 Know what's in your heart, and just do it, and don't care what anybody else says or doesn't say. If you have it in your heart, and you'll know, sorry, you'll know, you will know. Okay, so here we are with Patty Mark, the founder of Animal Liberation Victoria and Long-Term Vegan. I think you've been vegan for about 30 years. Amazing, really honoured to have this interview with you. It's a lot for the movement and you're really an animal rights legend. So thank you so much for being here. Thank you, thanks. And we're here on your amazing little abode here with all the amazing creatures here you live with. Yep, there's about 85 animals here, it's our Liberation Sanctuary. Amazing, and it must feel good to sort of be taking a step back now and looking after all these animals, but there's a lot of work associated with just having this amount of friends around to look after. I'm really living the dream. I can't believe this has happened to me after all these years of working for the animals. Now I get to be just be with them all the time, but yeah, it's a lot of work. Beautiful out here. So I just want to, well I wanted to introduce you to my following, because there's a lot of new vegans that might not have, well we didn't know what was going on back then. A lot of people you were operating before, a lot of my following might have been born. And I just wanted to introduce you because you've got a lot of knowledge and I just wanted to start at the beginning. Like how did you get involved with animal rights? Well I guess the first sort of step was I went vegetarian. My husband and I bicycled, he was Australian, that's why I got here. We bicycled overland in 1974 from England to Australia. And I was a big animal lover. I loved animals, but didn't realize I ate them. And we were in the outbacks of Greece on a really rural road. There was dirt road, cycling along. There was a flock of goats with their kids. And I said, stop, stop! And you know what, kids are so cute. So we stopped and we interacted with these goats for a good half hour and I was in heaven. And then shortly after we stopped, a little village at a roadside cafe, tarpaulin over three big cauldrons. And we didn't speak Greek, so when he lifted the lid we were just going to point to which meal we wanted. And when he lifted one of the lids, it was goat's head soup. Oh my God. And it had the goat's head in it. And it's like, wow, everything, I was 24 years old. Everything just exploded and I got chills now. It was like, wow, I'm eating these animals who I love. And I went vegetarian on the spot, except for fish. I don't know why I still felt fish might be a, I don't know, but I added fish as soon as we got to Australia and I saw a huge shark taken on the south coast of Victoria, Port Ferry, this amazing creature. She was at least probably 10 foot long. And when I saw her, that was shortly when we got to Australia, that clicked to us as their animals as well. Yeah. So you made the connection by seeing the head of the animal, which most people don't get to see. They see the package and they see the flesh. And her eye, the eye is what went right through me. The eye would have been as big as a plum was this huge. And it was just looking back at me and it was just, yeah. So it was easy for you to make the connection and switch completely, but I guess back then there wasn't the information on the dairy or egg industry. No, I didn't even, there, no idea of veganism at all. And I didn't even, even when I first met my first vegan, which I pronounced it vegan, I didn't know how to pronounce it. And they were very thin people in pale. And I didn't even question them much. And that would have been probably in the early 80s. Okay. But then in 1984, I went with the government to a feedlot, beef and dairy feedlot. And I saw how, again, that's how ignorant I was. I didn't even know female cows had horns. So this, what they did then they would take off the horns because they've gotten away in the milking shed. They had a big hydraulic press, like a big giant secretary. And I remember standing there and no pain relief at all. And that cow just screamed. And the blood spurred at least three meters away, like a hose. And I said, oh, how long does that bleed? And he said it still drips after 12 hours. It doesn't shoot up, but it's still dripping after 12 hours. And her screams went right through me. And so I went vegan then. That was 1984, but I didn't last. There was no, like I said, I had met maybe a husband and wife team, but there was no other knowledge of veganism at all. And the only, I remember I got what's called Robert's Soya compound. It was a white powder to make soy milk. Soy milk. He had to shake it like crazy. And that was the only alternative to dairy. And I had two children who I brought up vegetarian. And so they were still having cheese pizzas and cheese is addictive. It actually is addictive and they wouldn't finish their pizzas. And after about six months of me being a vegan, I thought, oh, I can't let this food go away. So I would slip up. But then in around 1990 is when my son who was 15, he went vegan. He did a lot of reading and he was a good vegetarian. He said, mama, I'm going vegan. This is bad. I says, oh, it is. Okay, good. I'll do it with you. And then having the vegan in the household at work to treat a support network, a support system. Yes. But I'm so ashamed to think that it took me all that time from a, which now there's no other thing in the world I'd rather be than a vegan. Well, from your veganism, where did that sort of evolve into animal rights activism? Oh, okay. Well, then when I was still shortly after coming to Australia, I had two children that ride in a row, 77, 76, 77. Okay. And then 78. I had read some books and it was about the battery cage. Yeah. And I grew up in the Midwest USA, which is called the bread basket of the world. And that's where factory farming started. Okay. And yet I was so didn't know anything in it never clicked. So in this book, it was talking about the forehands and the little tiny cages. And well, and I thought how can anyone lock four little birds up in these cages row after row, tears high. It just really, really got to me. Yeah. And so I wrote, actually I wrote to Peter Singer and I said, what can I do to help? It was his book, Animal Liberation. Wow. So he said, he gave me the names of two people in Melbourne that I could write to that had animal rights groups. One was with dogs and cats and one was with lab animals. But, and I said, I want to work for farmed animals because there was nothing at all. This is 1978. Wow. And they kept saying, oh yeah, we can do that. But nothing happened. And then I was at the library one day and it was a women's magazine and it said, thumbs up to the group in Sydney called Animal Liberation, working for farmed animals. Wow. So I wrote to, that was Chris Townan. I wrote to her. We started a really good correspondence. And after a few months, she says, Patty, why don't you start up a group in Melbourne? And I said, me, I'm generally an introvert. Yeah. But when it comes to animals, for some reason there's no stopping me. Wow. And so I put a note in my local milk bar. For those that don't know, milk bar is like a delicatessen. Yeah. And I can remember writing on just on a A4 sheet of paper, Help the Hens. Wow. And my address and the time and place. It was December 7th, 1978. And a local journalist picked it up in the Herald Sun as an oddity and said, oh, what next? Help the Hens. And but it got space in the widest circulation newspaper in Victoria. And 17 people showed up at my lounge room. And that's how Animal Liberation Victoria started. Wow. Yeah. And so it was like an ad in the newspaper