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T able of Contents

Introduction

In discussions of effective animal advocacy (EAA) — the field of study for how we can most effectively help animals, also known as effective altruism for animals — there are several important, challenging, and sometimes controversial foundational[1] questions that come up over and over. This post attempts to summarize and catalog the key evidence[2] cited by EAA supporters on each side of these debates for easy reference. For example, in the “Effective Animal Advocacy - Discussion” Facebook group, there have been dozens of threads discussing confrontational strategies like protesting inside a restaurant or grocery store. Repeated arguments include:

For confrontation: Confrontation was used successfully by several historical social movements, such as the US gay rights movement. Even though there are differences between movements, this is still useful evidence.

For nonconfrontation: Confrontation make vegans and animal advocates seem weird and like a fringe demographic, making recruitment more challenging. Many have seen reactions to protests and online videos that suggest this perception is quite common. [3]

Clarifying notes

This post is intended for advocates and researchers wanting to make the most accurate assessments of what strategies have the highest expected impact, even in the face of limited knowledge. The evidence herein will not satisfy any desire for scientific proof. (We discuss this in more detail in this blog post.)

This post includes evidence that EAA researchers think is strongest: anecdotes and intuition, speculation, social movement trends, psychology findings, marketing findings, animal advocacy experiments, and any other information that makes one hypothesis more likely to be true than another.

We attempt to categorize each piece of evidence into the side of the debate that we expect a significant majority of EAA researchers agree it supports.[4] Where there is less agreement, or when the evidence’s direction depends largely on other questions in this document, it will be noted as pointing in an “unclear direction.” We also note when there seems to be significant majority agreement among EAA researchers on which side of the overall debate is most likely correct. Note that this does not mean it’s highly likely to be correct, just that it seems most compelling given the current evidence. The three questions with that level of agreement are:

Individual vs. institutional interventions and messaging (favoring institutional interventions and messaging)

Momentum vs. complacency from welfare reforms (favoring momentum from welfare reforms)

Animal protection vs. environmental vs. human health focus (favoring animal protection focus) [5]

Advocates can, of course, take a moderate position between the sides of the debates addressed in this document, and the composition of the animal advocacy movement might need some advocates taking different approaches. This document discusses what approach seems most promising on the margin, e.g. with a new $1,000 donation to the movement.

It’s useful to evaluate movement-wide strategy on the margin, but individual advocates should keep in mind that contexts (e.g. country, time period, resources) vary significantly and are often a crucial factor in individual situations. For example, if you are an established climate activist who now wants to focus on helping animals, you might want to focus more on environmental arguments than the average advocate does because that is where your expertise is and you might have disproportionate influence on environmentalist audiences.

This document is intended as a living reference, where ideas for further research are logged, new evidence can be added, and additional important questions can be discussed. We will try to update it as frequently as possible. Eventually, researchers in the field could add their own quantitative weights to different arguments so we can have more precise debates and updates of our individual views based on peer opinion.

The primary purpose of this document is as a secondary EAA resource, meaning we will cite existing EAA research when possible instead of outside sources. Because many EAA discussions happen via in-person conferences and meetings, social media, and email and other private communication, we will inevitably use some sources from outside EAA. When a theoretical argument is uncited in the text, you can assume that it is from unpublished discussions within the EAA community.

Before publishing this page in June 2017, we asked for feedback from 15 individuals who we selected based on (i) the amount of time we estimate they have spent thinking critically about these questions and (ii) our estimate of how independently they came to their views, e.g. we avoided asking too many people who work at the same organizations. Of course, despite our efforts, this post is likely still missing some evidence and misrepresenting some evidence. One way to help us improve this resource is through community feedback, so please feel free to contact us at info@sentienceinstitute.org.

Debates

Animal protection vs. environmental vs. human health focus

Explanation: Should we focus on animal protection, environmental, or human health arguments when promoting animal-free foods? Advocates cite many benefits of eating animal-free foods, but often we have limited space for our messages. For example, if we can only put one statistic on a billboard, should it be about water usage or factory farm cruelty?

For debates like this with more than two sides, we will discuss the arguments in turn and rank each side according to how much that argument favors it. Here is a table of rankings elaborated on below:

Animal Protection Environment Human Health Value Alignment 1 3 2 Leadership Appeal 1 2 3 Moral Outrage 1 1 2 Less Trendy 1 1 2 Consensus on Harm 1 2 2 EAA Consensus 1 3 2 Selfish Appeal 3 2 1 Mainstream Appeal 3 2 1 Historical Correlations 1 2 2

1 = most promising in terms of this criterion

Value alignment

Animal protection Human health Environmental

Explanation: Values vary, but it’s common in the EAA community to care most about the wellbeing of sentient individuals, so that’s the perspective we’ll take. Animal protection and human health are both mostly focused on individual wellbeing. Human health, however, is a more established value in society, so the emphasis of animal protection on individuals who are more neglected does more to align society with our values. Environmentalism could be motivated by a concern for the wellbeing of sentient individuals, but often the motivation is instead for the preservation of nonsentient entities such as ecosystems and landscapes.[6] Preserving these entities might matter as a proxy for improving sentient wellbeing, but the connection is tenuous and indirect.[7][8]

Value alignment matters for several reasons, including that it could affect partial measures people take towards an animal-free food system, e.g. whether they found a company creating fish meat substitutes to most reduce the number of animals being farmed, or beef substitutes to most improve human health; it could affect whether people continue to eat and promote animal-free foods if circumstances change, e.g. whether they continue to be vegan if evidence comes out that vegan diets are unhealthy;[9] it could affect what people do in other areas, such as whether they will take steps in the future to help wild animals.[10][11]

Degree to which they inspire current animal-free food movement leaders, e.g. nonprofit executives, public figures, entrepreneurs.

Animal protection Environmental Human health

Explanation: This is anecdotal evidence and might be affected by the historical prevalence of the different arguments, biases in self report, and other issues.[12]

Promotion of moral outrage

Animal protection, environmental Human health

Explanation: Animal protection arguments most clearly involve harm to outside entities, which can inspire people to get angry and view animal farming as a social priority over a personal choice. The environmentalist movement can also successfully inspire moral outrage when emphasizing the victims of environmental harms, such as wild animals and low-income or future humans. Health arguments could be framed as the animal farming industry harming or infringing upon the rights of consumers, such as through deceptive marketing, but the connection is weaker.[13]

Avoiding being seen as a passing trend or fad

Animal protection, environmental Human health

Explanation: Similar to moral outrage, fads tend to involve personal choices that mostly only affect the decision-maker’s wellbeing, so health is more susceptible to this perception.

Expert consensus on the relevant harm

Animal protection Environmental, human health

Explanation: Many people agree that there are serious animal protection issues with eating animals.[14] While the majority opinion is that the animal agriculture industry is very harmful to the environment and human health — especially the environment — there is less agreement, especially when it comes to non-industrial animal agriculture.[15]

EAA researcher agreement [16]

Animal protection Human health Environmental

Explanation: There seems to be significant majority agreement in the EAA researcher community that we should focus on animal arguments. The difference between human health and environmental arguments is lower, but EAA researchers tend to favor human health due to concern about the long-term attitudinal effects of promoting environmentalism (e.g. it could make people care less about wild animals’ wellbeing because it emphasizes moral concerns for ecosystems, biodiversity, and other nonsentient entities, which can come at the expense of sentient wellbeing).

Selfish appeal

Human health Environmental Animal protection

Explanation: Human health directly affects consumers. Environmental harm could plausibly affect a consumer later in life, or affect the welfare of those they know personally, e.g. their children.

Mainstream acceptance and popularity

Human health Environmentalism Animal protection

Explanation: While each of these areas receives significant mainstream attention, human health seems most compelling and environmentalism second most compelling to the general public by metrics such as how many laws have been passed to improve it, or how often it’s used to market new products and technologies. This is important because it both indicates how motivating people find these areas and how comfortable companies, policy-makers, and other decision-makers would be citing these areas as reasons for adopting more animal-free foods. Note that within the specific context of intellectual left-wingers, environmentalism might actually be a more popular motivation than human health.[17]

Historical correlations

Animal protection Environmental, human health

Explanation: The British antislavery movement focused on the treatment of the slaves in its effort to end the industry, occasionally using other arguments and only as support for the movement’s primary moral motivation. Insofar as our goal is animal protection, this suggests we should focus our messaging on animal protection.[18] (We hope to update this section with the correlational evidence from other social movements over time.)

Broad vs. animal focu s

Explanation: Should animal advocates actively promote other causes or focus exclusively on animal protection? For example, how much non-animal advocacy content should an animal organization or individual animal advocate share on their social media page? They could share none and consistently stick to an animal message; share only very relevant or only very significant news in other areas of social change where there’s widespread agreement, e.g. on combating racism; or share a large amount of non-animal content, even where there’s controversy.

To clarify, we are discussing active engagement in other issues, with resources that could otherwise be spent on animal advocacy (e.g. creating and sharing content about sexism in the corporate world, attending pro-immigration rallies), not just passive support (e.g. stating one’s political positions on matters outside of animal advocacy when asked about them as an individual, or supporting inclusion of diverse backgrounds in animal advocacy).

