UnchainedTV: Meet the Oprah of Veganism!

0:00 Pollution, all it takes is one simple choice. Now, here's your host, Jane Velez Mitchell. Hello, and boy, do we have an exciting guest for you today. He goes by Plant CEO, and I called him the Oprah of veganism. Then some people said, oh, well, is that a compliment or is it not a compliment? Well, I was in the news media for 38 years, and I can tell you that Oprah is a genius at what she does. You may not like her, you may like her, but she knows what she's doing, and she's one of the most successful broadcasters in history.

0:40 So when I said he's the Oprah of veganism, it was meant as a compliment. Now, Plant CEO interviews some of the biggest names in the vegan world, and we're delighted that he has a lovely series of these interviews on Unchained TV, our streaming network. You can listen to them for free. Here's a billionaire, here's people making vegan dog food, vegan stuntman, artificial intelligence expert, filmmaker, and of course, the head of Veganuary, turning millions of people vegan. Plant CEO, Anant Jhansi, joins us live from London, England, and we are so absolutely honoured to have you.

1:28 You're a great sport. I'd like to say that I love collaborating with you. You're always there, you give me advice, you help, and you do these great interviews. So tell me, why have you decided to devote your life to interviewing vegan leaders? Yeah, thank you so much, Jane, for having me on, and yeah, you're fantastic as well in all the work that you're doing. I think it's really driven in the fact that, I went vegan now nearly six years ago, and I decided to try and give something back. My day job's actually in marketing. So I thought, what can I do marketing -wise to promote more people, to find companies, get inspired, whether that's trying different products, or even seeing different documentaries, or even getting funding from VC firms?

2:23 So I think that was the passion, and that's why I created the show, to try and give this space to all these wonderful leaders from our community to inspire others. That's the main core reason. And the actual reason that I've done it myself is the passion for animals. So a lot of people go vegan for the planet, environmental reasons, or animal welfare, or their own personal health. I come at it from saving as many animals as possible. That's the reason why I'm doing it. And that's exactly why I'm doing it as well. So you did so many interviews.

3:04 I was just having to just pick a couple as a taste. I wanna start with a man who may be the most effective animal rights, vegan, plant -based activist in the history of the world. I'm sure there's a lot of competition, but this guy has brought us The Cove. He won an Oscar. He brought us Racing Extinction, Racing to Extinction. He brought us The Game Changers, and he brought us most recently on Netflix, You Are What You Eat, A Twin Experiment. Let's listen and talk about his interview on the other side. After we did a film called The Game Changers, people said, oh, well, I got off the diet because I'm really, I'm Northern European, I need milk, or I'm Asian, I need fish.

3:55 And I was curious, I was like, well, is there really anything about genetics that predisposes somebody to needing a different kind of nutrition? And I thought, well, why not use twins, identical twins, as kind of guinea pigs for a project, and what we did is we took 21 sets of twins, actually 22, one pair dropped out. So 21 sets of twins, and for eight weeks, we gave one of them a whole foods, plant-based diet, and the other twin a healthy, well, a healthy omnivore diet. So what if we got people who are genetically the same? Just like us. I was scared to death to tell you the truth of what was gonna happen, because we didn't know.

4:40 Twins share the same DNA, so we get to see if it's about your greens, not your genes. Vegan twins were biologically younger, they were no longer identical, because they had, their DNA was changing. And that was shocking to everyone. When you have the data, the signal that's so clear, like you wanna live long, you wanna have, live without chronic disease, a vegan diet's the way to go. So I thought this was such a fascinating interview. What I loved about it, as a person who has done documentaries and produced TV shows, was that this incredibly overachieving director, who's won an Oscar, revealed that he was scared out of his mind when he did the twin experiment, because he had no idea what it was gonna show.

5:28 Tell us about that. Yeah, I was actually quite surprised about that too, when he said that. You always think that, oh, they might have had an agenda in terms of what they were trying to get, achieve in terms of the results. So that was fascinating, where he was equally as, wasn't aware where it was gonna go to, but they just wanted to put the content out there. And he's such an amazing guy, to give up his time and devote so much of his career, when he could have been making any other types of documentaries, right? To focus his attention on this. And I remember from the documentary, the bit that he said there in the clip that you showed was about how the twins' DNA started to change.

