Ep. 1641 – The Good News with Angie Austin – DR. KEVIN FITZGERALD, VETERINARIAN, MORE ON HIS BOOK IT STARTED WITH A TURTLE / DR. FRANCES CHENG, HOW TO STOP ANIMAL TESTING IN THE FOOD INDUSTRY
In this compelling episode, Angie Austin is joined by long-time friend and distinguished veterinarian, Dr. Kevin Fitzgerald. They dive into Dr. Fitzgerald’s latest book, ‘It Started With a Turtle’, exploring his fascinating journey from being a security personnel for rock bands like the Rolling Stones to pursuing his passion for veterinary science. Dr. Fitzgerald shares valuable insights into the ethical considerations in the food industry, touching upon how animal testing doesn’t always correlate with human safety standards. The conversation weaves through his experiences as a stand-up comedian, his role in the Animal Planet series, and the importance of conservation
Welcome to The Good News with Angie Austin. Now, with The Good News, here’s Angie.
SPEAKER 03 :
Hey there, friend. Angie Austin and Dr. Kevin Fitzgerald, my friend of like 25 years, joining us to talk more about his new book, It Started With a Turtle, One Man’s Life on a Blue and Green Planet. Hey, my friend. I’m so excited to talk to you. How are you? I am doing well, and you are going to be so excited because in the next segment, I have an interview with Dr. Frances Cheng. She was a researcher in a medical school, and she was forced to do research with animals because that’s part of your medical school training. And she also runs a restaurant, and she is now… has an initiative to stop animal testing in the food industry in the food and beverage industry and she has a way to do this testing without animals and uh her description of what they do to animals to be honest with you kev i’m a little shocked that when i eat an oreo what they had to do to animals in order for them to make claims about that oreo so that i would eat it like kev i know what an oreo does to my body i don’t need them to test oreos on animals
SPEAKER 04 :
No, that’s right. You know, and there’s not always the same correlation between, you know, animal dosages in humans. You know, it doesn’t always translate to the same. So there needs to be ethical, you know, regulation of this and moral. You know, I think that these are animals that share the same life force we do. And I think, yeah, there’s a, There’s a real dilemma there with testing in animals.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah. She talks about the physiology being so different. So I’m excited to talk to her next. But another animal lover, you. Now, we talked about it started with the turtle a couple of weeks back when it first came out. One Man’s Life on a Blue and Green Planet. I got my copy on computer, but you can get hard copies. And I see that you’re doing a lot of book signings. And I already knew that, you know, as a young man that you did security for big rock groups like the Rolling Stones. And I knew the story about how you got involved. turned on to vet school. But just tell that little snippet of who you consulted when you were thinking about leaving your work, traveling the country, seeing the world with the Rolling Stones, doing security, but you had other opportunities. So who was one of the people you consulted?
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, at the end of the tour, you know, Keith would take care of the bouncers. Keith Richards. Yeah. And so, you know, people can say what they want about the Rolling Stones, but man, they are organized and professional. And, you know, it I guess all these years, you know, in the spotlight, it didn’t happen by chance, you know. And so they’re good guys. And so I had another chance to stay and do another tour. And, you know, they were going out again. And I also had a chance to go to, you know, maybe go to school. And he said, look, you can’t be a bouncer when you’re 50. He goes, for sure, go to school. I’ll write you a letter. I’ll write you a letter of recommendation. I’ll do whatever you need to do. But You need to go to school. And so, you know, unlikely person, unlikely source for great advice, but he’s the best ever. And, you know, you listen when he says something, you know, you take it to heart. I came back to Denver and said, Keith told me I got to get a grip on my life when my brother picked me up at the airport. He goes, well, when Keith tells you something, you better listen, right?
SPEAKER 03 :
That is hilarious. When you told me that the first time, I’d already known you for like a decade. And I’m like, you have all these great stories. I’m so glad you finally wrote a book. And a lot of people know that you’re a stand-up comedian. You do the Animal House segment on Channel 2 that you and I started about 25 years ago. You’re still doing it.
