February 15, 2024 • 41 mins
Maria chats with returning guest Pete Paxton about his latest undercover investigations; the upcoming puppy mill documentary Under Belly; and a new book about greyhound racing.
And Cailen LaBarge joins to talk about the fight for the Clean Water Act that SEED (Strategies for Ethical & Environmental Development: ethicalstrategies.org) has been working on.
Lotsa info and lots for you to learn so give a listen!
And Cailen LaBarge joins to talk about the fight for the Clean Water Act that SEED (Strategies for Ethical & Environmental Development: ethicalstrategies.org) has been working on.
Lotsa info and lots for you to learn so give a listen!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
It's Maria's MutS and Stuff. Whata great idea on iHeartRadio. Welcome to
Maria's MutS and Stuff with me today. It's very exciting because I have a
return guest, Pete Paxton, whois an undercover investigator rescue dogs as his
(00:23):
book. I don't want to sayhe was the star, but he was
the star of the Dealing Dogs documentaryon HBO way back when in two thousand
and six. So he is areturning guest. And I also have Kaylin
Lebarge and she is part of Strategiesfor Ethical and Environmental Development, which is
SEED, which is Ethical Strategies dotorg. So the two of you are
(00:44):
amazing with all the work that youdo and I can't wait to hear all
about it. But welcome to chattingwith me today. Yay, thank you,
thank you so much, how muchfor having it. Absolutely so our
organization SEED doing some very innovative importantstuff for environmental investigations. Yes, and
(01:08):
then there is I am very excitedabout a Puppy Mill documentary coming out and
that I'm involved with. And thena client of mine has come out with
a book kind Greyhound Raising. Theseare the exciting things. Those are a
lot of things. Those are huge. Okay, So let's talk about Seed
(01:32):
first, because this is the firstI'm hearing about Seed from you guys.
Okay, So I know you doa lot of stuff, you know,
for the environment and awareness with people, but let's talk about how how long
is it has it been around andtell me tell me more specific so I
can learn. Yeah. Yeah,yeah. We started Seed in January of
(01:56):
twenty twenty, so we had alittle bit of a rough star sure pre
pan like that was right before Ohmy goodness, yeah, it was just
right. Yeah. Actually, wedid our first case at a livestock auction
in Texas that Pete worked at inJanuary of twenty twenty, and the case
ended. It was a successful caseand we did get what we wanted to
(02:20):
get as far as evidence, butwe ended up pulling Pete because of COVID
in the case. Yeah, becauseit was just starting to ramp up.
I think this is like the firstweekend in February. Wow. Yeah,
yeah, so it was a crazytime to start a new nonprofit. So
where we really started the organization totry and focus on the connection between animal
(02:47):
rights, animal protection, community health, and you know, community groups and
people's experience and also nature and howwe as people are all intertwined with nature,
with animals, we all depend oneach other, and we hadn't really
seen an organization that was approaching thingsfrom that type of holistic perspective. So
(03:12):
that was kind of the impetus forwhy Seeds started. And we do undercover
investigations. Obviously, PEAT has donemany for us at the point, and
we also have a program that isfairly new, we started it last year
that we're facilitating and organizing and developingClean Water Act and what's called Resource and
(03:38):
Conservation Recovery Act cases against factory farmsbecause folks, you know, you hear
a lot about factory farms contributing toclimate crisis. Mesane output is you know,
causing about I think it's like something, but fourteen to eighteen percent of
greenhouse gas emissions are caused by agriculture, so obviously there's a big climate impact,
(04:02):
but you don't often hear about theimpact of fresh water and water resources
in general, and it's causing outfresh water crisis in the United States.
We have millions and millions of animalsthat we raise and slaughter for food,
and they all together. It's aboutone hundred and thirty times the amount of
(04:26):
waste that humans produce is our animalsproduced in this country, and all of
it unlike human weights, all ofit goes to the environment untreated. So
you have you know, these bigfarms and they're collecting manure in these massive,
massive lagoons a lot of the mostof the time, those lagoons are
made out of just dirt. They'renot lined. So you have basically all
(04:50):
these nutrients like nitrates, phosphorus,and you have you know, chemical fertilizers,
you have pestic sides, you havehormones, you have a lot of
bacteria E. Coli coliforms from dangerousbacteria, and all of that is sweeping
into the groundwater or being applied ontocrop lands in excess of what the crops
(05:15):
can absorb and being washed away intothe surface water. So what ens that's
happening is all of these these nutrientsbasically create algae blooms, which strips the
water of oxygen, kill all thefish and anything else that's living in that
body of water, and create adead zone. So it also nitrogen has
(05:41):
a lot of really negative human healtheffects called blue baby syndrome, where babies
can actually die if there's too muchnitrate in their blood because it essentially suffocates
them their cells can't get oxygen whereit's needed. So it's really bad for
the environment. It's bad obviously parctorfarming is bad for animals, and it's
(06:01):
really bad for the communities in whichthese farms are located. So our program
essentially is trying to help develop moreof these types of cases across the country.
We work with a really great litigator. He's amazing, he's been doing
this for decades. And yeah,we're trying to go after a lot because
(06:25):
most of these farms are operating inviolation of one or more federal environmental statutes,
right, so it's you know,no matter where you go, there's
options, sure, sure, yeah. Yeah. So we're trying to both,
you know, get the farms toclean up their ass or shut them
(06:45):
down. If they can't operate withinthe law, they shouldn't be operating at
all, and also raise awareness,get the public to understand how big of
a problem this is becoming, surebecoming a huge, huge problem. We
have groundwater and service water nitrate readingsacross the country that are in some places
(07:06):
hundreds of times higher than the EPAstandard for what's healthy, and I think
we're going to start seeing public healtheffects cascading from this compounding issue. It
just keeps getting worse every year becausethe stuff doesn't just go away. Sure
exactly is in the environment. Soyeah, that's that's our the environmental work
(07:28):
that we're doing. That's huge.I mean I just recently watched You Are
What You Eat, and I hadheard about this before, and it was
down it was somewhere down south whereit was from all the waste from a
factory farm, and and it wasbeing like all the poop was getting on
you know, in the crops andin people's houses. Yeah, it's just
(07:48):
like I think if people die fromyeahful from some like it's yeah, yeah,
it's a very dangerous situation. Ialmost feel I know about this,
which is like, which is thatlike if you look at the farms that
Kalin's talking about, right, youlook at all these factory farms and they're
near waterways, like some of themwill be right next to them, right
(08:11):
over be on an uphill, rightabove a river, and you look at
it and you're like, I guessthat's okay, and it's not. It's
not right. All the you know, yeah, all the crap is going
into the water, and it absolutelyaffects public health, and it affects wildlife
and everything. But it's so pervasivethat it's like we think it must be
okay, and how can that be? And it's like like you got to
(08:31):
remember that there was once a timewhen like smoking on plains was perfectly fucking
legal, right, right, andeveryone told us not tobacco's okay. We're
still we're still told, like youknow that that you're supposed to eat meat
every day should be a part ofyour days. You're right, of course,
(08:52):
of course, yeah, it's badfor you, right, And and
so what we have here is asituation where it's that the science is not
meeting where the law or enforcement isat right, you know, because it's
it's like because what it takes likedepending on where you're at, I mean,
(09:13):
it can take years for if youif you read because you got the
groundwater, you have the surface water, and if you read the pollution in
the groundwater, you're reading what itwas from from the newer piled up years
ago. Right, it could takea while for it to get down in
there, right, You're just waitingfor that pollution to build up and that's
(09:33):
different from the surface water. Butwhy is that? Is it because there
aren't any regulations or nobody's checking upon it, like why did it,
why does it happen, and whydoes it continue to happen? Nobody's paying
attention. It feels like, soit's it's we have a regulatory problem in
this country where we have these agenciesthat are meant to regulate certain industries and
(10:01):
their operation, but they also arevery embedded within the industry and work with
the industry. Sure so they getpaid off significant Indy. Yeah. The
way the EPA handles Clean Water Actand RECRA, they basically we'll just talk
about clean Water Acts. The CleanWater Act is administered. The EPA has
(10:24):
designated the state as the administrator forthese statutes. So the states themselves have
their own agencies that oversee permitting andwhat it's called a nifty's permit. Essentially
what you need to have if you'redischarging pollutants into a surface waterway, you
(10:45):
have to have a nifty's permit.They the requirements that you have to meet
in order to get the permits areone thing, and then there isn't a
lot of like actual substantial follow upthat's meaningful. They do notify, like
(11:05):
we have, you know, afarm that we're looking at in a state
that I won't name because this couldpotentially be a bigger case politically and as
far as media. But this producerhas a number of facilities in the state
and they have nitrate readings in thefour hundred in some of their facilities groundwater
(11:33):
monitoring wells, which is something thatcertain states require if you have a KFO
and there's nitrate issues. The EPAlimit is ten parts per million. This
there's you know, facilities that thisperson owns that are reading up in the
four hundred. They get a letterfrom the state agency every time they have
(12:01):
groundwater results submitted that just says thisis how keep monitoring. So there's not
the problem is there's no violation enforcement. There's no there's no like big slap
on their there's just a slap onthe rest. There's not even that there's
no significant enforcement for violations at all. So you have, we have the
(12:26):
information, we know it's bad,but apparently we're just not going to do
anything about it. Right, LikeI almost feel like because that's pretty common,
especially in these big agg sets wereI was going to say that,
like, I feel like because ofit's statewide as opposed to being enforced federally,
I mean, would that make adifference if it was federally because I
feel like the states that are inthe Midwest say, who have you know
(12:48):
all the cattle and the beef industry. Oh, you're going to get maybe
a slap on the wrist. Butif it was a federal thing. But
then again, would the Feds evenyou know, monitor or are would it
be the same thing that people youknow? The bottom line to me is
always when things like this happen,it's because people get paid off, you
know, and money is always whatthe big evil is, right, Yeah,
(13:11):
I think it's more the e pA is very friends. All federal
agencies are are friendly with you know, big industry obviously, right right,
And it's it's a balance they do. I don't want to say they don't
do their jobs. They there areobviously people working at EPA that are amazing
(13:31):
and they're about environmental impacts and arethere to make sure that industry is following
the standards. But the problem it'sa when you're doing it kind of piecemeal,
state by state. Certain states justdon't are very ag friendly and do
not want to push back at all, right, and unfortunately it's the citizens
(13:56):
of those states that are harmed.Sure, yeah, things like the one
of the problems with this is thatit's just like animal welfare, you know.