6:16 And I remember from the documentary, there was a part where at the ends of your DNA, you've got the telomeres. And the telomeres for the plant-based twin started to extend. So basically protecting the DNA, increasing your longevity. So to expose that, that hadn't been really shown before in such a short space of time, shows really how powerful plants are in terms of our diet and lifestyle, especially in relation to longevity. And also at the end of the discussion, I said, okay, what are you doing next?

6:59 And he goes, well, I've got so many projects. I've got like six on the go. And it was quite amazing to see that he had so many other projects that he's working on. And one thing that was quite interesting for me is how he has now been looking into animals and their behaviour in terms of communication and using basically AI to analyse that behaviour. And so one of his films that he's working on next will be looking into that intersection between understanding animals by using AI and seeing how they're communicating to each other.

7:39 So that's gonna be amazing, I'm sure, as well as his other documentaries that he's working on. And tell me how you pronounce his name because it's often mispronounced. We're talking about the director, the Oscar-winning director of The Cove, of The Game Changers, of Racing to Extinction. And you are what you eat, a twin experiment. Right, so it's Louis Fasoyas. Fasoyas, Louis Fasoyas, what an incredible activist. Really, really great interview. Now, you talked about artificial intelligence and we know it is changing the landscape. There are people who say it's more significant than the invention of fire. I don't know about that, but I know that every time I go online, I'm being invited now to use artificial intelligence.

8:23 And so you interviewed Sam Tucker, who is the head of OpenPAWS. And he is very worried that artificial intelligence could basically compound some of the worst influences and instincts that humans have to treat animals as mere commodities and even expand the whole notion of animals as products. I wanna hear what he has to say on your Plant CEO podcast and then talk about this. The potential for AI is so infinite that it's hard for people to grasp concretely, like where do we actually apply this within our current organisation?

9:08 Because the technology is so powerful and there's so many things you can do with it that it's like, where do you even start? The most dangerous situation I could think of would be a system that thinks that it's okay to discriminate against and to harm less intelligent species. And sadly, that's exactly what we're training into AI at the moment. Not only are we not taking any steps to actively address it, like we have with a lot of human bias in AI against particular groups of people, but we're actually continuing to embed more and more of it. And so I think that if we want to have the best possible chance of having a super intelligent AI that treats us well, we have to actually be an example for how we treat less intelligent species or less powerful species.

9:53 In a way, we're not at the moment at all, right? In terms of what we do to animals. But we have such a limited number of conversations that we're looking at compared to an AI that could potentially be looking at all of them. It can be so hyper-personalised at scale. This is terrifying to me. Of all the interviews that you've done, this one was the most alarming to me. I was like, oh my God, they're going to just make it more efficient in the way that we institutionally torture animals with these massive factory farms, concentrated animal feeding operations. But there's also a plus, which we're gonna get to in a second.

10:33 But what were your thoughts as you were hearing that? It was alarm bells were going off for me. Yeah, I think the main thing is that these AI systems are all using a form of training models. So whatever input they're getting, and I guess these AI companies, OpenAI, Google, Gemini are pulling in these massive sources of data that's available on the internet. And if that data has shown animals to be in a negative light in the way that we're basically abusing them for either their flesh, their skin, or their byproducts, that's gonna be reflective inside the responses the AI then gives.

11:26 And one worry area for me is like, okay, so as an industry, in two sides, there would be the meat and the dairy industry that will probably be using AI quite a lot to experiment their own way. But as our industry, the vegan industry, we need to ensure that we're on top of this. So one of his core things is to actually go to a vegan charity, for example, who are looking to do certain outreach and actually use the data that they have to put into their own version of an AI.

12:09 So let's look at a different data set and let's try and help those organisations come up. At the same time, he will be having conversations with Google, which I know he's had, and also with OpenAI to say, okay, can we ensure that we're also pulling in this level of data so the responses that you give back is relevant? Now, I did my own experiments actually. So I went to all the AI platforms and I said, okay, what can an individual do to reduce their carbon emissions? And each AI would give a different response. So, and then I kind of found one, which was Antropic and Claude, which did say, okay, the biggest thing that you can do as an individual is go on a plant -based diet.

13:03 And then there'll be other things like, okay, insulate your home or drive electric car or travel less, those other things. But the biggest impact an individual can make is to switch their diet. It's the easiest thing that we can do. If you're lucky and you live in the Western world, you'll be having three meals a day. Let's look at those three meals. And if you're eating seven days a week, that's 21 meal choices in a week. Let's start by each one of those decisions that you're making. Just go on to a plant-based one for one of them. You're preaching to this converted person. Obviously I've been vegan 28 years, but what I'm hearing is we've all got to get online and start publishing more articles that tell the other side of the story.

