[Dušan] Hello, hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, Today with us we have two and hopefully
three great speakers that I'm going to announce pretty soon. I'm Dušan Pajović. I'm the coordinator of Green New Deal
for Europe campaign for DiEM25. Welcome to our session where we
are going to host progressive ideas you won't hear anywhere else. Especially not on COP26, which
turned out to be a big flop. So let me introduce
our speakers first. With us here today, we have
Dr Steven Best, who is an award-winning writer,
noted international speaker, public intellectual and seasoned activist
with decades of experience in diverse political movements. He is associate professor of philosophy
at the University of Texas, El Paso. Best has published 14 books
and over 200 articles and reviews on a wide range of topics. He was a co-founder of the
Animal Liberation Front press office, a co-editor of two key volumes on
animal and earth liberation and the founder of
Critical Animal Studies. For his uncompromising advocacy of
total liberation humans, animals and the earth.
Best has been denounced as an
eco terrorist before the US Congress and banned from the UK for life. In his opposition to abstract terrorizing
divorced from the urgent ecological and social issues of the day,
Best aspires to show what philosophy means in a world of crisis. Thank you very much Steve
for being here with us today. Now, our second speaker, Anita Krajnc,
who is a co-founder of Toronto Big Save and executive director of
The Global Animal Save Movement. The groups use a lab-based community
organizing approach to mobilize activists to bear witness to animals at the
front gates of slaughterhouses. In 2019, Animals Say Movement
expanded to include Youth Climate Save, Climate Save and Health Save movements
moving the group's focus beyond animal videos to include campaigns
such as The Plant Based Treaty Initiative and Stop Animal Gifting campaign.
Anita holds a PhD in political science
and has taught university courses on social movement strategies
and is a follower of Leo Tolstoy and Gandhi's philosophy
of love and non-violence. Thank you, Anita for being with us. Our third speaker, who is hopefully
going to join us soon, is from the Party for the Animals,
Netherlands. Christine Teunissen studied history
at Leiden University from 2012 to 2014. She was press secretary for
the Party for the Animals faction in the house of representatives. Since 24th March of 2014, she has been
a member of the Municipal Council of the Hague and a member of the
Senate of Netherlands for 2018 to 2021.
She was the youngest member
of that senate session. Like I said, hopefully, Christine
is going to join us but, let's kick off this important session
by saying that we demand justice for all beings: animals, non-human animals,
humans and the earth itself. So because we assume that non-vegan,
leftists and non-animal liberation orientated leftists are watching us,
why do you think that animal liberation is important? What would you say to the non-animal
liberation orientated leftists? Steve, maybe we can start
with you and then Anita can add. Please feel free to take as much time
as you need, because this question is the central point
of the event, probably. [Steve] Sure all right.
Thank you. It's really terrific to be here.
This is a great program and I appreciate
the enlightened thinking behind it. So the question is: 'Should we
include animals in the TNT or any particular progressive program?" The answer is an unequivocal yes. We can and we should
and we must include animals in any truly progressive politics. Now the traditional approach on the left
is to disparage the importance of the animal question
or just ignore it altogether and I argue that this question
needs to be elevated to a place of central importance in our
politics, our thinking and our practice. I should say upfront that I have much
personal experience with this issue, my own personal and political evolution,
starting off as a Marxist, becoming a vegetarian against my will,
having kind of an epiphany or a religious experience,
eating a double cheeseburger that flipped me immediately. I worked in both human
and animal rights communities. I recognized that they devalued
each other, usually for bad reasons, but some people like the three of us,
I guess, do have feet in both communities.
We know how hard it Is to get one
community to talk to the other. So, for instance, one day I would try
to get leftists to acknowledge animal rights and maybe even
attend a vegan dinner. The next day after that, I would argue
with a vegan animal liberationist about the Importance for
radical social theory, of being involved in a political
movement and not just making this a personal or
a health issue by being a vegan. So you know, I came to see that
these two worlds need to come together and certainly environmentalists too. I had equal problems trying to talk
and work within environmental caps.
Now the progressives must engage
animal issues for two key reasons that I'll focus on today. First, of course, is the moral issue,
and second, of course, is the environmental issue. Where we recognize that the role
that animal exploitation plays. Factory farming, in particular, plays in
every environmental problem we have very much including climate change. I just want to say something quick about
animal studies and radical animal studies which is a politicization of this. It's not a single issue matter at all. It's just a social, political,
radical issue at heart. I want to just mention the concept,
what I call 'the animal standpoint'. Here my argument is that there are
many perspectives to look at history. A Marxist perspective is one. A feminist perspective is another. Race perspective is yet another
and they all illuminate really important things about history/ Certainly for me, the Marxist viewpoint
had much to say. Marx said that history is a riddle
and that his theoretical framework will resolve that riddle. Well, I don't think it can resolve
that riddle or any other perspective alone unless it also has the animal standpoint.
If we look historically at the way that
humans interact with animals, sometimes benevolently,
mostly in exploitative ways, we can understand history in a way
that no other viewpoint can illuminate. So this is an essential, theoretical and
methodological perspective on history. I'll give you one example. This is the social construction of
hierarchy and domination of one group over another. I would say, arguably this has its roots in
speciesism. Of course the discriminatory viewpoint
that the humans are superior to animals for one particular reason or another. If we want to understand the underlying
logic of social hierarchies and power relations, I think we have to
grasp the long history of human domination over non-human animals and how
speciesism informs other modes of social power. I think speciesism provided the prototype
for hierarchical domination and a battery, a range of tactics
and technologies of control, because humans have traditionally,
since certainly the western tradition, defined their essence, their nature,
their identity as rational beings.
That is in opposition to non-human
animals and basically, forgetting that we are animals and which they
erroneously define as irrational. So that is entirely devoid… Animals are entirely devoid
of the qualities that we deem to be human, which make us unique
and therefore separate from other forms of life. Now, once animals became the measure
of alterity and the irrational, they are the irrational, the non-rational. That is the contrast to
the rational essence of humanity. It was just a short step to begin viewing
different exotic, dark-skinned peoples as brutes beasts, savages,
women, the mentally ill. Anyone that didn't fit the category of
rational or normal got put into the category of the non-rational, They got reduced in other words, to
the moral basement and the main group in the moral basement is animals. So if we can somehow define animals
as non-rational and non-human and devoid of reason or complexity,
which they are not as recent science tells us and with very
persuasive evidence. So, if we can put animals in the
moral basement and say that's where there's no moral value,
because they're non-rational, all we got to do is drag any other group
into that basement we want and then treat them like animals,
reduce them to animals.
