The $600 Sanctuary Delusion (Vegans / Veganism / Animal Rights)
21 September 2016 [link youtube]
Youtube Automatic Transcription
what is effective activism and what is
the most effective activism for you personally I've raised this question again and again on my channel and I tried to start a discussion about the nature of animal sanctuaries specifically when I had a conversation with a guy named Jay costly she can still hear most of that podcast is on this channel as a series of videos Jay has a background working in zoos so you had a very interesting perspective on semi domesticated animals wild animals being raised in captivity the ethics of house is operated cetera et cetera and I think there were a lot of interesting ethical questions about what is the difference between animal sanctuary in a petting zoo but in a broader deeper level we all have to ask ourselves individuals what is the best use of our time and money if we're trying to make the world a better place if we are fundamentally concerned about ethics ecology animal rights the promotion of veganism in 21st century uh and I really sincerely think that different people are going to come to different conclusions depending partly on the advantages and disadvantages they have in life full disclosure I did spend a very memorable part of my childhood on a farm and seeing the conditions on other farms not just the farm I was living on and I spent a brief but very memorable part of my adult life also on farms I have seen farm conditions in Laos and Cambodia I have not yet visited a farm here in mainland China that could be coming up that could be kind of the future um for some people the greatest way they could make a difference in the world may well be working in this kind of farm conditions if you grew up if you're actually a vet if you have a diploma and veterinary medicine if you grew up shoveling manure baling hay putting out bags of oats or farm animals you might have a skill set in the background that really prepares you to work at an animal sanctuary you may really feel that writing an animal sanctuaries the best way you can make a positive difference in the world for someone else for different type of person I think they should probably really seriously consider the explicitly political methods discuss in this channel such as lobbying local government or carrying out advertising campaigns or public education campaigns and for other people I think the answer might really be in the creative arts it's with no irony that I say for some people the best way they can make a difference in the world and promote veganism ecology etc maybe through painting a picture maybe through performance maybe through playing music if you're a musician you may have ways of making a positive difference in the world that i do not have i am in my late 30s i'm not going to learn how to play guitar now on the other hand i am learning how to read write and speak the chinese language now and speaking Chinese may really change the options i have in terms of effective activism lobbying etc etc ah i'm going to provide links below this video to two different websites that give you a sketch of costs for keeping pigs and keeping horses it's not cheap in the United States the average annual cost of horse ownership is 3876 dollars per horse per year some of those costs are predictable the cost of having regular visits from a vet for deworming veterinary science can get much more expensive if a disease breaks out amongst your horses if you have many horses the same disease can go from horse to horse the same disease can go from horse to people also horses like cows can carry communicable diseases that the humans living around them get also which can be quite nasty so the vets fees alone average 485 dollars per year yes and of course vaccinations it's somewhat hilarious to me that actually many many vegans do not believe in vaccinations for human beings their auntie vax but they they believe in vaccinations for animals because normally with animals you can see just how quickly they drop dead if you don't give them those vaccinations um costs for keeping pigs I have a very detailed breakdown here although it is aimed at the pot-bellied pig belly pig is not a normal breed that's raised for meat so if there were rescued pigs from from you know the meat industry that you'd have a different species of pig but still I think these costs are indicative spaying and neutering 250 to 500 dollars with the initial shots so again vaccinations feed for a young pig it puts at five hundred dollars per year when the Pig gets older it becomes nine hundred dollars per year fencing costs veterinary care this estimates for one pick this is per pig remember 150 to 300 dollars per year and then when they get older three hundred to five hundred dollars per year surgical and extra medical care it simply notes you may be shocked one day to see a bill for 4,500 dollars um average annual cost for other enrichment items nine hundred dollars you can go through this list in detail now I do think the author of this website is really trying to warn people I I think he's trying to warn people with the high end costs and um he's trying to prevent people who wouldn't really be prepared to take on this level responsible in this level of cost not to adopt pigs casually and think that they can they can take care of them without without really planning ahead and without really saving up money and being financially prepared for the worst there is also some really interesting comments below this table of values one question so he's answering frequently asked questions question what will I do with my pig if I have to move get a divorce or for some other reason cannot keep him the answer he gives our chances are the pig will