13:50 Because we know the mainstream media doesn't tell the animal side of the story because look at the advertisers, meat, dairy, and pharmaceuticals. So everybody, you need to get online and get more vegan content out there. And we're certainly doing that. We got a caller, Sarah in Atlanta. Your question or thought for Plant CEO and not Joshie. Hi, my question is there's a lot of young millennials that are video content creators. They make video games, vegan video games, and they're already in that full AI industry. And I'm wondering if you're gonna be reaching out to them or like finding out how to connect with them because I feel like there's not a connection because that's why it's not progressing faster because the people that are doing this already, you don't even know about them.

14:46 All the young people that are making these video games that are actually saving animals and helping animals is my point. Maybe you guys could try to somehow collaborate. And that's my question is, do you even know about these people? In particular, there's one girl named Tricia who lives in LA now. She's a very popular video game creator. Thank you. Thank you. Well, you know, I've never thought about video game creators but I know that video games are huge. And I mean, it's such a massive, massive group. I also know that there are unfortunately a lot of video games that are centred around violence, killing not only humans, but other animals.

15:27 And there's even video games that involve farming of animals or hunting of animals. How can we turn that around? So Sarah, yeah. Thank you for your question. Great question. We've got to give them more exposure. So I'll be happy to get the person that you said if you can share with that afterwards, them on the show. I know that Redfoo has also been from LMFAO. He's been creating some content as well. I think all types of content, like so video games is definitely a key one to sort of engage with that audience.

16:08 But I also interviewed somebody and I have spoken to people who want to create like animated series of their books, for example. So I would like to see those sort of children's programmes getting into mainstream TV that will influence younger viewers to understand about animal agriculture and the impact that it's making on our planet. So yeah, I think both areas we need to invest more in. If there's people out there just who have created a game, do contact me and are happy to have a chat and see if we can get you on the show. I want to talk about you.

16:50 You're a cheerful gentleman living in London and yet you've decided to really devote and you're a family man, you have daughters, you have a wife, but you've decided to devote yourself to this. Why you? Because that's what I always want to find out. What's the secret sauce that made somebody like you, instead of just going out there, making money and enjoying your life and spending time with your family, you're devoting a considerable percentage of your life for no apparent remuneration just to get the word out. Why?

17:30 It's a great question. I think it's in a way, I just feel that we need to give the animals a voice and nobody else really is. So I kind of see it as like a, in a way a bit of a spiritual mission of mine to help us save these animals who are getting slaughtered every day. And part of it is to talk about the environment. Part of it is to talk about the science related to your health and also talk to activists.

18:11 Something fascinating happened to me where I recently joined a firm called Save for the Animals. And they have this cube of truth where you have a TV screen and you have activists in the middle of Leicester Square, probably the most busiest part of London. And they're showing footage from Dominion. And it's all about showing the insides of what happens in a factory farm, for example, or whether it's dairy or a chicken farm, for example. And then just seeing people's reaction and some people would like, go away and like, I don't wanna see it.

18:55 Other people would just sit and just like be fascinated and then they'll be prepared to have a conversation. So I think that's definitely part of it, like the activism side. But I think the way I do it is not necessarily talk about that so much. And there's so many brilliant people who are doing that. What I like to do is have these really insightful chats and let people come up to their own decision. And the same thing happened to me. I was brought up a vegetarian and then six years ago, after watching those documentaries, like the Game Changers, for example, or Cowspiracy and What the Health, all these fantastic documentaries led me to a decision after I did my own research, saying actually the dairy industry is the same side of the coin as the meat industry.

19:52 So once you start to figure that out, and I think really the passion comes, I think a lot of people who are sort of in this space and more vocal are doing it for the animals. So they're definitely more into the long-term, I would say, in making a change. And if nobody else is talking about it, why not? This is what we need to do. And don't get me wrong, I do love spending time and I do spend time with my family and my girls, but this is just another project that I need to devote my attention to. So yeah. And you're doing an incredible job and we're very grateful that you can watch his top interviews on Unchained TV.

