Guest Profiles
Jian Yi
Founder of Good Food Fund
Jian Yi is an independent filmmaker and founder of the Good Food Fund under the China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation. He founded the IFChina Original Studio in 2008, focusing on collecting social memories in rural China. He is a Yale World Fellow (2009), an Asian Cultural Council grantee (2008), an India-China Fellow at the New School (’08-’10) and a visiting fellow at Cambridge University (’07). Jian’s films have won international awards including at the Montreal World Film Festival and have been shown at numerous venues around the globe including New York’s Museum of Modern Arts. He graduated from the Beijing Broadcasting Institute and the University of Notre Dame. After making “What’s For Dinner?”, Jian started to focus on issues related to food and animals.
Leah Edgerton
Executive Director of Animal Charity Evaluators
Leah has been involved in the effective altruism community since 2011 and has been an animal advocate her whole life. From 2015–2017, she was an integral part of ACE’s communications team, building up the social media channels, growing the reach of the email list, and helping to plan and launch a website redesign. From 2017–2019, she worked at ProVeg International, one of ACE’s Standout Charities. She returned to ACE’s team as Executive Director in February 2019.
Paul Littlefair
Head of International at Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA UK)
Paul Littlefair graduated in modern Chinese studies from Leeds University, studying and working in China and Japan before joining the RSPCA in 1998.
Paul played a leading role in organising China’s earliest animal welfare conferences, notably the 2005 ‘International Forum on Animal Welfare & Meat Safety’ with the Ministry of Commerce’s Meat Hygiene journal. In 2008 a two-day conference ‘The Importance of Farm Animal Welfare Science to Sustainable Agriculture’ was hosted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ Rural Development Institute. In 2009 a further series of five seminars in Beijing under the title ‘The Benefits of Animal Health and Welfare for the Food Industry’ addressed audiences of retailers, producers, animal science academics and researchers.
The RSPCA has co-hosted with the International Cooperation Committee on Animal Welfare three annual ‘World Conferences on Farm Animal Welfare’ since 2017, and organised the special ruminant welfare sessions. In 2018 Paul introduced the ‘Beijing Consensus’, a framework declaration for cooperation between Chinese government bodies, livestock industry, food retailers, animal scientists and international NGOs to improve farm animal welfare. In 2019 the RSPCA signed an MoU with the China Animal Health & Food Safety Alliance to cooperate on promoting animal welfare science.
Professor Guo Peng
Associate Professor at Shandong University
Professor Guo Peng is an associate professor and the director of the Centre for Animal Protection Studies at Shandong University. After she returned to China from England in 2007 she became involved in stray animal rescue work and the construction of a local shelter. Since then, she has participated in various public debates related to farm and wild animal protection and the promotion of animal protection legislation in China. As a result, she has expanded her academic research from the philosophy of language to social research and animal ethics. She is one of the few scholars who actively participates in the practice and theoretical work of animal protection in China.
Tao Zhang
Co-Founder of Dao Foods
Tao Zhang is a co-founder of Dao Foods International, Inc., a cross-border impact venture established to invest in eco-friendly plant-based and clean meat in China, which has been selected as one of 15 startups disrupting the global meat industry by The Grocer. Tao is also founder and managing director of Dao Ventures, a cross-border impact investment, advisory and accelerator group with co-headquartered offices in both China and the US that encompassed China Impact Fund (CIF), China’s first impact fund that specializes in supporting environmental SMEs. Prior to this, he was the Global COO of New Ventures, the center of environmental entrepreneurship at the World Resources Institute.
Michael Fox
CEO and Co-founder of Fable Foods
Michael grew up as a meat loving Australian. As a child he once penned a song (more like a demanding chant) entitled “Steak of Glory”. He became vegetarian in 2015 for ethical, environmental and health reasons, but he still craves that steak of glory.
Michael shops at his local Farmer’s Market on the Sunshine Coast in Australia on a Saturday morning, bakes sourdough, brews Water Kefir (and has gotten accidentally drunk when a batch went awry) and generally likes to cook healthy food for his family which includes a 4 and 2 year old (he promises he’s not got them accidentally drunk). He wanted to combine his cravings for meat with his healthy home cooking habits to create a whole food based plant based meat. The result is Fable.
