PETA Interview - Amber Canavan, PETA Campaign Manager - Fish Sculpture - Donnie Creekmore

Donnie calls Stephen's Emergency Pager and speaks with Amber about PETA's offer for a trash fish sculpture to the mayor. They hope to also display a fish empathy quilt in City Hall. They discuss the harmful impact of the fishing industry on aquatic animals and the environment. Donnie suggests placing the sculpture next to an existing statue for contrast. They talk about PETA's anti-speciesist stance and the importance of considering the well-being of other species. Donnie asks about critics who argue that predators like bears and lions cause harm to humans. Amber explains that animals defend themselves in the wild, whereas humans harm animals on a large scale through activities like factory farming and overfishing. They discuss the environmental benefits of a vegan diet and the link between population growth and demand for meat products. You have reached Stephen's Emergency Pager. Hello, this is Amber. Hey Amber, this is Donnie. Can you hear me good? I can. Oh my gosh, yeah. I live out in the country, kind of, it's on the coast, but it's like, it's not really, there's not very many cell phone towers out here, and it's just kind of, it's kind of hilly. And then I was also in a steel building, it was, you know, we had everything working against us. Gotcha. Great. But did you, I don't know how much of my previous, you know, when I was talking, I don't know how much of it you heard. I think I got the gist of your question, yeah, it cut out somewhere in the middle, but, yeah, I mean, in general, the update is that PETA is, you know, looking forward to, and is in further discussions for our offer for the trash fish sculpture to the mayor, and we're hoping she'll be open also to, in the meantime, displaying the world's first fish empathy quilt, which is a 300-square-foot quilt made by a few members and supporters from across the country, from Alabama to Alaska, who have contributed to the quilt, that we're hoping will be displayed in City Hall. And that's in the meantime, while we're looking for interest from artists and art school students, and more details from the mayor as to the possible placement of our full trash fish sculpture. Gotcha, gotcha. Yeah, I actually really like the sculpture. I think it's beautiful, just personally. Would you—is accepting the sculpture 100% predicated on the original one being taken away or torn down? I wouldn't say it's a prerequisite. The goal is certainly to get that conversation going about, you know, there are things in our history that are harmful to the environment and to the individuals. You know, for example, all of the fish who are killed every year by the fishing industry, as well as the environmental impact that we'd like to bring to people's attention, without, you know, there's no legal protection from quilt treatment for animals who are caught in fishing. We know that they're intelligent and complex animals, and it's common industry practice that they can be impaled, crushed, suffocated, cut apart, all fully conscious, and those are things that simply, you know, people realize would be unacceptable to do to a cow, pig, or a chicken, but they're very commonly still done to aquatic animals, and that very, very much needs to change. Aside from the direct, you know, cruelty that happens to fish and other aquatic animals in the fishing industry, it's one of the greatest threats to marine wildlife worldwide. Non-target animals, such as whales, dolphins, turtles, sharks, all get entangled by the hundreds of thousands in fishing gear and nets. They can be dragged for months behind a whale, for instance, causing infection, starvation, and drowning from exhaustion. So we're, you know, we're wanting to get people thinking about these issues and realizing that there's really delicious and hearty and tasty vegan options that we can be choosing instead, and there are alternatives for people who are in the fishing industry. For instance, in Maine, we're seeing transitions to Maine for seaweed, because there's a booming market for seaweed in restaurants and in food ingredients, and that's really exciting to start seeing those alternatives that are safer for the workers, since the fishing industry is one of the most dangerous professions that's seconded only by working in a slaughterhouse, are the top two most dangerous jobs in the country. So it's really better for everybody that we start looking into changing things and moving forward, and we think the fish quilts and our, you know, potential-in-the-works trash fish sculpture will do the trick in getting those conversations going. That's great. That's really great, you know, and I honestly wasn't aware of, you know, a large percentage of the things you've mentioned, and, you know, and definitely there's no reason to cause undue harm onto, you know, animals. Would you be open and willing to, you know, the placement of your statue, or I'm sorry, let me rephrase that. Would PETA be open to placing the sculpture you've created directly next to the statue that exists here today? Um, we certainly have to talk about spaces and sizes and things like that, so we don't really have, you know, we're just starting opening that conversation with the mayor and whatever other public departments are going to be needed for this project, but, you know, being near that sculpture as a juxtaposition could certainly be a good conversation starter. There might be other better, more busy spots that might work as well, so that's all to be determined. Definitely, definitely. Definitely looking forward to. I'm a big fan of contrast, and immediately what struck me is just how the old statue obviously looks