20:36 And I hope you do. And also Dominion is on Unchained TV as well. Now that's a tough one to watch. More people have watched even a little part of that and gone vegan, saying I can't be a part of what's happening to these animals. We've got more callers. Tiffany in Los Angeles, your question or thought for Anant Joshi, plant CEO. Thank you, Jane, for taking my call and thank you, Anit, for all you do. I wanted to ask you, what is your take on sell meat and cultivated meat? Do you think it's an answer or a way to the future? I see so much mixed information about it. Thank you. Yeah, I definitely think it's a positive thing for the movement because on the pure fact that we might not be able to meet the demands for the meat industry and meet all those people who still don't care or love the taste of meat or just don't wanna change.

21:35 So the cultivated meat, as they now call it, is really an answer to that. Me personally, I've never had meat in that way. So I don't want to, or I don't feel a need that I would want to have it. And other vegans would be in the same position where they feel, okay, even taking a cell from an animal and then growing that cell in a non-harmful way, they wouldn't accept it. But I'm definitely pro it because I feel that we need these innovations happening as well as the meat or cultured meat, the other side is actually precision fermentation, where there's a lot of investment going in that, which is basically building the same protein as what you get in dairy, which would be things like casein.

22:29 And then using those proteins to basically put inside ingredients where you're using, say, milk, cheese, eggs, all that will get displaced from using precision fermentation. So both areas of technology, I've had people on the show talking about this, I'm definitely pro it because I feel that we need to, anything we can do to save more lives quicker, that is definitely an answer. The question is how big they can get in terms of scale to replace the amount of meat and dairy that's being consumed at the moment.

23:09 So I definitely see there's a future in cultivated meat. And I will say some of the most powerful people in the world are starting to recognise this. Bill Gates has said publicly, we need to switch to synthetic meat. Jeff Bezos, obviously founder of Amazon, has donated something like $100 million to all proteins. So people are starting to realise this is completely unsustainable. We've got two more callers, Lindsay in Tarzana, then we'll go to Maggie after that in Sacramento. Lindsay. Yes, back to the AI for a moment. It was just very enlightening what you said about how basically it's listening to us and we have these opportunities.

23:53 I'm a content creator and I get offered collabs and every time it's a consumer product, I go online and Google it to see if it's vegan and cruelty free. Well, AI is listening when I do that. Every time we go in a restaurant and ask what's your vegan options, we are informing people. So I think it's just a good reminder to all of us that are vegan or plant-based that we have an opportunity and we need to take advantage of it. Thank you. Absolutely and a very, very good point, Lindsay in Tarzana. Let's go to Maggie in Sacramento. Hi, thank you so much for having me and thank you so much for all the interesting topics that you actually mentioned here.

24:38 I'm the older generation and I'm not really using AI every day. And as a vegan, is there someone who can advise us what we can do like every day with vegans and AI to promote less cruelty? And is there someone who actually teaches and gives like a workshop on how we can do it? Because actually I couldn't find it anywhere and I don't know how to use that. And I would love to promote, you know, my liberation. That is a really good question. We keep talking about AI, AI. You know, the truth is that we all have access to, I have a chat GPT and I go in there and I do all sorts of things, try to get answers to things.

25:29 What can the average person do to utilise AI so that every single vegan is inputting pro-animal, pro-plant-based content? Yeah, I mean, if you're a content creator, then obviously putting content out, any form of positive content that you're putting out there will help whether it's articles, YouTube videos, you know, if you're putting audio files, that is one thing. So like you said before, Jane, about just, we need more content being produced. The second one I think, Maggie, is really about the education part.

26:11 There's lots of content on YouTube in general about AI and tutorials, I guess, about how to, you say, use the prompts and what way you can get the right results that you're looking for and how to ask those right questions. But I think it's a valid point in terms of maybe we need something specific about - How about this? Not to interrupt, but what about just taking all the reports that show that plant-based is the best way to reduce your greenhouse gas emissions footprint and just copying that and putting it in chat GPT? I would think that if it's an open source, right, and it's taking all this information in, and believe me, I'm no expert.

26:58 I'm just coming up with this off the top of my head because sometimes I'll put a report in there seeking information or seeking a summary. And so if you take all these reports, for example, last year, Oxford University did a study that showed that the average meat eater can reduce their greenhouse gas emissions footprint by 75% by switching to a plant-based diet, 75%. If we all did that, we could all immediately collectively begin to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 75%. That is the solution to climate change. Of course, nobody covered it. I didn't see it on CNN.

