Our Hen House: Vegan & Animal Rights Movement | Stories from the Frontlines of Animal Liberation - Episode 555: How Effective Research Impacts Animal Advocacy ft Brooke Haggerty and Jo Anderson

Episode 555: How Effective Research Impacts Animal Advocacy ft Brooke Haggerty and Jo Anderson

08/29/20 • 95 min

Our Hen House: Vegan & Animal Rights Movement | Stories from the Frontlines of Animal Liberation

In the opening of the show, Mariann touches base with Jasmin, who is currently on the road on her way to New York in an RV(egan). Jasmin tells us how her 3 dogs and cat are handling the trip, the ups and downs of cooking and eating all the occasionally weird food she packed in case Covid made buying food too difficult, and plans to visit Nooch in Denver to do a curbside shopping trip. While the road trip is long and moving is stressful, so far the incredible scenery along the way is making up for it.
In this week’s Vegan Businesses segment we’re shouting out Passion Placement, a job board and community focused on connecting people looking for work with mission-driven organizations supporting sustainable living, animal advocacy and environmentalism. We’re also pleased to tell you about Dodah’s Kitchen, which makes vegan soul food and desserts inspired by Afro-vegan traditions, with a mission of making veganism both accessible and delicious.
We have two guests this week! Brooke Haggerty is the Executive Director of Faunalytics and has over a decade of experience in the nonprofit sector. Her previous roles in the animal advocacy arena include serving as executive director for the Foundation for Animal Care and Education (FACE) and being a humane educator for the Animal Protection and Rescue League. Jo Anderson is the Research Director at Faunalytics, and she seeks to empower the animal advocacy community with empirical research and data. She is also co-leader of the RECAP (Research to End Consumption of Animal Products) researcher collective and is an Adjunct Research Professor at Carleton University, Ottawa. Brooke and Jo join Jasmin today to discuss Faunalytics’ mission to empower animal advocates with access to research, analysis, strategies, and messages that maximize their effectiveness to reduce animal suffering. They share their research findings on why people leave animal advocacy careers and the patterns that affect retention in advocacy organizations. Brooke and Jo also discuss how to support diversity and inclusion in the
animal rights movement and how people can work from within to create an equitable space using research. Wondering whether to say “plant-based” or “vegan”? They also share the findings on that.

“Do the research. What does the research say? Whatever type of animal advocacy organization you’re running, there is research out there that will inform the most effective ways you can move forward.”
-Brooke Haggerty

This Week in Our Hen House:

Why animal advocates suffer from burnout and how it manifests
Why leadership style affects retention in animal advocacy, and how good and bad leadership manifests
Faunalytics’ support for diversity and inclusion and how the animal advocacy
movement can stamp out implicit bias
Why the animal rights movement is getting stuck on one story and what that means going forward
Understanding operational expenses and why they impact what animal advocacy organizations can do
The value of research for keeping your organization on track
How to choose a path or organization when you become involved in animal advocacy
The services that Faunalytics provides for advocates and organizations
Public awareness of animal exploitation in relation to Covid-19
How to take the next step if you need research on a particular topic from Faunalytics
How to increase people’s willingness to try vegan meals
Why different animal products have different impacts on animal welfare
How people become ex-vegans

Resources Mentioned:

Connect with Faunalytics:

This Week in Our Hen House:

Why animal advocates suffer from burnout and how it manifests
Why leadership style affects retention in animal advocacy, and how good and bad leadership manifests
Faunalytics’ support for diversity and inclusion and how the animal advocacy
movement can stamp out implicit bias
Why the animal rights movement is getting stuck on one story and what that means going forward
Understanding operational expenses and why they impact what animal advocacy organizations can do
The value of research for keeping your organization on track
How to choose a path or organization when you become involved in animal advocacy
The services that Faunalytics provides for advocates and organizations
Public awareness of animal exploitation in relation to Covid-19
How to take the next step if you need research on a particular topic from Faunalytics
How to increase people’s willingness to try vegan meals
Why different animal products have different impacts on animal welfare
How people become ex-vegans

Resources Mentioned:

Connect with Faunalytics:

Previous Episode

Episode 554: The Vegucated Family Table ft. Marisa Miller Wolfson

Jasmin and Mariann open the show with a review of the National Geographic mini-documentary, Akashinga: The Brave Ones, which follows a group of women fighting poachers in Zimbabwe and why they are so committed to the cause of protecting and preserving elephants from extinction. They also discuss the hot-button issue of mask-wearing and how navigating the conversation around this new norm sometimes feels frustratingly like discussions about veganism.
In this week’s Vegan Businesses segment, we’re shouting out VedgeCo, a bulk plant-based food delivery that caters to both consumers and restaurants and sells only products from 100% plant-based brands at discounted bulk rates. We’re also featuring the Southern Roots Vegan Bakery, a Black-owned online vegan baked goods company that recreates southern classics and ships them nationwide from San Antonio, Texas. If there’s a vegan business you think we should know about, go to our Vegan Businesses Support Form and fill it out!
Animal activist Marisa Miller Wolfson is the co-author, along with Laura Delhauer, of The Vegucated Family Table, which provides vegan parents with a comprehensive recipe-filled resource. She is also the creator of Vegucated, the award-winning feature-length documentary that follows three New Yorkers who try a vegan diet for six weeks, and has led workshops and given talks about the ethical vegan lifestyle all over North America.
Marisa joins the show today to delve into why she was inspired to create The Vegucated Family Table as a go-to reference for plant-based parents looking for ways to feed their vegan kids from weaning to elementary school, and why so many folks have reached out to her, eager for the book’s detailed information. As the mother of two, she shares her tips and tricks for introducing new foods to her own children and offers advice on the best way to transition your family to an ethical vegan diet. Marisa also discusses why carnism is currently the mainstream way of eating and why, in addition to her passion for animals, she is deeply committed to fighting climate change through her own vegan lifestyle and by educating others on why it is critical to adapt the way we live to protect our planet.

