Kimberly Hillyer, DNP, NNP-BC 

The following is an amended transcript for Neonatology Today Media of Dr. Kimberly Hillyer and Jane Velez-Mitchell. 

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Introduction: 

Thank you for joining us on today’s broadcast. I’m Dr. Kimberly Hillyer, a Nurse Practitioner and the Media Correspondent for Neonatology Today. This segment features Jane Velez-Mitchell, Founder of Unchained TV. Jane is a long-time animal rights, addiction, and social justice activist. She is an experienced television journalist who has hosted her own show on HLN. She was also a recurring host on multiple networks, including CNN, TruTV, and E! She is the author of four books, including a memoir and a New York Times Bestseller. She has also received multiple awards for her animal right activism. Her commitment to various humane causes has led her to become a Vegan, one of the highlights of her digital network. 

Dr. Kimberly Hillyer: Hello, Jane. Thank you for joining us on today’s broadcast. I am excited to venture out from the world of medicine into a topic that globally affects humanity. As a well-known journalist who has had her own television series on HLN and as an author of five books, you have become a voice for many issues. Currently, you have been focusing on your new network, Unchained TV, which deals with your vegan lifestyle and works as an animal activist. How did you become an animal activist? 

Jane Velez-Mitchell: Well. My mom was born in 1960 before women even had the right to vote in Vieques, Puerto Rico, which is an island off the mainland of Puerto Rico, a beautiful island. She had what she thought was a pet pig or a pig who was a friend. One day she came home as a young child, and the pig had been slaughtered for food, and she literally fainted. When she came to, she shunned meat. So, she came to New York on a boat at the height of the Great Depression and became a successful dancer Latin dance troop. She met my dad, who was an Irish American advertising executive who also liked to dance. What they had in common was their dancing obsession. They would go out, and that was back in the day when they had bands in restaurants. 

I grew up in a mostly pescatarian household. We even thought we were kind of vegetarians, but we weren’t. Suffice it to say that I knew that bacon and hot dogs don’t fall from the bacon and hot dog trees and that there are these animals. Our society is really suffering because we’re all living in the meat matrix. Every so often, something happens where that meat matrix is ripped open, and we see the reality, and it horrifies us. There was a woman eating at a fast-food restaurant the other day, and it was all on the news that she was eating her sandwich, and all of a sudden, she realized on the Deli slice there was a nipple that was popping out, and she freaked out and screamed. Now my question to her is, well, who did you think you were eating, right? So that’s when that matrix gets ripped open, and you see a new reality. So, I think it’s incumbent upon all of us to think for ourselves and not just accept what people who are making huge fortunes off of animal agriculture are telling us. Which is, this is normal, you should do it. Anybody who says you shouldn’t eat animals is somehow weird or different. 

The truth is that for most of human history, we did not eat this way. Industrialized animal agriculture is a very new phenomenon. Fast food, which is how most people consume all this food, is a very new phenomenon, and it’s killing us. As one of my heroes, Dr. Sailesh Rao, who has an organization called Climate Healers and Food Healers, says, “we’re all being factory farmed,” not just the animals in their terrible condition. But the farmers and ranchers are put in terrible debt; they are pitted against each other in something called tournaments. They are essentially indentured servants of this machine. Consumers are also exploited because they need us to become overweight. We need to get sick. We need to develop diseases, so they can sell us pills and do operations on us. Preventative medicine is not focused on in this country. We wait till people are sick. Even in the hospitals, we feed them bad food. 

So, we’re all being factory farmed for what? The percentage of people who are actually making money on this is minuscule. And guess what? They all have their private chiefs, and their kids aren’t eating a bad diet. They’re eating healthy, so it’s a social justice issue, and it is a racial issue because fast food is targeted to communities of color. Food deserts are instituted and maintained, and it is destroying our environment. 

Animal agriculture is a leading cause of climate change that is not discussed. Yesterday I read a Vox article that said this great climate bill that they’re passing doesn’t address one of the leading causes, which is animal agriculture. So, it’s doing all these things. People love to talk about fossil fuels not everybody can afford to go out and buy a Tesla. Still, everybody can afford to make better, smarter, healthier, and more environmentally sustainable choices. Three times a day when they eat food. 

I’ve been a journalist who worked in mainstream media for 40 years. I worked at CNN. I worked at a whole bunch of local stations in New York and LA, etc. I started this in my quote-unquote, “retirement,” a nonprofit news network. I’ve never worked harder, to be honest with you, called Unchained TV, and we want to unchain the animals. We want to unchain the brains of people who are beating their chests in advocating for the very thing that is killing them. Well, it’s a choice; everything’s a choice. Driving the wrong way down the freeway is a choice, not a smart one. So, what people don’t realize is they think they’re exerting their free will. But in reality, they’ve been conditioned to want something that’s not good for them, and that’s called brainwashing. We are societally brainwashed. I wrote a book called Addict Nation. It says we live in a discogenic culture because there’s no better customer than an addict. They come back over and over again for the fast food, for the pills, for the alcohol, for the drugs. The dichotomy is that the only power you have is to realize you’re powerless against certain things and walk away from them. So that is the big picture of our network, Unchained TV. But we have more than 600 videos, and we realize that we can’t just lecture people. We have to entertain them. That’s why we did the world’s first reality series starring pigs. Pig Little Lies is now streaming on Unchained TV, which is a free network. You can download it on your phone for free just go to your app store UnchainedTV. One word. You can get it online at UnchainedTV.com; click. Watch now on UnchainedTV.com, or you can just put it into your streaming networks. If you have Apple TV or Roku TV, or Amazon firestick, you just put it into the search UnchainedTV and voila! It is there 100% free. 

