Building Effective Legislative Campaigns with Natalie Ahwesh and Hannah Truxell

[00:00:05] Jasmin Singer: Thank you both so much for being here. We've been really looking forward to this chat. There's so much that we want to know about and discuss with you about just campaign work and strategy and museums in your town, whatever. Whatever it is we are excited about chatting with you.

Natalie, let's start with you. I wanna start with a little background on Humane Action Pennsylvania and your role there. Tell us about it.

[00:00:30] Natalie Ahwesh: Sure. Humane Action Pennsylvania is about to have our 10th birthday next month. We actually started as Humane Action Pittsburgh, just a few volunteers meeting in a church basement to talk about different animal welfare issues and policies out there that we wanted to support or not support.

And, you know, mobilize the Pittsburgh community into following suit. Quickly decided that we wanted to work to pass our own policies for the needs in the greater Pittsburgh area, so we started really just focused on policy work. We passed a few laws with Pittsburgh City Council. We did the first retail sales ban in the state of Pennsylvania on selling dogs, cats, and rabbits that don't come from a shelter or rescue. One of my proudest achievements is we passed a ban on traveling exotic circus performances in a few places, and we got the circus out of Pittsburgh. As we passed more and more policy, we saw there was really a need for education. So not only educating legislators, which we'd been doing, but educating other stakeholders and community members about pressing animal welfare issues.

So, we became an official 501c3 in 2019, and most of what we do now is education, but we still do policy work, of course. We're a little bit unique in that we take a really holistic view at animal welfare issues and how they connect with other social issues like the environment or human health or domestic violence or whatever it may be. So we try to kinda, I guess, get people to expand their circle of compassion, as I like to say. So they might not consider themselves an animal advocate, but they care about the environment and so we can bring them into the animal welfare movement that way.

I'm one of the founding members and I've been the Executive Director now for a few years.

[00:02:10] Mariann Sullivan: God, I, I love everything about that. It sounds like you're doing amazing work and it's very strategic and you've actually accomplished something which is saying something in this movement.

So Hannah, I should mention that we've had Gabriel Wildgen on to talk about the Alliance. So some of our listeners are probably familiar with what it's doing, but other people may not have heard that interview. Could you just give us a brief overview and an update, because that interview was at least six months ago, about what the Animal Policy Alliance is?

[00:02:38] Hannah Truxell: Yeah, absolutely. So the Animal Policy Alliance was founded by The Humane League and launched last year. And we are a collective of local and state organizations that are dedicated to making changes for animals raised for food and fur. And Humane Action Pennsylvania is actually one of those APA members or Animal Policy Alliance members, and they were a founding member.

So they've been with us since the beginning and it's been so cool to see their growth and Natalie's leadership. We have grown since you last interviewed Gabriel, so we are up to 26 members now and continuing to grow.

[00:03:19] Jasmin Singer: Wow. That's so cool. Alright, lots more questions for you Hannah, but Natalie, let's go back to you for just a moment. Now tell us how you became involved in the Animal Policy Alliance.

[00:03:31] Natalie Ahwesh: Oh my gosh, that's a great question and one that I have so little recollection of. I think, Hannah, correct me if I'm wrong, but Gabriel was doing something with Harvard and reached out to me as part of a research study on I think just policy work, grassroots policy work in the animal welfare movement. I don't remember how he stumbled across me. But anyway, I had a great talk with Gabriel and I think a colleague of his and then kind of forgot about it. And then I think a year or two later, Gabriel reached out and said that, you know, the Humane League was creating this Animal Policy Alliance and invited us to join.

So my memory is really bad. So Hannah, you can fact check that.

[00:04:13] Hannah Truxell: Your memory is actually way better than you're giving yourself credit for, because that is, that is exactly what happened.

[00:04:19] Natalie Ahwesh: Great.

[00:04:21] Mariann Sullivan: You know, and I love that story because it just, you know, like everything we do, especially if like Gabriel, we remember who people are, and remember those connections, the bigger the movement grows, the bigger the movement grows. I mean, it just grows on itself and all of those connections end up meaning something, so it's actually a really great story. Hannah, tell us exactly like what are the parameters for the type of legislation the APA wants to offer support for? You're working with people who are supporting all sorts of things. What are you looking for to help them with?

[00:04:50] Hannah Truxell: Yeah, absolutely. We as a team and as a public policy team at The Humane League, we focus solely on animals raised for food and animals raised for fur. So the support that we provide to Animal Policy Alliance members is only within that scope. And as you mentioned, our members work on a lot of different issues and make a lot of progress in a lot of other spaces.

But one thing that we know at The Humane League and generally speaking, is that farmed animals are sorely underrepresented in conversations around policy development, which is part of the impetus for why we created the Animal Policy Alliance. So we keep our scope really narrow so that we don't get into mission creep and we can stay as effective as possible.

