news. And the journalist was saying that 1,500 or so of the birds died on the impact, but that there were hundreds more of these animals on the side of the

road with broken bones and broken beaks and broken combs and broken wings. And they were bleeding and suffering on the side of the road and thought, wow, that's horrible. But I was a hypocrite because I used to love KFC and my fridge was like a Zingerberger from the night before. And here I was saying, this is terrible for these chickens. But actually the reason they were in the slaughter truck going to the slaughterhouse was because of my actions. And so I just made a simple realization that the animals I consumed could suffer, could experience pain and therefore had a preference to avoid these emotions. And the recognition that they could feel these negative emotions meant by default they could also feel positive emotions of, you know, on some level as well. And so I just

thought, well, who am I to take their life if I don't have to? And so that's what made me go a vegetarian. Then I saw a documentary called Earthlings, which looks at animal exploitation in so many different forms. so dairy eggs as well, but also clothing, animal testing, entertainment. And after that, I felt, my goodness, I've got to, you know, do something because I feel like a hypocrite for a kind of espousing sorrow to these animals, whilst also being the contributor to their suffering. And that was what, that was what compelled me to make that change to vegan. Yeah. And there's a, there's an argument to be made that the, the chickens that ended up dead on the roadside are the lucky ones, because where they were going was going to be

going to be even worse. Have you been able to, now that you are a vegan and consider the animal agricultural industry to be just one of the greatest evils, I'd imagine, have you managed to kind of make peace with your past as a meat eater? Is that something that still troubles you? Or do you think you're kind of like making up for it? It wasn't your fault. You hadn't really considered it. It's not your fault that you'd never come across these thoughts before. And the moment you did, you kind of begun changing. But do you still feel any kind of guilt in that period? Well, I think it'd be a bit probably disingenuous of me to say that the moment that I did realize I changed. I mean, I knew before about animals suffering in the sense of I'd seen probably

like clips on YouTube or something like it wasn't as if I had no perception of animals being killed in slaughterhouses. And so I never want to take that ground of saying, well, as soon as I knew I changed, it sounds too pure of me. But at the same time, I don't hold myself responsible. Like, I don't hold people responsible for something if they don't know the consequences of what they're doing. You know, if we've never been told anything different, from the moment we're born, we're fed, the same narrative of meat for protein, cows milk for calcium, humane farms, high welfare, you know, farms, humane slaughterhouses, then it's not necessarily anyone's fault if they, if they buy and continue to perpetuate the myths that we're told as a culture.

So I don't, I don't hold myself responsible for the person I was before, although I do carry a certain level of guilt in the sense of, I recognize that I contributed immensely to this suffering. And so I do view, in a sense, what I do is a form of atonement, even though you can never really atone because what's happened has happened, but a sense of atonement so that future generations of humans don't perpetuate this violence, but also future generations of animals that have to suffer from this violence. Yeah. Do you, so you're separating the morality of the action from the morality of the person quite

well. It's like what you're doing is wrong, but that doesn't make you a bad person. Ironically, that kind of means that what you're doing, what I'm doing now when I argue the case of veganism is that we're making people immoral because previously if they didn't really, if they hadn't thought about it before, then although what they're doing is wrong, they weren't aware of it. So it's not their fault. But if you make them aware, then they become immoral people. So we're kind of going around making people into bad people in a way. But when you know better, you have an obligation to do better. So we make people immoral, but so they then have an opportunity to become more moral, you know, like immoral to become more moral.

Do you think that vegans are morally superior people? Great question. Right. So if you view actions objectively, and you would say that it is more moral to not harm a human than it is to harm a human. Now, it's more moral to not be racist than to be racist. And so by an objective truth, it is more moral not to cause a necessary suffering to non-human animals than it is to cause unnecessary suffering to non-human animals.

But the problem with viewing it so simple, with such an element of simplicity is that it overlooks the whole cultural conditioning, the psychological barriers, those cognitive imperfections, so to speak, or biases that really convoluted the situation and make it less than simplistic. And so yes, in a very objective form,

it is definitely morally superior not to harm others when you don't have to, but it kind of loses the nuances of a society that makes that hard for people to realize, because everyone around them is doing it. They've been raised to believe it's true. Society teaches them it's fine. And so, yes, but I don't think this one

is less morally superior if they don't know the truth. Sure. So you were kind of talking, again, at the level of the action there, it's more moral to not harm animals, but I mean, like, as people, is it fair to say that people who are consciously vegan

are morally superior because of the awareness that they have? Or do you think that because of the lack of awareness other people may have, that means that whilst what they're doing is more moral, they're not actually more moral people. It's an interesting thing. I don't, I feel somewhat hesitant to use that terminology simply because I don't feel, I feel that it can alienate someone if they don't understand to the point of view. And so you might have a viewer now who, who doesn't, hasn't seen the footage, has never really explored the concept. And so they may feel alienated

by me saying, yes, it is morally superior to be vegan. It seems almost like that expression of, you know, placing yourself on a high horse, which, you know, vegans don't ride horses. either, but the pedantic society, it is somewhat, I guess, an alienating concept. So yes, I do believe fundamentally that's true, but I don't espouse that way of thinking because I don't think it, I think it eliminates the kind of the cultural and societal barriers that stop people from realizing that. Yeah, because you understand the psychology of why somebody would be a meat eater. Yeah. But, yeah. Okay, so I want to, I want to get into some of the, some of the reasoning that you're putting forward because like I say people who are listening to this are probably

roughly aware that animal cruelty is bad and it's wrong and that I can see why people would think that the meat industry is probably a bad thing but where do you start with somebody who has never really thought about this before and you're sort of coming to them for the first time and saying hey have you ever considered that this thing you're doing every single day might be one of the gravest immoralities the world has ever known how do you open that door. Well, I think you actually touched upon it then. It's that notion of animal cruelty. I mean, ask anyone on the street, everyone's against animal cruelty. The problem is we use phrases and we use terms, but we never actually define what those phrases mean. So human slaughter is a great example

of that. People throw that term around, but no one ever asks them to define what that means. So again, of animal cruelty, everyone's against it because he wouldn't be against it. But then you've got to define, well, what does it mean to be cruel to animals? And so most people will say, well, cruelty to animals is some sort of unnecessary, conscious, direct. inflection of pain upon them. Okay, great. That's a great starting point. And so then what we have to establish is whether or not what we do to animals for meat, dairy, and eggs or any animal product for that matter, is it necessary? Okay, well, the modern science is quite clearly shown that it's not necessary. And most people

realize that most people, you know, know we can get protein from plants and iron and calcium from plants. And so once we've established that it's not a necessity, well, then people, all you have to do is remind people of what their definition of cruelty is, which is something they're against. And so then we, to be able to be, morally consistent, we then no longer just talk the talk, we have to walk the walk. And veganism is a manifestation of walking that walk because we're against animal cruelty, but we pay for it about realizing. And so it's, for me, that's a really powerful realization of people to have. We chat a little bit about it earlier saying, well, I went vegan, and I felt

like I was no longer living kind of a moral lie. You know, I was actually aligning my morals with my actions, my values of my actions. And so I genuinely believe that most people in society have those same values that we were talking about earlier of not wanting to cause harm, of not wanting to cause suffering, but they've never thought about it in a way that rationalizes the necessity of it. And so I think that's a great starting point. And then I think you just have to kind of explore the reasoning why people do it. And fundamentally, we can go through kind of a certain, we can circumnavigate through like a whole host of different excuses. You know, we can point to other animals in the wild,

to consume animals. We can point to like a food chain, but really always boils down to that notion of taste, right? People do these things because they enjoy how meat taste. They like cheese. I mean, who didn't like, you know, I used to love mozzarella and Hulumi and such. So taste is really the big driver in so much of what we do with animals or two animals. And so then the question becomes, well, what has high value in our eyes? Because if we're placing sensory pleasure on a pedestal and if sensory pleasure becomes a justifier for our morals towards animals or non-human animals, well, we have to work out if that's fair. So what is high a value? taste or life. And do we really value sensory pleasure as being a moral

justifier? Because again, to be consistent, if it's okay to do these things to animals because the end product tastes nice, a sensory pleasure, that any action that fulfills a sense of sensory pleasure for the oppressor then becomes justifiable for that reason alone. And we can see many cases, you know, rape, a whole host of different cases where sensory pleasure is not a good enough justify. So I think animal cruelty and that notion of sensory pleasure, like the two big players in in changing people's perceptions. Sure. I'm interested in the the concept of necessity because we were talking about you defined cruelty quite well, but it revolves around this concept of necessity and

philosophically speaking, nothing is necessary. Like you could, you don't need to eat, you don't need to be healthy, you want to be healthy, you want to live, you want to be comfortable. But there's a question of kind of how far we take that. I think it's reasonable to say that when you say you need to be healthy, what we mean is like everybody has such a strong and justifiable. desire to live a healthy life that we can term it as a need. But I have trouble trying to find where to draw that line. I'll give you an example. We were in boots the other day. I suffered very badly from hay fever. And I was in boots with some friends, one of whom was vegan, one of whom's not. And I was looking at the hay fever tablets and they all contain lactose. And I was there for 10

minutes trying to work out whether I'm allowed morally to buy this hay fever medicine. I ended up not buying it. I couldn't bring myself to do it. But I thought to myself, if somebody said to me, I'm a vegan, but yeah, I take my hay fever tablets, I don't think I'd, you know, have a quarrel with that. But if you think about it, hay fever can be pretty awful, but it's not, it's not like a necessity to not be sneezing all the time or to have red eyes. So would that kind of thing fall under your conception of necessity? Like should someone be able to buy hay fever tablets, which not only contain lactose, but also will have been tested on at least two other mammals under UK law. So what about that kind of situation?

That's a good question. I think the lactose one's interesting. Now, I could be wrong about this. This is what I've been told, but please research this before taking me on face value of it. But I've heard that the lactose they use as a binder in a lot of medication is actually it's not from cows. It's produced in laboratories and such. So the lactose won't be a problem, but the animal testing is an interesting one. I think for something like that, it's very hard that's a challenging concept I guess in the strictest terms it's not a necessity so it would fall out of category of being morally justifiable but at the same time I wouldn't look down upon someone for doing so so that becomes slightly hypocritical of me and I recognize that

but I'm not actually sure I'd find it I'd find it slightly challenging to point the finger at someone to accuse them of that because I mean when when I didn't take the behavior of tablet I was speaking to a friend of mine his name's Waleed, he's a ex-Muslim YouTuber and we were talking about this on his podcast. And when I told him this story and told him that I put the hayfif tablet down, he was impressed. He thought, oh, that's quite a virtuous

thing to do. And I'm thinking, like, does it make sense to think of that as a virtuous thing? Or does it make sense? Because to me I just felt like my whole argument with the not eating animals is that my comfort and sensory

pleasure, as you put it, shouldn't outwe an animal suffering. And getting rid of itchy eyes and a horrible nose that I can't put up with is a similar kind of thing. It falls under the same banner, it's sensory pleasure. And you say that it doesn't fall under the banner of necessity. But again, like you say it's not strictly necessary, but neither is any medicine to some extent. Like it's not necessary in a base level sense. It's all about just improving the well-weeing of human beings. And I don't know, I just can't kind of get my head around it. It's one of those areas in which I really just don't know what to think about it.

It's, I think with the animal testing side of stuff, we have like the tablets, I mean, everything, so even when we go to like super drug and all their range of cosmetics and everything is cruelty-free, so they say, like not testing animals. Right. Well, the issue is all the ingredients of there have been testing animals at some point. So when something's like a legal requirement,

it somewhat takes the ability out of our hands to make a decision because it's out of our hands. And so I think if you're looking at the case of a hay fever tablet, where the product has been tested animals historically and presumably is no longer tested because it's past those tests. And the lactose itself is not directly from an animal. That action could then be justifiable

because, well, you had no say or choice about whether or not that product was tested an animal or not. And more importantly, you boycotting that product doesn't change the system. But when it comes to something like food or say lever or down or whatever it may be or fur, is directly influenced by the choices that we make as consumers.

