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How I Learned to Love Shrimp
How I Learned To Love Shrimp is a podcast showcasing innovative and impactful ways to help animals and build the animal advocacy movement.
We talk to experts about a variety of topics: animal rights, animal welfare, alternative proteins, the future of food, and much more. Whether it's political change, protest, technological innovation or grassroots campaigns, we aim to cover it all with deep dives we release every two weeks.
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How I Learned to Love Shrimp
Ben Newman on campaigning against the RSPCA and the role of welfare labels
Ben Newman has had a colourful past few years, being one of Animal Rising’s co-directors and being arrested multiple times for various bits of direct action and disruptive protest.
Now, Animal Rising has turned its attention to campaign against the RSPCA, the world’s largest animal charity, for running the RSPCA Assured scheme. This has been quite a divisive campaign within the animal advocacy movement, with some, including both co-hosts, having fairly big questions about the effectiveness of this campaign.
00:00:00:00 | Intro
00:04:55:02 | Direct Action Rescues
00:10:01:20 | Mass Arrests Strategy
00:13:40:07 | RSPCA Assured
00:19:19:10 | End of Animal Farming?
00:28:24:12 | RSPCA Scheme Shutdown
00:35:19:01 | Public Opinion on RSPCA
00:45:41:18 | Slaughterhouse Investigations
00:50:24:08 | Social Media Controversy
00:55:36:06 | Animal Rising in 2025
01:02:29:10 | Closing Questions
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The RSPCA totally say like, oh, these are one or two bad funds. They're tightening up. I think it said, actually one of the CEO statements, Chris Sherwood said, customers can be reassured that they are contributing to better welfare, animal welfare by buying RSPCA short. But they're a massive NGO, like among the biggest. And there's serious inertia in these big organizations. They're super establishment and people travel, move through them. They don't really want to rock the boat. And this has been a really interesting experience trying to, to push a target like this. When you start off, you can be in really mission-driven organizations and people get tired out. These big, more conservative NGOs, it's among the biggest and most conservatives. So yeah, they're in the game of self-preservation.
SPEAKER_00:Hi, my name is Amy.
SPEAKER_01:And my name is James.
SPEAKER_00:And this is How I Learned to Love Swim, a podcast about promising ways to help animals and build the animal advocacy movement.
SPEAKER_01:Ben Newman has had a colourful past few years, being one of Animal Rising's directors and being arrested multiple times for various bits of direct action and disruptive protest. Now, Animal Rising has turned its attention to campaigning against the RSPCA, the world's largest animal charity, for running the RSPCA Assuracy Scheme. This has been quite a divisive campaign within the animal advocacy movement, with some including myself, having fairly big questions about the effectiveness of this campaign. As such, it's an interview where we try to challenge our guests more than normal, to the point where Amy had to actually tell Ben and I to stop talking over each other. And for context, I used to be one of the directors of Animal Rising, formerly Animal Rebellion, so this is a topic quite close to my heart. Also, Ben and I are good friends, and we've disagreed lots before, so there were no hard feelings afterwards. And one quick request from us, if you could take 30 seconds to review our podcast on Spotify, Apple, or your podcast provider of choice, we'd really appreciate it. Hey everyone, today we are joined by Ben Newman, who is the co-director of Animal Rising, formerly known as Animal Rebellion. They've run big direct action campaigns, including rescuing beagles, delaying the world's biggest horse race, temporarily closing the McDonald's distribution network, and other plant-based campaigns across the UK and Europe. Welcome, Ben. Hello,
SPEAKER_02:thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks for coming on. This is a blast from my past, as some people might know. I was also involved with Animal Rebellion pretty intensely for a couple of years. So it's fun to reminisce and challenge where we're relevant. The first thing we ask everyone is what's an animal related view you've changed your mind on recently and why?
SPEAKER_02:I changed my mind on things almost continuously, which drives me working with me quite annoying. But also because I came into four or five years ago, I just joined, just went to an Animal Rebellion local group meeting. And at the time, it adopted Extinction Rebellion strategy, mass arrest, plant-based food system message, get influence to climate movement, then we win because they were on the way to winning. And probably since then, we've entirely re-strategized and restructured every single year, which makes us kind of a freak organization. And we've semi-landed the direct action plane, which I haven't seen any other organization do. What do you mean by that? What do you mean by land a direct action plane? If you look at Extinction Rebellion, very few organizations run this. There was an 18 month period where we had 500 arrests and it's not sustainable. You can't do that forever. And almost all organizations sort of implode and fizzle out like social movement organizations, like Extinction Rebellion, bless them. But, you know, they sort of just then collapse themselves. Hopefully Just Stop Oil, you know, might come back, but I think they've driven into a brick wall. And this happens with loads of organizations. Very few reinvent themselves. And that's kind of, you know, very emotionally draining doing that. Yeah. And like things we've changed our mind on is like, Or learnt, even. Because it started from zero knowledge. Mass arrest and disruption is a tactic, not a strategy. Press is rocket fuel to a campaign, but you've got to have a rocket to begin with. And we've been a number one news story several times, and I look back on what we achieved with it. So it's understanding how all these bits fit together. Working with others is good. But the fire of Extinction Rebellion was born on shit on all the NGOs. That was a DNA exile, which we took on too. So non-animal farming issues are good, actually, and matter, because they're very popular. Petitions are not shit. Sorry, maybe I shouldn't say this. Petitions aren't lame, nor is outreach, nor are marches, nor is talking to your counsellors. No tactic is individually lame. Strategies can be lame. It's how you use tactics. Yeah, so there's lots. I mean, I have lots of different wins. Animal welfare wins are also very important, and that's something as well.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, lots to unpack. And I'm sure we'll talk about that as the episode progresses. We've had a couple of other specific direct action interviews. And I think what's common amongst the sort of thread of those is like a memory of being in the field doing something as a part of direct action. Is there a particular memory that stands out for you of a rescue or something that is particularly prominent for you?
SPEAKER_02:A few, but taking the beagles out of NBR, I did that twice, actually. Taking beagles out of NBR Acres, which is a puppy breeding facility in the UK. First time anyone done it since the 90s. And the first time we did it, we did it a second time when we took out 20. But the first time we did it, we just got in trespass the day before onto NBR Acres, got arrested, and then came out of the cell. And it was almost like, you know, Neo gets out of the Matrix and he wants to go back in to save Morpheus. You're like, we know, I believe we can get them back. I just spontaneously went in and just cut a hole through the fence, crowbar the door open and just saying to the guard, hello, don't mind us. I just took out five eagles and yeah, and that was amazing really. And that ignited, like that was, it didn't, unfortunately didn't massively break through in the press in the UK, but in terms of social media, it's close to what it meant for the, certainly the animal movement in the UK, particularly those that have been involved in the Shack campaign and stuff like that. It was like a massive moment for them and it really helped, I think.
SPEAKER_01:You guys rescued beagles a couple of times and then the police didn't press charges, right? And then you kind of did it a third time. Is that right? Almost because you want to take this case to court? So in
SPEAKER_02:June 2022, we did it once. Three of us did it accountably, me, Beau and Dan, handed ourselves into the police station with the narrative, put animal testing on trial. They charged it and then dropped it two weeks later because they clearly didn't want a trial. And then we went back and did exactly the same thing five months later and but took out 20 beagles. And now there's a court case. We are being charged for that, the burglary. And in December 2025, hopefully it will be quite an event to organize around. Yeah, we'll be having a trial, a crown court trial for burglary. In theory, there's a 10-year prison sentence. I mean, everyone tells me not to be so optimistic. I personally find it unimaginable because it'll be with the jury. They'll get a jury to convict us, but stay humble, I'm told. But the...