27:38 I didn't see it on MSNBC. It was in the New York Times and that's it. And shame on mainstream media not covering solutions. They love to stick with what I call catastrophe porn. Oh, the fires and the floods and the people, all these terrible things happening. And my heart goes out to them. But then when a solution shows up, you don't cover it. So I would say, Maggie, start downloading those reports. Start downloading those news articles. Every single positive thing about veganism, I would just cut and paste it and put it in chat GPT. Now, Anat, come back and correct me and say, Jane, you're absolutely wrong.

28:20 But until I hear further, if it takes in information, let's give it all the information we need to give it. And I'd love to ask Sam Tucker if that is effective and we will get back to you. This is an ongoing thing. Keep watching Unchained TV. And we will stay on top of that whole issue and get back to you on that, Maggie and our viewers. Because wouldn't it be great to have a peaceful army of vegans inputting good information into these artificial intelligence vehicles? We've got another caller, Christina in Los Angeles.

29:00 Your question or thought for Plant CEO. Hi, thank you. So I just wanted to share that recently, I was with a small group of folks who went to the Hollywood Climate Conference out here in Beverly Hills. And we have signs that said, normalise veganism, put the topic, put vegan characters in movies, scripts, TV shows, commercials, all of that. And surprisingly, the few folks that I was able to stop did say that they were all vegan. And this climate convention served all vegan food.

29:41 So I guess my question is to all of you and to Jane and to our esteemed speaker today, I feel like the climate community activists, environmentalists is a pretty good avenue to go through because they are forced to make that connection between veganism and climate. And then of course to animal issues and human health issues. And how do we make more of an inroad into the whole climate community? I thank you, Christina for that question. And since you said that I could answer it too, I will, I think we're making progress on that front. Having been vegan 28 years and having gone to so-called environmental events that are serving and conservation events that are serving meat and being disgusted because it's like serving coal at an end.

30:35 I mean, it's just not smart. It's hypocritical. But I'm starting to see a lot of environmental organisations changing. And I went to the Badass Green Awards, all vegan. And there were some of the top leaders in California government there. And everything was 100% plant-based and I asked around. And apparently somebody who was part of the organisation just made a point of speaking to the heads of the group a few years ago, a couple of years ago and saying, hey, and they listened and kudos to them. And we were recently at the Hollywood Climate Summit that was also vegan and kudos to them.

31:21 But I will say, and I'm not gonna name names here. There are some other so-called environmental groups that I've been a part of where, and sometimes it's a generational thing. Some people are like, no, we're gonna serve at our event what we think people wanna eat so we can get people there. And I'm like, that's not the point. So where are we with environmental groups getting the message? Because I've had run-ins with years, I'd say six years ago, I had run-ins with a couple of environmental groups where they didn't wanna talk about it at all. And they were kind of like buzz off. And in fact, a very famous person at a Fire Drills Friday event told me, you be quiet.

32:08 When I said, and animal agriculture even got written up in a newspaper. Again, I'm not gonna name names, but I've had run-ins with so-called environmentalists. I see it getting better. What do you see? I see it getting better, but I agree with you that there's some of the big organisations, especially like the COP28, for example, of the world where they have a huge convention of so many people attending, still serving meat and dairy. They have some options. I would love for them to have plant -based food as a default. I mean, how can you be a climate activist and still be serving steak or fish, for example?

32:54 So it's just insane to me, like they haven't quite made that connection. And I'm happy to hear, Christina, that if this climate conference in Hollywood was all plant -based, but in other parts of the world, doesn't all other cities, they still haven't made that connection strong enough. And again, it comes back to the point that we've been making here, both Jane and I, is that we need to have more coverage about this. We need more documentaries produced about this. We need more coverage. And we need, especially the climate activists, to know about this. So yeah, we still need to do a lot better job on it.

33:38 And one thing just- I have a New York Times article from last year up. Save the planet, put down that hamburger. Researchers examined the diets of 55,500 people and found that vegans are responsible for 75 % less in greenhouse gases than meat eaters. Now this was in the New York Times. So all those important people who go to COP28, I mean, they probably read the New York Times. They certainly should. It is the paper of record. It is the most important journalistic publication in the world. And it's saying it right there, flat out. So you kind of would have to live with your head in the sand not to know this at this point.

