INTERVIEWS!
In support of "The Last Lunch"
Below is the first of my interviews with prominent people who have chosen a veggie or vegan life.
First up, Juliet Gellatley BSc, Dip CNM, Dip DM, FNTP, NTCC
Founder & Director
Viva! and Vegetarian & Vegan Foundation www.viva.org.uk
1. What made you become a veggie / vegan? (Which are you?)
I'm vegan now but I was 15 years old when I decided to first become a vegetarian. It wasn't the outcome of argument or debate, or the process of intellectual investigation, not to begin with at any rate. It was because of a look.
A student friend was working on an agricultural project and needed to visit a model farm. I went along for the ride. My vague notions of stack yards, scattered straw and wandering animals disappeared instantly. There were no animals to be seen, only a collection of ugly, windowless, industrial buildings which could just as easily have been do-it-yourself stores or engineering workshops.
We started in the pig house. As soon as I walked through the door, in an atmosphere cloyingly warm and damp and laced with the smells of 100 defecating pigs, the first nagging unease began to gnaw at me. There were no cosy sties, no wallowing contentment, just row upon row of individual concrete stalls, each pig separated from its neighbours, unable to touch them despite being only centimetres away.
These pigs, I was informed, were the breeding stock, the pregnant
sows who would provide two and a half litters of piglets every year,
each litter frequently running to double figures. Ahead of each creature
was nothing but iron bars to which were clipped feeding troughs.
Beneath their feet was slatted metal through which most of their excreta
would hopefully drop. However, when they urinated it splashed up from
the floor, wetting the sides of the stall and the pigs' legs and belly.
They would eventually lie down in it. I noticed that any movement tended
to result in a scrabble to maintain a firm footing.
At the farm I visited, the poor creatures had given up the fruitless struggles of resistance. They had no option. The effect of their barren and sterile existence was obvious to see. Many of them exhibited a syndrome known as 'stereotypic behaviour', moving their heads backwards and forwards in an exact and constantly repeated motion, gnawing on their bars in a particular and regular way with the precision of a metronome.
Many of the pigs I was looking at had quite literally gone mad.
As I stood there and watched the sows in their endless boredom, I could appreciate what a superb example it presented of accountancy and veterinary skills combining to reduce waste, to maximise profit, optimize food intake and reduce staffing. In the planning, design and construction of this model plant every question had been asked and answered except one: what about the animals?
For creatures with such a strong sense of community, active and sociable, the decision to imprison them in solitary and idle confinement denies them even a semblance of their natural existence. Such a policy reflects our greed and lack of compassion. Pigs have become a product, have been manipulated and specially bred to produce particular types of meat. Ones with especially long backs produce more bacon rashers; ones with sturdy hocks produce better hams. The dominance of money, the logic of efficiency, the adulation of profit are epitomized in the pig-breeding shed.
The final act in my disturbing drama came at the end of the rows of
sow-stalls where a few separate, only slightly larger pens were set
aside from the rest. In each one was a huge boar. The one nearest to me
stood motionless, his huge head hanging low towards the barren floor. As
I came level with him he raised his head and dragged himself slowly
towards me on lame legs. With deliberation he looked straight at me,
staring directly into me eyes.
2. How has it changed your life? It is intimately part of my life - it led to me setting up Viva! and the Vegetarian & Vegan Foundation!
3. What music have you been enjoying lately? I've 8 year old sons so I listen to a very wide range! From the Kaiser Chiefs to Billy Joel, Pixie Lott to Elvis Presley, Billy Paul to Gabriella Cilmi.
4. What do your friends and family think of your decision to follow the veggie / vegan path? I'm going back a long time but at first my mum was bamboozled, my dad took the mickey. Now they are veggie and proud of Viva!'s work.
5. How has your choices in this area affected your most intimate
relationships, & how you manage them? I'd go out with a meat eater
after all you have to give people a chance! But a relationship that
personal wouldn't last if he didn't change.
7. Do you currently have a favourite quote? What is it? "Vegan - another word for hope".
8. Do you think vegetarianism / veganism is expanding? It is.
9. Is it important to you that it does? Paramount.
10. How does your work (an easy one for you, Juliet!) reflect your views? My work is my views! Veganism is central to saving animals, the planet and the aberrant human race and all our many diet related health problems!
11. What are your relationships like with non-vegetarians? The same as they are with vegetarians and vegans - depends on the person!
