November 26, 2025 • 58 mins
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Andrew deCoriolis is the Executive Director of Farm Forward where he advocates for safe, healthy, and humane farming. Andrew is an expert in animal welfare standards, certifications, and policy. He works with food companies, universities and cities to help them improve the welfare of animals and increase the proportion of plant based food in their supply chains. Andrew was responsible for creating and launching the Leadership Circle, a program aimed at helping institutions source more climate friendly food. Andrew’s work at Farm Forward has been covered in leading periodicals including The New York Times, Wired, and Civil Eats. Andrew is currently an advisor to the WellBeings charity, the Game Changers Institute, The Good Food Purchasing Program, and the State Innovation Exchange and is a board member of FindHumane.com. Andrew lives in Portland Oregon with his partner, two kids and rescue mutt Tater Tot.
The Juicy Bits:
- The end of factory farming is more likely than the end of farming animals in general for food.
- Factory farming is a method of farming, and it is also a set of laws, policies, and economic structures that enable a certain kind of farming.
- Since the Cold War, the USDA privatized industrial meat production for economic and political gain.
- People do not want antibiotics, drugs, chemicals, and contamination in their food.
- Humanewashing is like greenwashing, the use of marketing by companies to give the public the impression that their products align with your values.
- Because most people don't want meat, dairy, and eggs with drugs in them, there are layers of humanewashing: unregulated terms like all natural, humanely-raised, sustainable, cage free, and pasture raised; and unregulated certifications like certified human and animal welfare certified.
- The food industry doesn't do testing for antibiotics, because they don't want to know if they're there. If they know, then they'll have to solve the problem, and that's expensive.
- Andrew's favorite foods: cauliflower shwarma, Beyond Beef steak tips
**The information provided on this podcast does not, and is not intended to constitute legal or medical advice;all information, content, and material on this site are for general informational purposes only. This podcast contains links to other third party websites. Such links are only for the convenience and enjoyment of the user.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Welcome to the flirty vegan, thepodcast that motivates you to
thrive through plant based living.
I'm your host Jenny Chaffetz, certified life breathwork and
vegan lifestyle coach. After decades of dieting and
deprivation, I found the secret to living a compassionate,
nourished life. Whether you've.
Been vegan for years or you're just flirting with the idea?
(00:21):
Prepare to be inspired. By real people who courageously
chose health and love. It's time to look.
Better feel better and do better.
Well, hi everybody. Happy Thanksgiving.
I am delighted to have you here at the Flirty Vegan.
My name is Jenny Chaffetz. I'm your host.
And before we even get into this, amazing.
(00:42):
Episode with. The smart, driven and inspiring
Andrew Decoriolis. I want to say I am thankful for
you, the listeners. I am thankful to have this
platform of a podcast that features incredible.
Incredible guests who. Are teaching me how to do better
(01:03):
in the world, and I'm just so grateful to engage with them and
amplify their mission. And Speaking of amplifying
missions, let me just take a moment to tell you about mine.
With this new platform of the Flirty Vegan, my goal is to
spread the benefits and joy of avegan lifestyle.
And as a certified coach, I am here to support you on this
(01:28):
journey, whether that's making afull blown overnight change or
taking baby steps like Chuck talked about last time.
Maybe just swapping out one meala day.
Maybe just swapping out one meal.
Per week if you are a. Huge meat, dairy and egg
consumer I am. Here to help you.
In the manner that feels alignedbecause it really is all about
(01:51):
alignment. It is about acting in alignment
with our values. So if you value your health, if
you value the state of the planet, if you value the welfare
of animals, then I am here to make it easier for you to act in
alignment with those values. Because you might not know how
(02:13):
to go plant based. You might think it's dull,
expensive, the same mundane routine day after day salads.
Fruit Tofu. I want to dispel those myths and
offer you encouragement. So please look to the show
notes, book a free consultation call with me and let's talk
about what would feel good for you.
(02:34):
So thank you for tuning in. If you have not clicked follow
or subscribe on your podcast app, I would be so honored if
you would do that. And if you're watching this
video on YouTube, please subscribe to the channel.
It means so much to me and it helps other people find this
show. Like with everything, there's an
algorithm. I don't understand it, but it
(02:56):
exists. And the more people who listen,
download, share, and subscribe, the tech gods know.
And they promote this show to potential listeners.
So please help me increase the visibility of the flirty vegan
and all of my phenomenal Co hosts, if you will.
(03:18):
Now it is Thanksgiving tomorrow or if you're listening to this
in the future, happy, whatever. But in the spirit of
Thanksgiving, I just want to saya prayer for all of the turkeys,
all of the animals that find their way to American tables and
global tables. And I just want to acknowledge
that I understand food traditions run deep.
(03:41):
We all have our favorite foods from childhood things.
That we expect. To eat each and every holiday.
And my hope is by listening to this show, you will have a
greater understanding of our food system, how it impacts the
environment and how it impacts our health.
And I'm talking all of our health, physical, mental,
(04:02):
emotional, spiritual, because it's all connected.
We're all connected, We and all the living creatures on this
planet. So if you're listening to this
prior to Thanksgiving or after, it doesn't matter.
Please take a moment with me to express gratitude for the food
that we get to enjoy, the elaborate machine that made it
(04:22):
possible for us to even have thefood in front of us, and the
knowledge you are about to receive.
How about that? So today for this special
Thanksgiving episode, I had the privilege of speaking with
Andrew Decoriolis. He is the Executive Director of
Farm Forward, where he advocatesfor safe, healthy, and humane
(04:43):
farming. Andrew is an expert in animal
welfare standards, certifications and policy.
He works with food companies, universities and cities to help
them improve the welfare of animals and increase the
proportion of plant based food in their supply chains.
Andrew was responsible for creating and launching the
Leadership Circle, a program aimed at helping institutions
(05:05):
source more climate friendly food.
Andrews work at Farm Forward hasbeen covered in leading
periodicals including the New York Times, Wired and Civil
Eats. Andrew is currently an advisor
to the Well Beings charity, the Game Changers Institute.
The good food. Purchasing Program and the State
Innovation Exchange and is a board member of finehumane.com.
(05:28):
Andrew lives in Portland, OR with his partner, two kids and
rescue mutt Tater Tot. How cute is that name?
I love a good pet name. Andrew and I had a fascinating
conversation about the status offactory farms, the hate to break
it to fraudulent aspects of foodlabels, and also the positive
(05:50):
trajectory that we're seeing with respect to plant based
options. So this is not all doom and
gloom. Andrew brings a lot of hope and
possibility to this conversation, which is perfect
for Thanksgiving. So now, without further ado, I
bring you Andrew Decoriolis. Andrew, I am so excited to
(06:13):
welcome you to the Flirty Vegan Podcast.
Hello. Hi, thanks for having me, Jenny.
This is so exciting, but before we even dive into anything, I
would like to say happy Thanksgiving.
Happy Thanksgiving to you. Do you know what you're doing
for the holiday? Yes, I will be spending it with
family and you. Yeah, we're, we're hosting.
(06:34):
We've got the full, full crew intow this year.
We've got my wife and her familyand some friends coming over.
It should be fun. We're going to do a big vegan
Thanksgiving. Nice.
I used to love hosting but in the last couple of years we
downsized and we don't even havea kitchen table anymore.
We just have a really Big Islandand a lot of people are turned
(06:54):
off by the stools. It's very complicated for older
folks, so fine. I'll, there's, there's an era
for hosting. I'm happy to host this, you
know, this era. And then I'll be glad to also be
at other people's houses in the future.
It's fun with little kids also. Totally.
And yeah, so now I just have to pack up all the containers and
(07:15):
bring food so that I can actually enjoy the holiday.
So there's that. That is a hassle.
Yeah, it's fine. It has to get done.
So this is just the second episode of the newly rebranded
Flirty Vegan podcast. So I'm thrilled to have you here
in particular as as just it's funny.
(07:38):
I went 100 episodes interviewingwomen and now the first two
guests of this show are gentlemen.
So this is very exciting, littleintimidating, but.
Happy to be among the first, happy to be among the first
gentleman of the new of the new rebrand.
It looks great. So I want to start off by asking
you because it is called the flirty vegan which is many
(08:01):
gendered. Any gender you need multi
gendered anyone can be flirty. So what attracted you originally
to veganism? That's a good question and it
was actually a friend. It was a friend of mine who I
was eating with in in college. I went to a college that had a
(08:22):
student cooperatives that servedmuch of the food on campus and
students were responsible for everything from buying the food
to preparing the meals to chefing and cleaning up.
And I cooked in a vegetarian andvegan Co-op for many years and
was having lunch with a friend of mine.
(08:42):
And honestly, I had never reallythought that carefully about
vegetarianism, veganism, outsideof the sort of environmental
aspects of eating pure animal products.
I was environmental science major and was thinking a lot
about climate change. And so I was concerned about it,
but not from a, you know, not from an ethical perspective,
really not from an animal ethicsperspective.
And I had a friend of mine who was eating vegan and I asked him
(09:07):
to sort of like, oh, yeah, why? Why aren't you going to do X&Y?
Why aren't you going to go there?
And he said, oh, you know what? They, they don't have, you know,
vegan meals. And I said, well, as you know,
you can make an exception. And he said, well, you know,
yes, I can. But, you know, I'm really trying
to, you know, live my, live my ethical values.
And I said, oh, yes, you know, say more.
(09:28):
And so it started a conversationwhere, you know, for him, this
is a person I was really close with and doing activism with on
things like we were doing a lot of prison abolition and prison
Prison Reform work. And he said, you know, I don't
want to be part of the sufferingof other creatures.
And that includes, you know, nonhuman animals.
There's there's no ethical reason why, for example, we
(09:49):
should, you know, fight the prison industrial complex, but
not fight for the release of other sentient beings from the
prisons of animal farms. And I said, huh, I really hadn't
thought about it that way. And so thankfully for me, it was
pretty easy to have an ethical sort of evolution at the time
(10:11):
because I was already eating in a place that was either entirely
vegan or mostly vegan. And so it's easy to get choices.
My Co-op was already serving allthose meals.
I was already cooking vegetarianand vegan dinners.
So I was like, oh, I just have to make like small tweaks or I
just choose the vegan option that night, like no big deal.
And so because it at the time, the, the information was coming
(10:31):
from a trusted source, a friend who I cared a lot about in his
opinion, and then that it was easy for me to act on it.
It just became easy to sort of embody those beliefs.
And then once I had been embodying those beliefs for, you
know, several years, because I was in those co-ops for a couple
years while I was in undergrad, it just became sort of like part
of, oh, this is just what I do. It wasn't, I didn't have to
(10:52):
think about it much more after that.
And so when I graduated and, youknow, starting to cook for my
own and live on my own, it just was like, oh, of course, I'm
just going to eat plant paste. That's easy.
So the the evolution really started with a friend, but I was
thankful that I was in an environment that was very
supportive of it because I thinkhad it been, had it, you know,
had it been another kind of environment, it might have been
(11:13):
much harder. I don't know.
I don't know if I would have been as successful in sort of
making it part of my lifestyle rather than it just being, you
know, set of ethics that I agreed with but had a hard time,
you know, living up to. That's so interesting.
I love that about your college. That's so great.
This is not one of my prepared, not that I have too many
prepared questions, but this is just coming off the cuff here.
(11:34):
I'm curious, since you were likethat through college and then
you mentioned living on your own, was it a criteria when you
were dating? It wasn't the only criteria for
dating was that people had to like my cooking or enjoy food.
And I, I cook a lot. I, you know, since college and
cooking in co-ops, I've, I've always lived in housing
(11:56):
situations, either with roommates or friends where we
cooked and ate communally and I just enjoy cooking.
I've, I've also been a, a gardener and a, you know, a
amateur farmer. And so just having food be an
important part of my life in thesort of rhythm of what I do is
think about and then prepare food and enjoy food.