And so we have a direct ability to change how these products are produced or not produced in the future, you know, if we get out away, so to speak. We can actually have a direct influence on that, which is why it becomes more of a moral imperative to not buy those products. But a product that we essentially have no control over how it got to those shelves, it then becomes slightly more difficult to stop someone from doing it because their actions don't necessarily cause the problem in the same way. It's a legal issue as opposed to a consumer issue. Do you think that that, I mean, do you think, because an argument that my friends and I,

were toying with was an argument that if you focus on the most egregious parts, if you get rid of animal food, if that's gone, then the ripple effect will be that people will then kind of look at animal testing in medicine and say, well, now there's, there's no real reason. It will become so ethically obvious that they'll just end up just getting rid of it across the board. So perhaps you can still engage with animal cruelty in the kind of side areas if you focus, if it allows you to more effectively focus on the most pressing issues that will then ripple out. Like if I am not suffering from hay fever, I'm in a better position to write an essay that 100 people might read and two of them might go vegan because of it. So in one way,

that might be a kind of utilitarian balance of powers. But I mean, it seems like it makes sense as a vegan to have just a deontological rule against engaging with it. But I think if we apply kind of a deontological rule, it somewhat eliminates, again, those nuances of society. where it's not it's almost impossible to live in in that way and so I do agree that in a sense veganism is a is a minimization of suffering it's not elimination of suffering and and and i also feel somewhat um slightly um disingenuous when we when and i say these things and so i you know i'm very conscious of that when we refer to something as being cruelty free or like um you know say you know go vegan right and then you know you're not contributing to animal suffering these things aren't

strictly true you know we can't completely eliminate the suffering it's about a minimization of that suffering And so I think you raise a good point, which is say we, you know, say one of us, God forbid, something terrible happens to us, and then we have to accept a medicine that was tests in animals at some point. If it then restores us to good health where we can then contribute to, you know, putting forward a message, whether that's veganism or another message that, you know, helps people live a better life or a more, you know, virtuous life, then that action could be justified by the greater good, you know, and by a reduction of suffering across the board.

And so, yes, I think that there are these little areas, you know, say the hay fever tablets that create an interesting moral proposition. But fundamentally, they do nothing to discredit veganism as a philosophical teaching. They just show that society itself still suffers from an inherently speciesist mindset, which allows things like animal testing to take place when actually the grant money that's given to universities

to fund animal testing. We're much better used funding viable scientific alternatives that exist, but are not given the financial backing yet to become universally available. And so these little arguments that we can use are fascinating, but they actually reveal more of a root cause of the problem, which is society's ingrained speciesism that's allowed it to permeate into so many different aspects

that we then have these dilemmas of, well, can I buy hay fever tablets or not? When actually that is a question should never have to be answered because the hay fever tablets should never have to, well, maybe at the time, but should never in the future have to go through a period of using lactose, for example. And many people listening will probably cringe when they hear the word speciesism.

Yes. It seems like a kind of made-up concept. that you're using to make the issue sound more serious than it is because you're kind of drawing comparison to racism or sexism or something. How are we defining speciesism and is it worthy of such a kind of such a strong terminology? Yeah, so speciesism, it is like it is an ism and there's a lot of debates around so many isms, but speciesism is a discrimination against an animal based on the species. So, you know, an animal that doesn't take our form, you know, they're not the human species and therefore because they're not human, they're therefore subject to discrimination based

purely on those factors. And so, yes, it is serious enough in the sense of it's completely superfluous, right? And it holds no actual currency when it comes to dealing with moral issues because it's an irrelevant arbitrary factor, you know, what shape a being takes if they have feathers or wings or fur or scales, that has no bearing on their worth of life. And so I think, think it's a very important term because it helps us realize that actually we have a probably some sort of unbiased um sorry unconscious kind of discriminatory um attitude towards of a life based on something that that holds no that holds no currency really um so you know and i'm reluctant to kind of use that word i don't use it often i don't i think it can seem against almost like an alienating term for the

reasons you raise people like what is this word this is this is some millennial kind of um you know social justice terminology that and so it can be alienating to you But I think it kind of hits home to the root of the problem, which is just an attitude issue, a mentality issue that allows us to go, oh, well, this cow doesn't look like me. And therefore, because they don't take the form of myself or my peers, I'm allowed to do as I wish to this cow. But people will say it's more than that. I mean, people who eat cows, it's not just because the cow doesn't look like them. It's like, it's a whole different category of being to them, right? They have completely different cognitive abilities and self-awareness and all of this kind of stuff. Again, how do you approach someone whose argument is essentially, like, they are in a different moral category? We're human beings, we philosophize, we have our own kind of structures of law and morality, and one of the reasons we have that is for stabilization of human societies. That's in no way affected by the well-being of a cow or a chicken.

What is the rationale for caring about their well-being? Well, there's a few different ways of looking at it. First, you've got to define your moral code, and you've got to define your moral reasoning. And so there's a few ways. So it depends what angle you take on it. And so if you're looking at the, I mean, you raise like an intelligence idea, oh, humans have, you know, we've created these societies, we've created like a system of law and order. And so you use kind of intelligence as a factor as to why humans have some form of supremacy

of the animal kingdom. But we've got to apply these kind of ways of thinking somewhat unilaterally in a sense of we've got to be consistent. And so if you're going to apply something that there's relatively arbitrary like intelligence as a factor for life, well that someone has to permeate into our attitudes towards over humans. And so would we say this son who suffers from severe learning. difficulties, are they somewhat less deserving of life than, you know, someone in Mensa, you know, someone who's highly intelligent, for example. No, we don't, we don't, we don't do that. And we certainly

don't use those ideas as a reason to oppress. And that's, I think that's part of the problem is, is we come up these kind of like superfluous ideas, but then we use them as a reason to oppress. And so let's say we have a very, um, severe situation where you have to choose between the life of a human and life of a cow. I mean, for the reasons we talk about, say, cognition and intelligence, you know, advanced sentience, an ability to live a life that has a richer value than say the life of a cow, we could, in a situation where it's one or the other, choose the life of a human, and that could be justified through the reasons we talk about. But when we have a situation where we don't have to choose between one or the other, and it's very much possible just to

leave one of them alone, the cow alone, to do whatever it is that they would do naturally. Well, but then in that situation, that's the moral imperative, because we're not faced with a conundrum. And so the reasons that we would choose the human over the cow in a situation of, well, situation we had to, doesn't then provide justification to choose it arbitrarily when we should allow them to just live. So I think you've got to define your moral code and then apply that somewhat universally to see if it still face. So that, I mean, that extra quality that the human has in that extreme situation that

would cause you to choose them is not, that thing itself, that extra bit is not the thing that gives the moral worth at a base level. Right. What is it to you that does give a being moral worth, like in the same way that a table doesn't have moral worth, but a cow does, but then so does a fish and maybe a cockroach. Like, what is the, what's the metric? What needs to be within an animal? And even if we, you could not know if a certain animal actually has it, but if you could know if it had it, what would you be looking for to say this is something that should fall under our umbrella of untouchability? I'd say sentience and pain, the two factors. So a conscious, but also an ability to suffer. Those are the two kind of metrics I would go by. Because I think coupled with an ability to suffer comes a preference to avoid that. I think it's not just the fact that they can suffer,

it's that they obviously have a preference to avoid. And so that's what we should respect that in the same way that we should respect amongst our own species as well. We recognize, I think part of the problem why human inflicted suffering is wrong is because we can empathize us to the point where we see, well, this act of discrimination

or violence causes someone an emotional or physical suffering. And so we can define that as being something that should be avoided. And so it's the same to non-human animals. We can recognize that if you kick a dog, they will squeal, they will cower, they will feel pain. We can see that they can experience happiness. And so emotions like that, particularly, which are very much exhibited, particularly by the animals that we exploit, generally speaking, would garner them a sense of moral consideration. Sure. So giving animals moral consideration, because like you say, I think most people understand that even, because the arguments never seem to be, or rarely a cow has no moral worth. It's that the cow has so much less moral worth that my taste buds have a higher moral worth.

Given that they do have moral worth, what happens? So if I go and get a glass of milk or something, what's the story of that milk? Where's that come from? Because I think a lot of people have the idea that there is a cow on a farm somewhere and maybe it's kept in a small cage or something, which is pretty bad. someone comes along, takes its milk, sends it off to the, sends it off to Sainsbury's and then I get to drink it. What's kind of missing from that paradigm? It's interesting.

I think it's very difficult as well. So we define kind of moral worth between by our moral consideration of animals based on what it is that we're shown and based what it is that we're told. And so I think a part of the part of the issue with this is we're fed, the agencies and the industries themselves are incredibly immoral in the way they treat us as consumers. and they have a complete disregard for our desire to make decisions. And so we sometimes can't even fully tap into our own moral consideration because we're fed very much a manufactured version of events.

And I think that's a really big issue. And so often when it comes to moral worth, we're like, well, I perceive this to be within my moral code. But what you're perceiving isn't even what's true. And so we can't even make those decisions about knowing everything. And so with a glass of milk, you have a very interesting situation where many people don't even realize why cows produce milk, which is ridiculous, right? But I didn't.

I never thought about it. Yeah. I just thought that a cow ate grass and out came milk. You know, it seems so naive because, of course, it is. I mean, cows are mammals. So they produce milk to feed their child as, you know, mammals do. And so a farm will artificially inseminate or forcibly impregnate these animals. So they acquire semen from a bull. This is convention. This is how it happens across the board. You know, even small, organic, local family-owned farms. It's not just big industrial factory farms. So the farm will acquire semen from a bowl, acquire. I mean, we can all use our imaginations to know what that looks like. So they acquire the same. semen from the bull, they'll, you know, put the semen on ice, then they'll find the female cow who's, you know, ready to, she's fertile. So then the farmer will place his arm inside the cow's anus, and he'll hold the cervix through the lining of the anus, and then forcibly impregnate her by putting the semen through the vagina into the cervix. The cow's gestation is about nine months, so then once she's given birth, the farmer will take the baby away from the mother, because, you know, the baby will drink the first lot of milk, it's got colostrum full of

antibody is very important for a calf's well-being. But then once they've had the colostrum and the first feed, the calf's often taken away within the first 24 hours, because the more milk the the calf drinks, the less milk the farmer can sell. And so the calf will then be put in something called a solitary confinement hutch, which is a tiny hutch with a little bit of a fenced-off area, maybe a two feet or so long. And they'll be in there for up to eight weeks, that's legally speaking, sometimes longer if the farms break the law, which sometimes they do. The females will then be integrated into kind of like bigger pens where they'll then be put into the herd where they'll be forcibly impregnated on a continuous cycle. The males will either be killed. 90,000 male dairy

calves are shot soon after birth in this country because they're useless. We don't really consume veal here. So it's a bit of a, they're a useless byproduct. So they'll either be sold on for beef, but they're often the wrong breed, so they won't be profitable enough for a farmer. So 90,000 are shot. Sometimes they're exported to Europe for veal and sometimes they're sold on for beef and then all the female dairy cows will eventually be taken to a slaughterhouse. This is the kind of the hypocrisy of a vegetarian diet is, or vegetarianism as a philosophical or even just as a way of life. You know, people do it because they're against animals being slaughtered, but they don't

realize that dairy and eggs as well, animals are still slaughtered in the exact same way, but they suffer for years, you know, a cattle, you know, cattle for beef, 18, 24 months, a dairy cow, five, six years, you know. So we have a whole process of the same problem, but actually exactly, exemplified because the suffering is endured for longer. It requires periods of intense kind of confinement, even animals that we see roaming. I mean, when I got the train here today, big field full of dairy cows roaming and you think, wow, how beautiful. But, you know, that's fine during summer, but you've got eight months of the year where they're locked inside. You know,

you've got all these issues that we don't know about. And so there's a whole process at play that we just don't consider and we don't think about because we're not told. And what I find infuriating is the fact that these industries are so reluctant to show people and to tell people the truth because they know that a lot of people will find it probably morally abhorrent. So there's this complete denial of actually showing people the truth because then it can have a huge shift or can create a huge shift in people's perceptions. And so as consumers were fed this tiny, tiny myopic kind of view of what actually happens on these farms, you're going to Tesco's and they put these big banners, supporting local organic, you know, happy cows produce

happy milk. What does that even mean? I mean, a cow doesn't have to be happy to produce milk. You can beat a cow in so many ways and they're still going to produce milk. And there's this idea that, of course, farmers love these animals and they have, you know, they'll do the best for these animals because, well, they need them to produce the product. But apart from giving them enough food and somewhere to sleep and making sure they're not like, you know, being killed off for necessarily for a farmer and necessarily at the beginning, well, there's a whole range of things you can do to animals. And so tail docking, disbudding, you know, mutilations, taking away babies, forced impregnations. All of this happens in these industries in this

country and around the world and we're just not told about it. So I just find it frustrating that we live in the darkness about all of this stuff and when we shouldn't. We actually have, we should be granted at least enough consideration to be able to make these decisions ourselves given the full spectrum of the truth. Yeah. And look, let's contextualize this. This isn't like, it sounds like you're describing some awful war practice or some kind of, like this isn't for any other purpose. All of this that you're talking about, all of it, like, People listening to just really, really, let that sink in. Let the process sink in.

