Amid the various claims re leadership gaps and animal welfare deficits, it may surprise many that animal protection has seen substantial increases in income over the past fifty years (since the first “animal liberation” article by Peter Singer in 1983. The report on the growth in animal philanthropy on the Animal Grantmakers website tracks some of the animal protection funding developments since the founding of the affinity group in 1999. However, it is not just funding that has grown. In 1980, there were no university-based animal protection programs. Today, there is an undergraduate degree in animal protection (Eastern Kentucky University) and several masters degree programs (Tufts Center for Animals and Public Policy, Canisius College) and multiple animal protection centers at universities around the US (Tufts, UPenn, Canisius, UC Davis, Colorado State, Washington State, University of Tennessee, Arizona State and a number of others). Animal protection is thriving and students are flocking to animal advocacy courses across the USA. In my estimation, animal protection currently spends around $8 billion annually on various aspects of animal advocacy. The movement is not struggling. It is growing rapidly. The only question in my mind is how much further can the movement grow? In Colorado, animal advocacy organizations raise $18 per capita. At the low end, there are state animal advocacy movements that are raising “only” around $3 per capita. Animal advocacy income growth since the turn of the century has increased 3-4 fold in a number of states.
I have not looked at the issue but I suspect that many animal advocacy organizations offer multiple internships to students already. They could probably do more but the challenge is growing such opportunities, not creating a whole new structure.
Andrew Rowan
I have been astonished (but also gratified) by the amount of funding directed to farmed animal projects across the globe. However, there is still room to support more movement building. As somebody who launched the first Master’s Degree in Animals and Public Policy (Tufts University in 1995), I have watched as graduates of that program have spread across the world and have helped to expand the reach and impact of animal advocacy. Today, there are numerous degree programs supporting animal advocacy, but tracking the impact of animal campaigns and producing reports that analyze and report on the impact of specific strategies still tends to be a bit hit and miss. And animal NGOs (like most NGOs) are very poor at collecting data and keeping records (both current and historical) that document the impact of specific strategies. When I was at the Humane Society of the USA, I launched a digital library that stores both historical and current materials addressing animal welfare actions and campaigns. The Humane Society decided not to continue the Repository (or the Animal Sentience journal) after I retired, but was prepared to let WellBeing International assume both and the related costs, which we did in 2019).
The Repository now includes the four volumes of an early animal welfare science journal (existed from 1980 to 1983). The journal published a six-part series by Temple Grandin on humane slaughter. Grandin’s papers are not typically easily accessible since they appear in magazines and journals that usually are behind paywalls. The Repository is free for anyone to use and download papers, and Grandin’s papers have been downloaded up to 10,000 or more times each, despite having been published over 40 years ago. The Repository includes various other important historical materials and is now being used (full text downloads and other uses) by more than a million people annually, including many users from low- and middle-income countries who typically cannot access journal articles or other publications behind pay walls.
We cannot generate any sense of the specific impact of the Repository on global animal welfare, but the growth in usage (an increase of over 25% in the past year alone) indicates that the materials in the Repository are being acquired and hopefully read and acted upon by advocates around the globe. The Repository is a low-cost project (Wellbeing International donates around $50K a year in volunteer time to manage the Repository and the Animal Sentience journal—launched at around the same time as the Repository), but the cost for the use of the Elsevier Repository software and related website support is around $50K a year. WellBeing International would very much like to develop a specific Exhibit in the Repository that identifies and gathers documents and reports that track the impact of farmed animal welfare funding and campaigning over time. I was a close colleague of and advisor to Henry Spira, one of the most effective animal activists in the USA, and have been tracking farmed animal welfare campaigns since the 1980s. For example, Henry almost single-handedly persuaded the USDA to stop the face-branding of dairy cows when the USDA was trying to reduce the country’s dairy herd. Henry achieved this end by publishing a full-page ad in the Washington Times (much cheaper than the Washington Post, but read by the Republicans in Congress). That ad caught the attention of Elizabeth Dole (who was a cabinet member at the time). Her support helped Henry to gain an audience with senior USDA personnel and persuade them (presenting a win-win proposal) to stop the face-branding campaign. The Repository includes many of Henry’s letters and articles addressing his campaigns against animal use in toxicity tests and the face-branding of dairy cows. His face-branding campaign was the first successful farmed animal campaign in the USA! He subsequently persuaded MacDonalds to launch an animal welfare program—also the first successful corporate action dealing with farmed animal welfare.
Andrew Rowan