#162: Melanie Joy - The One Word That Explains Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows
We’re going to introduce you to a word today that may be new but is something many of us unknowingly participate in on a daily basis.
That word is “carnism.”
Melanie Joy coined the word in her work as a Harvard-educated psychologist and author specializing in the psychology of eating animals, social transformation, and relationships.
What exactly is carnism? It’s the Invisible belief system in our culture that conditions us to eat certain animals and not others. Her book title actually sums it up perfectly, Why we Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows. From birth, we’re conditioned to believe that cows, chickens, pigs, and fish are food…and, here in America, dogs and cats are pets. We don’t even question it. The fact that this belief system is so ingrained in our culture is, in fact, carnism.
But, my friends, the tide is turning as people are waking up and becoming more aware that,
We don’t have to consume animals to survive and thrive
There are better and more humane ways to treat animals – ALL of which deserve respect and dignity
And, we simply don’t have to act against our core values as empathetic human beings
Awareness is the first step and with awareness, we are better able to think freely and act compassionately, to create healthier and more fulfilling relationships and a more equitable and sustainable world.
Episode Timestamps
11:00 Melanie’s Journey to Veganism
15:25 Helping us understand carnism and how we’re a part of this invisible belief system
19:48 Carnism conditions us to act against our core values of compassion and empathy
24:00 In one day, more farm animals are slaughtered than the total number of people killed in all wars throughout history
24:30 Why carnism is a system of oppression and was this a big master plan?
26:00 Examples of carnistic defense mechanisms -
30:00 The Three “N” - normal, necessary, and natural
32:40 How do we piece the veil of carnism and start to dismantle the system? When you become aware of the system, you’re much less likely to be hijacked by it.
38:00 Are there classes and resources to learn more and develop effective communication skills around these topics?
38:42 Are we in a “meatocracy?”
41:06 How can this be so invisible if it’s so pervasive?
46:00 Why self-care and self-compassion are so important
50:58 How do we lower the bar for compassion and make it easier for people to make choices that align more with their values?
54:45 Is Melanie hopeful about the future?
59:55 Are there countries around the world that are heading in the right direction?
1:05:15 carism.org truly is a service organization
Order Melanie’s bestselling book, Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows
About Melanie Joy:
Dr. Melanie Joy is a Harvard-educated psychologist, celebrated speaker, and the author of six books, including the bestselling Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows and the award-winning Beyond Beliefs: A Guide to Improving Relationships and Communication for Vegans, Vegetarians, and Meat Eaters. Her work has been featured in major media outlets around the world, and she has received a number of awards, including the Ahimsa Award – previously given to the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela – for her work on global nonviolence. Joy has given talks and trainings in over 50 countries, and she is also the founding president of the nonprofit organization Beyond Carnism. You can learn more about her work at carnism.org.
Episode Resources
Center for Effective Vegan Advocacy
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Rip Esselstyn:
Hello, my cauliflower cousins, we at Plant-Strong are still in the joyful afterglow of our annual Plant-Stock event. The celebration of all things Plant-Strong. I want to thank everyone who joined us last weekend. What a plant party we had. Man, it was a blast and it is incredibly rewarding to see so many people actively engaged and participating in our live stream events.
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If you love cereal, as much as I do, you'll be delighted to hear that our multigrain flake cereal is now 30% off when you use the code multigrain 30. Make breakfast easy. Head over to plantstrongfoods.com and stock up today.
Melanie Joy:
I think this is important. Like I said, this world is not going to be saved because one person at a time makes the connection and opens their heart and changes their consumption patterns. We know that, and it's also important to know institutions are made up of people. People are hardwired to feel empathy and research has shown that the vast majority of people genuinely want to live a moral life.
They want to feel that they're living in accordance with their core moral values, practicing their integrity, which is by the way, why we go through all of these mental gymnastics in order to eat animals, because we need to feel good about what we're doing and we don't feel good about what we're doing when we're participating in carnism.
Rip Esselstyn:
I'm Rip Esselstyn and welcome to the Plant-Strong podcast. The mission at Plant-Strong is to further the advancement of all things within the plant-based movement. We advocate for the scientifically-proven benefits of plant-based living and envision a world that universally understands, promotes and prescribes plants as a solution to empowering your health, enhancing your performance, restoring the environment and becoming better guardians to the animals we share this planet with.
We welcome you wherever you are on your Plant-Strong journey and I hope that you enjoy the show. All right, everyone, class is in session. Today I'm going to introduce you to a new word that I guarantee 95% of you have never heard of, but it is something that the vast majority of Americans participate in every single day without even knowing it. That word is carnism.
My friend and today's podcast guest, Melanie Joy, coined the term in her work as a Harvard-educated psychologist, specializing in the psychology of eating animals, social transformation and relationships. Now, what exactly is carnism? It is the invisible belief system in our culture that conditions us to eat certain animals and not others. Her book title actually sums it up perfectly, Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows.
I mean, think about it. From birth, we're conditioned to believe that cows, chickens, pigs, and fish are simply food. Here in America, that dogs and cats are pets. We don't even question it. The fact that this belief system is so ingrained in our culture is in fact carnism. But the tide is turning as people are waking up and becoming more aware of that, A, we don't have to consume animals in order to thrive and survive. B, there are better and more humane ways to treat animals, all of which deserve our utmost respect and dignity.
C, we simply don't have to act against our core values as empathetic human beings. Awareness is in fact, the first step and with awareness, we are better able to think freely and act compassionately and to create healthier and more fulfilling relationships in a more equitable and sustainable world. This is what Melanie and I discuss today, so I would encourage you to listen to today's episode with an open heart and an open mind.
I completely understand that these topics are difficult and can be very emotional, but real change comes from people like you, Melanie, and me, when we aren't afraid to start the conversation and advocate for a more compassionate world.
Hi, Melanie.
Melanie Joy:
Hi, Rip. How are you?
Rip Esselstyn:
I am as well as you can be, given all the circumstances that are going on in the world right now.
Melanie Joy:
Yeah, no kidding. I was actually just thinking the last time I saw you was at your place. I think it was four or five years ago.
