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When you think of someone who is likely to
go vegan and start a farm sanctuary, I’m
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pretty sure the first person to pop into your
head is not a multi-generational cattle rancher
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whose entire livelihood is dependent upon
the slaughter of cows. Such a conversion would
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be nothing short of miraculous, right? Well
my guest today is here to share with you a miracle.
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Hi it’s Emily from Bite Size Vegan and welcome
to another vegan nugget. There is seldom anything
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quite as powerful of a vessel for veganism
reaching unlikely populations than the conversion
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of the most unlikely of the unlikely. I say
this all the time to people who email me and
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are upset they didn’t go vegan until their
50s or 60s, or more, but they will now have the ability
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to reach other people in that stage of life
who may not want to listen to a ridiculously
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tattooed girl on YouTube.
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In the same vein, my guest Renee King-Sonnen,
who married a multi-generational cattle farmer
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in Texas has the unique ability to reach other
people who work in the heart of animal agriculture
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and show them there is another way, that they
don’t have to make their income from the
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suffering and death of other beings. One of
the objections to a vegan world is that farmers
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will be out of work. Well Renee is blazing
the path to an alternative. I’m so excited
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for you to meet this one-woman revolution.
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Alright well, Renee I want to thank
you so much for taking time out of your busy
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schedule caring for the animals to be on the
channel and talk a little bit about your story.
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Awesome! So good to be here.
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Alright, so you could tell us a little
bit about how it is that you became a cattle rancher?
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Well, I became a cattle rancher by
default. I assure you it wasn’t in my plans
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to have anything remotely to do with even
living in the country. My husband Tommy, he’s...he’s
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been and his whole family generationally has
been in cattle ranching and so when I moved
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here, the cow’s were here, the chickens…
that’s how I became a rancher was by being
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a city girl that moved to the country, and
married a man that I really loved.
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Talk to us a little bit about the turning
point.
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Well, I moved out here and I always
fancied myself an animal lover. I always loved
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my dogs and my cats. I had a ferret. My grandma
had birds. She used to take us to the zoo
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and I loved all the animals, and the rodeo,
and being from Texas, that was just a big
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deal out here. Never once did I ever have
a connection that there was anything remotely
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ill conceived or wrong. And when I came to
the ranch, I guess in my naivety, I would
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go ‘Oh, you know, the cows are so cute!
Look at the little babies!’. And I would
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want to go out there, and get to know them,
I was just naive. And because who...who
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in their day to day life pets a cow? Who in their
day to day life goes and picks up a chicken,
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and hugs it, and loves it? It’s kept from
us. There’s a sort of a barrier there. And
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so living here, because I love animals, I
gravitated to animals that I also ate.
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And I also wore on my skin or my feet, or gravitated
to animals that I used to watch in rodeos.
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But...and so I started getting this connection
because I did have an innate love for animals
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but it was enforced and indoctrinated upon
me as a young child to love the one’s at
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home, and eat the one’s out there. And so
basically, the turning point for me was the
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first time the red trailer took the baby calves
that I had grown so used to and loved to the
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sale barn which eventually meant to be lot
and slaughtered. And I threatened my husband
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that I go to the sale barn. If he...if we
were going to keep doing this, I told him
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at the final analysis. I said ‘if we keep
doing this and that red trailer leaves one
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more time, I’m gonna follow it to the sale
barn’. And what they do there is once they
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leave here, their life changes forever. They
become just slaves! They go into these horrible
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metal chutes! They’re just whipped into
line! They’re tagged! They’re branded!
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They’re sold! They’re traded! They either
go straight to feedlots where they're...where they're just...they step
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in their own feces! Their own urine! They’re
just clustered all together in these horrible
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environments! They do that or they get sold
to one of these nice, peaceful, wonderful
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farms where everything looks so good on the
outside, and you’re driving down these Texas
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roads, and you look out, and you go ‘aww,
look at those humane cows. Those are grass
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fed beautiful cows’. So, the baby cows will
go to ranches like ours was where everything
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looks so wonderful from the outside. You know,
all it is...we are part...we were part of
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big agriculture. We were part of the system
that is destroying the fiber of everything
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we stand for as humans.
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Did you try to...I mean, I am just
trying to picture this. You see them going.
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Was is it just this light that went off and
did you talk to your husband about it?
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How did it progress to where you are now?
