Happy Veganuary everyone! If you’re a vegan animal activist, congratulations on another year in your journey! If you’re vegan but not an activist, congratulations, and please become active! If you’re not yet vegan, please go vegan now! Now onto the essay.
Every major community has its conflicts and divisions, and the animal advocacy world is no exception. From my perspective, the major fault line of the animal advocacy world is the welfare-rights divide. To put it shortly, welfarist animal advocacy favors incremental changes which improve welfare, even if animals are still subject to great suffering and slaughter. Meanwhile, rights-based animal advocacy favors an abolitionist approach, even if that means potentially losing out on opportunities to improve welfare in the short-term. This is genuinely a hard question to grapple with, one for which may not even have a philosophical answer. It is further complicated by the dynamics of cooperation and conflict between those who have different information, experiences, and interests. So I hope not only to shed some light on the debate itself but also on the contextual factors which may inform the debate. Conflict between the different factions in animal advocacy is necessary, but I believe it may also be good—if we can do it right.
Arguments and (Our Lack of) Facts
Here I will go through the arguments and facts as I understand them.
If we are to collapse the arguments into their consequential dimensions, then the main arguments of both camps go something like this:
Animal rights people argue that you would save more lives by taking what might be called a “door in the face” approach. By standing firmly in a fairly radical position, you extract greater concessions from others and shift norms more than you would if you immediately conceded to a more moderate position. Moreover, they worry that animal welfare policies are actually counterproductive in legitimizing the exploitation and slaughter of animals. That worry is borne out in humane-washing; in my experience, many people (including myself) have been misled to justify consumption of animal products provided they bear labels like “cage free” and “organic.” Worse still, if people substitute some animal products for others, it is likely that this is net negative: people often substitute red meat for chicken, fish, or eggs, which probably results in more lives lost and more suffering. Full veganism cleanly avoids both these complications.
Animal welfare people argue that you would have a greater increase in utility by taking what might be called a “foot in the door” approach. Asking people to do what they can and rewarding them for it still saves lives and/or reduces suffering, and once you’ve successfully persuaded them to take one step toward veganism and rewarded them for it, they might be more inclined to take additional steps. They worry that asking for people to jump straight to abolitionist veganism might alienate many moderates who would otherwise have been sympathetic to the cause and who might have been won over through a more gradual approach. That worry is borne out in the negative reputation veganism and some animal advocacy organizations (like PETA) can have in the popular consciousness—vegans can be seen as too pushy, sanctimonious, extremist, and just plain weird.
There are also compelling narrative arguments for both sides. This is perhaps more obvious for animal rights; we would still think it was horrible if someone killed a human for some instrumental purpose (say, to harvest their organs), even if they did so painlessly, so why would it be different for another animal? They have lives and feelings just like we do which should be granted the same respect that we grant to other humans. I will note that this is actually a pretty radical argument which I think even some vegans take a while to grasp. But the welfarist approach also has a pretty compelling narrative; if billions of humans were about to be tortured to death and you could press a button so that they would be killed in minimal pain, then wouldn’t you desperately wish to press the button rather than rejecting it because it’s not morally ideal?
As I said earlier, this is genuinely a hard question to answer, and I think those of us who disagree with each other should recognize this and give each other grace. That being said, there has been some investigation into many of the claims both sides use to justify their arguments, which I will try to summarize here. Note that I rely primarily on Faunalytics to find these sources.
- Comparing foot-in-the-door vs. door-in-the-face approaches: Anderson (2020) found that asking for reduction elicited both more pledges to reduce consumption and greater overall reduction in consumption; however, a vegetarian/vegan pledges had a higher immediate follow-through rate (i.e., purchasing a meatless meal) than reducetarian pledges did.
- Concerns about humanewashing: a 2020 study by Farm Forward found that 38% of their survey respondents incorrectly believed “cage free” meant chickens were raised continuously on pasture while 47% incorrectly believed it meant chickens had consistent access to outdoors. They concluded that “[h]umane certifications allow producers to promote the illusion of animal well-being while hiding the continued suffering of farm animals” and that “even certifications overseen by independent organizations deceive consumer to some degree.” Seems pretty damning.
