Animal Rights in Europe with Benny Andersson

Mariann Sullivan: We're thrilled to have you. We've been hearing a lot about this Project 1882, which I had not previously heard about, but I'm kind of excited to hear about it. And I understand you're in the midst of like a really exciting effort. So, but let's start since a lot of listeners in the States and maybe elsewhere as well, won't be that familiar with it. Can you just give us an overview of Project 1882? And then we'll spend the rest of the interview pretty much getting into details.

Benny Andersson: Oh, yeah. Project 1882 is, we are an animal rights organization, I would say pretty much the classic animal rights organization. We're pro vegan, but also do political lobbying. We're based in Sweden. We were founded in Sweden back in 1882.

Mariann Sullivan: That's crazy.

Benny Andersson: Yeah, so that's why we have this name. Because it's been like an animal rights project going on since, since 1882. But in Sweden, we are known under a different name, it's Djurens Rätt. But since that's kind of hard to pronounce for basically everyone outside of the Nordic countries, we, We actually, we said like, people are like slaughtering our name when they try to pronounce it and we are anti slaughter.

So then we said, okay, let's help people out. So that's why we changed our name to Project 1882.

Mariann Sullivan: As an English speaker, I just want to tell you we're very, very used to people catering to our needs. So thank you for being among the many.

Benny Andersson: Oh yeah. Yeah. I don't think it makes a difference. People didn't understand that were not Swedish speaking. They didn't understand our name before. And now people are asking why. Why are you called Project 82? It's basically the same for us, but it's easier to pronounce for the rest of the world.

But yeah, we've been around quite a while. And, we are a members organization, so we are funded and driven by our own members. So we have approximately, I would say like, 48- 50, 000 paying members. They are the main donors of the organization, and they are also, I'd say, in charge of the organization.

So it's, it's a very Swedish setup, I would say. It's like standard setup of Swedish NGOs, but yeah, We want a world where animals are seen as, or being treated as sentient individuals with the right to their own lives. That's the core.

Mariann Sullivan: Well said.

And I know you do a lot of things, and you do both grassroots and policy work and corporate outreach, so you cover, like, the main types of activism all within one organization. And I really want to talk about how they intersect and some of the conflicts there. But before we do any of that, let's start off with the tour, because I know that I think it's still ongoing, or else it just ended. And can you just tell people what the tour is and what your goals were?

Benny Andersson: Yeah, we've just finished, we just wrapped up, our European tour. What we did was, to start with, we have been touring Sweden doing like festivals, city fests, basically wherever there are a lot of people in a fairly good, mood. We try and visit those places and talk about factory farming, animal rights, promoting veganism.

And we've been doing that the last 19 summers, so touring is something that we are kind of good at. So when we, last year, were discussing, okay, what could we do, like, more work outside of Sweden, what should we focus on? And then we said, like, okay, there are a lot of organizations that are really good at different things, but we are good at touring, so maybe let's do a tour.

So we got this exhibition trailer. It's, it's an actual, like, full size trailer, which is like, uh, I don't know how to explain it so the listeners can understand how it actually looks like, but it's an mobile exhibition. When we parked this trailer, it's like kind of folds out.

It's almost like one of those, like Disney things, like a Disney movie almost, it's like foldable trailer,

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. And when you say trailer, I just want to, because trailer can mean a few different things to Americans. So I think you're talking about what we would call a tractor trailer, like a huge. Semi or a huge truck, the kind of truck you see on the highway.

Benny Andersson: It's a truck, but it's like 60 square meters

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, it's huge. Yeah.

Benny Andersson: Yeah, so inside this trailer, we have TV screens, VR showing factory farming practices that is common in Europe. So we gathered video materials from different organizations in Europe and compiled them.

So, yeah, so we've been touring Europe since June. We've been doing like 15 countries, I would say 20 larger cities we've covered. We've been from Helsinki in Finland to, um, Berlin in Germany, Barcelona in Spain, Portugal, yeah, Italy, a lot of European countries.

Mariann Sullivan: So what kind of preparation do you do before you roll into town? Like do you coordinate with local groups and do you create events? You don't want to just go there and park a big truck. Like you need to get people to show up. How do you manage that in all these different countries?

Benny Andersson: Yeah, that's where we're good at touring, but doing like events in Italy or Spain or whatever, we're not experts. So then we reached out to local groups in each country. So they do all the event planning. And it's basically their event. So we just provide the event place, like the trailer and also why should media, or politicians, or the general public, why should they show up?