12. Do you have a favourite piece of drama or film (fiction) that explores/touches upon these issues? And Why does that piece work for you? Charlotte's Web - beautiful children's classic that stimulates young ones to think about standing up for themselves and animals.
13. What do you think should be the balance between "table thumping" concern for animal rights and a more softly-softly approach? // Both work but at different times and with different people. You have to do both - depends on the campaign and the situation.
14. What happens to that balance, in your mind, when for example a right to protest via direct action is in potential danger, such as with the Animal Enterprises Terrorism Act in the US?// We must fight for the right to protest. Read Wild Swans for an insight into living in a regime of fear; or join Amnesty and look at the harrowing tales of people arrested for daring to speak out for their beliefs.
We have to make the public understand -- that to demean any part of nature, because we are part of nature, it means demeaning ourselves. That destroying nature means we are destroying ourselves. And that veganism is central to saving animals; and all of nature.
Each and every one of us has a moral obligation to animals and all of nature, and that means that we're all responsible for helping ensure that animals are protected and secured against abuse and exploitation. We have the right to protest, the responsibility to object; and we must do so to call ourselves humane beings.
15. Have you ever advocated direct action, peaceful or otherwise? Yes, peaceful. I fully support rescuing animals, for example, from places of abuse. Violence doesn't work; it just perpetuates violence.
16. What place do you see for theatre within activism? Theatre can bring to life the issues we should all care deeply about. It can do it so many ways - reaching our soul through our emotions. Theatre can help us understand our place in the world. I love it when it touches us through humour - something that can be hard to do through a conventional campaign on animal cruelty!
17. What is/are your own latest project(s) of which you are feeling pleased and passionate?
Last month, a major Viva! investigation into the egg industry shows a story of disease, incarceration, mutilation, short lives and electric shocks.
You probably haven't heard of Noble Foods but they are Britain's biggest egg producer and supply almost every supermarket. They claim to be the 'progressive' arm of the egg industry and supply 60 million eggs a week under stores' own labels or their own Happy Egg label.
Noble Foods - and others like them - have taken advantage of consumers' growing concern for animal welfare and free-range is now big business. With sales around £2bn a year, output now matches that from caged systems because we falsely believe that free range equals high welfare. We filmed thousands of birds in each shed,
many bald and bedraggled birds where hens "peck and kill each other." We filmed plastic yellow bags full of dead hens being carried away. And this despite birds having the ends of their sensitive beaks seared off to prevent pecking.
Whichever way we turn the answer is not to support these industries - it is to spurn them - to go vegan!
(Thankyou Juliet.)
8 York Court
Wilder Street
Bristol
BS2 8QH
Tel: 0117 944 1000
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Next
Robin Webb,
JB: When did you start to be a Veggie or Vegan and why?
RW: I’m a veggie not a vegan. I think one has to pass exams to be a vegan. It started when my girlfriend years ago would start to make the appropriate animal noises according to what food I would be eating. She would moo if it were beef sausages and so on. And I would think 'Ah yes.. That’s an animal I suppose,' and I would get to thinking... 'Mmm...I’d rather not eat animals, especially big ones, like cows and things you can make friends with.'
Moving onto shoes, it was a natural progression. If I don’t want to eat them, I’d rather not wear them.
It didn’t all happen in one go. Those shoes there have the car tyre soles. And then when I came across the material that I use now, I thought 'THAT’S what I didn’t know I was looking for,' and the whole vegetarian shoe thing started.
It wasn’t a long gap, between becoming veggie and starting up the business.
I was about 18 when I turned veggie, and mum said, “Well that won’t last”. And I started Vegetarian Shoes when I was 23. I used old leather at first from junk sales and such. I’d cut up old leather coats. It was a compromise. I still like it as a material, how it behaves, but it’s a small thing to give up and there are plenty of excellent synthetic, materials about these days, which we buy in, for example, from Japan.
JB: How has becoming veggie changed your life?
RW: In many ways. I feel quietly smug that I feel healthier than I would have been if I hadn’t been veggie, although it’s hard to measure. I have become healthier without even realising it I think. I look at my peers and feel reasonably fit. I’m 44
JB: Yes… I know a lot of 44 yr olds who have aged a lot worse than you have.
RW: Thank you. And working here, I have attracted more-informed veggies than me and learnt from them, and now for example I put plenty of milled flax in my food.
JB: What music have you been enjoying lately?
