Breaking news to bring you as California reels from devastating wildfires exacerbated by climate change. It’s truly a disaster. Now another threat is growing.

You’re looking at dead cows dumped on the side of the road in California, undoubtedly victims of bird flu, and the New York Times is warning that the possibility of a pandemic is no longer remote. At the core of these calamities, industrialised animal agriculture, accelerating climate change, raising the risk of pandemics by exploiting animals in the food system through systemic overcrowding and cruelty. But the destructive role of factory farming is being ignored by the government and by mainstream media.

That’s a very sick cow you’re looking at there. Now Congress is debating a new farm bill that will determine U.S. government subsidies to animal agriculture for years to come. Meanwhile, the incoming administration wants to cut two trillion dollars from the budget and the ag bailouts packed in the farm bill are an obvious solution that nobody seems to see.

Here to discuss it all, we have three experts, Robert Grillo of Free From Harm, as well as Donnie Moss from TheirTurn.net, and we’re going to be joined by Dr. Crystal Heath, a veterinarian who is being persecuted for bringing this subject up. I want to start with you, Robert Grillo, because you have literally stormed into the halls of Congress, basically shouting and screaming, begging to get members of Congress to look at the disastrous impact of this massive bailout to animal agriculture on climate change, on the bird flu, on human health, because it funds fast food and junk food. Is anybody listening? I think so, Jane.

I think people are listening. The people we’re targeting are some of the top decision makers, the biggest decision makers making the biggest deals and decisions in Congress as well as in the private sector. Just this last week, we confronted Senator John Cornyn from Texas, a CEO of the American Farm Bureau Federation, Zippy Duvall, one of the powerful people in the world, not just in agriculture, but one of the biggest power players shaping the farm bill, and the CEO of Fairlife, Tim Doleman, at the Dairy Forum.

All in three days, the last three days, we’ve confronted these people. The responses are all over the place, but these people want less government. They say they want less government, but when it comes to subsidies for animal agriculture, they’re calling for more, which makes zero sense.

If you want less regulation, and you want to cut the government’s budget, then you can’t say, oh, but we still want a massive bailout for animal agriculture. The Americans don’t want that. Let’s look at one of your speak truth to power confrontations.

I warn everybody, it’s shaky video, but that’s what happens when you speak truth to power. Americans need a farm bill that protects public health, animals, and the environment. And then our livestock producers are facing their own set of hurdles, which is why I’m focused on strengthening eradication efforts from things like feral swine and cattle feeder ticks, which cause devastating losses for ranchers across Texas and across the nation.

To build on that, we need an animal disease vaccine ban. The bird flu is insane. Animal ag is to blame, and the animal ag bailout.

Slaughter-free plant-based food system. I’m tired of our money going to bailing out all these animal ag industries. You need to leave, sir.

Show them the Farm Bureau heart and the farm heart. So there you go, Robert, when you were thrown out, the crowd cheered. Yeah.

So Zippy Duvall is a thin-skinned person that he is, in my opinion, a bit of an egomaniac. Can I just say something? We have to keep personal attacks out of this. And I’ll also say, I invite anybody mentioned in this broadcast on at any time, we’d love to dialogue with you.

But I mean, the point is you’re trying to, any way you can, get this word out, and you get thrown out. And not only are you thrown out, but they’re cheering as you’re thrown out. Well, sure, because in true Trump fashion, that’s what you do.

If you’re used to being in power and you’re used to trying to control the narrative, you rouse the crowd against one dissenting voice in the audience because you don’t want to hear dissent. That’s a very classic authoritarian type of tactic. That’s something that we’ve seen from Trump.

And from people like this, we’re going to see the same thing. But believe me, the one thing people are going to remember from the thousands of people in that room, the one thing that they will probably remember is not the boring rhetoric that they hear from Zippy Duvall, or Senator John Cornyn, or these other guys, but they’re probably going to remember the fact that there was some dissent. And that doesn’t happen very, very often in these circles.

And for us to get a message out of dissent about a different path forward is something that a lot of people will probably remember rather than the boring rhetoric. Well, okay. I agree with you.

