Welcome to Current Affairs. My name is Nathan Roinson. I'm the editor and chief of current affairs magazine.

My guest today is Marina Bolotnikova.

She is a journalist who writes about many things, but specializes in writing about animal welfare and animal agriculture.

She has written, for The Intercept Guardian, Vox, and most importantly of all, current affairs.

Marina, thank you so much for joining us on current affairs.

Thank you.

I'm really glad to be here.

Here's the thing.

You know, you have increasingly written on animal rights, animal welfare, animal agriculture, and I want to, I suppose I want to start by asking you why this has become your beat. Why this topic has taken so much of your life and you put so much work into this.

What is it about this topic that is so compelling?

You know, so the subject of factory farming and animal rights is something I've been obsessed

with for most of my life.

I think I was in six, maybe even fifth grade, like very young when I,

I decided I was going to be vegetarian. I don't think I had ever even heard of factory farming.

I just merely like had the theoretical thought that, well, if we don't need to eat animals to live,

then it's wrong to do that. And then I just sort of started, you know, I read some sort of beginner,

How to Become Vegetarian Book that my mom and I got at Barnes & Noble.

I think that was the first time I saw a mention of factory farming.

It said, you know, actually farm animals raised for food today are treated really badly.

And I was like, oh my God, I didn't, I didn't even

know that. I was horrified. I sort of, I got more and more into it. I watched Earthlings. That's a major

factory farm like Exposé documentary from the aughts narrated by Joaquin Phoenix. I watched that

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