that reached out to the whole, the whole, the whole state. Yeah. But it was just a little post-up note in the milk, local milk bar. Amazing. And what's interesting to me is some people come involved with animal rights activism before they're a vegan. Were there 17 people that come to you when you put this ad in the paper? Yes. Were they all vegan? Oh, no, no. I wasn't even vegan. Yeah. So you were a vegetarian when you got into animal rights activism. Yes, a vegetarian. And I doubt that many of those people were even vegetarian, but they didn't like the idea of four birds in a cage. Wow. So, and, and yeah, it's interesting that people, the more they know, myself included, the more we learn and know what happens, there's no turning back. Wow. Turning back. That's amazing. So there's a lot of animal lovers out there that aren't yet vegan. So these are the ones who are going to turn into the activists of tomorrow. Yes. You're living proof of that. Yes. So how did animal liberation victory evolve? I mean, you might have started small. Did you start rescuing animals? Yeah. No, that's the interesting part of the story. We started by all through the 80s mostly. We were, how will I, good little people. Yeah. I had a lot of contact with the local Department of Ag. They take me anywhere I'd asked to go. I had read a study on dark cutting in cows from an abattoir. So I said, well, that proves they're stressed. So I asked the Department of Ag, could you take me to the abattoirs? Because I wanted to then prove that these animals are stressed. It sounds ridiculous. Now, of course they're stressed, but, but so they set up eight abattoir visits for me. Or they, they took me to the beef and dairy feed lot. They take me to battery hensheds. So I did all these things and I sat down with the producers and chatted with them as if can we improve it? It was all welfare. Yeah. I had no idea back then of abolition. Yeah. And, and we'd work really hard. We'd have street marches, petitions out of our, coming out of our ears, tabling in the malls. We spoke, I spoke at a lot of schools. This was all through the early up through the 80s. But nothing that was like we do, that we did later. And then, so come the 90s. And we had campaigned so, so much. And we had so much, we did have a lot of media at first because it was such a new thing. There were no farmed animal groups. Wow. So then in the early 90s, I got a call from a woman that worked in a battery hen factory up near the border of New South Wales. Okay. And what she told me, I just couldn't even understand what she was talking about. She mentioned manure pits and hens fall in the manure pits. And at lunchtime, the other workers use them as target practice and they're starving to death. And I just, I thought, Oh, what do you mean manure pits? Yeah. And, and they, at the outside, they, the end of the aisles, they put four hens in each cage, but it toward the back, it's seven to eight hens in each cage. Wow. It just sounded appalling. So I had a friend that I knew go up there to work to see if she was telling, what she was talking about. And he confirmed it all. So then I had a really close friend, Diana Simpson, who was so brave and she lived in the area. And she said, I'll go in and take some footage. And I said, you will, I'll be forever grateful to that woman. So she went in by herself into the manure, manure pit, which what it is, the hens were on the first floor on the, and all, and the ground floor was all enclosed and all their, all their feces came down into huge mounds that were as tall as me, six foot tall under the cages. And then where the aisles were there, you could walk up and down. And she went in there by herself and filmed it and brought it to me. And it was just so horrible. Something just, I just said there, she filmed, there were piles of dead and dying hens around the manure, the, with some of the water nipples, they were all leaked. And there was a slurry of, it was a slurry of feces. And they were trying to drink that. There were dead birds caught in it. And in the mounds, there were birds just sitting there with their combs totally over their faces. I just was totally devastated. And I remember, I just said, die, we have to go in there. We have to go get them out. It was like, at that point, I'd had countless meetings, I think with every single minister for agriculture. So, you felt you weren't getting anywhere with them. So you wanted to take your own action. We weren't getting anywhere with them. But I, cause I thought there's, and what is happening there is so wrong. We're just going to go in and we're going to get them out. And at that point, there was a really, Darren Hinch. Okay. He had his own program on national TV. He was really big at, Hinch at seven, it was called. And I had contacts with him from other media. I had done with him. So I called him up and I told him about the footage, showed it to him. And I said, look, I'm just going to get some people. We're going to go in and we're going to get them out. And he said, he was surprised. He says, okay, I'll send a team in with you. So he did. I remember he said, A media team. A media team went with us. And that is what we call the first open rescue. He had a reporter, a camera person, and a guy that holds a big boom. And I remember they, the reporter was this tiny petite, a really lovely lady. They piggybacked her across the paddock. Wow. So yeah. So we went in and we filmed and we, we rescued from memory 21 Hens. And, and it made, and he then called it the Dungeons of Alpine Poultry and it was on national TV. And it just opened everything up. There was, and that was in March, 1993. And of course we were, back in those days, a private citizen could take a cruelty prosecution. So, and it was, that was in New South Wales and this property was right on the border of New South Wales. Okay. So, I prosecuted myself, prosecuted the farmer for cruelty to animals. Amazing. And so yeah, we thought, oh, this is going to be a test case. It's going to end factor. It's going to end the battery cage. We were so excited. We fundraised. We got lots of money. We hired the best barrister we could find. We, we flew over to experts from England, from London and had the whole thing set up. And it was in the Albury courthouse in 1994 by the time it went to court. And when we got there, they had what's called a voir dire, a case inside a case. And the, the defense, so the battery farmer then was before the courts, not me. He, his, his legal team said, oh, they asked the magistrate that the evidence I had was not admissible because it was illegally obtained. So they had this whole day in court arguing that point. And I, we lost it. So the magistrate said, no, you can't use any of your footage. And it was shocking footage, horrible. And you cannot imagine how I felt because that's all, all our evidence was, was that footage. And to make a long story short, I had to drop all the charges. And the hardest thing, one of the hardest things I've ever done, I had to sign that document. I dropped all the charges. And then they, the court awarded cost to him. So I was ordered to pay him $25,000. Court fees and all of that. All his legal fees. And of course I didn't have any money. I was a young mother then. And we were paying off a house in one salary family. We had hardly had any money. And so I had to offer to work. He had three factory farms. So I, he had one near me in Victoria. I says, I'll have to work it off at your factory farm. Oh my God. It worked. He agreed. No, he didn't. Of course he didn't want me there. Cause then all the evidence, no, all the evidence would have been admissible. Oh, I get it. So I was working there. I get it. That