I think these days it can be argued there isn’t really an animal rights movement, there is something that often gets called an animal rights movement, but it is just a form of animal advocacy that doesn’t reflect the values of animal rights.
Put simply, an animal rights movement campaigns for people to recognise the natural rights that other animals have, and that in the most important respects those rights mean that we cannot use other animals for our own ends.
This is a radical view of animal advocacy that is in opposition to speciesism, and is necessarily unpopular within a speciesist society, but the point here is to build a movement that is clear in its opposition to animal use, particularly farming and breeding animals for our own ends, whether it is for food, for vivisection, for sport or for the military, among other ways.
The animal rights movement is closely related to the vegan movement, and it has experienced many of the same challenges, whilst veganism is perhaps better known for promoting a lifestyle, or the practicalities rather than a philosophy, it nonetheless contends that we should not exploit other animals for our own ends.
Within the animal advocacy tent, it is possible to find some people that hold this view, but it is certainly a minority view, and often an unpopular one. Many people will consume animals at the dinner table whilst supporting the RSPCA and dog or cat rescues, other people will find wearing the fur of other animals abhorrent and be against that, some people will only buy free range eggs, others would not dream of buying foie gras or eating rabbits. People like this will in some way advocate for animals according to their own preferences, which usually do not inconvenience them, or cause them to make changes in any particular way. So it is easy not to wear fur, if that is something you already do. If you didn’t go to watch greyhound racing, it would be easier to say you were against such a thing. In this way human society does have some regard for other animals, just insufficient regard to release other animals from their human imposed status of things to be used for our own benefit.
Of course, many philosophers also choose to disregard the status of other animals, or don’t believe there is anything intrinsically wrong with using them, what would be wrong is to treat them cruelly. One such philosopher is Peter Singer, often referred to as the father of modern animal advocacy, but it is probably more reasonable to say that he is the domineering authority figure of modern animal advocacy, and that ought to be viewed as a negative thing from an animal rights perspective, and also from a philosophical perspective in general. There are more reasons that animal rights advocates might choose to distance themselves from Peter Singer, such as the views he has promoted related to some disabled children, or where Singer argues in favour of capitalism because it is the dominant system, and where we could more easily achieve his goals without going to the effort of upending inequality generally, or for that matter challenging power. We can do just as much good, or more good in the present system, cosying up to corrupt politicians and tech billionaires, something which corresponds well with the Effective Altruism movement.
At the end of the day we are a social movement tasked with creating change, and so for that matter we ought to do the more challenging work of positioning ourselves as committed to social justice, or being consistent with our values, whilst also encouraging others to align with this consistency. I think we can say that vegans and animal rights advocates don’t simply want justice for other animals, we also want to see justice for human beings, and people have often observed and experienced how the marginalisation of humans is entangled with the marginalisation of other animals.
However, we also have to acknowledge that generally speaking animal advocacy is a big tent, and so there are people who have no interest in upending the present state of affairs, and indeed seek to maintain it, or even intensify it. We see this with the rise of Donald Trump in the USA or with Nigel Farage in the UK, with support from tech billionaires like Elon Musk. This might not particularly matter in the day to day concerns of some animal advocates, but who might otherwise find themselves concerned with the forms of animal exploitation that tend to energise the right. Issues such as eating dogs, or live exports, or certain types of slaughter, or more recently the alleged consumption of swans. Things which indeed are wrong as a general matter, but animal advocates don’t necessarily recognise they can be manipulated by the right for political gain, sometimes with false claims generated to increase division.
Even where people might appear to oppose speciesism, we still have a problem where animals are used to maintain systems of power. We have seen this in relation to Israel for instance, and their use of veganwashing, sometimes promoted by mainstream animal advocacy nonprofits, and surely never criticised by them. Also, the other side is that even within animal advocacy there can be complaints about “intersectionals” that too quickly throw animals under the bus in an attempt to show solidarity with indigenous peoples, but for animal rights advocates there is no need to participate in this trade, just like we would not participate in trades over human harms. It portrays a lack of seriousness in our advocacy, even if we can point to our diets or lifestyles as an attempt to counter that, although here as well effort could be minimised in sympathy to the real challenges other people face.
Overall, the largest problem that animal rights has faced is one of definition, that much of academia1 and most nonprofits (the professional managerial class) promote or work with a view that animal advocacy is a big tent which is broadly “united” and factionless, something which can rely on “minimally defining” certain terms. This causes any number of problems, but the main consequence has been the control of narratives and resources, reinforced under the authority figure of Peter Singer. Over the past decade the main driving force in farmed animal advocacy has been his Effective Altruism movement, which rewards “effective” charities whilst marginalising people and organisations that are out of alignment, either by failing to promote slow growing chickens or tech solutionism in service to venture capital and consumerism. I think even here “nonprofit” activist organisations don’t often promote animal rights, as this wouldn’t align with Peter, but underlying their activism is swaps to products that serve venture capital investments and alt-meats. Even some businesses now claim to be “activist”, which is unsurprising given criticism that activism often equates to consumerism, and how corporations can position themselves as appearing to be the most important change makers, if only they can be nudged to do a little more.
