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Last weekend, celebrated Toronto-based animal rights advocate Jo-Anne McArthur gave her slide presentation “We Animals: Fifteen Years of Photojournalism and Animal Advocacy” in Vancouver, and our host Gillian attended this event, and tells us about it. Jo-Anne has been on the Animal Voices show several times before, and our most recent interview with her can be heard here.
Also, exciting news from Gillian: the launch of her Kickstarter campaign for her brand new children children’s book called “King Zoom the Vegan Kid: Vol. 1: Animals used for food“. Gillian gives us a teaser, but more to come on next week’s show!
Vegan Olympic Medalist Athlete and Animal Advocate, Meagan Duhamel
Olympic medalist figure skater Meagan Duhamel and Moo-tae.
Our feature interview is with Canadian figure skating champion Meagan Duhamel, who has recently returned from the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. We congratulate her and her partner Eric Radford in bringing home both a Gold and Bronze medal in the team event and pairs skating!
In addition to claiming 3 Olympic medals, Meagan is a two-time World Champion figure skater, and a 7-time Canadian National Champion in pairs skating. But not only that, she is a plant-powered athlete and a holistic nutritionist.
Meagan has been vegan since 2008, and in this interview, she tells us how transitioning to a plant-based diet allowed her to achieve the best results ever in her competitive figure skating career.
Meagan is also an avid animal advocate and has been active in rescuing dogs from the meat trade in South Korea this past year. Just last week, she was present at the HSI emergency shelter in Montréal where over 80 dogs have been recently rescued from a dog farm in South Korea.
She tells us about her experiences in dog rescue and her mini dachshund Moo-tae, who was saved from being someone’s dinner and now likes to spend daily meditation sessions with Meagan.
Meagan has a website all about healthy living at www.lutzofgreens.com You can also follow her on Twitter here and on Instagram here.
Enjoy this video of Meagan and her partner Eric Radford skating in the short program for the team pairs event at the Winter Olympics last month, which led them to a gold medal win!
Rebecca Aldworth, Humane Society International, on the Dog Meat Trade in South Korea
Our first interview today is with Rebecca Aldworth, the Executive Director of the Humane Society International.
As part of a broader campaign to end the dog meat industry in Asia, HSI has recently shut down a dog meat farm in South Korea, from which 80 dogs have been brought last week to the organization’s emergency shelter in Montreal.
Although most people in South Korea don’t regularly eat dogs, an estimated 2.5 million dogs of all types are still bred and killed each year for human consumption in over 17,000 facilities. HSI has helped shut down 11 dog-meat farms so far and has rescued about 1,300 dogs in South Korea.
In this interview, Rebecca tells us more about this campaign, and how HSI is working to have these dog meat farms in South Korea completely shut down in the next 10 years, while working with the farmers to take on alternative employment.
To find out how to volunteer or adopt a dog in the Montréal shelter, please see this webpage.