When I was dating, I was like, you can make your own ethical
(12:19):
choices. I'm not, I'm not going to
dictate that. But if you're not going to enjoy
the food that I'm making and theway in which I, I enjoy food,
it's going to be pretty tough. I'm so I definitely had some
folks who I was excited about them otherwise, but they were
like, they just didn't care about food at all.
And they didn't like, they weren't, didn't not like my
food, but they also didn't enjoyeating with me.
(12:39):
And it wasn't like a thing that was going to be part of our
lives together. And I was like, OK, I think this
is probably not a good fit. Never mind.
Yeah. And my my now wife, you know,
when we first started dating, she was a pescatarian for, you
know, vegetarian pescatarian forenvironmental reasons.
Like me, she sort of came into these issues as being a person
concerned about climate change and you know, really was over
(13:00):
time where she, you know, just being exposed to my work and
exposed to what, you know, I'm, I'm doing everyday.
For example, like 2 years ago, we were working on a big
investigation around quote UN quote, regenerative dairy.
And I was like talking to whistleblowers and getting all
this undercover footage and putting together all this
research. And she, you know, she was
experiencing it through me. And at the time she was still
(13:22):
using dairy Creamer in her coffee.
And, and then after that she waslike, I got to drop this, like
this is the last thing to fall, but we just got to find a great
plant based Creamer. So over a year, I think we
probably had, I don't know, 25 different plant based creamers.
I think we finally settled on onthe on the winter, but it was a
it was a journey to find the onethat worked.
(13:43):
I'm curious what that one is because I have found that
there's a lot of. Good ones and a lot of not so
good ones. Yeah, we really like the, the
most recent one that we've enjoyed is the Ripple Barista
Creamer. And the, the nice thing about
the barista blends is that they're thicker.
And so when you use a, a steamerwand from an espresso machine,
(14:04):
it doesn't dilute the Creamer too much if you use those
thicker ones. And so that, which is what we
have, we have a like a janky oldespresso machine with a, with a
steamer wand. And so it works perfect for
that. That's awesome.
That's so funny. It's when I'm talking to people,
I'll often say interestingly, sodifferent than your wife.
I'll often say that Creamer is one of the easiest things to
(14:24):
start with because I find that Ireally enjoy the ones that that
I have discovered. And so I'm like, my God, if you
don't want to give up, I don't know your yogurt or your after
dinner ice cream. You just can't stomach the idea
of coconut milk ice cream or something.
God, just throw the Creamer in your coffee.
I know, but people are so funny about their coffee.
(14:46):
It's got to be like exactly the right consistency and exactly
the right color, and it's got tomix in well and not separate.
I don't know, you know, it's tough.
People have very like funny emotional attachments to some of
these products. And differently from you, I
admit fully, I actually did not care that much about the
(15:06):
environment growing growing up, even though they developed a
recycling plant in my town and or, you know, OK, so fine, when
I was a teen, like that was sortof a thing.
And I remember getting in college, they passed out these
reduced reuse recycle mugs that we were supposed to bring to the
dining hall, but it wasn't really anything.
(15:26):
I I globbed onto it was kind of like the environment
environment, like it'll be there.
And yet it was a documentary about the environment that like
immediately flipped the switch for me.
It was, it was not even a question and I was not, I don't
know. I didn't identify as a tree
(15:46):
hugger or anyone who would advocate for anything
environmental. I mean, I wasn't throwing trash
out my car window, but I also wasn't really saying, oh, I care
about the rainforest. And yet we watched this
documentary and at the end of it, the gentleman said like,
(16:08):
basically, go vegan or the planet screwed.
And I said, OK, I'm vegan. I guess I have to learn what
that means. So I became an instant
environmentalist. And then came to learn about the
animals and then eventually learned about health stuff.
But he last. Yeah, well, it's funny.
It's funny all the different things that can help people.
(16:29):
I mean, yeah. And yeah, that's part of the
reason he's describing, you know, making a documentary.
Farm Forwards origin comes from helping write a book called
Eating Animals. One of our board members,
Jonathan for wrote that book andthe publication of the book and
the the sort of energy that it created was what launched from
(16:50):
forward, which is almost 20 years ago.
But yeah, we still hear from people all the time.
Oh, I read Eating Animals 10 years ago and X&Y or you know, I
got into activism because I I read Eating Animals or I watched
the movie and that had this effect.
So, yeah, you never know what what it is that will be the the
triggering event for folks. You know, maybe they had it in
the background or maybe they have values that already aligned
(17:11):
with those things for other reasons, experiences that made
it possible. And then that was the, you know,
that was the spark. So what was the documentary do
you remember? It was David Attenborough, I
believe it was the one My Life, I think that's the title, My
Life, where he goes through 60 years of his documentarian work
(17:32):
and shows the changes in the planet and species and all of
that each decade at a time. And so when it got to the
current decade, I was like, wow,this is devastating what has
happened and this has to stop. So I'll do my part.
Well, what a what A legend, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Amazing.
(17:53):
OK, so so you work at an organization called Farm
Forward, which I did illuminate to the listeners in the
introduction. As a a vegan, as a plant based
advocate like so many of us, I imagine you in a perfect world
(18:15):
would envision the elimination of factory farming.
That is the state of mission. Absolutely.
The end of factory farming is our is our state of goal.
Yeah. Right, so, and I don't mean this
to sound cheeky or disrespectful, what are you
doing at Farm forward? Is it is it kind of like finding
(18:36):
the the lesser evil? Like OK, since we can't tomorrow
end factory farming and make theentire planet vegan?
Is it just to to see what we cando better?
Yeah, it's a good question. I'll offer a little nuance on a
couple of those things. So yes, personally, I would like
(18:56):
to see the end of farming animals for food.
As a practical matter, I think it's hard to imagine that in the
lifetime of myself or my kids. But what I what I do think is
possible to imagine is the end of factory farming, of
industrial animal production. I think people will likely
(19:19):
continue to eat animals. But if that's the case, we want
to make sure that those animals are raised in the best possible
conditions, Not to say that those are humane conditions or
that that's, you know, morally acceptable.
People will ultimately make different calls about that
themselves. But we don't want animals to
suffer unduly on on farms. And so practically speaking,
what we describe ourselves as doing is what we what we say is
(19:42):
building the will to end factoryfarming.
And ultimately factory farming is a, a method of farming, but
it's also a set of laws and policies and economic structures
that enable a certain kind of farming.
And all of those things are possible to change your public
policy. So, you know, like other
profitable and harmful industries of the past, we
(20:05):
imagine that factory farming, when it's ended, will be ended
because publics decide they don't want it anymore.
And that could be for a wide variety of reasons.
It could be for ethical reasons.It could be for public health
reasons, it could be for environmental pollution reasons.
It could be for. Reasons that are about wanting
to create more employment opportunities in an era of, you
(20:27):
know, AI taking all the white collar jobs and needing new
employment projects for people like there.
There are lots and lots of reasons why we can imagine a
public and a public policy coming to the conclusion that
factory farming is no longer consistent with the public good.
And so we can invest in alternatives to factory farming.
Those alternatives may include, you know, agricultural and
(20:49):
farming policies that both I think promote significant shifts
in diet towards plant based eating and meals and the support
of agriculture that produces those foods.
But it may also include support for farming that raises animals
in much higher welfare conditions than they're
currently raised. And that's an acceptable outcome
to us. And part of the calculus behind
(21:10):
that, part of the reason why we think that's perhaps even a
desirable outcome is because it builds a bigger potential
political coalition. I think, you know, when you ask
people today, you know, do you want farmed animals to be
treated in XYZ way, the ways in which they're treated on factory
farms, it 90% say no. So there's like broad public
consensus that factory farming is a violation of our values.
(21:34):
If you ask them, is it OK to farm animals for food at all,
most people are going to say yes.
And so there's obviously work todo there, but we don't have to
do a lot to convince people thatthey're opposed to factory
farming. They already are.
The challenge now is to make it enough of a political priority
(21:54):
and have a political system that's functioning enough that
can risk be responsive to the public will that policy makers
ultimately enact policies that will begin to shift this big
ship away from industrial animalfarming towards other forms of
less harmful agriculture. You know, I heard someone say
(22:15):
recently, and this just struck me because I, I don't, I really,
I love the way she put this. She said veganism is a political
issue. It's not a partisan issue.
I, I love the way she put that. But what I'm seeing a lot of is,
and interestingly, I've heard itin some of the interviews you've
(22:38):
been a part of, not on your part, but perhaps on the
interviewer or or the platform itself is I, I hear people
wanting to point the finger at one administration or another
administration. From where I stand, every
administration sucks in this department because they are so
(23:03):
controlled by special interests,the lobbyists, I mean, find me a
president in history that has bolstered a very empathic
mission or, you know, compassionate approach to this.
I feel like I, I don't know, I, I mean, I hate to sound all doom
and gloom Debbie Downer, but with the work you're doing,
(23:25):
which is so admirable, how do you stay motivated when we do
live in the first world that is so driven by money?
Yeah, that's a good question. And I think, yeah, your, your
evaluation of the sort of bipartisan consensus on the
(23:48):
benefits of factory farming are right.
I mean, going back to the Cold War, we've had AUSDA, you know,
U.S. Department of Agriculture that
has prioritized industrial meat production and has done so as a
means of economic and political power.
I mean, it, you know, it really started as a Cold War project.
(24:12):
The secretary Earl Butts get bigor get out was was about the
Cold War, was about beating Russia.
I mean, very explicitly. And, you know, that model has,
you know, morphed and metastasized over decades to
what you describe as, you know, ultimately political corruption,
political capture, which I thinkis exactly right.
(24:33):
I mean, we, we, we are constant critics of the USDA and the
regulatory apparatus, regardlessof the administration.
Lots of quotes from me out therecriticizing, you know, Biden's
secretary of agriculture. Plenty of them out there with me
criticizing Trump's. Plenty of that before.
I don't mind discussing political issues on this show.
(24:53):
I mean veganism is a political issue as as this person I took a
class from said, I don't want toget into crucifying 1 leader
over another because come on now.
This has just been an ongoing. Yeah, I think that I think,
yeah, they're, they're both equally bad in many ways.
Interesting. And as you say, it is not a
(25:14):
partisan issue. I mean, right now there has been
a major effort within the current administration to change
how both the National Institutesof Health and the Department of
Defense use companion animals and other non human animals for
testing and major changes to what's permissible and a major
(25:35):
effort to stop the use of animals in unnecessary medical
laboratory testing. I that was not on my bingo card.
You know, Laura Loomer, who's anadvisor to President Trump and
you know, is, I would say a veryconservative sort of populist
figure in the media, like being on the side of protecting
beagles that are being experimented by the National
(25:56):
Institute. It was like not on my bingo
card. But it tells you that, you know,
there is a broad bipartisan consensus against animal
suffering. And I'm very supportive of any
effort under any administration,you know, to reduce the
suffering of non human animals, whether that's in laboratory
testing or whether that's, you know, in farming policy.
(26:16):
So what do you think is going tomove the needle, tip the scale,
change people's perception in terms of, OK, so, so here we are
the day before Thanksgiving, I would venture to say a large
majority of the population is going to consume Turkey
tomorrow, probably stuffing and mashed potatoes that are made
(26:40):
with butter, chicken stock, sourcream, those kinds of things.
So there's going to be a lot of animal products on a lot of
American tables tomorrow. What would you want to say to
the listeners either to change that for tomorrow or the day
after? The days after what?
(27:01):
What do you, what do you think resonates that that people will
hear or want to hear or are opento hearing?
Yeah. I mean, that's the $1,000,000
question. And if I had a, if I knew I had.
A Jim Andrew. We would have won.
