If you've been in city center lately, you might have seen one of the Go Vegan campaign posters
outside your favorite shops, or even at your bus stop.
Signs that say things like, "Eggs - what price does he pay?" and there are even stronger messages.
Thought provoking adverts are going to be appearing on Birmingham taxis, on the Warsaw digital billboard,
on the M6, on video screens at New Street.
I've got John Connors on the line, he's president of Irish Creamery and Milk Suppliers Association
John, what do you make of these ads, these posters and the message that they're portraying?
Hi it’s Emily from Bite Size Vegan and welcome to another vegan nugget. There’s no shortage
of animals in advertising, with many-specied mascots hawking all manner of products, up
to and including their own flesh and secretions.
Catering perfectly to the inherent dichotomy of animal lovers who eat animals, meat, dairy
and egg industry ads are rife with smiling animals all too happy to be eaten, or comically
encouraging the consumption of others. This rather perverse yet extremely pervasive concept
is something I explored in depth in this video, Do Animals Want To Be Eaten?
But what if the animals we eat actually ran their own ad campaign and replaced the billboards
emblazoned with their severed body parts and secretions with distinct individuals. What
would they say to us? What would they ask of us? And how would it change our behavior
and attitudes towards them?
This is the very premise of Go Vegan World, the largest and longest-running vegan public
advertising campaign spanning several countries and reaching hundreds of millions of people.
At the heart of this incredibly effective international endeavor is Sandra Higgins,
a vegan psychologist, educator, activist, and the founder and director of Eden Farmed
Animal Sanctuary, the first of its kind in Ireland.
In addition to caring for Eden’s 120 or so residents, Sandra delivers speeches all
over the world and provides vegan mentorship and classes through Matilda’s Promise, a
vegan education center named after one of Eden’s first residents. Please see the blog
post for this video linked in the description to learn more about Matilda’s story.
Without further ado, let’s hear from Sandra herself about the genesis of Go Vegan World
from the roots of Eden:
I realized for every individual that lives at Eden, this is the most important thing
that we can offer them: a home. But in terms of the changes we need in the world—in the
way that we relate to other species, other animals—that’s not enough. We need vegan
education.
So Go Vegan World, really, was born out of a period of darkness for me, where I felt
very frustrated. I was running the Vegan Education center and I was doing individual vegan mentoring,
but most of the people attending, were attending online from outside Ireland. The speaking
invitations I was getting were coming from outside Ireland.
So I was in this dark place that many activists would be familiar with: lying awake at night,
feeling frustrated, seeing the results at the cold face of animal activism, seeing the
victims coming here and feeling stymied and feeling like my mouth had been zipped shut
and there was nothing I could do to get that message out to the world.
The idea was inspired by the idea of people that had run bus advertising in the United
States and in Canada, and I decided to do that here in Ireland. So I did that for about
4 months and it was extremely successful, and it was so successful that we decided to
make it an International campaign.
And the strength of Go Vegan World, is that the animals, for the first time ever, are
on the streets—real individuals—many of them who live at Eden—lives and died—I
mean some of them have died while the campaign is on the streets.
For instance we had Diana, who was in the first campaign: They Trust Us - We Betray
Them, and then some of her photographs were in the second campaign, and as the campaign
progressed, I got a phone call to say that she had gone blind, and within 4 weeks she
had died. They live and die here, and the very least we can do is let them tell their
own stories.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/j2bmdyte26imnfk/Newcastle%20Station%20Diana.jpg?dl=0
We used to think here in the beginning of Eden that we were rescuing them. No, they
are rescuing us from our ignorance and I am still ignorant—every single day I learn
something new about them and about what we’re doing to them.
That’s the strength of what’s coming from Eden and that’s why I feel that the work
I do here is not mine, it’s their work.
Some of the very strong ways in which Eden and the residents at Eden have influenced
the Go Vegan World campaign are some of those last ads that I used, like “Vegetarianism
Is Not Enough”—for all the animals used for clothing, in research, for animals used
for eggs, for the mammals used in the dairy industry.
When anybody comes to Eden, and they talk about cutting down on animal use and eating
less meat is nearly always the one they come up with, I introduce them to, say to one of
the enclosures here where we have Emily, George, and Charlotte, and I ask them, you know,
“If you want to eat less, can you tell me which of them you’ll spare and which of
them you’ll kill?”
And the message gets home very quickly that eating less meat is no use to the one who
is killed
This incredibly simple yet profoundly powerful approach of focusing on the animal’s individuality
and personhood is the key to Go Vegan World’s effectiveness, especially within the heart
of Ireland’s agricultural areas. I asked Sandra whether the cultural location of the
ads affected their composition, if she’d had any difficulty securing space, and what
the public reception has been so far:
It hasn't affected how I’ve constructed the ads at all, because the ads tell the truth
about animal use, and what the animals need from us, so they stay the same regardless
of where I show the ads. The International campaign is running in the center of some
of the largest cities in the world: London, Birmingham, Glasgow; the 3 largest cities
in the United Kingdom. How they’re received is very different though.
In the U.K. people have been very, very receptive. So in a 2-week period following the largest
campaign that we’ve run in Birmingham, 36,000 people have expressed interest in downloading
the vegan guide. The public are not insulted by what you're telling them—they're anxious
to know. And the words that rang in my ears all the time in the U.K. were: “I never
knew this.”
The Birmingham Mail actually ran a poll asking people about the effect that the campaign
had on them. I think it was 63% of people said they would go vegan having seen the campaign.
And another 10% said they would consider going vegan.