old, and it looks like, you know, probably made out of concrete or something similar, and, or stone of that, you know, and then comparatively, you know, here's the statue, you know, decades, decades later, that's created out of reclaimed lost fishing lures and equipment, and it's so colorful. I just imagined the contrast would be striking, and then that itself, because it would be placed next to it in kind of like an open, generous offering, would be kind of, would raise a lot of awareness. You know what I mean? Absolutely. Yeah, that's one of the things that struck an interest when we found out that that statue existed, and we've been using a lot more public art in our advocacy. For instance, we just wrapped up our Council of Animals display, which ran all summer on the National Mall in D.C., and those are seven or eight foot tall stainless steel, an elephant, a rhino, and other animals, just absolutely gorgeous and gigantic. So definitely good for getting conversations going. Here's a question for you, too, and this was kind of in the article. There was two terms that I had to actually look up myself because I was not familiar with them. One was, what was it, human supremacy or human supremacist, and the other one was speciesism, and I was just wondering if you could kind of speak to both of those terms. Is that possible? Yeah, and mentioning the Council of Animals, that is one of our anti-speciesist campaigns, and speciesism is basically when we discount the abilities and experiences and needs of other species because of our self-imposed superiority that we believe that we have over all the other animals that we share the planet with, and that includes people thinking or assuming that animals aren't intelligent or that they can't experience pain or suffering and that they don't have a right to exist and live on this planet alongside us and that everything, including their habitats, their homes, their babies, their bodies are ours for us to take, and our stance is anti-speciesism, which is giving other animals that we share the planet with consideration, so if they suffer, it's our obligation to not cause them to suffer for a sandwich or a handbag or something like that. Totally, and where I would agree with you on useless things like handbags and things like that, we do have one question for you. What would you say towards critics who would say a grizzly bear that mauls a jogger in the woods or a lion or a tiger that mauls just a human being that happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, they're obviously bringing pain and suffering onto a human being and kind of almost putting the human being back into the place of where they are in the hierarchy of the animal kingdom, like obviously we're not as strong as a bear, we're not as strong as a lion, and we're not as strong as a tiger, and that's why we don't typically congregate near them, and so could you speak towards that? If you're talking about that happening in the wild versus some kind of show exotic petting zoo situation, you know, if that's happening in the wild, then we are in their territory, you know, we are entering where they live, and they are defending themselves, which is, you know, very much different than us literally factory farming animals and us vacuuming up just wholesale, scooping up all of the life out of the oceans, where, you know, by many estimates, um, we're going to have technically fishless oceans. They don't mean not every fish, but in the next couple of decades, populations in the oceans are going to be crashing, and that's because the commercial fishing industry literally employs ships that vacuum up the ocean floor and leave nothing left and is one of the largest contributors to plastic pollution in the oceans. It's straws and plastic q-tips and things like that. Bottles are certainly a problem, but a large portion of the great pacific garbage patch, which is off of the coast of, it's midway around between California and Hawaii, a lot of that is fishing gear. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I could imagine. Do you believe that there's a place where, you know, obviously like consumers of meat products, fish products, and such can coexist? And then also, and aside from that, do you also believe that there is, or does PETA believe that, you know, the issue with the extraction of aquatic life at such rapid paces, and you could also make the same probably argument for the whole, like you were saying, the wholesale farming of animals? Do you think, do you believe that that's directly related to population growth over time and the need for, basically the popular demand, I would even say, for meat products as just kind of like what the market kind of wants? Well, we do know that a vegan diet is the lowest impact diet if you are trying to have a lower carbon footprint, a lower land use footprint, water usage and pollution, deforestation, and of course, overfishing. We have found that time and time again when companies slap labels such as sustainable, free range, humane, those are misleading buzzwords meant to make consumers feel better about what they're buying, when in fact their practices differ very little, maybe just one or two points away from what their competitors are doing. So, a package can say, for instance, cage-free and they're still doing a de-beaking of those hens. They're still killing all of the male chicks at the hatchery before sending the females to the cage-free farm. So, in reality, even though they aren't using a battery cage, all the other aspects that make the life for a hen who's used for those eggs absolutely horrific and short and she ends up with a slaughterhouse just like the other ones do. Now, just to draw