 a little introduction into who I am and how I come to be a vegan activist animal rights activist I haven't always been this way haven't always been um a good boy I went down the wrong track for many years like many years a decade and I had an epiphany when I was imprisoned part of that epiphany was becoming sober realizing the error of my ways and I started to right the wrongs of my past okay so I've been living in amends ever since and part of that is helping those who can't help themselves I always wanted to help people and that was a I thought that was a noble thing to do but then I realized there was a group of beings who needed my help more and they couldn't speak for themselves they were screaming and no one was listening so I decided to help animals become vegan after a series of events really a bizarre series of events and it was mainly due to my clear mind and pulling myself away from the environment that I was in so that's a short story it went for a lot longer than that but we don't have much time when you talk about this subject with people you are met with opposition that opposition stems from conditioning we've been taught a certain way for many years whenever I've mentioned a vegan to non-vegans always angry or laugh or just make fun of you my mum went vegan a year ago instead of failing liver fatty foods and actually cured it and I made a status about that and I still had people I've grown up with attack me so I was wondering why you think that is why why is it yeah we've been taught we need meat for we need milk for that something humane happens in a slaughterhouse we've been taught all these things and we're fed lies you look at a milk carton you see a green pasture and you think that's the be all and end all the dairy industry they don't show you what happens in between if the right person talked to them they wouldn't think it was very funny if they seen a pig screaming for their life in a gas chamber yeah no but they just don't see that so like you have to look at it from like their perspective okay people ridicule things they don't understand and what can happen when you bring these subjects up to people is they have cognitive dissonance cognitive dissonance is the feeling associated with contradictory belief systems she gets mad at you yeah yeah I think because like she might feel like I don't know maybe she feels attacked or something like that so she might get angry but she just probably doesn't understand like so give her some time so your belief if your beliefs are contradicting your actions you get an uncomfortable feeling in your tummy doesn't feel good feels a bit frustrating feels like wait a second these beliefs about animals you're talking to 99% of society who agree animals should be treated morally well because of the conditioning right and because people just don't understand what veganism actually is yeah it's about not stabbing animals for burgers the core principle is about exploitation and where exploitation leads okay individuals who would like seeing a dog be butchered in front of their eyes or even a pig you know they like to they like to it to remain behind closed doors but when you bring this up to them many excuses come up and it's almost like everyone has the same ones but it's weird like you might not even even know any any of these people okay that might they might be in america and you're over here in adelaide and they'll say exactly the same things to excuse the abuse that goes into their burger as the person in adelaide does and it's almost it's very bizarre the best way through that is to ask some questions get them thinking yeah like how has everyone been taught the same thing what is the number one excuse you hear someone shouted out protein that's the number one i'd probably say that's up there number one too because that's how they marketed it for so long meat for protein you have to eat meat to get protein you can't get protein without eating meat it's just impossible you will die you will die five years ago stopped eating meat not dead yet and i think like the thousands of vegan bodybuilders would beg to differ uh protein where does it originally come from it originally comes from plants all protein originally comes from plants now the lion eats the deer you might say well the lion ate the deer got their protein from the where the deer get the protein from exactly it all stems from plants all the nutrients you need so it's basically the same argument what about iron well you eat cows to get iron where did the cow get the iron from plants all nutrients nearly all nutrients if the vegetables and vegetables weren't sterilized and the water wasn't chlorinated b12 would be on these fruits and vegetables and it'd be in the water supply you can supplement with b12 i think it's it's important that everyone does the animals are injected with it but nutrients all the all the nutrients we need come originally from plants do you think it's moral to stab an individual to death to get the protein out of their flesh do you think it's moral to murder someone to get the iron out of their blood we're drinking the blood of innocent beings to get iron and there's no way around that's the truth and i speak the truth it's harsh it sounds really like come on mate that's a bit militant no it's not it's the truth where do you think you're getting the iron from the blood of innocent beings so the question would be do you think it's more to stab someone to get iron and all animals are stabbed you should tell me an animal