Animal agriculture isn’t just harmful to animals, it threatens public health, the environment, and our future. In this episode, biomedical scientist Dr. Faraz Harsini discusses the One Health approach, cognitive dissonance in food choices, and sustainable alternatives like plant-based and cultivated meat.
What if your daily food choices could prevent pandemics, protect the planet, and end unnecessary animal suffering?
In this eye-opening episode of Puppies, Pandemics, and Public Health, host Dr. Johnny Lieberman chats with Dr. Faraz Harsini, a biomedical scientist and CEO of Allied Scholars for Animal Protection. With a background in cancer research, zoonotic diseases, and sustainable food systems, Dr. Harsini shares his journey from a meat-eating background to vegan advocacy, exposing the hidden costs of animal farming, from environmental destruction and public health risks to the ethical horrors of factory farming.
They dive into cognitive dissonance, the myth of "humane" animal products, and innovative solutions like cultivated meat that offer the same taste without the harm. Dr. Harsini emphasizes One Health: a way to live prosperously while respecting human, animal, and environmental well-being.
Whether you're a health enthusiast, environmentalist, or animal lover, this episode empowers you to make informed, compassionate choices that align with your values, and shows how small changes can create massive impact.
Top 3 Takeaways
About the Guest – Dr. Faraz Harsini, PhD
Dr. Faraz Harsini is a biomedical scientist and the Founder and CEO of Allied Scholars for Animal Protection (ASAP), a nonprofit that mentors students in animal advocacy, environmental protection, and public health. He also serves as a Senior Scientist in Bioprocessing at the Good Food Institute, focusing on cultivated meat. With a bachelor's in chemical engineering, a master's in biotechnology and cancer research, and a PhD in cell physiology and molecular biophysics, Dr. Harsini has worked on zoonotic diseases, pandemics, and sustainable food systems. A vegan for over a decade, he advocates for One Health and ethical living.
🔗 Read more about Dr. Harsini: https://farazharsini.com
About the Show
Puppies, Pandemics, and Public Health explores the intersection of animal welfare, public policy, and human health. Hosted by Dr. Johnny Lieberman, each episode invites changemakers, legal experts, and health advocates to shed light on what really impacts our communities—and what we can do about it.
About the Host
Dr. Johnny Lieberman is a physician, public health advocate, and lifelong animal lover with a passion for connecting the dots between animal welfare, human behavior, and the systems that shape our lives. With a background in both medicine and public health policy, Johnny brings a unique lens to conversations about how our treatment of animals impacts human health, the environment, and social justice.
In Puppies, Pandemics, and Public Health, Johnny brings warmth, curiosity, and a dash of wit to tough conversations that matter. From exposing the realities of factory farming to uncovering the links between zoonotic diseases and our food systems, his goal is to empower listeners to be informed, compassionate, and engaged citizens—while still keeping it real (and sometimes bringing in puppies).
Whether he's discussing legislative loopholes or snuggling his rescue dog between recordings, Dr. Lieberman believes that creating a healthier world starts with how we treat its most vulnerable beings.
[00:00:00] With every meal we eat comes a choice, and every choice leaves a footprint from our bodies to the health of our children, to the sustainability of the planet we live on. To the animals unwillingly converted into food themselves. Farming animals for food comes at a great cost that we rarely stop to question.
In today's episode, we explore the consequences of these choices and how with just a few small decisions, we can make a huge positive impact.
Dr. Faraz Sini is a biomedical scientist and the CEO and founder of Allied Scholars for Animal Protection, a nonprofit that supports students who are interested in advocating for animal and environmental protection, public health, and pursuing [00:01:00] careers that could make the most difference. He is building a comprehensive and sustainable infrastructure for animal advocacy and plant-based eating in universities.
Dr. Harini holds a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering, a master's degree in biotechnology and cancer research, as well as a PhD in cell physiology and molecular biophysics.
Hello. I am here with Dr. Ferraz Sini. Thank you, and welcome to another episode of Puppies, pandemics and Public Health, Dr. Sini. Thanks so much for joining the show today. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. So, Raz, we're going to hit on a lot of topics I think today and share a lot of information with our listening audience.
If there were one topic that you think is the most important, perhaps one viewpoint you'd like to get across and share to make sure that our listening [00:02:00] audience does not miss, what would that be?
I think the take home message for me would be there is a chance to live. A life and build a food system that is based on one health. And what that means is that the health of us, public health, the health of the planet and animals, there is a way of living that we can respect all lives on this planet and without harming anyone and like live a life full of prosperity, without damaging the environment and harming animals.
And I think that's something that I didn't know growing up. I had no idea I even worked on diseases that were caused by the food system, including pandemics, which is why I love the name of your podcast, by the way, puppies, pandemics and Public Health. My, favorite subjects. And, the name suggests [00:03:00] that there are somewhat connected, right?
I guess that connection was never made to me. Even throughout graduate school. So yeah, my passion is now to actually make that connection for people who I know care about other people, animals, and the environment. Great for us. I agree with that one health concept.