And first of all, I applaud you for your courage and your team for going in there and speaking truth to power. I want to bring in Dr. Crystal Heath, who’s a veterinarian, and she has also tried to speak truth to power. Dr. Heath, first, I want to play a clip of you speaking at VMX, the veterinary meeting and expo recently, where you outlined how you were essentially persecuted for asking some tough questions about animal agriculture and what is happening with, well, the way we’re treating animals in the food system, particularly as it connects to mass killing of animals to prevent bird flu, which is not working.

I was kind of thrust into the public sphere about all of this. I had voiced concerns about water-intensive animal protein production practices, terminal surgeries, and all these things. And my colleagues told me I really should shadow a livestock veterinarian so I know what I’m talking about.

And I grew up in the porridge. I studied animal science at UC Davis before going to vet school. I think I know what I’m talking about, but I also recognize that I don’t work in animal production.

So I posted on the veterinary Facebook group that I was looking to shadow a livestock vet. And then it was like kind of this perfect storm. It was COVID.

It was like the industry was already on edge. And this pileup assumed that like I did not respect at all. This meme went out about me.

I was banned from veterinary Facebook groups. And it was like scary. My colleagues were sending me all of like, I was banned, but then my colleagues were sending me screenshots of the things that people were saying about me.

And I can like look at it and laugh like right now, but it was quite frightening at the time. And it’s just so frustrating to like not be able to set the record straight in these groups because I was banned and locked and couldn’t tell my own story. Dr. Heath, first of all, wow.

You and Robert, and we’re going to talk to Donny. The courage that it takes to speak truth to power to these powerful organisations without naming specific names. Tell us your ordeal and what you’ve gone through.

Yeah. I mean, I have been character assassinated. I have been smeared as somebody who collaborates with terrorist organisations, who works for terrorist organisations, someone who poses a threat to my colleagues.

So recently I was banned from speaking at a symposium when my talk was not even related to anything having to do with animal rights. It was about how to pay off your debt and live your passion. And my table, our honour, my organisation, our honour was barred from even tabling at this event, this veterinary conference.

I have been prevented from joining veterinary associations. I have been prevented from going to veterinary conferences, even just attending and watching because of my position. Thankfully, I’m thankful for this veterinary conference, allowed me to come and speak and table.

And it was so positive. And we had so many positive interactions with so many veterinarians. We were passing out t-shirts.

People were putting the t-shirts on, taking pictures with us. It was so great. And that’s what they’re scared of.

Like other, my colleagues seeing us as normal people with an important perspective. We pose such a threat to the industry when veterinarians are able to join together and speak out about these cruel practises. Now, you were one of the only people to actually videotape the cows being piled up on the side of the road in California.

This is your footage. I mean, this should set off alarm bells. And the New York Times, and I’ll show the clip, has said basically the response to bird flu has been abominable.

And now a pandemic is no longer a remote threat. Let me actually put that up and show you what the New York Times just said the other day. A dangerous virus, bird flu enters a new phase.

A pandemic is not inevitable, scientists say, but the outbreak has passed worrisome milestones in recent weeks, including cattle that may have been reinfected. A human pandemic is not inevitable, even now, more than a dozen experts said in interviews. But a series of developments over the past few weeks indicates the possibility it is no longer remote.

And then you showed me, we’re going to get a little wonky here, but it’s important. You showed me the sentient media article that lays out a case that U.S. taxpayers bailing out the poultry industry has helped propel the avian flu to an ever greater threat. Because in one case, they gave one company $44 million in indemnity payouts, basically to kill millions of birds, not that actually have bird flu, but that might be exposed or were exposed.

So by compensating companies in such a flagrant manner, they’ve reduced the financial incentive for these companies to be careful about the bird flu. Can you elaborate on that? Yeah. Imagine if you had a business and no matter how risky your business model was, taxpayers were going to step in and take care of you.

If you had a building that was, you know, at risk of burning down and it burned down, but because you could do your business much cheaper if you ignored, you know, safety protocols. That’s the system that we have set up. And this is a method of protein production that now most Americans are dependent on because we made it this way.

We are bailing out these billion dollar companies with who are making record profits, who stock prices are at record levels. We are forced to pay them millions of dollars when their birds become infected with avian influenza. We also don’t require them to put plans in place to use less cruel methods of exterminating diseased animals.

So we just allow them to seal up barns, pump in heat and wait for the animals inside to die. And our veterinary organisations support this method and enable this practise. And you are looking at a chicken being baked alive.