“ We want parents to feel good about feeding their kids — if kids eat crap, they act out, and that’s no fun.” – Marisa Miller Wolfson

This Week in Our Hen House:

How Marisa’s family and friends helped in creating The Vegucated Family Table
Why Marisa loves to bake and how you can see her gorgeous creations
How Marisa’s time as a Hurricane Katrina volunteer looking after animals traumatized her
The people who helped and supported the creation of the book
The difficulty of there being no playbook for what little kids should eat
Foods, supplements, and resources that Marisa uses to encourage her children to eat new things.
Marisa’s role in Jasmin becoming vegan and beginning her career in animal advocacy
How ethical veganism and healthy eating come together in the book
The climate crisis and how that affected recipes in the book
How looking back gives you perspective for the future
Why vegan kids don’t need to miss out at social events
The importance of “nooch,” a.k.a., nutritional yeast
Why the belief system you model for your children helps provide a moral compass and a healthy guide for the future
Why are vegan parents accused of “forcing” their lifestyle on their children?
The issues that parents should watch out for to ensure their child is thriving
Marisa’s plans for future projects

“The ideals are to make the world a kinder, more sustainable, gentler place.”
– Marisa Miller Wolfson

Resources Mentioned:

Connect with Marisa Miller Wolfson:

Vegucated Website

Next Episode

Episode 556: It’s a Dog’s Umwelt ft Alexandra Horowitz

Jasmin is still driving cross-country in the RV(egan), but will finally be getting to her new home in a few days. Surprisingly, she’s been able to do more curbside vegan shopping while on the road than she thought was possible. Along the way she stopped at Nooch in Denver, 10th Street Diner in Indianapolis, and was greeted with a latte and some vegan snacks from Mud Pie Bakery when she met up with family in Kansas City. Throughout the country Jasmin has noticed the avalanche of competing presidential candidate support signs and has been thinking about some of the similarities of this year’s election politics and animal activism. Mariann, stuck at home, is worrying about mice in the house, the virus, current political tensions, climate change, and the end of summer and is getting a bit overwhelmed. But! Jasmin will be nearby soon and they both can’t wait to hang out.
In this week’s Vegan Businesses segment we’re shouting out Qltykntrl (pronounced “Quality Control”) which was founded in 2018 and is a Black owned Las Vegas based streetwear brand focused on raising vegan aWEARness. Creating bold designs with a purpose, supporters of all forms of animal liberation activism, from direct action to marches to demos to outreach to lobbying to bearing witness to the slaughter of innocents, QltyKntrl provides designs for the army of activists fighting the war towards animal liberation. F**k speciesism.
Today we welcome Alexandra Horowitz to the podcast. She has long been fascinated by the mind of the dog, and her extensive academic research is aimed at answering the question of what it’s like in a dog’s world. She has written three books on dogs, Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know, Being a Dog: Following the Dog Into a World of Smell, and, most recently, Our Dogs, Ourselves: The Story of a Singular Bond, all of which seek to illuminate what dogs experience from the dog’s point of view. Alexandra is a professor at Barnard College, Columbia University, where she heads the Dog Cognition Lab and teaches on the topics of canine cognition and creative nonfiction writing. She shares her enthusiasm for the umwelt, or universe, of dogs and why she believes that domestic dogs are not studied widely academically. She delves into how and why we anthropomorphize our dogs and how at the Dog Cognition Lab they aim to study animals without projecting their own attitudes on them and with an awareness that each dog has their own rich reality. Alexandra also explains why she hopes that dogs can become a ‘gateway species’ that encourages us to think about farm animals and other exploited animals in a new, more compassionate way.

“If we can see dogs in other animals, then that chain of
empathy can go further than just the home.”
– Alexandra Horowitz

This Week in Our Hen House:

Why Alexandra decided to study dogs for her postgraduate research
How the Dog Cognition Lab works and how they conduct their research within an ethical framework
What Alexandra is looking at when she is watching dogs play
Alexandra’s recent study of how dogs smell and what she learned about the crucial importance of scent in a dog’s world
Why humans ascribe emotions to their dogs when they make certain expressions and whether dogs really do feel the emotions we attribute to them
Why we see similarities between human behavior and dog behavior
The compartmentalization of animals into different categories and how that affects how we react to certain groups
How animals are perceived in law, and why Alexandra explores the topic in her book, Our Dogs, Ourselves
How Alexandra feels about dog breeding and why she compares it to the practice of eugenics
Alexandra’s tips on how to give your dog a fulfilling life