The Hen Report: “All Hens, All the Time” | Postal Service Chick Deaths, Hospital Food Revolution, and Children’s Books for Animal Freedom

[00:00:12] Jasmin Singer: And this is Murray and this is our Hen Report, which is one of the episodes that goes up every week now that we're on three times a week. How's that going for you?

[00:00:24] Mariann Sullivan: All hens, all the time. That's your new life.

[00:00:27] Jasmin Singer: There was this one time many years ago where you and I wanted to have a YouTube show called Vegan Whine, but we. We wanted to whine. Like all we wanted to do was whine about things that annoyed us.

[00:00:44] Mariann Sullivan: It’s [crosstalk]

[00:00:44] Jasmin Singer: And,

[00:00:45] Mariann Sullivan: It's kind, you [crosstalk]

[00:00:46] Jasmin Singer: and we, we told a friend of ours who worked in media and she was like, no.

[00:00:51] Mariann Sullivan: That's a terrible, terrible idea.

[00:00:53] Jasmin Singer: She was like, no, you have to be positive

[00:00:56] Mariann Sullivan: while [crosstalk]

[00:00:57] Jasmin Singer: while whining. Yeah.

[00:00:59] Mariann Sullivan: I think it's brilliant.

[00:01:00] Jasmin Singer: Well, we could have been something, you know, anyway. Uh. It could have been. So, as you know, rising anxieties comes out on Tuesdays, the Hen Report on Thursdays, and the long form interviews on Fridays.

Don't forget to like and subscribe on YouTube even if you're not watching on YouTube. It really helps a lot. So I wanted to tell you that I went to a baby shower on Sunday and I have never,

[00:01:29] Mariann Sullivan: Like why do people have parties?

[00:01:31] Jasmin Singer: well, I have [crosstalk]

[00:01:32] Mariann Sullivan: just hate them.

[00:01:34] Jasmin Singer: Because they like them. That's why people have parties.

[00:01:37] Mariann Sullivan: I was born on the wrong planet. There's evidence every day.

[00:01:41] Jasmin Singer: Well, so this, [crosstalk]

[00:01:42] Mariann Sullivan: been to a party that I enjoyed.

[00:01:45] Jasmin Singer: okay, well, [crosstalk]

[00:01:46] Mariann Sullivan: I really don't. go [crosstalk]

[00:01:48] Jasmin Singer: all right, so, uh, what about my, my.

[00:01:51] Mariann Sullivan: are particularly dreadful 'cause they have games.

[00:01:54] Jasmin Singer: But what about that birthday party that was at your house that you hosted for me that had an improv, uh, expert where we did improv? You didn't like that?

[00:02:04] Mariann Sullivan: I hate improv

[00:02:05] Jasmin Singer: I know.

[00:02:06] Mariann Sullivan: God. Like people think they're funny and they're not.

[00:02:09] Jasmin Singer: Okay.

[00:02:10] Mariann Sullivan: It's No, it's true. People think that they make up funny stories, but they're, I don't understand it at all.

[00:02:17] Jasmin Singer: Listen, as the [crosstalk]

[00:02:18] Mariann Sullivan: it's funny 'cause occasionally everybody's funny.

[00:02:21] Jasmin Singer: As the 1996 improv champion of New Jersey, I must change the subject now because this is offensive to my inner soul and my inner child. So I went to a baby shower. I've never been to a baby shower before. I think, I don't think I have have, unless I blocked it out. I don't think so. but this one, I just wanna tell you one part of it.

So it was, uh. [crosstalk]

[00:02:44] Mariann Sullivan: showers? Don't they have like gender reveal parties now?

[00:02:48] Jasmin Singer: I think that's separate. I think that there's that and this, and I don't think most people do gender reveal parties. I like, I just don't think most people do that. And what an asinine stupid thing to do.

[00:02:58] Mariann Sullivan: don’t [crosstalk]

[00:02:58] Jasmin Singer: Uh, I [crosstalk]

[00:02:59] Mariann Sullivan: only read about them like, you know, when, like when they blow up thebackyard or something.

[00:03:04] Jasmin Singer: Exactly, exactly. But so this was, uh, vegans hosting it, and I'm pretty sure that Moore and I were the only non-vegan there.

I mean, we're the, whoa. Hold on.

[00:03:15] Mariann Sullivan: truth [crosstalk]

[00:03:17] Jasmin Singer: No, no, that is not, that was not Freudian. I am very much a vegan and have been for 20 plus years, I swear to God.

[00:03:28] Mariann Sullivan: She is.

[00:03:29] Jasmin Singer: Anyhow, [crosstalk]

[00:03:30] Mariann Sullivan: I can assure you.

[00:03:30] Jasmin Singer: I think we were the only vegans there. Aside from the people throwing the party, our friends, and.