Rip Esselstyn:
I think it was 2017-
Melanie Joy:
2017. That sounds right.
Rip Esselstyn:
... if I'm not mistaken. Yeah. At Plant-Stock.
Melanie Joy:
That's right. That was great. That was such a great experience. It feels like such a long time ago, so much has happened in the world since then.
Rip Esselstyn:
It has. It has, but I really appreciate you coming on the Plant-Strong podcast because one of our goals here is to get us... or to spread the good news about people eating more plants and less animals and how it can have such a major impact on not only our personal health but the animals we share this planet with.
I can think of no one better to have a conversation that reminds us of who we are, really connecting us back to our true sense of our behaviors and our values and how those are a little bit misaligned right now, when you really look at it through the right lens. I want you to help us deconstruct our whole practice around eating animals. Obviously I read this book over the weekend, Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows.
It is such a spectacular piece of work that you've put together here to really help us understand what is invisible. Then once you expose people to what is going on at a horrific magnitude, it's like, we should not allow this to go on for another second. I want you to talk about this in great detail. But before we do, I want to ask you just some lighthearted questions, because this can get pretty intense, listener, but well worth it. That is, so where are you right now? Are you in Germany? Are you in Boston? Where are you?
Melanie Joy:
Well, first of all, thank you for the very kind words and the warm welcome. I think the world of you and your family and the amazing work you're doing. It's really a pleasure and a true honor to be here having this conversation I just want to say a big thank you. I'm so happy to be here. I am in Berlin, Germany right now. Yep. It's about eight o'clock my time which is... You're six hours earlier, I think, so it's midday for you.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. What's the vibe like in Berlin, Germany these days?
Melanie Joy:
Yeah. I mean, things have been reopened for a while. The vibe is slowly getting back to what it had been, pretty active. My husband, Sebastian, and I live the very outskirts of Berlin. We're literally the last condo, the last house number in Berlin proper, which means that we are in an area that looks a lot more like a village and we are on the edge of a forest. The vibe here is quite calm and the natural beauty is really spectacular.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah. I drove through Berlin once in the 1990s and it was beautiful. Really was. Went to some-
Melanie Joy:
Very green.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah. I think I went to some spectacular castles and other things. You grew up in the States, correct?
Melanie Joy:
Oh, yes. I have lived in Germany for a little over eight years, but I'm American and yeah, I grew up on the East Coast. Most of my life I was in Boston.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah. You grew up, did you have brothers and sisters? Just tell me quickly about your family life?
Melanie Joy:
I have one biological brother and three stepbrothers actually. I'm in contact with my family. I have a very good relationship with my family. It's a little bit of a challenge being across the ocean and having to get on a plane if I want to see them. The biggest challenge is less the distance and more the time difference because when they're having coffee, I'm at the end of my day, especially for my friends and colleagues in California.
Yeah. I miss the East Coast, in particular, I miss the States, but I'm very happy living here in Europe because it's easier to be healthy in a lot of ways. We bike everywhere. There's a lot less driving. It's very bike-friendly. It's easy to be outdoors and exercising. In parts of the States, you can actually live without a car, but it's not quite as easy as it is here in Europe.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Well, I'm curious because I want to know a little bit about where your passion for this subject came from. For example, growing up in your family, were you guys vegetarians? Were you vegans? Was this something that you sought out on your own because you saw something and you were changed forever?
Melanie Joy:
Yeah. Well, I mean, it's interesting that you ask that. The book, Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows, my work, my organization Beyond Carnism, which emerged from the book and then the later books that I've written, all of this really emerged from my life experience, which started pretty early in my childhood. My family was not vegetarian. They were not vegan. Some of them are now, but really what motivated me looking back is that I was always a person who cared about animals.
I would never want to cause them to suffer, especially when that suffering was so intensive and so completely unnecessary. Of course, like most people, I grew up eating animals. I also had a dog who I loved like a family member. Over the course of so many years and so many meals, I never thought about how strange it was that I could pet my dog with one hand while I ate, for example, a pork chop with the other, a pork chop that had once been an animal who was at least as sentient and intelligent as my dog.
I just didn't connect the dots between the meat on my plate and the living being it once was. I was also very health conscious most of my life too and I wasn't connecting those dots either. What happened was that in 1989, I got really, really sick and everything changed. I ate a hamburger that turned out to have been contaminated with campylobacter which is the salmonella of the red meat world. I ended up hospitalized. I was on intravenous antibiotics.
After that experience, I just never wanted to eat meat again, not because I had made any sort of ethical decision, but you know when you're just incredibly sick, the last thing that you've eaten you just don't want to touch. I became a vegetarian at that point sort of by accident. This was back in the '80s, it was 1989 and there was very little awareness of veganism at all. I was 23 at the time.
In the process of learning about how to cook for myself, how to eat as a vegetarian, I of course stumbled on information about animal agriculture and what I learned shocked and horrified me. I could not believe the extent of harm being done by this industry, I mean, to animals, to the environment, to my own body. But what shocked me in some ways even more was that nobody I talked to about what I was learning was willing to hear what I had to say.
They'd say things like, "Don't tell me that you'll ruin my meal." Or they'd call me a radical hippie vegan. I quickly became vegan after learning about the horrors of the dairy and egg industries, a radical vegan hippie propagandist. These were my friends and family. They were rational people. They were compassionate people. They were health conscious people just like myself.
I became very curious as to how caring, thinking, ordinarily-thinking people, could just stop thinking and just disconnect from their natural empathy when it came to this issue of eating animals. That was what led me to do the research that I did and ultimately to write Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows.
Rip Esselstyn:
That emanated from... Was it a doctoral dissertation that you did?
Melanie Joy:
Yes. I ended up enrolling in a doctoral program and I studied the psychology of... A psych program and I studied the psychology of violence and nonviolence broadly. Then I narrowed the focus of my doctoral thesis, my dissertation to the psychology of eating animals. This was what led me to recognize what I came to call carnism or to identify what I came to call carnism, which is the invisible belief system that conditions us to eat certain animals. That's what I talk about in Why We Love Dogs.
