A Message from Animal Equality’s President: Where Do I Find the Strength to Fight for Animals?

First you are going to hear in today's
“Finding Hope While Fighting for
Farmed Animals” session
from Sharon Núñez, the co-founder
and president of Animal Equality,
which, as I'm sure you all know,
is an international organization
working with society,
governments and companies to end cruelty
to farmed animals.
Sharon oversees the work
the organization does in eight countries,
providing leadership and support.
Their work has been featured
in some of the most important
media outlets across the world,
which we have all seen many times,
of course, including The New York Times,
CNN, BBC, The Sunday Times, among others.
And they've been often selected
as one of the most effective
animal protection organizations around.
Please give it up for one of my friends
and heroes,
Sharon Núñez.
Thank you, Michael.
Can you take the computer?
Hi, everyone.
Can you hear me?
Well, first
I want to thank the organizers
of this wonderful conference.
As Michael knows, I had my doubts,
but it is wonderful
and it has lived up
to all of the expectations I had.
So I want to thank Michael, Julia
and Amanda for putting together
such an incredible conference.
Thank you so much.
I also want to warn that
some of the images that we're going to see
are a little bit harsh.
But as I like to say, we're activists.
Yeah, we're activists.
We're strong
and we're courageous.
So where do I find the strength
to fight for animals?
In other activists.
Their courage and stories...
They speak to us directly.
They remind us what our
movement calls for.
They remind us what we signed up for.
They remind us what we can achieve.
From the women who started the movement
against vivisection in the UK,
to the hunt saboteurs.
Heroes that have been putting themselves
between the loaded rifles of hunters
and animals for the last 50 years.
To one that is very touching to me.
Activist Jill Phipps,
a mother crushed to death
under the wheels of a truck
for protesting against the transport
of other mother's babies.
Baby calves.
To Gene Baur, carrying out
some of the first investigations inside
stockyards and slaughterhouses in the US
to create the Farm Sanctuary movement.
To Anita Krajnc.
Sorry, Anita.
For bringing water to animals
who needed it.
I want to give it up for Anita
and for Gene.
And for many of those who are here today.
To the most recent Smithfield case,
which you have all heard about,
where two activists were acquitted
on all charges
after being prosecuted
for rescuing two baby piglets.
We share a mission.
We are one movement making history.
I'm Sharon Núñez.
I'm Animal Equality's
president and co-founder.
But you know what?
That doesn't matter.
I am an activist.
I became an activist
to end the suffering of animals.
And it was the stories of other activists
and the belief that no fight
was more important than animal rights,
That in 2002, I decided I would dedicate
my life to animals.
This is me in a farm.
I had the pleasure to be joined
by actress Rooney Mara
to show the conditions of chickens
in farms in the UK.
For that, I have faced great obstacles.
I have seen animals
I couldn't save,
beg with their eyes
to be helped,
in the more than 51 farms I have visited.
I have been arrested.
My family threatened
for simply holding up a camera
to animal abuse.
In this photo you can see here,
I'm leaving jail
after five nights in a dark cell
and after being called an eco-terrorist
with 11 other Spanish activists
in the media.
Through it all,
I find strength in those of you
who came before me and those of you
who are part of this
history-making movement today.
Today I'm going to share with you
three of the most inspiring stories
that keep me being an activist:
Henry Spira,
Dulce Ramírez
and Sean Thomas.
"I remember my first dream was
to liberate all birds
from cages", said Henry Spira in 1995.
He was an activist his entire life.
But it was reading and attending a course
by Peter Singer that he decided
that he would focus on animals,
specifically vivisection.
According to him,
after a century of the
anti-vivisection movement
in the United States
and in the UK
having not too much of an impact
on animal experiments,
it was time to ask himself one question:
"What can I do about it?"
I present to you the movement's first
great strategist, Henry Spira.
Some thought it unreasonable to try to end
specific animal experiments.
Henry focused on one thing:
winning.
He learned as much as he could,
and he discovered that the American
Museum of Natural History,
(sorry for the images) was drilling holes
into the brains of cats
to conduct sex research experiments.
