After Casa de Carne and Save Ralph, I want to share another brilliant piece of advocacy — one that powerfully exposes and, for a moment, disarms the psychological mechanisms that allow people to reconcile the exploitation of animals with their values:

If you find yourself thinking, “I know someone who needs to see this,” consider sharing this article with them. That way, they get the video, some context, and, if they’re interested, a way to follow the rest of the series.

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What you should know about the creator

The video was made by Alex O’Connor — a person I recently criticized in a separate article for his shift away from veganism.

I can understand if that comes as a surprise, especially after watching this video and seeing how compellingly he makes the case for veganism.

O’Connor’s current position on veganism is incoherent, deeply misguided, and ethically hollow. In my view, his arguments for abandoning veganism are unfounded, and I have explained in detail why I believe they fail.

At the same time, the video above is, by a considerable margin, the most powerful invitation to confront our own cognitive dissonance that I have ever come across. Whatever one thinks of O’Connor’s current views, they do not diminish the power of his earlier work.

And that is why I still want to share this video.

My job with this newsletter, as I see it, is not to make the most universally popular choices. It is to do what I believe will help animals most — and to do so as thoughtfully and honestly as I can.

That’s why I decided to acknowledge the contradiction openly, put the video in its proper context, and make use of something that I know has the power to change minds.

How I know this video can change minds

I’ve repeatedly come across people in online discussions who describe this video as the reason they went vegan — sometimes even the beginning of their journey into vegan activism.

And there are countless comments under the YouTube video saying much the same — including from people who initially disagreed with its message:

Here’s what I think makes O’Connor’s video so special: it is emotionally honest — his frustration is palpable — but also eloquent and well structured. It is confrontational without becoming insulting.

That balance is incredibly difficult to achieve.

The result is a piece of advocacy that is sharp, uncompromising, and deeply persuasive without alienating its audience.

Those are exactly the kinds of resources we should pay attention to: materials that can genuinely help people overcome their defensiveness, recognize their own contradictions, and — most importantly — turn that recognition into change.

So if you think it might make someone stop and reflect, please share it.

Try to picture the least likely company to lead plant-based innovation.

A sausage maker founded by a master butcher, in business since 1834. A brand built on ham and bratwurst…

That’s Rügenwalder Mühle, one of Germany’s best-known meat producers.

And the company is undergoing a remarkable transformation. According to Rügenwalder Mühle’s latest sustainability report, 76% of its product portfolio is now vegan or vegetarian. In other words, just over two in ten products still contain meat.

That is quite something when you consider that this company has been slaughtering, curing, and smoking meat for almost two centuries. So how did it happen?

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A 192-year-old business, reinvented

Rügenwalder Mühle is now in its seventh generation as a family business.

For decades, it was one of Germany’s largest sausage manufacturers. Then, around 12 years ago, it started experimenting with plant-based meat alternatives.

At the time, Rügenwalder Mühle’s CEO made headlines by declaring that “sausage will be the cigarette of the future” and announcing plans to invest heavily in plant-based alternatives in response to changing consumer demand. “We’re adapting, and from December [2014] onwards, we’ll also be offering meat-free sausages. If customers take to them, they could become the new standard.”

Rügenwalder Mühle was the first traditional meat processor in Germany to launch plant-based meat alternatives — and the move quickly translated into significant revenue growth. What started as a side project has since become the company’s by far biggest business driver.

The numbers tell the story

In 2021, Rügenwalder Mühle’s vegan and vegetarian products crossed 50% of sales for the first time. By 2023, the split had reached 60:40 in favor of plant-based and vegetarian products. Today, it’s around 70:30, according to Vegconomist.

New plant-based products continue to arrive, including goulash, BBQ steaks, filets, crispy burgers, fricassee, and vegan cooked ham. One of its vegan products, Schinken Spicker, has even received Germany’s Sustainability Award.

91% of Rügenwalder Mühle’s non-meat products are now fully vegan. And the company’s shift toward plant-based ingredients is reflected in its growing use of plant proteins, which increased by around 30% between 2024 and 2025 alone.

The honest caveat

Rügenwalder Mühle still sells meat and dairy-based products. Animals are still being used and killed for these products, and a growing plant-based portfolio does not make that harm disappear.

I would never want to downplay that.

But I also think it is worth looking at the economic reality of a transformation like this.

Large companies cannot simply reinvent themselves overnight. New production lines, new supply chains, new ingredients, years of product testing, entire marketing campaigns rebuilt from scratch — it’s an enormous undertaking.

That’s what makes the pace of this transformation genuinely remarkable, even if it isn’t complete (yet).

Following the demand

Companies like Rügenwalder Mühle have entire teams devoted to figuring out what people actually want to buy. And the company has clearly made its bet: plant-based food is where its future lies.

Back in 2016, its CEO said he could imagine Rügenwalder Mühle operating without meat at all within twenty years. A decade on, what once sounded like a radical prediction now seems hardly far-fetched.

As plant-based alternatives increasingly outperform animal products in all relevant domains, the question for food companies is no longer whether they can sell them. It is whether continuing to produce animal products still makes commercial or ethical sense when superior alternatives already exist — and will only get better.

In just a few decades, vegan and plant-based movements have achieved something that once seemed almost unthinkable: changing what some of the biggest players in the conventional food industry believe the future looks like. It is yet another testament to the power of advocacy and the impact of our individual consumption choices.

And Rügenwalder Mühle’s resounding success may inspire other companies to follow. When one of Germany’s most iconic sausage brands shifts its business model this dramatically, it sends a clear signal. Plant-based food no longer a niche experiment at the edges of the food industry. It is becoming mainstream — and the companies paying attention now have a chance to shape what comes next.

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Imagine a world where the very foundation of how we treat billions of living beings rests on a single, unproven idea. A belief so deeply ingrained that we rarely question it, yet its consequences are beyond catastrophic.

It sounds like the opening of a dystopian novel. It isn’t. It’s the world we already live in.

Historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari captured this reality in a striking observation:

“We have an unproven hierarchy of consciousness between humans and other animals. Most people believe that humans have some kind of superior consciousness, which is what justifies the way we treat billions of other animals. This unproven theory that human consciousness is superior to animal consciousness may have caused more suffering than any other single idea in the whole of history.”

Anyone who carefully examines the evidence will see that this assessment is not merely plausible, but profoundly justified.

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The Convenient Assumption

We often assume that animals do not suffer as much as humans. We ignore a mother cow’s cries when she’s separated from her calf because we can’t imagine her pain is as intense as a human mother’s. We convince ourselves that pigs suffer less while suffocating in a gas chamber because they can’t intellectually comprehend their fate. But what makes us hold on to these assumptions?

There is not a shred of evidence that the human capacity to suffer is inherently greater than that of other animals — in fact, there are compelling reasons to think the opposite may be true.

We know shockingly little about the inner lives of other beings. We can’t directly measure the richness of a bat’s sonar perception, a dolphin’s playful intelligence, or an octopus’s alien curiosity. Yet for thousands of years, humans have assumed our experience of the world is somehow richer or “more valid” than theirs. It’s an assumption, not a conclusion.

This assumption runs counter to a growing body of research showing complex consciousness, emotional depth, and problem-solving abilities in many nonhuman species. A team of scientists, who reviewed over 2,500 studies on the subject, concluded: “Evidence for animal sentience is everywhere.”

A Baseless Global Atrocity

A deeply entrenched assumption that flies in the face of mounting evidence is the cornerstone of our civilization’s treatment of animals. It’s the justification for factory farms, animal testing, and the destruction of habitats. It allows us to view other species not as fellow inhabitants of Earth, but as resources to be exploited.

Consider the staggering numbers: each year, over 85 billion land animals are killed for food, most raised in conditions that deprive them of sunlight, movement, and family. If we include fish and other sea animals, the figures rise into the trillions.

Our exploitation of nonhuman animals is by far the largest system of organized violence in human history. And it isn’t an inevitable byproduct of progress. It is the consequence of a deeply unfounded belief — one that, once it falls away, immediately unmasks this industry for what it is: one of history’s worst crimes.

What Happens Now?

Questioning our assumptions about consciousness may feel unsettling, but it also holds the power to unlock deeper levels of compassion and a profoundly different relationship with the world around us.

Once we acknowledge that there is no compelling evidence for the supposed superiority of human consciousness, the entire ethical framework built on that idea collapses — leaving a fundamental question: what could possibly justify causing such vast and unnecessary suffering?