Rip Esselstyn:
Carnism, is that a term that has been out there or did you actually invent that term?
Melanie Joy:
That was a term that I coined during my doctoral research.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. I mean, so what I'd love to do right now is help us understand carnism and how we live in this society that really embraces carnism without really knowing it because as you say, it's so invisible and it's so not talked about in a way that to me is at all accurate and brings to the forefront the amount of murder, violence, damage that happens on a massive level. Where do we start?
Melanie Joy:
Well, we can start with a little thought experiment-
Rip Esselstyn:
Please.
Melanie Joy:
... to help people get an understanding of this concept of carnism. Imagine that you're not vegan, you don't eat plant-based, you eat meat and you're biting into a juicy hamburger and your dining companion turns to you and says, "Rip, you know that hamburger is not made from beef. It's actually made from golden retrievers." Now, chances are what you had just thought of as food you now think of as a dead animal. What you had just felt was delicious, you now feel is disgusting.
Rather than continue eating the hamburger, you probably want to throw it in the trash and maybe even take to the streets in protest. This is because you haven't been conditioned to think of golden retrievers as edible, and therefore your reaction to the idea of eating them is your authentic reaction. You are connected. You are seeing more clearly. You're not looking at this meat and seeing food. You're seeing dead animal, and you're more connected with your natural emotional response.
Carnism is the invisible belief system that conditions us to eat certain animals. It's essentially the opposite of veganism. We tend to think that only vegans and vegetarians follow a belief system, but the only reason that we may learn to eat pigs, but not dogs for example, is because we do follow a belief system when it comes to eating animals. When eating animals is not a necessity, which is true for many, though not everyone, many people in the world today, then it's a choice.
Choices always stem from beliefs, but this belief system is invisible. When people are eating animals, they don't even realize that they have a choice, that they're making a choice. They're just doing what they've always done. They're just doing what they've been conditioned to do. Of course, carnism exists all over the world. In meat-eating cultures around the world, people learn to classify a small handful of animals out of thousands of possible species as edible.
All the rest we learn to classify as inedible and therefore disgusting, and often even morally offensive to consume. Even though the type of species consumed changes from culture to culture, members of all cultures tend to see their own choices as rational and the choices of other cultures as irrational and often disgusting and even morally offensive. Really what it all comes down to is we're conditioned. We're born into this mindset.
We're born into this belief system that teaches us to think of certain animals as edible and with these certain animals, when it comes to these certain animals in the United States in the West, for example, pigs, chickens, fish, cows for example, we learn to distort our perceptions when it comes to their flesh and the products procured from their bodies so that we don't see them for what they are. We therefore disconnect from our natural feelings and we therefore eat them.
Rip Esselstyn:
Do you remember, Melanie, it was a couple years ago, I think it was in Great Britain where there was news that broke out that a certain amount of horse meat was being used in their burgers and everybody was absolutely appalled?
Melanie Joy:
Right. Right.
Rip Esselstyn:
That, to me, is a perfect example of people not being accepting of, well, it's fine if it comes from a cow, but a horse? Forget about it, you have crossed a line.
Melanie Joy:
Yep, absolutely. What's really important to be aware of is that carnism conditions us to act against our core values. Most people's core values include compassion or caring and justice or fairness. Most people would never support unnecessary and extensive harm to animals for absolutely no reason. Yet most people support carnism and they do this because basically they've been conditioned not to think, not to ask questions.
Most of us never ask why we eat certain animals, but not others. We never even ask why we eat any animals at all. Then something happens like this example that you're sharing and people are shocked. Often people only see carnism, they don't even see carnism, but they become aware of their reaction to carnism when something interrupts their normal process where suddenly it's like, "Oh my God, I'm not eating a cow. I'm eating a horse."
There's very little difference between horse meat and cow meat. The difference is our perceptions of horses and cows. Not horses and cows and certainly not the flesh that becomes meat.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, and just to take this to another level or give more examples, like for example, I think you talk about in the book how in India, I mean, the cows are very sacred and they don't eat their cows there, right? I think it's Vietnam it's very common to eat their dogs there if I'm not mistaken and... Yeah, go ahead.
Melanie Joy:
Well, it's common in some countries to eat dogs, but not their dogs. This is really important. This is really interesting. The first foreign language that Why We Love Dogs was published in, was Korean. I went to South Korea to give talks about carnism. One of the things that was so striking is that not everybody is supportive of eating dogs in South Korea. I mean, there's a whole movement against it. It's only a small-ish percentage of the country that does eat dogs.
However, they don't eat all dogs. The idea of eating dogs is not necessarily offensive to a number of people, but the idea of eating a Maltese is offensive. The idea of eating your pet is offensive. The idea of eating a pug is offensive, and this is true here in the West as well. People eat pigs, but most people would not eat their pet pig or their pet chicken.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. In the book you talk about, I think it's an exercise that you maybe have done with your students and you recommend that the reader do it. That is what are some of the reasons why you're so accepting of... or why you wouldn't want to eat your dog and what do you think about a pig? For example, dirty, sweaty, clean, not clean, intelligence level.
Then you go through that and you realize how we have been basically brainwashed into thinking one thing about a whole category of animals that is not even close to the truth. For example, pigs, can you tell us a little bit about how pigs are actually, if anything, more intelligent and cleaner than dogs?
Melanie Joy:
I mean, you said it and you said it well, and that is the truth. Pigs are intelligent. They're sensitive animals. I mean, this is one of the reasons that people sometimes keep pigs as pets. Pigs are not the greedy, lazy, dirty animals that were led to believe that they are. Of course, if we realize the kinds of animals pigs really were that if we recognize they're sentients, it would be much harder for us to support the extensive violence against them that is carried out under carnism.
You bring up a really important issue when you talked about us being... You used the term brainwashed. Really what happens is that, as I said earlier, most of us would never willingly support a system such as carnism. If you think about it, in just one day more farmed animals are slaughtered than the total number of people killed in all wars throughout history. I mean, this number is staggering. The extent of the violence is such that even if it were reduced by 90%, it would be 10% too much for the average person to want to support.