It's just like when you have concernsfor say, like puppy mills,
right, and you're like, allright, well, what are the standards
going to be, Like how shouldwe treat all of these dogs? Right?
(14:18):
Like, how are we going tohandle all this pollution from all these
factory farms. Well, one ofthe first things that a regulatory agency like
the ETA or for puppy mills andthe USDA does is they take a look
and they're like, well, what'sthe actual situation? Right, And they're
like, all right, so likehow much room should dogs have? How
happy should they be? And thenthey look at it and like, oh,
holy shit, it's an enormous amountof dogs all crammed into cages.
(14:43):
Okay, these standards are gonna beand just an inch over that, right,
because you have to be realistic withwhat people are doing right, right,
And so when it comes yeah,when it comes to the environmental standards,
it's the same thing. They're like, all right, well, what's
the situation. Well, the situationyou have this incredible amount of manure of
(15:03):
thecs that is just going into theair, into the water, down into
the ground, and that then theysay, well, if we want to
regulate it in a way that ishealthy for people in the environment, they
can't exist, right. So instead, it's just like you said, I
mean, it's like you know,and that gets affected by it by lobbying
(15:24):
interests in the nags saying, youknow, we want to gut the ETA.
So it's it that's really like oneof the most exciting things about this
program that set has is that isthat there are laws you can use to
fight and even shut down these factoryfarms. It's just that it's it's difficult
(15:46):
because you know the reality is thatyou really applied the law to all of
them. I mean, you shutthem all down overnight, right, So
it's it's it's it's difficult, Andthere's there's you knows, there's sides that
are always trying to say we wantmore or less enforcement, but but far
more facilities are actually violators than thanare actually a suitor held accountable for it.
(16:10):
Wow, oh for sure. Andit's not. It is a little
bit tricky. You know, we'rewhere our goal obviously is to we want
to close factory farms because they're youknow, we're animal advocates, right right.
These statutes aren't meant to close thefarms. They're meant to force people
(16:33):
operating in the space to comply withthe law, right to do the right
thing. Yeah, right, Yeah. What happens is when farms close,
it's not because the court said,okay, you're violating, you have to
close. It's because the producer can'tafford to upgrade their system, which can
cost millions and millions of dollars toone that would allow them to comply with
(16:55):
the law. Yeah, it's not, it's not. I want to be
careful about how we talk about theyou know, this work in terms of
like closing farms, just because we'renot out there saying like we're doing.
We obviously want to close farms,that's our goal, but that's not the
goal of these statutes, right right. No, that makes sense. No,
(17:17):
thank you for explaining that. Thatmakes sense. Yeah. Yeah,
But I mean, for somebody who'slistening, who wants to help, how
can people I mean being aware ofit. Yes, that's you know,
knowledge is power. But what canthe average person do who wants to help
or in any way if there isa way. Yeah, So the biggest
(17:38):
way to help is to eat plantbased Well, that's no raising animals,
un factory farms that we wouldn't havethis problem in the first place. No,
you're right. People want to supportthe work that we do. It's
very, very expensive to bring thesecases each one. You're talking about one
(17:59):
hundred and fifty to two hundred andfifty thousand dollars when you add up expert
fees, court fees, all ofthat. Sure, So if if anyone
wants to support us doing this work, you can donate to SEED at our
website at Ethical Strategies dot org.But yeah, I think the biggest thing
is to eat less meat, true, and consume less dairy. That's those
(18:22):
those are huge dairy and yeah,they're they're huge. And also pork as
well. Yeah, and all yeah, at all, all factory farms,
including you know, poultry, they'reall massive, massive polluters and they all
have this problem. Right So yeah, yeah, and anybody who likesman,
if there's any listeners out there thatthere and I do not blame them,
(18:45):
like if you eat meat, yourhunter or whatever the case is, and
like you just like you heard youknow, you just heard kail and say
like eat more plant based and yourolled your eyes, Like I don't blame
you rolling your eyes when you hearthat. But the thing is like,
I mean, I I've done I'vedone a lot of interviews of journalists were
like I'll do the cruelty case andthey'll be like, okay, so what
(19:07):
do we do? How do westop this cruelty? I'm like, don't
eat animals and they're like no,no, no, be realistic. When
you are being realistic, like likelike there's like like the Klan's explaining there's
already regulations, right, there's alreadyways to hold them accountable. You know,
uh, we already know who's violatingand they're not being held accountable.
And here we are, the planetis dying. I go past that one
(19:33):
point five mark, right, weare, we are in desperate times,
and so we want to be realistic. The actual, most realistic best thing
that anyone can do is truly havea more plant based diet. Absolutely,
and it's healthier for you as well. It's so much healthier for people.
I know. I know and trustme, I have friends who are you
know, make fun of me becauseI eat plant based or they'll be like,
(19:56):
I can't do it, I haveto have meat. And I'm always
like, you know what, tryto, Like Paul McCartney says, meatless
Monday, do one day a weekjust for starters, and you're not gonna
die because you didn't have meat threetimes a day for one day. Just
do it for one day, youknow, Like, yeah, I think
try it? No one, youknow, I always say, like every
little bit counts exactly. You gaveit at meat Wednesday, or gave it
(20:18):
up for one meal, one meala day, right, because there's no
way it's healthy to have meat threetimes a day. I mean, come
on, why do we have somuch cancer in this country? Like think
about it, you know, Imean come on. Yeah. So all
right, well that's good. Soour the listeners can go to Ethical Strategies
dot org and they can make adonation and they could also learn much,
(20:40):
you know, learn about it aswell as what they were listening to here.
So no, but I and Ithank you, you know, I
thank you for doing what you dobecause it's really important, and I'm sure
it's it's frustrating so much because it'sYeah, it's just so frustrating because I
feel like you have so much goingagainst you, but you know what,
you keep fighting the good fight andchiseling away, which is really how things
(21:03):
get done. So kudos to youguys for sure. Thank you. No,
but it's true because I think it'sstuff that people aren't aware of.
You know. I think a lotof times, like you know, people
will watch a documentary or there'll readan article and go, well, okay,
you know what can I do?Well, you can do something.
