A few weeks ago, I honored my part of the deal. In July 2026, participated in Anonymous activism in Amsterdam, outreaching on two consecutive days, for about six hours in total. David and Anni Ramms filmed the whole thing, and he’ll moderate and record the follow-up discussion at Vegan Campout in August. I’m sharing my preliminary experiences and opinions here.

For those not familiar with Anonymous’ approach: a few (masked) people show screens with footage of how humans abuse animals, on some busy square or street. Other activists approach those who seem to engage with the footage. They will try to have a conversation, following a “protocol”: a list of questions that hopefully ends with people committing to stop exploiting animals and going vegan. Or better yet (the ultimate goal): becoming a vegan activist. The questions are entirely focused on the ethical aspect of exploiting animals (I’ll get back to that).

This is a bit of a long posts. There’s a summary at the very end.

Respect and criticism

I have some critical thoughts, after my experience, but it’s important to note that these are expressed with a lot of respect for what the Anonymous people are doing. I have only admiration for people who commit to helping make things better for animals, in whatever way, shape, or form, and spend a significant amount of time doing it. It was clear to me how seriously all of the activists were taking their job, and how committed they were.

I’m sure most of those who knew me knew that I was to some extent critical of their approach. Nevertheless, I felt very welcome and appreciated. I went in with an open mind, and applied the approach as faithfully as I could (even though I experimented a bit now and then).

I also need to note that obviously my experience was limited. Other people have done this much longer than I have. Also, how this particular group of activists comported themselves is probably not entirely representative of all AV groups. Still, the outreach is pretty streamlined, and as Paul Bashir was there himself, one may assume that this was the most “orthodox” execution of the approach.

In spite of the critical comments below, I find that there’s a lot to like about Anonymous for the Voiceless, and I think it’s great that they’re around. It is a scalable model for individual outreach, and many people can (after a minimal amount of training) participate in it and help advance things for animals.

I do believe a certain (limited) number of people can be reached in this way, and that we can get new activists out of this, who may go on to stay in the movement for a long time and do great things. Chances of success are higher because activists try to focus on the people who seem open, and quickly let go (after three “strikes”) of those who (in activists’ eyes) are not ready.

I’m thankful for this experience and to Paul, my buddy, and the other activists welcoming me. I enjoyed it a lot. I am usually not confrontational when I talk to people, but it felt good to be like that for a bit, and see where it took me. I guess that now and then, “holding people accountable” can be a good strategy. I’m sure I will apply some of the approach in certain circumstances.

My experience

I was assigned a buddy, who I first shadowed, after which he shadowed me. We could hear each other’s conversations through a microphone attached to our shirts. My buddy’s comments on my outreach were instructive, and helped me stick to the protocol - which I was there to test. The protocol starts with “Hello, how do you feel about humans exploiting animals?” and then ideally goes on for about eight more questions.

Maybe my very first experience was beginner’s luck (even if I had to speak French, which is not my forte). I bumped into a couple and their young son, who were very open to answering my questions, and very concerned about animals. First the woman and then the son agreed there was nothing keeping them from being vegan, and they promised they would be from now on. The man seemed reluctant, but - improvising a little bit - I told him it would be hard for his wife and son if he didn’t go along, and he agreed as well.

The commitment to go vegan is what the AV activists are after. Once they have that, they get people to confirm that animals deserve to have people speak out for them, and even ask them to stand with a screen for at least a few minutes and be an activist for animals.

Out of maybe 20 conversations, I got to the yes-I’ll-stop-exploiting-animals point only one other time. I heard from other people it was a slow day (sometimes it seemed there were more activists than people stopping to watch the footage).

Pragmatism and idealism

In my book and work, I make a distinction between pragmatic and idealistic activism. These are not super-defined terms, but one way to make this distinction is to say that pragmatic activism is more outcome-focused (results are most important) while one of the characteristics of idealistic activism is that it focuses heavily on following certain rules.

I’m sure Anonymous activists will think of their activism as very much outcome-focused. However, while - as stated - their commitment to impact is clear, following rules seems also quite important to them. Every time after a chat, my buddy would tell me the terms and expressions I had used but shouldn’t have. It all came down to making sure people understand the problem of animal exploitation as a whole, rather than focus on subparts (e.g. meat) or distractions (e.g. diet).

This focus on exploitation as the problem means that talking about anything other than general animal exploitation seems problematic. It’s not really done to talk about suffering, circumstances, or specific practices. Or if one does, it has to be in a way that connects these aspects - again - to the general problem of animal exploitation. Also: don’t talk about animal products, neither in the abstract, nor concretely about milk, meat, leather… Rather talk about body secretions, body parts, animal skin. Sometimes I felt the “correct” terms were not the ones that were most easily understandable for the audience.

Flexibility vs. rigidity

This is part of a wider issue that I see, which is that the outreacher should not adapt the protocol to whoever they have in front of them. There’s no meeting people where they are, there’s only the question of whether they are ready for the protocol or not.

The clearest example I saw of that was when an outreacher talked to a woman who said she was vegan already. After a few questions, it became clear she was plant-based (e.g. not avoiding leather etc.) and the outreacher continued with the protocol, as if she was nowhere near vegan - while I felt she was very close. The woman received zero recognition for where she was already, and the conversation did not feel productive at all to me. I told the outreacher my honest opinion: that this had been worse than nothing.

Here’s an example that I find even more problematic (I didn’t witness it). The person in this video has been an ethical vegan for twenty years. Paul Bashir himself talks to him, but the poor man doesn’t get any pat on the back. On the contrary, because this man is not actively doing outreach and believes people should make their own choices, Paul ends the conversation calling him a disgusting human being. The fact that this video is posted online seems to mean that the AV people are okay with its content? If I had to score to the AV approach, then from whatever number I rate it out of ten, I probably would subtract three or four points for this alone.

The activists seemed not to mind leaving people with a “bad” feeling, for instance by walking out of the conversation, or even being very confrontational (or quite rude) to people. They believe this will make people think. I’m not saying it’s impossible that this happens, but it doesn’t seem very likely (something to test - see below).

A rule I found hard to follow was not to shake a person’s hand after what I thought was a nice interaction. Even if they stuck out their hand, my buddy told me, we refuse it because the victims would not like to see us shake their oppressor’s hand. I can understand the rationale, but it didn’t feel helpful to me to refuse a hand after a person seemed to appreciate the conversation.

Optimizing for the handshake

In this particular type of outreach, all the attention seems to be directed at getting a person to commit to no longer exploiting animals. I agree that’s a nice goal, but I felt this focus was often at the cost of appreciating and getting the most out of the conversation (the process) itself.

To some extent the activists seem to look at the conversations as black or white: committing to go vegan: good, not getting there: failure. Personally I felt I had some great conversations where I felt I was sowing seeds, but where (understandably) the person was not ready to commit on the spot.

Conversely, I’m not so sure about the people committing. In a meeting, we analyzed interactions on video (many convos are recorded to spread on social media and to learn from). Showing a successful interaction (ending in a handshake), the activist asked what we thought.

I didn’t want to be a downer, but said I gave it at most a 20% chance that the person was now vegan. The others seemed surprised at this. I explained that the conversation was just one moment in a person’s life. While I had no doubt that he was now closer than before, the man would be stepping into the real world, be confronted, perhaps, by a spouse or children who hadn’t been in the conversation, would see meat on every corner of every street, etc. It’s hard to believe one conversation and one “pledge” are strong enough to counter the forces of gravity and inertia. (And if it was enough, it probably means that the person was very close already even before the conversation?)

I guess I’m most critical of how much confidence AV has in the effectiveness of moral suasion, and a particularly strict approach to it to boot. People don’t take the step from a conversation to conviction to permanent behavior change easily.

Controlling the conversation

I like that activists are told to keep control of the conversation (with the help of the protocol). It’s too easy to get sidetracked by all kinds of objections from their interlocutors, which would prevent the activist from making their essential points. However, there seem to be downsides to this. For one thing, activists will focus on getting through their questions. I heard one member of the public say to the activist: “You are working with a script. We are not having a conversation: this is me answering your questions.”

The other downside is that sincerely meant questions and objections are often not taken seriously enough or not responded to. When people express health concerns, these are not addressed. When they say they agree but it’s hard, they get no acknowledgment. When they say they’ve already gone part of the way they don’t get - like I stated before - any recognition. And when people ask: okay, but how? activists are not supposed to give them any pointers, except to say that they can find that out for themselves. Which is true but not necessarily helpful.

AV firmly believes that the WHY comes first. Once you are convinced, you can overcome all obstacles. I believe that the HOW being difficult is in itself an obstacle to understanding the WHY. Once people see that there are tasty, affordable products available, their defensiveness against listening to the WHY can be lowered. Sure, it won’t hurt if they understand the principle of veganism, but understanding it and putting it into practice has huge repercussions.

Other asks?

When people aren’t ready to commit to going vegan, the AV activist is not supposed to present them with another option, nor are they supposed to applaud any other commitment the person makes (like “I’ll look into it; I’ll try it for a week; I’ll think about it…”). I suspect this is because anything less than the commitment to go vegan is unethical, either to do or to suggest. Again, rules.

Personally, I would present people with other options. Even getting them to commit that this month, this week, or even just tomorrow, they wouldn’t use animal products, or that just their next meal would be vegan, would in my eyes be a win. I especially believe that when people DO something, this can have an impact on their commitment and beliefs - which is why I think their grabbing a screen and standing in the cube for a few minutes can be quite meaningful. I think the focus on this is great. But why not also have them do smaller things? Give people, for instance, a discount code from a collaborating restaurant in the area, and measure how many people use it.

Does it work?

Which brings me to impact measurement. How well does the approach work? AV talks about thousands of people going vegan and/or becoming animal activists in the course of a one-month demonstration (e.g. 7,000 people during the action in Cologne, DE). I’m skeptical, but could we come to a trustworthy answer if we do better than just taking people at their word?

Paul Bashir’s answer to people who tell him to measure more is that it’s impossible to be sure, unless we hire private detectives. I think that’s not a satisfactory answer. I can see how a follow-up could be helpful. I asked some of the activists why they don’t routinely ask - after successful interactions - for people’s email address or phone number, and follow up a month and/or three months later, to see how it’s going. There were some logistical objections, but I got no clear answer why this wouldn’t be done. Even if it was consistently done for only a limited amount of time (say two months), this could yield some good data to extrapolate from.

Measuring people’s post-interaction response seems especially important when making big claims that run against our intuitions or against what we know from research. The question of whether letting people walk off with a bad feeling about themselves is productive or not seems to be a good candidate for research. As is the question of whether a committed person really follows through or not.

Paul Bashir claims AV’s method is the most effective outreach method in the movement. I do not underestimate the value of him interacting with thousands of people, but this does not seem to be a claim one can make on the basis of just one’s own (or one’s group’s) experience.

In any case, other people who are more research-experienced than I am could chip in on this.

Looking ahead

There’s more to tell, no doubt. I look forward to exploring the pros and cons of the Anonymous approach further with Paul, and I wish AV all the best. I might participate again in the future.

I encourage vegans who are not active to join a group and try out the approach (find your local chapter here). Apart from the real-world impact you may have with it, AV also offers a community. Dog knows how hard it can be to be a vegan in this world. Communities help.

Below is a summary.

Almost invariably, they’ll say you don’t understand the first thing about animals. They are - they claim - the experts on cows and pigs and chickens, and you are at best uninformed, at worst a liar.

Before anything else, let me note that these days, the easiest, laziest but also most popular defense against inconvenient truths is saying that they are lies. People may tell you that you’re lying without anything to back it up. They may put those damn laugh-emojis under your Facebook posts without really knowing why. And their calling you stupid and ignorant may be just… because that’s exactly what they are (oh yes, it can be infuriating).

But other than that, no, most farmers and industry people are not the experts on farmed animals and their welfare. Below is why.

Vegans aren’t perfect (duh)

A concession first. Not wanting to exploit animals does not equal understanding them. A vegan doesn’t necessarily know what an animal wants. Lack of knowledge about animals can lead to wrong conclusions. On occasion, things might be less bad for an animal than an unaware vegan believes (think, for instance, about cows who may prefer their stable over the meadow, in certain temperatures).

