Jay Ruderman:

Welcome to All About Change. Today my guest is Peter Egan, a British actor known mainly for his television roles, including his role in the hit historical drama, Downton Abbey. Like many activists, Egan found his cause by chance. When a laboratory named Custard collapsed outside his house, Egan’s wife jumped into action, taking the animal to a vet, and eventually the family adopted the dog. For Egan, this moment opened his eyes to the crisis of surplus pets in the UK, and it served as his invitation into advocating for animal rights. Egan now supports a great number of organizations and animal rights causes, from Saving Suffering Strays, to Animals Asia, to Animal Equality UK. He’s also been a vegan since 2016, and like me, he’s a dog lover. Peter is currently involved in a campaign to protect stray animals in Turkey, and we talk about this timely work at length. We recorded this conversation in late November and things have certainly continued to develop since then, but the conversation remains timely and vibrant. Peter Egan, welcome to All About Change. Thank you for being with us today.

Peter Egan:

It’s a great pleasure. Thanks for inviting me.

Jay Ruderman:

I’m going to jump in directly to the horrendous situation in Turkey. The law that Turkey passed to go after stray animals that are being slaughtered by the government.

Peter Egan:

This as an urgent appeal for the whole world. The Turkish government is going to try and pass a law that will exterminate millions of cats and dogs in their country. We cannot allow this to happen.

Jay Ruderman:

I know that Turkey is reviewing the law, but this law calls for euthanasia of stray cats and dogs isolation in confined spaces. What I’ve heard is that there are around 4 million cats and dogs at risk. Where does the campaign to oppose this stand today?

Peter Egan:

Well, there’s been a huge amount of support throughout Europe against this dreadful bill that is put in place basically to make the streets tidier for the FIFA World Cup in 2030. And as far as I know, certainly throughout the UK where I live, there has been an enormous response against that, and a lot of lobbying of FIFA to look at this dreadful piece of cruelty that is going to kill, I think, potentially 5 million dogs between now and 2030. It’s absolutely shocking. And I think that anyone who loves what we call the beautiful game, cannot possibly condone such ugly cruelty to just tidy up the streets of a country that is quite a beautiful country with their dogs.

Jay Ruderman:

And Peter, how do you feel as someone who’s living in the UK, working to oppose a law in Turkey? I know from my own activism that we’ve worked with the country of Indonesia to improve the way that they portray religion in their textbooks. How do you feel about working on an issue that’s distant from where you actually live?

Peter Egan:

I think compassion is universal. I think care for our planet and care for all the species that contribute and inhabit our planet is a universal theme, and anyone in any country should feel free to campaign for those issues because anything that we are doing is not to influence the political status of the country or to inform people how they should vote, it’s really about how they should consider the lives of the creatures that we share our planet with, and those, of course, that have no voice.

Jay Ruderman:

Exactly, and you’re doing great work. I feel that there are issues that are pulling at us because we are citizens of the world and we should speak out, but I also feel from my own experience as an activist, that countries do care about their image and how they’re portrayed around the world, and when people organize outside their countries in conjunction with people inside the countries, it does have an impact that these countries are paying attention to opposition to these policies.

Peter Egan:

Yeah, I think that’s absolutely true. A lot of these countries, and without wishing to use an insulting phrase, but developing countries, for want of a better image, are very concerned about their image in the world, plus the fact that a lot of them depend very much on tourism as part of their commercial industry. Yes, they’re going to be very concerned about that.

Jay Ruderman:

Having said that, it makes me think of your work against a horrendous policy of trying to extract bile from moon bears.

Peter Egan:

That’s horrible.

Jay Ruderman:

And I believe that’s in China. Can you talk about what it is and why it’s important to the people that are doing it, but also the effectiveness of going there and talking about it. And this is a country that maybe fall into the category that you talked about that may be harder to influence.

Peter Egan:

Yeah. My first introduction to bile farming came through my favorite charity on the planet, which is Animals Asia, which was founded I think in 1996 by a remarkable woman called Jill Robinson. It’s based in Hong Kong and has worked in China for 30 years. And she understands very clearly the importance of how to deal sensitively and politically with the Chinese system. Bile farming was introduced in China, I think in the early eighties because moon bears are the big, black Asiatic bears that have a golden crescent on their chest. That’s why they’re called moon bears. And there are probably 18,000 bears in captivity in China at the moment. The bears are caught in what they call crush cages. A moon bear can live up to 30 years, and indeed they do live for 30 years in cages. They live and they die in the cage, and then their body is disposed of in various ways where every single element of their body is used in one way or another for sale.

