Our Hen House: Vegan & Animal Rights Movement | Stories from the Frontlines of Animal Liberation

This week, Jasmin and Mariann dig into a wave of encouraging news for the plant-based movement alongside a sobering look at threats to wildlife protections. They cover new data showing plant-based sales climbing across Europe as prices and taste improve, the FDA’s struggle to define “ultra-processed foods” (and its decision not to ban them), a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s rollback of Endangered Species Act protections, and the surprisingly bipartisan momentum behind banning gestation crates. They also explore whether “nudge theory” is really enough to drive lasting dietary change, how Denmark’s landmark pig-farming reforms could offer lessons for U...

This week Mariann tears through the industry press so you don’t have to: an Animal Ag Alliance exec frets about “brand-busting” without ever explaining what it means, Oregon’s IP 28 gets branded an extremist plot for daring to remove cruelty-law loopholes, a horse vet insists carriage horses basically drive themselves, and ranchers wax poetic about breeding cattle too docile to complain. Plus: France loses millions of birds to a heat wave (measured in tonnage, obviously), BLM guts public input on grazing rules, and Millie Bobby Brown starts a quinoa-vegan controversy nobody asked for.

Renee King-Sonnen, founder of Rowdy Girl Sanctuary and author of the new memoir Rowdy Girl: Confessions of a Vegan Cattle Rancher, returns to Our Hen House to share the unlikely journey behind her long-awaited book. From battling addiction to falling in love with a rescued calf named Rowdy Girl, Renee opens up about the spiritual awakening that transformed her from a Texas cattle rancher’s wife into a vegan advocate — and how that same rowdy spirit carried her through to land a book deal with Bloomsbury Publishing.

In this episode of Our Hen House, filmmaker Joanna Zelman and her father, retired emergency medicine physician Dr. Jared Zelman, join hosts Jasmin Singer and Mariann Sullivan to discuss their viral short documentary Cow Trip, which follows a chaotic road trip rescuing two dairy calves from Vermont to a Maryland farm sanctuary. The conversation dives into life inside the dairy industry, the unexpected compassion shown by farmworkers, and what it takes to tell an authentic animal story.

Jasmin Singer and Mariann Sullivan catch up on New York City happenings and dig into major animal advocacy news, from a vegan appointee shaping the city’s food policy to the fight to finally end horse-drawn carriages after a tragic event. They also cover a legal win for student activists, RFK Jr.’s surprisingly bipartisan push to reduce animal testing, and a call to action against Marriott’s broken cage-free egg promises—plus a look at new AI tools helping advocates work smarter.

This episode dives into the Ridglan Farms activist prosecutions, USDA’s new “lawfare portal” (yes, the federal government apparently needs help fighting itself), CAFO propaganda dressed up as science, and fresh data showing just how misled the public really is about caged hens and industry-funded meat studies.

Artists, authors, and activists Sol Anzorena and Tom Grotewohl join Our Hen House to discuss their grassroots campaign, Protect the Porkies, fighting a proposed copper mine that threatens Michigan’s Porcupine Mountains, Lake Superior, and the North Country Trail. They break down the ecological risks of toxic mine waste, light and noise pollution on wildlife, and how their small local movement grew into a national fight — all while remaining vegan activists building unlikely alliances with hunters, conservatives, and nature lovers alike.

This episode of The Hen Report features Mariann Sullivan and constitutional law professor Michael Dorf, filling in for Jasmin, for a wide-ranging conversation connecting Supreme Court doctrine to the fight for animal rights. Dorf draws sharp parallels between the catch-22 legal standards trapping activists like Wayne Hsiung and the contradictory hoops required for habeas corpus relief, arguing both function as reassuring “lies” that mask how little protection the law actually provides. The episode also digs into the recent birthright citizenship case, the case for and limits of extending constitutional rights to sentient animals, and why cruelty laws’ vague “necessity” standard l...

This week on Rising Anxieties, Mariann Sullivan digs into a genuinely encouraging legal development (yes, really), some deeply depressing policy news from our neighbors to the north, a dairy industry propaganda machine that apparently involves a live cow, and a livestock industry reminder that “precious cargo” has nothing to do with feelings. The usual cocktail of outrage, dark humor, and the occasional glimmer of hope.

Animal law attorney and activist Wayne Hsiung joins host Mariann Sullivan along with attorneys Chris Carraway and Steffen Seitz of the University of Denver’s Animal Activist Legal Defense Project to break down the California Court of Appeals decision in Hsiung’s criminal case—a pivotal ruling that overturned two of three trespass convictions stemming from actions at Sunrise Farms and Reichardt Duck Farm, while leaving critical legal questions about the necessity defense unresolved. The group also previews a potential California Supreme Court battle and provides updates on Zoe Rosenberg’s appeal and the Ridglan Farms beagle rescue p...

In this episode of The Hen Report, Jasmin Singer and Mariann Sullivan welcome flock member and postdoctoral researcher Neha Nataraj from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Neha attended the Johns Hopkins/PCRM Summer Immersion on Innovative Approaches in Science — a free, four-day conference focused on reducing and replacing animal use in biomedical research and toxicology — and shares what she learned about the cutting-edge science, the people driving it, and the complex realities of working toward a world with fewer animals in labs.

In this episode of Rising Anxieties, Mariann Sullivan tears through the week’s most revealing industry news — from egg producers finally grasping that animal advocates want them gone, to Oregon’s audacious PEACE Act inching toward the ballot, to the toxic gas hazards quietly killing dairy workers. She also covers the Cargill lockout rocking Colorado’s beef industry, the federal government’s creative reinterpretation of H-2A visa law to hand dairy farms a captive labor force, and a truly stunning Memorial Day message from the National Beef Association that somehow forgot what Memorial Day is actually for.

This episode of the Our Hen House interview features Thomas “Richie” Manandhar Richardson — AI Impact Director at Vegan Hacktivists and former Director of Research at Bryant Research — in a wide-ranging conversation about two urgent frontiers for the animal movement: financial activism targeting factory farming and the growing role of artificial intelligence in animal advocacy. Richie breaks down why divestment campaigns largely fail to cut off funding for factory farming (and the rare exceptions where they can work), how international development banks in the Global South represent a more promising pressure point, and what it means to stigmatize an industry financia...

This episode of The Hen Report celebrates two major animal rights victories — the closure of the notorious Ridglan dog testing facility and Philadelphia’s ban on horse-drawn carriages — then pivots to the next big fight. Hosts Jasmin Singer and Mariann Sullivan are joined by animal advocate and poet Gretchen Primack and Sexy Fit Vegan founder Ella Magers to announce an ambitious 200-mile march from Albany, NY to Marshall BioResources (September 12–26), the largest animal experimentation breeding facility in the country, with over 20,000 animals.

This week on Rising Anxieties, Mariann covers the EU’s ongoing (and apparently never-ending) effort to strip plant-based foods of their meat-adjacent vocabulary, the Oregon ballot initiative that has the animal agriculture industry writing fever-dream op-eds, and a Russian company claiming it’s wiring dairy cows’ brains for remote-controlled lactation — which is either the future or a war crime, possibly both. Also: the Save Our Bacon Act is losing sponsors, India’s dairy industry is built on a quiet lie, and America’s dairy farmers can’t find anyone willing to take over their farms.