Our sympathy for and identification with animals may also lead us to ascribe qualities or feelings to them that they do not have (anthropomorphism).(1)

Vegans and animal people may also idealize animals, believing they’re always the kind creatures of our picture books. But non-humans can at times demonstrate nasty behavior - to humans or to other animals (not that this justifies any mean behavior on the farmer’s part, of course).

Farmers are undereducated about animal welfare

Are farmers in a better position to know what animals want and how they feel?

Working on a farm and being with animals will certainly teach a farmer a thing or two about animals. However, the first thing to remember is that most farmers will never see their animals in a natural environment where they can demonstrate their natural behavior. Experiencing animals only in industrial settings, the farmer is getting a limited view of the animals’ faculties. Perhaps it’s people working on sanctuaries who understand farmed animals best?

And it’s not that the farmers acquire a lot of theoretical knowledge during their studies, which are mainly about getting a profit out of the animals and fattening them as efficiently as possible. The little they learn about animal welfare is taught in function of husbandry, economics, biosecurity or compliance with existing laws.

This is quite a painful gap, when you look at it. Vets, zookeepers, shelter operators and other handlers of animals need to have at least some schooling to make sure they relate to their animals appropriately. But farmers, who may work with up to many thousands of animals and are the main agents contributing to their welfare, graduate without knowing much about animal welfare at all.

Farmers don’t do much better than the general population

For what they’re worth, two data points about farmers’ knowledge about animal welfare.

In the Netherlands, Dr. Leonie Cornips developed a cow language quiz, recording and translating twelve different cow sounds. Over three hundred farmers and more than a thousand members of the public took part, trying to identify what the cow was trying to say from sound alone. While farmers did better than the public, a mere 32% recognized the sound of fear or stress. Nearly half failed to recognize the call of a cow wanting to be milked. The heart-rending sound of a mother crying for her calf was correctly identified by only 31% of farmers, while 45% interpreted it as a positive signal.

Another, older study showed that farmers (called “caretakers” in the study) did not do significantly better at recognizing pig vocalizations than “naive students”, and they did worse than ethologists. Farmers also tended to downplay the emotional intensity of the animals’ cries (e.g. at castration). The researchers hypothesize that “caretakers might use a psychological defense to protect them from feeling intense emotions for the large numbers of animals to which they provide care.”(2)

Biased against seeing animals as beings with interests

The latter, of course, is a major issue. Farmers need to see their animals as products before anything else. Often this conditioning started early, when a farmer was raised on a family farm. Even more so than the rest of us, they learn that animals are there for us to use. If you think of someone as a product, many questions around animal welfare are unlikely to ever arise.

Farmers can’t be the experts on what animals need or how they feel, because there is too much working against them being that. The farmer’s stake in the whole story is even bigger than that of the consumer, because animals are their source of income. As Upton Sinclair wrote, it is hard to make a person understand something if their livelihood depends on them not understanding it.

Biased animal welfare scientists

If you want to learn about animal welfare, the farmers should obviously not be your first resource. But animal welfare science might not be either. It’s not just the industry itself that suffers from structural blinders: the very science used to evaluate animal welfare is often compromised by what some researchers have called “pragmatism bias”.

A 2026 paper published in Frontiers in Animal Science highlights how funding pressures and operational constraints systematically skew scientific inquiry toward short-term gains, symptoms rather than root causes, and intensive production systems. Instead of investigating what animals genuinely need to thrive under ideal conditions, animal welfare science frequently limits its focus to what is economically viable within current industry models.

This creates a closed epistemic loop: by restricting research to incremental adjustments within flawed systems, science inadvertently helps normalize and entrench those very systems, leaving policymakers and the public with a very incomplete view of what animal well-being actually means.

The need to push back

Vegans shouldn’t be too arrogant to say that they know all there is to know about animal welfare, and should be aware of their biases. But even more important is to bring to the fore the biases of farmers and animal welfare scientists working for the industry, and push back against the idea that they are the ones who know animals best.

They don’t.

What they may know best is how to raise an animal most profitably.

(1) I wrote about anthropomorphism and anthropodenial here.
(2) The industry language of “units”, “livestock”, “yield” or “harvesting” obviously contributes to this defense.

First of all, if ex-vegans spout misinformation in public, or turn vehemently against veganism, we are right to explain our point of view and give counterarguments. I wouldn’t be surprised if part of the ex-vegan stories are amplified - sometimes even invented - by pro-meat campaigners. And if an ex-vegan (or anyone) becomes a die-hard carnivore influencer, I don’t think I mind much that they are mobbed and shamed.

Celebrities are a special case, and many people love to hate them. In this article, I make abstraction of Gaz Oakley and other celebrities and influencers, and merely look at how our movement sometimes deals with ex-vegans in general. I’m talking about people who, for sincere reasons, stop being vegan (and don’t brag about it). Celebrities or not, they are often treated quite harshley.

Black sheep effect

Part of what explains this, like I wrote in my previous article, is the black sheep effect: someone who defects from a norm/leaves a group is treated much more negatively than someone who never followed the norm or was never part of the group in the first place.

I understand that. I’m often disappointed when I hear about ex-vegans. Like other commenters, my first reaction may be: you knew everything, you knew about the problems with animal products, you knew how to replace them, you’ve done it for years… and now you turn your back to it all? How could you? And also: you were one of us, and you left us.

Out of this disappointment comes anger. Outrage even. I’ve seen many vegans making comparisons with child molestation, murder, racism etc. They’re using language that (I hope) they wouldn’t use towards their non vegan parents, children, spouses or friends. It’s thwarted expectations (among other things) that make us do this. Note that something like the reverse is also true: we’re all the happier if a person from whom we didn’t really expect it, has a change of heart. How happy we are with the stories of animal farmers turning vegan!

We need to realize that while understandable, this behavior (anchored in evolutionary psychology) is not entirely rational and that it doesn’t help us, nor the animals. How we behave towards the black sheep is important for our movement in several ways.

There are still more ex-vegans than vegans

I wrote about vegans falling off the wagon before. There are more ex-vegans than vegans (same for vegetarians). Many people seem to have problems continuing a vegan lifestyle. Now the reaction of many (present) vegans is interesting: these people were never vegan in the first place, they didn’t do it for the animals, they saw it as a diet…

That’s clearly not always the case. There are people who go vegan for the animals and then give up. We can then say they were never vegan at all, believe that are hypocrites or driven by profit… but how does it help us or the animals if we don’t take ex-vegans seriously?

I don’t find being vegan in this world hard, but I’m surrounded by vegans and animal people, I can find and afford all the plant-based products I want. I don’t have kids or a spouse who want to eat animal products… But for other people, taking into account all the pro-meat advertisements that are being thrown at them, and all the pro-meat nutritional information… I don’t doubt that it can be hard at times to keep it up.

Giving ex-vegans the cold shoulder will make things worse

Imagine a vegan who is struggling. There’s a lot of pressure from the outside. There may be health issues they are dealing with. Maybe their “faith” is wavering. Who can these people turn to? Will they be able to find support, or will they be wary of telling anyone about their doubts, then perhaps fail, and fall off the wagon?

Another problem is this: anyone who sees how ex-vegans are sometimes punished might become less likely to ever go vegan in the first place. We obviously need it to be more normal, fashionable even, to not eat animal products. There are probably quite a few celebrities around (artists, politicians, public intellectuals) who haven’t outed themselves as animal-friendly, or vegan/vegan curious. But if they’ve ever seen the treatment of ex-vegans, their reasoning might be: if I ever have to turn back, for whatever reason, I’ll be destroyed. So either I won’t go vegan, or, if I do, I’ll never say so in public. This would be a shame.

More generally, when we’re posting our reactions and criticisms, we should think about who else is watching. Around every public shaming there can be many people who are silently checking what is going on. What if the lesson they take from this spectacle is not “I should be more committed” but “these are not my people”? While we think we’re punishing a defector, we’re showing anyone still on the fence what awaits them if they ever fall short.

Finally, even people who self-identify as vegan but who, because of criticism from their own side, might choose to no longer do so. Again, that won’t help normalize being vegan.

Tackling the biggest challenge in the world

At the heart of these issues lies how our pro-animal ideology, our compassion, our anti-speciesism often translates to a pretty much all-or-nothing normative behavior. If you’re pro-animal, you should not consume any animal products (otherwise you’re not pro-animal).

Given how little success we are having in convincing people to go vegan (including the fact that so many people can’t even *stay* vegan), this is clearly not the ideal strategy for success. If we treat anyone who’s not aligning their behavior a 100% with the vegan ideal as not part of our team, we are bound to remain a very small club (and we make it very easy to fall off the wagon).

A very small club will not be able to tackle the biggest challenge in the world: to change the diet of eight billion people. So we have to be able to work together with all kinds of people who don’t think exactly the same as us, who make mistakes, who backtrack, who sometimes say the wrong things even. We should be charitable towards them - not just because that shows the compassion we want other people to show towards animals, but also because it’s what’s better for animals. So who is on “the team”? Everyone who intentionally or not contributes to a better situation for the animals on this planet.

In case a black-and-white ideology prevents us from seeing things like this, and keeps insisting that murder is murder and that eating animals is the same as child abuse, we need to remember that there are very different social norms at work in these different spheres. Eating meat is not just acceptable but actively celebrated by 95% of the population, while child abuse is illegal. While what is generally thought does not equal what is actually right, we need to accept that these different norms mean people have different ideas of wrong-doing in these various cases. For most people it’s hard to consider something as wrong when 95% of the people are participating in it.

This understanding alone can help us create a bigger tent - something which I remain convinced is the number one thing our movement needs to do in the years and decades to come.

That happened, as you may have seen, with Gaz Oakley, a celebrated Welsh chef and cookbook author, who - as Avant-Garde Vegan - built up a following of two million people. He’d recently shifted to a quieter, rural life, growing his own vegetables and keeping rescued chickens. On a podcast, he said he no longer considers himself vegan, and focuses more on localism, foraging, rewilding etc. He even said he’s open to eating invasive species (crayfish, venison, pigeon…).

Many vegans, of course, have expressed disappointment, anger and frustration with Oakley. They talk and write about a betrayal of values or financial gain. I understand this disappointment, and I do think what Oakley did - and still might do - can cause some real PR damage. I don’t agree with the man’s reasoning about nature (nothing is as clichéd as “reconnecting with nature”) or his aggressive stance on invasive species. I could write a long post on all of this, but others have done so (see e.g. here and here). In this piece, allow me to bring some other thoughts that may be a bit less obvious.

Can we be more charitable?

First of all, as some of my readers will know, I’m in favor of what I call slow opinion. We don’t know everything there is to know about this person, we can’t look in his head, we shouldn’t make assumptions too quickly - definitely not negative ones. Let’s leave some room for doubt.

And let’s try to be charitable. The guy did a lot. He inspired millions to eat more plant-based. There are no doubt people who attribute their going vegan or getting active to Oakley (and those people don’t need to follow him where he went now). Also, he apparently plans to remain mostly plant-based, and is potentially still an ally against factory farming.

In terms of harm, our diets are on a spectrum

Oakley is eating eggs from rescued hens. These products are not without issues (the rescued animals are breeds that are inherently problematic), but we should be able to distinguish lesser harms from bigger harms. Considering all animal products as the same evil doesn’t help anyone. I haven’t found anything about how Oakley would source his fish or his “invasive species”, but in case they would come from hunting, this is - as much as I despise hunting and think it’s wrong - less horrible than an animal spending their entire life in a dark, overcrowded shed.

The same goes for the amount of animal products one consumes: none is great, but less is better than a lot. We can’t pretend someone is going full omnivore again when they say they’re going to eat a few animal products now and then (I’ve seen vegan influencers being totally lambasted for saying they’ll eat this or that product-with-some-animal ingredients on occasion).

Let’s also consider that vegan diets are never entirely harmless, with some products negatively impacting the environment, human labor, or even animals. Oakley may be avoiding some issues that many vegans aren’t.

What if vegans are not the best advocates?

This is a point I’ll explore in another post, but for now: what if vegans are putting the bar too high for the average person, and say 90%-vegans are more convincing or inspiring? I can imagine many more people being attracted to a lifestyle or diet that allows for at least exceptions, than to one that is absolute (no matter how many times we may want to say that animal rights are non-negotiable). As much as we dislike it, dropping the vegan identity may also be helpful in this respect.