Dr. Kimberly Hillyer: So, your network, Unchained TV, is really trying to establish a platform where not only are you able to help out people and society but also these animals. The show that you’re talking about it is six series episodes. 

Jane Velez-Mitchell: It’s five. Five episodes and they’re micro episodes. They’re about 11-12 minutes each, but it is the world’s first reality series starring a family of pigs. I can tell you the story of how it came to be. If you want. 

Dr. Kimberly Hillyer: I do want to hear that. 

Jane Velez-Mitchell: Well, most of these networks are spending billions of dollars starting similar networks. The major networks are starting things like Peacock is, they spend 2 billion dollars in one year. We did this for tens of thousands of dollars, but essentially, it’s the same technology. So, most of these networks are made by one hit series, whether it’s Succession or House of Cards or The Morning Show. It’s something that is on everybody’s lips. You got to check this out right! So, I call my friend Simone Reyes, who has been on reality shows before. She’s an animal activist and a vegan. I say, Simone. We need a reality show. That’s what we need to launch our network. She said, “I can’t talk right now. I’m trying to rescue 2 pigs, bonded pair. They’re in a high-kill shelter, and they’re going to be killed tonight. I can’t talk to you!” I said, “wait for a second. That’s our reality show!” 

So that’s exactly what we did. We got those pigs out, and that’s not so easy. You rescue a dog, you put a leash on a dog, and you walk out with the dog. But with a pig, these animals are large. These potbellied pigs. I’ll tell you all about the scam that has people buying infant pigs falsely marketed as adult pocket pigs. There’s no such thing, and so we got the two out and then this wonderful Lady Cindy Brady, who runs a micro sanctuary just about half an hour’s drive from the Hollywood sign. She has goats and horses. She said I’ll take them in. She put the mother in the Laundry Room. The mother’s name is Beatrice. The Daddy Pig is named Dante. They’re named after Dante’s Inferno, the famous medieval poem. Dante went into a nice little area with some goats, and he got some hay, and all of a sudden, she realized Mama Beatrice was pregnant. Oh, my God! So, she didn’t just rescue two pigs. She rescued. Well, it turns out to be fourteen pigs after Mama Beatrice gives birth. 

What I took away from it was that I was out there numerous times participating as a cast member, also the executive producer, and the founder of Unchained TV. What really struck me was how much these families want to be together. How much they love each other. How much the mother protects, Mama Beatrice protects her babies. How much the babies want to be with their mommy. It’s just like human beings. They have eyes, they have hearts, they feel terror, they feel loneliness. At one point, we had to take Mama Beatrice to get spayed, and also, her tummy was sagging, so we weren’t sure maybe she had a tumor. She didn’t want to leave her kids, she did not want to leave her babies, and she didn’t know. And what was so amazing was that Cindy, after they’re such smart pigs had the emotional and intellectual development of toddler humans. They’re considered the fifth smartest animal when it comes to intelligence. So finally, after outwitting several people trying to get her in the crate, Cindy got on her knees, and she said, Look, “B: that’s what she called her. Beatrice, I promise you. This is yours forever home. You will return to your babies. Trust us. We’re just trying to get you to the doctor to take care of some problems. Now. B. Doesn’t speak English, we know that, but she clearly heard the feelings, the emotions, and she came down. And she backed into that crate. It brings tears to my eyes. 

Because these animals have so much in common with us humans. The mothers want to be with their babies. The babies want to be with their mothers, but industrialized animal agriculture keeps mother pigs and something called pig gestation crates the size of their bodies. They can’t turn around even to scratch themselves, and they chop on the bars in front of them, and they break their teeth because they go mad. If you did it to a dog for 5 days. You’d be arrested and charged with animal cruelty, and they are doing this took billions and billions of pigs. They’re called pig gestation crates, don’t take my word for it. Go online and Google it. The first time I saw a pig gestation crate about 25 years ago, I said, No, this is not possible the humans would not create this obvious torture machine and design it. And then I went to the next video, and I saw 20,000 of them in a warehouse. Now we wonder why are we being punished? Why are we suffering from COVID? Why are we suffering from fires and floods, and drought? Well, Mother Nature. Okay, I think he has had it. With our arrogance as a species and the cruelty which we condone when we make these choices, and we go in and say, well, I’m going to have bacon, I’m going to have a hot dog, I don’t care, society is told me that their suffering doesn’t count. Wrong. It does count. And now it’s coming back to haunt us. 

Dr. Kimberly Hillyer: Yeah, I would definitely agree with that, but to be honest, one of the things that I was most surprised about while enjoying your series was that you were rescuing pigs from shelters. Now, I’ll be honest I’ve volunteered at shelters in my area, and you usually see cats and dogs. So, I was really surprised that there would be pigs in the shelter. When I did a little bit of research, looking into where did this come from, this idea of micro pigs, teacup pigs that were now being purchased. Thanks to celebrities, maybe unbeknownst to them. Endorsements of these cute little animals. These cute little pigs that were going to stay this size, and then it turns out. No, they’re potbelly pigs that are going to be 100 lbs. or more. That was very, very surprising to me. Where did, as far as you know, this whole establishment of micro-preemie pigs or teacup pigs come from? 

Jane Velez-Mitchell: Greedy breeders who want to make money will take infant piglets who are adorable, absolutely adorable, and they will market them to unsuspecting people. Sell them sometimes for thousands of dollars. As fully grown adult micropigs, pocket pigs, and teacup pigs, they have all sorts of names for them. Whenever you see animal cruelty, always follow the money. So, what happens is, and you’re right, celebrities encourage this. I’ve seen TV shows where, Oh, look at the little piggy, but who knows what happens to that pig? Once the cameras stop rolling anyway. 