have to be put down killed or placed in a risky situation where he will not be safe period the sanctuaries are all full period when people get pigs for pets they seldom see a list like this or get a chance to understand what they are getting into so many get them without full information and then cannot keep them later and the places for them to go are few and usually full if you go to our placements page you can read about the risks in our part of the country when trying to place a pig in a good home be very careful placement groups as they have one purpose to collect fees and how safe the pig is maybe of secondary concern now again full disclosure I have never spoken with someone who currently owned and operated and annuals an animal sanctuary vegan animal sanctuary but I did speak with a married couple and they had considered owning and operating an animal sanctuary and they spoke to other people running them and they after they gathered the information that they decided against it that I said that was not the path you take so I got their perspective and this sort of thing was part of it they found it quite depressing that you know because the they're just not in a position to casually say to people people have a horse to get rid of or pay to get rid of they cannot casually except one more horse or one more Pig it's not just about how much empty land you've got it really is about the cost including enormous costs for regular veterinary care that all these animals require the next question here on this less Jethro's worth reading question I want to have my pig be an only pig stay inside and be very bonded to me how do I make that happen in ? is that the other questions the answer if you think this through you will soon realize this is not what you really want it all for the pig it means a lifetime of separation from his kind the only creatures on the planet who speak his language and feel his feelings for you it means a demanding and whiny companion who will destroy the house bite everyone that comes near him and eventually even back you down as he establishes his role as Boss Hogg he will be unhappy and frustrated in his life and you will pay dearly for it approximately ninety-six percent of pigs who become homeless are from single Pig households what starts with a tiny cute and agreeable piglet ends tragically with a 180 pound pig with long hubs and tusks that no one can trim until he is crippled and dies or he attacks the wrong person and is killed pigs frequently attacked toddlers and older family members why blame the pig ? he is simply angry at being held captive in the prison you created think about what your wants mean for the pig it is all bad news so this is fascinating because this website is fundamentally supportive of the idea of keeping pigs as pets specifically pot-bellied pigs but this man is really aware that you know the I was going to say the dehumanizing effect but humans here the that it is in some sense extremely denigrating for a pig to be deprived of the company of its own species for a pig to to live in such extremely unnatural conditions just for the entertainment of human beings unlike pigs living in a pack of other pigs being able to socialize with other pigs to some extent etc etc so I mean all of this raises the question of to what extent would an animal sanctuary treat pigs like household pets or treat horses like household pets um these animals can live for many many years especially if you are getting the multiple visits from vet vets every year you know all of these injections and shots and treatments again and again and then when they get into old age she talks about the pig is becoming a fourth riddick developing arthritis and needing special food and special medical care as they as the garden life so you can extend their lives much much longer than they would survive in the wild and I think that most vegans if they donate to an animal sanctuary that is what they are assuming and I think most of these people also are assuming a very small plot of land where pigs and horses live in small pens which really resembles a farm or a petting zoo and not wild conditions at all now you can tell me if you are more or less horrified by this what if you had a very large plot of land only fenced on three sides that backs onto a forest onto a dense forest and there are wolves in that forest and there are bears in that forest and there were let's say there are vultures let's throw in some vultures some carrion feeding birds like Falcons and vultures or what have you okay and you say you know what if people donate their horses to live here we have enough space for the horses to run around and we don't castrate the horses we don't spare new to the horses and we don't give them any shots we don't give them any veg veterinary care they get to run around they don't get dewormed they don't get their hooves trimmed and you know what sooner or later that gets sick or they die and the wolves come and tear them to pieces and all that's left is a pile of bones that would be a very different model of a sanctuary in substance that might not be a sanctuary at all you might be horrified but I think those horses would have for a few years an experience of a life that is really pretty natural the horses now I could say the same boat pigs and repeat the same thing what if instead of having human beings come and tie the pig down and repeatedly cut the tusks so the tusks can't grow naturally cut the hooves repeatedly treat these pigs and what again instead of castrating the pigs your very fundamental difference in the pigs behavior in nature or what have you what if you're letting these pigs actually revert to living like wild boars and you're not providing them with this kind of intensive veterinary