 In early 2018, a controversial documentary was aired on the BBC, highlighting vegan activism in the UK. It was centered around my vegan prophecy tour, the actions of the SAVE movement, and allegations of threats from vegans to farmers. As a result of this documentary, there were many articles written and following this I was asked to appear on a radio show with a TV host called Jeremy Vine. I was unaware of the viewership of this radio show at the time, but it was the largest audience I've ever reached in a single interview. I'm going to tell you how many people just listened to that interview. Seven and a half million. The aftermath of this interview sparked a media tirade with dozens of articles from every major newspaper in the UK reaching tens of millions of people. This kicked off the start to many media opportunities to come, but this was also a very polarizing debate with questions raised about my aggression and conduct and I was heavily criticised by the vegan community for pushing people away from veganism. I never released the full interview because I was very self-conscious of this criticism, but after reflection and listening back to this with a new perspective, I feel it really wasn't as detrimental to the message as some were saying. And my conduct in the interview was the driving force to this becoming a very effective way of reaching the mainstream media. So here it is, my most controversial interview ever. Dairy and meat farmers have claimed that they are living in fear after receiving death threats from militant vegan activists. Vegans are people who follow diets, which are even stricter than vegetarianism. While vegetarians don't eat meat or fish, they do still consume dairy food. Vegans think eating any dairy products is wrong because most milk comes from cows. Veganism is becoming increasingly popular. At least 1% of those over 15, which is over half a million people, follow this plant-only diet. People often become vegan because they're concerned for animal welfare. While not all vegans become animal rights activists, obviously there is a small but growing proportion who directly confront those in the food industry. The BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme spoke to farmers who've been targeted by angry vegans and the farmers have been saying that they're called murderists and rapists. They claim that they've received death threats, they've even had livestock stolen. We can listen as you two are vegan protest, you'll hear activists confronting farmers and rattling their gates. Would you like to speak more at this time? Yeah, let me speak to him. Do you care about animals? But you can den them to a slaughterhouse when you eat them. Out there, you treat us shoulder to shoulder! So protest by vegans against farmers and abattoirs, some of them hold vigils, they stand in the metiles of supermarkets with graphic images of animals being slaughtered and they hold protests for animal rights. Farmers have actually been meeting counter-terrorism police to discuss how to respond. So we wondered, are you a farmer? Have you been on the receiving end of vegan anger? Maybe you don't work in the meat or terry industry but you've got a vegan in your office. You might have asked, what is it about a vegan diet that makes them so angry? Joey Carpstrong joins us, a vegan activist from the Save movement which has 42 groups in the UK, over 100 worldwide. Good afternoon. Hello Jeremy, how are you? I don't know whether you're angry today or just generally about the whole thing. Well I'm a bit upset to see a sandwich has a piece of a pig's body in there, a dead pig that didn't want to die. Probably pushed into a gas chamber because that's the most humane method for stunning pigs in the UK, a gas chamber. Yes, there's a ham sandwich on the table. Yeah, ham is a euphemism and that actually comes from the flesh of a dead pig. What would you rather call it? I'd like you to call it the dead body of an animal who didn't want to die. Is the cheese a problem as well? The cheese comes from a mother who had her children taken from her and had her hands shoved in her anus and was artificially inseminated with bull semen. Probably why vegans would say that a dairy farmer is akin to a rapist. I wouldn't call a farmer a rapist, I wouldn't use any of that words without explaining to them the process and why they actually involve themselves in these types of practices. For you, if I obviously won't eat this sandwich now, in fact I might never eat it, but it's offensive to see it. Well, I believe it's more offensive to actually show me the piece of an animal who didn't want to die than it is to sort of call someone out for it. Okay, so tell us what you're doing by way of campaigning. Okay, so what we do is most of my campaigning, all of my campaigning is peaceful. It's polite dialogue in a respectful manner. I do activist workshops where I teach people this way of advocating. Farmers in these situations are claiming to be the victims, which I think is quite absurd because I think that they are forcibly breeding these animals, putting them on trucks and sending them to their murder. Now, if you don't like the word murder, they're being killed against their will. I don't know if anyone's actually been in a slaughterhouse. I've been in the slaughterhouse where they're decapitating animals. I've seen the last ounce of life be drained from their eyes and it smells like fear, blood and feces in there. What if somebody who eats meat just doesn't want to hear this? Well, if it's not good