I mean, one thing to note about,you know, tricky consumption is
that it's it's down fairly substantially over the last few
years. It's down more than 10% since
(27:23):
2023. You know, fewer demand for
Turkey products is going down. I don't know if that's you know
about consumer perception or about inflation or a combination
of those things. But you know, there there are
reasons to think that the publicis ready to consume fewer animal
products. Now again, I don't think most of
the public is ready to go vegan,but I think a large percentage
(27:46):
of the public and I don't know what percent, maybe 40% is ready
to eat pure animal products and have more plant based meals.
And, you know, if you asked me in, you know, 2050, do I think
half of all Americans will be vegan?
I would say no, I don't think that's likely.
But if you said, do you think half of all meals consumed will
(28:06):
be vegan, I'd say yes. I could imagine that as a
future. And it's going to be a
combination of things. It's not going to be, you know,
as they say, it's not a silver bullet, it's silver buckshot,
even though that's a, you know, some kind of a violent analogy
as we're talking about with idioms being troubling.
The, you know, there's all kindsof efforts underway to shift
(28:29):
diets at institutions with college and universities.
Hospitals that were part of thatI think are showing real
promise. We just launched a campaign
earlier this month focused on food safety, on salmonella
contamination in the poultry industry.
It's gotten a huge amount of press.
We got a front page article in the Los Angeles Times.
(28:51):
We had, you know, videos with high profile influencers on
social media that were viewed more than a million times.
We have people, you know, 10s ofthousands people taking action
on petitions demanding that the USDA take more action to
regulate the meat industry. That was an issue, food safety,
salmonella. Those were issues that we hadn't
(29:12):
really worked on before and we chose intentionally because
they're ones that are about how yucky Buddhas that come from
factory farms. And so part of the calculus that
we've made over the last couple years, and this is based on
consumer research, both polling and focus groups, is that the
messages that resonate most withpeople right now are ones about
(29:34):
discussed about what's in animals that come from factory
farms. Antibiotics and hormones and
drugs, chemicals, things that are on the food, adulteration,
contamination. It just gives people the yuck,
it gives them the egg and it gives you an opportunity to talk
about the conditions on factory firms, which are disgusting.
And so focusing on issues that are sort of at the overlap of
concerns about personal health and diet, and then that allow us
(29:58):
to, you know, sneak in a messageabout cruelty in factory farms
are the ways in which we're trying to sort of piggyback on
people's selfish personal interests about their health,
but but make them have to confront information about their
food production systems. And, you know, that gives me
optimism that there are so many people that seem to be engaging
that if they're resonating with it, you know, the, the place
(30:20):
where the the disconnect is, if we're thinking about the sort of
causal chain of change is once we have this as a priority among
people or enough people making sure it's a political priority.
So, you know, in 2028, a way that we'll know if we're being
successful is like our major candidates of either political
party. Do they put out an agricultural
platform that talks about the need for food system
(30:42):
transformation? And you know, is, is actually
proposing things that would be about shifting subsidies and
investment for factory farms towards other forms of food
production consumption. Because if so, then we're
starting to that would be a signof real progress.
But that is the kind of time scale we're talking on.
You know, we make a lot of investment to try to change
public conversation and sentiment and turn that into
(31:05):
political priorities. But obviously that's such a
complicated, messy system. You're, you're entering the
realm of politics and our politics are really volatile
right now, especially. And it's hard to know whether or
not, you know, this kind of concern from the public about
whether it's food safety or pandemics or antibiotics or, you
know, all of which which touch issues of factory farming.
(31:25):
It's hard to know if any of those will become translated
into political priorities. We'll do our best to see that
they are. But it's, you know, no question
that it's a, it's a challenge. It's funny that you use the term
sneaking in the message this doesn't relate to your life but
for the majority of people they have to sneak vegetables into
their kids lives but not if the house is plant based.
(31:49):
Yeah, weirdly my kid loves broccoli and my 10 month old
loves broccoli so they we eat a lot of broccoli.
I have one kid that likes broccoli and another kid that
wrote an acrostic poem in elementary school about all the
things related to broccoli that she hates so.
That sounds right. Yeah, of course you do.
First you have one of each. Yeah.
(32:10):
Yep, Yep. So I used to make meals that
would have Peppers cut up reallybig, broccoli cut up really big
so that each one could take out the thing that he or she did not
want. It was lovely.
It's very accommodating of you as a parent.
Isn't it? Yeah, Yeah.
Not unlike every other parent inthe world.
Oh boy, that's familiar. Hey, sorry for the interruption,
(32:33):
but I have to tell you. So at the Flirty Vegan I have
been promoting one-on-one coaching and that is something I
am still committed to. However, because so many people
have been asking me about a group program, I figured what
the heck, Starting in January let's prioritize our health.
But not like a resolution that falls flat and ends in disaster.
No, let's approach this gently. So whatever your health concern
(32:57):
is to lose weight, lower your cholesterol, improve other
health markers, maybe just have more energy and sleep better,
that can all be addressed and accomplished by eating more
plants and fewer animals. This program will give people a
community environment along witha knowledgeable, supportive.
(33:18):
Coach to Pepper. In science and strategy, and we
will focus on how to easily, affordably, and deliciously
incorporate more plants into ourdaily diet.
So if that sounds good to you, please head to the show onenotes
and click on the link to book a free connection call just like
you would if you were interestedin one-on-one coaching.
And we'll get started. Now let's get back to the show.
(33:41):
So you said something that struck out to me.
Now let's see if I can remember the words.
I should have written them down.Oh, the way people are slowly
making changes based on, I forget how you phrased it.
Not not messaging, but things out in the world that are
(34:03):
gradually creating change. Maybe when you were talking
about the Turkey reduction, thatbrings me to a topic I've heard
you talk a lot about, which is humane washing.
So we're going to get into that in a second.
And, and I'm, I'm just as guiltybecause before I went vegan, I
(34:24):
transitioned to humane products.I was buying the more expensive
organic cage free eggs from and I actually looked on the package
to see that they were processed in New Hampshire.
I live in New Hampshire, so I didn't want the ones from New
York. I wanted the ones from New
Hampshire. I was buying the organic pasture
(34:47):
raised beef or bison and you know, all these things because
I, I, I felt like that was better.
Can you please illuminate for this audience what humane
washing is and if they're just wasting their money buying
(35:09):
products that have a very prettylabel on them?
Sure. I'll give you a, a short answer
and then a long, a long answer. The short answer is, you know,
humane washing is just like greenwashing.
It's it's the use of marketing by companies to give the public
the impression that their products align with their
(35:30):
values. So real simple.
In the case of the meat industry, meat and dairy and egg
industry, they know that the public does not want products
from animals in factory farms. They know that, you know, they'd
have better polling data than I do.
And they know that consumers don't want meet with drugs in
it. And so in order to convince the
public that their products are socially acceptable, they have
(35:50):
to make all kinds of claims about them.
Now, unfortunately, most of the claims the the words you see on,
you know, meat products, eggs and dairy are either entirely
unregulated, meaningless or meanmuch less than you would like
them to mean. So I would include in those
(36:11):
things like all natural, humanely raised, sustainable,
cage free, pasture raised, even the term pasture raised, while
it sounds nice, gives animals access to the outdoors.
And if they are truly giving animals to the access, access to
outdoors, you know, that's better conditions probably for
the animals. But none of those terms are
regulated and they don't mean what consumers think they do.
(36:31):
So in pole after pole polls thatwe do the ASPCA do other, you
know, polling research firms. When you ask consumers, hey,
what do you think the word all natural means on a meat product?
They'll tell you all kinds of things that have absolutely
nothing to do with the regulatory definition.
So the industry knows this, of course, and that's why they use
those terms. So that's one sort of form of
(36:53):
humane washing and then there are sort of layers of humane
washing. Another are certifications,
these sort of independent or pseudo independent
certifications, which you know, may say things like certified
humane or animal welfare certified.
And you may see those products in places like Whole Foods.
You're going to even see certified humane, especially
eggs. You'll see even at places like
(37:13):
Walmart and Target, those certifications may be somewhat
meaningful, but they're going tobe much less meaningful than,
again, than consumers imagine. For the most part, when
consumers see those labels, theythink, oh, these come from
healthy animals with healthy genetics, raised on pasture.
The kind of small bucolic farm family farm that I imagine from
(37:33):
old McDonald and cartoons. Yeah, yeah, nursery rhymes.
Exactly. Yeah, exactly.
And that isn't the case for the most part.
Most of these certifications aremodified industrial operations
that may give animals slightly more space or natural light or
may have slightly better management of their manure
systems, like minutia that may reduce suffering marginally, but
(37:58):
definitely don't meet consumers expectations when they see those
labels. And then there are a very few
number of labels that are mostlyrun by, you know, independent
nonprofits that, you know, do mean quite a bit and are high
efficacy and really do mean thatanimals raised with those labels
have come from small scale family farms where they were
(38:20):
raised on pasture and come from breeding stock that have healthy
genetics. And unfortunately, those
products are mostly not available in grocery stores.
So for the vast majority of consumers, when they go into
their local grocery store and they see an animal product with
a claim or a label that is something around animal welfare
or sustainability, the chances are that that label means much
(38:42):
less than they think it does. And from our perspective, that's
a real political challenge because consumers unhappiness
with the current conditions of factory farms can be converted
into political action. But that political action may be
stymied if they are convincinglylied to.
If they are told, yeah, actually, I can solve this
(39:02):
problem just by buying differently.
If I just shop differently, I can solve this problem.
In reality, unfortunately, they can't, you know, they, they,
they can opt out. Opting out is is, you know, the
most sort of politically valuable, we think option.
But until consumers, you know, have real good information about
(39:23):
the production practices of the products they see in grocery
stores, we think it's much less likely that they're going to
demand the kind of political change that we think is
necessary to reform the agricultural system more
broadly. So part of the reason we focused
on humane washing is because, A,people don't like being lied to,
and, B, because we think we can take some of that anger at being
misled and turn it into political action.
(39:45):
Demanding better regulations on meat labeling, for example, or
perhaps encouraging some of those people to reduce the
amount of animal products they consume or opt out entirely.
So when you talk about the lack of regulation or involvement as
far as these labels go, I've heard you talk about the studies
(40:08):
finding hormones and antibioticsin meat packages that are
labeled to not have those things.
Is there legal recourse for that?
I mean, I beyond just the fact that it said humane, but we
don't even know what that means because the definition is so
(40:28):
fuzzy. If it says no hormones and it
was tested for hormones, isn't that really bad?
It is and is, you know, probablyfalse advertising.
So it's actually currently beinglitigated right now.
There's a an ongoing consumer class action lawsuit against
Whole Foods for exactly this, this topic.
(40:49):
So, you know, if you've ever been into Whole Foods anywhere
in the country, it would be hardto have avoided their marketing
about we have no antibiotics ever in any of our products in
the grocery store. Turns out that's not true.
It turns out we found an antibiotic in a product that we
bought from a grocery store, a Whole Foods in San Francisco.
And the USDA has tested a huge amount of now cattle products
(41:13):
that are marketed as antibiotic free.
And they found that something like 20% of them had illicit
antibiotics, many of them medically important antibiotics
residues in the, in the animals.And it leads to this question
about, well, if Whole Foods isn't testing, which they are
not to ensure that there are no antibiotics in those products,
how can they know? How can they know that the meat
(41:34):
that they're selling at a premium that's marketed as
antibiotic free really is that? And the answer is that they
don't and they don't want to know.
The meat industry has avoided doing things like antibiotic
residue testing because they don't want to know, because if
they know that there's antibiotics in these products,
they have to solve the problem. And solving the problem is
expensive. And so they have avoided doing
(41:56):
things like testing and transparency initiatives and
instead we're happy to sell consumers products that probably
contained antibiotics in them, even though consumers were
paying a premium for antibiotic free meat.
