Billy Nicholles

Karma: 16

Billy Nicholles 3 Mar 2026 18:41 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Seth Ariel Green 🔸’s comment on: Should sustainable pet diets be a leading EA cause area?
Makes sense, fair point Seth! Appreciate your interest, and work in this space.

Billy Nicholles 3 Mar 2026 10:35 UTC
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in reply to: Ben Stevenson’s comment on: Should sustainable pet diets be a leading EA cause area?
Agreed on your point on scale Ben. And also curious to hear whether Andrew has a response to this.

But I still think that most people here are dismissing the case for tractability too quickly here.
Firstly, I’d agree with Andrew that the findings of his survey are a decent initial justification for tractability (even with the limitations of the survey data granted).
Secondly, I think most people aren’t recognising that there’s no rule saying we have to market vegan pet diets as vegan or plant-based. Indeed, the successful brands in the space right now (e.g. Omni) are deliberately not doing this, branding instead around hypoallergenic, healthy, clean label, and sustainability qualities. Omni is now achieving mainstream support—e.g. Dragons’ Den investment from celebrity investors, steady growth YoY, incl beyond a vegan consumer base.

This is a learning from the human alt protein space—we don’t need to market our products as vegan in order to sell them, and actually avoiding vegan branding is probably better for mainstream adoption (e.g. Huel is quietly vegan, and I expect is displacing more animal-based meals to plant-based than some leading outwardly vegan brands).

The pet industry is facing multiple pressures/incentives to diversify its ingredient choice, including sustainability pressures, supply chain volatility, ABP diversion towards other uses (e.g. sustainable jet fuel). This could encourage companies to formulate well branded plant-based options, or to increase the proportion of non-animal based ingredients in their formulations (something most consumers wouldn’t even notice, but could have a large impact). E.g. check out FeedKind Pet from Calysta, that offers an animal-free protein derived from microbial fermentation that they’re selling as new pet food protein with improved health, sustainability, and supply chain security profiles.
There’s actually a case to be made that pet food diet change could be more tractable than human dietary change, which I discussed briefly on Alistair’s post on this topic.
I recognise that I’m mostly providing theories/anecdotes rather than hard data here (if people have hard data on tractability that they’d like to see, lmk!), but I think most people aren’t recognising these theories, and are being too quick to dismiss tractability based on the idea that consumers won’t accept vegan pet diets. This view doesn’t acknowledge the various other strategies available to the alt protein pet food sector beyond selling 100% vegan formulated and vegan branded diets.
What links here?
- Billy Nicholles's comment on Is EA sleeping on making dogs and cats vegan? by Alistair Stewart (27 Feb 2026 7:48 UTC; 2 points)

Billy Nicholles 27 Feb 2026 8:00 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Nick Kautz’s comment on: Is EA sleeping on making dogs and cats vegan?
Thanks for this Nick—you’re right that this topic can seem absurd to some people at first glance, and i’ve seen this quite regularly with comments on mainstream media reports.

I don’t think this has to be the case though. The phrase “vegan pet food” can sound like (contraversial) human ideals forced on helpless companion animals, but that’s quite clearly not the actual motivation here (and I now think not the phrase we should be using externally). Framing and marketing the debate/products around the principle of responsibly feeding companion animals while ensuring with good animal welfare standards, sustainable production, and optimal pet health is possible. I think many would agree that this is a reasonable goal, and that change is reasonable if the status quo isn’t meeting those parameters.

If any good marketers have more thoughts on how we can package and communicate this case to pet owners, I’m keen to hear them! E.g. @Kempe

Billy Nicholles 27 Feb 2026 7:51 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Jack White 🔹’s comment on: Is EA sleeping on making dogs and cats vegan?
Would refer to my comment above here. It’s definitely not the case that you need to be vegan to be motivated enough to make your cat/dog vegan—many non-vegan guardians are drawn to plant-based diets (knowingly or not, depending on the marketing) motivated by health, allergies, or environmental concerns.

Billy Nicholles 27 Feb 2026 7:48 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Ben Stevenson’s comment on: Is EA sleeping on making dogs and cats vegan?
Thanks Ben and Seth for these thoughts, and Alistair for this post!