This is not just an intellectual exercise. It is a call to honesty, a plea to stop justifying actions with a theory we cannot prove. Faced with such immense stakes, the least we can do is err on the side of caution.

The choice is ours: to continue down a blind and baseless path that drives countless beings into misery and jeopardizes our own survival, or to embrace a different way forward.

Tens of millions have already chosen the latter, adopting a vegan lifestyle and shaping the only global movement that confronts animal cruelty in a holistic way.

There is hope — but the future is not yet decided. Whether humanity continues its path of harm or turns toward reason and compassion ultimately rests in the hands of people like you and me.

Let us recognize the historic responsibility that lies before us, and rise to meet it together.

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One thing that never ceases to amaze me is how little awareness there still is around the environmental and public health impacts of animal agriculture.

For a topic that affects all of us so profoundly, it’s incredible how many people have never been exposed to this information — and how little of it is covered in mainstream news, school curricula, or dinnertime conversation.

To help make these facts more accessible, I’ve condensed some of my most important findings into a simple flyer. 👇

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Please feel free to download and share this flyer widely.

Want to explore the evidence and sources behind these claims? Read more here.

Want to print the flyer? Here’s a version with fewer, lighter colors to save ink:

Print Friendly Version Of Flyer

1.4MB ∙ PDF file

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A massive awareness gap

If you’re wondering whether the claim that many people are unaware of this is just a hunch — it isn't. It shows up consistently in the research.

A review of 90 studies concluded that consumers generally have “low awareness of animal agriculture”. The vast majority of consumers consider common animal farming practices “unacceptable,” yet unknowingly support them through their everyday purchases. Other studies have found that even people with higher education backgrounds had “almost no knowledge” of the environmental harms associated with consuming animal products.

This lack of awareness is hardly surprising given how consistently the impacts of animal agriculture are overlooked in public conversations. One analysis of 1,000 climate-related articles found that only 7% mentioned animal agriculture at all — and that these mentions often framed the industry as a victim of climate change rather than a significant contributor to it.

This tracks with what I’ve seen firsthand over ten-plus years of conversations on this topic: when asked without prompting, most people struggle to name more than two or three of the issues covered in the above flyer.

And even when people are aware of these issues, they usually don’t realize that animal agriculture is not merely a contributor to them, but their single largest driver.

This is a staggering awareness gap — with devastating consequences.

Start conversations

In this situation, raising awareness is one of the most important things we can do.

I hope the flyer above helps spark meaningful conversations. Please consider who in your community might be receptive to this information — and share it with a friend, coworker, or family member. Every person who learns more and engages with the topic helps move things forward.

If someone would like to learn more, they’ll find additional information and sources by following the instructions provided at the bottom of the flyer.

For more shareable resources on related topics, check out my Vegan Visuals Library:

I’ll see you very soon
–Pala

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There’s one argument used to justify the exploitation of farmed animals more than almost any other: that being vegan is simply too inconvenient. But is it really? And compared to what? Once you follow the argument to its logical conclusion, something doesn’t quite add up…

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Why do people think being vegan is inconvenient?

Veganism is about doing what we reasonably can — it has never demanded the impossible. Yet even for people who have the choice, shifting away from animal products can involve practical adjustments, such as exploring new meals and changing shopping habits.

When something feels embedded in daily routine and social life, it often seems easier to stick with what’s already known, making change feel unnecessarily complicated at first glance.

Here’s why that thinking is wrong

1) “Convenience” ignores the external costs of animal agriculture

The misunderstanding becomes especially clear when we zoom out.

Animal products may feel convenient at the point of purchase, but their consequences are anything but convenient:

• accelerating climate instability

• deforestation

• biodiversity loss

• risk of pandemics

• antibiotic resistance

• soil degradation

• water scarcity

These are not abstract concerns. They translate into:
higher healthcare costs, food insecurity, environmental disasters, unstable living conditions, and widespread diseases.

So when people defend animal products on the basis of “convenience,” they privilege a momentary reduction in effort over the prevention of immense and enduring harm. Evaluated over any meaningful time horizon, this is a profoundly irrational bargain.

2) The “inconvenience” of veganism is temporary and adaptive

For most people, the challenge lies in the transition phase — not the long-term reality.

While the first months require a touch of initial curiosity and mindfulness, they quickly give way to a lifestyle that feels natural and straightforward.

Taste preferences adapt, habits stabilize, and what once felt restrictive becomes intuitive. To put it in the words of Professor Dr. T. Colin Campbell:

„The first month can be a challenge, but after that it gets much easier. And for many of you, it will become a real pleasure. I know that’s hard to believe until you’ve experienced it, but your palate changes when you eat only plant-based foods. You’re going to find that you’ll be able to enjoy plant-based foods with great pleasure and great satisfaction, even though the transition period may be a challenge in a psychological and practical sense. It takes time and a little effort. You may not get any support from your friends and from your family. But the health benefits are nothing short of a miracle. And you’ll be surprised at how easy it is once you’ve developed new habits.“

What is called “inconvenience” is often just the psychological friction of change — and moving through it can yield enormous rewards.

3) A plant-based lifestyle repays the initial adjustment

One of the most overlooked aspects of plant-based living is that it can significantly reduce everyday expenses. While people often associate veganism with specialty products, the foundation of plant-based diets actually consists of some of the most affordable foods available: legumes, grains, potatoes, oats, rice, vegetables, and fruit.

Even many plant-based meat alternatives have become as affordable as, or even cheaper than, their animal-based counterparts.

Once new routines are established, many new vegans find that their grocery costs decrease substantially — a finding also supported by research.

In this sense, a plant-based lifestyle does not merely justify the initial adjustment — it literally repays it.

And that’s before even considering the substantial savings in long-term healthcare costs associated with plant-based diets.

4) Convenience does not justify exploitation

Fundamentally, veganism is a moral stance: a commitment to avoid funding preventable animal cruelty and exploitation.

While this choice may involve practical adjustments, inconvenience has never been a valid ethical argument against reducing harm.

Most meaningful human progress has initially come with some inconvenience: learning new systems, changing long-standing habits, questioning social norms and inherited beliefs, or letting go of accepted but damaging traditions.

If “inconvenience” were treated as a stopping point for moral action, very little of importance would ever change — and many of the freedoms we take for granted today would never have existed.

5) While inconvenience fades quickly, the alternative compounds

In contrast to a vegan lifestyle, which quickly becomes routine for most people, the impacts of animal agriculture do not fade with time — they accumulate year after year, compounding environmental degradation, resource consumption, and animal suffering.

Emissions continue to rise, land use expands, disease risks increase, and ecosystems are placed under growing strain, while new generations of sentient beings continue to be bred, exploited, and killed.

This creates a clear imbalance: a short-lived personal adjustment on one side, and a set of endlessly growing and escalating consequences on the other.

Conclusion

The transition to a plant-based lifestyle can be approached not as a burden, but as a meaningful and joyful process of discovery — exploring new foods, learning new recipes, and gradually building habits that are both sustainable and rewarding, including financial savings along the way.

At the same time, every person who makes this shift contributes to something larger than their own choices. Veganism becomes more accessible with each step taken: more products enter the market, more restaurants expand their options, and what once felt unfamiliar becomes increasingly normal. In that sense, it is partly a self-reinforcing process — today’s “inconvenience” helps reduce tomorrow’s barriers for yourself and others.

Seen in a wider context, animal products are not convenient at all. Their costs are simply displaced — away from the moment of consumption and onto the environment, public health systems, future generations, and billions of suffering victims. What appears as short-term ease is tied to long-term structural strain with catastrophic global consequences.

The question, then, is not whether veganism requires some initial adjustment.

It does.

The question is whether that temporary adjustment is more difficult than the escalating, system-wide consequences of maintaining the status quo.

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If you found this piece helpful, please share it with a friend, a coworker, or family member — every conversation helps move things forward.

Vegan Horizon is fully independent — no ads, no paywalls. If you’d like to support this work and receive new posts, consider joining as a free or paid subscriber. 👇

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When dealing with anti-vegan arguments, sometimes a short video is simply the best response.

But finding the right one — a video that addresses the specific point clearly and doesn’t take 20 minutes to get there — can be surprisingly difficult.

So I sifted through countless videos to put together a collection of the most effective ones. It’s become one of my go-to resources, and I hope you’ll find it just as useful.

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A few notes:

• I’ll keep adding to this list over time — more arguments, more videos. If you have suggestions, let me know in the comments.