I don't feel like it's gained enough broad acceptance. It doesn't have a lot of airtime outside of the community, which we're already involved with. That would be a great place to perhaps start and share. I'll let you go on perhaps and share a little bit more about what that means, maybe why One Health is not already in effect.
You hit on a great summary of it in that it the health of humans is interconnected with the health of animals. The health of the environment, they're [00:04:00] all connected. We don't necessarily have to sacrifice one to improve the other two. And in this case where humans, the laws are made by humans, for humans, we don't have to throw animals in the environment under the bus, so to speak, to guarantee our own health.
And in fact, it may be the opposite, especially if you talk about something like pandemics and the horrible pollution from the industries and the farms that produce the food that we have to eat. There is a better way to do it. And so I'd like to hear a bit of your thoughts on that. But even before that, maybe share a little bit with our audience first, how you got to where you are.
And why should we listen to you? How are you qualified to talk on these topics? I know you are, maybe our listeners don't, so maybe share a little bit of your background and how you got to where you are. For sure. And [00:05:00] I don't want people to listen to me because they think there's something special about me necessarily.
I do have qualifications, but really I want people to be able to take this information. And reflect and hold it against the values they already hold. And judge what I say, but I would say that I come from a big bias for eating animals because I grew up that way. I'm originally from Iran, so I was born and raised there.
Back there when I was a student in college, I think I always say college is the first time in your life when you realize that the world is a shitty place. You start learning about all these different causes. And I remember I was very lost because I cared about so many things.
Human rights was born and, I was really interested in environmental protection. My bachelor was indeed chemical engineering, but then I became really interested in biofuel, production and sustainability.
at the same time, as shy and introvert as I am, some of my friends [00:06:00] said, Hey Fra, you play music, let's go to hospitals and play music for children. So it was after this movie, patch Adams that I'm sure some people remember or watched. Patch Adams was an American doctor who did this thing called clinic clowning.
So you become a clown, but you basically go to hospitals to just make people feel better. And so I started doing that and. Doing. So I interacted with a lot of children suffering from cancer. And again, I looked at them and I was like, I wanna do something really meaningful with my life. And that's why I decided to focus my graduate studies on cancer.
There was this cancer institute in Texas that I really wanted to come to, which I did. So it's like one of the best institutes in Texas. So I did my master's there and then I got interested in just biomedical sciences and just decided to continue my education and doctorate in biomedical sciences.
And after that [00:07:00] I joined Biopharma to work on zoonotic diseases and pandemics and cancer. And I think the underlying reason was always me just wanting to do. The best thing I can to help people. And at different points in my life that meant different things. You know, cancer was very big at some points than I thought that pandemics and zoo genetic diseases could also harm a lot of people.
But somewhere along the line, I was living in Germany and I was trying to rescue some fish in Iran. there is a Persian tradition where we keep goldfish at tables as a symbol of life and prosperity and wealth and freedom. And ironically these are trapped fish who end up just.
Dying eventually because people don't take care of them. And so even back in Iran, I was trying to really just encourage people to be kind to animals. Now remember that the [00:08:00] idea of not eating animals was not even a thing in my mind. It was just like I was against like, harming animals in hunting or, cages and stuff like that.
So in Germany when I was living, there, one of my friends once said, for you try to save animals, but you literally eat them and you are a hypocrite. And I was like, ouch. So I didn't like my friend. Most of us don't like to hear that. It's not comfortable, it's not a comfortable topic. Obviously no one likes to be judged or be told what to eat or not to eat.
But really what she said stuck with me and. After a while I started to think about the animals. And when I say I was biased for eating meat, I really mean it because even when I started to think about it, I remember there was a time I had just discovered broadhurst in Germany and it was my favorite food.
And there was a day in my life I said, [00:09:00] sorry, animals. It's like one second of your life. But I just love hur and today when I look back, I'm not really proud of my weakness that, I put animals' lives second and my taste and pleasure of a meal that I couldn't even remember three minutes later.
So, but really that just put me in this path when I started looking into just animal agriculture and the experience of these animals. I'm gonna interrupt you here if I could,
Yeah, and I think this is a good point. I share a lot of similarities. I grew up biased towards eating meat.
I ate animals and or animal products almost every day, if not every day of my life. Never thinking for one second where it came from. Never. One second, it was a hamburger. Never once did it enter my mind. This came from a cow, which had its own life and wanted to live. [00:10:00] It was treated horrifically, literally its entire life from the moment it was born when it was probably ripped away from its mom until the moment it was slaughtered.
It was a horrific life to make a few minutes of pleasure on my mouth that like you pointed out with the bratwurst, it would be forgotten about.
Like you I struggled with, you didn't name the term, but you may have struggled with what we call cognitive dissonance, which is when your friend pointed out, Hey, you claim to like animals, but you're eating them right away. In our brains we have this. Defense mechanism because nobody wants to feel like I am a bad person.