So the fact that you guys areexplaining this and you know, mapping it
(21:23):
out for people, I think isreally it's very key. You know,
knowledge is power. I always saythat, and it's true. So yeah,
I think you're right. A lotof people are very well versed in
the you know, climate, likethey're bring us gas impacts of factory farms,
but not on the water side,right right, And it's good for
them to learn and know about itbecause you know, every little bit of
(21:45):
this matters. So yeah, Andif you live in a in an agricultural
production state and you are near factoryfarms and you're worried about your water quality,
you can always reach out to uson our website and yeah, that's
great to be happy to talk toyou and give you some advice and give
(22:06):
you some resources. No, that'sgreat, excellent, all right, Well,
Pete, you mentioned the puppy milldocumentary. Let's talk about that.
Yes, so okay, Yeah,this is exciting. So this is another
one that you did an undercover investigationwith. Yeah, so this is uh,
(22:26):
this is a a documentary that isgoing to be coming out in the
process that it's getting finished. It'scalled Underbelly and if you go to docs
dot tv it'sdox dot tv, youcan find it there. It is a
documentary all about puppy mills and it'svery pro adoption. So what happened was
(22:52):
a documentary maker got in touch withme, this badass guy, Andrew Miller.
He's like these ex military and it'slike you can tell because I've never
I've worked at a lot of amazingdocumentary makers. I've never had somebody who
like can like keep up in thefield. I mean it's like it's like
(23:14):
it's like like because we're going inwhere you know, we're going to pet
stores, undercovering pet stores, youknow, deep talking to them about where
the puppies come from, and thenfilming where the actual dogs come from or
live to supply puppies. And youknow, we're showing how these pet stores
are lying. We're showing we're showinghow, you know, all these little
little mom and pop places that havea few dogs, what the real conditions
(23:37):
are like. And for some ofthem, you know, I'm having to
do surveillance work and I'm having tolike crawl through the woods to get there.
And Andrew was right there with mewith this massive camera, keeping up
perfectly quiet. It was really excitingworking with him. But but what I'm
excited about with this is that weyou know, we get into it.
(23:59):
It's not it's not all like theworst or the worst footage is in the
documentary. It really talks about howthere's a lot of shelter overpopulation. It
means a lot of anams are dyingin shelters, and you know, it
discusses kind of how we have onthe one hand, we have this kind
of like this culture clash of peoplethat they don't want to regulate anything.
(24:22):
They don't want any regulation of thebreeders they want regulation of stores. But
at the same time, you havethis thing where like the one issue that's
bringing together conservatives and liberals rescue animals. Dogs is a huge thing people you
know, like, I mean,half the people you know that I that
I work with when it comes totrying to fight pet stores they sell puppies
(24:48):
and trying to stop puppy and thosehalf the people I work with are diehard
Republicans, you know. It's that, you know, we just we come
together on this issue. And soyou get to see that in the other
thing that you that you get tosee is that it's very pro adoption,
and there's kind of like this there'sthis thing. It's really easy to just
(25:10):
be like, you know, she'severybody just love dogs, and it's like,
all right, well, you knowsome people love how dogs race or
fight other dogs, right right,right, yeah, you gotta yeah kind
of get into that mean right,And then you have this really big thing
in the dog rescue movement, whichis adopt or buy from a responsible breeder.
(25:33):
And many people who I work withand who I know and love have
that saying. And so I'm nottrying to I'm not trying to put down
anybody that says that, but Iwant to challenge it. And the reason
is that when we have so manyanimals dying in shelters all over the country,
I don't really think that right nowit's responsible to breed it all,
(25:57):
absolutely and absolutely yeah, you know, and it seems like we'll hold on,
you know, like I mean,come on, there's like there's just
from just breeding two puppies, likewhat does it matter? You know they
might be and that's I'm not apuppy mill, right, but but it's
that no matter who you are,no matter where you are, there's dogs
(26:18):
in a shelter that are either goingto be put down where they need to
be fostered to make space for otherdogs. Correct. Yeah, yeah,
so we we have that option,and so we can revisit the responsible breeding
thing at some time in the future, but it's probably not going to be
anytime soon, correct, you know, especially when we have an increasing amount
of natural dis doctors, which meanswe got to keep getting more dogs and
(26:42):
cats out of those areas and bringingthem to other places, especially inland,
and the shelters are already too full. Right, No, you're absolutely right.
Yeah, And I still think peopleand I think the more it's talked
about it, it kind of fizzlesit out. But people still are under
the impression that a dog is damagedif it's in a shelter, and it's
(27:04):
like it's so old school, butpeople still think that, And I'm like,
where did that ever come from?And why do you think that?
You know, it's just yeah,you know, it can be a thing
that if you have a dog thatis just rescued and nobody really knows who
(27:25):
the dog is and the dog mayhave gone to some trauma that yeah,
there might be something to work out. Like that can be a thing.
But but the thing is, notall of them are like the exactly.
Separation anxiety is usually way more minorthan most people think. Puppies get separation
anxiety being pulled away from their parentsexactly when they're at breeder facilities and going
to pets dolls. That's right,exactly. Yeah, And and many rescues
(27:51):
that are foster based, when they'vehad dogs for a while, they get
to know their personalities. Those dogsare fully grown, their immune systems are
developed, and they know this doglikes other dogs or cats or kids or
not, like, this dog's lazyor this dog needed to run five miles
exactly exactly. Yeah, you geta puppy, you can do all the
(28:12):
training you want, but you don'tdetermine that puppy's neurology. You don't determine
that puppy's personality. You know,you might be like, this is gonna
be the best, most physically activedog, and that dog might might be
like, dah, yeah, Ijust want to lay on the couch,
right, yeah, give me,give me the couch and popcorn exactly.
So yeah, it's it can bebetter adopting, but you know, it's
(28:37):
that I think one of the thingsis that is that, you know,
one of the things that we wedid was you know, Andrew and I
we we went and documented a lotof documented puppy bills everywhere. But one
of the things I focused on atone point was I was going around Texes
to puppy nills because uh, Texashad had a thing where you know,
(29:00):
you didn't I think you had tohave like eleven or more breeding females to
acquire state license, and the stateregulations were like kind of like the USDA
ones, right, So what Idid is I went to females all over
Texas that are small, family owned. They just they just got a few
dogs and they're just selling to whoever, right, they have less than eleven
(29:22):
breeding females. And I had todocument what the conditions were like, and
that footage is up on the CompanionAnimal Protection Society's website. And it was
fucking horror shows, I'm sure itwas. It was dogs living in their
own waste, days, weeks,months away. And I remember there was
one Texas legislator who he specifically said, he said, like, come on,
(29:48):
this can't be happening to all.No one would do this to a
French bulldog. I don't believe it. So I went out and I filmed
French bulldogs alongside you while was indocks and with weeks like there's nowhere they
could step without being right. Andthen I went to another breeder nearby who
had French bulldogs and you know what, it was pretty clean, but those
dogs were living on cage wire elevatedabove the ground, right, you know,
(30:12):
And and it's like it's like thatthat's and so an important point about
that is that a lot of peoplesay, like, well, look,
if you want to find a responsiblebreeder, what you do is you just
have to ask the right questions,right, and you have to you have
to ask to see where the dogsare. And it's like that sounds good,
right, it doesn't work really right, in reality, it doesn't work
(30:33):
exactly. Yeah. It's like sayingto someone like, you know what all
you have to do in an abusiverelationship is just look at the red flags
and if there's a red flag,you leave. Oh right, Oh I
didn't think of that, right,yeah. Yeah. People aren't like that,
correct. People will say, youcan come out and you can see
the dogs. Oh, I'm sorry, it's a bad day. I'm sorry,
(30:55):
the dogs are upset. I'm sorryone is sick. And then ninety
nine percent of the time people willignore the red flags because that puppy is
cute and that's how puppy mills standbusiness. That's right, you're absolutely right,
absolutely, uh huh, you're right. Yeah. So, so this
(31:15):
documentary Underbelly is all about exposing theproblem, goes into detail about it does
not put down you know, anybody, doesn't try and demonize breeders, but
just explains what the situation is andpromotes adoption. So I'm very excited about
it. So if you go todoc dot tv. You can check it
out. You can join an emaillist, and the more people that are
(31:36):
they're not asking for anything from anyone, right, but the more people that
we get on there, the morepeople that then will know that, Like
you know, if we get itup on a YouTube channel before we before
it's promoted, to get a bunchof subscribers. And what that does is
that makes it where a distributor canlook at that and say, oh,
you have that many subscribers. Okay, we'll take it. Distributor would be
(31:57):
like we're talking like you know,I'm just going to say that right right,
Oh that's cool. So okay,So we can go to dos dox
dot tv and and join the mailinglist. Listeners can do that, I
can do that, and that willhelp quick and you'll see underbelly right there,
you'll see a little of me climbto a tree doing saying awesome,
(32:21):
no good because there's always you know, call to action, what do we
do? So we can go toEthical Strategies dot org to learn more about
the Clean Water Act and all thework you're doing there. And we can
go to docs dox dot tv andsign up for the email list. In
this way. Yeah, that wouldbe awesome for a distributor to pick it
up and then we can all seeit and then you know, again,
spread the word and people will knowthe truth if they and I think people
(32:45):
a lot of times know the truth, they just don't want to hear it.
