The Harm of Humane with Emily Moran Barwick

**Hope Bohanec** (0:08)
Welcome to the Hope for the Animals podcast, sponsored by Compassionate Living. I'm your host, Hope Bohanec, and you can catch up on all our past shows and get more information by going to our website, hopefortheanimalspodcast.org, and you can find my contact information there as well. Today on the podcast, we are continuing the Humane Hoax theme, seems to be our theme for the month, because of Compassionate Living's upcoming Humane Hoax Online Conference. That's coming up on February 26th. So we're continuing that theme today with our guest, Emily Moran Barwick. She's from Bite Size Vegan. She created Bite Size Vegan. And Emily will be speaking at the upcoming conference, the Humane Hoax Online Conference at the end of this month. So I hope you will join us for that. We have five wonderful speakers covering numerous aspects of the Humane Hoax, the Humane Myth. So please join us. Register for this free conference on February 26th. And I'll put a link to that registration in the show notes.
But before we get into our conversation with Emily, I have some thoughts to share.
So I've been beyond excited for all the beyond meat options in fast food, but there's been a recent controversy in the vegan community over the KFC Beyond Nuggets. And while most vegans are really celebrating all these advancements, there have been some who have been vocal about their opposition to this development, particularly with these nuggets at KFC. And I saw an image on social media that said something like, maybe KFC created Beyond Nuggets so that vegans would fight with each other and not with KFC. So, I feel like I want to address this.
So the issue that these folks have, my understanding, is that most of the KFC nuggets are deep fried in the same oil as the chicken flesh. I think there's some restaurants that are able to have a separate deep fryer, but for most of them, the nuggets are boiled in the same oil, also that they are unhealthy and KFC is just really a terrible business, killing billions of chickens, so we shouldn't be supporting them or singing their praises.
And if you're someone who feels this way or you know someone who feels this way, I just want to say that, you know, I get it. I agree, I agree with you on all those issues. I don't know that I could eat them. Being fried in the same oil as the meat, that grosses me out, I get it. And yeah, KFC is a horrible company that is responsible for the deaths of billions of birds. But I also want to encourage these folks to think about a few things that I'm gonna say about this. And here's my main message around this issue.
It's not for you. It's not for vegans. It's not for us. As vegans, we can feel really left out of the mainstream. We want to be accepted and included, and I get that. So we feel like we should be able to participate in this what really is a revolutionary moment. But for many vegans, we sometimes have health standards, purity issues, that will take a while to be met, if ever.
The focus of this should not be on us, not on vegans. The focus is on saving lives, immediately saving lives, animals' lives that are suffering. It's been estimated that beyond an impossible meat saved a million animals' lives in 2021, a million lives.
The health concerns, the purity issues, I get it, I do. I agree, but those can come later. I get not wanting to encourage people to eat unhealthy food, sure, but it is better. The nutritional profile is better than meat and it's certainly better for the environment and it's by far better for the animals. So again, I will say, it's not for you. Vegans have other options. Many of us can go to a vegan restaurant, we can go to the health food store, you can find healthier nuggets that aren't fried, but others may not have that option. KFC may be all they can afford, the only restaurant in their neighborhood. And not everyone's gonna go out of their way 20 miles further to the vegan restaurant, not everyone can.
But if there's a better option for their kids, for their husband who just got diagnosed with heart disease, for the people who say, you know, I'll do it when it's easy. Well, this is making it easy for them, affordable for them. So again, I say, it's not for vegans.
So KFC and other fast food chains that are offering vegan meats, they're doing what we asked. This could be the beginning of a huge change, changing them for the better, making their offerings more healthy and certainly more compassionate. Is it everything we want? No, but it's a process and it's a huge first step, a wonderful beginning with these Beyond Nuggets. It's not the end, final, perfect world we want, sure, but it's a huge start. You don't have to promote it. If that doesn't feel right to you, that's fine. They have huge marketing budgets, fast food, so they don't need vegans to help promote it. But I would encourage you to please not speak out against it. The lives that can be saved are in the billions. And maybe someday the McDonald's sign will say, billions and billions saved instead of billions and billions served.