So that is the subject of a potentially large consumer class
action lawsuit. And I think if it's successful,
which I'm cautiously optimistic it will be, the case has been
(42:18):
going on three years. So the wheels of justice move
slowly. But I suspect there'll be more
litigation on this front because, you know, the USDA
knows that there's a lot of illicit antibiotic use.
We know it. The retailers almost certainly
know it. They aren't testing.
And until they are, there's almost certainly going to be
illicit use of antibiotics in these animal operations,
(42:39):
industrial animal operations. And so at some point, consumers
are going to start to sue them alot, and they're going to start
to win. And it will become expensive to
lose these lawsuits. And so my hope is that that kind
of material risk creates the necessary motivation for them to
do the right thing that they should have been doing all
along. There we go.
(43:00):
All right, I like that. So watching documentaries like
the one I mentioned, the the Attenborough film and also the
end of Medicine, which recently came across my radar, which I'm
telling everyone I know about because that was just mind
blowing, One can find themselvesreally discouraged about the
(43:23):
world and the trajectory we're on.
What are you, Andrew? Hopeful.
About what am I hopeful about? Well, that's a tough one.
Some days it feels like a tougher question than others.
It is Thanksgiving, so let's tryand be positive.
I I am genuinely optimistic about the way in which food and
(43:49):
food and climate are increasingly becoming a
motivating factor for big companies, food service
management companies, the kind of companies that serve food at
all of your local universities and schools and hospitals.
The way in which they are experimenting with thoroughly
encouraging their diners to eat more plant based food.
(44:11):
So arm forward incubated a project many years ago called
Default Veg, which is now spun out into its own project and an
organization called the Better Food foundation.
It's also spun out another organization called the Greener,
Greener by Default, all of whichis about using actively
behavioral nudges, like very subtle psychological cues to
(44:34):
encourage people to make different choices about the food
that they eat when they're not at home.
So this is like when they eat out, especially at the big
institutions and all of these big institutions, many of them
and the companies that that serve food at them all have made
pretty substantial commitments towards reducing their
environmental footprint, their carbon footprint of their food,
(44:57):
what's called Scope 3 emissions.So they're saying, hey, we're
going to reduce our scope 3 emissions from things like food
and transportation by a big percentage by 20-30 or by 2050.
And the reality is they can't achieve those goals without
substantial reductions in the amount of animal products they
consume. And they're starting to realize
that. They're starting to actually
(45:17):
have to implement policies and menus and different dining hall
designs and different menuing options and different marketing
strategies, all with the goal ofshifting diners behavior towards
choosing more plant based foods.I think this is a very exciting
trend and I think it will continue.
I think it is now a potentially permanent change and how these
(45:39):
institutions do business becauseserving more plant based foods
is better for diners health. It's good for their bottom line
and it helps them meet these prosocial environmental commitments
that they've made. And so, you know, when I see
things like the New York City hospital system making plant
based foods the default for all their lunches and dinners
(46:01):
because it's good for patients and the rate of people eating
plant based meals goes from 5% to 70%, whatever the numbers
are, when it's just massive changes and how people behave in
these institutions with what arefairly ultimately minor changes,
I'm very optimistic about that work.
And, you know, there's thousandsand thousands of hospitals and
(46:22):
schools and institutional cafeterias of different kinds
that serve food that can be influenced.
And those are changes that we don't have to wait for.
And like my experience of, you know, sort of going, going plant
based in an environment where all of those foods were already
available. When people can start to live
(46:42):
into their values more easily, they are stickier.
When you're confronted with the discontinuity 3 times a day,
it's really hard. I'm sure many of your listeners
have had this experience. It's like hard to maintain that,
but when you go to lots of places and at lots of places,
it's easy for you to choose a plant based meal because it's
the one that sounds the most delicious and it's at the top of
the menu and it's the one that'sfirst in line at the cafeteria.
(47:05):
I'm much more optimistic about that.
Creating sort of a broader scalecultural transformation and how
people think about food and thatstuff doesn't require policy or,
you know, a government that functions, which we may or may
not have right now. So I would say that is the best
reason that I have for optimism,at least this year.
That's so good and it it's just so crazy.
(47:27):
I was at lunch with someone today and the person is is very
plant forward plant conscious and was asking me a lot of
questions about the things I have learned and discovered.
And so I felt free to share a lot of really gritty details.
And she would periodically stop and like I can't and and she
(47:50):
knows not not that it was La La La La me eat my chicken because
she wasn't. We were both having plant based
meals, but she was having an emotional response and I was on
the verge of tears as I was talking about some of the images
I've encountered. And I said that is what I am
hoping the change in this podcast does by bringing on
(48:14):
people like you to share something positive and
inspiring. It's not all devastation and
morbidity and sorrow. So I, I had just said this a few
hours ago, I swear, I swear. Like these guests are going to
(48:34):
be inspiring. So stay tuned.
And now I feel very comfortable letting her know that this this
is an episode that won't make her super sad.
So thank you. I'm glad.
Yeah, I'm glad to inject a positive note, happy to add more
optimism. I am genuinely, you know, more
optimistic. I mean, it's, it's hard and
often, you know, depressing. The challenges seem significant.
(48:57):
But at the same time, I think weshould have lots of reasons to
be hopeful. And you know, hope is also a
political act, even when doesn'tseem like there's reason to it
having it is an important thing.Yeah.
So before we wrap up, I do want to give you space to share with
the listeners how they can follow your work, get involved,
(49:20):
just be more active. Yeah, thank you for that.
The best way is to get on our newsletter, get on our e-mail
list and that's at farmforward.com.
There's a sign up button in the upper right.
You can also follow us on any ofthe social media platforms you
like best. We're on Instagram, Facebook and
TikTok and you can follow me. I'm also on on X on Twitter, for
(49:42):
better or worse. And so I'm, I'm they're often
they're sharing, putting opinions on on news of the day.
So if you're a nerd and want to talk about AG policy, come, come
find me there. But I think the best bet is,
yeah, just follow us on our newsletter is, you know, we'll
send updates about new campaigns, opportunities to take
action, ways in which you can sort of get involved either
politically or by, you know, signing a petition to support
(50:05):
the kind of incremental change that we're trying to push all
the time. And then, you know, if there are
things that we can do to supportpeople as they make transitions
in their communities, we're happy to do it.
So we're connected to a big network of organizations that
provide hands on support to helppeople transition their
institutions towards more plant based eating.
And so if you like, probably many of your listeners are, are
(50:27):
a member of a church or synagogue or have kids in a
school or have a workplace that serves food and you want to
encourage those places to do better, you know, both Harm
Forward and some of our partnerscan help support that work in a
hands on way. And so, yeah, we'd love to hear
from you if that's the case. And, you know, we we find that
that kind of change at the sort of grassroots and community
level is often what keeps us motivated to keep doing this
(50:50):
work when other things seem harder.
So yeah, we'd love to hear from your community.
So just to elaborate a little bit more on that.
So let's say there is a university that doesn't have a
very robust plant based option. Let us know, love to help.
OK, so so is that they need to get in touch or I would let you
(51:12):
know. Yeah, you can let it sounds like
there's a very specific example here you're thinking about.
Yeah, you can let me know and wecan either directly, you know,
be in contact with the university or there, you know,
some of our partner organizations like the Better
Food Foundation, you know, have robust university programs.
We run a student activist ambassador program at Better
(51:35):
Food Foundation. It's all about supporting
students as they advocate for changes on their campus
specifically in this direction and offer lots of resources and
student trainings and then provide direct consulting.
So if an institution says, yeah,actually we do want more plant
based options, how do we do that?
We have partners that will go inand do audits and help create
recommendations and help them reorient their menus, really do
(51:56):
sort of soup to soup to nuts kinds of support or institutions
that are making this change. And soup and nuts are two of my
favorite things to eat, so they are.
And yeah, absolutely. And sometimes soup with nuts,
Yes. So with that in conclusion, I
would like to ask you, and this does not have to be Thanksgiving
theme. You can, you can you know, go go
(52:19):
rogue on this. What is What are your favorite
snacks, meal, beverage? Is there something favorite that
you want to entice the listenerswith?
Well, as a parent of two small children, meals are hectic time.
And so we've gotten on a pretty,I would say not regimented, but
(52:43):
like a pretty well organized meal planning system to keep
make the dinner decision making process a little easier for
ourselves. And so my current favorite,
which we actually did last nightwas cauliflower shawarma.
So we did like roasted cauliflower and red onions,
chickpeas, tomato, cucumber salad on the side, some fresh
hummus, pita wraps and then sortof special treat, which we don't
(53:06):
always do, but sometimes we did the Beyond beef steak tips,
which I really like. We roasted those up in an air
fryer. Great all together, great little
little wrap. Delish.
That's amazing, I didn't know about the steak tips.
Oh, that's my favorite one. Steak tips are the best one of
the If you're someone who enjoysplant based meats, I think that
(53:27):
one's out of this world. That's good to know.
Yeah. We, I mean, I, I try not like
you said, special occasion kind of thing or, you know, just as a
backup. I try not to rely on them too
heavily. But yeah, my daughter loves the
impossible. The tube.
It's a la a la Jimmy Dean style,but.
The spicy pork one or the the regular one?
(53:50):
Spicy better is better. Spicy better us too.
Yeah, I I've done that one in and Passole.
It's really good in like a Passole style soup.
It's delish. I haven't thought to do that.
I'm obsessed with the fiber fueled cookbook recipe of
Passole. It's.
Nice, I don't think I made that one.
Yeah, let's check that one out. A good one to check out.
(54:12):
Yeah, it could be actually a good holiday meal a little,
right? If someone hasn't fully made
their Thanksgiving menu yet, Passole is not a bad option.
It's perfect. Well, Andrew, thank you so much
for being here. I'm so.
Grateful, glad to be here. For your for your wisdom, and I
wish you a very happy Thanksgiving.
Thank you. You too.
Well, as you could gather, Andrew Decoriolis is a very busy
(54:34):
man with a lot of items on his agenda list, so I am grateful
that he was able to carve out time for this interview.
Now let me get into the juicy bits of our conversation #1 the
end of factory farming is more likely than the end of farming
animals in general for food #2 factory farming is a method of
(54:59):
farming and also a set of laws, policies, and economic
structures that enable a certainkind of farming.
And side note, if you don't knowwhat factory farming looks like,
I do invite you to explore this topic.
And while it is incredibly disturbing, perhaps it will move
you in a direction of consuming less animals and pay more
(55:22):
attention to where your food comes from and its impact on the
environment. OK #3 Since the Cold War, the
USDA privatized industrial meat production for economic and
political gain #4 people do not want antibiotics, drugs,
chemicals, and contamination in their.
(55:42):
Food. Right, I think we can all agree
that that concept elicits a feeling of disgust #5 what is
humane washing? And for that matter, what is
green washing? These are terms that might not
be familiar to everyone, but it is the use of marketing by
companies to give the public theimpression that their products
(56:03):
align with your values. Values that pertain to the
environment would be greenwashing, and values that
pertain to animal cruelty and the sourcing of animals for
food. That's humane washing.
Which brings me to #6 because most people do not want meat,
dairy, and eggs with drugs in them, there are layers of humane
(56:28):
washing at work. There's the unregulated terms
like all natural, humanely raised, sustainable, cage free,
and pasture raised, to name a few.
And then there's these certifications like Certified
Humane Animal Welfare Certified,which unfortunately are rather
irrelevant. And because #7 the food industry
(56:51):
does not do testing for antibiotics because they don't
want to know if they're in there.
If they did, they would have to do something about it.
They would have to solve the problem, and that would be very
expensive. So sadly, you simply cannot
believe these labels on your animal food products.