And that and too bad, youknow what I mean, Like we
have to keep repeating it over andover. The oldies. Yeah, yeah,
oh exactly. The dog, Yeah, the old dog. Senior dogs,
Yeah, have such a hard timegetting adopted. It's true. Everybody
(33:06):
wants a puppy. But I've afterFloyd, the dog who lives to be
nineteen died in twenty twenty one,I adopted a ten year old grumpy Chihuahua.
No good for you. Has becomethe light of my life. The
senior dogs just are so grateful.I was just going to say, yes,
they're just so happy to have ahome, and yes, absolutely it
(33:30):
just they'll warm up your home absolutelylife. Yeah. Yeah, so adopt
the old guys. It's true.No, that's very very important because many
times too the older dogs, youknow, their owner died and nobody would
take the dog, so they windup in the shelter and it's like,
it's not their fault. It's nevertheir faults. It's our faults for not
arranging, you know, so absolutely, absolutely okay, And we also want
(33:57):
to talk about the greyhound book.You mentioned a friend of wrote a book.
Yes, oh, yes, yeah. So one of the clients I
have is Great two k Usa,and my work for them has been filming
greyhound trainers who use live rabbits totrain the dogs. The rabbits are torn
apart alive. We talked about thatthe last time, Yes, we talked
(34:19):
about this still last time you wereon with me. Yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah, awful, awesome. I don't need to go any more
detail about that, but listeners,if you're not aware, that is how
greyhounds are trained. The grand industryhas always said that. It's not that.
I've filmed trainers in yeah, one, two, three, four states.
In fact, one of the trainersit was a cop. I remember
that story. Yeah, yeah,I mean, it's just it's it's a
(34:40):
it's a horrible situation. But whatthe dogs go through is also is terrible.
You know, besides how often theyget injured and then they get killed.
You know, you you'd think yourcommon sense would be like, wait,
a minute. These are greyhounds.They're dogs used for racing, right,
So you so aren't they out thereon a lot of space. No,
yeah, they they're in these littlethey're they're in they're in pens at
(35:01):
some facilities. But then once they'reready and they're going to go racing,
they're just in cages. They're inthese little cages and they're muzzled. And
I understand that doesn't make a lotof sense, but that's just what they
do because it saves money to justkeep them there. That's so so uh
right now, it's that you know, uh, greyhound racing and it's it's
(35:22):
it's it's you know, it's gettingbanned state by state and and to finally
outlaw we have there's a federal billthat is always there and it's just never
quite passing because there's just not alot of attention on it. But uh,
to help push the effort, theygreat Tuque Usa has written a book
(35:44):
called Brooklyn Goes Home and it isthe incredible story of a greyhound in China
that they were able to bring tothe US to rescue and to show what
the dog, what the dog wentthrough, and what the dog's personality was
like going to rescue and then andthen and then you know, finding a
(36:04):
loving home. And it is theentire story of them fighting greyhound racing and
banning it state by state. Andif you ever want to understand like what
goes on behind the scenes, thisis like I mean, this is like
a peels back the entire curtain onlikethe good, bad, and the ugly
(36:25):
all of it. Of here's howit is working with you know, all
these Republicans and Democrats together trying tofight greyhound racing and all of the horrible
underhanded tricks that the industry has doneto try to keep it alive. And
you can you can you can learnall about it, and you can go
to Great two k USA dot organd you can then learn about what you
(36:51):
can do to support the federal bill. This this is I'm excited about because
this is realistic. We could actuallydo this. We could end an entire
type of animal suffering. And thisis not taking someone's job, right,
like I got all the poor industry. Now this is a bunch of like
rich pricks that want to bet ondogs and you're just turning them. You
(37:15):
can't be evolved with the legal animalcruelty anymore stop right, exactly, exactly
right. They're not going to missout. They should go volunteer somewhere or
do something else with their money,exactly, you know, yeah, you
go donate to a charity or something. Yeah, exactly. That's that's great.
No, but that's perfect. Okay. So so this is good.
We have a lot of call toactions for the listeners to do because I
(37:36):
love that. So Brooklyn goes homeand that's a great g r E y
two the number two KUSA dot organd you can order the book through there.
And I saw the book actually couldbe ordered anywhere, but I think
it's probably better to order it throughthe dot org through the rescue. Correct.
I think you suld get it onAmazon. Get on Amazon, yeah,
(37:57):
yeah, yeah, if you goto if you go to their web
site. Yeah, you can getinformation on everything you can do to support
the legislator, the federal bill.And and because that's always that's always somewhere,
yeah, and then always getting pushedaside for all of the other the
other stuff. But this is reallyimportant, but it's always right there.
Yeah, no, and it's veryimportant. So well, my big question
(38:19):
for the two of you, uh, do you two ever sleep. Do
you ever rest, because I feellike, you know, there's no rest
for the weiry. You guys arealways doing something. It's I mean,
it's pretty incredible. We both haveInsamia. Yes, I'm sure. I'm
sure. I'm sure because I justI feel like between the two of you,
you do so much and I'm surewhen you try to close your eyes
(38:42):
at night, your minds are racingand you're thinking of the next thing or
something, and it's just, youknow, we're really grateful for both of
you and doing all that you dofor all of us animal lovers. You
know, all I can say isI keep fighting the good fight. But
thank you for that. Thank you. We feel very lucky. It is
an absolute privilege to be able todo this work and represent those that can't
(39:06):
represent themselves. Sure, so yeah, I feel super lucky and grateful that
I get to have this job.It's excellent. Well, and it's we
appreciate that. But yeah, Imean, we gotta say. We got
to say. I mean, it'slike you you're one of those people where
it's like, you know, you'reThere's a lot of different podcasts and radio
(39:27):
hosts that are out there, andmost of them are like you know how
I'm going to get a lot oflisteners. I'm going to talk about how
I, you know, got drunkand got in a fight, or I'm
like, you know, I'm gonnamake fun of you know, someone like
you know, like, yeah,you're discussing things that matter. So that
is that is very well? Thanks? Well, yeah, because it's very
important to me. You know,like you guys, you give a voice
(39:50):
to the voice list and I alwaysfelt that way too, Like yeah,
I have a microphone, I cantalk about music and stuff, but there's
also other important things, you know, and talking about animals and helping them
animal animal welfare and rescue is youknow, has always been very very important
to me. But I couldn't doit without people like you, so you
know, it goes both ways.So I do appreciate and you guys always
(40:12):
make time for me, and Ido appreciate that as well. We're so
we're exciting, ye and wide absolutelywell Kaylin Lebarge and Pete Paxton, I
thank you. Uh you know,like I said, no no rest for
the weary, but keep keep fightingthe good fight. And uh for the
listeners who want to do something,you can go to ethical Strategies dot org.
(40:37):
You can go to to learn moreabout SEED and the Clean Water Act
and everything else that they do.Uh under Belly is the documentary, the
Puppy Mill documentary, And you cango to docs do x dot tv.
Get on the mailing list so theycan get a distributor. That would be
amazing, and also look for thebook Brooklyn Goes Home and Let's get Greyhounds
(40:59):
not racing any more. I mean, come on, it's ridiculous. It's
twenty twenty four. Enough of thisshit, right and I know it's like,
come on, let's let's let themjust be at dogs, you know.
