UnchainedTV: Shocking Chicken Abuse Alleged!

0:00 It's a plague our world. If you want to revolutionise your health, get truly joyful and jump to the next phase of human evolution, all it takes is one simple choice. Now, here's your choice. Here you go, guys. Here you go. We have breaking news to bring you. This is a shocker. Breaking news about chicken abuse. Undercover footage just released by Animal Outlook of chickens being abused in a California factory farm, Animal Outlook is calling on the Fresno County District Attorney's Office to file criminal animal cruelty charges against the corporation, Foster Farms, which is the major poultry producer in California, major supplier to the big supermarkets.

0:54 This video shows multiple instances of forklifts driving over and hitting live chickens, chickens being thrown, chickens being kicked and grabbed by their wings. Foster Farms says all of its chicken farms are American Humane Association certified and that the chickens it raises enjoy the five freedoms, including freedom from discomfort and freedom from injury, pain, or disease. Animal Outlook says its investigation reveals a stark contrast showing anything but humane care and freedom from discomfort, injury, and fear. Now, Foster Farms just moments ago released a statement that we saw.

1:37 We will read it to you. They are invited on any time to respond to Animal Outlook's allegations. And right now, we are delighted to speak to Animal Outlook's new executive director, Ben Williamson, about this blockbuster breaking news as well as his fascinating history as a leader in the animal rights movement. Again, this footage is from Animal Outlook. Undercover investigative footage just released, a blockbuster breaking news story. And I believe we are the first news organisation to be showing this footage.

2:19 I wanna go straight out to Ben. Ben, what was your reaction just as a human being when your undercover investigator first showed you this footage? Hi, Jane. Thanks so much for having me on the show. My reaction hopefully is the same as everybody who watches this and to think, I can't believe this goes on. We know from doing countless undercover investigations, we know that every time we do this kind of thing, we see something that we expect to see rough handling, we expect to see abuse, but some of these things like the forklifts driving over the birds, the distances these workers were throwing the animals into the cages at, when they should be, I mean, they shouldn't be there at all, but if you're going to do that, place them delicately inside, but they just showed no, they showed complete disregard for the lives of these animals.

3:13 And you can't be helped but be gobsmacked by the cruelty that you see in the video. Now, tell us the timeline. We're going to immediately read the statement from Foster Farms, but what was the timeline here? Over what period was this occurring? The investigator went undercover at a catching crew in three counties in Central Valley, California between 20 of June of this year and 24th of July. So they were in the field for about a month and they went to three counties, multiple farms as part of this catching crew. They were working sometimes 14, 18 hour shifts in the middle of the night, sometimes in a hundred degree weather.

3:58 And as you see the footage that they captured whilst in the field really shows that the workers are under enormous stress and unfortunately they're putting the birds through even more agony by just wilful, egregious cruelty that you can see. It's really, really shocking. And you know what? We're going to play this multiple times. Excuse me. We're going to play this multiple times today because essentially, you know, a picture equals a thousand words or a million words. You can describe this. You can go on and on to basically try to paint a picture.

4:46 But when you actually see it, there is no mistaking what you're seeing. So I just want to say, Ben, that I immediately, as a journalist, when I saw this a couple of days ago, tried to get the other side of the story. As a journalist, I always try to get the other side of the story. I'm calling the operator now at Foster Farms General Enquiries, trying to get a response. I've already written to the company listed as a PR firm, as well as written to General Enquiries, trying to get a response. Hey, yeah, my name is Jane Velez Mitchell. I'm a reporter for Unchained TV and I'm trying to get to the press department to get a response to an undercover investigation released by Animal Outlook, alleging multiple instances of cruelty caught on tape, which they have presented reportedly to the Fresno County District Attorney's Office, requesting animal cruelty charges be filed against the corporation.

5:49 So I'm trying to get the other side of the story. I'm trying to get a response from Foster Farms. Can you transfer me to your press department so I can talk to somebody? So I did not get a response. In fact, I checked just moments before air, just to make sure. However, also moments before air, Foster Farms did reportedly issue a statement through a poultry publication. And let's read the statement from Foster Farms. It says, the headline is Foster Farms response to animal cruelty situation. On October 8th, this is the publication talking, the company released a statement that said it took immediate action when it learned that broiler chicken catchers were mistreating the birds at a facility in Fresno County, California.

6:39 So this is from the company. Quote, four weeks ago, Foster Farms uncovered a few employees had intentionally violated our animal welfare and training standards and procedures. Per our zero tolerance policy, we immediately terminated those individuals and referred them to Fresno County Law Enforcement where they will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, said Randy Boyce, General Counsel for Foster Farms. Put simply, the conduct was counter to everything we stand for as a company and our actions ensure those responsible are held accountable. So now I wanna go back to the head of the organisation that published that undercover investigation, Ben Williamson, what is your response to Foster Farms response?

