[Speaker 1]

Welcome to the Unshay TV podcast with me, your host, Jane Velez Mitchell. Guess what? Parrots need your help.

 

They are in crisis right now. We’re gonna bring you a lot of breaking news regarding what’s happening with parrots. Of course, parrots are one of nature’s most gorgeous and captivating creatures.

 

And that’s why people want them as pets. But the parrot pet trade is causing unimaginable suffering for parrots. And now there’s a growing push to stop the parrot trade and protect these highly intelligent, sensitive birds from exploitation.

 

We’re gonna tell you about the latest moves to make this trade a thing of the past. Now you’re looking at various species of parrots here. We can tell you we’re gonna cover the African grey parrot, which is amongst the most popular bird species.

 

And that’s due to their ability to mimic human speech. Suriname is one of the biggest exporters of live birds. Now experts and activists are gonna tell us how we can stop the removal of parrots from the wild.

 

Again, they really need our help right now. Harm to parrots in captivity is significantly related to their longevity and their need to bond to their flock. We see birds who have been in several different homes and some of them not very good and they come to us and their ability to trust is severely compromised.

 

We also need to educate people about the fact that they are not good pets and they’re much better served living in the wild. We are seeing parrots suffering due to the miseducation and misinformation spread by parrot traders, such as pet stores and breeders. Many parrots are living short, unenriched lives and many more are suffering from many diseases, including liver disease, due to the misinformation spread about their diets.

 

It is time for this neglect to end. All right, do you wanna help parrots? I certainly hope so.

 

Well, this is your opportunity. We’re so excited to have an incredible panel. I wanna start with Liz Cabrera-Holz, who is somebody who really can dive deep on this subject.

 

Liz, you are Senior Campaign Manager for World Animal Protection. What is the situation with parrots right now? Well, what we like to say that there, we don’t like to say, but what’s going on right now is that there is a parrot crisis.

 

And that refers to both US and international demand for parrots, which is devastating wild populations, individual parrots, ecosystems, and humans. So from World Animal Protection’s perspective, what we’re working on is trying to reduce the demand by banning their sale in pet stores. By banning the sale, really we work on all animals right now, there’s a real crisis with parrots because they don’t belong in pet stores and pet stores sell so many species of birds from tiny finches to large parrots like macaws.

 

But the most commonly sold species are these smaller parrots, budgies. They’re also called, in the US stores, they call them parakeets, cockatiels, conners. In those small, these species are profoundly social, intelligent, behaviourally complex.

 

So by banning their sale in pet stores, we’re gonna protect them from cruelty and we’re also gonna reduce the pressure on overwhelmed sanctuaries and rescues. When I look at these images, my heart breaks. I’m frankly disgusted.

 

And as I say, almost every week doing this podcast, talking about some animal cruelty or another, I’m ashamed to be a member of the human race. Like, what is wrong with us that we have to take these spectacular animals and stick them in cages and all because we supposedly like them? That’s why people get these parrots unthinkingly because, oh, they’re beautiful, I love them, I wanna get them.

 

And then in the process, they end up torturing them, Liz. That’s right. And I think that’s why we’re so excited about the retail ban approach, because if you grow up seeing these parrots in cages, in stores, at strip malls across the United States, you’re gonna grow up thinking that it’s okay to keep them in a cage.

 

And people don’t realise that whether they’re born in captivity or the wild, parrots retain the need to fly, forage, and socialise. And it’s not possible, despite what pet stores say, to meet their physical and social needs in human homes. So then as we just saw in those photos, we have birds experiencing severe psychological stress, loneliness, so many of them will develop self-destructive behaviours such as feather plucking, screaming, and aggression.

 

Well, this is the sad imagery. And we wanna show you some images of these birds when they are free. And it was really, you know, I love parrots, but I’ve never really experienced them in the wild.

 

And it’s so extraordinary. You’ve got to see how parrots behave in the wild. And it really gives you a sense of how agonising captivity must be.

 

Look at this. So when you see that, it just breaks my heart. And I wanna go to Laura Kim Joyner on this.

 

You are also a parrot expert. I mean, these parrots, they long to be with their families. They long to be in the wild.

 

Tell us why it’s so painful for them to be in captivity. Right, some of this is just from experience of watching the birds. I’ve been doing this for about 40 years in the Americas working with parrot conservation.

 

And also you hear from the people, the indigenous people that work and live with the parrots, they tell you this. And the scientific studies say that these birds like to fly. They have very complex social structures.

 

They name their children. It is, they give them specific parrot calls and they remember these names. They can live to be, well, some of them in captivity over a hundred years of age.