• It’s worth bookmarking this page, so you always have a solid response ready when you encounter common objections.

• Almost every video in this collection is under three minutes, with only a few exceptions where the topic really needed more room.

• If you find this collection useful, please consider sharing it with others.

Video replies to anti-vegan arguments

1) “We’re omnivores”

→ Video

2) “It’s natural to eat animals”

→ Video 1, Video 2

3) “Humans have eaten meat for thousands of years”

→ Video

4) “Animals eat other animals”

→ Video

5) “It’s the food chain”

→ Video

6) “It’s the circle of life”

→ Video

7) “The animals we buy from the shop are dead anyway”

→ Video_1, Video_2

8) “We are more intelligent than animals”

→ Video

9) “Going vegan won’t make a difference”

→ Video 1, Video 2

10) “What would happen to all the farmed animals if the world went vegan?”

→ Video

11) “Farmers would lose their jobs if we all went vegan”

→ Video_1, Video_2

12) “Animals die in crop harvesting”

→ Video

13) “Plants feel pain”

→ Video_1, Video_2

14) “Insect farming is better than veganism”

→ Video

15) “What about ethically raised and humanely slaughtered animal products?”

→ Video_1, Video_2

16) “Fish don’t feel pain”

→ Video

17) “What’s wrong with using products like dairy, eggs, and wool?”

→ Video

18) “Farmers love their animals”

→ Video

19) “Those animals are bred for that purpose”

→ Video

20) “What could be wrong with backyard hens?”

→ Video

21) “We need animal manure for fertiliser”

→ Video

22) “Vegan diets don’t contain a natural source of Vitamin B12”

→ Video

23) “Vegans lack protein”

→ Video

24) “Will I become weaker and anemic if I stop eating animal products?”

→ Video

25) “Vegan food is ultra-processed”

→ Video_1, Video_2

26) “Vegan soy is destroying the rainforest”

→ Video

27) “It’s a personal choice”

→ Video_1, Video_2

28) “It’s part of my culture”

→ Video

29) “My religion says I can eat animal products”

→ Video_1, Video_2

30) “What will my family and friends think?”

→ Video

31) “Buy local meat”

→ Video

32) “It tastes good”

→ Video

33) “Morality is subjective”

→ Video

34) “Stop forcing your beliefs on others”

→ Video

35) “We should all respect one another’s views”

→ Video

36) “There’s no ethical consumption under capitalism”

→ Video_1, Video_2

37) “Veganism is a privilege”

→ Video

38) “Veganism is too extreme”

→ Video

39) “Veganism is like a religion”

→ Video

40) “Veganism is racist”

→ Video

41) “What about human rights?”

→ Video_1, Video_2, Video_3

42) “Veganism is inconvenient?”

→ Video

43) “Why can’t we just reduce our animal consumption?”

→ Video_1, Video_2, Video_3

44) “Vegans want their food to look like animals”

→ Video

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Foundational videos: veganism explained

What is veganism?

→ Video

Why go vegan?

Why go vegan for the animals? → Video

What are the health benefits? → Video

What are the environmental benefits? → Video

Why (and when) to use videos?

A good video clip can explain an idea more clearly — and more engagingly — than most written comments ever could. And let’s be honest: people are far more likely to watch a short video than read a wall of text.

Videos aren’t always the right move, though. If someone’s unlikely to click a link at all, sending one won’t help — so use them where the other person seems genuinely open to watching, and tell them upfront that it’s short. That one detail alone makes people far more willing to give it a chance.

In fast-moving comment threads, a text reply often works better than a video link — or a text reply with a video attached, so people can choose.

If you need help finding the right words for a written response, take a look at this quick-start toolkit — I’ve collected everything you need in one place.

One thing up front: If the title makes you think, “This is an unfair comparison — one provides food, the other doesn’t,” consider this: animal agriculture provides just 18% of calories but takes up 83% of farmland. This article isn’t arguing that people should go hungry — it’s making the case for more efficient, sustainable food systems.

Spend five minutes on social media and you’ll find someone warning that AI infrastructure is destroying the planet.

They’re not wrong to worry. Data centers consume enormous amounts of electricity, and their energy demand could more than double by 2030.

It’s encouraging that so many people care about environmental impacts. But watching these debates, I increasingly find myself asking a different question.

Why do data centers receive this level of environmental scrutiny when so many people barely think about industries whose impacts are vastly larger?

This isn’t an argument against scrutinizing AI. It’s an argument for applying the same scrutiny consistently.

One industry, in particular, belongs in that comparison:

The animal farming sector.

It stands apart because:

• it is optional in a way few other large-scale environmental harms are

• it has larger environmental impacts than data centers across every major issue critics raise about AI — from water use and land use to emissions and impacts on local communities.

Let’s look at those issues one at a time.

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1) Climate Emissions: a rounding error vs. an order of magnitude

Data centers — the entire global fleet, AI included — account for roughly 0.6% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Animal agriculture accounts for somewhere between 16.5% and nearly 20%.

That’s not a marginal difference. It’s about a thirty-fold gap.

If AI emissions tripled tomorrow, they would still be dwarfed by the environmental burden of global meat and dairy production.

And a large chunk of animal farming’s footprint comes from methane, a gas with more than 80 times the global warming impact of CO₂ over a 20-year window. In fact, the climate impacts of the industry are so profound that experts have concluded there is no credible pathway to meeting global climate targets without phasing it out — even if fossil fuel use were eliminated entirely.

If your climate concern about AI is genuine, the math points you toward the industry emitting thirty times more, not the one emitting less than 1%.

2) Water Use: the numbers get even more lopsided

Water is one of the metrics AI critics reach for most, because it sounds shocking on its own: data centers are projected to use ~1 trillion liters a year by 2028.

Animal farming already uses ~228 trillion liters of blue freshwater annually — over 200 times more, and that’s not a projection, it’s current usage.

“Blue freshwater” refers to water drawn from rivers, lakes, reservoirs, and groundwater that is consumed rather than returned. It does not include rainwater.

Earlier this year, the United Nations warned that the world is rapidly depleting its natural “water savings accounts” and entering an era of “global water bankruptcy,” underscoring the urgent need to address this issue.

3) Land Use: a few hundred acres vs. reshaping continents

A large hyperscale data center campus typically covers a few hundred acres — an area that would take only a few minutes to drive across. By comparison, animal industries occupy 83% of all agricultural land and close to a third of the planet’s ice-free land surface.

This vast land footprint is also why meat production is the single largest driver of deforestation worldwide, to create more space for pastures and feed production.

By contrast, AI’s physical footprint is so small that it wouldn't even register on a world map. All cities, towns, roads, factories, and other human infrastructure combined occupy only about 1% of the world's habitable land — and data centers account for just a tiny fraction of that. Although the exact ratio is difficult to quantify, it is clear that animal agriculture uses thousands of times more land than all data centers combined.

4) Impact on Local Communities: disruption and strain vs. life-threatening impacts

Neighbors of data centers raise legitimate concerns, including cooling-system noise and heavy demands on local infrastructure and power grids. These concerns are real, but they are not the only costs that deserve attention.

Near concentrated animal feeding operations, the air carries ammonia emissions, manure is stored in open lagoons, waterways are often polluted with waste runoff, and nearby communities have been found to experience higher rates of respiratory illness. In the US alone, the air pollution from meat, dairy and egg production leads to over 12,000 deaths each year.

Slaughterhouse work is also associated with severe psychological harm — including depression, anxiety, PTSD, and substance abuse. Research has found that communities with slaughterhouse employment tend to experience higher rates of violent crime, rape, and sex offenses than comparable communities with other types of industry.

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5) Harms Without a Counterpart

No data center has produced a drug-resistant superbug. No language model has triggered a pandemic or caused ocean dead zones. Nor have they been identified as major drivers of soil degradation, habitat destruction, or biodiversity loss.

The animal agriculture industry, by contrast, is not only a significant contributor to all of these harms; it is the single leading driver globally across all of these categories.

Focusing on the impacts of data centers while ignoring harms of this magnitude raises a basic question of consistency — and of proportion.

Beyond environmental and public health consequences, one cannot ignore the immense suffering of billions of farmed animals — suffering that is routinely accepted, with little hesitation, through everyday consumption of animal products.

One industry can get clean. The other can’t.