Now, if we had not put animals
in the moral basement in the first place, there would be no category to stigmatize
and exploit these other people as some kind of animality, brute beasts,
beasts, savages or something else. Now, the animal standpoint also is
going to reveal I think, the root causes of the climate crisis and I'll say
some things about that. But let me get onto the
moral argument, real quick. Philosophers like to make
this very complicated. I don't. I think the moral argument
for animal rights or animal liberation is is pretty simple in essence. It's what I would call an
analogical argument. It's based on an analogy that depends
on the substantive life traits and conditions that humans share with
other animals. And at root, the argument for animal
rights is: if we humans have rights, animals have rights for the same reason
and to deny their rights is to be logically inconsistent and therefore to
undermine our own case for rights in some significant way. So let me remind everyone
of the obvious: that we are animals. We are advanced apes with
sophisticated forms of thinking, technology and culture, all of which
originated in and is impossible without a pre-existing biological and
social basis in animal communities.
We didn't get our qualities from nowhere. So that means we have important
commonalities with other animals and the argument for animal rights
or animal liberation states. In essence then: that these commonalities
are morally significant and if you think otherwise, is to express
a form of discrimination, bias and prejudice dominant in
western culture, since at least ancient Greece,
and that is speciesism. It's really the last remaining socially
acceptable presence, form of discrimination, the last socially
accepted form of discrimination certainly amongst the left,
which unfortunately has been influenced by this traditional speciesism just as much as anybody else
and I know this again from experience.
Now speciesism is rooted
in two fallacies: one that only human beings are
rational or intelligent beings, and animals are just dumb brutes. Science tells us that
they are sophisticated. They are complex in their emotions,
their feelings, their ability to think and analyse the world in their ways. Their social interactions with another,
they're remarkably complex and interesting, and it's just we who are too stupid
to understand that. So that's the first premise of speciesism:
that only we are rational or intelligent beings. The second premise is the possession
of rationality alone qualifies for superior moral status
and privileges over so-called non-rational human beings. Now isn't that a nice coincidence that
because we take ourselves by definition to be rational beings, homo sapiens,
that we elevate rationality to be the supreme moral arbiter? What if giraffes legislated morality
then all of us short-necked people would be in some very serious trouble. In the 19th century, a utilitarian
philosopher Jeremy Bentham made a very forceful reply
to this rationalistic argument. I quote him. You might be
familiar with this quote. It gets right to the heart of the matter.
It cuts through all the bullshit
really in a one sentence or so. He said: "The question is not,
can animals reason, nor can they talk, but can they suffer and why should
the law refuse its protection to any sensitive beings?" So that's a bottom line argument
for species equality that proclaims sentience, not reason
as the necessary and sufficient condition for what we need to have rights. That goes against the entire philosophical
tradition, from Aristotle to Kant. All the rationalists who had this
really weak, essentialist definition of humans and Nietzsche and Freud
and many others, and certainly contemporary science, that show us
how false this definition is. Now, of course, humans are different
from other animal species. The definition of species is to be
something unique from other forms of life. It's tautological. All humans are different
from one another, but that fact does not give one human more rights
or value than the other. The point is that we can acknowledge
factual differences without thinking that they are morally relevant. So, yes, we have differences with animals.
These are factual differences,
but are they morally relevant? Do they really matter? Are they as important
as we think they are? I would say no, and I would also say
that we should not focus on our differences, but we should
focus on our commonalities. We all are sentient. We all experience, pain and suffering. We all have preferences. No one wants to be caged,
tortured or killed, or denied freedom of movement and happiness of life. Our most basic moral intuition is that
it's wrong to cause another being pain. If pain is pain and suffering
is suffering, then when I must ask: when is it necessary to cause pain
or suffering to another living being? The answer is almost never
simply because they lack rationality? Well on that criterion, many humans
would not have rights either because I think we're
a very irrational species. We are after all
destroying our planet. Now, I showed that I think speciesism is
strongly analogous to racism and sexism. They're hierarchical
systems of domination. They involve a dualistic separation of:
one thing is radically different from the other, men from women,
whites from people of color, humans from animals.
It's the same logic of
domination in each case. We ought not to be particular about
which prejudices we accept and which we reject, because
so many people: "I'm against racism. Against sexism.
Pass me that hamburger." You know, as hopefully enlightened people,
we ought to throw out all forms of prejudice and discrimination
into the trash bin of history and not accept our favourite form
of discrimination and think that we are enlightened, egalitarian people. Now, traditionally, the left has been
behind the moral and political curve for more advanced movements. This was true in the 19th and 20th
century when Marxists ignored issues such as gender and race. It's true in the 1960s,
when socialists thought environmentalism
was a bourgeois concern. Now it is all too true with many
other progressive and leftists in their views toward
animal rights and veganism. For the most part,
they just don't get it. Just as it once did with environmental
issues, the left has rejected animal rights issues as bourgeois
or merely reformist or single issue, and just sometimes they are,
but they remain blind to the myriad of severe social and
environmental problems caused by things like factory farming
and meat consumption.
Now speciesism in theory informs
speciesism in practice, including the globalized industrial
system that kills over 70 billion land animals a day. That's more than 200 million victims
killed each day! There's really no other word for this. This is an animal holocaust and it's a
gigantic stain on human history. The barbarities that we inflict on
animals ought to be a profound concern for anyone who claims they have
compassion and empathy and moral values.
Here in the United States,
in the 1960s Martin Luther King, the great humanist articulated a vision
of universal humanism and equality when he denounced tribalism. He advocated what he called
a world house no longer divided by hatred and prejudice. It's a beautiful vision,
this humanistic utopia, but it's missing a qualitative leap
to another realm that we must include, and that is animals. We must bring animals into the
moral community of concern. He left them out, as so many other
eloquent humanists have. But this world house in any system
is still a God damn slaughterhouse so long as we exploit billions of animals
every year for human food consumption. So long as we think that our palate tastes
merits the death of another being and so long as we turn our eye to the
environmental cost of eating their meats. So, leftists will not truly change anything
fundamental about that system and by extension, other systems until
left thought, like enlightened anthropocentrism in the environmental
movement, we must undergo a Copernican revolution
and it's a bit spiritual – if I might say – and that is the
recognition that the earth does not belong to us,
but rather we belong to the earth and we must conduct ourselves
as respectful citizens in the planetary eco community.