 

And some of the macaws can fly up to 50 kilometres a day and they can eat over 70 some different types of plant and insect and bark species. So, you know, it’s sort of like when we say you put a bird in a cage, you’re putting a young child in a cage. They have the intelligence of about a five-year-old and they have that kind of energy.

 

When you look at young macaws or young parrots of any age, they don’t stop moving. They don’t stop talking. They’re like children, they’re wired.

 

Their brains are being wired to learn everything that they can and they need to learn a lot because they’re gonna live a long time. And so when I see birds that have been raised in captivity and in cages, it’s like I’m seeing a different species. My heart aches.

 

It’s like they’re on, we might even say they’re like on the spectrum. Their brains have not developed. It’s like they’re not even really a parrot.

 

They are a projection of human desires and it’s heartbreaking to see. When you see them here and then you see them in captivity, it’s nauseating. And here’s my message, empty the parrot cages.

 

How are we going to do that? Now, this has all been brought to me thanks to Justine Block, who was on our panel today. And she is an attorney and she’s been tracking what’s been happening with the whole crusade to get birds along with other animals out of pet stores.

 

And so there’s been a very, very exciting development. I wanna play you the sound of exactly what happened and then we’re gonna break it down. This happened in a town called Beverly, Massachusetts, but what happens in Massachusetts, as we know, from Paul Revere can spread to the rest of the country.

 

Order number 40 of 2025, amend chapter 117, animals, to add section 16, restrictions on the sale of animals to prohibit pet shops from the sale of any live amphibian, reptile, bird, or mammal. Pet shops would be allowed to provide space for the display of animals available for adoption from an animal care facility or animal rescue organisation, but are prohibited from receiving a fee for providing such space. Violations would be punished by a fine of $300.

 

Councillors, is there a motion to approve order 40? This is for a first vote.

 

[Speaker 2]

So moved.

 

[Speaker 1]

Second. Is there any further discussion? All those in favour?

 

Motion. That carries nine, zero, and that will be available for a second vote and final passage at our next regular meeting. Thank you.

 

Justine Block, thank you for bringing that to our attention and we understand that this did get final approval. You can see here from a news bulletin and that now this is the 16th municipality in Massachusetts to pass a pet store ban. This one specifically includes birds.

 

What is the significance of that? This is huge news, Jane. We’re really excited about this recent victory in Massachusetts.

 

And the ordinance that you just watched there get passed is much broader than what we have now in California. So in 2017 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, they were the landmark city to pass a broader ban beyond cats and dogs. In California, we also protect rabbits.

 

Now they are protecting in these cities in Massachusetts that have passed bans, not only mammals, but also birds, also amphibians, reptiles, and spiders. So this is really an exciting new trend that we’re seeing because as I mentioned in California, we have had the ban and that is more common now, I think almost 500 jurisdictions now in the United States have passed the bans on dogs and cats, but now these expanded bans to other species of animals, including birds is huge. Well, I would think that California would be one of the first places, West Hollywood was the first to ban fur that got spread across the country.

 

We have to bring this to California. I personally have seen flocks of escaped parrots in Culver City. I saw it with my own eyes or I wouldn’t hae believed it.

 

I went to visit a friend and I was hearing a lot of macawing and I looked up and I saw these animals and now she’s no expert, but she said, those are parrots and we believe that they are either the escapees or the descendants of escapees. And one of the reasons that could happen is because, well, it’s a climate in California generally, not always, but generally where they could survive in the wild, but people adopt, excuse me, I shouldn’t say the word, people buy these animals and take them to all sorts of places to get bitter cold. So if they escape, they’re dead on arrival.

 

What can we do to make sure that this incredible bill that passed in Beverly, Massachusetts spreads across the United States so that we will never walk into a pet store and see any bird, but particularly parrots, but any bird, Liz, being put for sale? Yeah, so we encourage grassroots groups to start working on this issue. World Animal Protection has a toolkit on its website with advice on passing expanded retail pet sales bans.

 

We have a policy one-pagers on various species, including birds that are designed to use with legislators. And we have a one-pager that breaks down the issue, also designed for legislators. So as Justine said, Beverly, Massachusetts was the fourth, Cambridge was the first in 2017.

 

There’s also a ban in Arlington, Massachusetts, as well as Washington, DC. So we think this is gonna continue to pick up speed. Also exciting, a bill was introduced into the Rhode Island legislature that would ban the sale of parrots from breeders and brokers and pet shops.

 

And we just think as more and more people become aware of the parrot crisis and other crises with species, I’m sure many listeners heard about New York City and other cities banning the sale of guinea pigs in pet stores. I think as people’s circles of compassion grow, we’re just gonna see more and more energy around this issue. And you’re looking at images of these injured parrots.

