Aidee Walker
actress, activist
The more I talk about eggs
the more they actually gross me out. Eeuuh. I’m opting for smoothies. I’ve been having a lot of smoothies this week.
I bought those Palace Poultry ones.
I thought, “Oh great, they’re not spending any money on the pretty pictures” — it was simple packaging. It was just yellow, basic. Oh great! Then, no. Not great.
I thought about all the cafes
that claim to be free-range because they have to buy so many, and they’d be buying the cheaper free-range ones. It’s pretty terrible.
I didn’t know how small the cages were
before we shot the SAFE ad, and I didn’t know about the different personalities of the chickens — the introverts that may never move from that spot in the cage and it’s bascially like a slowly dying animal. Some of them die and it’s not even noticed. You just want to trust there are good farms out there.
If we all actually saw how it was for these chickens,
we might change. When I saw rescue chickens for the ad, they had no feathers at all. None. They looked like the most emaciated little creatures. It’s crazy. Eggs are thought to be a source of nutrition but these chickens were on death’s door. And they were I think we trust packaging too much.
When I saw the [Countdown] story this week, I thought, “Shit, we really believe the packaging.” Even the term free-range is really misleading. You trust what the companies are saying to you. We have this image of a bunch of chickens running around in a paddock. But all it means is there’s a hole where they can go out and walk around a bit.
I did this bike ride up New Zealand
for a mental health charity and I was a complete vegan and I was easily one of the the fittest in the group — I remember that argument that you need protein, you need eggs. I wasn’t eating any.
There’s a lot of animal cruelty issues but I felt with this one there could be change. When I was a kid,
eggs represented comfort food. Poached eggs on toast from a storybook farm, where chickens were happy.
If someone starts getting on a bandwagon about coffee
I’m like, “Shut up.” I’m not going to stop drinking coffee.
We make burgers —
fake chicken patties, it’s just silly, really. But you have to still enjoy your food. I have too much coffee and chocolate.
We are all activists now.
Like all those who said, “I’m going on a women’s march.” Everyone’s woken up a bit. I’m more of an activist than I thought. And doing this commercial makes me an animal activist.
As a white female I’m in a situation of privilege
where I can get away with more. My boyfriend is Maori and it’s made me even more aware of my privilege. He has to be super by the rule book because he’s been questioned walking home from a party at midnight, and the cops asked to check his bag. That would never happen to me. We really underestimate our privilege.
AIDEE WALKER FEATURES IN SAFE’S COMMERCIAL ASKING COUNTDOWN TO BAN ALL CAGE EGGS, ON AIR FROM APRIL 2. CATCH A SNEAK PEEK AT CAMPAIGNS.SAFE.ORG.NZ/TVAD