Health worries should be taken seriously

Oakley spoke about health challenges. Even though some commenters are skeptical this was the case (saying he only offered those after a lot of backlash), we can’t look into his head (see first point). All I know is that health issues are often a cause for people to abandon ship. It’s not necessarily that their diet is the cause of their symptoms, but it’s understandable that after a long quest trying to get better - and surrounded by pro-meat propaganda in a carnistic environment - they might at least think: “what if…” and maybe experiment.

Pushing him away is not going to get him closer (duh)

The so-called black sheep effect is at work here: defectors from a shared norm will be treated more harshly than outsiders who never signed up. Ex-vegans will incur more ire than meat eaters. With their behavior, the defector may imply that the standard is unlivable or false. That’s very threatening to the ingroup, and it’s part of the reason for the backlash. So after the person left, we bolt the door behind them.

Vegans mocking, criticizing, accusing the man of all kinds of nasty things is a reliable way to drive him even further away. Someone pushed out by their fellow progressives may find a warmer reception elsewhere. The right, in particular, is good at welcoming people the left has shamed - offering them community and a sense of vindication. It’s not what we want.

Let’s look at ourselves

Oakley said he didn’t feel at home in the vegan community. We can ignore that, or take that seriously. There are good reasons to do the latter, because many people feel it - including me at times. We define things very strictly - who is in and who is out, what is right and what is wrong. That is not appealing to many people.

So there’s an irony here: the sort of pile-on against Oakley for leaving may be exactly why he no longer felt at home in the first place. The angrier we are at him, the more we prove his point.

Still on our side?

I had ended my first version of this article like this: Let’s be more forgiving toward those who fall off the wagon, and help them back on.

But that’s actually not the message I want to bring. It would imply the only solution is to get Oakley back at 100% vegan.

What if - as long as he remains largely plant-based, against factory farming, and continues to care about animals - we simply consider him to be on our wagon still?

That would be the kind of inclusiveness that makes our movement larger, our rules less absolute, our appeal wider, and our minds less rigid. And that is, I think, what ultimately helps animals most.

I recently read his biography - The Fearless Benjamin Lay by Marcus Rediker1 - and have wanted to write about him ever since. In our darker moments as animal advocates, when we despair about the gigantic challenges in front of us, it can be helpful to look at how others fought the odds and never gave up.

A radical dwarf

Benjamin Lay was born in England in 1682. He worked as a sailor, a glove maker, and a shepherd. He became a Quaker and married Sarah, who was, just like him, a little person. In the late 1710’s, they went to Barbados together to work as merchants, but were transformed by seeing the evils of slavery (most people on the island were enslaved). Eventually the couple settled outside Philadelphia, and Benjamin spent all his remaining years trying to change what they had witnessed.

He boycotted products from slavery, and fought for abolition for forty years, against the active hostility of his own religious community. The last third of his life, he lived in a cave, next to which he grew his own food in a small garden, made his own clothes from flax because he refused to wear wool, and would not eat any animal flesh at all.

Empathy for little people comes naturally to me. Being only 166 cm (5’5), I know how stature (or lack thereof) can shape how others perceive you (look up heightism). Lay had it far worse. In his own time he was treated as defective. Historians called him “the little hunchback.” His enemies called him deformed in body and mind. In his book, Marcus Rediker argues that being treated as less than human gave Benjamin a moral imagination many of his contemporaries lacked. He knew what it was to be looked through, and carried that knowledge outward, to everyone else he saw being looked through, including animals.

By Rediker’s account, Lay was not a pragmatic or likable activist: he was aggressive, awkward, self-righteous and stubborn. Indeed, he appears to have been a quite obnoxious fellow - possibly a terrible vegan advocate - so we shouldn’t idealize him. But there sure are things to admire in him.

Fellow creatures

This little person mainly fought his own people: the community of Quakers. He challenged them about the fact that in spite of their lofty religious ideals, many of them were slaveholders or were otherwise benefitting from slavery. These were the people he prayed with, the ones who sat beside him in his meeting houses. He was telling those he loved that they were monstrous.

Before Lay became a vegetarian, he killed a groundhog that kept ravaging his vegetable patch, nailing parts of the animal to the four corners of the garden. Not soon after, he regretted what he had done and renounced eating animals. He came to see the connection between the exploitation of humans and non-humans, whom he all called “fellow creatures.” To make clear the connectedness, he quoted Pythagoras:

“As long as Man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings, he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.”

We may not live to see the fruits of our work

Lay fought his various fights for many years, but did not live to see much result. People, including the Quakers, generally didn’t take kindly to his activism. Many said he made slave keeping “too great a sin.” At one point he was physically removed from Quaker meetings (which presumably was not a hard thing to do). He was jailed on occasion. His own Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Quakers and several other groups ended up disowning him.

Lay died in 1759. The Quakers did not formally prohibit slaveholding among their members until 1776 - which still made them ahead of the rest of the world by a long time (the United States abolished slavery in 1865).

There was a bit of light right near the end of his life, though. A friend brought Lay the news that the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting had finally begun to discipline slave-trading Quakers - which apparently had Lay declare that he could die in peace.

Only in 2017, more than 250 years after his death, the Quakers had the good sense to formally reinstate the man. As of today, most haven’t heard of him.

Animals are still locked up by the billions. Most of the people we love still eat them. Like Benjamin Lay, vegans and animal advocates are considered “too censorious” at the dinner table. Like Benjamin Lay, we may expect (still for quite some time) to be ridiculed, fought and antagonized.

Lay was probably a pretty bad animal advocate, and we shouldn’t copy his self-righteousness. But we can be inspired by the stamina of this small, unusual person - who saw early, alone, and was right.

Further Reading:

• The Fearless Benjamin Lay, by Marcus Rediger

• Veganism in quakerism

• Becoming Benjamin Lay: a movie

40.000 people signed a petition to ask for Jones’ deporation from Australia. The separation of mother and child apparently struck a cord.

At least when it’s about wombats. When it’s about farmed animals, not so much. On Mother’s Day, let’s spare a thought for the non-human mothers - and their children.

The hens who’ll never know their chicks

You know where eggs come from. But have you ever thought about where the chickens who lay the eggs, come from?

They obviously come from other chickens, but these so-called parental animals are even more invisible than the egg-laying hens or the chickens raised for meat.

Parental animals live on what we call breeding farms or parent stock farms, in intensive conditions (nine birds per square meter in the EU). About 10% of the animals in any group are roosters, who have to make sure the fertilisation rate is as high as possible.

These roosters are much larger than the hens, and the latter have no choice but to endure the roosters. Severe injuries from the males’ spurs and claws to the hens’ backs, necks, and wings are common and can be fatal. Even a small bleeding wound can trigger pecking by other chickens, often resulting in death.

When after 70 weeks, the hens’ egg production starts to decline, the hens and roosters are sent to the slaughterhouse. By then, the hens have laid around 170 eggs. These eggs go to a hatchery to be hatched. The female chicks will go to a laying barn as laying hens, and the male chicks are killed on the day they are born.

Born without a mother

Something else most people never think about: when both the egg-laying hens and the broiler chickens peck through their eggshell and see the light, there will be no one around to guide them or give them love. Broilers will be killed after six weeks, without ever having known maternal care.

In “normal” circumstances, a hen already communicates with her chicks while they are still inside the egg. Hens are very protective of both their eggs and chicks, defending them with their life if they have to. Mother hens teach their chicks everything they need to survive, from scratching and searching for food, to finding a safe place to sleep, as well as social behavior.

Chickens who grow up without a mother often imprint on each other, rather than on an adult animal, which can lead to very problematic behavior. Without a mother to model foraging, pecking can turn on other birds - feather and toe pecking may escalate to cannibalism and death. Without a protective adult, birds are also more fearful; so-called “panic crowding” can lead to smothering.

Breaking the bond

I suspect that most people in the meat industry - and many people who eat meat - will dismiss talk of mothers and children, of family bonds and separation, as mere sentimentality.

But motherhood is not a sentimental add-on: it is a hard-won evolutionary adaptation that dramatically boosts offspring survival through protection, nourishment, and the transfer of learned behaviour.

All this, the intensive animal industry destroys - ruthlessly, across all species. A dairy cow is impregnated, gives birth, has her calf taken within hours. She was tricked into producing milk for a calf she will never raise - year after year, until she is worn out. A sow in a gestation crate can feed her piglets through bars, but cannot turn to reach them. And then there are the mothers who never get that far. A British abattoir vet has testified to seeing unborn calves kicking inside the wombs of cows hanging on the slaughter line, bleeding to death.

The tiny Australian wombat had a mother to be taken from. That is why we noticed. The billions of mothers in the animal industry have their children taken before they can even meet them.

For the animal mothers, it’s never a Happy Mother’s Day.

I’m talking about sentient AI*. If your focus is purely on helping animals, you might not be interested in this topic, or believe it’s completely bonkers. Yet there are interesting parallels with the situation of farmed animals.

Some people think sentient AIs (or “digital minds”) are an impossibility. I don’t know where they find the certainty to say that. Others seem to believe sentient AI is inevitable. Again, I don’t know where they find the certainty to say that. Personally, I rarely feel strongly about complicated topics that I do not understand well, but I know that when smart and decent people differ in opinion on something, doubt and hesitation are not a luxury.

Sentient AI - whatever it may look like - definitely doesn’t strike me as an absurd idea. People who wonder how bits and bytes could ever feel something or become self-aware should realize that - unless they are religious - it’s all just physical processes in our heads too. Of course if you think more ephemeral things like a soul are in play (I don’t exclude the possibility), sentient AI might be out of the question.

Anthropomorphism and anthropodenial

At various points in history, even some very clever people felt uncertain about the sentience of non-human animals. René Descartes famously thought they were machines, and that their cries of pain were just mechanical noise.

Today, most people won’t deny non-humans - or at least mammals - the experience of pain with Descartes’ conviction. However, there is still a lot of uncertainty about what exactly animals are capable of. To what extent can various species feel pain, have thoughts, experience emotions like loneliness or boredom?

We can make mistakes in two directions. The first is anthropomorphism, which is about attributing qualities, feelings, thoughts… to non-humans that they might not have. The second is the opposite: what ethologist Frans de Waal called anthropodenial - and which is probably much more common: denying animals feelings, thoughts etc that they (probably) have.

The same mistakes may happen in how we think about machines and AI. You may have seen a robot lawn mower working “diligently” on someone’s front yard and thought how cute that thing is. Perhaps you saw a video of someone tipping over a robot and felt a sense of empathy. Or you may have thanked or apologized to Claude or ChatGPT… All of these are (most probably) cases of anthropomorphism: the machines don’t feel what you - in jest or not - are considering.

Just as with animals, I think that regarding AI, anthropodenial is ultimately more dangerous than anthropomorphism.** Assume for a moment - if you don’t believe it - that one day AIs become sentient, and that many of the things we make them do frustrate them, exhaust them, make them feel sad… Further assume that they can be copied ad infinitum and that there might be quadrillions, octillions… of sentient minds out there with the capacity to suffer. That would be awful.

In principle, it’s even hard to be 100% sure that the people around us are sentient and not zombies or robots, but in practice we assume that they can feel and are self-aware (based on similarity, intuition, what they say about it themselves…). It will be a lot harder to determine when sentience has arisen in the case of AIs (if it ever happens). I suspect there will be a long period of uncertainty, in which philosophers and others may debate over this for decades, and where part of society defends the interests of the AIs and a bigger part of society ignores them. Just like what is happening with animals today.

The dependency bias trap

Another thing that makes this very complicated is that by the time society will be ready to seriously consider the sentience of our AIs, we will be quite dependent upon them (supposing they have not overtaken us - that’s another topic), and we will be biased against deciding that they are sentient. Even in the light of convincing evidence, uncertainty might be maintained because it’s convenient. We’ll have every incentive to interpret ambiguous signals as non-sentience. Use-and-deny, in other words.