Yet, most people support carnism through their daily food choices and their actions. The reason this happens is because they don't realize what they're doing. Carnism, like other systems of oppression, is structured to make sure that conscientious, caring people who are rational, act against their caring and against their rationality without realizing what they're doing. It does so by using a set of psychological defense mechanisms.
These defense mechanisms distort our perceptions and disconnect us from our natural feelings so that we act against our values, against our own interests ultimately, and the interest of others without even realizing what we're doing.
Rip Esselstyn:
Do you think this is something that there was some master plan to create carnism or is it something that just has evolved over the last 75, a hundred years to where it is today?
Melanie Joy:
Well, this mentality is something I think that has evolved over many, many years, and it is not... The system that is carnism is self-perpetuating, essentially. It's self-sustain. Most people who participate in carnism have no idea that they're participating in carnism and they're keeping this dysfunctional essentially system alive. Some people do actively try to keep it alive.
Those are the carnistic industries and carnistic businesses that stand to profit or continue to profit off of people's choices. I can give some examples if you want of these carnistic defense mechanisms so people know what I'm talking about.
Rip Esselstyn:
I think that would be really helpful. Yes. Yes.
Melanie Joy:
There are a whole host of different psychological or carnistic defense mechanisms that we use. I'll share a few of them. One of them is abstraction or sometimes called deindividualization. You don't need to know this word. Basically, what happens is that-
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh, is this the cognitive trio?
Melanie Joy:
This is part of the cognitive trio. When we are born into a system such as carnism, carnism is widespread. It's so widespread. It's called a dominant system. That means that it is so widespread that its beliefs, its teachings are invisible. It's really woven through the very structure of society to shape norms, laws, beliefs, behaviors, et cetera. It's institutionalized.
That means the beliefs of carnism, the assumptions of carnism are embraced by all of the major social institutions, government, business, religion, nutrition. When we study nutrition, for example, we actually study carnistic nutrition. When we're born into such a widespread system like this, we end up looking at the world through the lens of carnism and it affects our perceptions.
Rip Esselstyn:
Can you give me another example of something not carnism that has an ideology that is pervasive throughout our culture? I think you mentioned patriarchy or feminism or something like that.
Melanie Joy:
Yeah, absolutely. I'll just for listeners explain what I mean by this defensive abstraction. We learn to think of farmed animals as lacking in any individuality or any personality of their own. We learn to think, for example, that a pig is a pig and all pigs are the same, or we learn to think of farmed animals as objects. This is another defense, objectification. When we are eating chicken, we say that we're eating something rather than someone.
These are distancing mechanisms. They distance us from the truth of our experience, essentially. We also learn to believe in what I call the three Ns of justification that eating animals is normal, natural, and necessary. Arguments that have been used of course, to justify violent practices throughout human history, from male dominance to heterosexual supremacy.
Getting back to your question, carnism is structured like other systems of oppression or oppressive systems like patriarchy. Some people think of patriarchy as sexism. It's important to recognize that the victims of each oppressive system will always have an experience that's unique. I don't want to compare the suffering of the victims because people can find that very offensive. At the same time, it's important to recognize that these systems, patriarchy, classism, racism, and so on-
Rip Esselstyn:
Speciesism.
Melanie Joy:
Speciesism, they all are structured in a very similar way and most importantly, they all stem from the very same mentality. The very same mentality that drives us to carry out harm against farmed animals or other animals is the mentality that causes us to support exploitation of humans and harm to humans.
It's really, really important to recognize this because when we do, we recognize that when we're trying to create a better world for anyone, we can't simply just look at who is harming, who is oppressing or abusing whom? We really need to look at how and why we oppress and abuse in the first place. We need to look at this oppressive mentality that we have inherited.
Rip Esselstyn:
You mentioned those three Ns, normal, natural and necessary. Let's just try and dig into some of those a little bit deeper, like necessary. What do you mean by necessary? Like what? Most people think you need protein and the only place where you can get protein is from meat and so therefore I'm justified in doing it because otherwise I would wither on the vine and die.
Melanie Joy:
Exactly. The N of necessity I believe is the most important N that keeps carnism alive, and oppressive systems in general alive. When we believe something is a necessity for our survival, for our various survival, then we're willing to do all sorts of things that we wouldn't otherwise be able to do. If you look at atrocities that have been committed throughout human history, they've largely been made possible by convincing the populace that supporting the atrocity is necessary for the survival of the race, of, in this case, the species of the nation.
When we believe that eating animals is necessary for human survival or for human health, that gives us basically a free pass to do whatever we need to do because eating animals becomes an act of self-defense basically, self-preservation. It becomes ethically neutral in a sense. When a necessity becomes recognized as a choice or even becomes a choice, when a necessity becomes a choice, it takes on an ethical dimension that it didn't have in quite the same way before.
I think we can see that happening now that more and more people thanks to people like you, Rip, and your father and your family, really helping people recognize that it's not necessary to eat animals to survive or to thrive. In fact, it's necessary to stop eating animals and more and more people are waking up to this reality. I think that's one of the reasons that people are becoming increasingly ethically uncomfortable with the idea of eating animals.
Rip Esselstyn:
You have a quote in the book and it's actually by Adolph Hitler that says, "Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it and eventually they will believe it." That to me is just so... It seems so true and that's what's going on to me today in several different things, including carnism. How do we pierce the veil here of carnism and how do we get... I mean, obviously talking about it, reading about it is to me the first step.
But what I found really fascinating when I was reading this book is if you don't ask the questions and you're not presented the information, this argument then, because I think we're so indoctrinated and habituated into this world of carnism, it's almost impossible for us to see into the carnism matrix in order to pull ourselves out of it and see, oh my God, look at this. This is the most incredible lie that's been perpetuated for decades.
Look what it's doing to our personal health, the planet's health, the animals we love, and also to all of the... just the collateral damage and the workers that are being numbed and you do a great job talking about it here. Back to my question is, what's the best way to bring somebody out of this matrix?
