The Hen Report: “Veganism is Where My Money Goes”

i. e. an update on news in the AR world and some chit chat and whatever. First of all, I would say the biggest news in my life is that I, I'm sitting up. I'm not lying down.

Mariann Sullivan: All right, we will give you three minutes to tell us how sick you were, and how you're feeling better, and how awful it was, and I know it really was.

Jasmin Singer: Yeah. I had COVID for the time.

Mariann Sullivan: Two minutes.

Jasmin Singer: Okay, 25 minutes. I had COVID for the first time, and I fainted and wound up going to the hospital, and all of the medics were queer, and then my doctor was a lesbian, and,

Mariann Sullivan: This is getting kind of like, uh, like a beginning of a porno movie.

Jasmin Singer: Yeah, that's what I thought. And then it definitely did not continue in that direction, by any means. So it...

Mariann Sullivan: You didn't just faint. I mean, you did faint. That's bad enough. But also, your blood pressure was something like -20.

Jasmin Singer: Yeah, I basically died. Alright, I didn't die, but yeah, my blood pressure went down to like 60 over 40. It was very dramatic. And by the way, I really did not have a very serious case before that happened. I just went upstairs to like get ready for bed and went to brush my teeth and was like, I can't brush my teeth.

And so I just used mouthwash. I was like, okay, I'm gonna go to bed. Then I was like, I thought I'm gonna probably faint. And so I just, I got myself down to the ground, which is good because my brother fainted not that long ago, or like actually it was probably a couple years ago, and he was like in denial the whole time, and so he really fell and he, he knocked out his tooth.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, no, that's the, that's the big, I mean, fainting in and of itself isn't necessarily like that serious, though when your blood pressure's that low, and I guess it is, but it's very dangerous.

Jasmin Singer: He knocked out his two front teeth.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. Well, that's luckier than a concussion, so.

Jasmin Singer: No, I know. So anyway, I was really sick. I'm still not better, but I am back out in the world on a very modified schedule and I'm following the CDC recommendations.

Mariann Sullivan: You had Canadian COVID.

Jasmin Singer: Yes, which means it was very, it was nice. It was like a much nicer experience than if it was U. S. COVID because I had, you know, just gotten back from Montreal, which was just so fabulous. In fact, I looked at the photos of it the other day, because I was like, I cannot just remember this summer as being the summer that I started to go into a gay porn hospital experience. But anyhow, so, last,

Mariann Sullivan: I'm remembering this summer primarily as the summer where I had poison ivy for a month. So, you know, play through. If you want to complain about COVID, it sounds much more dramatic than poison ivy.

Jasmin Singer: I just, I can't even explain how hard it was moving from point A to point B, like, after I got home, just, I was so sick, like, I, I couldn't move, I, I, like, could not move. The last time I was this sick I was 18 and I had mono. Anyway, enough about me, let's talk about you. What do you think of me?

That's a line from Beaches. I can't believe how many of my references people don't know anymore. Like younger people.

Mariann Sullivan: Well, I've certainly heard that line, but I think that's a, you know, that line has entered the zeitgeist.

Jasmin Singer: Yeah. It has entered the zeitgeist along...

Mariann Sullivan: People don't know where it originated, but they have heard it.

Jasmin Singer: Right, exactly, it has entered the zeitgeist along with the new Animal Law Podcast episode.

Mariann Sullivan: That was your idea of a segue into something that's about me instead of about you?

Jasmin Singer: Yeah, it was my idea

Mariann Sullivan: It was good. It was well done. Yeah, no, I do have a new Animal Law Podcast.

Jasmin Singer: Yeah, tell us about it.

Mariann Sullivan: Well, two people who have actually been on relatively recently, though they weren't together in my former interviews, and I, they're two of my favorite lawyers and they're really, you know, I just feel like Animal Law is developing in these new directions and these two guys are among the people who are taking it there.

One of them is Will Lowrey. He is from Animal Partisan. And the other is Chris Carraway, who's at the University of Denver's Animal Activists Legal Defense Project. And so they're talking about this case. Will is actually the client. Animal Partisan is the client and the clinic at the University of Denver is the lawyer because it's a Colorado case. And it has to do with the slaughter of a lamb you know, a botched slaughter. I promise we don't go into the facts too much. You know, as always, we have to go into the facts a little bit. It's just hideous. And they're bringing this case and they figured out a way to try to force the district attorney to bring a cruelty case for what happened in a slaughterhouse. And so far I mean the case is not very well developed yet but it's still worth finding out about so you can keep track of it because the arguments that have been made so far by the district attorney are just like they're horrifying.

