This is a noble question worth spending some time on. If we truly care for the animals locked in sheds and cages waiting for their turn on the truck to the slaughterhouse, then we owe it to them to do what is most effective to save them.

Some activists think it’s most effective to take the measurements approach and analyze how to reduce suffering as much as possible. Others look at how they can most affect the industry by going after the “easy” targets of fur and foie gras. Some use their careers, becoming lawyers or alternative protein scientists. A handful of us think of activism solely as vegan outreach, and the question becomes how to best do vegan outreach.

Until recently, I told activists the most effective activism they can do is the activism that they are most excited to do. Being excited to do something means you will more likely do it. Alternatively, If you hate talking to strangers yet are convinced that vegan education is the most effective path forward, you will burn out quickly, or worse, not do a good job at outreach. Maybe you reason that becoming a lawyer or cultivated meat scientist will secure the most positive results for animals, but you are 40 years old and deep into a completely different career path.

However, I now think doing the type of activism that excites you most is the second most effective thing you can do for the animals. What is now first? Get others involved in the movement. Why? All the paths toward animal liberation require people working on them. The more people working on them, the faster we can go. The more pressure we can mount. The more minds we can change.

The recent No Kings protests in the US gained media attention not by having a novel message but due to the sheer numbers of protesters involved. If ten people came out, we would easily dismiss the protest. However, millions of people held signs and marched through the streets across hundreds of cities, a sizable force on a mission. Clearly, the number of people involved amplifies the message and creates urgency in the cause. We can learn from this.

How do we get more activists involved? Here are some strategies that I’ve seen work:

• Lead by example. Raise the minimum levels of commitment by proving exactly what that looks like. Show others what is possible. If you do a lot of pressure campaign protests and want to inspire others to do speakouts, then do them first yourself. If you want to raise the bar of expectations at your alternative protein company, work longer, harder, and smarter. Want an animal rights organization in your area but don’t have one? Start it. Create blueprints for others to follow. Be the model activist within your chosen area of activism.

• Learn influence. If you want someone to take action for the animals, you have to first ask them to either directly or indirectly. Directly asking someone requires you to be likeable and trustworthy. Indirectly asking could be inspiring someone by leading by example or showing new activists what is possible on a social media video. Both require influence. How do you have influence on others? How do you get someone to come to the next event? How do you win that big grant? What makes people want to join your efforts?

• Focus on one-on-one invites. Making Facebook events or dropping invites into a group chat will only get those most intrinsically motivated to come. Reaching out to individuals and personally inviting them makes a huge difference. Which would motivate you more: A text invite in a group chat of 50 people or the organizer reaching out to you individually, saying “Hey! Last protest you really killed it on the megaphone! We are having a follow-up protest this Friday. Want to come and let the fur store have it again?” One-on-one invites can be annoying because they take more time, but you will get consistent responses more. Because this approach is so effective, I encourage all my organizers to reach out one-on-one to invite folks to events.

• Host skill-building workshops. This could include how to do outreach, video editing, undercover investigations, understand your rights, run a pressure campaign, write letters to the editor, and/or practice anything and everything you are an expert in to train new activists. Want to learn something new? Reach out to someone you know that has those skills and offer to help set up a workshop. Get a room at the library and invite everyone you know. Host an online meeting. Growing the movement involves growing and refining our skills.

• Always be recruiting. When someone you meet at a vegan outreach event tells you they are vegan, ask them if they want to get involved with activism. I volunteer as a tour guide at a farm animal sanctuary, and once I find out someone on the tour is a vegan, I speak more about volunteering or donating instead of issues with animal agriculture. If I was in a chemistry class with the intent of becoming an alternative protein scientist, I’d talk to my classmates about pursuing that career path or ask the professor if I could do a 10-minute presentation on the subject to the class with the intention of recruiting.

• Become an official mentor. Many of my suggestions in this article are informal, but Animal Activism Collective has a formal mentorship program where an experienced activist is teamed up with someone interested in activism. The program guides the mentee through a more formal process to help them grow their skills, knowledge, and experience.

• Host social events with the purpose of recruiting. New activists can find it scary to sign up with strangers. How do you know if the group will have your back? Are they knowledgeable? How welcoming are they to new people? Maybe you worry since you are new you won’t do something correctly, and you will embarrass yourself or make them annoyed at you. These are questions new activists have. Setting up social events (potlucks, restaurant meetups, etc.) allows people to meet each other as people first, so trust and relationships can build. We have had several new activists join us for demonstrations after first meeting us at a social event.