7:24 Well, when I first read that statement, I thought, okay, they are acknowledging that there is cruelty involved. They're acknowledging that there are individuals responsible who have now been fired and that they themselves are calling for the Fresno District Attorney to file charges against those individuals. What they were obviously doing as well was deflecting any criticism against them as a company, saying that they will instead do some retraining, change some management supervision practises and trying to deflect any attention. But on closer reading of the statement, they're trying to actually distance themselves from the video. This might be a completely separate instance of cruelty that they're actually purporting here.

8:09 They're not actually linking what they've discovered as intentional violations of their animal welfare and training standards to our video. So it could be a completely different incident. We also have no way of verifying that the individuals who have been fired purportedly are the same individuals featured in our video. So we have a lot of questions about their statement. Again, we're glad that they seem to be acknowledging that animal cruelty has no place in farms. But the truth is, Jane, you and I both know that animal cruelty is a part of animal agriculture. The amount of hours that these people are working, the amount of birds on the farm, there's 15,000 birds here.

8:49 You can't ensure that any of those birds are living a good life. And it's just running over them with forklifts and backing up over them with forklifts, throwing them into these cages, as we can see on the video. It's horrible, it's egregious, and Foster Farms has to bear culpability on this. Foster Farms is unique amongst many animal agriculture companies. It employs all of these individuals. They're not contracted out. They're not contract growers. They're not contract catching company. These are all Foster Farms employees. They own the farms, they own the birds, and they employ the individuals. So Foster Farms surely has some corporate responsibility here.

9:32 What's more, California law is fairly unique in that not only does it suggest that corporations should be held accountable for acts of animal cruelty involved on their farms, they also invite it. They say corporations must be held responsible for the actions of their employees. So we think we're in a pretty good place. We think that the Fresno DA will pick this up and will file the cruelty charges. We've alleged 206 total charges against Foster Farms, against the workers, against the supervisors, and we're hopeful that the DA will agree with us and move this forward. So let me ask you the timeline that this occurred, because sometimes companies say, well, this is taken out of context.

10:19 These are a few bad apples. That's essentially what they're sort of saying. They're saying that the people who are doing this, this specific individuals are going to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. However, if this is happening over, let's say a month, and that's what I wanna check with you, wouldn't the people who are the supervisors see some of this? I mean, if you're running over chickens with a forklift and there's any supervisor there, I would assume that they would ultimately see that. What is your take on that? Yeah, absolutely. You're right on the timeline.

10:59 It happened over a month, but it happened over a month between June and July of this year. We could have picked any month of the year. We could have picked any farm. This kind of stuff is endemic to animal agriculture. The number of birds on these farms, the speed at which they work, throwing of these animals, backing up over them with forklifts. It's the kind of thing that is horrible to watch, but unfortunately is endemic and a part of animal agriculture. You simply cannot remove the animal cruelty from animal agriculture. You're right. The companies, we always see this response. We always see companies say, this is a few bad apples. We're retraining. It's rare that they call for the prosecution themselves.

11:41 That's a step forward, but they also attack the people who put out this video. They want to talk about that we're a vegan organisation and we're just trying to get people to go vegan. I think when you see the footage, it's hard to make any separate inference than the best thing to do is to leave animals off your plate. So we see this response all the time, but when you keep seeing the same cruelty over and over again, then it's not just a few bad apples. It's endemic in the animal agriculture industry. So where do we go from here? And by the way, I want to say, I invite Foster Farms on anytime. Again, we tried to reach them. They didn't respond to me.

12:22 And I reached out approximately six times, but then we did get that statement that they gave, which I'll put up here to the poultry magazine or the poultry publication. But we do invite Foster Farms on anytime. We would love to dialogue with you. We would love to discuss this with you. You are reportedly the largest poultry producer in California and you supply chickens to the biggest supermarkets. I mean, I saw the list of supermarkets. It's the supermarkets that everybody shops at. And so I have to ask you, Ben, ultimately this is a consumer issue.

13:04 I mean, if people are watching this and it's upsetting them, and then they go out and they buy the chickens, they're the ones paying for the production of these chickens. Yeah, they might not be the people directly committing the cruelty to animals, but they are paying the people who are committing the cruelty. And so the best thing that any individual, any of your viewers can do, which I'm sure they do, is to stop feeding animals, period. You're right about Foster Farms and their customers. They supply Albertsons and Walmart and Kroger, among others that listed on their website. And I think the store should also be taking some responsibility here. They should be saying to Foster Farms, you know, this is unacceptable.

