Lewis Bollard: recommendation

Transcript context

…Whenever a discussion like this comes up, it's often phrased in the context of personal behavior. I think people will be assuming that what we're going to get up to is this push to make you vegetarian. I happen to have been vegetarian. I grew up a Hindu, so I've never eaten meat. Then I just stayed a vegetarian after I was no longer a Hindu. But then I started prepping to interview you and I'm like… I don't know how valuable this is, especially if you look at some of these online charity evaluators and you're just like, “A dollar of your donation will offset this much meat-eating.” You're like, “What are we doing here?” But anyways, vegetarianism, overrated? I think we made a mistake as a movement making this about personal diet. It's great when folks want to make a personal diet decision, whether that is eating less meat or meat from more humane sources, but the focus should not be on the individual. This is not how large-scale social change occurs. We need government reform. We need corporate reform. People can be a part of that regardless of what they eat, regardless of what their diet is. We need people to be advocates and funders and supporters of this cause. How did we end up in this position? When people think about animal welfare, they think PETA, they think of protesters who are encouraging individuals to give up meat consumption? At the same time, these charities, which are so effective at corporate or policy changes, are just so neglected. How did this end up being the landscape of animal welfare activism and funding?…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.