Arguments for a broad focus

It can have spillover benefits for those other movements, e.g. sharing lessons of what works and what doesn’t, lending human capital. [19] It can have spillover benefits from other movements into animal advocacy, e.g. credibility (given animal advocacy is often treated as a less serious, less mainstream social movement), resources, or increased numbers of advocates in high-profile campaigns. The anti-abortion movement was supported by religious groups that had broader socially conservative agendas and greater political acceptance. [20]

This can include people involved with or benefiting from those movements being more interested in and comfortable with being animal advocates.

Some broad societal issues targeted by other movements seem likely to indirectly increase the chances of success for the farmed animal movement. [21]

Arguments for an animal focus

Insofar as we think animal advocacy is the most important way to spend our time, [22] we miss out on impact when we are spending time advocating in other areas. In the British antislavery movement, advocates focused narrowly on their shared goals, ignoring major differences in their views on other issues. [23] A broad approach can have spillover harms into those other movements, e.g. reducing their credibility if one thinks animal advocates are less respected by the mainstream. [24] A broad approach can have spillover harms from those other movements, e.g. associating with violent movements might make the public less sympathetic to animal advocacy. The anti-abortion movement’s association with conservative religious groups may have reduced the credibility and durability of the movement. [25]

This can include people opposed to those movements being less interested in and comfortable with being animal advocates. Too broad a focus could discourage people who like the animal advocacy from working on it if they disagree with animal advocates on their other positions.

If animal advocates give more of their time to human issues, that could reinforce the notion that advocates should prioritize human issues over animal issues.

Unclear direction

If movements animal advocates associate with are partisan, it could make animal protection more of a partisan issue. Close proximity to other movements might make criticism more likely, e.g. anti-racist activists could attack animal advocacy for having too high a proportion of white advocates. This could have benefits such as helping animal advocacy improve, but also harms such as making the public who hears those criticisms think less of animal advocacy. Advocates of other social causes might be more or less receptive to animal protection messages. They might be more receptive because they are used to and have shown interest in social causes generally; there is evidence of correlations between recognition of human rights and animal rights. [26] They might be less receptive because they identify their cause of choice as most important and think any focus on other causes detracts from it.

Confrontation vs. nonconfrontation

Explanation: How confrontational should we be in our activism? Most EAAs have little trouble consistently categorizing activism as confrontational or nonconfrontational, though it’s hard to come up with a precise, comprehensive definition. Informative questions for assessing confrontation include: How much does a specific tactic make its audience uncomfortable? How much does it disrupt people from their normal routine? How much does it evoke anger or other forms of emotional arousal?

Arguments for confrontation

Some well-studied social movements, such as US anti-slavery, women’s suffrage, and the 1960s civil rights movement, seemed to greatly benefit from confrontational tactics. [27][28][29][30][31]

Critics note — and proponents agree — that animal advocacy is different in many important ways from these movements, such as this movement being led by allies instead of the oppressed themselves and the degree of popular support at the time of confrontational action, though the implication of these on the direction of the evidence is unclear. [32][33] Nonviolent confrontation likely differs substantially in its effect from violent confrontation, and what qualifies as the latter is unclear. [34][35][36]

Disruption, discomfort, and anger all tend to make people take notice and speak out, whether for or against the activists. This can lead to more media attention and a larger number of people reached by a pro-animal message. [37][38][39]

Moral outrage is important in overcoming the tendency to justify the status quo, an important step in accepting pro-animal messages. [40]

Confrontation implies that the issue is important enough for people to protest about, even as important as historical social movements that used confrontation. Some tactics that effectively extract concessions from targeted companies are at least partly confrontational. [41][42] Confrontational tactics and their accompanying rhetoric may be attractive to some advocates and may have movement-building benefits, bringing in new activists and other resources, at least temporarily. [43]

Arguments for nonconfrontation

Confrontation probably has something of a “backfire effect” where the pro-animal message actually moves some of the audience away from a pro-animal position. [44][45][46][47] Confrontation might harm the reputation of animal advocates. [48][49][50] British antislavery advocates did not conduct public demonstrations before there was broad public support of their specific goal. [51] Instead of seeming like respected historical social movements such as the 1960s civil rights movements, pro-animal confrontation might instead be categorized with less-respected protest movements like anti-abortion activism. It also might associate impact-focused animal advocates with less reputable segments of the animal advocacy community who use gimmicky or violent tactics. Similarly, there are arguably several examples of unsuccessful confrontational social movements such as the Occupy Movement and anti-gay marriage movement. [52] By being perceived as aggressive and acting in a way most people don’t, confrontational activists risk being less persuasive because they are less likeable, authoritative, and similar to their audience. This might be mitigated by, for example, dressing professionally at a protest. [53] Moral outrage can come from less risky sources than confrontational tactics, such as simply showing people the cruelty exposed through undercover investigations. [54] Rational people might be particularly less likely to associate themselves with a confrontational animal movement because of greater concern for their intellectual reputation or general aversion to argumentative tactics that don’t center on rational arguments. [55]

The importance of this argument is affected by how much influence you think such people have. For example, if one thinks advanced technology such as general artificial intelligence is likely to be developed quickly and have a large impact on society, then people involved with those technologies might have extremely disproportionate influence, and they may be less receptive to confrontational tactics.

Confrontational tactics may be more likely to alienate institutional decision-makers and encourage legal restrictions. [56] Verein Gegen Tierfabriken , an animal advocacy group in Austria that uses confrontational tactics, has faced state repression , though legal restrictions have also been imposed on undercover investigations of factory farms (a seemingly less confrontational tactic) in the US through ag-gag laws. The use of confrontational tactics may accelerate activist burnout. [57]

Unclear direction

Confrontation has more of a polarizing effect, varying greatly in whether it leads to more or less acceptance in each audience member. Some think polarization leads to more discourse and social change, [58] while others think it leads to a stalling movement due to a lack of unilateral support. [59] Animal advocacy seems to currently have limited public support (e.g. most people still consume factory farmed animal products). Some think this makes confrontation more effective as social movements might need attention to begin snowballing, [60] while others think this makes confrontation less effective as it makes advocates seem fringe and unpopular. [61]

Consistent vs. varying messaging

Explanation: Should we use consistent slogans, images, etc. or should we vary them with each campaign, each organization, etc.? Consider the rainbow flag that’s used across the gay rights movement or the golden arches McDonald’s consistently uses to identify themselves. How much should animal advocates try to use consistent messaging features like these, as opposed to varying their slogans, images, etc.? Here we can also come to moderate conclusions, such as using a consistent slogan but varying the associated image, e.g. the words “Help animals” but with different photographs of animals each time those words are displayed.

Arguments for consistent messaging

There are many apparently successful examples of these in historical social movements. [62] British antislavery advocates used extremely consistent messaging. [63] Marketers see the development and maintenance of “memory structures” (e.g. association of golden arches with McDonald’s) as one of the most important functions in advertising. [64] Consistent structures build familiarity, which leads to more liking and success in interpersonal persuasion. [65]

Arguments for varying messaging

The elements of a given billboard, leaflet, etc. can be better optimized for a specific situation if they are not required to be consistent. [66][67][68]

However, there is a lack of evidence that efforts to vary health behavior interventions by making them more “culturally competent” improves their effectiveness. [69] The evidence on the effects of tailoring interventions to the recipient’s individual characteristics or needs is mixed. [70]

When a new element is included in a campaign, such as a provocative slogan relating to a current event, that can increase discussion and media attention because it is more fresh and interesting. Some message framings may be effective for recruiting activists but alienating to a wider public. [71]

Unclear direction

Public discussion, particularly on controversial policy questions, often focuses on one aspect of an issue while excluding all others, frequently swinging from one extreme view to another. [72] Consistent messaging could take advantage of this dynamic by having higher average message quality because the consistently used message can be the most promising one. It could run afoul of it because trying a variety of messaging strategies to see which “takes off” in the public eye is the superior approach. Which of these possibilities ends up happening depends on, among other factors, how much feedback advocates get when trying out different messages for various lengths of time.

Controversial publicity stunts vs. other tactics

Explanation: How much should we utilize publicity stunts or other gimmicks that generate substantial attention but are strongly disliked by some of the audience and appear as trivializing animal issues or antagonistic towards other social movements, such as sexualized images of women, offensive statements, and silly costumes?

Arguments for controversial publicity stunts

These often generate large amounts of attention relative to the effort put in. For example, a single press release or billboard often leads to numerous news stories and thousands of social media interactions. [73] Some publicity stunts are particularly thought-provoking, especially given their ability to point out the moral inconsistencies and other issues in people’s behaviors and beliefs. This can lead to people being shocked out of their current views in a way that wouldn’t happen without the publicity stunt. C ontroversial publicity stunts could support activist recruitment by being particularly compelling to would-be activists, even if they are off-putting to the average audience member. [74]

Arguments against controversial publicity stunts

Farmed animal advocates frequently struggle to create change because the audience sees farmed animal advocacy as a lesser social justice movement, as silly or fringe, or as a movement that conflicts with other important goals like feminism and anti-racism. This perception seems caused or exacerbated by publicity stunts used by animal advocates over the past few decades. [75] Frequent use of publicity-focused tactics may lead to media disinterest [76] and a numbing of the audience. This may require varying tactics or increasing the offensiveness or absurdity of the tactics in order to maintain similar amounts of attention, which may exacerbate the downsides. A small amount of experimental research suggests no improvement or even a negative effect from sexualization, including two randomized trials of PETA advertisements that used either sexualized or non-sexualized images of women. Those two trials showed less intention to support PETA after viewing sexualized images, and found a mediating factor of the dehumanization of women.

