Factory Farming’s Hidden Link: Investigating Livestock Auctions with Pete Paxton and Cailen LaBarge

Mariann Sullivan: We have two topics to cover, and I know that they're both part of SEED, but they're kind of different, but I'm sure you could tell us ways in which they go together.

There's the legal side and the investigation side, and I thought we'd go to the investigation side, because that's how we first heard you know, that there was something that we wanted to interview about. So the name of the organization, which I really love, is Strategies for Ethical and Environmental Development, and Pete, you're really on the investigation side, and they're really your area of expertise, we've interviewed you about it before, you've been everywhere, I don't know how you still laugh, or actually exist, knowing everything you know.

But for those people who missed your last interview, which was really a long time ago, can you tell people just a little bit about your career, the whole arc of it, and then we'll get into this most current investigation?

Pete Paxton: Yeah, so I've done investigations in the animal rights movement for 23 years.

Basically, how I got into it, is that, long story, super, super short, originally I was looking to go into law enforcement. And I was studying everything about law enforcement and different kinds of law enforcement, and I was looking at the behavioral unit of the FBI, and so I began studying serial killers.

I was like a teenager at this point, right? And I know everything about serial killers. I've read all the books, I've seen all the documentaries. And at the same time, I became vegetarian, then vegan, and an animal activist, and what I learned through my research, and what has become validated in my career, is that the worst things I've ever read about serial killers doing to people happens to animals, but on a mass scale. The difference is that there's very few people that do cruelty investigations of commercial animal abuse. Generally law enforcement doesn't do that.

If it's a farm, if it's a puppy mill, you're not going to have law enforcement going in and sizing places like that up for undercover work, right? It falls to civilians.

So I thought I'll combine the passions and I'll do this. And half my career has been dogs, the other half has been animals used for food. Um, a little bit of hunting and some other things like that here and there.

So I've worked undercover at virtually every kind of factory farm and slaughterhouse you can name. I've worked in numerous countries, a lot of commercial fishing boats. I've worked undercover at several puppy mills and investigated, like, about a thousand at this point, and co authored the book Rescue Dogs that covers a lot of the stuff about puppy mill investigations.

And so it's just been, it's been this huge mishmash of all these different cases. And then along the way, of course, trying to figure out where to fit in after all this time, Cailen and I formed, Cailen really did the work, formed SEED. And here we are.

Cailen LaBarge: It was a joint effort.

Jasmin Singer: Well, we have so many questions, there's so many things in that that I want to really dive into, but Cailen, I want to turn to you because when I think of modern factory farming, I think of animals mostly being shipped from, say, a Smithfield factory farm to the slaughterhouse and not changing hands in between.

But there is still a very powerful auction industry governing how some animals change hands. So Cailen, can you tell us what the role of these auctions is and which animals end up at them?

Cailen LaBarge: Sure. Yeah, and I think Pete actually can answer this in more depth, but I'll start out. They are integral. They are the backbone of animal ag, especially beef and dairy. We found out when we first started researching auctions that 80 percent of cattle producers rely on them to get their cows to slaughter, which is a lot larger percentage than I had previously thought.

I thought they were, you know, regional and only operating at a smaller scale, but they really are absolutely integral to the operation of industrial animal production.

And all types of animals end up at auctions. And one of my favorite facts that we uncovered from this that Pete talks about a lot in interviews is sheep go through more auctions than there are sheep because they go through them more than once, oftentimes.

So, it's really the way that animals are moved around. It also presents a pretty significant zoonotic disease risk because these animals are coming from all over the place, intermingling for brief periods of time, and then getting shipped hours.

And different species are housed together, intensively, for several hours or days at a time, and then they leave and go become exposed to other animals afterwards. I don't know if you want to add anything to that, Pete.

Pete Paxton: Yeah, you put it perfect. Yeah, that's the main thing that we found is that most people think, you think of an auction and you think that it's like, that's a few people, they got their little farms and they're selling animals to some other people for their little farm.

Some of it is that, but JBS, Cargill, Caviness Beef Packers, all these places go to auctions to buy, right? Basically, if the thought in your head for an auction is a dude in a cowboy hat, and he's just up there saying gibberish, like, Higgity biggity higgity flip, that is it. That's exactly what an auction is, right?

And it's like, the people get dressed up. It's a once a week thing. It's a big deal for the local community, and so people will get all dressed up for it.

The way I like to explain it is it's like, imagine you combine characters from the movie Deliverance with an episode of Real Housewives and like, that's what you see at the auction.

And so, everybody comes there and you have people that like, they have a lot of animals and they're selling and then some other small farmers buying. And then you got people, their job is that they're buyers for major slaughterhouses like JBS. And they go through and they are just trying to like pick every single one they can and then they'll have a semi truck come in and get them later, right?