On scale — ~~I’ve also recently realised that the scale as presented in Knight (2023) is inflated based on his ABP calcs~~ it’s also my opinion, based on similar arguments to Ben’s, that the scale of this cause area is probably lower than Andrew suggests. [Based on Andrew’s response, I’ve rephrased the above sentence]. However, it’s worth remembering that ABP use in pet food is a declining trend, at least in the US. Premiumisation has already pushed animal-based ingredient use in pet food to have a roughly ⁵⁰⁄₅₀ split of ABP vs human consumable ingredients. And the ABP proportion is declining further—I’ll be publishing updated data on this in the next few months hopefully.

On tractability, I agree more with @Denkenberger🔸 that there’s more potential here than most people are assuming. Compared to humans, where taste/texture replication is v important and v difficult, and diet habits change regularly, it’s much easier to create palatable plant-based diets, and to keep dogs on exactly the same diet for a long period of time.
It may well be that transitioning dogs to plant-based diets is easier than for humans. The key is how they’re marketed—as in the human space, labelling the food as “vegan dog food” will badly damage uptake, but marketing as “hypoallergenic”/”clean”/”sensitive diet” can be more effective (see Omni, the UK’s leading plant-based dog food company, which is v quiet on vegan messaging, but is growing in mainstream appeal).
I’d also point those interested towards a new study (co-authored by Peter Alexander) by Harvey et al. (2026), which compares different ABP allocation methods. Their range for global impacts of dog food consumption is 469-1332Mt CO2eq annually. Knight’s 2023 estimate was 759Mt. So, while v likely still an overestimate, it’s roughly in range of this study too, which I think was well conducted (the lower range is using economic allocation, the higher fig is using a form of mass allocation that definitely overestimates impacts).

I’m interested in looking more into the marginal impact of ABPs in pet food (e.g. via system expansion modelling), and am interested to chat this through with anyone who has thoughts on this!
[Edit: I make a further case for tractability on another post on this topic here. Would encourage those sceptical of vegan pet diets on tractability grounds to read!]

Billy Nicholles 26 Jan 2026 17:15 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Tristan Katz’s comment on: Should animal advocates treat veganism as a supererogatory commitment or a moral baseline?
Thanks for this Tristan! This looks like a good correction, although I haven’t looked into the sources. Assuming the data is accurate, I’ll revise to “veganism has only risen modestly in the past few decades”, and seen only fluctuated rises in the last decade.

I think my point still stands with this revision.

Billy Nicholles 26 Jan 2026 9:48 UTC
3 points
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on: Reflections on FarmKind’s January media campaign
Is the research you mention by Samantha Kassirer, or more detail on it, public yet? I’ve heard you reference it a couple of times and interested to see more.
Thanks for the thoughtful and transparent write up :)

Billy Nicholles 14 Jan 2026 16:07 UTC
12 points
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on: Should animal advocates treat veganism as a supererogatory commitment or a moral baseline?
We should present veganism as commendable, and offsetting as a legitimate stopping point for individual supporters.
I’m highly concerned by a) the stagnant levels of veganism over the past few decades (between 1%-5%, rarely more, even with the growth of alt proteins), and b) high to very high levels of vegan recidivism.
It seems quite clear to me that we badly need alternative ways for people to support the animal movement beyond 100% diet change. I think it’s possible 100% diet change (i.e. veganism) may be holding us back as a movement.
I don’t think the philosophical consistency around offsetting your diet matters as much as some think it does — veganism is philosophically consistent; it’s also remarkably unpopular! If donating can be a valid way for people who would not meaningfully consider diet change to support the animal movement, I think that’s great, particularly given we’re a cash strapped movement right now.
Some caveats:
1. Veganism still seems important as an end goal, and as a position that those who are v committed can take if they want to. I do think that having a strong and committed base of animal advocates who live out these principles is great, and that veganism as a practice/culture/identity can help to bring talent into the movement. In an ideal world, it can also serve as a positive and laudable symbol of taking pro-animal sentiment to its logical conclusion.
2. I’m concerned by movement infighting and think we should try not to upset/anger grassroots activists with a shift to donation-based (or other alternative forms of) advocacy. This is probably a hard balance to strike, but worth considering carefully.
3. Donation-based advocacy won’t be worth prioritising forever. At some stage, we may have enough donations/resources that other pro-animal actions will be more impactful.
4. I haven’t seen much data on the extent to which garnering donations from groups unreceptive to diet change works. Can we actually convince these groups to donate, and continue donating? V curious to learn more about this.