that doesn't get stabbed actually maybe male baby chicks in the egg industry you don't eat those male baby chicks though but fish get stabbed in the throat cows get stabbed in the throat pigs get stabbed in the throat okay they're gas chambered first or they're shot in the head first or they're electrocuted electrocuted first but they're all stabbed in the throat why to drain them of their blood so they're all being stabbed in the throat okay now people go to me joey you're being animated and you're trying to you know over exaggerate my words cannot over exaggerate what happens to animals you watch the footage watch the footage my words don't do it justice or even come close to doing it justice it's an absolute abomination i could say well you know there's iron in my blood do you think it's more to stab me for the iron in my blood and they could say well no because you're a human okay okay here we are humans and animals there must be some massive difference between us that makes it more to stab a cow and not moral to stab a human being what is that difference we could say okay well joey like you know humans are clearly more intelligent than cows cows don't have iPhones we could say well not all humans are intelligent are they some human beings are born with a disability aren't they do we treat them immorally no we don't we protect them with human rights okay just because a cow might not be able to drive a car or use an iPhone or you might think that you can do mathematics better than the cow does not morally justify stabbing the cow to get iron because you would not apply that justification for stabbing me to get the iron out of my blood you would call it an injustice you would call it murder but for some reason we've made a distinction between cows and humans and we've said well even though cows are the same in all the ways that matter aren't they think of the ways that matter sentience what is sentience they are self aware they are conscious beings there's someone inside of there an individual with a personality experiencing their reality subjectively through their own eyes through their own lens okay just like there's someone inside of you who gets scared who gets hungry who gets tired escapes danger avoids pain you know welcomes well-being all animals want to experience well-being they want to avoid pain and suffering okay we have that in common with cows pigs fish chicken you name the animal okay yeah there are differences there are i'm not going to say we're all the same there's differences between human beings as well it doesn't justify treating one human differently from another you can say animals there are different species they look different to us you know cows they look different to you know imagine if we use that type of discriminatory mindset against each other we have passed and we still do today and it's what separates us speciesism okay it's like racism except it's to do with discriminating based on species and it's usually human supremacy human supremacy to the point where we're like we think we're that much better than animals that we can steal their children off of them forcibly impregnate them stab them to death and eat their body parts and use their skin as a sweater okay that's what human supremacy does to animals what does racial supremacy do to other humans gas chambers horrible stuff we put pigs in gas chambers up here at marie bridge i don't know if anyone's been to marie bridge uh to hear the pigs scream for their lives and beg for mercy inside of a gas chamber it is absolutely heart wrenching and you can't do nothing do you know why because it's legal what we do to pigs in gas chambers is legal if someone comes up to you guys you ever do any protein after everything i just said then we discriminate against animals certain animals based on species okay it's usually human supremacy but not always because how many people have a dog at home nearly everyone has got a cat you got some companion animal a bird maybe you're rescued a bird maybe you know most people have a dog i always use dog because i've always been around dogs you know we all know the character of dogs if anyone hurts a dog around australia kill the bloke kill them and i've and that's not that is not me saying that you go to any facebook video of someone abusing a dog go through the comment section kill them skin them alive do exactly what he did to that dog to him true are they all vegans of course not of course not they're just compassionate people and they don't see that they're applying one moral standard to dogs that they completely disregard when it comes to cows pigs fish chicken lambs that are on their plate that died were murdered they didn't just die naturally they were murdered that their life robbed from them in a slaughterhouse disgusting place a slaughterhouse so we discriminate based on species because of cultural conditioning okay you go to yule and china dogs are food okay dogs are i don't think dogs are food i don't think pigs are food either okay see what culture does it it conditions people to believe certain animals don't matter and the root of all evil the idea that some lives matter less we can just stick let's just stick on this intelligence thing because it's a really important point for everyone even if you're if you're not vegan if you are vegan it doesn't matter this is a really important point children would you say a four year old child is as intelligent as your average 30 year old human of course not okay they're very vulnerable to children