Issues such as tech solutionism, consumerism or “mainstreamness” can also be found in other social movements, and it is not simply the domain of animal advocacy. For animal rights advocates following and participating in other movements it ought to be possible to identify how these similar issues are playing out, even more so when reflected in conventional politics where centrist technocrats work to diminish or trade certain values in an attempt to increase the size of their tent.
Peter’s pragmatism, haircuts and suits, and the great unifying divide
Peter Singer probably received his important break in animal advocacy reviewing Animals, Men and Morals (1971) for the New York Review of Books, an article that formed the basis for his own work “Animal Liberation”.
Animals, Men and Morals is a particularly worthwhile read and probably ought to be a foundational text for the modern movement, with various chapters covering a broad range of areas in animal advocacy. Peter Singer even said that it formed a “manifesto for the animal liberation movement”, but in reality that work was quickly usurped by his own.
As Singer’s influence grew, his work became central to creating a division in animal rights advocacy, and it motivated some former animal rights advocates to now push for a professionalised Pragmatic Pork approach. This shift by nonprofit professionals was aimed at “meating people where they are at”, for instance by encouraging the factory farming of “free range” rather than “caged” eggs, an initiative that was pushed by Singer as president of Animal Rights International. Instead of opposing industry and challenging people over animal use, we were now, under a certain group of nonprofit leaders, supposed to validate and promote industry consolidation toward “free range” eggs by reinforcing industry centred welfare standards.
Of course, within animal advocacy generally, welfarism is a popular approach and almost all animal eating animal advocates support these types of campaigns to some degree, usually run by the RSPCA, Compassion in World Farming (CiWF) and what was formerly known as the Humane Society of the United States (now called Humane World for Animals). However, now such organisations as The Humane League and Mercy for Animals were collaborating with industry to promote certain forms of animal exploitation under the guise of “animal rights”, often going on to celebrate these initiatives together.
To help push this “new welfare” narrative, nonprofits (backed by philanthropy) sponsored “animal rights” conferences to deliver speeches on the utility of participating in these campaigns, often with the buzzwords *effective*, *strategic* and *pragmatic* as a vehicle to deliver their preferences. Whilst lowering the bar of animal rights to incorporate animal welfarism, also led to the lowering of the bar (practically to the ground), of human social issues, and as nonprofit influencers have stated, “we shouldn’t make things more difficult than they already are”.
This type of attitude meant that it wasn’t particularly surprising that external pressure from the #metoo and Black Lives Matter movement was enough to cause the bar on human issues to be raised a little, and for big philanthropists to be caught out by their failure to consider them2. Celebrated men in the movement, such as Paul Shapiro and Wayne Pacelle of HSUS3, and Nick Cooney of Mercy for Animals (formerly at The Humane League) found themselves in the spotlight, later finding shelter in the pursuit of venture capital backed lab meat or more conservative animal welfare PACs. Whilst nonprofits utilised NDAs and brought in different leadership it was still essentially business as usual (donors needed to be reassured), but now with Kitty Block at HSUS and Leah Garcés at Mercy for Animals (formerly of CiWF, which further demonstrates that normalised shift toward welfarism). It is worth mentioning that Peter Singer was also accused of sexual impropriety.4
All aboard the lab meat train
Lab meat5 has so far received over $3billion in venture capital, with most of the Silicon Valley tech billionaires weighing in, whilst Elon Musk has even shown interest in it for space travel. But there have long been problems with its development, and not just with foetal bovine serum or issues with vivisection, as it was supposed to have been on supermarket shelves years ago, whilst PeTA once offered one million dollars for in vitro meat to get to market way back in 2014. Much of the hype has worked to marginalise forms of grassroots animal advocacy, positioned as somewhat unnecessary because tech would solve the animal welfare issue, whilst making significant environmental improvements. Some people argued we should go all in on lab meat, something occasionally favoured on the “veg” side of Effective Altruism. More recently non-existent supermarket lab meat has been sucked into the culture wars with it being banned in some regions, this tends to get traction with animal consuming liberals because they believe lab meat could solve issues they don’t particularly want to deal with, something lab meat advocates would usually position as a benefit to their approach. Why struggle if tech can simply save us?6
The Vegan Society did take the surprising decision to pour some cold water on lab meat hype, despite almost all animal nonprofits seemingly taking a simplistic and positive view, something which The Vegan Society formerly appeared to hold in alignment with Singer and the nonprofit establishment. One other important issue with lab meat has been the strategy deployed by lab meat advocates of “for or against”; could someone really be against something which might transform the lives of other animals when it arrives to market in 2014? The fact is this approach is designed to garner lab meat support, but a look at the facts shows there is a lot of room to draw attention to flaws in lab meat promotion, particularly the aim of getting vegans to support it. Given that Pragmatic Pork advocates wanted to distance themselves from vegan “extremists” it’s strange they now wanted their approval, unless there was some calculation aimed at dominating the overall narrative. This could mean silencing potential criticism over the efficacy of lab meat, the problems of hype and tech solutionism, environmental claims, nutrition claims, and the problem of Silicon Valley tech billionaires exerting control over the product7.