was 1994. Wow. So no, I never heard another thing. So how did it feel that day? It would have felt like, well, justice hasn't been served here today. I mean, you got off of, off of paying the court fees, but that must have ripped your heart out. It did. It was like I said, I just was, I could not put my hand to sign that paper. I was just, I can still feel how my hand felt that I can't, I can't just let all these birds down that, but, but then we did get so much media and that started, we have since then done hundreds of these open rescues at night. And, um, in the first five or five or eight years, we had hates the media cause it was a fairly new thing. And again, as time goes, it becomes old news. You always got to get, get something different to get the media to come. But it really, um, at the time, nobody had seen inside these sheds. Nobody knew what was going on in there. This is the nineties. There's no internet. There's no, um, what do you call it? Facebook, Facebook, social media. Yeah. It was a whole different world back then. Do you feel like from that, that first open rescue and feeling that injustice of, you know, not prosecuting this man, did that drive you going forward? Was that fuel? Like, did that drive your passion going forward to trying to get that retribution? You know, well, not so much because there's so many of these farms. We went to one of them that was a real talk, real, really got to me was called happy hands egg world. We did at least 30 rescues there and they were strict Catholics. And I was brought up strict Catholic. I'm not anymore. But, um, but they had a lit up crucifix with lights in the paddock next to the sheds. They had nine horrible sheds. And then I could go on and on all the different fact fact. We call them factory farms then. Again, I didn't, I wasn't using the word animal agriculture, which is what we have to say. It's not about factory farms. It's about animal agriculture. Yeah. But in those days, it was still factory farming. And, um, and we would still measure the cages. We would still try to say this is against the law, the code of practice. I get it. You've got, you've got eight hands and there should be four. That's how we would, there's actually footage of me measuring cage after cage. Whereas the real change to ALV and all our work happened in the late 90s. When I started to read the work of Gary Francione, who was a professor of law at Rutgers University. And I read some of his work and it was like, wow, this is, it just, it, what was in my heart then crystallized in my mind, what the whole movement should be about. So it's not about making things better. And about, um, yeah, we, we can make life better for them. It'd be like the slave trade in, in the United States. Exactly. Let's give them a hot meal on Sundays. I will teach their kids to read. It's, it's not, it's not about welfare at all. And it was like my whole world opened up then. And we actually changed our constitution at the time. And ALV then became an abolitionist animal rights organization. Amazing. But we were the only one and we were really marginalized. We were really became, oh my God, they're fanatics. They're extremists by the rest of the movement, which was really hard at the time. What's really wonderful is now the movement is that, you know, largely is mostly abolitionist. Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. I would say it basically is you don't see activist groups now and let's fix, let's make the cage bigger. Just that's to me one of the most gratifying things, the changes that I've seen to date that all these, you know, so many, so many good people out there working so hard for animals. And, but they used to really think what you're doing, you're going to put the public off. It's too much. They're not going to understand. And the whole people will never stop eating meat. They'll never go vegan. And we were ostracized. We really were. And it was, nobody likes to be ostracized. But to see that change is just, it's, it's so, makes me so happy because it's where the movement needs to be. Yeah. And it's there. So when your heart, you felt like you were doing the right thing, but you were being ostracized for doing the right thing. Yes. Oh, quite, quite a lot. I remember I started a animal rights magazine when, well animal welfare magazine, it was called Outcry in 1980. And I edited in a name changed a few times, edited that up into late 90s. And then they thought it was getting too radical. By the time I started to put abolitionist stuff in it, and it used to be circulated to most of the groups in Australia. They did, they didn't want it. And some people said, oh no, we want a different magazine. It's too, they just thought it was too radical. So stuff, it was just, but, but I'm glad I felt, I felt so strong. I think because I'd been in all these sheds, I'd seen firsthand what these animals are going through. And there's no way to fix it up. There's just no way. So I think the fact that I'd seen it all firsthand myself is what made me just say, no. Yeah. Abolition just makes sense, doesn't it? There's no humane way to exploit. Or it's like the way we view the animals, isn't it? Like if you're viewing them as a resource and an object and something to make money from in a commodity, they can never be treated like an individual, can they? Exactly. Yes. And I'm so glad when I came across all that because it's just, to me now it's just so straightforward. But it's, but again, it wasn't around back in the late 90s at all. It was, well, I guess because most people, you know, well, we still have a long way to go. We really still have a long way to go. But there's more and more people working so hard. There's so many amazing groups and activists out there now. It's just so exciting. It must be so amazing to walk in a supermarket and see all the different options coming from your powdered soya milk that you're mixing up and going, oh, what is this stuff? Well, no, that, when we started, I remember the 17 people in my lounge room, I remember saying to them at the time, I said, because I sort of wanted to not, to let them know it might take us a while. I says, look guys, it could take us two years till we ban the cage. That's how naive I was. I really thought we would have the battery cage banned in two years. That was 1978. And then our main aim was that back then free-range eggs weren't available in the supermarkets because the Victorian Egg Board had a levy and you had to get so many, you had to have permission from the Egg Board to sell your eggs. And the free-range farmers just couldn't get any. So there was no access to free-range eggs. So our main goal in the early 80s was to get free-range eggs in the supermarket. That's what we worked our guts out for that. And then when I think back and then it clicked, all we're doing is creating another animal industry. And I've seen it so clearly as the years progressed that we were just adding to the problem. And that's why when I totally understood and abolition and how important it was that, yeah, and then I know other animal groups were still doing the free-range eggs. And I used to waste, I'll be honest, a lot of my anger and energy on getting frustrated with other groups of why are you doing this? You know, why are you doing this? I guess I had to think I used to do that too. But once you know, you just think, come on. But I did get really, I used to get so frustrated. Yeah, one of the things for me is I feel like the welfare movement holds everything back. There are some theories that, you know, welfare is a road to veganism. But for me, I feel like the welfare movement holds it back because it makes people comfortable with continuing to