Experiments were funded by
public tax money.
And they'd been doing these experiments
for 20 years.
To ensure the campaign would gain
public support,
Henry explained the experiments
to people who had no relation
with the animal rights issue.
They were shocked.
Like for all of us here.
For Henry, it did not make a difference
if the experiments
were being carried out on a cat,
a rat or a hamster.
But he knew he needed an animal
that most people would support.
He had found an issue
that few people would be against,
funded by public tax money.
He described the campaign brilliantly.
"Do you want your tax money
to be spent on mutilating cats
to see how they perform sexually?"
Henry Spira was focused on winning.
Therefore, he reached out to
the museum and asked them
to end the experiments.
If there was no need for a campaign
or a protest.
Why carry it out?
He received no response.
He had a vision.
But he was also a great strategist.
It was time to campaign.
He wrote articles,
including in The New York Times.
He conducted protests.
When the museum said
it would arrest anyone
who entered the museum with signs,
the protesters wore T-shirts.
Henry Spira used a series of
novel strategies
that are part of Animal Equality
and part of our movement today.
He encouraged corporations
to stop funding the museum
until they ended the experiments.
Just like today,
we reach out to company affiliates
to ask them to stop
supporting animal abuse when we campaign.
This is Animal Equality's Compass campaign,
where we're reaching out
to Bank of America to ask them to drop
Compass, as they're
using gestation crates.
There's a little difference.
Henry did it 40 years earlier.
Henry was a master of conducting tactics.
After 121 members of Congress got involved
and expressed their opposition
to the experiments,
the founders of the museum
had to pull out.
It was the protests.
It was reaching out to the affiliates.
It was reaching out to Congress people.
The experiments ended.
It was the movement's,
in my opinion, first great win.
“Once you know,”
he said,
“once they know,
you're not just looking to campaign.
You're not just looking to make noise.
What are you looking to?
You're looking to win.”
He then moved on to even more
unreasonable targets.
Henry was called unreasonable
his entire life.
Revlon: He won.
Revlon soon committed
to funding the end of animal experiments.
Avon: He won.
He bought a single piece of stock,
and that managed to give him access
to a Procter & Gamble
shareholders meeting and ask a question.
Soon after, Procter & Gamble
were telling him what they were
doing to end experiments.
It's one person: Henry Spira.
One person.
In 1995, Henry decided
to focus on farmed animals.
In my opinion, the animals that needed the most.
He spent his last years of life
battling cancer
and focused to improve
the lives of these animals.
He managed to get face branding banned
in cows being transported
from Mexico. And McDonald's,
for the first time, to strengthen
their animal welfare policies.
Henry Spira is an absolute hero of mine.
I read his book many times.
I've watched his documentary.
I always find inspiration.
And he reaches out to us today.
He asks us
to refuse to give up.
He asks us to believe
that the fight is worth it.
He asks us to please focus on results.
Focus on what you can achieve,
even if you're just one person.
But most importantly,
he asks us to be unreasonable.
After having banned circuses
with animals in Jalisco,
Dulce knew it was time to fight
for animals killed for meat.
She armed herself with a camera
and decided to film how bad the situation
was in her state of Jalisco,
the largest meat
producing state in the country.
Dulce visited 36 farms
and a slaughterhouse.
She documented
a newborn calf
yelling for her mother minutes
after being separated from her.
Dulce also documented
this
and this.
After three days
of filming in slaughterhouses
throughout Jalisco,
with no rest,
with Animal Equality's
co-founder, Jose Valle,
they spent a night before Christmas
standing on a pool of blood.
They were documenting
the largest killing of all:
La matanza de Navidad.
The Christmas killing.
Doing investigations in Mexico
is very, very, very risky.
But that didn't stop Dulce.
Once, she was stopped by the narcos
and told to turn around or...
That didn't deter Dulce,
and it didn't deter another hero,
Ari Nessel,
who joined Animal Equality
as part of our investigations in Mexico.
Dulce used all of this pain and all of this suffering.
And it did not make her weaker.
No, it didn't. I work with her every day.
It made her stronger.
She built a team.
She lobbied politicians.