care supervision etc and you're also not regulating their sex lives I mean I'd have you been on a farm but when two horses decide to mate everybody on the farm knows about it when to minks decide to mate on a big farm everybody knows about it um human beings who run farms or run petting zoos are very much involved in the disgusting details of how the animals make love poo reproduce those are all decisions the human Pink's are involved in which as a vegan I'm not comfortable with I think you know you say you're liberating these animals but actually they're just going on to a very different kind of oppression where human beings are controlling every aspect of their lives they're being fed by human hands and the animals are going to try to reproduce with each other and then what are the human beings going to prevent that are they going to prevent it chemically or through castration or you know no matter which way you look at it whether it's horses or pigs or wild dogs um it's gross and the gross Ness is worth reflecting on because one of the reasons why many of us became vegan in the first place was we took a look at the meat and dairy industry and said this is gross but it's interesting to me on the one hand you have the enormous cost of pretending that these animals are household pets and treating them like household pets or on the other hand you have the barbarity of letting them live a little bit closer to the wild for a much shorter period of time and to live a life that will inevitably end with their either dying a violent death at the teeth of some predator such as wolves or bears or their first getting sick and collapsing and then being torn apart by carrion feeders whatever if you got vultures at where you are vultures coming and pick the bones apart I was looking forward to having an in-depth discussion with another person on YouTube who these issues another person who is raising money for an animal sanctuary and that other person has requested that I not use his name on my channel which is very interesting because he has like more than 30 videos that use my name maybe more than 50 videos by now he has many many videos that might have but okay he asked me not to use his name is videos his current target is a very very modest six hundred US dollars per month how many horses can you keep how many pigs can you keep for six hundred US dollars a month how many can you keep really for six thousand a month you got to think about labor costs how many people are you employing on this farm yes one or two people may work for free it's a husband-and-wife team who want to have their hartnett if you can't be there twenty-four/seven you need at least one other employee who's getting paid to do that job costs mount very very quickly even for a very very small number of animals and once you know that limit once you know exactly how many horses and how many pigs you can accept then you can't accept any more until one of them dies and you are going to have to make the hard decisions about when they live in when they die like oh we have a 4500 dollar medical bill coming up for this pig either we spend that money so this pig can live or we let this pig died and a new pig replaces it because the number of animals who can be rescued or liberated on one of these sanctuaries is almost infinite there's such an enormous number of animals even from abandoned pets like this particular type of pig let alone from animals you know if animals that are shall we say byproducts are jettisoned by the meat and dairy industry now it's the costs are big it's a lot of money and the outcomes in some ways are certain in some ways very uncertain if the question is about how can you make the world a better place I'll compare this to a project that right now I'm thinking about doing fundraising for I have written a children's book I wrote it originally in Chinese and then I translated the Chinese and English so have the script and I've been talking to illustrators now some illustrators or amateurs who are vegans who are willing to do this for free they've offered to illustrate the book for free I don't know if that will work out but I'm in discussions with those artists and one artist who is a vegan but is a real professional who's done many children's books before she gave me a cost estimate / illustration she said $500 500 US dollars for each illustration for this Jones book I'm sorry I don't even mention this children's book is highly effective vegan propaganda let me show you you know it's a story it could have beautiful pictures the pictures are still negotiation but this is communicating the moral and the message of the story has everything to do with veganism has everything to do with the surreal nature of the meat and dairy industry that's all around us that's invisible and unthought-of and that you know without being gross introduces children and their parents to this fundamental consideration with the ethics of where our food comes from and the lives the animals are living at all times unseen in a world where there are only concrete floors and steel shed roofs over their heads and where that's the only world they know from the day they were born to the day that the professional artist the the real pro to the bunch she gave me a cost estimate of 500 US dollars up front for each old station and that is a very low price for someone like her she is a vegan and I believe she was giving me that low price you know because she she supports the cause it's her charitable price 20 illustrations not hard to do the math it's a lot of money it's real money tell you about many thousands of dollars but you're talking about a one-time cost if I could raise the thousands of dollars pay the artists publish the book that book have positive outcomes in