Our Hen House: Vegan & Animal Rights Movement | Stories from the Frontlines of Animal Liberation

In this episode of Our Hen House, Mariann and Jasmin sit down with Alex Bury, Vice President of Development at Vegan Outreach, and Stacy Shepanek, Director of Communications at Vegan Outreach and co-lead of Knox Vegan, to talk about grassroots vegan activism that works. They dig into Vegan Outreach’s massive leafleting legacy (22 million booklets and counting), their 10 Weeks to…

In this episode of The Hen Report from Our Hen House, Jasmin and Mariann dig into the tension within the animal protection movement over anti-factory farming messaging that stops short of asking people to eat fewer animals. Inspired by Mariann’s Substack piece Expanding the Tent and Jasmin’s experience at an op-ed writing workshop, the two trace this strategic issue through historical&...

Mariann Sullivan breaks down why the meat industry is panicking about animal rights groups making common cause with small farmers, how dairy operations turned their unwanted male calves into a billion-dollar beef sideline (20% of the US beef supply and counting), and why the H-2A visa program is a legal nightmare for an industry that runs on exploited labor. Plus: Colorado…

Award-winning undercover investigator Lindsay Oliver joins Jasmin and Mariann to discuss her groundbreaking work inside a national primate research center and her new memoir, Marshmallows Are Their Favorite: Undercover at a Primate Lab. Over a two-decade career spanning more than 100 investigations across factory farms, research labs, zoos, and circuses, Lindsay shares what it’s really like...

In this episode of The Hen Report, Jasmin and Mariann sit down with Gretchen Primack and Ella Magers to debrief the historic March to Abolish Animal Testing (MAAT) — a 207-mile trek from Albany to Marshall Bioresources, the country’s largest breeder of dogs for animal experimentation. The organizers share what it took to mobilize over 1,000 people in just three and…

Marshall BioResources is big mad about Our Hen House, the Animal Agriculture Alliance thinks animal activists are secretly swimming in a billion dollars, and a UK newspaper is very upset that PETA has the audacity to care about sheep. Meanwhile, a Smithfield plant worker becomes the fourth death on the job, a rancher writes a whole essay pretending climate change isn’t…

In this episode of The Animal Law Podcast, Mariann Sullivan speaks with Eric Glitzenstein, Director of Litigation at the Center for Biological Diversity, about what he calls the most extreme attack on the Endangered Species Act in its history. They break down two unprecedented actions by the Trump administration: the elimination of the long-standing regulatory definition of “harm” that...

 In this episode of The Hen Report from Our Hen House, hosts Jasmin Singer and Mariann Sullivan unpack the growing differences in approaches within the animal protection movement between some large organizations and some grassroots activists. They examine how some major groups are currently framing their “end factory farming” missions — often without naming a clear end state or using t...

This week, Mariann Sullivan is in a mood — and who can blame her? A fashion industry executive body-slams PETA protesters at a runway show, and The New York Post wants you to feel bad about a foie gras ban. The FAA is investigating the drone pilots who keep catching ranchers in the act of abusing animals. Plus: screwworm makes a…

Marie Gibbons, co-founder and CEO of VeriBark, joins Our Hen House to explain how her AI-powered app analyzes over 130 dog body signals and vocalizations to help pet parents understand what their dogs are really communicating. The conversation digs into the science behind animal body language, the ethics of using AI in animal advocacy, and VeriBark’s ambitious roadmap to expand beyond…

This week on The Hen Report, we talk with poet and activist Gretchen Primack and Sexy Fit Vegan founder Ella Magers about the March to Abolish Animal Testing — a 207-mile trek across upstate New York from Albany to Marshall BioResources, the country’s largest breeder of dogs, cats, ferrets, and pigs for animal experimentation. They dig into the logistics of supporting…

Rising Anxieties digs into the pork lobby’s freshly inflated “$1.07 billion animal rights conspiracy” report , the Gallup poll agribusiness loves to misquote, and a meat-trade columnist practically begging Big Beef to invent lab-grown protein before someone beats them to it. The $1.07 billion “animal rights” funding illusion  Prop 12 fallout and the 2026 Farm Bill — w...

