Meatless Monday: Interview with Earthlings Director, Shaun Monson
This Meatless Monday, we are so excited to bring you an interview with Shaun Monson. Monson’s writer/filmmaker credits include the award-winning documentary Earthlings, which focuses on the suffering of animals used for food, fashion, pets, entertainment and medical research. He is currently working on Unity, volume two of the Earthlings trilogy. (For more information, visit www.earthlings.com, www.unitythemovie.com).
The first five readers to tweet Kris_Carr with the link to this blog, will receive a free copy of Earthlings!
1. What was the inspiration behind Earthlings?
I got the idea because I was filming public service announcements on spaying and neutering pets, so it started with domestic animals. When they were killed on the street or euthanized in the shelters, they were put into this room that’s essentially a big refrigerator. When I saw the animals piled up in there, it made me think of meat, and it got me thinking of cows and pigs and chickens. That was the beginning of Earthlings really, the first spark of inspiration.
2. Is it difficult to get people to watch it?
It’s challenging material. There’s a quote by the late actress and activist Gretchen Wyler, who worked with the Humane Society for years: “We must not refuse with our eyes what they must endure with their bodies.”
When people think they can’t watch it, I always say, “I understand,” and tell them how hard it’s been getting anybody to look at it. I talk about the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, which means the government can imprison people if they cost a corporation money through certain types of animal activism.
When I tell people this side, they become more curious, because they feel their freedom is being taken away. So instead of telling them what they should do, I empathize. I’ll give them a DVD, which may sit by their TV for a while. Maybe they’ll come around to it. I am of the opinion that we should never force these things. If you force activism on people when they’re not there yet in their hearts, they’ll slip back into doing things their old way.
3. In Earthlings you say “Make the Connection.” What is that connection? What do you wish people would understand?
I hope people can “make the connection” between all expressions of life – human, animal, tree, because we all share the same planet, and one life form is connected to another. One thing Earthlings shows is animals clearly experience fear and pain, as do humans. When we use them, we are causing them tremendous fear and pain, right up until their death. So we ask people to make that connection between animal products they use, how they are obtained, and so on.
4. What do you say to people who say that animal research is worth it if it finds life-saving cures for people?
It is a speciesist argument, and it’s dualistic – one species must suffer for another to flourish. We need to get beyond this perception. The majority of animal experimentation is done for personal or household products, like cosmetics and cleaners. It’s no sacrifice to buy cruelty-free soap. What’s challenging is questioning the belief system about the medical world. Animal experimentation is rarely done to find cures, it’s for drugs to alleviate symptoms. It’s a law that pharmaceuticals be tested on animals before any human trials, so it’s primarily done because it’s the law, not because it assures that drugs are safe. There are scientific limitations of animal experimentation in terms of human biology. Even the most basic observations illustrate this. My dogs drink out of the gutter. If I did that, I’d be sick to my stomach.
Organizations like PCRM do extraordinary work on alternatives to animal experimentation that are far more effective and more sophisticated. This is the kind of research people interested in life-saving cures should be promoting.
5. What advice do you have for people just starting out on a vegan lifestyle?
I encourage people to start with food. In Earthlings, the food segment is 30 minutes of a 90-minute movie, so you can do the math. The one thing we can all do for the animals, the planet, and each other is go vegetarian. It’s the best for all parties involved: all other earthlings.
6. What are your thoughts on the relationship between nutrition, a vegan diet and health and wellness?
A vegan diet is undeniably healthier. Some people believe they’re eating meat and dairy for health reasons. Now I don’t mean to be rude, but I want to be real: if people want to eat animals it’s their own business, but the only thing animal products do for health is deteriorate it. Ironically, we have a war on drugs, a war on terror, a war on poverty…maybe we should have a war on food? Food kills more people than tobacco, alcohol, guns, crimes, AIDS, not wearing your seatbelt, etc.
7. You have a daughter. What advice can you offer on raising vegan kids?
That’s a challenging one. Parents choose what kids eat, but the problem is school. I make her lunch every day, and she eats whatever I give her. But if there’s cupcakes for someone’s birthday, or it’s pizza day, then it’s tricky. She likes to do what other kids do, so I’m mindful of that. I’ll bring in vegan pizza that looks the same. On Thanksgiving when they have turkey in the classroom, which is mortifying for me, I drag myself out of bed early and make a Tofurkey, then slice it up so it looks similar.
8. What’s the thinking behind your new film?
Unity is about being aware of the subtleties, those expressions of life we tend to be apathetic about, meaning we don’t consider them important. For many, this includes people starving to death in faraway countries, the poor, animals, other races, other religions, other political preferences. All these expressions share a zeal for life. Every form wants to survive – human, animal, tree. We need to get past our attachments to symbols like race and religion and tradition and nationality, if our attachments are dividing us, which they are.
Unity comes from an understanding of the world that doesn’t rely on opposites – us and them, human and nonhuman, rich and poor, etc. I mentioned dualism earlier. This applies particularly to the human ego. It wants to separate and distinguish itself from others.
9. Earthlings has inspired so many people to change their lives. How will people change after Unity?
They will recognize any other expression of life as the same as themselves, if for no other reason than it is here in the same atmosphere as we are.
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