Unclear direction

Similar to confrontation, publicity stunts have more of a polarizing effect, varying greatly in whether it leads to more or less acceptance in each audience member. Some think polarization leads to more discourse and social change, [77] while others think it leads to a stalling movement due to a lack of unilateral support. [78] Animal advocacy seems to currently have limited public support (e.g. most people still consume factory farmed animal products). Similar to confrontation, some think this makes publicity stunts more effective as social movements might need attention to begin snowballing, [79] while others think this makes publicity stunts less effective as they make advocates seem fringe and unpopular. [80]

Individual vs. institutional interventions and messaging

Explanation: Should we focus, in our messages and interventions, on changing individuals or changing institutions and social norms? Generally, changing individuals means changing consumer diets — though it could arguably also include creating activists — and changing institutions means changing companies, governments, or other groups of individuals. Specific decisions affected by this consideration include whether to say “go vegan” or “end animal farming” (messages) and whether to donate to veg leafleting or corporate campaigning (interventions).

Arguments for individual focus

Usually the ask of the message is clearer when it’s individual-focused, e.g. “go vegan” means you should go vegan. [81]

An increased rate of short-term behavior change can lead to more long-term behavior and attitude change as it shifts the person’s identity. [82] The focus on short-term behavior change, which is relatively easy to measure and monitor, also means activists can iterate with shorter feedback loops. [83][84]

There is evidence that a wide range of health behavior interventions focused on individuals, including leafleting, brief face-to-face conversations, and motivational interviewing can have significant effects on behavior. However, the effect sizes seem small and the evidence in favor of some of these interventions is weak or ambiguous, despite decades of research. [85] Institutional interventions might be less tractable due to the current number of individuals advocating for animals, or due to the current Overton Window that arguably excludes common animal-friendly positions, such as veganism and ending animal farming. [86] Institutional messaging could lead to a loss of motivation as the scale of the issue might seem large and overwhelming. Institutional changes such as taxes and price interventions may face resistance due to a perceived harm to individuals of low socioeconomic status. [87] There have been difficulties in enforcement of Supreme Court decisions for a range of issues, [88] as well as difficulties in enforcing farmed animal institutional changes in recent years . [89][90] Some people, especially many effective altruists [91] and others who are particularly ambitious, might be biased towards institutional change because it seems to be weighted more towards lower likelihoods of larger impacts instead of higher likelihoods of smaller impacts. [92]

Arguments for institutional focus

It seems that few if any social movements have succeeded with a heavy focus on individual change. Environmentalism seems like the best candidate, and environmentalists seem to think “green consumerism” has been fairly ineffective. [93] The American antislavery movement’s “free produce movement” had limited success and was abandoned in favor of political approaches. [94] Targeted campaigns against fur retailers also seems to have been more effective than consumer-focused advocacy. [95] Successful examples of consumer boycotts in other social movements (anti-abortion, antislavery, and anti-GMO) had a clear institutional focus. [96][97][98] In surveys and voting behavior, people seem much more supportive of institutional change than they are willing to implement individual change. For example, there have been consistent majorities voting in favor of farmed animal welfare reforms, [99] and a 2017 poll suggested 49%, 47%, and 33% of US adults say they support a ban on factory farming, slaughterhouses, and animal farming respectively. [100] The anti-GMO movement in Europe achieved its most concrete victories in institutional contexts, often with small, focused campaigns rather than attempts to shift individual consumers away from GM food. [101] Anti-abortion advocacy seems to have failed to substantially change public opinion, though education and persuasion tactics may still have been effective at generating temporary support for specific policy initiatives. [102] Research on health behavior suggests that i ncentives, price changes, bans on undesired behavior, and other forms of legislation seem to have larger effect sizes than most individual or small group interventions. [103] Some of these interventions may also reduce behavioral inequalities, which may affect the long-term success of the farmed animal movement. [104] Institutional messaging could reduce defensiveness by shifting blame away from the recipient and onto relevant institution(s), facilitating moral outrage in the audience. [105] Blaming the audience can induce more of a “backfire effect.” [106][107] Institutional messaging makes it harder for people to become demotivated by the lack of a clear large-scale solution to the relevant issue. It helps prevent the recipient from feeling like they can only make a drop in the bucket, especially given the highly communal nature of animal product consumption. [108] Institutional messaging has more inherent emphasis on social pressure, i.e. that other people are making changes, and social factors seem very powerful in individual decision-making across different contexts. [109] Institutional changes in society create talking points, rhetorical ammunition , and common knowledge that can spark further discussions and change minds. Individual focus can exacerbate the “It’s my personal choice” counterargument to farmed animal advocacy. An institutional focus might do more to emphasize the victims of animal farming, leading to more motivation for advocates and consumers, as well as doing more to promote the interests of animals, especially relative to trivial human interests like gustatory satisfaction.

The importance of this argument is affected by how you weigh long-term versus short-term impacts . If you care more about short-term impact, then the direction of future progress matters less.

Some people might be biased towards individual focus because of its association with direct, short-term impact, i.e. instant gratification. [110] There seems to be significant majority agreement among EAA researchers that an institutional focus is more effective. [111]

Influencer vs. mass outreac h

Explanation: Should we target our advocacy efforts towards influencers or the general population? Concrete examples of targeting influencers include writing more sophisticated, intellectual content instead of more accessible content; giving a talk at a small academic conference vs. giving a talk to the public; engaging in substantial one-on-one outreach with celebrities vs. handing out literature to as many people as possible.

Arguments for targeting influencers

For each influencer you affect, you tend to have a bigger impact because, by definition, they have more social, financial, political, etc. resources.

The importance of this argument is affected by how disproportionately you think resources are divided between some groups and others. For example, if one thinks advanced technology such as general artificial intelligence is likely to be developed quickly and have a large impact on society, then people involved with those technologies might have extremely disproportionate influence.

For securing some legislative outcomes in the anti-abortion movement, influencer support seems to have been more important than majority public support. [112] Decision-making in the Supreme Court of the United States can probably be influenced by interest groups and by elite culture, suggesting that institutional change can be secured without first securing support from the general public. [113][114] In the 1960s-80 s, the leadership of the Republican Party, [115] the Catholic Church, [116] and the Evangelical protestant community [117] all had substantially more strongly anti-abortion stances than their community members and supporters, and the actions of the communities more closely aligned with the leadership than with the community members and supporters. Influencers are arguably more amenable to rational messaging (especially intellectuals such as researchers and academics), which probably makes them more receptive to our reason-based arguments and allows us to get our message across in the most honest and straightforward way. Influencers are arguably less fickle, meaning changes we make in their attitudes and behavior are more likely to persist. In the 1970s and 1980s, positive media coverage in the most prestigious German newspapers was a leading indicator of favorable German public opinion towards nuclear energy. [118] The framing of debate in the media, by legislators, and by relevant influential social movement actors seem likely to modify the effects of a Supreme Court decision on public opinion. [119] There is weak evidence from the anti-abortion movement that social change may be more likely to occur if credible professional groups advocate for change for technical reasons before broader participation and pressure is encouraged. [120]

Whether this is evidence in favor of influencer outreach depends on what stage of social change the farmed animal movement is currently in.

Arguments for targeting the general population

Whether directly or through influencers, the public needs to be moved to support the changes advocates call for (though this may not be the case for some changes and in some circumstances). One study found that the proportion of a population that is involved in a nonviolent resistance campaign is positively correlated with a successful outcome [121] and that no campaigns had failed after maintaining the active participation of 3.5% of the population. [122] In one recent analysis, focus on grassroots organizing seems to be a common feature of several successful modern US social movements and comparably absent from several less successful movements. [123] Social movement scholars have found that public opinion is often an important determinant of legislative outcomes. [124] Some animal advocates likewise believe that successful lobbying is dependent on supportive public opinion, [125] perhaps even dependent on attitude polarization. [126] Public opinion could play an important role in affecting whether legislation is preserved or subsequently overturned. [127] The public can influence legislation directly through ballot initiatives and referendums and indirectly by voting for politicians that espouse views that match their preferences. The decision-making of the Supreme Court of the United States seems to be substantially influenced by public opinion. [128] When pre-decision public opinion is more closely aligned with a Supreme Court decision, the risk of legislative backlash is lower and the effects of the ruling on public opinion seem likely to be more positive. [129]

A review of 121 research items suggests that when the Supreme Court of the United States makes a decision, this causes public opinion to move towards the opinion implied by that decision, though the evidence is slightly weaker than that for the influence of public opinion on Supreme Court decisions. [130]

In the anti-abortion, civil rights, and gay rights movements, judicial rulings that lacked majority public support seem to have provoked substantial public backlash. [131][132] Corporate welfare campaigns have been partly dependent upon mobilizing the public to express dissatisfaction with a particular practice in animal farming, such as the caging of layer hens. It may be crucial that the public is already opposed to a practice for such campaigns to be successful. Influencers are often more difficult to reach and have more competition for their attention. Influencers are often more publicly committed to certain positions, which likely makes it harder to change their minds. Because many influencers have their success determined by public opinion (e.g. authors getting book sales, politicians getting votes), influencer attitudes and behavior might be mostly determined by the general population’s attitudes and behavior. Animal advocates may have more flexibility to utilize controversial tactics if there is public support for their demands. [133]

Unclear direction

In the British antislavery movement, elite Anglican politicians and intellectuals were recruited as leadership, but their grassroots petition campaigns which mobilized the masses also seem to have been critical. [134] Several successful modern US social movements seem to have put substantial resources into tactics focused on changing public opinion. [135] The same is true for some less successful US movements, like the anti-abortion movement, [136] but others, like the gun control movement , have put little emphasis on public opinion campaigns. [137]

Left-wing vs. nonpartisan focu s

Explanation: Should we prioritize appealing to the mainstream left or a nonpartisan audience? There are other options, such as appealing to the radical left or exclusively to right-wingers, but people suggest these two approaches most often.

