7-16-24 *INTERVIEW* Natalie Fulton of Pro-Animal Future Talking Denver Slaughterhouse Ban

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
You may recall a few weeks ago, I guess it was I had a
guest on from Colorado State University talkingabout a study that she did regarding the
potential economic impacts if a particular ballotmeasure in Denver were to pass that would
ban animal processing facilities aka slaughterhouses inDenver. So we talked about that,

(00:21):
and Natalie, who is social medialead at Pro Animal Future, which is
the organization backing the ballot measure,say hey, I'd like to join you
too and give our side, andsaid, sure, come on in,
and so here we are. Sofirst of all, welcome and just get
close to the mic or pull itclose to you. It's very adjustable so
you don't have to lean over toomuch. And so again, welcome to

(00:45):
KOA. And why don't we startwith what is the mission of Pro Animal
Future and then we'll get into theballot measure. Absolutely. Yeah, First
of all, thank you so muchfor having me on. I really appreciate
it. I know that in theepisode with Jennifer Mark and you said you
were one billion percent against this ballotmeasure. So I'd like to get you
down to maybe, I don't know, eight hundred and sixty one million or

(01:06):
so. So, yeah, I'mreally happy to be on here, and
yeah, I want to start bytalking about why we're running these ballid measures
in the first place and what ourmission is. So we live in the
United States, which is supposedly theland of the free, but every year
over ten billion animals are confined andslaughtered. Their freedom is taken from them,
they're separated from their friends and family. And when we're kids, we're

(01:29):
taught that some animals matter morally.Dogs, cats, guinea pigs. We
love them, we welcome them intoour families. And we're also taught that
other animals, cows, pigs,chickens, sheep, are there for us
to use how we please. Wecan eat them, we can wear them.
We can eat them, we canwear them, we can do whatever

(01:52):
we want with them. Over thelast few decades, the scientific literature on
animal sentience has confirmed that the animalswere as objects are just as emotionally complex
as the animals that we love.Pigs and dogs are the same and their
ability to feel pain and suffer,yet we treat them completely differently based on
justifications of tradition, culture, andhistory. We know that many meat eaters

(02:15):
are deeply uncomfortable with this industrialized slaughterhousesystem and factory farming, but they feel
powerless to do anything about it.So this measure seeks to spark a gradual
evolution away from using animals as resources, starting at the local level here in
Denver, Okay. So I'm justgonna we'll go back and forth and when

(02:36):
you say stuff I want to followup on, and we'll follow up on
it. So there's two particular ballotmeasures we're probably mostly going to talk about.
One one is to ban fur,and then we're going to focus on
the slaughterhouse one. But sticking withyour mission for a second, So is
this do you perceive this if itsucceeds as an incremental step towards a bigger

(02:57):
effort to try to get Denverites andColoraden's and ever every body to eat less
meat and wear less leather and useanimals, kill fewer animals for whatever purpose.
We do not want to tell anyonewhat to do. We don't want
to tell anyone what to eat.But this measure is a way to evolve

(03:17):
society at the systemic level away fromusing animals. Calling on restaurants, corporations,
legislation because we feel that the burdenof choice shouldn't be on the consumer,
So that's why we're not focusing onthat. But the world we would
want to see would have less animalslaughter and less reliance on using animals as
resources. Absolutely Okay, I wassuper clever wording right there. You said

(03:42):
we don't think the burden of choiceshould be on the consumer, which means
you don't think consumers should have achoice. Absolutely not. It's not that
I don't think consumers should have achoice, But what I am saying is
that in this realm, in ourcurrent food system, consumers already don't have
a choice, and that's because animalagriculture is heavily sub So what choice are
you saying there should be then,because they have a choice between between meat

(04:04):
and beyond meat yeah, or meatand impossible burger meat and being vegetarian.
So they have it. So areyou suggesting there should be some other choice?
Uh? No, What I'm sayingis that, like, yes,
you're right, consumers have a choice, but that choice doesn't have the effect
that they would ideally want it tohave. For example, if you don't
consume any animal products, your taxmoney is still going to fund animal agriculture,

(04:27):
whether you like it or not.So if we didn't have any subsidies
for animal products in the US,they would cost two to four times more
than they currently do. So abig mac instead of being five dollars,
would be thirteen dollars. And weknow that price has an outsized impact on
consumer choices. So the government isalready very involved, is what I'm saying,
right, And I don't know ifthat's if that's true, what the

(04:50):
effect of subsidies is on beef pricing. I know there are a lot of
complicated intrusions by the federal government intoagriculture, and actually I'm against all of
them. I don't know if yourparticular numbers are correct there, but all
right, I don't want to runin ten. Let's keep going. So
what is this proposed? What doesthis ballot measure say what to do?

