We are hosting a series of free online talks from a variety of renowned speakers. These events will be streaming live on Facebook and YouTube, where you can engage with the speakers by asking questions. If you can’t make the live event, the talks will be available for viewing on both platforms shortly afterwards.
Upcoming talks
Completed talks
Lab-grown Mooseburgers? An L’nuwey View on Food Technology
Margaret Robinson, PhD
September 19th 2022, 3pm PDT, 6pm EDT
This talk will examine how technological developments in food production, such as the creation of in vitro meat, can be perceived from a Mi’kmaw or L’nuwey worldview. Drawing on cultural understanding of animals as relatives to human beings, evident in traditional Mi’kmaw stories, Dr. Robinson will describe how cultural duties and protocols of respect and gratitude to moose might change with the introduction of lab-produced meat products. Mi’kmaq relationship to the moose and changes in this relation over time will be highlighted in relation to our growing knowledge of epigenetics.
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Margaret Robinson is a Mi’kmaw scholar and a member of the Lennox Island First Nation. She is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of English, Sociology and Social Anthropology at Dalhousie University, where she is also the Coordinator of Indigenous Studies. Dr. Robinson is a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Reconciliation, Gender and Identity.
Margaret Robinson is a Mi’kmaw scholar and a member of the Lennox Island First Nation. She is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of English, Sociology and Social Anthropology at Dalhousie University, where she is also the Coordinator of Indigenous Studies. Dr. Robinson is a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Reconciliation, Gender and Identity.
The plant-based cities movement
Mo Markham & Eleanor Carrara
June 28th 2022, 4pm PDT, 7pm EDT
The Plant-based Cities Movement (PBCM) is a Canadian initiative working to ensure that municipalities are at the forefront of the fight to prevent further climate breakdown. Many are already working toward decreasing greenhouse gas emissions and the PBCM is cajoling many more to get onside.
The time has come to transition to a sustainable plant-based food system.
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Mo Markham is an organizer with the Plant-Based Cities Movement in Canada, Waterloo Region Climate Initiatives, the Eating Animals Causes Pandemics campaign, and the OneHealth Advocacy Project. She has helped create climate strikes; organizes her local vegfest; has had articles and letters to the editor published on a variety of issues; has taken part in animal rights and social justice actions and campaigns in Ontario, in Canada, and across the world. A writer and retired social worker, she has also been active in the women’s and LGBTQ communities. She went vegan 7 or 8 years ago after seeing the effects of climate change in Western Canada’s beautiful British Columbia.
Eleanor Carrara has been a committed lifelong animal rights and environmental activist with a focus on transitioning institutions to a plant-based food system. Eleanor is the Outreach and Policy Lead with Nation Rising, an organizer with the Plant-Based Cities Movement (Montreal area), and a member of the Coalition for a Sustainable Food Transition. Eleanor also heads the Canadian university campaign working with the senior leadership to promote the plant-based transition Universities and Plant-Based Meals.
Veganism and evolution
Gregory Tague
March 15 2022, 4pm PDT, 7pm EDT
Veganism in some forms can be traced back to Biblical times (e.g., the book of Daniel in the Old Testament) and is alive in, for instance, an ancient Indian religion like Jainism. Vegans avoid harming or eating animals or exploiting animals for their skin, fur, or bodies. Other than for religious reasons, vegans are motivated by diet or health, ethical concerns, psychosocial responses to celebrities or fads, or identity politics in the form of activism.
Most corporations and many people see no profit in ethics, so the weight in this argument for ethical veganism falls on establishing the resilience and sustainability of human and environmental health. Issues include uneven food consumption, collective implications of animal farming, and personal gain over community ecology. Corporations and entrepreneurs are capitalizing from a plant-based trend, but often their actions are not fostering the conservation but the exploitation of resources.
Minds, eyes, voices, and hands should be on how a vegan economy across industrial nations can prevent poor health and mitigate climate change. Certainly, ethics are constituents of sustainability goals, as the United Nations is well aware. For developing countries where food instability is a concern, wealthy nations could help them adapt to veganism in the wake of global warming without relinquishing cultural beliefs or practices.
Technology and laws are not primary solutions for achieving a healthy environment. Recycling is not of itself a final solution. Energy loss and food waste, especially from animal agriculture, must be eradicated. This is an argument demonstrating how in our ancestral hominin lineage we were plant and fruit eaters, just like our living relatives, the great apes.
Biologically, we can survive on a plant-based diet. More so, with the mechanism of cultural evolution, the arts as much as the natural and social sciences can educate young people about the benefits of a vegan culture to generate advantageous shifts in attitudes about physical, environmental, and animal well-being.
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Dr. Tague is a Professor in the departments of Literature, Writing and Publishing / Interdisciplinary Studies and founder and senior developer of The Evolutionary Studies Collaborative at St. Francis College, N.Y. He is also the founder and organizer of a number of Darwin-inspired Moral Sense Colloquia and other multidisciplinary events. Books include: The Vegan Evolution: Transforming Diets and Agriculture (forthcoming 2022); An Ape Ethic and the Question of Personhood (2020); Art and Adaptability: Consciousness and Cognitive Culture (2018); Evolution and Human Culture (2016); and Making Mind: Moral Sense and Consciousness (2014).
In book series or journals, Tague’s published work in evolutionary studies spans disciplines across literature, philosophy, law, science, and paleoanthropology. Professor Tague has also written or edited nine other academic books or literary anthologies, including Character and Consciousness (2005), Origins of English Dramatic Modernism (2010), and Puzzles of Faith and Patterns of Doubt (2013). He is the founding editor of the peer-reviewed ASEBL Journal, now website (ethics/arts/evolution), and is general editor of the Bibliotekos literary site and Literary Veganism: An Online Journal.