13:47 We will not stop your products anymore. But we know it's ultimately a business decision when you are paying very little amount of money per bird and then you're forcing people to put it on their plates. That's unfortunately the reality, is that it's a problem where the costs are externalised to the animals themselves. People paying to eat chicken, it's the animals that eventually pay the ultimate price. And this is the way that animals are farmed in this country. Well, I wanna say that at Unchained TV, you know, and there you are, right there on Unchained TV behind me.

14:33 If you're watching, we're a streaming network that is available for free download. We're a 501C3 nonprofit available for free download on any cell phone, just put in Unchained TV, on any television with an Apple TV device, a Amazon Fire Stick or a Roku device. We're also available on all Samsung TVs and soon to be all LG TVs. But we just commissioned a documentary done by a woman who runs a chicken sanctuary. And you have to watch, it's called Meet the Chickens. And it's really, really fascinating because it shows that chickens, which a lot of people just think of as sort of like a nugget are individuals and they have very unique personalities each and every one of them.

15:26 Like everything I thought about them was wrong. And I think that as a society, everything that we think about them, if we think about them at all is wrong. They are all individuals with unique personalities, unique faces and voices and preferences, likes and dislikes, little idiosyncrasies. They're just as individual as our dogs and our cats. And I think if society knew who they really are, we would treat them a lot better than we do.

16:14 We currently have 25 chickens here, all of them rescues. Most of them are Cornish crosses, these big white birds. They are considered meat birds, broiler chickens. We kill about 9 billion of them a year in this country alone. So it's not really an overstatement to say that it's a miracle that any of them have made it here. Oh man, this documentary and it's not graphic unlike the video we're showing you today, but please check it out. It's on Unchained TV and it was done by a woman who has actually, the woman you're looking at, Tracy Glover.

16:58 She doesn't have experience as a documentarian, but we just gave her a mic and a stabiliser and she pulled off this really touching half hour documentary about these individual chickens that she has rescued, each with their own story. And as a human being, it's just then when you see what is happening to these chickens in industrialised factory farming, wow, it just makes it even more difficult to really comprehend the magnitude of what we're talking about, Ben.

17:41 I mean, the magnitude, the number of individuals, it's mind boggling. Yeah, I mean, we're talking about 15,000 birds on this one farm. We know that the number of birds in farms can go up to the several hundred thousands. And then ultimately, as you said, 9 billion birds every year in the United States. So it's an unimaginable scale really. And we're very lucky in that we're able to go into these places a few times a year and really document what happens there for people who, quite obviously, they want to hide the truth from the consumers.

18:24 We're able to go in and take this footage and then hopefully get charges put against the people responsible and the corporations responsible, but it doesn't happen enough because we're still not able to get this message through necessarily to everybody. There's a vast gap between what people think these animals' lives are like and the reality that we show every time we do one of these investigations. And it's through people like you, Jane, and your show, and everyone who's watching, it's really up to all of us to help share these investigations, tell people who don't otherwise know just what goes on here and show them for themselves. Because I think seeing is really believing. And once you see this, it's really hard to imagine that there's anything else other than this kind of stuff going on.

19:11 So tell us about the person. I know you can't reveal his or her identity, but tell us about the person who recorded all this. They have to go in there day after day and essentially, what? They are working there? What happens? Yeah, they're part of the catching crew. Obviously, I don't want to give up too much about how we conduct these things for their safety and for the integrity of the campaign, of the investigations. But yeah, it's a horrible thing to have to see this and not react as any human being surely would with any sympathy in caring for these birds. The most important thing is that they document the cruelty, that we're able to press charges and hold people and corporations accountable for what they're seeing and what they're being asked to be part of.

20:01 And ultimately, we'll save more animals that way. But yeah, it's a horrifying thing to have to do this, to keep up a pretence, to be party to it, to stand by and not do anything about it other than film and document and record and take notes. All of these notes, all of the footage helps build the case, not only for people to go vegan, but also for the law enforcement to do their job and hold people accountable. And what's really interesting is, and I want to say, we invite foster farms on any time to respond further. We've read your statement. Now, this is off their website, American Humane Association certified.

20:44 They say they're certified by the American Humane Association and that the chickens they raise enjoy the five freedoms, freedom from hunger or thirst, freedom from discomfort, freedom from injury, pain or disease, freedom from cages, freedom from fear and distress. What is your response to foster farms' five freedoms? I mean, it's a bit of a joke, isn't it really? There's no way that you can see the footage of the birds being thrown into the cages, being run over by forklift trucks and then think that they're free from discomfort or injury. Also, we know that the investigator recorded that the temperatures exceeded 100 degrees.

