There is another important argument i think we should all acknowledge and put into the conversation: the modern animal rights movement is now 50 years old, but diet change and factory farming has been its highest global priority for only about 15 of those years - an extremely short time period. This movement has been mostly focused on fighting animal research, the fur industry, hunting and animals in circuses for so long. Of course there has always been advocacy on veganism and factory farming, and some vegan organisations, but all the focus on farm animal investigations and campaigns is quite recent.
If our goal is animal liberation, our movement has the toughest one ever in human history for many reasons we all know so well. And one of them is that the list of animal abuse issues is very long. But, most important of all, i think if we look at the effectiveness of our movement through these lenses, we can see it has actually been extremely effective, with often little resources and as a young and inexperienced movement: fur farming was huge in the past, but now it has been banned in almost all European countries and the global production has now dropped 90% in the last ten years; about 50 countries banned the use of animals in circuses; foie gras production has been banned in almost all UE, India, Australia and more; cosmetic testing banned in Europe and then slowly in major parts of the world; and the list of small or big wins goes on. As EA teaches us, these are not the areas where most animals are used and with the highest level of suffering. But can you imagine a plant-based society with no factory farms where people still wear fur or enjoy watching chained elephants in circuses? Changing the perception of animal abuse, and shaping the idea that animals are capable of suffering, is a vital part of our movement’s work, and all these other campaigns helped not only in that but also in the growth and expansion of the movement itself, generating amazing activists.
This is a huge topic to discuss, but what I wanted to point out here is that professional and dedicated campaigning to stop factory farming and promote diet change are relatively new. It is true that there is a wall we are hitting and we are not able to climb yet, but we just started hitting it recently. I think there are still a lot of tests to be done, and there is definitely room for improvement and some success, but only if we still believe that animal liberation is our northern star.
There is another important argument i think we should all acknowledge and put into the conversation: the modern animal rights movement is now 50 years old, but diet change and factory farming has been its highest global priority for only about 15 of those years - an extremely short time period.
This movement has been mostly focused on fighting animal research, the fur industry, hunting and animals in circuses for so long. Of course there has always been advocacy on veganism and factory farming, and some vegan organisations, but all the focus on farm animal investigations and campaigns is quite recent.
If our goal is animal liberation, our movement has the toughest one ever in human history for many reasons we all know so well. And one of them is that the list of animal abuse issues is very long. But, most important of all, i think if we look at the effectiveness of our movement through these lenses, we can see it has actually been extremely effective, with often little resources and as a young and inexperienced movement: fur farming was huge in the past, but now it has been banned in almost all European countries and the global production has now dropped 90% in the last ten years; about 50 countries banned the use of animals in circuses; foie gras production has been banned in almost all UE, India, Australia and more; cosmetic testing banned in Europe and then slowly in major parts of the world; and the list of small or big wins goes on.
As EA teaches us, these are not the areas where most animals are used and with the highest level of suffering. But can you imagine a plant-based society with no factory farms where people still wear fur or enjoy watching chained elephants in circuses? Changing the perception of animal abuse, and shaping the idea that animals are capable of suffering, is a vital part of our movement’s work, and all these other campaigns helped not only in that but also in the growth and expansion of the movement itself, generating amazing activists.
This is a huge topic to discuss, but what I wanted to point out here is that professional and dedicated campaigning to stop factory farming and promote diet change are relatively new. It is true that there is a wall we are hitting and we are not able to climb yet, but we just started hitting it recently. I think there are still a lot of tests to be done, and there is definitely room for improvement and some success, but only if we still believe that animal liberation is our northern star.