And then you have someone who they just need one more sheep, or they want to get a little lamb for their kid to raise. All that, right? But auctions, the problem with them, is that when it comes to animal agriculture, the rule of thumb is this, the less human interaction with animals, the more neglect, the more human interaction, the more violence, and because there's constant human interaction in those auctions, constant violence.

So, all of these animals, when they come in, even animals, if they're loved on the farm and they got a name and someone's like, I don't abuse them, once they go into that auction, which most people, if you're a sheep, goat, and, you know, cattle producer, most of them rely on auctions. Once they go in. That's it. All bets are off.

Mariann Sullivan: You know, I had always thought of them as not an integral part of the industry as well, or I guess I didn't think about them that much. I didn't know much about them. But it makes total sense now that you're talking about it, because the cattle industry is so different from the pig industry. The pig industry is very integrated.

It's really farming, or what they used to call farming, whereas ranching, it is still not really small, but, but individuals or individual ranches that raise these animals, and then they, they end up changing hands. Does the auction process usually take place before they go to the feedlots?

Are the feedlots owned by the big buyers?

Pete Paxton: Yeah, so it is often they go from the farm to auction to feedlot and sometimes they can go from feedlots, depending on the size, to auction to slaughterhouse. If it's a massive feedlot, it goes straight to slaughter.

A lot of times what you'll see is you'll see these young calves that come in, and maybe they've spent time on the farm, they're a few hundred pounds, they're young calves, they come in and someone buys them up, they send them off to the feedlot to fatten them up, and then those could go straight to slaughter.

Smaller places, it's kind of like you go from one to the other. Which by the way, in the summer in Texas at livestock auctions, we saw healthy calves that are like, you know, between three and six months old, perfectly healthy, fall over, collapse, and even die from heat exhaustion.

Mariann Sullivan: That's not going to get any better either.

Pete Paxton: No, no, it's not.

Jasmin Singer: Why did you decide to focus on this aspect of the industry, I'm curious, for either of you?

Cailen LaBarge: We like to find gaps that other groups aren't working on, and we realized that there had been some previous investigations into auctions, but they were on a small scale and no one had done a real comprehensive series at several auctions across several states. So, we felt that was important to show how this feeds into the rest of the industry.

Pete Paxton: And it's like, okay, the U. S. is now the largest beef producer in the world, and the largest beef consumer. We produce more beef than Brazil. We have beaten them now.

And, it's this huge sector that's growing, it's destroying the environment. And we need to focus on other things as well, but here's how it works in like the consumer's mind. You can tell them there's a problem with factory farms and you shouldn't raise animals for food and you know, even the slaughter is bad and blah blah blah.

And they'll be like, okay I hear you Jasmin and Mariann, that makes sense. But you know what? I heard that there's someone who like, they raise their cows and they're pretty nice to them and they only have a few so I'm gonna go to Mcdonald's, right? It's like, and a lot of cognitive dissonance happens in that little space, but the result ends up being exactly what everyone else is doing.

And part of this case is to say, if you are that small producer, you're someone, who like, you have a couple animals, whatever, and you love them. You are not exempt from this because odds are your animals get to market through auction, some of them probably go through more than one auction.

I remember there was this one auction I was at, and it was this hideous place. It was a lot of abuse. Emery livestock in Texas. And this one goat came in, this woman came in. She had the goat on a leash and a collar, and she unhooks the leash, and she kisses the goat on the head, and she hands me the collar.

And normally, when you move animals, you scare them, right? You move after them, and you're like, Hey, hey! Waving your hands, and they move away from you. I had to have this goat follow me to get into a pen, but after that goat went through the auction, that goat was running like all of the others, because they beat the hell out of the animals to get him in there.

Mariann Sullivan: So that was one in Texas, but you went to a lot of auctions, right? I mean, this was a pretty big endeavor.

Where did you go and how long did you spend at each one?

Pete Paxton: So we investigated 17 livestock auctions in 10 states and I worked undercover at 15 of those auctions. It was Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa, Florida, California, Pennsylvania, New York, and Louisiana.

And the longest I was ever at one was two days. Like I'd spend a day or two. So like, the footage that you see, if you go online, and you go to the evidence breakdown, and you don't have to. You don't have to torture yourself with this, but if you go to the evidence breakdown, we have it broken down by species type, type of animal. You can see the kinds of abuse the different types of animals suffered. And it will say the name of the auction, and then you see it.

That was obtained in a day or two at that auction. Because the abuse is just that, there's no place I went to and I was like, oh, this is fine. And you know, they hire all kinds of, you know, it's just a lot of locals, but they'll take anybody. As long as you know how to work with animals, and you understand how to move around animals, as long as you're not drunk when they hire you, you can get in and work at an auction.