The parallel with animals is clear. We are extremely dependent on them (or think we are) in terms of food, clothing, the economy etc. We confine them in systems that are optimized for efficiency and profit, and this entails largely ignoring their welfare. As most human beings aren’t sociopaths, they experience some cognitive dissonance between this treatment (and their consumption) on the one hand and knowing that these beings are creatures with needs, feelings, pains… Something’s gotta give, and most people reduce this dissonance by convincing themselves that the animals we use don’t suffer all that much (because their circumstances are okay, or because they’re not physically/mentally equipped to suffer a lot).

I can imagine that, had humans cared and known a lot more about animals before they started using or consuming them, we wouldn’t have gone on to treat them in the ways that we do today. Now that we know, we are so dependent on using them that it’s hard to turn the ship. One could compare with discovering a life-form on a nearby planet. Imagine a creature that looks like some combination of a pig and a cow, and that it’s edible. Would we start hunting or raising these beings for food? Our cruelty and stupidity not withstanding, chances are that we might not. We might be able to think about them more clearly, rationally, compassionately, because at that point, we are not using them. Prohibiting ourselves from eating them wouldn’t really affect many people.

The window for action

Not only is it easier to think without bias about capabilities and moral status of entities that we do not use: it’s also far easier to protect them legally. Conversely, when the Nonhuman Rights Project tried to free Happy the elephant from a lifelong jail time in a New York zoo, they tried to make the case that Happy is a legal person. Some of the judges were sympathetic to the argument, but one important argument in the verdict was that the consequences of granting personhood to an animal like Happy would be too vast for society to deal with. And so Happy remained property.

What does this mean for thinking and acting around the potential sentience of AIs? Sure, we might invest a lot of resources into protecting AIs against harm they might never feel, and that would be a waste.

But if there’s a reasonable chance that some day AIs may one day - maybe soon - be capable of suffering, then the time for at least some people to concern themselves with the moral status of AIs is now - before we’re so dependent on them that we can’t afford to think clearly, and honesty becomes very expensive.

The same goes regarding species of animals we’re not using yet, or things we don’t yet do to animals. It’s far easier to say today that animals should not be sent into space or be farmed on other planets, than to stop it once it’s already happening at scale.

Billions of factory farmed animals can attest to what happens when we ask the right questions too late.

(see below for further resources)

* I’m using sentient, conscious, aware… interchangeably here, for simplicity. I take sentience to mean that there is something it’s like to be that system: experiences that can go better or worse for it.

** Of course anthropomorphism (towards AI or animals) is far from unproblematic. It could lead to harming animals (think of the dolphin’s “smile”), or triggering a backlash that makes people dismissive when it actually matters.

Find out more on the topic of digital minds:

• Sentient Futures

• Sentience Institute

• Center for Reducing Suffering

• NYU Center for Mind, Ethics and Policy

• Eleos AI

• Animal Ethics blog

• Digital Minds newsletter

The founders increasingly struggled to make the event financially viable. After announcing there would be no more editions, they found a buyer: a company that owns conference venues. As a result, this year it moved from Amsterdam to rural Barneveld - which apparently is the chicken capital of the world.

All of this is to say something we all already know: the climate around alt protein has shifted a lot lately. Maybe seven years ago, there was a sense that the revolution was imminent, that plant-based meat was ready to take off, following the smartphone’s trajectory, and that cultivated meat would land on supermarket shelves within a decade.

But the bubble burst, and we ended up disappointed. According to one analysis, most consumers started trying vegan burgers, nuggets, and sausages for health reasons. Then inflation hit, and at the same time the narrative spread that these products were ultra-processed and not healthier than meat. Consumers saw no reason to keep buying products that offered no clear health benefits, cost more, and tasted worse. Today, the crazy money that poured into alt food companies back then seems largely to have dried up.

Being less optimistic, however, does not mean we are dead. Quite the contrary. The vibe at the conference was great, and in the closing session most attendees said they left more optimistic than they arrived.

The age of the hybrids

One of the reasons to be hopeful - and a topic of focus throughout the conference - is that hybrid meat seems to be doing well. It’s now also known as balanced meat: products like sausages, burgers or minced meat that are partly animal, partly something else (plant-based, fungi, or - hopefully soon - cultivated).

Hybrid products were in the talks and breakout sessions, and were offered as snacks to try (I didn’t). If - like me - you want to see an end to animal food production, you may be skeptical of these mixed products. They are at least half animal-based, so they still cause a lot of animal suffering. And what if they delay - possibly forever - the end goal by offering a moral loophole: a way for consumers to feel they are part of the change while still participating in the harm?

Here, however, are some reasons why I think (without being sure) that the animal movement should welcome the growth of hybrid meat:

1. These products reduce a lot of suffering, and right now have more potential to do so than vegan products. Look at this simple slide I made for a presentation. Suppose only 5% of a fast-food chain’s hamburger sales are vegan burgers (left). Now compare that to all their burgers being 25% plant-based (right). In reality, just 2% of Burger King US’s burgers sold are the vegan Impossible Burgers.

2. If hybrid is a winning category, it can help strengthen the economic viability of the alt protein sector, since many companies might produce both plant-based products and plant-based ingredients for hybrid products.

3. Success for the hybrid category should mean reduced meat sales, which may negatively impact the traditional meat industry.

4. I can imagine that getting used to hybrid products could shift people’s thinking. Meat might start to feel less like an all-or-nothing category, and the idea of plant-based meat could start to feel more normal.

Going for umami

Michael Fox (middle initial actually J) from the Australian company Fable laid out a concrete case for hybrid products. As an ethical vegan, Fox started by creating a pulled shiitake mushroom product, but now focuses on developing minced shiitake ingredients to blend with minced beef.

The benefits of shiitake and other fungi are impressive. They’re exceptionally nutrient-dense and a great source of fiber (which meat lacks), vitamin D, iron, and protein. Fungi are closer to animal products than plants are, so they require less processing than, for example, legumes when they are turned into meat-like products. Shiitake are also excellent for boosting the umami taste, especially when combined with beef. In blind tastings, shiitake-beef products consistently win out over pure beef products and are often described as “more meaty” than meat, even when they contain 50% mushrooms. They can also be 20% cheaper.

The first successes for Fable are in. After very well-received trials, Compass Group, the world’s largest food service company, is working to replace 30% of its minced beef with a 50/50 blend, aiming to eventually reach 90%. JBS, the world’s largest meat company, launched a shiitake-infused burger in one of its brands in Australia.

Fox ended with some advice: alt protein companies must set the bar really high before launching products: inferior ones hurt the category and erode consumer trust. If your product doesn’t taste better than meat, Fox said, if it isn’t cheaper and healthier than meat, and if consumers don’t perceive it as better than meat, don’t launch it.

Mycelium: going the way of the leafcutter ants

Another fungi enthusiast on stage was Paul Shapiro, CEO of The Better Meat Co, which grows mycelium, a fibrous, meat-like structure in close to its natural state. He explained that leafcutter ants have actually domesticated mycelium since many millions of years, long before human agriculture.

Shapiro framed fungi fermentation as an antidote to the problems that have plagued the alternative meat sector. It requires little processing, and turning low-value carbohydrates into high-value protein, from inoculation to harvest, takes just 17 hours (compared with 6 weeks for chickens, 5 months for pigs, and over a year for cows).

The good news is also that there are thousands of species of mycelium, each with different flavors, textures, nutritional profiles, colors, and smells. At the moment, Quorn, the OG of mycelium, uses just one species and is responsible for 99% of all mycoprotein sold. There is, in other words, still a whole world to explore.

In terms of impact: for seven years now, the Better Meat Co has been selling to Perdue Farms, which the poultry company uses in their Chicken Plus range (50% chicken, 50% plant-based). Shapiro estimates that this deal alone has resulted in approximately 600,000 fewer chickens being raised and slaughtered.

Good inventions, not good intentions

Paul Shapiro was an animal activist long before he became an entrepreneur (I remember doing protests with him in front of fur stores, over 25 years ago). After years of grassroots activism and congressional lobbying, he became a firm believer that technological innovation, rather than moral advocacy, will help wean the masses off animal-based meat. He points to inventions like fountain pens, cars, and kerosene, which replaced quill pens, horse-drawn carriages, and whale oil lamps, respectively, and spared countless animals.

For animal advocates, such pragmatism may feel both like a relief and a bit of an insult at the same time. A relief because it suggests a path that does not depend on mass moral awakening. And an insult because it reminds us of how limited moral persuasion can be. Indeed, we do wish the world would change through an endless series of individual conversions: the meat-eater sees the truth, feels the horror, becomes compassionate and joins Team Vegan.

But this approach fails more often than it succeeds. So we need products people can consume without changing their habits or even their values. It’s a less satisfying story, because it doesn’t flatter our sense of being right, and it does not reward the part of us that wants the public to finally “get it.” But perhaps it’s the story that moves the most animals out of the system in the shortest time.

Technological innovations do not render moral advocacy useless. They make it more likely to succeed. Once we’ve made ourselves less dependent on animal products, through plant-based, cultivated, or hybrid alternatives, we may finally be free to see meat and dairy, and our treatment of animals, for what they are.

She’s an old friend, and we’re meeting her over lunch. Let me call her Annie (not her real name). Annie has been running an animal sanctuary in France for many years.

She’s 69, and apart from the occasional help of volunteers, does it all by herself. She’s in my country, Belgium, for a brief visit. In fact, all her visits are brief, because she can’t leave her 120 animals - horses, donkeys, goats, cats, dogs, chickens, and more - alone for long. Even during these few days away, a volunteer told her over the phone that a donkey needed to be euthanized after a freak accident. “Why,” Annie said with a sigh, “do these things continue to happen?”

Annie would like to move back to Belgium, where she’s originally from. She feels very lonely in the south of France, where few people understand her. She’s surrounded by locals who eat the animals she would save, hunters who shoot them, and vets who don’t get why she cares so much.

Annie spends all her time and money on her animals, whom she saved from abandonment, neglect, or slaughter. People know how to find her. They often emotionally blackmail her, saying that if she doesn’t take a particular animal, it will be euthanized or slaughtered. Annie has a very hard time saying no in these situations.

Sitting across from her, it’s hard not to feel that her life is no longer entirely her own. That something else is making the decisions.

We could call Annie a prisoner of compassion.* She’s less free than many people are because of how much she cares. Her compassion decides when she travels, how long she stays, how she spends her money, and how much rest she allows herself. While many caring people may feel like this to some extent, it may be worse for frontline animal helpers in animal sanctuaries or shelters.

We have our own sanctuary (Feathery Forest). It’s entirely my girlfriend Melanie’s project. She loves to do hands-on work with animals, while I’m more of a cerebral person who prefers the top-down work. Sanctuaries, and people who take care of individual animals, can only help a small number of animals directly. Costs are high, and animals require a lot of space. For that reason, among activists who focus on impact and effectiveness, sanctuaries sometimes have a difficult reputation: resources could be better spent to help larger numbers of animals.

I think there’s truth to this criticism, but sitting across Annie - and living at a sanctuary myself - I can hardly allow myself to think it. The thing is, I am so glad sanctuaries and shelters are there for the animals, who will remain the victims of human indifference and cruelty for as long as these traits exist in us.

The frontline helpers are the ones who get up close and personal with the misery and the surplus of animals. They incur costs. They experience the heartbreak of having to say no. They face physical and mental exhaustion. They see their animals die, one after another, at a pace that doesn’t even give them time to mourn. They absorb a part of the world’s cruelty so that others don’t have to see it directly. They are the ones, it seems, whom compassion is holding most tightly in its grip.

Looking at Annie, I was thinking about something that could help her. I’m guilty of increasing people like Annie’s burden: when I encounter an animal in need, I’ll find a shelter or sanctuary, or someone who’s got too many animals to take care of already. That’s because I don’t know myself what to do with the animal - certainly not if it’s in need of medical care. At the very least, I leave a donation.

I told Annie something I hope could bring some comfort: that a quick, painless death - euthanasia - is not the worst thing in the world. And that on a planet where there are more animals in need than there are people, resources, or space to care for them, tragic trade-offs are unavoidable. Refusing to accept that can mean pushing people like her past their limits.

When we said goodbye, Annie would soon return to her animals in France. Back to the same responsibilities and the same impossible choices.