And you can go to Gray gr e y two number two,
KUSA dot org or wherever you getyour books. So thank you Pete and
Kaylin, and we will definitely talkagain. Pete, you know you are
(41:21):
a regular guest and now I wantthe two of you to be more regular
guests and we'll talk again and seewhat's going on on the agenda and everything
else. But thank you, thankyou both for everything. Thank you,
thank you Maria, you rock,you know
It's Maria's MutS and Stuff. Whata great idea on iHeartRadio. Welcome to
Maria's MutS and Stuff with me today. It's very exciting because I have a
return guest, Pete Paxton, whois an undercover investigator rescue dogs as his
(00:23):
book. I don't want to sayhe was the star, but he was
the star of the Dealing Dogs documentaryon HBO way back when in two thousand
and six. So he is areturning guest. And I also have Kaylin
Lebarge and she is part of Strategiesfor Ethical and Environmental Development, which is
SEED, which is Ethical Strategies dotorg. So the two of you are
(00:44):
amazing with all the work that youdo and I can't wait to hear all
about it. But welcome to chattingwith me today. Yay, thank you,
thank you so much, how muchfor having it. Absolutely so our
organization SEED doing some very innovative importantstuff for environmental investigations. Yes, and
(01:08):
then there is I am very excitedabout a Puppy Mill documentary coming out and
that I'm involved with. And thena client of mine has come out with
a book kind Greyhound Raising. Theseare the exciting things. Those are a
lot of things. Those are huge. Okay, So let's talk about Seed
(01:32):
first, because this is the firstI'm hearing about Seed from you guys.
Okay, So I know you doa lot of stuff, you know,
for the environment and awareness with people, but let's talk about how how long
is it has it been around andtell me tell me more specific so I
can learn. Yeah. Yeah,yeah. We started Seed in January of
(01:56):
twenty twenty, so we had alittle bit of a rough star sure pre
pan like that was right before Ohmy goodness, yeah, it was just
right. Yeah. Actually, wedid our first case at a livestock auction
in Texas that Pete worked at inJanuary of twenty twenty, and the case
ended. It was a successful caseand we did get what we wanted to
(02:20):
get as far as evidence, butwe ended up pulling Pete because of COVID
in the case. Yeah, becauseit was just starting to ramp up.
I think this is like the firstweekend in February. Wow. Yeah,
yeah, so it was a crazytime to start a new nonprofit. So
where we really started the organization totry and focus on the connection between animal
(02:47):
rights, animal protection, community health, and you know, community groups and
people's experience and also nature and howwe as people are all intertwined with nature,
with animals, we all depend oneach other, and we hadn't really
seen an organization that was approaching thingsfrom that type of holistic perspective. So
(03:12):
that was kind of the impetus forwhy Seeds started. And we do undercover
investigations. Obviously, PEAT has donemany for us at the point, and
we also have a program that isfairly new, we started it last year
that we're facilitating and organizing and developingClean Water Act and what's called Resource and
(03:38):
Conservation Recovery Act cases against factory farmsbecause folks, you know, you hear
a lot about factory farms contributing toclimate crisis. Mesane output is you know,
causing about I think it's like something, but fourteen to eighteen percent of
greenhouse gas emissions are caused by agriculture, so obviously there's a big climate impact,
(04:02):
but you don't often hear about theimpact of fresh water and water resources
in general, and it's causing outfresh water crisis in the United States.
We have millions and millions of animalsthat we raise and slaughter for food,
and they all together. It's aboutone hundred and thirty times the amount of
(04:26):
waste that humans produce is our animalsproduced in this country, and all of
it unlike human weights, all ofit goes to the environment untreated. So
you have you know, these bigfarms and they're collecting manure in these massive,
massive lagoons a lot of the mostof the time, those lagoons are
made out of just dirt. They'renot lined. So you have basically all
(04:50):
these nutrients like nitrates, phosphorus,and you have you know, chemical fertilizers,
you have pestic sides, you havehormones, you have a lot of
bacteria E. Coli coliforms from dangerousbacteria, and all of that is sweeping
into the groundwater or being applied ontocrop lands in excess of what the crops
(05:15):
can absorb and being washed away intothe surface water. So what ens that's
happening is all of these these nutrientsbasically create algae blooms, which strips the
water of oxygen, kill all thefish and anything else that's living in that
body of water, and create adead zone. So it also nitrogen has
(05:41):
a lot of really negative human healtheffects called blue baby syndrome, where babies
can actually die if there's too muchnitrate in their blood because it essentially suffocates
them their cells can't get oxygen whereit's needed. So it's really bad for
the environment. It's bad obviously parctorfarming is bad for animals, and it's
(06:01):
really bad for the communities in whichthese farms are located. So our program
essentially is trying to help develop moreof these types of cases across the country.
We work with a really great litigator. He's amazing, he's been doing
this for decades. And yeah,we're trying to go after a lot because
(06:25):
most of these farms are operating inviolation of one or more federal environmental statutes,
right, so it's you know,no matter where you go, there's
options, sure, sure, yeah. Yeah. So we're trying to both,
you know, get the farms toclean up their ass or shut them
(06:45):
down. If they can't operate withinthe law, they shouldn't be operating at
all, and also raise awareness,get the public to understand how big of
a problem this is becoming, surebecoming a huge, huge problem. We
have groundwater and service water nitrate readingsacross the country that are in some places
(07:06):
hundreds of times higher than the EPAstandard for what's healthy, and I think
we're going to start seeing public healtheffects cascading from this compounding issue. It
just keeps getting worse every year becausethe stuff doesn't just go away. Sure
exactly is in the environment. Soyeah, that's that's our the environmental work
(07:28):
that we're doing. That's huge.I mean I just recently watched You Are
What You Eat, and I hadheard about this before, and it was
down it was somewhere down south whereit was from all the waste from a
factory farm, and and it wasbeing like all the poop was getting on
you know, in the crops andin people's houses. Yeah, it's just
(07:48):
like I think if people die fromyeahful from some like it's yeah, yeah,
it's a very dangerous situation. Ialmost feel I know about this,
which is like, which is thatlike if you look at the farms that
Kalin's talking about, right, youlook at all these factory farms and they're
near waterways, like some of themwill be right next to them, right
(08:11):
over be on an uphill, rightabove a river, and you look at
it and you're like, I guessthat's okay, and it's not. It's
not right. All the you know, yeah, all the crap is going
into the water, and it absolutelyaffects public health, and it affects wildlife
and everything. But it's so pervasivethat it's like we think it must be
okay, and how can that be? And it's like like you got to
(08:31):
remember that there was once a timewhen like smoking on plains was perfectly fucking
legal, right, right, andeveryone told us not tobacco's okay. We're
still we're still told, like youknow that that you're supposed to eat meat
every day should be a part ofyour days. You're right, of course,
(08:52):
of course, yeah, it's badfor you, right, And and
so what we have here is asituation where it's that the science is not
meeting where the law or enforcement isat right, you know, because it's
it's like because what it takes likedepending on where you're at, I mean,
(09:13):
it can take years for if youif you read because you got the
groundwater, you have the surface water, and if you read the pollution in
the groundwater, you're reading what itwas from from the newer piled up years
ago. Right, it could takea while for it to get down in
there, right, You're just waitingfor that pollution to build up and that's
(09:33):
different from the surface water. Butwhy is that? Is it because there
aren't any regulations or nobody's checking upon it, like why did it,
why does it happen, and whydoes it continue to happen? Nobody's paying
attention. It feels like, soit's it's we have a regulatory problem in
this country where we have these agenciesthat are meant to regulate certain industries and
(10:01):
their operation, but they also arevery embedded within the industry and work with
the industry. Sure so they getpaid off significant Indy. Yeah. The
way the EPA handles Clean Water Actand RECRA, they basically we'll just talk
about clean Water Acts. The CleanWater Act is administered. The EPA has
(10:24):
designated the state as the administrator forthese statutes. So the states themselves have
their own agencies that oversee permitting andwhat it's called a nifty's permit. Essentially
what you need to have if you'redischarging pollutants into a surface waterway, you
(10:45):
have to have a nifty's permit.They the requirements that you have to meet
in order to get the permits areone thing, and then there isn't a
lot of like actual substantial follow upthat's meaningful. They do notify, like
(11:05):
we have, you know, afarm that we're looking at in a state
that I won't name because this couldpotentially be a bigger case politically and as
far as media. But this producerhas a number of facilities in the state
and they have nitrate readings in thefour hundred in some of their facilities groundwater
(11:33):
monitoring wells, which is something thatcertain states require if you have a KFO
and there's nitrate issues. The EPAlimit is ten parts per million. This
there's you know, facilities that thisperson owns that are reading up in the
four hundred. They get a letterfrom the state agency every time they have
(12:01):
groundwater results submitted that just says thisis how keep monitoring. So there's not
the problem is there's no violation enforcement. There's no there's no like big slap
on their there's just a slap onthe rest. There's not even that there's
no significant enforcement for violations at all. So you have, we have the
(12:26):
information, we know it's bad,but apparently we're just not going to do
anything about it. Right, LikeI almost feel like because that's pretty common,
especially in these big agg sets wereI was going to say that,
like, I feel like because ofit's statewide as opposed to being enforced federally,
I mean, would that make adifference if it was federally because I
feel like the states that are inthe Midwest say, who have you know
(12:48):
all the cattle and the beef industry. Oh, you're going to get maybe
a slap on the wrist. Butif it was a federal thing. But
then again, would the Feds evenyou know, monitor or are would it
be the same thing that people youknow? The bottom line to me is
always when things like this happen,it's because people get paid off, you
know, and money is always whatthe big evil is, right, Yeah,
(13:11):
I think it's more the e pA is very friends. All federal
agencies are are friendly with you know, big industry obviously, right right,
And it's it's a balance they do. I don't want to say they don't
do their jobs. They there areobviously people working at EPA that are amazing
(13:31):
and they're about environmental impacts and arethere to make sure that industry is following
the standards. But the problem it'sa when you're doing it kind of piecemeal,
state by state. Certain states justdon't are very ag friendly and do
not want to push back at all, right, and unfortunately it's the citizens
(13:56):
of those states that are harmed.Sure, yeah, things like the one
of the problems with this is thatit's just like animal welfare, you know.