Bears are extraordinarily stoic and can put up with great pain, and the farmers who extract the bile sometimes think the bear isn’t in pain. So they’re not being intentionally cruel, they’re just being ignorant and indifferent. So it’s an absolutely dismal and appalling condition for a wild animal to live in. It’s absolutely heartbreaking.

Jay Ruderman:

It’s a horrific condition. And I think one of the themes that we’re going to get to, which I’ve heard you speak about in the past, is we treat animals differently than we would treat humans, and we look at them differently. We look at them as creatures that should serve us, which is not the way we should look at them. But at this point I just want to ask you, since the work that you’re doing in Animal Asia is effective, if there are audience members who want to get involved with them, how can they reach out to them?

Peter Egan:

Well, they can Google www.animalsasia.org or just Google Animal Asia, and all of the outlets will come up and all of the support sites will appear with a Google search very, very simply. It’s Animals Asia, and they have sanctuaries in Chengdu in China and in Tam Dao and [inaudible 00:08:31] in Vietnam. And that’s the simplest way to get through to them.

Jay Ruderman:

Peter, what I love about you is that when you experience something, you act on it, which is a very important lesson for activists because people can see horrendous things, conditions in society, think that that’s awful, but you take an action and you dedicate a significant portion of your life to these organizations because you’ve also come out against zoos in the UK. I’d like you to talk a little bit about why zoos are problematic and how sanctuaries can remedy the problems that zoos present.

Peter Egan:

A sanctuary exists for the animals, and a zoo exists for people. Zoos are a very Victorian concept introduced into the UK and in America, I think, about 150 years ago, then when we knew so little about animals and animal sentience. They just were kind of crowd pleases and they were freak shows, really. Yes, it was understandable in those days because people didn’t travel, that we had no television, we had no hidden cameras, we couldn’t see different species in the wild, so to have zoos was a remarkable experience, and it introduced these wonderful creatures to the public in general. But as we have grown as a society and as we now understand that it’s entirely wrong to have a wild animal in a confined space, it’s entirely wrong to have an elephant in a zoo. An elephant needs to be in the wild. It’s the same with a lion or a tiger or a giraffe. I think any wild species needs to be in the wild.

Zoos are constructed to try and show animals as closely as possible. So you have these big glass screens in generally a concrete enclosure, say, for an elephant or a silverback gorilla, and here they are in a prison, and all they see are faces pressed up against the glass, and it must be so confusing for them. I’ve often thought sometimes children scream when adults get too close with their faces. They don’t know what is this huge face coming towards me. Then I wonder what an elephant or a tiger or a gorilla feels when 20 or 30 or 40 people press their faces against the glass and go, “Oh, look at that,” And start waving and trying to make the animal do something. It’s a total intrusion on the soul and the being of an animal. It’s only there to make money. I just find the whole concept now of zoos outdated, restrictive and destructive in terms of my sensibility and my understanding of the needs of wild creatures.

Jay Ruderman:

Well, I think you’ve educated the audience about the problems of zoos. I want to transition to, you’ve been involved in so many different unique animal causes from stray dogs in Turkey and Sarajevo to donkeys working in kilns, making bricks in Egypt, and all of these fall under the range of animal rights. What’s the connection? You’re all over the world, you’re involved in different cases. How do these issues come to you and what do you see the common connection between them?

Peter Egan:

The common connection between all of them is quite simply that I believe that every species on this planet has the right to have what we as the ace predator have, and that is the right to live as happily as we can, as freely as we can, and as much without fear as we can. I watched a film called Earthlings, and up until that point, I was caring a lot about animals and I had lots of rescues in my life, and I believed that I was a compassionate person. I watched the film Earthlings and saw the devastation and cruelty imposed on animals in intensive animal agriculture. And I thought, wow, I don’t care about animals enough because if I cared about animals, I wouldn’t eat them and I wouldn’t support the industries that treat them in such a disgusting manner in order to have a piece of meat or a piece of animal product on my plate.

