Vegan Education with Dr. Faraz Harsini

Joining us today is Dr. Faraz Harsini, the founder and CEO of Allied Scholars for Animal Protection (ASAP). Faraz shares with Hope the importance of creating ongoing infrastructure on US college campuses that students can utilize for continued outreach. They discuss various vegan education tactics such as the use of graphic imagery and its effectiveness. Faraz also talks about encouraging changes to dining halls and how student activists should focus on increasing vegan options and not distractions like cage-free egg transitions. 

Dr. Faraz Harsini is a food systems and biomedical scientist. He holds a degree in Chemical Engineering with a focus on environmental research and nanobiotechnology, an MSc in cancer research, and a PhD in Cell Physiology and Molecular Biophysics.  As the founder and CEO of Allied Scholars for Animal Protection (ASAP), he is building permanent infrastructure in university to protect animals. Through ASAP, Faraz empowers students, promotes veganism, advances alternatives to animal testing in universities and medical schools, and helps dining halls transition to plant based food systems.  He also lectures at many universities educating students on the benefits of a vegan diet. 

Resources:

www.alliedscholars.org

www.instagram.com/alliedscholars

www.instagram.com/dr_faraz_harsini

www.youtube.com/c/DrFarazHarsini

https://twitter.com/DrFarazHarsini

Website:

www.alliedscholars.org

Ahimsa Living Circle Registration

Support this Podcast:

Hope for the Animals Podcast

Compassionate Living 

Transcript

Episode 125: Vegan Education with Dr. Faraz Harsini

Hope:

Welcome to the Hope for the Animals Podcast, a project of Compassionate Living. I'm your host, Hope Bohanec, and today, our interview is with Dr. Faraz Harsini. 

He has focused his activism on college campuses and college students, which I think is really smart. Young people, are exploring their ethics, how they want to live their lives, and starting their lifetime habits. It's really a great place to focus, and we're going to talk about that. 

But before we get into the interview, I wanted to share some thoughts with you. I recently had a couple of things happen that were kind of frustrating that I wanted to share. It's just too easy these days to get disillusioned with the state of the world and the progress for animals, but there is a light at the end of this tunnel of recent news. I'm going to get to a positive thing that happened as well. 

But I was listening to NPR recently, and they never say anything about vegan. It's just so rare to hear anything about animal farming or its impact, or veganism, but there was a long interview happening with an environmental ethicist who was spouting about individual change, how it doesn't help, this narrative that seems to be more and more prevalent these days, that the individual action that you take doesn't really help, and we've got to focus systematically. But they were talking about things like recycling and that kind of thing, and then the interviewer asked about going vegan. I took a deep breath, and I held that breath for the entire answer, while I turned red in the face with irritation, and he proceeded to say that eating vegan doesn't help. You're just one person. You're not going to affect any change, on and on. But then he took it in this crazy direction. It took this really unexpected turn, and he said that because of the growing number of vegans in the US, that the industry has had to look elsewhere to sell their animal products, and this is why we're seeing a rise in meat and dairy consumption in the East and in Asian countries. So basically, blaming vegans for the increase in global animal product demand and global animal product consumption. I have never heard this. Has anyone out there ever encountered this accusation? It's just so crazy. I mean, do we have counter information disproving this? I know it's ridiculous, but when an expert says it, when an environmental ethicist says it, it can be very convincing. So we do need counter information, factual information, to dispel this myth. Apparently, that's now going to be going around. It was frustrating that it was NPR, one of the actual trusted sources that does emphasize fact and science, and when they do finally talk about vegan, it's in this ridiculous context. It was very frustrating. I have a recent podcast episode actually addressing this growing narrative of individual change doesn't make a difference. It's episode 122 called Vegan is a Boycott with Janet O'Shea, if you want to hear more about this growing narrative. 

So the other disheartening thing that happened recently, I get requests from people on occasion that want to be on my podcast that don't align with my strategy or my messaging and they obviously never looked into or listened to my podcast. But I got one recently that was a doozy. I got a request from someone wanting to be on my podcast that has released this new app, and the app was called Humane Watch. And this app shows you, you know, you download the app, and you put in your zip code, and it shows you where you can buy organic chicken and free range eggs in your area. Wow. What a wonderful addition to our animal advocacy efforts. Oh, goodness. So you know, this app probably took hundreds of hours and so much money to create the app. And just so everyone knows my position, if you don't already, I do support some incremental change campaigns, but we have to look at each one individually and the criteria to gauge if they are effective or not should be if the steps taken for that incremental change lead us in the direction of animal liberation, to non-commodification of animals, and alternative labeling does not. That is the humane hoax. It sends consumers in a side direction of more animal consumption, more money for the industry. 