• Retain existing activists. Unfortunately, not everyone who becomes an activist stays an activist. While some might have legitimate reasons they cannot be active, most drift away and often without good reason. Building community, encouragement, and lasting relationships with people is important to keep them coming out. We have to be genuine, true friends to our fellow activists. Haven’t seen someone at an event or action in awhile? Shoot them a text. Letting a person know they are valued might give them the bump they need. Activists who come to an event once a month may come out more with a gentle and encouraging push.

The bottom line: Take recruiting as seriously as you do your activism. We cannot simply act in our silos of activism waiting for only those intrinsically motivated to join us. We need to be actively recruiting, inviting others to join us in the most important moral cause of our time.

Anyone can recruit. You do not need a job title or leadership role to recruit. Everyone involved has the ability to take part in at least one method of recruitment listed above. Take time out of your day to contemplate your recruitment plan, strategy, and execution. I cannot stress enough that thought and care needs to be put into community building and recruiting.

Consider all the activism you do in a month. Say it is 50 hours. Now imagine inspiring three others to get active at 20 hours per month for a total of 60 hours. Due to your efforts, you contribute 110 hours a month! Now imagine they each recruit another activist. This is called the multiplier effect. Getting new activists involved increases the total amount of work done. What event do you have coming up next month where you can unleash the multiplier effect? What strategies of recruitment and retention will you use?

Animal activists accomplish an impressive amount with so few people. Imagine what we could do with double or triple the numbers. That’s why the most effective thing you can do as an activist is to help grow the movement.

I first heard the term “trigger event” from Robert Grillo, so credit for the idea goes to him. This post examines examples of trigger events and explores how activists can leverage them in pressure campaigns.

Pressure campaigns are when activists target a particular industry, company, or individual with a clear demand using a variety of tactics, some of which will be illustrated and listed below. Books have been written on pressure campaigns, so I will keep my focus on how trigger events can catapult a pressure campaign forward. For a brief intro, Jake Conroy has a great video summary of pressure campaigns here.

Naturally Occurring Trigger Events

The extreme confinement on factory farms is a breeding ground for diseases and pathogens including avian influenza. In factory farms, if one bird tests positive for avian flu, the entire shed is killed, sometimes the entire farm. This has resulted in hundreds of millions of birds killed in the animal agriculture industry within the past few years. Instead of reducing the number of birds on farms, decreasing their confinement, or supporting alternatives to farming birds, the United States government handed out over $1 billion as bail out money to farmers. Normally, if a business makes poor decisions, they pay the cost and perhaps file for bankruptcy, but not for chicken farmers. The government hands them money so that they can continue with their malpractice. No need to learn from mistakes or fix any issues.

Free From Harm took these bailouts as a trigger event. Free From Harm confronted government officials on why they are sending billions of dollars to bailout a failing business, often by disrupting speaking events of decision makers in the government. The goal was to hurt the chicken industry by reducing their income, using the bailouts from avian flu as a catalyst for their goal.

Angela Davis, a black liberationist and vegan, used the murders of black people by the police in California in the 60s as trigger events to open up public discourse on the violence against black people. A single murder might lead to multiple mass protests, interviews, news articles, marches, and court battles. Each round of murders brought more pressure onto authorities to stop the violence, and won more hearts and minds of previously indifferent white people. We see similar trigger events today in the human social justice space with the killing of George Floyd or Renee Good galvanizing people and sparking entire movements.

San Diego county has many rodeos. However, Padres Rodeo found itself in the spotlight by forcing a pregnant horse named Pearl Necklace to “perform.” 15 minutes after she was forced to buck a “cowboy,” she collapsed. She died along with her 11 month old, unborn child. Strategic Action for Animals (sxfaorg) used Pearl’s spotlight as a trigger event. The public was already aware of the situation, sympathetic to the cause, and sxfaorg turned up the pressure. Sxfaorg got multiple sponsors to withdraw support for the rodeo and stopped the city of San Diego giving $150,000 of public funds to Padres Rodeo. Much of the history can be seen on sxfaorg’s Instagram.

This is by no means an exhaustive list. These examples illustrate how trigger events come into the spotlight. Avian flu, police killings, and deaths at rodeos are naturally occurring in that activists did not make those events happen. However, trigger events can also be created by activists. Many atrocities are kept hidden because the entity or individual knows what they are doing will reflect poorly on them should they be exposed. We do not have to wait for an event to naturally unfold. Events can be manufactured and pushed into the public spotlight.

