No New (or Old) Slaughterhouses with Shannon Blair and Malaina Watts

Jasmin Singer: Yeah, so are we. We're so excited that you're here too. And you guys are obviously involved in a lot of different types of activism, and we hope to get into some of that.

But we really want to focus on the slaughterhouse projects in Florida and perhaps about some other current projects, but let's start with a little background, if that's okay. I understand that this took place in Jacksonville, or thereabouts. So give us a little background on who you are and what you do.

Malaina Watts: I'm Malaina Watts. I am the US liaison for the Plant Based Treaty. I live in Sarasota, Florida. I do travel quite a bit. I'm also a mentor with Animal Activism mentorship. I've been with them since 2021. I've been with Plant Based Treaty since 2022.

I really enjoy helping new activists get active in their community. I've had some really, really great experiences. And it's a real big passion of mine. I do many different forms of activism, but when I got involved with Plant Based Treaty, I really loved the way that we were doing institutional change and we were working from the inside out.

We've seen so much change and so many great things happen over the past few years since the inception of the Plant Based Treaty. So it's been really great working with everybody and the amazing team that I have.

Shannon Blair: And I'm Shannon. I'm a certified vegan lifestyle coach and educator. I am now a mom of three, but notably Vegan Evan's mom.

He makes me super proud. We went vegan together, and he's been my inspiration in really getting well educated on a lot of different topics. And I'm the president of Solutionary Species. I'm also a mentor for Animal Activism Mentorship, and I am the plant-based community coordinator for Solid Rock Community School, one of the only plant-based schools in the country.

Mariann Sullivan: As Jasmin mentioned, you're doing so much, but we want to get into these slaughterhouse projects, because we like to focus on specific types of activism, and these seem to have been really major successes against pretty big forces. I mean, these were not minor, minor slaughterhouses that were either planned or already in existence.

And I know there were two slaughterhouse projects. And then there was a third kind of illegal thing, but let's take everything one by one. First let's talk about I think was the big one, which if I understand was a government project, or at least the government was pretty involved in it.

And it was a couple of years ago, or I guess it was an ongoing process. So maybe it even started longer ago than that. So what was this proposed slaughterhouse project? Where was it? And how did you find out about it?

Shannon Blair: So we found out a little over a year ago, and what initially happened was a good friend of ours, who actually has a sanctuary in the city where this proposed slaughterhouse was going to possibly be, had contacted us, and she said, "We have to do something about this, but I've been out of the activism scene for a couple years," aside from the sanctuary, which is a huge form of activism, but she had been out of the boots on the ground scene, so she asked if I could possibly try and get some people together. I immediately reached out to Malaina because we work on so many different projects together and we both live here in Florida.

We care very much about the animals here and their habitats. And obviously, all the animals in the state that are going through other systems. So, I reached out to her and we immediately jumped on it. We found out that there was an upcoming meeting from our friend that had the sanctuary. And right away, we tried to mobilize as many activists as we could.

And we went to that first meeting as prepared as we could be in a short amount of time, from doing a little bit of research and the information that our friend and her husband had gathered already. I think we made quite an appearance there, our first time at the Board of County Commissioners meeting.

They didn't really know what was coming and they got hit pretty hard that night. It was really the beginning of a long project there. We had to go to many meetings. Malaina can jump in and tell you some more about it.

Malaina Watts: So this was proposed back in December and Mayor Marlowe, who is also from a background of a rancher family, he was talking to the ranchers, and they decided that during COVID, they were getting bottlenecks. They weren't able to get their animals to the slaughterhouses, it was taking up to six months, where they were having to feed the animals more and things like that.

And I guess it came about, Anna Parizia, who was the one behind the project. She is very involved in the community with their environmental and food systems, things like that. She decided that, collectively, they would try to propose a slaughterhouse so they would be able to serve the ranchers in their community, get the animals to slaughter quicker.

They also discussed things like food scarcity, and they wanted to make this available to the community. And by the time it came around to the April 4th meeting, I believe it was, nobody in the community had really known about this project and what the proposal was, except for the ranchers that he had communicated with at the Outback Steakhouse, I guess.

So when we found out about it, like, Shannon got in touch with me and we gathered some of our friends together and we went to the meeting. The meeting was extremely difficult. If you can imagine, we spent five hours in the room listening to many people discuss the, um, equipment they would use, how many animals they would kill, how they would be killing them.