[00:05:40] Jasmin Singer: Hmm. And just generally speaking, what type of support is available? Hannah?

[00:05:45] Hannah Truxell: We provide support that ranges from drafting legislation to creating fact sheets. We also provide campaign strategy support. In fact, we'll get into it in a bit, but we're actually working with Humane Action Pennsylvania right now on their foie gras ordinance and enforcement. So we provide ongoing support as a policy goes from introduction to implementation to enforcement.

[00:06:13] Mariann Sullivan: All right, so let's get to the issue at hand here and that has to do with foie gras, and most of our listeners are probably somewhat familiar with the horrors of foie gras. But can you just kind of give us the basics and then talk a little bit about why you decided to focus on this issue?

I mean, one thing that we've got in this movement is a whole lot of things that we could be working on. So why foie gras and just an overview of why it's so bad.

[00:06:40] Hannah Truxell: Foie gras is falsely marketed as a luxury product. And what people don't understand about foie gras is that the reality behind the production of the product is horrific. So on foie gras farms, producers will use a technique called gavage, which includes essentially inserting a long pipe down a goose or duck's throat to feed them beyond what is natural or even beyond what they desire in order to fatten their liver and create that buttery texture that foie gras is known for.

It's one of the cruelest practices in animal agriculture, and that's why a lot of activists have our sights set on ending the production and sale of it.

[00:07:31] Natalie Ahwesh: Yeah. And as to why Humane Action Pennsylvania wanted to work on this. I mean, besides just the incredible cruelty that Hannah just described and not wanting to have that kind of cruelty in our city. You know, we work on policy and education for all animals, right?

Companion, wildlife, farmed animals, but we really hadn't done much policy work with farm animals just because, I mean, one, it's hard. You know, people tend to care a lot more about puppies and kittens than they do about farm animals. And also, you know, we do have a lot of limitations in the state of Pennsylvania for what we can do locally around farm animal protection because of our right to farm law, which I think is pretty common across a lot of states, although I'm sure Hannah can speak more to that than me.

So, we're very limited locally with what we can do in terms of regulating agricultural, and I hate to say it, but normal agricultural practices, as the industry loves to say, but we don't have any foie gras production farms in Pennsylvania. So we knew that if we targeted this practice, you know, the ban that we worked on was not only a ban on the production to stop any potential future farms from opening, but the sale, which is really the key part of it. And we felt like we were less likely to see legal challenges because there are no foie gras producing facilities in Pennsylvania. And if you're at all familiar with the lawsuit in New York City, who passed a very similar ban before us, you know, they've been kind of caught up in legal challenges around that.

[00:08:58] Jasmin Singer: Yeah, I get, I wanted to add just a personal anecdote, which is that one of my first jobs in, I'll call it the institutional animal protection movement, which was almost 20 years ago, was running the New York City anti foie gras campaign when I worked for Farm Sanctuary from New York City. And it was a campaign I had inherited, it existed before I worked there, and it involved a, a weekly protest that went on for like years. And I, you know, there were things that I probably would've done differently if I were forming the campaign, like for example, I didn't feel there was necessarily a clear end goal for this particular protest.

And if it was educational outreach, I think that's perfectly fine. But I also sort of wonder what the markers of success become at that point. We stood in front of a grocery store, like a sort of. upper West Side grocery store and with our signs and our footage, and people hated us.

You know, like they really hated us. But the one in every a hundred people who would be moved would fill out a comment card that they would then drop inside the box right in, you know, the comment section in the grocery store, and the managers would promptly throw those out. So I'm not sure, I don't know what it did, but there was a lot of hostility because of Hudson Valley Foie Gras. And so you know, I learned so much in that campaign and in that role and that experience, just about how to effectively and ineffectively run campaigns. So I guess I'm curious, first of all, a logistical question. Where is it sold? Is it mostly in restaurants?

[00:10:52] Natalie Ahwesh: In Pittsburgh, that's correct, or it was correct. We did an inventory as one of our first steps in tackling this so that we knew exactly what we were dealing with. if it was, you know, sold at 200 restaurants across the city, we knew we might have a fight on our hands with the restaurant owners. We found at the time there were about 11, I think, restaurants and one specialty grocery store in the city limits selling foie gras, which is less than one percent if you look at it that way, which is how we kind of sold it to council.

And so it wasn't something really common. And, you know, we did get the like. Well, why bother with this? Right? If it's not that common, why not go after a different industry? There's, I guess a point to that, but also we feel like we have to shoot for wins where we can get them. And as I described earlier, we didn't feel like a farm animal policy was necessarily winnable at the time. And you know, I think a victory for one animal is a victory for animals everywhere.

[00:11:51] Jasmin Singer: Absolutely.

[00:11:52] Natalie Ahwesh: We certainly aim to pass policy and do work that is more widespread in terms of the effects. But also, you know, this was important. It spread awareness. Most people in the city, and I'm guessing other places, really didn't have any idea what foie gras was.