21:29 You know, they're not free from thirst or hunger or discomfort for those reasons as well. So yeah, I mean, it's a bit of a joke. It's a bit of humane washing. And, you know, unfortunately it will probably continue. It will probably, American Humane will, might come out and say something similar, like this is horrible, we don't condone this, but then very little is going to happen as a result. So that's why it's up to all of us to take action ourselves and to be responsible for making sure this cruelty doesn't go on by, you know, forcing these corporations to stop the business of chicken farming. Have you reached out to the American Humane Association and shown them this video and said, hey, you're certifying this company, this, I mean, have you talked to them?

22:20 I wouldn't know what the investigators did before I got here a week and a half ago, but I can tell you that American Humane will likely respond at least internally to say that this is horrible. It doesn't conform to our standards of the five freedoms. It doesn't conform to the standards of healthy, enriching lives for these birds. But how many times do you have to see such a thing before you say, well, actually this is endemic and the kind of businesses that are taking our label and using our brand as a humane shield before you say enough is enough and we're not going to certify foster farms or, you know, any of these types of businesses again.

23:05 Yeah, now, Tracy Winter Glover, who is the person who did the documentary, Meet the Chickens, which I really urge you to watch on Unchained TV, she says, people will say this is an anomaly, but the truth is it's the norm, just unbearably heartbreaking. You know, what's your response to that? Because again, if we go back to the statement by the company, they're saying, you know, this is not acceptable. We reported the people doing this to authorities and they're going to be prosecuted. Yeah, I think again, it's a shirking responsibility as a corporation. You know, these individuals were employed by foster farms.

23:46 The birds were owned, so to speak, by foster farms. The farms were owned by foster farms. To say that this is just a few bad apples, it's your company that is not putting in the supervision necessary to safeguard the health and lives of these animals, to make sure that these things don't happen to them. You can't just say they didn't play by our rules. If you're not enforcing your rules, then you are responsible for what happens underneath them. So you took this video to the Fresno County District Attorney's Office. And, you know, we know historically, and there's cases up and down California and other parts of the nation where the district attorneys refuse to prosecute.

24:31 They might sometimes prosecute the individuals. It seems like foster farms was saying they will be prosecuted. I would think that would be up to the district attorney to make that announcement, but maybe he or she will. But will they go after the corporation? Did you ask them to go? After the corporation and filed charges against the corporation, and if so, what was their response? We did. Foster Farms, we believe, is culpable for the actions of its employees here. And California, as I said, is pretty unique. It has a good, relatively to some other states, a good penal code, which allows for prosecutions to be brought up against, in fact, invites prosecutions to be brought against companies for the behaviour of its employees.

25:21 So we think the DA will agree with us and agree that Foster Farms is culpable and not really buy what Foster Farms is selling here, which is trying to say it's the action of a few individuals that this situation has been dealt with, we've fired them, we're retraining. You know, that's not good enough. And just because, well, even if it was no longer going on, even if the retraining does work, it still happened. And Foster Farms and its employees need to be held accountable for the abuses that we've seen. So what did the DA say? Were you able to have a discussion with anybody from that office? The case is ongoing. We're in communication with the DA.

26:03 So we're just awaiting the next steps on their behalf. And as I say, we're confident that they will agree that there have been egregious violations of California's cruelty to animals statutes here. And that Foster Farms, its employees, its supervisors are all responsible. So do you ever get to dialogue with Foster Farms? I mean, I tried, as you saw, calling, emailing, filling out a form on the website, did not get a response. Now, again, I invite Foster Farms on anytime to respond further. They did issue a statement, we read it. And so do you ever get to dialogue with Foster Farms?

26:49 So I've held a number of positions and maybe we'll talk a little bit more about my background in the past. So working for other organisations that try to do a bit more corporate engagement, we see these organisations, we see chicken companies put up a wall to anyone in the animal protection movement. They are just not interested in what we have to say. They use their pay to play humane shields and they try to do everything that they can through deceptive marketing practises to convince everyone that everything's rosy. And as far as engaging with the animal protection community, it's just not something that they welcome and that they're receptive to.

27:35 They will occasionally try to make piecemeal changes and get the support of some people in the animal protection community. But as far as people like myself who are calling for people to stop eating animals, it's not in their business interest to necessarily engage. And so they'd rather just stonewall us, spend a lot more money on marketing than we have in our total operating budgets. This is a $3 billion company, as you said, the largest in California. They can just purport through marketing efforts that they're doing something completely different to what we're able to expose on a month-long investigation. So no, they're not very receptive to engagement at all in my experience.

