How I Learned to Love Shrimp

Tania Luna brings us a wealth of knowledge this week as she walks us through the best working practices of organisations seeking to support animals that must integrally include the human animals that work to protect others.

Tania’s team apply their wealth of experience in the tech space to the animal advocacy space supporting organisations to prioritise employee health and well being in pursuit of our common goal: increasing the sustainability and efficiency of our work. Tania offers top tips, learnings from supporting organisations so far and explains more about their service at Scarlet Spark and ho...

An absolute treat of an episode this week as we were asked to interview long-time advocates Leah Garcés and Sharon Núñez, live from the Animal and Vegan advocacy summit in Washington DC in May earlier this year.

From anger in Leah’s 20’s to some eye opening potential prison-time in the past for Sharon, our esteemed guests walk us through their experiences over the last 20 years of their tireless work for animals. A nostalgic and powerful look back and projection forward from these two powerhouse leaders. 

Leah Garcés is president of Mercy For Anima...

Long overdue conversation on the important topic of fish this week with the lead for fish at Eurogroup for Animals, Doug Waley. Doug’s expertise lies in working for fish at the EU level however most of the episode is filled with important information relevant to fish farming across the globe. 

It’s a technical one but really insightful as we explore the everyday life of a farmed fish, the challenges they face and what can be done to secure meaningful wins for the billions of fish farmed each year. 

As always please check out the ep...

Matthew and Jane co-founded the online campaign Veganuary in 2013, which has encouraged millions of people across the globe to try being vegan for the month of January and beyond. More recently, Matthew launched Veg Capital, an organisation that provides early-stage capital to companies striving to replace the use of animals in our food system and founded vegan chicken brand VFC. Jane remains on the board for Veganuary as chair.

Episode filmed live at the Vegan and Animal Rights Conference in Manchester in April 2024. The episode is warm and nostalgic as Jane and Matthew gave...

Sofia Balderson is the co-founder of Hive, formerly known as Impactful Animal Advocacy, an organisation that aims to improve coordination and collaboration in the farmed animal movement through cultivating impactful, intentional, and serendipitous communities

Many listeners may be on the Impactful Advocacy Slack – a Slack workspace with over 2,000 animal advocates and a great place to connect, learn and share ideas. Today, we spoke with Sofia Balderson, one of the originators of that Slack Channel about lessons in starting new projects, the importance of facing rejection, how much you should listen to philanthropic funders to understand the value of...

Short but sweet episode this week from Ignacia, author of a recently released book, CEO of a leading organisation in Latin America and mother to two small kids. We're delighted that Ignacia took time out to talk to us about her experiences right across her contributions for animals. 

We chat about Fundacion veg and their campaigns in both diet change and animal welfare as well as the decision for Ignacia to scale down her organisation and what led to this decision. We talk about the importance of country context in campaigning and the challenges when working in t...

Bob Fischer is the Senior Research Manager at Rethink Priorities and Associate Professor of Philosophy at Texas State University.

Can insects feel pain? Should people who care about chickens, cows and pigs also care about reducing the suffering of crickets or black soldier flies? In this episode with Bob Fischer from Rethink Priorities, we try to answer some of those questions, as well as talking about the rapidly growing insect industry, and possible ways for advocates to help farmed insects.

We talk about lots of interesting content and research, for some of which there are...

Kristie Middleton is  vice president of business development for Rebellyous Foods where she and her team help institutions add more plant-based options to their menus. Kristie’s also the author of MeatLess: Transform the Way You Eat and Live—One Meal at a Time and a long-time animal advocate. 

Rebellyous Foods has created novel manufacturing technology in order to make plant-based chicken more affordable to the masses. Mainly targeting food service providers such as universities and school districts, Kristie, who is Vice president of business development at the venture capital funded company, uses her experience from her days a...

Jaya is a seasoned operational executive with a rich history of promoting animal welfare in the food retail sector. As the Co-founder and Chief Program Officer of Global Food Partners, a Singapore-based multinational consulting firm, he helps food and hospitality businesses implement their cage-free egg policies across Asia and reduce the cost of cage-free sourcing.

A fascinating episode as we unpick the many advantages of working collaboratively with the industry to advance animal welfare. We chat about the key challenges to this type of work right now, animal welfare challenges in Asia generally and try to understand...

Lauren Mee is the CEO & Co-founder of Animal Advocacy Careers, an organisation that tries to match mission-aligned talent to opportunities that accelerate the end of factory farming.