They didn't understand why we were targeting that as opposed to things, you know? So I think there was a lot of education around not only this cruel practice, but also being able to describe to people that, yes, it's incredibly cruel, but there's so many other incredibly cruel things going on in other industries too.

So it's kind of a gateway to open up conversation to other animals that we're using for food.

[00:12:30] Jasmin Singer: Yeah. I mean, Hudson Valley Foie Gras had a real stranglehold over the whole area. I think it was a reason why certain organizations chose to do some investigative work into the human rights concerns with the farm workers at Hudson Valley Foie Gras, which was also, you know, not surprisingly terrible. I'm just wondering, Hannah, maybe you could answer this, how much of a role does the APA play in deciding what issue or campaign to focus on?

[00:13:01] Hannah Truxell: We play a role in so far as we help our Animal Policy Alliance members think through what their options are. We help them think through what's strategic in terms of their legislative and political landscape. And then in addition to that, we look at the legal landscape. So Natalie mentioned right to farm laws.

Those are a huge barrier to local progress for farmed animals. I mean, we're seeing it in New York City right now. Like, you know, Natalie mentioned the litigation around that foie gras ban. You have to be very intentional about how you craft laws in order to make sure that they can withstand legal challenge and do what you are wanting them to do.

[00:13:46] Mariann Sullivan: I just wanted to add to what you said, Natalie. I just think what you said is just so vitally important about when you do reach beyond things like foie gras, which are, you know, luxury foods and you start talking about what progress you can make with other animals. I think some people are probably feel that, well why go after foie gras as you said, like it'll just make people think that the only bad thing going on for animals in agriculture is foie gras when we all know that it's just as bad for laying hens. But the way you put it, I think, was so important to maintain that messaging. To think of it as, we're getting animals, farm animals on people's minds.

And once they're on people's minds, if we have messaged it right, we can expand that conversation. It's not a dead end. It's a step forward.

I mean, I just can tell from the way you're talking about it, that that's exactly the approach that you were taking.

That this is something that we can accomplish and then maybe we should look at other things as well someday.

Yeah. Absolutely. And that's what we're trying to do. We're actually hoping to introduce this year at the state level, a gestation crate phase out. You know, I think if there's anybody out there that is with an organization, maybe, you know, a small grassroots organization or thinking of starting one, that's not something that you can just dive right into.

[00:15:01] Natalie Ahwesh: At least not in my opinion or my experience, something at that level. My formal training is I was a college math professor. You know, I wasn't schooled on policy work or animal advocacy or anything like that. So it's really just all been for myself and most of my team kind of learning as we go.

So we really had to start. You know, I mentioned our first bill, the legislation that banned selling dogs, cats, and rabbits from pet stores that didn't come from a rescue or shelter. And of course, that's a really important issue close to my heart. I feel like we had to start at that level of not only companion animals, but something that wasn't incredibly prevalent in Pittsburgh to learn more about the process, learn more about the players, build those relationships and get some, I'm gonna use easy in air quotes, easy victories under our belt in order to gain that knowledge and experience and the relationships needed to tackle heavier lifts.

[00:15:55] Jasmin Singer: Right.

[00:15:56] Mariann Sullivan: And then you can say to people, well, if you banned foie gras, how can you possibly support putting a pig in a gestation crate? It's like,

[00:16:02] Jasmin Singer: I.

[00:16:03] Mariann Sullivan: significantly different.

[00:16:04] Jasmin Singer: I remember doing a protest in front of like a fancy restaurant on the lower East side or something. And it was when Obama was running for president and Gene Bauer was there and the restaurant owner was outside and was like, why are you guys even here? It was a silent protest. It's like, why are you guys even here?

Like, don't you care about other issues? And I said, yeah, we have an anti-veal protest next week for Mother's Day if you'd like to join us. And he goes, no, I actually have a job. And Gene Bauer said, so does she. She's a community organizer just like Barack Obama.

[00:16:42] Hannah Truxell: Right on.

[00:16:43] Jasmin Singer: that story.

[00:16:43] Mariann Sullivan: Nice comeback.

[00:16:44] Jasmin Singer: Yeah. And by the way, I just wanna say Marian and I always say that animal rights runs the gamut of the political spectrum, and it's kind of the only thing that does.

But I wanna say in response to what you just said, Natalie, that animal rights also runs the gamut of professions. And because you are like a math professor and I was a theater kid, what other issue would bring us together right now on the same interview, but caring about animals? Like, I don't even know basic addition. It's true. Anyway, okay. I digress.

[00:17:18] Mariann Sullivan: Ok, can we get back to the legislation?

Because we haven't gotten to the exact legislation.

[00:17:22] Jasmin Singer: Know, I know.

You just have to let me tell my stories. Mariann, why don't you know this already? Uh, yeah, if you can.