 

Look how pathetic. I mean, they plucked out their feathers. Almost every single photo we have here is the animals have plucked out their feathers and some of them, it’s really hard to watch.

 

There’s a hole there. That parrot has a hole. Look at this one, completely shorn of feathers.

 

They seem tortured. Obviously they’re craving, they have an innate desire to fly. I have to say that Hollywood is not providing a solution.

 

Just so happens last night, usually around 10 o’clock after I finished working like 12, 14 hour days, I watch a half an hour just to relax and go to sleep. And I was watching a show that was a period drama from the 19th century, like Victorian England. And sure enough, they’re introducing birds in cages into one of the early department stores.

 

And I was like, oh my God, I’m seeing an example of why this happened last night. I couldn’t believe it. Or maybe I’m just aware of it because I knew we were doing the show today.

 

But the whole idea was that the episode was centred around selling birds at an apartment store and ha, ha, ha. And anytime the birds appeared, the funny music would show. And it was just like harmless fun.

 

And I was looking at it after having read about the pirate crisis and the bird crisis, birds in pet stores. And I’m like, this is not harmless fun. And it’s irresponsible for Hollywood to portray it as harmless fun.

 

And it actually made me very angry. What are your thoughts? I’d like to go to LoraKim, join me on that one.

 

Right, one of the things that people can do and think about is that this is just not a problem in North America or industrialised countries. This is a problem that goes deep all the way back to where the birds are from. And so we wanna be able to tell these stories.

 

So people go, well, not only do birds, we don’t wanna see them in cages, but it’s hurting parrots where they are. For instance, 30% of the parrot species in the world are endangered and over half of them are in declining populations. We just don’t see some of these parrots anymore in any of these countries of origin.

 

And then the people who, the indigenous people and the people who live there are losing their parrots. So it’s like a colonialism extraction mentality to say, well, we want birds where we are or in the city and we’re gonna take them from you all. So they’re losing their spiritual and cultural pieces.

 

And it’s dangerous work to protect the parrots. I’ve had friends who have died protecting parrot nests. And that’s all because someone somewhere in the world wants to have a parrot in a cage and be able to have company and beauty and all the things that people are attracted to parrots for.

 

And by the time they get to somebody’s home or collection, nine out of 10 have already died or suffered along the way. So even if you have a parrot that’s four generations removed your entertainment, your satisfaction, your company is still connected to that harm that is continuing throughout the world at this very moment. And then as birds come into the United States or into other countries, they are incredibly abused before they even get to pet stores at homes.

 

There was just a big confiscation in Southern California in early February, about 268 species. 50 were dead at the scene when they went to go do this confiscation. So it’s just tremendous harm at all levels.

 

The people in the sanctuaries who hearts are broken, the people, the conservations who are losing their lives protecting parrots all the way back. This is a poly crisis. It’s yes, parrots, but it’s people.

 

And it’s ecosystems because parrots are the seed dispersers. They fly around with seeds and they plant. They are the farmers of the forest.

 

We need them. And we need to say, perhaps the world needs them more than we need them in our pet stores and in our homes. Well, and the thing is, this is happening, as you mentioned, as the panel has mentioned to so many species.

 

It seems like all we can do as a species is torture other species. If you look at what’s happening to the wild caught monkeys for ridiculous animal experimentation, they’re also threatened with extinction because we’re capturing these animals from the wild and putting them in cages and taking them to laboratories where they’re being tortured. And then let’s face it, 95 or more, 99% of experiments that work in animals don’t work in humans because we don’t have tails.

 

And so to use the most basic example, dogs are allergic to chocolate. I’m definitely not allergic to chocolate. Sometimes I wish I were, but I’m not.

 

So there are things that will make dogs very sick that don’t make humans sick and vice versa. And it’s happening to wild caught monkeys. It’s happening to birds.

 

It’s happening to parrots. It’s happening to all sorts of species. And as we drive species into extinction, we are threatening our own species, Justine Block, because once we basically eliminate all these species, we’re gonna experience an ecological collapse.

 

And it seems like we just are not smart enough to appreciate that when we torture these animals, we are hurting ourselves as well. Your thoughts. Absolutely true.

 

There are things that we can do in the animal rights community. We are overwhelmed with so many issues today. And that’s why I really appreciate that the parrot crisis is brought up to the forefront so that we can learn more about this individual issue and what we can do.

 

One is to share information about the harms to the parrots that are happening now and to other species. Secondly is get involved with these local campaigns. I saw a billboard two years ago about the LA Pet Fair and that is what inspired me to go, wait a minute, what’s going on?