34:22 To me, what I see is, I'll just call it the way I see it. Arrogance, an unwillingness to change, and wilful blindness and hypocrisy. Yeah. One other important thing is, when it comes to investment, the plant-based industry went through a bit of a downturn in terms of VCs and investors looking to invest into plant -based companies. Another avenue could be, is that we should be talking to these climate firms, these VC firms that are predominantly tasked with IP money, investors' money to make a change.

35:10 And therefore they should be investing more on plant-based companies. So this is potentially another angle that vegan startups or plant-based food startups can seek money is by going directly to those climate VCs as well as the plant-based VCs as well. And what about the government? I mean, that's, you know, the really big story is that right now here in the United States, the farm bill is being debated. It will determine US government policy toward agriculture, including animal agriculture for the next five years. And of course, they're trying to undo what we did here in California with Prop 12, which says that pigs from gestation crates, these are crates the size of an animal's body.

36:02 They are never able to turn around or even scratch themselves. They go mad and they break their teeth on the bars. It's a torture device, plain and simple. And this kind of confinement is extreme confinement. Pigs are the fifth smartest animal, smarter than dogs. So the people of California voted to ban any products that come from pigs who are kept in these crates. And Prop 12, as it is known, went all the way up to the US Supreme Court. The US Supreme Court upheld Prop 12 and still the meat industry, as the farm bill is being debated, is still trying to insert language to undo what the people of California, which is the fifth largest economy in the world and supposedly about to become the fourth largest economy in the world, said very clearly, we do not condone this kind of cruelty.

36:57 And so I can show you, because we've interviewed various people protesting against this, and there are so many people who are literally getting arrested trying to speak to our representatives to say, if you continue massive subsidies for animal agriculture for the next five years, you are going to doom us to a climate apocalypse. We are paying millions of dollars to bail out the chicken and egg industry, a $276 billion industry. Why are hardworking Americans paid to bail out this industry?

37:39 It is absurd and immoral. You have betrayed hardworking constituents in America. It's time for a plant-based pay-as -you-go future. The committee will be in order. The committee will be in order. The committee will stand in recess until the police can restore order. That just happened recently. We interviewed the gentleman there who was arrested, Robert Grillo, the head of Free From Harm, and he is, you know, look, prior to doing anything like that, like non-violently disrupting a congressional hearing, thousands of letters have been written.

38:24 But these folks are supposed to represent us. They're not supposed to represent the meat industry and the 0.1% that are billionaires. And in fact, a lot of the meat industry isn't even United States. The biggest pork producer in the world, Smithfield, is a Chinese-owned company. I mean, what? Meanwhile, we are spending tax dollars trying to fight climate change when the meat industry is a huge, if not the leading driver of climate change, and not us. Yeah, the governments have to be tackled from a lobbyist point of view, obviously.

39:07 And we need groups in each country to take charge on this. And more needs to be done. I mean, the meat industry is so powerful in terms of the billions of dollars that it makes every year, that they are putting their efforts to do the same with the governments. And we need to sort of fight back in some ways to do this. But the message obviously needs to go to them. But unfortunately, not all governments in the world today are very moral, I would say. A lot of them can be corrupt, especially when there's money involved, whether it's coming from corporation tax from these large companies that are paying for different initiatives within the governments.

40:04 The main thing is that the governments actually need to come back to science and actually look at what the cause is for climate change. And once they start to realise that, a lot of work can be done. And there is countries now in Netherlands, for example, have started to make some changes. Also putting dietary guidelines like in Canada, that's also been done where they're pushing forward for plant-based diets. But that needs to be done in every country, right? So as well as the lobbyist group, that's the key thing because also one part is that we just don't have enough people.

40:52 We don't have the power of people as much as the meat and dairy industry has to throw at the governments. Well, I wanna challenge that for a second because somebody I admire a lot said recently, Wayne Chung, a former constitutional law professor. And he's been arrested many times. He's considered the leader of the open rescue movement. They go in, they do undercover investigations, they show the horrors and then they tell prosecutors prosecute. The prosecutors say no and often arrest them for going in and taking a couple of animals out of a ginormous factory farm who were sick while documenting and usually live streaming everything they're doing.