It's a special occasion.

There's this special animal rights trailer coming to town and then each group, they are creating their own event in their own local context. So if they want to promote veganism and have food trucks next to it, we've done that.

Or if they want to have an exhibition about a really horrible factory farming equipment, like showcasing that, they've been doing that outside the trailer. They did it in Lithuania and they had like members of parliament coming there and seeing those things for probably the first time in their lives.

Mariann Sullivan: Wow.

Benny Andersson: So yes, it's been very, very different. Each city and each country has been very different, but it's been really, really interesting.

Mariann Sullivan: Does any one particular city stand out as a especially memorable experience?

Benny Andersson: I would say the ones we did Lisbon and Porto in Portugal, those two stops in Portugal were really, really amazing. We had so many visitors. I think we had more than 1000 visitors. We had this super long segment on Portuguese television. This newly founded animal rights group, Frente Animal, they got some really good exposure.

So yeah, I would say that was like the perfect, like we

had a lot of regular people,, politicians, media, and the local group, they were really happy. So, then we were happy.

Mariann Sullivan: You know, I lived in New York City for a lot of my life, but I've recently moved to a much smaller city, also in New York State, but further north. And I'm guessing that the small cities are probably a real sweet spot because they're always looking for new, you know, like in New York City, there's a lot of news to compete with, but in smaller cities, it's a real event, isn't it?

Benny Andersson: Yeah.

I would say that that is probably the case in most countries, like the capital, even if it's like a small city compared with New York City, there's always things going on capital. Yeah. That's why, when we were in Italy, we were in two other cities, Bologna, which is like, that city is a lot of like students.

It's a big university city. So there was a really good crowd there, and the Italian organization, LAV, they have this amazing program where they go out and do school talks, like in, in classrooms. They, I think they do 600 classes a year. So they invited like school classes to the trailer.

So, yeah. Smaller cities, I would say those are really good for activism.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. And I would imagine the news, like the TV stations or whatever, they're hungry for innovative local stories. So that's always good to play into. This is probably something Europeans are extremely used to, but as an American, I'm not. Like, how do you deal with language? Like, you know, we're very used to like, we can go pretty, pretty far and anywhere in this country and everybody speaks the same language.

But you're talking about a gazillion different languages. What do you do about it?

Benny Andersson: Yeah, you just have to do it. I don't know. Yeah, there's a lot of different languages. Yes. And, Swedish is like, Norwegians can understand us, but that's basically that. We have to use English a lot. English is the, is the language that is most used.

But, in some countries, like, especially the ones when we're in Slovakia or the Czech Republic, not everyone is speaking English at all, or is not very fond of speaking English.

Mariann Sullivan: And you know, when I've traveled in Europe too, as an English speaker, really a lot of people can speak English, but there's a limit to how complicated they're eng. You know, it's like everybody who works in a shop can speak English, but pretty much about what they're selling. It doesn't necessarily go into the kind of English you would want to be able to really communicate with people about something so difficult.

Benny Andersson: Yeah, and that's why I would say that's why we used a lot of visuals.

Like that's why, yeah, and the thing is, we also translated all the subtitles on all the movies that we showed in, inside the trailer, yeah.

So in each country, the local language, it was subtitled in that.

So, and that was thanks to the local groups that did that heavy lifting of translating.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. That's a lot of work. Yeah.

Benny Andersson: We kind of figured out that it was a lot of work to do this tour, but we learned a lot during this tour. And I would say, the big takeaway for me was that, yeah, there are different countries, like, there are different cultures, different ways people think and act when it comes to what they think about animals or animal rights.

But it's pretty much the same anyway, when you speak with people.

Like, people care about animals. And that is the biggest takeaway I would say for me. And, I think I can speak for the most people in my team that that's what we figured out or, or understood. It was that people care. Especially when they see the realities that animals endure.

Mariann Sullivan: Are people very shocked?

Benny Andersson: They are. Yeah. And that's also, we, like in our organization, we sometimes use this phrase, I would say, try to translate it as somewhere else ism.

Mariann Sullivan: Um, yeah, that's very good. Yeah.

Benny Andersson: So, like, this must be somewhere else.

This is horrible, this cannot be around here, it must be somewhere else.

Mariann Sullivan: Not as much as it used to be, but that's a particularly British kind of attitude. I think the Brits think of themselves as such animal lovers, and indeed they are. And you just so often hear, well, we don't have factory farming here. And I'm like, actually, yes, you do.