 

There are pets sold at these giant expos, one big building of birds, one giant building of reptiles, and another of aquatic life at the fairgrounds. So I talked to activist friends, reached out, used the toolkit that Liz had mentioned earlier from World Animal Protection. And we went and did outreach at the pet fair and handed out flyers.

 

The campaign was supported by PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and Defence of Animals and LA Animal Defence League as well as other local organisations, Animal Alliance Network, and we all came together and it just was important to get that information out to people. And a lot of folks didn’t know, oh, I can actually go to a rescue or a shelter to get a bird because we would hand out lists of where people can adopt instead of buying animals to support this very cruel, harmful industry. And so that makes a difference too.

 

And any way that we can get the word out and join campaigns. And I do wanna just say one last thing about the particular campaign I’m mentioning is that I collaborated in defence of animals which supported our campaign. And we asked the County of Los Angeles Board of Supervisors, please stop these pet fairs.

 

It’s on the fairgrounds, which is County property. They can stop these pet fairs. They can ban the sale of animals at the pet fairs.

 

And that’s what we’re working on. We have over 10,000 supporters that have sent communications to the Board of Supervisors asking them to stop the sales of the birds at fairgrounds. So what’s next?

 

Oh, what can we do to make this more effective? Because we have the solution. We know that it’s possible.

 

Beverly, Massachusetts, way to go. You passed this law. So what are we doing to make sure that these laws are passed across the United States?

 

Because let’s face it, Beverly, Massachusetts is a small town. I never even knew there was a Beverly, Massachusetts until yesterday. So yeah, what’s the plan, Liz?

 

How can we get this coast to coast? I have a couple of thoughts. One, if you’re really interested in the parrot issue, I would encourage you to check out the International Alliance for the Protection of Parrots, which is doing a lot of great organising on this.

 

And if you get connected to that group, you’ll be connected to lots of advocates who are working on this. If you live in Massachusetts, I’d encourage you to reach out to the MSPCA, the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. They were the driving force behind the first ordinance in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

 

And the little notice you saw about Beverly, that was from their website. And if you live in another part of the country, reach out to me, reach out to World Animal Protection, and we can also get you plugged in to campaigning. And yeah, we’re just excited to support it wherever this pops up in cities.

 

In terms of bringing it coast to coast, I think we would love to follow the model that we’ve seen with puppy mills. As Justine mentioned, there’s about 500 cities and eight states who have banned the sale of dogs and cats and sometimes rabbits in pet stores. And that’s in order to shut down puppy and kitten mills.

 

We would love to see people take this on at the local level. And then as it grows, we can bring it to the state level. And don’t even, I would also encourage people not even to just stay focused on birds.

 

If you’re gonna work with your local legislator, consider including all animals. Though I know today we’re focused on birds because they are in such dire circumstances. But it’s, I mean, this is the thing that overwhelms me.

 

Yes, it’s birds, but it’s also monkeys. It’s also Guinea pigs. It’s also every other species.

 

And we know from the World Wildlife Fund, we’re barreling towards extinction. And it’s one of the nine boundaries. When we experience complete species extinction, which we’re basically on the road to doing, there’s no turning back.

 

You can’t go to amazon.com and order more species. I mean, Laura Kim Joyner, why is it that the powers that be aren’t recognising that this is a very serious crisis for humans too? Well, in some countries, the government authorities are in on the bribing and the corruption, and they are part of the export system.

 

And they’re making their own money doing it. So, locally where birds are currently ranging, we have a country problem where the governments could be weak, there’s poverty, the drug trade is immense. And so local governments, even if they had the will, politically, they can’t do it.

 

They don’t have the power to do it. It just sort of runs wild with, they’re just not able to stop the trapping. And that’s why so many of us who work with wild parrots have come together in the International Alliance for the Protection of Parrots, in Loro Sin Fronteras, Parrots Without Borders.

 

These are American Spanish speaking organisations are saying, we can’t do it. We don’t have the governments that are strong enough to do it. It’s too immense.

 

It’s too much in the cartels. It’s too many wealthy people in Asia coming here to buy the parrots. We just little people, we can’t stop it.

 

Our governments have to stop it and they’re not doing it. And that’s why at the same time that we’re doing the legal structures and the pet store bans and all of this, we have to change the world ethics that it’s not okay to have birds in cages. This is too long, too slow.

 

We need to do all our emergency work to save parrots now too. But it needs to be sort of like the orca whale or like the chimpanzees. It is not acceptable to put wild animals in the cages into captivity.

 

It’s not the way that we need to do this. And it’s a huge change in environmental relationships with humans. We have, everything has to change, Jane.