So yeah, this app I feel like it does not help. How amazing would it have been if this app guided shoppers to only vegan products. That would truly help the movement, truly help animals, guiding us in the direction to end injustice, the direction of more compassion and eventually leading to animal freedom. This was really a missed opportunity, and people need to do their homework before asking to be on a podcast. I'm glad to know that this exists. It's just one of the latest examples of what the animal advocacy movement is putting our time and money into. 

But there are signs of hope. This is the last bit of information that was a positive sign. I'm on CNNs email list, and they send emails about various things, and they do one on Sunday called the Sunday Spotlight, where they offer kind of a deeper dive or deeper info on a subject and this particular Sunday was all about going vegan. The email subject line was A Diet for People and the Planet, and they linked to six articles and several recipes on all very positive information about going vegan. Now, granted, it was mostly health and environment, very little mention of animals, but mostly good information and a very positive view of it. The email talked about how vegan diets can ease the strain on ecosystems and help us live longer. It was really just what I needed to give me some hope that we are still affecting change, that we are still slogging in the right direction. 

So it's not all bad news, but these are all things to be aware of. These narratives of humane washing that really distract from our true mission of animal freedom are out there, and we do need to know about them, all right. So let's get into our interview for today and hear about some really great work that's happening for vegan education.

Hope: 

Okay, today we have Dr. Faraz Harsini. He is a food systems and biomedical scientist. Faraz holds a degree in chemical engineering with a focus on environmental research and nano biotechnology. He has an MS in cancer research and a PhD in cell physiology and molecular biophysics, and he is the founder and CEO of allied scholars for animal protection. ASAP is the acronym. He is building permanent infrastructure in universities to protect animals through ASAP. Faraz, empowers students, promotes veganism, advances alternatives to animal testing in universities and medical schools, and helps dining halls transition to plant based food systems. He also lectures at many universities, educating students on the benefits of a vegan diet. Welcome to the podcast, Faraz.

Faraz:

Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to talk to you today. 

Hope:

I think that reaching out to young people is so critical, so important, and I'm grateful that that you are doing this, but before we get into that and your work, we like to ask a question to get to know you. So why and when did you go vegan?

Faraz:

Well, I'm originally from Iran, and that's where I was born, and until I was 22 years old, I never even heard of veganism. We don't even actually have a word for it in Farsi, but I know that I loved animals. I dedicated my bachelorette thesis to animals sacrificed in animal testing labs. I was against hunting, and I was a musician. So I even had at the end of my concerts every time a message about animals and encouraged fellow Iranians not to buy goldfish for Persian New Year, which is a tradition, and millions of fish die during this tradition. And I really just loved animals, except that not eating them just never crossed my mind. I never knew anything about the cruelty. Obviously, grew up, just like anyone else being told that I need meat to be healthy. And the part that is honestly the worst is growing up, I actually didn't like meat, but, you know, I was told that it's good for me. I needed to be healthy, and by the time that I actually wanted to go vegetarian, I was so addicted to eating meat that it was almost impossible to let it go at the time. So I didn't hear about it until I left Iran, and about 14 years ago, I was living in Germany, and that's where one of my friends, close friends, from back in Iran, actually told me that for us, you can say you love animals and eat them, too. And you know, I'm very grateful that she had the courage to talk to me about it, because most of us don't want to risk our friendships, and if our friends are wrong, we wouldn't say that, because we don't want to lose those friendships. But I really think that a true friendship is that when your friend is wrong, and not just a little bit, you have the courage to say something because you know that they can do better at the same time, I wish that I think anyone at any point, if they grabbed me and said for us, why aren't you vegan? Watch this footage, and, you know, answered a few basic questions. I would have gone vegan a lot sooner, probably anytime. But unfortunately, even when my friend pointed out my hypocrisy, I never really learned about eggs and dairy. I never really watched the video, nothing. It was just that question alone. Just stuck with me for three months as I was like working on it or thinking about it, and became gradually more and more uncomfortable with the idea of eating meat until I became vegetarian. And obviously even then I told myself that there are these people who are so extreme they don't even need eggs and dairy for whatever reason, little I knew. And so when I came to the US finally, around 2013 that's when I watched a video about eggs and dairy, and I was like, well, I guess I'm going vegan.