28:18 What about fines? Somebody said here, the company needs to be heavily fined. Is this regulated? So is it really just about the DA making an arbitrary decision as to whether or not to file criminal charges? What regulations are being broken? And what about legal action that is not criminal on the civil side? Yeah, it's all a possibility. The first port of call is for the DA to get involved and take it on from a government perspective. There are other legal avenues open if that doesn't happen. Fines are one of the punishments that we see sometimes doled out. Certainly not enough.

28:59 As you say, often the prosecutors just won't pick up the case and use some really poor reasoning as far as we're concerned to shirk responsibility themselves and not hold these corporations to account. Fines, penalties, sentences, bans from working with animals are other ways that people have been held responsible in the past. But I don't think anyone can kind of see this, the footage that we've documented and say that there's really much punishment that can fit the crime of what they've put these birds through. So one of our commenters who happens to be watching on YouTube, I believe, can I support while still eating meat or will you hate me?

29:44 What's your response? I don't hate anybody. It's a personal journey going vegan and food is such a personal thing with so many different social societal factors involved in people's decision -making. We think that when people see the kind of footage that our investigators are able to capture, when they learn more about the issues, there's no other conclusion than to go vegan. But we know that food preferences evolve over time and that people's vegan journey can be long and they can come at it from many different ways. But ultimately, you as a consumer, if you don't want this kind of thing to happen, the only real thing you can do is to not participate in animal agriculture by leaving animals off your plate.

30:34 And if you are just joining us, we've been reporting breaking news. I believe Unchained TV is the first news organisation to put out this video that was obtained by Animal Outlook over this past summer. An undercover investigator was there for about a month at a foster farm's facility and saw some pretty horrifying things. There's a forklift running over live birds and birds were left alive, suffering. You can see what's going on here. In one instance, a driver crashes forklift into a building.

31:16 I mean, these are drivers who have these chickens. I honestly, I don't really have any words for this video to describe it. Sure, you could sit there and describe it, but it's like, to me personally, my feeling, it's like watching a horror show. And this is California's largest poultry producer. I wanna say that again. This is California's largest poultry producer. When you're going to the supermarkets, the biggest supermarkets in California, there's a very good chance if you're getting chicken that came from this situation. So, you know, here's the thing though.

32:00 I wanna say this. We, I personally, as a journalist who has been doing this now for several decades, I have covered situations like this over and over and over again, various companies. Indeed, one could argue that it is very rare. Maybe it's never even happened where you go into a factory farm for animals and everything's hunky-dory. It seems to me my personal experience on the industry as a whole is that every time investigators have gone in and they're investigators from Animal Outlook and from Animal Equality and from PETA and from Last Chance, I mean, it goes on and on.

32:42 Organisations have been doing this for the longest time. They find disturbing situations. They just find things that people go, oh my God, oh my God, this is horrible. And nevertheless, I just wanna show you a graphic and I'm gonna stop this video for a second to show you the graphic. Here's the graphic. Animal consumption continues to skyrocket. This is from like the early 60s to 2022. You can see that the number of animals is skyrocketing and chickens are the most by far consumed animal.

33:26 If we stopped eating chickens, the number of animals killed would dramatically drop by something like more than 90%. Correct me if I'm wrong, Ben. No, you're absolutely right. Unfortunately, even though we've exposed numerous chicken farms and other kinds of farms, numerous corporations who are involved in this cruelty, even though it's all available on our website, animaloutlook.org, for anyone to access at any time, sadly, the kind of cognitive dissonance of people just buying what the industry is selling and buying the lies, the myths, the humane washing just makes people feel okay and more comfortable about eating animals when it's just the reality is so different from what the companies are putting out there.

34:23 So yeah, sadly, the number is increasing. At some stage, we do hope that we reach peak meat, as they call it, and it starts dropping. We'd know that plant-based meat substitutes are getting better and better and more widely available. We do think as information becomes more dispersed and more available to people, and that people will make the right decision and leave animals off their plates and go for some of the more delicious plant-based meat substitutes if that's the way they wanna go. But yeah, it's a sad state of affairs that no matter how many times we do these investigations, we know that the kind of societal pressures, family, community, the type of messaging that works.

35:09 We've done a lot of work on behavioural sciences in recent years. I think that's one of the best things that the movement has done in recent years is really try to understand what's involved in people's decision-making, from nudge behaviour and behavioural sciences. But we're not there yet. The message isn't getting through in the way that we want it to. Your audience is fantastic, and I'm sure everyone is more enlightened than most who watch your show, but it's up to all of us, I think, to share the responsibility of getting these messages out to make sure that we start to bring that graph down. Yes, and I just wanna read some of the comments. I've been vegan for 20 years and I'll die vegan. FYI, we all start out vegan. Interesting point. Tiffany Brunelli, there is no right way to do the wrong thing.

