[Speaker 1]

Welcome to the Unchained TV podcast. I am your host, Jane Velez Mitchell. Wow, do we have an extraordinary guest for you today.

 

The amazing Leah Garcés, President of Mercy for Animals, and she is the author of this blockbuster game-changing new book, Transformation, the movement to free us from factory farming. Amazing, it’s truly a game changer without further ado. Oh, let’s go straight out to Leah Garcés herself.

 

Leah, just tell us in essence why you wrote this book. What is your bottom line message? Yeah, I wrote this book because I wanted to tell a story about people and animals closest to factory farming and how they were finding a way out to give us all hope that if they can find a way out, we can all find a way out of factory farming.

 

Well, it’s so extraordinary because I think it’s the thing that our society needs more than anything else right now. And it’s not just a book, it’s a movement and Mercy for Animals has taken a lot of action. You’ve actually sent us some video of what you’ve been up to.

 

So let us show that video and then we will discuss it on the other side. One, two, three. Ah!

 

[Speaker 2]

Woo!

 

[Speaker 1]

We are here for a ribbon cutting ceremony of our very first transformation hub here in North Carolina. It demonstrates everything we’re moving away from and everything we’re moving towards, which is a life after factory farming. It is so significant we’re doing this in North Carolina.

 

North Carolina has some of the highest concentration of both pig and chicken factory farms and it’s growing. So we are right in the heart of it, showing that we are resisting factory farming and building a new, better way.

 

[Speaker 2]

My family is very, very excited because they used to work with me at the poultry house back then. And right now, I transitioned from poultry to a greenhouse. They’re very excited and very happy for me on what I’ve been doing.

 

[Speaker 1]

Oh, wow. One of the big takeaways that I got watching this is that the chicken farmers are not the bad guys necessarily. They’re also victims of industrialized animal agriculture.

 

They are also trapped in this terrible system that leaves them in debt. Tell us about that and what happened with that particular farm. Yeah, Jane, the typical system is that there is a person living in some rural part of America and they wanna maintain a way of life.

 

They want to either stay on the land because their family has owned it for generations or they want to raise a family there. And there’s not a lot of employment. And so the chicken industry comes to town and they offer them a contract.

 

And they say, all you have to do is take out about a million dollars or more from the bank to build structures, to build a factory farm. And we’ll arrange that loan for you. And then we will bring you chickens.

 

And with the money that you get per flock, you get to pay back that loan. So it’s like a mortgage. They take these giant loans out.

 

And at first it seems great because they’re their own business person. They’re living out their life in the rural area they wanted to, but it’s a factory farm. So chickens start to get sick, they start dying and the farmers don’t get paid if those animals don’t make it.

 

And so the mortgage stays the same but the payment starts getting less and less and less. And soon they realize that they’re completely trapped and they are essentially all but indentured servants. And by then it’s too late, they’re stuck and they’re stuck in this cycle of debt.

 

And not only that, if they get close to paying off their debt, what happens is the company comes back and says, actually we need you to do some upgrades now. We need you to take another million dollars because the technology has changed. We need you to have new systems in place.

 

And then they take another loan out and then they’re behind again and again and again. And this happens to farmers all over the country. It is the way that chickens are raised in this country.

 

And it’s through this indentured servitude that contract farmers are stuck in. So let me ask you a question. How do they make that transition?

 

You describe basically a farm in North Carolina going from poultry farming to plant-based and I’d love to know more about what plants. And how can they afford to make that transition when they’re already in debt? Can you work us through the process?

 

Because obviously this would be an amazing thing to happen at scale. Yeah, and that’s a really good question. So most of the farmers that we work with are very close to paying off their debt and they’re at that point at which the company is telling them that they need to get another loan out.

 

And they’re trying to decide, do we get further in debt? Do we keep going or do we make a change? And so this in one farmer in Texas, they said, no, we’re not getting another loan out.

 

We wanna make a change now. And that’s how they got in touch with us and made the transition to hemp in that case. With Tom Lynn, he had been raising chickens with a company and they dropped his contract very suddenly.