some contrast to that, you guys would obviously be completely open and supportive of small mom and pop families with their chickens and their yard and them hatching their eggs and eating the eggs and that kind of regenerative kind of home organic agriculture? Regenerative agriculture is another one of those buzzwords the meat industry has been scouting a lot recently. So, we do have some more information on our website, but for instance, small farms are still generally, especially for eggs, getting those hens from the same hatcheries. It's common industry practice from the hens that are sent to the big factory farms down to the chicks that you can buy at the farm supply store down the road. Common industry practice is to kill the male baby chicks, usually the day that they're hatched and that is mostly done either by maceration, which is basically like a wood chipper that they put the chicks through life, suffocation or gassing. So, even the smaller scale farms are still getting those chicks from these hatcheries that have those practices. You're never going to see a small farm that has every female hen who is used for her eggs. The way that they hatch, it's more or less 50-50 male and female, unless they have a whole other farm full of roosters. Oh my god, I can only be a mess. No one wants to live near there. Right. Yeah, four o'clock in the morning is not going to be a fun time for them. Yeah. The point comes down to is that we can get everything we need from a healthy vegan diet. It's lower impact on the environment and we really need to be moving away from treating animals like their meat machines, like their egg machines, for their skin, things like that. There's so many more sustainable, healthy and humane things we can be doing and all the investigations we've done into free range farms and so-called humane low hair and leather, wool. When we've done deep dives into these industries that are using these marketing terms, invariably, whenever these animals are still being used for profit, they always suffer. While they might be putting on a pencil that one thing that they say they don't do that everyone agrees is awful, they're still doing those 99 other things. At the end of the day, that animal's body ends up chopped off and on the serving platter and that's obviously not good for the animal. What would you say to critics that say that, you know, I'm a human being, I'm part of the animal kingdom, I'm a product of nature and therefore when I eat other animals, they are just my prey, just as if other predators eat their prey. I prefer meat and I'm unwilling to change my ways. Mm-hmm. Well, I mean, we're definitely encouraging people to learn more about this and that's, you know, what all of our investigations and education does. A lot of people don't know or realize because it's the marketing that they've been exposed to. America is, for instance, obsessed with protein and, you know, the natural, like, it kind of sounds like you're kind of implying the, you know, what about lions? They eat meat. We're not lions or any other species. They're saying that because another species does it, that it's okay for us to do it. Other species do a lot of things that we would find very unsavory and illegal, so that's not really a justification. And once you drill down to it, like I said, going vegan is best for human health. We are in the middle of, you know, multiple disease outbreaks. The mass raising and killing of animals for food and also taking them from the wild is one of the main ways that disease outbreaks have been coming to humans. We're just on the tail end, for instance, of the country's worst avian flu outbreak. There's so many more I can mention, but that's one example. We also have swine flu coming through again and that's not just from factory farming, although that is a big one, but people going into wild animals' habitats and interacting with wildlife, the human-animal interface is what they call it. So, overall, our society, there's just no buts about it. We cannot continue consuming animals at the rate that we do. In the United States, we raise and kill about 10 billion land animals every year and that doesn't even touch the tens of billions of aquatic animals that we're just scooping up out of the oceans. The planet just cannot sustain that type of consumption. Right. Oh man, I completely just lost my train of thought. I went through all the questions that I had written down. I've just been honestly just asking questions because you're actually really pleasant and easy to talk to. Oh, I remember the question. America is very polarized right now. We have extremes on the left, extremes on the right. What would you say to people who would characterize PETA as just extremist activists? Well, the vast majority of Americans don't want to see animals suffer and we know that from poll results and from being out on the streets giving vegan fried chicken away in Atlanta to, you know, everywhere in every single corner of the United States. We've been out at election events and political candidates giving away barbecue tofu in Texas and people loved it. Everyone overall has a concern for animals and we've been seeing that in our on-the-ground outreach. Opinions have been changing a lot. I'm not going to get into the super deep political stuff, but, you know, eating vegan food is something everyone can do for whatever reasons that they're doing it for. Okay. That range runs the gamut from animal rights to their personal health to the environment. There's a lot of people who do it because they're concerned about world hunger because it takes, you know, 16 pounds of grain to get one pound of meat and the famous comparison is if you want to have