enough for you. They just don't want to hear it, they want to eat meat without hearing it. That's willful ignorance, but you're still consuming it, it's in your body. I might be in this position, I don't know. I want to eat a ham sandwich, I don't want to hear that. I don't want to hear it comes from. You're paying for it to happen, aren't you? I don't want to hear it comes from. You're paying for pigs to be killed and you don't want to hear it, but that's ignorance. Would a child have a right to say, I don't want to hear this? Well, we're force feeding them dead animal bodies and if a child's seen a slaughterhouse, they would not want to eat that, would they? They might well not want to eat it that soon. No, it's not food, it's violence. But just saying I don't want to know where it comes from is acceptable, isn't it? Well, there's many, if you are directly causing something to happen and you don't want to hear it, but you're responsible for that. A child wants to eat a sausage roll without being reminded. Well, I think we have a responsibility to show our children how that sausage roll came about. Can't the child choose not to hear it? Well, that's ignorance, isn't it? But they could choose to be ignorant. They can choose to be willful ignorant. So why would you stand in the aisle of a supermarket with pictures of animals being killed? What do you think is more immoral, showing people pictures of animals being killed or paying for it directly with your food habits? Your food choices, paying for it to happen, supply and demand. These industries wouldn't exist without the consumer. I don't think people that consume animal bodies are bad people. I used to consume them three or four times a day, but I've just woken up and I just... So you were a meat eater yourself? Only four years ago. And four years ago? So in your 20s, I'm guessing? 26, 27, I think I went vegan. Okay, so you ate a lot of burgers? I ate steak for dinner, chickens for lunch, pig bodies for breakfast. And what was your sense of the vegan mindset when you weren't a vegan? Do you think they're all crazy or what? Well, the thing is, it's funny how, like, we are ostracized for being extremists. No, I'm asking what you thought of vegans when you weren't one. I didn't have a thought on vegans, but if someone come up and politely told me that, you know, I'm contributing to some of the worst animal abuse on the planet with my food choices, I would probably listen to them. Did that happen to you at some point? Someone planted a seed. You eat suffering and death and manifest this disease and anxiety in your body, and I thought of the sort of the reaction from an action, okay? Like, you do bad things and bad things come back. Okay. And I thought animals are vulnerable and innocent, and I didn't want to be a part of that. Right, and that was just like a light switch moment for you. It was a seed that was planted in my mind, and it took a little while to flourish. And I lived with hypocrisy, knowing that I cared for dolphins and dogs and cats, but I had a piece of a cow on my plate, and I couldn't live with that hypocrisy for more than, you know, an extended period of time. All right, let's just bring in John here, not his real name. You're a haulier. You transport live animals across the UK. Hi, John. Good afternoon, Jeremy. Good afternoon, Joey. You've heard the case there for vegans getting a bit stuck into our food supply industry. Yes, Jeremy, what it is, first of all, I'd just like to emphasise the UK has the highest husbandry and welfare in livestock farming and transport. We do lots of certification in my family alone as 150 years of farming and livestock haulage. We have vehicles now, state of the art, costing an excess of $250,000, $300,000 with air con, water drinkers. Temperature control. The world's on the way to the abattoirs, on the way to the slaughterhouse where they get killed against their will. So what about the welfare inside the slaughterhouse? Joey's speaking on me. Jeremy, what I'd like to say is also we're incredibly big farmers. We have seven to ten fires and sheep at any one time that will go in to the food chain. So where's the justification for sending them to a slaughterhouse when it's unnecessary? Give me a justification. Justify it. I don't care what if you're going to talk. Justification is, first of all, I hence not to pick an argument on the side of it, UK, obviously you're obviously Australian and New Zealand. Perhaps you ought to worry about your own country, first of all, because did you realise all the lambs and yous killed in Australia and New Zealand are all killed halal? Because obviously you have such a yours. So why are you worried about the UK? We have the highest standard. We have to take certificates. The highest standard for killing animals. They stab them all in the throat. They stab every single animal in the throat. They shock them or they gas chamber them and they stab them in the throat. UK, Australia, America, no better. John, have you, John, in your job, have you had vegans throwing things, hitting things? I don't know. We go to a regular Arbutaur every other Monday. They would be down in an Arbutaur where we've had people stand in front of the lorries. Police have actually threatened to arrest the lorries drivers because they've kept dribbling forward to drive forward because they say they have to stop. We've had, does the UK people know that these people are also aligned with the ALF and I've had colleagues in the industry had letterbombs over the years. Provide evidence