We must not rape and pillage
the habitats of other animals and put them on the torture racks
of suffering for our really unjustifiable tastes. Now, animals aren't the only victims
of this holocaust perpetuated by the global meat and dairy industry, what I call the global meat
and dairy complex, they go together. This is deadly serious for us as well,
for our ability to create peaceful and sustainable societies. If I could identify one problem,
one problem at the centre of some of our most critical social and
environmental crises, and I could not choose capitalism,
because that would be first and it's grow or die logic
which is unsustainable. This one problem would be the
global agricultural system and its focus on meat production.
The amount of water… [Dušan] We can go back
to that in the next questions. [Steve] Okay. [Dušan] Thank you.
Thank you. This review has been
really terrible and great. I couldn't agree more. Anita, do you have something to add
from the perspective of civil society and social movements? [Steve] Do I? I'm happy to leave
it in your hands. [Anita] Okay. Thank you. That was like yeah, very profound
and I agree completely. That was an incredible analysis. Just from my own journey and
perspective with the Animal Safe Movement,
we've been very influenced by Tolstoy and Gandhi and his
approach, which is deontology or doing the right thing in the present
or focusing on duties and when you're bearing witness
to animals at slaughterhouses, your sense of accountability is much
higher than if you're watching a film.
A film can make you do the right thing
and not harm or exploit animals and become vegan and an activist,
but when you're in the presence of the victims, it's profoundly
transformative and you realize the scale of the problem, and also
your responsibility and the community's responsibility to stop, you know,
stop these death camps. So one of the things that we found is,
when we bear witness, a lot of the focus is
on individual duty. When we started the campaigns,
we didn't focus too much on system change. We focused on just like conscientious
objection to the outrage of slaughterhouses and animal exploitation. People like Tolstoy and Gandhi,
they always said: The first step in social change
is looking at yourself, self-perfection before
trying to change society. I think there's some lessons in that. I think when you look at environmental
groups today, they like to just say it's all about system change. Don't talk about consumers. Don't talk about individual change. It's actually both. In sociology and other disciplines,
we talk about agency and structure and you know to change a system,
you need both.
You need that kind… Both agents to act morally,
be conscientious objectors, create a social movement,
create bottom-up pressure, people power. There's a whole field of theory about that. Then you also need to just focus on
advocacy and system change. That's something that we want to
bring to the table when we're moving beyond just doing vigils. So, as Dušan mentioned,
Animal Safe Movement is now broadening to climate and health
and other social and environmental issues. We recently launched a campaign
called Plant Based Treaty and in it, we want to focus on
individual change and system change. It arose after meeting
with Tzeporah Berman. She's with Stand Earth. She was Greenpeace International's
energy campaigner. She's a hero of mine. In the 90s, I was part of the
environmental movement and I got arrested in civil disobedience
in old growth rainforest campaigns in Clayoquot Sound. it's on Vancouver Island and
The Great Bear Rainforest, which is the mid-coastal
part of British Columbia. We were just trying to protect
these thousand-year-old trees that were homes to many species,
including many endangered species. So I knew her in the 90s
and then I contacted her in April with Genelle who is
Genesis Butler's mom.
Genesis Butler, if you don't know,
is a a social media influencer on climate and veganism
and Nicola our climate communications person
with our movement. We asked her: how do we get
animal agriculture on the agenda in these climate talks? And she goes: Well I've been watching
animal rights groups for decades, and I still don't know
what you want. It's just like: Go vegans! She said: Governments
are the most powerful actors. You really know how to target
governments. Oh, then she showed us the
fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty or Fossil Fuel Treaty. This was in April of this year. Then we looked and we got: Oh okay.
Well, let's create a plant based treaty. So we just copied their model
because, as you know the environmental movement has
thousands of times more resources than any animal rights movement.
So, they have a very sophisticated
model of bottom-up pressure where they're trying to get a million
individuals, 10 000 groups, businesses, 50 cities to endorse,
to create bottom-up pressure for system change,
for national governments, to negotiate a global fossil fuel
non-proliferation treaty. So when you look at their model,
it's a lot of system change, but we wanted to adapt it
because we believe in individual change
and system change. We are going to try to inject that
into the debate, because that's one of the ways they try to
keep us out – the environmental movement –
because they say it's not about consumers. It's not about what you eat
as an individual. It's about system change
and policy change.
So anyways, that's one of the
challenges that we have. In our Plant Based Treaty ,
we made it science-based, but it's very interesting because
the science very much overlaps, I would say completely
with the ethics. I agree with what professor Best said. It's the world view that we need
Is that we're part of this earth. We're a very holistic ecological
point of view where and that focuses on interdependence
and Tolstoy said in a really beautiful short moral tale that he wrote called
"King Esarhaddon of Assyria". it's a very Buddhist tale. He says: When you wish to harm others,
you really do evil to yourself. I think if you look at the science,
with us harming pigs, cows, chickens, fish,
all these different animals, us putting you know, pigs in
gas chambers, where they suffocate with carbon dioxide poison. The incredible irony is that we're
injecting this CO2 and we are going to suffocate from CO2. The way we're heading there
could be runaway climate change. So yeah, have we made some progress
with these two communities, environmental and animal rights,
or even like climate justice or social justice and animal rights? There have been some inroads,
and I agree with Professor Best that it's both communities that
have to move towards each other.
Like a lot of animal rights communities
might not be aware of social justice. There might be or not. There's a lot of learning that needs to
take place in that community as well. I agree with professor Best that
in general, the left is more aware of just generally the different
sort of moral issues there in different communities. So I think there are some
indications of progress.
Like, for example, because of
all the slaughterhouses. slaughterhouse workers that died
or were hospitalized because of Covid, it raised awareness
with a lot of people on the left or a lot of liberals about
the problems with slaughterhouses. Unions were calling for
slaughterhouses to be shut down. in in Alberta, Canada, where I live,
Cargill has a huge cow slaughterhouse. there, and the union and workers
asked that the slaughterhouse be shut down. Cargill, one of
the biggest multinationals that produces animal feed
and has slaughterhouses, they worked with the Alberta government
and prevented the the slaughterhouse from being shut down. So they kept kept it open, so you know
killed more workers, there was more hospitalization and it became
the Covid epicentre in Canada and that was true for
a lot of slaughterhouses in the United States and Europe,
all over the world.