 

And he was looking for an alternative way to make ends meet. And that’s how he got in touch with us. So in truth, if you add up all of the debts that poultry contract farmers have, it’s about $5 billion.

 

So we cannot solve this by like one by one by one. We are going to eventually need government intervention. We’re going to need big changes at scale.

 

Right now, we’re just trying to do proof of concept. We’re trying to show this is the roadmap. Farmers don’t wanna do it like this.

 

If they’re given an alternative, they will move away from industrial animal agriculture to specialty crops like mushrooms and microgreens like you see in these videos. There is the need for government and policy change and subsidy shifts in order for this to succeed at scale. Well, it’s funny you should mention that because I was reading the New York Times today and let me just show you, by the way, you’re looking at footage of this transformed poultry warehouse that has now become this gorgeous and sustainable and peaceful greenhouse producing, I believe, microgreens.

 

Yep, that’s right. That’s absolutely fantastic. Look how clean it is compared to what a poultry, CAFO- Yeah, literally where they were raising chickens before and we took the roof off.

 

We put corrugated plastic kind of material in there and we’re now growing microgreens, which is when we looked at the different products that farmers could make the most money on, specialty mushrooms was the highest profit margin and microgreens are the second. And there’s other things like strawberries and blueberries and tomatoes and zinnia and like flowers and a ton of other options. And the great thing about this too is unlike chicken farming where you can only do chickens and that’s it and you have to do it the way the company tells you to do it and you’re not allowed to innovate or do anything better.

 

In this case, you can change your mind. You can innovate as a farmer as most farmers are very innovative, hardworking people. They’re given that freedom, that true economic freedom that is denied in a factory farm setting.

 

And Tina says he will make millions. I think we all hope she’s right. Here’s a question from one of our viewers.

 

Do these reformed farmers become ambassadors and assist with transitioning their animal farmer neighborhoods? That is such a great question. So part of Mercy for Animals Transformation Project is to do exactly that, is we’re trying to get eight to 10 farmers each year who become spokespeople in their communities.

 

And they’re really speaking about how to change, why to change and even stopping and preventing future farmers from making the same mistakes they did in the past. And we have a program that farmers can move through where they even get media training. We want this to be a ripple effect where no one owns the idea and it’s available to anyone.

 

We make the blueprints available, the economic, the agriculture, you know, spreadsheets available to any farmer who wants it. And it’s all about getting the idea out there and creating that ripple effect so anyone can transition who wants to away from factory farming. So here’s the book, Transformation, The Movement to Free Us from Factory Farming.

 

I am listening to it on Audible as I walk my dogs and I’m enjoying every second of it, learning so much. So you can order it by just going to beacon.org, B-E-A-C-O-N.org forward slash transformation. Not transformation, even though it’s a transformation, it’s transformation, a play on words.

 

I urge everybody to get it, whether you get it, Kindle or hard copy or Audible, do it because it’s a roadmap for saving our planet, saving our society, saving animals, saving our health. And to that end, I wanna talk a little bit about, okay, the New York Times. This is the front page of the New York Times today.

 

And I’m not talking partisan politics here. I’m talking about a $2.4 trillion debt according to the nonpartisan budget office. And yet still, despite all this, the subsidies remain entrenched in these bills.

 

What drives me crazy is that we could radically reduce healthcare costs and make people healthier and give taxpayers more of their money back if we stop subsidizing animal agriculture. You talk about this in your book, the subsidies to animal agriculture, how they affect consumer buying patterns. I don’t call it capitalism.

 

I call it corporate socialism because so much money is going to prop up this industry and it’s our tax dollars going to prop up the industry. Can you break it down for us? Could you really talk about this very eloquently in your book?

 

Yeah, I recently heard Ethan Brown from Beyond Burger put it so succinctly. He said, factory farming is held together by duct tape, subsidies, and antibiotics. And really there are two pillars that allow for factory farming to persist.

 

And one is subsidies and two is antibiotics. And in the case of subsidies, so much money is going to prop up this system. It’s a fraction.