Benny Andersson: Yes you do, more than we have in Sweden actually, so if anyone from Britain is listening to this, now you know.

Mariann Sullivan: Well, I imagine everybody listening to this probably already knows.

Benny Andersson: But yeah, that, it was a very interesting experience for us. And I'm not sure we're going to do it, like, immediately next year. I think we will maybe take a break, but not touring Europe.

We will actually be touring Sweden with this trailer, because we have been touring Europe, but not Sweden.

Mariann Sullivan: Oh, yeah. So you can switch off. Yeah.

I would make it a little easier. Yeah,

So it sounds like, but just let me confirm with you. I mean, I assume that one of your reasons in going is to inspire the local people who are already kind of on board, the local vegans, the local animal activists, but you're also reaching a lot of non vegans. How do you get them?

Benny Andersson: That's, a million dollar question. How do we get them? Uh,

Mariann Sullivan: That's kind of the question, isn't it? About everything do.

Benny Andersson: But, since we've been doing a lot of like, we call it like public outreach, I don't know if that's the phrase in English that

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, that's a perfectly legit phrase, yeah.

Benny Andersson: That's when you do this more, if you setup, when you're at an event or when you make an event yourself, we try to focus on these one on one interactions with people.

And I would say, for me, the trick is to figure out where people are. How much do they know? Speak with them and not to them, to find out what are they thinking about, if they've been thinking about this at all. In most cases, people are, they are aware that there are issues, and they know about factory farming, even if they don't know maybe the phrases or the terminology, they know there's this industrialized keeping of animals. Then you can just start like, do you like this concept?

And then people will say, no, it sounds bad. And then you can talk about it from there. In most cases, people, they understand, then they understand why people choose not to eat animals, even if they're not like, telling you upfront that, Oh yeah, I'm going vegan now.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, if one is waiting for that, that's not going to happen. But that doesn't mean that you haven't started them thinking, and they will end up there, but they're not going to, yeah, it's You have to face that right off the bat.

Benny Andersson: Yeah, so, we usually say like, if they leave after talking with us, and they have like a better impression of animal rights people or people that are choosing plant based or that are defining themselves as vegans, that's a win. We don't expect these big changes en masse.

But since we've been doing this for such a long time and we go back, like now I'm talking about Sweden and we're going back to a lot of the same places year after year. We can see the changes, and it's, the changes are, of course, from our perspective, way too slow. But there are changes, you know, there are a lot of changes and people have, they are starting the discussions from a higher level.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah.

Benny Andersson: each year.

Mariann Sullivan: I think that's really true. And it's something for us all to hang on to, even though there are still more and more and more animals trapped in this. There is a difference. Like you, you said that people frequently come and know it, you know, uncomfortable knowing that factory farming exists, maybe not knowing very much about.

I don't think that was true 10 years ago. I don't think they knew there was such a thing as factory farming. They thought it was old McDonald's farm, which is our phrase for like, you know, a cute little farm with a couple of chickens and a pig.

Benny Andersson: Yeah. Yeah. I think you're completely right there, and I think that's, I don't know if this is the correct phrasing, but I think that there's like the power of wording or phrasing when we as a movement, as a collective, use the same kind of phrases. If we talk about factory farming, when a lot of people use the same words, they become real words, and they become words that are describing reality. I think that for at least, and I can look at Sweden, like, the factory farming, that word in Swedish, it's not even in the dictionary.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah.

Benny Andersson: Yeah, but people, now they know about it and I would say it's the last 10 years since we've been like consistently been using it, describing reality as these are factory farms.

They are not, as you said, like old McDonald's farms, these are factory farms. They have nothing to do with the stories in children books.

So,

Mariann Sullivan: I think the industry is very, very upset that that term got away from them and that it's so widely adopted. Everybody knows what that means. And it speaks for itself. You don't even have to explain, when you use the term factory farming. I know that you do a lot more than grassroots, and I want to get into that too, but I just want to preface some of your work vis a vis legislation with the fact that if you don't live in Europe, and maybe even if you do live in Europe, the governmental structures are a little hard to understand. There are a lot of layers. And, from the outside, it gets a little confusing. But I really want to, I know that there's some Europe wide legislation, and maybe even at different levels, at the national level and even perhaps locally. But first of all, I think that you mentioned that you wanted to talk about the recent European elections and what you think they mean for animals. Is that a good place to start?