- Concerns about substitution: the short answer is that there doesn’t seem to be much conclusive evidence here. A meta-analysis found that on average, animal advocacy interventions don’t result in significant differences, but that heterogeneity in results was high, suggesting that some interventions resulted in increases in chicken/fish/small body consumptions while some others resulted in decreases, but we don’t know exactly which.
- Concerns about backlash effects: while I couldn’t find anything that was specifically about the language of the messaging, there have been a few studies that investigated the effects of protests, particularly disruptive protests, which may serve as a decent proxy. Polanco, Perry, and Anderson (2022) report that being exposed to a video of a disruptive protest was associated with an increase in meat consumption, but the results are at best questionable and at worst misleading. Meanwhile, Ostarek et al. (2024) (full paper here) found that while a disruptive animal rights protest initially sparked more unfavorable opinions towards animal rights (compared to pre-protest baselines), by 6 months later opinions had shifted back towards baseline such that the differences were no longer significant. It’s hard to say from these results, but my guess is that there is a risk of alienating certain groups and tarnishing the vegan reputation, but perhaps not as great a risk as some of us fear.
Before I move further, I should emphasize that we don’t have a ton of research on animal advocacy, and we should be careful in how we interpret the little we have. I think we should take seriously the possibility that labeling schemes are backfiring due to industry efforts and influence, which is a caution for welfarist approaches. But other than that, it’s hard to say whether one form of advocacy is generally superior or inferior to another.
Considering Movement Building
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
— Margaret Mead
And that’s probably not just a platitude.
Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist whose work centers around resistance movements, determined that they tended to follow what was termed the “3.5% rule.” In an analysis of movements from 1900 to 2006, she found that every revolutionary movement which had peak participation of 3.5% of the population succeeded in a revolutionary aim, whether it was to topple a government or achieve independence/autonomy. This is just an observation, not an iron law of physics; and indeed, since then, a movement in Bahrain which had peak participation of 6% of the population failed to topple the government there. But it suggests that if even a small minority of the population is actively pursuing change, they can usually get a lot done.
This ties into an argument that one of my friends gave that’s been really compelling for me, which is that advocacy is about movement building, not just immediate dietary change. If your goal was to convince everyone to become vegan directly, then a more moderate approach makes relative sense. But if your goal is to create a movement of committed activists and use that to effect systemic change, then the calculus shifts. It becomes less costly to alienate people who are on the fence or who are weakly supportive, while it becomes more important that you find or make people who are really committed to the revolution and hone their abilities and motivations. One might object that to have such an activist core, we need a much larger group of vegans and allies to draw from. That might be true, but even so, evidence suggests that general support for animal protection is already quite high. It may then be comparatively more important to build a base of vegans and a core of activists, even if that means trading off a bit on the support of some allies.
Why I’ve Moved Towards Rights-Based Advocacy
You might’ve gotten a sense that I personally favor rights-based advocacy. What’s interesting is that before I was a moderately strong welfarist. I’ve given some relatively reasonable reasons for this, but you might be wondering why I moved towards rights-based advocacy. Yes, the reasons above played a role, but they’re not the full story. What else swayed me?
Perhaps the most major reason is that I believe that people are scared to rock the boat, myself included, and that pisses me off. We are overly sensitive to what others think of us and whether others like us. To a degree, this is sensible; we should try to be likeable where we can, and there is useful information to be gleaned from someone’s opinion of us. But too often, we are too timid to speak and act in certain ways because we are afraid that it will make people angry or make us look stupid.