 

Everything has to change. Our interrelationships to other people and other species and the earth and our societies have to be societies of economically flourishment for all beings. And so you can see we’re so far behind, right?

 

We’re really far behind. And so it’s really hard for any governments to come up against that, whether you’re an industrialised country or not. And whenever you have a time and you wanna go to some positive stories, I can tell you some really great things that people are doing to save parrots.

 

Well, yeah, I like to be positive, but also it seems that we’re racing the clock. If these animals are going into extinction across the world, if there’s, you always have to follow the money, unfortunately. And that’s why there has to be, I think, legislation.

 

Because if they think, if these stores think they can make money by selling birds, you gotta know that they’re gonna try to sell birds. I mean, we’ve gone through this with puppy mills. Thank God.

 

Again, West Hollywood leading the way with a lot of these types of bills. You’re not able to sell puppies in that municipality. It has to be animals that, dogs that come from rescue.

 

So I think that’s the out, that people can still see these animals at the pet stores if they come from rescues. But do you really wanna give a parrot to anybody? I mean, shouldn’t there be like relocation of all these animals back to the wild?

 

Or is that not possible? Because once they’ve lived in a cage so long, they won’t be able to survive in the wild. And it’s just not practical to take a bird who’s been living in a cage and suddenly transform that bird back to Latin America or Africa or wherever the bird came from and say, go free.

 

I think that might be a little fantastical, but I’d like to hear Liz’s thoughts on that. And is that we’re, once these birds are here, we need to take care of them. That’s why something we haven’t really touched on yet is that the bird rescues and sanctuaries are in crisis too.

 

Because the average bird guardians not prepared to meet the bird’s needs, behavioural problems with birds, financial difficulties, life changes for humans. We now have birds flooding rescues and sanctuaries and not many accredited bird sanctuaries or good bird sanctuaries exist. Many shelters and rescues don’t even accept birds.

 

So Foster Parrots, which is one of the largest accredited parrot sanctuaries in the U.S., which has provided some of the photos we shared with your team, is inundated with surrender requests. They receive something like 700 to 1,000 requests annually and their executive director, Karen Windsor, has described the volume as soul crushing and overwhelming. Yet we still have the pet industry flooding the U.S. with baby birds every year. And I’ll pass it to Laura Kimbo to answer your question about rewilding birds. Okay, yes, Laura. Right, right, right.

 

So first off, morally and ethically, the birds need to go home, right? They don’t belong here. They belong with the people and with the ecosystems.

 

They need to go home. It is very much a challenge. One is the governments with the legalities and the bureaucracy and the money to actually take the birds back and let them go.

 

And some birds can come from being all the way from talking English and Spanish and never seeing a wild parrot to actually having mates and raising young in the wild. It can be done. It’s extensive and it’s expensive to be able to do this.

 

However, the bureaucracy and the threat of disease to move birds that have come from all over the world, we mess them up into the, let’s say the United States or Europe, and then we take them back to a country where there’s still free-flying parrots, we’re asking for trouble. And so it’s a very complex piece. However, people are trying to do that.

 

There have been some rescues in Southern California, birds that came out of areas where I work in Nicaragua and Honduras, and the governments were willing to take them back. The people were willing to do their own money and volunteer to have them come back. The birds were isolated and raised to be wild birds in Southern California.

 

There was no risk of disease. We couldn’t get our governments to send them back where they belong. And so we have a stopgap there, even if it’s just as a symbol of some very special qualities of birds that can go back, that are wild, that do not have disease.

 

For our own hearts and our own spirits, we need to send those birds back and say they should have never left their home in the first place. Oh, you are so right about that. But I mean, the practicalities.

 

I think we need to, Justine, get some maybe celebrities involved in this. We need to make it something that everybody’s talking about. But part of the problem is there’s only so many celebrities that care about animals.

 

And there’s so many animals being tortured, animals tortured in the factory farm system. We just covered that last week with some horrific footage, animals tortured for animal experimentation, animals now being tortured for the pet trade. It’s really hard.

 

Those celebrities who do care about animals also get overwhelmed with requests. I constantly get requests to please connect me with five or 10 very famous people. I’m like, no, just because I’m an animal lover and I used to be on TV doesn’t mean that I’m hanging out with all these extremely famous people.

 

I can’t help you. What can we do to make this something that is stamped in the public consciousness and make it embarrassing for people to say that they’ve bought a bird? It’s become in some circles, embarrassing to say you’ve bought a dog.

 

I think people are waking up to the idea that these papers are not worth, my dog has papers, that that’s almost a sign of like you have a low IQ. Well, we do see on social media viral posts of people that have gone to pet shops and seen birds languishing for months with price tags on them over $1,000, sun conures, for example. And they raise money to buy the birds and say they’ve rescued them from the pet shop somehow.