35:53 Leave it off your plate. And we also have a statement from Kim Delgado. Oh, geez, the numbers of eating animals should be dropping. All these years, all the information. We must continue to get the truth out there. Tina, the workers don't get paid much. Workers don't get paid much. Don't pay the abuse and murder of these innocent beings. Go vegan. And it was very interesting to get this message from Erin Wing, who I know is a former undercover investigator at Animal Outlook who has been given awards for her courageous and really risky undercover investigations.

36:38 She says, after conducting and managing investigations into multiple chicken farms and farming facilities over the course of seven years, the treatment is always the same, brutal and heartbreaking. And I think that what we have to consider is when you're talking these kinds of numbers, billions of animals being killed. I mean, millions and millions and millions of chickens have been killed in the amount of time we've been talking today. How can you do that nicely? Is there any possible way to do that nicely? Or does the sheer number result in, well, the footage that you revealed to the public that we are showing you now, Ben?

37:24 Yeah, there's no such thing as humane meat. There are degrees of barbarity and inhumaneness, but there's no way to take the life of an animal humanely because ultimately they don't want to die. They don't want to be treated in this way and in any way that means that they'll be killed prematurely in a fraction of their natural lifespan. So the only thing to do is to stop eating them altogether. Now, I will say that part of this footage, actually, we weren't able to show as much of the cruelty as we recorded.

38:06 There were so many incidences of birds being thrown into those cages, so many incidences of the forklifts being driven over the birds who have been grown so large for their breast meat that their bodies can't support, their legs can't support their own weight, that they couldn't get out of the way. And rather than stopping the forklift, moving the animals out of the way, it's just more expedious, it's more profitable to run the animals over and count that as a loss. Well, Tracy Glover is saying exactly, this is the chicken industry. How can we expect the workers to see these babies for the individual sentient beings they are when we say their lives don't matter?

38:48 They, meaning the workers, become desensitised. They couldn't do their jobs if they didn't become desensitised. It's inevitable there will be this abuse. This is an industry that by definition is based on violence and death. So I have to ask you, Ben, are the workers then sort of scapegoated if you take her point of view? They're gonna be punished possibly. The company says they're gonna be prosecuted. Take it away. Yeah, absolutely. The companies are trying, you can see in their statement that Foster Farm is trying to scapegoat these few bad apples, as they say, that they're blaming the poorest of the whole Foster Farms organisation, which is the lowest paid workers in the system.

39:33 But Foster Farms knows that this type of abuse takes place in its supply chain. And they're simply just trying to deflect any criticism and shirk corporate responsibility for the abuse that we've uncovered and that is constantly uncovered. We've got investigations going back to 2015 with Foster Farms and other organisations do as well. So yeah, this takes place all over the country, a whole number of all the top chicken producers in the country. You'll find this kind of place completely commonplace. Well, we've got another long comment here. Okay, so I don't like eating meat for the main reason because of all the unnecessary treatment and cruelty toward these sentient beings.

40:15 And you can get all your necessary nutrients in other ways, but I have dogs that eat raw because it is better for them. It bothers me sometimes when I have to prepare their food. And yes, the entire animal is used, but I don't know what else healthy you could give them to eat. Myself not eating is one thing, but what about our pets? Well, I have two dogs and this one here is one of the two and she's 100% vegan. And my gosh, her energy level is off the charts. She's perfectly healthy. So there's plenty of vegan options for your companion animals. Just wanted to answer that question there. Let's talk a little bit about you.

40:57 You're very modest, but you have an incredible, I was reading it and I could be going on all day, recycled paper by the way, talking about all the different things you've done. You're originally from London, my favourite city. I have to say one of my favourite cities, but really my favourite city. And you worked at PETA, United Kingdom, PETA US. Then you were the director at World Animal Protection and then the executive director at Compassion World Farming. Wow. Tell us about your journey, Ben. Yeah, I'm very happy to. So I'll start you off at the beginning.

41:39 My vegan origin story was, I came from the kind of Gary Francione school. I really got into the abolitionist approach. That was my entry point into the world of veganism. And just the arguments that they were making completely made sense. That there is no way to do this ethically and really abolitionism is the only way to go. So at the time, my background was actually in economics. I did economics at university and I did my master's in political economy at London School of Economics. And I was working for an economics think tank in the city of London. And it was around the time of the financial crisis in 2008, 2009.