Hope:

It's really interesting that there's not even a word for vegan in in Farsi, in so many languages, right? I mean, this is something that's very, very new. Have you thought about going back and doing any, any outreach at home at all?

Faraz:

I mean, there is a word for it which is vegetarian, but just like India, when you say vegetarian, it's not really clear what you mean. It mostly means vegetarian, like someone who actually consumes eggs and dairy. So we basically nowadays just use the word vegan or like full vegetarian, something like that. But they can't actually go back to Iran. Back in Iran, I did some political activities. I was in protest against the regime. Almost got killed in some of those protests. And on top of that, I'm not religious. So in Iran, we were all born Muslim, but I'm not. So if you sort of, quote, unquote, leave your religion, then that's punishable by death alone. I'm gay, so that's and then I've done some LGBT stuff, and that's punishable by death. So I have, yeah, I nuked every bridge behind my back. But that doesn't stop me from talking about veganism in Iran, and I think that I'm probably one of the top Iranian vegan influencers, just because on Instagram we can make content, and there's just not a lot of Iranian vegan animal rights scientists and doctors. But yeah, ever since I started making content in Farsi, it's doing very well, and I I'm sad that I neglected it so much because I always thought, well, it's a small country or whatever, but I didn't think about it big impact that I can make because of my unique position there.

Hope:

Yeah, well, I'm glad that you got out that you are safe and you know that you're able to express yourself fully, and that you are able to be an influence, you know, and that you can give some vegan information in Farsi on Instagram, that's awesome. I think that's great. 

Faraz: 

Yeah, thank you. 

Hope:

So, so you're here now, and I think you got your graduate degrees here, is that right? 

Faraz:

Yeah, I came to Texas because I wanted to do cancer research. And there was one particular cancer institute in Lubbock, Texas, which was one of the best Cancer Institutes. They literally bought the entire cancer center from California and helicoptered it down to go back Texas. So, oh, wow, that's where I really wanted to study, and that's really what brought me originally to the US.

Hope:

Okay, so how did you how did that lead you into forming allied scholars for animal protection. And what does ASAP do? Maybe explaining what the organization is and why you started it.

Faraz:

So originally I wanted to do biomedical research, just because back in Iran, I volunteered in a hospital. I played music in a cancer institute back in Iran, and, you know, interacted with a lot of children suffering from cancer. And, you know, I asked myself, What is the purpose of life with my life? And at the time, the answer was, well, you know, cancer seems to be one of the biggest sources of suffering in the world so that's my thing now. So I originally came to the US because of that, but about the same time was when I actually became vegan. There are two parallel thoughts. One is that biomedical research, the more I realized that a lot of it comes back to the food that people are eating. And I, you know, got interested in biomedical research as it relates to food and diet and chronic diseases. You know, I had this dilemma that even if I want to save people, number one cause of death is still heart disease. Where does heart disease come from? From saturated fat and cholesterol, animal products, meat, eggs, dairy. When I was working on cancer, I was shocked to learn that red meat and processed meat are literally group two and one carcinogenic by World Health Organization, and no one is talking about it. And if I'm successful in my cancer research, then I'd probably reduce cancer risk or death by point 1% and I'll get a Nobel Prize. So that would be the biggest impact I could have yet, 40% almost half of cancers can be prevented by lifestyle choices, including diet, and no one is talking about it. So I had this dilemma here, and but I would say my vegan outreach has nothing to do with that. That was really just secondary to me, connecting and understanding the depth of suffering and scale of suffering in meat, eggs, dairy and other industries that exploit animals. There is just nothing like that. no suffering and death and torture that even comes close to that as someone who had gone through so many different forms of oppression and trouble and almost like getting killed for who I am and all of that, like I feel like I'm still the lucky one here when I think about animals, like I always wanted to do Something better and bigger with my life in terms of like impact, in terms of making this planet a better place, I wanted to start doing something about animal rights. Didn't know where to start. Someone said, Hey, your university used to have an animal rights group called Animal Rights Calling, and it's inactive. Do you want to be its president? And was like, president? Yes, of course, I do like to be a president. So I ran this club for, I don't know, seven years, and I was its president, not because I was qualified, just because there was literally no one else in Lubbock, Texas. So after I graduated, my group just died because I couldn't find someone else to run it, and pretty much everything that I had built the infrastructure all the dining hall initiatives, it just all died. I was like, I can't be the only one. Let me look at what happens in other universities. We actually looked at top 100 universities in the US and realized that most of them don't have any vegan animal rights group at all, like zero. You walk into these universities without ever being exposed to veganism. Now, most of them, at some point, did have a vegan group. They just no longer do, because they just die. The same thing that happened to Animal Rights Coalition in my university. They have. And everywhere. And every single time, it's so predictive, I know like someone says, I'm running a club, I'm like, all right. It lasts for two years, no question. And most importantly, I want the Starbucks version of animal rights. I want like Starbucks, but for animal rights, what do I mean? I mean that if you go to any university, you should be exposed to the same message, same branding, same activism, the same way that you like any other brand. You go to Starbucks, you know how much it's gonna cost, you know what you're getting. You have the same menu everywhere. And I think that can really help the movement. And honestly, the idea of ASAP is not smart at all. It's like I didn't come up with this. Every other group has discovered this and implemented that. Christians, you have the same exact Christian organizations having chapters all across universities, in law schools. There is a group called Federalist Society. They're conservative, and they have chapters in liberal schools and conservative schools. They just focus on law students. And the course of one generation, about 50 years, they managed to have six out of nine Supreme Court justices affiliated with them, right? So imagine the political power that they have only they all they do like they do. They don't do anything else. All they do is focusing in universities and law schools. And so the obvious question for me was like, how do we replicate that for animal rights? And that's where ASAP started. I knew that I needed to focus on universities. That's where I think it's the biggest and most neglected issue in animal rights, because we get to actually focus our limited resources in universities. There is no other place that I can do that. Obviously, we don't have as much money and as many people as Christians or conservatives and other groups do. We are a small group. But in universities, you can a small group can actually make a huge impact. It takes literally one student to saturate a college campus with veganism, and you have captive audience. So you have the students who are going to be there for four years. If you do something every single week, at some point, everyone in that university has come across it, especially the way we do it. We put up so many posters. There's events going on every single week. But just to wrap it up, my idea is that most people become vegan by accident. So many actually tell me that they become vegan in college, but it was always an accident. They took this philosophy course that the professor happened to be vegan friendly, and they gave them some book to read, and that changed their life. Or it's some random like, in my case, if my friend didn't have the courage to talk to me, I don't know what I would be doing today. Most other people, it's just some random conversation, random video, they watch, random documentary. Somebody suggested that it shouldn't be based on randomness and accidental events here and there that we make new vegans. I think it should be intentional. It should be systematic. And if George Bush didn't invent the term No Child Left Behind. I probably would use that, I don't want any college student to be left behind. Every single college student should have the opportunity to learn about veganism, think about the cruelty to animals, think about what happens to animals, and feel empowered to use their future, use their career, whatever it is, to actually help solving it, and that's an opportunity we have only in college campuses and nowhere else.

Hope:

So what is it that you do specifically? What tactics do you use on campus? I know that you I've seen your social media, so I know that you use tabling and outreach and film showings. Why do you think that this form is important, like this direct vegan education? 

Faraz:

The truth is, there are different ways that we can make an impact, and there are people with different interests, so we try to cover them all as much as we can. For instance, we have events about ethics of veganism, but we also have events where we might not say on the surface that this is a vegan event. For instance, love animals, come grab a cookie. There's a sign that says, love animals get a cookie. Or answer an interesting question, get a cookie. And the question is, do you love animals? And everyone says, Yes. And then we ask, well, when you say love, do you mean just loving cats and dogs and cute and fuzzy animals? Or, do you think that animals deserve to be respected? And people are like, thought about that. But yeah, the latter. And then we say, Well, if that's the latter, have you thought about the animals that you're currently eating? Do you think those animals have been treated with respect? And we have conversations like that. Sometimes we show the footage that's just the most powerful thing that people ever see in their life. We know some people care about the environment, so occasionally we talk about the environment. That's the gateway for people to come in and then learn about veganism. We talk about animal testing. It's a big topic by itself, but at the same time, there are a lot of students who are against animal testing, especially if it's on dogs and monkeys, and we use those events to get people in, and once they're a part of a club, once we have their contact information, they can always send them stuff about veganism. But then we are on campus, tabling and showing footage, so that 1000s of students who are walking by every single day interact with your setup. But the second one is a little more in depth. So movie screenings, talks, having animal activists, doctors, climate scientists, you name it, to go to classrooms and give speeches and organize, and we're really good at that in a way, that we promote these events because we don't want to preach to the choir, but we do also want to grab vegans and find them and unite them and empower them. So that's actually one of the big things for me. It's not just making new vegans, but also, most vegans are so shy. So the question is, how do we find them? How do we inspire them not to be shy, not to be silent? In fact, become active, because that's how we can snowball our effects. So that's another thing, and then another part of our work is working with dining halls on campuses, as you mentioned. But yeah, there are different methods, different strategies. But of course, I would say that majority of our events are around ethics of veganism, which I do want to clarify. That's what veganism is. Veganism has nothing to do with health and environment. That's why I like to differentiate when I say plant-based diet, that's what I mean for health, for environment. But veganism simply means that we don't exploit animals.

