When a social movement as powerful as the one rising forth for the humane treatment of animals in our food chain creates an opportunity to nurture that good will, the smart executive will not only embrace it, but will help lead the way.

Executives who are part of the "old, inhumane economic order," must "get a new business plan or get out of the way," Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States, writes in his new book, "The Humane Economy: How Innovators and Enlightened Consumers Are Transforming the Lives of Animals." "You're already in danger of being too late."

The "you" in those weaponized sentences are the executives, investors and even the employees of the multiple industries Mr. Pacelle addresses in his book: pet retailers, circuses, marine parks, lab scientists and — of particular relevance to the readers of this website — foodservice and the animal agriculturalists who supply it with meat, dairy and eggs.

The timing indeed seems right for such a book. Almost every month now there is a major story about the further disruption of one animal-dependent industry after another. Just weeks ago, the Ringling Brothers Circus conducted its final performance with elephants, a year ahead of the already-scheduled discontinuation of the act. SeaWorld — historically intransigent to reform — announced that it would no longer breed orcas, effectively signaling the end of its killer whale shows. Chimpanzees are on their way out of laboratories in the United States, and when such giants as McDonald's and Walmart turn toward new approaches to better treat the animals who account for so much of their sales, there can be little denial that a new era is already well underway.

A call from the consumer

In short, diners are calling for improvements in the lives of the animals who share our world, and brands and their supply chains are hearing them and responding with reforms that even a couple of years ago would have seemed like Hail Mary wishes at the end of a long list of goals for the animal-welfare movement.

Major brands, for example, have set deadlines for their suppliers to move to cage-free environments. Gestation stalls and other means of extreme confinement for pigs? On their way out. Billions of dollars of venture capital are helping calcify the young bones of a fascinating new industry whose overarching goal is to develop in vitro meat and meat-substitute products that will allow consumers to enjoy the unique textures and flavors of meat without causing one sentient creature to wince in discomfort.

Even in the month or so since the book's release, Wendy's has announced an expanded trial of a new meatless burger, joining Burger King in offering a humane alternative to the standard ground-beef patty. And The Wall Street Journal reported that Whole Foods and Starbucks are moving away from using chickens that have been engineered to be so plump that the unnatural weight can break their legs, causing the obese birds to depend on their wings in order to walk.

Why now?

Compassion for animals is not new. Ancient religions express concern for the treatment of animals, including the Torah, which proscribes a ceremonial gentle approach to the slaughter of creatures used for food. More recently, when Americans were educated in the 1980s about the nasty, brutish and short lives of veal cows, consumption of the product dropped from its per-capita high of 8.6 pounds to just .3 pounds per year.

Three modernities, I believe, have fueled the change: timing, technology and social media.

1. Timing. Arguing that race relations in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world are a settled matter would be ridiculous, even enraging to many. Doubtless, too, few in the LGBT community would agree that their goal for complete civil parity has been reached.

But it seems that with social movements it is not necessary for the meaningful maturation of one to be achieved for the infancy of another to begin. Now, with those two major intra-species conflicts in address, the moral arc of the universe described by Martin Luther King Jr. — long but always bending toward justice — has the bandwidth to include the next most egregious set of rights violations, which the individuals who comprise the American market appear to have identified in our utilitarian exploitation of animals.

Furthermore, as the boldness of pioneers in any movement empowers them to be first to the corner with signs and first to the politician's desk with signatures, their self-outing as adherents to the movement emboldens others to slap on bumper stickers and send emails to their own representatives.

2. Technology. The progressive miniaturization and enhanced connectivity of recording devices have enabled organizations like The HSUS, PETA and others to infiltrate factory farms and other animal industrial complexes in order to document more thoroughly and more quickly the abuses than ever before. The power of these images is well known and feared by the perpetrators of the harm. "Ag-gag" bills—legislation designed to criminalize whistleblowing in the agricultural industry — have been proposed with mixed results in multiple state capitols. Ag-gag advocates know that transparency is among their greatest threats, and they spend millions to guard against it.

3. Social media. A movement must have a message, and a message must have a medium. Perhaps no other cause benefits as much from the power of social media as the one for improved animal welfare. Hundreds if not thousands of large and small organizations exist to proselytize across Instagram, Twitter and Facebook in particular. The surreptitiously-collected photos and videos from inside industrial agriculture facilities explode virally across the networks, as do mesmerizing depictions of animals forming inter-species friendships and demonstrating great capacities for emotion, reasoning and tool use.

The latter convinces more people every day that the difference between human animals and non-human animals is not a difference of type but degree. Increasingly consumers see that there is not a binary cleft between the restaurant executive and the animals for whom she is responsible, but a continuum; not an either/or, but a more/less in terms of intellect and the capacity to experience pain, sadness, fear and grief. And evermore studies demonstrate to the open-minded that we and the rest of the animal kingdom stand closer together than the scientists of the Enlightenment suspected —when the minds of the day argued we were uniquely inspirited and non-human animals were naught but automatons, circuits conducting mere electrical impulses through what amounted to no more than a robot of flesh.

What's an operator to do?

Restaurant executives indeed do stand at a threshold, facing an industry at a rare, critical pivot point. As Mr. Pacelle details in "The Humane Economy," CEOs and their boards in some of the most powerful companies in the United States are doing the math and realizing an unstoppable force is bearing down upon them, and that to avoid being crushed, they must move with it.

Early adopters — those who modify the treatment of their animals and embrace the inevitability that their menus need to include meat substitutes—will earn the greater share of loyalty and profits. Those who don't will eventually need to catch up. The millennials contain the greatest percentage of vegetarians and vegans of any generation yet—almost double the number who count themselves among the boomers. And with other issues supporting a meat-less or even a less-meat society — environmental well-being and personal health, for example — it's difficult to see those numbers shrinking as millennials and their children wrest the market from their predecessors.

More than hunches bear this out. Walmart conducted a survey of its customers and found that "77 percent of its customers will ‘increase their trust' and 66 percent will 'increase their likelihood to shop from a retailer' that ensures humane treatment of livestock.'" A 2007 poll commissioned by the American Farm Bureau Federation and conducted by faculty at Oklahoma State University—both heavily vested in animal agriculture — found that 95 percent of Americans "believe farm animals should be well cared for."

In addition, "Nearly 90 percent believe food companies that require their suppliers to treat their animals well are 'doing the right thing,'" according to the "The Humane Economy." Even the World Bank has warned companies to ignore animal welfare expectations at their peril.

Seldom is it the case that doing the right thing results in negative consequences for business. Enterprises — foodservice and those across the spectrum of business — all trade at least on some level on the good will of their customers. And when a social movement as powerful as the one rising forth for the humane treatment of animals in our food chain creates an opportunity to nurture that good will, the smart executive will not only embrace it but will help lead the way.