Cailen LaBarge: I was going to say, they seem to be fine with you drinking on the job.

Pete Paxton: Yeah, I did not drink.

Cailen LaBarge: Not you in particular,

Pete Paxton: They were, yeah, but they kept trying to offer me beer. That did happen a lot.

Jasmin Singer: Wow.

You started to get into this a little bit, but without getting too graphic, since our listeners already fully accept that it's awful, can you give us a general overview of like, some other things that are happening at these auctions? Paint a picture. And I know I'm saying paint a picture, and I'm saying don't get too graphic, so good luck.

Pete Paxton: No, I got this. It's cool. It's cool.

Mariann Sullivan: And not just what's happening to the animals, but I think some of the points you make about what's going on with the people are so fascinating.

Pete Paxton: Okay, listeners, it's my goal to not make you cry. I am going to try to make this the most entertaining and informative discussion of animal abuse you've ever heard. So let's give it a shot and see how this goes.

Okay, basically what happens at auctions is that at most auctions, so you have livestock auctions, and then you have small animal auctions like poultry auctions. I'll describe those in a sec.

At the livestock auctions, everybody comes in to unload. It's a line of cars. Sometimes it goes down the county road or around the block, depending on where it's at, right?

People show up and they unload animals and you might have a trailer come in and you have one goat, you might have a trailer come in that is so packed with calves that when you finally get the doors open, they literally spill out and fall out onto the ground they're so packed in there.

So that, everything in between. And then people, you got to move them because you got to get them in there and get them into the pens.

Now, if they came in early, because sometimes they come in the day before, or sometimes they come in early in the morning, and then you have the auction later in the day. You don't give them food and water, generally speaking. Most of them don't.

The reason is that when you have the cattle, they go through, they come out of unloading, they go into pens, and then you got to get them into auction. And as people move into auction, they're moving them quick, right? So they're beating and shocking them, and they're moving them in.

People bid on them. Now, 90 percent of auctions do it this way. The animals come in, you look at them, and you make your bid. You make your bid by pound. Then, the animal or animals go out of the ring and they go onto a scale. You see how much they weigh, then you see how much you're paying, right?

But you don't want to pay for water weight, You don't want to pay for water and food that's in their system. So they have been dehydrated and starved that entire time until they get back to their pen. In that way, neglect is built into the system for profit. That's messed up, right?

Then they go and they go into their pens. And then people want to start unloading. Especially, like, you're a small time producer, and you're like, hey, I just need to get my three sheep and get out of here. That JBS dude is going to be showing up, and I don't want to wait behind his 18 wheeler, right? So you want to go.

Meanwhile, animals are moving to auction, out of auction, everybody's in a hurry. And you're the auction worker, and you're there, you have been busting ass all day trying to make this happen, generally speaking, sometimes we actually would get a break, often there was no break.

It was like, you go, you tell another auction worker, Hey, your section is slow right now, can you get me something? And then you're trying to like eat, literally with shit covered fingers, like eat a bag of chips while you're working, right?

You're dehydrated, you're starving, and the animal's got to move, and then amidst all of this, an animal falls and won't get up. So when these animals come out of auction, let's just say you're on the line, right?

And the animal's coming down the line. You've got corrals on your right, you've got corrals on your left. And they have to go into a numbered pen. A certain buyer buys one, let's just say, Jasmin, you're buying a bunch of goats, and they say, alright, pen 15, I know that's Jasmin's pen, gotta get that animal in the pen 15.

Mariann buys one, now that's pen 20, okay, let's take them down to pen 20, open up that gate, get them in. Jasmin's animal falls, here comes Mariann's animal, I can't get them mixed up. If they go in the wrong pen, I'm screwed. And so, people are gonna get that animal up quick before other animals come outta auction.

And that's when the real violence kicks in. And so in that way, the ones that are the weakest, become the most abused. And so the thing is, at a lot of auctions, almost everyone in the community has at some point worked at the auction. It's the place everyone goes. At least one day someone has been like, Yo man, we're down people, you're not working today, can you help out? Like, you know how it works.

And so even if you feel for those animals, you feel for those workers too. There's all kinds of people. I've worked with crews that are experienced cowboys, and I've worked with crews that are just a bunch of drunk teenagers. Everybody acts the same, right? Because they've all been there since they were kids.

I've watched people teach their kids, and not just parents of a kid, I've watched the crowd at an auction cheer on a six year old kid as he's running after sheep and goats, kicking them to make them move, right? And then I've seen a dad drinking beer while his son is so frustrated that he's overworked, he's literally picking up goats to throw them over fences.

I'm sure that that dad was treated like that six year old when he was a kid. I'm sure that his dad treated him like he was treating that teenager, right? And that kid's gonna grow up to be like his dad. And so I saw people, they're younger than me, they'd say yes sir and no sir to me. They were very kind, you know?