SPEAKER_00:Just casual. Ten years, you know, nothing to...
SPEAKER_02:But we hope to build a lot around it because we're also... Yeah, so it's a great opportunity. So Rose, who's one of the other co-directors, we were in a documentary which is coming out one month before the trial and we'll be signposting the trial and we'll build other things around it, celebrity support and all kinds of stuff. Yeah, that's going to be one of our key streams of work.
SPEAKER_01:How many of you are on trial
SPEAKER_02:for that one? Eighteen.
SPEAKER_01:Eighteen.
SPEAKER_02:Wow,
SPEAKER_01:big one.
SPEAKER_02:Broken up into four groups. I'm in the first group, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Wow. It's always tough being the first one. Speaking of, it could be with police or otherwise. What's a particularly kind of sketchy or scary situation you've been in as it relates to
SPEAKER_02:direct
SPEAKER_01:action?
SPEAKER_02:The Grand National, this is the world's biggest force race watched by 600 million people live on TV with 300 million bets. We trained up 300 people to do it. They'd come to trainings around the country. Two weeks beforehand, we looked at the paper, the Daily Mail the day before, and it was on the front page of the Daily Mail. We were supposed to be doing a secret. And then we went ahead, but still somehow managed to get a hundred people there running against the fence. And it was honestly sort of just like people just like running against the fences with G4S security, who'd been like pretending to be walking dogs. They'd hired all this private security. It finally came out of nowhere. Just really just trying to being, being very, very rough. But yeah, that was very sketchy, but slithered and people, people got like their, someone got their collarbone broken by police, but they managed to slither over the fences. It was okay in the end and run down the Grand National, which was, it was nice in the end, but it was definitely sketchy. But to be honest, very, very fun. I
SPEAKER_01:think you're kind of underselling it. I hope we can link this video. It was an insane video of Ben basically doing a flip over the first fence, which is fairly high, and then like leaping over another fence and then tearing down the track with security guards following. Is that right? It's an insane video. Yes,
SPEAKER_02:it's crazy. It's from a police helicopter. So what we were actually doing, it was very difficult. So we were actually being going to court for this, but The police knew we were coming. So there were quad bikes, helicopters going backwards and forwards across the ground. National was like the biggest policing operation ever. But I don't know how. They looked so stupid because an MP actually said, sorry, beforehand said, if this had gone ahead, it would have been a national humiliation watched by the world. So they put all this massive security into it. But then, sorry, so there was marches. We were just doing pointless marches, marching around industrial parks. So all the helicopters were following the marches. And then, what story was I getting at? Oh, yes. And then, so there's amazing footage from the helicopter as they suddenly go, oh, wait, they're coming down the side. And then running down as all the police form a funnel behind. It really was epic. We need to get hold of that footage again and share it because, yeah, it's pretty badass.
SPEAKER_00:so getting arrested that's part of your you were saying like a tactic is that one of the main strategies
SPEAKER_02:at the end of 2023 we pivoted away from a mass arrest strategy it was it is not sustainable we had 500 arrests in 18 months we've got 23 court cases next year these are groups of people on trial like five or six and stuff and you can't keep running on that forever Yeah, so we've certainly slowed down on that. And that's like this year we pivoted, we did mass investigations always, but it's still focused on people power, but a reduced focus on arrest. Yeah, we've learned a lot every single year. We're adding components that you can make work together to make a campaign even more effective. But I think there was also a philosophy at the time, which was, this was in the climate movement. You get arrested, there's a backfire effect. And then you win. And that's, for a fringe issue, that's gobbledygooks. You have to have mass public support, really. And that's what we count as conditionals, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And when you say it's not sustainable, so from like a people perspective, where we see this, as you were saying, like it's not sustainable for people to keep doing that, but also I imagine expensive. Are there other components that make it not sustainable that we haven't mentioned?
SPEAKER_02:Policing catches up. So I remember Jake Conroy, the cranky vegan, from the Shack campaign once said, to us that a direct action campaign has about four years in it before the police catch up with you. And I would say that played out almost exactly. So both in terms of the consequences in court, they brought in new laws, but more importantly is actually how the laws were interpreted by the judges, how vindictive the judges, where the judges have just gone, we've had enough of this and we're stopping it. But also preemptive policing, where the police actually have real operations and you're having your doors knocked down and all this kind of stuff. So it starts to get quite hairy. It just starts to not feel that fun, carefree people power anymore. And also things like the public lose. I think an initial issue is exciting new, like just a boy walking roads, for example. I think initially it was a bit outrageous within Slave Britain, but at least daring and bold. But then over time it starts to feel cheap. If you run out of ideas and you're just repeating old ones, which are disrupting the public, it's this. I think that, so there's different components, I think, of the public getting sick of it and also the press losing interest in it. But yeah, the people, what it does to your core team, because you have to lead by example. you know and at one point in 2023 it's like oh my god like I think I have like a core team of you know 25 or 30 people 17 of them we had a reasonable chance of being sent to prison like that hasn't materialized but that's like you can't run an organization forever
SPEAKER_01:definitely there's this element of I think what Ben hit on the head is it being less fun when almost you're worried to do anything because you're at risk of a suspended sentence or jail time or there was a point where Ben and I knew by first name another police officer called Inspector Ben Newman. Funny enough, it's the same name. And he would be able to recognize us by face, which was extremely bizarre and worrying. So when you get to the stage when police can recognize your face and they know when they last arrested you, it plays on your mind like, oh, what's going to happen if I go out? What's going to happen if I get caught? And you gain these weird bail conditions that we talked about in the episode with Tom Harris, where you can't be in the city of Westminster. You can't do all these kind of weird things. You can't talk to certain people. So yeah, all this repression adds up and takes a toll on people for sure.
SPEAKER_02:And also the strategies ran out of road. We were an add-on. Animal Rebellion was an add-on to Extinction Rebellion. And Extinction Rebellion, the climate movement, isn't on this sort of infinite winning streak. We have to redefine ourselves independently of the climate movement.
SPEAKER_00:Speaking of a strategy shift then, so something that was revealed this year at the BART conference was that you would be going after the RSPCA's assurance scheme. So that's a scheme in the UK. You can explain what that is and why you chose them as a target. Yeah, we'd love to know more about that campaign kind of in a nutshell.
SPEAKER_02:So the RSPCA is the world's oldest and biggest animal charity. They have a farm assurance scheme. which covers 50% of hens, egg-laying hens, 25% of pigs, most Scottish salmon. It's a voluntary scheme, yeah, which companies, which farms companies sign up to. The RSPCA runs some adverts. So it's an assurance scheme. And the RSPCA has a budget, you know, hundreds of million. King Charles is a patron. They have some laws of prosecution. So they're a British institution. Quintessentially, they're like nation of animal, the symbol of the nation of animal. So they are unique. And the campaign's been for them or to be honest, we've been saying drop, but I wish we'd be going disassociate because we'd actually been, that was one of the considerations at the start. James and I actually spoke about this. And for them to stop supporting promoting animal farming and have a meat production message. As part of this campaign, we did the biggest farm investigation in the UK, stopping the one bad app narrative release in June. That's 45 farms released a long ago. We just released a slaughterhouse investigation for three slaughterhouses. They dropped all the slaughterhouses. Since we got going, the CEO has resigned, the head of policy has resigned.
