Jah Ying Chung

Jah Ying Chung

by | Jan 16, 2023 | Contemporary, Photo Interviews

“If you want to be effective at changing people’s minds and behaviours, it’s very important to first understand how they think, and how they behave, and why.”

Jah Ying Chung, a food researcher in China, stands in a packaged food aisle of a store that is also a wet market. Jah Ying is the co-founder of The Good Growth Co., which researches Chinese consumers' attitudes toward food and works in the plant-based/alternative protein and animal welfare spaces. Hong Kong, China, 2022. #unboundproject / We Animals Media

After interning with the UN in Beijing, then graduating from university in 2010, Jah Ying Chung began campaigning for the environment. Her interest in international development fed into a concern about how climate change could impact people in underdeveloped nations in Asia.

“I remember talking about Bangladesh, how if the sea level rises and there is flooding, [there is a] lack of infrastructure to ensure the wellbeing of everyone, especially those living near the coast,” she says. “These kinds of issues were very fascinating to me ever since high school.”

Jah Ying Chung, a food researcher in China, stands at the entrance to a wet market. Jah Ying is the co-founder of The Good Growth Co., which researches Chinese consumers' attitudes toward food and works in the plant-based/alternative protein and animal welfare spaces. Hong Kong, China, 2022. #unboundproject / We Animals Media

Jah Ying Chung, a food researcher in China, stands at the entrance to a wet market. Jah Ying is the co-founder of The Good Growth Co., which researches Chinese consumers’ attitudes toward food and works in the plant-based/alternative protein and animal welfare spaces. Hong Kong, China, 2022. #unboundproject / We Animals Media

Though at that time Chung had not yet made the connection between animal agriculture and climate change, the further she got into campaigning for the planet, the more she learned about how much her own meat consumption was contributing to the very problem she was battling. “That’s when I started to eliminate meat,” she recalls, and it’s when she started shifting the focus of her mission.

Chung’s first project was a platform to help student groups in Asia fundraise and connect with corporate sponsors. “The mission originally was to empower students so they could do more on campus, and hopefully that leads to more meaningful things when they graduate.” But eventually, Chung wanted to do more. She sold the company after five years and began searching for her next venture.

“I was very adamant,” she recalls, “that whatever I do next it needs to not only feel like it’s a good thing [..] but it had to be concretely impactful with evidence to back it up.”

Eventually that search led her to animal welfare and the plant-based/alt-protein space in Asia, and to designing and doing market research that helps companies better understand Asian consumers.

Jah Ying Chung, a food researcher in China, uses her mobile device outside an urban grocery store. Jah Ying is the co-founder of The Good Growth Co., which researches Chinese consumers’ attitudes toward food and works in the plant-based/alternative protein and animal welfare spaces. Hong Kong, China, 2022. #unboundproject / We Animals Media
Jah Ying Chung, a food researcher in China, browses tinned foods on the shelves of a grocery store. Jah Ying is the co-founder of The Good Growth Co., which researches Chinese consumers’ attitudes toward food and works in the plant-based/alternative protein and animal welfare spaces. Hong Kong, China, 2022. #unboundproject / We Animals Media

Today, Chung is the co-founder of The Good Growth Co., a market research firm “for sustainable and ethical food systems in Asia,” according to the organization’s website. Good Growth works with “alternative protein companies, animal welfare nonprofits and social impact funders to understand consumers, scope new markets and prototype products & programmes.”

“The whole idea was to help good things grow,” she says of building Good Growth Co. in 2019.

Now, plant-based and alt-protein companies, as well as animal advocacy organizations looking to expand to Asia, for example, can and do look to Chung’s important work to learn how to most effectively target people in that region, and to understand the opportunities and challenges of working in these countries.

“If you want to be effective at changing people’s minds and behaviours, it’s very important to first understand how they think, and how they behave, and why.” For example, she explains, “one interesting thing we can look at is what do advocates believe about consumers, and what do consumers actually think?”