These these were issues, and it's
marginalized communities that are exploited to work in slaughterhouses. So clearly, a lot of people on the left,
including in the US politics, began to listen to the issues
that we've brought forward. So there is that important intersection,
of worker rights and historically there's been some awareness
like Ray Rogers who developed Killer Coke campaign,
a very progressive vegetarian. He worked with slaughterhouse
unions in the 80s when Reagan was trying to destroy the different
unions in the airline sector and slaughterhouses and so forth. He generally had a campaign against
unionisation in the private sector and in the public sector. So there has been some recognition
historically like Ray Rogers. When I asked: Why? You're a vegetarian, yet you're working
with unions for slaughterhouse workers. So, obviously those are tricky issues, But, I guess the general argument
is to increase the laws and the regulations
against that industry. it's wrong to have it
completely unregulated. They're subsidized, which means that
people consume more meat, dairy and eggs, or you know,
animal flesh.
We have to be careful with the
species language as well. So anyways,
I agree with what Professor Best said. We've had some interesting
experiences over time and we think there's more traction
now than ever for our issues. We see it in the in the climate field. [Dušan] Let me just emphasize
the Plant Based Treaty campaign which you mentioned, because It has
also been endorsed by DiEM25, and this is a call for our viewers
to endorse it themselves. We are working towards making the
Plant Based Treaty demands into policy. So, if you'd like to work with us on that,
our moderator is going to attach a link in the chat for
joining our movement. Thank you. It means a lot. Yes, sorry again, Professor Best,
for interrupting you previously. It's because I have this as
the next question. What's your take on COP26? As you know, they mentioned methane.
pledged to cut it by 30 percent. Methane emissions, with no word
about animal agriculture.
They said that they are going to stop
deforestation. They said it also in 2014 though,
but nothing happened. Even in that, we don't see anything
about animal agriculture. There has been a leaked document which
shows that animal agriculture has been buying off people and lobbying
not to be present in the reports. So. my question is: Is COP26
a lost chance, or did you not have high hopes in the first place? What's your take, professor? [Steve] We've been talking and talking
for decades about this. There have been so many conferences
and promises that go nowhere. This will never change until we have
really forceful social movements. I'm surprised. I'm so proud of the people involved
in this, but I don't know why these movements aren't stronger.
I don't know why there aren't
revolutions in the street. I don't know why animal groups are not
exploiting the climate crisis more to promote veganism
and the animal question. I do think this is getting
better amongst the left. I think we're finally starting to see
what a disaster meat eating is for the planet. This is a total liberation issue where
we understand the interconnections. The basic point here is: what we do
to animals, we do to ourselves.
We do to ourselves! Comes back to us and nothing is more
obvious than the environmental impact of meat consumption. Everybody knows that the fossil fuel
giant, Exxon Mobil is a huge contributor to climate change,
but the world's top five meat and dairy companies emit the same amount of
greenhouse gasses as Exxon Mobil. A recent study showed another really
astonishing fact, and that is that the 20 top livestock companies together
emit more greenhouse gases than Germany, the UK or France. So, animal products are responsible for
about 60% of all food related emissions. They account for 18% of greenhouse gases,
which is more than the entire transportation sector, which is about 14%, We pay a lot of attention to the
problem with carbon dioxide. But of course, methane gas is about
30 times more potent. Cows and other ruminant animals
emit 30% of the world's methane. If we go on to look at how many resources
are needed to feed this system of killing animals for food consumption,
how much land is stripped? How many rain forests
are chopped down? How many indigenous
people are affected consequently? How many social conflicts
this all creates, we start to see even more connections.
I said, it's the one issue. If we can greatly scale back on meat
production, ideally eliminate it, we will make so much progress. Now we're starting to see this
in some movements. For instance, in October,
just in October of this year, a group of leading scientists warned
that meat production must be reduced by 50% to meet the goals
of the Paris Accord. They are they advocated replacing this
with foods that are more environmentally friendly and minimize public health
problems and that, of course, would be plant based foods. Another study found that if the US slashed
meat consumption in half and switched to eating more plant based
foods, the result would be a 35% decrease in US diet-related
emissions by 2030. In other words, this is one of the most
powerful things that that we can do for the environment, is to reduce
or eliminate our meat consumption.
Let me just give one more example. Progressive and environmental groups
are catching on. I'm really happy to see this as part of
your programs because they need to be. We need to put a new… We need radical new social institutions, but we also need a whole
new agricultural system. This must be at the forefront of
our programs and politics. For instance, in 2018 Greenpeace called
for a global reduction of 50% in our consumption
of animal foods by 2050. They envision a system of ecological
farming that would promote animal welfare and be much less
harmful to the environment. That's nice, and I think that
would be a great step forward. But it's morally problematic
because, it's just polishing the chains of animal slavery. What animal liberation calls for is not
the reduction in their suffering, but the elimination of their suffering,
the elimination of all forms of exploitation,
the exploitation of humans, the exploitation of the earth
and the exploitation of animals. We see that all of these things
are interconnected. So Greenpeace is talking about animal
welfareism and minimizing the the amount of suffering
we cause animals.
We don't talk about minimizing
the suffering in gulags, or in Auschwitz, and we shouldn't talk about
minimizing it in factory farms. I get that this would be a
tremendous step forward, for reducing the impact of
greenhouse gases on the environment. But we really need to take that
qualitatively forward to a position where we recognize each other as
equals in the bio community and really get in touch more with
the values of compassion for every sentient life which are
fundamental to eastern religions But, Not to ours. Let me say that in our contemporary
framework, that animal rights and animal liberation, leftists
– I don't think understand this. It involves the deepening and logical
evolution of left progressive values. We have the values of
non-discrimination, anti-hierarchy inclusiveness,
community rights and autonomy. We also claim to represent the weakest
and the most exploited people or beings, the most vulnerable
members of our society.
I don't know who's weakest
or more exploited than animals. I consider them members of
our society and our eco community. However foreign it might strike some,
animal rights is in fact a logical growth and outcome of left progressive values. We have a lot to say about climate change
and I hope that we can make a greater impact in this. [Dušan] Thanks, thanks, Steve. Yeah. Let's have a
conversation about it. First, let me just emphasize that
our our viewers can post questions in the comments and in the end, we are
going to have a small Q & A session. Anita. You were at the
forefront of the COP26. What is the news from there? [Anita} Yeah, I'm in Toronto,
so I wasn't there, but our team… We had team members from Britain
and some from Europe that went to COP. We had a giant inflated cow that said:
"Stop animal farming!" I just want to share the image because
I think this image has value. The Getty image which
actually has value added. I don't know, let me just share screen.