I hope that she, and all other prisoners of compassion, don’t just appreciate what holds them hostage, but can also take pride in it. Even if compassion limits their freedom, it is also the reason so many animals are safe. Most of all, their work is an inspiration. In a world where animal exploitation is legal, subsidized and everywhere, they are the ones who remind us of all that humans can be.

* I came across this term in the writing of the Dutch author Charlotte Mutsaers

There were many great talks and speakers, but I want to focus here on two sessions, which described the same movement in very different moods. They made me consider, once again, what we can realistically achieve.

Connor’s radical realism

In his talk A journey of a thousand steps, Connor Jackson from Anima UK spoke from the trenches of corporate welfare campaigning. Connor has spent over a decade leading Anima’s UK work, combining undercover investigations with corporate pressure and activist mobilization, and building a track record of pushing major food businesses to improve chicken welfare standards.

Connor is vegan and wants to see an end to animal exploitation, but he has his reasons for campaigning for better living conditions for layer hens and slower-growing broilers. After decades of activism, he said, the number of farmed animals continues to increase. And chickens, of course, represent the vast majority of farmed animals. Connor believes the movement is “overwhelmingly failing” these creatures and needs to change its approach.

He thinks cage-free campaigns may be the most successful campaigns in animal rights history, giving hundreds of millions of birds a better, though far from ideal, life. Activists who can’t see a difference between caged and cage-free, or between fast- and slower-growing breeds of chickens, are not taking animal suffering seriously enough. Being able to spread your wings, escaping the pain of walking on metal grates for over a year, access to sunlight, the ability to escape aggressive flockmates… are all very meaningful for the birds.

Connor knows that cage-free systems are not the end point, but the strategy is to progress in steps: from battery cages, to cage-free, then to free range, to organic and beyond. With such incremental reforms, we can progressively undo the focus on efficiency that harms animals, raise their political status, and shift what society deems acceptable.

This will take time. Although he calls himself an optimist, Connor believes many activists’ dreams and goals - such as ending animal exploitation within the next few decades - are misguided, and that we’ll be stuck with intensive animal agriculture for many decades to come.

Harley’s optimism

In his talk The sleeping giant: unleashing the power of the animal movement, Harley Brewer, an activist with Just Stop Oil, Extinction Rebellion, and Animal Rising, offered a different story.** While many media outlets are keen to report that veganism is collapsing, Harley argues that the data do not match that narrative, and that the number of vegans has grown dramatically over the past decades. He believes that, as a movement, we think we are smaller than we are: in the UK, there are not just 3% vegans, 6% vegetarians, and 5% pescatarians, but also 25% flexitarians. Together, Harley says, that’s 39% of the public taking part in an economic boycott by actively reducing meat consumption. All these people are taking active steps to help put an end to factory farming.

If any other movement had 40% of the public taking part, Harley argued, it would not see itself as failing. We can absolutely win this and there is no reason we couldn’t end factory farming in our lifetime. Harley pointed to several recent victories: universities going partially or even fully plant-based, Proveg UK swapping nearly 60 million meals in UK schools to plant-based ones, and the Communities Against Factory Farming delaying or stopping every single factory farm application.*

Winning will require thinking politically (the government is the ultimate decision-maker), building coalitions across ideologies, and transforming the people who participate. Veganism should not be a prerequisite for joining the movement - the only requirements are a willingness to work on the issue and an ability to collaborate. Most of all, according to Harley, we need to believe that we can win.

Winning without wishful thinking

I’m not sure who I agree with more: Connor Jackson or Harley Brewer. It’s not obvious, in part because they’re using focusing on different things and using different metrics.

I do believe Connor is right that making a difference in the lives of hundreds of millions, and eventually billions, of chickens is significant. And I also think Harley is right that, despite the horrible and loud voices wishing vegans and the animal rights movement to hell, we have more support than we think we have.

But aside from asking which of these narratives is most factual - a question we’re not going to resolve here - we can also ask which one is most helpful.

Some will say that what’s most helpful is what’s most factual. That’s a reasonable view. If you believe you can do less than you actually can, you might aim lower than you should. Conversely, if you believe you have superpowers, you might set unrealistic goals and end up disappointed and frustrated. It seems, therefore, quite important to have a clear sense of what we can realistically achieve.

And yet at the same time, I also believe in self-fulfilling prophecies: believing you can do more than you think may energize you to actually do it. In that sense, as Karl Popper said, optimism is a moral duty.

I’m not sure whether realism or optimism will get us the furthest. We probably need a combination: optimistic realism or realistic optimism. And what’s most useful may often vary individually, on the person and where they are, psychologicially. If you feel burned out or dejected, a dose of Harley would do you good. If you’re overly optimistic, believing everything will sort itself out quickly, take a dose of Connor.

Because one thing seems clear: we will have to keep working as hard as we can. Lewis Bollard of Coefficient Giving put it aptly: the end of factory farming is neither inevitable nor impossible.

It won’t be easy, but it can be done.

We should dream big and appreciate small steps, put in the work and think creatively, do our research and find out the best interventions and tactics, and collaborate with everyone who thinks factory farming is a disaster (no matter what they eat).

*note that not everyone thinks stopping new factory farms is a good idea, from an animal welfare perspective

**I'm aware that also Wayne Hsiung offered a very inspiring and optimistic side, but I was unable to attend it.

Could we help animals, thought Dutch activist Marjolein De Rooij, and protect them against exploitation and unfair treatment by giving them labour rights? The idea gave birth to an non-profit called the Animal Labour Union, which offers a refreshing way to look at the situation of farmed animals. At the same time, this framing raises some obvious questions among those who - like myself - prefer to see the farmed animal industry gone entirely. I recently attended the Union’s conference and spoke with Marjolein about her initiative.

Marjolein, what exactly is the Animal Labour Union and what do you want to achieve?

The core idea behind the labour union is that we approach animals differently. I’m specifically talking about working animals—animals who are part of an economic system, which means there’s a financial component and an employer-employee relationship involved. These factors determine how these animals are treated. I focus on working animals in animal agriculture because the numbers are highest there, but this could extend to police dogs, guide dogs, animals in research, entertainment, sports, and more.

We were inspired by human labour unions. About 150 years ago, most employees were uneducated, had little power, and came from lower social classes. Many were exploited by their employers. They weren’t taken seriously and needed representatives to help them—not because they couldn’t speak, but because they weren’t heard. That is the situation of working animals today. We want to see them not only as victims, but as active participants in the labour process. Unfortunately, I couldn’t legally set up an association where the members are animals—they are not legal persons—so we set up a foundation and have donors.

Hasn’t the situation for animals improved? Employers don’t have complete power over their working animals. They’re constrained by animal welfare regulations.

Often, animal welfare laws can be ignored if the employer finds them too expensive to implement. Society agrees that cutting off a pig’s tail is wrong, yet it’s still allowed because farmers claim it’s impossible to stop. Human labour law works differently—there’s no room for such negotiation. A construction worker must wear a helmet, even if the employer considers helmets too costly.

Seeing farmed animals as employees is clearly better than seeing them as property. But since there’s no payment, contract, or mutual agreement, isn’t it more accurate to call them slaves?

It is indeed slavery, or forced labour, and I’m aware the parallel with human workers breaks down in several places. A human worker’s career ends with paid retirement, while animals die at the end of their working life—which may be short. An animal never chose this. From birth, animals must do what they are forced to do. The problem is that when you call farmed animals slaves, you are calling farmers slaveholders, and this will kill any chance of dialogue.

Framing farmed animals as working animals opens new possibilities and perspectives. For instance, in the Netherlands, it’s forbidden to compete on labour standards. Someone who fills shelves in a supermarket will earn the same at another supermarket. But the same retailers are allowed to compete on the working conditions of the animals whose body parts or products they sell. Drawing these kinds of parallels makes the animals a subject of conversation. They get agency and empowerment.

Abolitionist activists might argue that the “worker” frame risks cementing the system by creating a situation that feels “good enough.”

I am vegan myself and support abolishing the use of animals for food, but this will be a slow, long process. We need to pursue many paths to reach our goal. Labor law is dynamic, not static. 150 years ago, we started with a half-Sunday off and one week of unpaid leave per year. Today, we are discussing parental leave and the right to work from home. Labor law evolves with what society finds acceptable. I believe giving animals a voice could lead to abolition. A cow might say: “You can have some milk, but first I need to feed my calf. I also choose who fathers my calves, and I need a comfortable place to rest.” Very few forms of animal husbandry could ever meet such standards, though some might work with a consent model. In any case, I don’t think a labour law approach will increase acceptance of the industry.

Can you tell us about the six labour rights you advocate for?

First is the right to a safe working environment. For instance, barns must be protected from fire. Hundreds of thousands of animals die in barn fires every year because we don’t take security seriously enough. The same applies to low-emission flooring systems—cows may crash through the floor and die in the manure pit.

The second is the right to a healthy working environment. So far, the industry has focused mainly on physical health: disease, pain, and injury. But we also need to consider mental health. Boredom, for instance, could be a serious problem, yet we don’t address it until it causes physical issues like chickens pecking at each other or cannibalism.

Third is the right to a social life. Unlike human workers, farmed animals live where they work. They should have more freedom to choose their companions and live in intergenerational groups—for instance, cows with their calves. We must adapt the systems to the animals’ needs, not the other way around.

Then there’s the right to rest, vacation, and retirement. People often joke about this, but it’s perfectly possible to take it seriously. For example, we can choose not to inseminate an animal immediately after giving birth and give them more time to recover.

Retirement seems more difficult to arrange?

Yes, after their working life, humans live until they die. For many animals, the end of their “career” is also their death, since their bodies are eaten. But dairy cows, for instance, could be kept for at least a year after their last calf. We could extend their lifespan by spreading production—the same milk over six years instead of four. If animals live longer, you need fewer of them. Of course, not all those millions of animals—consider the chickens!—can get an actual retirement, but even a symbolic right would be meaningful.

The fifth right is freedom from violence. I realize that killing animals is violent, so we could never fully implement this right. But I don’t just mean human violence—I also mean violence between animals caused by their living conditions. For example, facilities that breed parent stock for egg-laying hens keep hens and roosters together in crowded spaces, and many hens get injured.

Finally, there is the right to have a say—to be represented. Certain human parties need to voice the animals’ concerns to the industry, but this is happening only to a very limited extent. For instance, in a Dutch commission on humane animal husbandry, there are 17 stakeholders from the industry and only one animal protection group.

You’re doing research into animal language, including AI. Do you think we’ll ever understand animals, so that they can better represent themselves?

Animals communicate with us constantly—in a sense, animal protest happens every day. Yet we often fail to listen. AI could be a crucial tool here, as it excels at distinguishing vocal patterns and subtle sounds that escape the human ear. In crowded agricultural environments, it’s nearly impossible for humans to isolate, for instance, “pleasure calls” from the background noise.

Farmers often argue that if an animal wasn’t doing well, it wouldn’t be productive.

That reasoning is flawed. 70% of hens have breastbone fractures, yet they still lay eggs despite the pain. 25% of cows have udder infections or are lame, but they continue producing milk. I think it’s crucial that farmers are not the sole judges of their animals’ living conditions. Imagine if Schiphol Airport claimed KLM takes care of its baggage handlers well enough and there should be no interference or unions. We don’t accept that argument in any human workplace. Farmers need to make many financial decisions, and when money is tight, animal welfare is often the first to be sacrificed.

What about the argument that farmers know their animals best?

I’d say most suffer from professional blindness. A farmer with 200 cows or 300 sows doesn’t have time to check each animal individually. Instead, they rely on totals and averages, tracked through technology. Their phone alerts them to a drop in production, but they may not notice a cow with a sore hind leg. Many modern farmers have lost traditional knowledge about keeping animals alive without industrial systems. Research shows many can’t even recognize the sound of a cow calling for her calf. Farmers also have an incentive not to bond with animals that leave every week—it hurts too much. Research shows that talking gently to pigs reduces their stress by 25%, yet almost all farmers say they don’t talk to them.

Are you happy with what you’ve done so far with the Animal Labour Union?