SPEAKER 04 :
We started, yes, every 26 years in June. Oh, my gosh. But, you know, you’ve always been an animal lover. And, you know, we were given this wonderful opportunity. biodiversity of all the animals around us, particularly in Colorado where we live. The wildlife is so spectacular. We’ve been seeing the owls have been real active this spring with babies and teaching babies how to hunt and fly. The wildlife here, we’re given this wonderful biodiversity and our intellect and all the other animals are waiting for us to use our intellect and save the place, but I think that there’s wonderful things conservation-wise. I just did a lecture in Chicago to a wonderful group called Citizens for Conservation that they go out in their own communities around Chicago and pick up trash and try and preserve parks and go in and reclaim parks where maybe the underbrushes over-claimed it so that people can go and enjoy it. So I think the national parks and the city parks are one of the best ideas anybody’s ever had. If you look at how often our parks in Denver are used, it’s remarkable that people playing volleyball are just going out and enjoying the day. It’s a great thing. We were meant to be outside. When we’re outside, our physiology changes and you get more endorphins with sunshine and in, in, uh, And yeah, we weren’t meant to be in these concrete cocoons.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah. No kidding. You know, I, we have motion activated cameras and we live on, even though we’re, you know, just outside of Denver, we have several acres and it’s kind of like a horse property neighborhood where they have horse, like horse trails, but a lot of animals use those little trails that they’ve kind of fenced off in between the homes.
SPEAKER 04 :
Urban wildlife. You probably see foxes and you see coyotes. Probably you may even, even see raccoons and, and, You know, the urban wildlife in and around any big city now where these animals have learned how to exploit the place, rabbits, you know, are still. Hummingbirds.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah. Kevin, we had three owls in our front yard. And it was the weirdest thing because it must have been a territorial thing because my son’s like, oh, my gosh, like they’re fighting. And then we had one that landed an owl that was on. We kind of have a front porchy kind of thing. And he was just like sitting there. You know, and I’m like, I mean, it’s so rare, like daylight to see an owl just sitting basically on the edge of your porch. But last night, my husband just sent me this photo and he’s like, there’s a coyote because we have motion activated cameras. There’s a coyote basically looking in our basement sliding glass door. And he’s about 10 feet from the door because, you know, I have a lot of pets. And they go out that back door and I sit in the backyard with them. And they have those collars that don’t allow them to leave our yard, per se. And I thought my dogs would be smart enough that I could take the collars off after a few weeks and they wouldn’t. But no, they know the minute that the collar’s off, they can leave the yard. And they know when the collar’s on, they don’t go near the edge of the yard. So anyway, that coyote knows that that’s their roaming ground. And he’s just like staring in the sliding glass window waiting for lunch.
SPEAKER 04 :
No, we have to be very careful. We see the lucky ones that have survived, but we see coyote and fox attacks on pets. The coyotes have learned it’s easier to pull a fat cat off a porch than to chase down a bunny. So I think we have a little bit of foresight as to who goes out late at night and unsupervised. I think particularly where you live, or an area where there are big stretches and expanses of undeveloped areas where they can hide and live. Yeah, well, they deserve their place at the table, too.
SPEAKER 03 :
Right. Just not my table of my pets. You’re right. No, I’m the supervisor. They don’t go out after dark, not in the yard. That’s for sure. We have a special pen my husband built that’s outside, but six-foot fence and the whole nine yards, so they can’t get near our animals. I want to… catch up now on it started with the turtle uh one man’s life on a blue and green planet dr kevin fitzgerald i mentioned you know you going to vet school and you doing the animal house segment on channel two uh you’re also a stand-up comedian and then your um animal planet um work as well being on tv can you tell me how you got into the comedy and the animal planet show because we haven’t touched on that yet
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, stand-up, I always liked. We would go in college to see different comedians, and Steve Martin played at Red Rocks, and there were comedians that we really enjoyed. And so I had a friend that was doing it, and I’d go and watch him, and he was even getting paid, and I thought, well, I can be this bad. I should try this. And so, I mean, there’s different things you do, and I think for most people, public speaking is one of their greatest fears, and for stand-up comics, there’s something wrong with us because we want to get out there and tell our stuff. And so you start in the beginning on amateur nights and new talent nights. And, you know, you get torn to pieces by the crowd. Then you go back the next week and you’re healed up a little bit and you’re a little bit better. So it’s kind of the classic thing of, you know, try, fail, try again, fail again, try again, fail again. And then finally, you know, try again, fail better. You know, you’re doing a little bit better. So if you stick with it, you can You can learn, and I don’t know if I’ve ever mastered it, you know, trying to get that perfect joke out, and you never do, but it’s been a great hobby. And so we were lucky here in Denver in that, you know, we are yourself included. We’re part of a wonderful television community, and Jim Berger had done, you know, How the West Was Lost, a thing from the perspectives of the Native