SPEAKER_01:Some of these aren't directly related to the campaign, right? So it's not clear that Chris...
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, no, no. The Chris, yeah, it's not 100% clear. I mean, this is just what's ended up happening. I mean, it's quite discombobulating, to be honest. President, the head of policy, the vice president, Brian May, and it won't be surprising if Chris Backham and Caroline Lucas resign. You know, by the time this comes out, that will not be surprising either. And they're the president and vice president.
SPEAKER_01:Hey everyone, James here. Since we recorded this episode, Chris Packham and Caroline Lucas, who were the president and vice president of RSPCA, have in fact resigned from their roles due to Animal Rising's campaign and the investigations they undertook. So Ben had some pretty good foresight in this episode, which we thought might be useful context.
SPEAKER_00:And they're like prominent figures in the UK. So that's the other unique thing about the RSPCA. There's a lot of celebrity endorsement. Caroline Lucas is the previous head of the Green Party, elected MP. So there's a lot of prominence surrounding the RSPCA. And so just to clarify, so your ask from Animal Rising was for them to completely drop their assurance scheme so they would no longer be using their advertising and kind of access to the rhetoric around what good farming looks like, etc. et cetera, you asking them completely to drop that assurance scheme.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And maybe we'll get into it. I mean, certainly this has been a controversial campaign and it's also been quite a hard campaign to run. So in answer, yes. But what we've been trying to achieve is not necessarily, has it been a vehicle to transforming the animal movement into a fighting force? I think it's been good for that as well. So there's been lots of And we've been lent into, has there been a transformative conflict in the animal movement around it? And yeah, and big up, James has done a good job on LinkedIn.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I've been part of the transformative conflict, as well as Matthew Glover. Big up to Matthew Glover, great guy. Yeah, I'm curious on that point, because part of me is like, we have enough problems, the animal movement faces the rest of the world. We shouldn't be trying to create more conflict internally, i.e., one of us targeting an ally, even though you guys may rightly point out it's a bit of a hypocritical ally in that they sell animal products on their website, which is obviously not what you want from an animal welfare charity. Why did you focus on RSPCA over another assurance scheme? I think a big one in the UK is Red Tractor. Red Tractor is more or less an industry body. They certify like 80-90% of the products and it more or less means nothing. It's like the legal minimum. So why focus on RSPCA over Red Tractor?
SPEAKER_02:Well, no one gives a damn about Red Tractor. The RSPCA is the Royal Society for the Protection of Animals. It's a household name. It's a British institution. It's the most trusted messenger on animals in the UK. It's like the British Heart Foundation putting their stamp on cigarettes or Harry Potter on a vape aimed at children. So it's the same reasons that the RSPCA short scheme has been successful in spreading across the UK. The same reasons it's very effective. In
SPEAKER_01:some ways, it's not been very successful, so... RSPCA covers around 12% of animals, you know, according to the 2021 report, 12% of all animals in the UK, whereas red tractor is a much higher number. So in terms of animals covered, surely red tractor actually is more successful. But no
SPEAKER_02:one gives a damn about red tractor. The red tractor doesn't
SPEAKER_01:mean... But surely the animals do.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, no, no. So there's two halves to this, to understanding there's what of the merits of a welfare scheme. On the one hand, you have the welfare improvements, which the RSPCA is fundamentally different to red tractor. They're an actual animal charity. The red tractor is just nonsense run by the industry. So what are the actual welfare improvements? And the RSPCA short scheme does have, of course, they're still factory farms, but they're better than the average factory farm. And then what's the humane washing on the other side or the legitimization of the industry? You've got the marketing, direct marketing, yes, which is adverts of pigs running around in fields. Okay, that's a bit icky. But it's also the second part of the legitimization of the industry by the most trusted voice on animals in the UK. And I think there's a question of at what point is it appropriate, though, that you try and pull, stop trying to change the industry from the inside, and you just call out for an all right ban. For example, when fur farming got banned, it would have been inappropriate for one month before that, the RSPCA to step in and start selling RSPCA shored fur. So I guess it depends on your analysis of how close are we to, at some point, you've got to go, falls to the walls and destroy an industry. But
SPEAKER_01:do you think we're that close to ending the industry? It might be very unlikely. And the fur farming industry is quite different to where we are with farmed animal farming.
SPEAKER_02:I think that is a fair question. So it depends. If you are really, really far away from animal farming, it was completely unfathomable that you could ever start meaningfully reducing it. In a short scheme like the RSPCA, it would make a lot of sense. If you're very near its end stage of life, providing that kind of institutional support could probably be net negative. Where are you on that spectrum? And that's not necessarily the same for all industries. And I think in general, there's a strong tendency in countries which are further behind, like the US, so Americans, to be very anti the assured scheme. They did this campaign. People in the UK understand it a bit more. They might have more mixed views to the UK further along. And I suspect actually you could probably map it on Europe like that. I think that's a legitimate question. And I think Potentially, and we might get on talking what we're going to be doing next year. It was part of an adherence strategy, which is really, really undermining animal farming. And the RSPCA pulling out support was part of that strategy. That would maybe really, I think, resonate with more people. I mean, I probably think if it said disassociate message, which signals at least that you're not stepping into that abolitionist, welfarist doo-doo, that would have been helpful if we'd done a bit more signaling around that. Because I don't, most of us don't care about that.
SPEAKER_01:What is Animal Rising's, like, thoughts or, like, view on when in the UK we'll get rid of animal farming? Because even what you're insinuating, it's, like, not that far off. Whereas, you know, for me, it's, like, you know, post-2100. Like, we are so far off. We have so much work to do that it's, I think, you know, almost in every country in the world, it's useful in the meantime because everything else is
SPEAKER_02:so far
SPEAKER_01:away.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, sorry. No, no, it is very far away. And I think this question around Well, in Germany, meat consumption came down by 0.8% last year. So it is starting to turn in Europe a little bit. No, I do think it's far away. It's just less far away from the US.
SPEAKER_00:So similar to the Grand National. So it's picking targets that feel more prominent in the public eye and more interesting with the press, like potentially an animal group going after red tractor is like slightly predictable because they're the industry. So it feels like that would be a predictable choice. Whereas perhaps in this occasion, it's like going after something to highlight the hypocrisy of the RSPCA assured scheme because of them being a household name to protect animals. So a part of it is not necessarily about, you know, the amount of animals the assurance scheme covers or like how many animals will be affected, but about the press pickup and like the public opinion of the topic to also just like make some noise there.
SPEAKER_02:Yes. Is it an issue which people care about? Because we often say that we should be like the weather. The weather is in the news every day because everyone cares about it. The RSPCA actually means something. You can target, you want with the public, we try and target things to people either, like the Grand National McDonald's, we targeted people, it's symbolic and also targeted directly people actually watching it. The RSPCA actually means something to people and we're targeting a British value and it's, if you were to describe like the the nation of animal lovers or just the cognitive dissonance. The RSPCA is a perfect reflection of the cognitive dissonance around animals, obviously. So they actually mean something to people. And that's been reflected in... We haven't been on the front page of The Times yet. That was the objective this year. Yeah, but it's been... For example, when you put the King's... Wallace's face on the King's portrait... That was the number one news story in the UK and US for two hours. It knocked the conservative manifesto, as in on like the live coverage because of the Royal Link. And it just shows how, because it's the right target, you're able to do that. And then it's happened with celebrity support or notable support when Brian May resigned. That was a brief, like a top news story and stuff. So yeah, in terms of that, it's obvious if your only interest is getting press. Yeah. Sure.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Prominent figures to go against.