 

A fraction goes to nuts and berries. When you find it cheaper to buy chicken nuggets than blueberries, there is something really wrong with this system. And it wouldn’t be, so one of our proposals is that we really need to shift these subsidies away from factory farming and towards transitioning farmers towards healthier food systems.

 

And it wouldn’t be the first time that we have done something like this. In the Reagan administration, there was a Tobacco Reform Act. And that was where, because there were health concerns, the administration said, we are no longer going to support tobacco farming.

 

Before that, it was all supported by government subsidies, government support, government quotas. And the government said no more. And they did a buyout program.

 

It was like a big program where farmers could opt out of tobacco farming and transition to something else. And they were given a certain period of time. And overnight, within one year or two years, half of the farmers, when they were offered this buyout, transitioned to something else.

 

They got out of tobacco farming. So we have a real model for how we can move away. And we’ve done it before in history where we can move away from factory farming.

 

It only exists now because of the support that it receives through government subsidies. Right now, even through avian flu, where we’re supporting through purchasing of when animals get sick, they’re being reimbursed when these animals are killed. Instead of getting to the root of the cause and saying, why are these animals sick in the first place?

 

Because they’re in filthy squalor conditions where disease spreads easily. So I really believe we already have a model in history where this has occurred. And we could repeat that.

 

Cory Booker has tried to do that through the Farm Systems Reform Act. And in that proposal, he says that farmers would be given a debt cancellation for any debt they have around contracts and poultry or pigs. And then they could transition and get a certain amount of money to transition to healthier food systems.

 

And so we have a model and I feel like it’s just time to start moving towards that model. And it very much fits honestly with this idea of like no government waste. We’re wasting tons of money just subsidizing and propping up factory farming.

 

I mean, that’s the thing. This is the era of let’s cut. We had Doge trying to cut everything and obviously it was very controversial.

 

I’m not getting into that, but if you are gonna cut and your idea is to cut, why not cut what is the most environmentally destructive industry, terrible for our health, just devastating in so many ways. And to that end, Mercy for Animals was featured recently here in Los Angeles. We had LA Climate Week.

 

As part of that, we had the West Hollywood Food Day with Plant Based Treaty and the city of West Hollywood discussing food systems. Mercy for Animals had a representative there and she made some incredible points about the destructiveness of animal agriculture and how we have to address this as a society. Along with a delicious plant-based spread, speakers laid out why going plant-based is absolutely crucial.

 

Animal agriculture is one of the leading causes of climate change and water and air pollution, but it is the single leading cause of deforestation, species extinction, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, ocean dead zones, soil erosion.

 

[Speaker 2]

I mean, there are so many things that this industry contributes to. And I think that’s a really great way to start relating to other people. Everyone cares about something and we can tap into their passions to drive them to action.

 

[Speaker 1]

West Hollywood has now made history. All of their official city events are now plant-based by default. West Hollywood Mayor Chelsea Byers revealed that all she needed was a little push from advocacy groups.

 

What it took for me was just hearing that this idea was out there. When Mercy for Animals started knocking on my inbox and asking me as somebody who was situated as, you know, in my bio, it said I cared about climate change. Our city was a city in our climate action plan that addressed factory farming and mass agriculture as a problem with climate change.

 

So there was sort of all of this in a matrix that would line up and be like, yeah, that makes sense to go target them. But now what else makes sense? So you are doing so much at Mercy for Animals.

 

The organization was mentioned several times also by an official from the LA County Supervisor’s Office who talked about all the ways you’re working with the LA County Supervisors. The most populous county in the United States with a population greater than 40 US states combined. So first of all, kudos to all those things that you’re doing.

 

Tell us a little bit about that because it seems like you’re having some impact on local governments and yet the federal government seems to remain immovable. Yeah, I think the federal government is a really challenging place to make progress, but cities and states and counties are a wonderful place to make progress, especially cities. And as you just pointed out, West Hollywood has adopted a plant-based by default policy, which means that all of their events, and they host a giant pride event, by the way, like a massive pride event, one of the most attended pride events in the country.