She was interviewed by the
most famous journalists.
She conducted protests.
One politician she spoke to
was so deeply moved
by what Dulce had done
and Dulce had showed him,
that he also decided
it was time to do something.
His name was Salvador Caro.
Salvador took the images that Dulce
had filmed to the Congress of Jalisco,
the largest meat
producing state in the country.
And in a large screen confronted
congresspeople
about the cruelty
happening in their state.
They were shocked.
All of these footage were taken
by our activists in Mexico.
They are all real.
Everything that happened.
Change was not only necessary,
it was inevitable.
It only took four months after viewing
this footage for an initiative
to be introduced in the state.
Where Dulce
had raised her hand
to film animal cruelty,
for months, for days,
standing on pools of blood,
90% of Congress people in Jalisco
voted to end cruelty.
For the first time in the state,
animals had basic protections.
Stunning was made mandatory
and considered a crime
if animals weren't stunned.
And extreme cruelty like beating animals
and kicking them became a crime.
It protected 200 million animals
from extreme abuse.
Next was the state of Hidalgo.
This is Dulce and her team.
A similar protest, (sorry)
a similar way of working resulted
in the first-ever chapter in Mexican state
law to protect farmed animals.
It includes a ban on starving hens
to get them to lay more eggs,
which is common practice
within the egg industry.
It bans mutilations
without veterinary supervision.
It stops animals from witnessing
other animals
from being killed in slaughterhouses.
It makes stunning mandatory and it
includes cameras to monitor slaughterhouses.
Dulce won't stop
until all Mexican states protect animals.
Her next effort is to change
the Mexican Constitution
to get animals
recognized as sentient beings
in Mexico.
As well as to get millions of Mexicans
to switch to plant-based eating,
with more, with over
a million subscribers
to our Love Veg program in Mexico.
This is Mexico before the arrival
of Dulce and Animal Equality.
Almost no investigations,
no laws for farmed animals, no
basic protections.
Little information
about plant-based eating.
This is Mexico today.
The colors of change affect
500 million animals.
Dulce reminds us
that we have agency in all situations.
We have agency. That's our freedom.
We can choose.
If we find courage...
and courage,
which, you know, we all feel fear.
Courage is not the absence of fear.
Courage is to move forward
regardless of our fear.
And her courage
changed an entire country.
Be the person whose
courage makes majority.
And in this room today,
we have Dulce Ramírez,
who is there.
We love you, Dulce!
There is more.
It was September 2007 when
Sean Thomas walked into the
Hallmark slaughterhouse in Chino County,
California, as part of an investigation
with The Humane Society
of the United States.
This slaughterhouse would be his life
for the next two months.
What he would film would shock the country
and show how farmed animal cruelty is
viewed in the US.
Exhausted from years of cruelty,
their babies
taking away from them year after year,
in farms in California,
Arizona and Texas,
dairy cows arrive at the
Hallmark slaughterhouse
after being driven
for 12 hours across the country.
Their final destination.
Perhaps the worst of all.
On arrival,
some have swollen feet,
others limp.
Some can't stand up.
To move them out of the truck
and into the slaughterhouse,
workers tie chains around
their necks and pull.
They use electric shocks on them
to get them standing and moving.
“On this occasion,
a worker is so enraged,” Sean told me.
I met with him
two weeks ago to get this story,
“He put a hose over a cow's face
and turned on the water.”
“He did this for a minute, and then...
she collapsed.”
Sean Thomas also filmed
how cows unable to move were slaughtered
and processed for meat,
which goes against federal regulations.
The meat from these cows was going
to fast food chains and
school lunch programs.
in California.
Children were eating
the mutilated bodies of mother cows
who had never been able to take
care or feed their own children.
After ending the investigation,
Sean took the footage to the local
sheriff.
Feeling hopeless, the sheriff's office
did not think that they had the power
to seek prosecution.
Sean and the HSUS lawyers insisted they did.
Finally, the sheriff's office
brought animal cruelty charges.
Sean and the HSUS, Sean ensured
that such cruelty would
not stay at a local level.