SPEAKER_01:I think the moral legitimacy seems to be like, am I right in thinking that that's like one of the key assumptions or like things underpinning the campaign? It's that, you know, almost like meat consumption or like views around how we treat animals in the UK is kind of propped up to a significant extent by the RSPCA, like the world's oldest animal charity saying it's basically okay to eat meat. I mean, you can do so in a way that makes you feel totally fine. Is that one of the key assumptions that's like underpinning this? And I'm like, that's the main vehicle to change. Like if the RSPCA with your support, like meat consumption in the UK would go down and people would have this almost like reckoning about animals.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, in short, obviously. I mean, for me, it seems quite obvious that having the RSPCA, I mean, whether or not there is a good question of I'll do the negative, the benefits outweigh the negatives. That's a good question. But it's quite obvious. Having the Royal Society for the Protection of Animals, that world's oldest animal charity's logo being on an animal product, in a country that calls itself nation of animal lovers as part of British identity increases consumption. And that's reflected by the price premium. It's reflected by McDonald's using the RSPCA assured pigs in its advertising that Marks and Spencer's using its advertising. There is a question of whether or not people getting, buying high welfare meat is just a stepping stone to people cutting out meat or is actually ends up being a ridge that they hang on, you know, forever. But then I was looking at the RSPCA target, them advertising at people who are trying to, it was their two target groups of people who are cutting down, who want to cut down meat, for example. So that's a suspect that they, it's people who feel, I want to eat less meat, I feel bad. Oh wait, there's RSPCA short. So, I mean, for me, that's obvious. I think that there is a humane washing and the legitimization aspect. I think it's a legitimate question. What are your priorities? Do the negatives outweigh the benefits. And I would say, you know, I've discovered through this campaign that there are real animal rights fundamentalists who almost bought the idea that there's a difference in welfare between a caged hen and a non-caged. I think that makes my skin crawl if you would say that. It's so human-centric and based on these abstract ideas of speciesism and the rest of it when really you need to be thinking about the experience of the individuals, not abstract political concepts. But then also, amazingly, you know, I spoke to someone from open philanthropy, just thought they called and asked not to run the campaign, for example. They say, we don't care about humane washing. So I think a nuanced perspective is, and that's the great thing about this RSPCA campaign, I think it's helped a lot of people develop a nuanced perspective that's required for us to win next year
SPEAKER_01:and beyond. I don't know who you spoke to in person. I suspect they said that they don't care about humane washing. I guess my view on the humane washing stuff is it's already happening, whether we like it or not. And the question is, like, do we rather it kind of happen and the standards are actually better? And, you know, I'm on the camp of, I think the RSPCA standards are better than none. You know, they say no fast growing broilers, they say no cages, no crates for pigs, yada, yada, yada. But it's like, there's loads of A, you know, there's people like Retractor who are slapping stuff on and saying it's high welfare when it's really not. And there's also things where, you know, there's actually no formal thing and they just say bread naturally or just like give in like space. It's like, what are these like literally undefined, unmeasured things? I think people are still going to be whacking this on, you know, regardless of what RSPCA. So I guess I'm just unconvinced that, you know, RSPCA short is the main driver of humane washing versus like every other company in the world.
SPEAKER_02:There's definitely truth there. But I'd also highlight there's the two components of the campaign is the individual people, you know, consumer behavior, buyers, and then there's the transformation of an institution. And we're also undergoing a campaign to try and transform the RSPCM. To be honest, we're going to see what happens because we've held them in crisis for long. I mean, the shop doctrine is a brilliant book if anyone hasn't read it. And we are following a strategy of the shop doctrine. If you put an institution under shop for long enough, that they start grasping on alternative solutions. You need to try and make sure your solution is the one on the table.
SPEAKER_01:It's funny because that book was in the context of adopting neoliberalism and how bad it was for South America. So it's funny using this in a positive way. Anyway, good book. Naomi Klein. Check it out.
SPEAKER_02:So just on it, the RSPCA, just to make a small point, has had campaigns basically, about 10 animal groups have run campaigns on the assured scheme before. and about the RSPCA in the past. It's quite uncontrolled. That's the funny thing. Americans really didn't get it. In the UK, it's been quite common and controversial. Not as controversial thing, but they had lots of campaigns in the past and they thought, oh, we'd been hearing that. They thought and they would come and they would go. And yeah, and this time it's come and they got the sinking feeling of like, oh my God, it's not going, which is a great negotiation position.
SPEAKER_00:So you spoke about your views on welfare and I'm interested in the decision on the demand for the RSPCA to drop the scheme rather than like improve standards or like more auditing or what was the kind of sense of them dropping the scheme? Because potentially the likelihood is that those farms that were RSPCA assured go to a worse scheme like Red Tractor, for example. What's the strategy there?
SPEAKER_02:So we know that if we ask for 100%, we get something between, I mean, what's it called? Call it the radical... blank effect. And we've certainly experienced this. We asked for 100% plant-based catering. For example, we get default oatmeal on day one. We asked the RSPCA to drop the assured scheme. I mean, they dropped meat recipes off the website day one. They brought out a report and they've increased visits from one a year to three a year visits to farms. And they've also implemented 100% plant-based catering in all their internal and external events. We know with the Grand National, we call for the whole horse racing industry to be banned. They do the biggest welfare changes around national in 10 years. So we know that there's a back tail and this is certainly how he's increasingly thinking about strategy. There's a sort of a long tail behind these very bold asks. And we don't really, yeah. So we don't think necessarily what we, what we will get as our way. And we think, how do we, how do we shift the window on it? So the trouble, you know, you would argue the RSPCA, you get that long tail and then at some point you break it and the whole thing falls down. which has also then that unlocks other benefits. But the idea is the RSPCA scheme wouldn't be dropped in total isolation. It's with them then changing their position on animal farming. We're obviously trying to make an intervention into a complex system and admittedly, the outcomes can be quite unpredictable.
SPEAKER_01:Something you mentioned earlier on, which was the thing, let's say, I was advocating for before this all kicked off was that there managed to be something like disassociates from the RSPCA short scheme like the charity because before it used to be called Freedom Food I think and it wasn't as linked to the RSPCA brand and in my head I see this as a nice like middle ground of solutions where you know we keep the assured schemes which I think do have like meaningful improvements for animals lives as well as you don't get the moral legitimacy like lending that the animal charity side does the short scheme but what was the thinking on why you didn't go for that in the end and you went for the drop?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah well I'm not sure. It might be my idea actually,
SPEAKER_01:James. I was definitely pro. I'm very happy with your idea, but I was definitely pro that idea.