[00:17:29] Mariann Sullivan: I would like to know what the legislation actually says.

[00:17:32] Jasmin Singer: Right.

[00:17:33] Mariann Sullivan: And Hannah, I understand this is one of your big roles. That one of the things that the Animal Policy Alliance really helps with is writing the legislation, which makes sense, since you're a lawyer and you have other legal eagles working on this as well, I guess.

[00:17:44] Natalie Ahwesh: So tell us what it says .And were there any particular choices you made about how to craft it?

I have to say yes, Hannah and her team were incredibly helpful. I mean, we were so lucky to have other places like California and New York paved the way in already working on legislation.

[00:18:02] Natalie Ahwesh: And I think every time, you know, at least for us that we're working in legislation, we're able to learn and modify those pieces of legislation to hopefully make them better and avoid, you know, loopholes that might have been in earlier iterations. So Hannah and her team at The Humane League were so incredibly helpful with that. It bans the production and sale of force fed animal products and that phrasing, I think, I don't know if this is maybe getting a little off topic, but Hannah was asking me in a debrief after we passed this legislation, if I could do anything differently, what might I do? And I said I would absolutely not call it a foie gras ban like we did.

Just, you know, colloquially, I feel like us in the animal community, we know what that means, the general public does not. So it was very different reaction when I was communicating about this ordinance to, you know, John Q Public, a foie gras ban, where it was like, that's so dumb. What's the point? Versus a force fed animal product ban. And it's like, oh my god, they're force feeding animals. So the language in the legislation says force fed. And that is always, at least, you know, publicly outside of the animal community, how I refer to it now in hindsight.

[00:19:05] Mariann Sullivan: That is such an excellent point. Like, I would call it a foie gras ban because the words foie gras are just anathema to me. Like, of course that's a terrible thing. Other people don't think that. Like, they don't even know what you're talking about.

[00:19:18] Natalie Ahwesh: Right.

[00:19:18] Mariann Sullivan: They don't even know how to pronounce it.

[00:19:19] Jasmin Singer: Can I ask a, a somewhat ignorant question as like a non-lawyer here? I remember, and I'm not up on this, but I remember that like after one of the times the ban of the sale in New York City went through there was, like kind of word salad happening on menus. And it was like, instead of calling it foie gras, they would call it, you know, pate or something like that.

[00:19:44] Natalie Ahwesh: dealing with now.

[00:19:45] Jasmin Singer: Yeah. Oh, okay. Can you tell us a little bit more about that and does that play a role in the way you worded this?

[00:19:51] Natalie Ahwesh: Well, so yes and yes. Just to go back for a moment and Hannah, please chime in because you helped craft this, so you probably could speak to it better than me, but we were also strategic in calling it Force Fed. Well, one because of the point that you just brought up, right? Because if we just banned foie gras, then yeah what about pate de Duck or, you know, whatever else they wanna call it. And it also, actually, it doesn't ban the sale of foie gras. So if the restaurant owners can prove that their foie gras does not come from a facility that uses force feeding, which I think there's one or two in the world,

[00:20:24] Hannah Truxell: Mm-hmm.

[00:20:25] Natalie Ahwesh: In I think Spain, so they're very, very, very likely not getting their foie gras from there. But we thought that we would be less likely to get pushback from the restaurant community, and also help withstand certain legal challenges that we thought could arise if we banned the product instead of the method.

[00:20:42] Hannah Truxell: One of the things that came out of Natalie's work in Pittsburgh has been my team and I are doing case studies on successful legislative campaigns. And we did a case study on the Pittsburgh foie gras ban and we also did a case study on the California foie gras production and sales ban from many years ago.

And the beauty of these case studies is that along the way we got to hear lessons learned from folks like Natalie about calling it a forced fed product ban versus a foie gras ban. And the reasoning why the messaging was so key, and we also learned, you know, in California, like you all were mentioning, there were all these loopholes.

They were calling it all these obscure things. They were like giving it away for free with crackers and just like, there were all these crazy loopholes. And the more we had conversation and the more we dove into it, we were like, we can fix these things in the model legislation that we draft for our Animal Policy Alliance members.

And so we've done that. We've made it clear that it's on the business owner to prove that this product is not the result of force feeding. And you've gotta show evidence and otherwise, the enforcement officer is going to assume that it's a product that's the result of force feeding and you're gonna get fined.

It's made our work better because of what we've learned from advocates that have led these campaigns on the ground.

[00:22:10] Mariann Sullivan: That actually brings up a really interesting question too. Like you, you say you're crafting model legislation. Is that another thing that the APA is doing now that you have model legislation then do you hope people tweak it for their particular jurisdiction in case there are variations or whatever?

[00:22:26] Hannah Truxell: Yes, absolutely. We understand that there are challenges with just having a model piece of legislation. They can't just automatically be translated into a separate jurisdiction. And our hope is that by having model legislation, it gives our members a place to start and then they can come and collaborate with us on the specifics.