Chung recently partnered with Faunalytics, for a ground-breaking two-phase study that asked animal advocates what they thought were effective strategies and then asked the same of consumers. According to Faunalytics: “After seeking input from members of the farmed animal protection community in China, we conducted focus groups regarding the attitudes of Chinese consumers towards meat consumption, the concept of farmed animal welfare, different types of messaging and strategies for encouraging movement growth.” What the study found was, in part, that Chinese consumers are most concerned with farmed animal welfare due to reasons around food quality and food safety. “Products labeled as higher-welfare are more trusted, while lower-quality products are associated with a range of concerns, including animals being raised in unsanitary conditions, and the use of hormones, antibiotics, and GM products on farms,” according to the study’s key findings.

Jah Ying Chung, a food researcher in China, smiles as she selects vegetables from the display inside a store that sells produce. Jah Ying is the co-founder of The Good Growth Co., which researches Chinese consumers' attitudes toward food and works in the plant-based/alternative protein and animal welfare spaces. Hong Kong, China, 2022. #unboundproject / We Animals Media

Jah Ying Chung, a food researcher in China, smiles as she selects vegetables from the display inside a store that sells produce. Jah Ying is the co-founder of The Good Growth Co., which researches Chinese consumers’ attitudes toward food and works in the plant-based/alternative protein and animal welfare spaces. Hong Kong, China, 2022. #unboundproject / We Animals Media

Further, the study also found that “animal welfare was not generally seen as a foreign concept. Contrary to what some China-based advocates suspected in our Phase 1 report, we found that most participants exposed to the concept and details of provisions for animal welfare did not generally see it as something foreign, Western, or associated with foreign values.”

Chung calls the latter findings surprising but points out that cultural stereotypes can perpetuate false assumptions about certain consumer groups, thus making this kind of market research all the more important for truly understanding market opportunities.

Chung describes the work she is doing now as “exciting” and says she feels very lucky to be doing something helpful.

“From a cause perspective, there [is] quite a lot of evidence that this work is impactful.” Perhaps reluctantly, the humble researcher even admits “it’s kind of a dream job being able to combine intellectual interests while working on an impactful cause.”

But now Chung is thinking about what she calls “the last mile,” making sure people are actually using the information that is gathered, as well as making it even easier to do so. “This is why I am conducting research on research,” she adds, to design the company and its processes to make it all more usable, to maximize impact.

Jah Ying Chung, a food researcher in China, poses for a photo on an urban pedestrian bridge. Jah Ying is the co-founder of The Good Growth Co., which researches Chinese consumers' attitudes toward food and works in the plant-based/alternative protein and animal welfare spaces. Hong Kong, China, 2022. #unboundproject / We Animals Media

Jah Ying Chung, a food researcher in China, poses for a photo on an urban pedestrian bridge. Jah Ying is the co-founder of The Good Growth Co., which researches Chinese consumers’ attitudes toward food and works in the plant-based/alternative protein and animal welfare spaces. Hong Kong, China, 2022. #unboundproject / We Animals Media

Finally, when asked what her personal hope is for farmed animals in China and for the future of the plant-based food and alt-protein movement in Asia, in true researcher form Chung answers with questions: “What does it look like from the Chinese perspective?” she asks. “What does welfare mean, what does a good life mean?” She says she does not yet know the answer, and that’s what keeps her so invested in this cause.

“Discovering what good looks like from the perspective of Asian stakeholders, and trying to connect it with those from the West,” she says, “that [is] the most fascinating part of the work.”

Written by Jessica Scott Reid

 

Azul Cardozo

Azul Cardozo

by | Nov 25, 2022 | Contemporary, Photo Interviews

“In Latin America we face a lot of injustices and a constant violation of basic human rights….so I started to question and connect different forms of both human and animal oppression…..we connect all of these causes because the fight for animal rights is part of the resistance against social inequality….”