I was in my early sixties then I couldn’t believe that I’d spent all of my life not actually focusing on this cognitive dissonance, for want of a better word or image, that I’ve been experiencing all of my life. And I think that opened the door as far as I’m concerned and why I now am engaged with so many different species throughout the world. And because I am quite vocal about it, I then get approached by different organizations to say, will you give a voice to this? Like for instance, the donkeys in the brick kilns just outside Cairo in Egypt. I knew of course about donkeys for quite a long time, but a wonderful charity called Safe Haven for the Donkeys approached me a couple of years ago and said, “Look, we really like the work that you do in other areas for animal rights. Would you come and visit Egypt and come and visit the kilns and just learn about donkeys?”

And I said of course I would. So while I was there, I was asked if I would go and visit a woman called Mira who had a house in the suburbs of Cairo, a double-fronted, old Victorian house, a wonderful house on three stories. It was a house that’s owned by her father who was a judge, and her mother who was a doctor and now retired. Someone said, “Would you go and have a look and see Mira Dogs?” I said, “Yeah, sure, of course I will,” So I went along. I could hear the house before I saw it because I just heard barking, and this is in a residential area. And then when we parked and opened the car door, I could smell it because all you could smell were feces and urine. We then went into the house and in the house there were 600 abandoned dogs that this woman had taken in, and they were all pets. They weren’t street dogs, they were abandoned pets.

And she is a woman who has taken on, now she has a thousand dogs. Mira has taken on a huge thing here. We’ve just come from her family house in Cairo, in the suburbs of Cairo. Just imagine 600 dogs together. Huge, huge commitment there. And what Mira wants to do is to develop this piece of land so that all of the dogs can move from that accommodation to here. They’re not in the house, thank goodness anymore, because I helped her raise the money to build a sanctuary just outside of Cairo where 80% of the dogs have now moved, and eventually all the dogs will be there. Another kind of serendipity, I am now engaged with Mira Dogs in Cairo and trying to help the stray and also the abandoned pets in Cairo as well. The activity that I’m doing, I also do work on rhinos in KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. It’s like dominoes. They hit one after the other and they all come in my direction and I find myself irresistibly connected.

And I have to say, having said that, I’m not in any way trying to imply what a good human being I am. I just feel that I have had an extremely lucky life. I’ve been an actor for 58 years, and during the 58 years that I’ve been an actor, I’ve never been an international or even a star, but I’ve always been a very successful actor. And so the acting God has been very kind to me, and I’ve been very, very lucky. And so I also feel that it is right for me, now that I have a platform, to give something back. I feel blessed that I have… I’m 78 years old and I have an overriding passion in my life that will be there until I die, and I feel lucky to have that passion.

Jay Ruderman:

Well, Peter, I think that the important message that I, as a fellow activist, am taking from you is, one, you’re going out. You’re going to the field, you’re going to places, you’re observing the situation of donkeys pulling bricks, of moon bears having their bile extracted, of dogs being culled in different countries. You’re also not afraid to speak out.

Peter Egan:

Yes.

Jay Ruderman:

So you’re taking a leadership position and getting other people involved and expanding the influence that you can have. I want to just turn back to something that you said, which is very important, because I think you’ve internalized the whole issue of how we treat animals. Is there an incrementalism in becoming a better human being, a better activist, or does it just happen right away?

Peter Egan:

I don’t think it happens right away. A thing that I remember remarking to myself about 10 or 15 years ago when I was talking to someone about commitment and activism, is it is easy to get someone to notice, it’s hard to get them committed, and it’s hard to get them to carry on that commitment. It is never going to be a head judgment, it has to be a heart judgment, and you have to win hearts and minds, and you have to give people the opportunity to view something that is going to touch them so deeply without forcing them to turn away. So I have always tried to find a means of sharing the most appalling things in a way that will enable people to have the courage to sit, listen, and watch, and not say, “I have to turn away. I can’t bear to look at this.”

So I have, in many cases, tried to not show the worst of what I’ve seen, but to try and explain it vocally rather than visually. So that’s been a choice that I have made a lot of the time. I rescued a dog, he was a border collie spaniel, and he was a tiny dog. I found him with my late wife, Myra, in a rescue in North London in 1999. I was visiting this rescue center. I was in the cattery and a bucket started moving around the room on its own like a bit of magic, and I said to one of the carers, “What’s that?” And they said, “Oh, that’s a little dog that we just rescued.” And so I tilted the bucket and looked under it, and my beard was much longer at the time, and this little dog attached itself to my beard and came out attached to my beard, and I said to Myra, “I think I’ve just been chosen.” And this little dog could just fit in my hand. It was so small. It had been chucked away from a puppy farm in Wales.