It's unregulated marketing and finally #8 Andrews favorite
(57:12):
vegan foods. He told us about that
cauliflower shawarma recipe, which sounds amazing.
And I did not know about the beyond beef steak tips.
So I think that's something I will need to check out very
soon. Once again, I want to say happy
Thanksgiving to all of you listening to Andrew and again
express my gratitude that you'rehere listening, clicking like
(57:36):
leaving a review on Apple Podcasts and sharing the flirty
vegan episodes with your friendsand family.
I want to give one last plug to the show notes where you can
find a link to book a free consultation call or if you
prefer, connection call or discovery call and opportunity
for us to gather virtually and get to know each other.
(57:57):
See if I can support you on the path of flirting with veganism.
I will see you right back here in two weeks for my conversation
with the amazing and beautiful Cheryl Moss, who is doing so
much in the world of animal sanctuaries and rescue
organizations. And so, with a heart full of
gratitude and a fridge full of veggies, I send you peace, love
(58:21):
and chickpeas. Yeah.
Welcome to the flirty vegan, thepodcast that motivates you to
thrive through plant based living.
I'm your host Jenny Chaffetz, certified life breathwork and
vegan lifestyle coach. After decades of dieting and
deprivation, I found the secret to living a compassionate,
nourished life. Whether you've.
Been vegan for years or you're just flirting with the idea?
(00:21):
Prepare to be inspired. By real people who courageously
chose health and love. It's time to look.
Better feel better and do better.
Well, hi everybody. Happy Thanksgiving.
I am delighted to have you here at the Flirty Vegan.
My name is Jenny Chaffetz. I'm your host.
And before we even get into this, amazing.
(00:42):
Episode with. The smart, driven and inspiring
Andrew Decoriolis. I want to say I am thankful for
you, the listeners. I am thankful to have this
platform of a podcast that features incredible.
Incredible guests who. Are teaching me how to do better
(01:03):
in the world, and I'm just so grateful to engage with them and
amplify their mission. And Speaking of amplifying
missions, let me just take a moment to tell you about mine.
With this new platform of the Flirty Vegan, my goal is to
spread the benefits and joy of avegan lifestyle.
And as a certified coach, I am here to support you on this
(01:28):
journey, whether that's making afull blown overnight change or
taking baby steps like Chuck talked about last time.
Maybe just swapping out one meala day.
Maybe just swapping out one meal.
Per week if you are a. Huge meat, dairy and egg
consumer I am. Here to help you.
In the manner that feels alignedbecause it really is all about
(01:51):
alignment. It is about acting in alignment
with our values. So if you value your health, if
you value the state of the planet, if you value the welfare
of animals, then I am here to make it easier for you to act in
alignment with those values. Because you might not know how
(02:13):
to go plant based. You might think it's dull,
expensive, the same mundane routine day after day salads.
Fruit Tofu. I want to dispel those myths and
offer you encouragement. So please look to the show
notes, book a free consultation call with me and let's talk
about what would feel good for you.
(02:34):
So thank you for tuning in. If you have not clicked follow
or subscribe on your podcast app, I would be so honored if
you would do that. And if you're watching this
video on YouTube, please subscribe to the channel.
It means so much to me and it helps other people find this
show. Like with everything, there's an
algorithm. I don't understand it, but it
(02:56):
exists. And the more people who listen,
download, share, and subscribe, the tech gods know.
And they promote this show to potential listeners.
So please help me increase the visibility of the flirty vegan
and all of my phenomenal Co hosts, if you will.
(03:18):
Now it is Thanksgiving tomorrow or if you're listening to this
in the future, happy, whatever. But in the spirit of
Thanksgiving, I just want to saya prayer for all of the turkeys,
all of the animals that find their way to American tables and
global tables. And I just want to acknowledge
that I understand food traditions run deep.
(03:41):
We all have our favorite foods from childhood things.
That we expect. To eat each and every holiday.
And my hope is by listening to this show, you will have a
greater understanding of our food system, how it impacts the
environment and how it impacts our health.
And I'm talking all of our health, physical, mental,
(04:02):
emotional, spiritual, because it's all connected.
We're all connected, We and all the living creatures on this
planet. So if you're listening to this
prior to Thanksgiving or after, it doesn't matter.
Please take a moment with me to express gratitude for the food
that we get to enjoy, the elaborate machine that made it
(04:22):
possible for us to even have thefood in front of us, and the
knowledge you are about to receive.
How about that? So today for this special
Thanksgiving episode, I had the privilege of speaking with
Andrew Decoriolis. He is the Executive Director of
Farm Forward, where he advocatesfor safe, healthy, and humane
(04:43):
farming. Andrew is an expert in animal
welfare standards, certifications and policy.
He works with food companies, universities and cities to help
them improve the welfare of animals and increase the
proportion of plant based food in their supply chains.
Andrew was responsible for creating and launching the
Leadership Circle, a program aimed at helping institutions
(05:05):
source more climate friendly food.
Andrews work at Farm Forward hasbeen covered in leading
periodicals including the New York Times, Wired and Civil
Eats. Andrew is currently an advisor
to the Well Beings charity, the Game Changers Institute.
The good food. Purchasing Program and the State
Innovation Exchange and is a board member of finehumane.com.
(05:28):
Andrew lives in Portland, OR with his partner, two kids and
rescue mutt Tater Tot. How cute is that name?
I love a good pet name. Andrew and I had a fascinating
conversation about the status offactory farms, the hate to break
it to fraudulent aspects of foodlabels, and also the positive
(05:50):
trajectory that we're seeing with respect to plant based
options. So this is not all doom and
gloom. Andrew brings a lot of hope and
possibility to this conversation, which is perfect
for Thanksgiving. So now, without further ado, I
bring you Andrew Decoriolis. Andrew, I am so excited to
(06:13):
welcome you to the Flirty Vegan Podcast.
Hello. Hi, thanks for having me, Jenny.
This is so exciting, but before we even dive into anything, I
would like to say happy Thanksgiving.
Happy Thanksgiving to you. Do you know what you're doing
for the holiday? Yes, I will be spending it with
family and you. Yeah, we're, we're hosting.
(06:34):
We've got the full, full crew intow this year.
We've got my wife and her familyand some friends coming over.
It should be fun. We're going to do a big vegan
Thanksgiving. Nice.
I used to love hosting but in the last couple of years we
downsized and we don't even havea kitchen table anymore.
We just have a really Big Islandand a lot of people are turned
(06:54):
off by the stools. It's very complicated for older
folks, so fine. I'll, there's, there's an era
for hosting. I'm happy to host this, you
know, this era. And then I'll be glad to also be
at other people's houses in the future.
It's fun with little kids also. Totally.
And yeah, so now I just have to pack up all the containers and
(07:15):
bring food so that I can actually enjoy the holiday.
So there's that. That is a hassle.
Yeah, it's fine. It has to get done.
So this is just the second episode of the newly rebranded
Flirty Vegan podcast. So I'm thrilled to have you here
in particular as as just it's funny.
(07:38):
I went 100 episodes interviewingwomen and now the first two
guests of this show are gentlemen.
So this is very exciting, littleintimidating, but.
Happy to be among the first, happy to be among the first
gentleman of the new of the new rebrand.
It looks great. So I want to start off by asking
you because it is called the flirty vegan which is many
(08:01):
gendered. Any gender you need multi
gendered anyone can be flirty. So what attracted you originally
to veganism? That's a good question and it
was actually a friend. It was a friend of mine who I
was eating with in in college. I went to a college that had a
(08:22):
student cooperatives that servedmuch of the food on campus and
students were responsible for everything from buying the food
to preparing the meals to chefing and cleaning up.
And I cooked in a vegetarian andvegan Co-op for many years and
was having lunch with a friend of mine.
(08:42):
And honestly, I had never reallythought that carefully about
vegetarianism, veganism, outsideof the sort of environmental
aspects of eating pure animal products.
I was environmental science major and was thinking a lot
about climate change. And so I was concerned about it,
but not from a, you know, not from an ethical perspective,
really not from an animal ethicsperspective.
And I had a friend of mine who was eating vegan and I asked him
(09:07):
to sort of like, oh, yeah, why? Why aren't you going to do X&Y?
Why aren't you going to go there?
And he said, oh, you know what? They, they don't have, you know,
vegan meals. And I said, well, as you know,
you can make an exception. And he said, well, you know,
yes, I can. But, you know, I'm really trying
to, you know, live my, live my ethical values.
And I said, oh, yes, you know, say more.
(09:28):
And so it started a conversationwhere, you know, for him, this
is a person I was really close with and doing activism with on
things like we were doing a lot of prison abolition and prison
Prison Reform work. And he said, you know, I don't
want to be part of the sufferingof other creatures.
And that includes, you know, nonhuman animals.
There's there's no ethical reason why, for example, we
(09:49):
should, you know, fight the prison industrial complex, but
not fight for the release of other sentient beings from the
prisons of animal farms. And I said, huh, I really hadn't
thought about it that way. And so thankfully for me, it was
pretty easy to have an ethical sort of evolution at the time
(10:11):
because I was already eating in a place that was either entirely
vegan or mostly vegan. And so it's easy to get choices.
My Co-op was already serving allthose meals.
I was already cooking vegetarianand vegan dinners.
So I was like, oh, I just have to make like small tweaks or I
just choose the vegan option that night, like no big deal.
And so because it at the time, the, the information was coming
(10:31):
from a trusted source, a friend who I cared a lot about in his
opinion, and then that it was easy for me to act on it.
It just became easy to sort of embody those beliefs.
And then once I had been embodying those beliefs for, you
know, several years, because I was in those co-ops for a couple
years while I was in undergrad, it just became sort of like part
of, oh, this is just what I do. It wasn't, I didn't have to
(10:52):
think about it much more after that.
And so when I graduated and, youknow, starting to cook for my
own and live on my own, it just was like, oh, of course, I'm
just going to eat plant paste. That's easy.
So the the evolution really started with a friend, but I was
thankful that I was in an environment that was very
supportive of it because I thinkhad it been, had it, you know,
had it been another kind of environment, it might have been
(11:13):
much harder. I don't know.
I don't know if I would have been as successful in sort of
making it part of my lifestyle rather than it just being, you
know, set of ethics that I agreed with but had a hard time,
you know, living up to. That's so interesting.
I love that about your college. That's so great.
This is not one of my prepared, not that I have too many
prepared questions, but this is just coming off the cuff here.
(11:34):
I'm curious, since you were likethat through college and then
you mentioned living on your own, was it a criteria when you
were dating? It wasn't the only criteria for
dating was that people had to like my cooking or enjoy food.
And I, I cook a lot. I, you know, since college and
cooking in co-ops, I've, I've always lived in housing
(11:56):
situations, either with roommates or friends where we
cooked and ate communally and I just enjoy cooking.
I've, I've also been a, a gardener and a, you know, a
amateur farmer. And so just having food be an
important part of my life in thesort of rhythm of what I do is
think about and then prepare food and enjoy food.
When I was dating, I was like, you can make your own ethical
(12:19):
choices. I'm not, I'm not going to
dictate that. But if you're not going to enjoy
the food that I'm making and theway in which I, I enjoy food,
it's going to be pretty tough. I'm so I definitely had some
folks who I was excited about them otherwise, but they were
like, they just didn't care about food at all.
And they didn't like, they weren't, didn't not like my
food, but they also didn't enjoyeating with me.
(12:39):
And it wasn't like a thing that was going to be part of our
lives together. And I was like, OK, I think this
is probably not a good fit. Never mind.
Yeah. And my my now wife, you know,
when we first started dating, she was a pescatarian for, you
know, vegetarian pescatarian forenvironmental reasons.
Like me, she sort of came into these issues as being a person
concerned about climate change and you know, really was over
(13:00):
time where she, you know, just being exposed to my work and
exposed to what, you know, I'm, I'm doing everyday.