[00:03:37] Mariann Sullivan: that they're vegan and they ha like all of my friends are vegan. I don't have any non-vegan friends...

[00:03:42] Jasmin Singer: well, they're also queer and I think we were the only queer people aside from them. So it was an interesting sort of heteronormative like meat eating crowd and all the food was vegan and amazing, like truly epic food.

[00:03:55] Mariann Sullivan: I know

[00:03:55] Jasmin Singer: They're very into, [crosstalk]

[00:03:56] Mariann Sullivan: the party and they're

[00:03:57] Jasmin Singer: very into food. Right, right. Very good cooks and they, they

[00:04:01] Mariann Sullivan: kind of vegan I am.

[00:04:02] Jasmin Singer: no order Chinese food [crosstalk]

[00:04:05] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah.

[00:04:05] Jasmin Singer: kind of vegan.

[00:04:06] Mariann Sullivan: at [crosstalk]

[00:04:07] Jasmin Singer: Yeah. Uh, actually it's text me and ask me to order the Chinese food for you.

[00:04:12] Mariann Sullivan: That's not true. I've never, literally never done that.

[00:04:15] Jasmin Singer: Well, no, but like if we're coming over and we're gonna order in, you ask me to do it. Sure, you do.

[00:04:20] Mariann Sullivan: Ask you to do it. You, if you're coming over and you wanna bring Chinese food, you do the

[00:04:24] Jasmin Singer: Okay. So it has,

[00:04:27] Mariann Sullivan: order me Chinese food. [crosstalk]

[00:04:29] Jasmin Singer: alright. [crosstalk]

[00:04:30] Mariann Sullivan: start now. [crosstalk]

[00:04:31] Jasmin Singer: Okay. [crosstalk]

[00:04:32] Mariann Sullivan: since, since you think I do. I might as well

[00:04:36] Jasmin Singer: Okay, so this is what I wanted to say. There was not any like pin the pacifier on the baby game, but there, there was trivia

[00:04:45] Mariann Sullivan: can [crosstalk]

[00:04:45] Jasmin Singer: and [crosstalk]

[00:04:46] Mariann Sullivan: of the baby. That sounds, that sounds very [crosstalk]

[00:04:48] Jasmin Singer: I made that up. I don't know if that's a thing, but, uh, that

[00:04:52] Mariann Sullivan: Sounds horrifying.

[00:04:53] Jasmin Singer: there was a trivia game that was all vegan themed and. It was fantastic. It was like amazing vegan activism. I have to tell you.

It was like [crosstalk]

[00:05:03] Mariann Sullivan: Oh, that is, that is [crosstalk]

[00:05:04] Jasmin Singer: they, [crosstalk]

[00:05:04] Mariann Sullivan: If [crosstalk]

[00:05:05] Jasmin Singer: there were a lot of people there [crosstalk]

[00:05:06] Mariann Sullivan: in which you can force non vegans to play a [crosstalk]

[00:05:09] Jasmin Singer: while eating vegan food [crosstalk]

[00:05:10] Mariann Sullivan: no, that's smart.

[00:05:12] Jasmin Singer: and there was trivia, like there was an app that it comes with. And so we had the app like, so everyone's like using the app with their phone while there's a screen that has the questions and you click the right answer and in real time it shows you who won.

[00:05:25] Mariann Sullivan: this is [crosstalk]

[00:05:26] Jasmin Singer: And so. And they didn't even put the questions together.

Like their meat eating brother put the questions together. And the questions were like, the average American gets X amount of fiber per day. How much does the average vegan get? And it was like, significantly more.

[00:05:42] Mariann Sullivan: 42. [crosstalk]

[00:05:44] Jasmin Singer: Yeah. And then, then it was like, uh. You know, which of these words is made up. And it was like aquafaba and then a few other funny words.

And then like a ma and it was like people were really into it. Like there was no making fun of ness and moura and I won. So, uh, we won.

[00:06:05] Mariann Sullivan: you did kind of have an edge.

[00:06:07] Jasmin Singer: We want popcorn salt, like fancy par caramel popcorn salts. Yeah.

[00:06:14] Mariann Sullivan: you meant you, you won salt,

[00:06:16] Jasmin Singer: Do you know what I put it on? So I, when, like that,

[00:06:20] Mariann Sullivan: sound delicious, like those are two delicious flavors.

[00:06:23] Jasmin Singer: so that night I'm like, you know, in the, in the basement hanging out with the kitties and I'm like, I wonder if you can air fry apples. And I Googled it and you can air fry apples. So I was like, I have to go. And I go upstairs and I air fry apples and I was like, I'm gonna dip them into peanut butter and more was like, put the caramel salt and I, it was amazing.