And now just think about the tell-offs. Think about the end. What do we end up with? A glass of milk, which you drink in less than a minute and go, that was quite nice. Maybe. You're not going to remember it tomorrow. How, what is, how can we understand the psychology of people who think that's worth it?

I mean, because a lot of people like you say are in the dark, But there's a whole lot of people that there are also a whole lot of people who do know what's going on. They do know that that's the process of milk, but they just don't care. There's just there's just no empathy. And it's not their fault. It's not your fault if you don't feel empathy for a certain, for a species that you can't identify with. But how can we understand why people don't feel empathy and how can we perhaps try to cultivate that empathy within them? Well, I think for all of society, we see huge social progressions happen when a lot of people that time don't agree with the social progression.

So, you know, I mean, it's not to make comparisons between actions, but slavery, you know, a lot of people were against slavery, but a lot of people ardently defended it. And so it's very interesting to say we could have gone back a few hundred years ago, or even less, to be honest. And you could have asked me the same question in relation to wherever or not we should have, you know, keep humans as slow. And so it's interesting how we still have these same ideas, we still have these same questions. but society's progressed to a point now where that is very much a marginalised view, of course. You know, most people in society are very happy to admit that that was a terrible thing, and it shouldn't have happened. And so I think what we live somewhat in a, it's kind of like a flock mentality.

We're a bit like sheep. And I guess I don't view that as a bad thing, but I view in the sense that we like to follow and be a part of the flock. And we don't like to be outcast and we don't like to be outsiders. And so I think for people that are reluctant to acknowledge that they should even empathize to these animals, I think seeing that that are, that are, that are, a slow, ever-growing consensus of people that coming to that realization is very profound

because it makes them think, well, actually this is something they should reflect on. But right now, there's no imperative for them to reflect on it. And so I think by kind of accessing people that are kind of more intrigued by these ideas and more open to empathizing with these animals, will then encourage more conversation to be sparked within people who are still very much reluctant.

But that's not to say that we should kind of like, just push them to the side now and concentrate on the easy people and hope that everything changes around them. I think then we have to find some sort of relatability. And so again, we can look at dogs. We can look at cats. We can look at animals that we love conventionally in society

or even look at Cecil the Lion. You know, that caused massive upro. Look at dolphins, look at whales. You know, all these animals that we conventionally love in a Western society. And then all we have to do, I guess, is draw kind of some sort of comparisons, draw some sort of, you know,

comparative reasonings between these different species to help people understand or to encourage people to understand why they should care about these animals that we exploit conventionally as well. And so I think even someone that says, I don't have any empathy for a cow, I don't care about this pig.

You know, I guarantee for most of those people, if they were walking and they saw someone beating a dog up, like, you know, an owner's beating their dog because they don't want to go for their walk or whatever. That's going to make us angry. And that's good. We're not just going to see it and go,

I don't care, you know, because I think a lot of the problem is this violence isn't happening in front of us. And it doesn't often feel tangible to us. And we can watch the footage, but it still doesn't feel quite real. Yeah. I've seen, you know,

pictures of emaciated children in third world countries, but I don't have the urge necessary to go and give free pound to ox farm, you know. So I think it's often the same with that kind of like we see this violent footage in slot houses or farms. But we could resonate with on some level, but it's not actually encourages to make a change. But the violence is, it's not in front of us. But when we see violence to non-human animals in front of us, even the people that I think are most, even morally nihilistic still feel something of a sense of that this is wrong. And I think trying to make that violence tangible in whatever we can by making it relatable is quite powerful. That's interesting you talk about how if you saw someone beating a dog on the street, you wouldn't be apathetic.

But you wouldn't even just feel sad or upset. You'd feel angry. You'd be motivated to action. Are you angry? Like, is that the emotion that you would feel? Because in the same sense that quite trivially, the first emotion that would become apparent if you saw someone doing that in the street would be anger before sadness. or compassionate philosophy, is that the kind of response that you have to the animal industry and to people eating meat? Is that the kind of emotion that makes itself predominant within you?

Even if you don't kind of make it clear because it's not a tactful thing to do, is that what you're kind of thinking? Not to people eating meat. No, I don't, like if I went down the street and someone's eating at KFC or McDonald's, I don't feel angry towards them at all. If I see footage and I see, you know, someone beating an animal, yeah, that makes me angry. I guess it's like a degrees of separation again it's it's that it's that accountability and responsibility you know someone who's punching an animal there's there's no there's no kind of illusion of a lack of responsibility or or kind of a a disillusion of of accountability is quite frankly you know what you're doing it's a conscious decision you're aware of the problem you're causing so that makes

me angry because it but again but again you can say well the person in the kFC who maybe seen all the footage and as well but again there's still those degrees of separation which make it easier for us to psychologically distance ourselves from what we're causing. Yeah, but there's also like economic dependence. If somebody, somebody's livelihood and or even just like their job, even if they don't like own a farm or something, if they're just a farmhouse worker, they, can we expect them to give up their life in order to abide by this moral code, which as we kind of happily recognize, is a slow progress. It's not going to happen overnight is it not like can i can understand the psychology of somebody who'd be like

i can see your point but since this is going to be a slow progression anyway it's still going to be going to be going on and because my livelihood depends on it and my family depending on me i'm going to stay put is that is that like is that a fair position for that person to to take um no i think society has to change but i don't believe that we should leave these people out in the dark to change on their own i think there's a i mean people often say to me oh you don't care about farmers livelihoods. And that's not true at all. I rely on farmers just as much as anyone else. We all rely on farmers. And someone says, well, what about the dairy farmers? I'm like, well, what about the oat farmers? You know, like, why don't you care about their

livelihoods? So you want everyone to stop consuming oat milk where you're going to put oat farmers out of business. So I think we have, again, we somewhat place on rankings, animal farmers has been like this, this, almost like a protected group where their livelihoods are somewhat more important than livelihoods of plant farmers or anyone you know we but i mean no one no one's trying to like the meat eaters and the dairy consumers they're not trying to put oat farmers out of business they're saying you know if you want to if you want to you can yeah i'm not going to but if you want to you can and i think the dairy farmers would just say can you just offer us the same generosity but we have to understand every purchase we make it creates um jobs for some people

and no jobs for everyone so like say you know blockbuster out business right so you know everyone who buy netflix subscriptions you know well okay wherever or not we we we we we care or not. Well, yeah, that puts block brist out business. Uber. All right, well, how many tax you cab drivers are now? So there's all, you know, everything, we go to Sainsbury, is all about the Tesco's workers. All, all these things create like a system where we value some jobs over and over, and it's not

a conscious thing necessarily. So the situation of animal farmers is I'm not, I don't, I'm not doing this because I want them to be out of business. I want them to diversify. And so I'm not trying to, I don't believe that animal farmers are bad people inherently. I think that animal farmers

that, that, that, um, go outside of what, would be legally condoned and do things that they're bad people but again you can look at the reasoning for why they do these things power struggles you know helplessness all these different things but like I think the generic animal farmer across the board is not necessarily a bad person because they do what we do and as such I'm not interested in them being out of business or them and have a job that's not my issue I want to them to diversify and so I want to create a system wherever possible where we can encourage animal farmers to diversify into arable farming and plant farming and many many many many

many animal farmers can do this. A lot of them do arable. They're mixed farms. They do arable an animal. And so we can create a system where they're encouraged financially and also, you know, through kind of like a social community to be able to transition over. I think that's what should be encouraged. And, you know, there's a company in the US called Elmhurst Dairy. There were a huge dairy company around, a family owned. And now they're entirely plant-based. And so the future is very much something that can cater for all, for all farmers as much as possible. Now some animal farmers won't be able to transition as easily, and so we can look at different technological advancements, whether that's vertical farming and

different things like that. But the root of the problem lies in subsidies. And what many people don't realize is animal farmers are trapped in these jobs, a lot of them. So let's take the average lamb farmer. In Wales, if you remove tax subsidies, the average lamb farmer loses 20,000 pounds a year. They get about roughly 50,000 pounds in tax subsidies, which means they make about 30,000 pound year. This is the average land farmer. There's some, you know, it's land specific. Subsides are land specific. So some get more, some get less. This is the average. And so they're actually trapped in these industries because they're relying on tax subsidies for the land that they own to keep them afloat. And where's that that freedom of choice really? And so there's

probably a lot of people that are involved in the industry that maybe don't want to be, but they've even loaned out equipment or it's a tradition, it's family owned and they have a guilt or responsibility to continue that heritage. But actually, if they were granted like a choice, maybe a lot of them wouldn't want to do it. You know, I speak to a lot of farmers, both current and an ex, who express, regardless of where they are, a sense of guilt. You know, a lot of them, they don't enjoy driving to the slaughterhouse with the lambs. These lambs they've spent six months or so with and then dropping them off. There's often a sense of guilt, there's often a sense of hopelessness in the sense, well, they can't do anything. And so I'm very keen on these

subsidies still being filtered through to animal farmers for the land that they own. But then those subseas must be given with the incentive therefore to encourage and cultivation of plant-based agriculture instead which we can all support as a society it's just about redistribution of of these funds that exist but are given to uphold kind of traditions and cultures that are somewhat outdated now yeah so yeah i have nothing against alma farmers i don't think the bad people and i and i want to support a transition that that works for them as well sure it's it's important to stress the economic basis of all of this it's all, it's all demand-driven. The way to affect the change is to use your purchasing power.