aren't they vulnerable they need to be protected defended if anyone touched a child abused the child it would be on they'd be in prison or you know god help them god help them animals pigs let's just say pigs they're around a three that they're comparative with their intelligence around a three year old child let's just say this is science speaking i don't know if it's true let's just say for argument's sake they've got about their medical capacity of a three year old child they might be more intelligent might have different intelligence i don't know we treat pigs like the worst criminals we treat we treat pigs worse than the child abuser and they did nothing wrong pigs have done nothing wrong to any of us okay and we treat them worse than the worst criminals on earth horrible it's a really tough topic to talk about because this is the basically the absolute raw truth of it you need to know how to debate these topics you know when people start going oh we're smarter than animals what are you gonna say like well i'm smarter than four-year-olds should i go around killing four-year-olds and eating their bodies of course not like who would who would say who would even suggest that why does all logic go out the window when we start justifying animal abuse you know why because they taste so good animals taste good i get it i do get it but like meat tastes good they would usually say not people like to separate meat from the animal it's easier for them it's just the way they just look at meat as meat as some inanimate product that just appeared in the supermarket so they say meat tastes good and i always correct them and say animals you're saying animals taste good the flesh of an animal that who had their life stolen them tastes good taste is a sensory pleasure sensory response basically like okay i happened to my tongue the sweet salty there might be a little bit of fragrance that might have used plants to flavor the flesh they might say well it well it tastes good and i'll get that a lot who gets that a lot get that a lot tastes good okay fair enough i'm not saying that i quit eating animal products because i hate the taste of bacon double cheeseburgers okay that's not why i thought it tastes good too but would it taste good if it was torn off the animal uh draw i don't know a bit of fur and bit of tendon and maybe if you had to kill the animal yourself and watch the blood drain out of them would would you still be hungry i don't know i don't know if that would taste very good that'll actually leave a bad taste in your mouth but taste using sensory pleasure to justify an immoral act where else does this happen sensory pleasure oh that made me feel good but there's a victim involved okay there's a victim involved and the attacker gains sensory pleasure from it now i'm not saying there's they're a conscious attacker because that's not true not all people that consume animals are conscious animal abusers but when you present them with some information and you might show them what's happening inside a slaughterhouse like we do with anonymous for the voiceless which i recommend everyone get involved with you show them and then they say but it tastes good they've seen the violence they know that there's blood on their hands because the consumer pays for the violence to happen without the consumer's dollar the violence goes away and then they use taste to justify it they then become a conscious animal abuser sorry that's the truth you are there's the second hand obviously you're not abusing going around abusing animals yourself you pay someone else to do your dirty work but like i did for 26 years i mean like i'm not like devoid none of us i don't know who's been digging the whole life okay none of us have okay we're all guilty of paying for someone to abuse animals but a rapist i hate saying that word sorry if it triggered anyone but it's true a rapist will get sensory pleasure from an immoral act now you might go Joey oh my god meat eating isn't the same as rape i'm not saying that if you think i'm saying that you're not listening to me an immoral act where you gain sensory pleasure boom an immoral act where you gain sensory pleasure boom that's the justification sensory pleasure taste for doing something horrible and i'm sure like a human being's flesh with the right seasoning would taste really good too mince them up into a burger you know put some herbs in their salt pepper garlic powder you know some cheese on top you know maybe made from the breast milk of a human being you know you could make a human burger tastes really good too it wouldn't just you know genociding human beings for your taste preference and you could say again joey will what was you know humans aren't animals we went through that what is the difference between us what is the distinction what is the moral distinction between us that justifies what we do to them i've been searching for one come on come at me where is this one i've been i've been five years searching for the moral justification for what we do to the most defenseless vulnerable beings on earth still gets fine one we can go through something though here's one personal choice who's got this one it's my personal choice to eat animals joey leave me alone leave me alone stop forcing your beliefs down my throat okay if i was speaking up against child abuse would you still say joey stop forcing your beliefs down that child abuse's throat no me eat his aunt child abuse is not what i'm saying okay don't twist what i'm saying but if