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The first time that it happened I remember
the red trailer being out in the field. And
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just was like, so stark against the green
grass, and the cows, and the babies, it was
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there. It was there for several days because
you had to bait the babies to go in. They
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didn’t want to go in except that they were
baited, and there was a chain on it so that
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the babies could get through, but the big
ones couldn’t. And so, I watched that for
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a few days and my connection began to get
disrupted as my disconnect. I started going
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‘What the hell! What is going on, ya know?’.
And I just...then I snapped back to the good
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rancher’s wife, you know, I gotta be tough.
And the first time they had like, I don’t
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know, 6 to 8 of the baby calves trapped in
there that I had rumble love the first 7 or
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8 months I’ve been here. And then when the
trailer pulled out, and the mother cows literally
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chased the trailer, crying, literally chasing
it trying to catch it. The little babies in
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the trailer, bugged eyed, trying to get out
the little bars, their prison, and I just
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stood there in disbelief. I think I went into
a literal shock. Ack, it was the most horrendous.
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I have been so tough until that point. And then
when I saw the trailer go out of the gate,
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and down the highway, and the mother cow still
chased them along the fence side, and something
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broke in me. Just broke and I told my husband
after it all happened, you know, ‘How do
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you do this?...how do you do this?’. He
said ‘Do what?’. ‘How do you raise these
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cows, these babies, and watch them go every
6 months to the sale barn?’. He said ‘Well,
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Renee that’s what we have to do. That’s
what ranchers do. That’s how you get to
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keep your property in agriculture. That’s
how, you know, pay for the tractors. Pay for
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you know, the insurance. Pay for the bills
that come in. You know Renee, we gotta do
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that. If we didn’t do that we wouldn’t
be able to sustain the ranch.’ And I’m
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like ‘Well, there’s really something wrong
with this picture, ya know.’ I just started
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sensing something really wrong. Well so then,
Tommy decides I need a calf of my own. That
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I need to be ‘a real rancher’s wife’
so that’s when Rowdy Girl came in. I bought
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Rowdy Girl for $300. A little bitty calf that
had lost her mother. I don’t know how it
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happened. Bought Rowdy Girl, you know, I never
had any of my own kids so she kind of became
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my little baby that I bottled fed twice a
day, watched her grow up. And he didn’t
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know that was going to be his biggest mistake.
So anyway, that’s kind of how it happened, you know the babies would...
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...the mama’s would cry every single night
when the babies left. I mean for days and
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days. They never stopped. They did not stop
until they lost their voice. There was no
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break, and my husband would just go about his
business watching the news, eating, doing
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whatever. And I’m over here about to go
out of my mind, go outside with them, screaming,
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hollering, crying, begging forgiveness. And
of course, all the while I was eating hamburgers,
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and chicken sandwiches.
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So, when is it that you decided not
only that you were going to create a farm
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sanctuary out of this cattle ranch but also
go vegan. I mean, was that kind of a simultaneous
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thing? When and how did that all of that happen?
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Well, what happened was every 6 or
7 months is when you sell the calves. You
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know, the mama cows were here enslaved I later
learned after I went vegan. The calves will
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be born. They go to sale barn every 6 months.
Well, me living here made it very difficult
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for my husband to do that so we started getting
pushed out 7 months, 8 months, 9 months, until
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the last time it had been 10 months. The red
trailer has not gone to the sale barn since
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February of last year. In this past December,
he was...we were like at a breaking point.
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Almost ready to divorce. I gone vegan October 31st
of last year, Halloween. I started watching
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just videos. I started like peeking at stuff
that I didn’t really want to watch. I would
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bring chicken sandwiches home. I’d be eating
them and my chickens would be at my feet,
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and I would start getting this breakdown in
my awareness that I was eating their cousin
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or their mother. I’d be eating, I’d be
bringing home hamburger meat or steaks from
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Kroger and I would be pulling into my driveway,
and not wanting to look at the cows. I find
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myself literally not wanting to look, like
I didn’t even want to know that they were
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there. I had this vision like this- that was
right before I went vegan.
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And from that day forward I’ve done everything
I can to no matter what it is, even from honey
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to...I used to eat my own eggs here at the
ranch. I don’t do that anymore. We just
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don’t do that. I mean, every time I find
out something’s vegan I immediately make
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a decision to act in integrity with that ethic
because we need to be doing that.
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And Houdini had been getting out every single
day, if you heard anything about this story,
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you know Houdini was getting out along
the highway, and so my husband was adamant
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about Houdini was going to have to get out
of here. She was a liability and there was
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no way because that was Rowdy Girl’s baby.