41:41 In fact, the only reason that they even find out that these so-called crimes are occurring is that the people who are doing it show it to the world. And he said, if every single vegan turned into an animal activist, we could achieve animal liberation tomorrow. So how do we get vegans activated? You have a lady who just said, how do we use AI? Okay, Maggie in Sacramento, how can we use AI? Imagine if every vegan just got online and we figured out an intelligence strategy for the average vegan to use artificial intelligence to input into the system all the important things about the connection between animal agriculture and habitat destruction, wildlife extinction, human world hunger, preventable lifestyle diseases, pandemics, pandemics, et cetera, et cetera.

42:33 That I think we do have enough, but we've got to get everybody to get activated. Yeah, I think we should, obviously as a community, I guess not all vegans want to be activists. That's the thing. And maybe vegans are doing it for their own reasons. Maybe it's personal health. If they're likely to be a lot younger millennials, they're probably doing it for climate change or even for the animals. But some people as they get older might have certain diseases related to their diet and they've turned, but not necessarily, but a lot of people like, it's quite interesting.

43:18 I was speaking to somebody earlier today about new people who are coming into veganism in London. And a lot of them are by themselves. Well, he froze a little bit and that gives me my opportunity to just tell you for a second about Unchained TV. We are, and it's right behind me, the world's only vegan streaming television network. So this is happening live. If I click that, you'll see this interview. And we have about 2000 documentaries, cooking shows, talks, interviews, news shows, biographies, nature, wildlife, everything from weight loss to companion animal dog training to hardcore vegan documentaries and animal rights documentaries.

44:10 And so what you can do is download Unchained TV for free on your phone. I mean, literally you just go to your app store and put in Unchained TV and boom, you have access to all of this for free. We are a 501C3 nonprofit. I don't take a salary. We're mostly volunteer run. And we're a really fun group. We have a lot of fun doing all sorts of coverage of activism in and around, not only New York and Los Angeles, but all across the world. So it's a vegan Netflix. Okay, that's the craziest thing I've ever heard. I love Unchained TV. Unchained, Unchained TV.

44:51 Your life will change. It's just that easy. Unchained TV has all sorts of content for everybody. Unchained TV changed my life. Unchained TV is crushing it. I love Unchained TV. Unchained TV is my go-to. Unchained TV. Who knew? Unchained, baby, yay! Unchained TV. And you can download Unchained TV. As I say, it's very easy. You literally go to your app store on your phone, or you can go to unchainedtv .com, or you can go on your television. It's on all Samsung TVs. I got a Samsung TV behind me. And any TV, if you have an Amazon Fire Stick, a Roku device, or an Apple TV device, and it's 100% free.

45:37 And the best thing about it is you can actually text videos. So let's say you wanna text this video to a friend who's interested in artificial intelligence or anything we're discussing. You just hit send, and you can send it right to them. So I hope you download it. Uh-oh, I just activated one of our videos. All right, we're gonna get back now to Anant. We have one more clip to play, and I would love to get to this because this person is incredibly influential in our movement on the business side of the plant-based space.

46:17 I'm talking about Matthew Glover. It's a David and Goliath type of scenario where you've got this huge meat industry, this animal industrial complex with thousands of lobbyists and lots of money to be able to create doubt. And they've done a great job over the last couple of years in creating doubt about meat alternatives. I keep thinking, what is our slingshot? What is that tool that's gonna beat the Goliath? I feel like the stone is truth. We have truth on our side, but what I don't know is what is the weapon, what is the tool that's gonna deliver that truth?

46:58 I'd never heard of Topham Town either, being honest with you, Anant, but we've acquired the business. It has two facilities, is massive. I mean, I got my 10,000 steps in just having a tour around the factory. It's just to give you an idea on the scale. It's got warehousing with up to 5,000 pallets. It's got huge lines. Over the years, this business has invested tens of millions in machinery and in equipment. As far as I'm aware, it's the biggest plant-based factory in Europe, possibly the world. Wow. Well, he is just an extraordinary man. And by the way, co-founder of the January Million Dollar Vegan. So many things, we could be here all day, but he is a businessman.

47:41 So where is plant-based business today? Yeah, so it was really happy to hear the acquisition that Matthew Glover and his team at the Vegan Food Group made with Tofu Town, which is a big independent family-run producer of tofu and manufacturing. And they bought this facility. And as the Vegan Food Group, they also own a number of other brands like the vegan fried chicken, for example, is one, but they've also invested in other companies through VegCapital.