The critical need to transform Canada’s food system and how we can make it happen
Anthony Garoufalis-Auger
February 8 2022, 4pm PDT, 7pm EDT
Anthony will discuss how a national scale food system transformation in Canada is possible over the next ten years, in the context of existing barriers and opportunities. With climate breakdown already upon us, the need to rapidly reduce the rate of warming to avert cataclysmic change is more urgent than ever. The science is clear that we need to start immediately shifting away from animal farming towards plant-based protein sources, and that our food systems and diets must change, especially in high-income countries. However, with our federal political parties failing to offer policy solutions that approach what’s necessary, how can we make this happen? Anthony’s presentation will go over the literature to explore what a rapid food system transformation could look like for Canadians. His remarks will also centre the forces at play pushing against what’s required. He will also explore how we can build a broad base and effective movement that can apply the pressure needed to put us on the right track.
Anthony is a Montreal-based climate emergency organizer, climate policy expert, and public affairs strategist. His work focuses on shifting the climate discourse in Canada from incrementalism to emergency-mode action. He is a co-founder of Extinction Rébellion Québec and works with the Climate Emergency Unit where he acts as a sectoral organizer focused on arts and culture, and food system transformation.
Meatsplaining: A New Name for an Old Devil
Jason Hannan
August 18 2021, 5pm PDT, 7pm CDT, 8pm EDT
Like other profit-driven industries, the meat industry thrives on an orchestrated campaign of public deception: on seductive rhetoric, clever talking points, shrewd PR tactics, and out-and-out propaganda. What are the main features of meat industry deception? What types of violence and injustice does it seek to conceal? This talk explores the phenomenon of “meatsplaining,” the meat industry’s rhetoric of denial.
Jason Hannan is Associate Professor in the Department of Rhetoric, Writing, and Communications at the University of Winnipeg. One of his most popular courses is The Rhetoric of Animality, which explores the history of Western attitudes towards animals from the ancient world to the present.
Jason is the editor of Meatsplaining: The Animal Agriculture Industry and the Rhetoric of Denial (Sydney University Press, 2020). His current book project is New White Saviours: The Colonial Politics of Meat, which explores the meat industry’s long history of colonial violence. He is also the Chair of Winnipeg VegFest, the largest vegan and animal rights festival in Manitoba.
What we can learn from the Sexual Politics of Meat
Carol J. Adams
June 22 2021, 5pm PDT, 8pm EDT
Carol J. Adams will discuss the vegan feminist critical theory developed in her revolutionary book, The Sexual Politics of Meat, first published in 1990, followed by a conversation with Earthsave Canada on topics including: how the Sexual Politics of Meat has been used by activists in the last 31 years, what has changed and what has stayed the same in our cultural narratives around meat, and how the Sexual Politics of Meat retains relevance in the vegan and environmental movements today.
Carol J. Adams is the author of numerous books including her germinal The Sexual Politics of Meat, as well as Burger, Protest Kitchen, and others. She is the co-editor of several anthologies on feminist theory and animals. She has been an activist against domestic violence, racism, and homelessness, and for reproductive justice and fair housing practices. A new generation of feminists, artists, and activists respond to her work in Defiant Daughters: 21 Women of Art, Activism, Animals, and The Sexual Politics of Meat and The Art of the Animal: 14 Women Artists Explore The Sexual Politics of Meat. www.caroljadams.com
How we can all play a role in making legal change for animals
Camille Labchuk, BA, JD
April 15 2021, 4pm PST, 7pm EST
Building a more compassionate legal system for animals can seem like a daunting task, but you don’t have to be a lawyer to play a role in improving animal protection laws. This talk will cover the nuts and bolts of making social change, and why engaged, every-day citizens are essential to bring Canadian animal protection laws into line with our social values.
Camille Labchuk is an animal rights lawyer and executive director of Animal Justice—Canada’s only animal law advocacy organization. Under her leadership, Animal Justice fights legal cases in courtrooms across the country, works to pass groundbreaking new laws, and ensures industries are held accountable for illegal animal cruelty.
Camille has litigated to advance animals’ legal interests at all levels of court, including before the Supreme Court of Canada. She regularly testifies before legislative committees, and was instrumental in passing a precedent-setting national ban on whale and dolphin captivity in 2019. She has filed false advertising complaints against companies making misleading humane claims; documented Canada’s commercial seal slaughter; and exposed hidden suffering behind the closed doors of farms and zoos through undercover investigations. Camille also regularly defends and protects the rights of animal advocates.
Camille is a frequent lecturer on animal law, co-host of the Paw & Order podcast, and a regular contributor to national publications like the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star.
Going Vegan For Life: Strategies for Success
Ginny Messina, MPH RD
Feb 20 2021, 3pm PST, 6pm EST
Whether you’re a long time vegan, new to this style of eating, or you’re working to help others move toward a plant-based menu, there are strategies that can help ensure success for the long term. This presentation covers key guidelines related to nutrition, food cravings, making room for mistakes, and the value of managing expectations. We’ll look at practical considerations around vegan food choices and cooking styles, and explore the myth of the “junk food” vegan.
Ginny is a dietitian with a master’s degree in public health nutrition. She is the author of a textbook on plant-based diets for health professionals and of eight other books including Vegan for Life and Even Vegans Die. She has published peer-reviewed journal articles on plant-based nutrition, taught nutrition to university students and worked as a public health nutritionist.
She has served on advisory boards to national and international science conferences and to numerous animal advocacy organizations. As a nutrition consultant, she writes and speaks about vegan nutrition, preventing ex-vegans, and body positivity. Her latest book is an all-new edition of Vegan for Life, with updated recommendations and new material for vegans and aspiring vegans.