(05:13):
Sure, so it says that wewill close slaughterhouses in Denver and also prioritize
the affected employees to get them differentjobs. So who's going to what does
that mean to prioritize? So rightnow, there's I think one hundred and
sixty employees and it's an employee ownedbusiness, so you're not only putting them
out of work, but also killingall the equity that they've earned in this

(05:35):
successful business that I will note processessomething like twenty percent of all the LAMB
in the United States. Sure,so as far as the employee ownership,
only a small percentage of those employeesactually own part of the company. We're
not sure exactly the numbers, butwhen we interviewed someone who used to work
there, he said that almost noone lasts long enough to get those benefits.

(05:57):
Slaughterhouses have between eighty to one hundredpercent turnover rate every year, which
means that a lot of people whowork there now wouldn't even be there by
the time the plant closes. Butthese are not good jobs we're talking about.
Slaughterhouse workers have higher rates of PTSD, depression and substance abuse. So
we have different organizations. There's notonly Denver's Employment Assistance program, but also

(06:19):
Brave New Life Project, which hasbeen helping slaughterhouse workers transition away for years.
And I think I invite anyone listeningto ask themselves if they would want
to kill animals all day. Well, I probably wouldn't, But isn't it
a little bit elitists or condescending foryou to say these are bad jobs and
therefore you shouldn't be allowed to haveit. I don't see it as elitist.

(06:43):
I see it as pro worker becausea lot of people who work in
these jobs don't necessarily want to bethere. They feel as if they might
not have other options, even thoughthey do they could do construction or different
types of jobs. The research showsthat they have high rates of depression PTA.
I think that if we can avoidputting people into situations where they're going
to experience trauma from their workplace,it's not a lead us to say,

(07:06):
hey, we shouldn't do that.You know, it's not a lead us
to say coal miners shouldn't have tobreathe in these toxic fumes. It's taking
their safety into account. That's that'sdifferent, though. I mean, I
think that's different. I understand thecomparison you're trying to make for me.
If there's somebody who's working in aslaughterhouse and they don't dig it, but
they could go work construction and likeit better and make more money, they

(07:27):
would go do that. I don'tthink it's I don't think it's ethical for
you to target one industry and really, really primarily, this is targeting one
business because to the extent that theirother ones are very very tiny. This
is this is basically a bill totarget one business that you guys don't like,
and that rubs me the wrong.That's not true. I appreciate that
concern, and that's something we've hearda lot. It's not that we just

(07:48):
woke up one day and decided totarget this lamb slaughterhouse. We want to
work up to statewide factory farming bands, and there aren't any factory farms in
Denver. There is this industrialized slaughterhouse. If there were other slaughterhouses, we
would be targeting them too, Butsince there's only one, it just so
happens this is the business that we'retargeting. I get that, but it's

(08:09):
still the effect is the same.I just keep coming back. Okay,
So I had the CSO person on, and I know you guys don't agree
very much with that study. Toput it gently, do you want to
talk about that study for a second. Absolutely, so the study is extremely
biased. The authors claim that it'snot, but they have deep ties to
the meat industry, both personally andprofessionally. CSU caught fire earlier this year

(08:33):
for generating skewed research for the animalagriculture industry while accepting generous donations from them.
Well, the study makes false assumptionsabout consumer choice, and they use
made up numbers and don't show howthey got them. Well, they have
like pages and pages of citations.They have lots of citations in that,
so I don't think that's true thatthey don't show how they got them.

(08:54):
But also, you know, they'vebeen an agricultural college forever. Of course
they're going to have ties to theagricult and they shouldn't have said that they
weren't biased. Well, it doesn'tmean they're not. I'm not. I'm
not conceding that they're biased. Justknowing people doesn't mean that you're biased.
You can have friends in a particularindustry and write an honest report. I
mean, I say stuff on theair all the time that would you know,

(09:16):
piss off people that I'm nominally alliedwith politically? I think I don't
know. I think you criticized thestudy by saying it has all kinds of
assumptions, and you put forward assumptionsof your own to do that. I
was just getting started. I'm happyto go more into specific numbers. So,
yes, we can disagree about whetheror not the authors are biased.
I am less interested in that andmore interested in what the study actually says.