consume the animal products. Yes, I totally agree. It took me a while to learn that too. And I would get, that's where the frustration came. I said, our rescue teams then started to go into the RSPCA approved sheds and the farms that were humane and the top, top stars. And they were just as appalling. I'll be honest, every bit is appalling like the barn-laid sheds. There'd be thousands of birds together cannibalizing each other. Some of the worst cruelty I've seen have been in the RSPCA approved sheds and pigarees and across the board. So there's no such thing as humane and making it better. But also what I was with in the first few years of ALV, we worked so, so hard to get free-range eggs available. And then it hit me that, oh, we've just created another animal industry. Because I kept up with all the statistics. There were just as many hens still locked up in cages when we had free-range eggs. And now you can get free-range eggs anywhere obviously and barn-laid and the whole thing. So it's not solving any problems. It's just creating a larger industry. Yeah, definitely. And for you, so moving through the 90s, you then progressed into the year 2000 and then social media come around. Yes. And how has social media changed the movement as a whole, do you think? Has it been instrumental? Facebook and YouTube and access to information. And now you've got more of a platform to share these rescues on. Yes, but then most of our open rescues were in the 90s and the naughties. And I don't even remember when I started doing Facebook. I wasn't familiar. I'm not very technologically minded. I remember my sister kept saying, you should get on this Facebook. I didn't know much about it. So I can't even remember when it came into play. When it came in. So it's very recent, isn't it? Yeah. It's very recent. I just remember I had so many contacts around the world. We used to write letters to each other like snail mail in the 80s and that. And then we started, the emails came in I know in the 90s and the mid-90s. And so I had a whole lot of contacts in different countries overseas and we'd email all the time. And I do remember when social media happened, the emails sort of stopped and everybody was more on Facebook and a thing called MySpace. That's right, MySpace. Yes. And by the time I got familiar with all that, then I found everything had changed. The whole communication in the movement had started to change and people were relating more on social media. Well, so what for you has been some of the most memorable times, say, the most memorable instances with certain animals or anyone you had to leave behind? What sticks out the most for you? Oh, wow. I know there's been a lot. Yeah. Okay. I could probably pick an animal from every category. One of the ones that really stole my heart though was a battery hen called Jess that we rescued from Wagner's poultry farm which I had been at 25 years before we rescued her. So if you can imagine, that farm's been there that whole time and I go back 25 years later and it was pretty bad when I first went in and so Jess would have been rescued because I was in court for her in 2016. So it would have been probably around 2014 or 15 and the place was even more run down. The back fences were collapsed. Everything was a mess. The shed was totally open. Half the cages were just empty and derelict full of cobwebs. And so we went in and it was quite dangerous because they had taken out a whole row of cages. So there was this like 10-foot drop that even they just had to walk along this narrow ledge to the cages to check the birds. And so we got quite a few hens out that night but Jess was massive. She was like this massive hen with her abdomen extended and we took her to the vet the next day and the avian specialist because I'd never seen anything like it before and I can remember as sick as she was she was still, it was a hot day, she was eating watermelon outside the vet so I thought well there's hope for you sweetheart, you know? And we went in and the vet was so sweet. She said, look Patty, if it's a tumor there's no hope but if it's pus we'll try our best but she's too weak to operate on now. So we'll let her rest here in the surgery for three days I think she said. I said okay. And then the day before the surgery the other vet called me and he said it's cruel to keep this bird alive, she's just so weak. And I said oh okay but the other vet said there was hope and he says yeah but she's just getting worse and worse and oh I was so sad because I had farmed a bond with her already and so it was so hard for me to say to him okay, okay do it but I did and I got off the phone I just burst into tears and there was a few people in the office and they heard me and they said what's wrong and I told them and they said well if they're good at euthanasia tell her to do the surgery as well. Of course. So I quickly called him back and I said oh hi is she still have you done it? He said no I said well look if you're good at euthanasia can you just try the surgery? Yeah. And he said yeah I guess okay and it was a success. Wow. And she lost more than half her body weight in pus. Oh my god. It was just there's photos of it. I think there's a billboard with Jess and you would not believe the difference in that hand and she was so sweet and she kept eating her watermelon and she got stronger and stronger and if you saw a before and after picture you would not believe your eyes and we were so bonded she knew the hens are so intelligent and they really they like our dogs and cats once you get to know them. Speaking of dogs. Yes. That's Rosie. Rosie's jumping on the podcast. We can let her in if you want. Come on Rosie. We'll have to open the door. Yeah. Come on. Come on. Yeah that's fine. Rosie's joined the chat. Yeah. So she got she was so friendly. She got to know where my bed was. She would come in and roost on my bed. Yeah. Every day I would come. I knew where she was. She'd come and sit on my bed. Beautiful. Do you think she knew your you saved her? Oh I'm not sure. I just think we knew each other and we really cared about each other. Yeah. She was very special. Yeah. She had many stories like that with the pigs we've rescued. Some we've made it. One of the pigs we have here at the sanctuary. I actually lift she's Chloe. She's ten years old this year. Wow. I actually lifted her out of a pigory ten years ago with this massive defarm leg. She couldn't even walk. She had about five vet visits. Oh here's the kitten. She had about five vet visits and she had really she got foster cares and I wasn't allowed pigs where I lived then and they were so good to her and they got her walking again and then they came on to difficult times and their sanctuary shut down so ironically then I have this place and they said they needed a home for her so I was so so she's back with me again. Amazing. She's been here a couple years now and she's yeah so that's a real joy. Beautiful. And you've got some dairy cows here as well? Yes. We've done we have a dairy cow several bobby calves which were rescued when they go to they killed them when they're only five days old so we've rescued quite a few of them and we bottle feed them and again I used to have we used to re-home them because I lived in the city but now they can live here and we have a do you want to hear about Mabel? Yes. Yes. And so that was in I think October 2018 so a bit over a year ago we got a call that these two wonderful activists were negotiating with a dairy farmer on the way far from here to re-home his cows because the wife wanted out. Yeah. And so and then they were talking about their neighbor had this little calf this little calf it turns out well anyway this little calf and