For example, like 2 years ago, we were working on a big
investigation around quote UN quote, regenerative dairy.
And I was like talking to whistleblowers and getting all
this undercover footage and putting together all this
research. And she, you know, she was
experiencing it through me. And at the time she was still
(13:22):
using dairy Creamer in her coffee.
And, and then after that she waslike, I got to drop this, like
this is the last thing to fall, but we just got to find a great
plant based Creamer. So over a year, I think we
probably had, I don't know, 25 different plant based creamers.
I think we finally settled on onthe on the winter, but it was a
it was a journey to find the onethat worked.
(13:43):
I'm curious what that one is because I have found that
there's a lot of. Good ones and a lot of not so
good ones. Yeah, we really like the, the
most recent one that we've enjoyed is the Ripple Barista
Creamer. And the, the nice thing about
the barista blends is that they're thicker.
And so when you use a, a steamerwand from an espresso machine,
(14:04):
it doesn't dilute the Creamer too much if you use those
thicker ones. And so that, which is what we
have, we have a like a janky oldespresso machine with a, with a
steamer wand. And so it works perfect for
that. That's awesome.
That's so funny. It's when I'm talking to people,
I'll often say interestingly, sodifferent than your wife.
I'll often say that Creamer is one of the easiest things to
(14:24):
start with because I find that Ireally enjoy the ones that that
I have discovered. And so I'm like, my God, if you
don't want to give up, I don't know your yogurt or your after
dinner ice cream. You just can't stomach the idea
of coconut milk ice cream or something.
God, just throw the Creamer in your coffee.
I know, but people are so funny about their coffee.
(14:46):
It's got to be like exactly the right consistency and exactly
the right color, and it's got tomix in well and not separate.
I don't know, you know, it's tough.
People have very like funny emotional attachments to some of
these products. And differently from you, I
admit fully, I actually did not care that much about the
(15:06):
environment growing growing up, even though they developed a
recycling plant in my town and or, you know, OK, so fine, when
I was a teen, like that was sortof a thing.
And I remember getting in college, they passed out these
reduced reuse recycle mugs that we were supposed to bring to the
dining hall, but it wasn't really anything.
(15:26):
I I globbed onto it was kind of like the environment
environment, like it'll be there.
And yet it was a documentary about the environment that like
immediately flipped the switch for me.
It was, it was not even a question and I was not, I don't
know. I didn't identify as a tree
(15:46):
hugger or anyone who would advocate for anything
environmental. I mean, I wasn't throwing trash
out my car window, but I also wasn't really saying, oh, I care
about the rainforest. And yet we watched this
documentary and at the end of it, the gentleman said like,
(16:08):
basically, go vegan or the planet screwed.
And I said, OK, I'm vegan. I guess I have to learn what
that means. So I became an instant
environmentalist. And then came to learn about the
animals and then eventually learned about health stuff.
But he last. Yeah, well, it's funny.
It's funny all the different things that can help people.
(16:29):
I mean, yeah. And yeah, that's part of the
reason he's describing, you know, making a documentary.
Farm Forwards origin comes from helping write a book called
Eating Animals. One of our board members,
Jonathan for wrote that book andthe publication of the book and
the the sort of energy that it created was what launched from
(16:50):
forward, which is almost 20 years ago.
But yeah, we still hear from people all the time.
Oh, I read Eating Animals 10 years ago and X&Y or you know, I
got into activism because I I read Eating Animals or I watched
the movie and that had this effect.
So, yeah, you never know what what it is that will be the the
triggering event for folks. You know, maybe they had it in
the background or maybe they have values that already aligned
(17:11):
with those things for other reasons, experiences that made
it possible. And then that was the, you know,
that was the spark. So what was the documentary do
you remember? It was David Attenborough, I
believe it was the one My Life, I think that's the title, My
Life, where he goes through 60 years of his documentarian work
(17:32):
and shows the changes in the planet and species and all of
that each decade at a time. And so when it got to the
current decade, I was like, wow,this is devastating what has
happened and this has to stop. So I'll do my part.
Well, what a what A legend, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Amazing.
(17:53):
OK, so so you work at an organization called Farm
Forward, which I did illuminate to the listeners in the
introduction. As a a vegan, as a plant based
advocate like so many of us, I imagine you in a perfect world
(18:15):
would envision the elimination of factory farming.
That is the state of mission. Absolutely.
The end of factory farming is our is our state of goal.
Yeah. Right, so, and I don't mean this
to sound cheeky or disrespectful, what are you
doing at Farm forward? Is it is it kind of like finding
(18:36):
the the lesser evil? Like OK, since we can't tomorrow
end factory farming and make theentire planet vegan?
Is it just to to see what we cando better?
Yeah, it's a good question. I'll offer a little nuance on a
couple of those things. So yes, personally, I would like
(18:56):
to see the end of farming animals for food.
As a practical matter, I think it's hard to imagine that in the
lifetime of myself or my kids. But what I what I do think is
possible to imagine is the end of factory farming, of
industrial animal production. I think people will likely
(19:19):
continue to eat animals. But if that's the case, we want
to make sure that those animals are raised in the best possible
conditions, Not to say that those are humane conditions or
that that's, you know, morally acceptable.
People will ultimately make different calls about that
themselves. But we don't want animals to
suffer unduly on on farms. And so practically speaking,
what we describe ourselves as doing is what we what we say is
(19:42):
building the will to end factoryfarming.
And ultimately factory farming is a, a method of farming, but
it's also a set of laws and policies and economic structures
that enable a certain kind of farming.
And all of those things are possible to change your public
policy. So, you know, like other
profitable and harmful industries of the past, we
(20:05):
imagine that factory farming, when it's ended, will be ended
because publics decide they don't want it anymore.
And that could be for a wide variety of reasons.
It could be for ethical reasons.It could be for public health
reasons, it could be for environmental pollution reasons.
It could be for. Reasons that are about wanting
to create more employment opportunities in an era of, you
(20:27):
know, AI taking all the white collar jobs and needing new
employment projects for people like there.
There are lots and lots of reasons why we can imagine a
public and a public policy coming to the conclusion that
factory farming is no longer consistent with the public good.
And so we can invest in alternatives to factory farming.
Those alternatives may include, you know, agricultural and
(20:49):
farming policies that both I think promote significant shifts
in diet towards plant based eating and meals and the support
of agriculture that produces those foods.
But it may also include support for farming that raises animals
in much higher welfare conditions than they're
currently raised. And that's an acceptable outcome
to us. And part of the calculus behind
(21:10):
that, part of the reason why we think that's perhaps even a
desirable outcome is because it builds a bigger potential
political coalition. I think, you know, when you ask
people today, you know, do you want farmed animals to be
treated in XYZ way, the ways in which they're treated on factory
farms, it 90% say no. So there's like broad public
consensus that factory farming is a violation of our values.
(21:34):
If you ask them, is it OK to farm animals for food at all,
most people are going to say yes.
And so there's obviously work todo there, but we don't have to
do a lot to convince people thatthey're opposed to factory
farming. They already are.
The challenge now is to make it enough of a political priority
(21:54):
and have a political system that's functioning enough that
can risk be responsive to the public will that policy makers
ultimately enact policies that will begin to shift this big
ship away from industrial animalfarming towards other forms of
less harmful agriculture. You know, I heard someone say
(22:15):
recently, and this just struck me because I, I don't, I really,
I love the way she put this. She said veganism is a political
issue. It's not a partisan issue.
I, I love the way she put that. But what I'm seeing a lot of is,
and interestingly, I've heard itin some of the interviews you've
(22:38):
been a part of, not on your part, but perhaps on the
interviewer or or the platform itself is I, I hear people
wanting to point the finger at one administration or another
administration. From where I stand, every
administration sucks in this department because they are so
(23:03):
controlled by special interests,the lobbyists, I mean, find me a
president in history that has bolstered a very empathic
mission or, you know, compassionate approach to this.
I feel like I, I don't know, I, I mean, I hate to sound all doom
and gloom Debbie Downer, but with the work you're doing,
(23:25):
which is so admirable, how do you stay motivated when we do
live in the first world that is so driven by money?
Yeah, that's a good question. And I think, yeah, your, your
evaluation of the sort of bipartisan consensus on the
(23:48):
benefits of factory farming are right.
I mean, going back to the Cold War, we've had AUSDA, you know,
U.S. Department of Agriculture that
has prioritized industrial meat production and has done so as a
means of economic and political power.
I mean, it, you know, it really started as a Cold War project.
(24:12):
The secretary Earl Butts get bigor get out was was about the
Cold War, was about beating Russia.
I mean, very explicitly. And, you know, that model has,
you know, morphed and metastasized over decades to
what you describe as, you know, ultimately political corruption,
political capture, which I thinkis exactly right.
(24:33):
I mean, we, we, we are constant critics of the USDA and the
regulatory apparatus, regardlessof the administration.
Lots of quotes from me out therecriticizing, you know, Biden's
secretary of agriculture. Plenty of them out there with me
criticizing Trump's. Plenty of that before.
I don't mind discussing political issues on this show.
(24:53):
I mean veganism is a political issue as as this person I took a
class from said, I don't want toget into crucifying 1 leader
over another because come on now.
This has just been an ongoing. Yeah, I think that I think,
yeah, they're, they're both equally bad in many ways.
Interesting. And as you say, it is not a
(25:14):
partisan issue. I mean, right now there has been
a major effort within the current administration to change
how both the National Institutesof Health and the Department of
Defense use companion animals and other non human animals for
testing and major changes to what's permissible and a major
(25:35):
effort to stop the use of animals in unnecessary medical
laboratory testing. I that was not on my bingo card.
You know, Laura Loomer, who's anadvisor to President Trump and
you know, is, I would say a veryconservative sort of populist
figure in the media, like being on the side of protecting
beagles that are being experimented by the National
(25:56):
Institute. It was like not on my bingo
card. But it tells you that, you know,
there is a broad bipartisan consensus against animal
suffering. And I'm very supportive of any
effort under any administration,you know, to reduce the
suffering of non human animals, whether that's in laboratory
testing or whether that's, you know, in farming policy.
(26:16):
So what do you think is going tomove the needle, tip the scale,
change people's perception in terms of, OK, so, so here we are
the day before Thanksgiving, I would venture to say a large
majority of the population is going to consume Turkey
tomorrow, probably stuffing and mashed potatoes that are made
(26:40):
with butter, chicken stock, sourcream, those kinds of things.
So there's going to be a lot of animal products on a lot of
American tables tomorrow. What would you want to say to
the listeners either to change that for tomorrow or the day
after? The days after what?
(27:01):
What do you, what do you think resonates that that people will
hear or want to hear or are opento hearing?
Yeah. I mean, that's the $1,000,000
question. And if I had a, if I knew I had.
A Jim Andrew. We would have won.
I mean, one thing to note about,you know, tricky consumption is
that it's it's down fairly substantially over the last few
years. It's down more than 10% since
(27:23):
2023. You know, fewer demand for
Turkey products is going down. I don't know if that's you know
about consumer perception or about inflation or a combination
of those things. But you know, there there are
reasons to think that the publicis ready to consume fewer animal
products. Now again, I don't think most of
the public is ready to go vegan,but I think a large percentage
(27:46):
of the public and I don't know what percent, maybe 40% is ready
to eat pure animal products and have more plant based meals.
And, you know, if you asked me in, you know, 2050, do I think
half of all Americans will be vegan?
I would say no, I don't think that's likely.
But if you said, do you think half of all meals consumed will
(28:06):
be vegan, I'd say yes. I could imagine that as a
future. And it's going to be a
combination of things. It's not going to be, you know,
as they say, it's not a silver bullet, it's silver buckshot,
even though that's a, you know, some kind of a violent analogy
as we're talking about with idioms being troubling.
