 So, these signs here, what do they mean to you? The first thing I thought of when I saw the sign was why love one but eat the other, choose vegan. I've got a really rotten sense of human, I said, or you could eat both. You could eat both? Yeah. Okay. So you wouldn't think, there was anything wrong with killing and eating a dog? I, in certain cultures they do it, I don't like it, but in certain cultures they do lots of things I don't like, so you can't do it. Is there any difference to their culture and our culture? There's a big difference, of course, history for a start. In the way they treat their animals for food. Yeah, very much so. What are the differences? The differences are that there's very little supervision or protocol or even cultural history. In some parts of the world I won't name them, but everybody knows who they are, where the animal life is treated as just basically a commodity to give it, you take it. But in a lot of parts of the world we're human life is treated the same way. Now in Australia we also have ethical issues about our intensive farming industries and particularly our live animal exports, which are not being addressed, so even in Australia we're, you know, we're better, but we're definitely not kill free, that's for sure. We've got factory farms here in Australia, massive pigarees and animals are treated like commodities because that's what they are, they're a product at the end of the day. A bolt gun and a pig's head, would you say, is the same as a bolt gun and the dog's head? It's regrettable that both are killed, the thing is that if the pig is lucky enough to get a bolt gun and I said it's probably doing pretty well. In this world? In this world, yeah. A lot of worse ways to go. What if we said like why love one but eat the other, what if we gave the alternative of loving both? No, no, no, it's a good line, I can understand the line. And when I was younger I worked in advertising, I know what a headline is, I know what an image is, I know what a communication is, I know what a logo is, all this sort of stuff. And you do it, the thing is that often if you want change, very often asking for a large step is very difficult for most people to get their head around, whereas if you work continually, continually, continually for small steps, small steps, small steps, you're more likely to get a good result. Because there's obviously a victim on the other side of this choice? Well it's only the victim that you're identifying. We're identifying the pig as a victim? Yes. You don't think the pig is a victim? Well the dog can be a victim as well. Oh yeah, in some cultures, yeah. But in our society, in this Western culture, it applies to us. You're definitely pigs that are in intensive farming situations, are probably treated along with chickens, but they're probably treated worse than probably any other intensively farmed animal. So you personally would disagree with our treatment of animals for food? I agree. Wherever possible, I'd buy free range, and if there was another brand or branding level that came through that was ethically farmed, humanely farmed, humanely slaughtered free range, I would definitely buy that product. So the free range animals go to the same slaughterhouse as the factory farmed animals? Not always. Definitely not always. No, definitely not in pigories. What slaughterhouse? Some of the country pigories have their own small slaughterhouses where they're done much better and they're not just herded into a truck and cut it off. Can you define better for... Better? It would be as much as possible that the animal is not traumatised, it has a good life within that lifespan. It's not slaughtered too early, I don't particularly like lambs, little piglets. Lambs are slaughtered at six months and pigs are slaughtered at around six months as well? Yeah, that'd be right. But you know, for example, I won't eat veal, pure and simply for the ethical reason that I won't touch the stuff. Okay. I won't... Because it's young? Yeah, very often the veal is slaughtered only a couple of days old. And chickens are slaughtered at? Chickens also, I buy... Six weeks old. Okay, I buy free-range chickens. I happen to like chicken. Yeah. Now the thing is, if I wanted to wrestle with the idea, I really respect vegetarians a lot. Okay. Okay, vegans are evangelical basically and they can be a pain in the ass. Okay. And... For what reasons? They're evangelical. Meaning they feel like they're superior... The whole time, the whole time, the whole time they're trying to convert. You convert, convert, convert, convert. You can't go out to a restaurant with a vegan and I'll guarantee you 50% of the time that vegan will be having a bash at the owner or the manager about why they don't have vegan options on the menu. And the manager will say, well, hang on a minute, if I tangled up my kitchen with half the kitchen being vegan and half the kitchen being normal, it's just too hard. It's like half the kitchen being kosher. Do you think it's annoying that people stand up for the rights of animals? It's not annoying, but they can definitely express opinions. I'm saying evangelical, they're not just standing up for the rights, they're trying to convert you. Whereas vegetarians don't do that. Because vegetarians are diet and veganism is about animals. Veganism is a much bigger concept. It's a philosophy against... The butter, eggs, the whole lot. Anything that exploits or hurts animals, vegans will say, we don't agree with that. Okay, I think the vegan philosophy is a good one and in an ideal world it's a good one. At the moment we're not in an ideal world and there's no way you're going to go, we're all vegan tomorrow unless... Look, all the