And the stuff that they would do to animals was just was horrendous. You know, it's good people doing bad things. And it's a culture, like the whole culture revolves around that.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, do you feel like you learned even more about human nature from this work? Or were you already like pretty sour on the entire human project before this? So you're kind of, I mean, you actually, which I guess makes sense because you were there. And as you say, like, I mean, I can't actually say the words, they're good people, but you know, in many, many ways, I'm sure they are. It's just, they leave out this one big piece.

It's both the animals are just in their way. I mean, the animals are their problem. They're the problem that they have to deal with, and they're always in the wrong place.

And so that's just frustrating. But it's even more so this cultural thing that this is what you do.

Pete Paxton: So, yeah, when I started my job, my career started with dogs and my first case is some of the worst stuff that I've ever seen happen to animals and it was dogs.

And, the rage from that case carried me on for quite a long time, just straight anger carried me on for many years. But, if anything, I've kind of chilled out. And it's that, at a certain point, I began to realize, like... this is the best way I can explain it, we see people that, they could just be poor, they could be undocumented workers, whatever the case is. And they suffer, they have no agency for themselves in any manner. And they find a job, and it just so happens to be this slaughter or this factory farm job. And if they don't do it, someone else is going to do it. And like you see it on their faces as they're doing really cruel stuff, they're taking no pleasure in it. They're just doing the job. Right? And we let that go. And we understand where they're coming from.

And I see that with people that do have agency as well. It's because I've crossed the border and I've worked in Mexico. right, it's like I see the behavior on both sides. And then I see it doesn't matter what your skin color is. It doesn't matter what your gender is, you know, it's that you're raised with this. This is a cultural thing that for some people, it's not just that they're a felon or they're undocumented and they can't speak up, that can have a major impact.

For other people, you don't have the same fear, but you have a similar fear that someone like that would have. Which is that if you speak up, it's not that you're afraid of getting kicked out of the country. It's not that you're afraid that you'd be fired and you're a felon and you can't get another job. It's that you're afraid that literally your entire family and every member of that community will see you as the enemy,

And so it's not that you're just hiding your feelings, you are destroying those feelings. You are replacing them with the idea that treating animals poorly can be a thing. Look, I mean, it's not like the brand inspectors care when they're there. It's not like the cops ever do anything about this.

You know the local cops, they have animals. They sell them and buy them at the auction. Right? So how can this really be wrong? And then law enforcement starts to adopt that mentality. Most of the time, law enforcement, when they think of animal cruelty, what they think is, the concern with animal cruelty is that it can lead to the abuse of people. right?

That's the real thing. It's not that the animals abuse, it's that it could lead to the abuse of people. So what if it doesn't?

What if all of this abuse of these animals never leads to the abuse of people? Is it really animal cruelty? And so in that way, you have this ultimate defense set up in your mind. And not just that what you're doing is okay, but that if someone else challenges it they're a threat, they're the enemy.

Jasmin Singer: Mm hmm.

Cailen LaBarge: Yeah, I think it's not just the cultural aspect, it's also an untenable work environment. You know, factory farming makes victims out of everyone and everything it touches, including the workers, including the communities that these facilities are sited in. It's a industry wholly dependent on exploitation.

Jasmin Singer: Cailen, there was a big article in Vox about the investigation by Jessica Scott Reid. Was there any other coverage or fallout?

Cailen LaBarge: Actually just two days ago, Jessica released another article through Sentient about this exact issue about how good people hurt animals, how good people do bad things to animals, specifically about some of the workers that Pete was introduced to in the course of this investigation.

Mariann Sullivan: How do you deal with getting press? I mean, this is an enormous amount of work. What is the process for trying to get it out there in the world?

Cailen LaBarge: We've been very lucky. We've had two investigations released in the course of our organization so far, and both times we've been lucky to get an exclusive. Our first case, we had an exclusive with The Guardian, and that case was another Texas livestock auction where we uncovered illegal tag switching. Where the facility was removing the RFID animal disease traceability tags and replacing them with in state organic back tags so they could be sold for three to four times the price out of state. And that case was done right at the beginning of the pandemic.

So, you know, God, we were lucky to get attention from that, because it was really a case about risks in our food system, dangers in our food system, and bad actors that could potentially be contributing to disease outbreaks. And then you have no way of tracing them back to the right herd or animal because you've now interrupted that process with fraud.

Mariann Sullivan: What's the legal situation? I mean, cruelty laws do ostensibly cover these animals in some way. I know they don't actually, but is there any legal recourse that would be possible if you could find the right person to do the right thing?

