“Survival at Stake: How Our Treatment of Animals Is Key to Human Existence” by Poorva Joshipura (vegan), Part 1 of 2

Poorva Joshipura (vegan) is a globally recognized animal-people rights advocate, author, and the first president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) International. Her book “Survival at Stake: How Our Treatment of Animals Is Key to Human Existence” explores how crises such as climate change, pandemics, and antibiotic resistance are closely linked to how humans treat animal-people.

“Early on in my career, I was an investigator, and I had the opportunity to film what happens to animals in a slaughterhouse setting. It was in that moment that I decided to spend the rest of my life working to help animals like him.” “Focusing on those similarities – that they are capable of suffering, that they feel joy, that they feel sadness, that they feel loneliness, that they have needs – I try to help people understand about speciesism as the root cause of all sorts of horrific cruelty that we make animals endure, and that then we thereby make ourselves endure.” “It is this very system that also contributes to the greenhouse gases that worsen climate change. That brings us also to zoonotic disease. Then we also have the fact that huge swaths of land are being cleared for these animals, and the food to feed them and to rear them. All of these are very, very serious concerns, and all of them are connected with each other, and they’re connected to the way we treat animals for meat, eggs, and dairy, but also fashion items like leather. I think that we need to look at the root cause of all of them to protect ourselves from every single one of those issues.”