Manufacturing Trigger Events

Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) repeatedly investigated Predue’s Petaluma Poultry for criminal animal abuse. DxE found “birds collapsed on the floor or stuck on their backs and unable to walk to food or water, left to slowly starve to death, as well as infectious diseases that threaten public health”. Such abuse and neglect are illegal in the state of California. Yet, despite DxE’s repeated attempts to get the authorities to punish criminals, corrupt government officials including Sonoma County’s DA Carla Rodriguez have done nothing but ignore hard evidence against Petaluma Poultry.

DxE created their own trigger event through these investigations. The campaign pushed criminal animal abuse into the public spotlight. To name some of the tactics used:

• Rescued injured chickens from a Petaluma Poultry facilities

• Organized mass protests and disruptions against Trader Joe’s, who is a major buyer of corpses from Petaluma Poultry

• Pressured Chef and author Tyler Florence to cut ties with Petaluma Poultry

• Ran a ballot initiative in Sonoma County to ban all factory farms in 2024 (unfortunately the initiative failed to get enough votes)

These events and others have spawned dozens of major news outlet articles, evening news segments, public street marches, social media discussions, and letters to newspapers. In terms of putting the right to rescue, the basic welfare of farm animals, and clear proof of corrupt government authorities in the public eye, this campaign has been a wild success.

When I say a trigger event being manufactured, I mean the event was exposed by animal activists. Activists did not create the abuse or situation, but discovered the issue and forced it into conversation. With DxE, they used the evidence from undercover investigations as a trigger event to force Petaluma Poultry’s criminal animal abuse into the public arena. DxE uses every tactic of a pressure campaign to bring down Petaluma Poultry all starting with a trigger event they exposed.

MLK Jr. similarly forced the injustice that happened to his people into public discourse with his demonstrations. It was all too easy in the 50s to turn a blind eye to the abuse of black people if you were white. So MLK Jr. exposed the violence black people experienced daily in newspapers and TVs. He brought bus loads of black people to Birmingham, Alabama for protests. The violence of the police was so heavy handed, it could not be ignored any longer by the larger white public. MLK Jr. created his own crisis, his own trigger event, and used the media to spread his message. The pressure became too great even for the racist business owners and mayor of Birmingham, and they caved, ultimately expanding the rights and dignity of black people across America.

How We Use Trigger Events

Animal abusing organizations and individuals do not want to be in the spotlight for their abuse. Hence, it is imperative activists force the abusers into the public’s attention for as long as possible to help create the change the animals need. Trigger events, whether created by activists or naturally occurring, can be used as catalysts to damage or end these industries.

Activists can watch/create, evaluate, and act.

Watch/Create: Regularly scroll through the news for anything animal related. Examples include puppy mills exposed, a horse pulling a carriage downtown collapses, pet stores neglecting care for their animals, viruses and other pathogens running rampant in your area, slaughterhouse worker strikes or injuries, animal abusing companies sued, and so on. These are all potential trigger events.

You could set up google alerts for keywords in the news or ask friends and family to keep an eye on the news for such events.

Trigger events can also be manufactured. Watching and waiting is not necessary if you have an issue the public would rally behind once exposed. MLK Jr. called this creating a “crisis”. Manufacturing crises work best on issues the industry or a company wants hidden from the public. If a target is doing something wrong and trying to cover it up, that is a clear indicator that this situation is ripe for exposure as a trigger event.

Evaluate: Are events you found serious enough to be mentioned in the news? Is there enough outrage or can you cultivate enough attention to damage the entity hurting animals? Are you or your group able to take this campaign on with some reasonable expectation of success?

Success can take on a variety of forms, but it should be defined so that you come forward with a clear demand. For some, simply educating the public is a major step, such as ventilation shut down where Iowa farmers roasted pigs alive by turning their sheds into hot gas chambers overnight. In the fight against foie gras, the ultimate form of success is the complete removal of foie gras across the world, but each time a restaurant, grocery store, or distribution center removes foie gras, that is a victory worth celebrating. You may not know how a trigger event will land with the public and lead to success, so experimenting might be required.

If you are alone without an animal rights group, continuing the conversation in the public eye could be enough to spark greater investigations by authorities. Solo activists can write letters to the editor or speak to the city council.