They're really horrifying. They're pretty much like uh, Well, it was in a slaughterhouse, so, like, you know, there's no such thing as cruelty. Anyway, listen, it's really good. Both of these guys are really good, and really smart, and I love this case. I love any case where people come up with ways to use cruelty laws, where you don't just have to rely on district attorneys who don't want to do anything.

Jasmin Singer: How did they do? I mean, I don't want to ruin the show, but how did they creatively think in that scenario?

Mariann Sullivan: There's a specific law in Colorado, and you have to go state by state with these laws, you know, and so it differs all over the place. There's a specific law in Colorado that doesn't have anything to do with animals, but it does allow people to bring a case against a district attorney who's not properly prosecuting a crime.

Jasmin Singer: Okay, wow. So, okay, I'm just kind of being dumb here, but for the litigators who are working on,

Mariann Sullivan: Like, that's a really terrible… you know, can we have a little bit of a therapy session first? Like, that's a terrible way to start a sentence.

Jasmin Singer: Are you saying I'm a terrible person? I'm sorry. No, you're right, it was.

Mariann Sullivan: Now that you're teaching young people, you have to be very careful about avoiding any of this self deprecating talk.

Jasmin Singer: Oh my god. Yeah, put a pin on that because you just reminded me of something I didn't tell you that I wanted to tell you about teaching, about my first class today, but I do have a question. If there is a litigator who is working on animal law issues, do they have to be in the specific state? Like in this case, Colorado?

Mariann Sullivan: Well, in general, I mean, that doesn't have anything to do with animal issues, but in general, you do have to be admitted to the bar of any state you're practicing in. So the answer is sort of yes, but there are exceptions too. You can kind of get what they call pro hac vice. It means like, if you're not admitted to the bar in a specific state and you want to argue a case there, you can get special permission. But it's generally best to have lawyers who are admitted to the bar in a specific state because they actually might know the law.

Because the law, especially with these kinds of laws, like criminal laws of different states, they can be very different.

Jasmin Singer: Well, there's so few people, relatively speaking, I know it's a growing number, but there's so few people who focus on animal law and are actually litigators. I just wonder when you add in, oh, and they have to know it in Colorado specifically. Oh, and they have to know it in like insert the blank state.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. Being a lawyer is very hard and difficult and unappreciated.

Jasmin Singer: That's what Kim Kardashian said.

Mariann Sullivan: Support your local lawyer.

Jasmin Singer: Totally. I agree. As does Kim Kardashian..

Mariann Sullivan: Let's get back to your teaching. We didn't even mention it, you started teaching, but not animal law.

Jasmin Singer: Not yet. First I have to, you know, understand the very basics of law. I am teaching feature writing and I've already worked veganism in, you'll be happy to know. I'm teaching it at the University of Rochester as an adjunct and today, as we're recording this, was my first day. And, so one of the things I was doing with the students was, uh, it's a very small class.

I mean, one of the things I was doing was like telling them how you could form an article, like, on a subject, you could form any number of features. And we were discussing different stories that you could get from like different holidays coming up, for example. And so one thing that came up when we were talking about trend features, so a feature article that is specifically geared around a current trend going on in the news.

Mariann Sullivan: How, how would you possibly do this? It's a good thing that you have young students who actually know what trends are going.

Jasmin Singer: Well, so I said, what could you think of? And one of them said, like basically becoming brain dead from TikTok. She actually had a turn of phrase she used for it, which I'm forgetting what it was. But, and I was like, okay, tell me more. And she said, there's this language that's coming out now that directly correlates to being brain dead from social media and one of the things that people say after something happened, like after they like, you know, crash their car into like a pole or like, or drop their coffee, they say, I'm just a girl.

And the girl who said this, the student, was pitching a story in this fake scenario on how this language, like, I'm just a girl, came about and getting into sort of brain dead TikTok culture. Now, I was like, okay, let me pause you. Wait, what?