There is another structural difference that is easy to overlook:

AI’s footprint is downstream of the energy grid — as grids shift to solar, wind, and hydro, the emissions tied to running a data center can fall dramatically, potentially toward zero. Some data centers are also moving toward closed-loop cooling, which can reduce freshwater use by up to 70%.

Animal agriculture has no equivalent off-ramp.

Feed additives and efficiency improvements can reduce impacts at the margins, but they cannot overcome the biological reality that converting plants into animal products is incredibly resource-intensive. Producing meat, dairy, and eggs requires far more land, water, and crops than producing plant foods directly for human consumption.

Conclusion

None of this is meant to minimize the environmental footprint of data centers.

But perspective matters.

While AI has become a lightning rod for environmental criticism, another industry — one that produces far greater greenhouse gas emissions, occupies vastly more land, drives deforestation, pollutes waterways, fuels antibiotic resistance, threatens biodiversity, and causes immense suffering to billions of sentient animals every year — often attracts far less public outrage.

Criticizing AI’s environmental impact is reasonable. Treating it as one of our largest environmental problems, while overlooking the vastly greater costs of animal agriculture, is not. If we’re serious about reducing humanity’s ecological footprint and minimizing unnecessary harm, our attention should be proportional to the scale of the damage.

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After months of experimenting with vegan flyers and visuals, I’m bringing them together in one place.

Until now, they were scattered across different articles. This post gathers them into a single repository of free resources you can download, share, and use in digital or printed form.

This is just the beginning — more will be added over time. Feel free to bookmark this post and check back for updates.

Making these visuals takes real time and effort. If you find them useful and want to keep them coming, you can upgrade your subscription or buy me a coffee — every bit of support truly makes a difference. 🌱

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If you have any ideas or feedback, I’d love to hear them — feel free to leave a comment.

And if you know anyone who might like to use or share vegan flyers and infographics, please pass this post along.

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A German court ordered two activists to delete footage of pigs dying in agony — and to pay an amount likely around €100,000 to the slaughterhouse involved.

Last August, I reported on a landmark undercover investigation by two friends of mine — Anna and Hendrik — inside a German slaughterhouse. I promised to keep following it. I wish the update were better.

This story still hasn’t made the waves it deserves outside Germany. It should. Because what has happened since tells us something crucial — not just about animal suffering, but about the methods this industry uses to deceive the public.

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What They Filmed

Anna and Hendrik are two brave animal rights activists from Berlin. As some of you may remember, they installed hidden cameras inside the gas chambers of Brand Qualitätsfleisch — a slaughterhouse that markets itself as a producer of “high-welfare” meat.

What they captured was the first footage of its kind ever recorded in Germany: pigs fighting for their lives as CO₂ flooded the chamber. Struggling to breathe. Panicking. Bloodying their heads against the walls. Screaming.

This is not an accident or an aberration. CO₂ stunning triggers an immediate, severe burning sensation in the mucous membranes of the nose, throat, and eyes. The animals experience intense pain, acute suffocation, and terror — for up to a minute before losing consciousness. This is the standard method used to kill pigs across Germany and much of the world. Hundreds of millions of animals per year, in chambers just like this one.

Anna and Hendrik’s investigation was a landmark. It ran on every major German news outlet. It created an unprecedented level of public awareness about something that had been, by design, invisible.

What the Court Decided

Here is what should shock every single person reading this newsletter.

The slaughterhouse sued. And it won.

A German appellate court has ruled that Anna and Hendrik must pay a sum likely in the region of €100,000 to the company, although the exact amount still has to be determined in a separate proceeding. The claimed damages stem from their entry into the slaughterhouse, the secret filming, and the publication of the footage.

And as of June 19th — tomorrow — they are legally required to delete every image and every second of footage from that slaughterhouse, including everything they have posted online.

Let that sink in. The judges confirmed the footage was authentic. They confirmed it showed animal welfare violations. They confirmed it was in the public interest. And they still gave the slaughterhouse everything it asked for.

This is a textbook SLAPP suit — a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. It is not really about trespass. It is about sending a message to every activist, journalist, and whistleblower who might consider doing the same: we will come after you.

Industry representatives said they were satisfied with the verdict.

What It Means

Germany’s animal welfare regulations are considered comparatively strong by international standards. And even here, what is happening inside these facilities is, by any honest measure, catastrophic.

What this illustrates is simple: Legal does not mean ethical. Regulated does not mean humane. CO₂ stunning is legal precisely because the public has been kept from seeing it. The lobby prevents an informed debate by ensuring no one ever sees the images. What Anna and Hendrik did was make that impossible — temporarily.

The lesson is not comfortable, but it is clear: we cannot rely on welfare standards or regulation to protect animals. The only reliable answer is to stop funding this system entirely, and inspire others to do the same.

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The Industry Is Afraid — And Lashes Out

Here is the other thing this case tells us: they are scared.

The animal rights movement is growing. Investigations like this one are landing. Just recently, in a nationwide taste and value test, vegan burgers beat conventional burgers across every category — taste, cost, and health. The industry knows it is losing the argument.

When an industry responds to a documentary investigation not by engaging with the findings, but by suing the people who filmed it and demanding the footage be erased — that is not the behavior of a confident institution. That is the behavior of one that cannot survive public scrutiny.

The Movement Strikes Back

What happened next gives me genuine hope.

Faced with the deletion order, a wave of German activists — including some of the country’s most prominent environmental and animal protection voices — began sharing the footage themselves, saying: “We would of course never ask anyone to screen-record this video, or cut it into clips and share it across every platform so it could never disappear from the internet. But if it happens, it happens.”

The footage is spreading. Solidarity demonstrations have been organized — including directly in front of the courthouse. And Anna and Hendrik plan to bring the case to Germany’s highest court, the Federal Court of Justice.

Anna’s words: “Let it be known: we will not be beaten down by this. We will not be intimidated. We will keep fighting for the animals — and we will keep going, and going, and going, until this suffering ends.”

What You Can Do

Every cowardly move by this industry must make us more determined, more united, and more creative — not less.

Share this story. People need to understand that the abuse happening in that slaughterhouse is not an exception — it is the standard. The suffering is real, it is ongoing, and every purchase of animal products helps fund it.

And we must be clear about what that funding actually means:

When we buy animal products, we don’t just pay for suffering and destruction. We pay for the lawyers. For the lawsuits. For the deletion orders. For the machinery of concealment that makes sure no one ever has to see what they’re paying for. Every purchase is a vote — not just for the product, but for the lie that surrounds it.

The animal industry tries to appear untouchable. But that, too, is a lie.

If animal rights activism changed nothing, the industry would not fight so hard to silence it.

If you can: be active. Be loud. Be a reason for hope.

Which makes the comic below worth sitting with for a moment.

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The large circle represents the cruelty inflicted on animals by industries that use them for food, clothing, entertainment, testing, and other commercial purposes.

The tiny dot represents all other forms of animal cruelty combined: pet abuse, deliberate acts of cruelty by sadists, influencers harming animals for clicks, and similar cases. In short, the forms of cruelty that tend to draw the strongest public outrage. These acts are horrific, and that response is entirely justified.

However, it is important for people who care about animals to recognize the difference in scale. Compared to the widespread, institutionalized suffering that is embedded in everyday consumption, the forms of animal cruelty that receive the most attention represent only a small fraction of the overall picture.

It’s a glaring contradiction: many people passionately oppose unnecessary violence against animals while simultaneously funding the system most responsible for it.

And I don’t say this from a moral high horse. For most of my life, I was one of those people. I cared about animals and condemned cruelty, yet I never paused to connect those beliefs with what ended up in my shopping cart or on my plate. Not out of malice, but because the victims were hidden — and because I had been influenced by industries and shaped by a culture that normalize such cruelty.

The above comic is an attempt to make the absurdity of that contradiction visible.

Many of you asked for simpler content in previous feedback rounds. After experimenting with shareable quotes and digital flyers, I’m now also trying out comics that communicate an idea in seconds. This was my first attempt.

More is on the way, and your input can help shape what comes next. If you have any feedback, thoughts or ideas, I’d love to hear them in the comments.

Further Reading: Animal Industry by the Numbers

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Last week, something historic happened in the world of food testing — and much of the English-speaking internet has missed it entirely.

Stiftung Warentest, Germany’s leading independent consumer-testing organization — founded by the government in 1964, now fully self-funded through publications, with zero advertiser influence — put vegan and beef burger patties head to head. Ten of each. A controlled, evidence-based comparison.