There we go.
So here it is. So you see the 'Stop Animal Farming'. it has the world map on it and in the
back drop is the conference centre. So, I just think it's a great image. So thank you, yeah. We did some direct action on the streets. We joined the the march. We developed the The Plant Based Treaty
Guide to Glasgow and with all the vegan restaurants,
we circulated that we were at Strathclyde University. There was a youth conference. It was called Conference of the Youth
which was just before COP and Greta showed up there one day.
We were there giving out samples
and signing up people to endorse The Plant Based Treaty. We have 18 members of parliament
in England that have endorsed The Plant Based Treaty. They support The Plant Based Treaty and
are calling for an early day motion to debate The Plant Based Treaty
and the role of animal agriculture in the UK Parliament. One of the things we're doing with
The Plant Based Treaty is it's about individual change like
The Plant Based Guide to Glasgow, but, it's about a system change as well,
and we're very much targeting governments.
We have email actions that you
can take on the website. The website is
plantbasetreaty.org You can write to your city councillor
and mayor and ask the city to endorse. So what we're trying to do, is create
bottom-up pressure on national governments
to negotiate a global treaty. We're trying to get 50 cities, and we
already got a couple of cities endorsing: Boynton beach in Florida
and Rosario in Argentina. We're looking at some cities in England
that have a lot of green members like Edinburgh, Glasgow, Brighton,
Bristol and a few others and so, yeah. I just wanted to add to some of
the points that Professor Best made. So there's this agreement,
as you mentioned, Dušan, Methane Pledge to reduce methane
emissions from I think it was 2020 levels by 30% by 2030.
It's quite meaningless, the target. It's just a target and
it's an inappropriate target. If you look at the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change, Sixth Assessment, which came out
in August, that's the place to go. A lot of the numbers are old. Do not look at old numbers
From 20 years ago about FAO. Those are old numbers. Look at the IPCC sixth assessment, because
it's much worse than it was before. So, there are two IPCC vegan scientists
that we're consulting with: Professor Danny Harvey at the Department
of Geography, University of Toronto and Dr.
Peter Carter, Canadian doctor
in British Columbia. He's amazing. They're, both amazing and basically,
professor Danny Harvey said: in order to meet the Paris Accord
targets, methane would have to be cut by 75% according to
the IPCC, sixth assessment. He showed us which graphs in that
assessment that show that. So, this goal of cutting emissions by
30%, it's quite meaningless by 2030. It's like we need to do that now,
like cut by 75%, to not have these long-term goals of minimal goals,
absolutely meaningless. There is a methane emergency and
as Professor Best mentioned, the global warming potential of methane
and nitrous oxide are much higher than carbon dioxide. They're short-lived gases. So if you deal with them, you can
help avert a huge climate catastrophe of crossing tipping points,
possible runaway climate change. We have this huge methane emergency. According to the IPCC, sixth assessment,
30% of methane emissions come from animal agriculture. So there's no way you're going to get
the 75% reduction methane now without quickly phasing out animal
agriculture and fossil fuels.
That's the conclusion of Dr. Peter Carter. We need to quickly phase out those two
industries. The IPCC sixth assessment said we have
five years at best to make major changes or we're heading towards
climate catastrophe. For us, being at COP was very important. We made a lot of links to progressives
and we worked with environmental groups. We're beginning to
make those connections. We have the endorsements of
Friends of the Earth in Hull, not the US. The one campaigner said
they wouldn't endorse. We have Extinction Rebellion in
some countries that have endorsed.
We have Fridays for Future
in some countries that endorsed and then Fridays for Future,
Digital endorsed. Greta Thunberg doesn't speak much
about it, but as we're getting more Fridays for Future chapters
or Future Digital, we're hoping that the leadership speaks out because
she said she is vegan for ethical and climate environmental reasons yet,
is not speaking out generally. We recently got some
prominent scientists endorsed. Professor Best mentioned
the Scientific Warning. That letter, which was organized by
Professor Bill Ripple.
He's a very famous scientist
on the west coast. He endorsed the treaty, just now. We also have George Monbiot,
a very incredible spokesman for climate and justice. He's just endorsed so we've got three
Nobel Laureates. The Fossil Fuel Treaty has more
than a hundred Nobel laureates and the Dalai Lama. We always look to them for like:
Oh, what do we do next? Then they're our guide. The other thing we did during COP is,
we had four letters – again copying the Fossil Fuel Treaty – We got an interfaith letter,
a youth letter, scientist letter and a politician's letter calling for
COP to take major actions and put animal agriculture
on the agenda. That was in terms of the topic of today,
that we've never had so much success in reaching out to different
communities with so much purpose. We should have done that when we were
just doing vigils for animals because they deserve… it's a moral baseline like they
deserve all their support. 100%. They deserve us doing proper community
organizing and working with all the different communities,
but now we're 10 years old. Now we're working on The Plant Based
Treaty and we're finding it lends itself in a way to community organizing
that others understand more than they did for the animal rights issues
we were fighting for, like bearing witness in front of
death camps basically.
So now, because they see the impacts,
people feel the impacts of climate change all over the world more than ever. According to Dr. Peter Carter,
there's been three mega events and we're going to see
more mega events. He said one which is associated with
animal ag is that the Amazon is now a net producer of carbon dioxide
instead of a sink. That's a huge event. That's like unthinkable. Like in 10, 20, 30 years ago, would
anyone have ever even imagined that – and it's happened –
the Guardian reported it this summer.
Another mega event was
the Siberian fires, forest fires. Dr. Peter Carter said that's like melting
the permafrost, and releasing methane and carbon dioxide. It’s scary and it was unforeseen. The third mega event is just the way
the arctic summer ice is disappearing faster and that would lead to
domino effects of: It would affect the conveyor belt,
the transatlantic conveyor belt. It would just affect a lot of different…
like Greenland ice. It's because, with the melting of the ice,
the surface becomes dark and then absorbs more of the heat
and that is a positive feedback which makes the change
worse and faster. That's where we're heading into
these positive feedbacks, where we don't have control anymore. We started it anthropogenic,
greenhouse gas emissions, but then, at certain point, nature reacts
with positive feedbacks that make the changes non-linear. It's very scary. I don't think people realize
how huge this issue is.