So the dog was about six weeks old. It had a little white bib and a black coat. I think in America, you call them tuxedos. In the UK, we call them dinner jackets. So I called him DJ for short. DJ became my gatekeeper in many ways. During that journey, I did find myself asking myself the question, could I eat this animal? And I say that in relation to when I visited the extreme markets in Indonesia when I was working on the dog meat free Indonesia campaign, and going into those markets where you see everything that moves is brutally killed in the most horrific manner. And the thing that really upset me was that you could see, in the dog meat area of this market, dogs in cages who had adopted learned helplessness, which meant that they had abdicated all response. They were there vacant, didn’t look at you, looked straight ahead. And what broke my heart was that I could see young children eating candy floss with their parents pointing at the dogs.

And they weren’t pointing at the dogs to say, “Oh, isn’t that a beautiful dog?” But they were pointing at the dogs to say, “Yes, that’s the dog I’d like to eat tonight.” They couldn’t look at this beautiful creature and say I could love that creature and that creature can give me something extraordinary other than a meal. That’s why I am so active. I want people to keep getting a message. I don’t want to bludgeon them. I don’t want to say to them, “I’ve had the most awful experience. My heart is broken. I feel bloodied and bruised. Help me. “I want to say to them, “Look, every single creature on this planet needs a life, and we have no right to take it away, and I’d love you to help me show other people how important and what a great contribution every species makes to our wonderful planet.”

Jay Ruderman:

It’s a great message. It’s about building allyship.

Peter Egan:

Yes.

Jay Ruderman:

It’s about working with people to explain how the world can be better rather than telling them how awful they are. Because I think the instinctive approach of people when you tell them how awful they are is a, “All right, leave me alone. I don’t want to hear you preaching to me.” My experiences as an activism is it takes stages. We focused on disability rights, and it went from local to nationally United States to international, and I understand that journey and how long it can take. You saw a movie, you became a vegetarian, then over the time you changed your diet and you became a vegan. And there is something called Veganuary, which is a month long vegan challenge. You said that you were disingenuous in not facing the horrors of the dairy industry, and it took Kate Fowler asking you at the right moment to push you over the edge to commit to eating vegan. How has being a vegan changed your life?

Peter Egan:

We used to joke about the fact that if you can pronounce it, you can be it. So it’s Veganuary.

Jay Ruderman:

I’m still having some problems there.

Peter Egan:

Well, don’t worry about it, Jay, because I had problems as well for a long time. I kept saying, “Is this Veganuary? How do you pronounce this word?” So it’s Veganuary. Like January, Veganuary. So yes, it was Kate Fowler. It was also Jill Robinson as well, because I think we kind of transitioned together through taking meat and fish out of our lives, and then cheese and dairy and chocolate remaining in it as the last kind of hurdle to jump. And it was when certainly Kate and Jill took me through the dairy industry. In many ways, the dairy industry is the cruelest because it’s an enduring horror where these poor cows are, and I know people hate the term being used when it’s to do with an animal, but they are basically raped in order to keep them pregnant and to keep them producing milk. Again, once I saw that, and I had it described to me, and then I watched it. And in watching it, I thought, is this worth a piece of chocolate? A piece of cheese? Just horrendous.

So there was no question in my mind, again, once I was faced with the reality that I could never, ever, ever support that. And now, in fact, I was having lunch, I was invited to a lunch the day before yesterday. I had some very good friends of mine. There were two vegans out of 10, and they very kindly cooked a vegan meal for everyone. And everyone at the table said, “Is this how you eat all the time?” I said, “Well, not actually maybe to this kind of high standard,” Because this food was being cooked for us, and it was lovely. It was delicious. I said, “But yes, I don’t have any…” I use the term, and it’s not an original term. I said, “The thing I love about being a vegan is that I never have death on my plate.” What appears on my plate is constructive and compassionate and life-giving. I’m not turning my body into a coffin. I’m not taking in dead material.

And I asked the people around the table, I said, “What do you think of this?” And all the responses were very, very positive. A lot of people apologize. They said, “Well, I don’t eat much meat anyway. I eat fish. I eat white meat. I don’t eat red meat.” As if that’s any better. And I don’t mean this in any patronizing way because I spent 62 years doing it myself so I can’t throw stones. So I always deal with the conversation as openly and as warmly and compassionately as possible and with very little judgment.

Jay Ruderman:

I want to transition to an important thing about how… First of all, I’m so sorry for the loss of your wife, Myra.