People buy them and think that this is a fully grown pig. Then the pig starts to grow and grow, then they say, I’ve got to dump this pig at the shelter. It’s too big for my apartment. It’s too big for my small home. It also is heartbreaking for the kids because, in one case, we rescued a pig who had nipped at the kids after the kids tried to put clothes on the pig. Now, yeah, you shouldn’t be trying to dress up the pig. Then the kids who had formed an emotional bond with this pig, just like my mother, back in 1920, when she formed an emotional bond with a pig, only to see the pig slaughtered. These kids are devastated when their parents say, oh, yeah, whatever the pigs’ name is, they’ve got to go off to the farm. You know how parents are; it’s always going to a farm, and it’s all a lie. Then the kids don’t trust the parents because they know on some level the parents are lying, and the parents dump the pig at the shelter. It’s terrible on so many levels. It’s actually traumatic for the children. It can also be traumatic for adults. I mean, they were scammed. They’re not bad people, but they can’t handle a pig. 

Some of these pigs get to be more than 200 lbs. I’m talking about potbelly pigs. For the children, it’s very terrible, the children who bond. The same thing about these programs where children are encouraged to raise an animal and then sell them and then give the animal away to be slaughtered. It really is this sense of betrayal, and also, it shatters trust because, on some level, the child thinks. Wait a second. You brought this being into your home; you purported to love the being. And now you’re giving the being a way to be killed; where does that lead me? If I mess up, could I suffer the same fate? So, from a psychological standpoint, it is truly devastating because it’s betrayal. It shatters trust, and it makes you wonder about your parents. You know? Are they lying to me? Can I trust what they say? There are many, many negative repercussions to the humans involved also. So, what we say is never buy an animal, don’t buy a dog, don’t buy a cat, don’t buy a pig. Don’t buy a horse. If you are hell-bent on having a particular species. Go to a shelter or go to a rescue. Actually, you can virtually foster all the children of Dante and Beatrice, and they have adorable names like Valentino. I’m fostering Valentino, but there are also waffles, and she came up with some really adorable characters. 

Dr. Kimberly Hillyer: Now, if I live in an apartment, there’s no way that I can foster an animal. Is there another way that we can foster and help these pigs? And then, if you don’t mind telling me, what does it take to care for and raise one of these piglets? 

Jane Velez-Mitchell: Well, great question because you can virtually foster them. If you go to Tinymasters.org, you’ll see the website, and you’ll see all the babies and its cuteness overload, and you can virtually foster. I send $50 a month to foster Valentino, but you could send $5 a month; you could send $10 a month. The point is these animals need hay. The cost of hay is skyrocketing, accelerated by climate change. I work with a sanctuary in Texas; they’re already halfway through all their winter. Because the hay has gotten so expensive. So, you see, ranchers and farmers are now exiting that business. 

Animal agriculture will have to end it. It will end either with our extinction or it will end with the planet just becoming too hot to support all these animals already. I don’t know if you saw that it wasn’t in the news per se, but it was on social media; in Kansas, thousands of cows keeled over and died from the heat. They just killed over, and somebody went and took a video from their car driving a good mile, at least, with cows, thousands of cows, literally with their legs up in the air, dead from the heat. So, what we are barreling towards is a climate apocalypse. There is one underlying false assumption at heart and at the root of so many of our societal problems; that false underlying assumption is that we need to kill animals to survive. We need to eat them. We need to wear them. We need to experiment on them. The truth is, we’re 8 billion humans; that’s the global world population today, and we are raising and killing. Do you want to guess how many animals per year are for food globally? Take a guess. 

Dr. Kimberly Hillyer: I would have to say it would have to be three times. Our population, people consume like you, said the fast food. I can only imagine how many animals are required to keep a fast-food chain open. So, I’m going to go with nine billion. 

Jane Velez-Mitchell: 80 billion animals are killed every year for food. A vast majority of them are chickens. So, we are taking a huge percentage of the food that has grown globally and putting it into the world’s most inefficient food source, animals. You can quibble about the numbers. It could be two, it could be five, it could be eight. It could be 25 lbs. of grain to make 1 lb. of meat, depending on what type of meat? Okay, a sirloin is different than a burger. Maybe, but it is an inefficient food source. 

Meanwhile, there are children in Afghanistan and Somalia right now dying of malnutrition and hunger because we are supporting the world’s most inefficient food system. If you took more than 80% of all soy produce fed to farmed animals, this is true of a lot of commodity crops. A huge percentage of the food is fed to farmed animals. If you diverted that food away from farmed animals, we could live in a world of natural abundance where nobody is dying of hunger. 

That’s why I work with Dr. Sailesh Rao, who said, “we’re all being factory farmed.” I consider him a genius. I did a documentary about him on Unchained TV called ‘Countdown to Year 0.’ He’s starting this whole movement called Food Healers because he believes food is a right. Just like air is a right, water is a right, and food is a right. You can only survive a few seconds without air. You can only survive a few hours or days, maybe a day, without water. I don’t have the exact statistics, so don’t quote me. I’m not a scientist, nor do I pretend to be. You can’t survive very long without food. These should be central human rights. And what creates profit? Scarcity! So, animal agriculture creates a scarcity that allows for profit. You notice there are no commercials on TV for apples. There are no commercials on TV for carrots. It’s all, for generally meat and dairy with the French fries grown in. So, we are pushing the most inefficient food source that is also terrible for our health. One out of every 4 people dies of heart disease. Heart disease is caused by plaque; plaque is what clogs the arteries. Plaque comes from cholesterol. There is no cholesterol in plants. Animals produce cholesterol; we’re animals, and we produce our own cholesterol. Unless you’re one of the rare individuals with a genetic predisposition for high cholesterol. If you have high cholesterol, chances are it’s because you’re eating too much meat and dairy products. 