 

And everything there that is hosted by the city will be plant-based by default. And this is a very good policy in terms of what we call nudge, don’t judge. We were inviting people to try plant-based without forcing it on them.

 

So you’re saying, we’re not taking away your options. You can still add them if you want to, but our first offering will be plant-based. And there’s been studies done that, there was a study done where you compared a conference.

 

In one conference, they offered the meat as the default and you had to add the vegan option. And the other one, they had the vegan and you had to add the meat as the default. And when they did that, there was an 80% reduction in meat consumption when you had the vegan by default policy.

 

Meaning most people are just going along with the flow. They’re going with the flow. And very few, especially for one meal, are just gonna add it on intentionally and choose to have it.

 

They’re willing to try things that are just put in front of them and that everyone is doing around them. So we’re really capitalizing on that sort of psychological flow that people are in. And we’re looking at counties and cities that could adopt a default policy.

 

And really most counties and cities have some kind of policy around reducing emissions. And what’s become very, very clear is we are not going to reach our climate change goals. That goal of reducing, keeping the planet no hotter than 1.5 degrees Celsius if we don’t address food. And within food, if we don’t address meat, dairy, and eggs. And Mercy for Animals sees this as a priority in terms of a way to tackle reducing suffering of animals and a way to tackle ending factory farming. Yes, and reducing the suffering of animals, obviously key.

 

And we don’t wanna give you too much unpleasant footage. People don’t wanna see it, but yet that is the reality. There’s no nice way to kill more than 80 billion animals, which is what we’re doing in today’s society.

 

And sadly, let’s just talk a little bit about the unfortunate stats. The meat consumption is still going up. You address this in your book saying that from 2007 to 2014, meat consumption actually declined and then it turned around and started climbing again.

 

What do you make of it? Yeah, and I don’t know if you remember, Jane, that moment where we were like, we’re winning, we’re winning. And it wasn’t, we were not winning.

 

What was happening was that other economic factors were playing, were causing some decision-making. So meat prices went up. That was the big factor.

 

So we had the recession in 2008. So people had less money to spend. And then we had corn prices just skyrocket.

 

Corn is fed to chickens. Chicken prices went up as a result. And then there was also some disease outbreaks in pigs that caused further problems in terms of price.

 

So basically the cost of meat went up dramatically and people had less money to spend. So that combination meant people started eating less meat. And we thought we were winning, but it turned out it was just economic, economy playing, putting into play.

 

And, but that does give us a clue, I think, as to what we need to do. And what I think needs to happen is meat, dairy and eggs needs to bear the true cost, which is why we need to get rid of the subsidies. We can’t outsource the pain and suffering to vulnerable populations like workers, farmers and animals.

 

And if we had the true cost, if we had the true cost of meat, it would be probably four or five times what it costs. And that would automatically cause people to eat dramatically less as a result. I love the fact that you’re focusing on poultry farms, although I know you’re also gonna include pig farms, hog farms, because chickens are by far, if you look at these stats, the number one animal for food.

 

And so if we actually just won on chickens, that would be extraordinary. And some of these chickens are killed for eggs. Male chicks are macerated.

 

Now with bird flu causing egg prices to go up, you’re seeing a skyrocketing consumption of plant-based eggs. We’ve interviewed Josh Tetrick, the founder of Just Eggs, and he’s told us that his sales are shooting up. So there is an alternative.

 

It’s not a sacrifice. So let’s get back to the chicken farm that you’ve transitioned and tell us, it seems like, wow, it’s fantastic, but it’s obviously a very in-depth process. What I’ve heard is that some of these chicken warehouses are so filled with toxicity and dirt that they can’t be easily transitioned because they’re just so filthy and so toxic.

 

So what are some of the challenges? Yeah, certainly. I mean, we can’t grow things right in the ground in these places because it’s full of dust and ammonia and toxicity, as you mentioned.

 

So that would be brought into the plants and then we couldn’t sell those. So one of the most viable options is mushrooms. And Tom Lim in this clip that you’re seeing here, he’s actually growing mushrooms in a container.

