 And I know that you've been to quite a lot of different farms and you've done some kind of like an investigative work yourself. What would you say is the worst place that you've been to? For me, the worst feeling I got was... Right, so Joey, we're here at Vegan Campout. Had your talk last night. Do you want to give me a bit of an overview of how it went, what you talked about, kind of what you've been doing recently? Yeah, so my speech was pretty intense because there was lots of people there more than I'm used to and... How many? Yeah, I don't know, there was like seven or eight thousand in a big pavilion. So it was pretty intense but I just gave an overview of my life from beginning to how I got to an activist and yeah, I was a bit more open and raw about it and stuff. So yeah. Well I think most of our listeners are going to know what kind of work you do in your background but do you want to just tell us a little bit of how you went from being obviously this gang, lad, prison kind of vibe to where you're at now because it's a bit of an incredible journey, you've had. Yeah, well it is a long story but I can break it down for you. Let's have the Twitter version. Yeah, so essentially like yeah, I was involved with drugs and gangs and then it sort of spiralled off into like more intense high level gangs and then come to a head. I went to prison and got sober in prison, had an awakening. Part of that awakening was realizing that I was a hypocrite who claimed to care about animals but was eating their bodies and had a bit of self-reflection one day and decided to align my belief system with my actions and went vegan and then I couldn't close my mouth about it. I was very outspoken, left the gangs and started social media as a platform to inspire people to make changes and to speak up for animals and then it's progressed into me not stopping consistently and making a few waves here and there. So would you say that being an animal lover is something that's always been there for you and do you have like a particular story of one animal maybe that kind of set you on this journey? I know a lot of people talk about an experience with a kid with a dog and they kind of think about how much they love their dog and then they're realizing that they're eating a pig or something. Do you have anything like that that kind of steers you in this direction? I can remember like I've killed animals before and anytime that happened I had a deep shame about it so I knew that about me I didn't like doing bad things to animals or people and especially like I would take drugs after I'd done something violent to a person so I was really doing something I was against my nature and I remember a friend showing me a video that someone had been out hunting that we knew and he cut a little baby deer out of a mother deer stomach after he'd killed her and he was doing this puppet thing with a severed head of this deer fetus and I was going to attack my mate over I was like what are you showing me that for? I was deeply offended by it I thought it was disgusting and cruel and you know I was about 21 years old at that stage so there wasn't no one animal that made me change she wasn't like oh my god this and it was just like I can't believe they're doing this to them like why isn't anyone stopping them it was just so horrible and so vast that made me like I've got to I've got to help this cause you know. So you've done a lot of campaigning for animals now because it's been eight years you've been big and something like that yeah it's been a long time and you've just been I know you're in the UK for a long time but you've been back in Australia now for the last six months and what have you been doing there and how does the activism that you do in Australia compared to that that you did in the UK? Okay so what I've been doing in Australia is campaigning for sea animals, the little fishies, the fishies don't get much airtime and like everyone's saying you got to watch sea spiracy you got to watch sea spiracy so I like thought you know what I'll do is I'll watch sea spiracy and react to sea spiracy and then off the back of watching sea spiracy go out and campaign for the fishies and yeah we just went across the coast and did a bunch of stunts, SeaWorld, got some media which was good and yeah so yeah I was so surprised DailyMail must have got someone from the Guardian or something working for him because they were being objective in that but like yeah and then yeah so they wrote some decent objective articles and they said my message for me and yeah it was good I think the sea animals deserve a little bit more attention and definitely gave that to them and got people just thinking about the fact that they deserve like rights because people don't really see the fish as deserving of rights you know like just a right to like live in peace and without being exploited but they are the most abused and murdered animal on earth and I saw that you had a really interesting conversation with somebody that worked on a fish farm was that in Chile or something yeah we were in Australia and he's he like I just couldn't believe it like I was there you know with the sign with no actually had a screen with the footage he worked up and he's like you know I used to work in a salmon farm and I'm now a vegan sea animal rights activist who's free dives to get people to connect with sea animals and I was like when does this well when does this happen for the perfect people just think it's set up it was not set up Lautaro his name was and he is amazing guy and yeah yeah cuz he was like you know people go to sanctuaries to like connect with chickens and he's in this water yeah with like a gray nurse shark and like the sharks like interacting with him in that so like really cool yeah and I mean you know in the UK Scotland's one of our biggest producers well in Europe I think they're the third largest producer of Atlantic salmon yeah is aquaculture as big in Australia as it is here oh god it is big well all I know is the worldwide statistic that that's 50% of the fish people are eating are coming out of fish farms now there are fish farms in Australia I don't know how much bigger it is than you know actual commercial fishing but it only makes sense that you know they they get these animals in a controlled environment where they can get you know as many as they can to breed and have this consistent flow when they're going out on boats it's like hit and miss you know how they're gonna catch them are they not but with farms they just they can exploit and exploit and have a consistent amount of numbers there's also a lot of disease you know they get heart disease they get chlamydia they get like you know this flesh eating disease on their faces the waters filled with feces like these animals are diseased and suffering in a big pool of feces but they're saying that the fish farms just in Scotland alone create as much feces as the entire population of human beings in Scotland and that's all