Lewis Bollard

Today, I want to talk with you about one of the most important moral issues we never talk about, and that's factory farming.

But first, I want to share with you the story of how I came to be here.

I grew up in New Zealand, and yes, we had a sheep farm.

It was small, 100 acres of rolling hills, and the sheep would graze the hillsides by day and then retreat to the hilltops to circle up and fall asleep at night.

The sheep ultimately went to slaughter.

But I always felt like at least they'd lived good lives and had quick deaths.

Frankly, if I'm ever reincarnated as a sheep, which, as a New Zealander, is not unlikely, I'd like to live their life.

When I was a teenager, we traveled to Vietnam.

And in the back streets of Hanoi, I stumbled into a live animal market.

I still remember seeing the site, stacks upon stacks of cages crammed full of animals of every species, trembling in fear, staring out at me in distress.

I was shaken.

But when I returned to New Zealand, I figured things were different.

I mean, you can see the cows and the sheep in the fields.

Still, I started to wonder how we treated the animals that you couldn't see.

How, in particular, did we treat the pigs and the chickens?

So I did what you did back then.

I picked up a phone book, and I looked up some pig and chicken farms.

And one by one, I called, and I naively asked if I could just come visit.

And one by one, they told me no.

They don't let anyone just visit.