Then there’s cancer. The World Health Organization has officially determined that processed meat, hot dogs, bacon, and deli slices, are officially cancer-causing. It’s a carcinogen. All of this information is out there. Do you hear it? No. Why? Because who pays the bills on advertiser-based media? Meat, dairy, and pharmaceuticals. They might as well be in the one-in-the-same industry because a lot of the pills, like the cholesterol-lowering pills and the erectile dysfunction pills. Erectile dysfunction is a precursor of our disease. So, when the body is getting clogged with excess cholesterol, it’s systemic. It’s not just happening to cause heart attacks. It’s causing other things like erectile dysfunction. And again, I’m no doctor, no scientists, but there are studies, and there is new research into the effect of the skyrocketing so-called dementia because there are vessels in our brains as well. And they’re getting clogged. I don’t know about you, but when I was a kid, everybody’s parents didn’t have dementia. Now every person I talk to, their parents are out of it, they’ve got Alzheimer’s or Dementia, or how you want to characterize it. Well, what’s going on? The rise of these problems is absolutely parallel with the rise of fast food? 

So, you talk about human health. The healthcare crisis, the healthcare costs, our deficit. You talk about climate change. We are giving; here’s the thing that nobody talks about. Everybody will beat their chest about fossil fuels. But nobody talks about the fact that trees absorb carbon. We have essentially given planet Earth a buzz cut, not to do development. We think it’s development because we all live in cities for the most part, and we see all these buildings. We go the development is what’s taking away the trees. No, farmland to grow crops to feed 80 billion animals and cattle grazing land. Now that’s not me saying it. The amazon rainforest is being destroyed, and thousands of football fields are every time you turn on the news. I don’t have the exact numbers, but it’s like a punch to the stomach. When you see the numbers, it’s being destroyed for cattle grazing land. Now they like to say, well, it’s logging. Logging is a byproduct. The reason they are destroying it is cattle raising and who is consuming the cattle. Americans. JBS is one of the biggest cattle and meat companies in the world, Brazilian or from that part of the world. But we are the consumers; we’re consuming all this stuff. Meanwhile, we’re fomenting about their destroying the rainforests. Don’t destroy the rainforest but wait for a second look at the mirror; who are they destroying it for? 

Dr. Kimberly Hillyer: You’re talking about looking in the mirror. You brought up something that really connects with me, as I work in the healthcare field, about pharmaceutical companies and their involvement. But as I’m listening to you, I’m also thinking about how medicine as a whole also participates in it or the healthcare industry participates in it. You mentioned cancer; there’s a cancer research and medical research that uses animals. Have you done a dive into that part of the healthcare industry? Medical research with animals’ necessities or not necessarily. Because I feel like, basically, I remember hearing someone from the NIH saying that it was not really necessary to do this. We were finding cures in some of these animals that weren’t translating to our species. We were giving the species diseases and cancers and different things like that, but it wasn’t necessarily translating. So maybe animal research was not the way to go. Have you done a little research on that as well? 

Jane Velez-Mitchell: Oh, yes, for decades. I was a reporter in Philadelphia when somebody sent me a cassette tape of one of the most horrifying things. It really turned me into an animal activist. It was a head injury, experiments being done on primates, and you throw the word science out there. Everybody says, “well, we can’t ask questions.” It’s science; it’s research. They were bashing in primates’ heads with ginormous, “ginormous” powerful objects that had whatever Gs’ of force. They were playing rock music, and they were joking. Then they would lift the animal’s hand like this and go look and drop it. It was sadism on a level that I could not even begin to comprehend. 

A lot of the people who run organizations, like White Coat Waste, which is run by a guy named Anthony Bellotti, who actually had a summer internship at a laboratory, and he said what he saw horrified him. He decided to devote his entire life to ending animal experimentation. The truth is that we’re not animals in that sense. Yes, we’re animals, but we don’t have tails, we don’t have paws, we don’t have snouts. If I feed my dog chocolate, my dog could be poisoned. Unfortunately, I eat a lot of chocolate, and nothing bad happens to me except I put on a couple of pounds. So, we are not animals, and what happens to animals doesn’t impact us. Most of the drugs that work on animals don’t work on people. This is a scientific fact. 

Look at the pandemic. There was an article in the New York Times on February 27. That, said the scientific community, has concluded that in all likelihood. However you want to phrase it, they didn’t say necessarily by a preponderance of the evidence or beyond a reasonable doubt. But they said it was very clear that COVID almost certainly started at the Wuhan wet market. Where wild animals and domestic animals, blood, guts, feces, urine, pus, and every other thing is mixed together. People said, well, what about the lab? The lab theory? Well, even if you looked at the lab theory, what were they doing there? They were experimenting on bats. So, either way, our disregard of other species and other beings came back to haunt us in the form of the pandemic. Of course, no news media talks about that because, once again, that would rip open the meat matrix and have people wondering. Well, maybe this is not in my best interest to do this. Do you know that the mainstream media does not use the word slaughterhouse? When COVID swept through the slaughterhouses, that became a big issue for the slaughterhouse workers. The rank and file were dying overwhelmingly. People at the lowest rung of the social order — Immigrants people, who have just been released, for example, from prison. Often the only job they can get is killing animals for a living. There was an order sign saying this was essential and they needed to keep working. The news media did a report on it a little bit, but they didn’t say slaughterhouse. They said food processing facilities or meat processing facilities. Okay, so meat packing plants won’t use the word slaughterhouse. Why? Because that breaks open the meat matrix again, and people start thinking, well, whoa! What actually happens there? Oh, slaughter; animals are killed! 