Americans of the American West. And he had an idea for, oh, ER was real big at the time, you know, with George Clooney. And he had about an animal ER and thought that our hospital, a 24-hour hospital, might, you know, fit perfectly. And Animal Planet was brand new and just starting. And so it was a perfect storm, you know, our place and his idea and the people at High Noon out there were so talented. And it really proved it. um, you didn’t have to be in New York or LA to have a hit show. And we were one of the first shows I did, you know, for 11 seasons. Wow. And two seasons of interns. And, and, you know, and so it was, it was very successful. And those things kind of have a shelf life and it ran its course, but you know, I, I realized, You know, I’m not a celebrity. I’m a poor but honest veterinarian. And it showed what we do on a daily basis, and it showed veterinarians and veterinary medicine in kind of a light that people might not always see, kind of behind the wall, and what was happening with different stories. So, yeah, so that’s how that started.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, I have to say, Kev, I follow you on social media and I see you with my pets and my friends and I attempt to come see you do comedy. And you’re friends with one of my other Irish friends, Karen, who just recently, Karen Boylan, well, not Boylan anymore, she’s married, but went to one of your book signings. And I know, and we share our Irish heritage as well. But I have to say, and I know how humble you are and you’re just going to brush me off, but you are one of the kindest, most giving, thoughtful people in terms of wanting to leave the world a better place and just like you ooze kindness. Like you bend over backwards for people and your love of animals and you only sleep like four hours a night. You’re like doing standup, you’re done at one. But if I message you, I mean, if it’s the middle of the night, I swear within like half an hour, you’re either calling me back saying, don’t worry about the chocolate chip cookies. Stop Googling things. Your dog’s fine. Google is the cleanest thing ever.
SPEAKER 04 :
I mean, I had a woman tell me the other day, you know, she said, I went on Google and it said that a dog mouth is 10 million times cleaner than a human mouth. And I said, well, actually, madam, we don’t lick our bottoms all day. We can get, you know, bad bacteria from any dog’s mouth. And so, you know, I mean, yeah, Google has heard it. People are crazy. I mean, this woman, she didn’t want to give vaccines to this dog the other day. And she said, the vaccines will make my dog autistic. Oh, my goodness. How could you tell he’s a French bulldog? You know, he’s not doing a lot of, you know, higher math problems to begin with. And so I think. No, I think Google is great. We can pick up things, but it’s not the last answer.
SPEAKER 03 :
Kev, we’re out of time, but just like I figure, you brush off all my compliments. I just think you are a super terrific human. Dr. Kevin Fitzgerald started with a turtle, one man’s life on a blue and green planet. Looking forward to our next interview. Thank you, friend.
SPEAKER 04 :
No, thank you. I hope I helped you. Thank you for all you say. You’re too kind. Thank you.
SPEAKER 01 :
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SPEAKER 04 :
Kimball, Nebraska is listening to the mighty 670 KLT Denver.
SPEAKER 03 :
Hey there, friend. Angie Austin here with the good news. Now, this topic isn’t going to seem like good news, but the fact that we can help is good news. Okay, so here’s the deal. There is, and I wasn’t even aware of the extent of this, there’s animal testing that’s done in the food industry and still goes on today with a lot of popular products. For instance, the Mega Stuff Oreos that my kids love so much that we just had on vacation. I’ve been known to have one from time to time. I know they’re very unhealthy for me. I don’t need any animal testing to know that an Oreo is not healthy for me. So here is what’s interesting. Dr. Frances Chang is going to join us here in a minute. And she actually worked with animals in testing because if you’re going to medical school, a lot of these animal tests are done in that medical school setting. And so she has about a decade of background in testing. experiments that in some cases involved animals and so she saw a lot of this done and now she has turned the tables and is working to stop this kind of testing uh and she is a restaurant owner and she is a doctor and she has a very important position now and is involved with uh you know, stopping this. She’s a chief scientist of international laboratory methods with PETA. What are some of the things that they do? Well, they do things like force feed these animals, juices, candy bars, breakfast cereals, even liquor. And they are force feeding them sometimes starving them, injecting them with harmful substances, sometimes giving them cancer or giving them high blood pressure, hanging them upside down for quite some time by their tails to let them deteriorate. They’re made to run on treadmills and they’re forced sometimes to swim until exhaustion, electroshocked, those diseases that they can be infected with. And then at the end, they need to do away with the animal in order to dissect the animal and see the effects on the animal. Why are they doing this? Well, Dr. Chang can explain that in some cases they’re doing it so that they can make claims about their food, maybe telling us a certain snack food is a junk food is healthy in some way or does something good for us or if they’ve added vitamins to it or something. So let’s find out more about this and the initiative. We’re talking about this new food initiative that’s set to end animal testing in the food and beverage business. We’re going to learn more about the Eat Without Experiments Global Certification and how we can get involved. Joining us is Dr. Francis Cheng, a chief scientist of international laboratory methods for PETA. Welcome, Dr. Cheng.