And so if you are confronted with the reality of that, and perhaps you realized it instantly, but your cognitive dissonance, that brain defense mechanism took over [00:11:00] for a number of years. When someone pointed it out to me, first, for me, what got me there was dogs. I loved dogs.
And I still do and always will. But someone kind of casually pointed out to me, you love dogs, but you eat pigs and you love baking so much. And I shrugged it off like, oh, there, it's completely different, but it's not different. And that's one of the points I wanted to throw out there. If you've thought that something like a dog is just different from a pig or a cat.
Is different from a cow. Think about why you think that, other than the fact that we've been marketed that our, at least in the United States and probably Canada, I can't speak for many other countries, but it's been thrown in front of us in marketing campaigns, partially sponsored by our government much of the time.
All our lives [00:12:00] we've been led to believe milk. It does a body good, right? I grew up with those ad campaigns with famous athletes, superstars, movie stars preaching that to us. Why would I think anything else? Beef, it's what's for dinner, right? It's just normal. You have steak or a hamburger and we've had that thrown at us.
I've been a victim of it till someone challenged me with it and I started to think at it and I didn't change right away. Like Raz didn't. And you don't have to. Like Raz mentioned, I hope that if this is a new idea, you'll at least think about some of these concepts and take it from there. Raz, thank you for permitting my interruption.
You're about to chat more about One Health with our audience.
yeah. for me, this lifestyle, this idea of veganism. Was finally something that brought three things that were [00:13:00] always dear to me. Public health, just trying to help people the environment that I always cared about and obviously animals.
And, you know, for a while I really just tried not to talk about animals openly because I was like, what if people think I'm biased? But then, you know, I changed my mind. I thought that I do care about animals. We shouldn't shy away from talking about things that we actually care about. And especially when it's something so big and massive in terms of like pain and suffering that we inflict needlessly.
And I fully agree with you, lake. When you hear this idea for the first time you don't like it because who likes to hear that the way they were raised and their habits are wrong? No one. Indeed we love good news about our bad habits, and that's something that they think animal industry tries to exploit as much as possible to tell people that you need more meat and you need more [00:14:00] dairy and more eggs.
But yeah, what I said that I hope that people don't listen to me because I don't know as a doctor or as someone who has done research on this not just because of that, but take these ideas and Run with it just notice how many times you are exposed to.
Ideas of eat more meat, eat more dairy, like you said, the advertisements of using actors and actresses to promote the idea that you need to have milk. Every time you go to grocery store, please pay attention. Every animal product that you buy has a picture of an happy animal, and it's always some cartoonish happy animal.
But between you and me, do you really think that if you go to a slaughterhouse, you're gonna find a bunch of like happy animals, like smiling? And so I think it really starts from us being honest with ourselves, understanding what's happening. And it's like you said, it's not our fault. We've been victimized by this system that just lied to us [00:15:00] from the beginning to get our money I have no, problem with any business making a profit.
I've been a small business owner for a while. I had my own practice as a doctor trying to help people and there's many people who have legitimate businesses, but I do have a problem, and I think many consumers would, of any business lying to you to get you to buy their product.
I don't think anybody likes that, and I don't think the general public is aware that's going on in the grocery stores every time you're buying an animal product. Am I right? Absolutely. Andre, really just the best indication of how messed up it is. I think as someone who's into public policy and, studying law yourself, ag gag laws,
Ag, ag laws, for those of you who don't know, they're actually, for the most part, not constitutional. They usually get struck down by Supreme Court, but sometimes animal industry,
they [00:16:00] basically try to criminalize, whistleblowers who simply go inside animal farms and show people what happens. there is no broccoli farm. There is no plant-based meat company that is trying to sue people from going inside and showing you how soy is either harvested or processed, but that just shows you what are they hiding that they try so bad to keep it hidden from people.
And I think that just shows that if people saw the reality, the truth, they would not want to support that. It's so easy to do it because we are living every single day in these lies. And you can go down the rabbit hole of each animal product, including like bacon that, you know, you talk to people about compassion for animals and the problems with meat and pandemics and environment, and the response you get is, but I love bacon.
And I get it because I love bacon. If you think you like bacon, I liked it even [00:17:00] more. But really the truth is bacon was like the garbage part of meat that the meat industry just didn't know what to do with it.
It was the worst part of it, but they just found a great way to market it. And now we were so brainwashed almost that you can give people all the facts, everything that they need to know, but then we are stuck at, I just love bacon, and actually I wanna just add some people, when they learn that I don't eat meat, they say, but I love meat.
I could never do that. And I say, me too, I didn't stop eating this stuff because I stopped liking the, taste of meat or cheese or any of that. But you just learn that there is a better way to live. There are millions of people who don't eat these animal products are still happy.
We still eat delicious food. And that's what I'm talking about. That's that one health, that's the beauty of it, that you learn that, oh my God, apparently there is a way of living where [00:18:00] you eat what you like, you still eat tasty food. You still, enjoy your meal, you are still healthy without harming animals and the environment and other people too.
