Thanks for your deep engagement with the report and thoughtful comment! No, it didn’t come across as blunt or rude or anything! :)
I was thinking of something closer to a vegan outreach campaign that was optimized for delegitimizing the industry when I wrote that. We did write that we think that its an institutional focus is more effective, and perhaps its abolitionist focus too, though veganism can also be framed in that way. Perhaps the report should have talked more about how other types of animal campaigns can (and should) leverage the stigmatization process.
I don’t think veganism is really a quiet act of omission. Generally quite a few other people will come to know that you are vegan and veganism gets plenty of popular press. I don’t think this would be happening if there were much fewer vegans. Maybe if veganism only involved dietary choices, but that’s not what you’re getting with vegan outreach, unless you’re really leading with the health arguments. Having said that, I agree that it looks like divestment is better at getting press, though hard to say exactly. We did cite that as the strongest reason for engaging in divestment.
It does still seem to be like basically all animal advocacy campaigns involve stigmatization to some significant extent. It’s not much of a jump from meat is immoral to the companies that are creating it are immoral. Legislative campaigns also involve pointing out serious inadequacies in the industry practice that need to be reformed, though the message may not be as strong here.
I think there is something to the idea that divestment hits closer to the pocketbook with the stigmatization that it brings, though I’m not convinced that that makes up for the paucity of direct effects.
I do think there should be people trying divestment in the animal advocacy context and seeing how it goes, but unless the results proved us wrong, based on the arguments in this report, I wouldn’t recommend a big shift of resources towards it.
Sorry I never replied but here’s a very quick thing on what I thought our main disagreement was but maybe we’re closer than I initially thought! I interpreted your conclusion to be something along the lines of “We shouldn’t do any divestment as other approaches are less risky and more effective” but your final paragraph above is basically the view I hold too:
I do think there should be people trying divestment in the animal advocacy context and seeing how it goes, but unless the results proved us wrong, based on the arguments in this report, I wouldn’t recommend a big shift of resources towards it.
Basically I totally agree, in that we should a couple campaigns/organisations trying divestment in a somewhat rigorous way to get some good learnings out of it, before deciding whether to stop it completely or scale up. I just think when I read your sentence:
We think that, given the existing evidence, many existing animal advocacy campaigns will be more effective and less risky than divestment.
I interpreted this as we shouldn’t do it or invest in it at all! Not sure if it’s just me but I think adding what you said above “some people should try it with some limited resources to test it properly” to the conclusion would really help with understanding your final recommendation. Thanks for all your work on this again—super interesting!
Hi James,
Thanks for your deep engagement with the report and thoughtful comment! No, it didn’t come across as blunt or rude or anything! :)
I was thinking of something closer to a vegan outreach campaign that was optimized for delegitimizing the industry when I wrote that. We did write that we think that its an institutional focus is more effective, and perhaps its abolitionist focus too, though veganism can also be framed in that way. Perhaps the report should have talked more about how other types of animal campaigns can (and should) leverage the stigmatization process.
I don’t think veganism is really a quiet act of omission. Generally quite a few other people will come to know that you are vegan and veganism gets plenty of popular press. I don’t think this would be happening if there were much fewer vegans. Maybe if veganism only involved dietary choices, but that’s not what you’re getting with vegan outreach, unless you’re really leading with the health arguments. Having said that, I agree that it looks like divestment is better at getting press, though hard to say exactly. We did cite that as the strongest reason for engaging in divestment.
It does still seem to be like basically all animal advocacy campaigns involve stigmatization to some significant extent. It’s not much of a jump from meat is immoral to the companies that are creating it are immoral. Legislative campaigns also involve pointing out serious inadequacies in the industry practice that need to be reformed, though the message may not be as strong here.
I think there is something to the idea that divestment hits closer to the pocketbook with the stigmatization that it brings, though I’m not convinced that that makes up for the paucity of direct effects.
I do think there should be people trying divestment in the animal advocacy context and seeing how it goes, but unless the results proved us wrong, based on the arguments in this report, I wouldn’t recommend a big shift of resources towards it.
Sorry I never replied but here’s a very quick thing on what I thought our main disagreement was but maybe we’re closer than I initially thought! I interpreted your conclusion to be something along the lines of “We shouldn’t do any divestment as other approaches are less risky and more effective” but your final paragraph above is basically the view I hold too:
Basically I totally agree, in that we should a couple campaigns/organisations trying divestment in a somewhat rigorous way to get some good learnings out of it, before deciding whether to stop it completely or scale up. I just think when I read your sentence:
I interpreted this as we shouldn’t do it or invest in it at all! Not sure if it’s just me but I think adding what you said above “some people should try it with some limited resources to test it properly” to the conclusion would really help with understanding your final recommendation. Thanks for all your work on this again—super interesting!