For your consideration: An exchange re: advocacy & animals

“Veganuary started in the UK in 2014, and I noted the production of broilers per person in the UK in January increased 4.27 times as fast from 2014 to 2024 as from 1994 to 2013.” 

Relevant portions of the full exchange. A message to One Step:

I am currently doing a research fellowship ....

We are currently evaluating the promise of a new organisation running Veganuary campaigns. However, I suspect one explicitly focussed on decreasing the consumption of poultry birds may be more cost-effective. Do you know the cost-effectiveness of One Step for Animals in terms of kg of chicken consumption reduced per $?

From our reply:

Tl;dr: One Step’s “About” page is the most important bit I have to offer.

I’ve worked for and with quite a few animal advocacy organizations in the past 35 years. (I’ve also been on the evaluative side at VegFund.) Having seen (and written) answers these groups have given to questions like yours (e.g., “Our surveys show 5 animals saved for every $100!”) and their budgets, factory farming should have ended and everyone should now be vegan. I’m not casting aspersions; as mentioned here, I did these projections back in the 90s. 

Yet as you know, the average person in the US and globally is eating as many factory-farmed animals as ever before. There is vastly more suffering on factory farms today than 10, 20, 30 years ago. Despite all the claims over the course of decades, the world has never been worse for non-human animals.

Also over the past 35 years, I have read arguments why “Our advocacy is different this time.” But the facts above should leave us more than skeptical about any claims of any “reduction per $.” 

For details on why there is more suffering despite decades of advocacy, please see Meat Reduction Hurts Animals and Good-Faith Advocacy Can Cause More Suffering.

When starting One Step for Animals, our number one priority was to avoid advocacy that, on net, actually causes more suffering. Making sure our advocacy was not causing more suffering was the focus of our previous survey. But of course, we can’t really trust those survey results, given response bias and the fact that any meaningful measure would have to be done over a significant amount of time.

Based on our experience and the lessons we have learned over the past 35 years, not causing harm on net is the only honest claim demand-side advocacy can make. (Welfare reforms like cage-free campaigns are different, but even there, history has shown many “victories” that didn’t actually translate to fewer animals in cages. Work on the supply-side – i.e., plant-based and cultivated animal products – has also not come close to fulfilling the projections and promises.) 

I would be happy to discuss any aspect of this with you further. But One Step won’t make any claims other than “do no harm.” Claims of efficacy simply do not match with reality. Even if not consciously dishonest, these claims are misleading to the point of being actively harmful to animals.

The person I trust most regarding animal suffering is Lewis Bollard at Open Philanthropy Project. He and I don’t agree on everything, but he is not trying to sell a certain story, promote his group or philosophy, or solicit support. He takes suffering very seriously. In addition to being extremely scrupulous and rigorous in evaluations, he constantly monitors himself for self-delusion.

From their reply:

I agree [more suffering despite advocacy] is a concern. Veganuary started in the UK in 2014, and I noted the production of broilers per person in the UK in January increased 4.27 times as fast from 2014 to 2024 as from 1994 to 2013.

It could have increased faster without Veganuary, but the correlation is still concerning.

Stay tuned for more on this. 

If you would like to support work driven by these facts, please click here.
Note: Open Philanthropy is not a supporter of One Step, but Lewis is. 👍