That's basically it, isn't it? I mean, that's what we're doing as, what someone like yourself would do as a vegan activist, what you're essentially trying to get people to do is to change their purchasing habits. That's what it comes down to, right? And it's fairly easy to do now, but a lot of people live in places where it's not really that feasible. When I went to Texas recently, I remember people talking about the comparison between Dallas and Austin. In Austin, it's fairly easy to be a vegan, but in Dallas,

as I found myself, there are many options available to you. You can go to entire complexes where nobody's really got anything vegan. You have to go and get just a pizza without the mozzarella and basically have bread for lunch. So can we expect people who live in those kinds of societies to go vegan, to just kind of throw it all to the wind and put in this, this incredible amount of effort that people living in a city like Oxford or London don't have to do. Is that really fair to put the same moral imperative on them as it is someone like us? Yes, I think so. I mean, there's no denying that it's harder for some than it is for others. I think I've been to Dallas, actually, and there's a strong vegan community there. And yes, maybe there's not all the

restaurants that we have that we know we have in the UK this I mean it's so easy here now but the point is you know you've got supermarkets you've got all the products there and so yes social situations might become more challenging and yes it may require a bit more preparation but you know inconvenience it still doesn't justify what what happens and also the only way these things become more accessible is by by people making that change and demanding that that happen and so what's happened in Austin is it's easy to be vegan there's so many great places there in Austin, which is kind of weird because it's in Texas. And so there has to be a permeation from this kind of like vegan-centric Austin to kind of permeate into Houston and Dallas and San Antonio

and such. Yeah. So I think we still have to do that because if we're ever to bring about change, it is through changing, not solely, but consumer habits for a massive driving force in that. And so we still have a moral imperative to start demanding products to make it easier. And so I don't, I think the real question of what you're asking there is not about like options and how difficult it is when you're eating out, it's about financial situations. And so impoverished people, so people living below the line, that's when this question, I think, becomes really pertinent because you have a socioeconomic system that somewhat sets up a dichotomy where traditionally that the lowest-standing family is the one's most reliant on things like fast food, most reliant on things like ready meals and processed foods,

which are still very far away from being vegan friendly in so many regards. And so that's when I think that question becomes important because the question then becomes, can we expect this, single mother with a family who's having to work maybe two jobs to feed, you know, her, you know, her children. Can we expect her to then go and buy fruits and vegetables and nuts and seeds and grains and cook up a banquet? That's when that question becomes challenging. And so then I always say, well, it's the responsibility of those who can to do so and then through kind of like changing that system, we can make things more accessible, which is happening with like KFC and, you know, like ready meals now. And that's because of people that can do these things, demanding change for

for the purchasing habits. So it's not always going to be easy for everyone, but for most of us, yes, it may not, it may, no be, we might not be able to get drunk and go to McDonald's anymore right now. Like, there are definitely going to be social challenges and issues that we have to kind of like reframe, but those slight inconveniences and a slight change of habits and routines, and I use the word suffering very, very lightly. The suffering that we face from those inconveniences is nothing compared to the suffering that's happening to the animals and also to the planet on a wider scale as well. On a similar point to the, to the point about people who don't have very much money struggling to get by.

I was thinking about this recently. Is it immoral to give some change, some spare change, to a homeless person, knowing that he's probably going to go and spend it in McDonald's? No, I don't believe it's immoral. Your intentions are different. I would say if you want them to have food, then go and buy them something to give to them. I think that's better anyway because you give to money to a homeless person. It could go to drugs and alcohol.

And you could argue, well, that's their choice. And it's kind of like once you've given money to someone, well, that's their money now, right? So they can kind of choose to do what they want with it based on their own lifestyle and moral kind of reason. So now I don't believe, so you've done it for a good reason, for a virtuous reason to hopefully help maybe to get them a hostel and stuff. And so if they then choose to spend that on that, well, so be it. But if it's something you're worried about, well, not so be it. But if it's something you're worried about, then you should definitely buy the food yourself and give them the food. So then there's no worry.

You're doing the good thing without the worry of your, what's their money then. but the money you've given them then been filtered. Would you have like a rule? Because I remember recently I was stood at a kebab van getting some chips, which is another thing I want to ask you about, actually, with things like chips being cooked in the same fats and things, if that's something you avoid. But I remember I was getting some chips,

and a homeless person came up to me and asked if I had any change. And I said, what's it for? He said he wants to get some food. And I said, it's fine. I'll get you something. So we both got some chips. And then Hussain, the lovely kebab man, says, do you want cheese on that?

And the guy kind of goes, yeah, that'd be great. And I froze. I was like, am I supposed to go, no, no, no, I'm going to buy you food, but I'm going to choose the food for you? Like, is that something that I should have done? Yes. Yeah, I think so. Again, one of these situations, it's very tricky.

I would have said that it would be better for you not to do that. But at the same time, it's not like, it's not like you're no longer vegan or you're a bad person because you did do that because again the situation comes from from an act of virtue and then this extra thing happens that you didn't really have much control over in the moment apart from you have to say no and then you're worried about your virtuous act seeming less virtuous and then you're worried about how people perceive that and so then there's this pressure socially of not wanting to seem awkward or like seeming selfish or something even though the act itself is very unselfish so no I would say that you should still not do it because the principle is you're still creating the demand you know

Hussein then we'll have lost a little bit more cheese and then you know have to buy more cheese quicker and such like that so yeah you shouldn't have done that but it doesn't make you a bad person you know and this is why it becomes challenging you know but then it becomes challenging because if my if my reasoning is this is good and this is bad then to buy these products is an act of bad which means if you're consciously doing it you're a bad person but then I don't think people are bad for doing these things and so it's a roundabout thing of like just mental gymnastics of trying to find good and bad without making without defining people as good and bad sure I see what you mean so what do you think about like um because uh at hussein's for instance um i'm pretty sure they

cook the chips in the same oils as they cook the animal uh the products and i don't have any quarrel with it but i know a lot of vegans really really do they'll they'll completely avoid that kind of thing are you someone who avoids that i do avoid it but back when i mean you've only been vegan like three months now right so back back then i would have not thought too much about it i actually i don't know if i ever did it or if i did it consciously i'm not sure i wouldn't do it now but back then maybe would have done. And the reason I wouldn't do it now is it's not necessarily because of a moral reason. It's not because it doesn't add to the

supply and demand. It doesn't but it, I just, I don't want that. It's a bit disgusting. Yeah, I don't want like a piece of like fried chicken to end up in my chips or something, do you know what I mean? So it's more of that reason alone. It's not necessarily a moral reason. It's just more of a personal reason. Yeah, and you reminded me as well

bringing up KFC, for instance. There's a big debate and we nearly spoke about this earlier, but I said, let's save it for the podcast. KFC I have released a vegan chicken burger Burger King are trialling the Impossible Burger So many places are beginning to do this kind of thing Should we be going and spending our money

At a place like McDonald's or KFC or Burger King Which are the big dogs when it comes to animal exploitation In order to buy their vegan products So I mean this links back to what I was saying before And so if I was when I was talking about low-income families rely, you know, dependent on these, on these, um, these fast food outlets a lot of the time. And so, um, yes, I think we should, but for people that can't live like you and I necessarily, can the people that can't go into M&S or can't buy fruits and vegetables.

But you think we shouldn't do that? I think we can buy them if we want to. I don't, I don't have, I don't have, I don't have an issue against people buying it. Um, at all. I think, I think it's a great thing that is this is happening. Not, it's not just about the burger. It's about it, it's, it's, it's symbolic of change and that's why I love it. It's not because I'm like, yay, KFC, let's give the money. It's because it symbolizes progression. But I mean, there is a, because the way that I'm looking at this is that as soon as a vegan option becomes available in McDonald's or KFC or Bergking, we should just absolutely just flock there and make them sell out and make

the demand increase. Because if that doesn't happen, there's a chance that they're just going to take it off the menu. Well, they're not going to care about it too much or they'll keep it as a side product. If we show that this product is the dog's needs, it's the, it is the thing that everybody wants, then it takes a bigger place on the menu. It's a bigger picture, you know, that there's nicer writing and the price goes down and there are special deals and everything. And then eventually that will convince more people to purchase it and for them to put even more money into vegan options. I feel as though

given that, a lot of people say that because these people are so big on animal exploitation, we should avoid contributing our money to that economy. But because they're so big, the best thing we can possibly do is affect that economy. So to me, it's not just like, yeah, go there if you want. It's like, absolutely, you should go out of your way to go and buy. You should every time you get lunch, if you can afford it, you should go and buy a vegan burger, even if you don't really want to eat it. Like, we should really be driving that economic progress. Yeah, I mean, it's funny. I've spoken about this quite a few times and I always said, and I used, this is before the Kerosene, I used to use McDonald's, and I said,

McDonald's is one of the places I'd least like to go and buy anything. And the reason for that is because it's so bad, which ironically means it's the place I should most go and buy something when the vegan product comes out. Because if we think about, again, this is an indictment of our society, right? It's an indictment of the fact that McDonald's and KFCenberg can hold so much power and can create so much damage as a single corporation. And so we are somewhat battling within the confinements of kind of what's possible for us

as consumers. So if McDonald's is destroying the rainforests for cultivation of cattle or for beef and for soybean that's fed to those animals and such, and even in this country, it's responsible for, you know, land, you know, habitat destruction, kind of, you know, deforestation and such. If it's so bad, then we need them to stop as quickly as possible, right? We need them to stop what they're doing. Yeah.

And so you can do that through kind of like a social, you know, kind of through a consumer supply and demand thing, you can do it through some sort of like anti, you know, kind of anarchistic kind of anti-capitalist kind of like uprising. So, you know, but we have to work within the confinements of what we have now. And the latter thing I said probably is not going to happen right now regardless of how you feel about it. But the thing that we can enact is kind of like a supply and demand consumer thing. And so that's something we have direct power over right now. And so I do think that these things happening is a great thing.

And I do think that we should buy them. But at the same time, like I'm also not, if someone doesn't want to go into KFC and buy the vegan burger and they're vegan, like I get that as well. I can understand that, A, we feel uncomfortable about it. you know, a little bit of a saving grace is people like, oh, if you buy this burger, then that money is going back to chicken farming. No, not necessarily. In fact, it's going back to corn because, you know, the corn is corn that's producing the burger. And so when you buy that vegan burger, that money's actually going to be going back to

corn to produce more of it. And then it'll be profits and dividends and such. So it's not actually that necessarily every penny you give to KFC is going back into chicken farming. It's going back into providing that product more because you're increasing the demand for that product. Well, it's also one of the first things we spoke about today. And I remember asking you about, like, how far.

you would take the principle anyway, because I've never understood why somebody would say, and also, like you say someone might be uncomfortable going into KFC. I consider that in the same way that it's uncomfortable to change your diet. Like, if it's for moral progress, then who cares, let's do it? Like, come on, you have an obligation here. If it's so, if there's this real opportunity for economic incentive, for someone like McDonald's to change the way that they're treating animals, or at least the extent, then I think we have an imperative to do it.

But if you're going to have this, this rule against going to places and contributing to companies that exploit animals, it's like I said to you earlier, are you going to go and buy your books from Waterstones if the cafe upstairs is selling meat? That money in a roundabout way is going into a company that's spending money to exploit animals. So in a roundabout way, you're funding that. It's like, that's ridiculous. Come on.

You're still going to shop at Tesco, even though they're selling milk. You can't take that principle to the reducteo ad absurdum. And so it seems like a bad principle to be holding. I think that I don't, not only do I not understand the argument of people who say that it's wrong to go into these places. I think the exact opposite. I think it's the best possible thing we can be doing. You seem a bit more sort of apathetic about where you're getting the, the vegan goods. Well, yes, I guess so.

I think that's probably that slightly puritanical side of me that wishes this wasn't the way, you know. It's almost like a reluctance to accept that this is what has to happen. But I also do think that currently, the way society is shaped at the moment, that is what has to happen. And so we talk a lot about consumer demands and supply and demand, and this is a perfect example of that. And so, yes, if no one went and bought the vegan KFC burger, I mean, thankfully, they did. And I say thankfully, which kind of summarizes how I feel. But if they didn't, then that burger would not be there. And then it would be a failure.

And then other fast food chains would be like, well, it didn't work for KFC. Like, why would we do it? But it sets a great example for us all, you know, it sold out like within three days or something. thing so they have to restock it. I mean, that's fantastic, you know. So I do, when I, when I, I, I try and sit somewhat like on the fence, like, oh, do I, do I personally need to buy it? Do I personally need to endorse it? Or will it just happen naturally? Or is that a risk, you know, and, but you are right in the sense of how many degrees of separation do we need to have? You know, we can go into Tesco's. Tesco's have farms, you know? So if I'm buying a vegan sandwich from Tesco's and that money's

going back into Tesco, how do I know that that money is not then going to promoting animal farming? You, you don't now. So it really is about how many degrees of separation are you willing to have. I mean, this didn't kick off with the Greg sausage roll. It didn't kick off with Wagamamas or Frankie and Benis or any of. No one was like, Wagamamas have a vegan catsu curry. I'm never going to Wagamamas because they have a chicken catsu curry. Like, why is it that KFC has suddenly kind of created such a kind of like a binary scenario of like yes or no? Like no, no one else did that. And so I think it's what KFC emboldens and what it represents. That must be it. It's like these companies, KFC and McDonald's and they're like, they've become just metonyms for animal

cruelty to the vegan community. It's like they are the poster child of that kind of thing. It's like they're synonymous with it, whereas like Gregs or Wagamama isn't really, even though they're doing the same thing. But it's disingenuous. Yeah, it's just a, it's just a cultural effect. I'm interested in putting some kind of specificities to you because I imagine you find this with the work that you do, many of the conversations you'll have are not really on the big picture ideas, which I think is worth kind of covering that ground. But a lot of the nitty gritty is where the interesting stuff is found. So let me give you a slightly contrived thought experiment, shall we say. And you'll understand why I'm sending you camping in a second,

but you're going camping and you picked up some vegan foods on the way. It's only once you get to the field and you're far, far away from civilization, this is important, that you realize that you've accidentally bought some non-vegan food. And so your choices are, it's already bought. Your choices are you either eat it or you throw it away. There's no, like, go and give it to a homeless person. There's no kind of, like, get out, claws like that. It's like you're either eating this milk and egg product

or you're just going to throw it away and not eat it. What do you do? I wouldn't eat it. Why is that? Well, I mean, you can, so you make the argument, right? So I bought the product. I mean, like, I could be very facetious and say, I'll take it back, you know. Not allowed.