Which to that, I really wanna say that even if I hated animals, I would still promote plant-based diet because of the public health impact of it. Thanks, Ross. There's multiple good reasons to make the choice, and you touched on something else twice now. I wanted to just emphasize it became very easy for me because supporting the violent process, including sexual violence a lot of times to these animals.
they actually have the local workers and dairy farms. they call them rape racks where the female cows were unfortunately strung up to have a metal catheter shoved inside of them to artificially inseminate them over and over again. If you ask most people, if they would [00:19:00] support sexual violence or violence for no reason among humans, I can't imagine any person that I know saying, yes, most people are good and are not criminals.
That's not the way we live our lives. We extend that to animals. Why do so many who are not thinking like this draw the line? Why is it okay to sexually violate animals, to shove electric prods in their eyes and their rectum when they don't wanna move as quickly to the slaughter line to raise them in their own filth and castrate.
Them without anesthesia do all these horrific things to produce products that give us such temporary pleasure. The point is financing that world. It's not consistent with my values and yeah, I [00:20:00] still would enjoy a piece of bacon or a tenderloin steak or this walking by a barbecue where they're grilling burgers.
That still almost automatically makes me salivate and says, I'd love to have a burger, but I don't because living that life is not consistent with the way I wanna live or supporting that cruelty. It's not consistent with my values and the way I wanna live my life. It took me a while to frame it that way.
Once I did, it's just become an easy decision. I don't wanna support that. I do still love the flavor of it. And maybe we'll touch on this briefly. I'm a big supporter of cell cultivated, be where you can still enjoy the flavor. And this ties in the one health concept because, and I'll let Ferraz go on a little bit if he wants to, on how it's produced and some of the benefits of it, it ties in One Health.[00:21:00]
On a previous podcast we talked about out contaminated meat from the grocery store. It's well north of 50%. The contamination rates when you buy raw chicken, raw Turkey, raw beef, 50, 60, 70, 80% of the time it's contaminated with stool bacteria from the animals. Taking the slaughterhouse away and producing a chicken breast or ground beef, the risk is zero.
You could eat it raw, but the point is, it's not contaminated. it's antibiotic free. It's bacteria free. It's cruelty free, and it doesn't pollute the environment like slaughterhouses do. So there's so many reasons to embrace this. You don't even have to give up the taste, but I've made my decision.
This is something for you to think about. What are your values? Are you okay supporting this industry for a few minutes of pleasure on your [00:22:00] palate, a few times a day for us? Please continue. Yeah, so I'm glad you touched on dairy because. Every time I talk about these topics, people always say, so you don't eat meat.
They don't even think about eggs and dairy. And it's funny because, you know, I teach in a lot of universities and I had a talk at Harvard and one of the Harvard students had to pull up his phone to fact check me on the fact that only female cows produce milk. And you know, as ridiculous as it sounds, I think when I was 22 years old, if you ask me, I really never thought about it.
I always thought that cows are just, there are cows. Yep. I never thought about cows as female and male but yeah, there are cows, they always produce milk and nothing bad happens to them. We're like, no, only female ones produce milk. They only produce milk if they're pregnant. They're not useful for [00:23:00] their industry if they're not producing milk.
Therefore, they're always kept pregnant. And just for that to make a little more sense, just imagine think about my mom. If somebody kept my mom pregnant for as soon as she gives birth to me, somebody takes me away because they don't want me to drink my mom's milk. They milk her until her milk production goes down and then they rape her again, and then they separate the next baby and they repeat the cycle six or seven times until like her production goes down and she's no longer profitable.
And then they kill her. And same thing with eggs. as if that's not a horrible enough life, right? Then they go to the slaughterhouse and a, a cow that's been sexually abused all its life, emotionally abused, treated like crap. Then that's what becomes your hamburger meat.
It gets taken into the Waterhouse. That's what I honestly think, that if you thought about the experience of animals, uh, I think eggs and dairy are probably worse than just meat alone. [00:24:00] 'cause these animals have been abused for their whole life, like you said, emotionally.
And it's like when you switch the species, it just makes sense. How terrible. Imagine if somebody raped a dog, removed all the puppies, milked the dog, it just like, you are like, what? Stop this. Don't even stop talking. I don't want to imagine that. But same thing with eggs, right?
Male chickens don't lay eggs. We never question. Everyone says I get my eggs from this happy farm where, there is a security camera. You can always look at all the chickens. And I like ask. So in that farm, what happened to male chickens? They're all killed. And all those female chickens are eventually killed to the second.
They're not profitable. But here is the beauty of it though, I guess like you look at ice cream or like something with milk in it, it looks like the most innocent food. But the second that you have this knowledge, like I look at this ice cream and I'm like, someone had to be raped and murdered for this, and it just doesn't make any sense.[00:25:00]
But the beauty of it is Ben and Jerry's, right? You probably didn't even know that you had dairy free ice cream at some point and you couldn't even tell. That's how good it is. that's how little effort it takes to switch what we eat. next time you go to grocery stores, you will get that Ben and Jerry's, all you have to do is to choose one of the flavors.