It was so good.

[00:06:46] Mariann Sullivan: fry me of apples. [crosstalk]

[00:06:47] Jasmin Singer: You got to, [crosstalk]

[00:06:49] Mariann Sullivan: to the store and buy some apples because I've absolutely food in the house.

[00:06:54] Jasmin Singer: yeah. I'm not even remotely surprised.

[00:06:55] Mariann Sullivan: I have to. I hate going to the store.

[00:06:58] Jasmin Singer: we, I have to tell our listeners that when we were.

[00:07:00] Mariann Sullivan: I hate going to the store.

[00:07:02] Jasmin Singer: When we, [crosstalk]

[00:07:03] Mariann Sullivan: where there are humans. [crosstalk]

[00:07:04] Jasmin Singer: okay. when we were just jotting things down that we wanted to talk about on today's hand report. At the same time I wrote down baby shower, vegan quiz. Well, you wrote down addressing the banality of evil.

[00:07:19] Mariann Sullivan: I think they're kind of the same thing, to tell you the truth.

[00:07:25] Jasmin Singer: Oh my God. Okay. Address the finality of evil. What do you got?

[00:07:30] Mariann Sullivan: know, I just jot down thoughts sometimes thinking about doing the Henry Report and, I just started thinking about my activism and I guess somebody mentioned the banality of evil in some context, and I started thinking of it, and of course it's a phrase I don't, I'm sure it was a book, it was a phrase for which the philosopher Hannah Arendt is very famous and she wrote about it. She used the phrase, which became very popularized when she was writing about the trial of Adolf Eichmann, who was a, high up Nazi who ran the concentration camps and he was put on trial. I actually remember the trial of Adolf Eichmann. It was in the sixties. I don't know whether he was imprisoned all that time or whether he had escaped and then he was caught. I think he was tried in Israel. I don't remember it. Well, I was actually quite young because I

think it was in the early sixties too, but uh, I'm pretty sure I remember it going on. It was a big deal. I didn't know a lot about it. 'cause you know, like, there's some stuff about concentration camps and Nazis that you probably shouldn't tell 10-year-old children. Anyway, so her point was, is that Eichmann and loads of the other people who ran the concentration camps, and did other things within the regime, I guess, who were like really ordinary people. They had ordinary lives, they had nice families. They loved their families.

They just were regular. So she came up with this phrase, the banality of evil. Like, we tend to think that people who are evil or doing

[00:09:00] Jasmin Singer: Mm-hmm.

[00:09:01] Mariann Sullivan: are gonna be obvious monsters in some way. you know, we identify certain people. I'm not gonna mention the most obvious one because I [crosstalk]

[00:09:11] Jasmin Singer: You are not allowed. Yeah.

[00:09:12] Mariann Sullivan: As re really weird and actually kind of monstrous and saying crazy things and whatever. But really enormous, enormous amount of evil, and this is certainly true when it comes to animals, are just like everyday people, you know. Thinking that, alright, this is what I do, this is what I'm supposed to do, this is what they tell me to do.

You know, just following orders. I think that line actually came from that situation. Uh, and, everyone else is doing it, so that's what I do. And that's what creates the system of factory farming and the horrendous evil that we perpetrate against animals.

And I guess the thing that, it wasn't just that I had this random thought, it's that I'm getting more and more in my personal attitude like unbending, you know, uncompromising just, just.

[00:10:01] Jasmin Singer: In what way?

[00:10:02] Mariann Sullivan: I was saying, you know, a few weeks ago we should come up with a religion in which we make it clear to people that if they

[00:10:08] Jasmin Singer: That they’re, [crosstalk]

[00:10:08] Mariann Sullivan: to eat animals, they're going to hell. [crosstalk]

This is evil. It's a sin. They're doing it, they know what they're doing. It's wrong. Like, I have that attitude

[00:10:16] Jasmin Singer: mm-hmm.

[00:10:17] Mariann Sullivan: I understand that, you know, I probably do things too and, this is how people are. And evil isn't what they are, but it's what they do. And if you do it, even if you don't think of yourself as evil, even if you think that you're a really nice person, even if in many, many, many ways, you really are, you're still doing something evil. That is my attitude towards that. I do not think that that is necessarily good activism. And you know, the whole line in activism nowadays is much more meet people where they are, you know, like.

[00:10:49] Jasmin Singer: With activism or specifically with animal activism?

[00:10:52] Mariann Sullivan: Oh, I animal activism, I think animal activism encompasses... it certainly encompasses climate. You know,

[00:10:58] Jasmin Singer: Mm-hmm.

[00:10:59] Mariann Sullivan: a lot of things that aren't specifically animal activism. And you know, I think that most people have the attitude like, you know, you, you would never call somebody evil.