Lt's truly an existential threat and we
all of us, we're living in an era where this might be the end
and faster than we had foreseen. So did COP do what it… It was horrible and they're not
responding to what the UN Secretary General
called Red Code for Humanity. They're not responding to it. Some of the conclusions from that,
like Greta and I'm trying to think there were some other other institutions
that said, basically we gotta do things outside COP and really
do the right thing outside COP and create all this pressure so that
hopefully COP eventually negotiates with you know, and shows some
leadership rather than stalling. [Dušan] Okay, thanks Anita. Well, I have multiple questions and we
have some questions from the audience. So let's try to be quick
regarding the next one.
Well, we tried a lot of things to
liberate animals and we are pushing from different perspectives. For example, DiEM25 now included
abolition of animal agriculture in our Green New Deal,
which is our policy for the movement and also where we have political wings,
electoral wings, we are going to include them in the political
program itself as well. What do you think? Are the next steps towards abolition
of animal agriculture and other industries that
exploits animals? Professor Best. Sorry, you are muted. [Steve] Getting the problem of
factory farming and understanding its relationship to climate crisis,
species extinction every other major environmental problem,
I absolutely think this is critical and again, I wish animal groups
would exploit this.
They're in a perfect position to do this. I really think things
are going the wrong way. I mean it's like the steamship
that needs to turn around. We know that climate emissions
are soaring, increasing. You have a population right now of nearly
eight billion people on the planet and meat consumption
has doubled in 20 years. It's expected to rise another 13% by 2028. So this problem too, the population
growth, modernization of countries who want more meat consumption
and the production of more meat consumption. Truly we're heading to a world of
something like four degrees warming by the end of the century.
If we see what's happening already at
about 1.1 degrees celsius, what is going to happen to four? It's going to be astonishing. I'm reading a lot right now
about human evolution. I find this fascinating. I'm reading very early into our
human history, and people might be interested to know that there were many
human types and many human ancestors who were hominids and somewhere
between apes and humans as they evolved.
We interacted and somehow about
30 000 years ago, when the Neanderthals died, we were
the only surviving human species and there were many. So it makes me wonder what would
happen if another species had survived and that we didn't. We could easily have not. I'm struck by how adaptable humans
were and how much they outcompeted other human species and other
life forms to become the top predator that they are now. I see that we're not
adapting to this problem. It's not a matter of learning,
because if you look at every past empire,
these empires have all collapsed. They've collapsed in large part
for many causes. But one key cause has been,
they degraded their environment and they ran out of resources, food etc,
and they collapsed. We're facing this collapse now,
not just of any particular empire, say the US empire,
but the human empire, the human empire, because we lord
over this planet in such a way that we have created
a new geological epoch.
I mean I don't think
in historical terms, anymore. It's too limited. I have to think in
geological terms and epochs. Everybody knows
that the holocaust epoch is over. We're a witness to it.
It's over. This was 10 000 years, this epoch lasts,
in geologic time. It's the epoch in which
agricultural society emerges. It's the epoch in which everything we know
about human society became true, everything good and bad in that epoch,
and that epoch is over. The term is problematic, but it tries to
mark a new geological break we're in now, and that is the anthropocene. We are the dominant force in this
anthropocene world. No other species has had
such an impact on this planet.
So again, we have to adapt,
but we're not adapting. It's not a matter of learning from
our past mistakes, because we have all the knowledge we need. It's a matter of economic and political
powers are going to exploit every last fossil fuel in the ground
that they can, They are going to take this
planet down with them. So, it's a matter of social power
that has to be overturned. It's an institutional issue. So of course, going vegan is not going
to change this issue by itself, but we have to join social movements and
struggle for radical social change. Yes, we have to connect those
structural and personal issues. It is I think, the most powerful
thing that we can do. it's the one thing I know that
benefits us and our health. It benefits other animals
and it benefits the climate. We really need to get this
onto a mainstream political map. We're failing as a species. We're going to fail and the consequences
of failure are are not just for our civilization, as we know it,
but for all biodiversity and all the webs of life.
Nature has always regenerated
itself after every extinction crisis. The last one of course,
was 65 million years ago. When the dinosaurs were wiped out,
mammals got a new ecological niche, primates evolved and we evolved. but we keep hitting the earth
over and over again. That asteroid that hit the earth
65 million years ago only hit it once, and life was able to
regenerate and respeciate. Then biodiversity became greater,
but we keep hitting the planet. We're that meteor that doesn't
stop crashing into it. So, that's why I think that we are on
a fatal collision course with nature.
Culture has become elaborated from
nature, but in contradiction to nature. We have to harmonize our societies
with natural ecosystems. We have to recognize the limits of nature
and God damn it, we've gotta overturn this global meat
and dairy complex. We're cutting meat production by 50%
as a lot of groups are asking for. That's a good start,
but we need to go further, morally,
strategically, politically. [Dušan] Thank you, Professor. Anita, do you have anything
to add to that? No okay. We can go straight to the
questions from the audience then. I guess this one has been replied
actually by Professor Best, but maybe we can give it to Anita then. There was a question
saying and I quote: “We should just eat local and
stop industrial meat production.
Go back to small farming and cutting
down meat intake when our biomass allows for that.” [Anita} Yeah, I would say that this
is one of the things we're up against. In our Plant Based Treaty we said,
no new animal farming. We did not say no new industrial
animal farming. The thing is, I don't think we should
grant anyone that privilege, or that exception of eating meat
when we have 8 billion people as Professor Best said. If you look at companies
like Cargill, they have a strategy that is bypassing industrial
animal agriculture in India, so they have partnered…. Cargill has partnered, with Heifer
International, for example, in a project called Hatching Hope. What they're trying to do is get
a hundred million people to engage in backyard
chicken operations. More than 60 million
of those would be in India.
They're working with the Indian
government trying to get per capita consumption of chicken and eggs
to increase by three and fourfold. They're exploiting plant based tribal
communities and going in Odisha, – it's an eastern state in India-
going in there and offering backyard chicken operations,
goat passing: gifting goats. It's leading to… There's a forest that's
a UN protected forest. There are now intrusions
into the forest, forest fires in a number
of UNESCO spores sites. There's a recent report that showed
that they are being burnt. Often the link is because
of animal agriculture. So, I don't know if you're in
the United States. I don't know where this
question is coming from. This is the wrong model.