 

And these kind of posts go viral, people saying, oh, you’ve saved the bird that was languishing. I mean, our hearts go out to these poor birds you see at the pet shops confined, not able to exhibit their natural behaviour, not able to fly. So I think it would take a viral post from a celebrity or to somehow shift this.

 

And we have, as I mentioned, as activists put out information contrary to this to defeat what is going out into the social media world to say, no, you want to adopt. If you buy those birds at the pet store, the bird will be replaced with another prisoner. It’s not helping the birds to buy them.

 

It helps to, if you really want to have a feathered friend to adopt from these overwhelmed sanctuaries. And unfortunately, oftentimes the birds that are purchased at pet shops end up abandoned, further overwhelming the rescue industry. As Liz mentioned, it’s already very much a crisis at this point.

 

So we have to stop the demand. We have to deal with the demand. It would be great to get celebrities involved.

 

I do just want to add one other thing because you mentioned West Hollywood is that we have asked West Hollywood to take the initiative on this again. And with Mayor Byers, she had introduced an initiative at the city of West Hollywood last year that was unanimously moved forward by the city council. They directed the city attorney to draft an ordinance similar to the one that Beverly adopted, which is broader than the ban on the cats, dogs, and rabbits to include birds, other mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and arachnids.

 

So that’s really positive news. We are still awaiting for the ordinance to come back for consideration by the city council. So we need all hands on deck.

 

That’s one reason we’re here talking about the parrot crisis is that we will hopefully be able to get people to come out. We’re asking everybody, please keep this on the radar so that if you care about this issue to come out and comment at the meeting. So that’s really important to submit comments in support of these ordinances because we’re up against the pet shops.

 

As you mentioned, Jane, these are Goliath industries. And behind the pet shops, there’s also, as Laura Kim mentioned, the trafficking. I mean, the illegal trafficking is worth billions, as I understand.

 

It’s very sad, very sad how much a lot of the parrots that are illegally trafficked are sold for and in the pet shops that there is a lot of money involved. So we need grassroots major support to get these initiatives passed, the bans passed as soon as possible. So what I’m hearing is it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

 

West Hollywood always leads the way. I mean, they have been the first in so many animal protection ordinances that then spread far and wide, the fur ban being the ultimate example. But the bad news is that there are very powerful moneyed forces behind this trade.

 

And I can’t get into specific pet shops here because there’s a lot of legal issues and I do not have the bandwidth to study every pet shop across the United States. I don’t know who does, but there are people who are looking into specific pet shops without naming them and specific ones that have many stores across the United States. I mean, if we get that knocked out, that’ll go a long way toward ending the trade, hitting some of these big, big franchises.

 

Now, what really struck me is also, even when you think that a parrot or one of these wild birds in captivity is healthy and okay, they are not, you sent me a video of a parrot panting. And at first I looked and I thought, well, she seems okay, but within seconds I realised that she was in tremendous distress. Let’s watch, it’s only 23 seconds and then talk about it on the other side.

 

That’s really sad. It just broke my heart when I saw just the stress, obviously this animal is under. Liz, can you elaborate on what you would say to people who think, well, it’s gonna be different with me.

 

I’m gonna create a gazebo or some special area. I’ll never forget the time that I was walking my dogs and there was this man who was frantically looking for his escaped bird who had been walking on his shoulder. And you see that every so often where people think, oh, I got the bird under control, the bird’s gonna stay on my shoulder.

 

And I helped him and we looked for hours, we couldn’t find this bird. He was really distraught and upset. So I don’t think he was a bad person, he’s just extremely misguided to get a bird and then try to walk around with a bird on his shoulder thinking, I don’t know what.

 

And what I did say to him is, whatever you do, do not get another bird to replace. Eventually I got a little annoyed because there was no sense of, I’m responsible for this, I made a mistake. I shouldn’t have put a bird in this position.

 

This is narcissism on my part. And when I didn’t see any of that self-awareness, eventually I turned to him and said, just make sure you never get another bird to replace this one. And he kind of looked at me.

 

But I mean, what would you say to people who think this is somehow cute and okay? I would tell them, again, it’s just not possible to meet birds’ psychological, social, physical needs in our homes. I would encourage them to look at what of the bird species they wanna buy.

 

Look at videos of them in the wild. Look how many birds they’re congregating with. Look what they do at night.

 

Look how they raise their children. When birds are in captivity, they’re usually isolated or maybe there’s one or two other birds. And that is not normal for parrots.

