In the fourth decade of animal advocacy, I honestly wonder what has hurt animals more than AR advocates pointing to polls.
Why would we ever, ever, ever look at opinion polls, when every day, everyone is casting an actual ballot at the grocery store and restaurant?
This reminds me of all the interviews where Beyond Meat’s Ethan Brown said, “People tell me they don’t want GMOs.” He is simply talking to the wrong people. Nearly everyone only cares about cheap meat. Full stop. Nothing else matters, no matter what they say.
I think polls can be useful indicators for the likelihood of success of a ballot measure (e.g. banning intensive confinement, like some US states have), but they have to be framed concretely and with enough context to emphasize the costs to consumers. Also, people have voted to ban cages and crates despite it increasing their costs and not already really buying cage-free or crate-free. See this for some discussion:
https://jaysonlusk.com/blog/2019/2/18/why-dont-we-vote-like-we-shop
In the fourth decade of animal advocacy, I honestly wonder what has hurt animals more than AR advocates pointing to polls.
Why would we ever, ever, ever look at opinion polls, when every day, everyone is casting an actual ballot at the grocery store and restaurant?
This reminds me of all the interviews where Beyond Meat’s Ethan Brown said, “People tell me they don’t want GMOs.” He is simply talking to the wrong people. Nearly everyone only cares about cheap meat. Full stop. Nothing else matters, no matter what they say.
I think polls can be useful indicators for the likelihood of success of a ballot measure (e.g. banning intensive confinement, like some US states have), but they have to be framed concretely and with enough context to emphasize the costs to consumers. Also, people have voted to ban cages and crates despite it increasing their costs and not already really buying cage-free or crate-free. See this for some discussion: https://jaysonlusk.com/blog/2019/2/18/why-dont-we-vote-like-we-shop