Mariann Sullivan: I don't understand what it has to do with being brain dead. I mean obviously there's something horrifying about it that when you're putting yourself down and you've done something stupid you say, I'm just a girl, but that's deeply troubling but what does it have to do with being brain dead?

Jasmin Singer: She said that it's… okay, brain rot, it's called brain rot. And she said there's this whole like language that has come out of brain rot. And that is just one example. And it's because like, if you're looking online for too long or something, and you become brain rot, like you kind of just become dismissive of everything else you do, pointing to well, the internet stole my brain, I have brain rot.

But so I was like, is there a boy example of that? Or is, “I'm just a girl,” the only thing? She couldn't think of a boy example of it. And so I said, well, that's something to noodle on, isn't it? You know, and, so she jotted that down as a possible idea, but you made me think of it a moment ago.

It's horrifying, right? Like that girls are just being dismissive of their thoughts by saying I'm just a girl.

Mariann Sullivan: It's unbelievable, like, and, and that she wasn't even presenting that as problematically sexist. She was talking about just using it as like, you know, one of the examples of how you show you have brain rot. Like, yeah, I, I don't

Jasmin Singer: I was thinking about...

Mariann Sullivan: Is it possible for the world to get worse?

Jasmin Singer: I was thinking about that Kamala scene that they keep playing where she's interviewing, um, who is she talking to in it? Brett Kavanaugh maybe? And she says, like, are there any laws that exist that dictate a man's? Yeah. It just made me think of that exact moment thing. So yeah, that was disturbing, but I'm really enjoyed my first day.

I gave them a copy of VegNews because I was showing them feature writing, I obviously am gonna have a lot of speakers and I want to have someone from VegNews. I want to have someone from Sentient Media if I can.

Mariann Sullivan: It's exciting.

Jasmin Singer: I’ll be infiltrating their smushy young brains, as long as they don't have brain rot.

Mariann Sullivan: And your grandma the teacher will be so happy.

Jasmin Singer: She would have been, sure, she would have been, yeah. Yeah, no, things are, things are happening. You know, I'm in rehearsals like every day now. So, but I mean, I'm sorry, I haven't seen you in so long because I'm just, I had to miss a lot of rehearsal for the COVID. And at one point they started calling me in to do it.

There's this really funny picture, I think it's on my Facebook page of my scene partner doing a scene and someone's phone is where I sit and I'm like, my FaceTime face is on it. It was funny. But anyway, I do wanna tell you one quick thing, which is that one of the promos that they shot for one of the plays I'm in, not, not a promo that I'm in, because it's not related to a scene I'm in, but they shot at the zoo, locally, because these people are playing apes in this particular scene.

Mariann Sullivan: That's sad.

Jasmin Singer: Well, actually, I think the scene is interestingly animal rights-y. I'll, I'll see what you think after, I mean, it's, it's presented as pretty horrible, but they're doing these little promo shots, like they did a promo shot with me at a cafe, because one of my scenes takes place at a cafe, so I'm drinking my soy latte, and that's the photo that exists. But anyway, so they took some of the actors to the zoo, and I was just so disturbed by it, but then I saw this new Banksy thing that's going on. And I wanted to talk about it briefly because there's this new Banksy artwork, not here in Rochester, that would be something, wouldn't it?

Mariann Sullivan: Oh, that, wouldn't that be cool?

Jasmin Singer: Yeah, but on the shutters of the London Zoo... well, why don't you talk about it, because I'm getting my brain rot from my COVID, because it's such a cool painting of an ape liberating these animals, basically.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, it actually is a whole series. And the way I think it happened is that this was the last one that went up because the rest of them were just random images. I mean, you know, I imagine that all of you know that Banksy is a graffiti artist and very famous. And, over many days in London, these images appeared and they weren't really, you know, as explicit as this one that appeared at the zoo.

They were just images of animals. One was a goat, there were elephants, monkeys, a wolf, pelicans, a cat, piranhas, and a rhinoceros. And they've just appeared randomly. And then, this one on the shutters that come down to close the doors at the London Zoo. And it's this picture of a gorilla holding up like the side of a tent and all of these other animals, either some flying out and some crawling out from under it. And I just think it's so, I mean, it's obviously great. It's like, I mean, what I took from that is that, you know, you kind of wonder where all these other animals came from. And then finally you find out that they all escaped from the zoo because there's this final image of them getting out of the zoo. It's just so moving. London Zoo clearly did not know what to do with this. They lauded it and they said they were so privileged and so excited. They called it an incredible surprise and that they were thrilled. They did leave it up for a little bit, with some plastic over it.