Peter Egan:

Thank you.

Jay Ruderman:

But you’ve talked about how animals can help you through grief. How do animals provide you or how have they provided you, your dogs have provided you solace at a time when you lost someone so close to you?

Peter Egan:

I think animals have amazing intuition and amazing instinct, I think. When my wife, who was the most important and influential person in my life for 49 years, when she was dying and she wanted to die at home… Sorry, I just need a minute to kind of cross that territory.

Jay Ruderman:

No, take your time. I’m so sorry. I know how painful it is.

Peter Egan:

It’s surprisingly painful in the most extraordinary times. And of course, I embrace grief completely because it’s so important to me to make grief my friend. I hold grief by the hand now. It’s an important part of my life. Not in an indulgent way, but in a defining way. It defines my love and it defines what I learnt from being in the most fantastic relationship for 49 years. So there was a situation of three weeks where Myra was in extreme pain every two hours, 24 hours a day, and myself and my daughter, our daughter, we were with her all the time, as indeed was a staffie called Megan, who was my wife’s shadow. And Megan was a sixteen-year-old Staffordshire Bull Terrier, a beautiful, wonderful rescue that we’d had who was in love with Myra. Now, she only left the room where Myra was in bed to go into the garden to relieve herself, and then would come straight back and we put a bed in there for her, and she would go in the bed and she would just lie there.

Now, five or 10 minutes before this drug was wearing off, she would get up and walk around the bed every single time.

Jay Ruderman:

That’s beautiful.

Peter Egan:

Before we knew, Megan was saying Myra’s in pain, and that happened every two hours for three weeks. And then when Myra died, we had four other dogs as well at the same time that were not experiencing that as closely as Megan was because Megan’s relationship was phenomenal with Myra. Megan went quiet and went into a depression. I didn’t think she was going to last very long after that. I thought that she would go very, very quickly, but she didn’t. She lasted a year and a half. And I spoke to a friend of mine who was a healer, and I said, I’m amazed that Megan lasted that long, and he said she was looking after you.

Jay Ruderman:

That’s beautiful. And I think people don’t get that about dogs.

Peter Egan:

Yeah. They don’t get it. They don’t get it at all.

Jay Ruderman:

They don’t get how strong a role they can play in our lives, that they watch out for us.

Peter Egan:

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Jay Ruderman:

Peter, I want to thank you for being so vulnerable and open because I know this has been difficult. I appreciate you sharing with us. People who are animal lovers, who understand dogs, how can they get involved? There’s so many stray animals in the world. What would be your advice?

Peter Egan:

Well, I think the first thing I would say to anyone anywhere in the world, and they are all over the world, every community will have a shelter within their community somewhere. And as you would know, they’re all over America. There’s loads of amazing shelters. If they are interested, visit their local shelter. And they don’t have to commit to a lifetime, they can just say, “Can I walk a dog for you? For an hour a day or an hour a week, or, “Do you have a dog that needs fostering?” I don’t have to keep the dog all of my life. I can have it for six weeks or six months or two weeks or whatever. Just open the door to compassion and caring. What is very important about that, as far as I’m concerned, is that it stops us all just caring for ourselves and going inward and introduces opening that door helps us go outward, in my opinion.

So visit a local shelter or go on the internet and just Google shelters, cats or dogs or whatever you like, and there will be an outlet there that you can quite easily… Because one of the great things about the internet is that it offers the most appalling things on the one hand, but it also offers the most creative things on the other. The best of the internet is its creativity. And you will see that there are people doing remarkable work close to you in any community, and every one of them needs help. And if you have the inclination and the interest, just put your toe in the door. And once you’ve opened that door, look in. Have the courage to look in if you can. And I promise you that if you look in, you’ll step in and you will find remarkable riches.

Jay Ruderman:

That’s great advice. Peter, thank you so much for being my guest on All About Change. You’ve given us so much treasure in how to become a more impactful and effective activist. Thank you for what you do, and thank you for your time. Today’s episode was produced by Tani Levitt and Mijon Zulu. To check out more episodes or to learn more about the show, you can visit our website, allaboutchangepodcast.com. If you like our show, spread the word, tell a friend or family member, or leave us a review on your favorite podcasting app. We really appreciate it. All About Change is produced by the Ruderman Family Foundation. That’s all for now. I’m Jay Ruderman, and we’ll see you in the new year on All About Change. Happy Holidays.