You meet them where they are, you encourage them to cut down, you encourage them to like, make reforms and you try to find compromises and like yelling at people. And, mean, I don't yell at people. I couldn't be bothered. But, you know, telling people they're evil is definitely not. They're, they're just gonna shut down and they will never listen to you.

And I think that's true. It's just that I don't, you know, that's where I am right now. It's just hard. It's just hard. You reach a certain point in life and, and like playing the game just becomes harder

[00:11:36] Jasmin Singer: But do you recognize that these are like complex individuals that are making an evil choice, but are not necessarily inherently evil themselves.

[00:11:48] Mariann Sullivan: that's what I mean. I, I think that they aren't necessarily inherently evil and I think that's probably, I, I'm not sure that's what Hannah Arendt was saying. I, I'm not that as that familiar with the way she wrote it, but in talking about the banality of evil, I think she was saying that in other ways in their lives they, you know, they were nice people,

[00:12:05] Jasmin Singer: Mm-hmm.

[00:12:06] Mariann Sullivan: Doing nice things, having nice families, and because evil, know, it doesn't really matter that much whether evil is something you do or what you are like, like what does that even mean? I think that kind of what I'm saying is that I just can't get away from the feeling anymore that this is evil and they are deliberately participating in it. I don't sit in judgment, like that's not what I wanna do. I mean, maybe I'm am sitting in judgment, but I, I just think it's like we're so worried about sitting in judgment on people and, being judgmental and being that vegan. But the fact is, is that it's evil. What, like what we do to these animals is wrong.

[00:12:48] Jasmin Singer: Lemme tell you something I was at a book club the other day that I just joined. I've never actually been in a book club before and this is like theater people who I know in the area. So I'm the only vegan and they were very, you know, accommodating. But like, that's an understatement.

A lot of people went out of their way to kind of, challenge themselves. In fact, I remember talking when I was in the last play, I was in Body Awareness, that there was a cast member who just reacted so strangely to my veganism. Well, this person was at the, book club and she was like, I was at the grocery store like Googling, how do you make a popcorn ball vegan?

And I got like the vegan butter and the vegan marshmallows and I didn't know. And, and then she goes, and then the in.

[00:13:32] Mariann Sullivan: the people who you who are acting weirdly. [crosstalk]

[00:13:35] Jasmin Singer: Yeah.

[00:13:36] Mariann Sullivan: weirdly 'cause they're, you know, you're disturbing their thought processes and it's actually having an effect on them.

[00:13:41] Jasmin Singer: Right. And, and then she goes, and the internet said, some vegans don't eat palm oil. It was, and then we got into, I was like, well, okay, let's just pause. There's a lot of non-vegan who also don't eat palm oil. It's not necessarily always considered under the

[00:13:55] Mariann Sullivan: you

[00:13:56] Jasmin Singer: Right. Yeah, exactly. But anyway, um, so.

[00:14:00] Mariann Sullivan: she, you know, she saw [crosstalk]

[00:14:01] Jasmin Singer: She, it was wonderful. It was very moving to me. It was very moving. But anyway, so we wound up, because of the book we had read, we wound up talking about like kind of what you're talking about now and Someone said like, kind of offhandedly that life is pain and fear. It's just full of pain and fear.

And then someone else said, well that's, you know, I'm not sure if I see it like that. I feel very, Detached from, if it's pain and fear, I just feel like life is, and that you're the person kind of adding the layers to that baseline of just isness, which was a very, you know, Buddhist perspective.

And so I said, well, I, I think life is pain and fear. I think that that's obvious. Like I think that, and of course I'm thinking about the animals and I'm like, I think life is pain and fear with a lot of joy in it, with moments of joy. For many, many individuals. But in saying that, I'm not saying that like the understanding that life is pain and fear dictates how I go about my life, dictates my mood or the amount of suffering I'm in.

It's just to me information that can impact how I show up in the world. And like I don't, I'm not that deep about this kind of stuff. So I don't know if this resonates at all. But when you know what's going on behind closed doors to animals,

[00:15:26] Mariann Sullivan: They know.

[00:15:28] Jasmin Singer: it, it's widely [crosstalk]

[00:15:29] Mariann Sullivan: know. [crosstalk]

[00:15:31] Jasmin Singer: They know the, the, the life. [crosstalk]

[00:15:33] Mariann Sullivan: like, you know, Eichmann and the other, the other people who ran the concentration camp, they knew what was happening. [crosstalk]

[00:15:39] Jasmin Singer: you mean the people at my book club?

[00:15:41] Mariann Sullivan: and so they were okay with it. 'cause that's what they're supposed to do. That's exactly how people are about animals. It's just banal, , the evil is banal. It's like meaningless. It's, I don't, I mean, I'm not sure any of these people, whether I'm talking about the Nazis that we're talking about, or, or, uh, people eat meat. They don't think they're doing anything evil. So maybe [crosstalk]

[00:16:03] Jasmin Singer: No, of course not.