the real world for decades some children's books stay around for 30 years which curious george is still selling and of course if you want to you can put it on the internet for free as a PDF if you want to you can put it through publishing websites and you can also publish it on paper in this case the book is in both chinese and english so potentially it could be reaching people in Hong Kong and Taiwan and Canada and England it could have all kinds of positive effects for myself personally for my daughter I'm divorced but I have a young daughter it could have positive x in my life and it could be something where throughout your life is an activist you can point back to getting it as a little pause difference me in the world and for families vegan families raising kids it could be something really positive when I compare the commitment of time and money and considering the type of outcome you get with that project to the commitment of time and money to just keep five horses alive I think the book wins and it wins for me given who I am I do have some experience with farming it's not worth describing here I do have some experience with shoveling animal manure with the flies with the mosquitoes with bales of hay with bags of animal feed don't kid yourself it smells bad it's sweaty hard work and the a coastal thank you for it they don't they're not don't make them happy by shoveling their poo you really don't with her whether it's a petting zoo or or a real zoo or a no or a farm or a sanctuary a lot of that work it's it's fundamentally the same despite that the ethical intent you have to take care of the animals and you know the animals get sick and there has to be quarantined they're all these complications and animals break their legs and then there are you questions you're going to shoot them to the head are you going to try some very time-consuming expensive method of saving them once they've got a leg broken then animal like a horse a horse of the broken leg very tough to deal with very heroin all these gross terrible things given my background give it who i am i can tell you i am not the guy to run an animal sanctuary and even if i were just the donor if i were giving money between those two projects i think it's a very tough calls forth the animal sanctuary uh and now beyond that we can talk about the efficacy of real politics wherever you are in the world people are watching this in all different countries in all their in political systems ask yourself does your government like money how about a twenty five percent tax on leather shoes if you want to sweeten the deal you could reduce the taxes on non leather shoes by ten percent government is still making more money right if there's one thing politicians like to do its give themselves a raise it would send a profound signal through the whole social system that leather is obsolete if we had a twenty-five percent tax on leather shoes and a 10-percent discount unknown leather shoes there was a time certainly a couple hundred years ago when there was no substitute for leather when many many objects are made of leather and there was no other real material available those days are over the days when we relied on horses to fight our wars are over the days when heroin was an acceptable medicine are over you know many many things have changed and governments have to make policy decisions that reflect those those changes in priority those changes in values those changes sometimes ultimately in scientific knowledge there was a time when governments encouraged people to smoke cigarettes and use tobacco and those days are over and that's reflected in punitive taxation policies make governments a lot of money having high taxes on cigarettes I do not think in most countries like in a country like Canada I do not think that twenty five percent tax on leather shoes is an unattainable goal I think it's an attainable goal I think that's the kind of change that has both pragmatism and you know an ethical stand behind it and that many politicians would be willing to listen to if you want to pass a law that makes all cancer research impossible by making all vivisection illegal I don't think any politicians are going to take you seriously right the stakes are high they're the consequences are real and you're talking about restricting academic freedom eliminating a whole area of high tech research they're all these knock-on effects and many many vegans passionately want to make all vivisection illegal I understand that I understand your passion but now i'm talking about pragmatism not passion think about the time you might think about if if if you have one animal sanctuary that takes care of a handful of horses and handful of pigs at a cost of fifteen thousand dollars a year really i think that's a very low cost compared to one person's salary the whole operation land pets i actually don't think that's very fifty thousand US dollars a year or let's say you have fifteen thousand dollars a year in cash going into a campaign including lobbying public education advertising a full-blown political campaign to try to achieve special taxation on leather shoes because leather shoes are obsolete they're immoral they're bad for the environment that kill animals the leather industry at every stage polluted pollutes water etc and said which one do you think is more effective and which one actually could achieve a real outcome or a real goal one of my problems with spending fifteen thousand dollars a year on the animal sanctuary is that all you're doing is perpetuating a situation in which animals live in a domesticated state of having their will broken of having no real independence no experience of the wilderness or living in a pack with their own kind and which ultimately they're trapped inside wooden walls or inside wooden fence is or inside metal cages waiting to die