More than 2000 veterinarians have signed a petition saying this method called ventilation shutdown or ventilation shutdown plus or VSD plus is an abominably cruel method. Honestly, even this video up, it depressed me so much and made me so embarrassed to be a human being. The idea that you would, you know, sometimes you’ve got to, they seal up houses, okay, and they put, that’s what they’re doing with millions of chickens inside.

These chickens are dying slow deaths being baked to death. Who are we as a culture? And all of us, you and me and everybody listening is being forced to subsidise this with our tax dollars. It’s complete madness.

It’s morally abhorrent. It’s evil. I will say it.

And you’re simply trying to raise the alarm bell that it’s not even effective. It’s not even effective because the government by compensating the companies for doing this, then they don’t take the extra precautions because they’d figure, well, we’ll get compensated anyway. Is that what you’re saying? Crystal? Yeah.

And the, the discussion is always around, oh, the high price of eggs, but we’re never talking about the high price of these production methods that these corporations are using that threaten our food security, our public health and animal welfare. And we need to incentivize these companies to transition to animal free methods of food production, which they can, which they have the resources to, but there’s no incentive for them to do that. They can continue with this business model because they’ll continue to be bailed out.

And that puts our nation’s food security at risk. And a question being asked, how many hours does it take to bake to death incomprehensible? It depends on the situation, anywhere from one hour to as many as eight hours we’ve seen. Dear God, dear God.

And then, you know, the, the really horrifying, and as Karen LaCava says, horrific, the really horrifying part is it’s horrifying enough. But then when people try to raise the alarm bells or even ask powerful members of, for example, the agriculture committee that is weighing what these subsidies should be, they’re literally arrested. And we have some clips of Robert Grillo, who was here, basically just trying to get this point across that this is not necessary.

And it results in being thrown out to cheers and arrests. The Farm Bill is a product of dark money that comes from the meat, dairy and egg industries who have bought your vote through millions of dollars in campaign contributions. You have betrayed hardworking Americans, but we refuse to pay for disease outbreaks that come from confining and slaughtering billions of animals, not another penny for cooking millions of birds alive.

It’s time to fund a water-free, plant-based food system. Stop the animal ad bailout. It’s horrific! I’m worried about that bird flu very much, and I know that there are dead dairy cows infected with bird flu that lay along the roadside near dairy farms.

The scavengers go after them. There’s no biosecurity or warning. And that scavenger hunt there actually spreads the disease, the bird flu, to wildlife, other birds, and humans.

How can the CDFA allow this? Are you putting industry profits over public health and animal welfare? That’s my question. Donnie Moss of theirturn.net You’ve been working to try to alert the incoming administration that purports to want to cut $2 trillion from the budget, that there is a way. Take it away.

It’s not just the bailouts. It’s the subsidies that the government gives to industrial animal agriculture, which makes it impossible even for smaller farmers to function fairly. If Trump is eager to cut the national federal budget by $2 trillion, one very easy way to make a big dent in that cut is to eliminate these subsidies to animal agriculture and to these other crops that are grown to feed these animals.

We could eliminate those subsidies altogether to cut the budget, and that would encourage farmers to transition into grown fruits and vegetables, which would reduce health care costs, which would further reduce the federal budget. Right now, with the government’s Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, looking for ways to cut the budget, we’ve delivered them just the easiest possible solution to that. The problem is, how do we reach these people to show them the obvious? I look at something called the 80-20 rule, and I was reading about it, and I was like, this is animal agriculture, absolutely, the 80-20 rule, which is 20% of the inputs cause 80% of the outcomes.

That’s a principle that a lot of people are talking about, and to me, that is animal agriculture. 20% of this 20% of subsidies, of cruelty, of waste, of self-sabotage is creating 80% of our problems. The health care crisis, by subsidising animal agriculture, which is essentially subsidizing fast food, you are creating the obesity crisis, you’re creating the heart disease crisis, and you’re creating the cancer crisis, because processed meat, which is how most people want to eat meat, to a large degree, is officially a level one carcinogen, according to the World Health Organization.

Mainstream media does not talk about that. That’s why we created Unchained TV, to try to have these conversations. But how do we get the people who are making these decisions to listen in desperation? I actually wrote a comment in the New York Times.