evidence is there that mankind is going to have to change its eating. It's just black and white. It's bad for the environment, bad for overpopulation. That's the jury's out on that. Saturated fan cholesterol. If you want to give as much evidence about how this stuff is bad for you, there's as much counter evidence that says how much this stuff is good for you. So don't even get into that argument. It's very confusing. The science behind eating bacon and eggs and cholesterol and saturated fat. Okay, there's nothing wrong with eggs. Bacon in moderation, there's nothing wrong. Full of saturated fat? No, it's not. And cholesterol? You cut the fat off, you buy a lean piece of bacon, it's got less fat in it than a steak or butter or coconut oil which vegans love. Coconut oil, full of saturated fat. Coconut oil is full of saturated fat, yeah. It's a refined product. Shabble it down, telling everybody what a great product it is. When it comes to diet, there is a lot of misinformation around. There is. There is. If you want to... But when it comes to ethics, we can't really argue that it's long to stab an animal for no reason. And I'm a big believer in ethical animal husbandry, okay? And so if a vegan issue aside, if somebody comes out and says, this is a moral issue, and I really do... This is not my quote originally, but I really do think that in future generations they're going to look back on our part of history and how we treated our animals with great shame. I do think that's going to happen. If you can go into a shop or a supermarket and you can buy an ethically farmed cut of lamb or even a salmon, because even salmon is intensively farmed. If you can buy it knowing it's had a good life, it's been well treated, it's been free range, it's been fed proper food that suits it, it hasn't been put in a store, deprived of life and freedom ethically and as painlessly as possible slaughtered, but you're going to pay five times more for that product, I would say good. It's good just to painlessly kill an animal. Yes. How is that good for the animals? It's not good for the animal. That's what we're saying. And we're omnivores, okay? We eat vegetables and we eat meat. And you veg vegans will disagree with that and say, no, no, no, we herbivores. Well, we don't need to eat meat to be healthy and thrive. We've got vegan athletes here, bodybuilders. I know that, but we can choose. So we're doing it for no reason, just because we like the way they taste. No, we're doing it, well, it's true. We're doing it to animals for no reason because we... It's also a cultural thing, where you're brought up with a certain food and you're in a culture, certain foods don't eat pork, certain foods don't eat cow. Culture is no justification for injustice, though. Okay, now, already in your interview, you're taking an evangelical approach to the animal's perspective. But already, but what I was complaining about before, that vegans are my observation, is that they will not conduct a reasonable discussion without getting hot and without evangelicalising and trying to convert the people who they're doing it to. And you're doing it now. Just from the animal's perspective, though, it's an injustice to enslave them and kill them, even if we do that in a kind way. I can see the poster. You wouldn't think so? You don't think of bolt gun in the head in a happy animal? We've got a whole history of doing that. Humans, the whole history, 3,000 years of farming and even going back to Neanderthal, 400 years of slavery. Okay, and you want to look at idealised cultures like, oh, the American Indians and, oh, the Australian Aboriginal and what are they doing? They're out there, they're hunting stuff, they're eating it. In survival situations, it's a bit different to... No, no, no, no, not survival. A lot of these American tribes are very prosperous. They just have a lot of eating bugs. There's a lot of things that happen in tribes that aren't ethical. You would agree? I think that... Like, they rape each other, there's murder in tribes, there's, you know, people killing each other, there's wars, there's traditional cultures that go to war with each other and kill other humans. Yes, yes. That happens in culture. Culture's a big catalyst for these injustices. Okay, well, now you want to bang on about anti-war and everything like this. No, we're just saying, all I'm saying is like, just because we've always done it and just because it's part of our culture, just because it's traditional and we like it's a habit, it still doesn't justify a bolt gun in an animal's head if they want it, from the animal's perspective. It's better than a rusty knife in a car park in Saudi Arabia. There's obviously better ways to kill people too, but it just doesn't make it justify. A few people think... You know, there's better ways to take someone's life, but if they didn't know about it behind them and... Yeah, and it's called... What is it, rules of war and war crimes? War crimes. No, humans, we've got a lovely big list about what you can and can't do in war, which everybody ignores anyway. We'd probably say that. You would agree that war, no matter how kindly it's done, like shooting people and killing people and dropping bombs on people is just not... Nor is it never justified, yeah. Sometimes it's justified. To defend yourself in a defensive way, yeah. But pigs and cows and chickens haven't done anything wrong to us for us to do this to them. Okay, now you're getting an evangelical and I'm getting a little bit over this interview now, so I'm gonna walk on it on Sunday and mainly because your tone has changed. Oh, no, no, this is my normal tone, but... Here's a card, take a card. Oh, well, we tried, didn't we? We tried.