SPEAKER_02:If it had all been up to me, that is what would have been the message. It was a mistake not doing that. It was focused on clickbaity stuff, whereas my focus was arguments which were actually intellectually incoherently. solid and that is obviously what the different audiences of your campaign with the public a very simple message of drop works they're like that's a bad thing it's very easy just to get oh that's a bad thing i don't like it you're speaking to people um in the movement and the rspca and key stakeholders it's dissociated it works a lot a lot better more and more my focus on campaigns is yes press is a rocket fuel which stakeholders are very absorbent to and ultimately we're trying to get wins people who can actually make decisions and press very much helps that. I think it shouldn't be disassociate. It's less sexy phrase, but it would just give you that rather than having like 40% support, you'd have 90% support where people go like, oh, that sounds reasonable. And maybe there are problems with disassociate because the problem is the reason companies voluntarily sign up to your short scheme is because the RSPCA name adds value to the products. If you didn't have the RSPCA name, They wouldn't have the product. And maybe if the RSPCA sold the scheme, it wouldn't be led by a charity anymore. And therefore, over time, become an industry, greenwashing operation. I mean, humane washing. But there are details there. There is probably a solution there. It's just quite hard because we haven't been floating it. People haven't been talking about it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, sure. Difficult to measure. I guess on that then, so obviously there's... very wide range of international listeners on the podcast and a lot of countries don't have an RSPCA or equivalent charity and still have high meat consumption so does that suggest that actually in the UK the labeling doesn't matter that much and perhaps it would still be the case even if RSPCA like you know didn't even exist in the future or the assurance scheme didn't exist that perhaps it wouldn't make that much of a difference to meat consumption?
SPEAKER_02:It depends on what stage you are, yes. If it was at the right end stage of an industry's life, the RSPCA would prop them up. In the UK, how far into that stage? How much propping up is the welfare label really doing versus is everyone else condemning meat and the RSPCA is backing it? Or is everyone basically saying it's fine and the RSPCA is a tiny little voice?
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_02:On the whole, it obviously helps legitimize the industry. Is it overall net negative? Probably there are ways to do it. without like this disassociation where you'd get most of the benefits, get a lot of the benefits without, I'd say it's a fairly significant downside. And yes, and that's probably a disassociate space. So yes, it does, but it's not like the B or, it's not like without the RSVC support, the meat industry would collapse
SPEAKER_05:overnight.
SPEAKER_02:But they are signaling to all these other institutions. For example, the vet space. We attended a vet's conference. Rose got a talking slot. She's one of the other people from Animal Rising because they would be afraid we'd disrupt it. And the vets are very anchored to the RSPCA, the RSPCA short scheme, and the vets provide them as legitimacy. So there are other effects of the RSPCA endorsing animal farming.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think that's valid. I saw a LinkedIn post from Rose just a couple of days ago about the RSPCA advertising recipes for Christmas that included milk and dairy products and eggs. And actually, a lot of the responses on there were from vets. I don't know if it's because she got a lot of friend requests after that particular
SPEAKER_01:conference.
SPEAKER_00:But yeah, it was a lot of RSPCA justification from people who have on their LinkedIn that they're in some sort of veterinary medicine. It's definitely an interesting conversation when it comes to propping up that sense of what it actually means to be someone whose job is to protect animals and stop animals from suffering and help them. So yeah, it's definitely interesting.
SPEAKER_02:So when we do a system map of the UK animal system, we draw the vets who are critical. So we've been doing a bit more of a systems analysis approach, trying to make interventions in these universities and councils. And the RSPCA is a key node. And the vets, we were previously looking at a project on the vets because they are such a critical node of support for animal agriculture. And there are definitely lots of lines drawn in the RSPCA node and the vets node when we were drawing it out. So yeah, that is something in the back of our mind as well. But yeah, I mean, I take all the criticism of the RSPCA. It's not a perfect campaign, but it's been, I think, quite a successful campaign.
SPEAKER_00:Just going back to the public opinion as well, I just want to touch on whether you do any market research or any sense of consumer behaviors. Do you conduct anything? You keep saying like, it does matter to them whether it's RSPCA assured or not. Is there research or studies to suggest that that is the case, that consumers are concerned about the RSPCA assurance scheme? Have you done any market research or testing to get that information?
SPEAKER_02:Well, we were going to do surveys before and afterwards, for example, and the impact on public opinion. We actually made one with James and I actually made one to shift in opinions from the campaign, but we didn't quite reach. We did this with the Grand National, for example. And then, because we actually did shift, it was measurable on a national scale. The RSPCA campaign hasn't yet hit that. So we were going to try and track, for example, reduced trust in the RSPCA, impacting, for example, people's support for meat consumption. So no, we're trying to do a real-world experiment there. So no, not on that. There are reports, for example, by what are they called? Fornalytics. on humane washing and labeling. I don't think it really applies. It's basically based on the premise that no one knows what these welfare labels are. And I don't think that actually applies in this case.
SPEAKER_00:Because the RSPC is so prominent, you mean?
SPEAKER_02:No, no. And we have been actually talking about trying to do some stuff for like next year. Always open to being wrong, you know.
SPEAKER_01:I didn't know about this research until right now, but I was doing some quick Googling while we were talking. And there is an interesting stuff from YouGov on from 2022 on people's recognition of UK food standard labels. And the number of people who actually know what the RSPCA is, is about the same as Red Tractor. And it's a bit less well-known compared to British Lion, which is famous for eggs and a bit less well-known than Fairtrade, yada, yada. So it seems like, at least in the survey, which I'll link so people can see and Ben, if you want to see it. I guess this is one thing is like, I'm just not convinced it's like, you know, the thing that like everyone knows and holds on to is like, I know what this thing is so well, because it's like most humans have, most of us shoppers have such like a shallow understanding of like what our food labels actually mean. It's like, I actually have no idea what like fair trade actually means for farmers or what soil association organic actually means for like soil health. You know what I mean? So I think, I assume that is basically true. So when I think of like red tractor and RSPC, they're like, ah, probably similar. What do you think?
SPEAKER_02:Well, that's not what my mom thinks.
SPEAKER_01:This is
SPEAKER_00:the research, I see. This is a high
SPEAKER_01:quality. This whole campaign is based off Ben's mum. Who's very nice, by the way, I think about her. No, but
SPEAKER_02:when you were saying you were going to be talking to the RSVCA a while ago, she was like,
SPEAKER_04:well, I buy RSV, I
SPEAKER_02:buy RSV's actual chicken.
SPEAKER_01:So, yeah, 4.6 did this interesting bit of research on welfare washing where, so this is like an experiment they designed with a US audience obviously a bit different comparing hypothetical food choices with certified humane which is the main certification scheme in the US with kind of unverified labels like I said people just write humanely certified and it means nothing and some animal products that have no certification some of the things that I took away as being very important is what you said Ben is people don't differentiate very well between what's real and what's not and how meaningful is it and another point which I thought was important was people you know, again, in this hypothetical experiment, didn't purchase more, or try to purchase more animal products when they knew it was like welfare certified. So it wasn't like, oh, this stuff is high quality, therefore, I will buy more is more like, oh, I'm going to buy the same amount regardless. And it's a question of whether I'll spend it on the slightly more expensive welfare stuff or the cheap stuff. Any thoughts on that, Ben, maybe to the second point we haven't spoke about much before.
SPEAKER_02:I don't think people make their meat consumption decisions on the spot in a supermarket, depending on what's there. These are longer running behavior change, which all feed into the big lie of, you know, animals are having a nice time on farms. The industry obviously think people do know the assured scheme because it adds value to a product. They sign up to it and they're able to see their 60% recognition of their brand on that place in their marketing material. So, yeah, no, I do hear that, but I think it's kind of this model of people are just making these decisions right there and then that these are deeper cultural beliefs. So I think this is all very interesting. There's nothing like learning a system like trying to break it.