RW: I love playing things to death, and I love good intro’s so… I have found out how to use my ipod to just play an intro over and over. I love Carol Brown from the Flight of the Concords
I’ve just revisited The Southern Death Cult, or The Cult, They do terrific intros. Chilli Peppers, Stranglers, Devon Sprawl is a recent favourite.
And the Waterboys. I’m enjoying ukulele, partly as I am playing ukulele again at the moment too, after going to Wookulele in Worthing with one of my Godsons. I’ve taken it up again.
Other things I enjoy include motorcycling, but people don’t know me within those circles just for my vegetarianism. I mean I don’t wear it on my sleeve. I don’t want to eat meat, and… I get on and live my life. Doing what I’m doing, work-wise, says enough really.
JB: How have your most intimate relationships or how you manage them been affected by the choices you’ve made in this aspect, e.g. by your choice to be a veggie?
RW: Erm…I don’t know. (pause) Did I tell you I like bikes!? (laughs) Mmm…. Feelings.. ugh. I felt hungry once. (laughs) … okay… Next question.
JB: Okay…What are your current favourite dishes?
RW: Mmmm. I like anything Mexican. Or… if I can have two choices, two Mexicans! …. With Chips
JB: Corn chips?
RW: I like wedges!
JB: Do you have any favourite quotes?
RW: “Do it right and do it right now.”
Or “The successful person is he that is prepared to do what the unsuccessful person is not willing to do.”
I don’t like to hear when people say they have “done their best” or that they can’t do something. I believe… you think what it is you want to do, and you kick down doors to do it. I used to have boxing past! Actually I do what it takes to get where I want to go. Even if that’s sometimes in a round about way.
JB: Do you think vegetarianism is expanding?
RW: Hard to tell, but I think yes. It’s more widely heard of in restaurants, on menus. Most people these days have heard of veganism.
JB: Do you think it is important that it does? Do you want to see it expand?
RW: Is that a trick question? Yes. Very much. For environmental reasons and everything else.
JB: What are your relationships like with non-veggies?
RW: Friendly. Live and let live. I don’t need to use shock tactics. We’re simply supplying the positive side here.
JB: So you don’t have the arguments you had when you did when you were 18?
RW: No.
JB: What do you think should be the balance between a more strident louder table-thumping vegetarianism, and a quieter approach?
RW: I think in the UK we want to be cajoled and wooed, and feel like we’re being sophisticated, although the louder approach might have its place, for example in the US: I think there’s so many ways to influence people.
JB: Have you ever advocated direct action?
RW: Sometimes thought about it. MacDonald’s has this thing where they have this rolling total of the number of burgers they’ve sold, and I think… what if we did the same, for the number of cows we’ve saved. I mean we’ve sold quite a lot of shoes. We’re 20 years old this weekend.
JB: Congratulations! Happy Birthday.
RW: How many skins have we not used in that time?
JB: Can you guesstimate? Do you know?
RW: I probably could one day, but to those who say it’s just a by-product-…. Well no… it’s at least 10% of the anima’s value on the market. So it has a value.
JB: Yes, and a very large value to the cow.
RW: So my work is my direct action, and it’s very jammy, doing what I love, being creative, being my own boss.
JB: So, for example, the Huntington Life Science Activists who were recently jailed for several years for their actions, how do you feel about them?
RW: It’s hard for me to comment. I don’t know the details; I’m not into confrontation. I want to make friends. I want to build bridges and get along, although I am sure there is a place for confrontation.
JB: So… as a church goer, that image of Christ in the temple with the merchants cheating the aged and blind.... He gets confrontational.
RW: Yes he was an interesting fellow, sometimes very hard and sometimes very soft. He was both uncompromising and also very compassionate. Yeah… he made a whip and started shouting, “Get out of dad’s house!” Yes he was pretty direct. I’m not sure when is the time for it, and it makes me wince to see people react.
JB: What is your own latest project of which you are feeling most proud?
RW: I got a few ideas but I’m not ready to talk about them until I’ve developed them more, just to avoid being a victim of the industrial espionage that this interview is so obviously is a cover for. (laughs)
JB: Fair enough! Thanks again Robin, for talking to us.
RW: Thank you!
Robin has very kindly donated some wonderful shoes to The Last Lunch project.
12 Gardner Street, Brighton, East Sussex, BN1 1UP, UK.
Tel: 01273 685685 shop@vegetarian-shoes.co.uk