One thing that we know that is key to upholding these laws is making sure that they have as much community relevance as possible. So we work with them to clearly craft the reasoning behind the law in order to help it withstand legal challenge.

[00:23:09] Jasmin Singer: And Natalie, a question for you. You started to get into this a bit, but you chose to bring this bill before the Pittsburgh City Council. Were there any reasons in particular that you chose Pittsburgh, which is by the way, a city we completely love as we were chatting about before we hit record.

[00:23:30] Natalie Ahwesh: Well, we're based here. Humane Action Pennsylvania is based in Pittsburgh. I live here. You know, I talked a little bit earlier about the importance of relationship building and how over the years of doing different policies, we were able to build so many amazing relationships with Pittsburgh City Council.

Specifically one, I call 'em our animal champion, pretty much every Pittsburgh law we've passed has been with this particular council member.

And so, we thought we could do it here. We really want to spread the legislation across the state. We'd love to pass it next in Philadelphia. And then we do have a commitment from a state legislator that if we can get a ban in Philadelphia, they will introduce a state ban. So we have set our sights on Philadelphia. I don't have a timeline. We're currently looking for someone to lead that because it's so important to have constituents

[00:24:17] Jasmin Singer: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:17] Natalie Ahwesh: members involved. And so that's something that we're actively working on. So maybe the next time I speak with you, we'll be underway for that. Hopefully

[00:24:25] Jasmin Singer: Or maybe one of our listeners will reach out to you because I know we have quite a few people in Philadelphia, also a city we love.

[00:24:32] Hannah Truxell: Very cool.

[00:24:33] Natalie Ahwesh: That would be great.

[00:24:34] Mariann Sullivan: So, I mean, obviously it helped to be local in Pittsburgh, and the fact that you'd been doing legislative work there for a time, did you know beforehand, did you have somebody in mind who, who you thought might wanna introduce it? Did you have a feel for who was on your side? Is that part of this process and is it really an important part of this process? Because I don't wanna intimidate people who don't have that yet.

[00:24:57] Natalie Ahwesh: Well, I remember when I first got involved with Humane Action Pennsylvania, and like I said, I was teaching math. I didn't even know who my representatives were.

But you know, we had this idea that we wanted to do, we had three pieces of policy. One was the retail sales ban that I mentioned. The other was the circus ban that I mentioned. And the third was finally banning live pigeon shoots in Pennsylvania, which we have not been able to do, and advocates have been working on that for over 30 years. But two outta three I guess isn't too bad for 10 years. Anyway, I thought, well, I'll just look up and see who my council person is. And I called him and I left a message and I remember he called me back and I was in the grocery store and I was like you would've thought he was a celebrity or something. I was like, oh my God, my city council person called me back and we set up a time to have coffee. Again, I didn't really have any idea what I was doing, but I met with him and I said, I see some problems in our city, related to animal welfare and I'd like to work on them.

Will you do this? And he said, yes. The first bill that we passed, the retail sales one, we introduced it and passed it in three weeks. And I thought, oh my God, this is so easy. And then the circus bill took three years. But yeah, it's funny, you know, you were talking about protesting and there's of course a lot of protesters here for foie gras and, and other things too. And Humane Action Pennsylvania has taken a very strategic approach, approach to being a non protesting organization. We never participated or organized protests, and that's not because we don't think that protesting has a purpose in the movement. It absolutely does. And I remember protesting the circus for years before I joined the organization. But for us, we feel that we've been able to be more successful at building relationships with the key stakeholders that we need, and be viewed as, I'm gonna say, like the. Again, I keep wanting to use air quotes. I know this is not necessarily on video, but, uh, the like professional animal welfare organization, the reasonable ones.

And so I love, I'm sure this kind of translates into any advocacy movement, but I feel like in the animal community, I love that we can have all those different sides of the advocacy spectrum represented and, and hopefully work together. Of course, it doesn't always work out that way.

[00:27:16] Mariann Sullivan: That was really, really informative and I totally agree with you. Having different people play different roles is ideal, but I also totally agree with you we don't always all agree with each other, so that can be a problem, but

[00:27:27] Jasmin Singer: Well, actually, can I just jump in with a question there on that subject? Sorry to interrupt you, Mariann.

[00:27:32] Mariann Sullivan: It's all right.

[00:27:33] Jasmin Singer: But, Our Hen House listeners and Our Hen House guests also represent all different parts of activism. You know, we cover the arts, we cover legal advocacy, we cover grassroots, we cover investigative, uh, you name it, and our listeners too.

And Mariann and I you know, we don't know what works. And that's why Our Hen House exists because we want to talk to people from all of those examples and more, but there are people who really object to single issue campaigns and so I'm wondering if one of you can speak to that. There has been criticism in the animal protection world in the past about how it could be sort of counter to animal liberation to focus on a particular single issue campaign such as foie gras.