it was so pitiful she had been kept in a tiny concrete enclosure that had a dead rotting sheep in it and feces. How awful. And she had pneumonia her eyes were pussed shut in bulging she couldn't see properly and covered in lies she was really sick and he was keeping her to flush her eggs because her mother was a good milker Wow. So because he knew she wasn't going to survive he was thinking I'll wait and flush your eggs For the genetics to keep the genetics for her mother? Yes because the mother was such a good milker so it would have made it was more profitable for him to use her eggs from the genetics of the mother and then she would have just he would have killed her So he didn't care about her as far as only the age as far as the proper for him She wasn't treated for any of those conditions the vet visit she had pneumonia covered in lies and the eyes were the real problem she still has scarring on her eyes but she now has partial vision and she's we've called her Mabel and she's so sweet and so luckily they did give her they did let the girls have him have her so she was free finally and um yeah and she's just we all love her she's so sweet She's ok today She's big and bold Beautiful So a lot of people might not know why they kill the bobby calves so young in the dairy industry you just want to explain a bit about that for people who might be new Yeah sure people I was one of those people I just thought well cows don't have to die yeah we can drink and if you don't milk them they're going to explode and I really believed all that for years but you know they only it's like every mammal like human like us because I'm a mother I'm a grandmother but um so a mammal has milk to feed their own baby not somebody else's yeah so when when the cows have the dairy the modern day dairy cows they're never allowed to suckle their babies they're taken away because they're put on the milking machine and any mother who's hearing this will know the more your baby suckles the more milk you produce okay yeah so if you're if you have a really hungry baby and they're suckling a lot you're going to have a lot of milk at least that's what happened with me yeah yeah yeah and um and the same with cows so they put them on these machines and they milk them milk them so where they used to maybe milk them once a day now they milk them three times a day and the milk volume is because they're pumping them more I get it and they their little babies aren't allowed to suckle at all yeah um perhaps from colostrum the first day and the females are kept to replace their moms in the herd and the males are all killed before they reach five days of age generally unless a few are kept out to raise for um veal or for they're killed bit later but the majority are killed it's just so sad yeah horrible only babies and for you being a mother maternal you understand that on such a deep level oh very much so and um yeah I would like to think every mother but for some reason they don't um that's one big mystery I have to this day than a mother who they know what mother wouldn't die for her baby I know you would do anything for your baby they just I've heard that I've been in the country where they bellow for days when their babies are taken away and vice versa so um and for in the women's movement and women's rights and feminists we should be every feminist should be the one standing tall and proud for the rights of these mothers who are just so violated so horribly violated the whole animal agriculture industry is built off sexual abuse that goes on in the industry because I know I'm running a campaign while we're doing this podcast on sexual abuse across the board there's a lot of aspects of this that people don't uh that really even in the animal rights movement is really little known and one of those things which is separate to dairy obviously but you were talking about the parent hens and I took a little clip of you in a parent shed um can you just say parent hens and then we can talk about maybe the sexual abuse in the dairy industry and then there's the stud boars in the pork industry just what you know and what you found particularly disturbing right okay yeah with the the parent birds for instance here is someone I thought I knew just about everything there was to know in the industry and I didn't I think it was in the early 2000s where I all of a sudden I came across a parent bird farm and I thought in the sky it never crossed my mind so we were doing an RSPCA approved shed that night and the birds had been depopulated I got it so we were all there there were no birds but we heard these horrible noises like somebody said I think it's some guys radio because it was a paddock with a little caravan in it um but we thought this is radio some sort of horror story but it was horrible noise but it wasn't so we got in and we just followed the noise and um it was only about a kilometer away and when we got there we could hear the birds screaming inside and all the lights were on it would have been like 1 a.m. so we went in there instead we're very peaceful nonviolent we do full biosecure so we got in the first there was a little anti room where we changed into our gear and disinfected and when I opened that door I thought a barn laid shed like the RSPCA approved ones yeah I couldn't believe what I was seeing there in that particular place there was I found out five hens to every one rooster so it was filled with roosters and hens and they were being repetitively mated nonstop one in the morning the hens were screaming um we had to wade through them it was just so pitiful many of the hens had no feathers on their back they were red raw and the roosters I must admit I had to feel sorry for them they were just exhausted um and not in good shape at all and so we took a lot of footage and got that and then when I did further research I found out what's called spiking in the industry where when the the roosters because that in that place it was five hands to every rooster they get so exhausted at about 40 weeks because they're they take they kill all the roosters and they put new young roosters in to keep going the hens until they're all depopulated at 60 weeks and their eggs are for um the the egg industry another reason why we said you can't support free-range eggs those are their parents they come from parent hens yes and those sheds to me they're worse than the barn laid even it works in the cage it was like hell it was just a horrible place it's creating this environment where hens can't escape roosters and then they're putting sexually active roosters in with these exhausted hens there's nothing natural about this process this is creating a torture chamber where birds can't escape each other and their you know and you know farmers will try to say well we're just letting them do their thing no you're not you're creating a place an enclosed area where they can't escape each other it's overpopulated and they're just raping these hens it was it was it was virtual rape it was that they had no peace at all and often they would pick similar hens you could tell some hens were much more raw and red than others it was it was just horrific and then and then also though then we also came across parent bird farms those were for the laying hens so they're offspring and they can collect the eggs they don't like have to go because they raise them and what is it called? can't think of the word the eggs? where they put the eggs incubator? incubator sorry so and what I found out because I thought they have to use the eggs right away but they collect them and put them in an they can keep them for a while until they have a full incubator full and then all those hens all those eggs that are