It's just like when you have concernsfor say, like puppy mills,
right, and you're like, allright, well, what are the standards
going to be, Like how shouldwe treat all of these dogs? Right?
(14:18):
Like, how are we going tohandle all this pollution from all these
factory farms. Well, one ofthe first things that a regulatory agency like
the ETA or for puppy mills andthe USDA does is they take a look
and they're like, well, what'sthe actual situation? Right, And they're
like, all right, so likehow much room should dogs have? How
happy should they be? And thenthey look at it and like, oh,
holy shit, it's an enormous amountof dogs all crammed into cages.
(14:43):
Okay, these standards are gonna beand just an inch over that, right,
because you have to be realistic withwhat people are doing right, right,
And so when it comes yeah,when it comes to the environmental standards,
it's the same thing. They're like, all right, well, what's
the situation. Well, the situationyou have this incredible amount of manure of
(15:03):
thecs that is just going into theair, into the water, down into
the ground, and that then theysay, well, if we want to
regulate it in a way that ishealthy for people in the environment, they
can't exist, right. So instead, it's just like you said, I
mean, it's like you know,and that gets affected by it by lobbying
(15:24):
interests in the nags saying, youknow, we want to gut the ETA.
So it's it that's really like oneof the most exciting things about this
program that set has is that isthat there are laws you can use to
fight and even shut down these factoryfarms. It's just that it's it's difficult
(15:46):
because you know the reality is thatyou really applied the law to all of
them. I mean, you shutthem all down overnight, right, So
it's it's it's it's difficult, Andthere's there's you knows, there's sides that
are always trying to say we wantmore or less enforcement, but but far
more facilities are actually violators than thanare actually a suitor held accountable for it.
(16:10):
Wow, oh for sure. Andit's not. It is a little
bit tricky. You know, we'rewhere our goal obviously is to we want
to close factory farms because they're youknow, we're animal advocates, right right.
These statutes aren't meant to close thefarms. They're meant to force people
(16:33):
operating in the space to comply withthe law, right to do the right
thing. Yeah, right, Yeah. What happens is when farms close,
it's not because the court said,okay, you're violating, you have to
close. It's because the producer can'tafford to upgrade their system, which can
cost millions and millions of dollars toone that would allow them to comply with
(16:55):
the law. Yeah, it's not, it's not. I want to be
careful about how we talk about theyou know, this work in terms of
like closing farms, just because we'renot out there saying like we're doing.
We obviously want to close farms,that's our goal, but that's not the
goal of these statutes, right right. No, that makes sense. No,
(17:17):
thank you for explaining that. Thatmakes sense. Yeah. Yeah,
But I mean, for somebody who'slistening, who wants to help, how
can people I mean being aware ofit. Yes, that's you know,
knowledge is power. But what canthe average person do who wants to help
or in any way if there isa way. Yeah, So the biggest
(17:38):
way to help is to eat plantbased Well, that's no raising animals,
un factory farms that we wouldn't havethis problem in the first place. No,
you're right. People want to supportthe work that we do. It's
very, very expensive to bring thesecases each one. You're talking about one
(17:59):
hundred and fifty to two hundred andfifty thousand dollars when you add up expert
fees, court fees, all ofthat. Sure, So if if anyone
wants to support us doing this work, you can donate to SEED at our
website at Ethical Strategies dot org.But yeah, I think the biggest thing
is to eat less meat, true, and consume less dairy. That's those
(18:22):
those are huge dairy and yeah,they're they're huge. And also pork as
well. Yeah, and all yeah, at all, all factory farms,
including you know, poultry, they'reall massive, massive polluters and they all
have this problem. Right So yeah, yeah, and anybody who likesman,
if there's any listeners out there thatthere and I do not blame them,
(18:45):
like if you eat meat, yourhunter or whatever the case is, and
like you just like you heard youknow, you just heard kail and say
like eat more plant based and yourolled your eyes, Like I don't blame
you rolling your eyes when you hearthat. But the thing is like,
I mean, I I've done I'vedone a lot of interviews of journalists were
like I'll do the cruelty case andthey'll be like, okay, so what
(19:07):
do we do? How do westop this cruelty? I'm like, don't
eat animals and they're like no,no, no, be realistic. When
you are being realistic, like likelike there's like like the Klan's explaining there's
already regulations, right, there's alreadyways to hold them accountable. You know,
uh, we already know who's violatingand they're not being held accountable.
And here we are, the planetis dying. I go past that one
(19:33):
point five mark, right, weare, we are in desperate times,
and so we want to be realistic. The actual, most realistic best thing
that anyone can do is truly havea more plant based diet. Absolutely,
and it's healthier for you as well. It's so much healthier for people.
I know. I know and trustme, I have friends who are you
know, make fun of me becauseI eat plant based or they'll be like,
(19:56):
I can't do it, I haveto have meat. And I'm always
like, you know what, tryto, Like Paul McCartney says, meatless
Monday, do one day a weekjust for starters, and you're not gonna
die because you didn't have meat threetimes a day for one day. Just
do it for one day, youknow, Like, yeah, I think
try it? No one, youknow, I always say, like every
little bit counts exactly. You gaveit at meat Wednesday, or gave it
(20:18):
up for one meal, one meala day, right, because there's no
way it's healthy to have meat threetimes a day. I mean, come
on, why do we have somuch cancer in this country? Like think
about it, you know, Imean come on. Yeah. So all
right, well that's good. Soour the listeners can go to Ethical Strategies
dot org and they can make adonation and they could also learn much,
(20:40):
you know, learn about it aswell as what they were listening to here.
So no, but I and Ithank you, you know, I
thank you for doing what you dobecause it's really important, and I'm sure
it's it's frustrating so much because it'sYeah, it's just so frustrating because I
feel like you have so much goingagainst you, but you know what,
you keep fighting the good fight andchiseling away, which is really how things
(21:03):
get done. So kudos to youguys for sure. Thank you. No,
but it's true because I think it'sstuff that people aren't aware of.
You know. I think a lotof times, like you know, people
will watch a documentary or there'll readan article and go, well, okay,
you know what can I do?Well, you can do something.
So the fact that you guys areexplaining this and you know, mapping it
(21:23):
out for people, I think isreally it's very key. You know,
knowledge is power. I always saythat, and it's true. So yeah,
I think you're right. A lotof people are very well versed in
the you know, climate, likethey're bring us gas impacts of factory farms,
but not on the water side,right right, And it's good for
them to learn and know about itbecause you know, every little bit of
(21:45):
this matters. So yeah, Andif you live in a in an agricultural
production state and you are near factoryfarms and you're worried about your water quality,
you can always reach out to uson our website and yeah, that's
great to be happy to talk toyou and give you some advice and give
(22:06):
you some resources. No, that'sgreat, excellent, all right, Well,
Pete, you mentioned the puppy milldocumentary. Let's talk about that.