SPEAKER_00:So what are the plans then? So you've spoken about how long the campaign's been going now. There's this sense that maybe something's going to occur. There's been big shifts in leadership. Has that stunted the campaign? Where is it going from here?
SPEAKER_02:Well, there's no one to talk to anymore. We don't
SPEAKER_00:even know the email. They've all gone.
SPEAKER_02:Maybe it's easier to say our direction maybe next year and maybe how that links in is that we're looking to move to the pig industry and gas chambers and potentially we're trying to figure out what an ask could be if it's a halt on the pig industry or potentially a ban and organizing, trying to build on what we did with the RSPCA campaign and trying to orbit the animal movement around a goal. potentially with a shared narrative because we built so many relationships in the RSPCA campaign. I know everyone said it was divisive, But we have been speaking with every animal group apart from the RSPCA. We've actually probably better friends the RSPCA now than we were before. You know, you've
SPEAKER_01:got to have a fight. That's the point of conflict. Is that what they think as well? Our friends. Yeah, our friends campaigning against us. Well,
SPEAKER_02:that's the, you know, the avoidance of conflict is our favorite book, Five Dissunctions of a Team. And avoidance of conflict, well, it's actually the second dissunction. I would say it's the first one. dysfunction. But anyway, through this process, we built a huge amount of relationships to build on next year. And we hope to get, I keep using the expression, vertically integrate the movement around a shared goal. And the problem with the assured scheme is that we've got some alignment, but we want to get alignment through all the welfare organizations, the raggedy grassroots running pressure campaigns, and your professionalized people getting legislative wins. And we're thinking that the pig industry is that, it's the weakest, the vets are already pulling out There'd be now articles in the Vets Record saying the vets should pull support from it. We know actually the government ministers have taken an interest in gas chambers. This is the direction we're taking. There's only eight gas chambers in the UK killing 90% of pigs. This is the same in Europe. Only a handful of CO2 suppliers, one gas chamber manufacturer.
SPEAKER_00:How does that link to the RSPCA then? So you're picking apart like individual facets of the scheme or is this like you're going to stop the RSPCA stuff and just focus on a particular topic?
SPEAKER_02:We're figuring it out at the moment, but the hill will die on the pig and gas chamber industry. And it's unimaginable that the RSPCA assured pigs are mostly killed in gas chambers, that the RSPCA would be a pillar of a support. And this is linked to when you actually are really having an industry on the ropes. And if you can really build up mental bit, then certainly I think most people would agree in trusted institutions, drawing support could be a net positive. Yeah. And it's a very common sense issue. with potential massive public, it's not got salience yet, but resonance. So we do part three, but the RSPCA, there would be a component of it, them being a pillar of support, the gas chain, for the pig industry, probably. We've come so far in the last year. We've never even done investigations before. And we completely restructured. And we always find what we thought we could do a year ago, we couldn't imagine what we could do today, one year ago. And we've come a long way in this last year. And almost, yeah, we feel like working with others, we can really take on a large national target and actually move to, you know, we've been grinding for four or five years and have been saying lately, okay, this has been good training, but it's time to start winning. And I think everyone needs that. For example, we were chatting a lot with Tom Harris and others were around the other day, in this room actually that I'm sat in, Tom Harris, Nicola and Leila, who are looking at the grassroots network and integrating local grassroots campaigns. So you might have it, for example, a local campaign target in each gas chamber, and I would support that network. We hope to, if you're listening, whoever, everyone from the RSPCA passionate aligning around a goal and a strategy, and we'll have that back tail. If we push, for example, ban pig testing, we know there's this long tail that it suddenly frees up, suddenly makes it much easier to move along that axis of the welfare changes or banning on expansion. So anyway, this is how we're thinking about strategy.
SPEAKER_01:So the goal is something like basically forcing... pork producers or retailers basically whoever's buying pigs to rather than have them stunned via gas chambers and you know and co2 they're they're stunned via another method is that kind of the the goal
SPEAKER_02:the gas chambers is the issue with mass public support but i think we'd use it for the same reason for example the the article in the vet's post by um steven mccullough big up steven mccullough the vet yeah said gave five examples why the vet industry should withdraw support from industrial pig farming So I think we'd have to use that as a reason for calling for a ban on pig farming.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, to the extent you want something winnable, I think banning pig farming is pretty hard. I think if you want something winnable, I'd go for a bit smaller than that. I don't know exactly what it is.
SPEAKER_02:I think it's potentially an emergency halt to the expansion of the pig industry because almost until this thing's got under control, apparently in Scotland, they've been slightly receptive to the idea of a moratorium or what they call it, a pause on the expansion of the salmon industry. I don't know if I said this already in Tasmania. So Harley, she actually used to be in Animal Rebellion back in the days in doing the farm transparency project in Australia. And they caused an early election or political crisis in Tasmania by releasing gas chamber footage. Yeah, what the goal is, the gas chambers are indefensible, but irreplaceable. Well, one, they're irreplaceable because it's unique custom built infrastructure. The two, they're irreplaceable because there's not really much of a great alternative. We don't really want to find ourselves arguing that getting in these ridiculous arguments about like okay can we fill all the gas chambers with argon gas now please which is like the kind of being pitched as the most humane alternative
SPEAKER_00:so one clarifying point we just keep talking about um next year this will be released in january so when you're talking about next year you mean uh this year so we're talking about 2025 so these are no no it's all good so these are the plans for 2025 then you
SPEAKER_01:touched on it very briefly, but do you want to say the second part of the RSPCA campaign you just mentioned on the slaughterhouses side of things? We
SPEAKER_02:released three slaughterhouses one go. Well, actually four. One of them was a salmon. I was putting cameras inside slaughterhouses. This seems to be our go-to move now. You don't just investigate one, you investigate loads. And one go as a report and a video as well. And the outcome was the RSPCA immediately dropped all three and actually reported themselves. Well, they reported those slaughterhouses to the authorities themselves. But you know, the truth is, if you put a camera inside any farm or any slaughterhouse, you're going to come out shocked. That's obviously the big lie is that there's these nice fairytale farms or nice, you know, humane slaughter. But they're very violent places. And I guess there's no real surprise there maybe to those who work in animal stuff, probably those who work more in welfare. I think the RSPCA have been a little bit shocked and surprised. I don't know in some ways for me it's obvious you put a camera inside a sword house it's going to be very upsetting but
SPEAKER_00:the video was interesting I saw because you like showing the footage to people in the street right that's part of the video and people like yeah I guess people you wouldn't expect to be necessarily that concerned like I just this and in my head there's a group of three guys who maybe look like builders or something and I feel like they're watching the footage and then actually say like enough like We don't want to watch any more of that. It's like, it's too much. So I feel like that's been an interesting narrative to be not just, you know, all of us in the animal rights space going, yeah, we know it's like, isn't it terrible? And us feeling that, but actually trying to access like a wider public audience who, you know, maybe have never seen anything like that before. I think that the video was powerful.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and it was quite hard getting people to watch Swordhouse footage. So we got other people. We got Peter Tatchell, the legendary gay rights activist, took part in it, watching the videos and reacting to it. In the video, we had Moby, we had Dale Vince. Sorry, this is the thing on the Swordhouses. So we actually did something different as well. So we recorded per animal metrics. So Bless me, she went through so much slaughterhouse footage. She's an advertising.