that steak and put 16 pounds of pasta right next to it and just dump it in the trash is basically what you're doing every time you eat that. Not to mention the, you know, bathtub or so of water that's getting wasted for the thousands of gallons of water it takes for a pound of beef. So I think I'm a little off. No, you are representing yourself actually incredibly well. I don't feel insecure whatsoever. Yeah, I wouldn't feel insecure at all. I think you've represented yourself incredibly well. I got one last question for you that just popped in my head. I am a, you know, just an amateur mycologist. I like to go hunt for mushrooms out in the forest. I've grown some oyster mushrooms and shiitake mushrooms in my past and I really love the flavor of them but something that Paul Stamets, I'm not sure if you're familiar with the man, but he's kind of basically shown that mushrooms mold that they're actually intelligent, that they can respond to stimuli, that they can communicate. He can't necessarily demonstrate the communication in a way that you can, like we can hear it, but it's in a way that scientifically is proven that there is communication there. Since they're intelligent but they are a protein source, are they considered part of the animal kingdom to PETA? Are they an open protein source for folks like me who enjoy mushrooms? What's PETA's stance on mushrooms? We do have a pretty in-depth blog about the plant-steel pain debate, so I would definitely check that out in written form. It's probably a lot better than I can answer in short form, but what it boils down to is the capacity to suffer and as it stands now, we definitely know that animals, including fish, you know, aquatic animals, definitely do have the ability to suffer and we need to do something about that by, you know, changing the way that we eat and wear and everything. If evidence comes out that somehow some other kingdom of beings on the planet can suffer, then that's definitely, you know, a conversation that we'll have to have, but right now, especially since all the animals who we eat now are also eating plants. So, for instance, that comparison I just made a couple minutes ago about the 16 pounds of pasta, because for every pound of meat that's produced, that animal needed to eat a lot more plants to sustain their body functions, not just putting on every kind of food that they eat, every kind of plant they eat. It doesn't just go into their muscle mass. It goes into maintaining their daily bodily functions. So, for folks who are, you know, genuinely honest to God, I mean genuinely, not generally, genuinely honest to God plants rights activists, I've never met one in person, you should still be vegan. That's still the least impact thing that you can eat. The lowest cause of suffering, even if you 100% believe that plants or funguses or any other thing can feel pain, it's still the most, it's still the least impact, it causes the least amount of suffering. I personally, I've never heard of the term plants rights activist until this phone call. I thought they know what it is, but you hear that argument a lot with people just trying to either pick an argument or just have a thought experiment. Right, right. Okay. And then, man, I had one that popped in my head. I just don't want to waste your time. I don't know how much, I mean, I'm already, you've already spent 30 minutes with me. Um, man. So good to know something you'd said in the middle of there. I'm so sorry. I should have written it down. A lot of it is like, you're making good points, and I want to listen to you at the same time. I'm trying to think of something or ask you to Wow, well, um, how about like insects, I guess? Oh, yeah, that's what it was. Do insects suffer? You know, how many are killed by agriculture, you know? Right. And the answer would, again, still be that, while insects and other animals may be impacted by plant based agriculture, it's still far, far less to, you know, have those you know, have those soybeans and eat those directly than to not only raise and kill that chicken or cow, but all of the hundreds of pounds of grains that it's going to take to feed them to get them to slaughter weight. So again, you're still having much, much lower um, side impact on any other species by eating the plants directly than by filtering them through that animal and getting much, much less meats or eggs in return. But yes, it is believed that insects feel pain. There's been some really, really great studies recently, especially about the capacities of bees. And I'm sure there's going to be more coming out about other, other species as well. Okay, so I remembered, and this will be my last question. Okay, I promise. Okay. My, my aunt is a vegan. She works at a zoo. And I remember her telling me this, that and she supports PETA. And she works at the zoo because of the zoo or I don't, I might not even be called a zoo, just to be honest, but in my mind, it's a zoo, because there's lots of animals there. And, but they, they're in captivity, but they have the kind of space that they would generally need in their wild habitat. I remember her saying, and that the way that they do everything is to the highest ethical standards. And she, she raises all sorts. I mean, her house is like a zoo too. And she supports the idea of my family raising chickens for their eggs, just in having a rooster and everything, just because she, she looks at it as we're saving these animals from the, the, the very things that you've described. What do you think about that? So if you, if you are adopting those animals and not purchasing them? Well, I mean, I mean, however you get them, that animal is going to have a way better life than it was