Exactly. okay so the argument's made okay you've bought the product the damage is done yeah so what's the harm well again you can you could make the moral argument that there is no harm and so again like say I'm three months of vegan or like you know how long there was a time where I would probably eaten it right at the beginning where I'd have said ah you know whatever I've done the damage but now I wouldn't I think that's just because for me for me like I don't view this as being food anymore in the same way that I if you know in the same way let's say I bought a sandwich I opened up and And then I realized actually this, it's actually a layer of plastic in there.

I still wouldn't eat it because I don't see it as being food. And that seems like a strange thing to say. But I don't see it as being something I want to eat. Presuming you could eat that plastic and it was like a healthy-ish thing to do. Your other option here is to throw it away. The other option is to waste the food, throw the plastic into the ocean. You know, like surely that's worse, especially since, as you say, the damage has already been done. Well, I mean, it depends how long I'm out there for, if it comes to a situation where I, so first of all, like, if I, if I don't have to eat it, so I could, you know, feed the, you know, so we could do it. I mean, is it a sandwich? What have I bought? If we're getting asked, then I agree.

Let's, well, I'll, I'll lay the cards bare here. The other day, I bought a corn sausage roll thinking that it was vegan and it was not. Okay. So you've bought a, you've bought a sausage roll that, that one of these corn sausage rolls that has, has milk and egg in it. I'm a terrible vegan. What can I say? I'll say that vegan badge off, you know. What do you do? Well, I mean, I mean, so you could, I mean, maybe you could have taken it back, maybe you could have given it to someone else, or maybe you could have thrown it away. I think you're faced with three conundrums there.

If you eat it, I mean, morally you could make the argument well, the damage is done. And if you can't return it, then, you know, you could give it to a homeless person, of course. But at the same time, for me, I don't want to normalize that to myself. And so if my mentality says now that these products to me aren't food. And so at the beginning,

if I was to consume those products, I'm still normalizing this is, something I want to eat, where in reality, now I don't want to eat these things. And so if it's the choice of between not eating it and eating it, even if not eating it means I'm going to go hungry and miss a meal. And I'd still rather do that because there's no, there's no part of me that has the desire to do that. I mean, it's not just the bad effect on you in terms of hunger, but also the intrinsic wrongness that there seems to be with food waste. Food waste is a massive problem. Yeah. And you're kind of contributing to that. I mean, it's almost a bit of red herring

because the environment we're describing, I could keep the food, take it back and give it to a homeless person, you know, or I could take it apart and feed it to animals. There's so many different options, so it's an environment that would never really happen now. Is that really much worse? So, okay, but maybe that's not what you're saying.

Maybe, because you seem to be implying that it wouldn't be, would it be wrong to eat it? I suppose is what I'm asking. I can understand why you wouldn't because you're a bit disgusted by it or you don't want to, but is it immoral? Because there are two ways to look at it for me. The first is to say the damage has been done

And because we're trying to minimize suffering and maximise pleasure, the small pleasure that I'll get from now eating this is worth the fact because the suffering's already been done. So we may as well maximize the pleasure now by having it. The other argument is to say there's something incredibly grotesque about allowing someone to take pleasure from the exploitation of animals, even if the damage has already been done. Like I wouldn't eat baby flesh or something from a murdered baby, even if I would quite like the taste because there's something a bit grotesque about taking enjoyment from that, right? So I think it can swing both ways. But is it, is it actually? actually wrong, rather than just a kind of practicality, is an immoral thing to do. Yeah, I think so, because also it comes down to that issue. It's almost like, right, so say like with the baby example, the human baby example, say it's the exact same situation, you were given this sandwich, you were told it was pig, and then you get to the thing and there's like a little note that says, ha, this is actually baby, right? You're still not going to eat it because you recognize that as being wrong, but actually, well, again, you know, the damage is done. But what, I mean, because I'm thinking, obviously people like

will intuitively say that's wrong. But to me, putting on the philosopher's cap I'd say well actually I don't necessarily think there's anything intrinsically wrong with eating human flesh and like the damage has already been done I didn't do the murder the only thing that's possibly wrong there is the slightly gruesome feeling of taking enjoyment from eating that but if you do then it seems to me that you can make the philosophical case that actually that is the right thing to do yeah well I mean that it depends where you form that

line I suppose then doesn't it I mean if if it's if you believe that it's right to I mean I think to be consistent if you believe that you believe that it's right to eat the animal product then you would have to be consistent to say I think it's right to eat the baby because if the arguments are the damage is already done I can't you know this is the situation we're in well I'd at least say it's not wrong even if it's not even if it's not right it's not not it's not wrong yeah not immoral but I do I do think it is because at the same time I think I wouldn't want someone to do that with my flesh even though I hold no real kind of I guess really no I wouldn't if I died and then like someone into the peat in my flesh I

probably like now I'd rather they didn't do that so I guess this is almost a sign of respect in the sense of, you know, this is not something that we would want. So it's almost like a respect and a normalization of the process of what's happened to the animal. Do you think that we should have a similar kind of reverence for animal carcasses? I mean, the fact that we even have a different word, carcasses rather than like, what would be the word, slipping my mind for human bodies. Corpses. Like, I can understand why we want to live in a society where people after death are treated well. And I think the reason for that is because, as you say,

you would quite like to be treated well. I personally don't particularly care. You can do what you want to my body after I've died. But I understand why people do. And even though the person who's died isn't going to be there to experience it, other people will be assured by the fact that we're treating them like that, that we'll be treating ourselves like that. But do you think we should do the same thing for animals?

If we're having kind of equal moral consideration, especially because animals aren't going to look at other animals and think, oh, I'm glad that's not going to happen to me. Like, is it fair? to say that like an animal dies naturally we give it a perfectly nice natural life try to try to increase its pleasure but when it drops dead you just kind of chuck it in the incinerator is there something wrong with we put them in the incinerator yeah like like should we should we should we because i think we kind of cringe at the idea of doing that to a human body yeah just

discarding them yeah yeah should we kind of be treating animal bodies in the same way with a similar respect it really depends i mean it depends what value that animal has and so if you come across say like a deer in a forest that's just died you have no burden or moral responsibility to do anything with the body just you know so you don't have to perform like a burial or a ceremony or respect their life or anything like that but at the same time with dogs and cats the idea that we would treat them as family and then just throw them away when they die seems wrong but i guess the argument could be made well what what's really the difference there in the sense of you know i would be quite shocked if someone had a dog and the dog died and they threw them an incinerator

So, you know, not cremating. I mean, that's different, but I mean, just like start burning them or something. I would be shocked by that. But really, I mean, why would I be shocked by that? Like, what, I guess it just shows a lack of respect for life or for the life that they had, even though that seems somewhat ironic because there's no life there anymore. That's essentially what we're doing with human beings. And we, when we, a funeral service is just this strange, ritualistic, like, sanctification of life.

That's essentially what we're doing. And I think maybe if we're trying to kind of cultivate a similar, maybe that's part of the, like, if you think about the kinds of animals that we would treat well and bury after death would be the same kind of animals that we intuitively wouldn't want to see getting beaten up on the street when you use the example of a dog people can kind of relate to that that's the kind of pet that we would that we would bury maybe maybe it's kind of connected in that way I don't know but it must be it must be I don't know which way I don't know if it's like because we treat dogs with reverence we're more we're more kind of morally attuned to their suffering

or because of the fact that we're morally attuned to their suffering that we then treat them with reverence I'd be interested to find out. because that might be a good way to cultivate empathy. If we find out which way around it works, we could kind of try and apply the same thing to other animals, perhaps, I don't know. But I think it's very difficult to develop empathy for, for instance, fish.

It's almost impossible for most people. I mean, you can look at a dog in the eyes and tell it's feeling pleasure and pain. You can kind of do it with a pig too. I mean, pigs are quite emotive animals. Cows, you know, they'll roll around and have fun. Never seen it in a fish, I have to admit. Never seen a fish smile.

never seen a fish kind of squeal in pain I mean like how can that come about like especially if the arguments that we're kind of making are resting on this this consistency someone might say to you Ed you know

I'm I'm with you you've made me realize that I'm inconsistent by being angry at a dog being slaughtered but not with a pig being slaughtered but I have no empathy for these fish I think that that shows a significant

a significant what we with the word be a significant kind of boundary in our species or kind of like a war in our species that it's almost like we place like our inability to empathize as a reason for them to suffer where actually that's a failing on our part rather on on the fish's part are we certain that fish feel pain in the same way as as pigs and cows yeah so i mean it's science there's a whole bunch of literature out there about this but let's take um a study was done on fish um they um the little I think it was like a little incision was made into them or something.

And so their heartbeat increases, they begin to breathe more, more erratically. And then they administered the morphine, and so the heart rate dropped, their breathing. So all the symptoms of humans in pain, you know, were then exhibited in fish. And then when, you know, the morphine was administered, the same reaction that would apply in humans apply to those fish as well. So I guess if anyone actually has any doubts about whether or not they can empathize with fish, there are actually videos online that I think are very shocking.

so a fish been eaten alive and I think this is a really great way to gauge whether or not we empathize with these animals where we see a fish that's half eaten but they're still alive and I think most people are really I think most people have a reaction to that and it's a big thing in Asia

where we eat like light of octopuses and stuff so to go and have a look at that go and Google like fish being eaten alive and see if that provokes emotional reaction because again to be morally consistent the reason that we should show moral consideration to dogs and pigs is not because we can hear them scream you know that that's redundant vocal cords don't don't attribute moral consideration um it's the foundation of

of sentience and also of the ability to feel pain and so all we have to do is acknowledge that the fish um can feel pain and are and a sentience and then then it shows a moral inconsistency to to a grant consideration to cows and pigs chickens dogs cats humans but not to tuna and salmon and and you know and animals in in in the ocean yeah i think the answer is probably a philosophical empathy. You can have a kind of emotional empathy in the sense that you look at a pig and you see its eyes and you think,

man, I want your suffering to end. But you can also have a philosophical empathy, which is like thinking about the reason I'm empathetic towards my fellow creature, my fellow, my fellow man, my fellow dog, and seeing if that also applies to fish, even if I don't feel the same emotional response, I can kind of cultivate a feeling

that I should be empathetic at the very least. And that's kind of practically equivalent to having the empathy when it comes to the treatment. But it can be done. I remember the story of Franz Kafka, who after we went vegetarian, stood in an aquarium looking at a fish,

and he was just overwhelmed with the sense of contentment. It was like, I can finally enjoy standing here and looking at you without feeling guilt. But talk to me about honey. Oh, honey.

Because we're going to get smaller and smaller. We've come from the humans to the cows to fish, and I want to get down to where this ends. I mean, honey is a controversial one, and insects more generally. Generally, people want to start eating crickets because they're full of protein and things. Like, where are we standing on this?