Benny Andersson: Yes, that's a good place to start, definitely. The European elections, they are impacting all animals in Europe. Because we have some legislation are like mandatory for all EU countries, I would say, not European countries. The European Union and Europe is not the same.

There are a lot of European countries that are not within the European Union. So when I talk about legislation here, it's the legislation in the European Union.

Mariann Sullivan: Right. That's so obviously true. I should have made it clear. European Union does not mean Europe.

Benny Andersson: No, everyone outside the European Union living in Europe can testify to that. Uh, yeah. And they get really angry. I think it's when you say America in the U S and, uh, kind of forget that there are more countries in America.

Mariann Sullivan: Right. No, I try to be very careful about that because people do not, it's a problem because we call ourselves Americans, you know, and that's kind of the word. Like, I can't really call yourself a United Statesian. That's just not a word. So it gets a little confusing, but yeah, I totally hear you.

Benny Andersson: Yeah, and I totally get it. If you living in the US, it's a bit tricky. No, but if we talk about layers, I'd say the highest layer of legislation, that's the EU legislation, but of course there's not one legislation, there are like several types of legislation covering the European Union, but it's not like if you want to find out what's legal or not, you look into the European Union law book.

You go to your national legislation, because each country has their own national legislations, but in some cases, they have to follow the European Union legislation. So that's why legislation can differ from country to country. Each country can interpret the European legislation slightly different.

There are also some exemptions, local exemptions from European legislation. Some countries they don't want to follow all the European legislation so they can get exemptions or in some cases they don't care about it. So it's, it's, uh, I

Mariann Sullivan: I started off saying this is very confusing, and I think that you've just proven that.

Benny Andersson: Yeah. But the thing is, the European legislation, even if it's not followed by everyone, it kind of sets the bar. That sets the standard.

So, improving that legislation is really important. And also since a lot of other countries in Europe, non EU countries, they are also looking at the EU legislation, and kind of like,

Mariann Sullivan: Okay,

Benny Andersson: mirroring. Yeah, because sometimes, if you want to have trade agreements with the EU, you have to adhere to some of the EU legislation. So that's why, even if personally I'm not enjoying doing lobbying work to change legislation, that's not why I became an animal rights activist. Uh, I'm much more comfortable doing grassroots work, but we want to impact the highest number of animals.

And that's why we go the legislative route.

Mariann Sullivan: So one of the major efforts in the EU, maybe Europe more broadly, and actually everywhere I guess, has been cage free campaigns for laying hens. And now also, there are a lot of campaigns for what are called broiler chickens, to improve the conditions. You know, they remain controversial among a lot of animal activists.

What do they really get at? You know, are they a dead end or are they a step towards something greater? What is the status of these campaigns and how do you feel about them personally, and how do you weigh those judgments about, Is this something we should put a lot of effort into?

Benny Andersson: Hmm. Yeah. That's also the million dollar question I would say. Or like, which way should we choose to go? If we look at. Europe, or the EU, now I have to correct myself, the EU, we have a promise of a cage ban in the European Union from the EU government, the EU Commission.

They have promised that they will propose, uh, a ban on cages, not just for hens, but for all animals like pigs, geese, ducks, you know, all animals within the factory farming system. Cages should be banned. I would say that has been, like, well used. When you work k on cage free, it's kind of simple for people to understand what you're asking for, but I would say for us, it's always been a way to highlight factory farming in general. That there's this system where animals are being kept.

So when we advocate for the EU to have a cage free legislation. We are also, our organization, we are also at the same time saying, like, you as an individual, if you want to make the most impact yourself, you should choose to skip eggs totally.

Mariann Sullivan: Right.

Benny Andersson: And I know that a lot of organizations find it hard to communicate both things.

And I have to admit it would be easier just to communicate, you know, go vegan or choose cage free, but what we are asking, we are saying like the industry, politicians, the people that have real power, corporations, they should go cage free. We as individual beings, we can choose whatever we put on our plate.

And then we should avoid eggs, if we talk about the egg industry or like the hens. So we do the same with the so called broilers, we are asking companies to stop using the fast growing, maybe you say Frankenchickens, maybe that's a term being used.

Mariann Sullivan: Right. That's a term that's

Benny Andersson: Yeah, but at the same time like our biggest campaign that we are running is public awareness about the chicken industry. And our call to action is to not eat chickens. That's our like, number one.