And it was an extremely difficult place to be at the time for both of us. We tried to hold it together as much as possible, and we all got to speak on it. But April 4th was just the first of many days that we had gone. Um, I can't recall how many meetings. I think I missed maybe one or two, due to it being about three hours away from where I live.

But, we kept challenging them. Anna Parizia herself, was very involved, like I said, in the community and the environmental and everything. And nobody seemed to really question her or any of the things that she was proposing or things that she was saying, because she was such a big part of the community and involved in every club.

And also tried to pitch to the Sierra Club about it being environmentally friendly with animals not being shipped off as far, and things like that. But when we first heard about it, the fact that they wanted to spend $2.5 million in taxpayer money from the COVID relief fund. to build a slaughterhouse at the Newberry Environmental Park of all places.

Of course, both of our heads just kind of exploded, thinking about that and how it just didn't make sense.

Mariann Sullivan: Can I just interrupt? Cause I just wanted to clarify. So they were just going to spend government money to build this slaughterhouse. It was just as a favor or, you know, a service to, and this was for cattle, right?

It's local, you mentioned ranchers. So it was totally a cattle slaughterhouse?

Shannon Blair: It was large animals, so it also would have included the killing of sheep, goats, and pigs as well. No birds, no chickens, no turkeys, but, uh, large animals. And they were saying, I think 15 a day, but that was speculated to just be something that was being said.

Because people were concerned about the amount of waste, and this was bordering an elementary school, and a middle school. Like Malaina mentioned, it was literally in an environmental park that they were planning to do this. And $2.5 million of ARPA funds, American Rescue Plan Act funds. So, from the pandemic. It was a five and a quarter million dollar project, not including the estimated value of the land, which was going to be donated by the city of Newberry, if the plan went down like they wanted it to. This 96 acre plot was owned by the mayor's family, not all that long ago.

And there's a lot of really interesting things that we found out, during the almost year that we worked on this project. And Malaina mentioned it, cattle rancher. He was like a fourth generation cattle rancher, the mayor of Newberry. And Anna Pritzia that she mentions, this is one of the five board of county commissioners, and she was the chair at the time. So she's madam chair, she's in charge, basically, and decides kind of when everybody speaks, and when they don't, and she's also a big wig with UF, the University of Florida, their IFAS extension, and so she's like their sustainability guru. And she's making statements to the media about how this is gonna lower the carbon footprint and how wonderful it is for the animals because they won't have to be traveling as far on these horrible trucking drives which, you know. She was using her knowledge of the industry in ways that she could to manipulate and twist and the regenerative lie was embedded everywhere.

Malaina said we went to a lot of meetings, that's for sure. We went to a ton of county meetings.

Mariann Sullivan: Did you feel that there, I mean, did she have like a particular interest? Were there dealings going on behind the scene that people were profiting from this? Because it just seems so bizarre.

I mean, I don't know that much about the slaughter industry, but I mean, usually slaughterhouses are, built by private entities. They're not usually built by the government, right? This is just such a weird story. I mean, clearly, well, it sounds like there was stuff going on under the table.

Shannon Blair: I mean, they worked on it for over two years before they brought it to the public. So I would imagine there had to be something going on. There was also a major expansion on the wastewater treatment center that was on this same environmental park which could have been, you know, money involved there.

Mariann Sullivan: At what point did you find out? How far along was the project?

Shannon Blair: Well, the five commissioners had unanimously approved this 2.5 million going toward the project. And since then, like we found out just after that happened, but by the time we went to our first meeting, one of the five had already flipped.

He had spoken to many people, including ranchers themselves. He had read some books that were given to him that were along the vegan and animal rights side of things.

Jasmin Singer: In addition to the animal rights arguments, what kind of opposition was brought together to oppose the project?

Shannon Blair: We used a lot of information from the environmental aspects.

We had a lot of ammunition from Plant Based Treaty and from A Well Fed World's amazing work, with the Center for Biological Diversity having extensive information on the myths of grazing and things like that. Malaina can tell you some more.

Mariann Sullivan: Was there actually a coalition or was it basically animal rights activists who were gathering information on additional issues?

Malaina Watts: It was mostly animal rights. Well, we had animal rights activists. We also had the help from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. They wrote in letters. They also sent a representative in. Ingrid Newkirk sent a letter in saying that she was, this is where they distorted her message. She said that she was in favor of the slaughterhouse, if they built it with glass walls.

And so they were saying that they had the support of Ingrid Newkirk from PETA for the slaughterhouse.

Mariann Sullivan: Oh, God.