The article was about Musk planning to retool the government. We all have heard that the Department of Government Efficiency wants to cut $2 trillion from the budget. I thought this hadn’t been published, but it actually did get published and got 28 recommends.

This is what I wrote. Elon Musk, please read this. Elon Musk, please read this.

67% of the population is lactose malabsorption. Please look into gutting the Farm Bill. This is an elegant solution to your challenge that will also benefit the American people.

Let the law of supply and demand rule and end this corporate socialism for the benefit of Big Ag and Big Pharma. Now, sorry to read all that, but the devil’s in the details here. I got 28 likes on that, which you don’t usually get that many in a New York Times comment.

But the point is, how do we get this message to Elon Musk? We had somebody try to write an op-ed in the Washington Times. Similar thoughts rejected. What do we do? Anybody who has any thoughts, raise your hand.

James, can I comment on that? Go ahead. Can I just say that there’s not nearly enough focus on—Congress holds the purse strings. They ultimately get to decide where the money gets appropriated.

Now, of course, there’s a lot of influences on Congress, but how many groups are actually pressuring Congress right now, or any part of the federal government, for that matter? How many animal groups or environmental groups are actually putting pressure right there where it needs to be to change our food system? I would say very few. Very few individuals and very few groups. Obviously, we need a lot more momentum.

We don’t have enough momentum yet. Today, the Senate Democrats come out with a letter that condemns Trump’s cuts. They talk about the egg industry and how the price of eggs is going to soar.

There’s no leadership or imagination, even on the Democrats’ side. Their idea is to pour more money into the egg industry to try to solve a bird flu crisis instead of having the leadership or imagination that perhaps this is a great opportunity to change course, to invest in alternatives to eggs. They have so much power to do so.

We really need to focus and hold accountable that body and all those that are elected there. I have to say, I agree with you. To put it mildly, it’s a bipartisan problem.

During the Biden administration, the USDA announced more than $43 million investment in meat and poultry processing research, expansion, and innovation. It’s truly a bipartisan problem. You’re absolutely right.

I pull my hair out when I watch liberal media, MSNBC, and they talk about the rising price of eggs or they use an example, eggs, bacon. It’s like, wake up, people, and how do we get through to them? These are otherwise brilliant people, Rhodes Scholars, and yet they can’t see that virtually all of our major problems are coming from our subsidy of a horribly destructive industry, not just cruel to animals, but causing horrible healthcare outcomes for human beings. Let’s not forget climate change.

Unchained TV just did a special report on climate change. I would like to play a little bit of it for you so that we can bring that aspect into the conversation because, and I’m looking for it right now, full disclosure, you get to see behind the camera for a minute. I know I uploaded it, and if I didn’t upload it, shame on me.

I will upload it now and we’ll continue to talk about the idea of the wildfires that have so devastated California. They’re exacerbated by climate change. What to me is truly maddening is that if the U.S. government didn’t subsidise animal agriculture, Donnie, we wouldn’t be accelerating climate change.

If you take a look at what the New York Times reported on an Oxford University study, I can show you that right now, and it’s unbelievable. It’s basically showing that, well, that’s true too. You’re more likely to go to prison for exposing animal cruelty than committing it, but additionally, there’s this.

A dangerous phase of bird flu is arriving amongst us, and there’s this. Save the planet, put down that hamburger. Researchers examined a diet of 55,500 people and found that vegans are responsible for 75% less in greenhouse gases than meat eaters.

Right there, if we all transition to a plant-based diet, we could reduce our collective greenhouse gas emissions by 75%. Donnie? We know for years, we’ve known from the United Nations that animal agriculture emits more greenhouse gases than all forms of transportation combined. If that’s not something that should jolt us into changing our habits, then nothing is.

That’s really powerful. A few years ago, Jane, you may recall that the Amazon was burning down. There were man-made fires to clear rainforests in order to make way for cattle grazing and to grow crops to feed those cattle.

When you think of the Amazon, we’ve all learned that the Amazon, the tropical rainforests are the lungs of the Earth, and they’re big carbon sinks. In order to continue eating meat and producing cows for consumption, we are transforming our carbon sinks into carbon emitters. It’s a little bit surreal.