We need to completely get away
from meat, dairy and eggs completely, because it's not
sustainable for the world. There are no exceptions. There shouldn't be an exception for
Europe or the US or Canada, because there are companies like
Cargill that are exploiting it. Can you imagine a hundred million
backyard chicken and increasing per capita chicken
and egg consumption? in the state of Odisha they've gone
into schools and introduced eggs into their lunch program. Whereas before, they would be eating
chickpeas and healthy food, there is now a diabetes epidemic in
Indonesia, in India, because these western companies have gone there
and tried to change their diets. If you look at China, Cargill went there
for their pilot project with Hatching Hope. China used to be mostly plant based. India used to be mostly plant based. Latin America had a very strong
plant based tradition. It's these slaughterhouse companies
and these animal feed companies from the West, and so you do need
a capitalist sort of imperialist kind of analysis, which shows that these
companies are so greedy and selfish.
They're like the cigarette tobacco
companies,where, when their market in the west shrinks,
they go elsewhere. Unfortunately, this is a story that has
been told over and over whether it's armaments from
World War One and the whole… The story repeats itself of the greedy
capitalist, capitalism going amuck. We absolutely have to
do the right thing. It's not a time for half measures. Absolutely not! We have to go completely vegan,
plant based, be a model and an example and stop being the problem. [Steve] Absolutely, let's not forget about
the current Covid crisis. After all that started from live markets
and various forms of animal exploitation. This is a great example of how what
we do to animals, we do to ourselves and how animal exploitation is an
absolute nightmare for human health and for the environment. 75% of all of our diseases, including
recent diseases like AIDS, Ebola, etc. come from animals. They're called zoonomic diseases. The exploitation of birds in particular,
creates things like bird flu, which has killed millions of people. So is it really worth it to exploit animals
in live markets and even factory farms, breed pathogens and diseases,
and release these new pathogens into the environment? Is this the price we want to pay to shut
down society, to lose millions of lives so that we can sell birds in
live markets and we're destroying the habitat of animals? And so we in ever closer contact with
animals, and these viruses jump.
They jump into our populations,
and so we get these viruses because we're invading animal spaces. So this is a total liberation issue. This understands the interconnection
between human liberation, animal liberation and earth liberation
and how all of these different systems and communities need to blend
together into one holistic non-exploitative paradigm. [Dušan] Thank you both. This next question can be taken
by Professor Best, I think, but I'm not sure I fully agree with
how it was pronounced.
"It's easier to sell the idea that meat
eating is unhealthy compared to the idea that
animals suffer needlessly. Do you see dangers in taking
the utilitarian approach to animal rights advocacy?" I'm not sure if you are the one taking
the utilitarian approach, but here. [Steve] Yeah, I'm not taking the
utilitarian approach, because the rights-based approach is different. So utilitarian approach is associated with
animal welfarism, which is concerned with the reduction of animal suffering,
not the elimination of animal suffering.
So, we don't want better factory farms
or forms of exploiting chickens and other animals for
human food consumption. We just need to stop eating animals
and we'd be healthier, and animals would surely be happier
and environment would be better. There are so many
arguments for veganism. The health argument is very powerful. We'll persuade many people, because
so many of our diseases come from consuming meat and dairy products,
they're carcinogenic. They promote heart disease and
just about every major disease that we have stem from meat/dairy
based diet. But other people, they're interested
in the environment and if you tell them the impact of global meat production
and consumption on climate change and on the rain forests and on indigenous
farmers, that makes sense to them.
Then other people are very concerned
about animals and may not know what goes on inside a factory farm
and that will convert them immediately. So, we have many perspectives for
veganism, for animal liberation and we need to deploy
all of these perspectives. One will be more persuasive
to other people than another. I just started because I had
a religious experience, eating the dubble cheeseburger. One time I was so grossed out by this,
when I was about 24, I stopped eating meat
and then I started learning. I had some moral centre inside of me
that became awakened somehow.
Against my will. We will try to find
people's moral centres. That's why I try to appeal to the left,
sometimes just as a moral argument, as a consistency argument. Why are we against capitalism
and exploitation while we're eating chicken and meat? Don't you guys get it? These are made by gigantic corporations
that exploit their workers and we're consuming their products. You're talking about social
change at McDonald's. Come on, you know,
let's make the connections. Going back to Covid, I'd like to say one
other thing that I think is interesting. Look at how this world has tried
to deal with the Covid crisis. Look at how inept this is. Look at how many weaknesses
it exposes in our society. It's a crisis right, but wait till
climate change really hits. Are we prepared to
deal with climate change? We can't even deal with Covid
and we're going to deal with climate change with our mass refugees,
of hundreds of millions of people with the collapse of social systems
and medical systems. This gives you some indication of
how unprepared we are for what's coming
and it's coming quickly.
I agree that the various tipping points
are are going to come together. When ecosystems collapse,
they can collapse immediately. Baudrillard the French philosopher,
had a great quote. He said: “It would be wonderful to
be alive at the beginning of the world, but it would also be wonderful to
be alive at the end of the world.” He's being ironic, but we are alive
at the end of the world, at least at the end of civilization
as we know it. We're witnessing it. We're witnessing a geological epoch
pass before our eyes. We're witnessing the last death gasp
of the holocene epoch and this new human dominated epoch
and what it's going to be like and we can't even handle Covid? We can't even wear masks
without political arguments and political division. Wow! [Dušan] Exactly, exactly. The next question is from
the chat as well for Anita. “What would be your advice when
you face backlash when advocating plant based diets and agriculture?” There's one similar question
to that, which says: “I come from Balkans, where meat
eating is huge and I sometimes face real aggression from meat eaters
for talking about animal rights.
So how do you guys
usually deal with that?” Maybe Anita can start. Then we can go to
Steve and his cat. This is a real animal friendly conference. [Anita] Yeah, thanks. Yeah, good questions. Thank you, yeah. My parents are from the former
Yugoslavia or Slovenia and I understand the cultures. Cultures change and I think you can
use so many different methods to try to convert people.