Melanie Joy:
Well, I mean, and you're right, it's one of many incredible lies that have been told to us and we have inherited and supported without knowing what we were supporting. It is huge. You're right. It's vast, this carnistic machine. Carnism is institutionalized, as I said, so how do we change something that's existed for so long and that's really saturated through society? Absolutely.
The first step is absolutely awareness and especially for people... I mean, raising awareness of carnism is very, very important because when we become aware of the system and of the defenses that we have internalized, we're much less likely to be hijacked by them. One of the challenges with raising awareness of carnism is that carnism conditions people to resist anyone or anything that would actually get them out of the carnistic box.
I'm sure a lot of people who are listening to this who have tried to... Whether you're talking about eating plants for health or eating plants because of concerns about animal welfare, you've probably experienced opening your mouth to talk about what you think is a very easy 'sell' and having the person you're talking to resist with a lot of defensiveness saying things like, "Don't tell me that you'll ruin my meal," which is what people used to say to me when I first tried to talk about my experience when I became vegetarian.
Nobody wanted to hear what I had to say and they would actually get angry at me for trying to share information with them that would actually help them have better lives and help them participate in creating a better world. Raising awareness is very, very important of carnism. We have a lot of videos on our website, short videos, a lot of materials that are bite-sized and easily digestible at carnism.org.
I think it's also very important for people who are already eating a more plant-based diet and who are already in alignment with vegan values or clearly in alignment with vegan values, to learn how to communicate about this issue in a way that reduces the chances... or I should say that increases the chances that their message will be heard as they intend it to be. This is a huge part of the work that I do and that we do at Beyond Carnism.
I've written two books on effective communication and relationships. One of them is specifically for people who are communicating across this vegan/non-vegan difference. But learning the tools, the principles for effective communication is so important and can be so life-changing, no matter who you are and what you're talking about. But certainly if you want to be a part of helping shift, part of transforming carnism, it's very helpful to be empowered to talk about this issue in a way that's effective.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. If you don't have the communication skills to make it happen, as you said, you're probably going to fall on your face and people are not going to want to hear it. What book did you write that actually helps people with that communication style? Is that Beyond Beliefs?
Melanie Joy:
Yeah. Well, one of the books is Beyond Beliefs, which is a guide to improving relationships and communication for vegans, vegetarians, and meat eaters. The other one is just called Getting Relationships Right. Getting Relationships Right is not specifically about communicating and relating around this carnism/veganism difference, but it'd a one-stop guide to building relational literacy, which is the understanding of, and ability to practice healthy ways of relating. It includes a lot about communication.
Rip Esselstyn:
Do you actually have a online class that people can take or something like that?
Melanie Joy:
We do. We have our Center for Effective Vegan Advocacy. We give in-person and also online trainings and courses to anybody who wants to be able to talk about this issue or improve their communication more broadly, or even just live more sustainably as somebody who is not eating animals in this dominant animal-eating culture. People can come to carnism.org or veganadvocacy.org. We have a lot of materials, videos, courses, trainings, and we're putting up more bite-size materials on our website over the coming months.
Rip Esselstyn:
Fantastic. Do you believe that we live in a democracy or a metocracy?
Melanie Joy:
Metocracy.
Rip Esselstyn:
Metocracy. Yes.
Melanie Joy:
Yeah. Well, I think it's a hybrid model at this point. I mean, there are so many vested interests in maintaining the carnistic status quo, so much money funneled into the carnistic industry and institutions. It's really staggering. This was a big part of the problem as more and more people thankfully are becoming aware of not only the dangers of eating a carnistic diet, but the imperative of moving toward a plant-based diet for our bodies, for the animal, for the environment.
I mean, this information is becoming increasingly disseminated and yet even when people want to make a change in their lives, they can really struggle to do so. Part of it is because carnistic agriculture has massive subsidies, so it's just a lot cheaper to eat some of the food that's the most toxic to your body. Part of it is because people buy into this idea that either you're eating plant-based or eating vegan and you're part of the solution or you're eating animals and you're part of the problem.
We have this sort of all or nothing mindset, which is understandable but problematic when we're communicating about the issue. We really need to invite people to, I always say, just be as vegan as possible, whatever that means to you.
Rip Esselstyn:
You know what? I want to ask you this. In your... Well, not your opinion, but according to your data, how many animals including fish, roughly do we as a human species eat every year? Do you know?
Melanie Joy:
I did know when I wrote it in the book, but my brain does not retain numbers very well. I'm sure it's on a page of the book somewhere though.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay. Yeah. Well, I can tell you, and this isn't necessarily from your book, but just from some data that I've read, it's somewhere between 70 to 80 billion animals-
Melanie Joy:
It's incredible.
Rip Esselstyn:
... annually. My question to you is this, I mean, if we are, in some ways, I'm just going to call it performing this kind of mass murder globally annually, and you talked about, just to put it in perspective, how many animals we are killing every day, how can that be so invisible? How is it that we're not seeing trucks with animals during the day? We're not seeing all these massive farms with cattle and chickens and stuff, is it because everything's undercover and cloaked or what's going on?
Melanie Joy:
I mean, the vast majority of it is. I think it's somewhere between... To my knowledge, 95 to 98% of the meat, eggs and dairy that make it to people's plates globally is from factory-farmed animals. So the main defense, the primary defense of carnism is denial. If we deny there's a problem in the first place, we don't have to do anything about it. The primary way that denial gets expressed is through invisibility and carnism keeps its victims out of sight and therefore conveniently out of public consciousness.
So yes, these individuals they're not standing on hillsides grazing. The vast majority of them are not anyway. They're housed in these windowless sheds in remote locations that are virtually impossible to attain access to. To be fair, they are transported in trucks with windows along the highway, and people pass them every single day, but they pass them and they don't make the connection.