[00:16:04] Mariann Sullivan: we should tell them. I know it's bad activism.

[00:16:08] Jasmin Singer: What do you think I should have done at the book club? Like just been like, well, you're all evil. It's like, as I eat my vegan popcorn ball, I mean, this is more of like an ideological conversation that we're having right now than one that could,

[00:16:21] Mariann Sullivan: know, like, I don't know what the activism output is of these thoughts. I really don't, that's how I started.

[00:16:28] Jasmin Singer: yeah.

[00:16:29] Mariann Sullivan: think this, I don't think we have a way to be, to be good activists and express these thoughts in a way that does anything other than shut people down. But I'm just saying it's my truth.

And as I get older, it's harder and harder for me not to say my truth and just act

[00:16:45] Jasmin Singer: Yeah.

[00:16:45] Mariann Sullivan: like it's all okay. I guess that, this was a, a large part of the thinking behind that, project was it of DXE, uh,

[00:16:53] Jasmin Singer: hmm.

[00:16:54] Mariann Sullivan: you declined to sit with people who [crosstalk]

[00:16:57] Jasmin Singer: the V. The V, the vegan pledge. I don't think it was DXE.

[00:17:00] Mariann Sullivan: DXE.

Okay.

[00:17:01] Jasmin Singer: May. No. Maybe it was. Maybe it was.

[00:17:03] Mariann Sullivan: You know, you're not mean to people, you’re [crosstalk]

[00:17:05] Jasmin Singer: No, it was. It was. You were right. It is DXE

[00:17:08] Mariann Sullivan: but you declined to sit [crosstalk]

[00:17:10] Jasmin Singer: Mm-hmm.

[00:17:11] Mariann Sullivan: eating animals and you explain to them why.

[00:17:13] Jasmin Singer: Well, I have to tell you, uh,

[00:17:14] Mariann Sullivan: does go along with this ' cause, [crosstalk]

[00:17:16] Jasmin Singer: for sure.

[00:17:17] Mariann Sullivan: you're using your actions and not angry words tell them that you think this is wrong.

I, mean, maybe wrong is a little, is a little softer than evil, but I like that word evil.

[00:17:30] Jasmin Singer: I'm picking that up. 98% of the food at the book club was vegan. There was like a cheese cube thing, but I had brought Miyoko's cheese, as well, and everyone sort of politely tried it. But anyway, there were, there was this dip that someone was like, it's vegan, it has beans, this and that in it, she's like, I made it vegan. And I was like, oh, okay. Are these crackers vegan? I could have picked up the box and looked, but like my hands were full. And she's like, oh, I don't know. And then one person picked it up and looked at it. It was like, yeah, yeah, it's totally vegan. And so I grab a few crackers, I put it in the dip, I eat it, and then I look and I'm like, it's totally not vegan. So I was sitting there and I'm like, damn. You know, and then I just thought, I'm just not gonna say anything because to me, that's the vegan choice in that moment. I don't wanna make it look difficult.

[00:18:19] Mariann Sullivan: I would agree. Like there's no point in making a fuss about that. I'm talking about making a fuss about the big concepts.

Not about whether something is perfectly vegan. That I think can be counterproductive. I mean, I'm fine with if people wanna do that, I have no problem with it.

But that would not, that's not so much what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the big picture, the keeping quiet about how terrible you think this behavior is. Anyway, we have taken up a lot of time. We promised we were gonna keep these episodes short.

[00:18:47] Jasmin Singer: Yeah. [crosstalk]

[00:18:48] Mariann Sullivan: to the news. [crosstalk]

[00:18:49] Jasmin Singer: Yeah. Let's, let's do,. Do you know that song? You and I love to sing this song? It's gonna get us into the first article here. Movin' to the country, gonna eat a lot of peaches.

[00:19:02] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, I forgot about that song. All right. All right. Not a cheerful story about peaches. This is from The Counter. Last year's salmonella outbreak linked to peaches may have been caused by quote unquote fugitive dust. This is by Jessica Fu. You know, how, how it o often happens that there are salmonella scares about various.

Foods of, plant origin even though salmonella comes. comes From animals and it's usually greens and lettuce. And that makes sense because the water is, you know, can be contaminated. And they're often near factory farms, that contain animals. And so it all makes sense. But apparently last year there was this salmonella outbreak with peaches and a lot of peaches had to be recalled and a hundred people got sick. think anybody died. And this is just a theory. They're trying to figure out how it happened. And, you know, people theorize, well, it was in the water, so it got into the tree, and they said that, that's not what happens. But they think that it may be in the dust from the factory farms.