the most effective activism for you personally I've raised this question again and again on my channel and I tried to start a discussion about the nature of animal sanctuaries specifically when I had a conversation with a guy named Jay costly she can still hear most of that podcast is on this channel as a series of videos Jay has a background working in zoos so you had a very interesting perspective on semi domesticated animals wild animals being raised in captivity the ethics of house is operated cetera et cetera and I think there were a lot of interesting ethical questions about what is the difference between animal sanctuary in a petting zoo but in a broader deeper level we all have to ask ourselves individuals what is the best use of our time and money if we're trying to make the world a better place if we are fundamentally concerned about ethics ecology animal rights the promotion of veganism in 21st century uh and I really sincerely think that different people are going to come to different conclusions depending partly on the advantages and disadvantages they have in life full disclosure I did spend a very memorable part of my childhood on a farm and seeing the conditions on other farms not just the farm I was living on and I spent a brief but very memorable part of my adult life also on farms I have seen farm conditions in Laos and Cambodia I have not yet visited a farm here in mainland China that could be coming up that could be kind of the future um for some people the greatest way they could make a difference in the world may well be working in this kind of farm conditions if you grew up if you're actually a vet if you have a diploma and veterinary medicine if you grew up shoveling manure baling hay putting out bags of oats or farm animals you might have a skill set in the background that really prepares you to work at an animal sanctuary you may really feel that writing an animal sanctuaries the best way you can make a positive difference in the world for someone else for different type of person I think they should probably really seriously consider the explicitly political methods discuss in this channel such as lobbying local government or carrying out advertising campaigns or public education campaigns and for other people I think the answer might really be in the creative arts it's with no irony that I say for some people the best way they can make a difference in the world and promote veganism ecology etc maybe through painting a picture maybe through performance maybe through playing music if you're a musician you may have ways of making a positive difference in the world that i do not have i am in my late 30s i'm not going to learn how to play guitar now on the other hand i am learning how to read write and speak the chinese language now and speaking Chinese may really change the options i have in terms of effective activism lobbying etc etc ah i'm going to provide links below this video to two different websites that give you a sketch of costs for keeping pigs and keeping horses it's not cheap in the United States the average annual cost of horse ownership is 3876 dollars per horse per year some of those costs are predictable the cost of having regular visits from a vet for deworming veterinary science can get much more expensive if a disease breaks out amongst your horses if you have many horses the same disease can go from horse to horse the same disease can go from horse to people also horses like cows can carry communicable diseases that the humans living around them get also which can be quite nasty so the vets fees alone average 485 dollars per year yes and of course vaccinations it's somewhat hilarious to me that actually many many vegans do not believe in vaccinations for human beings their auntie vax but they they believe in vaccinations for animals because normally with animals you can see just how quickly they drop dead if you don't give them those vaccinations um costs for keeping pigs I have a very detailed breakdown here although it is aimed at the pot-bellied pig belly pig is not a normal breed that's raised for meat so if there were rescued pigs from from you know the meat industry that you'd have a different species of pig but still I think these costs are indicative spaying and neutering 250 to 500 dollars with the initial shots so again vaccinations feed for a young pig it puts at five hundred dollars per year when the Pig gets older it becomes nine hundred dollars per year fencing costs veterinary care this estimates for one pick this is per pig remember 150 to 300 dollars per year and then when they get older three hundred to five hundred dollars per year surgical and extra medical care it simply notes you may be shocked one day to see a bill for 4,500 dollars um average annual cost for other enrichment items nine hundred dollars you can go through this list in detail now I do think the author of this website is really trying to warn people I I think he's trying to warn people with the high end costs and um he's trying to prevent people who wouldn't really be prepared to take on this level responsible in this level of cost not to adopt pigs casually and think that they can they can take care of them without without really planning ahead and without really saving up money and being financially prepared for the worst there is also some really interesting comments below this table of values one question so he's answering frequently asked questions question what will I do with my pig if I have to move get a divorce or for some other reason cannot keep him the answer he gives our chances are the pig will have to be put down killed or placed in a risky situation where he will not be safe