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The result

Vegan patties came out on top, and it wasn’t particularly close:

1) Overall rating

• Seven out of ten plant-based patties rated “good.” Only three out of ten beef patties did.

• The three top-scoring burgers came from Aldi MyVay, Garden Gourmet, and Beyond — and they were all vegan.

• This is a dramatic reversal from the last time this test was run in 2021, when meat still held the edge. The improvement in plant-based products over just a few years has been remarkable.

2) Fats

• Vegan patties averaged 43% less fat and 20% fewer calories than their beef counterparts — and the fat they do contain skews toward the healthy, unsaturated kind, while beef patties lean heavily on saturated fat.

3) Taste

• Plant-based options scored better on average for seasoning, juiciness, and overall cooking results. Some beef patties, meanwhile, showed up with off-putting smells, flat flavors, and shelf-life issues.

• The evaluation was conducted through an anonymised blind tasting, with trained assessors reviewing the patties without knowing which were vegan and which were beef. All products were prepared under identical conditions.

4) Food safety

• Antibiotic-resistant bacteria were found in 40% of the beef patties tested. One contained genuinely pathogenic bacteria. The vegan patties? Zero contaminants.

5) Price

• The vegan patties were, on average, 20% cheaper than beef. And that’s before accounting for the massive government subsidies that artificially deflate the price of conventional meat. Without those subsidies, the gap would be even wider.

This test didn’t happen in a vacuum

These results, while remarkable, land at a moment when a balanced vegan diet is already demonstrably healthier and less expensive than consuming animal products. Plant-based food is getting better, more convenient, and more affordable at the same time — a combination that the animal industry has no real answer to.

Vegan products will keep improving. The price gap will keep growing. The excuses will keep running out. At some point — and that point is getting closer — choosing to support unnecessary animal suffering will require active, conscious effort to justify. It won’t be about convenience, or taste, or cost. Those arguments are already crumbling.

The question of whether the animal industry will collapse under the weight of all this is no longer if. It’s when.

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There’s a bizarre contradiction at the heart of how people talk about veganism — and to understand it, we need to take a closer look at how we usually think about boycotts. 👇

We love a good boycott

There is something undeniably electric about watching a massive corporation buckle under the weight of a collective “no.”

When Jimmy Kimmel was pulled off air under political pressure, the backlash was immediate. People canceled subscriptions, advertisers panicked, and suddenly — miraculously — the show was back. Late-night hosts openly credited the people who boycotted Disney with forcing that reversal.

Or look at Tesla and X, both of which suffered major commercial damage — from falling sales and advertiser boycotts to declining brand trust — after Elon Musk’s open attacks on American democracy. The supermarket chain Target saw billions wiped off its valuation during boycott campaigns following its rollback of DEI initiatives.

There is a tremendous public willingness to participate in these actions. 2.5 million users stopped using ChatGPT over OpenAI’s controversial deal with Trump’s “Department of War,” handing rival Anthropic not only the top spot on the Apple App Store but also the title of the world’s most valuable AI startup.

Both recent and historical examples already show that boycotts can have an overwhelming impact — and have helped achieve some of the most important social and political advances.

Boycotts have led to the end of state-sanctioned systems of discrimination and segregation. The boycott of slave-produced products contributed to the abolition of slavery. Strategic boycotts of South African products helped end apartheit in South Africa.

It is entirely conceivable that some of these systems would still exist today without private individuals standing up for what they believed in and channeling that conviction into determined boycotts.

Companies pivot, executives panic, laws change — all because enough people decided to withdraw their money.

We know this works.

We cheer when it works.

And yet…

Here’s what I find fascinating: the moment veganism enters the conversation, the script flips.

“I can’t change anything.”
“My individual choice doesn’t matter.”
“It’s too small to have an impact.”

Really?

Because what is veganism, structurally, if not a boycott?

A boycott of industries built on animal exploitation. A refusal to fund a system of needless cruelty. A withdrawal of demand.

The exact same mechanism.

The exact same logic — just applied consistently, every day, instead of episodically when a scandal trends.

Someone will object at this point: “Veganism is a niche concern — it doesn't have the potential for a mass boycott.”

But think about what that claim actually reveals. Not a rebuttal — just a confession of how little the person has looked into it.

Veganism already is a mass boycott. A remarkably effective one. In terms of global participation, the refusal to use animal products may well be the largest boycott in recorded history.

Veganism is also simply the values already held by the overwhelming majority of society put into action. Just applied without arbitrary exceptions. The “niche concern” label is more convenient than it is accurate.

Animal exploitation and cruelty are things many people still pay for — but not things many people actually stand behind. Many can’t even bring themselves to look at what they’re funding.

Add in the staggering environmental and health consequences of animal farming, and the case stops being philosophical and becomes almost mundane.

Veganism isn’t just a plausible candidate for one of the most justified boycotts of our time. The case for it is about as clear-cut as it gets:

• The stakes couldn’t be higher. This isn’t a boycott over a brand’s PR scandal. This is about the greatest source of preventable animal suffering on the planet — which also happens to be one of the most pressing existential threats humanity faces, from pandemics and antibiotic resistance to biodiversity loss and climate breakdown.

• You don’t lose — you win. Unlike most boycotts that demand sacrifice, this one tends to pay you back. A plant-based lifestyle is significantly cheaper, and many people report meaningful improvements in their health. It’s one of the rare forms of collective action where opting out personally costs you far less than participating immediately gains you.

• It’s backed by the values of the majority. As mentioned above, this isn’t a fringe position. The principles veganism acts on — that unnecessary cruelty is wrong — are already held by most people. Veganism simply means living those values honestly.

• You’re joining a movement, not starting one. Tens of millions of vegans worldwide have already spent decades shifting supermarket shelves, product ranges, and public awareness. A thriving global ecosystem of activism, innovation, and community has been built — and it’s ready to support you from day one.

• The wind is at your back. Economic, demographic, and technological shifts — from the rise of Gen Z to breakthroughs in alternative proteins — are set to amplify what’s already one of the most sustained and well-networked boycott movements in human history. The question isn’t whether this is going anywhere. It’s whether you add your weight to it.

Every time you purchase something, you fund something.

Every time you eat, you vote.

It’s time to be clear with all the boycott enthusiasts around us: if boycotts work, veganism works.

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Final thoughts

The impact of a boycott goes far beyond economics. Alongside the financial pressure they build, boycotts show solidarity, sustain stories in the public eye, provide visible evidence of opposition, and bring new people into a cause. They create outsized impact with minimal resources. In short, they are one of the most powerful tools available to us in the fight for a kinder world and a livable future.

And they are available to everyone. No protest permit required.

History shows what they can achieve. Boycotts have already brought down systems of oppression and industries once considered untouchable, including wild animal circuses, orca shows, and fur.

The largest system of animal exploitation on the planet is next. It’s already happening. We can all be part of accelerating it.

Thank you for reading!

If you’d like to support this project and help it grow, please consider joining as a free or paid subscriber. Sharing my articles and recommending this newsletter also helps tremendously, as I rely on word of mouth to reach more people.

Thank you for stopping by. 💛

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It’s amazing to see how far these posts are reaching. After my last post on Casa de Carne, the filmmaker himself, Dustin Brown, even showed up in the comments! Thank you for being part of this — and for helping spread the word. 😊

Now, on to today’s feature: “Save Ralph.” Published five years ago by Humane Society International, this award-winning short film deserves a true revival today. It follows Ralph — a soft-spoken, endlessly polite rabbit — as a documentary crew shadows him through an ordinary workday. Except nothing about Ralph’s day is ordinary:

If this film moved you, share this post. That way, others can also subscribe and catch future films in this series.

Every pair of eyes matters.

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The genius of Save Ralph

What makes this film so quietly devastating is Ralph himself. He doesn’t rage. He doesn’t plead. He accepts — even apologizes for complaining — and that gentle resignation is harder to watch than any outward protest could be.

When he looks into the camera and explains that humans have been to space, so surely it’s fine for rabbits to suffer for “the illusion of a safer lipstick,” the sheer absurdity hits you right in the gut.

The laboratory scene pulls you out of the dark irony and into the raw reality. The moment neighboring rabbits — locked into the same restraints — desperately beg the crew for help cuts through the film’s warm aesthetic like a knife.

The final moments, where Ralph is left severely injured but still trying to put on a brave face, stay with you long after the screen goes dark.

Then a message appears that should never need saying — yet sadly still does:

The creators built something remarkable here: a piece of art that is visually beautiful, deeply emotional, and impossible to forget. It serves as a stark reminder that the products many people use every single morning can carry a heavy cost.