i'm speaking up against animal abuse that's what i understand veganism to be it's not some health journey for me it was at the start you know i lost a lot of weight doing juice fasting found out about the power of plant-based foods the ethics is what turns you vegan and usually when you stop consuming the flesh of you know animals who suffered and you know all that fear something wakes i don't know if this is just conjecture but something sort of clicks and you understand the ethics personal choice it's my personal choice um yeah it is it's it it's a choice i'll say that i'll say that much it's a choice so if someone says to you whoever it may be it's my personal choice stop forcing your opinions on me you know you could say well your choice has a victim so it ceases to be personal basically you know yeah it's a choice we have many choices in life you can choose to exploit and abuse animals with your food choices or you could choose a vegan burger and there's many around okay now your health is a personal choice eat vegan chocolate eat the vegan junk food i couldn't care less if you smoke vegan cigarettes okay as long as you know but actually you might if you're health you know you probably want to be around to see your kids as long as you're not harming anyone else by harming yourself you know that's fine with me a real personal choice not one like hey you know i'm going to go buy some bacon this pig's going to be gas chambered six month old six months old these pigs little children screaming terrified scared covered in their own feces screaming for death inside a dungeon filled with gas you might say well it's sleeping gas they just fall asleep no that you know a few years ago that you might have been able to get away with that until some brave activists cameras down there and we're seeing just how gentle that sleeping gas really was horrible horrible what it does it burns inside their eyes uh the co2 carbonic acid it's called when it reacts with mucous membranes inside their lungs inside their mouth and it burns you have a cracker can of coke in your eye get that gas in there think about that even if it didn't hurt though you know if it was gentle gas we wouldn't put humans and gently gas them to sleep irrelevant how gentle the gas is but it's still horrific to hear them scream and suffer suffering is bad using animals is the problem though personal choice okay so i mean you might you might actually use that excuse yourself which you know you might think you know people are infringing on my personal choice that's not freedom they're taking away my freedom by saying i can't eat my meat you know but you know that that's great from your own point of view but we're asking people to be altruistic and see it from the animal's point of view where's their choice their choice has been robbed from them you know everything their children have been robbed from them their choice to bear their own children and to live in in peace and harmony is being robbed from them this one is really common who can guess what it is no close it's on par with the food chain lions lions there's many different ways of explaining how people will say or lions eat other animals other animals eat other animals in nature the spider eats the fly this is what i got when i was on the good morning britain anyone see the good morning britain show okay the celebrity chef goes the cat eats the mouse the spider eats the flyer that's just the way it is the food chain animals eat other animals in nature and quite simply if you were going to navigate your morality by the actions of the animals in nature you'd be doing all sorts of crazy things and we could be justifying all types of crazy things couldn't we i mean because animals kill each other in nature they're in a very different scenario to us to us they're in a survival situation we are not okay we are not we have plant foods we can manufacture all of our food out of plants got plant agriculture that's fine the lions aren't in the same situation they they do it out of necessity like look we could justify killing each other because lions you know kill each other or they have fights and they claw each other's face off or they they go and you know hunt down an antelope we could use that same justification to hunt down human beings who we might deem as prey absolutely ridiculous it's called basically it's a logical fallacy it's an appeal it's a simple logical fallacy you can look these logical fallacies up it's one of the most common it's an appeal to nature fallacy you are saying basically that because it happens in nature that it's moral or that it's even good there there's good things that happen in nature there's also horrific things that happen in nature so you can't go nature justifies my my moral behavior it's crazy it's actually quite crazy when you think about it think about what other animals do to each other without consent you know they don't ask for permission before they start humping each other they don't act in a civilized way we came to be civilized human beings civilized compassionate you know sensible you know but it all goes out the window when we start trying to justify our abuse of animals for cheeseburgers what would you say like if someone goes well you know joey like our ancestors have been eating meat for millions of years you know what i mean like ancestors though like and if you don't know you just well that's correct well there there's science against it there's science to support it i think the majority of science supports