And so I looked all over Texas for a home.
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But there was no one that would take these
cows...no one. And so after that, and Houdini,
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and the cops, and trying to find homes, one
day I told my husband ‘Look, you know, I
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can’t find a home. Why don’t we just figure
out how to have a sanctuary right here in
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Texas’. He thought I lost my mind, ya know.
He said ‘You’ve lost your mind literally.
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This is not L.A.. This is not New York’.
He said ‘Would that even work? We can’t
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do that here Renee, no way. I’m a member
of the Brazoria County Cattlemen’s Association.
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We can’t do that. What would everybody
think? And there’s no way that can happen
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here in the middle of all these sale barns
all around us.’ And I said ‘Well what
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if I just buy your cows?’ And that’s when
he just about lost it. You know, I was screaming
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‘No, let me buy...let me try to buy these
cows. Let me figure out how to have a sanctuary’.
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And I said ‘Maybe you don’t know how to
do it. Maybe I don’t know how to do it but
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I’m sure somebody does’. And so, that’s
what happened, and I didn’t know. But my...think
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my heart space and my soul lined up with the...a
real big vacuum and a need for our planet.
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It’s a planet. This is for our planet that
I’ve been a force. He’s okay with it.
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I mean, he went vegan too, ya know.
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I heard about that. When did that happen...how
long did that take and was it...tell me a
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little about that. I just want to hear more
about that.
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That was crazy, you know. During this
whole time I had tons of deer antlers on my
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wall which was about to drive me freakin’
nuts. I felt like I was living in a morgue.
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You know, because once...I don’t know about
the rest of the world, but once I went vegan
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my sensitivity went out the roof. So, I’m
talking about liberating with this giant elk
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on my wall and I would just go [stunned].
I mean, I was feeling the heaviness of them
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all over me and my husband was going plant-based
at the time, but his heritage was as a hunter.
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His Dad, his Grand Dad, his great Grandfather
had a slaughterhouse for god’s sakes, in
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Houston, one of the biggest ones. They used
to drive cows from San Antonio like cowboy
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days, ya know. Because his heritage was so
deep it was really hard for him to make the
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connection, especially about the deer heads
being on the wall because they were just momentos.
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He would use this terminology with me and
I showed him your hunter one, you know that...oh
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yeah! Back before he took them off the wall
I showed him, I said ‘You gotta watch this.
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You gotta see this’. So, I showed him your...yeah,
I loved that one, and of course he watched
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it. It might have been part of his decision
because there were several...several different
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things that did. He finally, just one day
decided he didn’t want them on the wall
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anymore and now I hear my husband talking
all the time about how good it is for your
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health. I hear him talking about, because
we’re having tours, we have tours every
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week now, and I hear him telling visitors
how good it is for the animals. He’s making
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the connection. He’s gone from plant-based
to now, I would say that in his ethics, in
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his mind, he’s probably 75% vegan in his
mind. He’s definitely totally plant-based
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but he’s getting there ethically too.
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Well thank you so much for everything
you’re doing and for your powerful testimony
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and just your…your passion. I think that
alone- I mean look at everything that you’ve...
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...you've accomplished by just having this change in
your mind that “I’m not going to stand
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for this anymore” and now it’s become
this incredible thing, so just thank you for what you do.
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Well, thank you. Thank you Emily.
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I hope you enjoyed hearing Renee’s incredible
story of conversion. I think her husband may
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win the most unlikely vegan of all time award.
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Renee has the support of such heavy-hitters
as Kip Anderson, the creator of Cowspiracy,
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and Howard Lyman, a former cattle rancher
himself turned vegan animal advocate, and
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her mission is growing by the day. You can
check out all of her links below to get in touch.
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Now I’d love to hear your thoughts on this
incredible story. Does this make you rethink
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the possibility of who can be vegan? Are you
an unlikely vegan or vegan-to be? Let me know
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in the comments.
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If you enjoyed this inspirational story, give
the video a big thumbs up and share it around
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to show that anyone, anywhere can live a life
of compassion. If you’re new here be sure
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you can click on the nugget army icon there or the
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link in the iCard sidebar. Now go live
vegan, never dismiss anyone as a potential
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vegan, and I’ll see you soon.
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Why in the world would you eat a chicken and love a dog?
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Why would you do that?
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Here's my babies and they are so awesome!
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They love side by side together and I hope that all of you can one day make a decision.
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To go vegan.
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Peace out!