[00:20:00] Jasmin Singer: Wow.

[00:20:00] Mariann Sullivan: Like, uh, you know how your mother always told you, you wash your fruit carefully?

[00:20:05] Jasmin Singer: I never do.

[00:20:06] Mariann Sullivan: Well

[00:20:07] Jasmin Singer: I never do.

[00:20:08] Mariann Sullivan: in shit.

[00:20:09] Jasmin Singer: I most of the time don't eat, wash it at all. I admit it, and I'm sure that's horrifying, but now I'm going to, because ew, that's gross. And it's, that's the thing, right? That industrial ag doesn't just harm the animals and the climate, but it has tentacles everywhere, including in your innocent looking stone fruit.

[00:20:24] Mariann Sullivan: peaches. [crosstalk]

[00:20:26] Jasmin Singer: Ugh.

[00:20:26] Mariann Sullivan: It's just, it's just horrifying. And of course they're talking about like fixes for it and what could be done. And I, I don't think anybody's talking about the industry paying for these fixes. As usual, it's either gonna be probably the peach growers or the government. Talking about ways to minimize the dust from factory farms. Disgusting.

[00:20:46] Jasmin Singer: All right, well, let's move on. This is also pretty disgusting.

[00:20:50] Mariann Sullivan: This happened a while ago, a few weeks ago, and I don't think we talked about it then, and Kenny Torrella just wrote an article about it. So I just thought that I would bring that to people's attention. It's when those 4,000 chicks died in the mail. You know, and people always, every time it happens that chicks die in the mail people act like they're completely shocked. But it happens all the time. Frequently, it's a huge, huge number because they get left there. They apparently, they were left Over the weekend without water, food, or temperature.

And, there were 14,000 altogether. And apparently they're trying to find homes for the 10,000, which seems pretty challenging. 10,000 of them survived. And, you know, there are, as he points out, there are plenty of other stories that are like this. And he just goes into a lot of the problems with transport, not just of the fact that they stick chicks in the mail.

It just [crosstalk]

[00:21:37] Jasmin Singer: Yeah, I, I did post this when it originally [crosstalk]

[00:21:40] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. It was. It’s [crosstalk]

[00:21:41] Jasmin Singer: came out [crosstalk]

[00:21:42] Mariann Sullivan: of press. [crosstalk]

[00:21:43] Jasmin Singer: because I. Do think people don't realize that that's standard practice for and [crosstalk]

[00:21:48] Mariann Sullivan: they don't think what the point he makes here is that they don't think about, they think maybe about slaughterhouses. They think slaughterhouses are bad. They don't really think about factory farms as much though

[00:22:00] Jasmin Singer: hmm.

[00:22:00] Mariann Sullivan: they have to, if they're gonna understand anything, and I think they do more than they used to, but they really don't think of transport and loads and loads and loads of animals die in transport,

[00:22:10] Jasmin Singer: Transport also isn't really a consideration for people who like to buy their meat local. They don't think about the [crosstalk]

[00:22:18] Mariann Sullivan: you [crosstalk]

[00:22:18] Jasmin Singer: transport issue, you know?

[00:22:20] Mariann Sullivan: they still have to be transferred from one place to another.

[00:22:24] Jasmin Singer: Right.

[00:22:25] Mariann Sullivan: 33.8 million chickens died in transport in

2024. Those are just the ones who died in transport.

[00:22:31] Jasmin Singer: Alright, let's move to something good in,

[00:22:33] Mariann Sullivan: All right.

[00:22:34] Jasmin Singer: In New York City's public hospitals, a quiet revolution is underway. Over the past two years, more than 1.2 million plant-based meals have been served to patients making vegetarian options the default choice across all 11 facilities. It's so exciting.

It's not just about dietary restrictions, it's about nourishing culturally diverse meals that, that truly resonate with this like rich tapestry of communities. Why did you choose this article?

[00:23:07] Mariann Sullivan: Because it was good news and I love this project. This is of course, Katie Cantrell, who's been on the podcast.

And this article is by Michael Grunwald and it was originally published on Canary, but, but I got it off of Sentient, sometimes they republish really interesting articles from other, outlets. yeah, I mean, I guess we've talked about this before 'cause we talked about it with Katie, but it's just, I, I love to see New York City doing something so great. You know, Mayor Adams had a few problems. He's not that

[00:23:34] Jasmin Singer: Really, [crosstalk]

[00:23:35] Mariann Sullivan: right now, [crosstalk]

[00:23:36] Jasmin Singer: He was on Our Hen House once.

[00:23:37] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, he was on Our Hen [crosstalk]

[00:23:38] Jasmin Singer: Hmm.