The, you know, there's all kindsof efforts underway to shift
(28:29):
diets at institutions with college and universities.
Hospitals that were part of thatI think are showing real
promise. We just launched a campaign
earlier this month focused on food safety, on salmonella
contamination in the poultry industry.
It's gotten a huge amount of press.
We got a front page article in the Los Angeles Times.
(28:51):
We had, you know, videos with high profile influencers on
social media that were viewed more than a million times.
We have people, you know, 10s ofthousands people taking action
on petitions demanding that the USDA take more action to
regulate the meat industry. That was an issue, food safety,
salmonella. Those were issues that we hadn't
(29:12):
really worked on before and we chose intentionally because
they're ones that are about how yucky Buddhas that come from
factory farms. And so part of the calculus that
we've made over the last couple years, and this is based on
consumer research, both polling and focus groups, is that the
messages that resonate most withpeople right now are ones about
(29:34):
discussed about what's in animals that come from factory
farms. Antibiotics and hormones and
drugs, chemicals, things that are on the food, adulteration,
contamination. It just gives people the yuck,
it gives them the egg and it gives you an opportunity to talk
about the conditions on factory firms, which are disgusting.
And so focusing on issues that are sort of at the overlap of
concerns about personal health and diet, and then that allow us
(29:58):
to, you know, sneak in a messageabout cruelty in factory farms
are the ways in which we're trying to sort of piggyback on
people's selfish personal interests about their health,
but but make them have to confront information about their
food production systems. And, you know, that gives me
optimism that there are so many people that seem to be engaging
that if they're resonating with it, you know, the, the place
(30:20):
where the the disconnect is, if we're thinking about the sort of
causal chain of change is once we have this as a priority among
people or enough people making sure it's a political priority.
So, you know, in 2028, a way that we'll know if we're being
successful is like our major candidates of either political
party. Do they put out an agricultural
platform that talks about the need for food system
(30:42):
transformation? And you know, is, is actually
proposing things that would be about shifting subsidies and
investment for factory farms towards other forms of food
production consumption. Because if so, then we're
starting to that would be a signof real progress.
But that is the kind of time scale we're talking on.
You know, we make a lot of investment to try to change
public conversation and sentiment and turn that into
(31:05):
political priorities. But obviously that's such a
complicated, messy system. You're, you're entering the
realm of politics and our politics are really volatile
right now, especially. And it's hard to know whether or
not, you know, this kind of concern from the public about
whether it's food safety or pandemics or antibiotics or, you
know, all of which which touch issues of factory farming.
(31:25):
It's hard to know if any of those will become translated
into political priorities. We'll do our best to see that
they are. But it's, you know, no question
that it's a, it's a challenge. It's funny that you use the term
sneaking in the message this doesn't relate to your life but
for the majority of people they have to sneak vegetables into
their kids lives but not if the house is plant based.
(31:49):
Yeah, weirdly my kid loves broccoli and my 10 month old
loves broccoli so they we eat a lot of broccoli.
I have one kid that likes broccoli and another kid that
wrote an acrostic poem in elementary school about all the
things related to broccoli that she hates so.
That sounds right. Yeah, of course you do.
First you have one of each. Yeah.
(32:10):
Yep, Yep. So I used to make meals that
would have Peppers cut up reallybig, broccoli cut up really big
so that each one could take out the thing that he or she did not
want. It was lovely.
It's very accommodating of you as a parent.
Isn't it? Yeah, Yeah.
Not unlike every other parent inthe world.
Oh boy, that's familiar. Hey, sorry for the interruption,
(32:33):
but I have to tell you. So at the Flirty Vegan I have
been promoting one-on-one coaching and that is something I
am still committed to. However, because so many people
have been asking me about a group program, I figured what
the heck, Starting in January let's prioritize our health.
But not like a resolution that falls flat and ends in disaster.
No, let's approach this gently. So whatever your health concern
(32:57):
is to lose weight, lower your cholesterol, improve other
health markers, maybe just have more energy and sleep better,
that can all be addressed and accomplished by eating more
plants and fewer animals. This program will give people a
community environment along witha knowledgeable, supportive.
(33:18):
Coach to Pepper. In science and strategy, and we
will focus on how to easily, affordably, and deliciously
incorporate more plants into ourdaily diet.
So if that sounds good to you, please head to the show onenotes
and click on the link to book a free connection call just like
you would if you were interestedin one-on-one coaching.
And we'll get started. Now let's get back to the show.
(33:41):
So you said something that struck out to me.
Now let's see if I can remember the words.
I should have written them down.Oh, the way people are slowly
making changes based on, I forget how you phrased it.
Not not messaging, but things out in the world that are
(34:03):
gradually creating change. Maybe when you were talking
about the Turkey reduction, thatbrings me to a topic I've heard
you talk a lot about, which is humane washing.
So we're going to get into that in a second.
And, and I'm, I'm just as guiltybecause before I went vegan, I
(34:24):
transitioned to humane products.I was buying the more expensive
organic cage free eggs from and I actually looked on the package
to see that they were processed in New Hampshire.
I live in New Hampshire, so I didn't want the ones from New
York. I wanted the ones from New
Hampshire. I was buying the organic pasture
(34:47):
raised beef or bison and you know, all these things because
I, I, I felt like that was better.
Can you please illuminate for this audience what humane
washing is and if they're just wasting their money buying
(35:09):
products that have a very prettylabel on them?
Sure. I'll give you a, a short answer
and then a long, a long answer. The short answer is, you know,
humane washing is just like greenwashing.
It's it's the use of marketing by companies to give the public
the impression that their products align with their
(35:30):
values. So real simple.
In the case of the meat industry, meat and dairy and egg
industry, they know that the public does not want products
from animals in factory farms. They know that, you know, they'd
have better polling data than I do.
And they know that consumers don't want meet with drugs in
it. And so in order to convince the
public that their products are socially acceptable, they have
(35:50):
to make all kinds of claims about them.
Now, unfortunately, most of the claims the the words you see on,
you know, meat products, eggs and dairy are either entirely
unregulated, meaningless or meanmuch less than you would like
them to mean. So I would include in those
(36:11):
things like all natural, humanely raised, sustainable,
cage free, pasture raised, even the term pasture raised, while
it sounds nice, gives animals access to the outdoors.
And if they are truly giving animals to the access, access to
outdoors, you know, that's better conditions probably for
the animals. But none of those terms are
regulated and they don't mean what consumers think they do.
(36:31):
So in pole after pole polls thatwe do the ASPCA do other, you
know, polling research firms. When you ask consumers, hey,
what do you think the word all natural means on a meat product?
They'll tell you all kinds of things that have absolutely
nothing to do with the regulatory definition.
So the industry knows this, of course, and that's why they use
those terms. So that's one sort of form of
(36:53):
humane washing and then there are sort of layers of humane
washing. Another are certifications,
these sort of independent or pseudo independent
certifications, which you know, may say things like certified
humane or animal welfare certified.
And you may see those products in places like Whole Foods.
You're going to even see certified humane, especially
eggs. You'll see even at places like
(37:13):
Walmart and Target, those certifications may be somewhat
meaningful, but they're going tobe much less meaningful than,
again, than consumers imagine. For the most part, when
consumers see those labels, theythink, oh, these come from
healthy animals with healthy genetics, raised on pasture.
The kind of small bucolic farm family farm that I imagine from
(37:33):
old McDonald and cartoons. Yeah, yeah, nursery rhymes.
Exactly. Yeah, exactly.
And that isn't the case for the most part.
Most of these certifications aremodified industrial operations
that may give animals slightly more space or natural light or
may have slightly better management of their manure
systems, like minutia that may reduce suffering marginally, but
(37:58):
definitely don't meet consumers expectations when they see those
labels. And then there are a very few
number of labels that are mostlyrun by, you know, independent
nonprofits that, you know, do mean quite a bit and are high
efficacy and really do mean thatanimals raised with those labels
have come from small scale family farms where they were
(38:20):
raised on pasture and come from breeding stock that have healthy
genetics. And unfortunately, those
products are mostly not available in grocery stores.
So for the vast majority of consumers, when they go into
their local grocery store and they see an animal product with
a claim or a label that is something around animal welfare
or sustainability, the chances are that that label means much
(38:42):
less than they think it does. And from our perspective, that's
a real political challenge because consumers unhappiness
with the current conditions of factory farms can be converted
into political action. But that political action may be
stymied if they are convincinglylied to.
If they are told, yeah, actually, I can solve this
(39:02):
problem just by buying differently.
If I just shop differently, I can solve this problem.
In reality, unfortunately, they can't, you know, they, they,
they can opt out. Opting out is is, you know, the
most sort of politically valuable, we think option.
But until consumers, you know, have real good information about
(39:23):
the production practices of the products they see in grocery
stores, we think it's much less likely that they're going to
demand the kind of political change that we think is
necessary to reform the agricultural system more
broadly. So part of the reason we focused
on humane washing is because, A,people don't like being lied to,
and, B, because we think we can take some of that anger at being
misled and turn it into political action.
(39:45):
Demanding better regulations on meat labeling, for example, or
perhaps encouraging some of those people to reduce the
amount of animal products they consume or opt out entirely.
So when you talk about the lack of regulation or involvement as
far as these labels go, I've heard you talk about the studies
(40:08):
finding hormones and antibioticsin meat packages that are
labeled to not have those things.
Is there legal recourse for that?
I mean, I beyond just the fact that it said humane, but we
don't even know what that means because the definition is so
(40:28):
fuzzy. If it says no hormones and it
was tested for hormones, isn't that really bad?
It is and is, you know, probablyfalse advertising.
So it's actually currently beinglitigated right now.
There's a an ongoing consumer class action lawsuit against
Whole Foods for exactly this, this topic.
(40:49):
So, you know, if you've ever been into Whole Foods anywhere
in the country, it would be hardto have avoided their marketing
about we have no antibiotics ever in any of our products in
the grocery store. Turns out that's not true.
It turns out we found an antibiotic in a product that we
bought from a grocery store, a Whole Foods in San Francisco.
And the USDA has tested a huge amount of now cattle products
(41:13):
that are marketed as antibiotic free.
And they found that something like 20% of them had illicit
antibiotics, many of them medically important antibiotics
residues in the, in the animals.And it leads to this question
about, well, if Whole Foods isn't testing, which they are
not to ensure that there are no antibiotics in those products,
how can they know? How can they know that the meat
(41:34):
that they're selling at a premium that's marketed as
antibiotic free really is that? And the answer is that they
don't and they don't want to know.
The meat industry has avoided doing things like antibiotic
residue testing because they don't want to know, because if
they know that there's antibiotics in these products,
they have to solve the problem. And solving the problem is
expensive. And so they have avoided doing
(41:56):
things like testing and transparency initiatives and
instead we're happy to sell consumers products that probably
contained antibiotics in them, even though consumers were
paying a premium for antibiotic free meat.
So that is the subject of a potentially large consumer class
action lawsuit. And I think if it's successful,
which I'm cautiously optimistic it will be, the case has been
(42:18):
going on three years. So the wheels of justice move
slowly. But I suspect there'll be more
litigation on this front because, you know, the USDA
knows that there's a lot of illicit antibiotic use.
We know it. The retailers almost certainly
know it. They aren't testing.
And until they are, there's almost certainly going to be
illicit use of antibiotics in these animal operations,
(42:39):
industrial animal operations. And so at some point, consumers
are going to start to sue them alot, and they're going to start
to win. And it will become expensive to
lose these lawsuits. And so my hope is that that kind
of material risk creates the necessary motivation for them to
do the right thing that they should have been doing all
along. There we go.
(43:00):
All right, I like that. So watching documentaries like
the one I mentioned, the the Attenborough film and also the
end of Medicine, which recently came across my radar, which I'm
telling everyone I know about because that was just mind
blowing, One can find themselvesreally discouraged about the
(43:23):
world and the trajectory we're on.