Would one of you mind speaking to that?

[00:28:19] Natalie Ahwesh: I think that's a really great question and a really great point. And hey, I don't have all of the answers I wish that I did. You know, my philosophy and I guess I could say the philosophy of Humane Action Pennsylvania is we want progress over perfection. So I do feel like I can, you know, tangibly rack up the victories that we've had. I mean,have we e solved the animal welfare crisis?

Like, absolutely not. Are there things we could and should be doing better? I'm sure. But we're doing something and we are making progress and we are educating people and we are changing laws.

[00:28:56] Jasmin Singer: Right,

[00:28:57] Natalie Ahwesh: I guess that's my answer.

[00:28:58] Jasmin Singer: Right. I mean, I personally agree with you. And even if I didn't, I don't know what's right and what works, you know? This is an emergency, this is a horrible emergency. And so there's room for every philosophy in my opinion. But let's get back on track and thank you for going on that tangent with me.

Mariann, you wanna take the next question?

[00:29:20] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, I, I guess I was wondering, getting back to the city council, it sounds like, well, with this particular bill, particularly with the farm animal issue, like, was there a lot of opposition? What was the opposition like?

Was there any kind of, like, did people come in from other places to try to fight this? Who were your main supporters on the city council? I've obviously, I know nothing about the Pittsburgh City Council. I don't know whether it's a bipartisan group or whether... like in Rochester, they would all be Democrats. There,

[00:29:50] Natalie Ahwesh: It's the same in Pittsburgh. I don't think there's been a Republican on council for, I don't know. Uh, I mean, not in my lifetime. I would say like 50 years or something.

[00:30:00] Mariann Sullivan: a party issue, but I, I would assume there were different opinions.

[00:30:04] Natalie Ahwesh: So I would say, well, I'm gonna say a couple of things, I guess, if that's okay. So when we did, probably what we're most known for, which was the circus ban that I referenced back in 2017, so the city council person that we were working with, who was the same person that we worked on the foie gras ban with, you know, he called for a public hearing so that members of the public could come and voice whether they support it or oppose the legislation. Like, no pun intended, but it really turned into a circus. The Shriners literally sent I think four busloads full of clowns. And they had signs that said, Councilman Kraus, who was the person we were working with, Councilman Kraus hates kids 'cause you know, their Shriners children's charities, which the circus does nothing to fund by the way. They had signs that said Bruce Kraus makes clowns cry. The Pittsburgh Zoo, I think gave every employee that day off so that they could come fight against it. you know, Ringling Brothers was of course there. The National Aviary, which is located in Pittsburgh, was there. And then, you know, we had like 15 constituents that we had mobilized to come down to speak in support of it.

And I mean, it went on for hours and hours and hours. And frankly, I think it just annoyed the council people. So, in working with Councilman Kraus, again, I think he really just kind of wanted to keep it quiet and talk to other members kind of behind the scenes.

We were also in a really fortuitous position, well, not really, he's retiring, which is bad because we can't work with him anymore, but he wanted this to kind of be his swan song. So I don't wanna say that members of council were against it. I don't think most of them cared.

[00:31:40] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah.

Yeah.

[00:31:41] Natalie Ahwesh: So we were able to get a vote of seven to two. I don't really have any real insight on the two who voted against it, so I'm not sure.

I can't speak to that. But it was, I would say, a decisive victory if you're looking at the numbers. But, know, the sad fact is, and I'm guessing this translates to other places, like most of the legislators, either don't care or they don't care enough to make it a priority. After the legislation passed, I mean, we did get a lot of pushback from the community, not people that were like, we're dying to have foie gras. But we're experiencing all of these other issues that, you know, translate across the country, I think. Why is council wasting its time on this? And our biggest newspaper had an op-ed just tearing our council person to shreds over why he would waste time on this. And so that was really the backlash that we got.

It was nothing, I don't think issue specific.

[00:32:32] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah,

[00:32:32] Natalie Ahwesh: It was all just about not being important.

[00:32:34] Mariann Sullivan: To be clear, like legislative bodies waste time on all sorts of things all the time. It's only on animal issues that the press suddenly becomes upset about it.

Well, Hannah, you're nodding. Is that something that you've experienced in other places as well?

[00:32:49] Hannah Truxell: I have, yes, absolutely. I have heard it in other cities and it is a very convenient excuse.

[00:32:55] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah.

[00:32:56] Natalie Ahwesh: We like to say, you know, the legislators can walk and chew gum at the same time. And also, you know, we with the help of The Humane League, of course, we drafted this, we're essentially working on the enforcement, so it really isn't even taking much of council's time.

[00:33:11] Mariann Sullivan: No, of course not. It's not like you're creating a department for the protection of geese. I

[00:33:16] Natalie Ahwesh: Right, exactly.