Hope:

Yeah, that's right. Plant based is the food you eat. Plant-based food you have a plant-based recipe. But veganism is about the philosophy, the ethics and not harming animals. 

Faraz:

Exactly. 

Hope:

You said something about not preaching to the choir. And I always like to say that, you know, I really don't mind if everyone that comes to my event is vegan, because I think the choir can always do better. The choir needs to get inspired to speak out, and also to have the education to speak out in effective ways. So that concern of, oh, well, we're just preaching to the choir. We're just talking to vegans. And I don't think on college campuses that's the case at all. I'm sure there's a lot of non-vegans that you are reaching out to. But that concept of “oh, let’s not preach to the choir.” The choir can always do better. The choir needs education too, and inspiration.

Faraz:

So absolutely, that's why I actually clarified that we do absolutely need vegans. What I meant is like, I get invited by random vegan clubs in colleges to go give a talk, and I go there, and there are six vegans in the group, and, you know, that's great, but I'm like, this talk would have been an opportunity for everyone on campus to come and learn and actually go vegan if you're organizing, why is it just advertised to a small group of vegans instead of the entire college? So when we have transparency screening, or any other documentary screening, or when we have a doctor that comes, we promote it very well amongst vegans as well as the entire campus because every college student should have the opportunity to learn, but I do 100% agree with you. That's why I said it's possibly even more important to get the vegans that we already have to actually be inspired to do activism because a lot of times are very shy, very isolated, and sometimes they don't even tell their best friends that they are vegan. And we can't really change the world, if that's the kind of vegans that we have, like they're so shy and isolated, we can't change the world like that.

Hope:

Yeah, yeah. It's true, empowering them, giving them courage to feel that this is an important thing to speak out about and not be shy or concerned about what others are going to think and that takes community so that they feel supported. So that's great that you're creating that. I want to ask about specific tactics in vegan education because I know that you use Anonymous for the Voiceless tactics. I've seen that on your videos, and just for people that don't know, Anonymous for the Voiceless, the tactic is that you stand you have activists that stand all in black, holding a laptop and showing graphic imagery of what happens to be animals in a public place, and they wear this masks. I don't know what, what's, what is it called? What is the guy called? It's those white masks. What do they call?

Faraz:

Those? Yeah Guy something.

Hope:

Guy something. Yeah, it's these white masks. Anyway. So they're masked and I think part of that is so people don't feel they're being stared at when they're looking at the video. Probably that is kind of part of the reason for that mask, anyway, but as people are walking by, they're seeing these laptops with graphic imagery of the animals, and then there will be other activists that are involved, that come to talk to people that maybe are watching the video, or that are curious about what's going on. So someone comes over and talks to you about it, and this is kind of a very public use of graphic imagery, and there's debate about whether this is effective or not. And I'm just curious how you feel about that, because I know that you use that. So talk about that. And I'll just say I don't like those masks. They’re weird. And actually, it was connected to a movie called V for Vendetta, where it was human rights activists, but they were violent. They were not nonviolent. So I don't really like those masks.