Many animal advocates were led to believe “game changing” lab meat was just around the corner, and some nonvegans have favoured waiting for lab meat over making meaningful changes to their animal consumption. Tech critics have also mostly ignored lab meat claims8, perhaps because of a lack of interest or understanding in animal advocacy. Whilst even in the area of green washing where environmental claims have been brought into question, this still hasn’t triggered a noticeable reaction, something which has been beneficial to nonprofit elites evading accountability.
Nonprofit approaches in “big tent” animal advocacy
The difficulty of recognising what nonprofits actually represent is that some of their campaigns could also be animal rights campaigns, such as supporting farmers moving from animals to plants, or where their messaging is supposed to appeal across the board. So don’t be cruel to animals is something that is often picked up and supported by animal rights advocates, but the organisations are not saying that all use is abuse, they are saying that “factory farming” is cruel, and not being able to turn around in a cage is cruel. These things are indeed harmful, but the point is that animal exploitation is wrong, so no matter the reform, the entire system is corrupt, and if the issue is to be framed in the way of treatment at all, then it ought to be as *illfare*9 not industry centred *welfare*.
Some advocates outside of the corporate animal nonprofits promote the view that we need to support incremental “improvements” for farmed animals alongside veganism, but an important difference would also be to use illfare rather than welfare. It would be more accurate to campaign with a frame that animal farming is fundamentally wrong. However, when it comes to conventional political campaigning then all of that work involves agreement and necessarily collaboration with industry to deliver changes (which are usually designed to benefit them in some way), and this means falling in line with dominant nonprofits directing campaigns, and whose interest is principally in working toward their own goals funded by philanthropy, and not recognising or respecting pluralism in the animal advocacy movement.
This leads to another problem with nonprofits running populist campaigns, in that some of those campaigns align with abolition. So not the abolition of “cages”, but the abolition of something like fur farming. Even where this is the case, big nonprofits are not partners with animal rights advocates as their whole agenda is based on undermining animal rights for “pragmatic” ends. Joining with these nonprofits10 works against animal rights as a whole, so whilst there is value in them not simply doing welfare reforms with animals farmed for fur, there is disvalue where that organisation benefits from validation, and because of their status their preference is to manage campaigns and receive whatever plaudits are on offer. Whilst due to their position they might also unilaterally compromise and make a deal11.
For genuine grassroots campaigns that work on single issues like vivisection, there can be a problem as far as veganism goes, as most don’t want to promote veganism as it creates discord with potential supporters who are not vegan but find vivisection objectionable, like many nonvegans. Here it might simply be enough to ensure food at events is vegan, but sometimes there could be unnecessary marginalisation or dismissal of veganism to reassure nonvegan members of the group.
What can also follow, is that grassroots organisations can singularly focus on other animals, or some aspect of exploitation. This can render campaigns or movements open to manipulation from the political right, perhaps where they legitimately believe that other animals deserve greater moral status, albeit accompanied by bigoted human views that in the end cannot be separated out.
Some animal advocates would claim that human issues can be marginalised because other animals are in the moral basement, sometimes this is related to misanthropy and a somewhat understandable disdain for humans that are responsible for so much exploitation and harm (although this disdain should be resisted). It is true that speciesism underpins other forms of oppression and that other animals are frequently traded against by humans; either by comparisons of being treated like animals, or worse than animals, or by comparing humans to animals such as police to pigs, or as certain groups as insects, cockroaches or rats. It is important to recognise the corruption of this entire system and work against it, and to not reinforce it through campaigns.
Mainstream animal nonprofits manage their own organisations to some degree, but open up animal advocacy to “everyone”, ensuring the door is opened wide to all political groups12. This means they casually externalise the difficulties of conflicting political values in animal advocacy. As an example, some people associated with Anonymous for the Voiceless have stated they want to see feminists marching hand in hand with so-called mens rights activists for the animal advocacy cause, something which only gets more absurd the further you take this sort of analogy.