Malaina Watts: We did have the help of other organizations that did step in on this in the beginning, and then it just went down to pretty much Shannon and I and all of our knowledge on environmental and animal rights and animal welfare issue. So, between the two of us, we were able to do a lot.

I did mention we went to a Sierra Club meeting where she was trying to get them to say that they were for it. We ended up, we tried to ask questions at the meeting and you know, got a little upset with, I would say Shannon, because we thought that we were going to be able to get some questions answered.

A lot of that was about regenerative and the community really looked up to her and didn't question anything because she was so much a part of all of these groups that they just didn't even, you know, think to question regenerative or to question anything that she was saying. I mean, her whole thing, she had mentioned once that during COVID she was unable to get fresh meat from places and she did not want to have to buy it out the trunks of people's cars to know where her meat came from, which was actually pretty, pretty crazy.

Mariann Sullivan: In addition to going to these meetings, which sounds, I can't believe you pulled this all off with basically just the two of you and like a couple of letters from Ingrid Newkirk. It's pretty unbelievable. Were there any kind of public protests? Was anybody in the community like, was there a community group that was like, energized? I can imagine people, even if they're not animal rights activists, wouldn't want a slaughterhouse in their neighborhood.

Shannon Blair: So we definitely had help from local activists and community members as well, and we had a pretty solid group who would try to attend every time we found out about a meeting, and then we would meet some new people, usually at the meetings, and occasionally we'd see one of them come as a repeat person giving a statement.

We learned a lot during this whole process about how these public meetings work and whether you have one or maybe sometimes two opportunities to speak. Do you have three minutes or five minutes? Can you somehow wiggle an extra three minutes during topics plus public comment, but we did have a pretty solid group of people that would show up when they could, but they were often sneaking these meetings in with very short notice, and we believe were breaking sunshine laws here in Florida.

You're supposed to give a certain amount of days when you're putting these items on the agendas and they were just like sneaking them on. But, we also did surveying in the community. So that was one of the ways that we educated people and we did chalking and some protesting beforehand outside the meetings as well, depending on the time and where they were. Like the one that was in the city of Newberry, it was kind of late at night and it was on property where there was no chance we were going to be doing any of that.

But when we were at the regular meetings in the County, which were held in Gainesville, right on public sidewalks, then we were able to talk to people walking by and we had our signs and we were chalking some funny statements like Anna Pritzia's grazed and confused.

Jasmin Singer: Oh my, yeah. Wow. I'm so blown away by everything that you're doing that it's hard for me to understand that there's even more. And Malaina, I understand you're affiliated with the Save movement. So speaking of doing more, what's your role there? And what was the involvement of the Save movement in helping all of this happen?

Malaina Watts: So I am the U.S. liaison for the Plant Based Treaty Campaign, which is founded by Anita and under Animal Save Movement. So, I was able to get our media team to post a call to action on our social media to message Mayor Marlowe in opposition to this slaughterhouse. I was trying to find out how many letters we had gotten out, and I'm sorry I couldn't find that prior, but we did get an overwhelming response of people that were against it.

Shannon had also mentioned that we did the surveys, and she had come up with some surveys, and we went out to the community to talk to them about whether they knew about the project, if they knew they were spending the 2.5 million taxpayer dollars on it, how they feel about it, if they would work at one, if they wanted one in their backyard, and the majority of the people said no, they didn't know about it.

No, they did not want one in their backyard. No, they did not want to work in one. So, and these people were not vegan or plant-based people that we were reaching out to within the community. She had done up a survey for the two different colleges, as well as just community members. So, that was also a really great tool that we used.

As far as Animal Save, I mean, they always back me up in everything that I do. From this one to Jacksonville, as well as the illegal slaughterhouse we did. They've always been extremely good about getting posts up and calls to action. Super supportive of it.

And, obviously that's mostly why I'm here in this meeting today is because the people in Jacksonville did reach out to us, to handle this case. And Shannon and I have kind of been given the title recently of slaughterhouse watch committee. So, we're the ones that they call within the state to get on things.

Mariann Sullivan: You never know where life will lead you. I bet when you were a little girl, you didn't imagine you'd be on the Slaughterhouse Watch Committee.

Malaina Watts: I did not see that coming.

Jasmin Singer: I just want to ask, what did you want to be when you were a kid?

Malaina Watts: Oh my goodness. I wanted to be a writer, a journalist, actually. I loved writing, I loved singing, and I loved just, you know, using my pen and pad. And that was what I wanted to do, which I guess is now actually what I'm doing. A lot of that now anyway.