Arguments for left-wing focus

The most- discussed and well-researched social movements in the past 100 years, such as gay rights and anti-racism, seem to have succeeded with this method.

This evidence is mitigated by potential selection effects that make left-wing-focused movements more likely to be discussed and researched, such as the general left-wing leaning of academia . [138]

Left-wingers might be easier to persuade than right-wingers because left-wingers are more likely to be vegetarian, [139] indicate willingness to buy animal-free food technology, [140] and have wider moral circles, [141] which may be key factors in the farmed animal movement’s success.

There is also more precedent for moral circle expansion movements with left-wing alignment than right-wing alignment. Empirically, we see that most of the current animal movement is left-leaning, including leadership, e.g. nonprofit executives, public figures, entrepreneurs. Of course, this is anecdotal evidence and might be affected by the historical prevalence of the different arguments, biases in self report, and other issues. Also, right-wingers, especially politicians, often have ties to animal industries.

Speciesism is correlated with other prejudicial attitudes and, relatedly, with the conservative ideological constructs of social dominance orientation and right-wing authoritarianism. [142][143][144] Stronger alignment with a major political party might speed up progress, at least temporarily, by increasing the rate at which legislation is proposed. [145]

Arguments for nonpartisan focus

Arguably, there is historical precedent for movements stalling and failing to make significant progress with a strong partisan focus, such as environmentalism, the anti-abortion movement, [146] or even the animal rights movement to date . Strong opposition from the right could be detrimental, especially if one thinks that sympathetic right-wingers can mitigate the opposition from animal industries. In the British antislavery movement, advocates focused narrowly on their shared goals, ignoring major differences in their views on other issues. [147] The movement’s parliamentary leader, Wilberforce, was a Tory, and while it seems more liberal politicians were more supportive of abolition and emancipation, the movement was not taken up as part of the Whig identity nor did campaigns try to tie it to one or the other party. [148]

Unclear direction

Left-wing focus lends itself to a broad (i.e. cross-movement) approach. This was especially apparent in anti-GMO activism in the United States and Europe, where skepticism of GM food arose as part of a broad package of left-wing concerns. [149] Partisanism probably leads to more polarization. Focusing on the mainstream left means it’s likely harder to implement policy change when a right-wing government is in power. On the flip side, it’s easier when the administration is left-wing. [150]

Momentum vs. complacency from welfare reforms

Explanation: Do welfare reforms lead to momentum or complacency for future progress? When companies and governments commit to higher welfare standards, does this make further progress, such as increased vegetarianism rates, corporate adoption of plant-based foods, and public opposition to animal farming more or less likely?

Arguments for momentum

When a welfare reform happens, people see that their culture includes some concern for farmed animals, which could help people develop stronger cultural identification with that concern, enabling them to feel more outrage when they learn that the animals are still suffering tremendously even in improved or purportedly “humane” farms and slaughterhouses. Animal advocates establish connections with companies, media, etc. that can be utilized to make further changes easier. In 2015 and 2016, welfare reforms quickly followed each other, including the transition from cage-free policies to commitments to ending chick culling and policies for chickens raised for meat. [151] Increased rates of vegetarian diets are associated with higher farmed animal welfare across countries in the EU. [152] Note that this is only weak evidence because the correlation is likely influenced by additional variables that increase concern for animals . Similar correlations have been found within the US and within the Netherlands. [153] Anecdotally, it seems that media coverage of welfare reforms tends to focus much more on what issues still exist and what progress is coming next than on how things are better now and meat-eating is less ethically concerning. [154] A small-scale empirical study by Mercy For Animals on Mechanical Turk found that respondents who read about welfare reforms were more likely to say they would reduce their consumption of animal products than a control group who read about unrelated policy changes. This difference held for both corporate and legal reforms, tested separately. [155] Two smaller studies on Mechanical Turk observed similar effects. [156] An analysis of social media responses to corporate welfare announcements found that only 3 of 1,617 comments explicitly suggested that the welfare reforms were sufficient and that no more action would be needed. [157] An observational analysis of the US from 1982 to 2008 showed a negative association between media coverage of farmed animal welfare and meat consumption. There are numerous qualifications for assessing this result that make it less useful evidence. See the Qualifications section in the cited report for more detail. [158] Empirical evidence suggests welfare reforms increase the costs of animal farming, which likely weakens the industry and decreases consumption of animal products, which is progress and likely makes the public more receptive to future reform. [159] The cost increase makes sense theoretically as well because if reform increased profits, then the industry would likely do it without advocacy pressure. There is disagreement about the extent of this price increase. [160] In the British antislavery movement, advocates first ran a major legislative reform campaign — abolishing the transatlantic slave trade — that they believed would be more agreeable to the public than eliminating the whole industry, but which they also believed would significantly curtail it. When that was successful, they shifted their sights to the elimination of West Indian slavery. Their success suggests that a major reform favorably affects momentum , but does not provide as much evidence for smaller reforms. [161]

There were also some smaller reforms to the industry, such as a restriction on the slave workday to 11 hours, which appear to have caused more momentum than complacency, but it may be crucial that (1) advocates framed them as a step towards an end goal of eliminating the industry, rather than end goals in themselves, (2) advocates did not present them as more directly impactful for the victims than they were, and (3) the industry failed to fully implement them (see the following bullet point). [162]

If companies that use animal products eventually become unwilling to further increase farmed animal welfare on their own, this could increase public frustration with the industry and possibly build momentum for legal regulation, especially if the reforms they have pursued have built momentum against farmed animal cruelty in the public.

Beyond that, if the public momentum has built up sufficiently and the industry resists legal regulation, the public may come to agree that the cruelty they oppose cannot be sufficiently removed from the industry through regulation and concede that as such, the industry needs to be abolished. There is some evidence that this is what happened in the British antislavery movement. [163][164]

In the US anti-abortion movement, increasingly radical legislation has been passed since the 1990s. [165] Anti-GMO campaigns in Europe won a series of concessions from food retailers and regulators throughout the 1990s. These concessions did not appear to soften opposition to GMOs (indeed, negative sentiment toward GMOs as reflected in polling data continued to increase in Europe) and the EU eventually put in place a moratorium on GM crops. In the United States, which saw fewer meaningful concessions to anti-GMO activism, opposition to GM food remained lower than in Europe and the US did not enact a moratorium on GM crops. [166] Some advocates might be biased towards complacency because of frustration with the current rate of progress of incremental change for farmed animals and their desire to believe that the movement will quickly reach its goals. There seems to be significant majority agreement among EAA researchers that momentum probably outweighs complacency. [167]

Arguments for complacency

The arguments above apply more strongly to momentum for further welfare reforms than to momentum for reducing the number of animals used for food. Because of both reforms and the “humanewashing” [168] that those reforms might support, some people might think animal farming has become humane and the cruelty no longer exists, making them more likely to eat more animal products and support the continuation of the institution. Similarly, some people who know that much of animal farming is bad but buy products newly marketed as humane because of reforms might experience a moral licensing effect that makes them feel more comfortable consuming other products they know are less humane. [169][170]

A 2017 poll suggested that 75% of US adults say the animal products they purchase “usually come from animals that are treated humanely,” despite less than 1% of US farmed animals actually being raised on non-factory farms. [171] Anecdotally, many meat-eaters justify their behavior with the existence of humane animal farming. There aren’t many anecdotes, however, of this justification increasing in prevalence with welfare reform information , and since few people will attribute a behavior they feel guilty about to the usual factors such as social pressure or a lack of motivation, such justifications should be taken with skepticism. [172]

Companies could become more resistant to further reform after they have implemented some changes, particularly those that boost their image significantly while costing them little. Pushing for reforms instead of replacement of the industry could suggest that animal farming is a more permanent institution, or reinforce the notion that animals will always be mere property for us to use. Animal industry companies might be able to influence and defuse animal advocacy organizations using the connections advocates build with them, especially if there is financial investment , donations, or other payments. EAA researchers, especially those who have been heavily involved with welfare reforms, may be biased towards momentum because of optimism, status quo bias, or bias towards more immediate and tangible impact.

Unclear direction

An observational analysis of egg consumption during the lead-up to California’s Prop 2 vote found that there was no decrease in egg consumption associated with increased media coverage, though demand for cage-free eggs tended to increase and demand for cage eggs tended to decrease. There are numerous qualifications for assessing this result that make it less useful evidence. See the Qualifications section in the cited report for more detail. [173]

Further questions

In our public communications, should we frame reforms as gradual progress away from factory farming (or perhaps all animal farming) or as end goals in themselves for their improvements to farmed animals’ lives? Relatedly, should we frame successes in reform efforts more as “victories” or “progress”?