It says like dairy free. Not that they care about people. It's probably for, lactose allergy and whatever. But it just shows you how easy it is to. Eat foods that taste literally the same, to a point that we barely can tell the difference, without causing this like massive emotional and physical trauma to cows.
We can also talk about taste if you want. Oh yeah. That's, stop there. 'cause that's a great point. I've experienced that more and more as I've tried to expand what I eat. I like good food, like a lot of people, if not most, or all. But I've continued to try things [00:26:00] and I'm surprised at how good they are.
I've recently encountered a couple of, plant-based cheeses, which taste almost like the real thing. It's good enough for me. And what the real thing, right? That's a mental construct that we have from growing up. Does it have to taste exactly like cows, dairy, cheese, not really. Has to satisfy the palate and taste good.
And I also sour cream. I found one that's indistinguishable. It's got the same richness to it. that people crave. that's something else that's hardwired in that rich creamy feeling. It doesn't have to come from a cow, it doesn't have to a avocado is something else, which is a great replacement for that creamy texture that you want.
And does it take a little adjustment? Yeah. And when I speak with my friends or colleagues who aren't, and we talk about it and they say, yeah, some of that makes sense.
I take that with people [00:27:00] who are open to this idea, but they're not gonna cut off everything right away.
My one friend who eats meat and dairy, but he's put cream in his coffee forever. I said, try this. You can easily find a dairy free creamer and I bet you won't notice a difference. Start with that. Start and see, what happens after that. If you like it, maybe you'll branch out to a dairy free butter or start small.
One of my professors who I had on here brought up the idea of just get an egg replacer for when you bake. That's another, you start small. That's like small things I started doing. I don't notice the difference. The rare occasion I do bake something. You save one egg or two eggs.
Don't notice a difference. So if you're thinking about the idea, but you're afraid that you have to give up too much flavor, start small, find one thing that you can make a difference with and [00:28:00] expand from there if you're so interested.
Farage, you were gonna speak about something else? Yeah, I completely agree. I think the biggest stopping force for me when I wanted to go vegan was like. I have to say goodbye to all the foods I ever liked in my life and eat tomatoes and lettuce for the rest of my life. and I really think that most people don't go vegan because that's really, they still think vegans eat salad.
I was like, no, you literally eat the same foods. I love pizza. And hamburgers and all that stuff. I still eat the same thing. I like people say, I don't like vegan food. I'm like, guacamole and pico, the gao and I don't know avocados. And you go to Chipotle, right?
Literally you get the same things, the beans and rice and grilled veggies and then that they have some soy base that you can replace the meat with it and get your corn. Literally 90% of things on there is already vegan. You don't even think about it. Peanut butter and bananas and all that.
[00:29:00] French fries. Not the healthiest things, but vegan, right? But I tend to think about humans as people who have values that most of us are willing to uphold and fight for. And we are just more than these machines that. As if, I'm trying to just convince you here it is, here is some food that I'm sure you're gonna enjoy eating, but I think I really value people more than that.
That I want you to understand that why you should choose differently and that you have the power. Absolutely have the power to do that. Because sometimes I feel like people think so little of themselves that I can't, I'm so powerless. Versus I know that if they tried, they can do something that's a lot more aligned with their values.
And so when it comes to taste, yes, there are a lot of [00:30:00] things that, you know, you discuss, you can find. Foods that taste almost the same. And when you go vegan, you start discovering new foods like nutritionalist. I realized that. non vegans don't know what nutritionalist is. And I'm like, you are missing my friend.
How can you miss Nutritionalist? I just dump gallons of nutritionalist in whatever I eat. I love that stuff. And so you actually discover new foods when you go vegan. But what I wanna say is think about it in another level. Have you ever liked some food when you were growing up that you no longer like it or vice versa, you never liked it and now you the point is, taste is actually acquired aside from some evolutionary aspects of the food that we like, such as salt and fat, because those things help us survive.
The rest of it is just a habit. It's acquired. If you were raised in a society where. The normal thing to do [00:31:00] was eating like lame baked tofu, no spices. That was the norm. That was what society defined as festive, and that was the bacon quote, unquote. What would I have to do to convince you to eat that animals, if that was normal to you?
If the norm to you was eating or drinking soy milk or almond milk, what should I do to convince you to now come drink breast milk of raped and tortured animals? it's like you'd be like, are you crazy? that would sound so weird. But that just tells me that you and I did not choose to like cheese.
We did not choose to like bacon. Indeed. I as a kid, as a small kid, I actually didn't like meat. I never ate the meat. And people around me, parents mostly said, oh, no, no, no, you need the meat. That's how you make blood. now you're our doctors. That's not how it works. that's what people thought.
And they forced fed me meat to a point that I [00:32:00] started liking it to points that when I actually wanted to stop eating meat, I said, sorry, pigs. I just love broadhurst. And I see that all the time. There are so many kids, they don't actually like to eat meat, but the parents, you know, sort of feed them because they think it's good for them, and then it just becomes a habit.
