Barefoot Vegan Magazine March_April 2017 issue

alone. Society is changing and we are part of that change.
Blue now has a place in my heart and the pain of her comes
back to me at the most unexpected times - and so it does
with the hens I recently filmed. I want to rescue them all
but it isn’t an answer as they will simply be replaced with
others.”
I guessed there must have been some hair-raising
moments over the years and I was right.
“One of the first undercover exposés I did was into duck
farming. My colleague and I were so naïve – two women
chatting up a worker so we could see inside a duck shed.
The noise and stench and overcrowding were overwhelming
but I dropped to my knees in the crap and filmed.
“The managers weren’t as gullible and I was suddenly
surrounded by angry men so I surreptitiously ejected the
tape and hid it in my knickers. They wouldn’t dare search
there! It was all worth it as it got enormous media coverage
– the first-ever view inside an intensive duck farm.
“You have to be robust to do this work and know your
limits. I filmed in one slaughter house and struggled to
suppress the urge to shout out, ‘stop it, stop it you bastards,
you can’t do this!’ I won’t film slaughter again - others do
that.
“We know from our Face Off street viewings that the
cruelty affects people deeply and challenges their
perceptions, which is why we have to keep doing it. Our
Face Off chicken film has also been viewed by 260,000
people on one Facebook page alone. I feel no sense of
elation as I know the scale of what’s happening. But we have
to change people – we are changing people and the pace of
that change is now quite extraordinary!”
Tony Wardle is a
journalist, author,
associate director of
Viva! & editor of
Viva!life magazine.
He has been with
Viva! since its launch,
and his time is
consumed mostly with words,
writing for and editing the supporters’
magazine, in addition to editing a large
output of written material as well as
conceiving and writing much of it. You
can read Tony’s blog by clicking here.
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