Mariann Sullivan: I mean, I do think that a lot of the animal rights movement has become much better at communicating these two messages kind of simultaneously. And not to harp on this, cause I know it's a tough issue, but it's just so important. Like, I just imagine that sometimes it becomes difficult to do that because in one sense you're saying to the corporations or whatever, and I'm not talking about you personally, I'm talking about the animal rights movement in general, well, this, you know, cages are terrible, but if you do cage free, that'll be great and we'll approve of that. Like, that's what we want you to do. And then you're saying to other people, cages are terrible and they're just one step above cage free, which is also terrible, which is not actually, there's nothing to be done about it really, but does it sometimes become difficult to do the negotiations with companies and government at the same time, telling people the truth about, you know, that cage free is no walk in the park.

Benny Andersson: Yeah, And I have to say, I can only like talk about what Project 1882, what we are doing. But I would say when we negotiate with corporations or when we talk with politicians about these issues, we are really upfront with, yeah, we are a vegan organization.

That is like the first five minutes when we talk with companies, because that is also what is used against us. And when we do these campaigns that the industry they're telling all these companies that you shouldn't do any like welfare policies because they are vegans anyway, they just they don't want you to do this. Yeah, they will never stop. And we're actually saying that we won't stop.

And then we say there's like, huge problems. We think you should go plant based but this is the least you can do at the moment.

And they're quite certain, they know that when, how to say, the cages are done, we will come back and we are coming back already.

So just to give you a, like, we, we started out doing like these cage free, campaigns in like 2008, 2009. And now there are only 2 percent of the hens in Sweden are in cages.

It's like 98 percent cage free. Then we went back a couple of years ago, we went back to these companies and said, Hey, you have these broiler chickens, they live horrible lives, you need to do something about that. And now we're going back to those companies and saying, Hey, you should set plant based goals.

You should reduce the amount of, if you don't want to go vegan overnight, you should set goals.This is s probably what people get most surprised about. We got KFC, Kentucky Fried Chicken, the company that most animal rights people regards as one of the most horrible companies on earth, they have published a policy that by 2030, 50 percent of all their proteins will be plant based.

Mariann Sullivan: Wow. That's unbelievable. Yeah.

Benny Andersson: Yeah, and that's a weird thing, you know, I didn't expect. I didn't see that coming when I started my animal activism, like, when I was 17, that I would be sitting with KFC and getting them to promise, and they are actually doing it, because when they published the policy, they had zero plant based options in Sweden.

Zero. Like, if you don't eat meat, you couldn't even buy french fries. Now they have it, so they are building on that. And I totally understand if you're not going to KFC anyway, like me personally, I haven't set my foot in that place,

Mariann Sullivan: Sure.

Benny Andersson: But a lot of people do, and especially young kids.

And those are the ones that consume chicken meat the most, uh, at least in Europe. That's why we think it's like super important.

Mariann Sullivan: That's a remarkable achievement. Like, do you think that things have shifted to some extent because of climate? And do you use climate arguments a lot in your advocacy or do you really stick to animal issues?

Benny Andersson: Since we advocate a lot for chickens, and they are the losing species, so to say, in this climate discussion.

So yeah, of course we, sometimes we tell people that meat is not good for the climate, but I would say like 90% or more of our arguments are focused on the animals.

It can be like that the animals have feelings, that animals have rights. If we talk about animal ethics or animal philosophy, or that they can suffer. You don't have to read Peter Singer or Tom Regan or whatever. No, no, but if you like, if you have a dog or a cat or, you can translate that into other species.

That's where our main effort is.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. I teach animal law and, you know, I've taught it for a long time and it used to be that the philosophy was so important, like just explaining to people that there was a logical reason that this meant, and nobody cared. The kids don't care about it anymore. They just, they know that animals matter.

I mean, they don't all change their behavior or agree on what we should do about it. But you don't have to tell them that, you know, that they have rights and moral philosophy mandates that they think that it's just not there anymore. So interesting how much that has changed.

Benny Andersson: Yeah, I completely agree and I think that when me and my teenage friends started doing like animal activism, we got these photocopied, like bunch of papers with all the arguments, like if you get this question answer, like Q and A's and all the, uh, because we thought that we needed all the answers on every question. And these long discussions about, like basically, animal rights philosophy. And as you say, like the kids today, or even the adults today, that's not where the, where the discussion starts today.

They, people know it's a problem and they,

Mariann Sullivan: They hope somebody else will fix it.

Benny Andersson: Exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah, that that's, they know it's a problem and then they try to forget about it.