Reducetarianism vs. veganism

Explanation: When we advocate for individual diet change, should we emphasize reducetarianism or veganism? This is assuming we’re focusing on individual diet change. For a discussion of whether to focus on that at all, see the Individual vs. institutional section. This question particularly lends itself to answers that lie between the two extremes, such as suggesting a vegetarian diet or to “cut back on or cut out animal products entirely.” If you find yourself near the middle of the debate, consider these moderate options.

Arguments for a vegan ask

Asking people to go vegan more strongly communicates the importance of the issue because it requires a more drastic action. Each individual who complies with the ask directly causes more of a reduction in the scale of animal farming. Some r esearch suggests that larger goals for personal behavioral change produce larger changes than moderate goals, on average , [174][175] though what constitutes a sufficiently large goal in this context (e.g. reducetarian, vegetarian, vegan) is unclear. Popularizing a vegan ask among professional, friendly advocates could reduce the stigma around veganism, [176] which is especially important if we want to advocate veganism more down the road. The audience might think less of reducetarian or vegetarian asks because they seem less internally consistent than veganism. This is even more true if the audience knows that eating eggs causes a relatively large amount of suffering compared to eating cow and pig meat. Vegans might seem more dedicated and committed than reducetarians and/or vegetarians. Similarly, a vegan or vegetarian diet is simpler to follow due to the hard-and-fast rules. Persuading people to adopt a vegan diet avoids the risk that reducetarian diets have of actually increasing animal consumption, such as if one cuts out red meat but even slightly increases the consumption of chicken or fish meat. [177] However, the strong focus on veganism in the UK in the 2010s does not seem to have successfully prevented a rise in egg consumption. [178] A smaller number of vegans might be more useful than a larger number of reducetarians if adopting veganism encourages stronger identification with the farmed animal movement and thereby encourages individuals to take disproportionately more other steps to help animals.

Arguments for a reducetarian ask

Arguably, a greater percentage of outreach recipients will change based on a reducetarian ask, even if they make smaller changes. This is usually justified just based on reducetarianism being a smaller lifestyle change, [179] and there is some empirical evidence, [180] though the difference could be reduced or reversed by effects like (4) in the above list .

If one believes the success of the animal-free food movement depends on reaching a critical mass of people making any change in their diets, then this argument carries more weight. Because reducetarianism is a smaller behavior change, we should arguably expect it to have a higher rate of recidivism, since small behavior changes are more common than large behavior changes.

If more people are amenable to a reducetarian ask, it could do more to broaden our support base, which is important insofar as one thinks that many somewhat-committed members are important for social movement success. [181] Arguably, reducetarianism is a more novel idea than veganism, so it could be more interesting and thought-provoking. This is probably more applicable in Europe, where there seems to have been a heavier focus on veganism than in other regions. Advocating reducetarianism or, to a lesser extent, vegetarianism can avoid the negative stigma around veganism. [182] Advocating selective reducetarian diets better allows advocates to explain the reasoning behind the choices , e.g. advocates can emphasize that avoiding chicken, fish, and eggs reduces the most direct suffering. There are significant differences in the impact of various reducetarian diets, but vegan diets all have the same impact.

Arguments for a midpoint (vegetarianism)

In the British antislavery movement, while a few people made an effort to abstain from purchasing any Slave-made goods, the consumer movement supporting abolition focused specifically on West Indian sugar. This avoidance of one major symbol of the institution gained substantially more traction than the avoidance of all the institution’s products, and it served as a useful symbol of support of the political movement. [183] A vegetarian diet avoids some of the animal products that cause the most suffering, such as chicken and fish; milk production causes comparably little suffering, though egg production causes more suffering than many meat products. [184]

Unclear direction

One might have more of an individual, “personal choice” focus, which could be bad.

There seems to be significant majority agreement among EAA researchers that institutional focus is more effective. [185]

Veganism is more strongly associated with a focus on animals than with environmental/health aspects.

There seems to be significant majority agreement among EAA researchers that animal focus is more effective. [186]

If one wants to make a reducetarian ask, making a vegan ask right beforehand might be an effective way to increase the likelihood of agreement with a “door-in-the-face” strategy. [187] Similarly, if one wants to make a vegan ask, making a reducetarian ask right beforehand might be an effective way to increase the likelihood of agreement with a “foot-in-the-door” strategy. [188] It’s not clear which of these strategies is more impactful.

Social change vs. food technology

Explanation: Should we focus on social change, such as activism and marketing of a new technology, or on developing better animal-free food technology, such as through mechanical and tissue engineering? Many resources of the animal advocacy movement, such as a dedicated college graduate with a degree in tissue engineering, are clearly better suited for one strategy or the other, but we face a dilemma with less-specialized resources, such as money.

Arguments for social change

Food technology seems to mostly go through monotonic progress, i.e. we mostly have better — or at least not worse — technology as we used to except in extreme cases like societal collapse or government-mandated destruction of research findings . In contrast, social change can move backwards, i.e. attitudes and human behavior could become worse than they used to be . This suggests that work on social change is more likely to affect the direction of the future, e.g. whether animal farming ever ends, than work on improving food technology. [189]

The importance of this argument is affected by how you weigh long-term versus short-term impacts . If you care more about short-term impact, then the direction of future progress matters less.

There is more private interest in technology because it’s more strongly associated with short-term corporate profits, suggesting it’s more likely to happen without animal advocates. Current animal-free foods are — surprisingly to some — still not very popular despite their arguably high quality. This suggests that quality matters less. There is evidence from one experiment that even if new, highly meat-like animal-free foods become as cheap or cheaper than comparable animal products, they may still be unpopular, [190] though reported preferences before a product is on market may not reflect actual consumption decisions. Some researchers, such as those at the Open Philanthropy Project and Animal Charity Evaluators, are skeptical about cellular agriculture products getting to market in the near future. [191][192] This suggests that we might need to depend on social change to help farmed animals, at least in the near future . Reviews of historical social movements suggest that social change has followed the efforts of many social movement organizations. [193] There is some historical evidence for activism as an important driver of technology adoption. Positive news coverage seemed to encourage positive public opinion of nuclear power in Germany. [194] The Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign in the 2010s, which “campaigned for new federal rules on coal plants and subsidies for renewables, and organized communities to oppose new coal plants and shutter old ones,” seems to have been successful in reducing US coal production and encouraging the adoption of other technologies. [195] There is some historical evidence that social, regulatory, and economic factors can delay or reverse the adoption of a profitable new technology. GMO researchers, for example, felt confident that GMOs would spread rapidly once developed, improving the sustainability and quality of the global food system. However, GM foods were rejected or blocked in major world markets like Europe and Africa, and today GMOs have failed to spread widely or to dramatically improve the global agricultural system. [196]

Arguments for food technology

In the same vein as the first argument above, t here are some ways for technology to affect the direction of the far future e ven if there is monotonically increasing technological progress . [197]

The importance of this argument is affected by how you weigh long-term versus short-term impacts . If you care more about short-term impact, then the direction of future progress matters less. One example is that if we think highly-advanced artificial intelligence or other advanced technology will arrive soon and take control of the universe, the values of society at the time of arrival might be very important, such that we just want to improve values as much as possible as quickly as possible because advocates’ ability to effect change would stop when the artificial intelligence arrives. And some technology m ight offer a quicker improvement to society’s values than social change, even if in the long run the social change might result in more significant or more robust value improvements . Another example is that speeding up animal-free food technology could result in social change, e.g. once people stop eating animals they might subsequently care more about them, and achieving this quickly frees up modern animal advocacy efforts to do more to change attitudes in further ways, e.g. by helping people care about non-anthropogenic suffering.

The importance of this argument is affected by how much you think we’re in a “golden age” of animal advocacy. If you think there will be much less animal advocacy, say, 100 years from now, then hastening technological progress in order to take advantage of this opportunity to multiply our impact (e.g. there’s a friendlier political climate, more advocates eager to help with projects), which we won’t have after the golden age, could matter much more. Animal-free products may need to be the same as or extremely similar to their animal-based counterparts before society is at a comparable point to other social movements where we’re ready to successfully push for changes to production.

Technological work could leverage private interest from corporations, investors, and entrepreneurs (resources that are otherwise unavailable to the movement), e.g. if you did the early-stage research, you could count on others to finish it and commercialize the product if you showed them it was a promising opportunity. [198] Social change might be less tractable, partly because it’s harder to measure one’s progress. It might be prohibitively challenging to convince others to make a significant change like switching many of the foods they eat [199][200] or adjusting their identities to become antispeciesist, so what’s most needed could be to make going vegan or opposing harm to animals require less of a transition cost for people (e.g. with better plant-based meats). Arguably technology has been more neglected, [201] perhaps due in part to some animal advocates thinking that if they just show the public how animals are treated and offer solid ethical arguments, people will change. Moral circles may trend towards a setpoint, and if so it seems like that’s most likely a point that includes the most powerful beings and excludes those whose inclusion would not increase the society’s power, or in other words excludes those who are more of a burden and cost more resources to care for than they contribute to the selfish interests of the powerful. At present that most powerful group is humans, or at least many humans, and though we’ve historically expanded the circle to include more humans, further expansion to beings like chickens, fish, and grasshoppers doesn’t reap the same benefits to powerful humans like the economic progress seen with women’s empowerment and the decreased violent conflict seen with increased cooperation between ethnic groups. Therefore, expanding humanity’s moral circle beyond humanity may be very challenging and as such technological solutions to nonhuman suffering may be more tractable. Seeking to spread one’s own values may increase the likelihood of others’ spreading different or opposite values. [202][203] Businesses and academic environments (which are usually where technology development occurs) seem to be more efficient than activist environments, especially grassroots, because activists spend so much overhead on community maintenance. For example, because activists often have more overlap between their social circles and professional circles, so those professional circles tend to be more casual, activists end up dealing with more interpersonal issues with time that could be otherwise spent on direct work.