So, if people would switch to a plant-based diet, if you just gave them the facts, we’d all be vegan because you’d have to be living under a rock not to see some of these videos already. PETA does an amazing job. PETA and other organizations get the word out there. We have some serious documentaries that we show on UnchainedTV; we have “Dominion,” and we have “Earthlings.” We have more light-hearted fare like “Vegeducated,” where a group of hardcore meat eaters is put through a Vegan boot camp, and hilarity ensues. So, we have various shows. We have a lot of vegan cooking shows. 

It’s the conditioning of our society. I still have cable, and I see these commercials pop up with the dripping meat, etc. These high-priced movie directors are hired to do commercials. They can subliminally connect these pieces of meat with everything, from sex appeal to upward mobility, to keeping up with the Jones to social status, patriotism, femininity for women, and masculinity for men. They are experts at it. Okay, we’re being conditioned. 

Dr. Kimberly Hillyer: That is very true. Some of the commercials really hit me growing up. Things like seeing these celebrities or supermodels in little bikinis with the big hamburger in their mouths. I’m hearing what you’re saying and processing it. I realize you’re saying how much influence these companies have in sending out their message. So, it’s good to have an alternate platform like your network whose able to get out the truth. How do you feel like you are able to utilize that to maybe even move past just messaging one-on-one but to make a difference on the legislative side? 

Jane Velez-Mitchell: Well, yes, the reason I did this. I was in mainstream news media. For 40 years, I worked at CNN. I worked at local TV stations around the country. I worked in syndicated television. I’ve written 4 books, including 2 New York Times bestsellers. You know, after 40 years of really working hard, I think I may have taken like a dozen lunch breaks in that time. I’d like to be out on the beach reading a trashy novel and having some Vegan bonds. 

But this has to be done because there are too many people on this planet to talk to them one-on-one. We must use the most effective means, which is a video showing people the reality of modern-day factory farming, which is morally reprehensible, showing them the joys of vegan cooking. Which we also do on Unchained TV. We have hundreds of Vegan cooking shows. We got a guy named Derek Sarno, who makes mushrooms, and turns he turns mushrooms into these incredible stakes and all sorts of meat in, and you look at any way that’s a steak. No, it’s a mushroom. We have “Soulicious” vegan, so delicious! And she does these incredible dishes that are absolutely like they’re just delectable. This is not a sacrifice. See, the other thing that we’ve been conditioned to believe is that somehow eating fruits, vegetables, nuts, grains, and legumes which is what Nature put there for us to consume, is some terrible sacrifice. No, the food that we make is absolutely delicious. And again, that’s part of changing the conditioning. I have cookouts all the time. I invite people over and make all sorts of food, and the veggie burgers, and everybody eats every last bit. Then, I say, you know, by the way, there’s not a single animal product in any of this. So, you can still have your mayonnaise. Hellmann’s has vegan mayonnaise. You could have your butter, Meokos butter, or many other brands. Yeah, you do have to find the brands you like. Cheese, by the way, is extraordinarily addictive. There’s a book called the Cheese Trap by Dr. Neal Barnard because Nature put a morphine-like substance in cow’s milk, cows, breast milk, to encourage the baby calf to drink the cows’ breast milk; and what happens? 

Is that addictive substance also addictive to humans? Why does it apply to cheese, particularly because that’s compressed milk? It compresses, and it’s a concentrated amount of that substance now, and that’s why people sometimes find It’s the hardest of all to give up cheese. It’s no accident, so you should check out the book the cheese scrap, written by a doctor. Okay, I’m not a doctor, and I always say that, but he is. And he wrote this incredible book that explains it. So, you go out there, and you go. Well, I didn’t like that. Vegan cheese Well, do you like every cow-based cheese you have ever tasted?

No, okay. Some people don’t like him, and there, so you got to find the products you like but see when there’s no argument that works. Then you’ve got to ask yourself, wait for a second, is it me? I’ll say this: I’m a recovering alcoholic, 27 years sober, and back when I was in my disease. There was no argument that anybody could make that would convince me that I didn’t need to have a drink if it was a good day. I needed to celebrate by having a drink. If it was a bad day, I needed to comfort myself with a drink. If it was raining, I needed to drink as it was ready. If it was sunny, I needed to have a drink because it was sunny. So, what happened was I hit bottom and made a full myself at a party in Hollywood. I had a moment of clarity, and then I had a shift in my perspective, and I realized it’s not that I won’t drink tonight. It’s that I don’t have to that change right totally shifted my mentality. It was like a psychic shift or even a spiritual shift. What we need to do it’s the same thing with these meat and dairy products. People are clinging. To them, as If they’re the solution, when in fact, they’re the problem. I used to cling to alcohol like it was a solution when in fact, it was the problem, and that’s the dichotomy. Then I tried to negotiate with it and manage it, and I never won, and people are trying to negotiate and navigate from meat to dairy, and they never win. 

Dr. Kimberly Hillyer: So outside of these wonderful programs, I’m definitely very interested in viewing those. I did notice them when I was going through the programming that you have. How would you say that someone would start now? I live in the blue zone area of Loma Linda, known for being the blue zone partly due to, as you said, the healthy lifestyle, healthy eating, vegetarianism, or veganism. That really kind of, I think, was established well within Loma Linda itself. But for those individuals who did not grow up Vegan or vegetarianism, how do we take those steps? I know we can start by looking up the recipes from your chefs, but how do we take those steps? 