SPEAKER_00:Wow. Yeah, it's a
SPEAKER_02:lot. But putting numbers, for example, like 40%, I think it was, of cows, like visibly tried to escape before being killed. Over 90% are used electric prod, even though that fanned in the RSPCS short scheme. So we recorded metrics in that way as well because we're really keen on this one bad apple narrative. It's actually really pervasive. Yeah. So we tried other things as well. So we... We didn't make enough of this when we released the forms that these are randomly selected. And then we also provide the raw footage as well for each form. So people can see what you actually putting your numbers on and you haven't cherry picked for the, you know, the three minute video you make as well. So trying to increase like transparency and openness
SPEAKER_00:I think that was one of my biggest disappointments with the RSPCA responses. And actually, we haven't spoken about this, but they publicly responded or the CEO publicly responded to the campaign. And what I would have really appreciated and perhaps consumers in the same position is like just an acknowledgement that what had been released and the investigations that had been released like weren't okay. And actually that like something did need to change. And I feel like unfortunately, that wasn't acknowledged. it felt quite like corporate rhetoric really like the statement that was released and not a sort of empathetic look at okay there was suffering in there that was like not easy to watch and actually that we need to do something about that I feel like that that was a piece that was kind of missing from their response I thought
SPEAKER_02:yes the RSPCA totally say like oh these are one or two bad funds they're tightening up I think it said actually one of the CEO's statements Chris Sherwood said customers can be reassured that they are contributing to to Better welfare, animal welfare by buying RSPC Assured. But they're a massive NGO, like among the biggest. And there's serious inertia in these big organizations. They're super establishment and people move through them. They don't really want to rock the boat. And this has been a really interesting experience trying to push a target like this because Chris Sherwood, for example, has gone on now and he's a, and I'm not from with him, but good to be the CEO of a children's charity. It's the NGO industrial complex and a lot of people are moving through and they don't really want to change things up. When everyone knows, when you start off, you can be in really mission-driven organizations and people get tired out. These big, more conservative NGOs, it's among the biggest and most conservatives. They're in the game of self-preservation. There is obviously a mission-driven component to it, but I think an even bigger component of inertia and self-preservation.
SPEAKER_00:You spoke as well about kind of uniting the groups, and at least you feel as though Animal Rising now has maybe better or more thoughtful connections with groups and individuals than previously, just because of choosing such a controversial sort of inside campaign, if you like. And there's definitely been narratives on social media that I've seen, like James, you've definitely been in heated debates on the old LinkedIn.
SPEAKER_01:Friendly, friendly, but heated.
SPEAKER_00:sure sure um how helpful do you feel like that's been maybe this is a question for james like for our space in the uk to be like igniting those conversations and actually seeing those different points of view but also i guess the resource input for all of that that it's it's felt like because it was an inside target that actually anyone from an animal org is like now voicing their opinion on whether that was the right strategy or tactic or what the approach should have been and do you think that's like a useful conversation for us to be solidifying or talking about our opinions on that topic in the UK or is it like a resource that could have been used elsewhere?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, well, first it was news to me that the RSVCA was part of the animal movement.
SPEAKER_01:Absolute shots fired. That's outrageous. They might say the same for you, Ben.
SPEAKER_02:But I would actually say this experience has brought, you know, people helped create an identity of where are the boundaries of the animal movement. I think, has it been that resource intensive? Perhaps there are, but overall, not a huge amount if we get out the other side, stronger and transformed. And I think it's helped develop a lot of people. These conversations, I mean, I think James is okay. You know, he's a little bit tired in the morning when he's been up all night on LinkedIn, but that kind of resource intensiveness. So I think what we need to do is get people aligned around a whole animal movement, around a shared strategy, not parallel strategies, which actually, the problem is, there's a welfare strategy and a meat reduction strategy. Normally, they're running parallel to each other with very little interaction. The RSPCA short campaign is actually where they hit each other. And what we need is everyone around a strategy of how do we end animal farming as quickly as possible while giving the animals trapped in the food system a good life as possible, so long as those efforts do not undermine meat reduction strategy. And we traditionally, like old welfare strategies, forget that third condition. And that's the RFPC-assured scheme. So yeah, so hopefully, that's what I've been hoping is that we can move towards a shared strategy where that's the problem statement we're trying to solve.
SPEAKER_00:What was your experience, James?
SPEAKER_01:I think it's early on. We have so many enemies, you know, quote unquote, to focus on, you know, the opposition, like the big meat companies, you know, retailers who promote these meat products, you know, blah, blah, blah, in industry schemes, you know, the NFU. I just think it's, like more productive to be focusing our time and energy on them. And that's not to say, you know, I think that there probably are some definite, definite drawbacks of RSPCA, like legitimizing stuff. But I guess the question for me, like if I had to prioritize, you know, a list of campaigns from like NFU to everything else that it's RSPCA, RSPCA is like fairly like low on my list. I guess that's kind of my overall takeaway just because like we're so far away in terms of like legitimizing me and RSPCA being the key factor of that. I would just rather focus on other stuff and, I'm of the viewpoint like not everyone needs to, it's overly ambitious to think like, oh, everyone's going to buy into like some shared vision. So I just think, you know, groups are too diverse, you know, both in terms of what they believe and what they actually care about. So I just think almost we shouldn't bother doing that. And it's okay to have these lanes as long as they're not like seriously disruptive to one another. I don't think it is in this case. You know what I mean? So I just think it's like, let's just get shit done in our own domain. And like, and that's that.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, but the unique thing about Animal Rising is we're a social change organization. And this is how we position ourselves. We can shift the game on something, make it a massive drama. And this is how we're thinking about strategy. That is our role in the movement. It really is being able to be the first to tread the path of others. We can create a drama around something, which just in the UK at least, there aren't other organizations quite positioned to do the same thing. And maybe that's us appreciating. We've really grown to appreciate our role. We don't need to get a big coalition around something first to get the ball rolling on something. But it's better if we do. Because we've just seen what happened with the reflection. I look back at the Grand National, I think, just think we could have been, you know, if we'd just gone off, we're just going to crush the Grand National this year. Maybe we could have. But we had others swinging in and we've seen these things happen organically, people swinging in. And we really now realize that's where our greatest potential is. Because people, I say all the time, no one gives a damn what we think. And the people shouldn't. They know what we... It costs us nothing to be bold. We're total outsider figures. But we've learned, you know, when we work with others, we can... I don't know. So that is us playing our role, I suppose, is looking for those opportunities on issues. But yeah, so I'd agree. Sorry, just finally. Yes, I think in AR, in animalizing, we totally also are developing an appetite of, This has been good, but we also want something that everyone can get behind wholeheartedly.