And then they took it down.

They don't know what they're going to do with it. It's just so crazy though, because obviously it's, it's this commentary on the zoo itself and the whole concept of zoos and they're, they're pretending like they, you know, or they actually think this because they can't think straight when it comes to animals because nobody can, that this is like approving of what they're doing at the zoo. Zoos are so crazy.

I really think that, I mean, for one thing, I mean, a lot of it is a scam because people really, really do believe, you know, all this good stuff about zoos, even though it's all nonsense. And, you know, the, the enclosures aren't nearly as good as people think they are.

And they don't even look like they're good, and they're not as good as they look, because a lot of the ways the animals are enclosed are kind of hidden. And I just kind of wonder, like, do you think zoos are falling out of favor?

Jasmin Singer: I don't think so. I really don't, unfortunately. I mean, like, I'll just, this is one tiny example, but I know someone who is very progressive in many, many ways, and a very critical thinker, and she was recently talking about the zoo here in, like, a very positive way, and said something like, well, I know Jasmin doesn't like zoos, but blah blah blah, and I said, I just want to clarify that I think that zoos just inherently are deeply problematic, but I'm not saying that all zoos are created equal, I just think that, philosophically, we should be beyond this. And most of the time the animals are mistreated, and 100 percent of the time it's wrong in my opinion.

But she kind of, and then she said something the next time I saw her, something like, I really like that you're a person who has convictions. You know, like.

Mariann Sullivan: It's so patronizing.

Jasmin Singer: I know, but it's like she didn't exactly mean it to be patronizing.

Mariann Sullivan: No, of course they don't, they think we're cute.

Jasmin Singer: Yeah, I think that because I took her out on her birthday and I was like, Hey, I'll buy you a latte, but only if it's non dairy milk.

And she goes, I thought you said you weren't that vegan. And I was like, well, did I? Like, I don't remember actually saying that sentence, but I was like, it's my money and I don't, I mean, veganism is about where my money goes. And so anyway, it was just weird. So to

Mariann Sullivan: Well, I mean, I just had a conversation with Liz Tyson from Born Free USA, last week. Is it last week? I think so. Yeah. And about, and a lot of it was about zoos. And all right, I'm going to say it again. I brought it up so many different times, but I just think it's appropriate, that my favorite Jim Mason comment, which I heard him say, I haven't ever read it. And I think it would have been a good choice in that particular situation that, um, teaching children about animals by taking, I'm sorry, everybody, I know you've heard this a million times before, teaching children about animals by taking them to the zoo is like teaching them about sex by showing them pornography. You know, you learn something about sex by watching pornography, but is it really what we want them to learn about? Does it get to the soul and art or the beauty of what this means?

Jasmin Singer: For example, you learn that all medics are queer and that the doctors are, I was like, no, sorry. Yeah, no, I mean, I don't think that zoos are on their way out. I think roadside zoos, maybe a

Mariann Sullivan: Well, on their way out doesn't, you know, I just mean like,

Jasmin Singer: Will there be a shift?

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, is there a shift going on because you know circuses... there's been a lot of progress on circuses, which you know, it's like are just completely psycho and insane. I'm probably not supposed to say either of those things as an insult.

Jasmin Singer: That is correct… Dear Mariann…

Mariann Sullivan: All right, I'm not gonna talk anymore you can just do it.

Jasmin Singer: Just talk about my lesbian porn experiences. No, I do think it's a sad topic, but I'm happy about the Banksy. You know, do people know, I think people do know who Banksy is

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, I think he's pretty famous, but that doesn't mean everybody that, you know, and what do I know? He's certainly vegan famous.

Jasmin Singer: It is a very beautiful, I, you

Mariann Sullivan: and I think he's, I mean, he's way beyond vegan famous. I mean, not all of his stuff, and not all of his stuff is vegan themed by any means. I mean, it's all over the place.

It's just one of his themes is animals.

Jasmin Singer: yeah, it's very moving, very

Mariann Sullivan: Boy, if I was going to be an artist, which I have no desire to be, I have to say, but if I was, I'd want to be Banksy.