 

So imagine like a cargo container, we put HVAC in it. We have the old shelves that used to be used for chicken, like barriers and dividers are being used. And so that’s a contained environment that can be put anywhere.

 

It could be put inside the greenhouse or it could be put outside of the greenhouse. So that’s a really viable option when the ground isn’t safe. The other is what you’re seeing in these clips, which is these raised beds.

 

So putting in raised beds, but then you’re using the warehouse as a greenhouse. So you reconstruct it, it’s the same frame, but you’re allowing light to come in and air to come in. So there’s definitely challenges in using the equipment and sort of upcycling the equipment, but these farmers are so creative and they’re so willing and innovative that we’re coming up with all kinds of solutions.

 

And this is just one option. This is sort of one way a farmer’s doing it. We have another farmer in Iowa who’s strictly doing mushrooms and that’s the Fauborg family.

 

And they used to raise pigs for a company. We have others that are doing, they used to raise chickens and they’re growing cherry tomatoes and zinnia. So the options are kind of unlimited depending on how a farmer, what they’re motivated by and also what their local market looks like.

 

So the one that’s doing zinnia and she’s also doing peppers, like ghost peppers and tomatoes, she’s got a partnership with a local caterer who will just take everything and anything she has that is fresh. So she grows this stuff, she brings it to the caterer, he does like weddings and events and things like that. So it kind of depends on the local market too.

 

But what it does allow for is a lot of economic freedom, a lot of innovativeness from the farmer and really building that local economy. I wish that every single member of Congress were forced to read your book. Is there any way you can deliver it at least to every single congressional office and give it to them?

 

I’d be happy to start a Kickstarter to make that happen. You know what? That’s not a bad idea, Jane.

 

I like that idea. I might circle back with you and bring the book to Congress. I love that idea.

 

Absolutely. I mean, it would be also great from a social media perspective to show you delivering the books and then follow up and say, have you read the book? Because there’s solutions there.

 

They say there’s no way to convince somebody of a solution that’s going to cost them money. But truly, I think what’s happening right now with such a focus on saving money, it can be, I would call politically neutral. This is not a left or a right even issue.

 

It’s a question of a waste of taxpayer money, which is a bipartisan concern. And I think that there’s a way to bypass the partisan political divide and just say, this is a complete waste of money. And the amazing thing is that if they were to stop subsidizing animal agriculture, making the true cost of cheap hamburgers, double cheeseburgers, milkshakes, what they should cost, people would switch to healthy food and the healthcare costs in America would drop.

 

In your book, you talk about the fact that processed meat is cancer causing, that red meat is a likely carcinogen, that people are dying of heart attacks from food packed with cholesterol. There’s no cholesterol in vegan products. I mean, it’s a win, win, win, win, win, like for everybody moving away from this unhealthy food system.

 

I always tell people about chicken. Chicken is so unbelievably unsafe in this country. It concerns me when anybody is eating it.

 

It literally has to be dipped in chlorine in this country. Chicken is dipped in chlorine before it is sold to consumers. And if you don’t believe me, Google that, it’s true.

 

And it’s so true that Europe will not accept our chickens because it’s dipped in chlorine, because that’s against the law in Europe. So, and why is our chicken dipped in chlorine? Because it’s full of salmonella, it’s full of campylobacter.

 

It has, chicken is considered one of the highest sources of campylobacter poisoning in this country. And it’s concerning to me that we have a food system like that. And if you add in the fact that all of our meat is propped up by antibiotics and antibiotics are being used to protect these animals in filthy environments.

 

And instead of cleaning up the environment, we’re just feeding them antibiotics to both protect them from disease, but also to help them grow faster because they discovered the antibiotics help the animals grow really, really big, really fast. And we’re wasting vital antibiotics that could be used for ourselves. And we may have a future where antibiotics don’t work because we’ve wasted them on tortured animals, essentially.

 

By the way, we get a great comment from one of our viewers. This is a very interesting program. As an abolitionist, I would not have given a moment to animal welfare groups, but this program is changing my view on MFA, which is doing excellent work for animal liberation.