To be honest, I don’t think one animal is better off today than four years ago because of us. But we’ve started a movement, and we’ve been heard. I’m on the radio every two weeks, in major newspapers, and was selected number one in the Dutch “Sustainable Top 100.” We received funding from the Ministry of Agriculture, and they invite me to give lectures and workshops. Various stakeholders find the six rights we champion to be a useful framework that highlights many areas for improvement.

What are your priorities for the future?

I’m very concerned about technological innovation. Governments invest in “sustainable” livestock farming to solve climate problems, but ignore the interests of the individual animals. Air scrubbers can make barn fires spread faster. Measures to reduce ammonia emissions may make the barn climate less healthy for animals. In Denmark, supplements to make cows emit less methane caused animals to suddenly die. If we adapt a cow’s digestive system, who says they don’t have continuous stomach pain?

I’m also very interested in what makes animals happy. There is a lot of focus on reducing pain and suffering - they negatively impact production - there is little commercial incentive to study animal happiness. I think that even in terrible circumstances, humans and non-humans can still experience moments of happiness. As long as the animals are in the systems, can we, apart from reducing their pain, perhaps also look at how we can increase their happiness? Some would warn here against anthropomorphism - ascribing human characteristics to animals. But I agree with primatologist Frans de Waal, who said denying animals certain characteristics that they do have - anthropodenial - causes more suffering than we think. So always and everywhere, when we make decisions that affect animals, we should wonder: how does the cow, the pig, the chicken… think about this?

More information:

• Animal Labour Union (English and Dutch)

• For Dutch readers, the book Hoeveel vakantiedagen heeft een varken?

“I consider myself quite an altruistic person, and I choose plant-based options regularly. But somehow, I can’t feel all this empathy that you seem to have for the animals. Sometimes a vegan friend will explain to me everything that happens, and somehow I can’t truly feel it. What do I do in such a case?”

What, indeed, do you do when you want to care but can’t?

In most cases, I’m skeptical when people tell me they don’t care about what happens to animals. Sometimes it’s posturing for others, or a lack of self-examination. Another reason can be that they are not familiar enough with animals, and what they are cognitiviely and emotionally capable of. More importantly, people are protecting themselves against caring, because caring has real-life consequences. If you care about what happens to a pig and want to be honest with yourself, you’ll probably have difficulty eating pig meat, at least from an animal that was factory-farmed. So in order not to have to change your behavior (bothersome!), you’ll try not to care, and you avoid things that would lead to caring more.

Still, I do encounter people who tell me very honestly that they don’t care. Especially when I can see that they would like to care, I take them seriously, as I did in the case of this young woman. Her question made me consider - as I often do - what exactly it is that people need in order to change.

We are often quick to think that that’s empathy or being emotionally moved by something. And we may surmise that this is both a necessary and sufficient condition to change.

Yet clearly, that is not the case.

I tried to answer this young woman as best I could. To start with, I acknowledged her issue and said that we can’t help what we feel, and that sometimes, I don’t feel much for something that other people seem very moved or shaken by. Secondly, I asked if she was sure that she was not touched by animal suffering at all, and suggested maybe she watch a fragment of Earthlings or Dominion (warning her that these are extremely graphic documentaries which I’ve never been able to watch myself). She nodded and wrote down the titles.

Thinking without feeling

Thirdly, I said that it may not be necessary to feel the issue, and be moved by what happens to animals. She could also, in principle, change her views and behavior on the basis of mere information - such as the facts and statistics that I had been providing. One can, I think, conclude on the basis of reason alone that pain and suffering are not good things and we should aspire to reduce them for everyone who experiences them - and at least not to cause more of them. She seemed to agree.

That empathy and care are not sufficient conditions for change can be easily seen. So many people care about something but don’t change their behavior. It’s perhaps a bit harder to see that rationality by itself can lead to good behavior. But one can imagine a robot - who is not conscious - demonstrating perfectly rational and ethical (from a consequentialist perspective) behavior. The robot doesn’t feel any of the suffering, but will try (if it’s programmed the way you and I would program it) to avoid it and reduce it.

People, however, are not robots. We experience so many emotions and desires - which robots don’t suffer from - that pull us in non-optimal and irrational directions. So if a person is not a perfectly or even mostly rational creature, who aligns their values with their beliefs, some extra motivation or drive, in the form of empathy or care, is probably most useful, and even necessary.

There’s this saying: you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. A long time ago, at a conference, I heard the late Tom Regan say in a talk: philosophy can lead a mind to water, but only emotion can make it drink. I don’t remember the exact context, but given that Regan is the author of The Case for Animal Rights, a very dense, philosophical book, I assume he meant that these cerebral arguments are not enough, and that emotion or empathy has to be involved somehow.

How much empathy is too much?

No matter whether being emotionally moved by animals or not is necessary, at the very least it’s clear to me that this is a spectrum, and perhaps the question is rather: how much empathy is necessary? Some people may get very emotionally moved by these things, others only slightly. The same goes for rationality: some will attach a lot of importance to objective facts and numbers (and base their choices on them). Others might not, and make sub-optimal decisions because they are too emotional and caring. Therefore another question is: how much empathy is too much?

I often feel this tension in myself. I hardly ever seek it out, but seeing coverage of cruel animal treatment may renew or boost my motivation. It may spur me to write or share or do something that hopefully has some kind of positive impact. On the other hand, the result may also be that I react mostly from my emotions, and say or write things that people who are not in my shoes can’t relate to, and will find alienating - for instance because I’m too aggressive. Or I might suggest people donate to a charity that posted something I was very moved by, while the more rational thing would be to ask them to donate to a highly effective charity.

We can be really blinded by our emotions and our empathy. Caring can turn into frustration and anger, which - while sometimes energizing - are often not productive. Moreover, to be moved (let alone angry or frustrated) all the time may also be detrimental to one’s personal sustainability.

I’m not sure if I can conclude on much else than the cliché that we need both emotion/empathy and rationality - the former can help spur us into action, the latter can help select which actions are the most fruitful.

The combination is what’s most beautiful: an analytical person who is crying, or a very emotional person who is doing her best to sort out what is the best thing to do: both of these cases… move me very much.

Thank you for caring and thinking, with all your heart and all your head.

The alien and the butchery

La Belle Verte is a not very well known French film from the nineties. On a distant planet, members of an enlightened society are looking for one among them who will pay a visit to Earth. Familiar with Earth’s reputation as a nasty place, few volunteer - until one brave woman, Mila, steps forward. We follow this humanoid alien through various locations and situations on our planet. In one scene, she bumps into a butcher shop. Looking at the meat in the window, she asks: “What IS this? An exhibition of corpses?”

Then, a customer leaves the shop, and this short conversation ensues:

Mila: “Excuse me ma’am, what is it you just got there?”

Customer: “That’s my meat.”

Mila: “To… do what with?”

Customer (confused): “To eat, of course.”

Mila (with a terrified look on her face): “You are a carnivore?!”

The customer signals to Mila that she’s crazy. But seconds later, because of Mila’s mind-altering powers, she suddenly stops in the street, sits down on the pavement, unwraps the meat, and… stares at it in complete disbelief. For the first time in her life, we assume, this woman wonders about what she’s eating.

In art, the device used in this scene is called defamiliarization or - if you prefer a mysterious Russian-based word - ostranenie. It’s the technique of making the familiar strange, so that the reader or viewer is forced to see ordinary things with fresh eyes. In the case of La Belle Verte, this is done through offering us the perspective of an alien. Mila has no cultural conditioning around meat, no lifelong habituation to the sight of it. She’s not ignorant or naive, but simply unencumbered by the slow normalization that happens when something is everywhere and always.

An outsider’s perspective

Our practice of massively exploiting animals has indeed become so utterly normal that most people never seriously question it. Even I, as an animal activist for thirty years, often have moments where I think: is this really happening? Are we really torturing, killing and eating sentient beings by the billions, every year - all for short-lived gustatory pleasures? All without most people batting an eye? (see my article Gaslit by humanity).

To truly see our world in a new light, an outsider’s perspective is helpful. Since actual outsiders are very hard to find in our global culture, we have to conjure them through imagination. Fiction and thought experiments allow us to inhabit worlds where the current horrors are absent. From that vantage point, through the eyes of our outsiders, we may catch a glimpse of how our reality would look if it were no longer shielded by the veil of normalization.

We can imagine a society and someone standing outside of it - like “the savage” in Huxley’s Brave New World. We can imagine aliens in faraway places, as in La Belle Verte. We can dream up future human beings, who, from a better future look back at us with horrified eyes, as in the 2017 British movie Carnage (see the list at the bottom of this post).

What gives the outsider’s perspective its power is our knowledge or intuition that she’s actually seeing more clearly than we are. A moral relativist would shrug this off: Mila comes from a different culture with different norms, and leave it at that. But for those like me (and you?), who believe there are objectively better and worse ways to act or perceive the world, the outsider’s gaze is - rather than just an interesting thought experiment - a corrective lens, that strips away the distortions of custom and habit.

Make the familiar strange

My guess is that we - even those of us who already care deeply about animals - will only really, deeply realize what is going on here once it’s all over.

I remain convinced that we can make it so. Meat alternives will help. So will books, movies or thought experiments that defamiliarize, and show us that we are currently living in the pre-history of a truly civilized world.

Write them, make them, invent them.

So that some day, everyone will look at a piece of meat like our alien Mila does: with the terrifying clarity of someone seeing a corpse.

And so that everyone will one day wonder:

What the hell were we doing?

Defamiliarization in fiction (animals/meat)

• La Belle Verte (watch here or here)

• Carnage (watch here)

• Tender is the Flesh

• Under the skin (book and movie)

  Fragments in:

• K-Pax (book and movie)

• Star Trek: the next generation. Episode “Lonely Among us”
  
  Let me now in the comments if you know more examples…

Here is the text I found in my inbox:

You eat every day, often while doing something else (…) In these cases, the food is mostly fuel: You appreciate little of its flavor, and even less of its history:
That food came from something—seed, rain, sunshine; and from somewhere—the soil of places you’ve never been; and from someones—the energy and effort of people you’ll never meet.
When you consider this, you realize how much had to happen for just one small piece of food to arrive on your plate. And that inspires gratitude.
The Challenge: Choose one small item of food—a strawberry, a piece of chocolate, a slice of bread. Look at it carefully. Note its color, shape, texture, light, and shadow. Then imagine you can see beyond its appearance and into its history. Picture the dirt, the crops, the hands that harvested them. Then eat slowly.

Animal foods are inconvenient to be mindful about

Animals are conspicuously absent from this exercise. That is not accidental.

When people talk about food and list their favorite recipes, most will think of animal products: a steak, a trout, a cheese platter… But when we’re invited to focus mindfully on our food’s “history”, examples suddenly become plant-based. Strawberries are convenient, lamb chops are not.

Doing this exercise honestly with the foods central to most people’s plates would require imagining slaughter (sometimes without proper stunning) - and the awful, bloody places where this violence occurs. It would require thinking about life-long confinement, mutilations like castration, debeaking or dehorning, about bodies bred for productivity rather than health, about chronic pain, fear, and distress.

These are not marginal issues. They describe the standard reality of animal agriculture. Those who believe none of this applies to the meat they eat are either deceiving themselves or belong to verrrry small minority who only consume wild animals - and even there, “mindfulness” would mean confronting the terror we inflict on them.

People, always just people

Animals are the biggest stakeholders in our food system. We kill and eat hundreds of billions of them every year. Yet even in a mindful eating-exercise, they disappear from view. The attention challenge speaks of “someones,” but then clarifies that this is just about “people you’ll never meet”. Later, it urges us to “soften the boundaries between ourselves and the people who brought us our food.”

What makes this omission worse is that the context here is spirituality - and compassion, which Sam Harris frequently says is central to mindfulness. Yet once again, compassion stops at the species barrier.

The result is sort of perverse: an exercise meant to cultivate awareness and ethical sensitivity ends up encouraging selective attention. Arguably, what matters most here is precisely what remains unexamined. Being grateful for one’s food while systematically omitting the primary victims feels less like mindfulness and more like moral laundering. At the very least, it is a highly selective form of awareness.