Activist environments might be beneficial in some ways, such as more camaraderie and dedication that allows them to better endure setbacks like a failed policy campaign or slow adoption of animal-free foods.

[meta] Farmed animal vs. wild animals vs. general antispeciesism focus

Explanation: Should we focus on farmed animals, wild animals, or general antispeciesism in our messaging? General antispeciesism could mean anything from a message of, “Animals have feelings like us. Don’t be cruel to them,” to “Discriminating against certain species is just as bad as discriminating against certain races or genders.” The stronger versions of antispeciesism are favored more in the EAA community as the message we should emphasize in our advocacy, so this post will focus on them.

Farmed animal focus General antispeciesism Wild animal focus Scale 3 1 2 Neglectedness 2 2 1 Clear call to action 1 2 3 Avoids preservationism 2 1 1

1 = most promising in terms of this criterion[204]

Scale of the issue

General antispeciesism Wild animal focus Farmed animal focus

Explanation: General antispeciesism arguably includes all animals,[205][206] not just farmed or wild, even though discussing the plight of wild or farmed animals could raise concern for other populations. There are approximately 2*10^11 farmed animals alive at any time and 10^13 to 10^15 wild birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians and fish, plus many more bugs and other potentially sentient creatures.[207][208]

Neglectedness of the idea

Wild animal focus General antispeciesism, farmed animal focus

Explanation: Wild animals currently have very little advocacy on their behalf, at least for large-scale intervention to benefit individual animals.[209] There are people advocating for the preservation of certain species, such as pandas and elephants, and people helping individuals at a small-scale, such as wildlife rehabilitation programs. Some large animal rights organizations, such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) use general antispeciesist messaging, though it is still neglected under a sufficiently strict definition.[210] Some large organizations, including PETA, Compassion in World Farming, Animals Australia, and Humane Society of the United States advocate for farmed animals. These mainstream organizations achieve substantial media attention.

Similarly, there are reasons to expect cruelty to farmed and other domestic animals to decline without our intervention — at least, this seems more inevitable than proper assistance being provided to wild animals.[211][212]

Clear call to action

Farmed animal focus General antispeciesism Wild animal focus

Explanation: People affect farmed animals every day with their food choices, so changing those behaviors is a relatively clear call to action. Also, farmed animal advocates are already engaged in a variety of ongoing institutional tactics which people can be asked to support. General antispeciesism could include these calls to action, but given its broadness, its calls to action are less closely tied to the message. A wild animal focus has less clear calls to action, but still some, such as donating to organizations working on the issue, conducting further research, and helping individual wild animals, e.g. at rehabilitation centers.

Divergence from preservation arguments and association with preservationist ideas

Wild animal focus, general antispeciesism Farmed animal focus

Explanation: EAAs tend to care more about the wellbeing of sentient individuals than the preservation of nonsentient entities such as landscapes and ecosystems. Environmental arguments against animal agriculture are common, and modern environmentalism is often grounded more in preservation than wellbeing, so a farmed animal focus runs a risk of furthering that preservationist ideology relative to a wellbeing-focused perspective.[213]

Unclear direction: Tractability of spreading the idea

Explanation: Helping farmed animals is probably a more established cause in mainstream discourse as measured by, say, number of articles on the topic in major news outlets.[214] Similarly, there seems to have been more rapid growth in farmed animal concern and discussion of the problem than explicit mentions of antispeciesm or reducing wild animal suffering. Antispeciesism is limited somewhat in tractability by its abstract nature. For people to accept that we should help wild animals, they need some concern for those animals as well as a willingness to take action against harms that happen in nature, which is difficult for many people to accept.[215][216] One counter-consideration is that people regularly participate in farmed animal cruelty by eating animal products, while they don’t participate in wild animal suffering, at least in a similarly direct way. If farmed animal advocacy is closely related to the promotion of animal-free food technology, then preferences for naturalness may be a substantial barrier here too.[217] There is some anecdotal evidence that attendees of antispeciesist lectures accept the arguments for antispeciesism, indicating tractability.[218] Lecturers on farmed and wild animal advocacy also report attendees saying they are convinced by the arguments, though Oscar Horta notes that in his presentations, the discussion of veganism (which is not necessarily synonymous with discussion of farmed animals — see the individual vs. institutional change section) is the most contentious.[219]

Unclear direction: Relatively strong appeal to intellectuals

Explanation: Because antispeciesism is a more abstract, sophisticated idea it could have greater appeal to intellectuals relative to its appeal to the general population.

Unclear direction: Alignment with utilitarianism

Explanation: When people hear about or discuss farmed animal welfare, they usually focus on the wellbeing of individuals, either in terms of their suffering or the dissatisfaction of their preferences. Wild animal advocacy is usually individual-centric, but people often assume helping wild animals involves pursuing goals other than directly utilitarian ones, such as the preservation of a species. General antispeciesism is sometimes advocated for in utilitarian terms, but the concept of not discriminating across species doesn’t come loaded with a specific vision of how other individuals should be treated other than just that it shouldn’t depend on species identity.

Unclear direction: Association of antispeciesism with social justice and left-wing politics

Explanation: Antispeciesism in particular comes across as a very left-wing idea given its association with anti-racism, anti-sexism, etc. This could be a good or bad thing depending on how much you think animal advocates should focus on appealing to the mainstream left relative to a bipartisan audience. A possible counterargument here is that left-wingers might be particularly defensive about the inclusion of animals in their discussions because they want to avoid diluting their focus on oppressed humans or because they have developed their identities more around human rights than around general nondiscrimination.[220] Some EAA researchers think that counterargument is quite compelling.

[meta] Long-term vs. short-term focus

Explanation: Should we give more weight to long-term outcomes or short-term outcomes? A useful place to draw the line between the short- and long-term is at the end of animal farming, e.g. when humanity has such advanced technology that we no longer eat animals simply because they are inefficient ways to get meat, milk, and eggs. Of course, it’s really more of a spectrum than a line, so you should consider these arguments as they apply to more concrete decisions.

Arguments for long-term focus

The scale is astronomically larger. For instance, some suggest we​ could ​fill​ ​the​ ​universe​ ​with​ at least 10^38 human minds per second, a number of sentient beings that vastly outweighs the approximately 7.5 billion humans alive today. [221] Even the number of bugs alive today is likely not more than 10^20, and they live much shorter lives than humans. [222]

These estimates based on potential size of long-term civilization are optimistic in the sense that humanity might not continue that long.

Fewer resources (labor, money, etc.) are being used to help animals, or other nonhuman sentient beings, who might exist in the far future. Short-term good might backfire in the long-run, e.g. promoting vegetarianism — especially for environmental reasons — could lead society to care more about preserving species and ecosystems at the cost of the interests of individual animals, [223][224] but long-run strategies seem not to have comparable risks of short-term harm . It seems likely that thoughtful actors could have encouraged, discouraged, or otherwise influenced some of the important trajectory changes in human history. [225]

Arguments for short-term focus

Short-term outcomes tend to be more tractable , [226] or at least more measurably so. Achieving multiple short-term outcomes involves shorter feedback loops that activists can use to optimize their strategies. There is more uncertainty about the ability to help animals in the long-term, especially in that there are more crucial considerations about the long-term that could not only affect the magnitude of impact but also its sign. Important trajectory changes in human history seem partly caused by long-term and indirect factors that are hard for thoughtful actors to influence. [227]

Unclear direction

The tractability of moral circle expansion (a long-term outcome of interest to EAA) compared to other forms of social change is unclear. [228] In some cases, strategies that are among the most cost-effective in the short run may also be some of the most impactful in the long run. For example, corporate welfare campaigns have frequently been found to be cost-effective on short timeframes; [229] if one also believes that such reforms generate substantial momentum for further moral circle expansion, then they could also be highly cost-effective on long timeframes. This is evidence in favor of strategies with both short- and long-term effects. Two analyses of the deaths and retirements of national leaders and outcomes such as economic growth and political system tentatively suggest a relationship, but the evidence is unclear. This could be taken as evidence that long-term change is tractable, since thoughtful actors can aim to become leaders themselves or focus their advocacy efforts on those leaders. However, if the leaders are hard to influence, then this may instead reduce tractability. [230]

[meta] Social movements vs. EAA randomized controlled trials (RCTs) vs. intuition/speculation/anecdotes vs. external findings

Explanation: Which type of evidence has been most useful for answering questions like those in this document?

