animal rights — Blog — Vegan & Vibrant

NOTE: As of October 2021, this podcast is no longer publishing new episodes; however, you can download mp3 files of all existing episodes at these show notes posts on the blog.

From her desire to be a vet growing up, her immense love for her cat, Ginger, and her passion for animal rights, Shriya Swaminathan was born to serve the animals.

While in school at UC San Diego, a speaker from a pharma company guest lectured in one of Shriya’s classes. Shriya asked about the possibility of eliminating animal testing and was told, “if you could figure out the answer to that, you would be a billionaire.” This sparked her passion for learning about other ways of testing products other than testing on animals— which led Shriya first into a doctoral program, and ultimately down a winding path to her current work as a full-time animal activist.

Now a research associate for PETA, vegan hospitality consultant ( Nourish by Shriya), writer for VegWorld Magazine, and mentor at Animal Activism Mentorship, Shriya lives and breathes animal liberation. This conversation will motivate and inspire you to learn more about veganism beyond food, and will encourage you to find your joy and remember that sometimes we have to be willing to zig and zag to get there.

To listen to this episode, download the mp3 file HERE.

About Shriya Swaminathan

Shriya is an animal rights activist at PETA’s Laboratory Investigations Department. She is also a trained Vegan Hospitality Consultant and founder of Nourish by Shriya- her new consulting service that helps businesses attract vegan clients. She enjoys travel and exploring local vegan cuisines in the cities she visits! She volunteers with the Agriculture Fairness Alliance- a plant-powered lobbying group that aims to promote equity in farm policy, redirect subsidies towards climate-friendly, plant-based agriculture, and assisting animal farmers in their transition to consumer crop production. Shriya recently joined the Animal Activism Mentorship team as a mentor where she helps new activists identify their interests and use their talents to help the animals.

In her free time, you can find her hanging out with the residents at the Gentle Barn Sanctuary, while educating folks about the abundance of a vegan lifestyle. Her precious companion pooch Halley joins her activism on the #adoptdontshop message!

My first veganniversary (love any excuse for a good word combo) passed in November, so it's been well over a year now and I thought I'd share a few of my key takeaways from the first year. I'm sure most of these are pretty universal experiences for us vegans, but hopefully you'll get a few laughs or shout an "amen" or two.

1) It's not nearly as hard as I thought it would be.

Yes, it takes intentionality and planning, and can be inconvenient, especially in certain places. And yes, I have the privilege of living in a city with a Whole Foods, a few vegan restaurants, and a handful of other places that make it easy to eat out vegan without having to analyze the entire menu to come up with two items that pass muster. I know I can't pretend to know exactly what it would be like to live as a vegan in a place without all that stuff, but I do know that A) so much can be ordered online now, and B) most of that stuff is just vegan icing on the cake, not anything that's necessary to eat a balanced and delicious diet.

I get that there are people who go vegan primarily or initially because of health reasons and want to stick with more of a "whole foods" diet. I certainly crave and eat my share of veggies and whole grains, but I also gladly enjoy rich, indulgent vegan foods —and because of that, I don't feel like I really gave anything up. I still regularly eat delicious burgers, tacos, queso, cookies, brownies, ice cream, pizza, etc. So when people find out I'm vegan and say, "that must be really hard, I could never do that," I just smile and say "I never thought I could either, but when I figured out I didn't have to give anything up and just had to change which version of things I eat, it became pretty easy."

2) Still, there are all kinds of things that I'm continuing to learn, and that's okay too.

The most obvious thing when deciding to change my day-to-day behaviors to stop abusing animals was to stop eating them or eating their secretions that cause as much as (arguably more) harm than eating their flesh. That was already a big step, since in the past I bought into the "happy cow" myth ("They don't actually have to hurt or kill them for the milk, so I'm gonna happily enjoy my cheese, thanks"... boy was I wrong), and I also really didn't relate to fish, so I justified eating them because they are so different from me that they seem like they're from another planet. (As I quickly learned, wrong again. Okay, marine animals were out, too.)

But even after making the change of not eating animal flesh and secretions, I had to continue learning. Leather and fur (ew, never did fur thankfully) were obviously out, but shouldn't wool be okay, since they don't have to kill the sheep? Yeah, if you're alright with knowing that the pressure for efficiency means that the sheep are often abused. But surely silk is fine, right? It's just what the silkworms make and leave behind? (Oh wait, we actually boil the warms alive to harvest the silk, since they "ruin" the fabric if they hatch from the cocoon.) Honey seems to be a trickier issue, but hard-line vegans maintain using honey and beeswax is exploiting the bees' work and stealing from them, and we should find a way to support beehives without having to doing this. (I generally avoid honey, but want to continue to do more research about how vegans can support a healthy bee population.)

As I got more comfortable with the basics of being vegan (i.e. checking ingredients for gelatin, dairy, eggs, etc., checking shoe labels for leather or wool), I started learning more about animal testing and only buying "cruelty-free" products not tested on animals. (Literally my old thought: "It doesn't hurt a rabbit to put blush on it, right?!" OMG stop me.) And I know I will continue to learn even more (like how stearic acid in a lot of candles is made from animal fat... but good ole Yankee candles are fine!)