In this Animal Highlight, fellow Virginia Thomas discusses honeybees and the ways in which they are exploited for their honey. She notes how much labour goes into making honey and the scale of the industry that relies on it. Because of the violence and exploitation in the industry vegans do not eat honey.

Recorded: 26 October 2023

Featured:

• S6E5: Abolition with Gary Francione on The Animal Turn.
• The Bees of the World by Charles D Michener.
• World Bee Day by the FAO.
• Bees and the Politics of Honey by Virginia Thomas

Virginia Thomas is an environmental social scientist with a PhD in Sociology. She is interested in people’s interactions with their environment and with other animals. Virginia’s work explores the social and ethical questions in human-animal relationships. She is currently a research fellow on the Wellcome Trust funded project ‘From Feed the Birds to Do Not Feed the Animals’ which examines the drivers and consequences of animal feeding. This leads on from her previous research which examined human-animal relations in the media (as part of zoonotic disease framing) and in rewilding projects (in relation to biopolitics and human-animal coexistence). You can connect with Virginia via Twitter (@ArbitrioHumano).

Credits:

• Claudia Hirtenfelder, executive producer, editor and co-host
• Virginia Thomas, script write, narrator and co-host
• Rebecca Shen, content producer and designer (logo and episode artwork)
• Gordon Clarke, bed music composer
• Sound clips taken from: BBC Sound Effects
• Learn more about the team here.

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The Animal Highlight is a spinoff and sister podcast to the award winning show, the Animal Turn Podcast.

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