I was struck during the last presidential election that, once again, there’s not even talk about animal agriculture, factory farming, its impact on human health, on the climate, on the planet, on species extension, biodiversity. It plays such a big role in our lives, yet it’s not even an issue for public consumption and debate. In response to your question, how do we in the area specifically of getting animal agriculture onto the radar screen of DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, one of the things that I’ve been doing is I’ve been going to their Twitter page and responding to their tweets, pointing out this obvious solution, this obvious way to cut the federal budget.

I finally found the report. Here it is. Another alarm bell from Mother Nature has just gone off, and the question is, is it too late, or can we still change the outcome? I tried to run across two or three times to get in there and see if there’s any pets that I could grab, and unfortunately, every time I went there, it was like a massive heat wave hit me and almost knocked me back.

It actually burned my tyres eventually. And as I was running, a car drove by me. I heard, Billy! And it was Aaron Christensen from Animal Advocacy Network, and he was in that truck.

And I’m like, hey, what’s going on? Do you want to help out? We’re trying to get these horses and chickens and pigs and this and that. I said, sure. We did get all those animals out, everything from the horses, obviously, to the peacocks.

Very dangerous animals, the peacocks. Whether it’s a dog, cat, or a goat, people love their animals. I don’t care what their animals are.

There should be no discrimination here. I think it’s important to…nobody or no animal deserves the suffocation, the smoke, and the burning alive. No animal deserves that.

Take a look at that burnt out car. Kind of tells the whole story, doesn’t it? Where are we headed? Off a cliff? We’re in a time of climate crisis, and it’s clear we all have to collectively make some major lifestyle changes. So the obvious lifestyle change, which was recommended in the special report, which you can watch on Unchained TV, by somebody who lost her boyfriend in the fires.

Her boyfriend died in the fires and she said, go vegan. That is the recommendation. But I want to go to Dr. Crystal Heath because it was tragically ironic that the animal rescuer said, no animal deserves to be baked to death.

I’m sure you heard that. And that’s exactly what we’re doing to the chickens. In this mass ventilation shutdown horror that they’re doing their darndest to keep the American people from even knowing about.

Yeah, it’s absolutely horrifying and it was so shocking at this veterinary conference how many veterinarians still had not heard of ventilation shutdown. So many people don’t know about this. It should be in every news story about avian influenza.

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Journalists should be asking, well how are these birds being exterminated? But that question still isn’t being asked and I’m trying my hardest to get it out there. Thankfully Time Magazine published our op-ed about it. But my opinion is our 80-20 principle is we should be focussing our attention on educating veterinarians about this because every veterinarian I talk to is horrified that this is being legitimized by our profession and they want to stop it, especially when there’s a less cruel method available.

Although we should of course transition and support companies to transition away from animal agriculture animal-based protein production towards animal-free methods of protein production but instead we’re just legitimising the cruellest practises and that’s just the way it is. Our whole system of incentives is set up to reward those with the most brutal and callous business practises. We allow the most brutal companies to become the most successful and that is a dangerous way to set up our food system and it endangers our food security and our public health.

So just to add a few little nuggets to this terrible situation where we have the answers to all the problems and nobody wants to listen to us and indeed persecutes anybody who tries to raise the potential solution. Now the good news is that DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency run by Elon Musk says it wants to cut two trillion dollars from the budget. The bad news is that he went on the Joe Rogan show and reportedly said you can eat all the meat you want, it has no impact on climate change.

That makes it even tougher. I want to do a certain clip here that I think shows that there are some people, gotta give this guy from the Federal Reserve some props for at least listening to Robert Grillo when Robert Grillo from Free From Harm approached him. I think this is the first time where they didn’t call the cops and have you thrown out or arrested but let’s play that clip of you trying to make a point and this Federal Reserve bigwig actually listening for a minute.

Beef has a protein conversion rate of only 3.8% meaning that you have to feed a cow 100 grammes of plant proteins or whatever it is they feed cows wheat or whatever just to get a little less than 4 grammes of protein for human consumption and if we’re talking about minimising input costs and the most efficient type of system, doesn’t it make sense from a sustainability standpoint to transition to plant based proteins and to divest from the livestock industry? I still think that the supply chain for any given commodity or any given food product, we want it to be as efficient as possible. I can see your point feeding a 1500 pound cow from an energy efficiency perspective. It’s not my expertise here.

