Mercy For Animals

Vegan, no. Yeah.

Mercy for Animals says that they want to prevent cruelty to farmed animals and promote compassionate food choices.

Do they have the end state named? No.

As for vegan or plant-based, as it mentioned, they have compassionate food choices mentioned.

I think to some extent they are leaving it fuzzy.

I think that's probably deliberate.

I mean, Dan Shannon, who's the new head of Mercy for Animals, did post something recently, I guess, about his theory of change.

And he did say, I think, that...

Arash Yamtobian believes those moments matter.

He is the CEO of Mercy For Animals, and after years of working in technology, he thinks a lot about how we reach people.

Because if we want to change a food system that causes suffering on an almost unimaginable scale, we need a movement big enough to change it, and that means meeting people where they are, telling better stories, and moving beyond the idea that you have to be all in before you're welcome.

In this conversation, Arash and I talk about what it actually takes to change people and systems.

[laughs]

Me too.

So I think before we even get into Mercy For Animals and your life there now and the past year-

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm

So I've been quite active with these groups.

I would say sort of personally, like outside of this, some of the groups that I am engaged with is a group called Mercy for Animals, which is really looking at the problem of factory farms and They're quite active in essentially advocating for animals that live in pretty atrocious conditions.

And outside of my optimism about AI, I do feel like AI can be a tool where the powerful can control the weak and animals are amongst the most weak.

So I think there are things that we probably should be doing.

I mean, fur is basically gone from fashion, so that's a change I've seen over the past 40 years.

And thanks to the work of Humane World and Mercy For Animals and many other groups, some factory farms have gone cage-free, uh, for their hens, which is also good.

But the world I dream of where all animals are treated as sentient beings, we're not there yet.

And my, so my personal authenticity gap on radius, by the way, is 65%, because I want every animal on the planet to have a life as good as Pierre's.

Gets major media attention, goes viral on social media.

Uh, so one of the organizations that I do a lot of work with, uh, an animal advocacy organization, is called Mercy For Animals, and if you go to Mercy For Animals and you look up their investigations, um, you'll, you'll see some of the most, the most recent things that the industry is, is literally, um, taking to the law to try to stop.

And so, uh, to that end, state by state, um, the industry's lobbyists have pushed legislators, uh, legislatures to pass laws that would in one way or another prevent people from doing these undercover investigations.

If you just stop and think about that, it's extraordinary.

First, everyone got hired, enabling them to focus their full attention on the cause rather than squeezing it in between food service shifts.

Groups that received OP's blessing, like the Humane League, Mercy for Animals, and Anima International, flipped from being fueled by 90% volunteer energy to 90% paid staff time.

They shifted from an open organizing model, where volunteers could learn the craft of campaigning by owning their own creative projects from start to finish, to a model where volunteers were trusted only to hold signs, join social media comment storms, and occasionally do staff members' chores.

Four, eating the seed corn.

You know, they hear the latest craze, and it sounds really good, like, "I need to go full keto all the time." And I think some of these diets are very helpful for short periods of time, but I don't believe that they're sustainable.

So you have shared extensively about your journey to veganism really for health, but you also recently spoke at a Mercy For Animals event, which was also what clued Rich Roll and some others into your fabulous story.

I wondered what your journey has been like specifically as it relates to your concern for animals and their welfare.

You know, when I initially got on this path, I was not thinking about animals at all.