When I first watched interactions which followed a strictly rights-based approach, I had my doubts. It felt like it was attacking people for not being vegan, even if they were trying or they were part of the way there. But I’ve come to see it differently. In my experience, people who come from the rights-based perspective are often quite careful about the words they use. They relay the terrible facts of the matter and the emotional gravity behind those facts, yes. They emphasize the individual’s role in this atrocity. But there is no blame or character assassination; in fact, these advocates are often quite encouraging towards individuals, telling them that they are capable of doing things they don’t believe they can do.
In this way, they embody what compassion researcher Kristin Neff terms “fierce compassion,” which is something I’m trying to embody more myself. When I talk to non-vegans, particularly ones in my own life, I too often find myself validating the excuses and half-measures they give. I certainly want to laud them for their support and their efforts. But I can also see that they are looking to me for absolution. If I, a vegan, judge them to be doing enough, then they are doing enough. On my side, I don’t want to have to tell them they’re not doing enough because I know it will cause discomfort, both for them and for me. But if I’m being fully honest with myself, I think this is uncomfortably selfish of me. I’m not calling out bad behavior because I’m afraid of the repercussions. I’m afraid of people being angry at me. Again, there are ways to do this; I still think it’s good to emphasize that good people can do bad things. But the things they do are bad. That we must acknowledge.
I think we’ve also conflated initial reactions of anger with a lack of (long-term) success, as suggested by Ostarek et al. (2024). First, we believe it’s the faults of our messaging that make people angry at us. There’s some truth there; some messages will make people angrier than others. But it’s also true that no matter what you do, some people will be angry, especially if you want to do anything that’s more significant than labeling products. Animal rights, particularly for farmed animals, is an issue which by its nature makes us uncomfortable, and for some people, that discomfort expresses itself in anger.
I also think we are too quick to believe that anger is bad. To me, this is to conflate the symptom with the disease. Think about a fever. We automatically associate fevers with bad outcomes to the point where we may take medicines just to reduce fevers. But really, fevers (except very extreme ones) are good. Raising the temperature is part of how the body deals with disease, and a fever is a good sign because it indicates that the body has detected a disease and is responding to it. Perhaps, then, we should reverse our view on anger and other strong emotional responses. After all, the animal suffering caused by factory farming is of the greatest gravity—if some people aren’t responding with some emotion, then we have failed to convey the breadth and depth of the issue.
So what, is animal rights right and animal welfare wrong?
That’s not what I want to be the takeaway. Animal rights is right in the theoretical sense, which is that animals have rights to life and protection from harm similar to those of humans. But many people across the welfarist and rights-based spectrum believe that. It’s more about how we get there.
One thing I’d like to emphasize is that we don’t really know what the best and worst things to do are. The studies we have show a lot of null or small results. And of course, there’s always the challenge of generalizing findings to the real world. For example, a lot of studies don’t measure changes over a significant timespan, which could be a crucial variable to consider in our analysis. So I think advocates on both sides of the equation may want to hold their positions a little more weakly.
Another thing I believe is that it’s generally not good for us all to be doing the exact same thing. I think we should all be vegan, and I think we should all support animal protection. But I think having a diverse movement (in every sense of the word) is incredibly beneficial. First, we diversify our portfolio, avoiding the sorts of catastrophic risks that come with putting all your male chicks in one basket. Second, the success of a movement may not depend on the existence of any one approach but rather the synergy of many different approaches. I don’t aim to prescribe a right approach; rather, I aim to suggest a good direction. I still think animal welfare efforts are important, but I think we should have relatively more people and resources going to support animal rights efforts.
And there is the question of how we do animal rights. We associate radical beliefs and statements with destructive violence, shaming campaigns, and other generally extreme or senseless acts, and this may be why we are so averse to radicalism. But my next article will revolve around how we can stand firm in our veganism (and in other radical positions) while also maintaining respectful and productive relationships with others. So stay tuned for that!
Executive summary: The author argues that while both animal welfare and animal rights advocacy have plausible moral and empirical justifications, uncertainty in the evidence and considerations about movement-building have led them to favor rights-based advocacy pursued with what they call “fierce compassion,” while still endorsing strategic diversity across the movement.
Key points:
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