Transcriber: Leonardo Silva Reviewer: Mile Živković
I recently finished my Ph.D. in philosophy.
The most important lesson I learned is also one of the simplest.
The easiest way for me to explain it to you
is to introduce you to a few of my friends.
So, I'd like you to meet Cedric.
This is a picture of me and Cedric,
the most beautiful, dynamic, intelligent, little troublemaker I've ever lived with.
Cedric and I got to know each other very well,
and from getting to know Cedric, I learned a lot about all cats' emotions.
Cedric would yowl with excitement.
(Speaker yowls) (Laughter)
And he would purr with contentment.
Toward the end of his life, he was terminally ill,
and he would moan in agony.
How many of you have gotten to know the emotions of an animal?
Maybe it was your companion, dog or cat, or someone else.
I knew that would be most of us, and I'm sure you'll agree
that, if know an animal is suffering and you can do something about it,
we should do something about the animal suffering,
just like we took Cedric to the vet.
To extrapolate a bit, everybody's suffering matters.
It doesn't matter that they're not a human being.
And I knew this when I was five years old,
from being a little rascal puller of cats' tails.
So how can this be the most mind-blowing thing
I learned in my whole PhD?
Well, I'd like you to meet Kelly, my friend,
and her companion animal, Snow.
Snow is right there on her shoulder.
Like most chickens,
Snow is at least as sophisticated, emotionally and socially,
as a cat like Cedric.
Chickens can keep track of up to 100 individuals at once,
they have up to 30 calls that they'll use to express their feelings and desires,
and Kelly reports that Snow will get in her lap
and purr with contentment, just like a cat.
The difference between Snow and Cedric is that Snow has a much darker past.
Snow was raised on a factory farm,
as you can see by how her beak has been cut.
It was only when I was 25
that I learned the power and importance of the truth
that everybody's suffering matters.
In the depths of my studies of philosophy, I learned a simple truth about justice
and some powerful, mind-blowing facts about oppression.
The simple truth about justice
is that similar interests deserve similar treatment.
For example, if you and I both have an interest
in not having our nose cut off our face,
we both should have that interest respected, equally,
regardless of our gender, our race, ethnicity, sexual orientation.
Tall and short, young and old,
we deserve to have that interest respected.
And in fact, discrimination, I think, is the rejection of this very truth.
Racism and sexism just are treating similar interests unequally.
Now, our society has been racist, and sexist, and homophobic for so long,
but we've labeled these terms and we've fought against them.
It's an ongoing fight.
But what I've learned by studying philosophy
is there's a further form of discrimination,
so commonplace and so pervasive that we barely even see it.
It's called speciesism.
What I've learned is that, for most of my life,
I have been a speciesist, and in many ways, I still am.
The fact is some individuals are born into our world,
and just because of the group they're born into,
they get branded, mutilated, and killed prematurely,
but others with the same capacities are born into a different group
and they get grooming presents for Christmas
and they get to live long, happy lives.
What our society forgets and overlooks
is the simple truth that everybody's suffering matters.
Science speaks abundantly clearly that all vertebrates can feel pain.
Many invertebrates, too, very plausibly feel pain,
whether it's octopuses, squid.
The jury, I think, is still out about insects.
But the truth is, if somebody can feel pain, it's important,
and we need to reduce that if we can.
I want to talk about some examples of speciesism,
and I want to show you just how pervasive it is.
But then, I want to offer some hope,
some hope that we as society can overcome speciesism,
and we as individuals can overcome speciesism.
We could talk about discrimination against the millions of animals
that we make into clothing,
the millions that we kill and harm for our own entertainment,
but by far, the largest group are those that get made into food.
Fifty-six billion land animals are killed for food every single year,
and although that number is unfathomable,
it's dwarfed by the number of aquatic animals, which is around a trillion -
some estimates, 2 trillion -
aquatic animals killed for food every single year.
Now, I submit to you the bottom line problem is commodification,
treating someone as something,
when in fact these creatures are someone,
just like Cedric is someone and just like Snow is someone.
Today, I want to talk about five injustices in the poultry industry,
but keep in mind very similar injustices are true of fish, cows, pigs.