Lauren offloads all she knows about the hiring landscape right now when it comes to careers in animal advocacy. She talks us through some best practices and common pitfalls in the hiring process as well as her take on some of the more strategic questions when it comes to career progression in this space.

Whether you are not yet working in the movement, a manager looking to hire...

Aaron Ross has spent over 20 years working for farmed animals. His relentless dedication to this cause has seen him co-found two major organisations, The Humane League and the Open Wing Alliance and train and advise countless others around the world on corporate relations and movement strategy.

In this episode, we talk through an important topic, longevity, and discuss the advantages and pitfalls of this long-term dedication to this long-term fight. Aaron offers practical advice for those wanting to dedicate their career to helping animals and why staying involved over the long-term has immeasurable advantages.

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Description: Tomasz Herok recently spent over 5 months working undercover on British factory farms, as part of an investigation by Open Cages, the UK branch of Anima International.

[Trigger warning: graphic descriptions of animals suffering on factory farms throughout the episode]

In this episode we understand the complexities involved in being an undercover investigator, what Tomasz’s role on the farm entailed during his time there and how he personally deals with the trauma presented. We also talk through the campaign that the footage was used for and what Tomasz needed to capture in or...

Simon Newstead, entrepreneur turned impact investor, is a founding co-partner of Better Bite Ventures who back food-tech founders in Asia.

In this episode, we deep dive into the world of alt protein and the different technologies available in the alternative protein space. We look at Asia specifically where Simon’s work is focussed as well as the challenges this industry is facing as a whole. We also quiz Simon on his view on the timelines we should work towards to see this global shift in consumption towards animal-free alternatives. 

Relevant links to things mentioned throughout the...

In this episode, we speak to Wanyi Zeng, Executive Director of Welfare Matters, an organisation that is focused on building capacity for the farmed animal advocacy movement in Southeast Asia.  We speak about the findings of Welfare Matters’ detailed and insightful report into the animal agriculture landscape in 6 key Southeast Asian countries, challenges facing the movement in Asia as well as Welfare Matters’ exciting plans to incubate new projects in the Asian farmed animal space.

Links from the episode: 

Asia Farmed Animal Day conferenceCurious Vedanth podcast Michal Klar - Future Food NowLee Kuan Ye...

Stien is the executive director of Animal Charity Evaluators, also known as ACE. Stien, wants to help people help animals and ACE tries to do that by finding and promoting the most effective ways to help animals.

In this episode we speak with Stien Van Der Ploeg who is their fairly newly appointed executive director. We talk through the latest release of the recommendations for this year and go into some detail on why certain charities and their interventions were selected. We talk about why their work is so important, the difficulties in the recommendation process and...

Today, we speak with Monica Chen, the Executive Director of New Roots Institute, formerly Factory Farming Awareness Coalition.
 
We speak about several big topics: 

Theories of change for the animal advocacy movementWhy collaboration between organisations isn’t always easy,The importance of focusing on changing culture and social normsThe difficulties around management and organisational leadership, as well as some lessons Monica learnt along the way

Monica is an inspiring organisational leader who spends lots of her time thinking about what can benefit the movement as a whole so it was a real pleasure to s...

Cameron is the executive director of Wild Animal Initiative, a nonprofit dedicated to improving the lives of animals by accelerating the growth of wild animal welfare science.

In this episode Cameron helps us to understand the vast topic of wild animal suffering. Cameron makes the compelling case for why we should invest resources into understanding how we can reduce wild animal suffering responsibly with data-backed interventions, improving the overall well-being of wild animals.  

We talk through the importance of Wild Animal Initiative’s research in this area, their grant-making arm which is enabling the research fie...

In this episode, we speak with Josh Balk who is the co-founder and CEO of The Accountability Board. Previously, he was vice president of farm animal protection for The Humane Society of the United States. In addition, he is a co-founder of EAT JUST, a food technology company.

We spoke to him about a promising new strategy that he’s trying out, which is shareholder activism. In a nutshell, that involves doing something that seems counterintuitive, buying shares in the largest food companies that use animals as products, and trying to get them to change. On top of...

Aurelia is the Africa co-ordinator for the Open Wing Alliance where she supports African organisations with their cage-free campaigning efforts. 

In this episode Aurelia walks us through the state of the advocacy movement in Africa and the unique complexities of campaigning in this region. We hear Aurelia’s thoughts on progress in Africa and the importance of flexibility when devising and testing the strategies and tactics required to end cages in Africa.

Relevant links to things mentioned throughout the show:

Open Wing Alliance WebsiteDonate to...