Azul Cardozo won’t admit to being an animal activism trailblazer in Latin America, but the lawyer, advocate, and punk guitar player has lent her time, energy, and passion to numerous organizations, including The Animal Save Movement, Direct Action Everywhere, The Plant Based Treaty, Uruveg, The Earthling Experience, and many more. Though she remains humble about her tireless work leading and organizing others, all who have worked with her know that she has undoubtedly grown the movement for animal rights in Latin America.

About seven years ago, Cardozo started down the path of vegan activism. Inspired by punk music, she joined a hardcore punk band, which, she says, “made me start questioning everything,” including capitalism, human rights, and animal rights.

“Punk and the animal rights movement have always acted together to challenge the system,” Cardozo explains. “Beginning in the 1980s, this communion was reflected in the emergence of songs, fanzines, animal rights concerts, and the militancy of punk-influenced activists through multiple and historic direct actions. The punk movement was a pioneer in instilling animal rights practices and concepts into the collective consciousness.”

For Cardozo, connecting with the punk music community was, she says, “the start of everything;” the start of learning more about animal exploitation, going vegan, and getting active for the animals.

Activist Azul Cardozo uses her mobile device to answer messages and post to her social networks. Azul has just finished helping to prepare a vegan stew, which she does every Saturday afternoon in collaboration with a project that cooks popular vegan dishes and provides the meals for free to low-income people in Uruguay. Photo credit: Martina Victoria Zamudio
Animal liberation activist Azul Cardozo chats with visitors at a local fair in Montevideo, Uruguay. Azul is sharing information with local people at the fair as part of the “Plant Based Treaty” campaign. Here she chats with people of all ages, while encouraging them to sign the treaty and enjoy a piece of vegan cake. Photo credit: Martina Victoria Zamudio / We Animals Media

The cultural context of Latin America has also played a role in Cardozo’s activism.

“In Latin America we face a lot of injustices and a constant violation of basic human rights,” she explains, “so I started to question and connect different forms of both human and animal oppression.”

This context, however, is also the greatest challenge Cardozo and the animal rights community in Latin America faces, she says.

To tackle this, Cardozo helped organize the first vegan soup kitchens in Uruguay to feed those in need. At the same time, she connected with the community and spread the message about animal rights within the context of aiding human rights.

Activist Azul Cardozo prepares vegetables for a stew. Every Saturday afternoon, Azul collaborates with a project that cooks popular vegan dishes for low-income people in Uruguay. Photo Credit: Martina Victoria Zamudio / We Animals Media
Activist Azul Cardozo holds a large pot full of vegetables for a stew. Every Saturday afternoon, Azul collaborates with a project that cooks popular vegan dishes and provides for free to low-income people in Uruguay. Photo credit: Martina Victoria Zamudio / We Animals Media
Activist Azul Cardozo carries a pot full of vegan stew down a staircase in preparation for the food to be portioned and delivered in Uruguay. Every Saturday afternoon, Azul collaborates with a project that cooks popular vegan dishes and provides for free to low-income people. Photo credit: Martina Victoria Zamudio / We Animals Media

“We work with the community, and we connect all of these causes,” she says, because “the fight for animal rights is part of the resistance against social inequality in Latin America.”

When she first started organizing animal actions in Colombia, she says recruiting others to join was hard.

“The oppression that people experience on a daily basis often causes them to lose hope in the struggle. Injustice in all areas is normalized,” she says.

In fact, she adds, it could be dangerous to speak out. “Latin America is the region of the planet where human rights are most violated, as well as the region where most social defenders are assassinated,” she adds. “Colombia continues to be the country with the highest number of human rights defenders murdered in Latin America and with the highest rate of impunity.”