One charitable interpretation is that animals are omitted from the exercise in order not to further normalize their consumption. But given that - as in almost any demographic - the majority of Waking Up-users eats animal products, this omission has the opposite effect: it allows participants to remain unexamined. A more honest, and genuinely mindful, version of the challenge might therefore include a sentence like this:

If you are thinking of an animal product, consider honestly what the animal went through. Then decide for yourself whether you are comfortable with that.

All beings

The pattern of forgetting animals can be found in much of spirituality beyond food. When I listen to conversations, meditations, or talks on mindfulness (on the Waking Up app and elsewhere), I find myself noticing who the speakers are referring to.

Almost always, it is people. Rarely is it beings. And yet compassion is relevant to everyone with subjective experiences. On this planet, human animals are only a small fraction of this set. Yet even those who are looking for the highest form of awareness, remain blissfully unaware of the animals in their food.

There are exceptions, of course. French Buddhist monk, author and vegan Matthieu Ricard, thinks refreshingly non-anthropocentric:

“All sentient beings, without exception, strive for happiness but are confused about what can bring them happiness. Because of ignorance, those beings have been wandering in samsara for many, many lifetimes. (...) When I see the state of suffering of those beings and their endless roaming in existence, how can I not harbour an endless feeling of compassion for those beings?
But a mere feeling of compassion is not enough. And today I am powerless to do anything for them. So because of that, I will generate the determination by crossing the door of the spiritual path and practicing it for that ultimate end. I will do so in order to gain the capacity to free all beings from suffering.1

All beings, Sam and team. Please, take non-humans seriously. Help humankind wake up to one of the biggest sources of suffering in this world - inflicted for one of the most trivial of purposes.

There are many reasons why this is so. The one I will address here is that people often resist being persuaded - especially when they feel someone is trying to change them. This resistance to persuasion stems, among other things, from a desire to see ourselves as free individuals who make our own choices.

Some people are much more sensitive to threats to their freedom than others. Moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt, in his Moral Foundations Theory, describes “liberty versus oppression” as one of the key moral dimensions people vary on. For many, this liberty sensitivity functions almost like an emotional alarm system: the moment they sense someone is trying to control them, they push back - often before they’ve even considered the substance of the message.

This is especially true for libertarians, for whom personal autonomy is often the central moral lens through which almost every political and ethical issue is judged. This includes food. Here, I’ll refer to people who attach very high importance to autonomy in matters of diet as food freedom fighters.

When freedom trumps everything else

Many limits on our freedom are uncontroversial. We accept (at least in theory) that we don’t have the freedom to rob others of their freedom - or their lives, bodily integrity, or property. Other freedoms are contested, like the right to bear arms in the United States. And what we consider acceptable changes over time, along with our moral norms. Practices that were once taken for granted can later become subject to scrutiny, regulation, or outright bans. The freedom to smoke wherever you like, for instance, is a thing of the past in most countries.

When it comes to food - and the consequences of our dietary choices - freedom still seems to trump almost any other argument. No matter the scale at which we exploit animals, the intensity of their suffering, or the damage done to the environment and public health, meat, dairy, and eggs can be produced legally, and people are free to buy them. That is the reality today. And until there is broader consensus that many of these practices are wrong or at least problematic, we have little choice but to accept this appeal to freedom of choice. Whenever we suggest otherwise, we’re told - politely or not - to stop telling people what to do.

Now when our messaging and attempts to raise awareness collide with pro-freedom arguments, what can we do? Below I discuss two options.

A rational argument: are omnivores really free to choose what they eat?

Many food freedom fighters won’t be open to rational argument. But those who are willing to reflect honestly may concede that freedom of choice is, to a significant extent, an illusion. I’m not referring here to the philosophical debate about free will, but simply to the forces that shape our food choices.

Of course the average supermarket shopper still decides whether tonight’s meal will feature sausage or pork chops, with fries or mashed potatoes. But how free is that choice really? How much of it is shaped by culture and habit - by what our parents ate - rather than by deliberate reflection?

And how much is steered by food companies and supermarkets that actively develop and promote products that are the most profitable? Through discounts, advertising, product placement, store layout, in-store sampling, scent marketing, and more, retailers and restaurant chains continuously push consumers in specific directions. Cooking shows feature famous chefs using sponsored ingredients. Here’s one data point: the entire global budget of the movement working to reduce animal consumption and animal suffering is less than one fourth of the marketing budget of Restaurant Brands International, the parent company behind fast food chains such as Burger King and Popeyes.

Add to this the lobbying of food producers (and stakeholders in adjacent sectors) who influence regulations, taxes, subsidies and even publicly funded promotion. All of this contributes to the food environment, in which people believe they are choosing freely what to buy.

And yet the food freedom fighter’s irritation is reserved for those pushy, preachy vegans. (For additional insight into why this is so, you can read my article When doing something good makes other people hate you.)

There’s more. Our bodies crave high-calorie foods - especially fatty and sugary ones. In times when food was scarce and survival uncertain, seeking energy-rich foods gave us an advantage. Today, this instinct works against us. Companies exploit it, making their foods as tasty and addictive as possible - just like Facebook and TikTok do everything possible to hijack our attention, in order to boost their bottom line.

Changing the food environment

Rather than trying to motivate individuals with various arguments, we can work on the supply side and try to convince companies or governments to take action. If people don’t on their own tend to make compassionate, sustainable, healthy food choices, and if our food environment is not supporting those options, we need to change that food environment so it becomes more conducive to positive change. We can try to convince the food freedom fighters - and the decision makers - of what I wrote above: that consumers are quite defenseless against market forces that exploit their weaknesses. Rather than opposing restrictions to our “freedom,” we should welcome all the help we can get.

Of course many food freedom fighters will be equally opposed to this approach. Perhaps even more than activists and do-gooders, governments and institutions should stay the hell out of people’s plates. And governments are indeed wary of interfering, not because the evidence is unclear, but because liberty-triggering backlash is predictable. To avoid a sausage-wielding populist running away with half the electorate, politicians prefer to leave things to the consumer. And this consumer says thank you, yes, I’ll decide for myself what I’ll eat, and then proceeds to buy exactly what various forces are pushing him to buy.

One option is to take an even subtler approach, so the public doesn’t realize something is being taken away from them. Institutions can nudge customers by promoting certain options, changing defaults (making the good thing the easy thing), or adjusting prices (but the food freedom fighters better not find out). So much of the real work lies in shaping the environment in which choices are made: making plant-based options more available, more affordable, more normal, and harder to avoid - so that people can keep their sense of freedom while the default direction of society quietly shifts.

The most free

If you’re vegetarian or vegan, you’ve heard it many times: “Are you allowed to eat that?” The question implies that we’re not free to do what we want, and have to follow certain rules. There are rules, of course - sometimes too strictly interpreted or enforced by the vegan community - but basically we follow them because we want to follow them.

Most vegans engage with food far more consciously than the average consumer. They’re more aware of where their food comes from and what’s in it. They’ve set clear criteria for what they will and won’t eat. They seem far less susceptible to advertising. Rather than simply repeating what their parents and grandparents ate, they’ve actively thought about their diet.

So when it comes to their food choices, even if it may not look like it, perhaps no one is as free as vegans.

Here then, is the irony: the food freedom fighters are not defending freedom from vegans - they are defending freedom from the one influence that challenges the status quo.

A bit further on, I come across two small dogs who are locked up in a small kennel. Their owners have a large garden, but perhaps they don’t feel like fencing it off. Or maybe they don’t want to clean dog poop from the lawn. I’ve rung their doorbell a couple of times, but never found anyone home. I’ve asked the police, who went to check things out, but told me they couldn’t see anything illegal. Holding dogs like that is just as legal as cramming pigs together in a dark shed.

From the garden with the dogs, I walk a few hundred meters further and pass a house. Through the window, I can see a birdcage with a lone bird inside. That cage would be the size of a room for a human - a room in which we’d have to spend our entire lives. Now imagine having wings, which allow you to move in three dimensions and, if you wish, to fly for hours on end. I suspect the elderly lady who “owns” the bird has no idea how limited - almost nonexistent - the freedom of movement of her little companion really is.

On the same walk, I may encounter other instances of animal suffering: hunters shooting rabbits and deer. Anglers who, in their own Zen-like way, drive a hook through a fish’s mouth. A rat who’s been poisoned. Herd animals who are alone. Ducks without water.

All of this is allowed. All of this is legal.

Every single day, I am amazed by this: that we as a species invent the most incredible things, create beautiful art in countless forms, slowly unravel the mysteries of the universe with telescopes we send millions of kilometers into space… and at the same time still imprison, abuse, exploit and kill billions of non-humans at will.

This situation becomes stranger still when you realize that a majority of people, across cultures, seems to genuinely care about animals. Just one survey from my country shows that 84% of respondents believe animals should not have the legal status of object, and they can suffer in the same way humans do.

A survey is, of course, only a survey, but this one and many others leave little doubt that at least in theory, across many countries, there is broad concern for animals and large public support for greater animal welfare.

Why, then, one might ask, is change happening so slowly? Why are we still barbarians when it comes to our treatment of the non-humans with whom we share the planet?

Many answers can be given to that question. We treat animals shamefully because we can. We do it because we want cheap meat. Because we are used to it and it’s been like this for a long time. Because change is difficult. Because of social pressure. Because vested interests resist…

But above all, animal suffering persists because most people somehow manage to look away from it. The irony is that they do so precisely because confronting animal suffering is often painful. But such wilfull ignorance, of course, solves nothing. One of the first things we must do if we want to rid the world of animal suffering - any suffering - is to be willing to see it.

It is a question that has haunted me for decades now - and that I will keep exploring, in articles here, and I think for the rest of my life:

How to make people see?

The immediate cause for writing this piece was a barrage of comments I received on a few Facebook posts from omnivores pushing back against an animal-friendly message. One could call these people trolls, but I’ll try to be charitable here.

I heard the familiar arguments. About health. About the Amazon rainforest being destroyed for my tofu. About plants feeling pain. None of that was new. Two other reactions weren’t new either, but I was struck by how often they came up - seemingly even more than they used to.

The first was: “You vegans think you’re morally superior.”

The second was: “Stop telling us what to do.”

These are old and tired arguments (or rather, emotional responses) but they are very revealing - especially when seen in the context of both the current zeitgeist and some features of human psychology.

To explain what I mean, let me take you back almost two decades.

Our one universal fear

It’s 2006. Together with a good friend and thousands of others, I’m standing in a huge hangar somewhere in the north of London. On the podium in front of us - shouting, bouncing, waving, fist-bumping - is the self-help guru of gurus: Tony Robbins.

“What are we all afraid of?” Tony asks.

We’ve heard it a few times already, so we can all shout along:

“That we’re not ENOUGH!”

“And if we’re not enough…?” Tony shouts back.

“We won’t be LOVED!”

I can still see and hear it. Ten thousand people chanting it, recognising it, fearing it. Tony claimed this fear was universal - present across cultures, classes, and circumstances. Rich or poor, he said, admired or ignored, successful or struggling: at some level, we all fear not being enough, and therefore not being loved.

However high your disdain for self-help gurus may be, at the very least in my own experience, Tony is right. Some part of my mind tells me this (literally) dozens of times a day, in one form or another: you’re not enough. You should do more. Be better. Work harder. Others are doing better than you. You’re an impostor. And so on, ad nauseam.

I’m guessing I’m not the only one, and Tony is correct that more or less everyone has this fear. And nobody enjoys being reminded of it.

Moral threat

I think you can see where I’m going with this. One important reason why people attack vegans (and other people perceived as “do-gooders”) is not primarily disagreement about facts or arguments, but a sense of moral threat. When someone does something that is widely seen as good, it can make others feel worse about themselves, whether they want that to happen or not.

This phenomenon even has a name in psychology: do-gooder derogation. We tend to dislike, dismiss, or ridicule those whose behaviour implicitly suggests that we could - and perhaps should - do better.

Seen in this light, accusations of “moral superiority” make sense. Often, no explicit claim of superiority is being made at all. The mere act of opting out of a harmful norm can be experienced as a silent reproach.

And yes - this is uncomfortable to admit, but important nevertheless - part of the reason many of us are vegan (or do good) is probably that it does make us feel better about ourselves. That doesn’t invalidate the choice. Almost all moral behaviour has a self-affirming component. Wanting to see yourself as someone who tries to do less harm is not a character flaw, but probably part and parcel of how motivation works.