They pass trucks of individuals that are literally being shipped to places where they're going to be dismembered in some of the most horrific ways imaginable, and this doesn't even register in most people's consciousness when it's happening, because people are so conditioned to be desensitized to the experience of these other individuals and to what's actually happening in the world when it comes to farmed animals, when it comes to carnism.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. I think it was a year and a half ago. It was an insanely hot day. We'd just gone through Chicago. We were pulling off to get gas and there was a 18-wheel vehicle, three decks with goats and my youngest daughter got out and she speaks her mind. She's eight years old and she was like, "Are you taking these and are you going to be killing them?" He said, "Yes, unfortunately that's my job." He had to go another 500 miles, which would be like eight hours.
It was literally like 95 degrees out. They were making such a stir and everyone that saw them, your heart just bled for them. I mean, I think another quote you have in the book is... I think it's Paul or Linda McCartney that says, "If slaughter houses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian." The reality is how these animals are kept, shipped around it, is it so grotesque. It is so abominable. The fact that we, as a truly empathetic species can allow this to go on it's egregious at so many levels.
That is why to me, the work that you're doing, and you're raising the awareness trying to teach people how to communicate with people that are empathetic like we are and very sensitive human beings, figure out a way to have this resonate with them is so vitally important.
Melanie Joy:
Thank you. I agree with you. It is grotesque and it is shocking. Many people who do wake up to the reality of what's happening in the world can find that they start to feel traumatized by it, not simply by becoming aware of what's happening, but then by becoming aware of the fact that the people around them, people they care about, people that they want to maintain healthy, authentic connections with are resisting this information and actively participating in the problem.
This is why it's so important for anybody who really does want to be a part of the solution and really does want to use their voice or use their energy, or just stay awake to this so that they can stay on the path themselves of not contributing to it, engage in some really good self-care and really learn about, again, the psychology of not just carnism, but the psychology of what happens to us when we wake up to carnism and how we can take care of ourselves.
We talk about this in some of our CEVA work too, our effective vegan advocacy work. I think it's so important. I can imagine that people listening to this podcast are aware of some of what we're saying. This is probably for a lot of people, not totally new information. For you who are listening, I would say, thank you. Thank you for keeping your eyes and your hearts open. You are on the front lines of change.
You are on the front lines of a social justice movement essentially that's very new and that makes you a pioneer. What that means is that you really have an obligation to take very good care of yourself, because if you don't practice a lot of compassion to yourself, if you don't learn how to take care of yourself, some of this reality can end up really causing you to suffer.
Rip Esselstyn:
No, this is a social justice movement big time. There's another quote that you have in the book. It's by Robert Lifton who wrote a book called The Nazi Doctors. He says... And I think this is so appropriate, as far as what we just talked about how this whole carnism is so absolutely invisible and under the cloak of everything that is visible to our society's eyes, and that is, "Mass murder is everywhere, but at the same time nowhere."
They do such a brilliant job, just keeping this under wraps. We just keep feeding this carnistic matrix, and we're just so absolutely blind to it. I read your book and it was so infuriating at the same time. It made me want to really stand up and do something about it.
Melanie Joy:
You are. This is so important. I mean, carnism is a multifaceted problem and it needs a multifaceted approach to the solution. People need to come at this problem from all different angles. If we don't debunk the myth that eating animals is necessary, we're never going to get people to stop eating animals. Of course, large scale change is going to happen not when one individual at a time changes, but when institutions change.
Now, thankfully we have medical and nutritional institutions finally starting to shift, finally starting to take a different stand. We have businesses for instance. My colleague, Tobias Leenaert, has written a great book called How to Create a Vegan World. In it, he talks about how we need to make compassion easier for people. We need to lower the bar. There are some of us, myself being one of them, when I found out what was going on I would've... Again, it was like '89. There wasn't really great vegan food available back then.
But at that point I would've been willing to eat cardboard for the rest of my life, but most people don't feel that way. For most people, the bar needs to be lower. For whatever reason, we need to make compassion easier for people so making it easier for people to eat healthy plant-based foods that are affordable, that are good for the environment that are not harming animals. This is so incredibly important. Whatever reason people use to stop eating animals is a good reason.
Many people stop eating animals, not because they're concerned with animal welfare, but because they're concerned about their heart health and physically their heart health I mean. Then once they stop eating animals, they're no longer defensive against information about animal rights issues, because there's nothing left to defend. It's really important to appreciate... I'll just reiterate this because it's so important, these carnistic defenses become internalized and people become very resistant to information that challenges what they see as their right to eat animals.
It's not just about raising awareness. It's about communicating in the right way. It's about helping businesses shift their business model from one that's organized around slaughter to one that's organized around producing healthy foods for the environment and humans, and it's about changing institutions in a variety of ways.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah. We need a major paradigm shift, a major shift in our consciousness as humans around carnism. God, we need to kill carnism. We need to do it. We really do.
Melanie Joy:
Kick carnism, to not use a... Or to move, as our organization says, beyond carnism.
Rip Esselstyn:
Beyond. Thank you, because kill that's not a friendly term. We don't want to use that. You just said we want to lower the bar for compassion. Give me an example, what you mean by that. Like lowering the bar. Yeah.
Melanie Joy:
To make compassion easier. Yeah. Tobias uses the example of how gluten-free products are really easily accessible now for anybody and very few people actually have celiac disease. But because there were people who were gluten-reducers, people who were not so sick that they had to not eat gluten, but people who were just, I want to reduce my gluten consumption, basically demanded gluten-free products. Now gluten-free products are so easily available that if you want to be gluten-free, it's pretty easy to do so.
It's the same thing with eating animals. We have to make the availability, basically drive up demand for healthy plant-based products, get these products to be more available. Hopefully do some political works and we really challenge the meat, egg and dairy lobbyists and subsidies to really challenge the subsidization of carnistic products so that they're not so easily available for people, they're not so cheap and make it so that people have easier... Basically it's about people having easier access to healthier compassionate foods. That's really what it is.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. What's your opinion of the cell-based meats that seem to be really getting a lot of funding, getting some traction right now since it's cell-based in a lab, as opposed to an animal that's killed? Are you okay with that?