SPEAKER 05 :
Hi, glad to be here.
SPEAKER 03 :
Hey, before we get into the experiments and what you’re doing with your initiative, I think you have a very interesting background. So you are a restaurant owner as well, so you’re in the food business, but you also had work prior to working with PETA that I think is very relevant. Can you talk about a little bit about yourself and your background?
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, prior to joining PETA, I was an experimenter all throughout my education up until my Ph.D., And I experienced firsthand how animal experiments don’t apply to humans. It’s completely bogus. And after I graduated, I came to join PETA and try to end this practice.
SPEAKER 03 :
I think because of your background, not just the restaurant business, but also working in animal experimentation, it makes your testimony and your work so powerful. When I read about your background, I’m like, hello, you couldn’t have made someone better for working for PETA than you.
SPEAKER 06 :
Thank you so much.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, let’s talk about, I think so too. So what is PETA’s Eat Without Experiments initiative and why do we need this?
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, so like I said, we have this Eat Without Experiments new global initiative and the goal is to eliminate animal experiments from the food and beverage industry. Because many people still don’t know that food companies, they experiment on animals and they kill them. for profit for food that we eat every day. For example, right now we have a campaign on the Oreo maker. The company name is Mondelez International. They have paid experimenters to force feed human feces to animals. They also feed them with candies, chips, and crackers with or without food fiber, and then they kill them just so that they can attempt to make some bogus marketing health claims that they’ve somehow made their junk food products healthier with these fibers in order to trick people into buying more of their products. So on our website, which is PETA.org slash EWE, people can speak out and urge Mondelez International to stop this cruel, unnecessary, and wasteful practice. All you have to do is click on that Take Action button in the middle of that page, and it sends emails directly to the CEO of Mondelez. You can tell him directly how you feel about this and urge him to stop. And we also have in this program a searchable database so that people can see which food and beverage products are made by companies that experiment on animals so they can make informed purchasing decisions. We have already persuaded many food and beverage companies to stop experimenting on animals. These include Unilever, Ferrero, Gorilla, and more than 400 other companies and brands have signed on to this program already and banned experiments on animals. But there are many other bad players we need people to know about, and we need people to join us in this fight to get experiments done. out of the food and beverage industry just like how we did with the cosmetics industry we got them to switch away from the animal experiments we can do the same with the food and beverage industry because we as consumers we have power over these for-profit companies because without us consumers they cannot survive
SPEAKER 03 :
All right, let’s give, I know we’re going to give it at the end, but I want to give the website right now so people, we make sure people get this so they can search the database and see which food companies are testing on animals. So give that website.
SPEAKER 05 :
PETA.org slash E-W-E. So it’s spelled P-E-T-A dot O-R-G for slash E-W-E. W-E stands for eat without experiment.
SPEAKER 03 :
When you mentioned the large company at the beginning, you mentioned Oreos, which I buy every week for my kids. So you’re talking about force-feeding animals, junk food and other things. And then at the end, oftentimes the animals are then killed and dissected. And they’re doing this in some cases to make claims that somehow their junk food is healthy because they force-fed these animals, killed them, dissected them, and then they make these claims.
SPEAKER 06 :
That’s exactly right. So these animals are intentionally and artificially made sick to begin with so that the food companies can test their food products on them and artificially cure the disease. So I’ll give you some more examples of what happened in these two industry experiments. Experimenters would inject animals with cancerous cells to make them grow painful and cancerous tumors. They would feed them high-fault diet to make them have high blood pressure. They would hang them by their tails for weeks so that they cannot move and their muscles would shrink and deteriorate. They would infect them with viruses to make them sick. They would run them on treadmills and repeatedly electroshock them until they cannot run anymore. And they would collapse on the treadmill. And there are so many more of these horrific examples. And at the end of the experience, like I said, they are often killed, and sometimes in violent ways, too. The most common way of killing is CO2 asphyxiation, so supplication by carbon dioxide. and sometimes neck-breaking or having their heads chopped off, having their heart ripped open and their blood drained out. And they’re dissected, too, and at the end they’re tossed in this garbage bag and thrown away, you know, those, like, red-colored biohazard garbage bags. And these are cruel. But not only are they cruel, they’re completely useless because animals, they have different physiology from humans. The animal test data don’t apply to humans. For example, if you test chocolate on dogs, You would poison the dogs and you would not prove the chocolate’s health benefit. The same thing, you would not test dog food on human babies. Why are we testing these human foods, common human foods in oils and cookies and treats and candies on other animals? It doesn’t make any scientific sense.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, and what’s interesting is you know this because in school you saw these studies.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, exactly. I saw it for a thing. The thing is that these companies, they’re not doing this for the sciences. They’re just doing this so that they can create some health marketing points to generate those sensational news headlines. News studies show eating ABC can cure XYZ. And most people, they don’t read the details. And I think in the companies, they take advantage of that. They know that people don’t care about the details. They might not know that these are animal experiments. They might not have the access to journal articles and see the conflict of interest section that these are actually funded by the companies that made these products. So they can get away with creating these claims and people still buy the product.