There's even a lot of suffering among wild animals.
So, this is certainly a partial list.
The first number to try to fathom
is that 8.6 billion chickens are killed just in a year,
just in the United States.
Ninety-nine percent of them live in what are called factory farms,
where one huge problem is overcrowding.
As you can see, the typical bird on a factory farm
has less than a square foot of space to maneuver in.
They're surrounded by the flesh of their fellow creatures, like a wall.
One problem this leads to are vices, such as feather pecking,
pecking the feathers of their fellow creatures,
killing them, even cannibalizing them.
One way that factory farmers cut down on this
is they keep the chickens in the dark for most of their lives.
Another way they'll cut down on this is by cutting their beaks off.
And because these animals are viewed as commodities,
whose suffering doesn't matter,
the standard is to cut their beaks off with no pain relief, no anesthesia.
A third problem are battery cages.
Among the [300] million laying hens
that are being in captivity at one time in the United States,
over 90% of them are raised in cages so small it's basically like this:
you get a filing cabinet drawer, made from wire,
and you put six or seven chickens in there,
and they don't get to leave, and they can't spread their wings,
they can't engage in natural behaviors like foraging or dust-bathing.
It's an incredibly inhumane way to treat someone.
What if you were born like that?
What if your cat were being treated like that?
The fourth is, of course, molting.
After a laying hen has gotten past the most fertile period of her life -
excuse me, the most productive in terms of laying eggs -
the standard in the United States is to starve her for weeks at a time
just so her eggs will be laid a little bit faster.
This is not a practice that's common in Europe or Canada,
but laws do nothing to stop it in the United States.
Exhibit five are the brutal deaths among chickens in the industry;
not only botched executions,
but 200 million male chicks are executed by the egg industry
just for being male.
They're killed while still conscious. Normally, they're put through grinders.
As you can see, these poor chicks are being put through a conveyor belt
into a grinder and ground alive, just for being male.
Now, 95% of the land animals raised for food in the United States are poultry,
mostly chickens, some turkeys,
and yet, the so-called "Humane Slaughter Act"
doesn't even apply to poultry.
Note the injustice, note the speciesism.
And suppose that you met a veterinarian or found out about one
that was treating dogs or cats in any one of these five ways,
cutting them without anesthesia, for instance.
Do you think that they would keep their license very long?
We have to fight against speciesism
just like we have fought against racism and sexism,
and we need to fight this as a society and as individuals.
The most important call to action I have, the most important thing we can do,
is to support the small, yet growing, sector of animal activist organizations,
heroes like the Humane Society of the United States,
which does outreach to corporations, to governments,
to change policies, to protect animal rights and welfare.
The heroes at Mercy for Animals do investigations of factory farms
to reveal to the public injustices that, otherwise, we would be ignorant about.
And the heroes at the Humane League do effective forms of outreach
to educate the public about these kinds of injustices.
Animal Charity Evaluators estimates
that donations to the most effective animal advocacy organizations
can save up to ten lives per dollar.
So, this is a highly effective way to give our support, to donate,
and to get involved with these organizations.
It's not just through nonprofits, however, that we can make animals' voices heard.
This is a picture of the Earthlings March,
which happens every year now, in August, in dozens of cities across the world.
People are standing up for animals, their welfare and their rights.
But animals need us to speak for them faster than we're doing.
Some 3 million animals are going to die over the course of the talk I'm giving,
and they need us to speak for them.
They also need us to be the change.
That's why we have to reduce our personal meat consumption.
Now, I know you have some questions about this,
and I'd like to address at least three.
The first question you might ask is,
"What difference can I make as one individual?"
The answer is: the typical American is responsible for the deaths
of some 406 animals every single year.
That's 28 chickens, two further land animals,
and hundreds of fish and shellfish.
Most of the fish will be fed
to the fish that will actually go through the Americans' lips.
We have to remember that supply is driven by demand,
and when we vote with our wallets, we're asking for animals to be bred,
regardless of the conditions that they're being bred in.
When it's over one animal per day whose death we could be sponsoring,
every meal becomes an ethical issue.