Yes, so okay, Yeah,this is exciting. So this is another
one that you did an undercover investigationwith. Yeah, so this is uh,
(22:26):
this is a a documentary that isgoing to be coming out in the
process that it's getting finished. It'scalled Underbelly and if you go to docs
dot tv it'sdox dot tv, youcan find it there. It is a
documentary all about puppy mills and it'svery pro adoption. So what happened was
(22:52):
a documentary maker got in touch withme, this badass guy, Andrew Miller.
He's like these ex military and it'slike you can tell because I've never
I've worked at a lot of amazingdocumentary makers. I've never had somebody who
like can like keep up in thefield. I mean it's like it's like
(23:14):
it's like like because we're going inwhere you know, we're going to pet
stores, undercovering pet stores, youknow, deep talking to them about where
the puppies come from, and thenfilming where the actual dogs come from or
live to supply puppies. And youknow, we're showing how these pet stores
are lying. We're showing we're showinghow, you know, all these little
little mom and pop places that havea few dogs, what the real conditions
(23:37):
are like. And for some ofthem, you know, I'm having to
do surveillance work and I'm having tolike crawl through the woods to get there.
And Andrew was right there with mewith this massive camera, keeping up
perfectly quiet. It was really excitingworking with him. But but what I'm
excited about with this is that weyou know, we get into it.
(23:59):
It's not it's not all like theworst or the worst footage is in the
documentary. It really talks about howthere's a lot of shelter overpopulation. It
means a lot of anams are dyingin shelters, and you know, it
discusses kind of how we have onthe one hand, we have this kind
of like this culture clash of peoplethat they don't want to regulate anything.
(24:22):
They don't want any regulation of thebreeders they want regulation of stores. But
at the same time, you havethis thing where like the one issue that's
bringing together conservatives and liberals rescue animals. Dogs is a huge thing people you
know, like, I mean,half the people you know that I that
I work with when it comes totrying to fight pet stores they sell puppies
(24:48):
and trying to stop puppy and thosehalf the people I work with are diehard
Republicans, you know. It's that, you know, we just we come
together on this issue. And soyou get to see that in the other
thing that you that you get tosee is that it's very pro adoption,
and there's kind of like this there'sthis thing. It's really easy to just
(25:10):
be like, you know, she'severybody just love dogs, and it's like,
all right, well, you knowsome people love how dogs race or
fight other dogs, right right,right, yeah, you gotta yeah kind
of get into that mean right,And then you have this really big thing
in the dog rescue movement, whichis adopt or buy from a responsible breeder.
(25:33):
And many people who I work withand who I know and love have
that saying. And so I'm nottrying to I'm not trying to put down
anybody that says that, but Iwant to challenge it. And the reason
is that when we have so manyanimals dying in shelters all over the country,
I don't really think that right nowit's responsible to breed it all,
(25:57):
absolutely and absolutely yeah, you know, and it seems like we'll hold on,
you know, like I mean,come on, there's like there's just
from just breeding two puppies, likewhat does it matter? You know they
might be and that's I'm not apuppy mill, right, but but it's
that no matter who you are,no matter where you are, there's dogs
(26:18):
in a shelter that are either goingto be put down where they need to
be fostered to make space for otherdogs. Correct. Yeah, yeah,
so we we have that option,and so we can revisit the responsible breeding
thing at some time in the future, but it's probably not going to be
anytime soon, correct, you know, especially when we have an increasing amount
of natural dis doctors, which meanswe got to keep getting more dogs and
(26:42):
cats out of those areas and bringingthem to other places, especially inland,
and the shelters are already too full. Right, No, you're absolutely right.
Yeah, And I still think peopleand I think the more it's talked
about it, it kind of fizzlesit out. But people still are under
the impression that a dog is damagedif it's in a shelter, and it's
(27:04):
like it's so old school, butpeople still think that, And I'm like,
where did that ever come from?And why do you think that?
You know, it's just yeah,you know, it can be a thing
that if you have a dog thatis just rescued and nobody really knows who
(27:25):
the dog is and the dog mayhave gone to some trauma that yeah,
there might be something to work out. Like that can be a thing.
But but the thing is, notall of them are like the exactly.
Separation anxiety is usually way more minorthan most people think. Puppies get separation
anxiety being pulled away from their parentsexactly when they're at breeder facilities and going
to pets dolls. That's right,exactly. Yeah, And and many rescues
(27:51):
that are foster based, when they'vehad dogs for a while, they get
to know their personalities. Those dogsare fully grown, their immune systems are
developed, and they know this doglikes other dogs or cats or kids or
not, like, this dog's lazyor this dog needed to run five miles
exactly exactly. Yeah, you geta puppy, you can do all the
(28:12):
training you want, but you don'tdetermine that puppy's neurology. You don't determine
that puppy's personality. You know,you might be like, this is gonna
be the best, most physically activedog, and that dog might might be
like, dah, yeah, Ijust want to lay on the couch,
right, yeah, give me,give me the couch and popcorn exactly.
So yeah, it's it can bebetter adopting, but you know, it's
(28:37):
that I think one of the thingsis that is that, you know,
one of the things that we wedid was you know, Andrew and I
we we went and documented a lotof documented puppy bills everywhere. But one
of the things I focused on atone point was I was going around Texes
to puppy nills because uh, Texashad had a thing where you know,
(29:00):
you didn't I think you had tohave like eleven or more breeding females to
acquire state license, and the stateregulations were like kind of like the USDA
ones, right, So what Idid is I went to females all over
Texas that are small, family owned. They just they just got a few
dogs and they're just selling to whoever, right, they have less than eleven
(29:22):
breeding females. And I had todocument what the conditions were like, and
that footage is up on the CompanionAnimal Protection Society's website. And it was
fucking horror shows, I'm sure itwas. It was dogs living in their
own waste, days, weeks,months away. And I remember there was
one Texas legislator who he specifically said, he said, like, come on,
(29:48):
this can't be happening to all.No one would do this to a
French bulldog. I don't believe it. So I went out and I filmed
French bulldogs alongside you while was indocks and with weeks like there's nowhere they
could step without being right. Andthen I went to another breeder nearby who
had French bulldogs and you know what, it was pretty clean, but those
dogs were living on cage wire elevatedabove the ground, right, you know,
(30:12):
And and it's like it's like thatthat's and so an important point about
that is that a lot of peoplesay, like, well, look,
if you want to find a responsiblebreeder, what you do is you just
have to ask the right questions,right, and you have to you have
to ask to see where the dogsare. And it's like that sounds good,
right, it doesn't work really right, in reality, it doesn't work
(30:33):
exactly. Yeah. It's like sayingto someone like, you know what all
you have to do in an abusiverelationship is just look at the red flags
and if there's a red flag,you leave. Oh right, Oh I
didn't think of that, right,yeah. Yeah. People aren't like that,
correct. People will say, youcan come out and you can see
the dogs. Oh, I'm sorry, it's a bad day. I'm sorry,
(30:55):
the dogs are upset. I'm sorryone is sick. And then ninety
nine percent of the time people willignore the red flags because that puppy is
cute and that's how puppy mills standbusiness. That's right, you're absolutely right,
absolutely, uh huh, you're right. Yeah. So, so this
(31:15):
documentary Underbelly is all about exposing theproblem, goes into detail about it does
not put down you know, anybody, doesn't try and demonize breeders, but
just explains what the situation is andpromotes adoption. So I'm very excited about
it. So if you go todoc dot tv. You can check it
out. You can join an emaillist, and the more people that are
(31:36):
they're not asking for anything from anyone, right, but the more people that
we get on there, the morepeople that then will know that, Like
you know, if we get itup on a YouTube channel before we before
it's promoted, to get a bunchof subscribers. And what that does is
that makes it where a distributor canlook at that and say, oh,
you have that many subscribers. Okay, we'll take it. Distributor would be
(31:57):
like we're talking like you know,I'm just going to say that right right,
Oh that's cool. So okay,So we can go to dos dox
dot tv and and join the mailinglist. Listeners can do that, I
can do that, and that willhelp quick and you'll see underbelly right there,
you'll see a little of me climbto a tree doing saying awesome,
(32:21):
no good because there's always you know, call to action, what do we
do? So we can go toEthical Strategies dot org to learn more about
the Clean Water Act and all thework you're doing there. And we can
go to docs dox dot tv andsign up for the email list. In
this way. Yeah, that wouldbe awesome for a distributor to pick it
up and then we can all seeit and then you know, again,
spread the word and people will knowthe truth if they and I think people
(32:45):
a lot of times know the truth, they just don't want to hear it.