42:24 And there was a lot of demand from the press to know what would happen with labour market, with interest rates and taxes. And so I was doing a lot of press at the time. And I thought, well, wouldn't it be great to be able to combine my skillset, which increasingly was press with my passion, which was increasingly veganism. And so I joined PETA. They were the largest animal organisation, the first one in my kind of sphere of influence. And I had a very enjoyable career with PETA for seven years, first in the U .S., sorry, first in the UK, in my hometown of London. And then I moved, I was lucky enough to move to Los Angeles with PETA.

43:08 Up until about 2019. And then, as you say, I moved into campaigns from press and then more organisational responsibility after that. So yeah, I've been around, I've been lucky enough to study under the tutelage of some great leaders in our organisation, Ingrid Newkirk and Steve McIver and Phil. So compassion. And so it's just really, I'm really grateful to have studied under some great inspirational people and to be able now to bring that to Animal Outlook. As I say, I'm two weeks into the job or not even two weeks into the job. But I think Animal Outlook, in terms of what the parts of what I think is going to help move the needle for animals is really on point.

43:57 People don't know it's a 29-year organisation. We're gonna celebrate our 30th year next year. It started out as a homework, kind of a high school club. And has developed into one of the leading kind of mid-size organisations in the animal protection movement. The focus on investigations and legal work and vegan outreach and now farmer transitions as well is something that I think fits the skill sets that I've learned in communications and campaigns. My job is really, as I see it, to help amplify that work and bring, deliver some of the amazing investigations and legal groundbreaking legal cases that we've done. We can continue to do to more of the mainstream public.

44:41 So to ask you a provocative question, I see that back, I would say 20 years, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, the mainstream media was more likely to cover an undercover investigation. Now I've noticed that they often pretend it didn't happen. And that's one of the reasons we started Unchained TV, the world's only non-profit vegan streaming television network to get these stories out. I even said to you, who else has covered this? Now, now that Foster Farms has issued a statement, maybe I hope there will be more coverage. We never want the exclusive on stories like this, never.

45:21 But one of the reasons we started it is that it's, to me, it feels more and more, and I was in mainstream media for more than three decades, that the mainstream media has been co-opted by the meat, dairy, and pharmaceutical industries, which are very intertwined. And so you're not seeing the kind of reporting that you even saw back 20 years ago when it comes to these undercover investigations. What are your thoughts on that? I think you're absolutely right. And I think that that has been my experience as well. I think a couple of things are happening. Yes, the mainstream media is kind of getting scared off by the litigiousness of some of these companies.

46:04 They don't want to put their head above the parapet because they're wondering, well, what if I get sued? As a media organisation, if I'm giving a voice to allegations that end up not having any reality, I think that- Well, let me just say this. I understand what you're saying, and I'm always very cautious as a journalist. You presented videotaped evidence. Now, sometimes in past, the companies go, this was taken out of context. Honestly, they didn't suggest that. They said, Foster Farms, and I'll read the statement again, and we invite Foster Farms on any time. We would love to dialogue with you.

46:44 It says, as quoted in this poultry publication, four weeks ago, Foster Farms uncovered a few employees had intentionally violated our animal welfare and training standards and procedures. Per our zero tolerance policy, we immediately terminated those involved and referred them to the Fresno County Law Enforcement, where they will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, said Randy Boyce, General Counsel for Foster Farms. Put simply, the conduct was counter to everything we stand for as a company, and our actions ensure those responsible are held accountable. You are saying the company itself is responsible. You're asking the Fresno County District Attorney's Office to prosecute the company, and we invite the Fresno County District Attorney's Office on, so there is the response from the company.

47:37 They're not saying this didn't happen. They're not saying what companies often say is, this was taken out of context. They're saying, yeah, this is not like some Hollywood production where it was made to look like. They're saying this happened. They're acknowledging it. Yeah, I mean, there might be a slight, slight of hand in their statements. They might, they haven't exactly linked it to the video that we filmed, but ultimately they're accepting that there has been some degree of cruelty to animal violations that have taken place at their farms, and they are saying that they've taken responsibility for it, which, you know, we would argue that they haven't until they face themselves the- What would you like to see the company do?

48:26 Well, ultimately, I think the company needs to get out of the business of chicken farming. As we know, chicken farming is, you can't detach cruelty to animals from chicken farming. We see it every time, but yeah, these workers should never be allowed to work with chickens. Again, the supervisors should be held responsible, the board of Foster Farm should be held responsible, and it's ultimately up to law enforcement to decide in this particular case which charges move forward and how responsible Foster Farms is held. But I would say as well, to go back to our point about media, you know, I could talk about media's willingness to embrace these things all the time. It's kind of a, it's a bit of a paradox because we see so much of this cruelty in investigations.