just leaking out into the ocean causing toxic blooms and it's just gross and it's incredibly cruel so yeah absolutely and I know that you've been to quite a lot of different farms and you've done some kind of Viking investigative work yourself what would you say is the worst place that you've been to ah such a hot question isn't it? yeah no if you want to talk about the worst farm yeah for me the worst feeling I got was in a slaughterhouse and they were these animals looked in very good condition like they'd been maybe looked after in a smaller farm but this is like that humane argument like yeah you can go into terrible farms and I've been in terrible farms and you know with chickens like on their last breath with their face down in their own feces like dying and then there's dying rotting birds more often if you're in a broiler shed you'll see more dead and dying animals like in a pig farm you know if you're coming across a dying pig it's like wow okay this pig's dying but chickens birds there's so many 50 to 100 thousand in a barn and there's just everywhere you look there's birds that are messed up but at the slaughterhouse with the pigs that we were I was sitting there in the holding pens with them for like an hour and a half before they went in and they were nuzzling my face and they were just they're like dogs curious and I felt like I was betraying them because I knew where they were going and then they got went in there and you know just got electrically stunned and then stabbed and dropped into a boiler tank to remove their hair and rolled and but the most horrifying part of it all was not the fact that they got gutted and their stomach was entrails were pulled out with them all the way down to their tongue it was when they dropped a massive sword down the middle of the pig and their head was soared in half and I could see inside this pigs head after I'd just been connecting with them and it left this like traumatic scar in me like it was very bizarre like it was like oh my god like I've just I've just got witnessed trauma from that you know yeah I think it's really difficult because I've been into a slaughterhouse myself and saw lambs being slaughtered and again I think one of the most disturbing things from that was to actually see even when it's been cut down the middle then it's all hung up all the in and throughout it's still twitching and you can still see like movement and it's carcass and you're like oh my god it's really weird it's such a horrible feeling and seeing that is awful and I know that like a lot of activists a lot of investigators as a result of that experience severe burnout and secondary trauma and all that kind of stuff how is it that you're able to keep doing the activism that you do and not get bogged down by all of that trauma last good question you know I actually don't give myself many options and I think that's what it is like I have suffered with trauma for most of my life I had childhood trauma I had a complex PTSD from the world that I was in for so long I had a therapy and you know it's about I have an outlet for this so I see what's going on I don't feel helpless I generate that emotion into activism and results you know people emailing all the time I'm vegan because of the I'm vegan because you you know like if it wasn't for that the outlet I would probably break down and it would express itself in a very negative way but some people are built for different roles and I will say that like I don't think everyone is built for the same roles in any company organization army soldiers they have different roles different strengths and that's why I think if you force yourself into a role that's not for you you could be in a world of trouble when you could actually have longevity in the movement doing something different and you're still just as valuable so yeah yeah and that follows on quite nicely because you obviously are quite controversial character yeah and how do you deal with a lot of the negative criticisms yeah I'll always say what I feel I don't actually you know you're probably getting about 70 cent 70% of what I actually feel so I do I do like look I do sense myself a little bit but like yeah I'm gonna tell people how it is to be honest I feel like what's happening to the animals trump human emotions and I'm sorry if people get offended not really that sorry but but I'm still gonna say it like for me I think it's important to speak the truth because the truth breaks through the lies and if you want me to use euphemisms and say that you know use all these words that make you feel a little bit more comfortable use the words that the industry use to make people feel comfortable about eating animals and it's not me I'm an activist I'm not a politician I'm not trying to garner friends here and you know whatever I'm just gonna speak like what what it would be like for this animal what they say if for them they're being murdered they're being tortured they're in an eternal mass murdering sickening nightmare you know so how do I articulate that and yeah like you gotta that anger if people get angry right they are more likely right to change later on I feel because like if it generates emotion in them like that like most people this is the worst enemy of us is apathy when people don't get angry yeah they don't even look they don't even comment they're too busy yeah although they don't want to know about it they're not just like that's that's the worst but anger people like going and debating and coming at me going you can't say that you know this is they're actually feeling something and they're having some type of cognitive dissonance in response to it and you know when these seeds get planted and they realize that it's true later when that when that emotion subsides when they hate towards me subsides all they're left with with is that seed and yeah definitely that and so to round up them we'll just finish off with a bit of what you're up to next and I know you don't want to say too much yeah so just what does the rest of 2021 hold for Joey Colter yeah so like obviously I like to keep things under wraps and you know but let's just say like I don't really necessarily always have long-term plans I just I follow my heart with my activism which is what I recommend people do yeah so I don't go okay in September next year I'm doing this I follow my heart and it takes me where I have to be in that moment so you'll see a lot more of the things I feel are going to be most effective to wake people up you're probably gonna see a lot more of me in tough situations to sort of advertise to people what's actually going on and you know we're gonna just try to break through again into the media somehow and just keep propelling the animal message forward more of the same JC pretty general that was I know that wasn't specific pretty good got away with words there thank you so much thank you for all your work that you do as well for Viva and you know you're very good activist as well so thank you