[00:23:39] Mariann Sullivan: and he gets credit for this.

So, you know, like you were saying before, people aren't all one thing or another. and this is an extraordinary program, you know, it's basically based on this idea of default architecture and just they offer people a, a plant-based meal and all of the menus sound great. They work really hard to make them delicious.

It's mostly Sodexo, I think is the company that services the hospitals and then if they don't take the first choice, they have a vegan second choice. And then they don't take that there's one with meat or if they specifically ask for meat. But most people don't. And

[00:24:12] Jasmin Singer: Yeah, [crosstalk]

[00:24:13] Mariann Sullivan: like the food and they say it's great.

People like people go with the flow.

[00:24:17] Jasmin Singer: They sure do.

[00:24:18] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, and you [crosstalk]

[00:24:20] Jasmin Singer: usually doesn't work for us. [crosstalk]

[00:24:22] Mariann Sullivan: This is the exact opposite of calling out people for being evil, and this is much more successful than my activism, I have to [crosstalk]

[00:24:30] Jasmin Singer: Yeah. [crosstalk]

[00:24:31] Mariann Sullivan: even bringing to people's attention what they are eating or why.

I wanted to read this one line the guy who wrote this article, even though it was published on Sent Media, as I mentioned, he didn't write it for them. And he is not vegan, I'm pretty sure. And he is coming out with a big book that's about the food system that's angry.

But this Line just drove me crazy. While vegan activists have mostly failed to get us to ditch meat through education campaigns and yelling, and biotech entrepreneurs have mostly failed to convert us to plant-based substitutes designed to mimic meat, bureaucrats working for embattled Mayor Eric Adams have engineered a radical dietary shift.

Now this very positive, but think that vegan activists have done a good deal more than education campaigns and yelling like, [crosstalk]

[00:25:15] Jasmin Singer: Couple more.

[00:25:17] Mariann Sullivan: and. The invention of plant-based substitutes. Yeah, they're struggling because they've been like buried in hostility by the meat industry, which has been very successful. But, you know, they are part of the puzzle and I really think things are gonna change. I listened to Nil Zacharias's interview with Ethan Brown from From Beyond Meat. You know, Beyond Meat is really struggling.

[00:25:39] Jasmin Singer: Yeah. [crosstalk]

[00:25:40] Mariann Sullivan: a beautiful interview and I loved it. I highly recommend it.

[00:25:44] Jasmin Singer: Ooh, let's link to it in the show notes. I love, uh, Nil and everything he does.

[00:25:49] Mariann Sullivan: All right. Next article.

[00:25:50] Jasmin Singer: Let me tell you why I am so excited about this one, because the other day at the grocery store, I bought pistachio milk and I, this was just like a norm. This was a normal grocery store. This was not like a tony Grocery store.

And do you remember when like ordering a soy latte felt like a radical act? Do you remember how exciting it was? Especially when we would drive across the country and like we would see a Starbucks, it was kind of the only place you could get non-dairy milk. And there was a huge upcharge of course. But now plant-based milks are the norm and the dairy aisle is undergoing a renaissance.

[00:26:28] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, no, this is a great article. It's from Vogue. It's a couple months ago by Katie Stone, A new generation of non-dairy milks is on the rise. I just liked the tone of the article and it's just uplifting. Like every trend arc, she says, we're now starting to see a new generation of fringe dairy alternatives emerge and she has all pistachio is one of them.

And there are these fermented milks and macadamia and cashew. You know, those have been around for a while. They've carved out their own niches while lesser known alternatives like pecan and walnut, I love walnut milk, are finding their footing. For those avoiding nuts altogether, Latini's sunflower seed milk. It was just very nice. Like, it's so completely like we're there. There's this huge variety and they're very fashionable and they're in Vogue, and

I just thought it was, it was kind of an uplifting article.

[00:27:18] Jasmin Singer: This is also uplifting. Uh, I watched this show on YouTube called SCI Show, SCI Show, and it's all about science. Which I know is not like, is probably shocking to hear me talking about it, but it's like fascinating to me. I love it. And they did an episode about, it was called The Meatless Meats of the Future.

[00:27:38] Mariann Sullivan: That's good.

[00:27:39] Jasmin Singer: it was about like, but it was about innovation. It wasn't about the vegan meats that currently exist. It was about seaweed and like just all of these things that you wouldn't necessarily think of. And it did talk about the meatless meats of now as well and why that works for some people and doesn't work for others.

So it was, it's always fun to just come across something, you know, like that.

When I went to the baby shower the other day, I wish that I knew about this new book because there's a new children's book that is quietly radical and it's called Free Bird. It's written by Christine Mott and illustrated by Ofra Layla Isler.