Dr Deborah Cao
Professor at Griffith University
Dr Deborah Cao is a professor at Griffith University, Australia. She is one of the world’s leading scholars in the areas of animal law & regulation and animal ethics & welfare in China. She is active on Chinese social media where she writes about Chinese culture, society and animals, and crimes against animals, and was named one of the 200 most influential bloggers in China in 2012. In 2009 she participated in the drafting of the proposed Animal Protection Draft Law for China. Her books on animal law and animal studies include Animals are not Things (2007, in Chinese), Animal Law in Australia and New Zealand (2010), While the Dog Gently Weeps (2012, in Chinese), Animal Law in Australia (2015), Animals in China: Law and Society (2015), and edited books, Animal Law & Welfare: International Perspectives (2016) and Scientific Perspectives to Farm Animal Welfare (2018, in Chinese).
Dr Cao will be joining us by video call.
Professor David Fraser
Professor at University of British Columbia
David Fraser is a professor in the Animal Welfare Program at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. His long career has focused on the behaviour and welfare of farm, companion, and wild animals ranging from mice to moose. He has served as a scientific advisor on animal welfare science and policy to many organizations including the World Organisation for Animal Health (Paris), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (Rome), and the Food Marketing Institute (Washington). Prof. Fraser is an enthusiastic teacher who mentors many graduate students. He is the author of many publications including the popular introductory book Understanding Animal Welfare: The Science in its Cultural Context. In 2005 he was appointed Member of the Order of Canada for his work as “a pioneer in the field of animal welfare science”.
Professor Fraser will be joining us by video call.
Jeff Zhou
China Representative at Compassion in World Farming
Jeff Zhou began his career in animal welfare when he volunteered for an international farm animal welfare conference at the end of 2005. In August 2008 he attended an animal welfare workshop in Cambridge to further develop his knowledge of the field, and began representing Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) in China that same year.
Jeff was promoted to Head of China in 2013, and since April 2015 has become Compassion's Ambassador in China. In his time at Compassion, Jeff has organised numerous workshops and conferences on animal welfare, and worked with a variety of organisations and individuals to promote animal welfare legislation. Jeff regularly gives educational lectures to undergraduates and producers to help raise public awareness of animal welfare, and actively seeks ways to work with governmental departments and research centres to promote welfare-friendly agricultural practices.
Jeff is credited with successfully developing the relationship between the ‘International Cooperation Committee of Animal Welfare’ (ICCAW) and Compassion in World Farming in China. As part of the Good Farm Animal Production Awards, CIWF has worked closely with Chinese producers, NGOs, governmental departments, and academia to improve the condition of farm animal welfare in China and around the world. By June 2019, 87 Chinese producers have been recognized by the Awards, providing an international platform to communicate with awardees from across the globe and showcase the development of animal welfare in China. Thus far, over 283 million animals are set to benefit each year.
Professor Peter Singer AC
Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University & Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne
Journalists have bestowed on me the tag of “world’s most influential living philosopher.” They are probably thinking of my work on the ethics of our treatment of animals, often credited with starting the modern animal rights movement, and with the influence that my writing has had on development of effective altruism. I am also known for my controversial critique of the sanctity of life ethics in bioethics.
Several key figures in the animal movement have said that my book Animal Liberation, first published in 1975, led them to get involved in the struggle to reduce the vast amount of suffering we inflict on animals. To that end...
Professor Singer will be joining us by video call.
Photo by Alletta Vaandering,
Program Coordinators
Maria Chen
Graduate Researcher at University of British Columbia
Maria Chen is a Master's student in the University of British Columbia's Animal Welfare Program. During her research, she lived and worked with Chinese dairy farmers to understand their perspectives, as well as factors influencing animal care. She hopes that through this program, passionate individuals can connect and become inspired to work collaboratively to create a better world for farmed animals.
Jonathon Tree
Policy and International Liaison at the Environment & Animal Society of Taiwan (EAST)
Jonathon Tree works on policy and international liaison at the Environment & Animal Society of Taiwan (EAST), where he leverages his international perspective to facilitate legislative advocacy, corporate collaboration, and consumer education to further EAST’s mission of achieving change for farm animals. He is a member of the Effective Altruism community, and has strong hopes for the growth of the farm animal protection field in China.
Maria and Jonathon are engaged in the IFAWF in an individual capacity, and do not represent their respective employers or institutions.
