Thanks Thom for responding. I wasn’t actually aware of who FarmKind were when I wrote my post above. It looks like a very good project overall, thanks for your work in the space.
Your response doesn’t answer for me the question of why it was decided to create such an anti-vegan campaign (at least in its webpage). I can see there could be a lot of good done by persuading people who are unlikely to try a vegan diet to donate. But something along the lines of “If you don’t want to be vegan but want to help animals, try this instead” or even “If you hate Veganuary, here’s how to beat vegans at their own goals” or something would seem to suffice (but with better words...). Creating a webpage full of negative messages about being vegan doesn’t seem necessary, and seems to me to actually be misinformation, given I’m not aware of anything showing that the typical Veganuary participant’s experience is like what is presented.
Having read the article in the Telegraph, I didn’t think it was actually that bad—it seemed to be mainly arguing for promoting donations rather than diet change, and didn’t actually seem to put veganism down (except for bringing up “vegan dogma”). (Though I wouldn’t agree that putting on a meat-eating challenge is ethically OK.) So being negative about veganism doesn’t seem to have been necessary to get publicity, so it makes it seem even stranger why the campaign web page takes this line.
It doesn’t seem to have been picked up by any substantial media outlet other than the right wing UK press—I’d have thought it would be desirable to get a broader reach, since I’d guess that people on the political left would be more likely to donate, and I wonder if being less adversarial might have worked better.
It would be good to see follow up analysis of what impact on donations the campaign actually has.
Cooperation: We let Veganuary know about our intention to launch this campaign at the very start of our planning process and have kept them informed throughout.
Aidan says here that it is a “bit”. That would seem to imply that Veganuary are collaborating with you on this. Can you say if that’s accurate? If there’s a follow up, it would seem good to highlight it to people here.
Our funders: FarmKind made the decision to launch this campaign. Organisations and individuals that have provided FarmKind with funding are not endorsing the campaign and it would be a mistake to equate past funding of FarmKind with support for our approach.
One of the things that people are going to do with a campaign like this is try to see who is funding it. Currently if you click the “Transparency” link at the bottom of the campaign page, it goes to a list of FarmKind’s funders, including the EA Animal Welfare Fund. It’s then going to at least raise the possibility in people’s minds that these funders implicitly endorse the campaign. Unless you’ve switched to self-funding, it does seem like these funders’ money is being used to finance it (including individual donors to the EA AWF). Would it not be normal to check with funders before launching a campaign that’s expected to be controversial? Particularly if their own donors might feel attacked by the campaign? It seems like it creates a fair amount of potential for blowback against the EA animal welfare movement.
If there is some complex strategy involving coordination with Veganuary or others, I’d hope it was discussed with a diverse range of experienced people in the animal welfare space and got their endorsement.
I would also say that the campaign web page loses credibility by calling competitive eaters “experts” (I’ve seen this in comments in non-EA spaces) - why would anyone go to such people for expertise on how to best help farm animals through donating? To me, relevant “experts” would be people knowledgeable about welfare campaigns and ethics.
I think there should also be considerably more nuance around the idea of offsetting impacts of meat-eating—calling it “like carbon offsetting” seems misleading as they seem different in a number of significant ways, which may affect what people want to decide to do.
Thanks Thom for responding. I wasn’t actually aware of who FarmKind were when I wrote my post above. It looks like a very good project overall, thanks for your work in the space.
Your response doesn’t answer for me the question of why it was decided to create such an anti-vegan campaign (at least in its webpage). I can see there could be a lot of good done by persuading people who are unlikely to try a vegan diet to donate. But something along the lines of “If you don’t want to be vegan but want to help animals, try this instead” or even “If you hate Veganuary, here’s how to beat vegans at their own goals” or something would seem to suffice (but with better words...). Creating a webpage full of negative messages about being vegan doesn’t seem necessary, and seems to me to actually be misinformation, given I’m not aware of anything showing that the typical Veganuary participant’s experience is like what is presented.
Having read the article in the Telegraph, I didn’t think it was actually that bad—it seemed to be mainly arguing for promoting donations rather than diet change, and didn’t actually seem to put veganism down (except for bringing up “vegan dogma”). (Though I wouldn’t agree that putting on a meat-eating challenge is ethically OK.) So being negative about veganism doesn’t seem to have been necessary to get publicity, so it makes it seem even stranger why the campaign web page takes this line.
It doesn’t seem to have been picked up by any substantial media outlet other than the right wing UK press—I’d have thought it would be desirable to get a broader reach, since I’d guess that people on the political left would be more likely to donate, and I wonder if being less adversarial might have worked better.
It would be good to see follow up analysis of what impact on donations the campaign actually has.
Aidan says here that it is a “bit”. That would seem to imply that Veganuary are collaborating with you on this. Can you say if that’s accurate? If there’s a follow up, it would seem good to highlight it to people here.
One of the things that people are going to do with a campaign like this is try to see who is funding it. Currently if you click the “Transparency” link at the bottom of the campaign page, it goes to a list of FarmKind’s funders, including the EA Animal Welfare Fund. It’s then going to at least raise the possibility in people’s minds that these funders implicitly endorse the campaign. Unless you’ve switched to self-funding, it does seem like these funders’ money is being used to finance it (including individual donors to the EA AWF). Would it not be normal to check with funders before launching a campaign that’s expected to be controversial? Particularly if their own donors might feel attacked by the campaign? It seems like it creates a fair amount of potential for blowback against the EA animal welfare movement.
If there is some complex strategy involving coordination with Veganuary or others, I’d hope it was discussed with a diverse range of experienced people in the animal welfare space and got their endorsement.
I would also say that the campaign web page loses credibility by calling competitive eaters “experts” (I’ve seen this in comments in non-EA spaces) - why would anyone go to such people for expertise on how to best help farm animals through donating? To me, relevant “experts” would be people knowledgeable about welfare campaigns and ethics.
I think there should also be considerably more nuance around the idea of offsetting impacts of meat-eating—calling it “like carbon offsetting” seems misleading as they seem different in a number of significant ways, which may affect what people want to decide to do.