 

Oh, thank you, I appreciate that. Yeah, I will say like, I’m both, I’m an abolitionist and I’m a pragmatist. So I both think about, and the kind of way I look at it, the analogy I often use is imagine that you’re a prisoner in death row and you’re in horrible conditions.

 

Would you want somebody advocating both for making your conditions less horrible while also at food? I don’t want a single animal to suffer for that. And I think of the pragmatic steps to get there, which is like increasing the cost and making it, internalizing the cost so that people eat less and move us in the right direction.

 

I think we need both of those approaches. Absolutely, I agree with you a hundred percent. And, you know, I just wanna say that you raise the issue of cruelty to animals.

 

And one of the most unconscionable aspects of industrialized agriculture is what they’re doing to chickens and other animals, pigs, culling them in a process called ventilation shutdown, VSD or VSD plus. This is a very sick, it makes my stomach just go in knots when I look at this. They’re roasting this poor animal alive as a test.

 

Ventilation shutdown has been described as a brutal painful method of animal depopulation. These mass killings deviate from normal slaughterhouse procedures and are now being used in the pork and poultry industries. And according to one report, more than 300 million poultry birds have been killed since 2021.

 

I know the figure is even higher now. Unfortunately, instead of putting these companies out of business, again, the taxpayers are being forced to subsidize this horror. 2000 veterinarians have signed a letter saying it is not acceptable.

 

Oh, what are your thoughts on ventilation shutdown? Yeah, I’m so glad you brought this up because I feel like it’s really gone under the radar lately. You know, ventilation shutdown, imagine like you’re on the New York City subway.

 

Imagine you’re, it’s crowded, it’s rush hour. And then all of a sudden all the windows are blocked. All of the ventilation is shut and you’re inside of this thing with tons of people.

 

It gets hotter and hotter and hotter and hotter. There’s less and less oxygen until you pass out and then you die. That is what happens in ventilation shutdown.

 

This is an approved method for disposing of sick animals. It is unbelievably cruel and it should be illegal. But instead they get payouts from the government for doing this, the companies themselves, the farmers themselves.

 

So instead of a company having to pay for this, so if let’s say Tyson were to have to actually pay for this, you can bet that they would solve it. But instead they’re just getting a band-aid. They’re just getting a paycheck.

 

So they don’t think twice about trying to solve this. They think there’s another bunch of chickens that are gonna come along and it doesn’t matter. So this is horrifically cruel.

 

It’s solvable. It should not be happening. And if we made companies pay for this loss, for the loss of animals, they would solve it.

 

They would not keep letting it happen. But instead our tax dollars are going to pay for this cruelty. So, I mean, where does that leave?

 

It seems to me as we’re discussing this, and again, you gotta get this book because it’s filled with hope. What I like about the book is, honestly, I deal with so much depressing content that sometimes I go, I can’t handle it. I just cannot watch another video of animals being tortured.

 

But this book gives us hope. And just in the title, it says, the movement to free us from factory farming. And first of all, how can people, the first thing you can do is get the book.

 

I’m listening to it on Audible, which is my preferred way of listening to books, consuming books these days, because I have two dogs that I walk long distances every day, and I listen to probably three books a week. But you can go to beacon.org forward slash transformation, and you can get this, however you like to read books, Kindle, listen to them, hard copy, whatever, but get it. So now that people have it, how can they be part of the solution?

 

Obviously we need governments to change. We need individual farmers to change. We need the big ag monoliths to change.

 

But how about the average person? Yeah, I really believe in the individual’s ability to change things. I think individual action creates collective action.

 

Collective action puts pressure on markets, and market pressure puts pressure on the companies and the governments that we’re trying to change. So your choices really matter, whether it’s eating one forkful different or one plate different, one meal different, a week different, or changing your whole diet, that helps. Every time you make a different choice in your diet, it’s reducing suffering, and it’s helping to support farmers and a food system that is more humane, sustainable, and moving in the right direction away from factory farming.