Yeah.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, and it's so big. What difference does it make what I do? I think that's like a big, just a quick way out of thinking about it. Uh, my behavior doesn't matter. And so that's an important thing for us to always remind people. You know, obviously this is pretty obvious to the world, in the U. S. we have seen a pretty drastic turn to the right. It's a very small margin, but here we are. It's not just us. I mean, there are similar trends around the world. Do you see animal issues as an issue that is clearly recognizable as left or right? Or do you think, I mean, if the Democrats had won in the United States, animals would not be any better off. It's one issue on which the Democrats do virtually nothing. So, do you see it as a left or right issue, or is there, or is it one of those few issues that kind of crosses boundaries?

Benny Andersson: Yeah, I get your question. And I would say like animal, right, or at least animal welfare, maybe not animal rights, but animal welfare is not that much like a left and right issue, broadly speaking. But then you can have some, some really, like really right wing groups that could be quite pro animal.

But in general, I would say like the green and red, in the European Union, the green and red parties are slightly better, or slightly more vocal on animal welfare legislation. The conservatives are a bit more, that's where the agri lobby has a lot of support, but that's not like 100 percent true.

Not everywhere. And it can also differ. If we talk about, for example, so called broiler chickens, or if we talk about dogs, or if we talk about horses, you can get different answers.

Mariann Sullivan: Of course.

Yeah. It's not just animal animals as a as a global phenomenon. Yeah. It's always important to remember.

Benny Andersson: The last, the elections in the European Union, there was a shift towards the right, and also towards the extreme right, so we have more far right parties or representatives basically everywhere. In national parliaments, but also in the European Parliament, and it's a bit too early to say if this has had an impact for the animals or not. The coming years will be very important, um, because there's a lot of legislation. The coming five years, because there are five year terms in the European Parliament, the coming five years, a lot will be discussed and decided on.

So, it's, how to say, interesting time. Uh,

it's, And it's, I would say, highly complicated. Yeah. And

Mariann Sullivan: think a little, you know, which is kind of what you've been saying, unpredictable when it comes to animals, because the right is not, there's no unity there. I mean, there's the capitalist, you know, strong capitalist attitudes is always going to be problematic for animals. I mean, but then there are, you know, factions on the right that, you know, are much harder to understand.

It's not just all about money.

For

Benny Andersson: No, I agree. It's harder to understand some, sometimes, the why, the whys, of different groups. But as you said, like, in the US example, like, okay, if the Democrats had won, at least for the animals, that wouldn't have made that much difference. And I would say like,

For

Mariann Sullivan: a lot of other issues, it would have made a big difference, but for

Benny Andersson: definitely.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, So I'm not, um, so in that sense, I'm not super happy. I would say, about the results in the U S because especially it will affect the rest of the world.

And that's why, yeah, I don't, I don't know. but I think, outside of the U. S., the U. S. elections, like, I wouldn't say not everyone knows about them, but a lot of people outside of the U. S. are following. And I would say a lot of people in Europe in general, they would have voted differently. I would say if the, if the US elections were in Europe, there would have been a different outcome.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah.

Benny Andersson: So next time you, you should, you should make like Europeans eligible to

vote in the US, then we

Mariann Sullivan: I'll, I'll

Benny Andersson: out.

Mariann Sullivan: that on as a project.

Benny Andersson: Yes.

Mariann Sullivan: So, the intersection where you work is kind of this interesting, the fact that you do both a lot of grassroots, like real vegan grassroots, and working for systemic change. And I assume that's both corporate and legislative, though we haven't really talked about the corporate work that much. You know, there's been a lot of discussion within the movement here about whether the grassroots activism really matters because you're reaching so few people. We have achieved, you know, we do not have a vegan world. Veganism doesn't even seem to grow. I mean, it's always 1 percent or something. So, how do these intersect for you? And how do you convince legislators that this is something people really want?

Benny Andersson: Yeah.

Mariann Sullivan: That, animals do matter to people? And, I mean, one of the things that stands in the way of that too, I think, is that there aren't a lot of people who are going to vote because of their beliefs about animals.

I mean, I might, but you know, even that's tempered to some extent. I'm not going to vote for a fascist because they like animals. You know, there's a lot of other issues, even for people who deeply care about animals. And so how do you get legislators to think that this is going to matter to them? This is a practical matter?

Benny Andersson: Yeah. The answer to your last question, it's like, It's not easy, I would say, anywhere in the world, but to start, if I go back to what you started with, like, should we do grassroots activism if it's not super effective? And I think grassroots activism is harder to measure.

