Melanie is the world's leading expert on the psychology of eating animals, most notable for introducing the concept of 'carnism' to describe the inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes people have towards eating animals.

She's written several award-winning books on the topic and how it impacts relationships between vegans and non-vegans as well as social transformation, including the best-selling Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows, Beyond Beliefs: A Guide to Improving Relationships and Communication for Vegans, Vegetarians, and Meat Eaters and Getting Relationships Right.

Her international organisation, Beyond Carnism, is dedicated to exposing and transforming carnism and is home to the Center for Effective Vegan Advocacy.

In this episode, Viva!'s head of investigations, Lex Rigby, asks Melanie more about her work to create a unified and resilient vegan movement, how we can learn to recognise secondary trauma and what we need to do to improve our communication. Watch the 'Kittengate' video also discussed in this episode here.

Lex is then joined by Faye Lewis, Viva!'s head of communications, to chat about cognitive dissonance, carnism as the 'third entity' in relationships and how to practise integrity in our lives.

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