Animal liberation activist Azul Cardozo holds up a blue smoke flare and a photograph of a farmed pig confined inside a crate in Montevideo, Uruguay. Azul is protesting in front of a well-known shopping mall in Montevideo as part of a an action she has organized for National Animal Rights Day. Photo credit: Martina Victoria Zamudio / We Animals Media

Despite this however, Cardozo says every day more people are willing to take the risk by using their voice to help both human animals and non-human animals. “We now have a large animal rights community,” she says, noting, more generally, that a greater openness of collective consciousness regarding animal exploitation has emerged. This growing interest in animal rights in Latin America is now helping Cardozo get more people involved, including touring other countries with The Animal Save Movement and Plant Based Treaty, and helping to start additional chapters across the continent. “When you want to do something, you really put all your effort into doing it,” she says.

Activist Azul Cardozo’s favourite element is water, and here she poses next to the ocean shore in Montevideo, Uruguay after a full weekend of action and activism. Photo credit: Martina Victoria Zamudio

Looking ahead, Cardozo says the strategy is to connect with other groups fighting not just for animals but for people, the planet, and for changes to the food system.

“The movement is growing and getting stronger,” she says, “because we are making alliances with other organizations that have different approaches.”

The goal, she says, is to spread the anti-oppression message, connect animal agriculture to the climate crisis, further open up collective consciousness about how all these issues are interconnected, and seek “collective liberation.” 

Article by Jessica Scott-Reid
Photos by Martina Victoria Zamudio

Helena Hesayne

Helena Hesayne

by | Mar 12, 2022 | Contemporary, Photo Interviews

“Animals are always the first casualties of war and economical crisis.” ~ Helena Hesayne

During the 2006 war in Lebanon, also known as the Israel-Hezbollah War, Helena Hesayne tells of how she had to remove the roof of her jeep. This was to ensure that Israeli forces in the air could see that she was transporting food – dog and cat food – and not weapons. With most of the people removed from the Hezbollah area at that time, there was no garbage for the many stray companion animals to scavenge for food. So Hesayne, Vice President of Beirut for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (BETA), and two other BETA members bravely headed out to feed the animals. But she doesn’t feel it was bravery that guided her. It was just what needed to be done for the animals she loves so dearly.

“I grew up during the war,” Hesayne explains, meaning the Lebanese civil war from 1975-1990. “I was in the Lebanese Red Cross when I was 17 until I was 19, so we just got used to it,” she laughs. Hesayne speaks casually of war not because she feels it is a casual thing, but rather, as she often says, “it’s very hard to explain; you have to live it.”

For example, she describes, “When we were young and we had an exam, we used to pray in class ‘oh I hope today they’re going to bomb, that way we won’t have the exam,’ she laughs again. “We lived day by day.” And it appears that this strategy of finding humour in daily life in Lebanon is what continues to help Hesayne stay focused on the animals as the country now faces a major economic crisis.

“Animals are always the first casualties of war and economical crisis,” she says.

Hesayne has always loved animals.

“I always rescued when I was a kid. If I found a stray, I was always helping.”

Then the civil war started, and Hesayne temporarily moved to France to be with an aunt. Her aunt had dogs of her own and Hesayne experienced for the first time caring for them as her own pets, walking them, and having them in the house. “In Lebanon in the seventies, having a dog in the house wasn’t very common,” she says, “maybe just the little fluffy ones. Big dogs had to stay in the garden.”

Upon returning to Lebanon in 1994, after moving between France and the US and gaining her bachelor’s degree in architecture, Hesayne then rescued a German shepherd named Brooks. Brooks’s owner had died in a motorcycle accident around the same time Hesayne’s father died. She felt a special kinship with the dog in this way. He became a constant companion, accompanying her to work and everywhere she went. She then added three huskies to the bunch, bringing all to the office each day, far before dog-friendly workplaces were a thing. “And I would only hire people who loved dogs,” she laughs.