produced they become barn laid free range and caged eggs so that's what it makes it all they all come from the same place they all come from the same place they might go to a different farm with different welfare standards exactly and it all starts with pure torture cruelty so there's your free range argument out of the window totally out of the window from this horrible breeding shed so can you imagine after I saw that and that's when I got so fresh because to me I always felt now I'm trying to be open more minded that people might not know but then when other animal groups would still promote free range eggs it would literally do my head in I understand for sure and that's the egg industry then there's the meat industry so then those are the brawler birds who are killed when they're only six weeks old and again where do they all come from because there's billions we're talking I think 64 billion of these poor birds every year globally and so then I met this guy that worked in I have the parent birds as well and at his particular farm there were 12 sheds and there were 11 with the hens and then the last one with the roosters they started them at day old and when they became sexually active they started to put the roosters in with the hens and the same thing started all over again and we did several rescues at these brawler parent birds and again because they're in there for up to over a year and again they're getting repeatedly mated they collect the eggs and I can remember I was so traumatized by one of those sheds they're like it's like a moonscape it's like the x-men gets really hard and it's and the hens are all bald and they're big birds and there's if anyone knows a brawler bird they're the sweetest birds and what we found in those sheds in the smell was by one of those sheds that I felt at the time I was just going to sit there and refuse to come out until something and I wish to this day I would have done it we did we did get a lot of media on these places but again they're still there they're still there right now yeah yeah and this is just one aspect that wasn't really it's like you were talking about this 20 years ago you know and it's still not really well known but I want to bring to the light for people so that you know people understand that these all these egg laying hands all these broiler chicks they come from parents who are hidden sheds and this is a very hidden aspect it's a huge industry huge industry yeah I'm got smacked why the movement hasn't picked up on it more I really don't understand that any other aspect of just the sexual abuse aspect particularly that you found out through your years well I know some of the intensive piggeries we've been to where they had the boars separate where they kept them for breeding I didn't we didn't actually see it of course this was before we had the hidden cameras so this would have been probably in the 90s but I can remember in you know the middle of the night we have our torches they had names above the boars really gross rude names just just totally demoralizing and disgusting names like I won't even say them they were just disgusting making fun of the animal and but dehumanity no not dehumanity it's just pitiful yeah but no we weren't privy to we weren't privy to actually how they made it or anything we just saw that they were the boars and they were usually caged not caged they were stalled all on their own would have been just a miserable life so they only let them out maybe to do the mating or to collect their semen and then they put them back in there and yes this is early 90s so I'm not aware of if I don't know if they were using artificial insemination back then they're probably just using them to mate and then putting them back in there yes yeah and well the dairy industry obviously it's built off the back of sex the artificial insemination they're not really using stud bulls to inseminate the dairy cows are they it's all artificial insemination now and so this aspect of the industry I've found is a lot harder for people to debate with right because they've got the humane slaughter and but this aspect particularly I feel like it's creating a little bit more of a stir because it's it really is a perverse part of the industry and without this aspect the industry kind of collapses doesn't it hmm absolutely and I think yeah I never thought of it that way you're probably right people don't see it as they would for instance if they if they thought a dog was being in bestiality and there's some horrible images of what they do to dogs and other animals for sexual gratification people would they'd probably go kill these people themselves they're horrified absolutely horrified but you're right they would go and eat an egg or a chicken or a a pig and that realize it's no different yeah what's happening to these chickens and pigs and cows is absolutely no different than when they restrain a dog yeah and do whatever they want yeah and people don't realize that they're funding the industries that they in these practices that they are morally against and when they find that out it's like wow yeah hmm so a few activism events I went to one of your activism events that you organized it was a five day fast hmm I want you to talk about how you your emotional journey was five days and how it started and how it ended can you give us a little I know it was a big it was a big five days but by the end of it I mean everyone was quite emotional and can you talk about the planning process and what you're sort of what you wanted to get from it and and how things eventuated with that sure yeah it was we came across the pig the pig slaughterhouse because we thought I remember there's a group of us saying let's just go to the slaughterhouses because this is how you could gradually evolve over your activism because I remember I first went through the slaughterhouses in 1980-81 and to me they are the the pits that's the worst thing on the whole planet are slaughterhouses and I thought to myself why is it taken so long that we're focusing on the slaughterhouses we had done one huge big lockdown at a slaughterhouse and there was a Brisbane Meet Congress I think it was 2006 and there was about four or five groups that got together and we I'll get to the pig slaughterhouse yeah that's okay we we planned this all and the locals were really good picked the slaughterhouse and we snuck in the night and there were three of us from Animal Lib that we actually found the spot where they actually slit the cow's throats and we locked ourselves to the machinery where the guy stands and slits the throat there were three of us so we needed a fourth so we had a really nice volunteer and then the other groups they chain themselves to the walkways the chutes where the animals come down so we were there and that got hate some media this is 2006 and to me that was my most important moment because we were finally where we needed to be right where they kill them where we need to say stop we need to shut these down so we were there and my son was I was chained to this other young woman and my son was chained to our another person on our committee and it was just so traumatic because the workers were all up on the ledge with their white uniforms on so the killing hadn't started we stopped the killing for four hours and we just refused and the owner came in and tried to talk to us at first and I think he thought I'll talk these people out of this but he didn't because we were so and so as the time clicked away because and we had called the police too after a couple hours and he eventually started to lose his temper and he went and got an angle grinder so he was going to cut through his own equipment to get