Faraz:

Yeah, I guess there are two separate things, showing the footage itself and the way that we do it, because the way we do it could be different to AV is one. Sometimes you just put the TV on that table,

Hope:

and AV is Anonymous for the Voiceless

Faraz:

Anonymous for the Voiceless. Yeah. So the way that it's done is very different. Sometimes you actually support this Halloween. Some of our chapters are actually giving people $5 to come and watch the whole Dominion, right? So it's basically the same thing in different formats, but they didn't actually realize that there was a debate on whether graphic footage is effective, because the data actually shows that the most number of vegans and the people who are actually vegan the longest, they saw the footage and they're ethical vegans. Still, most vegans I talk to, they became vegan after watching what happens to animals. So you have some data from surveys to actually show that, but also my experience, like every single time I just do that, it's like, super clear that when people watch it, I mean, they're shocked. They're absolutely shocked. They don’t believe it’s true sometimes, they don't want to watch it, but that's exactly the point that they don't want to watch it, because now they have to face their action. But you also have to realize that no matter what you do, some people won’t like it, no matter what you do, anything that you do, even if you don't do anything then they’ll be mad at you. There's nothing that you can do that it doesn't piss off somebody. Yeah, but the question is, amongst all these methods, which one is most effective, and to that, I also say if the entire animal industry has made laws or is trying to push laws like ad gag laws that prevents whistleblowers to from, like showing the footage to people, from recording it, that just tells you how important is to show the footage to people, if that's how bad they want this not to leak out. That's literally the opposite of what animal industry is doing every time you buy meat, eggs, dairy, they put happy animals on the package. They keep lying to people. But what is the truth? Do people like to be told truth or the lies? And I think that we do many different kinds of events, and it's really easy to just come up with excuses and say, Oh, it's hard. I don't know, whatever. But when they're looking at the footage of male chickens going to a grinder, it's a very different tone in the conversation because sometimes I don't actually have to explain anything. I just say, just watch that. You know it is wrong. So, and then, you know, the good thing about it is, when you do it in Anonymous for the Voiceless setting, then some people come and talk to you, and many people are just walking by, and they still have to look at the footage, and if for a fraction of a second think about animals, right? Yeah, and about the mask, it's actually really interesting because I was in Auburn University, in another university, and the administration came and they called cops and they said, Oh, we have a rule here that you shouldn't wear mask, which is completely bullshit. That was just an excuse because I told them, so what about so if someone is sick, they're not allowed to wear masks, or if someone is Muslim, are you telling them that they're not about to cover your face? Right? So that was completely bold. But anyways, we wanted to be a little careful, so we started the AV setup without the masks, just to see how it goes. And the difference between like people would interact less they it's not as theatrical, but as soon as we put up the mask, it really just gave it a different vibe. People don't look at the person holding the TV. They don't interact. They don't go to the person to talk to them, because it just looks like that. You're just holding a TV and you're casually talking to people. But when you wear the mask, and

Hope:

It suddenly becomes more like art, yeah? Like street theater. I understand that. I get that. I just don't like that particular mask. I feel like maybe using animal masks, having an animal mask on might be more effective, or at least not as creepy. That mask is kind of creepy to me. It's weird anyway. That's just my personal thing on the mask part of it. But as far as graphic imagery, I'm glad you said what you said, because it's true. We don't have a lot of stats and studies on whether graphic imagery works or not, but what we do have does really point to their effectiveness. So that's what I tell people, because, you know, there's people all the time that will say, Oh, well, let's not use anything graphic. And, oh, I don't want to see anything graphic, and I try to tell people, Look, you know, we've got to show people the truth. And it is effective. It does evoke emotion, and that's what we're trying to do right? 

Shifting to another kind of tactic that you have been working on, the dining halls, and changing the food that is presented at the dining halls. So some campaigns promote, encouraging using plant-based foods, more vegan foods in the dining halls. And some other groups are encouraging, switching to cage-free eggs in dining halls. That's a big campaign that's been happening across campuses as well. What do you feel is most effective and what tactics do you use?

Faraz:

The end goal for us is animal liberation, and for animals to stop being exploited and killed, Cage free campaigns do not do that at all. So if the entire egg industry right now became cage free, we get precisely zero steps closer to animal liberation because you're still killing same number of animals. Actually, you know, egg consumption is going up, so we are killing more and more chickens. My goal is not that. My goal is for people to get education of like, why vegan? Why to choose the vegan option? Even the goal is to let them try vegan food, enjoy it, get education on it, and know that it's easy to be vegan. They can still have yummy food. Remember, it's not a button. If there was a button that they could push and all the cages would go away, of course, I would do that. I'm not insane. But the thing is, it doesn't come for free. Cage free movement is wasting majority like most of money in the movement, right? So it doesn't come for free. It's actually sucking up all the most of the funding that could go to effective methods. So it's the opportunity cost that is the worst about this outreach, right? Because if you have dining, changes are extremely difficult. There are usually a multi-years campaign. It requires a lot of signatures, a lot of conversation with the dining hall, and if you're spending all that time, if you actually chose another goal, campaign goal, for instance, going 50% plant based, starting a station that is fully plant based, or plant-based defaults, right? Instead of giving people like red burgers, red meat burgers, why don't you put the Beyond Burger or whatever it is first that actually changes the consumption pattern, because the goal is not also to get this person to eat, you know, like he's gonna eat the egg anyways, and now, instead of, like, caged egg, he's gonna eat cage free eggs. Nothing really changes, and he will graduate, and he learned nothing about so that's not really my goal. My goal is for that person to understand, wow, you know, as a college student, I thought it's impossible to be vegan, but my dining hall has all these amazing options, and it's actually so I feel better. I now know why to choose this and when that person leaves, and that really plays along very well with the other educational stuff that we were doing on campus. And you know, when I do activism, when I'm at University of North Texas, I can tell people that in the middle of Texas, you guys have a feeling, and that just makes activism so much easier. Because I said, all you have to do is to go to this dining hall and you get your pizza and lasagna and pasta and everything that you like to and the cakes and cupcakes all vegan. That makes the conversation a lot easier than what am I going to say? Well, congratulations now that you you're interested in going vegan, please go and choose the cage free eggs. Yeah. So it completely misses the point. It wastes time and resources. And anyone who has done activism once in their life and has gone to a stranger and said, Would you consider going vegan? The first excuse that they hear is, I agree that conditions in factory farms are bad, but, you know, I'm sure there is a humane way to do this. When you tell them cage free, they don't know that it's not cruelty free. They think that this is the cruelty version. They still don't. 99% of students I talk to do not male chickens are killed in egg industry, whether it's cage free, pasture raised, does not matter, right? And when we are missing such an obvious point. They don't even know male calves are killed in dairy. Male chickens are killed in egg production. They don't know that. Then, of course, it actually makes it harder for them to go vegan because now they're being fed more lives by animal industry, right? So because of all those reasons, I really think it's a waste of time and money. At best, it just wastes money. At worst, it hinders progress.

Hope:

I fully agree, absolutely, and it is very frustrating to see the money, time, resources, energy, that's going into cage free campaigns and cage free transitions in the animal advocacy movement. So I appreciate very much that you only focus on plant-based foods getting vegan options in dining halls. So can you tell us about any of the reactions that you've had, maybe a recent encounter, or one that's memorable with any of the students? Because I know that you talk about it on social media like that, that the students’ reactions and then getting involved, is there one that's interesting or a story that you want to share?

Faraz:

Yes, when I was in graduate school, I talked to, I was tabling. This is obviously even before ASAP. I was tabling, I talked to a student who was a part of Marine Corps and Future Farmers of America, and from Texas near rural area near Dallas. When we met, we talked about veganism. I don't even remember what I said, for five minutes, very short conversation, apparently, according to him. And you know, next day he comes back, he's vegan. And we started, he just went vegan overnight. 

Hope:

Wow.

Faraz:

He started helping me with the organization. Then he actually wanted to do some environment focus for his major. And I said, Hey, even if you care about the environment, even if you care about plastic pollution in ocean. Still, one cause of that is fishing. You still have to fix the food system. So apparently, I was convincing enough. He actually got a job in the same lab I was doing my PhD. He got his doctorate as well, and I'm so happy to say that today he is actually working at Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, and he's the liaison that works with FDA to stop animal testing. And he is my best friend, and he is one of the kindest, one of the smartest people I've ever met in my life, and all. 

Hope:

And all because you were tabling there one day and just talked to him about veganism for five minutes.

Faraz:

So the crazy thing about this story is that how does someone from another continent from like Iran, Middle East, ends up in Germany, becomes vegetarian, ends up in the middle of nowhere in Texas and becomes vegan and is randomly chatting with strangers? And this stranger comes and now, like when our lives like collided. Now he's dedicating his entire life to veganism. But the reason that this story is very powerful, I think, is because all I ask myself, is that, what if I wasn't there that day, at that time, I wasn't that active? So it could have been very well that I wouldn't be there, and if I wasn't there, then where would Joey be? Or if my friend wasn't there to talk to me about going vegan, where would I be here today? The reason that this story is very powerful is because of that, and that's really the reason that I started ASAP. That's the motivation behind it. Every single time we do activism, we are on campus, I get stories like that. Every single week, a student writes to me and says, last one, I loved it so much, she said, after talking to you guys, I've gone vegan, and I feel so I feel so free, which I thought was like the most beautiful thing, like the fact that you are allowed, you get the opportunity to free people from years of conditioning and brainwashing of animal industry. I love that story because it's really why I focus on universities. Because every time I'm on campus, I'm like, how many people like Joey are walking around? And it could have changed. We could have changed their lives by a short conversation.