Melanie Joy:
I mean, I'm okay with anything that is creating a more compassionate world and a healthier world and so if cell-based meats can be affordable for people, accessible for people and can replace mass slaughter, then of course I'm all for that.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Which I think it can. I think it has the potential to do all that. I interviewed Ethan Brown from Beyond Meat and he's obviously trying to do everything he can to create a burger that mimics meat so that meat eaters don't feel like they're missing out on anything. That's why to me this whole cell-based meats is so fascinating because to me, maybe they'll be able to grow it and make it in a way where it doesn't have as much cholesterol or saturated fat and so it's a healthier form of meat, but maybe not much.
Frankly to me, you know what? We need to do this for the planet, we need to do it for the animals and I think for people that are really hell bent on doing this because they want to be the healthiest versions of themselves. They'll find hopefully something maybe that's in a different category, plant-based or something like that.
Melanie Joy:
Yeah, exactly.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah. I love so many of the quotes and the way you start off so many of the chapters in your book. I think it's the second page it's Gandhi and the greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. Right now I think it's fair to say that our moral progress is going backwards. It's stagnated and we need to make it go forward. You seem to be very, very hopeful about the future.
Melanie Joy:
I'd say I'm cautiously optimistic. I mean, we're in a race against time essentially. We do know that humanity has to change its consumption patterns substantially. If we hope to have a planet to leave to our grandchildren and whether we're able to make that change in time or not, I don't know. What I do know and what I do see and what does give me hope, I've been talking about carnism since the book came out essentially, the first version. You're referring to the 10th anniversary edition, right?
Rip Esselstyn:
Yes. Yeah. I'm sorry I didn't say... Yes. Yes.
Melanie Joy:
It's no problem.
Rip Esselstyn:
10th anniversary. What? Came out like two years ago?
Melanie Joy:
Yeah. It came out in 2020. I've been talking about this for close to 12 years now, all over the world. I've been to 50 or so countries on six continents having this conversation about carnism and what I see over and over again, without exception everywhere I've gone is that people really do care. We know that we are hardwired for empathy. Empathy is in fact our natural state and most people are absolutely horrified when they learn the truth about carnism and do want to withhold their support from it.
I think this is important. Like I said, this world is not going to be saved because one person at a time makes the connection and opens their heart and changes their consumption patterns. We know that. It's also important to know institutions are made up of people. People are hardwired to feel empathy and research has shown that the vast majority of people genuinely want to live a moral life.
They want to feel that they're living in accordance with their core moral values, practicing their integrity, which is by the way, why we go through all of these mental gymnastics in order to eat animals, because we need to feel good about what we're doing and we don't feel good about what we're doing when we're participating in carnism. That is hopeful. There are the movements.
This social justice movement, the animal rights movement and in particular, the vegan movement, which I would say is a movement within a movement is exploding all over the world. Again, without exception. Whether I'm in Kuwait or Taiwan or South Africa or Lithuania, I hear the same thing again and again and again, from reporters in mainstream media and from people running vegan organizations that in the past three to five years support for an awareness of plant-based eating has just exploded. That helps me to feel quite hopeful.
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh, to me when I look back on when I wrote, for example, my first book, The Engine 2 Diet in 2009, right?
Melanie Joy:
Right. I remember.
Rip Esselstyn:
When you wrote your book in 2010, and I think about how exponentially far we've come in the last decade, that gives me a lot of hope that in another decade, which as you said, we've got to move at the speed of light here. But in another five to 10 years, it'll be really interesting to see where we are and if we haven't really started to move beyond carnism in a meaningful discernible way.
Melanie Joy:
Yeah. I agree with you. I agree with you completely. That is the way the trajectory is headed. History has shown us again and again that when enough people speak out... Virtually every atrocity throughout human history was made possible by a populace that turned away from a reality that they felt was too painful or just chose not to face. Virtually every social transformation was made possible because a group of people chose to bear witness and they demanded, requested that others bear witness as well.
This is what we can see happening right now when it comes to this issue with the animals and with carnism. I do also feel that promoting awareness simply of the word and the concept of carnism is also quite important because it means that it stops people from thinking that eating animals is somehow a given. It's just the way things are, the way things are supposed to be when we name it and we show that no, eating animals does not have to be a given.
It is the result of a belief system. Not only a belief system, a belief system that is an oppressive belief system. It's structured exactly the same way and reflects exactly the same mentality that has driven and enabled atrocities throughout the history of humankind. That really changes the conversation when we can recognize carnism and carnistic practices for what they are.
Rip Esselstyn:
That is powerful. That is powerful. You say that witnessing is the cornerstone of social justice.
Melanie Joy:
It is an important piece for sure, of social justice.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Throughout your travels around the world, have you seen a culture or a country or a society that is more vegetarian/vegan, maybe outside of India than it is-
Melanie Joy:
Carnistic?
Rip Esselstyn:
... than it is carnistic? Yes.
Melanie Joy:
Oh, that's interesting. I have not personally been anywhere where veganism is the dominant practice actually. Let me think about it. I don't think so, but I've been to places that are very, very vegan-friendly. I mean, Tel Aviv, Israel obviously it's carnistic. It's not a culture that's completely plant-based but I do remember when I was in Tel Aviv, Israel is extremely vegan friendly.
I remember I went to this just mainstream... It was a lunch place where they had probably like 150... It was a bowl place. You make your own bowl. There's a bunch of people behind the counter and then you just tell them what you want in the bowl. You've got like 20 proteins to choose from, 20 starches, a bunch of veggies and on and on and on. It's this huge place. I remember asking, I said, "Oh, which of these is vegan?"
He pointed to three things and he said, "This, this and this are not vegan." I was like, "This is amazing." Israel's very, very plant-forward we can say. The U.S. isn't doing too badly either in a lot of places. You go to cities like... You know because I think we're around the same age. Things have changed a lot recently and everybody knows the word vegan and anywhere you go, you can pretty much get plant-based options.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. In 2019, right before everything shut down because of COVID, we went to Poland. My wife's brother has been in Poland for 25 years, married a Polish woman. They have two sons and we did a trip around Poland and I was stunned and amazed at how vegan friendly it was in Poland. You could pull up your HappyCow app and it pointed you exactly to all the vegetarian/vegan restaurants in the area. We're on our way. We're on our way, but being who we are, we just want it to go faster.