Often people have pointed
to documentaries. I myself was converted after seeing
The Animals Film narrated by Julie Christie in the 90s. A lot of people have been converted
by watching Game Changers, Cowspiracy, What the Health, films like that. So the power of film is enormous
and it does change people very quickly. There's Earthlings, there's Dominion. I mean, those are very profound films. Most people are, I believe, if they're
not sociopaths or psychopaths, they care. So it's a question of how do you
get people to watch these films like Dominion and Earthlings? How do you get people to come to
a vigil because it's transformative so that to me is the challenge. That's why I feel working full-time in a
social movement is where I need to be, because I just feel like that's the mission. How do you get more and more people
mobilized to get more people to see this stuff ? That's on an individual level. On a systems level, I would suggest
that you organize as a community, so engage in community
organizing strategies.
Build a team and then
do street actions. We know from Professor Chenoweth,
that she studied revolution. If you get 3.5 percent of the population
mobilized, that's very important in terms of success and also getting
majority public opinion. You can't just have that. You also need a
majority public opinion, so there will be a day when
we ban meat, dairy and eggs. What I'd suggest to you is just
have that goal in mind like: We're in it to win this and to outlaw these egregious
violations of rights of animals. There's so much progress. You're just influencing people.
Hold a screening of one of these films. Organize a group. If you go to The Plant Based Treaty,
we're asking people to organize local Plant Based Treaty teams to try to
get their city to endorse, get businesses to endorse. There was a Polish Green MP
that endorsed the treaty. He said he was an omnivore,
but his son was vegetarian and he knows that going
plant based is the right thing.
So, like that, you know. Forty of our endorsers are not vegan
and we have already over 20 000 endorsers, hundreds of
businesses and groups. I think we all need to recognize
that we face an existential crisis and in order to survive,
we need to quickly phase out animal ag and fossil fuels. Let's just get that narrative out. [Steve] If I may, the other
encouraging thing to see is the increase in plant based
alternatives to a meat diet. It's incredible what they're doing when
they make plant based chicken, meat, fish, everything, all the milks,
all the cheeses. They're getting really sophisticated,
these products. Some people – I guess you call them
flexitarians – are gravitating to these products more and
they're becoming more available. Here's a contradiction. Big corporations are pushing
these products and so they're starting to flood markets. I know they're very,
very popular in England. They're gaining popularity
here in the States. So this is an important movement
that we can make these alternatives to people and make them available
to people and they taste pretty good.
So, I mean why do people eat meat? Because they like the way it tastes. So, if we can make other alternatives
that taste just as well, I could give somebody an Impossible
burger and ask them: "Does this not taste good
or is it just like a hamburger as you recall it,
maybe a little too much?" They're gonna like it. So, we should be pushing these
plant based alternatives too. Lots of corporations and lots of
animal activist groups are doing this. This is one promising development
but that's not by itself going to change animal agriculture,
but it's a good development. [Dušan] Thank you very much, both. We don't have much time left because
we have another session after this. So, let me ask you both if you have any
final words for our audience. Anita? [Anita] Yes, thank you. It was such a pleasure being on this panel
with Professor Best, and you Dušan. I would say if you could please, go to: plantbasetreaty.org and endorse the treaty. I'd invite Professor Best. Would be a really a great honor
for you to endorse it.
Dušan already has
and DiEM5 has. Thank you DiEM. You could endorse it as an organization,
as a business, as a city. We also have tools on the website,
so like, how to lobby your city, a draft motion to present to your city. We have email actions that takes
a moment just send it to your city and ask your city to endorse. In Canada we got our first
MP to endorse, in Toronto, we're so happy! And then we learned
so many things about what that MP's doing. There's so many initiatives happening
and we just got to organize. We got to create massive
bottom-up pressure and we need to change
at the grassroots level and then
get a global agreement on switching to
a plant-based future ASAP! And we really need to phase out
animal agriculture and fossil fuels soon if we are to survive and have a livable world for us
in our own time but also for future generations
of plants and animals.
[Dušan] Thanks. Professor Best. You're muted, sorry! [Steve ] I do want to
encourage people who are not vegan
to become vegan. I like a quote by Chris Hedges,
a US radical writer. He says: "We can by becoming vegan
refuse to be complicit in the torture of billions
of animals for corporate profit and we can have
the well-documented health benefits associated with a plant-based diet, especially in the areas
of heart disease and cancer." And I want to finally say that
social social movements and environmental movements really need to engage animal rights
liberation and veganism. They would profit immensely
by this. We're not only engaging
stimulating ideas when we consider
the animal standpoint, and it not only deepens
our spiritual and our moral consciousness, it provides new perspectives
on social and environmental crisis. As much as, I would say,
as the Marxist class lens has illuminated history for us, I think the animal standpoint
can tell us so much about history, and if you doubt it just read any number historical treaties from the genre
of so-called animal studies.
And the light that
this sheds on human beings sociologically, psychologically,
etc. And so we not only get
a stimulating perspective but we deepen our social movements
and our environmental movements. We incorporate new people,
we grow bigger, we grow broader, we grow more diverse. And this is what I would like to see
for a radical movement for the 21st century. We're in the 21st century
and the politics of today has to be alliance politics. We need to connect the dots. We need to connect them theoretically, and we need to connect them politically, and that means that we incorporate animal, human,
and environmental perspectives into a one holistic social movement or an alliance
of different social movements. It is hard to build alliances
with other people. I know Anita would agree with this. I've had some frustrating
and some good experiences but this situation is so dire
with the planet right now, in such great crisis that
perhaps this is a time that we can start building
what I would call a total liberation movement, an alliance politics
that's deeper and broader than anything yet created.
Not for instance social ecology or environmental justice movements; these put together social
and environmental movements and social environmental issues, but where is the animal standpoint
in these issues? Let's build broader alliances
and deepen and grow our movements. [Dušan] Thank you very much,
both of you. It has been a great pleasure for me. Anita has been my dear colleague and Professor Best is one of
my favorite philosophers, I've written my thesis in the critical animal studies area
as well, so I really enjoyed this session. Thank you for being here with us. And let me just say
to our viewers that we have two more sessions
today. The next one is:
The Same Boat, Different Storms about the global south
with Manon Aubry and Harpreet Paul. And the one after that is Beyond Capitalism: The Green Future with Yanis Varoufakis,
Ann Pettifor, and Noam Chomsky. Of course, both of you
Steve and Anita are welcome to join us
and see that on on YouTube. And we are going to have
one more event after Cop Off with our viewers and supporters.
Because we a are grassroots movement, we are building our policies
with you people and that's why we want you
to get included in the Cop Off Talks which are going to be focused on
making policies out of all of the sessions that we held. So we are going to include
even more the animal rights after this session, I hope. The moderator will put links
in the chat. [All] Thank you!.