 

And I went, Jane, I also feel sad and pessimistic sometimes, and I needed to write this book to show that there is hope. I went into the field, and I interviewed dozens and dozens of people who are fighting factory farming right where it is, right next to factory farm, whether it be community members who are living next to factory farm, farmers, even workers in the slaughterhouses, and even animals. There’s a whole section on animals who have escaped factory farms and found places and sanctuaries.

 

So in my mind, if they can do it, if these people who are, and animals, these beings, every being who is right in the system can escape it and can fight against it and build a new way, so can each and every one of us. So I love the, I have to say, I’m not just saying this because I thought of it, but I love the idea of you taking this book and going from office to office in Congress. And also state legislators too.

 

I’ve gone up to Sacramento, I don’t know how many times, and walked with various groups, including Social Compassion and Legislation, which does, tries to get legislation passed here in California, and go from office to office chatting with people. A lot of times they’re very inviting, and they’re like, sure, let’s take this. Somebody comes out of an office, say, hey, we’d like you to read this.

 

And then when there’s social media going on, it puts a little pressure on them to read it. And if they don’t read it, that doesn’t make them look good. If they do read it, maybe they’ll wake up.

 

Do you see, given all the discussion about how we are facing this extraordinary deficit and we need to cut costs, and unfortunately, of course, there’s a lot of controversy about programs that are vital being cut, but is there any movement in the Farm Bill, which sets food policy for like the next five years? If you look at the subsidies, and please correct me if I’m wrong, a lot of the subsidies are packed into that Farm Bill. I know that they have not passed a final one yet, is my understanding, and it keeps getting kicked down the road.

 

Is there any effort to get into that Farm Bill and get rid of some of those subsidies that are literally destroying the health of Americans, accelerating climate change, creating the budget crisis? The list goes on and on, and it’s right there staring them in the face, and for some reason, they can’t see it. I mean, I really like your idea, Jane, and we may be circling back on this.

 

I don’t think there’s enough going on in the Farm Bill. It’s always extremely difficult, I mean, to address subsidies, and we always have to try kind of backdoor entrances on this to try to get something through. So not enough is being done.

 

I like your idea, so maybe we’ll be circling back and thinking about how to do what you’re talking about. I mean, at the very least, it’ll lay down seeds for the next Farm Bill. Yeah, and Tina Walker’s like, put them in libraries as well as schools, college, universities.

 

Yeah, we’re in 400 or so libraries now. And by the way, all of the proceeds to this book go to Mercy for Animals, and so it’s feeding the work that we do. And yeah, the last number I had was we’re in over 400 libraries, so you should be able to get it out of your library.

 

If not, you can ask for it. Yeah, but I think it’s very important for people to buy the book because when it becomes a New York Times bestseller, that also gives it a lot of credibility. And so I urge everyone as an act of supporting this movement to order this book now.

 

Again, Beacon, B-E-A-C-O-N.org, Forged Last Transformation. So we only have a couple of minutes. I wanna go into a little bit of in-depth on exactly how this works.

 

You’ve seen the B-roll and the celebration, but we do have a one on the details. Let’s break it down because a lot of people are still wondering whether it’s mushrooms or how do you decide what product to grow in place of animals? Hi, my name is Kalomi Joshi.

 

I’m the demonstration hub project manager with the Transformation Project at Mercy for Animals. So on Tom Lind’s farm, he was producing 100,000 chickens probably monthly. And what we have done is taken that and shifted that operation to something more sustainable and plant-based and achievable for farmers like Tom Lind.

 

We have our irrigation system that you’ll see the pipes coming into the raised bed. Well, anything we could repurpose, we did, but the plumbing and irrigation is all new. Also just because the design of it is different for the plants.

 

Along the wall, just so you’re aware, this is a cool wall. And if we actually walk towards it, it has an AC type of feel, but it helps with the fans, which pulls this cool air across the greenhouse. That’s basically a cardboard structure with water going through it.

 

And we’re doing a little bit of physics to get this cool air across. I’m assuming this is newer, right? This is new.

 

This is similar thing for the chickens, right? That’s right. Same idea, but it’s for greenhouses.

 

Correct, that is right. Probably in about two to three weeks is the turnaround time for these seeds before they’re transplanted into their respective growing systems. Yeah, we bring some farm ones for the buckets.

