Hope for the Animals Hope Bohanec
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- Cultura y sociedad
Longtime animal advocate, Hope Bohanec, covers a variety of farmed animal issues including the ethical, environmental, spiritual, heartbreaking and heartwarming aspects of living vegan. Hope has engaging conversations with inspiring guests focusing on critical reasons for living a vegan lifestyle and covering current topics such as the humane hoax, environmental impact, speciesism, and effective outreach advocating for chickens, turkeys, cows, pigs, goats and other farmed animals. Hope is a 35-year vegan, animal rights activist, and author. This podcast is a project of Compassionate Living.
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Supporting Farmed Animal Sanctuaries with Faik Bouhrik
Today on the podcast we are joined by Faik Bourik, founder of Vegius, a provider of vegan services to support farmed animal sanctuaries worldwide. Faik is a mathematics, physics, and astronomy college instructor who combines his academic background with his roles as a professional writer and entrepreneur. Passionate about animal rights and gender equality, he founded Vegius to provide much needed financial support to farmed animal sanctuaries.
Faik talks about how he fell for the humane hoax and bought humanely labeled products when he was first thinking about farmed animal issues. He shares how little meat he ate growing up in Algeria and how the traditional diets of so many cultures around the world are predominately plant-based. He talks about the importance of farmed animal sanctuaries to open people’s hearts and to make emotional connections to animals. We also discuss karma theory and how this is an important concept to bring to western culture, which brought us to some interesting history lessons from Faik.
Resources:
Vegius
Support this podcast:
Hope for the Animals Podcast
Compassionate Living -
Vegan Entanglements and Systematic Oppressions with Zane McNeill
Connecting veganism to other justice causes is critical to our success and our guest today recognized this at a very young age. Zane McNeill is a scholar-activist, chair of the National Lawyers Guild’s Animal Liberation Committee, and was the co-manager of the collective Right for Animal Rights Activists. They have worked closely with the Institute of Critical Animal Studies (ICAS) and have published chapters in ICAS collections, including Vegans on Speciesism and Ableism: Ecoability Voices for Disability and Animal Justice and Expanding the Critical Animal Studies Imagination: Essays on Solidarity and Total Liberation. They have also edited Queer and Trans Voices: Achieving Liberation Through Consistent Anti-Oppression, Vegan Entanglements: Dismantling Racial and Carceral Capitalism, and Building Multispecies Resistance Against Exploitation: Stories from the Frontlines of Labor and Animal Rights (forthcoming, Peter Lang Publishing).
Zane will help us to unpack new terms like “consistent anti-oppression” and “total liberation” as well as “carceral veganism” where animal activists align with agencies to criminalize and deport people in marginalized communities of color when we should be targeting the system of oppression itself. They discuss the parallels of body autonomy issues for humans and non-humans. Zane addresses everything from micro aggressions experienced by animal activists within the movement to larger, structural issues of oppression. Join us for this important discussion.
Resources:
Zane’s Book Vegan Entanglements
Hope for the Animals Podcast
Compassionate Living
Compassionate Living’s YouTube Page
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Greenwashing Animal Agriculture with Vasile Stanescu, PhD
Do you want to know the truth about grass-fed beef? Regenerative grazing? Free-range eggs? This episode is jam packed with the jaw-dropping reality of greenwashing. Vasile Stanescu is an Associate Professor and Chair of Communication at Mercer University. He received his Ph.D. in the program of Modern Thought and Literature (MTL) at Stanford University. Vasile’s research focuses on greenwashing in animal agribusiness, critiques of humane meat, in vitro meat, and consumerist options for social change. He is the author of numerous publications on the study of animals and the environment including in the Journal of American Culture, Rhetoric of Health & Medicine, the American Behavioral Scientist, and Animal Studies Journal. Vasile is also the co-founder of the North American Association for Critical Animal Studies (NAACAS).