[00:33:18] Jasmin Singer: Hannah, during the campaign, does the APA have an active role or do you leave the lobbying mostly to local folks?

[00:33:27] Hannah Truxell: Two things. One, we leave the lobbying to local folks, folks on the ground like Natalie and her team. We are very intentional about deferring to our Animal Policy Alliance members because they know their communities best and they know their legislators best. So we provide guidance and input and whatever sort of support that they need in that regard, and then we let 'em take it from there. We also at The Humane League, have a huge network of incredible supporters that we call change makers who take action for animals, on corporate campaigns and on legislative campaigns. So when we have, a legislative action at the state level or at the city level with one of our Animal Policy Alliance members, we send an action alert out to our supporters in those areas so that they can support our members and that they can also take action in their own communities to support progress for animals.

[00:34:30] Mariann Sullivan: You know, most of the farm and animal legislation that, we see getting passed, particularly by legislatures, not by ballot initiative, involves foods like foie gras foods on the periphery, foie gras, octopus. You know, you're not up against some huge industry. And of course they're very important in and of themselves.

I'm not discounting that, you know, this still involves enormous numbers of animals, even these tiny industries, when you take it animal by animal. So they're important in themselves. But you had talked a little bit about having the hope that we might be at the beginning stages of seeing farmed animals established as a legitimate area of public policy going after a gestation crate ban in the legislature as opposed to by ballot initiative.

And it is one of the ironies of this whole world that we can get people to vote for animals, and we can't get legislators representing those people to vote for animals. But that is the way it is. So do you think that this foie gras ban is actually a step towards that?

[00:35:31] Natalie Ahwesh: I hope so. I think it is.

[00:35:33] Mariann Sullivan: Well, and we've been emphasizing local legislation, but also that local legislation a step towards state legislation?

[00:35:39] Natalie Ahwesh: I would say in my experience, absolutely. There's several issues, you know, foie gras being one of them, that we are hoping to work with the state legislature and we could say, Hey, you know, we did it in Pittsburgh. You know, you could almost think of it as a pilot, not that other places around the country maybe haven't done it as well. And you know, here's what we learned, here's how it worked out, here was the public reaction. You know, I mentioned, for foie gras specifically, we had a state legislator who told us if we could pass the bill in Philly, um, that they would introduce a state bill, you know, because I would imagine in Pennsylvania, you know, Pittsburgh and Philly are the big markets for that product.

[00:36:12] Mariann Sullivan: I can imagine like issues, that deal with, you know, more commonly farmed animals, I mean, you mentioned a gestation crate ban, are harder for a million reasons, but they might actually, in some ways be easier in the sense that people kind of know that factory farming is bad. And might, recognize that, oh well maybe it should be reformed. Whereas a foie gras ban, people just have no idea what it is. It doesn't seem like part of their life. Like what are we even doing here? It's a, nobody eats foie gras. So in some ways these bigger issues that the opposition is gonna be a lot harder, but maybe the support will be stronger as well.

Do you think that's a possibility?

[00:36:50] Natalie Ahwesh: I think it is, I think it can cut both ways. You know, I know that originally when we wanted to work on this foie gras ban, like in the very, very, very early stages, we thought about maybe trying to put veal in there as well. And you know, when we did the restaurant inventory, it was like there's so many restaurants serving it and you know, it's just a much more common item.

Less common I think nowadays, but still a pretty common thing for people to consume. And, you know, I found nobody wants to be told what to eat. And so for us, I think the fact that a lot of people weren't familiar with foie gras worked in our favor in that way, right? Not in every way, of course, as I alluded to earlier, but it wasn't something that we were taking from them.

[00:37:33] Mariann Sullivan: Well, it it's also, I mean, I, that must have helped that it was really a ban on force feeding, than a ban on a specific type of food. And the same could be done with other types of animal foods. So, yeah, I think people don't wanna be told what to eat, but they might be open to being told, like, what is the limit of what we can do to animals?

[00:37:54] Natalie Ahwesh: I think that's true. You know, I was in Harrisburg last week, trying to shop around the gestation crate phase out that we would like to work on, and I met with about 15 legislators and actually talked to a few more about the issue. The purpose of my visit was really just to try to socialize the issue and see what legislators had to say.

You know, were they like, oh my God. Like, no, we would never touch that. We would never go after the ag industry, like, forget it. I met with an equal number of Democrats and Republicans, and every single one of them, I think, genuinely thought it was abhorrent and said that they, you know, depending on language, of course, that they would support a bill that would, you know, eliminate or at least greatly reduce extreme confinement for mother pigs.

So,

[00:38:34] Mariann Sullivan: Something that's been done in other states and I mean, the first time anything is done is definitely the hardest, but now, of course they haven't met the pork industry lobbyists yet, so they really don't know what they're up against.