Cailen LaBarge: Yeah, actually, we went right to the USDA in that case, and they took over a federal investigation. APHIS took over the tag switching aspect, and then, we also had a complaint under the Packers and Stockyards Act, because they were also operating an illegal slaughterhouse on the property, and, yeah, that's still ongoing as far as we know. USDA's kept us in the loop.

And they're still pursuing that facility four years later.

Pete Paxton: Yeah, we should discuss the Waverly thing, just not in too much detail. Okay, I'm not going to describe this in too much detail, but I worked at Waverly Sale Barn, in Waverly, Iowa, and there was some abuse, it was some sadistic abuse, right? It was unnecessary, and it was someone abusing sheep and goats while smiling, right? And doing it because if the animals didn't move the way they wanted, these guys would do these things just to cause prolonged pain to them as if it was teaching them, right?

And they were like in their late 50s, I think one of them was in his early 60s, they'd worked there for decades. And I saw this young guy, and I tell his story on the website, I give him an alias, but I saw this young guy do something similar, and he had no look of pleasure on his face. He had a look on his face like, am I doing it? Am I doing the thing you're supposed to make me do?

It was not our goal to send anyone to jail on this case, you know, especially don't want to try to like mess with someone if they might be an undocumented worker, or just trying to not make anyone's life hell, right?

But, these guys needed to go down. And so, we went to law enforcement, and said, look, you know, this is sadistic abuse, obviously cruelty violations, it's rubbing off on a younger worker. You know, we're not looking for charges on that young man, but there's a problem here.

They went after charges for one of them, I won't go into too much detail, but there was some kicking, like kind of holding an animal in a manner that was causing a lot of pain, and then there was throwing an animal by the scrotum. Out of all of these things that were unnecessary and done just to inflict pain, the DA got in touch with me. He said, yeah, the detective spoke to an expert, and they said that out of all these incidents, throwing an animal by the scrotum is the one that was obviously unnecessary.

And I was like, wait, what? I'm sorry. So after 23 years of doing this job, Jasmin and mariann. I don't know what animal cruelty is. And sorry if that was too much detail, I'm not trying to upset people. But if you ask, what's the, like, go into law enforcement and what's the process? I mean, sometimes it works and most of the time it doesn't. And that is also a cultural thing.

Mariann Sullivan: I mean, enforcement is obviously the issue.

You know, there are some lawyers, who are doing some interesting stuff and bringing in cruelty cases, finding, you know, obscure laws but getting the local authorities to bring cruelty charges....

I'm surprised you even found a DA who would say that was animal cruelty in these situations.

Pete Paxton: Yeah, well, we did something that we weren't quite used to, which is normally, and I think there was a reason for this in the past, but normally, you know, animal rights groups may go to a DA and they're like, look, here's a binder that we made about this case. This is the cruelty statute that applies to this incident and this incident. And here's case history to back it up. And because you're too stupid to know how to do your job, prosecutor, we're going to hand you this and we're going to walk you through. And I think that there was a time when it's like they didn't want to have to do that work, but I think that now they're offended by that, right?

So we did the opposite. I had this work on this case and I had this work on a puppy mill case recently that was successful with law enforcement. I just called the cops. This is straight up my real name, this is exactly what I'm doing, please don't burn me. Do you want all the evidence? I'll give it to you and I'm going to send you a report with the highlights right now. And then that was it. And I was like, we're not looking to go to the press right now. We just, there's a problem and we want the cruelty to stop.

And that was it, they just cooperated.

Mariann Sullivan: I guess there are a lot of different factors that go into whether that's going to happen. A lot of different personalities, a lot of different cultural situations. But it's nice to note that it's not that it never happens, so it's possible.

From the article in Vox, it seems that there are actually states that have specific regulations for animal welfare at auctions, which I had no idea such regulations existed. I assume that they're just not enforced? Is that the story?

Cailen LaBarge: I think enforcement is the biggest missing piece when you're talking about anything in animal ag. We have so many regulations. Obviously, we have cruelty statutes. Much of what is done at factory farms that would be considered cruelty, as you know, is exempted because of common industry practices. Even when it's not, there's just so little enforcement.

Really, enforcement is the missing piece here.

Jasmin Singer: hmm.

Mariann Sullivan: I was surprised to hear that there were even regulations, though.

Pete Paxton: Yeah, there are, but it's like, people don't, like, one of the biggest ones is that you cannot unload downed animals. They can't be loaded at an auction, and you can't try to force them to move if they can't move. I mean, you can see on the footage online on our website, I watched this Mennonite dude, he unloads this downed cow at a livestock auction, Empire Livestock in Vernon, New York, and then there's management right there helping him do really abusive stuff to move this downed cow that can't walk through a chute and enter a pen. In fact, enter what they called the dead pen because they expected her to die.

