We welcome allies from all walks of life and across the political spectrum.

• As a result of being unifocal on farmed animal issues, we do not exclude any potential allies on the basis of their other beliefs, backgrounds, or affiliations.
• We are proud to have worked with the left-of-centre Social Market Foundation, as well as the right-of-centre Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation, and NGOs like The Vegan Society as well as investor coalitions like FAIRR. 
• On a personal level, our clients are sometimes vegetarian or vegan, but are often meat-eaters! We don’t ask or discuss this with our external partners uninvited.

We deeply value and appreciate individuals who choose to give their resources to the animal movement and/or invest in alternative proteins.

• “Donor skepticism” among activists is often fuelled by a misguided belief that philanthropists give to charity for cynical or self-interested tax reasons rather than genuine altruism. This is incorrect – donations to charity will never save a philanthropist more in tax than they cost in donations.
• Investors in alternative proteins are not unreasonable to expect a return on their investment. Moreover, many high-profile investors and funds are ethically-motivated so-called “impact investors” – meaning that they are willing to accept more risk and/or lower return because they are aligned with the company’s mission.
• The animal movement should avoid the “own-goal” of adopting or encouraging attitudes or practices which alienate would-be donors or investors, such as criticising Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates on posts about them investing in alternative proteins. This type of attitude could become extremely damaging to the movement.

We centre individual outreach messages and imagery on farmed animal suffering.

• Evidence shows that images of farmed animal suffering are more compelling than environmental or health messages in diet change advocacy on an individual level.
• There is evidence that focusing on animals in messaging:
  • gets more people to say they would change their diet, 
  • results in more significant diet change (i.e. vegan rather than flexitarian) and 
  • results in longer-lasting dietary change.
• Environmental, health, economic, or other arguments may be most pragmatic to employ in some situations, particularly when communicating with institutional stakeholders.

We support and applaud incremental improvements in animal welfare standards and/or labelling.

• While some vegans take the view that endorsing welfare standards entails taking a position that “animal farming is acceptable given big enough cages”, we believe this is misguided.
  • Even if you are an abolitionist with respect to animal farming, the only feasible route to removing animals from the food system entirely involves a gradual increase in welfare standards.
  • One function of welfare standards and labels is to increase the cost of rearing animals overall. Therefore, such schemes not only benefit the animals which have higher standards, they also cause fewer animals to be farmed overall.
  • The most vocal supporters of mandatory animal welfare standards and labels are animal advocates who understand these dynamics and small high-welfare farmers.
  • The most vocal opponents of mandatory animal welfare standards and labels are animal advocates who misunderstand these dynamics and factory farm lobbies.

We recognise that there are severe limitations with private welfare certification schemes. 

• These schemes involve perverse incentives where certifiers are paid to enforce the certification standards – but if they enforce the standards robustly and revoke certifications for farms which don’t meet the standard, they will lose revenue. This might lead to internal incentive structures which discourage proper enforcement of certification standards.
• These schemes lead to a selection effect which skews the perception of animal welfare labels overall. When welfare labels are optional, producers only disclose if it is good news. No producer will voluntarily add a “factory farmed” label. Therefore, consumers only see “high welfare” labels or no welfare labels, which leads consumers to believe that animal products are high welfare overall.
• Private certification schemes are significantly worse than mandatory government labels, although they are likely better than nothing.

We encourage and celebrate the efforts of people who are meat-reducers, flexitarians, and other “imperfect” meat-reducing diets.

• We applaud all meat reduction efforts which are sincere, significant, and sustained. Only the individual knows if they are eating significantly less meat day-to-day, or just thinking about the one time they had a vegetarian option in the last year. 
• While we do not endorse consuming any factory farmed products, we recognise that it is not practical to exclude non-vegans from engaging in more significant forms of animal activism. 
• Chastising vegetarians as hypocrites, for example, rather than considering them allies, is very likely to alienate individuals who might otherwise make a significant contribution to reducing animal suffering.

We support and endorse alternative proteins, including plant-based, fermentation-derived, and cultivated meat and other animal product alternatives.

• We are not interested in forcing or misleading anybody into eating alternative proteins. We want alternative proteins to win because they are tastier, cheaper, and healthier than animal products, and our food environments highlight these facts to consumers. 
• Plant-based animal product alternatives are healthier and more environmentally sustainable than animal products. This is the relevant comparison – not plant-based alternatives vs. whole foods plant-based, because alternative proteins displace animal products, not whole plant foods.
• Some vegans follow a whole foods plant-based diet, and consider this an important part of their personal health regime. We respect the personal decision not to eat alternative proteins, but we ask these people to refrain from spending their energy attacking alternative proteins in public. The most vocal proponents of the incorrect idea that “Alternative proteins are processed and therefore unhealthy” are whole foods plant-based vegans who misunderstand this dynamic and factory farm lobbies.

We applaud and celebrate the efforts of individuals who engage in online or other low-effort forms of animal activism.

• Many would-be activists have the false idea that “Real activism entails high-effort activities like street activism or protests” and subsequently fail to engage in lower-effort forms of valuable activism.
• In reality, there is not necessarily a correlation between effort expended and animal suffering reduced. Some forms of activism are more effective than others, but making more effort does not always mean helping more animals.
• Often, the major concern of people engaged in high-effort activism like protests is to ensure that there is photos and videos that can be shared on social media. Moreover, they are right to have this concern – these actions can reach and inspire more people online than they ever could live.

Activities which might disparagingly be called “slacktivism” can add huge amounts of value for animals. Devaluating these activities can suppress valuable forms of activism. Such activities include taking online actions and donating to effective animal charities.

We are strongly supportive of “nudges” to decrease consumption of animal products via defaults, menu design, and other choice architecture.

• The point of “nudge” interventions is that they encourage people to make better (i.e. healthier, more sustainable, more ethical) choices without restricting their choice or imposing significant costs.
• In this important way, nudges such as plant-based defaults and majority-veg menus are extremely unobtrusive measures which empower consumers to make healthier choices without forcing them or imposing taxes or other tangible costs.
• Animal advocates and behavioural scientists must not retreat from advocating nudges as an important tool for decreasing animal product consumption. Our choices are constantly subject to many sources of influence – adding positive choice architecture to menus and institutions is an extremely modest and unobtrusive request.