that we we're eating you know meat for millions of years you can't deny that can you oh i don't think it's wise to deny they we have to be truthful but you know our ancestors were doing a lot of crazy stuff and what is an ancestor really what was 200 years ago as an ancestor well are you 100 years ago century ago as an ancestor ancestors in world war two gas chambering people well like how much of what our ancestors did do we want to morally justify or use to morally justify our behavior i mean if you're going to use one you have to use it all you can't apply that logic you can't say okay ancestors ate animals so therefore it's moral for me to do it today or therefore it justifies me doing it today ancestors were committing rape you know war crimes murdering each other i'm not going to use that to justify rape war crime and murdering each other today though because that's just crazy you're crazy no you're going to use ancestors as a justification for your actions you either take everything they did or nothing they did you can't use it you cannot use it it's a it's a logical contradiction you can't use it so yeah i mean it's also it's all about supply and demand it's great to tell people about supply and demand if you're talking to them because a lot of people just they they they might have learned it in school but they might have forgotten it these industries only exist because of the consumer period that is that that sentence right there i mean people go joey i'm going to go turn this farmer vegan so he turns his farm vegan look if that farmer turns his cattle farm where he's ranching cattle for beef into a vegetable farm the demand for beef still exists it's done nothing to the demand you want to turn the farmer vegan because then he'll stop contributing to the other beef farms that's great but you know what's going to happen if he cuts shuts down his beef farm the beef farm next door it's going to get double the business that's how it works you shut down not oh my god this slaughterhouse i've seen horrific slaughterhouse we need to shut it down you know what the horrific slaughterhouse next door there's no no such thing as a good slaughterhouse okay no such thing as a good slaughterhouse next door is going to get double the business we target demand that's how things change the consumer here we go this is another one what is what am i going to like how am i going to make a difference like if i stop eating animals that's all good and well but that's not going to change anything imagine if everyone on earth had that same mentality seven billion people all like oh what what what what it's it's called an appeal to futility it's also a logical fallacy i learned a lot of these online ask yourself hey there's a these are very important to know appealing to futility it's it's futile it'll never happen so why should i change why should i stop committing a conscious act of animal abuse because other people are always going to commit conscious acts of animal abuse why should i not abuse that child people are always going to abuse children doesn't matter if i don't apply the same logic it's absolutely insane when you apply it in a different context think about that i say people are always going to murder each other in war too people are always going to be raping you know each other and those horrible things always going to be happening but you don't do it do you you don't do it because of there's you know you have your own you know moral code that sort of and and you will have your own victims everyone has their own victims i had my own victims 26 years not just animals human victims i was going down a very violent path okay i realized that i stopped you know but imagine if my mentality was like no i'm not going to get in these bar brawls and stop bottling people because there's always going to be bar brawls like everyone has their own body count and it's about minimizing that as far as you practically so if someone goes vegan and they can stop you know a thousand animals let's just say they stop 10 god i mean 10 10 animals being tortured abused bred into existence i mean if a thousand people did that so that's the appeal to futility okay this one here i think we'll spend a little bit of time on um because it's my baby i love this one not i hate it it's the worst one it is the worst literally the worst one if someone dared justify you know kicking a small child and said well don't you know mate like why are you so upset the carrots that you eat fill pain too imagine that imagine if someone got a cigarette lighter and started burning a dog on the face you know doing something horrific to a dog which people do do that sick people do sick things to animals let's just use a dog and you know when you pulled him up and like you might have pushed him off and said what the hell are you doing and he said plants fill pain too what's your problem imagine that imagine the uproar imagine you'd be in every single newspaper on earth so that i think that that's on par with the worst i'm going to say like um comparing like a cow a sentient cow beautiful beautiful animals they are like they are so loving so intelligent they really peaceful majestic who's been to a sanctuary who's met a cow many people met a cow not many not many people have met a cow beautiful or a bull a male female cow bulls a male really majestic quiet like they're really timid shy beautiful animals it's like something there's someone in there and it's really it's a beautiful experience comparing a someone to