Like a corporate commitment, you can get the data, and you can run the numbers and calculate number of lives being impacted, and that's harder to do with grassroots activism because you don't really know. You don't see the results, but I would say for us. it's like crucial to do both. Because why should companies or Politicians listen to us if we don't have a movement that we can mobilize? Because that's what they're listening to.

They don't... if I call them, and this is actually what I'm telling our grassroots volunteers. It's like, hey, if I'm calling a politician and say, hey, I'm Benny, I would like to talk about animals. Can you schedule a meeting? And they say, who are you? I'm a regular guy, you know, that cares about the animals.

And I'm a voter. Could we schedule a meeting? They would say, thanks for a call, we will call you sometime. Bye. But when I call and say, hey, I'm Benny, I'm the CEO of this organization, we have 50, 000 members, we have 700, 000 followers in social media, in a country with 11 million people. Then they say, okay, yeah, let's at least have a meeting and hear you out.

So that's where I see like, I'd say if you want to do these changes on like a corporate level or legislative level, you need to have a movement. And if you want to change people's, like, as you say, hearts and minds, if you're like five people with an Instagram account, uh, even if you're like getting funding, you can only do that much, you know?

But when you have a movement, when you have volunteers, when you have like people that are doing this, the vast majority of the people in my organization, they're not being paid. They are volunteers like 100%. That's where the real power is. for me as a paid staff, and we have 60 paid staff in our organization, so it's a substantial amount of people, but what I would like at least to picture is that we can facilitate the activism of all these other people.

We can do like some special things, like we can specialize in lobbying or legislation or something, what we are actually doing is providing these volunteers and other members or activists, the tools, and they are doing the job. As I said, like, I can call, I can try and get a meeting, but if they don't think that it will have consequences denying us meetings, because that's basically what it is. Like, if you're saying no to a meeting with us, we're going to talk about that, and that's going to be in your inbox, or on your phone, or on your campaign Facebook page, you know, people being really annoyed that they don't care about the animals.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. And the, there is that fact that you alluded to before that, all right, people may not vote on this, but people do care about animals. I mean, not everybody, you know, there are the psychopaths out there, but most people actually would not do a bad thing to an animal. Like I would say a very significant majority would be horrified. Even, you know, even a chicken, you know,

Benny Andersson: yeah, definitely, yeah, yeah,

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, there is power in that, even if legislators aren't totally secure, anybody's going to vote on those issues. They still don't want to be hated by every animal lover in Sweden.

Benny Andersson: No, and I think grassroots activism is, for me it's like super clear that grassroot activism is important because it actually, it has an impact. I cannot show you the statistics about it because it's hard to estimate, but speaking with so many people... that's like, why is our movement where it is today?

Like, did grassroots activism have nothing to do with it? I would say like, grassroots activism has everything to do with it. Yeah, also, I would say, it's the best... like all the people that have like senior positions, not all, but the majority of people in my organization that do like very non activist tasks, they do like the finances or whatever, they started as grassroots activists.

Mariann Sullivan: What about vegan activism, do you think, I mean, you obviously believe in the worth of persuading people to go vegan or to go more vegan or to, to consider being vegan. I mean, I passionately believe that matters. So I'm just asking this. for the sake of asking it, but why do you think it matters?

Why does persuading one person to go vegan when that will have such a little impact on the number of animals, or no impact at all possibly on the number of animals killed, why is it important?

Benny Andersson: Yeah, I think it's important because if I succeed in getting one person going vegan, that person has her own life, her own friends, so my impact will, how to say, I don't know, multiply? That might be the word.

Uh, yeah, and of course there will be setbacks, people will stop being vegan, we all know it, like there are a lot of people that used to be vegans, of course. But not doing it, I would say, if you have the possibility to do it, if you have the time or energy or if you have the capacity to do it, you should do it. I understand that not everyone likes to do like, this vegan outreach thing,

Mariann Sullivan: No, different things are for different people.

Benny Andersson: But, there are so many like different kinds of activism.

Like a lot of my friends that are vegans that are not like considering themselves as activists, but they are really good at, you know, showing their food at work. They're like baking vegan cakes.

Mariann Sullivan: I consider that activism..

Benny Andersson: Yeah, and I tell them, yeah, what you are doing is activism.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah.

Benny Andersson: They say, no,

Mariann Sullivan: Great thing is, is like doing animal rights and legislative, like can really wear on the soul. Knowing what we know is very hard. And the baking the cakes gives you a little other way to do something positive and makes you happy at the same time helping animals. So it's good that we have that to turn to when we can't handle it.