SPEAKER_00:Awesome. So do you want to talk about your other projects? So there's other things that Animal Rising runs. You've got your plant-based universities and plant-based councils. How is that all connected to the mission of Animal Rising? And what are the plans for those in 2025? So
SPEAKER_02:our mission is a 100% plant-based food system. And what we've been doing, we've been organizing people at scale to run plant-based campaigns, changing smaller institutions, which then lead up to the potential for the larger ones. So plant-based universities is organizing university students across the UK and now 10 countries in Europe. This is groups of students on campuses to pass a motion through their student union for it to support 100% plant-based catering. They then, the idea is to use the student voice through the student union. The student union might control 20% of the cafes to use the student voice to talk at the departments, which some places have done, for example, Cambridge University. And anyway, then you maybe go to the university leadership later. We've done past motions in 12 universities so far through the UK, two outside of the UK, one in the Netherlands, one in Graz. Cambridge University is a 100% plant-based cafe and a few of the departments are plant-based. Now, yeah, there's hundreds of students involved. On Sunday, apparently 70 students come into the office, come in the office. We have an office at the moment for a potluck. You know, there were summer camps. We're planning in this summer camp in Europe. The idea is people get coaches from around the different countries in Europe to go to the PBU Mega Camp. So it's joyous. Mega camp. So it's been, and we've, we had some accounts and people are really going through personal transformation. And if you, so anyway, that's universities. We probably have about a hundred students graduating a year and people are really then going on to other things as well. So people are coming through transformed. We are a bit of a factory now, producing people who are being transformed into activists. And we're doing this now with councils in the UK. So this comes under the strategy of something which is modular, repeated once in the country, and you find something you can win once anywhere, then you scale up and try and win everywhere. And councils, there's 400 councils in the UK. James and I gave it a good first run back in late 2020. Yeah, that's
SPEAKER_01:right. In COVID, we couldn't do direct action, so we resorted to this. But actually, I think it's going pretty well, much better than when I was there.
SPEAKER_02:We relaunched in 2023 with a proper community organizing model. So we've really learned, basically, we know how to organize people now. It's been a long... grind but we scaled up 48 we launched 48 groups in person in the UK and this year their groups are four you know at least groups it's quite strict it's groups three or more they won't even count the number of campaigns like a group if you're working on something together passing motions we've done it through 13 councils in the UK passing motions which are either 100% plant-based internal catering or some pro-plant-based motion and then we're looking at trying to build up to regional targets because we've got the basic building blocks now we aim to get 100 campaigns by the end of next year part-based councils doesn't sound sexy but it is it is sexy it's so sexy it's so sexy keep saying that man and anyway we're just in the process trying to organize so students universities residents of councils and we're just in the process trying to launch farm-based churches and That's the vision. This is a work in progress. We had the first call yesterday, was it? Anyway, and then the vision would be organizing school students for schools. And this is cradle-to-grave activism. So you go to plant-based schools, you then go to plant-based universities, you then go to plant-based councils, and then you go to plant-based churches.
SPEAKER_01:I've never heard the word cradle-to-grave activism. It's insane terminology. Wow, I love that. Wait, wait, wait. Surely you need... Plan-based retirement homes. Who's
SPEAKER_00:working on that? I'm a bit worried. It goes from babies to school to university to death.
SPEAKER_01:Churches is like in the middle of your life and then you go towards the end.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and what it's leading to, so loads of people are going through these campaigns now and really, I've described these campaigns, what's the goal of them? And we're really just trying to pass motions. I keep describing it. Passing these motions is a vehicle through which we can create personal transformation in people, people who realize they can change the world. And I often tell this story, but we had a plant-based council's national training day the other day, 40 people were there. A woman was there, Z, big up Z. But she, anyway, she said at the end, I didn't realize people were trying to change the world. I believe I can change the world.
UNKNOWN:It was like being at some sort of like American mega church.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, wow.
SPEAKER_02:And, you know, this is, about design and strategy and how people feel that we said at the beginning, you know, if you're here to be told by the experts what to do, go home now. If you're here to work together, the door's there. If you're here to work together, create a better world, stay. The end result, sorry, is that we have shifted it. So Plant Based University has been on the BBC and we've had It's been at quite a few large press events. And I think it's shifting the Overton window. So universities, we pass it through the National Union of Students to support plant-based unis. They then had universities that we're not running campaigns at reaching out to try and implement plant-based stuff. So we were shifting the Overton window for other universities. But also like Chris Packham recently brought out the plant-based pledge for all NGOs to support 100% plant-based. We've seen the National Trust. Linda from Plant-Based Councils went and passed a motion through the National Trust, voted for all their cafes to be 50 cent plant-based. This is the biggest nature organization in the UK. Wow, that's awesome. And they were all plant-based councils, campaigners. So we're giving people the experience of winning and we hope to scale this up. And we're planning this different ways to target all different NGOs. And we know lots of NGOs now starting to get that 100 cent plant-based internal catering. And so, yeah, so it's a great scalable strategy that Because the idea is to be organized as a natural constituency on something that people actually care about.
SPEAKER_00:Seems a great place to end on lots of whens. Thanks so much, Ben. I think that's been a really useful... unpacking and I guess maybe slightly different in tone to some previous episodes just because it's a campaign here in the UK I know James is very passionate on it and so I think it's been a really helpful
SPEAKER_01:maybe sound like a huge keyboard warrior I am in fact a keyboard warrior but I also had a call with Ben and Dan to discuss my my thoughts beforehand so it's not all keyboard based I'll have you know it's good to air this stuff with your friends so
SPEAKER_00:yeah absolutely So I'd love to know from you, Ben, just to finish off. So some piece of news that you're excited about recently. Has anything come up that you'd like to share?
SPEAKER_02:I actually think plant-based treaty don't get enough shout outs. They're trying to get a global plant-based treaty. I've just been watching videos of them at COP and they're getting like Amsterdam to commit to transitioning their protein from like currently it's 40% consumption in the city to be like 60% plant-based or something, you know, the big shifts. And they're starting to get shifts from cities and they're trying to build up to plant-based treaties. So just seeing them at COP, I think that's like an actual coherent strategy.
SPEAKER_01:And in terms of media recommendations to listeners, any books, podcasts, articles? Well,
SPEAKER_02:Your Neighbor Kills Puppies, that's a book by Tom Harris, Shaq. Oh, yeah. It's unbelievable. Forget animal groups, the last people to fly too close to the sun where they nearly defeated international capitalism and the state unleashed the full force of the state on them. So I'd definitely say that. Big up Tom Harris and Nicola. But the good strategy, bad strategy, you were actually talking about this with Jesse, I think. That's right. A brilliant book. And that's how we think about strategy a lot in AR, about things trying to be mutually reinforcing. And it's a bit better. I'm sure other people recommend it because everyone's talking about it now, but we were talking about it before. change how to make big things happen. The book, which is about how network theory works and targeting clusters. This is what we're doing with universities and councils. We're trying to crunch clusters and then let it domino effect through the rest of the system.
SPEAKER_00:Nice. We'll link all those in the resources as always. Thanks.
SPEAKER_01:And last but not least, how can people get involved with the various Animal Rising campaigns and projects if they're interested?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I'd say at the moment, the thing to get involved with is not with Animal Rising, we're orientating ourselves at the moment, but if you're a university student, there's literally, I can't imagine why a vegan university student would not be involved in plant-based universities. If you're anywhere in Europe, you can go onto the plant-baseduniversities.org and sign up. We're actually about to start paid adverts targeting vegan university students on social media, because surely it's a great time. So anyway, if universities can do that, anyone else in the UK, sign up for plant-based councils.
SPEAKER_00:Awesome. Well, thanks so much again, Ben. Yeah, really intriguing episode. I've really enjoyed learning more about the campaign and the work of Animal Rising. So thanks so much for coming on.
SPEAKER_02:No worries. Thank you.
UNKNOWN:Thank you.