I’m so excited about these animal welfare projects! After 12 years working at an animal welfare organization in Chile (Latin America), I can attest that both of these issues are huge challenges for the region. Please, if you can support them, do so! 🙏

Thank you very much for your response. I think it’s a great system. In my country (Chile), the position of director is not remunerated, but the election is not democratic. I don’t think that’s always a bad thing (sometimes it can bring in the most committed members) but since I studied law, I personally lean toward a fully democratic option on principle. I hope more EA members will share their experiences.

Thank you, Ángel, for opening this debate. I will focus on aquaculture, which I consider the most neglected sector and the one that affects the largest number of sentient beings by individual count. In my view, it is the most illustrative example to frame the problem.

In Latin America, the challenge is not only to confront an already established industry, but also to act preventively against an expanding threat: shrimp farming in new countries across the region. Today, Ecuador is the world’s largest exporter of shrimp and one of its leading producers. In addition, Panama, Mexico, Brazil, Honduras, Guatemala, Colombia, and Cuba are also involved in production. At the same time, countries like Chile (the world’s second-largest salmon producer) are exploring the development of new shrimp farming initiatives through research and pilot programs, although no commercial industry has yet been established. Advocacy in this context is preventive: while general aquaculture frameworks exist, there are no specific welfare standards for shrimp, let alone operational bans.

From my perspective, the dilemma is not “established vs. preventive,” but rather “established + preventive vs. preventive.” Moreover, if we use coastline length as a proxy for aquaculture-suitable coast, Latin America and the Caribbean together account for approximately 72,000 km, compared to Africa’s 40,000 km. This provides an objective measure of the potential scale of the problem if we fail to act in time.

This is compounded by a severe underrepresentation of organizations working beyond companion animals. I speak from direct experience: I am Chilean, and 11 years ago I co-founded the legal organization Fundación Derecho y Defensa Animal, with a strong focus on legal advocacy. Based on that foundation, and through the work of LatinGroup for Animals, we can affirm that in key countries like Chile and Ecuador, there are only three or four professionalized organizations dedicated to legal animal advocacy, and in the Caribbean, there are virtually none. This is a field-based empirical observation that underscores the urgency of a coordinated regional strategy.

Hi! I really enjoyed the event. The venue was absolutely top-notch in every way (I imagine the team was able to negotiate a good rate for it). One piece of feedback: I think the issue with Swapcard was that it was made available to attendees too close to the event date, which made it hard to actually schedule 1:1 meetings through the platform. I’m usually a big fan of Swapcard at EA events, but this time I couldn’t really use it. Since there were many new attendees, they probably needed more time to get familiar with how it works. That said, I still managed to meet lots of people, and the space was great for that. As for the vegan food, I’m sorry to hear what happened with the supplier, but I really appreciate that you were able to find a solution. I’m still using the EA Chile notebook (love it!), though I would’ve preferred a T-shirt (I’m guessing that’s more expensive though)

Huge thanks for the organization, everything felt super professional and high quality. The highlight video was also incredibly well done. I’m really glad this team is leading the way.