Have you swapped out your household and beauty products for cruelty-free alternatives yet? What are your favorite certified cruelty-free brands? Drop them in the comments to help others make the switch.

Next time we reach for a cosmetic product, let’s think of Ralph.

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The making of Save Ralph

What many don’t realize at first glance is that Save Ralph is a stop-motion animation film — meaning every scene was created through an incredibly labor-intensive, hands-on process. If you’re curious about how the film was made, check this out:

This making-of video gives a deeper appreciation for the immense care, craftsmanship, and countless hours that went into bringing this powerful story to life. Let’s help ensure that all of this painstaking effort was not in vain, and that as many people as possible get to experience this important work of art.

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There is a particular kind of injustice that hides in plain sight.
Not because it is subtle — but because it is so normalized that people stop seeing it.

One of the clearest examples is the way we talk about pigs.

“Dirty pig.”
“Filthy as a pig.”
Pigsty. Swine. Mud creature.

An animal forced to live in conditions we would clearly recognize as abuse in any other context… has somehow become the symbol of filth itself.

And that inversion of reality says something deeply disturbing about us.

Pigs are not dirty animals.
They are animals we force into dirt.

That distinction matters more than people realize.

Anyone who has spent real time with pigs outside of agricultural captivity knows this almost immediately. At sanctuaries, pigs often smell like hay, soil, or almost nothing at all. They are curious, social, emotionally complex, playful, and remarkably clean. Given space and freedom, they separate their sleeping areas from where they relieve themselves. They build nests. They organize their environment. Mother pigs carefully prepare spaces for their babies before giving birth.

Before sleeping, pigs often arrange bedding with their snouts, circling and shaping comfortable resting spots like someone fluffing pillows before bed. They don’t casually collapse into waste because they enjoy filth. They avoid it whenever they are allowed to.

But modern animal agriculture takes nearly every natural instinct a pig has — and turns it against them.

The tragedy is not just physical suffering.
It is the constant psychological distress of being denied every condition that pigs naturally seek for comfort, cleanliness, safety, and care.

Imagine being locked inside a room so small you cannot turn around. Imagine standing on hard slatted floors above pits of excrement. Imagine ammonia so concentrated it burns your lungs and eyes.

People living near pig farms have described the stench as unbearable. Some compare it to rotting corpses. Others report nausea, headaches, eye irritation, and being unable to open windows in their own homes. Entire communities have fought legal battles over the pollution and odor surrounding massive pig operations.

And still, somehow, the animal trapped in these conditions — the primary victim — is the one accused of being disgusting.

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What should we call a system that forces animals to stand in urine and feces because they are denied enough space to walk away from it?

If someone confined dogs inside a tiny room, never cleaned it, and left them to live ankle-deep in waste, society would not shrug and call dogs naturally filthy. People would call it abuse. There would be outrage. News coverage. Criminal charges.

But when the victims are pigs — animals at least as emotionally sophisticated and often considered more intelligent than dogs — language suddenly shifts. The filth becomes their identity instead of our crime against them.

That is part of what makes speciesism so insidious.
It doesn’t merely hurt animals.
It victimizes animals to such a degree that they are not even considered victims.

And pigs pay for that distortion with their entire lives.

Many never touch grass.
Many never build nests.
Many never breathe fresh air.

These are not trivial discomforts.

We know animals can become depressed when their basic needs and instincts are chronically frustrated.

Yet with farmed animals, society often acts as though none of this matters to them.

As though they are somehow emotionally untouched by degradation because we have categorized them as “livestock”.

But they are not machines for converting feed into flesh.
They are sensitive beings with preferences, instincts, relationships, fears, and desires.

One of a pig’s strongest senses is smell. Their snouts are so sensitive they can detect food buried beneath the ground. They explore the world through scent in ways humans can barely imagine. And we confine these animals inside air so toxic that workers themselves sometimes struggle to breathe.

There is something especially cruel about that.

And there is something grotesquely ironic about mocking pigs for conditions humans created.

The phrase ‘dirty pig’ says nothing about pigs and a great deal about human cruelty.

We imprison highly intelligent, naturally clean animals inside environments saturated with feces, blood, infection, heat, ammonia, and death — then use them as cultural shorthand for impurity.

What could be more backwards than that?

And even if someone points to the rare “better” farm with cleaner barns or marginally improved conditions, the core injustice remains untouched.

Because the fundamental violence is still there: breeding sentient beings into existence for profit, controlling every aspect of their lives, separating families, denying freedom, exploiting their bodies, and killing them after a fraction of their natural lifespan.

Cleaner prisons are still prisons.

And the existence of slightly less horrific systems often serves another purpose: helping normalize the much larger machinery of suffering surrounding them.

At the center of all of this is a simple but devastating truth:

Pigs deserved better long before we ever began treating them as commodities.

They deserved the chance to root through forests.
To build nests.
To raise their young.
To live according to their own nature, not the one we impose on them.

Instead, we buried them under centuries of ridicule and industrial violence — and then taught ourselves to confuse the consequences of abuse with the character of the abused.

That distortion is difficult to sit with. And it is exactly why I don’t want to end only in outrage — even if outrage feels deserved here. Because what sits underneath all of this is not just cruelty, but also the possibility of seeing differently.

The moment we stop accepting inherited stories — about who is “dirty,” who is “meant for use,” who is too simple to matter — something begins to shift. Not in the animals, but in us.

There is hope in that shift.

And there is something each of us can do to move it forward.

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You’ve probably heard it lately.

“Veganism is declining.”
“The hype is over.”
“Meat consumption is still going up globally.”

It’s often said with a strange mix of pity and quiet satisfaction — as if to signal:
See? Your side is losing.

Let’s be clear: that narrative is not just misleading. It’s fundamentally detached from reality.

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Why the “Veganism Is Losing” Narrative Falls Apart

1) The first mistake: treating this like a “two-sided battle”

Framing this as “vegans vs. everyone else” is already a failure of understanding.

This isn’t a culture war or a lifestyle trend being “won” or “lost.” The idea that vegans are trying to “push” something onto society misunderstands their role: they are not inventing a concern, but highlighting an existing disconnect between values and behavior.

In reality, there is already broad agreement with the underlying critique. Overwhelming majorities oppose standard animal farming practices — even while continuing to pay for them.

People across all levels of society express strong outrage at publicized cases of animal abuse, while simultaneously enabling far more severe forms of animal harm through everyday consumption.

That’s not a stable divide between two sides. It’s a gap between what people believe is acceptable and what their behavior actually supports.

2) The hard truth: this isn’t optional

Anyone who has seriously examined the evidence knows that the animal agriculture industry isn’t compatible with planetary boundaries and long-term human survival.

Not environmentally. Not in terms of public health. Not in terms of resources.

This leads to an unavoidable conclusion:
Humanity will move away from animal exploitation.

The only real question is how.

We can do it consciously — guided by science, ethics, and foresight.
Or we can be forced into it — by ecological breakdown, health crises, and systemic collapse.

Both paths lead to the same endpoint. One involves far more suffering.

3) Short-term fluctuations are not long-term trends

Yes, there may be temporary setbacks for veganism. Yes, some plant-based companies may struggle.

But treating these fluctuations as evidence that veganism is “failing” is like looking at a single cold day and declaring that climate change has reversed.

Every meaningful social transformation in history has included setbacks. None of them followed a straight, uninterrupted upward trajectory.

Progress is uneven. Always.

If vegan pioneers in the 80s or 90s had interpreted early resistance as proof of failure, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation today.

4) The bigger picture: unmistakable structural change

Step back for a moment.

A few decades ago, veganism was marginal, inaccessible, and widely misunderstood. Today:

• Plant-based alternatives now exist for virtually every major animal product.

• All major supermarket chains offer non-dairy milks and a range of vegan foods.

• Conferences, news outlets, online networks, and international organizations are dedicated to veganism and plant-based living.

• Entire restaurants — even supermarkets — are fully plant-based in some cities.

• A flourishing ecosystem of over 800 vegan startups is helping revolutionize the food industry.

• World-famous celebrities are using their platforms to advocate for veganism.

• Cities have started banning meat advertising.

• Vegan athletes are breaking world records and taking home dozens of gold medals.

• Tens of millions of people worldwide identify as vegan.

• Living vegan is now significantly more affordable than living non-vegan.

This didn’t happen by accident. And it didn’t happen overnight.