Hope:

So powerful. Yeah, so if there are students out there that are on college campuses and interested in possibly getting an ASAP chapter started, can they just reach out to you on your website? I'll have some links in the show notes. But what's the best way for them to reach out to you?

Dr. Harzini:

Yeah, so Instagram, usually I reply to direct messages to myself. Dr. Faraz Harsini, there's also Allied Scholars page, so that's at Allied Scholars on Instagram, but you can also find me on YouTube, but you also go to our website, which is alliedscholars.org There is a contact form that will come directly to me. There is also an application for starting a new chapter. If there's any students who want to start a new chapter, I would say, however, that my bottleneck at this point, we are so stretched thin because we have so many more students than we can actually even handle at this point, but I still struggle to say no when I have a student, I can't say no because I know the impact. So one of the best way people can actually support me and support the animal rights movement is by considering even a small donation to us. 

Hope:

Great. Well, we will definitely have those links available in the show notes for people, and we are going to need to wrap up so I want to ask you our last question, what gives you hope for the future?

Faraz:

I have hope because I know that animal oppression is not the only form of oppression where, at the time, it was legal and normal and completely neglected every other forms of injustice used to be there at some point. When you think about slavery, when you think about women's right, when you look at LGBT rights, I know that I can never win in a way that it's like 100% like, what is winning? There is no 100% that we can get, but I know that there is only one thing that actually matters, is that I have a very limited time left on this planet. I could die anywhere from today to maybe another 34 years, and all I need to do is to make sure that I make the most out of it, that the day I'm in my deathbed, or maybe I'm seeing the bus that's about to hit me, the last thought in my mind is, I gave it my best, and nothing else really matters. Because, you know, at any given time, I thought about the best strategy. Sometimes I was right, sometimes I was wrong, but at any given point, I did my best, the best, best of my capacity and ability, and that's really the only thing that matters. And I learned that I shouldn't be really pursuing happiness as much as satisfaction because now I still have sad days. I still have days that I'm heartbroken, but I have never been as satisfied because I know that every second, every day is going towards the best thing that I can be doing with my life. Last thing is that I know that no other form of injustice ended because everybody changed. In my ideal world, you don't need to talk to every single person to make everyone vegan. We didn't have to convince everyone that slavery was bad, or gay people deserve to get married, or whatever it is. It was only because of a small group of people who spoke up, who had the courage, they weren't silent. That's why I have hope. We don't need 100% of people to be vegan, but we do need vegans to speak up. This is why I want to end by saying, if you are vegan, we need you. Don't be shy, be proud. This is the best thing that you've already done with your life. Please. Now is the time to start speaking up. And when I say speaking up, it's whatever is in your power. I'm coming from a country where I can lose my head for saying what's in my mind. We don't hear we have this amazing, beautiful country with all of its shortcomings, still one of the best countries in the world, you can say whatever you want. Use your voice, use your freedom. Use your free speech power. Use everything in your power to speak up for animals.

Hope:

Beautifully said for us. Thank you. That was all really powerful. And it's true. We don't necessarily need to pursue happiness, but fulfillment, and feel like we fulfilled our purpose and did something good for this world and vegan activism, vegan advocacy, it gives us that purpose. All really powerful stuff. Thank you so much for our conversation today. I really enjoyed it. Thanks for being on the podcast.

Faraz:

My pleasure. It was my honor. Thank you.

Hope:

Thank you for listening to the Hope for the Animals podcast, a project of Compassionate Living. Just a quick announcement, Compassionate Living's monthly. Ahimsa Living Circle will be starting back up again on Saturday, November 8. This is a gathering of spiritual leaning folks exploring the Dharma traditions, Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism and the path of non-violence ahimsa. Ahimsa is a Sanskrit word meaning nonviolence or non-harming. So if you're interested in exploring veganism and ahimsa, we invite you to join us. The Ahimsa Living Circle will be ongoing every second Saturday of the month, starting this November 8, and ongoing from there, 10am Pacific time. I'll put a link to the free registration in the show notes. I hope to see you there. Thank you for listening. Please share this podcast and live vegan.