(09:39):
Right, So it says that threethousand jobs are going to be lost,
that is absolutely not true. Aneconomist from CU Denver said that their
reported eight hundred and sixty one milliondollar number was so ridiculous that it's concerning
that it was even listed, muchless reported on, because it just wouldn't
happen in actuality talking to about thejobs, three thousand jobs are not going

(10:01):
to be lost because they assumed thateliminating the plant will get rid of all
jobs indirectly related to the slaughterhouse.Yes, rivers who drive their stuff around
and things like that. Similar thething. Well, but did similar closures
result in the banning of an entireindustry in a fairly large area or you

(10:24):
what kind of like where have weseen a band like this before? Oh?
Yeah, yeah, I'm not talkingabout a ban I'm talking about like
when plants have closed for economic reasons, like the one in Greeley. Right,
Okay, So I again, theparticular numbers that you are referencing were
the worst case in that study,although although I will stipulate to you that

(10:46):
when that guest was on my show, she said that they thought the worst
case may be the most likely case, rather than the middle case being the
most likely case, as you normallysee with studies like this. But even
the best case is pretty bad.Are you and are you? Are you
saying that you think the real caseis better than their best case. Absolutely,
I'm saying that the study fails toaccount any of the positive positives that

(11:09):
we could see from this closure.So we shouldn't just be looking at this
in terms of closing the slaughterhouse.We should be looking at it in terms
of opportunity cost. What could wedo instead? Slaughterhouses are known to pollute
the neighborhoods, in polluting anything,They've been violating the EPA's Clean Water Act
for at least three years. Idon't think that's true. It's we have

(11:30):
sources for all of this. I'vesaid it too, Yeah, I don't.
I don't think it's true. Idon't think they've ever been found in
violation of their of their current permits, and they're inspected all the time.
So we'll have to see one ofus is right and one of us is
wrong totally, and I invite thelisteners to check out the blog posts to
see those sources because I appreciate thatI want people to have accurate information.
Definitely. The other thing is thatwe can think about what businesses would be

(11:52):
there instead. Slaughterhouses across the worldhave been turned into museums, breweries and
other successful businesses, so it wouldn'tjust be completely losing revenue. There is
a positive and when we look atthe positives of treating animals better and moving
society away from this cruel industry,it's clear that it's the right choice.

(12:13):
We're talking with Natalie Fulton. She'sthe social media lead at Pro Animal Future
and they're the main force behind theproposed ordinance in Denver that would ban slaughterhouses
in the city and County of Denver. If you live in Denver, you're
gonna get to vote on this.Their website is Proanimal dot org. So,
Okay, I'm gonna it's gonna soundsarcastic, but it's not. I

(12:35):
love lamb, right, Lamb isprobably my favorite meat of the common meats,
and if you get your way,probably the price of lamb goes up
by I don't know twenty percent orsomething like nationwide, not just here,
and it could be more. Imean, when you commodities are priced on
the Margini's to trade commodities, right, you get rid of twenty percent of

(12:56):
something, even if half of thatends up getting placed, you're talking about
a significant price increase. So forpeople who like eating lamb, for restaurants
that serve lamb, all this stuff, you are making this thing that a
lot of people enjoy unaffordable. ButI'm guessing that's actually what you want,
So no, that's not necessarily it. What I will say is that you

(13:16):
are unique in your love for lamb. Most Americans need less than one point
five pounds of lamb per year.You're talking about it being expensive. It's
already a premium meat, way moreexpensive than other meats, so it's not
something that most people are buying regularly. And as far as you know,
you kind of framed it as thisis my way and not your way.
But I think what we really needto be thinking about is the animals.