Jasmin Singer: There you go.

Malaina Watts: And I'm doing kind of journalism work and everything within what I'm doing.

Mariann Sullivan: I guess that actually does coordinate with my next question, because I was really curious, like, were you able to get any press coverage on this? Did it reach that level of attention?

Malaina Watts: Alachua County absolutely did. I actually was going through all of my media coverage today to pull things out and just go over everything. And there were probably a dozen or so articles written on this that showed the feelings, as we were going through, the feelings of each of the commissioners and how some of them changed their minds as they were going through and the concerns of the commissioners and the public and, and how, um, Shannon and I caused so much division within the community, on all these different points you know, from animal welfare to what it's going to do to their real estate and their communities and, you know.

Mariann Sullivan: But they did go into an animal welfare issue. That's really interesting.

Malaina Watts: I would say that came more from the side of the animal activists and the community, than anything.

Shannon Blair: We tried to do a really good balance of everything there. So we would talk about the workers and like, who would wake up and want to go to work at a slaughterhouse because they were boasting how it was gonna create like 8 to 12 new jobs. And then we would talk about you know what it's like for slaughterhouse workers based on their accounts. And me personally talking to them all throughout the country when we've traveled as a family. And then, we would talk a lot about the environment and try to get rid of the regenerative lies and all the humane and because they were touting all of that. But yeah.

Jasmin Singer: So this is like reading a deeply layered novel or something. So tell us about like, how does it end? What happened?

Shannon Blair: So we kept showing up, we kept showing up. And, one by one, these commissioners seemed to be coming around a little bit, and we'd be like, alright, now we've got another one on the fence, and we'd be thinking like, who's gonna flip, who's it gonna be, and then finally, cause we needed three of them to say, let's squash it.

And at that point, right before the end, we had the one that had flipped since the very beginning, we had him all along, and then we had one more that had changed over, and two that were on the fence. And then that main one that Malaina mentioned from the beginning, who had something to gain it seemed from it, she was never going to flip, so we knew she was not, so we're like, all right, we got to get one of these two, what's going to resonate with them the most?

The one was a school teacher, and she seemed to really like Evan, and thought that he was really brave and we're trying to think like, all right, we don't want to make them mad. We want to keep them kind of liking us, but you know, not wanting to keep being bothered by us at the same time. They need to know we're going to keep coming back.

What is it though that we have to say? And that last meeting we got Mary Helen Wheeler to flip and as soon as she did it at the end. We're like, oh my gosh, it's over. It's over. No slaughterhouse. And this is going to be like, it was going to be 10, 000 square feet and it was really going to be, you know, horrible, obviously for the animals, but also for the community.

And to just keep building these new murdering facilities is not the direction that we want to be heading in.

Mariann Sullivan: And actually, as you're saying, like, this is a big problem for the community, but this isn't the, I mean, it's unbelievable, but you've actually had another slaughterhouse event, protest, I don't know, you've shut down another slaughterhouse. And I really want to hear about that one too. And this was actually a privately owned slaughterhouse, right? Which seems to me would be much harder to make a case against because the first one, the fact that they're spending tax money on it, that really seems awful.

But tell us a little bit about I think it was a halal slaughterhouse and it might, in fact, like a much bigger proposition. Anyway, I'm making this up because I don't know the details. So tell us what the details were.

Malaina Watts: So this one, a friend of ours, another activist that previously lived in Jacksonville, I guess her mother had found an article.

There was only one article that was printed on it, saying that they were looking to get a slaughterhouse opened up. It was going to be a 25, 000 square foot slaughterhouse that was proposed. It was going to be one that serviced halal restaurants and markets across the state of Florida.

So this one was a little bit different. This one was a little bit quicker. A woman, by the name Stacey, she had contacted In Defense of Animals and In Defense of Animals reached out to Animal Save Movement. And after the Alachua County one that we had shut down, Anita had come to me, Anita, the founder of Animal Save Movement, she had copied me in and said, "Hey, we have this great activist that got another slaughterhouse shut down in Florida. Maybe she can help with this project as well." So, we immediately got into a meeting with this woman, Stacey, who wrote a letter. saying that her 84 year old mother was going to be living across the street from where this slaughterhouse was proposed. And immediately, the movie The Smell of Money came to mind, and how in North Carolina, um, Smithfield, where they have people dealing with issues over there from feces being outside their house, running their families off, making them sick. So we decided to get our team together again.