Vas talks about what is really behind regenerative grazing and the false messaging around supposedly “new” methods of animal farming. We also talk about the detriment of chicken farming, how beef is so often cited as the worst culprit for the environment, and the myth that if you just switch to chicken, it’s so much better. Vas dives deep into how interconnected all animal farming industries are and how the supposed “green” meat movement is just another marketing tool for industrial agribusiness. He also shares how he feels that it is critical to reverse the stigma on veganism and have Vegan Pride.
Resources:
Humane Hoax Online Conference details and free registration
Learn more and support this podcast:
Hope for the Animals Podcast
Compassionate Living
Studies cited in this episode:
Joseph Poore, University of Oxford
Tara Garnett, Food Climate Research Network at Oxford University -
Media, Animals, and Compassionate Journalism with Nina Jackel
News media that is sympathetic to animals is critical in creating a compassionate world. A 2023 von Liebig Award Winner, Nina Jackel is a journalist and activist known for effecting change for animals around the world through her non-profit media organization that she founded called Lady Freethinker. Nina leads numerous divisions at the organization that expose cruel and illegal activities through undercover operations and galvanizing ordinary citizens to make a difference.
Hope and Nina discuss the importance of news media for animals and Nina offers advice about what makes good media that has the potential to reach wider audiences. She also talks about Lady Freethinker’s important campaign targeting social media posts that abuse animals, such as fake “rescue” videos where abusers put animals in distressful situations just for clicks. They also discuss how to reach people who care about animals, but haven’t made the connection to compassion for farmed animals and veganism.
Resources:
Lady Freethinker:
Website
FaceBook
Instagram
Twitter
William von Leibig Foundation Award Winner
Humane Hoax Online Conference details and free registration
Learn More and Support this Podcast:
Compassionate Living
Hope for the Animals Podcast -
A Rancher’s Wife Goes Vegan with Renee King-Sonnen
Renee King-Sonnen is the Founder and Executive Director of Rowdy Girl Sanctuary that transformed from a cattle ranch to a sanctuary for more than 120 animals—the first documented beef cattle ranch converted to a 100% vegan sanctuary in history. Rowdy Girl sanctuary is changing the world for farmed animals with programs like the Rancher Advocacy Program (RAP), an educational program that inspires cattle ranchers and animal farms to consider alternatives to animal farming, and Families Choosing Compassion that offers a compassionate alternative to Future Farmers of America and 4-H programs. Most recently, Renee has been the subject of a documentary, Rowdy Girl, that had its World Premiere in Toronto at Hot Docs, and the U.S. Premiere at the Hampton Film Festival. She has just completed a memoir with the working title of Secret Diary of a Cattle Rancher’s Wife, slated to be published in 2024. Renee tells her fascinating story of transformation from cattle rancher’s wife to vegan animal activist.
We would like to thank A Well-Fed World (AWFW) for their generous support of this podcast! A Well-Fed World is an international hunger relief and food security organization advancing plant-based foods and farming to create a sustainable, nourished, and climate-friendly future. Learn more at awfw.org.
Resources:
Hope’s Book: The Humane Hoax: Essays Exposing Happy Meat, Humane Dairy and Ethical Eggs
Donate to Compassionate Living
Rowdy Girl Sanctuary and Film:
https://www.rowdygirlfilm.com
https://rowdygirlsanctuary.org
https://www.facebook.com/rowdygirlsanctuary
https://www.instagram.com/rowdygirlsanctuary/
https://twitter.com/RowdyGirlRanch
https://www.youtube.com/rowdygirlsanctuary
https://www.tiktok.com/@rowdygirlsanctuary
https://rancheradvocacy.org
https://www.facebook.com/rancheradvocacyprogram/
https://www.instagram.com/rancheradvocacyprogram/
https://twitter.com/RancherAdvocacy
Learn More and Support this Podcast:
Compassionate Living
Hope for the Animals Podcast -
BONUS EPISODE: Support Grassroots Vegan Education
This is a special short episode just for dedicated listeners. In this time of giving, I hope you will consider supporting grassroots vegan education.
Please donate to Compassionate Living to support the continuation of this podcast. Thank you!