He had documented that the slaughterhouse
was slaughtering animals
who could not move, which, as I said,
goes against federal regulations.
And that the meat was going
into the food system.
When in a room with USDA officials,
they insisted it be a quiet process,
the HSUS lawyers and Sean walked out.
It was time for the investigation to go public.
After a huge media release,
the USDA had to admit that
the inspection process was inadequate.
It resulted in federal hearings.
So happy about this.
The first time in US history
for farmed animals
that a case reached Congress.
Here is the owner of the slaughterhouse,
the manager of the
slaughterhouse testifying.
When the owner of the slaughterhouse said
"Well, I have not seen this footage,"
a member of Congress told him:
"Well, you must be the only person
in the United States who has not seen it."
There is more.
This investigation resulted
in the largest meat recall in US history,
with 143 million
pounds of beef recalled.
This case is taught in Animal Law
universities today.
It is historic
and it paved the way for future
investigations.
Those organizations,
those of us who do investigations.
The first time a slaughterhouse
was charged for animal cruelty,
the first time farmed
animal footage was shown in Congress,
the first time an animal task force
was created in Chino County, California.
And the biggest media exposure
for animal cruelty
in the history of the United States.
Today, Sean
continues with his mind
set on uncovering the truth.
Now, as Animal Equality's
International Director of Investigations,
he leads our investigations
internationally and has been behind
the release of dozens of investigations.
In December last year, under
Sean's leadership, an Animal Equality
investigator filmed inside a hatchery
belonging to Foster Farms,
one of the largest chicken producers
in the United States.
This newborn is caught in the machinery.
He will soon be discarded
and get ground alive.
This newborn,
he is scalded alive
after getting caught up in a tray
and ending up in the washing machine
at the hatchery.
Tho it is difficult to get prosecution
for animal cruelty,
even with cases as shocking as this one,
-the sheriff's office
completely ignored us-.
Sean has worked with counsel to use
any means necessary to pursue prosecution,
and they have found a new way
of seeking justice for these chicks
where Animal Equality will be the plaintiff.
We're still working on it.
Animal Equality is suing Foster Farms
for animal cruelty.
Sean reminds us
that we can't look the other way.
We can't look the other way.
We just can't. We can't.
That our courage and determination
can shine a light on animal cruelty
and that we can show people the way.
Show the world.
There are three things that these heroes
Henry Spira, Dulce Ramírez, Sean Thomas
have in common.
Firstly, their legacy will continue
beyond their lives.
Their commitment,
their undoubtedness, their courage,
their focus on results
will impact millions of animals
for decades to come.
They inspire us to go beyond
our limitations.
They inspire us to see obstacles
as opportunities.
Secondly,
they couldn't be certain about change.
They just didn't know what would happen.
Spira could not know
if the American Museum
of Natural History
would stop the cruel experiments.
Dulce wasn't certain
if the nights standing in pools of blood
would end in legislative changes.
And Sean couldn't know
if the time at the Hallmark slaughterhouse
where he saw
all of those cows abused and beaten
would result in criminal charges
or even a federal hearing.
But they took ownership
of that which was in their control,
showing up every day
and trying their best for animals.
And they became invincible.
They became indomitable.
Thirdly, Henry, Dulce and Sean
are part of our movement,
as are you.
These stories are bigger than them.
They're your stories.
But these stories
are also bigger than you.
These are the stories
of the millions of animals
that existed, exist today
and will continue to exist
tomorrow.
We stand with Spira and Dulce
and Sean in a battle
between a cruel past
and a more compassionate future.
There is few of us, few soldiers
fighting this battle
against unimaginable adversity
and powerful enemies.
But they show us,
and a lot of you in this room show us,
that we can win.
We can achieve.
We can be unreasonable, like Spira.
We can be courageous,
like Dulce.
And we can show the world
what they need to know,
like Sean.
And we can show the world
what they need to know, like Sean.
Every day, it's a daily decision.
Wake up in the morning.
We can make a choice:
Obstacle or opportunity.
Fear or courage.
And I ask you today:
What will you choose?
Animals need us to answer.
The sooner the better.
Thank you so much.