Lewis Bollard

So, so far globally, wealth has heavily correlated with more suffering.

I mean, the drive of people getting richer has led to them eating far more meat and far more of that coming from factory farming.

And we have overwhelmingly seen that trend across all countries.

In a few European countries, we are starting to see the dynamic where once countries have reached a certain degree of wealth,

they are able to bring about reforms that actually reduce the total amount of suffering.

I think it is quite likely that Germany has passed the top of that curve and is now on the other side of diminishing total animal suffering.

Critical thing to bear in mind is this does not happen on its own.

In Germany, this happened because there are very talented advocates who harnessed that public opinion and concern to drive corporate reforms with the retailers and to drive government policy reforms.

And I think we need to do that.

I don't think you can just count that people are going to get to a certain degree of wealth and this is going to happen.

I think it only happens if there is advocacy to mobilize that public opinion.

Yeah, it's a huge problem.

So advocates in the US passed ballot measures in Florida and Arizona to ban gestation crates.

And then the pork industry just imported crated pork from other states into those states.

Mm-hmm.

So advocates then went to California and Massachusetts and passed ballot measures that extended the same standards to the sale of pork within the states, that you can't sell pork from crated pigs anywhere.

I think that is a critical move.

And we're seeing the European Union now considering doing the same thing, imposing animal welfare standards equally on imports.

I think that policy is critical.

to not just ensuring that you're not getting these laws undercut, but also to changing the political dynamic.