It’s the result of sustained cultural, technological, and ethical shifts — the kind that don’t simply reverse because of a few years of market volatility.

Early vegan pioneers could only have dreamed of this kind of support structure. Imagine how confused they would be hearing people today say, “veganism is dying.”

In a recent piece, I looked more closely at these developments and outlined several powerful reasons why optimism about veganism is not only justified, but well-founded — worth checking out if you want to understand the thinking behind this in more depth.

5) Integrity isn’t conditional

There’s also a deeper misunderstanding behind these reactions.

People often assume that ethical choices should depend on popularity or momentum.

They don’t.

You don’t stop rejecting injustice because others haven’t caught up yet. You don’t abandon your values because progress isn’t fast enough.

Choosing not to contribute to unnecessary harm isn’t about being on the “winning side.” It’s about consistency between what you believe and how you act.

Even if the world were moving in the wrong direction — that wouldn’t make the right choice any less right.

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The Real Danger: Manufactured Hopelessness

If anything, the “veganism is dying” narrative serves a purpose.

Hopelessness discourages action. It makes people disengage. It protects the status quo.

Industries that depend on harmful systems don’t need to win the argument — they just need people to believe that change is impossible.

But it isn’t.

Final Thought

Declaring veganism “dead” based on short-term fluctuations is not just analytically weak — it’s a complete failure to grasp the scale, direction, and existential significance of what’s happening.

It ignores decades of progress.

It misunderstands how social change works.

And it roots for a system that is fundamentally at odds with both our values and our survival.

If there’s anything truly irrational here, it’s not the belief that change is coming.

It’s the belief that it isn’t.

The greatest gift we can offer is hope.

If this post gave you any,
pass it on.

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At a time of skyrocketing living costs, it’s more important than ever that people understand a simple but often overlooked reality:

Plant-based eating isn’t expensive. It’s a money-saver.

I’ve condensed key research insights on food prices and plant-based eating into a digital flyer to make them easier to share and quickly accessible at a glance (see below).

For me, and for many others, cost is not the main reason to avoid animal products. There are far more urgent motivations. But it’s important to understand that, contrary to popular belief, cost is not a barrier at all — it’s one of the advantages.

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Let’s dispel the myth that a plant-based lifestyle is an expensive luxury. Download, share, and use this flyer however you like — whether in your community or on social media — to help get the message out. 🌱

It’s wild how many people still don’t realize this

I often hear people — both online and in everyday conversations — say that they understand the arguments for going plant-based, but that it would simply be too expensive for them. It’s striking how persistent this belief still is.

It’s true that some specialty products like meat alternatives or vegan ice cream can be relatively pricey. But they make up only a small part of a typical plant-based diet. The foundation is built on affordable staples such as rice, pasta, potatoes, beans, lentils, fruits, and vegetables — foods that are not only inexpensive, but also filling, nutritious, and easy to store.

Even meat alternatives are becoming increasingly cost-competitive. Just last week, reports showed that, as meat prices climb, plant-based mince is now 29% cheaper than beef, lamb, and pork mince at the UK supermarket chain Tesco. And that cost gap will keep growing.

The system is skewed — and plant-based still wins

Plant-based eating is cheaper despite the massive advantages given to the animal agriculture industry. Enormous subsidies, tax breaks, and unaccounted social and environmental costs all work to artificially lower the price of animal products. Meat and dairy receive vastly more taxpayer-funded support than plant-based agriculture — in some cases, hundreds of times more.

The system is heavily skewed — and plant-based still wins on price.

At its core, it’s simple economics. Plant foods require far fewer resources like land, water, and energy. There’s no breeding, feeding, or slaughtering. Supply chains are shorter, storage is simpler, and marketing costs are often lower.

Plant-based is better for the planet. Better for your health. And better for your wallet.

The myth that plant-based diets are more expensive still affects people’s buying choices every day. Please share this post — and help set the record straight.

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Thank you for reading!

Vegan Horizon is a reader-supported publication. If you’d like to support this project and help it grow, please consider joining as a free or paid subscriber. Sharing my articles and recommending this newsletter also helps tremendously, as I rely on word of mouth to reach more people. Thank you for stopping by. 💛

The health impacts of consuming animal products have been widely studied. Yet much of the public conversation focuses narrowly on individual risks, failing to capture the true scale of the problem.

So today, I want to zoom out.

I’m introducing a simple framework that captures the full scope of how animal products — and the industries behind them — affect human health. I call it the D.O.R.I.E. framework: five interconnected levels of risk that, together, reveal a much deeper and more systemic issue than most people realize.

D — Direct diet-related health risks from animal products

O — Occupational hazards within the industry

R — Resource scarcity driving hunger and malnutrition

I — Infectious diseases, from zoonoses to antibiotic resistance

E — Environmental health risks, both local and global

Seen in isolation, each of these is already a reason for serious concern. Taken together, they point to something far more profound: an industry that doesn’t just affect individual health, but shapes health outcomes on a global scale.

Let’s take a closer look.

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D — Direct diet-related health risks

At the most immediate level, consuming meat, dairy, and eggs directly affects personal health. In particular, studies have found potential links between the intake of animal products and risks of the following diseases and conditions:

• Type 2 diabetes

• Different types of cancer, including breast cancer, prostate cancer, ovarian cancer, testicular cancer, and colorectal cancer

• Heart disease

• Dementia

• Cataracts

• Cellulite

• Obesity

• Allergic, autoimmune, and inflammatory disorders

• Life-threatening reactions to e. coli toxins

• Recurrent gout attacks

• Neurological diseases

• Prepuberty

• Prostatic hyperplasia

• Declining sperm counts

Cutting animal product consumption lowers intake of saturated fat, cholesterol, nitrates, hormonal residues, carcinogenic compounds, and pathogens like Salmonella, E. coli, Listeria, and Campylobacter, while increasing fiber, phytonutrients, and unsaturated fats — collectively improving health outcomes.

Abstaining from animal products has been found to have a preventive effect against 14 of the 15 deadliest diseases of our time — and can reduce all-cause mortality. Nutrition experts at the University of Harvard say “there is strong evidence that a plant-based diet is the optimal diet for living a long and healthy life.”

O — Occupational hazards

Workers in industrial animal farming and slaughterhouses often face dangerous, grueling working conditions. Long hours, repetitive injuries, and exposure to sharp tools take a serious toll on their bodies, while the stress, trauma, and the daily witnessing of animal suffering drive high rates of anxiety, depression, PTSD, and substance abuse.

For good reasons, slaughterhouse work is recognized as “America’s worst job” and as “some of the most exploited labor in the world”. In debates about meat and dairy consumption, these impacts are often overlooked, even when they affect the physical and mental health of some of the most vulnerable people in society.

R — Resource scarcity and hunger

Meat and dairy production exacerbate global hunger and malnutrition by converting edible crops into far less food than they consume. Farmed animals require large amounts of feed, yet they produce only a fraction of those calories in return.

This inefficiency stems from basic biology. Unlike plants, animals use energy not only for growth and reproduction, but also for movement, maintaining body temperature, and other metabolic processes. As a result, much of the nutritional energy invested in them is lost before it can become food for humans.

To sustain this system, vast quantities of grain, corn, soy, and fresh water are diverted into animal agriculture — much of which could otherwise be used directly for human consumption.

Extensive areas of land are dedicated to growing animal feed and maintaining pasture. The largest analysis to date shows that animal farming provides just 18% of global calories while occupying 83% of farmland.

With roughly 24,000 people dying each day from hunger and malnutrition and four billion people facing severe water scarcity, this inefficient use of resources poses a serious risk to human health and well-being.

I — Infectious diseases

Globally, around 73% of all antibiotics aren’t used on humans, but on animals raised for food. This accelerates the rise of antibiotic resistance, a significant global health threat that is projected to kill more people than all types of cancer combined by 2050.

Intensive animal farming — the source of nearly all everyday animal products — is also recognized as the single most risky human behavior for pandemics. These environments (tight spaces, high stress levels, insufficient sunlight, open wounds, and poor ventilation) are not just utterly inhumane; they are ideal breeding grounds for infectious diseases.

Experts warn that a new pandemic could be 100 times worse than COVID and have called modern animal farming an “infectious disease trap,” a “ticking time bomb for future viruses,” a “ticking pathogen bomb,” and a “hidden pandemic time bomb.”