49:12 We do three or four of these kinds of investigations a year. The media's just a little, let's say, almost tired of it. It's more of a, it's like a man bites dog. What else is new? We know that cruelty to animals exists in factory farms. We know it happens. So they kind of think nothing's new, but at the same time, we know that their audience doesn't know this stuff. We know that we ourselves as animal protection advocates, we're constantly surprised by the degree of cruelty that we see on these farms. So, you know, it's a very strange state of affairs where the media organisations say, oh, this is just what happens. But for some reason that is not getting out to the public.

49:52 And please share this out. We are streaming this on our streaming network where you can comment as well as Facebook, YouTube, X, LinkedIn, share it out. You know, if indeed you're not gonna get mainstream media coverage on this, then the only way that we can do it is through independent media, which is what we are, and through people sharing it out. And there it is when somebody says, I'm sharing this out on every platform, it's a click. And that's, you never know the impact.

50:32 I actually sent this to somebody who, I think we all have a situation where there's somebody that we like very much, but they completely disregard our position when it comes to animal activism and veganism. And I have a friend like that. And, you know, I was looking at this and I just texted her the link. And I said, three minutes, watch it. I didn't say anything else. And she responded, this is sad. That was it. But I said, I appreciate you taking the time to watch. Thank you. I didn't really wanna say anything more. I don't wanna fight with people. I just wanted her to see it. Because one of the hard things is to get people to watch these videos.

51:17 You know, that's why we have Unchained TV. We have a lot of fun, upbeat videos, cooking shows and reality TV shows and fun, upbeat coverage. But then mixed in with that is some of these more serious, disturbing videos. So, exactly. Well, we only have a couple minutes. I wanted to get your thoughts for where Animal Outlook is going to go. And, you know, having worked with many, many different animal rights organisations over decades now, I would say that, you know, what stands out to me about Animal Outlook, and I've interviewed some of the undercover investigators who, to me, are the bravest people in the entire movement, is your undercover investigations.

52:02 You're known for that. Is there anything else you're gonna be focused on? Well, I really like the strategy that Cheryl and my predecessor and Erica before have laid out for Animal Outlook. You know, it all starts with investigations. That's how we get the truth. That's how we know what's going on. From there, we have a legal strategy. We want impact legal advocacy, something that's not only going to prosecute a few people at a time, but actually something that's replicable that other organisations, other firms can then use to litigate properly in their jurisdictions. That can be scalable and hold the whole industry and the whole animal protection, the whole animal farming system to account.

52:44 From there, obviously we use the investigations, the legal work to create a vegan movement, to say that there is no alternative to animal cruelty within the animal farming industry. Going vegan is the only way to actually, to end the cruelty. So vegan outreach has to be like the tip of the spear really, because that's what any single, that's the most, the best thing that any single individual can do. And from there, it's about just transition. So helping farmers escape, because farmers are trapped in this system too. Farmers are under enormous amounts of debt when they go into chicken farming, building the barns and being responsible to the integrators usually, and helping them transition out of animal farming so that we can close that loop, having them grow lettuce, having them grow mushrooms, having them grow other things that do not harm, create inequality to animals.

53:35 So really closing that loop and making sure those things never happen again. So I really like Animal Outlook's strategy of how we go from the investigations all through to the end, which is a more vegan world. Wow. And do you think we're getting closer to a more vegan world? Because nothing goes straight up. I mean, when Beyond Meat, for example, went public, it was like a frenzy. And then there was just an explosion of plant-based restaurants, products, and now there's a bit of a retrenchment because nothing ever goes straight up, even the most successful stocks are a bit of a craggy line. Where do you think we are? Unfortunately, I think it's something we're gonna be forced into.

54:17 As humans, we don't kind of do much until we're forced into it. And we see what's going on with these dreadful hurricanes in Florida now. We know that animal agriculture is one of the leading causes of climate change. It's probably not going to be something that we change until it's too late. But if there are enough people calling for it, we'll get there just in time and we'll end animal agriculture while we still have a planet to live on. I just wanna say, Ben, it's been such a delight speaking with you. I find your backstory fascinating. I know you're a very busy person, so I wanna thank you for taking the time to join us here on Unchained TV. And I hope, if you haven't, that you download our streaming network.

55:02 So it's a vegan Netflix. Okay, that's the craziest thing I've ever heard. I love Unchained TV. Unchained, Unchained TV. 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, yeah. So download it. The world's only vegan streaming network. It's free. You can download it on your phone, on your TV, and you can also watch online at unchainedtv.com.

55:44 See you next time. Bye. Thanks, Jen.