Cailen LaBarge: And it's not just animal cruelty. When they were doing all of that illegal tag switching in the first case. A lot of that was happening directly in front of the mandated vet inspector.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. it's the same old story. But, you know, one story that is kind of new, and somebody asked this question, I'm sorry, I think it might have been you, Elizabeth. Like, obviously, disease has always been a problem. And I guess you were doing this kind of, at least before bird flu was found in virtually every cow in California, but what are the disease implications here?

I mean, these animals are just being completely mixed up together, right?

Cailen LaBarge: Yeah, I think we're just waiting for the next pandemic at this point.

Pete Paxton: Yeah, because we didn't discuss the small animal auctions. You should tell them about that.

Cailen LaBarge: We investigated auctions that had dogs, and chickens, and quail, and rabbits, guinea pigs, all together, in direct proximity to one another, in cages that were touching each other, sometimes in the same cages. So, yeah, it's a real risk, and the dairy cow bird flu problem.

I think the New York Times just released an article about how milk production is rapidly spreading bird flu now.

Jasmin Singer: I was just reading that right before we got on. It's like, I mean, on digital anyway, it's like front page about that.

What were your goals in doing this work? Like, do you see any potential for litigation? What is your flow like water strategy?

Pete Paxton: The flow like water strategy was doing the case itself because no one focuses on them. And because the heat was low, we knew that we'd get in. No one's going to hide. Like, the stuff that you see when you go online and you see that. Those people that are committing those acts have literally just met me. And all that happened right in front of me, right?

So the flow like water strategy was go where there's no resistance, there was no resistance there, we're going to get all of it. And don't just hit one place, get them all, right? Just 17 places, 10 states, this is a problem. What to do about it, this is where it's difficult.

Because this is where it's like, This is the eternal question that y'all, and interrupt me at any point, I know you deal with, we all deal with this, is that people are like, well, what should we do?

And it's this dilemma at that moment, because I'm really big on legislation as my big, the biggest thing I want to go for, right, but laws already exist. to prevent this.

It doesn't matter, they're breaking them. There's already third party inspections, you already got Beef Quality assurance and all that, you know, that's saying like, I mean, that downed cow that I was talking about being abused in New York, that place has hosted events at Cornell University for the Beef Quality Assurance Program. Where they say don't shock animals, they shock them. Don't beat downed animals, they beat them. Don't use hard objects to hit them. They were using massive canes to beat the animals, right?

It does nothing, right? So, like, realistically, when you have a culture that does that, where the vast majority of the time law enforcement doesn't want to hear anything about criminal charges,

What besides promoting a plant based diet is the realistic thing to actually stop this abuse? And so the real goal of this case was to take this slice of America and just uncover it for everybody to see.

That was the initial starting...

Mariann Sullivan: I'm really struck by when you were talking about flow like water, the fact that going to so many places, like their line, which is getting pretty old, but they still pull it out. It's like the one bad apple line, you know, that oh, oh my god, we're so shocked that this happened in our facility and we're firing these terrible immigrants right away.

And, uh,

Pete Paxton: You know how lucky I am that every single place I've worked at is the one bad apple?

I mean, what are the odds? Yeah,

Mariann Sullivan: When you do a whole bunch of them all across the country, it's a little hard to argue that, you know, the whole apple orchard isn't rotten.

We've been talking a lot about this, but I started out by saying the work you do, both on the investigation side and on the legal side, but the legal side isn't just looking at this cruelty, Cailen, my understanding is that a lot of the work you do is on the environmental side, on the environmental impacts of factory farms.

Can you tell us a little bit about the kind of... the website says you do litigation support, and I'm curious to know exactly what that means.

Cailen LaBarge: Yeah, so I am a lawyer, but I'm not a litigator, and when we started SEED, we were, like I said, really looking to fill gaps that we were seeing, that other groups weren't addressing. And one of those was a more holistic approach to advocacy and strategic litigation.

Essentially, we're not litigating. We are supporting litigation, which means we are doing all of the case development at the beginning. So, creating all of the evidentiary technical and factual record, which is a very big undertaking, takes, you know, hundreds of hours. We are going out and getting all of the water samples at the beginning that are the impetus to file the notice that are in the complaint.

We are funding the litigation. We are helping to find experts. We are going out and doing community organizing. but we're not acting as a plaintiff and like I said, we're not the litigators. So, it's a lot less risk for us. It helps us achieve our goal of proliferating these types of cases because, from my perspective, this is one of the best ways to really hold the industry accountable and force some transparency into their operations, because we have these really robust, strong federal environmental laws like the Clean Water Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, which we refer to as RCRA, and they are solely based on these technical data.

So it's almost like strict liability, where if you have the record, you have the facts, you're probably going to win. And it costs so much money for these facilities, especially the really big ones, to operate under the law successfully, that they oftentimes have to significantly reduce their herd size or close entirely, when these cases are brought and were successful. We haven't seen one of our cases through yet.