Social movement evidence comes from examining the strategies employed by movements along with the potential[231] outcomes of those movements, such as the US environmental policy changes in the decade following the publication of Silent Spring in 1962.

EAA RCTs are done specifically in the field of EAA, such as the Mercy For Animals online ads study.

Intuition is hard to define, but means a judgment made by an individual that doesn’t rely on evidence they can cite directly. For example, a graphic designer might think one company logo idea looks better than another, but not be able to describe exactly why. If this designer has decades of experience seeing logos succeed and fail, we should probably take their intuition seriously. Speculation is similarly challenging, but I’m using it to refer more to logical reasoning than a single, untraceable judgment. For example, we can speculate that we should focus on animal wellbeing over consumer health when promoting animal-free foods because having a wider moral circle seems beneficial for the long-term wellbeing of sentient beings. There’s a chain of reasoning here, but it’s not really based on specific, empirical evidence. Anecdotes, while distinct from intuition and speculation, have many similarities as evidence so these are all considered together.

External findings are often from RCTs, but also general findings in psychology, sociology, or other relevant fields field, such as the identifiable victim effect.

# of outcomes Context focus Variable isolation Sample size EAA RCTs 3 1 1 2 External findings 2 3 2 1 Intuition/speculation/anecdotes 1 2 3 3 Social Movements 1 3 3 4

1 = most desirable

Accounting for the most outcomes, e.g. short-term and long-term effects, direct and indirect effects

Social movements, intuition/speculation/anecdotes External findings EAA RCTs

Explanation: If we look back on a social movement, such as the children’s rights movement of the 1800s, we can take a broad, comprehensive look at outcomes that the movement might have affected, such as the laws governing children’s working conditions in the 1900s. Since most EAAs care about sentient beings that exist a long time from now, and those that are less directly related to our advocacy, accounting for these outcomes is useful.

One’s intuition can be built up from looking at history, having long experiences in one’s own life, or listening to other advocates with their own experiences. In the latter two cases, you probably get a sense of long-term outcomes, but not as many indirect outcomes. Speculation can also account for a variety of outcomes, but it tends to be quite challenging to speculate about long-term and indirect ones. Admittedly, the ranking of speculation is unclear and “Accounting for the most outcomes” might not be a very useful metric for evaluating it.

External findings are often from psychology, such as the identifiable victim effect and the backfire effect, where they have undergone substantial testing in a variety of contexts — though keep in mind that many psychological findings do not replicate, so it’s best to rely on findings with a large number of varied studies weighing in their favor. Even well-studied findings, however, are often only about a small number of short-term, direct outcomes,[232] and it requires speculation to use these findings to estimate other outcomes.

EAA RCTs usually measure a limited number of direct, short-term outcomes, such as self-reported diet change a few weeks after seeing an online veg ad. It is possible to expand this scope somewhat with strategies like tracking subjects for years or measuring outcomes at a macro-level such as a college cafeteria, but given the limited budget and number of researchers in EAA, it’s unlikely the scope will be as wide as external findings, intuition/speculation, or social movements.[233]

Focusing on the context where we’ll use the results

EAA RCTs Intuition/speculation /anecdotes Social movements, external findings

Explanation: EAA RCTs are done in the specific context we want to understand better: animal advocacy. The context of intuition/speculation varies, but it’s often based in EAA itself. Social movement evidence and external findings are necessarily from different contexts, though they can be more applicable if the conclusions persist across a range of contexts.

Isolating the variable of interest

EAA RCTs External findings Social movements, intuition/speculation /anecdotes

Explanation: EAA RCTs and external findings based in RCTs are able to experimentally control for the variable of interest. Some external findings are at least partially based in non-RCT results,[234] and social movements[235] and intuition/speculation/anecdotes often can isolate the variable of interest by controlling for other variables. However, as with any observational evidence, it’s quite challenging to avoid risks of lurking variables.

Sample size

External findings EAA RCTs Intuition/speculation/anecdotes Social movements

Explanation: External findings are often based on a number of experiments or other studies across a variety of experiments. However, one should be cautious about the presentation of “established” effects that actually lack reproducibility, especially in recently criticized fields like psychology. Still, EAA RCTs will probably have even lower total sample sizes due to a lack of financial resources and researcher interest, at least in their current state and the near future.



Intuition/speculation/anecdotes vary tremendously in sample size based on how much experience we have in the area of interest, from hundreds of data points when it comes to one-on-one communication to likely very little when it comes to how societies behave.

Social movements are pretty clearly the lowest on this metric due to the small number of data points available, which are even fewer when we consider the limited research done in this area so far. Reviews of historical social movements have, so far, tended to focus on movements with in different categories than the farmed animal movement.[236]

Less explored questions

There are many debates we hope to discuss in the future and add to this post. These include:

When working on policy change, should we focus on changing corporations or governments (legislative or judicial)?

When discussing the plight of farmed animals, should we use terms like “rights” and “autonomy” or “welfare” and “suffering”?

Does making small asks, such as for someone to go vegan one day a week or to sign a petition, increase or decrease the likelihood of further action? I.e. is moral licensing or moral consistency the stronger effect?

Should we focus on a model of campaigning and social change that uses few large (i.e. triggering) events or more small events?

Should we focus on audiences that have shown more receptiveness to animal messages in the past, or audiences that are resistant and therefore possibly more neglected and impactful on a per-person basis?

Should we focus more on the ideology of eating animals (i.e. carnism), of discriminating against certain species (i.e. speciesism), or is focusing on defeating an ideology like carnism or speciesism less effective in general?

When we evaluate the individual impact of interventions, should we prioritize attitude or behavior change?

When, if ever, can violence (or other aggressive illegal actions like property destruction) be an effective tactic? [237]

Should we focus on “animal farming” or “factory farming” as the institution we oppose?

Should animal advocacy organizations encourage centralization or grassroots autonomy?

Which interventions should we favor? Currently, this page only covers foundational questions, i.e. those that stretch across different interventions to help animals, e.g. whether to advocate reducetarianism or veganism affects how we design leaflets, webpages, online ads, etc. In the future, we might cover the strongest arguments for and against each such intervention, but this would be a significant undertaking. If you are interested in the existing work in this area, you can get one perspective with Animal Charity Evaluators’ intervention reports .

[1] Another potentially confusing term. We just mean it as questions whose answers indirectly inform decisions of which interventions to undertake to help animals (e.g. handing out veg leaflets, giving lectures in schools on caring for animals). The reasons we’re focusing on foundational questions are (i) limited research staff time, meaning we have to restrict our scope, (ii) it’s probably better to start at the more foundational level; if we started with discussions of intervention tactics, we’d be referring to foundational questions without having associated write-ups.

[2] The Oxford English Dictionary’s first definition of evidence is “the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid.” We use this definition, which does not require the evidence to be particularly strong, as opposed to a definition like “something that furnishes proof.” In other words, we consider any information that makes one empirical hypothesis more likely than the alternative; we are not restricting ourselves to evidence that leads to high confidence in a certain hypothesis.

[3] Note that for the topic of confrontation, as of October 2016, there are now a few blog posts by advocates debating confrontation that can be used as references. However, it seems useful to aggregate the arguments therein. One advocate wrote a summary blog post along those lines for that debate, but a more general reference is probably still useful.

[4] We very approximately define “significant majority agreement among EAA researchers” as 80% agreement among the 20 people who we believe have most thoroughly considered these issues. In June 2017, we conducted a survey to gauge opinions on the top-level questions in this survey, but we did not ask about each piece of evidence on this webpage. See this blog post for more information.

[5] We very approximately define “significant majority agreement among EAA researchers” as 80% agreement among the 20 people who we believe have most thoroughly considered these issues. Our claims were originally based on best guesses, but in June 2017, we surveyed the 21 such people and this was true among the 15 respondents to our full survey. See this blog post for more information.

[6] We don’t know of any survey or experimental data directly on this question, but there is some related survey evidence. “Here are a couple of results from within surveys (not focused on wild animal issues) that suggest that people assign more moral value to non-sentient environmental systems and biodiversity than they do sentient individuals… 1) A paper on “Moral Expansiveness: Examining Variability in the Extension of the Moral World” asked participants to rate 30 different entities by the “moral standing” that they deserved. “Low-sentience animals” (chickens, fish, and bees) were deemed by participants to deserve lower moral standing than non-sentient “environmental targets.” These groups had mean scores of 2.64 and 3.53 respectively on a scale from 0 to 9. By comparison, plants had a mean score of 2.52, stigmatised groups of humans (homosexuals, mentally challenged individuals, and refugees) had 5.35 and family/friends had 8.90. 2) A talk by Stefan Schubert on the psychology of existential risk and long-termism refers to a survey which found that a clear majority of respondents were more concerned about the loss of individual human lives than the difference between most dying and all dying (i.e., they weren’t too worried about extinction). But this was reversed when the same question was asked about zebras.” - Jamie Harris, “Survey data on the moral value of sentient individuals compared to non-sentient environmental systems”

[7] “Yes, the integrity of local ecosystems could benefit sentient beings, but we should discuss environmental issues in terms of the impact on sentient beings, not simply on the preservation of nonsentient entities like ecosystems or biodiversity, and we should ensure the social change we create is promoting our own values as much as possible, rather than related values that overlap in some, but not all, contexts.” - Jacy Reese Anthis, The Animal-Free Food Movement Should Focus Primarily on Animal Protection Arguments

[8] “Some animal supporters are environmentalists because they think ecological preservation best advances animal welfare, while others hold an additional moral view that nature is intrinsically valuable. It's troubling that spreading the animal movement risks creating more defenders of wildlife who may cause more animal suffering than they prevent. Plausibly the animal movement is still net positive, especially if future wisdom helps to correct its present oversights, but I think it's safest if we push explicitly on the cause of reducing wild-animal suffering -- both among animal activists and others who are open-minded.” - Brian Tomasik, Does the Animal-Rights Movement Encourage Wilderness Preservation?