Take your small victories, what do you make of it Robert Grillo? The fact that you weren’t arrested for making a very valid point. That was an interesting experience because it was the Federal Reserve Bank’s annual agriculture conference and Goolsbee is a leading spokesperson for the Federal Reserve Bank you’ll see him on major mainstream news outlets so I definitely wanted to make a point of talking to him and I caught him on his way out after he made his closing speech to everybody. He just showed up at the end just to say a few words and say how great agriculture is.

As he was walking out I was able to stop him and ask him those questions. Now keep in mind the context of this conference. The theme is how do we minimize costs input costs and how do we create the most efficient food system and I’m sitting there like the only person in the room thinking why aren’t we talking about plant based transition? Why is there no discussion? We have a dairy expert in the room.

We have somebody from a pig farm in Indiana. We have all these people talking about how they’re going to make their industries more efficient but they’re all animal industries. I’m the lone person there talking about plant based transition and it was a great experience because I got to talk to a lot of leading ag people and this guy Goolsby he says I’m just a financial guy I don’t know the ethics.

I’m like no yes you do. You have spoken out about the energy sector and how we need to move to renewables and you have every point to make to say we should also for the same reasons we need to transition to renewables we also need to transition to a plant based food system. It’s so frustrating how can we reach the people who just want to cut the budget? Now we got some really interesting comments from people watching on social media.

Barbara Glick says in the confirmation hearings the new secretary of agriculture mentioned subsidies distort the market so we have another target to hold accountable. I believe this was the woman who wants to be the new agriculture secretary. That’s the good news that she has said in the past that subsidies distort the market which means she’s potentially against subsidies.

The bad news is that she issued a fiery defence of the EATS Act which would wipe out every single little bit of progress we’ve made in for example eliminating pig gestation crates for a lot of pigs where they’re kept in crates the size of their bodies unable to turn around. If she’s in favor of the EATS Act that is the worst. It’s like everything’s an upside down world Donnie.

I have to go back to you. There’s no clear cut answer here. I think the clear cut answer is how do we reach these people with just the financial cut not the moral lesson.

Jane I think first of all sadly things happen in baby steps and while many would say that baby steps are for babies that’s probably who we’re dealing with here. We can continue to do what we’re doing by educating the public and working with organisations that are trying to move the needle away from animal agriculture toward plant based consumption. You know who’s on our side? Mother Nature.

She has sent a strong message to Americans and to people around the world that what we’re doing isn’t working. We saw it with the wildfires in California. We saw it with the hurricane in North Carolina which destroyed parts of western North Carolina.

Hurricanes that have decimated parts of the west coast of Florida and Louisiana. At some point it’s going to be more cost effective for the government to do the right thing which is to cut these subsidies to animal agriculture than it is to turn a blind eye. Maybe it’ll come down to dollars and cents.

Maybe it’ll come down to people in positions of power who are personally impacted by the devastating impact of climate change driven by animal agriculture. But as grassroots activists on the ground, we have our bodies, we have our keyboards and we can share stories like this and we can take to our keyboards and do whatever we can to reach the decision makers and our elected officials who need our votes. So Dr. Crystal Heath, here we are.

We’re offering a solution. We’re offering a solution to climate change to a large degree. Not a 100% but a pretty major solution.

75% per human being reduction in greenhouse gases. We’re offering a solution to the bird flu. If we had no birds in factory farms we wouldn’t have a bird flu outbreak that we would have to kill millions of birds in factory farms.

We’re offering a solution to the human health crisis with 70% of Americans overweight and more than 40% obese, which is causing our healthcare costs to skyrocket. We have also a solution to world hunger by the way, which there are many people suffering from malnutrition and hunger around the world because animals are eating a huge percentage the majority you could argue of the food. We’re 8.2 billion humans and we’re raising and killing 92 billion animals every year.

I mean what I don’t get is how is it possible for these people not to see this? I could see the people who are making money off of the subsidies, okay, as somebody said famous, you can’t get somebody to agree to a reality that’s going to cost them money. You can’t get them to see a solution that’s going to cost them money if they adopt the solution. But somebody like Elon Musk, okay, he seems to be very focused on doing to the U.S. government what he did to Twitter, now X. It’s gutting it, gutting it, gutting it.