SPEAKER 03 :
So they’re creating these claims by testing on animals. It’s not necessary. It’s not relevant because our physiology is different than the animals. And these tests are not required in any way by law, correct?
SPEAKER 06 :
It depends on where you are. In the U.S., no. So the food safety regulation in the U.S. doesn’t require animal experiments, and that’s because We already have a ton of animal-free test methods that are internationally recognized and regulatory agencies approved that can be used to assess the safety of food. For health claim regulations, the health claims in U.S., in Canada, and the European Union, they don’t require animal testing. They require human tests. They actually don’t even accept the animal test data as standalone evidence. And in the regulation, they explain that it’s because You know, human trials are the gold standard for food testing animals. They have different physiologies from humans and therefore experimenting on animals cannot provide scientific evidence, scientific information for humans. And, um, so they, they don’t, they require human tests and these are just common human food. So there’s no issue with testing on humans directly, but in some other parts of the world, uh, there are regulations for foods that would trigger animal experiments. And in those situations, PETA’s focus has been on changing the regulations themselves. We have an international team of scientists and lawyers, and we regularly meet with regulators and help them update their regulations. For example, we have convinced the Taiwan FDA to remove the animal experiments recommendation from six of its health plan regulations already. There are eight more in the works. And companies who are in this situation, they say animal experiments are required by law. they can come to us for help. We regularly consult companies and provide strategies and provide proposal to get these regular agencies to accept animal-free test methods. In these companies, they can still participate in the Eat Without Experiments program because there is a category that allows animal experiments that are explicitly required by law.
SPEAKER 03 :
Okay, so what ethical research can food and beverage companies pursue instead of animal testing? Because I’m pretty aware, I watch my 600-pound life, I’m pretty aware of what abusive Oreos can do to the human body. I don’t need any animals killed to show me what an Oreo does to my body. So what ethical ethical research can the food and beverage companies pursue instead of animal testing?
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, so for foods that we buy and eat every day, foods that humans have been consuming for a very long time, clinical studies can be done and they actually have been done for most of the food that we eat already. We already have human data. In this situation, animal testing, animal experiments don’t add anything to the scientific information. they’re completely unnecessary because we already have human data. And more clinical studies can be done on consenting human volunteers when it comes to everyday food, like Oreos, oatmeal, green tea, chocolate, cookies, anything that you can think of. For novel foods that don’t have a history of safe human consumption, again, we have plenty of animal-free test methods that can be used to assess their safety. These are mostly in vitro and computer modeling methods. They are based on created based on human physiology. So they’re actually more reliable and more predictive than animal experiments. And again, these are accepted internationally, regulatory agencies accept them and prove them. Once they’re deemed safe, then you can do the clinical studies with consenting human volunteers with no issues.
SPEAKER 03 :
Okay, so again, we want to give the website so people can search the foods that they eat, that they purchase to see if they’re involved with animal experimentation and which companies are doing this. And then there’s an easy way to contact those organizations and tell them we’re not going to support them if they continue these painful animal testing procedures. So give us that website again, doctor.
SPEAKER 05 :
It’s PETA.org slash EWE. So PETA.org forward slash EWE.
SPEAKER 03 :
And again, Dr. Chang runs her own restaurant. She’s in the food business. She also worked in animal testing when she was in school, so she saw this firsthand. And now she’s working with PETA to stop this unnecessary and painful, unethical treatment of animals. Thank you so much, doctor, for all you’re doing to help animals and to help us as well get in contact with these companies. Thank you.
SPEAKER 06 :
Thank you so much for having me.
SPEAKER 02 :
You’re welcome. Thank you for listening to The Good News with Angie Austin on AM670 KLTT.