Jane Velez-Mitchell: Well, look, I know it’s a process. I wasn’t born Vegan. Then I was, I don’t want a curse here, but half-ass vegetarian. I think I could say get away with that until I met a fourth-generation cattle rancher named Howard Lyman. I was a local news anchor here in California, working out of the Paramount studios. He had recently been on Oprah. This is a quarter of a century ago when he revealed the secrets. He was a fourth-generation cattle rancher who got sick, and as he was going into surgery, he made a pack with God. He said, “God, if you get me through this surgery alive, I will reveal the terrible secrets of my industry.” He wrote a book called Mad Cowboy. He went on Oprah and revealed the secrets, and she famously said that just stopped me cold from eating another burger. Because he talked about the babies ripped from their mothers. For us to drink cow’s milk, those babies can’t have that milk, so they have to be separated from their mothers, and the mothers grieve, and the babies grieve. The boys have no need for them in the dairy industry, so they either stick them in veal crates, or sometimes they shoot them, or sometimes they throw them on dead piles and let them die. Okay, they don’t need them in the dairy industry, so the boys are just trashed. 

Just like chicks in the egg industry, people say, well, eggs, there’s no problem with eggs, right? Well, all the male chicks are ground up alive in macerators. They don’t need male chicks. You can see the videotape of all these workers; they’re just looking for males and females. Man and the boys go like this, and they go right into the macerators. In fact, there’s a documentary out of Israel where the macerator company calls the police on activists who have stopped the macerating machine with all these chicks. She’s going to be grounded up alive. The police come in, and the activist says, well, if you think this is okay, you press the button and start the machine. And the cop couldn’t do it. 

So, what Howard Lyman said to me that day that I interviewed him after he became a cause Celeb with his book, after being on Oprah. He said, “do you eat dairy? I hear you’re a vegetarian,” and I said, “yes,” and he said, “do you eat dairy?” I kind of hung my head because he just told me about all these horrible things that they do to separate the mothers and the babies and the boy calves. And I said, “yes.” He looked at me, and he put his finger right on my nose, and he said, liquid, meat, like that. And that was the moment I went vegan, like more than, well, about 25 years. I wish I had my Vegan date the way I have my sobriety day, which is April Fool’s Day. By the way, perfect date. God, I made a fool myself, and I still do, but I remember it now. 

So, you know. I think it’s a process, but it could have to be a long process. Look, getting back to the alcohol analogy when you give up drinking. You don’t leave bottles of alcohol around the house. What you do is, and how many movies have you seen this? You take the bottles, and you go, and you pour them down the sink. It’s the same thing with this. Yeah, you take out your dairy and your meat from your refrigerator and your cupboard, and you put it in a big box, and you give it to some homeless person who might need it or give it to a food pantry. Then you replace it with Vegan products. You can get your Vegan Hellmann’s mayonnaise; you can get your soy milk. You can get your vegan butter; you can get your Vegan cheese. You can get your veggie burgers that are becoming increasingly sophisticated because the substance that makes meat look, taste, and smell like meat is called Heme. Heme exists independent of just animals. You can create Heme, and you will get that same meaty taste. That’s why Impossible Foods is very successful because they use Heme in their products. So, you can replace it. You can have your veggie burgers. I don’t like all those so much, you know, like the nuggets and all that, because I didn’t grow up eating those things. But you can buy your chicken nuggets. They’ve done them now where it’s really impossible to tell the difference. So, if you can’t tell the difference, if it’s going to save the planet, allow you to live longer and healthier, and cause much less suffering to animals, why not now? 

Dr. Kimberly Hillyer: We’ve looked at that aspect but going back to your pig reality show, Little Pig Lies. How do we take that same responsibility when it comes to pet ownership? And ownership of animals that aren’t meant to be domesticated, or even those that we say, are meant to be domesticated. How can we be responsible? 

Jane Velez-Mitchell: Well, I think responsible pet ownership is really important. These are members of your family. Okay, I’m going to grab my little guy right here. This is little Rico, and he’s a rescue from Puerto Rico. He’s an old guy; he was my mother’s dog, and when my mother passed away in ‘99, I took Rico in. He’s a family member, and there’s nothing I would not do for him. 

A lot of people got pets during the pandemic because they were at home. Now the shelters are filling up with pets because they’re going back to work. People say to me, “Oh, I’m moved into an apartment. It doesn’t take pets. I got to get rid of my….” No, if you moved, why did you move into that? I’m not, I have compassion for people because I know that housing is a very critical situation, and often it’s really hard for people with companion animals to get homes. But that’s why we fight for legislation that would prohibit rental apartments and say, you can’t have dogs or cats here in California. 

I went to a Vegan Restaurant many years ago called Real Food Daily, and I was friends with the owners, and I saw they had a ‘B.’ I knew they were a very, very clean restaurant. I said, Gosh! Why do you have a ‘B.’ He said you won’t believe this. There was a little dog outside on the terrace, outside our terrace area. He went through the bars and sat inside the terrace, and a health inspector came along and gave us a ‘B’ for that. I said that’s outrageous, and I got really mad. I called my friend Judie Mancuso, who runs Social Compassion Legislation, and I said that’s ridiculous. I said we are so Speciesism in this society. It’s like we demonize animals. 

I sleep with my dogs every night. I’ve never gotten sick from dogs. Oh, I’ve gotten sick from people, believe me. So, I said we need a law. She proposed the dining with Dogs Law, which allows outdoor restaurants in California if they choose to accept animals into their outdoor patios. It passed with flying colors. It got a lot of publicity because people loved the idea. There were all sorts of stories about dogs dressed up for dinner, and there were comparisons to Paris. Then we passed it in New York. Okay, New York State. There are many people who have contacted me. We need to pass it in Texas. We need to pass it, but it really changed the culture. Now here in California, people don’t think of you coming in with your dog, but not until that law was passed. Now there’s a whole new attitude and guess what? Nobody’s suffering. Nobody killed over because you’re in some store with your dog. 