Outside of welfarism there is “veg”
Within the farmed animal advocacy “big tent” we’re essentially allowed to promote either less or better meat, so if we don’t want to advocate for industry centred welfarism because we believe plant or alt-meat consumerism is better (and not really for any other reasons) then we could promote “veg”. Veg is for “everyone”, because don’t you want everyone to be vegan, or veg, or reduce? When it is for “everyone” dietary change could be promoted on health, environmental, animal or cost grounds.
In recent times though, some leading Effective Altruists have advocated taking morality and hence animals off the advocacy table because people might feel shamed, and that things might seem disconcertingly moral. However, even more recently some have said that only price and taste are relevant for the success of alternative products. It is worth considering why people that journeyed from animal advocacy to venture capital continue to associate with an animal movement they think is broadly counterproductive to their consumer agenda, and the answer here is philanthropy. Utilising charity money to support big business through advocating subsidies, and weighting narratives through plant news organisations which mostly run PR for mainstream nonprofits. On the one hand technological innovation can be a good thing, but when it’s driven by big tech and Silicon Valley elites then it will be about shifting resources from the public sphere to further capitalise their bank accounts. Further displacing the importance of animal rights advocacy and social movements generally.
Although “veg” rarely criticises meat consumption (because it is “friendly”), it lacks the authenticity of something like reducetarianism. This is a small, well funded group (because it is a good fit with Peter’s pragmatism) formed by Brian Kateman to promote the consumption of less but better meat, where the consumption of animals and *delicious* bacon can be placed in contrast with the plant based diets of some nonprofit leaders (and the vegetarian diet of Peter Singer). There has been a degree of hypocrisy when they have traded off their own diets to insinuate radicalism (and to encourage people to keep faith with them13), whilst constantly undermining approaches that are more radical (there are also stories of influential leaders eating animals to appear “reasonable” in particular situations). Another issue with reducetarianism is that “reduce” can be associated with scarcity, denial and restriction, so whilst nonvegans push back against the “purity” of vegetarianism, they have also pushed back against reducetarianism for threatening their regular portions of animal products, despite it being a “friendly” speciesist program.
Kateman has also spoken about “ending the battle” between vegans and other animal advocates because “everyone is a reducetarian”. It is interesting that people associated with dividing the animal rights movement, then declared they had ended the battle, with the movement now united under Peter. However, it is arguable that veganism is part of a much grander vision of peace and liberation, whilst reducetarianism is speciesist, mainstream and supposedly for “everyone”. Although it seems unlikely that every reducetarian would be welcomed to work at Brian’s Reducetarian Foundation, something which happens to be a flaw in their approach. Other mainstream nonprofits have lamented their lack of appeal to more conservative minded people, particularly where businesses are trying to sell products, but perhaps that is partly their own organisational failure and their depiction as relatively exclusive organisations for liberals and centrists.
One of the better known people within the nonprofit “veg” approach is Melanie Joy of Beyond Carnism, ProVeg and the Centre for Effective Vegan Advocacy (CEVA). Joy has sometimes denounced criticism of “veg” advocacy as “shaming”, called for unity in a way that has marginalised animal rights, and appeared at “animal rights” conferences to deliver this message. At CEVA, Pragmatic Pork advocates such as Cooney, Friedrich, Shapiro, Ball and Singer have sat on the advisory board, and although during #metoo Joy shifted to emphasise some detrimental aspects of power, partly by coining the term “powerarchy”, this concern seemed to translate as improving opportunities for people aligned with Peter and “veg”. It’s worth noting that Effective Altruists would also promote the other side of the coin, such that it could be “strategic” to utilise and reinforce the power that white men have in service of other animals. This is likely part of the reason animal advocacy gained leaders and mentors like Shapiro, Pacelle, Friedrich, Cooney, and Singer.
The Vegan Society also became encumbered by ProVeg, when trustees brought in a co-founder of ProVeg International as CEO, and we had the “don’t have to be vegan.. to consume vegan products” campaign. Following their exit The Vegan Society was run by the head of business assuming dual roles, and it was unsurprisingly business as usual for that period of time. One of the aims of ProVeg appeared to be taking over established animal advocacy groups in various countries, and the first they took over was Vebu in Germany. It has been said The Vegan Society was in line to become the UK arm of ProVeg, but after the leadership transition more people left to form ProVeg UK. A group that is probably funded by a generous donor sold on the effectiveness of Singer’s favoured nonprofit leaders, and who probably wants to ensure their own general interests are protected, and certainly not threatened by animal advocacy. Which is one very good reason why animal advocates ought to campaign against meddling billionaires and bring some relief to more radical approaches.
It is true that some “veg” campaigning is no different to what some animal rights campaigning would be14. However, the “veg” approach functions to undermine animal rights. For example, when Veganuary became upset over Jamie Oliver refusing to participate because he has sometimes been criticised for using animals. Latterly, many nonvegan businesses have jumped on the Veganuary bandwagon for the publicity and association with doing good, something which trumped longstanding disdain for the v word that was formerly integral to Pragmatic Pork ideology.
