How can we improve animal-human relationships? How can we increase our sensitivity to the other animals who share this planet with us?

Poorva Joshipura is PETA U.K. Senior Vice President. She is the author of Survival at Stake: How Our Treatment of Animals is Key to Human Existence and For a Moment of Taste: How What You Eat Impacts Animals, the Planet and Your Health.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

Speaking of our own survival being bound up with animal welfare, we've seen how our treatment of animals has come back to bite us with COVID-19, but there are a lot of instances, mad cow disease, monkeypox, and now another chronic wasting disease zombie deer disease has erupted in Yellowstone Park that could jump the species barrier.

POORVA JOSHIPURA

I wrote Survival at Stake because I've been working in animal rights for nearly the past 25 years. Throughout that time, one common question has been asked: Well, shouldn't we deal with human issues first. But animal rights are human rights. Animal rights is environmentalism. These things are not distinct. And that's the point I was really trying to make in my book. I was inspired to write it because of the COVID-19 crisis. It just brings us back to the point of why it is so important to teach people, young people, and young men the importance of being kind to everyone, animals included. If you teach them that, I think the other lessons start to much more automatically transfer over.

Our Animal Ancestors

All of us vertebrate species came from this common ancestor. And so, if we look at ourselves and our bone structure and compare it to other animals, we will see a lot of similarities. It's no wonder, then, that we have a lot of very important similarities with animals. Yes, we may be different in a lot of ways, but we're the same as them in all of the ways that really matter.

The Impact of Racism, Sexism and Speciesism

I grew up in Virginia in the United States, and I faced a lot of racism in school and bullying when I grew up. And that experience put me on the path of recognizing what's wrong with other isms, not just racism, you know, sexism... Unfortunately, all women have experienced some form of sexism in their lives at some point. Also speciesism. All of these types of isms have the common theme of othering somebody else, othering somebody who's not like you. And a lot of the justifications that we use, historically, for racism or sexism or even speciesism are the same. For instance, that these beliefs or these notions that they're not as smart as us, or they don't feel as much, or this kind of thing. And we increasingly, thankfully, recognize that that's a flawed reasoning when it comes to racism and sexism. And it's also flawed when it comes to speciesism.

Understanding Animal Communication & How AI Can Be Used to Help or Harm Animals

With AI, I do think it is our societal responsibility to be aware of how it can be used to harm animals. For instance, there's the worry that the same types of ways that AI might help, for instance, protect against poachers, that same technology can also be used to find the animals to poach or to damage wildlife, not only protect wildlife. So there's that concern. There's a concern about factory farming and how animals are already wholly disregarded in that process. And AI could even further automate that process to where there's no consideration of the animals at all, even worse than what goes on today. At the same time, AI can be and already is starting to be used for things like doing way better than what we're able to do in terms of determining how well a drug might behave or how a chemical might react by way of looking at all of the data together that exists and drawing a conclusion way better than a human being can do. There are ways that AI is already being used to reduce how animals are used in the laboratory setting. There's a lot of research going on right now about deciphering what animals are saying. The question is, are we going to listen to those animals?

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I would go back to that very simple thing of treating animals the way that you would like to be treated. And I know that humane education is becoming a more welcome subject or way of teaching in schools. And I definitely think we need more of that where it's not just you go to school and learn about maths and science and history and so on, but you learn about those subjects within the realm of real-life issues and real-life problems.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk and Courtney Gaoiran with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producers on this episode were Sam Myers, Courtney Gaoiran and Aleister Knight. One Planet Podcast & The Creative Process is produced by Mia Funk. Additional production support by Sophie Garnier.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).