And it tells the true story of Flaco, the Eurasian Eagle Owl who escaped from the Central Park Zoo and found freedom in the skies over New York City. I love this. This is really cool.

[00:28:37] Mariann Sullivan: I, I actually know Christine Mott a little bit, because we both used to be on the New York City Bar Association Animal Law Committee. She is a lawyer. This is published by Lantern, our beloved, uh, Lantern Books, and it looks great. The illustrations, which you can see from this article, which is a review of it by Jordi Casamitjana haven't actually gotten the book yet. Uh, it really just came out. It looks great. The illustrations look beautiful. Apparently, according to this review, it's really super animal friendly. The proceeds benefit the Wild Bird Fund And animal friendly in a way that even though they don't talk about veganism according to this review, it encompasses like a holistic view of animals

[00:29:19] Jasmin Singer: Mm. [crosstalk]

[00:29:19] Mariann Sullivan: inspire anybody.

I, I'll just read the end. Overall, I thought the book was very good. It is educational, it is pleasant, it is informative, it is fun. It is about the real world. It's about the freedom that non-human animals exploited by humans dream about and how sometimes such dreams become a reality,

A message of hope for all the vegans like me dreaming in the vegan world of the future where everyone will be free.

I wish my parents had read me this book when I was a child.

So it sounds really good and um, I just thought people would wanna know about it.

[00:29:50] Jasmin Singer: The reason I said I wish I knew about it before the baby shower was because we had to bring a, a baby book with us, or a child's book, and, but I did get a book for them called Baby Vegan and I just looked it up and it's by Jennifer Eckford. So it's nice that these books are out there too.

I love that line that you just said about how I wish that I had this when I was a child. I really loved the book, The Giving Tree. I think there's something kind of messed up about it.

[00:30:18] Mariann Sullivan: I, I, don't know the book.

[00:30:20] Jasmin Singer: All right. Well, it's about a tree that keeps giving and giving and giving and like at the end has nothing left.

Just a stump. And it, it, [crosstalk]

[00:30:29] Mariann Sullivan: That sounds awful.

[00:30:31] Jasmin Singer: I think that something nice happens at the end. I, I, I don't remember. [crosstalk]

[00:30:34] Mariann Sullivan: be more to it than that.

[00:30:36] Jasmin Singer: No, but like the tree gave you fruit and the tree gave you shade and the tree gave you, like a, a place to climb. [crosstalk]

[00:30:42] Mariann Sullivan: though is if you give, if you give a lot, you will end up a stump with nothing

[00:30:47] Jasmin Singer: Well, that's one way of looking at it, but it does also seem like it it, everyone in my generation grew up with this book and probably the generations after me too, and it just seems like that's what we do to Mother Nature. We just take and take and take until there's nothing left. I wish I had this book instead.

Anyway, before we close, to tease out what, what we have tomorrow. Why don't you do that with our interview tomorrow?

[00:31:14] Mariann Sullivan: yes. it's a great interview. It's, it's one of our series of, of interviews with the Animal

Policy Alliance, and their efforts to obtain all sorts of legislation across the country. And we're gonna be talking specifically about banning octopus farming and these interviews are always with people who are on the ground, locally working on efforts, and somebody from the Animal Policy Alliance.

So on the ground, um, in Washington State where they have achieved such legislation is Amanda Fox, who is the executive director of the Animal Rights Initiative. And then we also talked to Allie Taylor, who's the president of Voters for Animal Rights in New York, and they're working on one of these bills as are on a lot of states around the country.

This is one of the issues that. You know, if you can get in there before the industry really gets a toehold, it's a lot easier to get it banned and so much information about octopuses and, and about legislation in this interview, so I highly recommend it. Our third participant was Brenna Anderst and she's the senior policy advisor at The Humane League.

[00:32:15] Jasmin Singer: While we're shouting out things that are coming up, we have an upcoming panel discussion called Roots and Rising Connecting Grassroots Voices. We'll talk about what absolutely anyone can do to change the world for animals no matter what their skills or experience.

We're recording this Sunday, June 1st at 1:00 PM Eastern. The live audience is going to be the part of our flock known as the Squawk Squad, which is those who donate $25 a month or more, but of course anyone can hear it on the podcast after the event. It will air on June 6th, so I'm really looking forward to that.

[00:32:51] Mariann Sullivan: That sounds very cool.

[00:32:52] Jasmin Singer: Yeah, and so thank you so much for tuning in. Don't forget to subscribe to Our Hen House on your favorite pod catcher and or on YouTube and leave a comment for us on YouTube or a review on,

[00:33:07] Mariann Sullivan: Don't leave a mean comment.

[00:33:08] Jasmin Singer: on Apple Podcasts. is another really great way to get people to tune in to Our Hen House. So thanks so much for joining us.

We'll talk to you soon.