 

So exciting. Let me ask you this. How many do you think you’re going to get going?

 

I know you said you wanted some of these farmers who make this transition then to become ambassadors. What are we, let’s talk numbers. I mean, how can we spread this?

 

Yeah, at the moment we have capacity and funding for eight to 10 farmers per year. So we think of it like how we do undercover investigations. When we do an undercover investigation into factory farming, we’re shining a light on this darkness.

 

We’re telling a story. This is the cruelty that is involved in factory farming. And it is used as a sort of a beacon to draw attention to the change that’s needed.

 

This is the same thing we’re doing with transformation. We’re doing eight to 10 transformations a year and we’re drawing attention to this is the struggle that farmers have. This is the path that we need to take to get toward a better food and farming system.

 

And we want to use those eight to 10 transitions to draw attention and build roadmaps towards a better system. Wow, it’s just so amazing. And I really feel like everybody needs to take part by buying the book, first of all, that is super important, getting up to date on all the facts and then supporting Mercy for Animals as well.

 

The book, all the proceeds go to Mercy for Animals and you’re doing all this incredible work. So I just want to say, wow, I’m really blown away. And Tiffany says, eight to 10 farms, excellent.

 

And then if you have this sort of exponential growth, if those eight to 10 farms each get eight to 10 farms and eight to 10 farms, I wonder, my final question is, okay, the farmers are gonna make more money because one of the shockers in the book was how little these farmers make per chicken. Can you break that down? And if indeed the farmers themselves are gonna make more money than it’s in their self-interest, wouldn’t that translate to, let’s say the local government of North Carolina saying, well, yeah, let’s support this.

 

And the reason I think about that is I also remember covering a terrible storm where a lot of these concentrated animal feeding operations, and I believe it was in the Carolinas, were right in Florida. And yet they just basically keep doing the same thing even as climate change worsens and those farms, those concentrated animal feeding operations, I don’t call them farms, factory farms, CAFOs are gonna get wiped out again. How about going to like the North Carolina government and seeing if they wanna get involved if indeed the federal government is so intransigent?

 

Yeah, I think that’s exactly the direction we wanna go in. I mean, a farmer, this will shock people, a chicken farmer makes 5 cents per pound of chicken, 5 cents. A chicken is about four pounds to six pounds.

 

So we’re talking about 20 cents per chicken that they’re making. It’s unbelievable. And you are paying at the grocery store a dollar per pound, so like $4 for a chicken.

 

So they’re receiving a fraction. The rest is going to the company and to all of the other marketing and distribution processes. So a farmer has a vested interest in transitioning something like mushrooms if they can sell it directly, where they could make $6 a pound.

 

They could make so much more money for a specialty mushroom like a shiitake mushroom. And so it’s really getting the money right to the farmer, right in the economy that is most needed, right in that rural economy, rather than winding the pockets of 100 people that have nothing to do with raising the chicken and doing the farming. Wow, well, I just wanna say thank you.

 

I know you’re an extraordinarily busy person for taking this time to talk to Unchained TV. Everybody out there, get this book, okay? I’m telling you, you need to get it.

 

It’s a fun read. I like the way you break up the personal stories with sort of the policy issues. Just as like when you’re getting a little bit on the policy, boom, we get another personal story.

 

So it’s very well woven. And I wanna just, because I know how people are, what, where do you get it? People are still asking.

 

Yes, of course you can get it on Amazon. And if that’s where you wanna order it, go ahead, but you can go to beacon.org forward slash transformation and get it as well. And I urge everybody to do that immediately.

 

And of course, while we’re asking folks to do that, we always ask people to please download Unchained TV. We are the world’s only a nonprofit vegan streaming network, absolutely 100% free, 2,000 videos and counting. You can download us on your phone and text those videos to your friends.

 

You can download those on the TV. There’s the TV behind me that is playing this. I’ll be playing it as soon as it’s over to watch it.

 

And you can also watch it online. So please do that. So it’s a vegan Netflix.

 

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

 

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