So that sucks. But that also tells you that when you stop eating these products, it's just a habit. It will change. And you start acquiring taste for healthier things and for so many other foods. And like you and I discussed. We try our best to come up with foods that taste the same. They produce the same experience and texture, like beyond, and I dunno, impossible.
Or the vegan cheese that you mentioned. But at the end of the day, maybe you are in a situation that your vegan cheese is not as, tasty or it doesn't produce that same texture, but is this what has happened to humanity just because of the [00:33:00] stretchiness of our cheese?
We would put an animal, I want you to ask yourself this question. How close a product should become to real cheese? that would justify like us stopping, like doing horrible things to cows. Is it like 99%? Is it 95%? Is it a hundred percent? Like at what point we say this is good enough for us to live our life in a way that we enjoy our meal without harming animals.
Wow. That's interesting. And I never thought about it like that for us. I think I went through that process in my head, WW with butter not thinking about it that way, and cream cheese. And I got to the point where in the beginning I tried to feel like, yeah, it's not even close. I'm going back before I made the switch.
And eventually I made the switch I'm not gonna do it no matter what. I just rather not eat the sub. I've started eating more [00:34:00] avocados and, almond butter, I just made other choices and eventually I stumbled across one. I was like, yeah, it's close enough.
it might be 50%, 70%. it's gonna do it for me of the mindset again, I like your idea challenges. What we do is we need it to be just like it. Or I'm not gonna switch unless you've got this value component, which plays into it. And everyone's threshold might be different. But for me, I was like, I'm not eating butter anymore, period.
Don't care. I'm not gonna finance it. At that industry, that cruelty and the market is responding. And there are multiple different cheeses out there, multiple different plant butters, multiple different plant-based milks. Plenty of options out there. encourage you to think about that Farrah idea.
How close does it have to be for you to not sponsor the torture and violent treatment of these animals? [00:35:00] Yeah, exactly. I think if the answer is that I will not give this up, I can't. But this is something I said actually, like people say I can't give up cheese. And that's something I said. But when you say that, you basically, I'm sorry to say that, but we basically sound like an addict, like an alcoholic who says, I can't give up alcohol.
But then what I ask people is that when you look at yourself, is that what you see of yourself addicted to a product versus your values? And it's just like that sometimes being vegan. Your options are more limited sometimes. Yeah. You know, I had sad vegan cheese that never melted. but at the end of the day, you feel so much better about yourself, just like an alcoholic or someone who's trying to like quit drinking and now they're going to this party.
Everyone is drinking. Everyone says, oh, come on. don't be like that. come drink with us. And you are in that moment. You have to decide. Do you want to break your [00:36:00] promise? Do you want to do something that you know it's gonna undo your promise or harm yourself? In this case, it's actually harming so many other animals.
It's not even you. But if you are strong enough and say no to that, then I guarantee you ask anyone who has ever overcame any kind of addiction. It feels so much better knowing that you stood up for yourself, for your values. And I think that's why the greatest thing that you can do is to not think about it as a diet rather as an ethical principle that how much suffering would I allow for my pleasure if this was my dog?
Because if our dog is in trouble We put ourselves in danger to go and rescue our dogs. We pay money. we would go bankrupt to just make sure that we pay for the vet bills of this one animal. I think the strongest element is that when you put yourself in place of these animals or when you think of [00:37:00] these animals as animals, similar to dogs and cats,
so I think the strongest thing is not to look at it as a diet because it's really easy to cheat on a diet, but if you consider the ethical element of it, it just becomes so much easier.
'cause you would never go home and eat your dog no matter how tasty your dog is, no matter how humanely they lived and they had a good life. So it's time to go. No, you just simply don't look at your dog as food. The reason that we look at cows, pigs, chickens, and fish as food is not because logically, rationally, emotionally, we chose that there are food.
It's only because we lived in a society that implemented this idea in our head. That's the chip in our operating system that we inherited from the society. we did not come up with this algorithm that says, this is food, this is animals. But when you step back, which is not easy, you have to break all these frameworks.
You have to step back and you think for [00:38:00] yourself are dogs and pigs so different? In what way are they so different that we do anything to protect one, but we complete, we joke about the suffering of the other. Right? People joke about like bacon or, you know, yummy, whatever. And if we did the same thing for docs, people would think like you are a psycho.
So what's going on there? So I want people to consider that ethics part because it helps you make better decisions. Yeah, Those are some great ideas for everyone to think about. And I always am glad to learn something on my shows. I had not heard that addiction analogy before and I think it's accurate and I can even extend it further.
You mentioned people who are addicted to drugs, substances, alcohol, they're all harmful for you. and it doesn't stop with animals or dairy, despite messages you may have heard [00:39:00] otherwise. dairy and processed meat. They're linked to cancer and then red meat non-processed probably as well.