What are you, Andrew? Hopeful.
About what am I hopeful about? Well, that's a tough one.
Some days it feels like a tougher question than others.
It is Thanksgiving, so let's tryand be positive.
I I am genuinely optimistic about the way in which food and
(43:49):
food and climate are increasingly becoming a
motivating factor for big companies, food service
management companies, the kind of companies that serve food at
all of your local universities and schools and hospitals.
The way in which they are experimenting with thoroughly
encouraging their diners to eat more plant based food.
(44:11):
So arm forward incubated a project many years ago called
Default Veg, which is now spun out into its own project and an
organization called the Better Food foundation.
It's also spun out another organization called the Greener,
Greener by Default, all of whichis about using actively
behavioral nudges, like very subtle psychological cues to
(44:34):
encourage people to make different choices about the food
that they eat when they're not at home.
So this is like when they eat out, especially at the big
institutions and all of these big institutions, many of them
and the companies that that serve food at them all have made
pretty substantial commitments towards reducing their
environmental footprint, their carbon footprint of their food,
(44:57):
what's called Scope 3 emissions.So they're saying, hey, we're
going to reduce our scope 3 emissions from things like food
and transportation by a big percentage by 20-30 or by 2050.
And the reality is they can't achieve those goals without
substantial reductions in the amount of animal products they
consume. And they're starting to realize
that. They're starting to actually
(45:17):
have to implement policies and menus and different dining hall
designs and different menuing options and different marketing
strategies, all with the goal ofshifting diners behavior towards
choosing more plant based foods.I think this is a very exciting
trend and I think it will continue.
I think it is now a potentially permanent change and how these
(45:39):
institutions do business becauseserving more plant based foods
is better for diners health. It's good for their bottom line
and it helps them meet these prosocial environmental commitments
that they've made. And so, you know, when I see
things like the New York City hospital system making plant
based foods the default for all their lunches and dinners
(46:01):
because it's good for patients and the rate of people eating
plant based meals goes from 5% to 70%, whatever the numbers
are, when it's just massive changes and how people behave in
these institutions with what arefairly ultimately minor changes,
I'm very optimistic about that work.
And, you know, there's thousandsand thousands of hospitals and
(46:22):
schools and institutional cafeterias of different kinds
that serve food that can be influenced.
And those are changes that we don't have to wait for.
And like my experience of, you know, sort of going, going plant
based in an environment where all of those foods were already
available. When people can start to live
(46:42):
into their values more easily, they are stickier.
When you're confronted with the discontinuity 3 times a day,
it's really hard. I'm sure many of your listeners
have had this experience. It's like hard to maintain that,
but when you go to lots of places and at lots of places,
it's easy for you to choose a plant based meal because it's
the one that sounds the most delicious and it's at the top of
the menu and it's the one that'sfirst in line at the cafeteria.
(47:05):
I'm much more optimistic about that.
Creating sort of a broader scalecultural transformation and how
people think about food and thatstuff doesn't require policy or,
you know, a government that functions, which we may or may
not have right now. So I would say that is the best
reason that I have for optimism,at least this year.
That's so good and it it's just so crazy.
(47:27):
I was at lunch with someone today and the person is is very
plant forward plant conscious and was asking me a lot of
questions about the things I have learned and discovered.
And so I felt free to share a lot of really gritty details.
And she would periodically stop and like I can't and and she
(47:50):
knows not not that it was La La La La me eat my chicken because
she wasn't. We were both having plant based
meals, but she was having an emotional response and I was on
the verge of tears as I was talking about some of the images
I've encountered. And I said that is what I am
hoping the change in this podcast does by bringing on
(48:14):
people like you to share something positive and
inspiring. It's not all devastation and
morbidity and sorrow. So I, I had just said this a few
hours ago, I swear, I swear. Like these guests are going to
(48:34):
be inspiring. So stay tuned.
And now I feel very comfortable letting her know that this this
is an episode that won't make her super sad.
So thank you. I'm glad.
Yeah, I'm glad to inject a positive note, happy to add more
optimism. I am genuinely, you know, more
optimistic. I mean, it's, it's hard and
often, you know, depressing. The challenges seem significant.
(48:57):
But at the same time, I think weshould have lots of reasons to
be hopeful. And you know, hope is also a
political act, even when doesn'tseem like there's reason to it
having it is an important thing.Yeah.
So before we wrap up, I do want to give you space to share with
the listeners how they can follow your work, get involved,
(49:20):
just be more active. Yeah, thank you for that.
The best way is to get on our newsletter, get on our e-mail
list and that's at farmforward.com.
There's a sign up button in the upper right.
You can also follow us on any ofthe social media platforms you
like best. We're on Instagram, Facebook and
TikTok and you can follow me. I'm also on on X on Twitter, for
(49:42):
better or worse. And so I'm, I'm they're often
they're sharing, putting opinions on on news of the day.
So if you're a nerd and want to talk about AG policy, come, come
find me there. But I think the best bet is,
yeah, just follow us on our newsletter is, you know, we'll
send updates about new campaigns, opportunities to take
action, ways in which you can sort of get involved either
politically or by, you know, signing a petition to support
(50:05):
the kind of incremental change that we're trying to push all
the time. And then, you know, if there are
things that we can do to supportpeople as they make transitions
in their communities, we're happy to do it.
So we're connected to a big network of organizations that
provide hands on support to helppeople transition their
institutions towards more plant based eating.
And so if you like, probably many of your listeners are, are
(50:27):
a member of a church or synagogue or have kids in a
school or have a workplace that serves food and you want to
encourage those places to do better, you know, both Harm
Forward and some of our partnerscan help support that work in a
hands on way. And so, yeah, we'd love to hear
from you if that's the case. And, you know, we we find that
that kind of change at the sort of grassroots and community
level is often what keeps us motivated to keep doing this
(50:50):
work when other things seem harder.
So yeah, we'd love to hear from your community.
So just to elaborate a little bit more on that.
So let's say there is a university that doesn't have a
very robust plant based option. Let us know, love to help.
OK, so so is that they need to get in touch or I would let you
(51:12):
know. Yeah, you can let it sounds like
there's a very specific example here you're thinking about.
Yeah, you can let me know and wecan either directly, you know,
be in contact with the university or there, you know,
some of our partner organizations like the Better
Food Foundation, you know, have robust university programs.
We run a student activist ambassador program at Better
(51:35):
Food Foundation. It's all about supporting
students as they advocate for changes on their campus
specifically in this direction and offer lots of resources and
student trainings and then provide direct consulting.
So if an institution says, yeah,actually we do want more plant
based options, how do we do that?
We have partners that will go inand do audits and help create
recommendations and help them reorient their menus, really do
(51:56):
sort of soup to soup to nuts kinds of support or institutions
that are making this change. And soup and nuts are two of my
favorite things to eat, so they are.
And yeah, absolutely. And sometimes soup with nuts,
Yes. So with that in conclusion, I
would like to ask you, and this does not have to be Thanksgiving
theme. You can, you can you know, go go
(52:19):
rogue on this. What is What are your favorite
snacks, meal, beverage? Is there something favorite that
you want to entice the listenerswith?
Well, as a parent of two small children, meals are hectic time.
And so we've gotten on a pretty,I would say not regimented, but
(52:43):
like a pretty well organized meal planning system to keep
make the dinner decision making process a little easier for
ourselves. And so my current favorite,
which we actually did last nightwas cauliflower shawarma.
So we did like roasted cauliflower and red onions,
chickpeas, tomato, cucumber salad on the side, some fresh
hummus, pita wraps and then sortof special treat, which we don't
(53:06):
always do, but sometimes we did the Beyond beef steak tips,
which I really like. We roasted those up in an air
fryer. Great all together, great little
little wrap. Delish.
That's amazing, I didn't know about the steak tips.
Oh, that's my favorite one. Steak tips are the best one of
the If you're someone who enjoysplant based meats, I think that
(53:27):
one's out of this world. That's good to know.
Yeah. We, I mean, I, I try not like
you said, special occasion kind of thing or, you know, just as a
backup. I try not to rely on them too
heavily. But yeah, my daughter loves the
impossible. The tube.
It's a la a la Jimmy Dean style,but.
The spicy pork one or the the regular one?
(53:50):
Spicy better is better. Spicy better us too.
Yeah, I I've done that one in and Passole.
It's really good in like a Passole style soup.
It's delish. I haven't thought to do that.
I'm obsessed with the fiber fueled cookbook recipe of
Passole. It's.
Nice, I don't think I made that one.
Yeah, let's check that one out. A good one to check out.
(54:12):
Yeah, it could be actually a good holiday meal a little,
right? If someone hasn't fully made
their Thanksgiving menu yet, Passole is not a bad option.
It's perfect. Well, Andrew, thank you so much
for being here. I'm so.
Grateful, glad to be here. For your for your wisdom, and I
wish you a very happy Thanksgiving.
Thank you. You too.
Well, as you could gather, Andrew Decoriolis is a very busy
(54:34):
man with a lot of items on his agenda list, so I am grateful
that he was able to carve out time for this interview.
Now let me get into the juicy bits of our conversation #1 the
end of factory farming is more likely than the end of farming
animals in general for food #2 factory farming is a method of
(54:59):
farming and also a set of laws, policies, and economic
structures that enable a certainkind of farming.
And side note, if you don't knowwhat factory farming looks like,
I do invite you to explore this topic.
And while it is incredibly disturbing, perhaps it will move
you in a direction of consuming less animals and pay more
(55:22):
attention to where your food comes from and its impact on the
environment. OK #3 Since the Cold War, the
USDA privatized industrial meat production for economic and
political gain #4 people do not want antibiotics, drugs,
chemicals, and contamination in their.
(55:42):
Food. Right, I think we can all agree
that that concept elicits a feeling of disgust #5 what is
humane washing? And for that matter, what is
green washing? These are terms that might not
be familiar to everyone, but it is the use of marketing by
companies to give the public theimpression that their products
(56:03):
align with your values. Values that pertain to the
environment would be greenwashing, and values that
pertain to animal cruelty and the sourcing of animals for
food. That's humane washing.
Which brings me to #6 because most people do not want meat,
dairy, and eggs with drugs in them, there are layers of humane
(56:28):
washing at work. There's the unregulated terms
like all natural, humanely raised, sustainable, cage free,
and pasture raised, to name a few.
And then there's these certifications like Certified
Humane Animal Welfare Certified,which unfortunately are rather
irrelevant. And because #7 the food industry
(56:51):
does not do testing for antibiotics because they don't
want to know if they're in there.
If they did, they would have to do something about it.
They would have to solve the problem, and that would be very
expensive. So sadly, you simply cannot
believe these labels on your animal food products.
It's unregulated marketing and finally #8 Andrews favorite
(57:12):
vegan foods. He told us about that
cauliflower shawarma recipe, which sounds amazing.
And I did not know about the beyond beef steak tips.
So I think that's something I will need to check out very
soon. Once again, I want to say happy
Thanksgiving to all of you listening to Andrew and again
express my gratitude that you'rehere listening, clicking like
(57:36):
leaving a review on Apple Podcasts and sharing the flirty
vegan episodes with your friendsand family.
I want to give one last plug to the show notes where you can
find a link to book a free consultation call or if you
prefer, connection call or discovery call and opportunity
for us to gather virtually and get to know each other.
(57:57):
See if I can support you on the path of flirting with veganism.
I will see you right back here in two weeks for my conversation
with the amazing and beautiful Cheryl Moss, who is doing so
much in the world of animal sanctuaries and rescue
organizations. And so, with a heart full of
gratitude and a fridge full of veggies, I send you peace, love
(58:21):
and chickpeas. Yeah.
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