period the sanctuaries are all full period when people get pigs for pets they seldom see a list like this or get a chance to understand what they are getting into so many get them without full information and then cannot keep them later and the places for them to go are few and usually full if you go to our placements page you can read about the risks in our part of the country when trying to place a pig in a good home be very careful placement groups as they have one purpose to collect fees and how safe the pig is maybe of secondary concern now again full disclosure I have never spoken with someone who currently owned and operated and annuals an animal sanctuary vegan animal sanctuary but I did speak with a married couple and they had considered owning and operating an animal sanctuary and they spoke to other people running them and they after they gathered the information that they decided against it that I said that was not the path you take so I got their perspective and this sort of thing was part of it they found it quite depressing that you know because the they're just not in a position to casually say to people people have a horse to get rid of or pay to get rid of they cannot casually except one more horse or one more Pig it's not just about how much empty land you've got it really is about the cost including enormous costs for regular veterinary care that all these animals require the next question here on this less Jethro's worth reading question I want to have my pig be an only pig stay inside and be very bonded to me how do I make that happen in ? is that the other questions the answer if you think this through you will soon realize this is not what you really want it all for the pig it means a lifetime of separation from his kind the only creatures on the planet who speak his language and feel his feelings for you it means a demanding and whiny companion who will destroy the house bite everyone that comes near him and eventually even back you down as he establishes his role as Boss Hogg he will be unhappy and frustrated in his life and you will pay dearly for it approximately ninety-six percent of pigs who become homeless are from single Pig households what starts with a tiny cute and agreeable piglet ends tragically with a 180 pound pig with long hubs and tusks that no one can trim until he is crippled and dies or he attacks the wrong person and is killed pigs frequently attacked toddlers and older family members why blame the pig ? he is simply angry at being held captive in the prison you created think about what your wants mean for the pig it is all bad news so this is fascinating because this website is fundamentally supportive of the idea of keeping pigs as pets specifically pot-bellied pigs but this man is really aware that you know the I was going to say the dehumanizing effect but humans here the that it is in some sense extremely denigrating for a pig to be deprived of the company of its own species for a pig to to live in such extremely unnatural conditions just for the entertainment of human beings unlike pigs living in a pack of other pigs being able to socialize with other pigs to some extent etc etc so I mean all of this raises the question of to what extent would an animal sanctuary treat pigs like household pets or treat horses like household pets um these animals can live for many many years especially if you are getting the multiple visits from vet vets every year you know all of these injections and shots and treatments again and again and then when they get into old age she talks about the pig is becoming a fourth riddick developing arthritis and needing special food and special medical care as they as the garden life so you can extend their lives much much longer than they would survive in the wild and I think that most vegans if they donate to an animal sanctuary that is what they are assuming and I think most of these people also are assuming a very small plot of land where pigs and horses live in small pens which really resembles a farm or a petting zoo and not wild conditions at all now you can tell me if you are more or less horrified by this what if you had a very large plot of land only fenced on three sides that backs onto a forest onto a dense forest and there are wolves in that forest and there are bears in that forest and there were let's say there are vultures let's throw in some vultures some carrion feeding birds like Falcons and vultures or what have you okay and you say you know what if people donate their horses to live here we have enough space for the horses to run around and we don't castrate the horses we don't spare new to the horses and we don't give them any shots we don't give them any veg veterinary care they get to run around they don't get dewormed they don't get their hooves trimmed and you know what sooner or later that gets sick or they die and the wolves come and tear them to pieces and all that's left is a pile of bones that would be a very different model of a sanctuary in substance that might not be a sanctuary at all you might be horrified but I think those horses would have for a few years an experience of a life that is really pretty natural the horses now I could say the same boat pigs and repeat the same thing what if instead of having human beings come and tie the pig down and repeatedly cut the tusks so the tusks can't grow naturally cut the hooves repeatedly treat these pigs and what again instead of castrating the pigs your very fundamental difference in the pigs behavior in nature or what have you what if you're letting these pigs actually revert to living like wild boars and you're not providing them with this kind of intensive veterinary care supervision etc and you're also not regulating their sex lives I mean I'd have