Melanie Joy:
Yeah, we do. That's why we have people like you in the world and that's why we have conversations like this. It's great. It's great talking to you. I love what you do. I'm so grateful. I think about this all the time. I remember back in the day when I first started talking about carnism and I had to... I mean, there was information out there about plant-based eating, but nothing like there is today. I would always struggle and I would have to try to find the best websites to send people to.
It was always so iffy, but now I'm like, "Oh, got you covered." There's no question. We have so much great information about how plant-based diets are super healthy and really accessible and can be absolutely delicious.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yep. Yep. No, you're right. The amount of resources is phenomenal. Then the amount of different vegan cookbooks that are coming out, plant-strong, plant-based, plant-slanted cookbooks, it's phenomenal.
Melanie Joy:
That's right.
Rip Esselstyn:
Then I'm also getting into the food space now with a line of Plant-Strong food products and the amount of companies that are getting... or I should say, even your tried and true ones like Campbell's and you name it, that are now introducing all kinds of plant-based products. We are literally in the midst of a bit of a, I think, cultural revolution or getting more plant-based books, food. Just I think the word I'm looking for is a zeitgeist, I think.
I think we are in the midst of a zeitgeist and sometimes it's hard for us maybe to see it because we're so entrenched in it, but it's definitely happening.
Melanie Joy:
I agree. I agree.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah. Let me ask you this, and I really appreciate your time today and for sharing this whole philosophy around carnism and beyond carnism, any departing words as far as what you would like people to do, go, how we can be helpful for them as they are starting to, in their own way, help themselves and help the people that they love to realize that we're caught in this carnistic matrix that we're trying to get out of?
Melanie Joy:
Yeah. Thank you. I mean, first, just a big thank you for people listening and for people tuning in and wanting to be a part of this conversation and wanting to be a part of this transformation that we're talking about. We see ourselves, at Beyond Carnism, as really very much a service organization. We are an organization that is in service. We're in service of this transformation that we're talking about and we're very much in service of people who are a part of this transformation. We want to help you.
We want to provide you with resources and with tools and with whatever support we can. If you want to come to Beyond Carnism, come to carnism.org, we have lots of tools for you to learn about carnism. Some of them are really bite-sized, easily shareable if you want to educate other people about carnism. We also have lots and lots of tools and services, if you want to improve your ability to be a part of this change, whether it's your communication or taking care of yourself and your own sustainability or just your education and learning more about this issue and the psychology.
What does it mean to be living in this dominant carnistic culture? What does that mean for you psychologically? How can you find a way to be empowered and joyful in this process along your journey, and be as effective as possible as you help to bring about transformation and to raise awareness? Come visit carnism.org. You can link from there to veganadvocacy.org. That's our CEVA website. It's linked on carnism.org, but you can also go directly to veganadvocacy.org to look at the vegan advocacy resources.
A huge thanks to you, Rip. I mean, you're such an inspiration and it's so great to be connecting with you. I never thought back in 2017, that the next time I'd see you would be digitally.
Rip Esselstyn:
Five years later.
Melanie Joy:
Five years later here in this world now.
Rip Esselstyn:
I know.
Melanie Joy:
But it's been such a honor and a pleasure, and I'm so grateful for what you do. Your passion is palpable and contagious, and I appreciate it so much.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, thank you and right back at you. Before I let you go, have you had dinner yet?
Melanie Joy:
Well, it's nine o'clock here so I had dinner before I talked to you.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah did. Can you share with us what you had if you don't mind, if that's not too personal?
Melanie Joy:
No, not at all. I have to try to remember. What did I have? I had some roasted sweet potatoes I was just picking for my dinner and a little arugula salad with lentils. I think I put chickpea... We have this chickpea rice, it's rice that's made from chickpeas and nutritional yeast with beans.
Rip Esselstyn:
Chickpea rice. I've never heard of that. How do you-
Melanie Joy:
It's great.
Rip Esselstyn:
How do you prepare it? Do you-
Melanie Joy:
It's great. Well, it's actually... I think it's little chickpea pasta. It's made of all chickpea flour and it's pasta, but it's shaped like rice and so you boil it and then you drain it and it has the texture of part rice and part pasta, but it's shaped like rice and it's got a lot of protein and it's Bio, that's organic. Yeah. It's all organic. It's actually great.
Rip Esselstyn:
Is that a product that you bought in Germany and then you made it? Yeah?
Melanie Joy:
Yeah. Well, everything because I'm in Germany. Yeah. I buy it here. We have a little Bio Leb in the organic store. It's like the Whole Foods of Germany. It's much smaller called Alnatura and it's down the street. We just go there and get lots of great vegan stuff there. The pastas they have are pretty fun.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, sounds delicious. I haven't had lunch yet, so I can't wait to have lunch and I'm having leftovers from last night. We made a big old soup, a big old vegetable stew with some really Hearty Bread. I bet you have great breads in Berlin.
Melanie Joy:
Too good. Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Love it. Hey, will you hit me with a Plant-Strong fist if you don't mind? All right.
Melanie Joy:
Where am I?
Rip Esselstyn:
One, two, three, Plant-Strong. There we are. Wait, boom. All right. Thank you, Melanie, so much.
Melanie Joy:
Thank you.
Rip Esselstyn:
To learn more or to pick up a copy of Melanie's books, including the groundbreaking Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows, visit the episode page at plantstrongpodcast.com. We'll be sure to add a link in the show notes to this and all of Melanie's resources. Thank you so much for wanting to be a active part of a global transformation so that we, as a species can continue to raise the bar and get beyond carnism.
The Plant-Strong podcast team includes Carrie Barrett, Laurie Kortowich, Ami Mackey, Patrick Gavin and Wade Clark. This season is dedicated to all of those courageous true-seekers who weren't afraid to look through the lens with clear vision and hold firm to a higher truth. Most notably, my parents, Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr. and Ann Crile Esselstyn. Thanks for listening.