Well, it’s right there and it actually would help people. Yeah, I mean I just went to Sprouts and you look at the egg section to see, I’m always checking what the prices are. Of course, the egg section is empty except for there’s a little just egg thing sitting right there.

There’s also some egg whites cans things too, but the just egg of course is $7 while the egg still is, even though egg prices have gone up, the egg is still cheaper than the just egg and that needs to be switched. It needs to be cheaper and easy for people to grab. I think a big thing with Elon Musk and a lot of these people, they still do not believe that you can be healthy on a diet that doesn’t include animals.

That’s a big barrier for a lot of people and a lot of people just aren’t used to eating these foods, so we have to solve that problem too. I think going to this veterinary conference, I met so many vegan vets who had no idea who I was. I’m like how on earth is there any vegan vet out there who doesn’t know who I am and what our honour is and know about ventilation shutdown, but still so many veterinarians who just need to get organized.

The politicians listen to us. We need to get organised. We need to get out there too and take pictures of what is happening out there in the world like I did with taking pictures of the sick and dead cows.

Go to the areas near you where bird flu outbreaks are happening. Take pictures of what is happening and send those to the media. We need to change the narrative.

We need to get this information out there. We need to raise awareness about the infectious disease trap of animal agriculture, how we are paying so much for empty eggshells. We are paying all this money and we’re not even getting food out of it.

Let’s redirect those subsidies towards supporting animal free methods of food production so that we can ensure our nation’s food security and our public health or else our nation will fall behind all of the other nations. That’s what these guys should care about, ensuring our future and our public health and our food security and animal welfare of course too. We know that when Beyond Meat went public in 2019 it was the most successful initial public offering for years, the meat industry freaked out and launched a massive PR war against plant-based meats basically calling them super processed.

Processed meat isn’t processed, isn’t super processed. Meat isn’t super processed. When you eat a hamburger you could be eating 100 animals or 200 animals.

It’s all mixed up together, not appetising. We have to counteract that as well because, and I urge all plant-based vegan people or vegan-friendly people, do not repeat meat eating industry talking points. Stop talking about how you hate veggie burgers.

If you don’t want them, don’t eat them, but zip it because every time somebody eats a veggie burger they’re not eating an animal and they are 100,000 times healthier than a meat burger. So where do we go from here? We’ve only got a couple of minutes. How do we reach Elon Musk? Now I talked to somebody who deals with a lot of high-powered people and what he told me is they have layers and layers and layers.

Like they have an assistant who has an assistant who has an assistant who has an assistant who has an assistant. You can’t really reach them. We were actually talking about maybe placing an ad in a conservative publication if they would even accept it.

You know how PETA does ads for the Super Bowl and they always turn them down and then they get a lot of free advertising as a result. Very clever way of trying to deal with it. But just to recap and review about what hasn’t worked, just asking politely does not work and let’s talk a little bit about when you try to speak truth to power.

This is an example of when you, Robert, were arrested for trying to speak truth to power. There you are in the Congressional hearing and you’re being walked out. This is a hearing on the Farm Bill and you’re just trying to make the point that it’s packed with these terrible subsidies and you literally are handcuffed and arrested and walked out.

So what can we do? I’d like to hear from all three of us, all four of us. I suggest let’s pool our resources and put an ad because I want to say one other thing. There have been news articles where, first of all, Vivek Ramaswamy who is a vegetarian left Doge, so that’s bad news because he might be more enlightened about this issue, but the second is I’ve read articles saying that Elon Musk says, well, maybe I can’t cut two trillion because he’s walked into a wall with a lot of protections of federal employees, etc.

So we’re offering an elegant solution that’s actually good for the planet. How do we reach this individual? I know you said you’re going to his Twitter page, but let’s just brainstorm about other possibilities. Donnie? How to reach Elon Musk.

One thing I did, Jane, I think you probably did it too, is that we sent emails to the public affairs departments of all of the companies that Elon Musk owns or has a controlling interest in. We created a campaign in which we had thousands of people sending those letters through one of these automated email programmes, then perhaps that would assuredly put this idea of cutting ag subsidies on his radar screen, no doubt. I also just want to make one point of clarification, Jane.