(13:37):
They're the ones who are most affectedby this. They are the ones who
have to be killed when they're sixmonths old. They have to go through
a slaughterhouse where we have video evidenceof them suffering well before they died,
and at the end of the day, we need to take what they want
into account, not just what wewant. So I think that's your best
argument. And I mentioned this toyou before we went on the air,

(13:58):
that my brother, uh before hepassed away, my brother became vegan,
and he wasn't as crazy about itas a lot of vegans. Like usually
if there's a vegan in the room, everybody knows because he won't shut up
about it. But he wasn't reallylike that. But I talked to him
about it, and I learned somethings at his concerns about the potential suffering
of animals in industry, in agricultural, in large scale agriculture, do you

(14:26):
think that there is a way inany given part of animal agriculture that the
animals could be harvested killed that doesn'tcause them to suffer greatly? And and
if such a thing did exist andyou believed that animal didn't suffer, would
you be okay then with eating it? Yeah. I think that's a really

(14:48):
great question. And as far asvegans being extreme, I may be more
on the extreme side, so Iwouldn't say that my views necessarily represent the
organization that I'm with. The that'sgreat about our ballot measures is that whether
you're vegan, vegetarian, or eatmeat, this will help create the kind
of world with less animal cruelty.And that's where we're focusing right now in

(15:09):
the areas where we agree with people. As far as if animals did not
suffer at all, we have totake lifespan into account. Sheep can live
for ten to fifteen years, andin the industry they're killed at six months
old. Even if there was apainless way to do that, I think
it would be wrong because they shouldhave the right, they're most basic,
fundamental right to their life, andthat's so important. And if we were

(15:31):
talking about dogs or cats, youknow, we wouldn't be framing it in
this way. There's a festival inChina called the Yule and Dog Meat Festival,
and people are always protesting it.They're not asking for bigger cages or
better ways to kill the dogs,They're asking for it to stop completely.
And that's what I think we shouldbe doing. As far as if there's
like a humane way to kill ananimal, humane means compassionate. Can you

(15:54):
compassionately kill an animal? Who doesn'twant to or need to die. Yeah,
again, I think that's your Ithink those animal related arguments are your
best arguments. I think the economicarguments aren't very good. And I think
that what you're doing is necessarily removingchoice and killing jobs, and you're clearly

(16:15):
you're willing to do that because youthink this other goal is more important.
It's not like these farmers we're talkingabout that probably won't lose their jobs in
this measure, but may in futureones. We don't want them to stop
farming. We want them to startfarming foods directly for human consumption, like
different types of plant based foods,which we're already seeing. Farmers can look
up ranch or advocacy program or transformationand those organizations will help them transition.

(16:40):
Right, So, folks who farmersmay be ranchers who are raising sheep.
Now if there's no processing facility closeenough, they might have to switch to
something else. But doesn't that reallyfeel like an incredible heavy hand of government?
Like I think it shouldn't be legalfor this ballot measure to even be
on the ballot. I think whatyou're trying to do, even though I
fully understand your goal with protecting animals. From my perspective, I think using

(17:07):
government to do this this way,I think is an immoral use of government.
Even though I appreciate your deeper goal, I'm really glad that you brought
this up in one minute. Okay, I agree that government control is bad.
That's why we're going through citizen initiatives. We are citizens, we came
up with this law, we petitionedto get it on the balant, and
now citizens are going to vote forit. Is by no means government control.

(17:30):
It's people choosing the kind of futurethat they want to create, right,
and I think they shouldn't be allowedto vote on it, just the
same way I think they shouldn't havebeen allowed to vote on reintroducing wolves to
other parts of the state where itwill never affect him. Yes, it's
voting on it, but it's stillvoting to use the power of government to
shut down one business, and Idon't like it. I will say,

(17:51):
though, Denver is a very bluecity and it would have surprised me if
you win. I think there's goingto be a lot of money spent against
you. But I think all elsebeing equal, people just go read the
ballot measure and they don't hear anyadvertising one way or another. I think
it's got a decent chance of passing. I'll give you the last seventeen seconds.
I absolutely hope you're right, andwe just want to make this clear
that if you care about animals andyou think that they should have a choice

(18:11):
in the matter, I appreciate yourdedication to freedom and the not aggression principle.
I'm saying it should apply to animalsas well. Natalie Fulton is social
media lead at Pro Animal Future,the group behind the ballot measure we've been
discussing. The website is proanimal dotorg. Thanks for an awesome and spirited
conversation. Thank you so much,achreciate it. We'll probably have you back

(18:33):
one more time before the vote.