us out and his staff was saying Barry no no they'll go blind because we didn't have eye protection when he was so angry so he left again and brought us all back security glasses which we put on and my son refused to put them on and I remember saying Noah put the glasses on because we didn't want to leave and he just stared the guy down and he was live on air was breaking news in Queensland at the time and at that point I was thinking we had had one of our people call the police but the police just went nowhere around and we found out later the abattoir guy had him in the tea room giving him tea and coffee the police well this was all happening so he starts with his angle grinder cutting through his own equipment and one of the the other person was so upset and she wasn't coping so we then said okay if the police come in we'll leave and the one thing I'll never forget is we're walking out you know how at slaughterhouses they have all these bins everywhere like huge big waste bins like at the back of coals it was full of faces the faces of the cows that they had pulled off skinned off it was a bit ugh I'll never forget that so that was the first time but that was 2006 but then it was years past before I remember we got together amazing activists we had a team and we said let's go stop this pig slaughter why don't we just stand in front of the trucks this was a diamond valley pork why did you choose this particular slaughterhouse can you talk about that at that point we didn't know about the gas chambers oh really? no so let me think why did we pick that place that's the interesting part that we didn't have any idea about the gas chambers turns out it's one of the most controversial slaughterhouses on earth now yes but why didn't we there was a reason we picked that one anyway can I think about it later and come back it comes back up that's interesting but I think there were from memory there's a lot of photos and video of it I think there was only ten of us and we went and we had big stop signs we made a whole bunch of just stop and peaceful nonviolent and we stood in front of the truck right before the grill comes up not in the road right there and we we did this to me it was an amazing action I thought oh my god we're doing this and the police came and it was we got media for that and blah blah blah and there was something that I can't remember why we were focusing on there but ironically after doing this a few times we had a call at the office that this guy who had worked there had some information for us so I I answered him and we set up and we met at a cafe and he told me the most horrific stories of what was happening inside and I should also say at the same time we had some really awesome guys that had come in and said look we're going to go in there and put in some hidden cameras so we had a team of guys going in there with hidden cameras so around the same time I was talking to this guy I had seen some of the footage of what's gas chambers and again I didn't know about the gas chambers so in the footage I guess a lot of people have seen it it is so horrible and so I'm sitting with this cafe and with this guy and because he didn't know that I knew what I knew so it confirmed what I felt that he was genuinely telling me all this stuff and he was everything he said was matched by what we were finding with the hidden cameras but then I remember he said to me one of his he was a manager with the I guess with the electrical division there so he wasn't a slaughter man or anything and he said he was he got so upset because he didn't he quit shortly after he went they had to clean the pits underneath the gas chambers and so he went there and was telling his guys and when they lifted the grill or whatever it was full of hooves that the pigs would have been so frantic and so terrified they actually ripped their own feet off I just thought I was just like when I saw Diana's footage I just thought oh my god and that sort of melded it became really important to me to get that place out there and to stop it and that's when we started regular big stoppages there we had a few but every December we'd do it and the fast that you started the question with the five day fast was part of that when we had done it four years in a row we decided because again you had to get something else for media attention we thought well that's fast so that's how the fast came about and this particular slaughterhouse that was the world first gas chamber footage that anyone had ever seen yeah no there was Ozzy Farms had done something at Cora where Piggory which we had also been in 30 years ago that's the biggest Piggory in the Southern Hemisphere and they since we started going rescues there they've built a slaughterhouse on site and they use the gas chamber as well and that's where the first footage originally yes they did the first one and it was around the same time we were doing it down here in Melbourne ironically it was virtually the same time and then when we released the footage and I remember when he saw the footage he couldn't believe that we had actually gotten in there and gotten footage of what he was talking about wow and the RSPCA were calling this humane weren't they before the footage was released they were all RSPCA approved and we did a huge campaign against their Artway pork that was endorsed by the RSPCA horrible conditions at their at their Artway pork farms and that was their what do you call it their poster child the RSPCA we changed all their little gimmicks and little we to show what was really at these properties and we followed one of the trucks one night once the truck went out and we followed it all the way to Artway to DVP so we knew they were being killed there but now so many pigs are killed at DVP so we knew it was oh that's why we picked that slaughterhouse yes because we followed that truck that night and that's where it went so we were going to connect that up with our Artway pork campaign that's how that all started and so you can imagine as the things all evolved and changed how we put more and more pieces together and the year before the fast we were on the roof there were 12 of us up on the roof and four of our people were chained to the to the gas chamber to the entrance so we stopped the killing that time that was the year before the fast I get it I don't remember that that had haped some media there was no change into the gas chamber no it was changed into the gas chamber with the kittens on the table now we started to four of them were chained and there were 12 of us on the roof they had to get the SES to get us down so then the next year that's when we had the the five day fast and we were blown away with that because we knew we'd have a bit of opposition but they had a hundred police officers there every single day they had big tents set up in the car park where the workers are the police had their tents set up their permanent tents it was just unbelievable yeah and that's the most police I've seen at a vigil to this day and that symbolic it's so symbolic of the police protecting corporations who are doing something which is inherently evil and the activists on the other side of the police trying to change the way things are yeah and peacefully so many people were crying people were so emotional there were only about 20 people fasting so they were very emotional but every activist there we had some days over 100 activists I think one day we had almost 150 some days less but to me the iconic image that came out of any image in my whole over 40 years of animal activism was the big pig truck coming in they brought it in the other way from where we were and they had about 80 police officers side by side protecting