The problem arises when that self-affirmation in one person triggers self-doubt in another - a dynamic which is likely intensified today. We live in a time of uncertainty, status anxiety, and perceived loss - economic, cultural, and symbolic. There is widespread resentment toward “educated city people,” experts, and so-called elites. Veganism, fairly or not, often gets lumped into that category: another lifestyle choice associated with moralising, privilege, and telling others how to live.

From that perspective, “stop telling us what to do” is less a response to an actual command than an expression of reactance: the instinctive pushback we feel when our freedom or moral self-image seems threatened. None of this means that the hostility toward any sort of do-gooder is justified. But it does make it more intelligible.

Being charitable

I am not suggesting that we respond to hostile comments by telling people they’re insecure, afraid, or morally fragile. That would only make things worse. Nor am I suggesting we abandon moral clarity or stop advocating for animals. What I am suggesting is that we take seriously the idea that many aggressive reactions are rooted in fear - specifically, the fear of not being enough, and not being loved.

So what to do with this? As I sometimes say: the true test of compassion lies not in being kind to the weakest, but in being charitable toward those we find most irritating, unreasonable, or hostile. This is much easier said than done. In online discussions, it is incredibly tempting to go into attack mode. Many commenters write in all caps, make spelling mistakes, repeat the same bad arguments. It is so easy to mock, belittle, or score points.

But every time we make someone feel smaller, dumber, or morally inferior, we strengthen the very reactance that keeps them stuck. And this ultimately keeps animals suffering.

Our ego might enjoy the clash. Our sense of righteousness might even be gratified. But if the goal is fewer animals harmed, more minds opened, and more hearts shifted, then understanding this psychological dynamic is not a luxury, but part of the work.

(PS: you are enough)

Not so when I run into a group of hunters on a peaceful nature walk.

This time, I really tried. I made an effort to hold myself back. I passed about five men with guns just as they were getting out of their cars, wearing their fluorescent vests. One of them greeted me politely. I managed to simply ignore him - which is a bit of an achievement.

I walked into the forest and saw that they followed the same path, behind me. Not much later I heard a gunshot, and saw three or four roe deer fleeing among the trees.

At that moment, I unleash my demons. I turn around, walk back, and confront two of the hunters, walking through the woods with rifles at the ready.

“You having fun?” I say in a loud voice.

“Excuse me?”

“Are you enjoying killing animals?”

A deep sigh. “Sir, you are on private property. You have to go back to the road.”

“Is this your land?” I ask.

“No, but we have hunting rights here. You need to leave.”

“Then call the police, because I’m not leaving,” I say angrily, not exactly sure what I want to do. I’m now just two feet away from him.

“I should call the police? Sir, you are the one on private property.”

“I know. Call the police or the owner.” I’m shouting now.

“Sir, you have no reason to come after me like this.”

“I do have a reason!”

“Really?”

“I’m defending the innocent animals you’re trying to kill.”

Another deep, frustrated sigh. “And tonight on your plate,” the hunter says, “it’ll be cauliflower, I guess?”

I’d heard this before, during an earlier confrontation with hunters. Maybe it’s something they teach in hunting school: if you run into some half-crazed anti-hunting type, ask them what they’re having for dinner. Gotcha!

“I haven’t eaten meat for thirty years,” I say.

“Looks like it,” the hunter replies. “Lack of development.” The irony of that remark seems to escape him entirely.

“Come on, let’s get out of here,” says his hunting buddy, just as frustrated as he is.

They disappear into the forest. I continue on my way.

When I hear another gunshot, I can’t help myself. I cup my hands around my mouth and shout as loud as I can: “Cowaaaaaaaaards!!”

The word echoes over the hills.

I’m told I usually look like a calm and composed person, so those of you who ever heard me speak or read my writings might be surprised that I’ve got this rage in me. Actually, when it comes out, it surprises me too.

But then again, it shouldn’t. It’s the pent-up anger, frustration and sadness about what’s happening to the animals, that I carry inside me quietly, day in, day out, for many years now. Rage at suffering, injustice, indifference. Those hunters got a full load.

I’m quite ambivalent about raging at them like that. On the one hand, it does feel good to do something. I believe that if everyone who meets hunters, challenges them, this may help to de-normalize hunting and maybe make their little outing just a little bit less pleasant. And potentially, it’s good for me to vent, just now and then. It certainly feels good. Liberating even. I feel no fear, not even much adrenaline. Just… righteous indignation.

On the other hand, everything I talk about to vegans and animal activists - tolerance, kindness, empathy, trying to take the other’s perspective - I threw it all out the window with this action, and probably didn’t achieve anything.

I know I can have a coffee with a hunter and have a decent discussion. We’ll agree on some things. For instance on the fact that wild caught-meat is better than factory-farmed meat. If I’m in a charitable mood, I might even admit that now and then, a good hunter may reduce suffering, by countering overpopulation and making sure the animals don’t have to starve to death. I can ask a hunter, from a place of genuine interest, why they do what they do. I could listen and nod, and really do my best to try to understand what pleasure their hobby brings them.

But not during the act itself. Not in the moment when animals are being terrorized, running for their lives. Not when right in front of me, someone aims to hurt and kill an innocent deer. In that case, apparently, I don’t have myself under control.

Maybe the next time I encounter a hunter in the woods, I’ll make an effort to keep my calm and approach him like a Zenmaster, or at least like the psychology-literate person I aspire to be.

Not making any promises, though.

It’s an understandable response. And it would be easy for me to condemn her unequivocally. Doing so, I’d win approval in the circles where I feel most at home. It would demonstrate that I am on the right side (meaning the left side). Yet I think it would also risk betraying the animals. So if you’re open for some additional nuance, read on (if you think nuance is a bad thing, you may want to read my slow opinion article first).

All of this is my preliminary opinion, based on what I’ve read. It’s possible that I’m overlooking points that would change my view. Anyway, no matter how many caveats I put here, I realize this text might be misinterpreted anyway. So be it.

A moral asymmetry
Antispeciesism is grounded in more general principles of justice, equity, and the rejection of arbitrary exclusion. Racism and homophobia violate those principles. From that perspective, condemnation of Bardot can feel almost obligatory.

I want to suggest that reducing people like Bardot to being racists - full stop - may be morally too simple, strategically counterproductive and, paradoxically, revealing of a deep asymmetry that antispeciesism is meant to challenge.

“Nothing excuses racism, and nothing can make up for it” sounds strong, uncompromising, and morally clear. But taken literally, it is also misleading, whether we apply it to Bardot or to anyone else. If nothing can ever make up for racism, then moral accounting becomes into a binary: once someone has crossed that line, everything else becomes morally irrelevant. Their actions, sacrifices, achievements, even the lives they may have saved, do not count compared to the hateful words they spoke.

Yet even the most committed antiracist or antispeciesist does not apply this logic consistently. We coexist daily with people who participate in, benefit from, and defend a system that inflicts immense suffering on animals. We continue to love them, work with them, organize with them, vote with them. I hope we don’t reduce them to animal abusers, even though part of us may think that is what they are.

I understand, of course, that we’re talking about different norms, and that in our society it’s hard to measure our treatment of humans and animals by exactly the same yardstick. But when someone like Bardot is reduced entirely to her worst statements about people, we should at least pause and ask why this reduction suddenly feels so natural, and why we may even feel pushed to respond this way.

Part of the answer, I think, lies in the moral asymmetry we still carry - sometimes unconsciously - even as antispeciesists. Of course it is possible to do so much harm in one domain that it eclipses all the good one does in another. But when we dismiss a lifetime of animal advocacy because of the words a person said (words which, it is true, may have real-life consequences), animal lives are once again being treated as morally secondary, as if their protection does not weigh heavily enough to complicate the verdict. It’s moral accounting where the animals don’t show up on the balance sheet.

Left behind
Bardot didn’t just make harmful comments, but also supported far-right politicians. To understand better why she did that, we need to realize what she was confronting, at a time when most of us animal advocates were not yet active: a machine turning billions of sentient beings into food, entertainment, clothes, or research subjects. Bardot was furious about it (even though, as a vegetarian, she still participated in some of it).

The point is, her hateful remarks do not seem to be simple expressions of xenophobia or bigotry. Many of them appear to be rooted in a broader misanthropy, because of what humans do to animals. When she described some people on Réunion Island as savages, it was apparently because they used puppies as live bait for fishing. When she spoke about “barbaric Muslims” invading France, it was because she was furious about the ritual slaughter of sheep by members of the Muslim community.

But Bardot - a combative, uncompromising and at times reckless personality - did not only attack immigrants or minorities; she also fiercely condemned French culture itself for its treatment of animals. She lashed out at any practices she saw as cruel, backward, or barbaric.

If you take animal suffering seriously and see the moral catastrophe that is happening every day, it’s not hard to imagine how rage can at times turn into something ugly when it finds no constructive outlet. Especially when the political camp - the left - that claims compassion as a core value, leaves animal suffering structurally under-addressed, one might feel drawn to allies that do take animals seriously, even if they bring toxic ideas. Bardot herself said bluntly that had the communists taken animals seriously, she would have allied with them instead of with far-right parties.

Some will object that condemning Bardot is not only a matter of principle, but also of strategy and pragmatism: drawing a hard line is necessary to keep animal advocacy respectable and to win (or at least not alienate) the left.

I understand this concern. But it rests on the assumption that the left, as it actually exists, has been a reliable or sufficient vehicle for the cause of reducing animal suffering. Evidently it has not. Despite its language of justice and compassion, the left has largely tolerated, normalized, or sidelined the mass abuse of animals. Recognizing this is not a blanket endorsement of right-wing politics, nor a call to compromise on anti-racism or other core commitments. But if this is the political reality, animal advocates among the right are a strategic necessity (we can criticize them for other views they hold).

Rejecting moral simplicity
We should be able to hold two truths at once: Brigitte Bardot’s racist and homophobic statements were indefensible, and her work for animals was extraordinarily significant. Rejecting moral simplicity does not weaken our ethics but strengthens them. Just like Bardot could do a lot better than reducing a group of people to their most horrible behavior towards animals, all of us can do better than reducing an entire person’s life to her racist or bigoted rhetoric.

Bardot’s life forces us to ask difficult questions about moral purity, strategic alliances, and the place animals still occupy - even within movements built to defend them. If antispeciesism is to be more than a slogan, it must be able to look at such cases without flinching, and without reaching too quickly for comforting certainties.

A brief word about that respect.

We should always respect each other as human beings, and respect each other’s freedom. No one can or should force anyone else to do anything.

At the same time, we can distinguish between respect for people and how we view certain choices these people make. I can respect someone who eats meat, while at the same time having reservations about the choices he or she makes.

To think that respect for eating meat and respect for eating plant-based are on the same level is, I think, misguided.

When a meat-eater says that they respect my choice to be vegan, I always think: Really? Isn’t that the bare minimum?

I then try to put myself in the meat-eater’s shoes. Maybe they think the vegetarian/vegan is being dramatic, difficult, following a trend, trying to be special… and that those things don’t necessarily call for respect.

But for the vegan, it’s about something else. It’s about boycotting or reducing suffering and exploitation. And for that, he or she is willing to forgo certain pleasures and tasty things. He or she says: I may find this tasty, but I’m not going to eat it. An effort is being made to help bring about change. I think that does deserve a certain amount of respect.

Conversely, the meat-eater asks for respect for… what, exactly? I honestly don’t find it easy to respect the fact that someone consumes and enjoys something carelessly, at the expense of the suffering and death of others. Nor do I have much respect for gratuitous opinions that are poorly grounded.

Still, I continue to respect the person. This will undoubtedly sound paternalistic or condescending to meat-eaters (so be it), but I understand that change is not equally easy for everyone. I try to remember that I needed time too. I respect that people get stuck in patterns of thinking and habits. That they sometimes do things to please others. That they worry about their health, about farmers, about a society that is often very critical. I see that people sometimes feel their identity is under threat, and that traditions - even if they mean little compared to suffering and death - are not unimportant or worthless.

In short, I do my best to stay open, to listen, and to understand.

That, for me, is what respect means in this context.

And hopefully, from there, we can move a small step forward.