 

We don’t have appropriate housing for birds in our homes. Bird cages don’t allow birds to meaningfully fly. The cage recommended by a major chain store, a major pet store chain, is, we calculated, 27 million times smaller than a budgie or parakeet’s range in the wild.

 

So we’re talking about social needs not being met, housing needs not being met, even their diet. Birds have specialised diets that are difficult to replicate in our homes. And even though seed diets have been popular in the U.S., they lack essential nutrients for parrots. So what we’ve seen is avian veterinarians say that malnutrition is causing up to like 90% of clinical illnesses they’re seeing. So this is just more evidence that we simply cannot care for parrots and other birds in our homes. And what you’re looking at are birds in the wild.

 

These are parrots the way they’re supposed to live. And it’s truly magical and majestic. And you see how much they enjoy flying.

 

This isn’t a case where parrots, because some of them can speak and mimic human language, don’t want to fly. I think that there’s a total misunderstanding of them as birds. In fact, I wanna make sure, I said, are parrots birds?

 

And I went and looked, and there were like thousands of Google questions about are parrots a part of the bird kingdom? So I think that’s another aspect of this. And I just wanna play 30 seconds exactly of what it sounds like for these birds in the wild when they’re in their natural habitat, living life as they should live it.

 

And as somebody said, it’s not okay, birds wanna be free. You know what? Obviously they wanna be free.

 

And why would anybody who thinks they love birds be so silly as to think that because I love birds, I should have a bird in my home? You know, ditto for fish, ditto for all these animals. I remember seeing a fish once that was basically in a tank the size of his or her body going around and around.

 

I go, oh my God, it’s tortured even just look at this poor animal. I don’t know, sometimes I lose my faith in humanity and wonder can humanity ever learn? You know, do we have to get to the point where we kill and destroy, capture, torture, maim every living being?

 

Sorry to be Debbie Downer here, but that’s my thought about it. Yes, it seems like we have hit a pause right now. One of the things that we use is no cage is big enough.

 

And you can hashtag that on all kinds of social media. Just, it isn’t possible to be able to do this. And the point that you made about people need to get out there and study the birds and watch the birds.

 

There’s a conversion that happens when people go off and spend time with wild parrots. They go, I did not know, I didn’t know. And I find that working in countries where the birds are is that we have these conservation projects where we hire people and volunteers and we go out and spend a lot of time with wild parrots, counting them and nest wondering.

 

And something changes in them. They move from being poachers to protectors. So I believe humans have the capacity.

 

I don’t know at a large scale, but I see the conversion all over the place. People willing, who used to be poachers, who have died and are willing to die to protect the parrots. So there’s a piece there that we need to be able to see parrots for who they are and really get that message out as well, as well as the bands in pet stores.

 

Oh, so sorry. Yes. No cage is big enough.

 

That is the best hashtag because people will always say, can I get a bigger cage? That is what people will say. Can I get a bigger cage?

 

So what is your response, Justine, to this concept of people always wanting to say, well, it’s just a matter of getting a bigger cage. I think that is a great hashtag. I think this is an important campaign.

 

It’s so true. It’s only a few generations of the birds that have been kept in captivity. It’s not like the longer domestication of dogs and cats.

 

They wanna fly. They have wings to fly. They want to flock.

 

They want to be wild. And it’s better to prevent the poaching and to deal with the demand side as far as educating folks and to deal with the breeding mills. You had mentioned the health of the birds earlier, Jane, and I did want to address one aspect I’m not sure has been brought up yet with most pet birds are from the breeding mills, which is there’s just so many aspects of the cruelty about the breeding mills, not very different from puppy mills where there’s rows of cages.

 

One common industry practise is parental deprivation where the hatchlings are taken from the parent birds too soon in these breeding mills and they’re hand fed with the purpose being for the parents to breed more. Because we talked about how this is a profit making enterprise. They don’t care about, I’m generalising, but there isn’t the care for the birds in this particular practise.

 

It’s very inhumane. And it results in behavioural and health problems later on for the birds because they’re hand fed. And oftentimes there’s a lack of training to the people hand feeding them and they develop health problems.

 

So maybe the experts can speak a little bit more to that practise, but I just learned about it. And so that’s just a whole nother reason not to buy birds. Just when we think we’ve heard everything, now we have this other issue of, oh, these birds are being bred in captivity in large numbers.

 

So Liz, how do we deal with that? Yeah, so to your point about how we make this an issue, I think one of the ways is telling people that these birds are bred in mills, just like there are puppy mills, there are bird mills, budgie mills are the most common. Again, they’re called parakeets in the US.