Some of the people were the same ones that we went to Alachua County with. So they were all excited and ready to go and get this one shut down. So, this one, I was involved in the meeting with the woman who called us, and getting everybody together. Unfortunately, Jacksonville is about five or six hours away from me, so I wasn't able to make it, but Shannon and her family and the other activists were able to, so I'll let her tell you about that from there.

Shannon Blair: Yeah, this one was really, in a sense, more nerve wracking because of it being a private situation. We knew that this was kind of like one shot.

We found out about it fairly late in the game. Like Malaina said, there was just this one article. It was an online article. If our friend's mom hadn't seen it, we wouldn't have known about it prior to Lisa from IDA contacting us.

Mariann Sullivan: That is so great. I just want to say, like, that is so crazy that this whole thing came about because somebody... I mean, it makes me feel like the animal rights movement, as tiny as we are, is kind of a well oiled machine.

Shannon Blair: Yeah.

Mariann Sullivan: We managed to pick this up and get you involved. It's amazing.

Shannon Blair: Yeah. And so we did as much research as we could. I had to make so many phone calls to find out the details of this meeting. Our friend's mom, the article that she had, it stated a date and I'm looking up these public meetings on the public government websites and there's like nothing about it because it's this weird zoning meeting that even though it's public they don't like publish the details online like they do with most of their meetings. And they have other zoning meetings posted so it was so confusing.

Finally I got this really nice woman after being transferred like six times who helped me majorly and then offered to also email me all the documents that were associated with it. So I got to ahead of time see like their 40 something page application, which gave me even more information that we didn't have previously.

And then...

Mariann Sullivan: I'm sorry, application for what? Was this kind of some kind of permitting that they needed? Zoning.

Shannon Blair: Yep. So that's all they needed was just for the county to rezone this and it was going to be a done deal. Like there was no other opportunities to stop it. Had the other one not ended when it did, we would have had many, many more opportunities to continue going and being a pain to them and trying to find ways.

We're so grateful it ended when it did and didn't go any further. But with this one, we wouldn't have had those other opportunities. So it was really scary. We only got the details for the meeting confirmed two days beforehand. So to try to get people together is difficult because they have these public meetings during the week, during people's work days, and they do that on purpose because they don't want tons and tons of people to be able to come out and speak on things all the time because that would make them have to sit there longer and work more and take more people's feelings into consideration. And so to get people together was difficult. We did a darn good job though in that short amount of time.

And then Stacey, she had taken off work and so had most of the family members who were able to get off. They made sure that they were there also. And it was

Mariann Sullivan: Can I just interrupt you for a second? Was this again, mostly animal rights people, or did you have more of a coalition on this one with the environmental issues involved?

Shannon Blair: So this one was more of a combination, but it was animal rights activists and this woman's family, this 84 year old woman who had had this property for many, many decades in the family. For generations, I believe, and they were concerned about not being able to have...

Mariann Sullivan: The neighborhood, the local.

Shannon Blair: Yeah.

Mariann Sullivan: And I mean, I assume that they had environmental justice issues that they were going to argue. You know, you mentioned The Smell of Money.

I assume it was a low income neighborhood. They don't usually try to build slaughterhouses in wealthy neighborhoods.

Shannon Blair: Absolutely.

Mariann Sullivan: So they were picking on it because they figured they wouldn't be able to fight back.

Shannon Blair: Right.

And it was out in the middle of nowhere. And that was another big thing is there really weren't many neighbors to band together. There was like three houses on this road. We tried to contact some people in other neighborhoods that we thought, you know, they're just across this main road maybe they'll care if their water is going to be affected or something to get them to come out. But with such short notice, that was difficult. And unless people are right there and they understand the impact, they can't be inconvenienced. And if they don't know about in the first place, they're certainly not showing up.

Jasmin Singer: Were the legislators open to arguments of environmental injustice?

Shannon Blair: Absolutely, and this was interesting because when we got there, once this item came up on the agenda, they actually had some negative things to say about it before they even took public comment. So it was a really encouraging start.

They had, in the short amount of time, heard a lot of concerns that people were having. This was a 25,000 square foot facility, so pretty massive. And so they were already mentioning that. So they were definitely open to it.

Mariann Sullivan: And I read it. Am I right? I think I read it was going to be supplying halal food to the entire region, or at least all of Florida, or like a really big area.

This was not a local kind of thing like the other one was.

Shannon Blair: Right, it was connected to a business called Apna Bazar, and I believe that they were planning to be able to get to all of their markets and stores throughout the state.