Well, that's interesting. I mean, it depends how you view it. Environmentally speaking, yes, the farming of insects is significantly better than the farming of ruminant animals. And well, any animal outside of that, mammals, birds like. So you could make that argument. The honey one's interesting. Let's break it down. We'll do like crickets next.

Let's do honey. So I think there's a certain illusion that actually by buying honey, you're somehow promoting bee um the bee populations you know which which in actuality doesn't work i mean you know we've been consuming honey for such long time and we buy lots of it but it doesn't doesn't mean that the bee populations is somewhat stabilizing um so farmers conventionally with honey um what will happen is um the queen bees the the worker bees will um they they are so loyal to the queen bee and that if they cut the the wings off the queen bee then the worker bees will stay with her for anything so you have these hives, they cut the wings off the queen bee. But they also artificially inseminate them,

which is really weird. So if you, they crush right about five of the male bees, the worker bees to acquire the semen, and then they clamp the queen bee in and the artificial inseminator. So that's like, first of all, that's, that's an issue in itself. Also, honey is the bees food source. So this is where it becomes a little bit disingenuous when we say, well, buying honey promotes bee populations and healthy bee populations. Because it doesn't, because we take honey away from the bees, which is their food source. And we replace it in some like high fructose corn syrup, which is nutrition inadequate and does nothing

to actually promote healthy bee populations. So we take that honey, we consume it, even though it's their food source that they've vomited to produce for themselves. We place it a nutritionally inadequate thing. And then come winter, often what will happen, commercial honey hives is the farm will gas the bees to death and then come spring and they'll repopulate them and start the process again.

And so, yeah, it's about the conventional farming thing has again a disrespect for life. So there are obviously stages. So you can consider that's like the factory farming of honey. And then you can have maybe like an environment of honey where the bees aren't gassed. For example, you know, where maybe the queen bee isn't mutilated in the same way. Although I'm sure she's always artificially inseminated.

She's not mutilated in the same way. And so we eliminate a lot of that problem. But the issue is, again, is we're still not, we're still dealing with an ideology that insists that animals are here for us to use. And I think that that's that mentality of speciesism. It's not about food. You know, that's one aspect. It's not a diet.

It's a philosophical understanding of our relationship with non-human animals. And while we have a dependency or an idea, an idea that non-human animals are there for us to use, I believe that's a very stagnating mindset. And so, again, I don't have an issue with beekeeping. Again, in fact, I think beekeeping is essential. And it boils down to these subsidies again. And so people say, well, without honey, where's the incentive for, us to breed bees. And then will these subsidies. Subsidized farmers to produce bees to then have

bee populations that can be then used for pollination and to produce plants that we need. And so in a roundabout way, just let the bees produce honey, but let them keep the honey as their food source. And then let's subsidize farmers so they don't need to sell honey to make money. Subsidize them so they can ensure that they have beekeeping and they're producing bees. And then we can allow the bees to do their thing, hopefully restore and stabilize bee populations. and, you know, and also with things like vertical farming and such, we can reduce pesticides and herbicides and bee killers in that way. So, yeah, there's no need for honey.

Agarvi, maple syrup was all these different things. And as such, let's just leave the bees to do what they want to do. Should we really care? Like, can bees feel pain in the same way? But they can feel pain. I mean, pain is subjective. How do we know that they don't feel pain worse than we do? You know, I think we have this, I guess it's almost a human arrogance

where we think that because we are potentially the most, evolved beings, cognitively speaking, that we therefore have the ability to feel emotions strongest. Well, I don't think that actually necessarily equates to being true. For example, killer whales, the part of their brain that has the associates with empathy is actually more advanced than that of a human or, you know, or so I've read, so let's, you know, I'm going to make absolutes. So that would message, that would maybe insinuate that killer whales or hawkers have

an ability to empathize more than we do. Who knows? But say, like, dogs is a good example. You know, one thing we always say about dogs is they live. the present, you know, they're always living in the present. That's one thing about non-human animals is they exist in the present. This might be something you've said. No, maybe not. Maybe not me. But with humans, we have an ability to think to the future. We have an ability to distract ourselves. You have an ability to kind of disassociate, right? And so when it comes to pain,

the fact that we can disassociate might actually mean that we can cope with pain better than non-human animals because we can take ourselves out of that equation. We take an animal that's more rooted in the present, can't necessarily think in the same way that we can or distract themselves in the same way that we can. Pain for them might be a lot more severe because they don't have these natural psychological escapes that we do. But I mean, can we even talk about the psychology of bees? Because that's the thing, that's the thing that I think most people are feeling it's like, yeah, we can't know that they can't feel pain in the same way that we can't know that a plant doesn't feel pain, but we can look at the structure, the chemical structure of plant and say

that that that's not what we're talking about when we mean suffering, really. People talk about the release of chemicals and that's not what suffering is. And I don't know, I can see what people would think that that doesn't exist in insects. Well, do they have a nervous system? Well, I don't know. Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, so, yeah, so they do, like, so, like snakes, for example,

and that they don't, we don't believe that they can't feel pain. So it's, it's, you know, yes, you know, we think we have to owe somewhat of a benefit of the doubt to these animals and say that we don't know necessarily everything about them. We don't know how deeply they think and stuff, but we should grant them enough of a benefit of the doubt

that says, let's not harm them. Yeah, because, I mean, it's not a big sacrifice to just not eat honey, right? So can you be a vegan, not to moralize, but can you be a vegan who eats honey? In your view, I mean? No, no, in the same way that you can't be a vegan that consumes milk or eggs. You know, there's an animal product, there's suffering involved, there is no necessity for it, and it would be better for the animals if we didn't do that.

Interesting. Okay, I want to talk to you about something that comes up all the time, and I kind of know how I would navigate this, but I understand why people bring it up. And it's kind of, it's not something that could exist universally. but people are always talking about things like you spoke about ethical humane slaughter before which I understand your reservations about but the kind of concept of taking an animal and letting it live fairly well and killing it painlessly before it's due but still killing it painlessly and then eating its meat you'd still have a problem with that yeah why well first of all let's take from a practical

perspective. Sometimes I'm sold this kind of idealistic version of animals like having just the most beautiful lives and then when they've lived a really good life, we just kind of shoot them in the head or something. First of all, that's just not physically possible. So even if we try to argue this from a moral perspective and we can perceive this to be moral, it still can't be implemented, certainly not with the land we have and with the demands that's in place. And so currently no products that you're buying are coming from this idealistic environment anyway, even free range organic. It still doesn't subscribe to what this idea is discussing. But let's say that we have, let's say that we can. Let's say we have as much land and as many resources as we want and this

isn't an issue. We can feed everyone's demand with this reasoning. Is it then still a moral issue? Yes, I think it is because these animals still have a preference to, they can still have the ability to feel happiness and the ability to nurture, you know, let's take cows, their matriarchal beings, they exist in familial herds. You know, for example, like that. So, you take out one, you shoot the mother in the head, well, that's still going to have a knock on effect to the herd, you know, and even solitary animals, they still exist in a way that means that they value or they, it's hard to say whether they have a preference or they value,

but we can, we know that they seek out experiences that provide pleasure. Yeah, because I mean, we know that they, that they desire their pleasure, but like, I don't think it makes sense to say that they desire to stay alive. They probably have no conception of living, the, the, the things that they do to, to attempt to stay alive will be side effects of the evolutionary processes that have brought about avoidances of pain and things that generally lead to death. I don't think they're kind of consciously thinking, I don't want to die. Although we can see animals mourn. And mourning is a suggestion of a recognition that there's no longer life. And so do they conceive a notion of death?

I mean, I guess we don't know. But if they can mourn, it must mean they have an understanding that life is finite. Well, there's, there's a animal mourning is an interesting. interesting, but a tricky thing to navigate. I spoke to Michael Shermer about it on this podcast, actually. He did a whole book about death and the different responses across the animal kingdom. Morning, I think, can be just an expression of missing somebody. It doesn't necessarily require a concept of death and knowing that it's going to happen to you as well. But animals do seem to recognize a finality of death. And sometimes you hear stories, again, it's hard to attribute this to be exactly what we perceive it to possibly be, but you hear stories of people

that say that their dogs, when they're sick, they go off to go and, you know, maybe they go and sit somewhere. And also, you hear stories of dogs go into the gravestones, you know, of their owners. And so that must suggest, so we say, oh, well, they have a perception of missing. Well, to miss, that means you have to recognize they're gone. So gone means that to recognize they're no longer alive, which... Well, I mean, dogs seem to miss their owners when they go down to the shops as well, like in the same way that they kind of scratch at the door, maybe that's a similar thing of sitting at the grave turn. They're kind of waiting for the owner to pop out of the grave. Potentially so. Which is very, very upsetting now that I think

about it. That's absolutely heartbreaking. It is heartbreaking. But again, if they don't, why is it heartbreaking? Why is it heartbreaking? Maybe because we have an empathy and we recognize. Yeah. But there again, it's heartbreaking because we empathies with the dog to think, oh, they're mourning. I think, oh, man, I must want that person back. Yeah, I suppose so. But at the same, so yeah, maybe it's hard and we can probably imagine that say bees as an example don't you know maybe we can make the argument that dogs do and pigs do and whales do but we would probably say that cockroaches bees and crickets probably don't so there's scales to this but that doesn't necessarily mean it's justifiable to kill those animals for that reason alone I mean so it's like

if I see a cockroach and I just squash it and then cook it up and eat it for my protein you know it hasn't suffered if I kill it instantly I might develop some kind of again in the world of philosophy, you can do whatever you like. So I have a special insect cockroach squashing device that painlessly kills cockroaches and I just use it on the odd cockroach and eat it for my protein. Why don't we apply that notion of killing without pain to humans? I think only because of the recognition that other humans have of that happening to them. I've spoken to people about this. I remember I spoke to a friend of mine who's a very, very happy person. He lives a very, very happy life. But he said to me, we had this argument about it because

he said, we were talking about this topic, and I said, you know, how would you feel about someone just coming up to the back of your head right now and shooting you? And you have no awareness. You're just dead instantly. And he'd be like, he was like, fine. I'm not going to know. I'm got like, if I knew it was coming, I'd want to avoid it. But like, I can't think of a reason to be particularly scared of that happening because

I wouldn't be aware of it. I'd just be gone. That would be a kapoot. So I think, like, intrinsically, there might not be anything wrong with, with killing someone painlessly because they're not going to suffer for it. you just don't do it because of the suffering that's going to come about in the world that they leave behind the same thing isn't really true of a cockroach unless they're homeless and they have no families and they have no social structures that's where things get that's where things get interesting

and interesting it's a good way tricky yeah yeah um i think again the reason why we'd be against that is because of the the the society it cultivates you wouldn't want to live in a society where an individual or the government or whoever it may be has the power to go and kill people that they don't deem like useful or worthy. I think that is the reason why we will have developed this empathy and this feeling of this feeling of legalistic morality. We say that somebody else shouldn't be able to be treated that way because that means I can be treated that way.

That's a kind of, I think that's the evolutionary psychology behind it. But the same just isn't true of a cockroach. No. So why not, why not just squash the cockroach and get the protein? What's the problem? I guess because they can have a, they can experience. Or I would imagine, I mean, I don't know a lot about cockroaches, but I would, I would imagine from the little I know about them, they can experience some form of happiness. And so to deny them, potentials to experience these things would be an immoral act.