Question number two is what I'll get to in a second.
First, we should realize that certain products are more ethical than others.
So, if you were to cut out just fish, eggs, and chicken,
that would do about 80% of the work of going fully vegan.
Keep in mind these are organisms who are much smaller.
So, to get the same amount of product,
you have to confine a whole lot more of them,
and kill and harm a lot more of them.
Now, I'm not advocating going out and eating lots of beef
because, for one thing, beef is highly unsustainable
and degrading to the environment.
We have to cut our meat consumption.
"Now, what about humane meat?" Very common question.
The answer is: if there is some scenario
where you can get the remains of someone who lived a long, happy life,
with minimal suffering,
that's pretty much a myth, very distant from the typical consumer,
any typical consumer today.
What we have, instead, are corporations
that make minimal, miniscule improvements in the welfare of still suffering animals,
and then they market this, like it's blessed by Saint Gabriel.
Let me give you an example.
"Cage-free," "free-range," "pasture-raised,"
these are all labels that still allow
three, if not four, of the five injustices I've mentioned,
whether it's overcrowding, the mass culling of male chicks,
cutting their beaks with no anesthesia, even forced molting.
And if you have a third-party organization,
they still might not be enforcing things right.
For example, the New York Times recently featured an investigation
of a supplier of whole foods.
Inside the supposedly humane farm, dozens and dozens of birds were found
in conditions of filth, disease, even having their beaks cut.
The one way to make sure your meal has the minimal cruelty in it
is to make sure that it's meat and animal product free.
"Animals kill each other!," you might think.
"So, maybe this justifies us somehow killing animals ourselves."
Well, the difference between us and predators like lions, tigers and bears
is that we're moral agents,
we can appreciate considerations like justice and equality,
we can understand how others' suffering gives us a reason to change our behavior.
And as moral agents, we do have a mission to respond to the suffering of others.
And I want to tell you, I want to assure you, this mission is easy.
It's easy because it's just all about habits.
What my message is, is: level up your compassion,
take your eating habits up a level.
And I'm going to give you three levels.
So, level one:
if you level up to reduceterianism,
you're just going to go, a few meals a week, meatless.
At level one, you discover that there are tons of foods we already love
that are vegan versions, whether it's burgers, burritos, pizza.
This is vegan chili that I made with my own hands.
It's got wheat gluten in it.
Some reducetarians include pastor Rick Warren
and his flock of 15,000 church members who went on a reducetarian diet.
They also reduced their waistlines by quite a lot.
Oprah and her staff did something similar,
and Arian Foster is just one athlete who's succeeded at the highest level
on a mostly meatless diet.
Weekday of Vegetarianism is level two:
basically taking vegetarianism to most of the time.
Now, 16 million Americans are vegetarian at least most of the time,
and here are three famous ones.
At this level, you get used to finding awesome vegan and vegetarian food,
like all of these things which are completely vegan
and can be found at Sweet Pea Cafe, right here in Tallahassee.
And at level three, you've got vegetarianism and veganism,
taking your animal-product reduction full-time.
Eight million Americans are already vegan,
and here are two of them, and then one honorary American.
(Laughter)
At this level, you start to learn
there are so many foods you never would've tried if you hadn't tried this,
whether it's falafel, tofu, awesome smoothies with almond milk,
or recipes with portobellos, kale, and peanuts.
You can find more vegan food at a veg fest near you,
such as the first annual North Florida VegFest,
on April 4th, in Cascades Park.
I think you'll find that the best vegan food
is known as the vegan hot dog.
(Laughter)
Wait, OK, this is not a vegan hot dog, but it gives me a great point to end with,
a point about the lens of justice.
When you put on the lens of justice,
between buns of bread, like this, you won't see food anymore,
you won't see meat.
What you'll see is someone's body,
the body of someone who's just like Cedric,
the body of someone just as innocent as Snow.
So, I'm asking you:
put on the lens of justice, see a world where nobody's rights are optional,
where everybody's suffering matters.
Level up your compassion by supporting animal rights advocacy,
including by sponsoring less cruelty in the coming weeks.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)