the truck with these poor the pigs are only 6 months when they're killed in those gas chambers they're still like teenagers yeah or young kids and that image will never leave my mind it was a double-decker big truck full and those police just and we were just a group of concerned people that just didn't want to see all this suffering and the police pulling the activists off of the truck really almost towards the end the police were getting more physical and pulling activists off the truck it was strange because some police got really really violent and nasty and others had tears and you could tell they didn't want to do what they were doing so it was sort of like the whole population but I think history will prove that what these group of people were trying to do again there was never any violence we're so peaceful we're such peaceful I think history will prove that especially as like I said there were probably as many police that you felt were not happy with what they were doing as the ones that got really well the really nasty ones were fewer if that makes sense but they were nasty they would be really they would pinch and pull and be really hard but the majority just did their job and then there were those that were in tears because some activists were showing the police the footage from inside that particular slaughterhouse and that was affecting the police as well the actual gas chamber where these pigs are put three a gondola and lowered into gas and they they just thrashed and creamed and the worker that I had had the tea met up at the cafe he said to me Patty they're enlarging it they're going to put in bigger chambers and it's going to quadruple the amount of pigs they kill and he was right so then I googled and there they brought in the system they use in the UK instead of three in a gondola they have like a room full that they just push the door in and they can kill four or five times more pigs so that was all in progress that was another reason why we were so determined to get the public outraged at all this before they built this part of the pigory but no it's there it's there well and it's an amazing action that particular one and because you've seen such a transition in the movement you've seen such a change like do you now have more hope than you once did like I guess you're walking in a supermarkets you're seeing the change you're seeing all these young activists and you've been you know how long you've been an activist for 40 years being an animal rights person and now you're starting to see this knock on effect and how does that make you feel oh fantastic I remember a time forget maybe around the turn of the century where I was so exhausted in those times I've had probably 10 major burnouts where you just you just go go go and then you just stop but then you get back up again but I can remember at one point thinking where are all the young people where are they and now they're flooding there's so many amazing activists all around the world that are chaining themselves in slaughterhouses that you know they're doing what needs to be done and it's not just a few here and there it's global and like you said the supermarkets are full of vegan products I think if anything climate that what's happening to our climate and how it's breaking down is mother earth coming to the aid of the animals as well there's no doubt about that in my mind once as that progresses that's going to push things real quick yeah they connect they're so connected aren't they climate change in animal rights and the climate change is an impending sense of doom for humanity so if they don't change that aspect of it and you know if they change their diet then that's a lot of the animal exploitation that will change as well it's a pity it's not they're not doing it for moral ethical reasons but and that's what we want but as long as they do it that's to me that's number one shut down these slaughterhouses and animal agriculture that was a big step for us too when we never said the word factory farm and when I heard it I said that say animal agriculture those were steps from going welfare to abolition to factory farming to animal agriculture to me those are the big steps and that are where we're at today and it's what has to happen wow so I just want to say thank you so much for all of your work I'm sure you've got 20 podcasts worth of stories to do but thank you for everything that you've done and you've paved the way you really have and you've stayed in the movement so long and so strong it's just a real inspiration oh I'm one of many there's so many all these things I'm talking about it was a whole team it was a whole team definitely a whole team amazing people out there and thank you for what you're doing the more people that we educate the better do you have any last words for animal activists let's just say give your words of wisdom to animal activists it's a hard road and you said you were ostracized right at the start and you got through that do you have any words to that was sort of in the middle section when we jumped from welfare to abolition but now that's not an issue because most activists are abolitionists yeah of course but some people might face being ostracized from their family for being vegan do you have any advice for animal rights activists if I had to do it all over again I reckon a lot of my energy that I would definitely change was arguing or disagreeing with other activists I would say let it go even though it can like I said I'd get so frustrated if other groups would promote free range eggs when I saw where they came from and that took up so much of my energy because I was determined I'd let these no we have to do it this way let that all go as hard as it is put your blinkers on know what's in your heart just do it and don't care what anybody else says or doesn't say if you have it in your heart and you'll, sorry you'll know, you will know and then do what needs to be done as long as it's as long as it's nonviolent I mean yeah I'm nonviolent but I mean I would step in if somebody was killing somebody I don't know I'm nonviolent but don't let what other people say or do or criticize we need to work together more there's so few of us that's the other thing we're all I think we, I don't know how we think this we're still a few grains of sand on the beach there's so many, what is it almost we're 7.5 billion people we're only a handful so even if you can't work together with someone else forget it and go down your path and do it as hard and as ethically and as passionately as you can that's what the animals need that's what I like about you, you're passionate and you know the infighting can have people leaving the movement and that's not what the animals need so stay focused on why you're doing this because it's not about us and it's not about oh it's not about arguing with each other it's about picture it like there's been a tsunami and you just how I feel when I go into the sheds I get so nervous I'm one of these people if I double park I break into a sweat and to get out of the rescue van into the shed in the night through the barbed wire I am so scared and nervous the minute I'm in the shed nothing ever can stop me I don't care you just get to work because you see all these animals suffering that's how we have to look at it as a whole movement not about us focus on those animals and what we need to do to help them but keeping in mind look after yourself as well to last the distance thank you so much I think we're going to leave that there thank you so much Paddy wow God you think we had been crying there thank you so much that's alright thank you it is hard isn't it that was a beautiful conversation really inspiring