a bag of rice or you know a pot plant saying oh you know that pot plant you know feels pain too so therefore it justifies us holocausting trillions of animals every year ripping them out of the ocean clawing their face like with a massive hook and just you know drap sometimes it gets him in the side of the head they stay suffer on the side of a boat you know suffocate in a big bath full of ice this is what we do to see animals horrible horrible and then people go well plants feel pain too don't don't you get off my back now a big reason people say this which is like it's basically a misinterpretation of the science um and everyone's heard about you know plants being intelligent really smart plants are they're intelligent they're not intelligent like a cow is intelligent but they do possess their own intelligence and i learned a lot about plant intelligence and i think it's important as vegans as advocates not to dismiss how incredible the plant kingdom is amazing what plants can do trees communicating with each other okay they communicate some type of electronic pulse communicating with each other letting each other that there's no there's danger they might harden their bark to avoid being attacked they spray some type of pheromone in the air to avoid being eaten they sense when they're being eaten they might release some type of poison all of these amazing reactions to stimuli in the environment now plants have been evolving for thousands and that longer than i think longer than animal life i'd suggest i mean plants can even learn okay so some some leaves might have like a mechanism where they might close up when they're touched they might be a drop of water touching on the leaf i learned this the other day i thought it was amazing okay and after a period of time the drop drop drop the leaf recognizes that the drop of water isn't harmful so it stops reacting to it amazing right does that mean that the tree is a sentient being with wants desires and needs they want to experience well-being avoid pain and suffering there's an individual inside of there having a subjective experience with a personality it doesn't mean that at all it doesn't mean that at all trees are having intelligent reactions to the stimulus in the environment that's it they're like big unconscious biological computers that's what they are okay there's amazing things that your phone can do too if you touch your phone screen as you know it senses your feet you could call you could talk to siri and siri will answer your phone is an sentient being okay you might say well plants are alive irrelevant there's not a scientist alive that believe that believes that that trees are having a subjective experience like there's someone in there it's absolutely ridiculous to suggest and it's it's it's insane to put plant life on the same level as a cow a pot plant no one goes into rescue a pot plant first from the fire but they might rescue the dog if the if the human beings are safe i think we need to remember to draw the distinction between sentience and intelligence okay a sentience is really easy to explain because you are sentient okay you experience your reality okay if plants did feel pain imagine if they did they felt it and they were like oh my god that hurts this person is hurting me and i need to escape they're not going to get far are they they haven't evolved to avoid pain so why would it make sense for them to be able to subjectively suffer it just doesn't it doesn't make any sense at all and the only people who will say that they're there are some supernatural plants that are having these conscious they're just it's all sort of woo woo science there's no you know real it's just basically misinterpretation of the actual science okay so i like to say is stabbing a puppy dog in the throat the same as cutting up a carrot of course it's not if they see me stab a puppy dog they'd probably punch me in the face i would punch me in the face too if they see me cutting up a carrot they'd say what are you cooking so they don't even apply their own logic they probably drive on grass and you know if they've seen a dog on the middle of the road and there was a we all know the one where there's the lawn and the dog would just swerve to hit the lawn or would you run over the dog if plants feel pain they wouldn't even be a distinction between the dog and the plants and yes you can say also that you know the the animals they eat consume a lot more plants but that's sort of playing into it i think you can say well if you care about plant life so much you know animals that you're eating a eating a lot more plants it's like 16 kilograms of plant food for one kilogram of beef or something like that i don't like to play into that because plants do not have moral value okay plants do not have intrinsic value the only value plants have is the value it gives to the sentient life on earth okay the only reason the rainforest matters is because of the sentient life the rainforest supports okay you take the sentient life off earth there's no capacity to experience well-being there's no reason to worry about suffering no one can suffer there's rocks and there's plants okay plant life matters because of the sentient animals on earth humans and other animals we wouldn't go to court and say you know you're on i'm sorry i just massacred about 30 people and i don't know why you're giving me a hard time your sandwich feels pain as well or the plants in your sandwich screams to death it's just an insane an insane justification