[9] “Additionally, new studies or changing features of human health (e.g. a rise in diseases that are more prevalent in plant-based eaters) could change the evidence base and make our favored arguments for an animal-free food system less compelling.” - Jacy Reese Anthis, The Animal-Free Food Movement Should Focus Primarily on Animal Protection Arguments

[10] “While veg advocacy is intended to change people’s diets and reduce the suffering of farmed animals, it could have important effects on whether people would take steps to reduce the suffering of wild animals.” - Luke Hecht, Wild Animal Suffering Survey Report

[11] “An environmental focus could cause people to harm wild animals, such as by painfully killing members of invasive species in order to preserve the integrity of local ecosystems.” - Jacy Reese Anthis, The Animal-Free Food Movement Should Focus Primarily on Animal Protection Arguments

[12] “It also seems to be the case that animal arguments have been most compelling in creating highly impactful animal-free food leaders, and creating more of these leaders could be very important for pushing our movement forward.” - Jacy Reese Anthis, The Animal-Free Food Movement Should Focus Primarily on Animal Protection Arguments

[13] “Environmental and animal protection argument can better inspire moral outrage than human health, because they involve harm to outside entities rather than just harm to the consumer making the decision. The health argument could be framed as the animal farming industry harming or infringing upon the rights of consumers, such as through deceptive marketing, but the environmental and animal protection arguments still seem more clearly associated with this sort of external harm in the eyes of the public.” - Jacy Reese Anthis, The Animal-Free Food Movement Should Focus Primarily on Animal Protection Arguments

[14] In one US survey, 65% of respondents agreed with the statement: “I have some discomfort with the way animals are used in the food industry.” Another survey found that 51% or fewer in each of the 5 surveyed countries agreed that, “Eating meat directly contributes to the suffering of animals.” The framing of these questions may heavily influence the results, particularly whether responsibility is placed on the survey respondents.

[15] “There is very little disagreement outside the industry itself about the intense animal suffering involved in modern animal farming. However, there is substantial disagreement about whether a vegan, or even a vegetarian diet, is better for human health. … Similarly, while there is much agreement that many modern factory farms are very environmentally damaging, some environmentalists think that farming some animals, such as grass-fed cows, waste-fed pigs, or insects, is actually more environmentally friendly than eating plants.” - Jacy Reese Anthis, The Animal-Free Food Movement Should Focus Primarily on Animal Protection Arguments

[16] We very approximately define “significant majority agreement” as 80% agreement among the 20 people who we believe have most thoroughly considered these issues. Our claims were originally based on best guesses, but in June 2017, we surveyed the 21 such people and this was true among the 15 respondents to our full survey.

[17] “Some might disagree with me because environmental, human health, or other topics have more public interest right now than animal protection, so they think emphasizing these benefits of animal-free foods could lead to more public enthusiasm and quicker public adoption. For example, one might be more likely to get news stories of a new animal-free food company if the press release is written with an environmental focus. People might also self-report health and the environment as more important factors in their consumption.” - Jacy Reese Anthis, The Animal-Free Food Movement Should Focus Primarily on Animal Protection Arguments

[18] “Economic arguments may have made sympathetic politicians more able to support abolition and emancipation, particularly as the primary arguments in favor of the Slave trade and Slavery were economic. The failure of Slavery to Christianize Slaves was also a criticism of it… Note though that moral arguments heavily and consistently dominated both petitions and antislavery advocates’ speeches in Parliament. Even when using economic arguments, advocates were explicit that if Britain did stand to lose something by giving up Slavery, it bore the responsibility for the debt, not slaves… Secondary motivations do not seem to have made much of an appearance in parliamentary debates, however, so a more detailed review of parliamentary records is required to determine how important they were as motivations and/or as arguments.” - Kelly Witwicki, Social Movement Lessons From the British Antislavery Movement

[19] In this context, we’re considering “benefits” to include outcomes beyond the animal advocacy movement, such as reducing sexism. Note that this could be a harm if one disagrees with the goals of the movement one is working with.

[20] “The evangelical community has been heavily involved with the anti-abortion movement… the early anti-abortion movement was heavily dominated by Catholics and the Catholic Church provided organizational stability even when the support of other groups fluctuated… Although not synonymous with the anti-abortion movement, some organizations and individuals associated with the Christian Right have been welcomed by the Republican Party.” - Jamie Harris, Social Movement Lessons From the US Anti-Abortion Movement

[21] “[W]e estimate an ordered logistic regression model to explain policy variations between 48 countries. As dependent variable we use the Animal Protection Index, a country ranking based on policy strictness. As independent variables we use GDP per capita, Polity Score, Civic Activism Index, and number of animal protection organizations. Results suggest that countries with stronger democratic institutions and more civil society groups focused on animal protection are likely to have stricter animal protection policies. For economic development and broad civil society strength we do not find significant effects.” - Alexander Holst and Pim Martens, Determinants of Animal Protection Policy: A Cross-Country Empirical Study

[23] “Wilberforce was highly conservative in most issues, while Clarkson supported French Jacobins — an affinity he downplayed — and believed women should be able to take a role in public affairs; Quakers and Anglicans were strongly socially divided, and Sharp was hostile towards his Quaker and Catholic allies’ faiths, but the coalition of Quaker and Anglican antislavery advocates on the issue of slavery was important; and antislavery leaders’ views even on the role of race in social order varied substantially. These critical players would have been lost to the movement if they insisted on only working towards their shared goal with people who shared their other priorities and views.” - Kelly Witwicki, Social Movement Lessons From the British Antislavery Movement

[24] In this context, we’re considering “harms” to include outcomes beyond the animal advocacy movement, such as effects on sexism. Note that harming another movement could be a benefit if one disagrees with the goals of the movement one is working with.

[25] “Association with Catholicism may have damaged the anti-abortion movement’s credibility among some non-Catholics. In 1988-9, the Christian Right suffered several setbacks, seemingly due, at least in part, to its failure to build a wide base of support. The influence of evangelicals may have led to the use of more polarizing messaging. The coexistence of separate (otherwise sometimes politically divided) Christian groups within the anti-abortion movement may have encouraged disagreements on tactics, which may have contributed to the failure of legislative efforts on one or more occasions.” - Jamie Harris, Social Movement Lessons From the US Anti-Abortion Movement

[26] “In this article, we empirically test explanations for variation in support for animal rights at the individual level and across the United States. We draw on a combination of national public opinion surveys and cross-sectional data on animal rights laws from the fifty US states. We find a strong connection between recognition of human rights and animal rights both at the individual attitude level and at the US state policy level. Our results demonstrate that support for animal rights strongly links to support for disadvantaged or marginalized human populations, including LGBT groups, racial minorities, undocumented immigrants, and the poor.” - Yon Soo Park and Benjamin Valentino, Animals Are People Too: Explaining Variation in Respect for Animal Rights

[27] “The action taken by these activists was radical and dangerous: William Lloyd Garrison’s public burning of the US constitution, which he called a “covenant with death”, almost left him dead after a lynch mob attempted to murder him (ironically he was saved by the police, who seized him and threw him in jail for his protest). Goodman writes that “Abolitionism grew, by contrast [to the ACS], in the teeth of elite hostility, intense popular prejudice, and physical violence, and it required an exceptional organizational and ideological commitment.”



Despite these obstacles, however, the radical abolitionist movement was extremely successful, growing from four to 1348 independent chapters in just six years - a 34,000% increase in activism (Goodman, 124). This exceptional growth coupled with a strong message and provocative activism had extreme influence on public dialogue and political action on slavery, pushing public tension to ultimately to the brink of the Civil War.” - Brian Burns, An Opiate to the Conscience: Welfarism as a Step to Animal Liberation

[28] “The willingness of [National Womans Party] pickets to be arrested, their campaign for recognition as political prisoners rather than as criminals, and their acts of civil disobedience in jail shocked the nation and brought attention and support to their cause. Through constant agitation, the NWP effectively compelled President Wilson to support a federal woman suffrage amendment. Similar pressure on national and state legislators led to the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920.” - Library of Congress, Tactics and Techniques of the National Womans Party Suffrage Campaign

[29] “The story of the Greensboro Four spread far and wide, far beyond the city of Greensboro. And then suddenly, almost inexplicably, the wave became a cascade - a cascade so wide and powerful that it would sweep over the country in a tide of direct action.



By the end of the campaign, over 100,000 people all across America would participate in sit-ins, despite the risk of arrest, beatings, or even assassination.” - Direct Action Everywhere, Why Direct Action

[30] “This stagnation was in stark opposition to the great success of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), which grew to 250,000 members in just five years from 1833 to 1838. The A