E — Environmental health risks

Environmental destruction and climate change are among the greatest health threats facing humanity — and animal agriculture is a major driver of both. The industry is the world’s leading cause of deforestation, the most serious threat to our oceans, the largest user of land, the largest emitter of climate-damaging methane and nitrous oxide, the leading cause of soil degradation, and the leading cause of biodiversity loss.

According to assessments by the United Nations and the Worldwatch Institute, animal farming is a driving force behind virtually every major category of environmental damage now threatening our future, at every scale from local to global.

It’s not just the direct environmental impacts that endanger our health. By destroying vital ecosystems like the Amazon rainforest — 80% of whose deforestation is driven by animal agriculture — we are also erasing our own capacity for healing: around 25% of modern medicines are derived from rainforest plants, and less than 1% of these plants have been studied for their medical potential. Every square mile of rainforest lost may cost us a future cure for diseases like cancer and diabetes, or infections we’ve yet to face.

Conclusion

Even setting aside the pressing ethical concerns, the case against animal agriculture remains overwhelming on public health grounds.

The harms tied to this industry — from individual disease risk to antibiotic-resistant bacteria to the health consequences of environmental degradation — are too severe, too costly, and too preventable to ignore.

Studies show that a global shift to plant-based diets could save hundreds of billions in healthcare costs and millions of human lives each year.

The D.O.R.I.E. model introduced in this article offers a clear and simple framework for navigating this discussion and — in an era of growing diet misinformation — helps ensure that no critical health impacts are overlooked or obscured.

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Last September, I published an article titled “Progressives, Let’s Talk About the Ethical Challenge Most of Us Avoid,” where I outlined 11 reasons why buying animal products conflicts with progressive values. The response was stronger than I expected. Across platforms, many people reached out, shared their perspectives, and said the piece captured something they had been thinking about for a long time.

To make the core ideas more accessible and easier to share, I’ve distilled them into a digital flyer you can download, share on social media, send to friends, or print and distribute offline — whatever feels most useful:

A huge thank you to everyone helping this flyer reach as many progressive-minded people as possible — your support really matters!

PDF version of the flyer also available, if needed:

How Do Animal Products Relate To Progressive Values

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Where’s the reference list?

Sources for all claims and quotes in the flyer can be found in this article. I’ve included a corresponding reference in the flyer’s footer to add credibility. If anything feels unclear or doesn’t quite work, I would really appreciate you letting me know in the comments.

So am I saying that veganism is only relevant for progressives?

No. The consequences of animal industries affect us all; this isn’t limited to any single political camp. While this flyer focuses on progressive values, further pieces addressing other political perspectives may follow soon. I chose to start with progressives in particular because our principles are grounded in the courage to confront injustice head-on. If we ask others to challenge systems of harm, then integrity requires that we do the same.

More is coming soon!

Stay tuned 👇

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That’s why I’m starting a new series of handpicked short films that get straight to the heart of why veganism matters — perfect for bite-sized inspiration or sharing with others.

You may have come across a few of these clips before, but powerful ideas are always worth a second look. Sometimes, a quick rewatch is the exact reminder we didn’t know we needed.

Today, to kick off the series, I’m sharing the award-winning short film “Casa de Carne” by Dustin Brown (who, fun fact, already saw this post and left a comment below 😊). In just over two minutes, his film delivers a powerful message that really sticks with you:

Casa de Carne is a cinematic masterpiece that uses the concept of a fictional restaurant — where diners must kill their own meal — to expose the profound disconnect between animal products and the living beings they once were.

In my view, the film’s most striking element is the deliberate, drawn-out moment at the end where the camera lingers on the protagonist’s face. The expression in his eyes and the heavy silence of that look capture a powerful realization — one that many viewers will find relatable.

The creators put a tremendous amount of effort into making this, and their work deserves to be seen. Know someone who might enjoy or be inspired? Every share counts.

More great clips will follow, and I’ll also be putting together a collection of my favorites. Stay tuned.

If you have recommendations for short films that powerfully explore animal rights or the impact of animal agriculture on humans and the environment, please share them in the comments. I’d love to check out your suggestions, and if something stands out, I’ll feature it in this series!

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For centuries, we have conflated the capacity to suffer with cognitive complexity. We assume that because a pig cannot solve a calculus equation or read a map, it must not feel the terror of the slaughterhouse as deeply as a human would.

This is a catastrophically flawed assumption. It bundles together several logical fallacies: the belief that intelligence is the metric of feeling, the arrogance that what we cannot fully understand must be inferior, and the confusion of communication with experience. A non-verbal infant lacks the “intelligence” of an adult, yet no one would argue the infant feels less pain when injured.

Why animals may suffer more

It’s plausible that the intensity of suffering varies between individuals and across species, but there’s no logical reason to place humans at the top. In fact, several factors suggest that non-human animals may experience a depth of torment that surpasses our own:

1) Heightened sensory systems

Many animals possess sensory hardware far superior to our own. Whether it’s acute hearing, a more sensitive nervous system, or a heightened sense of smell, their “interface” with the world is often far more high-definition than ours.

In the industrial environments of modern farming, these sharp senses become liabilities, where a metallic clang or the scent of blood may translate into a significantly more distressing sensory experience than it would for a human.

Chickens, for example, perceive colors beyond our imagination and can view the same scene at two different magnifications. Their beaks, routinely mutilated in farming, are highly sensitive tools that feel far more than we might expect.

Similarly, a pig’s snout, packed with nerve endings, or a cow’s horns and udders, also exquisitely sensitive, suggest that farming procedures — dehorning, tail docking, nose rings, and udder infections from repetitive industrial milking — may inflict pain and distress on a scale that is difficult for us to fully comprehend.

2) The trap of the present

Humans have the cognitive tools to mentally distance themselves from severe distress. We can distract ourselves with memories, find relief in the hope that things will improve, or just try to focus on something else. Practices like mindfulness, for example, can lessen pain.

An animal in a crate, however, may lack the ability to willfully direct their attention — and the conceptual framework to grasp that their suffering is finite. “If the pain is sufficiently extreme, even knowing that death is a possible future ending may help alleviate it for us, as compared to animals,” says Sahar Akhtar.

Without any sense that pain will end, animals are trapped in the present moment. In distress, their suffering is not just intense — it is total. It is their entire universe.

3) Evolutionary necessity

For a human, an injury can be managed with tools, medicine, and social support. For other animals, a serious injury is often a death sentence. Evolution may have selected for a much more “violent” and demanding pain signal in animals to ensure they prioritize immediate survival at all costs.

The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has suggested that animals with more limited cognitive capacities may depend on stronger pain signals, as “slower learners” may require more intense experiences to effectively deter harmful behavior.

4) Suffering without context

Humans are able to engage in inter-temporal calculations with respect to our interests and frequently discount pain in order to achieve other, higher order or longer term interests. Understanding that an experience serves a purpose — such as receiving an injection from a doctor — can lessen the perception of pain.

Animals, by contrast, are unlikely to possess these cognitive tools, and they cannot know the intentions behind human actions. A sheep confined in a metal crate and plunged underwater cannot comprehend that it is being cleaned; it experiences only restraint, panic, and drowning.

The broader system of exploiting animals serves none of their interests — and offers no benefit that could possibly “outweigh” or lessen their suffering.

Amplified pain

Numerous aspects of modern animal farming further amplify the suffering of its victims. Painful body deformations, bone fractures, and chronic pain caused by selective breeding; forced separation of families, particularly mothers and offspring; inescapable confinement that prevents animals from expressing their natural instincts; extreme forms of abuse and violence; and total lack of control — where every aspect of life, from light and temperature to movement and social interaction, is dictated by external forces — all combine to intensify their torment.

Conclusion

All of this suggests that we may be harming animals far more than we realize — probably far more than we can even imagine. A single industrial farm or fishing vessel could inflict more suffering than entire wars. And I mean this literally.

To continue operating under the assumption that non-human animals feel less is not just a scientific error — it is a moral catastrophe.

I know this reality is distressing, and it is natural to feel sadness or despair. But now, more than ever, is precisely the moment not to give up. Even in these times of unprecedented animal exploitation, there are real and growing reasons for hope.

So please, if you can, channel your grief into action and your despair into outrage. Speak out, spread awareness, and fight for change. Things may look bleak, and it may be hard to believe, but reason and compassion will ultimately prevail.

Despair alone helps no one — action saves lives. I invite you to explore these 18 ways to take action for animals, pick the one that resonates with you, and turn it into a mission that gives your compassion purpose and meaning.

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