Jasmin Singer: Yeah, I think me too, we'll have to fight for it. People won't know which of us it is, which of the hens is Banksy. All right, so the livestock lobby is waging war on lab grown meat. That is the gist of the new op ed by George Monbiot in The Guardian. And it's, I mean, we've, we've touched on this a little bit recently and we've seen this coming for so long.

Mariann Sullivan: I wanted to talk about something specific because it really does touch on something specific. So, yeah, the title does talk about the livestock lobby, and he does go a lot into that. But, he starts out by talking about electric cars, you know how the industry has fought the electric cars for so long, so now we're probably going to lose the planet, um, and, you know, it's exactly the same as meat. And he goes into all the information, which all of you know, and I do recommend the article, but, you know, how environmentally destructive animal agriculture is, and particularly he goes into the land use aspect of it, and how we just have to be devoting more land to the use of wild animals and we can't continue to destroy all of our forests and wetlands and savannas and rivers just to grow all of this meat. The real point, the reason I wanted to talk about the article is because he's talking more about solutions. He talks about the problem, but then he's talking about solutions and he points out that seeking to convince people to switch to a plant based diet for ethical reasons is going nowhere. Which is a sad commentary, and you know, since it is what many of us have devoted our lives to, but I got to admit, like, he's not wrong.

But he also is not really into what is commonly called lab grown or cell cultured meat. He said he was initially enthusiastic, but he thinks it's a dead end, which is a little disheartening, but he's super, super excited about, what he calls brewing microbes in this article, but he's talking about precision fermentation and that's, you know, the other way of growing meat that people are working on, which every time I hear about it, I think I have to learn more about that.

I did have Karthik Sekar on, who talked about it. It was a while ago. I'm not sure what episode that was on, but, just look up Karthik Sekar and the interview on Our Hen House, because it was good and it did help to understand. You don't actually have to grow stuff.

Like, you don't make it out of plants. I don't even, I mean, it's still, it's crazy. And a lot of it has to do with bacteria and microbes, which I'm sure puts people off, but it's just kind of exciting that all, you know, it's too late, it's hard to imagine we'll, uh, we'll ever figure this out in time to save the planet. But there are definitely ways to do it that are really cheap, and simple, the company's particularly talking about it's called Solar Foods, and it's a Finnish factory, it's not finished, it's in Finland, and it's just so cool. So cool, but you know, it's all being banned all over the place and in the States, in Florida, Alabama, and Italy, internationally so far, but they're working on it in a lot of places and it's just insane.

Jasmin Singer: Well, especially that it's, It's being, and you're right, by the way, I just want to go back. You're right. I thought we were just going to chat about the whole fact that this is ruffling feathers, but you wanted to talk specifically about precision fermentation.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, and, and the fact, you know, he also, the article is also about how hard the meat industry is fighting back. It's true. It is about that. But the thing that I was excited about is this precision fermentation.

Jasmin Singer: Yeah, it's, exciting to think that you could pretty much make anything out of it. Like, and it's crazy that it's being banned when you think about the fact that like, there are actually in my anecdotal, what I am sort of picking up is that a lot of companies are trying to make more strides to fight climate change and like, this is such an easy way to do it.

I mean, taking aside from the fact that animals are sentient and we shouldn't kill them for any reason.

Mariann Sullivan: There are so many reasons to do this. We all know that it's great. It's insane. Well, I'm not going to keep saying that. There is this one, aside from the bans, it's just the failure to support it. And he points out that the United States government spends 800 times more on subsidizing animal products than on subsidizing new proteins. And the EU spends 1200 times more.

Jasmin Singer: Yeah. Wow.

Mariann Sullivan: I could, like, this is our tax money.

Paying for dead cows and dead chickens.

Jasmin Singer: It's like a blatant attempt to just keep us shackled.

Mariann Sullivan: Could somebody just put me in charge?

Jasmin Singer: No, put me in coach, not first class. Callback, callback. Alright, well, let's talk about something that you enjoy talking about since you're getting, a little bit frustrated here, which is, , This was covered recently.