In 2006 Brooks died and Hesayne was devastated, she says, “I was so depressed.” Soon after though, something amazing happened. She attended a fair where BETA had set up a booth. At the time the group was just starting out. Upon meeting the volunteers, they encouraged Hesayne to join them. So she did, first volunteering at the shelter on her lunch breaks, then adding every weekend. When the 2006 war started later that year, she then became more involved, helping those starving strays. As she recalls, when people fled the country, many would leave their pets behind causing many to be strays.

“In the majority of cases, animals – pets – are just a commodity, not part of the family,” she explains.

By 2008, Hesayne was named vice president of BETA, a volunteer position she continues to hold alongside her job as an architect. Today the group is made up of 15 board members and 20 volunteers, many of whom are from other countries. BETA also shelters over 1,200 animals including dogs, cats, donkeys, horses, monkeys, and some wildlife. The group works with rescue organizations in Canada and the UK (also the US when permitted) to adopt out companion animals abroad (the other animals are placed in sanctuaries or remain at the shelter for life).

Today the mentality around having dogs in the home in Lebanon has changed says Hesayne; however, she adds, the problem now is the types of dogs most people want and where they are getting them from. The majority of mixed-breed stray dogs that BETA rescues are adopted by foreign families, while puppy mills, some actually owned by veterinarians, supply “designer” dogs to locals. “They also import a lot of dogs from Ukraine and other Eastern European countries, that are supposedly pure breeds and that come with health issues.”

Once, Hesayne recalls, someone contacted the shelter seeking a purebred dog, “he said, ‘It’s like I don’t want to drive a Fiat, I want to drive a Ferrari.’” This all lends to that mentality of animals being commodities, which she says continues today. And with current economical concerns in the country, dog-dumping by those who can no longer afford their dogs feeds into mounting problem with strays.

Thankfully though, Hesayne says there has been a shift in the region regarding spaying and neutering.

“When we first started, we were the only ones at the vet to do spaying and neutering and people would tell us ‘wow, it’s against God, how can you do that, poor animal.’”

Today she says it’s common to spay and neuter pets.

There is also a change in mentality around rescuing strays, she says.

“When we used to rescue a dog on the highway, no one would slow down, they would even get upset. Now not only do they slow down, many times you have people stopping and helping us.”

As Lebanon continues to cope with economic struggles, the global pandemic, and often extreme weather, Heysane says it’s the animals that keep her there. “The shelter will never be empty,” she says. Some dogs have been there all their life, for ten years or more. But, she says, the dream of finding each one of them a great home remains her guiding light.

“I just love them,” she says.

Written by Jessica Scott-Reid
Photographs by Seb Alex

Chihiro Okada

Chihiro Okada

by | Nov 12, 2021 | Contemporary, Photo Interviews

“I discovered that animals are placed in far worse situations, are treated far worse than humans. So I really started to put a stronger focus on the treatment of animals.”

When Chihiro Okada was a young student in Japan she imagined she might one day work in the field of human rights, perhaps tackling world hunger. But then, as a member of her school’s newspaper, she worked on a story about pets. The story brought her to local animal shelters and pounds where she learned just how many homeless companion animals in Japan are euthanized. She was shocked, she says through an interpreter.

Ms. Chihiro Okada, Director of Animal Rights Centre Japan. Photo by Itsuka Yakumo / #unboundproject / We Animals Media.

“I discovered that animals are placed in far worse situations, are treated far worse than humans. So I really started to put a stronger focus on the treatment of animals.”

Today Okada is the director of Animal Rights Centre Japan (ARCJ), the country’s most impactful organization for animal advocacy. The work of the group, under Okada’s leadership, highlights much of the progress being made for animals in Japan in the last two decades, and a slow but steady cultural shift.

After Okada’s revelation about the ill-treatment of companion animals in Japan, she started university with a new attention on animals. She traveled and studied abroad, first to Canada, where she visited more animal shelters, then to Australia, where she recalls meeting a teacher who was vegetarian. “That was then I thought, ‘ok there’s a lot more I can do regarding my interest toward animals,’” she recalls. And upon returning to Japan she quickly connected with ARCJ and began transitioning toward being vegan.

