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A challenge with promoting animal rights is the common request for people to completely eliminate animal products from their diet, a step too significant for most. This demand can lead to inaction due to the cognitive dissonance experienced by those disturbed by factory farming but unwilling to go vegan. Thus, providing alternative ways for people to contribute can build more support and reduce harm.
Promoting meaningful labeling: When I go to the supermarket, I often see labeling that purports to signify that the animals used in the creation of the product were treated more humanely. I have no idea (a) whether or not the treatment difference they are claiming is actually true (there may be little to no enforcement) or (b) whether the treatment difference they are claiming actually is significant in terms of its welfare effect. This is an area that EAs could enable non-vegans who are sympathetic… enabling them to identify labeling that is meaningful in terms of animal welfare differences.
Promoting off-setting: The farmed animal welfare movement funding is around two to three hundred million dollars globally, if I understand correctly, orders of magnitude less than cause areas like global health and development. I think there are people who agree that it is terrible that we live in a world of mass torture for the creation of animal products, yet are unwilling to give up the products and thus continue contributing to the demand for it. Although it may not be the most rational to tie one’s donation to one’s harmful action, it is a framework that resonates with people due to some intuitions regarding special obligations stemming from harms that one causes. In my mind, we should leverage this intuition and make it easy to: (1) provide a survey to people that establishes their dietary patters; (2) provide a portfolio of effective animal welfare charities that effectively address farmed animal welfare (conservatively calculated to overestimate rather than underestimate),(3) calculate a sum corresponding with the harm caused on an annual basis, and (4) providing an easy means for them to pay it. I understand @Luke Eure is doing some work that may further this project.
Making it simpler for people to engage in the farmed animal welfare movement is crucial. By offering accessible and practical ways to contribute, we can attract more individuals who share our goals, even if to a lesser degree.
Regarding offsetting, I am launching a donation platform for animals next month (as a recent graduate from Charity Entrepreneurship / AIM’s incubation program), which has ‘reducetarians’ as one of our target audiences, and we’ve build such an offset calculator. We’ll be trying to generate some earned media coverage at launch about donating as something other than diet change that people who care about fixing factory farming can do. We don’t be saying that people should donate instead of changing their diet, but that if they aren’t willing/able to reduce their animal consumption right now, there’s still something they can do.
We’ll need all the help we can get spreading the word about the platform and this calculator, so if you’d like to be updated when we launch so you can potentially spread the word, you can sign up to our mailing list at farmkind.giving
I joined your mailing list. I will be happy to share what you are doing both personally and through my org!
Nice points, Brad!
Relatedly, I estimated one can neutralise the harm caused to farmed animals by the annual food consumption of a random person donating just 0.269 $ to The Humane League (THL). For most people in high income countries, it is arguably way easier to donate 1 k times as much as this than to go plant-based (of course, not donating nor changing one’s diet is even easier).
Amazing summary found this really interesting. I was super surprised about no blowing up expose videos after 2018, although it’s good that explainer videos are still getting millions of views.
I’m interested in the “keep it positive” advice. Is that necessarily the best approach most of the time? Successful movements of the past have had health mixed of explaining the gravity of the issue. outrage, and hope for the future. I get the sentiment but wonder if it’s a little simplistic. There are multiple counters to “hopelessness”, positivity just being one.
Thanks Nick! I agree that “keep it positive” isn’t always the right call. In fact, it was very negative footage that first got me to care about factory farming.
My advice was intended for navigating social media algorithms and media editors, who both seem to favor the positive. But I agree the history of social movements suggests you also need to explain the gravity of the issue and elicit outrage.
In terms of Twitter, which is where my expertise lies
I don’t understand the key break points well enough. What are they things that could be acheived? What are the key “markets of the mind” that need shifting?
For nuclear this is “nuclear is dangerous” but nuclear is safer per gigawatt hour than fossil fuels. See our world in data
For “capitalism is bad” it’s “the world is much better”. See Our world in data
Possible lines here. Do people think:
“high welfare meat would be too expensive”
“factory farming’s ills are exaggerated?”
“animals aren’t really conscious”
″ I don’t care”
And for whicheveer of these are the main ones, what is the reality of the situation.
A graph showing that high welfare meat that animal wellfare advocates support is only $1 mor per meal
Graphs showing that the median farm is a horrorshow. Perhaps with video
vidoes of farm animals being highly intelligen
polls about how the public tends to care a lot about animials.
Sorry to write this quickly and happier to have a longer discussion, but I think many people could support the cause if they were supported with a map of the discourse and arguments they trusted.
Often to me the animal welfare movement looks like it doesn’t negotiate. If there were a push to say “buy high welfare meat is 50% better” if that’s true, then that could be a big tent thing.
Happy to discuss more in messages. I have 16k twitter followers so on this vertical I know something of what I’m talking about.
Thanks Nathan! I like your idea of mapping the key arguments that stop people from helping farm animals. My sense is there are different blocking arguments depending on the ask. For high-welfare meat, I suspect the blockers are:
“I already buy humane meat” (easy to believe this when most meat is labeled with ‘all natural’ and other meaningless labels)
“High welfare meat is too expensive” (true of truly high-welfare, but not necessarily of med-welfare)
“I have no way of knowing which meat is high welfare” (it’s really hard because in most countries the meat industry is free to mislabel their products with fake certifications and lots of meaningless claims)
You’re absolutely right that a major challenge is that portions of the animal movement don’t negotiate. Some high welfare meat is easily 50% better, but if you claimed that on Twitter you’d get drowned out by abolitionists claiming it’s all equally bad.
I’m pessimistic about changing individual diets in general, whether to higher welfare meat or plant-based, simply because of the scale of people you need to reach. So I’m more excited about mobilizing people to support corporate and political change. I suspect there the biggest blockers are a mix of “my action won’t make any difference” and “I’m too busy with other stuff.”
I’d welcome any additional thoughts you have!
Given that animal NGOs, according to the data presented in this article, are struggling to engage the media and impact the population, I wonder whether how much weight we should give to the various suggestions they provide? Might it be better to instead ask journalists/influencers who have proven success in getting attention on animal topics how they view this, and what thoughts they have about how to be effective?
Thanks, this was an interesting post. I was shocked to learn about the ag-gag laws. The argument in support of these just doesn’t seem to stand up to the animal rights abuses that it allows to be swept under the rug. I’m surprised these managed to get passed!
What are your thoughts on the types of media coverage that should be addressed to countries at various stages of economic development? I imagine that the type of media coverage we want to direct to well-off citizens in Western Europe is different from that we want to direct to those in semi-rural parts of China
Executive summary: Factory farming receives disproportionately little media coverage compared to other major issues, which allows the industry to avoid public scrutiny and maintain the status quo; increasing public discussion through various media and influencer strategies could help address this problem.
Key points:
Media coverage of factory farming has not grown relative to general agricultural reporting, unlike coverage of climate change.
Undercover investigations, once effective at generating media attention, have declined in impact since 2018.
Strategies to increase media coverage include innovating tactics, providing credible data, focusing on new developments, and building relationships with journalists.
Engaging influencers like public intellectuals, podcast hosts, and celebrities could help amplify the message.
Developing an effective narrative is crucial, focusing on widely agreed-upon issues like animal sentience and welfare, while keeping the message positive and solutions-oriented.
The movement should engage people as citizens who can support political and corporate change, not just as consumers making dietary choices.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.