It was around this time that other nonprofits also transitioned from criticising use of the v word, because it was offputting to people, (unsurprising that people find themselves discomforted when having their beliefs challenged), to embrace it when big corporate groups found value in the use of “vegan” for some aspects of greenwashing. Nonprofits sought to bring a trimmed down, minimally defined, dietary version of veganism into their big tent, where it could be managed, controlled, and was for “everyone”.
Nonprofit elites also believe people should support their organisations “for the animals” but really, the issue of animal advocacy is secondary15 to aligning with philanthropy and fellow ingroup nonprofits. Previously, there were also complaints about duplication, and surely these issues still exist, but rather than competing with each other for funds and space in the movement, organisations more frequently co-operate to control narratives and push agendas. Things which are furthest from Total Liberation because it is an approach grounded in the very system we are trying to dismantle. In some ways they operate closer to astroturfing, where a number of very similar organisations, associated with the same people, exist in order to present the view there is greater power and numbers behind an initiative than there really is. This is perhaps emphasised by The Humane League (THL) and their fake grassroots organising, which is top down and philanthropy driven, but they’re on the streets getting signatures to slow grow factory farmed chickens. THL have even demonised companies they had one day hoped to work with, such as McDonald’s, which looks a bit counterproductive, but does tend to resonate with animal advocates that don’t necessarily know they are being demonised for selling the wrong type of chickens, and would be celebrated for selling the right ones.16
Driving the narrative in animal advocacy
Some big animal advocacy nonprofits are part of the larger self-recommending organisation of Effective Altruism, where funding cycles through certain charities and meta evaluating / research groups. A benefit of operating a “big tent” advocacy nonprofit is they can follow trends in philanthropy and hoover up funding that is cheaply available through alignment, they can easily pivot to different campaigns without having to work around demanding organisational values. This is the case with international (some could say imperialist) nonprofits like The Humane League, Mercy for Animals, and Animal Equality, all of which promote “veg” whilst also promoting the consumption of welfare approved farmed animals. People that work at these organisations can cycle into funding groups as “experts” where they direct funding straight back into those campaigns and organisations, or people affiliated with them. When Lewis Bollard took the top role at the Open Philanthropy Project, tasked with distributing hundreds of millions of dollars of Dustin Moskovitz’s facebook billions, he arrived from The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), where he was mentored by Wayne Pacelle and Paul Shapiro. Lewis has directed most funding to welfare reform (which is essentially what he is most familiar with), and some to the lab meat trust network. It is also worth noting that within Effective Altruism, when they talk about doing the most good, the more animals that are used and exploited, the greater the priority, and the bigger piece of the philanthropy pie they can claim for their cause area.
It is also fair to say that animal rights advocacy could be more or less effective, similar to much social change work, but Effective Altruists aren’t really interested in exploring such things, because to them working within speciesism is ideologically friendly, pragmatic, strategic and effective.17
When “Effective Animal Advocacy” (sometimes known as Effective Altruism for Animals) was founded, it was by an intern working at 80,000 hours18. There appears to be no evidence of any foundational work conducted in animal advocacy, and at the time it seemed more important to simply get an initiative up and running. As such it arguably set about boosting Peter Singer and people like Nick Cooney who were already making claims about doing “effective” things based on research at Mercy for Animals. Others like Brian Tomasik (now also a trustee at the new EAA organisation) were working with Vegan Outreach and making claims such as “A single dollar donated to Vegan Outreach is expected to prevent between 100 days and 51 years of suffering on a factory farm.” This is the type of grand statement that is supposed to drive donations to “effective” organisations, and away from “ineffective” ones like animal sanctuaries. In the same article Brian repeated a claim that lab meat was expected to hit supermarket shelves in 2016, almost ten years ago. There are some other examples of criticism for various claims made by Effective Altruists in relation to “factory farming” and their general approach, and EAs have often been slow, or simply disinterested in spending time addressing them. Part of the intent here is to discourage people from making any criticism at all, and to signal that engaging in the work of criticising EA methods is futile, despite EAs making claims of openness, transparency and discussion, they instead largely operate as managers of Peter Singer’s preferences.19
To put things plainly the big nonprofits are not animal rights organisations, and they undermine animal rights in favour of Peter Singer’s Effective Altruism. There are no animal rights advocates in Effective Altruism because it is impossible to validate EA decision making as it presently stands. Whilst the speciesist utilitarianism of EA is only comparatively morally demanding in the context of concern for other animals in general society.