alternatively is the idea like purchased or not. If you can get them, you're saving them from a terrible, terrible existence is what she told me. Sure. So it's, it's, you know, it's definitely less bad than buying animals from, you know, tractor supply or something like that. So, you know, she's probably going, I can't put words in their mouth. Right. Right. Right. Probably going with the, you know, it, it, uh, harm reduction. Right. That's exactly it. Yes. That's exactly it. Right. Um, most sanctuaries, um, actually feed the eggs back to the hens. And that's because hens have been bred to have these insanely hyperactive reproductive systems. They'll lay hundreds of eggs a year. And that's a very small animal. Their ancestors, the red jungle fowl, just like other wild species of birds would only lay about a dozen eggs a year. If you had a bird who only laid a dozen eggs a year, would you bother housing them, spending veterinary fees or feeding them for a year just for a dozen eggs? Um, and the fact that these birds are generally bred to lay that many eggs, that's why most sanctuaries will feed them back. They don't, they don't eat those eggs. They don't sell those eggs because those hens suffer from osteoporosis. They're very prone to broken bones and their, their bodies wear out very, very quickly. Um, so that eating their eggs will help replenish. I'm confused though. I'm confused. I need to jump in by sanctuary. Do you mean like my house or like people? Like, I mean, I just, I, it's just me, my, my wife, I've got three kids, we've got our chicken coop and we've got a rooster and we've got 15 hens. And is that a sanctuary or do you mean like the place, the place where we got our eggs from? I just, I just, I, I haven't heard, I'm not familiar with the terminology. Sure. No, like a, like an actual, like, like a farmed animal sanctuary. Ah, okay. The common practice is to feed those eggs back to those hens, um, because, uh, their bodies can become depleted from the, their hyperactiveness of their eggs. So what I'm, what I'm getting at though, is that we are saving these, these chickens and we are saving the roosters by having them at our house. Like we have two acres, they just go all around. Like we are doing a good thing by, by housing them here. Cause we're not a sanctuary. We're not selling the eggs. We consume every bit of the eggs ourselves. We don't feed them back. We've never even thought about feeding back to them. Just sounds weird. Um, yep. And they'll, they'll, they'll do that in the wild too. Um, yep. That's, that's a common practice, um, to, with the shelves because they need the calcium back. But like what we're doing at our home is supported by PETA is what I'm saying. Well, I would say it's great you're giving them a home, but you don't, if, if, if you're only seeing the worth in them from what you can get out of them, you know, that, that's kind of the attitude that we're trying to move people away from. I mean, my children, they, they cuddle them and pet them, you know, I mean the rooster, there's no cuddling the rooster. He'll, he'll get at ya. But I mean, those, those hens, they, they're, they're basically treated like kittens. Right. As long as you're, you know, just like a dog or cat would, they need veterinary care. Um, especially they're high, uh, more prone to, um, prolapses of their vents. I hope you've never experienced that. Um, but that can happen. Um, yeah, as long as you're giving them all that proper, proper care, um, then yes, that is a good thing. That's, that's awesome. Cause I mean, you're, you're directly speaking to a large, large, large volume of Humboldt County citizens that, I mean, the amount of chickens that we have out here is just, we, we, backyard chickens is a thing in Humboldt County. Let's just put it that way. Right. You know, so that, that's good. As long as you're doing that. Um, but I also, like, I just need to reiterate the backyard chicken. Um, and, and this is, uh, because our, um, our, uh, cruelty investigations department, uh, deals with us all of the time is that the, the popularity of this trend of so many people having backyard hens, you've heard about the overpopulation crisis of dogs and cats being dumped, you know, on the county roads and things like that all the time with the increase in popularity of backyard chickens, shelters are, are absolutely overrun, um, by people give, you know, dumping those birds because they are only productive for a couple of years and then their production goes down. Um, so that is a problem. And if you're going to do a whole lot of other articles, that might be a topic, but, um, it's, it's been a big problem for, um, for shelters, not only just dealing with dogs and cats, but now, um, now chickens. Wow. Well, I mean, I just got to say it was a huge opportunity for you to take my call and to, you know, I, I was, I was kind of worried that we weren't going to get a call back, you know, I'm like, I'm going to call PETA. We'll see, you know, I kind of, it was kind of, everybody kind of was just kind of, Oh, you know, they might not return our call. So we all really appreciate it. Um, I'm going to write the article. I'm going to include, um, the entirety of your entire, I'm going to transcribe this and then into, into the thing. I'll send you a link to it afterwards. Yeah. Yeah. I really, really appreciate it. Um, I think you did a great job representing yourself. Um, yeah. So, um, yeah, I, I think that's it, unless you have any questions for me. Uh, no, great. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for covering this. Um, that's why we do it. Get those conversations. Awesome. Well, Hey, thank you so much. You have a great day. You too. Cheers. Bye.