you been on a farm but when two horses decide to mate everybody on the farm knows about it when to minks decide to mate on a big farm everybody knows about it um human beings who run farms or run petting zoos are very much involved in the disgusting details of how the animals make love poo reproduce those are all decisions the human Pink's are involved in which as a vegan I'm not comfortable with I think you know you say you're liberating these animals but actually they're just going on to a very different kind of oppression where human beings are controlling every aspect of their lives they're being fed by human hands and the animals are going to try to reproduce with each other and then what are the human beings going to prevent that are they going to prevent it chemically or through castration or you know no matter which way you look at it whether it's horses or pigs or wild dogs um it's gross and the gross Ness is worth reflecting on because one of the reasons why many of us became vegan in the first place was we took a look at the meat and dairy industry and said this is gross but it's interesting to me on the one hand you have the enormous cost of pretending that these animals are household pets and treating them like household pets or on the other hand you have the barbarity of letting them live a little bit closer to the wild for a much shorter period of time and to live a life that will inevitably end with their either dying a violent death at the teeth of some predator such as wolves or bears or their first getting sick and collapsing and then being torn apart by carrion feeders whatever if you got vultures at where you are vultures coming and pick the bones apart I was looking forward to having an in-depth discussion with another person on YouTube who these issues another person who is raising money for an animal sanctuary and that other person has requested that I not use his name on my channel which is very interesting because he has like more than 30 videos that use my name maybe more than 50 videos by now he has many many videos that might have but okay he asked me not to use his name is videos his current target is a very very modest six hundred US dollars per month how many horses can you keep how many pigs can you keep for six hundred US dollars a month how many can you keep really for six thousand a month you got to think about labor costs how many people are you employing on this farm yes one or two people may work for free it's a husband-and-wife team who want to have their hartnett if you can't be there twenty-four/seven you need at least one other employee who's getting paid to do that job costs mount very very quickly even for a very very small number of animals and once you know that limit once you know exactly how many horses and how many pigs you can accept then you can't accept any more until one of them dies and you are going to have to make the hard decisions about when they live in when they die like oh we have a 4500 dollar medical bill coming up for this pig either we spend that money so this pig can live or we let this pig died and a new pig replaces it because the number of animals who can be rescued or liberated on one of these sanctuaries is almost infinite there's such an enormous number of animals even from abandoned pets like this particular type of pig let alone from animals you know if animals that are shall we say byproducts are jettisoned by the meat and dairy industry now it's the costs are big it's a lot of money and the outcomes in some ways are certain in some ways very uncertain if the question is about how can you make the world a better place I'll compare this to a project that right now I'm thinking about doing fundraising for I have written a children's book I wrote it originally in Chinese and then I translated the Chinese and English so have the script and I've been talking to illustrators now some illustrators or amateurs who are vegans who are willing to do this for free they've offered to illustrate the book for free I don't know if that will work out but I'm in discussions with those artists and one artist who is a vegan but is a real professional who's done many children's books before she gave me a cost estimate / illustration she said $500 500 US dollars for each illustration for this Jones book I'm sorry I don't even mention this children's book is highly effective vegan propaganda let me show you you know it's a story it could have beautiful pictures the pictures are still negotiation but this is communicating the moral and the message of the story has everything to do with veganism has everything to do with the surreal nature of the meat and dairy industry that's all around us that's invisible and unthought-of and that you know without being gross introduces children and their parents to this fundamental consideration with the ethics of where our food comes from and the lives the animals are living at all times unseen in a world where there are only concrete floors and steel shed roofs over their heads and where that's the only world they know from the day they were born to the day that the professional artist the the real pro to the bunch she gave me a cost estimate of 500 US dollars up front for each old station and that is a very low price for someone like her she is a vegan and I believe she was giving me that low price you know because she she supports the cause it's her charitable price 20 illustrations not hard to do the math it's a lot of money it's real money tell you about many thousands of dollars but you're talking about a one-time cost if I could raise the thousands of dollars pay the artists publish the book that book have positive outcomes in the real world for decades some children's books stay around for 30 years which