for that claim that all vegans are extremists with letterbombs. Stopping your truck for two minutes is as bad as condemning animals to a knife in the throat. Who's the victim here? They would be better. To be honest, why should anybody public please tell me? Everybody's got to write their opinion, but these people, when we go to the dogs, we go to Arbutaurs. You've got people hitting the sides of lorries screaming. John, my brother, John, are you the victim in this situation? You sit in the front of your truck and drop animals off to their death. Who is the real victim here, my friend? Where is your justification for that? We have to take certification because the UK has to eat, OK? We can eat plants, my friend. I'm vegan, four years, completely healthy. There's no justification to do this. One of the things that's been said by people I know, but there may be no evidence for this, is that vegans do seem to be very angry. Yeah, you'd be angry too if our dog's in the back of that truck. Is it possible that eating meat calms you down? If there were dogs in the back of that truck, the public would be helping us, but they are speciesists. They think some species are food and some species are to be cared for. You'd be stopping the truck too, Jeremy, if it was your dog. I'd like to know how for the vegans, the vegans, the ALF, when they come to do these protests and different things, where are their pets too? Brother, do you have a pet dog? Do you have a pet dog, John? Do you have a pet dog? Do you think your dogs have moral value? Our dogs get treated very, very, very well. Do you think a bolt gun in a dog's head is okay? To be honest, we would not put any animal under any... High welfare standard at slaughter. Is that okay for a dog? Our high welfare, to be unfortunately... If we had a dog breaking later... You didn't answer the question. Is high welfare slaughter for a dog okay? We would euphonise any animal. If that was sick. Is it under pain or is that the side of it? What about to eat them? Unfortunately, we're in a trade. It long just done correctly and in a proper way. That's different. Thank you, John, very much. Is there a good point, Joe, in the way people make choices about what they eat and how they consume, and sheep are bred, a lot of them, to be consumed. Cows are. Does that change the moral value of those animals? They wouldn't live otherwise. Yeah, but should they be grateful to be sent to a slaughterhouse and be exploited for their bodies? Is it just the manner of death that upsets you? No, it's the fact that we're exploiting them and using them at all and condemning them to death when it's unnecessary. How is this justified? We're a civil society. This is savagery. Thank you very much to Joey Carpstrong, vegan activist from the SAVE movement, which has 42 groups in the UK, over 100 worldwide. Apologies for the ham sandwich that was left out. Pig sandwich. In the studio. And John is also haulier who transports live animals on the other side of the argument. Here, my friend. Thank you, well done. Thanks for that. You did well, God. That would have been... Sorry, I'll get really passionate in those moments. It's all right. You could be passionate. Yeah, you know, and like I said, he's just a product of a society that thinks this is okay. You know, and I used to eat animals just as much. Yeah, we're all group things on it probably, aren't we? But... No, I... Yes. Interesting how he couldn't justify it. He just started saying, I have a $250,000 truck with air conditioning, but... Yeah, the truck is very comfortable. Yeah. It's not justification. Thanks for your time. I really appreciate that. Thank you very much. I hope they like the show. Yeah, yeah, they do. Hey, hey, hey. If you're interested on the back, this is a case sensitive link. You can do a little vegan challenge. Great, great. Have you got the phone physically to your head? Brilliant. Cheers, matey. Fantastic. Thanks, Joey. Thanks a lot. Lovely to meet you both. Thank you. You do keep in touch. Thank you very much. Thanks very much. I really appreciate it. Check out some of the... Yeah, the YouTube channel. His YouTube channel. Yeah, Joey Carpenter. Oh, lovely. Cheers, guys. Thank you. Really nice to meet you. Thanks for having us here. It's really good to meet you as well. Thank you. That was excellent. Thanks so much. Love you all the best. Let him go. Did you hear all that? I'll give you an example of when I was heavily criticised. I did an interview on the Jeremy Vine show in the UK. I was a foreigner. I didn't know who Jeremy Vine was. Apparently he has a big radio show. And I was just trying my best. I wanted to do the animals justice. I wasn't on the show promoting myself. Okay. I was promoting animal rights. But many people in the community, the vegan community, had their own part to say about that. They said, you know, you failed the animals. You were too aggressive. And I took it pretty hard because I'd been on tour. Try my best. You know, we're all just trying our best, aren't we? There's no handbook on how to do this. Turns out, though, that as a result of my conduct in that interview, I went viral in the newspapers over there. I get criticised by people who aren't vegan, by vegans and by other activists. But luckily I'm not doing it for any of them. Okay. Doing it for the animals. The animals say, oh, you know, I'm on my way to be murdered inside of the gas chamber. But, you know, you're a little bit aggressive in that interview when you're defending us. Of course not. Of course they wouldn't.