It was in a Michigan newspaper and it's an op ed about how the U. S. can learn from Indigenous tribes in setting nutritional policy and it's really interesting. It goes into all of the different plant based foods that are just staples of indigenous diets.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, this is by somebody named Darylin Sue Berryman, who is a member of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians and a Native Food for Life instructor. And she's talking about the dietary guidelines and they're currently Well, there's a, the report on which they're based, is being prepared by the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. And for the first time, there is a member of that committee, Dr. Valerie Jernigan, who is Native American. And, I think this, I, you know, this could be really exciting. I mean, if this is really allowed to have an influence on the dietary guidelines, they're trying to get more input from Native Americans who, like many, many other people are, you know, lactose intolerant frequently, but also who are very, you know, the type 2 diabetes, probably one of the hardest hit communities by our incredibly flawed diet. And they're trying to like, I can just see this argument kind of working, you know, like, that Native Americans have a traditional Indigenous diet and the dietary guidelines needs to be more sensitive to that. That's the kind of argument that doesn't specifically say this food is healthier for you or even though the dietary guidelines are, of course, supposed to be about what foods are healthier for you. So I think it's cool. I think we should keep an eye on this. And I really hope that that this woman and these policies will be able to have more of an influence on the dietary guidelines, which are so stupid, you know, they're so awful, like, the vegetable foods just totally take, still, even though there's been some improvements, just totally take a back seat to foods of animal origin.

Jasmin Singer: You're supposed to say, watch this space.

That's what you say. Yeah, I also think it's cool. The article also discusses lactose intolerance and the adverse effects of dairy on people of color, specifically African, Asian, Hispanic and Native American descent.

And, I mean, yeah, the dietary guidelines should promote non dairy sources of essential nutrients.

Mariann Sullivan: It's not just dairy either.

Jasmin Singer: Right. Yeah.

Mariann Sullivan: I think the character, I mean, I know that efforts have been made before, but I think characterizing it specifically as a Native American issue, I really love that. I would love to see an effort being made to model our diets more on Native American culture. I think that would just be so good in so many ways.

And you know, people may think the dietary guidelines, well, nobody follows them anyway, but they have an enormous influence on institutional menus like, like school foods and whatever. Like there are, there are institutions that have to follow the dietary guidelines in developing their menus.

So even though the average person doesn't like look at the dietary guidelines and say, this is what I'm going to eat today, they are really important.

Jasmin Singer: We will of course link to this on the show notes. I think that the show notes, by the way, are a really important resource for people who want to stay on top of this stuff. What else do you have?

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, there's this article in Sentient Media that I wanted to talk about. It kind of relates to an Animal Law Podcast interview I did a while back, also with Will Lowrey. I just think I this is scary. Really scary stuff. And it had to do with, he was trying to get some information out of the FBI because apparently FBI agents, you know, had done presentations for the meat industry, which already you're like, what? And so it was really hard getting these, these records, which are supposed to be available under the Freedom of Information Act, but apparently he did.

And these FBI records reveal, according to this article in Sentient Media, that the Bureau has been exploring extreme legal measures, including the potential use of weapons of mass destruction statutes to target animal rights activists and make legal penalties substantially more severe. The penalties for these, I don't even know what these weapons of mass destruction laws are, but one can imagine what they relate to. They're state laws, so they, they're different in different states from 12 years to life in prison.

And they want to use these like for DxE activists and other activists doing direct action of any kind. They already have, where they haven't been ruled unconstitutional, ag gag statutes, they've tried that. But they've lost a lot of them because they were unconstitutional. They already have the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, which for some reason they're not using because I think they're scared of it. And, and now they want to do, like, they just want to put us all in prison.

Um, it's really scary stuff because, you know, obviously we do have activists out there doing this sort of thing, and they're already subject to, you know, really scary potential penalties, and now they want to make it even worse. They are so terrified of the animals rights movement. I mean, just so terrified, and this is the FBI working on it.

Jasmin Singer: Yeah, but it's, it's such an ugly, ugly, ugly way of dealing with it. I mean, I don't.

Mariann Sullivan: It's, um, yeah, it's, if I say it's unbelievable one more time during this program, It's like, just make me, make me stop, but it's all, it is, It's unbelievable.

Jasmin Singer: Yeah.

Mariann Sullivan: I like this quote from Laura Fox, who is the director of the Farmed Animal Advocacy Clinic at Vermont Law and Graduate School. She was also on the Animal Law Podcast, very recently, but about a different issue. And she says, it's ironic in a way because we know so much about zoonotic diseases and their animal origins, yet their lens is shifting that to, okay, now an activist is trespassing into an animal enterprise. What kind of contamination is happening, and can we trace whatever potential result from that to those actions by the activists there?