curious george is still selling and of course if you want to you can put it on the internet for free as a PDF if you want to you can put it through publishing websites and you can also publish it on paper in this case the book is in both chinese and english so potentially it could be reaching people in Hong Kong and Taiwan and Canada and England it could have all kinds of positive effects for myself personally for my daughter I'm divorced but I have a young daughter it could have positive x in my life and it could be something where throughout your life is an activist you can point back to getting it as a little pause difference me in the world and for families vegan families raising kids it could be something really positive when I compare the commitment of time and money and considering the type of outcome you get with that project to the commitment of time and money to just keep five horses alive I think the book wins and it wins for me given who I am I do have some experience with farming it's not worth describing here I do have some experience with shoveling animal manure with the flies with the mosquitoes with bales of hay with bags of animal feed don't kid yourself it smells bad it's sweaty hard work and the a coastal thank you for it they don't they're not don't make them happy by shoveling their poo you really don't with her whether it's a petting zoo or or a real zoo or a no or a farm or a sanctuary a lot of that work it's it's fundamentally the same despite that the ethical intent you have to take care of the animals and you know the animals get sick and there has to be quarantined they're all these complications and animals break their legs and then there are you questions you're going to shoot them to the head are you going to try some very time-consuming expensive method of saving them once they've got a leg broken then animal like a horse a horse of the broken leg very tough to deal with very heroin all these gross terrible things given my background give it who i am i can tell you i am not the guy to run an animal sanctuary and even if i were just the donor if i were giving money between those two projects i think it's a very tough calls forth the animal sanctuary uh and now beyond that we can talk about the efficacy of real politics wherever you are in the world people are watching this in all different countries in all their in political systems ask yourself does your government like money how about a twenty five percent tax on leather shoes if you want to sweeten the deal you could reduce the taxes on non leather shoes by ten percent government is still making more money right if there's one thing politicians like to do its give themselves a raise it would send a profound signal through the whole social system that leather is obsolete if we had a twenty-five percent tax on leather shoes and a 10-percent discount unknown leather shoes there was a time certainly a couple hundred years ago when there was no substitute for leather when many many objects are made of leather and there was no other real material available those days are over the days when we relied on horses to fight our wars are over the days when heroin was an acceptable medicine are over you know many many things have changed and governments have to make policy decisions that reflect those those changes in priority those changes in values those changes sometimes ultimately in scientific knowledge there was a time when governments encouraged people to smoke cigarettes and use tobacco and those days are over and that's reflected in punitive taxation policies make governments a lot of money having high taxes on cigarettes I do not think in most countries like in a country like Canada I do not think that twenty five percent tax on leather shoes is an unattainable goal I think it's an attainable goal I think that's the kind of change that has both pragmatism and you know an ethical stand behind it and that many politicians would be willing to listen to if you want to pass a law that makes all cancer research impossible by making all vivisection illegal I don't think any politicians are going to take you seriously right the stakes are high they're the consequences are real and you're talking about restricting academic freedom eliminating a whole area of high tech research they're all these knock-on effects and many many vegans passionately want to make all vivisection illegal I understand that I understand your passion but now i'm talking about pragmatism not passion think about the time you might think about if if if you have one animal sanctuary that takes care of a handful of horses and handful of pigs at a cost of fifteen thousand dollars a year really i think that's a very low cost compared to one person's salary the whole operation land pets i actually don't think that's very fifty thousand US dollars a year or let's say you have fifteen thousand dollars a year in cash going into a campaign including lobbying public education advertising a full-blown political campaign to try to achieve special taxation on leather shoes because leather shoes are obsolete they're immoral they're bad for the environment that kill animals the leather industry at every stage polluted pollutes water etc and said which one do you think is more effective and which one actually could achieve a real outcome or a real goal one of my problems with spending fifteen thousand dollars a year on the animal sanctuary is that all you're doing is perpetuating a situation in which animals live in a domesticated state of having their will broken of having no real independence no experience of the wilderness or living in a pack with their own kind and which ultimately they're trapped inside wooden walls or inside wooden fence is or inside metal cages waiting to die