Mariann Sullivan: A really big place.

Shannon Blair: Big operation. Yeah, definitely.

Mariann Sullivan: I just want to say, I think that's so interesting that even before you started talking, the legislators were like, being very hesitant or whatever it was you said, and not totally positive, and I think that's because you were there, you know, and those other people were there. Like they smelled what was in the wind, so to speak.

Shannon Blair: Right, the gentleman who put the application in, him and the attorney went up at the beginning and they asked for it to be deferred for a second time because it had already been deferred once. Luckily, because if it hadn't that first time, we never would have found out about it. And, the legislators denied that, so that was really encouraging also, because we were worried we had all come for nothing that day, and they actually stated, like they, this was much different than the Alachua County meetings, this one they had us fill out these pretty extensive cards.

We had to actually, anyone who spoke had to state their full name, and their address, their living address, where the other one, they wanted you to say your name, you could give your first name, they couldn't really pressure you very much. They didn't ask for addresses, which was good, because I might have been nervous some of those times with all the cattle ranchers and people that had shown up at some of the meetings. But this one, we didn't get to pick our order. It was kind of intimidating after coming from the other ones that we had gotten pretty comfortable knowing the way that they worked.

And some of the other meetings that we've been to in different places, I've never experienced this where you have to fill these things out. And in addition to that, we had to put our information on a list that everyone that was coming in could also just like take a photo of that wanted addresses and everything.

But we did it and we all went in and we couldn't pick our order, which, you know, sometimes people want other people to go first, so it helps them to get their courage up, but there was no opportunity for that. And interestingly enough, I didn't even get to speak, neither did my son Vegan Evan.

We were both prepared and lots of our other friends and the woman's family members never even got an opportunity because we had a really exciting thing happen right in the middle of the meeting. The applicant and his attorney rushed to the podium and the people are like, "hey, what are you doing? You already had your six minutes. These other people only get three minutes. You're not getting any more time."

And they're like, no, no, we'd like to withdraw the application.

Jasmin Singer: Wow. Wow. So let's talk about, I want to talk about the bigger picture here because Shannon, you're wearing an Animal Liberation hat right now. And how is preventing these two slaughterhouses from being built connected to that overall goal of animal liberation?

Shannon Blair: Well, there's no way that we're going to be able to achieve animal liberation if we're continuing to allow money to be put towards these new operations. These facilities that are only built to murder and dismember the most innocent and vulnerable beings we share the planet with. So, we have to stop these in their tracks when we can.

We need to be more diligent about finding out about them in our local areas And then we need to get our friends together and mobilize people to stop them because it's a lot easier to stop this from happening when they're brand new than to take down the ones that already exist. Not to say that that can't be done because they're shutting down left and right as well, but we certainly, if we're going to achieve a virtually vegan world and animal liberation, we can't have new ones going up.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, that's for sure. Malaina, how do you feel, you know, that these parts of your work, working for the Plant Based Treaty to the very big, kind of very positive, governmental kind of approach of getting people to eat more plants, and also shutting down slaughterhouses, you know, individual slaughterhouses that, you know, are just pieces of the huge, huge, huge, huge puzzle?

How do you feel those two things go together for you?

Malaina Watts: Well, the three core principles of the Plant Based Treaty are, one, to relinquish, which is stop the problem increasing, no more land use or change, including deforestation for animal agriculture or any further slaughterhouses being built.

So we want to phase out the ones that we have, obviously, and switch to a plant-based food system. All of our actions align with that first demand that we have. We want to redirect, is our second demand, to a plant-based food system. So I spend a lot of time going to council, going before council meetings and making a call to action for them to endorse the Plant Based Treaty.

We have a list of 41 actions that they can take within their city to make changes in a more climate friendly, plant-forward direction. We've had over 31 cities around the globe endorse this already. So my work brings me to each city to try to discuss ways that they can help mitigate climate change through institutional changes that they can make. So, this work that we did with these two are definitely along our line.

Mariann Sullivan: I know it's a cliche, but it just seems to me just this perfect representation of that old phrase or that old bumper sticker. Think globally, act locally. I mean, it really says it all.

Jasmin Singer: Tell us about the third situation.

Mariann Sullivan: I, I, yeah, it's unbelievable.

Jasmin Singer: I know. I can't even, it's crazy. I can't even believe that.

Mariann Sullivan: You really are the queens of slaughter, or non-slaughter!