We just started this program in late 2022. We have two cases that we've supported so far. Both of them are with the law offices of Charlie Tebbutt. He's an environmental litigator that's been suing CAFOs for water pollution for decades.

In my opinion, the best of the best. He set a really amazing precedent in 2015 under RCRA that held that land applying manure in excess of the crop's agronomic intake rate, so the ability to intake those nutrients, constitutes a substantial and imminent danger to human health and the environment. That was the first time we seen that precedent.

So we are really interested in using these, statutes to help force some transparency, and also it's a really good public education tool because people in our rural communities are suffering.

Like I said, the people in these fence line communities that have to deal with the impacts of the degradation of their water quality.

They have to deal with the smells and the nuisance. And this is sometimes the only way to get justice for those communities because legislation's not there and most of these states, the big ag states, regulatory agency is completely corporately captured. So they really have no motivation to go after these farms, they historically just don't.

I mean, big ag states like Iowa barely even regulate them at all. I think 4 percent of Iowa's factory farms have NIPTES permits. So, it's a huge problem. It's becoming worse, but the industry is concerned about this type of litigation, and that's why we really want to proliferate it

Pete Paxton: It hits them where it hurts.

Mariann Sullivan: It's all about money, that's for sure.

Cailen LaBarge: Yeah, and our litigators actually closed several CAFOs, you know, he didn't set out with that intention, but the litigation that he's brought on behalf of these communities has ended up closing several CAFOs and causing herd reductions in others.

Mariann Sullivan: Oh, that's amazing.

Pete Paxton: Yeah, and, like you mentioned, like, the Flow Like Water strategy, the idea, what's so cool about this environmental program is that the animal rights movement normally sets up a campaign, goes after a target, and then after the target knows you're onto them, knows that you're focusing on them, it's like, hey, investigators, go get them, right, and so the idea is to invert it, to try to get the movement to say, can you use forethought to go after a target before you create heat? Safer, easier, cheaper to go hit your targets, right?

Because once there's heat on, that's everything in investigations, it makes everything much more difficult and dangerous. Cailen's environmental program transcends the entire idea, right? It's that these places can know that you're coming after them. They can be on notice that you're going to do it. And it doesn't matter.

It's not like going undercover. It's not like you're trying to take photographs. They're going to hide the evidence. They're polluting the water, right? They're polluting the waterway or they're polluting the groundwater. You can't.

Yeah. you sample the water and then it goes to court. You're Screwed.

You know, that's why her idea is just, is genius.

Cailen LaBarge: It wasn't my idea. There's, you know, groups have been doing this for a long time and it has to be done well because you obviously don't want to set the wrong precedent. And it has to be done in concert with other interventions. You really need that community organizing aspect. And I so look up to groups like FarmStand and SRAP and Food and Water Watch and Waterkeeper Alliance that are not only, SRAP doesn't do litigation, but these groups are amazing at community organizing.

We are just starting that part of our journey in this program. And you really need that aspect of it to go along with the litigation, because once the litigation is over, you need people in that community that are still there that are going to be educated and politically active and want to fight for their community and their environmental rights.

Mariann Sullivan: And I would so much rather be going into court with local people as the plaintiffs than with a big organization, a

Cailen LaBarge: You have to.

You have to. It usually doesn't work if you don't have some type of investment in the community, if you haven't spent time there, if you don't have local plaintiffs. You're not going to get the result that you want.

Mariann Sullivan: I actually just interviewed Emily Miller from Food and Water Watch, who does a lot of this clean Water Act litigation. She said it's getting harder and harder to use the act, that the courts are narrowing the scope. Have you found that to be the case as well?

Cailen LaBarge: Yeah, definitely. I mean, with the Sackett decision recently that, essentially, you know, removed wet, most wetlands from protection, and we have the Chevron decision, which we're definitely waiting to see what's going to happen with that. And then, of course, we have our incoming administration that's threatening to further drain our regulatory agencies from their expertise, which, you know, we already have a, a huge lack of qualified enforcement staff in these agencies,Um, and if that gets degraded even further, it's really going to come down to groups like SEED and Food and Water Watch and all these other groups that are going to step up and force that accountability and transparency that the agencies aren't able to do.

Jasmin Singer: Do you see attitudes shifting at all in rural areas specifically regarding factory farms as people who are actually on the ground see this enormous damage that they cause?

Cailen LaBarge: Absolutely. We're part of coalitions that include animal farmers, small regenerative ag farmers, and they hate it as well. So you're making allies with people in these places that you normally wouldn't be on the same team as, but it's so important. You're all fighting for the same thing.

They're such destructive, destructive parts of our society, and, they really are, you know, degrading our rural communities to such a significant extent, and these people care about what's in their water. They care about, you know, being able to go outside. They care about opening their windows in the summer.