We know that Elon Musk doesn’t believe that cutting animals from your diet will impact climate change in a positive way and that he doesn’t think it will have any impact at all, but we do know that he wants to cut federal spending and so he might not discriminate against this idea if this idea would in fact be a way to cut the budget. Right, and I’d also like to say that a lot of these folks are libertarians and they basically feel that the government shouldn’t be subsidising and they’re against welfare. Well, this is corporate welfare.

It’s blatant corporate welfare. Why would they be in favour of it if they’re actually libertarians? The question is if we could reach Elon Musk, A, and then B, could we get Congress, which has the purse strings, to go along with Elon Musk? Your thoughts, Robert Yurlow. First of all, I’m not totally convinced that Elon Musk will last very long so I’m not even sure how much we want to invest in trying to change his mind, but I will say Congress is not going anywhere.

So we’ve had Congress for as long as we’ve had a country and we can get in front of these people. We can do more than just write emails and it’s good to leave a paper trail. It’s good to have emails and phone calls and social media posts tagging these people, but guess what? They can ignore all that, but what they can’t ignore is when we get in front of them and that’s what other social movements have to do too.

We have to have face-to-face, honest interactions, many different kinds of interactions, leading to a seat at the table so that they take our position seriously. We have to be willing to get out there and get in front of them. All right.

I love your courage. I have a question about these as your own protesters said, these members of Congress who you say are bought and paid for by the animal agriculture industry. I don’t know that appealing to their conscience, appealing to their logic is going to work.

I really don’t because… If they want to get re-elected they’re going to have to take their constituent groups seriously as well and they’re going to have to figure out what the… they’re going to have to make a calculus. Do I side with the animal ag interests or is there too much political pressure and too much change in my constituent base that says there has to be some concessions made? That’s what we’re looking for, concessions, a transition. We’re not expecting something to happen overnight.

Crystal Heath. So last year our honour got 87 press hits in the media from the New York Times, The Guardian, Vox Newsweek, The Intercept, so many Don’t forget Unchained TV, lady. Unchained TV, of course.

It’s just me, mostly our honour and a couple of helpers and this year we plan to get a lot more media attention and I have been following Elon Musk and all of these people and there’s this little crowd of people on Twitter that all know each other and all listen to each other. Right now we also have a group chat with around 800 people and we plan to wield that group chat to help amplify some tweets to various power holders. As a result of some of my supporters who have been tweeting at some prominent podcasters, I will be on a pretty major podcast hopefully in the next few weeks and we’ve got another major media story that might come out in the next few days too.

So we’re working hard to get media attention and I think this whole talk about bird flu is becoming much more prominent. There’s a lot more media attention around it and I think we have the opportunity to really push our narrative, take advantage of this whole bird flu situation as horrifying as it is and get out there, take pictures, talk to people, put our perspectives out there on Twitter which is still, everybody’s leaving Twitter but that’s where Elon Musk and all of these people are and that’s where all the journalists are too. So start writing thoughtful things, making creative content, going out there in the field and taking pictures of what is actually happening and talk to your veterinarian too who do have the power to change policy and legislation in the United States because our policy makers will listen to veterinarians and experts they won’t necessarily listen to animal rights activists unfortunately but animal rights activists can influence veterinarians.

Well you are a hero for first of all for many things but for going out there and videotaping those cows at your own risk because those cows undoubtedly had bird flu and died from bird flu so I’m glad you’re safe. I don’t see a lot of pictures of cows like that in mainstream media, systematically ignored. So I also applaud you Dr. Heath for getting on these major publications when so many people have had no luck.

So I feel that you have a magic touch, keep going. But I also like Robert Grillo’s approach of speaking truth to power, going into these hearings and disrupting them. I mean that’s non-violent civil disobedience to get a point across because they don’t listen.

If you talk to them nicely and they don’t listen you have to step it up. I also like Donnie Moss’s idea of really doubling down on X and I also like the idea of a high-tech petition that lays out exactly where they can cut the costs in the farm bill which has not passed yet. We do have an opportunity.

So I just want to thank all of you for doing incredible work. Everybody share this video out if you’re watching on social media and I always make a plea for everyone to download Unchained TV. We are the world’s only vegan, non-profit streaming television network that explains why we need to transition to a plant-based lifestyle.

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