Jasmin Singer: This is like, you should sell this show to Lifetime or something, or maybe not Lifetime, but HBO Max, Showtime. I understand that there was a third situation that was an illegal slaughter facility or something like that, which was already in existence that you became aware of.

Shannon Blair: So this was an Animal Recovery Mission operation called Operation Barker. This was named that actually because Bob Barker had donated towards this investigation prior to passing away. So, Richard Kudo, the founder of ARM and lead investigator, he had been undercover there for quite a while. And we became aware of it prior to it being released on the media.

And then there were some delays for the initial story to break, but we had said that we would help to organize a protest to help raise awareness about the entire situation. ARM has helped to shut down like 226 of these operations now throughout Florida. I guess 227, if you count this one because the property currently isn't operating anymore, but this was really a not cool situation, what's happening with the police there, because just a few months ago in St. Lucie, the sheriff was bragging and bragging about how wonderful it was to work with Kudo and save so many animals together. They had baby goats, together, holding them on the news and so this was a situation that had turned and the police were no longer working with them to try to remedy the situation.

So nothing had really been done at all until Fox News had started asking questions and then they had told them when the story was going to release. And at some point, one misdemeanor arrest was made based on the evidence that was turned over, but nothing else had been done in over eight months. So Animal Recovery Mission went public with the story.

We set up a protest to make people aware of the situation. So the first protest was at the property itself. And then it got really interesting. We showed up and I had had some information. I knew the name of the property owner and I knew that he wasn't the person that was doing the active killing that was being reported and, and under investigation and the evidence that had been turned over, he was just living there at the time.

And these people were doing their so called business on his property. So I spotted him and I yelled for him and he came over to the fence and he was actually talking to all of us that were there and he was talking to us in front of the media and he agreed to let us onto the property.

And he agreed to let us, at one point, take a chicken if we could catch them. Then it became, you can take anybody that you can catch. Then he agreed to actually let Animal Recovery Mission come the next day with their trailer and their team and rescue everybody that had been left behind at that point.

Which, unfortunately, most of the animals had already been taken out, and they had gotten them to different places that I'm sure were not going to have happy endings, But there were six pigs and several chickens and ducks left behind.

Mariann Sullivan: I, I have this feeling that this only happens in Florida, but maybe that's because of Kudo's work and the fact that he's uncovered so many of them in Florida, maybe they're all over the place.

And, and, but these are really just really small. Why do they exist? Like, why do people want to get... they're really small, totally illegal, like little small slaughter operations, right? In, like, on some back road somewhere in the middle of nowhere. And people go and buy their meat from there? Like, it just seems so bizarre.

But this is a pretty common situation, isn't it?

Shannon Blair: It is, and it's even more common in South Florida. Apparently, there is a huge black market horse meat situation here in Florida and they have found this going on in all different parts of the state. It's a huge ring and from what Kudo's investigations have shown, these guys are major players.

Mariann Sullivan: Uh huh. So there, I mean, there's serious money in, in like, slaughtering pigs on the back road. I mean, I can understand the horse thing. I mean, I can't understand it, but horse slaughter is illegal. So, you know, like, there are apparently some people who want to eat horses and, so you can understand why that would be illegal, but why you would want to do illegal chicken slaughter's beyond me.

Shannon Blair: And it's not just that it's also, they're doing most of these properties are doing rituals as well. So all throughout this property.

Mariann Sullivan: Okay. And that does make it more like a Florida thing, like a Santeria kind of.

Shannon Blair: Correct. Yeah. And then different like voodoo rituals and things.

Jasmin Singer: Okay. I know that you're obviously both very, very passionate activists. So I'm going to ask Marianne's favorite question. How would you each state your own theory of change? Like how do we get from where we are to the world that we want kids to live in?

Malaina Watts: Oy!

Shannon Blair: Malaina, do you want to go first or do you want me to?

Jasmin Singer: Actually, we could just leave it at oy. I'm just kidding.

Malaina Watts: So like, Shannon and I do a lot of different kind of activism. We get involved in all kinds of different spaces, because I think that it's definitely valuable to be able to be in different spaces from whatever it is. from, animal rights to climate to whatever we need to do to get things changed.

So we do everything from boots on the ground to traveling the country to documenting slaughterhouses and dairy farms and CAFOs. And we do huge convergences and tours where we get people involved and doing all kinds of pressure campaigns and different things. And, all of it is so valuable. When I started working with the Plant Based Treaty, um, I mean, I'm still doing all the other stuff, but working with Plant Based Treaty, I found a different way to reach people as well, which, unfortunately using, you know, I'm a vegan abolitionist all day long, but we use Plant Based to get us into other places to have these valuable conversations.