48:24 So he's actively in this space. They also bought a UK-based plant-based company called Meatless Farms. So yeah, I mean, it's gonna be exciting to see how they effectively use that factory, not only just to make tofu in the German market and all over Europe, but also use it to help the companies that they acquire get their products being manufactured there and going into mainland Europe, for example. So I think that's really exciting that they've acquired that big business. And as you know, as well as tofu and a lot of alternative proteins are being looked at, and that's where the investment is happening.

49:13 And also around, I would say, clean label foods and clean label products. So there's definitely that drive of less ingredients, even like for today, for example, me and my wife, we went on a, we had two meals that were raw vegan. So we wanna experiment with having raw vegan diet as well. So, and, but there's space. There's space to get these plant-based alternatives, whether you're vegan, whether you're flexitarian, whether you're open omnivore. You know, that's a new term that I heard. So all these foods are gonna be far healthier than the meat equivalents that they are.

49:59 Absolutely. And people often talk about processed, and I urge all vegans, anybody watching, do not repeat meat industry talking points. They love to talk about how vegan food is processed or even ultra processed. Now, let me tell you that the meat industry, according to the Guardian newspaper, has a war room the size of Fox News and a little bit of the Pentagon in Denver, Colorado, where it's manned 24 hours a day, and they send out negative stories, allegedly purportedly about the, about vegan products, denouncing them as processed and ultra processed.

50:40 Now, let me say a couple of things about this. First of all, you should read, and I recently interviewed Robbie Lockey, the co-founder of Plant-Based News, who has now a group called the Freedom Food Alliance. He just issued a 150-page report on this. So you can go to freedomfoodalliance.org and read this report, because it's really terrifying. They actually have something called a Masters of Beef Advocacy, and they're training all these social media activists to go out there and promote a meat diet. So we have to counteract that, obviously, and frankly, that's why I started Unchained TV. I was in the mainstream media for more than 30 years.

51:21 I worked at CNN. I had my own show on CNN. I worked at Disney. I was a local news anchor in New York City and in Los Angeles. I've worked at all the big, a lot of the big companies, CBS, Disney, CNN. I've been behind the curtain. And, you know, generally TV is most, well, who keeps the lights on? The advertisers. And who are the advertisers? Meat, dairy, and pharmaceuticals, fast food and pharmaceuticals. So we have to take it upon ourselves. If you look at any social justice movements, even in like the 19th century, people are, you know, handing out leaflets in the dark of night.

52:03 Well, luckily we have social media, but I would urge everybody, everybody to get active, to get really, really active. So we only have about two minutes. I want to get your final thoughts. Where are we as a movement? In a minute, Anant Joshi, plant CEO. Yeah, I think we just need more people to join the movement. And like looking at the UK market, there's now about 2.5 million people, which is up from about 1.1 million from 2023 to 2024, which is a great sign. Nearly 5% of the population here in the UK are vegan, but we need more, right?

52:48 We need more activism being done, like you said, like for the people who wanna do it, let's encourage this more content to be produced. And there was some comments about earlier on the show about some game designers. We need those games to be put in the hands of users. So we need to build up the awareness, but I do take the point about the AI education. And I think I'm gonna talk to Sam and see if we can do some sessions about that as well as you, Jane, maybe we can put that together. But there's a lot more work that needs to be done. And we obviously need to speak up for the animals that don't have a voice.

53:29 So that's our mission here. Yeah, because that could be fun. I know there are a lot of people who don't like to protest. Okay, they don't like to march around. I happen to enjoy it, but a lot of people don't. But that's something they could do. If it turns out that we could just be inputting this information into chat GPT or whatever, that's something people could do from their own home. And we could do it as a group. We could start a Facebook group and we could trade ideas. So please check that out. I am really, really so excited to collaborate with you. I wanna say that we need to have like 20,000 plant CEOs.

54:10 So keep churning out that content. Please talking to all, keep talking to all these movers and shakers in the industry who have done so much and bringing us these incredible interviews. We're very happy to have you. And for all of you watching, please download Unchained TV. We are a 501C3 nonprofit. You can also donate to us. We'd love to have your support and your participation. This episode was brought to you by Unchained TV. Unchained TV is a nonprofit organisation producing plant -based content built with tips and tricks to spice up those healthy veggies, grains, and legumes.

54:50 For more information on Unchained TV productions, just visit unchainedtv.com. That's unchainedtv.com. Thank you so much for joining us. And we will see you next time here on Unchained TV.