And that's basically what this kind of approach is working on, is trying to blame bird flu on activists. And they're working on this pretty seriously. And, that's where the weapon of mass destruction comes in. And the industry is just burning up with bird flu. So, these birds are both dying and being killed by the millions.

And, they want to use that as a way to hold activists responsible. As if there isn't bird flu everywhere, all over the place, just because of what they do to these birds and not because of activists.

So this is the kind of thing that, you know, we're up against. Like, the problem is that the smarter we get, and the more effective we get, like the harder they hit back. It's scary stuff. I just have so much admiration for the people who are doing this kind of work in spite of these kind of scare tactics. And I'm so grateful to lawyers like Will, for uncovering this and getting it out there so that maybe they don't feel quite as comfortable making these kinds of ridiculous arguments. And, you know, we should talk a little bit about, what's going on with Zoe Rosenberg.

Jasmin Singer: Right. I was just going to say, I mean, speaking of people you're grateful for who are doing the work, I mean, Zoe has been a guest on Our Hen House. She's 22. She's an animal rescuer with Direct Action Everywhere. She was prosecuted for removing four chickens form Purdue's Petaluma Poultry Slaughterhouse in June of 2023. And yeah, let's, let's talk

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, she, she was part of an action that took place right at the same time Wayne Hsiung was on trial in the other Sonoma County case. And they came down on her, so the Sonoma County DAs came down on her really hard. I remember reading that the charges that were laid against her at first, she could do 20 years in prison.

Well, apparently there's been some legal work that's done since then. And the prosecutors had to concede that evidence doesn't support one of the felonies that she was charged with. And there's been a lot of back and forth. And one of the burglary counts was just dismissed and there have been other charges that have also been dismissed.

So this is actually the third time the charges have been dismissed, and she was originally charged, okay, with five felonies. Then the defense lawyers told the prosecutors that one of the things was not a chargeable offense, so they were like, oh, okay, then we'll drop that. That's nice of them... Then the judge dismissed three of the remaining four felonies. Then they filed new charges, which include a felony burglary, which they have now moved to drop. Like, like, do these guys know what they're doing? Well, these guys or gals, uh, know what they're doing at all? Like, this woman's life is on the line. According to this article, the most she could be doing now is five years in prison, which ain't nothing, but it's a lot better than 20 years in prison.

They just throw the book at people trying to terrify them.

Jasmin Singer: Yeah, yeah, it's, unbelievable! It's shocking, really. All right, well, let's move on to better things, because you know, I always love a good book, and I always love a good book that has to do with veganism. So we wanted to just shout out Catherine Kelaher's new book, A Whole New Chrissy, Love, Laughs, and Fresh Starts on I don't want to say it wrong, Bondi Beach. I hope that's right, Bondi Beach. And it's just a lovely quick read. Yeah.

Mariann Sullivan: For those of you who like rom coms, the theme, it's interesting, and I think this is a very wise decision, the theme isn't really animal rights. It just comes in a lot, and veganism comes in a lot, you know, just because the heroine is vegan, but the theme really has a lot to do with body positivity, and she was kind enough to offer a copy to the flock, so if you are a flock member, and you're in the mood for a romcom, you're all set, because, you know, like, it's really nice to read something once in a while where you don't have to do that, like, just ignore what the characters are eating throughout.

Uh, and or at least you do have to ignore what some of the characters are, but at least not the heroine. And actually if you're a flock member, in your link to the flock bonus, you will get a link to the book itself, and you'll also get a reading from Catherine. So

Jasmin Singer: Fun. Love that. All right, so keep an eye out for bonus. And if you're not a Flock member yet, feel free to join us. We have a lot of fun over here, OurHenHouse. org. So I think you have a lot planned for Rising Anxieties today

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, I actually plan, I, you know, our plan is to do everything together, but I forgot to annotate them. So yeah, I'm going to do it separately.

But it's good stuff. Good stuff.

Jasmin Singer: So I hear.

Mariann Sullivan: Don't miss it.

Jasmin Singer: Let's, let's get to that right now.

Mariann Sullivan: Anxieties are rising...!