On her first day as a volunteer with ARCJ, Okada was told to read a particular book by someone named Peter Singer. The book, Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for our Treatment of Animals, published in 1975, is of course now considered a pioneering text on animal rights, but to Okada it was new, profound and put into words all that she was already feeling.

At that time, she recalls, there were no groups in Japan focusing on farmed animal welfare. Rather, ARCJ’s eye was fixed on banning animal testing and fur fashion. The group ran campaigns and organized large protests and marches; and since 2005, when ARCJ began campaigning against fur, Okada reports there has been a 94% decrease in the importation of fur products. “We can say that is a clear sign of success.” And even better, she says, was the closure of Japan’s last fur farm in 2016, effectively ending the fur industry in the country.

Historical photo provided by ARCJ.

Today Okada has been with ARCJ for twenty years, 17 of those in the role of director, and she and her team have shifted focus.

“The biggest issue that we believe needs to be tackled in Japan today is the treatment of farmed animals,” she says. “There are no other organizations like us currently working on these issues, both to improve the overall status of animal welfare in Japan, as well as working toward the overall decrease of animal farming.”

The group does this via consumer and corporate education, and lobbying for change. Last year, ARCJ was able to stop a legal proposal to ban free range chicken farming. ARCJ also advocates for increased production and availability of plant-based foods by speaking with food producers, grocers, restaurants, and hotels.

“Recently, more major companies here have been taking action toward doing something veggie or plant-based; it’s grown into a bigger range than we ever could have hoped for,” says Okada.

And Okada has been able to fulfill a personal goal of creating a “strong, nationwide animal rights action network,” of people and groups all around the country to share information and resources. “People now know they can come to us, contact us about anything animal rights related.”

Ms. Chihiro Okada talks with a long-time collaborator of animal rights activities. Photo by Itsuka Yakumo / #unboundproject / We Animals Media.
Ms. Chihiro Okada buries a dead sparrow she found during the interview. Photo by Itsuka Yakumo / #unboundproject / We Animals Media.
Photo by Itsuka Yakumo / #unboundproject / We Animals Media.

Looking toward the future of animal advocacy in Japan, Okada says her next ambitions are to see the use of battery cages and sow stalls end by 2030, and see food producers increase their range of animal-free foods, “to at least half of what they are producing,” she says, “within my lifetime.” But her greatest goal, she says, is to “pass this organization down, eventually, to the next person who can make this group into a huge social movement all around Japan that works toward the end of speciesism and the mistreatment of all animals.”

For now, Okada and ARCJ are pleased to see that the issue of animal treatment is finally permeating the popular culture, and that animal welfare is now a term and idea that the people of Japan are coming to understand.

“Five years ago when we said ‘animal welfare’ –which is an English word that we’ve made into Japanese—many people did not know what it meant. Since then we’ve been able to raise politicians’ and consumers’ awareness about factory farming,” she says. “We’ve been able to spread the fundamental understanding of what animal welfare is.”

What began as Okada’s small story on pets has blossomed into organized advocacy for all animals in Japan.

Written by Jessica Scott-Reid
Photographs by Itsuka Yakumo (with exception of the historical ARCJ photo)

Anita Krajnc

Anita Krajnc

by | Apr 23, 2020 | Contemporary, Photo Interviews

Bringing the world together to bear witness

Anita Krajnc looks through the fence to animals being unloaded at the slaughterhouse. Canada, 2015.

Anita Krajnc. Canada, 2015.