So are you pro-life? Oh, this is my view. Alex. This is my views in Iraq. Do you see the point I'm making? I do, I do. But it depends, I am, so it depends on what stage you are. I mean, I don't believe that abortions, I don't believe that.

the conception equals life. I mean, it does fundamentally, yeah. So I don't, but I do believe there's a point where it has to be wrong. I don't think that, you know, unless, unless, unless there's a danger to the mother, I don't believe, there has to be a point where it becomes wrong. I have, I have a problem with the potential, with the potential argument. That's why I bring it up, because you say, like, this cockroach has the potential to, to achieve some happiness and it would be wrong to restrict that potential for happiness just because of my, my, my, my taste birds or protein. In the same way, like a fertilized egg has the potential to achieve extreme happiness. And yes, a mother would have to go through significant pain in order to have that child, but that's presumably outweighed

by the overall happiness of that child's resultant life. And yet I still think it would be justifiable of us to say, no, no, like, it's not about the potential. Like, yes, sure that all that potential is there, but that mother still has the right to just to get rid of that fertilized egg, because it is just a fertilized egg after all. And in the same way, yes, the cockroach has a, has the potential for a bit of happiness, but the happiness doesn't exist yet, and it's just a cockroach, so let's squash it. But the cockroach is in a position currently where they can experience happiness, where it's a fertilized egg, it's still, there's not a human there, but there's the foundations for a human, but the human still doesn't exist. But I mean, we're still talking about

potential here, like the happiness is what we're interested in, and the happiness doesn't exist in the cockroach. Well, let's say, let's say we have a situation when we can, we can take cells and we can produce them in labs, let's say you could clone someone, which would mean that every cell on every one of our bodies, then all of a sudden should be granted some sort of moral consideration because any cell could then be taken to be produced into a human. Well, but then on your view, it seems that you would have an ethical obligation to take as many cells as you could and turn them into humans, because potential happiness is so important that we need to try and cultivate as much, like, as higher quantity of happiness in the world

as possible. But then, but you do that, and it leads to a problem where you, uh, actually create a system that creates more negativity and is detrimental to society. And so part, I guess, of the reason of abortion is that if we have overpopulation issues currently and we're only going to continue exceeding in that level. And so to add more life into this world doesn't necessarily ensure happiness. And how do you even quantify people's happiness? Let's say you take again, let's take a rape victim who is impregnated for that rape. How do we, and they're an impoverished working class person, you know. Yeah. Who knows? That baby isn't necessarily.

so you're going to have a happy life just because they can't you can't plug it into a calculator right but then again like there's always a counter argument i mean if you talk about like the population thing the same argument can be made for culling the elderly like i think we need to be careful with this kind of with this kind of eugenics but but the reason i'm talking about it is because i think that it seems easier to avoid all of this baggage by just saying yes squash the cockroach yeah maybe consistently it does i have to say even as someone who is is completely on board as you know with your ethical position when it comes to animals and as motivated for people to change as you are, I don't think I'd have the same kind of reservation as someone that's

squishing a cockroach, especially if they offered this justification. They weren't just doing it because they didn't think about it. They were like, listen, I know what you're going to say, but hear me out. And they explain this rationale and they squash the cockroach and eat it. I'd probably say, fair enough. I wouldn't do it, but I understand you there. Is a cockroach an easy example because we'd amplify? So I, would we do that to any animal? But just put a pig in there. Or a whale. It gets complicated because of the social nature of their psychology.

Like you rightly point out, if you kind of take a cow away, then it's family. You're going to be sad. But take like an isolated cow. That's why I sort of, I'm talking about the cockroach, because the original question was about this cow that's lived a fairly happy life. It's like come across in nature or something. And someone goes and shoots it in the back of the head and eats it. It's the same thing here, really. Like the potential happiness is there.

but so what like potential happiness is not is not intrinsically uh a worthy kind of concept because otherwise you get all of this baggage with with the issues of abortion and the issues of like quantification of happiness i think that that happiness does not exist and somebody could uh somebody could just kill that animal the animal isn't going to feel any pain so there's no net suffering um so at the very least it's not wrong because you're not contributing to any suffering. That always have to exist in a vacuum because, yeah, because even if you take like modern agriculture, again, it comes down to that issue of practicality. And so I think a lot of what we discuss, it provides an interesting proposition, but it doesn't apply to like a real world

scenario, if you know what I mean. And so I guess I've never really thought about it before because it isn't something that that's feasible with the resources and finite. Yeah, because I mean, in your position, you can't advocate a position that couldn't be implemented universally. Like, as doing what you do, you can do that. But I'm just interested in, like, philosophy. So someone's asked me, but people always ask me about hunting. And you have this immediate kind of revulsion

to the idea of going out and shooting an animal. But especially if you're doing it for food, not for fun, a wild animal is probably going to have a pretty horrific death. If you don't go and shoot the deer or whatever it is, then that deer probably is going to go on, get its foot stuck in some, some logs somewhere and then break their leg and die of starvation. Surely it would actually be nicer to have them be shot in the head, especially if you can then increase the pleasure even further by feeding a family of five for like half a year.

I don't believe, I think there's some interesting arguments to be had of hunting. I don't perceive that to be one because the natural order exists and I think we all acknowledge that nature is a violent thing. One thing I don't like about vegans sometimes is when we romanticize animals and to this extent where we think that they're virtuous beings and nature, you know, where humans commit the problem. Nature is violent and brutal and horrible and animals don't die in nice ways at all but that doesn't mean that we are therefore entitled to handle them because we could use that justification to hurt any animal I mean all animals I mean even humans

in many areas around the world are going to die in horrific ways but we won't be justified to then kill them in any less horrific way to try and... Yeah well I mean so I'm not I'm not kind of making a case that we therefore have a right to kind of inflict suffering on them I'm saying that you can imagine the virtuous hunter who genuinely is like like I want to save these animals man They're going to, they're going to, they, I don't want them to have to live the rest of their days in this horrific, violent, brutal situation.

I'd rather them just die painlessly now. So do we condone just eliminating the animal kingdom? Because that would be the natural conclusion of that. If we recognize that these animals are going to die and we recognize the nature is violent, then to be virtuous becomes, well, then to, to wipe out old. Which potentially is the most virtuous things. Yeah, would you say someone who bites the bullet and says that, yeah, minimization of suffering. It's like the antinatalist. position which you might have come across.

It's like some people think that if in humanity there is a net suffering, which there probably seems to be, if you consider the worldwide population of humanity, seems that there's probably a net suffering overall. So like to minimize suffering, if we're going to be consistent, is just to just to cull all living. The best thing we could possibly do is keep contributing to global warming

so that the whole population just dies out, right? Sounds like we're writing the Avengers Endgame script now. Yeah, but you know what I mean? Like, maybe the, if veganism is a philosophy about the minimization of unnecessary suffering, maybe the best thing a vegan can do is be the least environmentally friendly person on the planet. I mean, this is something, it's a funny thing, isn't it? And we stray into dangerous territory, obviously, for, you know, arguments of like, you know, people that believe that veganism is this kind of agenda to do that.

But it's a very interesting proposition. I believe that life is mostly suffering. and I honestly don't believe that the happiness even comes close to a counteracting the suffering, even just on a personal level. Those hardships are much worse than any sense of joy that we have to feel. So, yeah, so there is the case you made that if we want to eliminate suffering, well, that would be a no, that would be an elimination of life. It's not just like that seems to be like a plausible situation.

It's like if your philosophy really is as simple as minimize unnecessary suffering, then it seems that you're kind of ethically obliged to commit mass suicide. Yeah, I mean, I guess a utilitarian approach would reach that conclusion as well. So why not? Like, what's the approach to that? Well, true. And if happiness is a, the possibility of happiness doesn't justify not killing, then well, what justification do we have left not to do that?

Well, that's very interesting. Because like you've got a burden in front of you and you can press that burden and it wipes out the human race and all living beings. You're probably not going to press that button, right? Someone asked me that years ago and I said, no, and they said they would. And I said, how could you do that? And I said, because life is suffering. And I said, yeah, but people can, we can change.

Like, life could become so great. And maybe, maybe that's it. Maybe life has the potential to change, but nature can't. You know, maybe as a society, we could reach a point where we live in some form of idealistic utopia where these isms, these negativeisms we discuss as something of the past, very, very unlikely that would ever happen. But maybe that is, it's kind of like an idealistic, almost naive perspective of saying, well, things can change.

So we should grant it the chance to, change. I don't know. Society's progressed so far that maybe we could continue to progress to a point where a lot of the things that we perceive to be wrong and cruel are no longer a thing of society. And maybe that's the point that it's not about how we live now. It's about trying to foster a sense of a world where the things that we suffer from now are no longer things people have to suffer from. Yeah. It just, it seems a bit wishy-washy. Well, I'm thinking about the fact that we are expanding so much effort to try to save and progress. long the sentient experience of this, this, this, this, this, uh, this, uh, this creature of

humanity, but also like the, the other animals of the animal kingdom that perhaps is completely wasted and we shouldn't be doing it at all because the, the, the, the minimization of suffering would be, be a lot easier if we just kind of let it kind of fizzle out. It seems to be a kind of, it's not just like an interesting philosophical, um, like, using, it's kind of a, it's a, it gets to the core of the whole philosophy that we're talking about. It knocks the legs out of it. If the whole reason we're building this edifice of good treatment of animals and environmental consciousness and all this kind of stuff is, is based upon the minimization of suffering. Then if the minimization of suffering is the very

thing that kind of takes the legs out, then we're in big trouble, surely. I guess the question becomes, could we reach a point where we've minimized suffering so much that the suffering is no long to prevailant? Oh, what do you think? think that's possible? I mean, as someone who quite confidently says that, that, you know, life is constituted mainly in suffering, do you think, do you think it's possible for that to be reversed? I mean, like, there's a good philosophical literature. People should read Arthur Schopenhauer's essay on the sufferings of the world where he was one of the kind of early people to wake up and make this, make this point. It was like, suffering is, if suffering is not

the aim of humanity, then nature has completely failed in admission. Like, this is, it seems clear that suffering is the active thing and pleasure is the kind of is the response to it, not the other way around as people often think, like all pleasures seem to be a kind of negation of some kind of suffering, like pleasure of eating is a negation of hunger and all this kind of thing. They couldn't exist without virtue of the opposite. So, so like you say, like it might not just be like a societal indictment that right now there's more suffering than there is. It might just be within human nature. It is the case that suffering, is the predominant and always will be the predominant force.

If that's the case, then what are we doing here? That's a good question. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, these are the sort of conversations I have very much privately. And it's like, because it reveals something that you don't want to accept, really, doesn't it? It's kind of like we do, I do what I do because I have this idea that I can try and help in some way that would reduce this suffering that would help in the long room. would prevent others, you know, human, non-human from having to endure what people, you know,

human and non-human currently endure. But if it is this sort of like redundant kind of like pursuit for some sort of like inner peace because I'm, you know, maybe the reasons we do a lot of things we do to be virtuous is to reduce suffering within ourselves to try and pretend that we're making a difference, you know, it's almost like a form of like self-congratulation where it's like, oh, well, I know I'm suffering because life is suffering. So if I can help, that makes me feel good. So it's almost like a lot of what we do that's virtuous is in effect just a form of trying to reduce our own suffering

by making ourselves feel like we're actually generating a positive difference. Yeah. And that's a pretty defeatist attitude as well. And it almost eradicates this idea that people do genuinely good things for genuinely good reasons. Yeah, but I think most people will intuitively accept if they think about it hard enough that there's no truly altruistic act. You're always going to benefit in some way

from an action that you commit. And I think, well, I mean, yeah. Yes, although self-sacred, man, it becomes challenging. I guess that I'm thinking of, I mean, yeah, probably. Like a soldier throwing himself on a grenade. Yeah, this is the sort of example I was thinking. But they still, I mean, you can still see, even if it's like totally irrational, somebody is doing that because either to maximize the intense pleasure of virtue that they

feel in the moment of doing so, or the converse, which is the avoidance of the pain, of the guilt of having not done so for the rest of their life. Like, they're still kind of trying to aim at doing it. that. I mean, an interesting thought experiment that was put to me, and I've spoken to a few people and a few guests about this. It's an interesting bit of food for thought. If people listening want to, this was something that kind of proved to me that I think all actions are ultimately self-interested, which is if I put the dilemma to you of choosing between killing an innocent person and then immediately forgetting about it or not killing the innocent person, but living

the rest of your life, thinking that you'd done it and living with that guilt, like, which would you choose. And people kind of virtuously might say, yeah, I'd, you know, I wouldn't kill the person. I'd take the kill. But I think, I think, rationally speaking, if you think about it hard enough, you realize that ultimately you would probably just kill the person. And it seems a rational thing to do in that situation. And I, I don't know, maybe that's not something you agree with, but I think, and it seems a fairly, um, uh, it's not a nice thing to admit. Like you say, it's quite revealing of your, of yourself. But I think it's probably what most people would do. It's easy to take the high ground and say, no, I would never do that.