 

There’s also Guinea pig mills, bearded dragon mills, beta fishes mills. And in the mills, as Justine said, we’re talking about thousands of parakeets being kept in rows of barren cages, like inside barns and warehouses in Oklahoma and Texas. We’ve seen from investigations that groups have done, we’ve seen severe cruelty.

 

Also now the USDA is now inspecting bird mills. So I just, I saw a one inspection report from a large budgie mill in Oklahoma that found multiple dead birds inside a barn that had a heat index of like 110 degrees. Obviously birds were showing signs of severe heat distress.

 

And I wanna jump in and say these USDA investigations, they never do anything with it. I mean, was that place shut down? I would guess no, but I’d like to be wrong.

 

No, it wasn’t shut down. So what we’re gonna see, so this is new for many years, there was a lawsuit, it’s a long story, but for many years the USDA was not regulating bird mills, they are now. And that’s good in terms of we have more data to show legislators why they need to be shut down, but it’s bad in the sense that it’s not gonna change anything, right?

 

We have puppy mills, we know that who the bad, they’re all bad actors, but we know just how bad it gets at puppy mills. And now we’re gonna have that data, but you’re right. I don’t think we’re gonna see a change in the industry from this.

 

Well, I mean, that’s the problem is the USDA doesn’t do anything. Every single undercover investigation that we’ve ever covered at a factory farm, the USDA is there and they don’t see it, see no evil, hear no evil. And then even when it is written up, there’s no action taken, there’s no prosecution, even though that there are animal cruelty laws that are being violated.

 

So we’ve got a completely careless, uncaring system and all it is is paperwork. And they do this paperwork, but if you don’t act on it, what difference does it make? And that’s when the news media has to come in.

 

And even they are often cowed by the idea of offending a big company that might be an advertiser. But in a case like what you mentioned, where there was this horrific parrot or bird breeding facility, that’s a news story. Were you able to get the local news to cover it at least?

 

I believe PETA was the one who first exposed that, though I’ll say these inspection reports are all available online for anyone to look at. And I think PETA has done a great job at getting the media attention when these things come out. And so we all need to be continuing to monitor the inspection reports.

 

We also need to be tracing the supply chains to see where these birds end up so we can start holding the companies that are profiting from this cruelty, start holding them accountable, just like we’ve seen with pet stores selling puppies, you trace it back because while nothing maybe too egregious is happening in pet stores, though oftentimes it also is happening, the cruelty is hidden. That’s the way the system’s set up in the United States and we need to expose that cruelty. I like that for a hashtag, the cruelty is hidden, because a lot of people in the United States love to point to other countries and say, look what they’re doing.

 

And the truth is we are arguably the cruellest nation in terms of numbers or in the top two or three with the number of cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, goats, and lambs. The NIH is the number one experimenter in the world. We are a huge consumer of all these pets from the pet trade.

 

So we’re not in a position to point the finger. We need to look in the mirror and we need to say it’s not okay to have pets in stores unless they are from rescues and being put up for adoption and that that is a responsible adoption that a person can actually carry out in a compassionate way. We only have a couple of minutes left.

 

Final thoughts, I wanna start with you. Justine, you brought this story to me. Thank you for that.

 

What are your final thoughts? I’d like to address the enforcement issue. A lot of that is from the lack of resources and funding.

 

So I think as a member of the public, it’s important to push for more funding and more resources allocated to enforcement of the animal protection laws. So that is a big part of it. And I appreciate you having us here and I encourage everybody, if they’re interested in getting involved in this campaign, to contact me, ethicalearthclub on Instagram, ethicalearthclub at gmail.com and I can provide you more information about how to get involved and feel free to reach out to Liz’s organisation too and the other organisations represented here. All right, we only have about 30 seconds. Laura Cage, what are your final thoughts? No cage is big enough and breeding birds, captivity does not arrest the problem of illegal poaching.

 

So it’s not an answer, it exacerbates the problem. And I just wanna thank all the people who are risking their lives and giving so much of their heart to make a difference. And thank you for having us here and all our audience today.

 

Oh yeah, what you’re doing is hard work, thankless work, and you all deserve a round of applause for what you have to. Liz, last word. Just check out International Alliance for the Protection of Parrots, check out World Animal Protection and yeah, no cage is big enough.

 

I love no cage is big enough. I just urge everybody, be involved, be part of the solution. These birds cannot speak for themselves.

 

And you can also help by downloading Unchained TV, our streaming network, we’re the world’s only plant-based streaming network for animal rights. And it’s free, you can download it for free on your phone, just go to your app store, you can watch it online and you can watch it on your TV with streaming device. So it’s a vegan Netflix.

 

Okay, that’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. I love Unchained TV.

 

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