Benny Andersson: Yeah, I think some of the cake bakers have probably convinced more people to go vegan than I have. So, I, I think there're like so many different ways to influence people, if you want to use that word, or to provide food for thought to more people.

There's so many ways. There's not just one. That's why we don't want to use, okay, we are only targeting politicians or only going after corporations or only doing like street activism. I think when you do many different kinds, and we have, since we have the size to do it as an organization, they are like also helping each other out.

Because people that run companies or work in companies, They're also regular people. They see our campaigns in the street and then we have a meeting with them and they say, Oh yeah, I saw your ads on the subway today, or I saw your TV ad. Okay. Yeah.

That was not targeting them, it was talking about factory farming in general. So, or like politicians, they see companies like, you don't have to think about the whole US, you can think about a state or a city influencing, like, New York City for example, that's population wise the same as Sweden,

Mariann Sullivan: right.

Benny Andersson: 11 or 12 million or something like that.

So I think, like, when you influence a lot of people in New York, they are intersecting with each other. They are politicians or they are own companies or work in companies. So that's where I see the strength like of combining our different tactics.

Mariann Sullivan: think it's kind of basically rooted in the fact that we are primates and as primates, we copy each other. It's kind of as simple as that. If you're just out there doing it and talking about it, of course, because we're kind of special primates. But, yeah, that's the way change happens.

Uh, maybe it feels small, but I just read an article by Kenny Torella, who's a reporter for Vox here, who reports a lot on animal issues. And it was a fascinating study that he reported on, about how both meat eating and refraining from meat eating have gone up dramatically in the U. S. And he's like, well, how can that possibly be? And they did like this interesting study by actually studying the records from grocery stores for long periods of time of what people were buying, what individual people were buying. And the meat eaters are actually buying more meat, even more and more meat. And a lot of people are eating a lot less of it, which is not something you would know just from the overall number. And so that made me feel like maybe we are getting somewhere, at least with some people.

Benny Andersson: Yeah. That is super interesting. I have to read that.

Mariann Sullivan: It's on Vox. com, a recent article.

Benny Andersson: I think that kind of reflects also, you know, in a way, that our society, like, yeah, we're talking about like more polarized society or like we're living in our, what do you call it, like filter bubbles or something, yeah, we're living in, so many different worlds, but we're in the same world. And I think in some parts of society, meat eating is like, that's the shit, you know? It's almost like if you don't eat meat all the time, then it's not food.

Uh,

Yeah. And then you have a other, people like talking about, like, I don't know if that's a word, but meat shame. They're ashamed of eating meat. It's like,

Mariann Sullivan: I don't think we have that here.

Benny Andersson: Okay, yeah, but there's something called like the fly, um, It's a Swedish word, like, flygskam, it's like, you're ashamed of flying because it's bad for the,

Mariann Sullivan: have that either.

Benny Andersson: yeah, but that's, that's an actual

word.

Mariann Sullivan: of anything,

Benny Andersson: Now, uh, I wouldn't say like, shame is not like, it's like a super good emotion to feel a lot, but there, there should

be at least some slight

Mariann Sullivan: when you make people feel shame.

Absolutely. When you make people feel shame, sometimes they react the wrong way.

Benny Andersson: Yeah, yeah. But I don't know, that's just my made up theory in the life since you told me about this article. Like, yeah, I think they're like different groups behave very, very, very differently. They can be neighbors, they can, you know, live next door to each other and yeah...

Mariann Sullivan: People do not pick up all their habits from their neighbors anymore. They pick it up from, you know, social media or whatever.

yeah.

So yeah, this isn't geographic or anything like that, or class or whatever. It's really fascinating. I wish we could, uh, talk more, Benny, but I've kept you on here for a really long time.

I hope you'll join me for a little bonus for our flock members, but it's really been a joy hearing about the amazing work you're doing. It's really, really very powerful stuff.

Benny Andersson: Yeah, thank you and I would say I'm privileged to be surrounded by all these amazing people in my organization and also there's so many organizations in the US that we have drawn inspiration from for so many years. So yeah, it's a privilege.

Mariann Sullivan: I always say that, like, finding out what happens to animals ruins your life, but then you meet the nicest people.

Benny Andersson: Yes. That's, also true. Both are true.

Mariann Sullivan: Well, thanks, Benny. ​