See, we have to start thinking differently about these other animals with whom we share our planet. We’ve got to stop. We’ve got to start respecting them. Just before we went on, the story of the Norwegian authorities killing this walrus because people were taking selfies with the walrus. They couldn’t stop the people from taking selfies with the walrus, so their response was to kill the walrus. We posted it on Unchained TV Instagram, and I just said, this is murder. That’s what I texted right before. It’s murder. This epitomizes our arrogance toward other species, and it will come back to haunt us because we are destroying wildlife at such an alarming rate. That’s not me saying it; it’s the Worldwatch Institute. 

At the rate we’re going, we’re going to have almost essentially no animals in a decade. I’m talking about no giraffes, no lions, and no tigers. Now we like to say, oh, it’s the hunters; and I’m no friend of hunters. I detest them, but it’s really the destruction of the habitat of these animals that are causing climate change and wildlife extinction. 

I’ve gone to conservation events where they’re raising a lot of money, and conservation events tend to attract very wealthy people. I’ve noticed they’re raising a whole bunch of money to save animals in different parts of the world. But they’re serving meat at their Gala. I went up to the head of one of these in Beverly Hills, and I said, Why are you serving meat; if you’re trying to conserve these animals? He just brushed me off. People don’t want to make the connection. 

The main reason why we’re barreling towards extinction. With these, the species extinction at an alarming rate. Don’t take my word for it. There are extinction clocks online that you can go visit. It’s because we’re destroying their homes. Right here in Los Angeles today, before I got on this call, I testified at a hearing because they are trying to destroy LA’s last coastal wetlands. The Ballona Wetlands, it’s one square mile; it’s an ecological reserve that is supposed to be there for the animals. There are 1,700 species, including threatened and endangered species, who live there. There’s a plan that was concocted by private industry and developers to quote-unquote “restore it.” It doesn’t need to be restored. Sure, it needs some TLC. They’ve now allowed RVs; they are kind of trying to make it look like it’s deteriorated by letting the perimeter deteriorate. But the truth is that these animals live there. We have timestamp photographs of these animals, and I testified at a hearing for California Fish and Wildlife. I was like, this is a phony restoration. It’s a 10-year, 250-million-dollar bulldozing project it is going to chase all these animals out. They have nowhere else to go, and this is a landing spot for migratory birds. 

So, our whole society is playing with this idea that if there is land that’s not being used by people, somehow, it’s a waste. It’s the exact opposite; we need that land. In fact, there is a whole movement in New Zealand. I just read an article about how they are paying farmers to stop farming and grow trees for carbon offset. So, they can make more money doing the carbon offset by planting trees. Then they can actually produce either crops or farmed animals. 

Dr. Kimberly Hillyer: Soy and corn that’s needed to feed the animals. 

So you talked about one of the legislation pieces of legislation that you know was implemented here in California, widely accepted, and widely passed by Californians. New York is far as having their pets and animals able to be at the restaurants’ outside area. Is there any legislation that’s on the horizon that you know of that we should be keeping an ear out for to really push, whether here in California or nationally even? 

Jane Velez-Mitchell: Well, Prop. 12 was passed by the voters of California. Let me be very clear, we are people who are generally good. I believe it’s the systems that are bad. So, overwhelmingly Californians passed Prop 12, which would ban the sale of animal products produced through cruel means of confinement. Like those pig gestation crates that I talked about earlier. So, the pork industry has gone to court to try to do an end to or run around it. They are trying to say they have all sorts of arguments. I actually work with one of the lawyers who work with meaning in a nonprofit fashion; who’s fighting this? I just read his brief; I mean, the people of California do not want these cruel confinement systems. 

California is the fifth largest economy in the world, so when California says it’s done, it’s done. We saw that with the Cruelty-Free Cosmetics Act that we passed. Same organization, social compassion, legislation at PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. We passed the California Cruelty-Free Cosmetics Act, and that has had a ripple effect even as far as China. Which had required cosmetic testing on animals but is now rethinking it in the wake of this legislation. So, the old saying, what happens in California, spreads everywhere. 

So, we really need to worry about the effort to undo the voice of the people in Prop 12, which said we do not want products made from these cruel, terrible, cruel confinement methods. Where animals can’t turn around. What you said, well, why would they want to do that? Because all they want to do is fatten them up for slaughter. Most pigs are slaughtered around the age of 6 months. Okay, they’re babies; they’re terrified babies. 

What happens when you move around, you burn calories. So that costs, right? So, if you keep them immobilized, you can control pigs because pigs are very, they can be very large, and they can be very strong. So, you keep them immobilized, and you fatten them up for slaughter. It is morally reprehensible. Okay, I’m not saying that’s, oh, that’s just my opinion. No, I think anybody who looks at pig gestation crates and says this is okay. Needs to go see a therapist because it is just not okay. 

Dr. Kimberly Hillyer: Now you said there is work that is being done to change laws. You know that individuals are going through court, going to judges to overturn certain legislation. How do we get information on this? I know you have your information on Unchained TV, but is there a place that we can go to. So that we are aware of which representatives in our districts, in our areas, are working towards our interests. As people, as our animals, our pets, undoing cruelty, helping with climate change, all these things are a circle in the cycle. How do we find information about the judges? So, we are making sure that not only are we addressing the Props that come to the ballot but also the people that come to the ballot. 