[00:38:50] Jasmin Singer: So what would you say to people who are involved in, let's say, a local animal group or, or perhaps even thinking of starting one about the short term and long term possibilities for pro animal legislation.

[00:39:03] Natalie Ahwesh: Oh, great question. I'm only speaking from my experience, right, which is obviously very anecdotal. Like I said, I don't have any formal training in any of this, and of course I've met great advocates along the way, mostly through the Animal Policy Alliance and, we're of course all very similar in many ways, but take different approaches. So, you know, I would say it's key to remain incredibly non-partisan, maybe depending on where you live, that's less important. But even though, you know, I'm in Pittsburgh specifically, I remain very, very non-partisan. We work with a ton of Republicans for state issues and issues outside of Pittsburgh. I think you wanna set yourself apart as being, you know, at least coming across as the again, air quotes, rational, professional. I absolutely love PETA and we work with them. They have unparalleled research. I relied on them so heavily when we did our circus ban, for research on the specific animals that, you know, were coming to Pittsburgh, for example. But one of the first questions I got asked in legislator meetings was, oh my gosh, are you one of those PETA people?

[00:40:01] Mariann Sullivan: of

[00:40:01] Natalie Ahwesh: Right? And it's like.

[00:40:02] Mariann Sullivan: and, and in PETA's, uh, a salute to peta. I would also say my experience has been is if you say to them, we need you to step back on this one. They totally

[00:40:11] Natalie Ahwesh: A hundred percent. They just want what's best for the animals, which is what you would think everybody in this movement wants. But sometimes it doesn't manifest that way, in my opinion. But anyway, so, you know, being that professional, non-partisan presence,and again, in n my experience, you have to start with the low hanging fruit, the companion animal issues.

[00:40:31] Mariann Sullivan: Hannah, what, would you say to folks about first steps, either folks who have an organization but have not thought about doing any farm animal things or you know, somebody out there who's thinking maybe, maybe we need to start this here. Maybe I'm the person who's supposed to do it. What would you say to them? What advice would you give them and how can you tell them you could help?

[00:40:50] Hannah Truxell: Yeah, I, to be cliche, all it takes really is one person. And to tease, you know, future episodes, the fur sales bans in Massachusetts are great examples of that, where you had just one individual who had an idea to ban the sale of fur in their city and they made it happen. And just in incredible stories of that.

And I think in this movement and in this work, what we're up against can feel just insurmountable some days and can feel utterly and completely hopeless. I've certainly felt that myself. But, to Natalie's point, you know, progress over perfection, and we certainly believe that at The Humane League and with the APA is that if we can start with policies that might seem, you know, relatively small in the grand scheme, it can help build momentum and power and recognition of our members in their communities, then we can ultimately get to a place where we are matching the power of the animal agriculture industry, you know, with our money, with our people, and really solidly take them on.

And I think the most important thing is to have that hope that one day we'll get there. I also would say if folks are interested in starting a local organization dedicated to policy work for farmed animals or animals raised for fur, we would love to support you through the Animal Policy Alliance.

[00:42:22] Mariann Sullivan: But Al also, can I just interrupt, but you also support organizations that aren't specifically just for farm animals

[00:42:29] Hannah Truxell: yes. Yeah, yeah. Great clarification. Yes. so we have plenty of organizations like Humane Action Pittsburgh, and they focus on companion animal issues. They focus on plant-based policies, for example, and they focus on banning foie gras or banning the farming of octopus. So it really runs the gamut, and there's really a spot for everyone.

[00:42:50] Jasmin Singer: How can people get in touch with both of you and learn more about your efforts, but also potentially reach out with questions about starting their own efforts?

[00:43:00] Natalie Ahwesh: Yeah, I'd be happy to speak with anyone and, you know, let them know my experience. Of course other people started Humane Action Pennsylvania from the ground up. So we're on Facebook and Instagram and X and LinkedIn and all of that stuff at Humane Action Pennsylvania. Our website is www.humaneactionpennsylvania.org and email info@humaneactionpennsylvania.org.

[00:43:24] Hannah Truxell: And for my part, you can reach out to us, by going to our website at theanimalpolicyalliance.org. There's a contact form on there. so encourage you to reach out to us. And then for folks wanting to take action, go to thehumaneleague.org and you can sign up for what we call the Fast Action Network, where it will send you actions every day that you can take from the comfort of your own couch, in your pajamas, in whatever circumstances that work best for you.

[00:43:54] Jasmin Singer: I like that. I like to be in my pajamas in situations that work for me. Thank you both so very much for all that you're doing. This is, it's very inspiring and I appreciate the kind of tangible action steps. I, I hope that you'll hang on with us for a few more minutes 'cause I have some Zs. Same Zs.

Thank you both for joining us today on Our Hen House please stay in touch.

[00:44:19] Hannah Truxell: Yeah. Thanks for having us.

[00:44:20] Natalie Ahwesh: both.

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