Effective Altruists rode the wave of hype around Beyond Meat and lab meat, partly driven by the Good Food Institute which achieved top animal charity status upon its inception. This was thanks in part to being founded by Friedrich and Cooney, incubated by Mercy for Animals, and also associated with fellow Pragmatic Pork advocate Matt Ball and reducetarian Brian Kateman. Consumerist hype led to narratives around product exceptionalism and tech solutionism becoming one of the most important things for animals. It followed that you just needed a similar product to meat, but make it cheaper and accessible, and this would achieve the goal of “less but better meat” aka Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation. It was around this time the Israeli lab meat company SuperMeat spammed vegan groups on facebook soliciting donations to develop lab meat20. Netanyahu would also appear with celebrated US politicians such as corrupt NY mayor Eric Adams, whilst AIPAC funded Cory Booker could be relied upon to talk things up. They have been regularly featured in the plant / sentient news space, and are often brought in to talk about “veg” or better meat initiatives.
Some observations on animal rights and veganism in the midst of nonprofit dominance
Veganism requires people to be for animals, so veganism is ethical veganism. There is no vegan for health or vegan for the environment. It could be that people are also motivated for different reasons like health or the environment, but it must be accompanied by concern for the status of animals for it to be veganism.
Grassroots groups can be more authentic in terms of animal rights, and animal sanctuaries can genuinely represent other animals who are their constituents.
As a movement we’re not against “factory farming”, a nebulous term where hundreds of millions of philanthropy dollars are put into factory farming free range eggs and slow growing chickens, we’re against domesticating and farming animals for any reason. This is to put things simply, and there is concern for other animals generally, such as those hunted for sport or deemed to be “pests”, or are incarcerated in zoos. We can go further and incorporate how we ought to relate to other animals in the world, and consider what our responsibilites ought to be.
Backyard animal farming is dependent on industrial animal farming in different ways, sometimes for slaughter, feed, or breeding animals, but also as a means to differentiate a “humane” product. Whilst “cage free” campaigning isn’t about helping smaller farmers in a struggle against big ag, it is about working with big ag to implement reforms they would find favourable, potentially leading to the failure of smaller farms to meet increased short term costs, therefore increasing concentration in the industry as they are swallowed up. In the UK, figures sometimes circulate within online animal groups pointing to a decline in the number of dairy farms, but this doesn’t account for increased size of herds, and the increased production of milk per cow over time.
It can be important to talk about what happens to animals in systems of exploitation, but this should be framed as standard industry practices, usually taken from industry sources themselves because they deal in the facts of animal use before the marketing spin takes over. We can talk about things such as breeding and slaughter, things which are wrong in themselves no matter if Temple Grandin designed them.
The purity narrative has sometimes been invoked by activist nonprofits such as DxE,21 and corporate nonprofits have attempted to normalise this view of veganism, either to juxtapose “doing something” (instead of ekeing out new individualist levels of supposed purity) or to indicate the impossibility of purity and open the door for the casual consumption of animals, as happens with “veg”. The truth is veganism has never been about purity or simply eating cupcakes, it is about justice, and respecting other animals by not using them. In a nonvegan world there can never be purity or perfection, and not really in a vegan one due to our own fallibility. However, DxE wanted people to join their organisation and be active22, and to marginalise the importance of veganism (passive) over taking Direct Action Everywhere (active), whilst large corporate nonprofits prefer an “easier” speciesist mainstreamness rather than aiming for something “utopian” aka vegan. At best it could be utopia tomorrow, but the purpose of reducing veganism to a diet and then saying that it is impossible to be pure, or that individualistic dietary change is insufficient is really a strawman. Veganism is supposed to be transformative, and demanding, not simply something casual, in some ways it is supposed to be challenging, but at the same time we want to help people meet those challenges, and this has been part of the supposed role of The Vegan Society, and more broadly the vegan movement.
Activist nonprofits (and some youtubers23) often want to find ways to fit into funding structures that are designed to reward big animal nonprofits, this is partly why the activism that takes place is grounded in “veg” and not anything more politically radical. DxE provide an example of how proximity to philanthropy can still happen for activist groups (especially when they tie in with Peter Singer), and other groups like Animal Rising also lean into it. Most activist charities have also been trained in “effectiveness” by CEVA, even if it seems fairly irrelevant for groups that are doing activism rather than something “passive” (although just like it is too soon for veganism, it can also be too soon for activism). However, it’s worth emphasising that groups CEVA train don’t promote veganism anyway, because the “effective” thing is to dress “veg” up as vegan.
It is helpful to be aware that some nonprofits also make the case for different approaches, and when they are criticised for their advocacy they can refer you to an article that supports your point of view, even if it is essentially disregarded by the charity itself.
At a grassroots level there can be contention around education (sometimes deemed passive) vs activism (sometimes deemed confrontational), but this can mostly be about preferences, and both can work together when certain forms of activism bring speciesism to light.