Yeah. I think there's a lot of questions where people, no, of course not. I would, I would much rather live, like this kind of self-sacrifice. I would much rather live with that. But yeah, I mean, in practicality, we don't know. I mean, I think that's a lot of the time we just don't know what we do. The big, the big button, I think, is, I mean, I wish I could tell you that I believe that everything would be fine. And so I would, of course not push it. But if the bottom was there, And I thought about it long enough. There's a good job. There's a good chance I'd press it, you know.

So it's very difficult to know because how we want to be and how we want the world to be and how we want people to perceive us is often different to what we do in a situation where that option was presented to it. And also there's an important distinction because oftentimes these things get caught up and talking about what you would do.

But what you should really be interested in is what you should do, right? Right. So it's like, yeah, would you press the button? Would you kill the innocent person? Well, maybe, maybe not. But what should you be doing here? That's the question for people to.

So why should you? So why shouldn't you press the big red button? Well, that's the question. But what philosophical reasoning would say that what, I mean, obviously there will be some. So what, what reasoning would there be to not, like a nihilistic perspective that it doesn't matter if you don't? But the nihilistic position could only go as far as saying it's like indifferent to whether the button's pressed or not. It can't say don't press the button. It just says like, I don't care.

Like, do what you want. There are like arguments for the sanctity of life, which I don't think are particularly compelling. but, for instance, from a religious perspective, people think that you don't have the right to take the life of other people. Natural rights views will take this approach of saying that the rights actually exists. Like, you have an actual right to life. It's not like a product of, because I mean, John Stuart Mill believed in rights, even though that seems weird as a utilitarian. He had a whole edifice of building up a system of rights that's justified in the utilitarian principle, which seems really counterintuitive, but it's done quite well.

and it makes sense, but he doesn't believe that rights are actually their own thing. Bentham said the concept of rights is complete nonsense, and natural rights is nonsense on stilts quite famously. He didn't believe in them. But some people do. I don't give it the time of day, but that's one way you could perhaps get around it. Outside of that, I don't know what else there is. You have to believe in some kind of intrinsic value of life of its own accord,

not because of the pleasure or because of the suffering that, that's involved with living, but just life in itself. It's a similar question of like an isolated case of somebody who's completely comatose and incapable of feeling pleasure and pain. Is there really any, it's not like should you flick the button? It's like, is that even a moral question? Like, it doesn't matter. Is flicking that button not the same as like turning off a computer or something?

It's like if there's no pleasure and pain there, is that really all that matters? Some people will intuitively feel that there's a value to the life. It's not just like flicking off a computer. There's something breathing there. There's something organic. Maybe that's... But then again, that would just be what we do feel, not what we should feel.

It's an indictment of our psychology that we have this strange value of life of its own accord and even though we have no rationale for it. Well, maybe it's not even an indictment. Maybe it's something we should be thankful that we have. Well, but it's only thankful by virtue of the fact that we think that we want some justification not to press the button, right?

It's like it's completely circular. Yeah. We're only thankful to have a reason not to push the button because we don't want to push the button. Yeah. You know. So I don't know if there's really an escape from it. I don't know. And this is why philosophy is such an interesting thing to discuss because it draws up so many challenging concepts that are just, I think, sometimes beyond the realms of us, of, well, of course, beyond the realms of explain.

That's the foundation in so many ways. So it is a very much interesting thing to conceive of is why we should. shouldn't we do that? I mean, I don't believe, I don't, if we don't have some sort of, if you don't believe in religion, then I don't, then there's no preordained rights, you know, where do these rights come from? You know, culture may be, but I mean, culture is the poor determining factor of something like that, of morality or rights. Yeah, it can't be the basis. Right, exactly. Well, exactly. The metarethical basis of morality. Yeah. So we're without, if we don't have inalienable rights, then what do, then what do we have? Exactly. It, it's, and I think in alienating

rights can only be thought of as inalienable. I think it's useful to think of them as inalienable. It's useful. It's like a metaphorical truth, as Brett Weinstein would say, like, the gun is always loaded even when it's not. It's useful to think that it is because practically it helps to stabilize things in the same way. It's useful to think that the rights are completely inviolable in any situation. You know, you can't twist the innocent person's thumb to save the other person's life. You can't do it. They have a right to it. But ultimately, that's not grounded in an intrinsic value of the right or existence of the right. It's grounded in a separate principle. which I think is undermined by the fact that if it is the case, that life consists mainly in suffering. I think the whole thing is undermined, especially if the rights, including the right to life, is built on top of this kind of utilitarian principle, then by knocking out the utilitarian principle, we're also knocking out the rights. So it just all falls down, completely falls down. So where does that leave us? Somewhere not very pleasant.

No, it's, somewhere nihilistic and, and somewhere of, but is that, and I feel that that just makes sense. And I thought that people are trying to deny that. It's, it's almost, it's like a religion, I think this is how I feel a lot about religion, that people are religious because it gives them a sense of inner peace. And I think that often with philosophical teachings, I think that the default is nihilism. And then we try to convince ourselves of, of, of different principles so that we can try and give ourselves a sense of inner peace, you know, rights or whatever. And so, but is that, it's when everything trickles down and we discuss is that not just is that not just where everyone's going to fit in that sense yeah i mean even i mean even like the the thing that i've spoken about

before with people like step and rationality rules uh is the idea that people use religion to get that kind of basis but ultimately that itself is still a fairly um flawed basis because you ask about why you would care about what the divine creator of the universe thinks and and um you still end up in a similar kind of nihilistic and spiral but like if if listeners don't feel that way If you don't feel that life consists mainly in suffering, which I don't think, I think many people would dispute that. But also if you're just somebody who doesn't like to go down that rabbit hole and is thinking at the level of practical ethics, as well as philosophy taking you to these horrific, annoying and difficult places, philosophy can also take you to places like the realization that perhaps you should stop eating animal products. That's what it did for me. It can kind of take you both ways.

I hope the people listening have kind of been given some food for thought in that sense, in both directions. of course, but use this philosophical principle of consistency. Examine why it is that you feel certain things are right or wrong. And whatever justification you have for that, whether you're a natural rights theorist or a utilitarian or you're a religious person or whatever it may be, figure out what it is in that ethical construct that's making you think that something else is wrong,

like racism or sexism, think why it is, what's the rationale for saying that's wrong? And just see if it applies to animals too. And I think that most of the time it just absolutely does. I think also just something to add towards the end of these issues of should we or shouldn't we say press the button or you know that's not something we actually have control over so they're really interesting things to debate but but regardless of whether or not we think we should press that button or you know or if the the minimization of suffering taken to its extreme is this

scenario that's not something that's ever going to happen or something of control over and so we have to kind of operate within what's possible to us in the in the world that we live in and so if we do believe in the minimization of suffering and yes that might be the the fundamental logical conclusion, but it'll never happen. So let's just operate within the framework of what we have at our availability and the minimisation of suffering according to how what we can do is including the minimisation of animal suffering by being vegan. Yeah.

Now, I'm worried that if we draw this one any longer, then we'll start implicting some suffering in our listeners because they'll just be kind of dragging themselves along. Ears are probably hurting from the headphones that they're wearing. But I think in sort of closing, I've become convinced recently. It's become the most ethically obvious thing to me that I need to be a vegan

and that other people need to be vegan too. Do you think it is irresponsible to say that veganism is the most important moral emergency currently facing us? No, I don't think it's irresponsible. I think actually if you view everything in its totality, that's the obvious statement because it transcends beyond just what's happening to animals,

it looks at what's happening to our planet and also looks at what's happening to our health as well. And so if we view the number of preventable deaths in humans alone, the human rights and justices that occur in slaughterhouses and in other environments of animal exploitation. It becomes this all-encompassing ideology that deals with so many different issues. And so a lot of other social justice issues, if that's the right terminology, it's not single, it is quite a single issue. It deals with one problem, but this deals with a multitude of different problems. And so actually, if the question becomes, you know,

what is the most important thing that we can do in our day-to-day lives to alleviate the most suffering. Being vegan is absolutely that thing. Sure. I think because people are often quite offended at the suggestion that it's the most important moral consideration. I think because they say things like human trafficking still exists, like sexual slavery still exists. Why are we focusing on animals? I think my answer to that is that if you go onto the street and ask the average person, what do you think of human trafficking? You know what they're going to say. But if you go out of the street and asks the average person what they think of KFC. It's going to be a complete different story. So the moral emergency for me isn't necessarily what's going on per se,

but the fact that it's going on completely without notice and under the radar and no one seems to care even when it's brought to their attention. That's where I place the kind of height of moral emergency. Well, let's also add this the equation as well as to say like if if we get to a world where we have conceived the idea that raising chickens for food is wrong, we'll presumably, again, So to reach that kind of point in our moral development would presumably, and you'd certainly hope be a world with human trafficking, cease to exist by default, because to engage or to expound our empathy to include non-human animals

that we conventionally find difficult to empathize with, would surely mean that surely the empathy that we feel to our own species would increase by default. Of course, because veganism doesn't need to be about non-human animals. Veganism is a philosophy to me. I've always defined it as a philosophy of the minimization of unnecessary suffering of sentient creatures. So to be vegan means that these things don't exist by default. is to be is to be a vegan philosophically is as much to be against racism as it is to be against

speciesism yeah it's just that one of them is is not as prominent in in the moral context of of the current climate so like that's just kind of what has to be focused on but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's more important it's just more of like I say a moral emergency I think yeah that's that's fair to say and I hope that people can kind of understand that that's where we're coming from yeah maybe important wasn't like if I yeah I agree exactly what you just said important i don't think that any suffering is more important like they're they're all equally important in the sense that they should be abolished yeah that they're important to the to the to the extent of the extent of the suffering involved right so something could be uh more of a problem

because the suffering is of a higher quantity or even higher quality because people are different capable of experiencing different types of right of pleasures and pains um but they're all when it comes to uh as as as singer has said when it comes to just the experience of pain at a base level non-human animals are our equals in in terms of the ability to fill pain. I hope people can understand that it's not like we care about animals more than we do about humans or even the same amount. It's just that when it comes to moral consideration, the only thing that makes sense to attribute moral worth to is the ability to feel pleasure and pain. And that cannot be, that cannot be affected by the vestibule in which the pleasure and pain is existing. That, that

essentially I think is the summary of the of the vegan position there but I want to thank you for coming on Ed it's been a fun discussion it's been a bit wide ranging went to areas I didn't think it would didn't think it would go to I want to remind people about the animal rights march happening August 17th 17th and where like where can people find out about that yep on Facebook so if you type in search which is the group running it that I co-direct there's a whole list of different marches there's also a website www. the official animal rightsmarch dot org as well or on my social media channels as well yeah of course people can find you if you just youtube search earthling ad i imagine you've got the dot com forward slash earthling ad on youtube

everybody should definitely go and subscribe but also you're very active on instagram i don't think you have do you have twitter no i don't know i used to and i'm lucky you lucky you yeah likewise you can also follow me if you feel so inclined that's fine too um we don't mind uh but yeah thanks for coming on um really appreciate the work you do and congratulations on all the success as well, the things that you've been doing. If people follow you on social media, they'll see that you're all over the world doing all kinds of crazy stuff. I think it's an encouraging thing to see. So, you know, seriously, thank you. Thank you for the work. I always tell, I'd say to all guests, it's exciting to have you on, but it really is a real, real thrill to

have you here. And I hope that people, the people who've been incessantly commenting and emailing me about getting you on can now be somewhat satiated and that this conversation has been, been somewhat fulfilling for them. But with that said, like I say, Do be at the March. I'll be at the March. Ed will be at the March as well. You might bump into us. I have been, as always, Alex O'Connor and say I've been in conversation with Ed Winters or Earthling Ed. Thank you. Thank you.