So we could just take those, the addiction doesn't just perpetuate a miserable, horrific life for the animals and damage the environment as a result of the horrific pollution, which pollutes our water and our air, and our soil. It causes heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and if you're feeding it to your kids, how many parents would intentionally expose their children to secondhand smoke?
Anyone raising their hands?but you wouldn't be viewed as a good parent by anyone who knew about it. I don't see it a huge difference between that and intentionally feeding your kid's bacon or cheese or milk or ice cream.
The link between dairy and prostate cancer, [00:40:00] it's pretty strong and processed meat and red meat and colon cancer and other cancers of the intestinal tract especially. It's pretty solid. And so the addiction analogy extends. It's not like you're addicted to something that's good for you. It extends to crack.
Heroin, cocaine, marijuana, cannabis. Alcohol consuming these things in large quantities, exposing yourself to it. It comes with damage to you and anybody else that you're intentionally exposing to it. And as both of us are interested in public health, this is also how my brain works, that if you had one egg right, it probably doesn't do much about your health, but if 10 billion people have one egg a day, that just [00:41:00] means a lot of chickens.
That means a significant raise in risk of avian flu and antibiotic resistance and other things. If everyone. Drank just a glass of milk, then that is a lot of cows, right? So when you think about the food system that you wanna use to feed the world these become factors and I think I expect health professionals to really consider this in their dietary recommendations.
And you actually mentioned, I think you're absolutely right when you look at meat, processed meat is the worst, and then you have red meat, and the link could be a little weaker for some other things. But the real thing is that, what are you substituting that with? And there is a study from Harvard where they looked at 130,000 people and they followed them up for over 30 years.
And the substitution was processed meat, red meat, dairy, [00:42:00] poultry, even fish and eggs with plant-based protein and. Every time they substituted the animal-based protein with plant-based protein, there was a reduced risk in all cause mortality, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. So especially when the substitution is right and you replace these animal products with plant-based foods, you definitely benefit your health.
You reduce the risk of chronic diseases. But I absolutely agree with you. I don't think that parents intentionally do that, but I think lack of education or information, and I know nowadays meat industry is trying to muddy the water to a point that people say, well, I don't know, everything gives you cancer or I don't know,
So whatever. And that's the best thing that animal industry has done because they seed doubt. And at that point people say, you know what? I don't even know. And that's very sad to see. [00:43:00] Yeah, I agree. Raz, thanks for pointing that out. What you wanna share a little bit about cultivated meat as an option for going forward to reduce the burden, enjoy the taste.
Give another option. Yeah, for sure. So both plant-based meat and cultivated meat or lab grown meat, they're meant to mimic taste and texture of meat. But reduce the environmental impact and health impact. And most importantly, I think really just the basic idea is not to harm animals. So for us, excuse me, I think people know plant-based meat.
We've seen beyond the possible and some of a couple of the other brands. define for us what is, cell cultivated? Yeah, for sure. cell cultivated meat is basically real meat. So it's not plant-based. It's when you take stem cells from animals and you basically grow meat in incubators the same way that you [00:44:00] produce beer in cultivators or incubators or fermenters.
they're the same thing. So you do the same thing. You take the cells from animals and you grow meat. In these cultivators, it's literally just taking the animal out of the equations. So in our body, we make meat or the cow makes meat. What is meat? It's basically muscle and fat and stuff like that.
So how is it produced? It always comes from a few cells. So you can take those, a few cells and put them in culture, give them the nutrients and minerals and everything they need. And then produce meat without having that conscious sentient being, being slaughtered. Now why is it good? it's supposed to taste exactly the same.
It's supposed to, cost the same or even cheaper in the future. You don't need antibiotics because the whole thing is in an sterile environment. There is no infectious [00:45:00] diseases. There is no risk of pandemics and zoo genetic diseases. And the idea is that eventually it should be more efficient because all the energy that you put in to produce meat goes into producing meat versus when you feed animals, then you have to.
Like for instance, over 90% of the soy that we produce is not to actually feed people. It's to actually feed animals same as corn. And then much of these energy is wasted because animals walk around, they produce heat. And much of that energy is wasted over 90%. But then with cultivated meat, you don't have that problem because all the energy that you put in is going to producing meat without the bad stuff.
now I know that meat industry tries to say that these are highly processed and this and that, but the idea is not, if you really wanna eat super healthy, you should probably just eat whole food, plant-based like beans and legumes and rice and all that stuff. Nuts and seeds, things like that. But these are meant for people who [00:46:00] say, you really wanna have that burger, or you really wanna have some bacon or chicken, but here is your option.
Instead of doing horrible things to chickens and cows, here is how you can. It the same thing without harming animals. I would say it's like equivalent of, uh, if you're trying to stop drinking, if someone said, here is like 0% alcohol, beer, it literally tastes the same without the bad stuff, without the alcohol.
And again, like if you really wanna be healthy, that like 0% beer is not the perfect drink. It still has lots of calories you don't need. If you really wanna be healthy, drink water. But if you really wanna get that taste, it's okay. It's still better than drinking alcohol. That's the idea here. Right?