They care about their kids not, I mean, childhood cancer is, is increasing in Iowa, largely due to this. So people care about what's happening in their communities, even if they don't necessarily care about farmed animal welfare.

Jasmin Singer: Well, that's hopeful. I mean, I, I'm glad to hear that because as we start to close up, Pete, what about you? Do you have anything that you can leave us on here? That's maybe I don't know. I want to say hopeful, but I also don't want to, like, bully you into being hopeful.

Like, just something. that

Pete Paxton: Yeah,

Mariann Sullivan: He seems like

Jasmin Singer: reason

Mariann Sullivan: He seems an oddly hopeful person, I have. to say.

Pete Paxton: We are doomed. Um, no, uh, basically, one of the things that I see, just being a field guy, cause I I see things very differently.

I'm not a guy who does things by statistics, right? It's like, I'm a field guy. And the thing is, I know that we're in dark times right now.

We're in an anti enlightenment era. Okay, this is bad. right? And we're dealing with, it's like there's two Americas, you know, there's probably more, but it's like there's at least two Americas and half of them, it seems like they never moved on from the friggin Civil War, right?

And so they're certainly not on board with the idea that animals should be treated well. but what gives me hope is in dog rescue and in the puppy mill fight. Half the people that I work with when it comes to trying to pass legislation on dog kennels or actually going to protests at pet stores, half those people are Trump supporting Republicans.

And when I go out in the field and I'm meeting people, and even when it's on this, you know, even on the auction case, any of this stuff, they're people, right?

They're just people. Yeah, there can be prejudices, and there can be personality problems just like you see everywhere. But at the same time, you know, I see people that'll open up to me. They open up to me about, like, hopes and dreams and insecurities and everything else like anyone does.

And that, I feel, is the starting point that many of us miss, is that we feel like they're so alien, and we don't know how to relate to them or communicate with them, and we have to try to remember that if we were in their position, no matter how amazing and enlightened we think we are, we may not be any different.

We just have to try to relate to them, we just have to try to like, fight for the animals, but at the same time, and that's what I love about the environmental program, fight for the animals, but you don't have to fight against all of these people. The environmental program, yeah, those farms are gonna get nailed, they're getting sued and they're gonna get fined, but, we need to be... and I, if anybody, I'm like one of the worst about this because of the nature of my job.

It's that, it's not just standing up for animals, it's demonizing workers. Right, and that's what we're trying to turn around now, is to not demonize the people, even the people that are involved in this abuse. Even if it seems wrong or unethical to do so, try to think from their point of view.

Try to imagine being in their shoes. See how it affects your behavior.

Jasmin Singer: It's a really good point.

Yep. Thank you for that. And for everything that you're doing.

Can you tell us how we can follow your work and support your efforts?

Cailen LaBarge: Yeah, so our website, our main website is ethicalstrategies.org.

Our new website for the release of the auction series is seedlivestockauctions.org. So you can find us there. You can also find us on Facebook and Instagram and Blue Sky. Can I plug something?

Jasmin Singer: Please.

Cailen LaBarge: One of the things that we anticipate running up against in, trying to bring more and more of these cases is a lack of experienced environmental litigators.

There's a lot of environmental lawyers out there, but not a lot of environmental litigators in this country that are experienced in this particular type of litigation against CAFOs specifically. So we've teamed up with Joyce Tischler the Center for Animal Law Studies at Lewis and Clark Law School to offer a one year long externship where students can come and learn from myself and Charlie Tebbutt's team and Public Justice as well.

And the deadline for that is, December 15th for the spring semester, so if there's any Lewis and Clark students listening and you're interested in applying, go to the externship program at your school and please apply to SEED's externship.

Mariann Sullivan: No, that's great. I'm really pleased to hear that. I have one more question. I know we just tied it all up, but a question into my head. do you stick to federal statutory litigation or do you ever think about nuisance? Cause there's some big verdict, just an old fashioned nuisance, which is just a, you know, basic tort that's been in the law for a gazillion years.

And there've been some big verdicts.

Cailen LaBarge: Yeah, we don't have any plans to pursue that right now, but we're certainly open to it. We're just kind of starting our litigation journey at SEED. I'm learning myself at the moment, so we're open to anything.

Mariann Sullivan: Very exciting work.

Jasmin Singer: Well, stick around for our Q& A with our flock.

But Cailen, Pete, thank you both so much for all that you're doing. It's really heroic work, and it's so difficult. And we know that this was a difficult conversation to talk about and for our listeners to hear. But we, really, really deeply appreciate you and all of the ways you're changing the world for animals.

Pete Paxton: Likewise.

Cailen LaBarge: Thank you so much for having us. We appreciate everything that y'all do, too.