And that and too bad, youknow what I mean, Like we
have to keep repeating it over andover. The oldies. Yeah, yeah,
oh exactly. The dog, Yeah, the old dog. Senior dogs,
Yeah, have such a hard timegetting adopted. It's true. Everybody
(33:06):
wants a puppy. But I've afterFloyd, the dog who lives to be
nineteen died in twenty twenty one,I adopted a ten year old grumpy Chihuahua.
No good for you. Has becomethe light of my life. The
senior dogs just are so grateful.I was just going to say, yes,
they're just so happy to have ahome, and yes, absolutely it
(33:30):
just they'll warm up your home absolutelylife. Yeah. Yeah, so adopt
the old guys. It's true.No, that's very very important because many
times too the older dogs, youknow, their owner died and nobody would
take the dog, so they windup in the shelter and it's like,
it's not their fault. It's nevertheir faults. It's our faults for not
arranging, you know, so absolutely, absolutely okay, And we also want
(33:57):
to talk about the greyhound book.You mentioned a friend of wrote a book.
Yes, oh, yes, yeah. So one of the clients I
have is Great two k Usa,and my work for them has been filming
greyhound trainers who use live rabbits totrain the dogs. The rabbits are torn
apart alive. We talked about thatthe last time, Yes, we talked
(34:19):
about this still last time you wereon with me. Yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah, awful, awesome. I don't need to go any more
detail about that, but listeners,if you're not aware, that is how
greyhounds are trained. The grand industryhas always said that. It's not that.
I've filmed trainers in yeah, one, two, three, four states.
In fact, one of the trainersit was a cop. I remember
that story. Yeah, yeah,I mean, it's just it's it's a
(34:40):
it's a horrible situation. But whatthe dogs go through is also is terrible.
You know, besides how often theyget injured and then they get killed.
You know, you you'd think yourcommon sense would be like, wait,
a minute. These are greyhounds.They're dogs used for racing, right,
So you so aren't they out thereon a lot of space. No,
yeah, they they're in these littlethey're they're in they're in pens at
(35:01):
some facilities. But then once they'reready and they're going to go racing,
they're just in cages. They're inthese little cages and they're muzzled. And
I understand that doesn't make a lotof sense, but that's just what they
do because it saves money to justkeep them there. That's so so uh
right now, it's that you know, uh, greyhound racing and it's it's
(35:22):
it's it's you know, it's gettingbanned state by state and and to finally
outlaw we have there's a federal billthat is always there and it's just never
quite passing because there's just not alot of attention on it. But uh,
to help push the effort, theygreat Tuque Usa has written a book
(35:44):
called Brooklyn Goes Home and it isthe incredible story of a greyhound in China
that they were able to bring tothe US to rescue and to show what
the dog, what the dog wentthrough, and what the dog's personality was
like going to rescue and then andthen and then you know, finding a
(36:04):
loving home. And it is theentire story of them fighting greyhound racing and
banning it state by state. Andif you ever want to understand like what
goes on behind the scenes, thisis like I mean, this is like
a peels back the entire curtain onlikethe good, bad, and the ugly
(36:25):
all of it. Of here's howit is working with you know, all
these Republicans and Democrats together trying tofight greyhound racing and all of the horrible
underhanded tricks that the industry has doneto try to keep it alive. And
you can you can you can learnall about it, and you can go
to Great two k USA dot organd you can then learn about what you
(36:51):
can do to support the federal bill. This this is I'm excited about because
this is realistic. We could actuallydo this. We could end an entire
type of animal suffering. And thisis not taking someone's job, right,
like I got all the poor industry. Now this is a bunch of like
rich pricks that want to bet ondogs and you're just turning them. You
(37:15):
can't be evolved with the legal animalcruelty anymore stop right, exactly, exactly
right. They're not going to missout. They should go volunteer somewhere or
do something else with their money,exactly, you know, yeah, you
go donate to a charity or something. Yeah, exactly. That's that's great.
No, but that's perfect. Okay. So so this is good.
We have a lot of call toactions for the listeners to do because I
(37:36):
love that. So Brooklyn goes homeand that's a great g r E y
two the number two KUSA dot organd you can order the book through there.
And I saw the book actually couldbe ordered anywhere, but I think
it's probably better to order it throughthe dot org through the rescue. Correct.
I think you suld get it onAmazon. Get on Amazon, yeah,
(37:57):
yeah, yeah, if you goto if you go to their web
site. Yeah, you can getinformation on everything you can do to support
the legislator, the federal bill.And and because that's always that's always somewhere,
yeah, and then always getting pushedaside for all of the other the
other stuff. But this is reallyimportant, but it's always right there.
Yeah, no, and it's veryimportant. So well, my big question
(38:19):
for the two of you, uh, do you two ever sleep. Do
you ever rest, because I feellike, you know, there's no rest
for the weiry. You guys arealways doing something. It's I mean,
it's pretty incredible. We both haveInsamia. Yes, I'm sure. I'm
sure. I'm sure because I justI feel like between the two of you,
you do so much and I'm surewhen you try to close your eyes
(38:42):
at night, your minds are racingand you're thinking of the next thing or
something, and it's just, youknow, we're really grateful for both of
you and doing all that you dofor all of us animal lovers. You
know, all I can say isI keep fighting the good fight. But
thank you for that. Thank you. We feel very lucky. It is
an absolute privilege to be able todo this work and represent those that can't
(39:06):
represent themselves. Sure, so yeah, I feel super lucky and grateful that
I get to have this job.It's excellent. Well, and it's we
appreciate that. But yeah, Imean, we gotta say. We got
to say. I mean, it'slike you you're one of those people where
it's like, you know, you'reThere's a lot of different podcasts and radio
(39:27):
hosts that are out there, andmost of them are like you know how
I'm going to get a lot oflisteners. I'm going to talk about how
I, you know, got drunkand got in a fight, or I'm
like, you know, I'm gonnamake fun of you know, someone like
you know, like, yeah,you're discussing things that matter. So that
is that is very well? Thanks? Well, yeah, because it's very
important to me. You know,like you guys, you give a voice
(39:50):
to the voice list and I alwaysfelt that way too, Like yeah,
I have a microphone, I cantalk about music and stuff, but there's
also other important things, you know, and talking about animals and helping them
animal animal welfare and rescue is youknow, has always been very very important
to me. But I couldn't doit without people like you, so you
know, it goes both ways.So I do appreciate and you guys always
(40:12):
make time for me, and Ido appreciate that as well. We're so
we're exciting, ye and wide absolutelywell Kaylin Lebarge and Pete Paxton, I
thank you. Uh you know,like I said, no no rest for
the weary, but keep keep fightingthe good fight. And uh for the
listeners who want to do something,you can go to ethical Strategies dot org.
(40:37):
You can go to to learn moreabout SEED and the Clean Water Act
and everything else that they do.Uh under Belly is the documentary, the
Puppy Mill documentary, And you cango to docs do x dot tv.
Get on the mailing list so theycan get a distributor. That would be
amazing, and also look for thebook Brooklyn Goes Home and Let's get Greyhounds
(40:59):
not racing any more. I mean, come on, it's ridiculous. It's
twenty twenty four. Enough of thisshit, right and I know it's like,
come on, let's let's let themjust be at dogs, you know.
And you can go to Gray gr e y two number two,
KUSA dot org or wherever you getyour books. So thank you Pete and
Kaylin, and we will definitely talkagain. Pete, you know you are
(41:21):
a regular guest and now I wantthe two of you to be more regular
guests and we'll talk again and seewhat's going on on the agenda and everything
else. But thank you, thankyou both for everything. Thank you,
thank you Maria, you rock,you know
Popular Podcasts
1. Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
2. Stuff You Missed in History Class
Join Holly and Tracy as they bring you the greatest and strangest Stuff You Missed In History Class in this podcast by iHeartRadio.
3. Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.