Also the advertising world itself has taken an interest in the campaign. The campaign
won an award for the bathroom advertising. &nbsp;Not the most attractive of advertising but
because it’s such a dwell time it’s really effective, so… &nbsp;In that campaign I tried
to dispel the myth of humane use, particularly in the egg and dairy industry, and the notion
that animal foods are necessary for human health.
Marketing Week ran something on us last month on the subject of disruptive advertising.
So in the same paragraph as Sony, and Facebook and The Financial Times, they included Go
Vegan World advertising.
The whole campaign is designed to get people to got to the website so that they get accurate
information about animal use; and a clear and consistent call to stop using other animals
completely and now; and to make it easy for them to do that. &nbsp;And one of the most effective
tools of the campaign is the Vegan Guide.
So people can download that either by seeing the ads on the street, or through social media
or through the online advertising campaign that I run that targets non-vegans. &nbsp;Or they
can use the Q-Code that’s on some of the ads that are at eye level on the street. &nbsp;Or
they can use a free text number.
In Ireland people were a lot more defensive. And of course, in agricultural areas, this
is very entrenched in the Irish psyche: the relationship with the land and the belief
that other animals are our property, the belief that it actually forms some kind of economic
security in the country, which it actually doesn't. People felt very threatened, they
felt that I was threatening their way of earning a living and their very lifestyles.
In terms of securing ad space, there was a lot more difficulty in Ireland than it has
been outside Ireland, so the campaign almost didn't happen in Ireland, at all. I’ve also
had difficulty in the UK. I’ve had difficulty on television but I haven't had difficulty
with the outdoor advertising.
It’s the first time a vegan ad has ever made it to television. It’s been viewed
by a lot of people; we’ve seen an increase in the number of Vegan Guide downloads. &nbsp;And
very interestingly, there have been no complaints. &nbsp;There have been complaints in the UK about
the street ads, but there have been no complaints about the television ad.
As Sandra said, animal agriculture is deeply rooted within Ireland’s culture, economy,
and national identity. This was one of the most challenging aspects for me as an outsider
attempting to speak about veganism in Ireland.&nbsp;&nbsp;It was my research for that speech led me to
Sandra’s work in the first place. I reached out to her for insight and expertise, and
had the distinct honor of sharing the stories of Eden residents Joy and Alice in my speech
in Dublin. Months later, while walking the grounds of Eden, Sandra told me a story that
gave me goosebumps, and hope for change.
One of the most remarkable examples was the farmer who gave us two of the pigs who are
here, Emily and Charlotte. He gave us Grace as well and Grace died very young.
I was just going to bed one night, at about 10:00 or half-10:00 and there was a knock
on the door and it was the farmer who had given us the pigs. &nbsp;And he came back to ask
me how we ever started to do this to other animals, and he was very interested. &nbsp;And
he came again a few weeks ago, and he said, the more he talks to us and the more he sees
what we do here the more convinced he is that farming is wrong and veganism is right.
Of course, when you see the inside of farms, and when you see the condition of the bodies
that I rescue and what they go through and the deaths they have, of course it’s very
easy to blame farmers. &nbsp;And when we think about the dreadful things they do in the dairy
industry and the egg industry, and the mutilations and everything, of course it’s easy to look
at them and say they’re heartless.
But they’re doing what their fathers did. They’re doing what this country tells them
to do, what it encourages them to do, what it pays them to do. They’re doing what we
pay them to do every time we go into a shop and make a non-vegan purchase. They’re doing
what the schools are teaching them to do, but they’re not the only problem. And it’s
very heartening when farmers come to Eden and are open to what we’re doing here. Just
open enough to listen. That there might be an alternative way.
So one of the strengths of Go Vegan World, is that we’ve tried—and to a certain extent
we’ve succeeded in—building positive relationships with farmers so that they see plant-based
agriculture as an alternative to their current life and that they understand that veganism
is not the enemy of farmers. We always need farmers and veganism is very much the friend
of farmers.
The residents of Eden have not only changed the hearts of farmers and launched an international
ad campaign, but they were also the impetus for Sandra’s own vegan conversion.
All my work is inspired and informed by the animals at Eden. I learned about sentience
from them, just by observing them. They made me question. I started to think about it.
I fell into the humane myth thing for a few months. I was vegetarian myself, but I was
still cooking meat for other people, and we were still using eggs and dairy products.
And then one night some goats arrived in our yard, and they belonged to one of the dairies
close by us, so I visited that dairy when we gave the goats back, and I walked out vegan.
And I spent the next week researching animal rights, and I found the film “Earthlings”
and when I watched “Earthlings” I threw out every animal product in the house. I went
vegan overnight. You know, the food wasn't great for the first fortnight. I didn't know
what I was doing. I was worried about my health, because I have severe, very severe osteoporosis.
And I have to say that it was easy. It was easy, and I’ve never looked back, and it
completely changed my life.
I hope that you’ve enjoyed hearing from Sandra and, through her, the many survivors
who have lived and died at Eden. Though she will always defer to them, and rightly so,
I am constantly amazed by not only the astounding scope of Sandra’s activism, but also her
dedication to preserving the integrity their message.
If you want to help support this vital work, Eden is in need of volunteers, and currently
has some job vacancies as well. Please see the blog post linked in the description for
how to apply. You can also share the Go Vegan World campaign to further the reach of their
stories.
My deepest thanks to Sandra for sparing time from her certainly packed schedule to be on
the channel. Give this video a like and be sure to share it far and wide. Subscribe to
the channel and click the bell to enable notifications of new videos. If you want to help support
messages like this, see the support links below or join us in the Nugget Army on Patreon
via the link in the sidebar.
Now go live vegan, world, and I’ll see you soon.