Summary: The animal agriculture industry is responsible for the unnecessary slaughter of 65 billion animals worldwide per year, making it the most exploitative and violent industry on the planet. For this, and other reasons we will talk about, Dr. Melanie Joy founded the Carnism Action & Awareness Network (CAAN), a charitable organization dedicated to raising awareness of and transforming carnism--the invisible belief system that conditions people to eat certain animals. Dr. Joy is a Harvard-educated psychologist, professor of psychology and sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, celebrated speaker, and the author of the award-winning book on carnism, Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows. Our interview will address all aspects of carnism including how the vast majority of consumers of animal products are unaware that they are contributing to such animal cruelty—or that eating animals is a choice, rather than a given, in much of the world today as well as how humane people unintentionally enable animal agriculture so that we act against our own interests and the interests of others without realizing what we are doing. Through CAAN she seeks to empower concerned citizens and vegan advocates through education and activism, to help create a more just world for all beings, humans and nonhumans alike and we are thrilled to speak with her in more depth.
