José Cruz: But tell me about your animal rights work. Because I wanted to ask you about that. I haven’t talked to you about that.

Kanna Kai Jones: Um well, I- I used to join the demonstrations all the time. I don’t usually do now. But um, there are many things that um, the animal rights activists do. Uh start with the be, been- being vegan. (Mm hmm) Um mostly because the commercialized farms um (Mm) uh abuses the animals (Mm hmm) so that it’s not humane and… So we protest that you know, so uh so, uh fur, animal fur and feathers.

José: I thinkJosé says these words so quickly, you can barely hear it (0:43) that’s an easy place to start. (Mm hmm) I mean even if you can’t be vegan. The ostentatious, the pretentious uses of animal products in in society, you know like fur for slippers (Yeah) and and um ivory of course. (Exactly) I- I can’t even imagine wanting anything made of ivory knowing what’s happening in the world right now. (Mm hmm) Or or just the crap- half of the stuff that you hear about like with um, endangered species like tigers and white rhinoceroses, half of it is for for bizarre ideas in um, in um in um aphrodisiacs. (Mm hmm) U- that stuff doesn’t work.

Kanna: Yeah I know I know. Like uh some Chinese medicine (Yeah) Ha ha. (It reall-) Grind- grounded horns or. Yeah, I don’t think it would work.

José: And even if it did. Even if it did, you don’t need that. (Exactly) You don’t need to sacrifice an entire rhinoceros (Mm hmm) to provide male po- potency for for 15 or 20 men. (Mm hmm) Even if it works, so.…(Right right) That’s not even an argument to me. Yeah I think that’s a good place to start

Kanna: Unless then- And going back to fur, (Yeah) unless you’re eskimo with no civilization or something, (Uh) um you don’t really need to wear fur in this kind (No you don’t) civilized- the the lifestyle. But anyway, so that’s one thing. And also um, I- I, I do seminars for the people um um about how the uh environmental- is is- um like like um how do you sayhow do you say: Kanna was looking for the term “Habitat Destruction” Note that no matter how much trouble she was having, Kanna didn’t stop speaking (2:29) it, I’m sorry?

José: Oh no no what? How do I say what?

Kanna: Um (Environmental) let’s let’s say um,,, uh let’s talk about the the palm- palm oil.

José: Oh uh wait, what about palm oil?

Kanna: You buy food or uh or um cosmetics stuff (Uh huh) and nowadays almost everything has palm oil in it.

José: A lot of stuff, yeah.

Kanna: And it doesn’t really say “palm” oil…

José: Yeah right. (You know) It has some chemical name.

Kanna: Yes. And palm oil is is extracted by the from the pa- palm um…

José: Fruit or um seeds?

Kanna: The seeds, (Right) I think. (Yeah yeah) and um they deforest the the the majority of the the rainforest (uh huh) in Indonesia, somewhere around there, and then plant that palm treesKanna should have said, “those palm trees” (3:23) so that um they can get that- the most inexpensive oil in the world (Right) basically. But um, the animals living in the jungles (Mm hmm) lose their habitat.

José: Habitat sure, sure. Orangutans, baboons (Exactly) Similar problemWhen a sentence has a predictable subject and verb, a native speaker will sometimes omit them. In this case the subject and verb (and article) were “There is a similar problem…” (3:43) happening now in Australia (Mm hmm) as they’re making um ranch land to meet demands for beef (Mm) in Asia. (Right) And China’s just going- They haven’t even really begun to hit the peak of their demand for meat, and Australia’s trying to prepare to- pardon the pun- uh meet it (Mm hmm) and um they’re um, they’re they’re cutting down all kinds of forests that remain in Australia, and there isn’t much leftJosé’s story about what’s going on in Australia isn’t actually very accurate (4:09), and you see these horrible images of um koalas that got trapped in the slash and burn. (Yeah yeah) And now koalas are starting crawl towards the endangered list, (Mm hmm) because there are only so many places that they can live.

Kanna: Right right. Yeah. Same thing happen- things happening everywhere in the world. (Mm hmm) Um they use to talk about McDonalds deforet- deforesting for beef, (Mm hmm) but at the same time if you keep eating uh meat as much as you eat now, because of the popular increase- population is increasing (Right yeah) you have to eat more beef, and meat (Mm hmm) and then uh you have to- you have to have more land to grow their food, (Mm hmm) so the crop that that they grow, cornsKanna should have said, “corn” (5:02) and wheat and soy (Mm hmm) are going to be fed for the animals instead of fed for…

José: The people. That’s right. Yeah.

Kanna: …the people, yeah that kind of thing it’s it’s just- it’s not really uh logical to me.