Jane Velez-Mitchell: Yes. Well, I have to say UnchainedTV.com. We put out an article every week on the very latest in our movement. For example, this isn’t legislation, but I have two articles up right now that are really fascinating. 

We could feed the entire world using fermentation processes like microalgae. It is one of the oldest substances on earth, and it is something that can be replicated and fermented, and it’s high in protein in large vats. Now they figured out a way; it’s an Israeli company; we did an interview with them. They can brew it in large vats, and it’s a high protein source of food that could feed the earth. You can also add any additive you want to make it taste like, whatever you want. It’s kind of like tofu, except it’s made out of microalgae, and that is a huge breakthrough. 

Then we also interviewed a Belgium company called Paleo that is making. Get this. If you’re sitting down, 100% bio-identical meat that is Vegan. What they’re doing is they’re using DNA sequencing. So yeah, I had the same reaction. How could you do that? Don’t you need a biopsy, which would sell the base meat? They said, “No, what we do is we take the DNA sequencing. We copy the DNA sequencing, and we use another protein, in this case, yeast, and once we have that DNA sequencing, what we’re producing it not just tastes sort of like, but it tastes exactly like pork, chicken, beef.” They even found Mammoth DNA, and they created mammoth meat. They said that this is a substance that would be combined like any ingredient with other things. Let’s say you were making a veggie burger or you were making something you wanted to have as your meat dish. Put that into the plant-based substance as an ingredient in your dish; it tastes like meat. It now tastes exactly like meat because it is bio-identical to meat. So, there are all these incredible things happening that are on the horizon, and they are the solution. 

Sure, I’m all for protesting and demanding action, but I think technology is going to solve this problem. Millions and millions of dollars are being poured into all of these systems. And you might say, “Well, that’s not natural.” Well, is it natural for you to jump on a plane and fly across the world? Is it natural for me to have two lights staring at me? No! 

Okay, so I think that technology is going to offer the solution. As far as getting involved, if something you’ve heard today says this is not right, I agree. I have to tell you along with UnchainedTV.com, which is our website. The PETA people, just PETA.org, make it so easy. Let’s face it, we’re not in the day and age where people sit down and write letters to their congressmen. That’s like back from the turn of the century. So, PETA, you sign up, and they send you a text, and you just go like this, and it sends a letter to twelve members of Congress boom. No matter what I’m doing. I’m on the PETA list, and anytime I get it. I know that all I have to do is go on online. They send me emails. They also send me a text, and I click, click, click like that. I say letters to twenty people of influence, and I can personalize them if I want. If I don’t have time, I would say definitely go to PETA.org and sign up for their mailing list because they’re on top of all this. A lot of these groups. It’s the work of PETA. I’ve worked with them against animal experimentation. 

I was at the Hispanic journalist conference in Puerto Rico. I think it was back in 2009 when these two lawyers from the Amorites subcommittee of the Puerto Rican Bar Association came up to me. They said, Oh, they built a laboratory monkey breeding facility here in a small town, and we can’t stop it. They’ve already built it. We’re devastated. I said, never concede defeat before you’ve even started to fight. I said let’s go to the Legislature. We literally drove to the Legislature of Puerto Rico. We walked around we found animal-loving legislators. We enlisted them. PETA filed lawsuits. They have nineteen lawyers challenging this construction, which happened to turn out was without the proper permitting. Everything was blown wide open. It went all the way up to the Puerto Rican Supreme Court, and they were not allowed to open the facility, even though they had already constructed it. So, I can tell you that PETA is extraordinary, like a machine. I’ve supported them from the beginning. I deal with a lot of organizations, hundreds. I deal with them and profile them, and I have to say it is the most effective organization. 

So, if you care about animals, if you care about even health, if you care about the planet, certainly check out UnchainedTV.com. Check out not just our articles but also our 600 videos. Download our app you can watch it on TV. There’s a lot of fun, and we have a lot of documentaries. I was up until one in the morning uploading new documentaries. People think I have a team. People are always we’ll have your IT team do it. No, I mean, we’ve got four people. We’re doing this network; it’s 24 hours a day. I don’t take a salary. This is a labor of love. I am doing it for one reason only. We have to change, or we are going to go extinct, as Dr. Sailesh Rao said. You know we, in our arrogance, think that the human species can’t go extinct, but if the temperatures get too hot on this planet to support human life, we could. 

Dr. Kimberly Hillyer: Unfortunately, we are doing it to ourselves. 

Jane Velez-Mitchell: Yep. 

Dr. Kimberly Hillyer: I want to thank you for your time. Thank you for your information, especially for giving us information about your website. The videos, the blog. Information about PETA that I wasn’t aware of. I’m gonna make sure I sign up for those messaging systems because they’re making it so easy. Why would you not use it to make a difference? Because our planet needs us. These animals need us. Our future generation needs us. So, I want to thank you again, Jane, for joining us at Neonatology Today Media. 

I look forward to having a movement that you’ve started with this Unchained TV network is making a difference in multiple species’ lives. 

Jane Velez-Mitchell: I want to thank you, Kimberly, for a great interview, for caring and being on top of it, and for being willing to discuss this issue. You know, there’s really a whole sort of, I would say, prejudice against anything involving animals. As if serious people can’t discuss it. There’s a sort of inherent condescension. Oh, oh, I love your passion! When they don’t realize it is the most important issue. I really respect and appreciate the fact that you recognize that and took the time to do this. 

Dr. Kimberly Hillyer: No problem, and I really appreciate your time. I’m glad we could also highlight the medical, science, and research aspects because that hits home. It’s one of the things that we just have accepted, and we shouldn’t, and we need to challenge it. 

Jane Velez-Mitchell: Absolutely.