Furthering animal rights through freedom from tech billionaire “philanthropists” and their meddling in social movements, is something which ought to appeal across social movements and differentiate the grassroots from corporate nonprofits. Perhaps it could be one of the most important things, whilst it would also free other movements from the same predicament. Perhaps then we might have a somewhat freer system of media and politics, where animal rights advocates can make their case, rather than media becoming saturated with sponsored content and ingroup nonprofits working with the preferred systems of big donors.
Some further things that could be recognised and acknowledged
Cats and dogs aren’t examples of how we want to treat animals, and they are not examples of how we “love” animals. Generally in western society we categorise them differently, often as “pets”. But the frequency of cats and dogs ending up in shelters would affirm that we don’t respect them, or value them, that in the end they are often in the pet category of domestication (or domesecration). Otherwise they are used in vivisection, for sports and entertainment, in the military and for other reasons. This isn’t to say the question of why pigs are usually food, and dogs usually “pets” isn’t something interesting to have a conversation about, but we need to be aware of the limitations.
On a similar track, Melanie Joy has said that we love some animal species and eat others, but this isn’t really the case, and the relationship between “loving” and “eating” is more reasonably understood through speciesism, rather than “carnism”. This is because carnism isn’t an animal rights term, it’s a speciesist idea grounded in vegetarianism. Whilst there are some interesting and useful ideas related to carnism, for instance to explain the psychology of eating animals, it is worth noting the opposite to speciesism is veganism, and the “veg” pragmatism promoted by Joy has recycled defences of speciesism, such as undermining veganism (neocarnism) as a means to appear friendly and agreeable compared to vegan “extremists”, thus in their mind getting closer to nonvegans in an attempt to influence them. These contradictions have been ignored by nonprofit leaders, and they have internalised them within their own organisations.
Mainstream politics
Mainstream politics is mostly a complete waste of time, and marginalises animal rights as it is designed to shift us further away from our values in order to make alleged gains. Whilst the political left is hardly distinguishable from the right in terms of how other animals are valued, and it’s not an issue that political parties take seriously. Indeed, to even talk about other animals often suggests they are not serious, and are taking time away from more important human concerns. Sometimes “vegan” groups of Conservatives and Labour have been celebrated, but these are dietary, and centred around better meat welfarism.
The largest political parties mostly work on some aspect of welfare reform, if any at all. Supporting plant based products, or addressing animal farming subsidies would be closer to animal rights, instead of reinforcing industry paradigms of welfarism.
It is also worth noting the political right has a poorly developed view of animal advocacy, and has used terms that more reasonably embody values from the left. In some ways we need terms that embody different values or are simple descriptors of something, like “plant based”, although the meaning here is not always straightforward.
There is little to no representation of animal rights in legacy media, for the most part journalists seem to simply work the relationships they develop with big nonprofits, particularly in the case of The Guardian through sponsored content, where philanthropy has helped to promote a certain perspective.24
Single issue campaigning is fine as long as there are core values to organising, and radical approaches aren’t undermined.
Mainstream veg approaches can be advocated by mainstream institutions like the NHS and can be complementary in terms of advocating change. They simply promote increasing the consumption of plant based foods.
Environmental groups could also simply promote an increase in plant based foods, although they are often reluctant to do this in any meaningful way. For others there is a possibility they could be caught up in the culture wars of the right, such as outrage over woke scones.
Finally…
Nonprofit elites never consult with people outside their circle to consider whether what they’re doing is particularly useful, or whether they are treading on toes, or how their work could be improved in some way. There is no collective decision making over how hundreds of millions of dollars that go to animal advocacy ought to be distributed. Whilst big nonprofits rely on the fact their decision making is sufficiently opaque that people will either accept and support them, or ignore them, because to challenge them is designed to be an exercise in futility. However, ignoring them as they take up more space in animal advocacy just serves to increase their power. In the end, it could be that broader popular movements against people accumulating billions of dollars could be the most effective thing for a revival in animal rights advocacy.