To get Anita Krajnc to talk about herself can be a challenge. The Toronto-based activist and founder of the now-global Animal Save Movement (formally called The Save Movement), would much prefer to quote Tolstoy, Gandhi, or Mark and Paul Engler, than talk of her own achievements in animal advocacy. She’s no martyr, just modest, and much more focused on the ethics and fundamentals of animal rights, and the inner working of society and social justice movements. And when it comes to the creation of the Animal Save Movement, which now spans about 900 chapters, branching beyond Animal Save into Climate Save and Health Save factions, Krajnc, no surprise, gives much of the credit to her dog.

Anita Krajnc holding a sign during a Toronto Pig Save vigil. Canada, 2013.
Actor Joaquin Phoenix joins Los Angeles Animal Save activists at a vigil. USA, 2019.

Long before creating the first Save chapter, Toronto Pig Save, Krajnc says it was during her time as an undergraduate at the University of Toronto (U of T) in the early nineties, when she first became involved in animal activism. “I saw this poster for The Animals Film,” she says, a 1981 documentary about the use of animals by humans. She watched it with about twenty other people in a basement library at U of T, she says “and I couldn’t believe it. I had nightmares for three days. Then I became a vegetarian, and then an activist.” She soon became president of Students for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and collected data about the number of animals being used at U of T, “which was about fifty thousand vertebrates, a lot of animals,” she says, to provide to media and the ombudsperson. “That was one of the first campaigns I worked on.”

Anita Krajnc during Veggie Pride Parade in Toronto. Canada, 2015.
Anita Krajnc and fellow activists during Veggie Pride Parade in Toronto. Canada, 2015.

In the following years, Krajnc earned a master’s degree in political science and environmental studies, and a PhD in politics. She got involved in environmental activism alongside her sister – a long-time animal and environmental activist – earning her first arrest in 1993 at Clayoquot Sound, BC, during the “War in the Woods” anti-logging protest, then again in 1997, working with Greenpeace.

Krajnc then began working in academia, including at Queens University in 2006, where she eventually went vegan after watching the 2000 documentary The Witness, and started investigating the veal industry. “I actually didn’t know the veal industry was connected to dairy,” she says.

She then organized screenings at Queens, of the 2004 documentary Peaceable Kingdom, about farmers who refused to kill their animals, and she incorporated animal rights into each course she taught. “Every course! So in Intro to Canadian Politics, for example, I would have a week on social movements and a case study was the animal rights movement.”

At that point she says animal rights had permeated everything she did.

Anita Krajnc photographs chickens during a Toronto Chicken Save vigil. Canada, 2013.
Actor Joaquin Phoenix joins Anita Krajnc and Animal Save Movement activists in Toronto for a tour of the Be Fair Be Vegan subway ad campaign. Canada, 2019.

Catskill Farm Sanctuary founder Kathy Stevens bearing witness with Toronto Pig Save. Canada 2013.
Slaughterhouse employees force Anita Krajnc away from the gates. Canada, 2015.

“Like most of us, once we start learning about the issue, it becomes a core. It’s what we really want to do. We have other jobs, but what we really want to do, to talk about, is animal rights.”

This all-encompassing passion is what led Krajnc down the path that would land her, in 2006, face to face with the pigs who would change everything.

A pig in a crowded truck. Canada, 2011.

“Before bearing witness I was an activist, but it never occurred to me to go up to the slaughterhouse and look at the pigs,” she says. Though she could actually see the former Quality Meat Packers slaughterhouse on Lakeshore, from the streetcar on Bathurst, she says she never went to check it out. “It just never occurred to me to walk there,” she says. “But in 2010, when we adopted Mr. Bean, the dog, [whom is now named co-founder of the Animal Save Movement], I would walk him every morning there, and that’s when we saw the trucks.” Krajnc says she finds it interesting that the origin story of the Animal Save Movement begins with an animal. “One hundred percent if I had not adopted Mr. Bean, I wouldn’t have done it [created the group].” And what Mr. Bean led her to that day, were pigs, looking at her, she says, “out of the portholes, and I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe how beautiful the pigs were, how scared they were, and how unjust it was.”