In this Our Hen House interview, Mariann Sullivan sits down with Simone Scampoli, executive director of Capra Libera Tutti animal sanctuary near Rome, Italy, to explore how sanctuaries function as spaces of transformation. Simone shares the sanctuary’s origin story, its evolving relationship with a once-exploited mountain landscape, and the philosophy of consent and animal agency that shapes...

On this episode of The Hen Report, Mariann talks with recent University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate Ryan Blum about his solo, year-in-the-making undercover investigation into the campus’s Meat Science and Animal Biologics Discovery building, where he captured rare footage of pigs being stunned using CO2 gas chambers. Ryan breaks down how the process works, why it directly contradicts the u...

In this episode of the Our Hen House Interview, Jasmin Singer and Mariann Sullivan sit down with performance researcher and theater maker Dr. Ben Hunt, founder of the Performing Animal Rights podcast and newsletter, to explore how theater, puppetry, drag, and creative practice can break through the psychological resistance that keeps people from engaging with animal rights. From vigils as unintent...

On this episode of The Hen Report, Jasmin Singer and Mariann Sullivan dig into a mix of movement news and reflection. They share encouraging data on the growth of plant-based product labeling and break down key legal wins in animal rights cases — including the Wayne Hsiung prosecution and the Meyenberg goat rescue case. The conversation turns to the environmental toll…

Turns out when food prices spike, the animal ag industry’s solution is just cheaper spin. This episode digs into the meat lobby’s sudden “affordability” crusade against animal welfare reforms, the bizarre pro-grazing propaganda tour, Trump’s confusing detour into meat processing policy, the BLM’s wild horse slaughter pipeline finally getting some overdue press,...

This month’s Animal Law Podcast features attorney Taj Uppal, who was arrested and charged with felony grand theft after rescuing two sick baby goats from Vera Goat Dairy, a California factory farm supplying Meyenberg Goat Milk to retailers like Whole Foods and Walmart. Uppal walks through the investigation that preceded the rescue, his arrest by Kings County Sheriff’s deputies, and the...

In this episode of The Hen Report, Jasmin Singer is joined by Marielle Vigneau-Britt of Totally Forkable to unpack a viral video from The Financial Diet’s Chelsea Fagan, who took aim at vegans while discussing consumerism in France versus the US. Together they dig into why comment sections don’t represent an entire community, how veganism keeps getting conflated with extreme “pur...

The pork lobby thinks conferences make activists scary, the dairy industry wants everyone drinking more milk they didn’t ask for, and chicken gets a chlorine bath nobody has to disclose — welcome to another week of animal agriculture explaining itself to itself. Industry playbook, exposed by industry: A pork trade publication frets that animal rights groups are getting “sophisticated&#...

This week on Our Hen House, Jasmin Singer and Mariann Sullivan sit down with longtime animal activist Jennifer Raymond — founder of Humboldt Critters Without Litters and author of The Peaceful Palette — to hear the harrowing, firsthand account of how she helped expose Miranda’s Rescue, a Humboldt County, California “rescue” that took in hundreds of shelter dogs each year while&#8...

This episode covers the Save Our Bacon Act getting shut down (again) in the Farm Bill, the delightfully weird strange-bedfellows saga around the Ridglan Farms beagle rescue, and the growing bipartisan side-eye toward animal testing — plus a Nonhuman Rights Project update and a preview of the next Animal Law Podcast episode. The pork industry tried (again) to torch state animal…

Animal abuse industry PR groups are suddenly very worried about undercover investigations targeting retailers instead of farms, a Brazilian trade show imagined a vegan supermarket with no bread (checks notes: vegan bread abounds), and a Wisconsin dairy program is teaching kids about cows via “virtual escape rooms.” Also: Congress “fixed” school milk access, USDA quietly un-...

Animal advocacy researcher Björn Ólafsson (More Than Meats The Eye, Better Food Foundation, Spain’s Animal Welfare Observatory) joins Jasmin and Mariann to unpack new UK survey data on public attitudes toward factory farming, why cognitive dissonance keeps animal lovers eating meat, and the behavioral science tactics — from “tasty titles” to plant-based defaults — that are quietl...

This week’s Hen Report dives into what makes an ally “natural” for animal advocacy, questioning whether meat reducers, cruelty-free (but non-vegan) consumers, or regenerative farmers truly share the movement’s goals. Jasmin and Mariann also break down troubling news about organic chicken production, the slow progress of cultivated meat, and the power of language in shifting...