Some further reading
Against Effective Altruism by Alice Crary
Invasion of the Movement Snatchers: How the Animal Rights Movement Fell Victim to the Doctrine of Necessary Evil by James LaVeck
Lab-Grown Meat is Supposed to be Inevitable: The Science Tells a Different Story25 by Joe Fassler
Making a Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights by Bob Torres
Piecemeal Protest: Animal Rights in the Age of Nonprofits by Corey Wrenn
Psychology and Long-Term Goals in Vegan Advocacy by Casey Taft
Radical Companionship: Rejecting Pethood and Embracing Our Multispecies World by Aiyana Goodfellow
Reducetarianism vis-à-vis Veganism: The Limits of Finding Common Ground by Mychael McNeeley
Reducing is a Good Thing. Reducing Animals to Food is Not By Mario
The Faulty Giving Culture in the Animal Advocacy Movement by Roger Yates
War on Vegan Activism by Jamie Cohen
Endnotes
- I think even with groups like Critical Animal Studies, there is no consistent and vocal opposition to Effective Altruism and what it represents. ↩︎
- Some of which were reported quite some time ago in the Washington Post. ↩︎
- Pacelle particularly was sold as a CEO who could go toe to toe with the CEOs of big companies to cut deals for animals, or could casually walk a slaughterhouse floor. ↩︎
- “My claim against Peter Singer, filed in the Santa Barbara court, alleges that he slept with at least thirty women from the animal rights movement in the last few decades, and handed out prestigious paid co-writing assignments, in the period covered by the claim (2002-2020), to women only with whom he had been sexually involved or was trying to be, and that he professionally punished women who did not condone his behavior.” https://dawnwatch.com/petersingeressay/ ↩︎
- For more information: https://www.cleanmeat-hoax.com/ ↩︎
- “When the companies of Silicon Valley reconfigure your ideals, it’s not just in order to sustain their business model. It’s also to avoid cognitive dissonance in their thinking about gender, race, class, history, and capitalism.” Excerpt from What Tech Calls Thinking (2020). By Adrian Daub. ↩︎
- On the Intertwining of Cellular Agriculture and Animal Agriculture: History, Materiality, Ideology, and Collaboration (2022). By Nathan Poirier. ↩︎
- There are some exceptions: lab-grown-meat-cultured-protein ↩︎
- Which is to say that all reforms necessarily take place in a reprehensible system. ↩︎
- Worth noting that the big nonprofits also distribute funds to smaller groups. It has probably incentivised smaller groups not to criticise the system, whilst giving the appearance of promoting diversity. ↩︎
- ar-wayne-not-so-humane-world.html ↩︎
- Some care needs to be taken when joining groups, some can have harmful hierarchies and very occasionally there might be groups like the Zizians. ↩︎
- Some people were pretty excited when Pacelle became CEO at HSUS, as someone who had adopted a plant based diet. ↩︎
- It is also true that some veg campaigning could lead people to veganism, just like welfare campaigning could lead people to veganism, or vegan campaigning to welfarism. Depending on how people engage with content. ↩︎
- “Weber and Mannheim distinguished functional rationality from substantive rationality. The latter refers to a critical reasoned reflectiveness with which one assesses and evaluates particular goals themselves and which guides one’s decisions. In bureaucratic settings, which are institutionalized paradigms of functional rationality, technique and procedure tend to become ascendant over substantive reflection about organizational goals, at least among lower and middle-level managers, where, of course, one is expected to implement policy rather than fashion it or much less criticize it. Even at higher levels of management, one sees ample evidence of an overriding emphasis on technique, rather than on critical reasoning.” Excerpt from Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers (1988). By Robert Jackall. ↩︎
- I have even seen some Effective Altruists call to boycott McDonald’s for the first time ever, because they wouldn’t adopt their slow growing chicken imperatives. ↩︎
- Perhaps it is also natural, normal and necessary. ↩︎
- effective-animal-activism-a-spin-off-of-80-000-hours-has-hired-a-full-time-executive-director ↩︎
- There is also a book called The Good it Promises, the Harm it Does: Critical Essays in Effective Altruism which examines some consequences of Effective Altruism, but it appears to have been minimised by EAs despite it being quite generous in its criticism. ↩︎
- “I deeply care about animals and want to see a world without slaughterhouses in my lifetime. I know technology is a key, since old habits are hard to change. Helping this dream come true is the only perk I need!” A quote from the SuperMeat fundraiser. ↩︎
- There have also been problems reported with DxE which are largely unresolved: direct-action-everywhere-dxe-misconduct-retaliation / why-i-am-boycotting-events-if-dxe-is-also-an-invited-speaker ↩︎
- Much of the idea was to promote “activism as the moral baseline”, so the moral minimum for the animal rights movement was to be active and join DxE (perhaps among some other groups), rather than be vegan. The idea of veganism as the moral baseline is that the least we need to do in the animal rights movement is practice respect for other animals by not using them (as far as possible and practicable). For DxE it was more important to become active, although it seemed that most members of DxE were vegan anyway. ↩︎
- Much of the language is also centred on a better meat narrative reflected from big nonprofits. When animals are the focus rather than plant based products then cruelty, “unnecessary” suffering and factory farming are usually at issue. ↩︎
- There is a related critical discourse analysis from Lukas Leitinger that is particularly interesting to read. ↩︎
- It is worth noting that criticisms are usually brought to Effective Altruists and lab meat companies, and they often acknowledge them, except articles often don‘t go far enough to consider the ties between funding organisations, animal welfare nonprofits and business. For instance, Eat Just (formerly Hampton Creek) was founded in 2011 by Josh Balk (from HSUS) and Josh Tetrick. There is a sense they get to manage the reported challenges in the lab meat sector, rather than there being a broader overview of relationships that contribute to the information distributed by the industry. ↩︎