Oh, great. That's a great way of putting it. Eating healthy, if that's your biggest concern, you may wanna steer clear of all of it. Still. So that's a good point.
One of the many barriers to getting it to full [00:47:00] market scale is finance. The federal government finances so much of our food system based on animals, which makes prices artificially low for everybody. The cultivated bean industry has not seen near that scale of investment.
One way to put it on equal footing would be to shift the balance a bit. that could be a whole podcast itself, way to solve that balance system. my hope is that we can get to the point where these products could be produced at scale, at a cost that's competitive with the product that relies on the abuse and slaughter of animals.
Let them compete on equal foot. it has the potential, well, it will be free of bacteria, free of antibiotics, free of all the harms that go into it. And so, personally I'm a supporter of that Let me just add something, because I think it's super important what you said about the imbalance of how government supports this stuff.
'cause people [00:48:00] say, vegan food is expensive, which to me it's like vegan food. They define it the cheapest and healthiest stuff. Legumes, nuts and seeds and fruits and vegetables are already vegan. But if you mean yes, plant-based food, like plant-based meats, like beyond or impossible, yes, maybe you have to pay a little more, but you have to understand that the meats that you're eating.
Has been heavily subsidized by the government to be cheap. If the government didn't subsidize that the plant-based meat, there is no way, there is no reason anything plant-based should cost more than animal-based products. It also shows how the system that we've built to exploit these animals is just another reason that it's so cheap.
Just so you understand, like, uh, normal chickens are supposed to have about 30 eggs per year, but we've genetically manipulated these chickens to lay some somewhere between 275 to [00:49:00] 300, almost 10 times more lay more eggs per year. And that just means that depletion of all the minerals from these animals' body, that's why they collapse at the end of a day.
so I mean, that's one reason that egg is so cheap. And then every time there is a pandemic, every time that there is a bird forough that kills all these chickens or cows then the government bails these industries out with our money. we pay for this system of death and torture that harms people and environment and us to survive.
But it also means that if we voted better, if we chose better products how easily the entire system can change, very quickly. And I don't really think that meat industry is made of people who are. Genuinely evil. I don't think that they enjoy having an industry that is the biggest death machine of all time.
I think they just want their money. And if they see that people are choosing different [00:50:00] stuff, they would easily just switch their practices as they have. Like some of the biggest investors in cultivated meat is actually Tyson and some other like JBS they invest a lot on cultivated meat.
They don't really care. They just want. To make money if they think that this is gonna be the future, which I think they're smart enough to know that producing meat from animals is not sustainable. I can very briefly touch on that. Like 80% of agricultural land in the world is dedicated to animal agriculture, which produces between 20 to 30% of global calories and protein, meaning that we are taking most of the land and produce very little food.
That means global malnutrition. That means that we already don't have enough food to feed about 8 billion people, and by 2050 we're gonna be 10 billion people. We already don't have enough food. Giving all these people enough food is not going to be [00:51:00] possible with producing animal products. And so I think meat industry understands that.
That's why they try to. Get ahead of it and invest in cultivated meat. And even plant-based meat, sometimes they actually buy out plant-based meat companies. And so really just to wrap it up, I really want people to feel like empowered that they can make a choice, that every time they make a choice, a different choice in the store, it makes a difference.
Every time they pay for meat, eggs, dairy, they probably pay for something that is not aligned with their values. And it causes a lot of pain and suffering to animals, the environment and other people. At the same time. I've been vegan for 14 years. 14 years ago you couldn't go to every coffee shop and get almond milk and soy milk and oat milk.
You, you get all three of them at Starbucks and most other coffee shops. And that change happened very quickly. It wasn't like you could go to any grocery store and find all these amazing vegan options. Now you do. [00:52:00] It just shows how, how much power we have if you just come together and make right choices.
Yeah, that's a great way to conclude. You have the power to make different choices. Hopefully we shed some light and educated you on some areas of this you didn't know throughout the course of your day. I think we all make decisions, small ones and big ones based on what we believe, based on what's important to us.
Do I get a dog or a cat for an example? what kind of car you wanna buy? What kind of job you wanna work? What friends? You keep these decisions and even smaller ones, you make decisions every day. We all do based on our values of what's important to us, the food we eat. Probably should fit in that category.
Maybe you think it does. Maybe you learn some information today, which will challenge what you think to think about it a little bit differently so that you don't have to be ruled by cognitive dissonance. If you already are. You're [00:53:00] empowered to make decisions that can be small and they can escalate over time.
It does not have to be difficult. It does not have to be unhealthy, and it doesn't have to be expensive. The barriers that I hear are just not true. There's a way to do it that can align with your values going forward. Dr. Faraz Rossini, thank you so much for joining on the show. This was a great discussion.
I enjoyed it. I learned some new information on it. I really from the show really appreciate your time and your contributions. My pleasure. Thanks for having me.