And it's going so well right now that I'm getting ready to go to LA Climate Week, where we're going to be, you know, pushing animal rights discussions into the climate movement. So it's super exciting for me. But, um, you know, going through institutional change and going to your county commissioners and going from the inside out, we're working with hospitals and universities and assisted living facilities you know, wherever we can get in to make that plant-based transition, to change the food systems over, to shut down the slaughterhouses, to stop making the demand so high, to educate people. So, I think all of these different forms of activism are super valuable in how we reach people and talk to people.

And I mean, I feel pretty solidly, after eight years of doing activism, I feel like, I've been trying to find where I can be the most valuable and where I can spend my time the best, make the most impact. And I feel like between what Shannon and I are doing and educating people and traveling and documenting and showing people that it's not just a small farm or a large farm, there's both so much animal abuse and horrific things that happen there.

So, I think we're all going to reach animal liberation collectively and through many different means. And education is definitely the way to go. I've seen a lot of really great things happen through Plant Based Treaty, and I've also seen a lot of different things happen with pressure campaigns, and boots on the ground activism, and things like that.

So, my answer would be collectively, through many different means, and lots of education.

Mariann Sullivan: That's very, very inspiring. I mean, that's how we like to think at Our Hen House. And that's why we like to interview so many different people who are doing remarkable work.

And you guys are definitely among the people out there who are doing remarkable work. The other thing I always like to remember too, is that almost everybody, except for the psychopaths, actually agrees with us. It's mysterious as to why they don't act like they agree with us, but they do. So there's something going on that, you know, Change is possible.

Shannon, how about you? Did you have something to add to what Malaina had to say?

Shannon Blair: Yeah, sure. So I believe education is the key. I think if most people understood, most people are not totally desensitized. There are people who grow up in these industries, and they're not going to be our low hanging fruit.

They're much more desensitized, but the average person is more ignorant and brainwashed, a combination, and a little bit desensitized, I feel like. So, I think that education is the key. I especially think that educating on the dairy industry is like the biggest part of the puzzle. I think if a lot more people could come together and focus on that as the main priority, because I think it holds the most shock value.

Like, by the time people are four or five years old, they know that animals have to die to end up on their plates, but most adults still don't understand how a glass of cow's breast milk comes to be or that it's even breast milk in the first place. So I think that there's so much shock value. And when you just use your common sense, we're not calves, we're adult human beings, and we're the only species doing these weird things. It's like easier to see.

And if people could get that, then I think that they'll have an easier time because the dairy is the addictive one. And then I think it's so important that people activate and continue educating themselves and get a part of some community and really do some forms of activism for animals because we need to like expedite this and normalize Veganism and activism, like, as quickly as possible, make them cool, and normalize nonviolence.

And I think, really, we can do it, because when you look at all these other things that we've had, these major changes, it happens very quickly, and then we look back, and we're like, how did we ever do it any other way? And that's whether it's cell phones, or having fire, or the treatment of groups of individuals, whatever it is. And I think, I hope that, you know, not that much time we can look back and say, "How did we ever do this to our fellow Earthlings?"

Jasmin Singer: Well, that is a very powerful and beautiful note for us to end on. And, I just really appreciate all that you're both doing. We do want to keep you on for the bonus content for a few minutes. But Shannon and Malaina, can you each please tell us how we can stay on top of your efforts?

Malaina Watts: You can find me on Instagram. I'm @plantbasedtreatyflorida to follow all the things that I've been doing. You can also follow me @WattsVeganLiving. That's W A T T S, like my last name, veganliving on Instagram. And I usually showcase all my work there. I do a lot of lives and things like that. So, we also have Solutionary Species that you can follow and Shannon can give you some information on how you can follow her and Vegan Evan and her family who does incredible work.

Shannon Blair: On Instagram. I am vegan activist mom. Used to be Vegan Evans Mom, but now Vegan Activist Mom, and then on Facebook, I'm facebook.com/veganshan. I'm really bad at social media though, so.

Jasmin Singer: That's okay.

Shannon Blair: Trying to get better.

Malaina Watts: I do most of the posting of our events, so if you can't find it on hers, you can find it on mine.

Jasmin Singer: Also, it seems like you're a little busy, but like you can't maybe necessarily do the Instagram all the time. So thank you both so very much for joining us today. We so appreciate you.

Shannon Blair: Thank you for everything you do for the animals and for having us.