She calls the moment an epiphany. “I had had a prejudice, or misconception,” she says.

“I thought all pigs were the same, but they aren’t, once you come close to them and look at them. And that’s true for any animal; they’re all individuals. And one day I saw seven or eight trucks and I said, ‘That’s it, we’re gonna start a group.’”

Pigs in a transport truck en route to slaughter. Los Angeles, USA, 2019.
Anita Krajnc with Esther on Esther’s first day at Happily Ever Esther Farm Sanctuary. Canada, 2014.

Inspired by the altruistic work of Tolstoy and Ghandi, whom she was studying at the time, Krajnc says she felt compelled to take action. “I thought, I’m just an ordinary person, but if they took the time out and organized in their own communities, then I must.”

And what Krajnc felt she must do – after a few months of figuring out their strategy, doing fundraisers and art shows and investigations– was to bear witness. She quotes Tolstoy:

“’When the suffering of another creature causes you to feel pain, do not submit to the initial desire to flee from the suffering one, but on the contrary, come closer, as close as you can to he who suffers, and try to help.’ That’s where we got the definition of bearing witness. You have a choice: you can flee, or you can come close and try to help.”

Los Angeles Animal Save activists giving water to pigs en route to the slaughterhouse. USA, 2019.

Krajnc says bearing witness of animals on transport trucks headed into slaughter is “an aha moment, it really changes you.” And once she experienced it herself, she knew it was something the rest of the world had to see. “Everyone needs to be face to face, to touch the animal,” she says. “Everyone needs to do this. Because if they see this they wouldn’t participate in evil.”

Anita Krajnc with supporters, after the court case against her for giving water to thirsty pigs in transport. Canada, 2015.
Anita Krajnc, after the court case against her for giving water to thirsty pigs in transport. Canada, 2015.

Krajnc brought perhaps the most attention to the growing Animal Save Movement in 2015, when she was arrested for providing water to a thirsty pig on a hot truck. What would later be dubbed #PigTrial made international headlines, sparking debates and commentary never considered before. The charges were dismissed in 2017, in the precedent-setting case that would set the tone for subsequent dismissed cases against animal activists in Canada and the United States.

Thirsty pig on transport truck is given water by Melbourne Pig Save activist. Australia, 2017.

The name Toronto Pig Save originally came out of a conversation between Krajnc and her best friend, as they sought something inviting, something others would want to join. “It’s such a great name, so positive,” she says, ‘Save,’ it’s such a beautiful word.” And it turned out, she says, to be a good name “to adapt for all different cities.” And adapt they did, to now not only including about 770 different chapters around the world focusing on a variety of animal species, but further branching into Climate Save and Health Save movements.

Anita Krajnc with a rescued cow at Farm Sanctuary. USA, 2013.
Burlington Pig Save vigil. Canada, 2018.
Pig Save photographs and posters are hung on a chain link fence visible from the street. Canada 2013.

For Krajnc, however, this is still not enough.

“We bear such a burden knowing what is happening with these billions of animals –trillions of animals with fish– every year, and then on top of that we have this looming climate crisis.”

Today, Krajnc believes Greta Thunberg is the most important person on earth, and she is working with climate activist group Extinction Rebellion, engaging in acts of civil disobedience.

And thus, the seasoned activist, academic and philosopher continues to witness, to disrupt, and to inspire others to change — for animals, people, and the planet.

 

Photos by Jo-Anne McArthur. Interview and story by Jessica Scott-Reid.

Jessica Scott-Reid is a Canadian journalist and animal advocate. Her work appears regularly in the Globe and Mail, New York Daily News, Toronto Star, Maclean’s Magazine and others.

 

Narrated by Anita Krajnc, this short film from We Animals Media tells the story of bearing witness and animal advocacy at slaughterhouses in Toronto during a 24-hour vigil in 2015, wherein amidst the horror, a small miracle took place.