Act: Take action. Copy many of the tactics outlined in this essay. Be creative with new activities that fit your situation. Mix actions up. Never let your target know what you are going to come at them with next. Here is an overwhelming list of actions to consider, simply to illustrate there is much we could do with a trigger event to launch us into a pressure campaign:

• Write letters to companies or their sponsors

• Pressure insurance companies to not cover your target

• Ask owners of the property your target rents from to kick your target out

• Contact authorities if a crime happened or enforcement agencies like the USDA if applicable

• Invite the news out to demonstrations

• Write letters to the editor

• Loud, noisy, disruptive protests

• Silent protest with tape over your mouth

• Flyering

• Start a ballot initiative

• Contact storms (call your target repeatedly or comment on their social media in mass)

• Chalking outside stores

• Hold a banner across a highway

• Disrupt shareholder meetings or speaking events

• Yard signs across town

• If you have money, a billboard

• Hang flyers on the doors of the neighborhood of the key decision makers of your target

• Disrupt speeches or grand openings

• Speak at city councils on banning or limiting a particular product or “show”

• Anything else that would keep the public’s attention on the issue and put pressure on your target

Direct action and civil disobedience have a history of getting results. Direct rescue of victims under the cover of night, open rescue, chaining yourself to an entrance (Animal Equality recently did this against Ahold Delhaize), and so forth. Note these types of tactics need to be weighed against their effectiveness on the outcome given they involve risk. It is hard to do activism from jail.

A Final Example Showing the Process

Backdrop: North Carolina has the country’s third highest shelter dog euthanasia rate . Most North Carolinians do not know this statistic. I wanted to educate the public on this crisis by manufacturing an event.

Creating the Trigger Event: I manufactured a trigger event holding a memorial service for dogs euthanized in shelters in front of a soon-to-open puppy store named Waggles. The event involved taping pictures of dogs to represent those who have been put down in shelters across North Carolina, laying flowers out, and giving speeches on the horrors of the puppy mill industry.

Evaluate: The local animal rights group that I am a part of, NC Animal Advocates United (NCAAU), was already running anti-puppy mill and anti-puppy store campaigns by having the issue in the public eye with protests, evening news interviews, news articles, and city council discussions. Creating another angle to get the issue into the public discourse made sense.

As an organizer, I’m always thinking of how everyone in NCAAU can have a role. This unique type of event could bring out folks not comfortable with protests or public speaking, which NCAAU has many such individuals.

Action: The memorial service was recorded and created into a social media post.

This post is our highest viewed, liked, and shared post by far. The post helped educate the public on the issue, framed Waggles in a poor light for their contribution to the death of dogs, and grew our social media base. Beyond that, for the individuals involved in the memorial service, this was a powerful moment reminding us of the reality for many dogs in North Carolina shelters.

Reflect and Prepare

Consider 2025. Were there any situations in your area that were potential trigger events? Make a list. Evaluate each event as if you might go after the target at that time. What would your game plan have been? What actions could you have taken?

I’ve only been involved in the movement since 2020. Animal rights veterans have said that the height of the movement was in 2019, before covid hit which disrupted all progress. Rumors are that the movement is almost at 2019 levels, more diversified in strategies, and more unified in vision.

There has never been a better time to be involved. Armed with this knowledge, keep a look out in 2026 for trigger events. Be prepared to act. Launching off a trigger event is a proven way to create change.

The ozone layer had a big hole that was only growing in Antarctica. The cause was primarily chlorofluorocarbons, chemicals used as refrigerants. The ozone layer shields us from ultraviolet radiation. Without the ozone layer, skin cancer and environmental harms would rise.

This was a precarious situation: either degrade the ozone layer until life becomes unsustainable due to extreme ultraviolet exposure and we perish, or stop cooling our foods so much, so often, and at such a large scale. It seems like an easy question – mild behavioral change or death? Yet history and psychology show us that small behavioral changes (even in the face of imminent death) can be extremely hard at a societal level.

Spoiler: we did not perish from the hole in the ozone, nor did we stop running refrigerators. What happened? Scientists designed an alternative refrigerator coolant. This unsexy, anti-dramatic solution coming from chemical engineering caused the issue of the ozone layer to disappear overnight. We created the alternative coolant, scaled up production, and everyone replaced their coolant. We won!

What would have happened if we did not find the alternative coolant? Would chlorofluorocarbons continue to create a bigger and bigger hole in Antarctica, turning Antarctica into a bleak desert? How much worse would the environment have to be before we took action to not use refrigerators? Chemical engineering happened to be sufficiently advanced to find, create, and scale the alternative coolant solution at an optimal time. Should that field have been more under developed, the alternative coolant could have taken much longer to discover or worse, not been discovered at all.

The Cost of Undeveloped Technology

Those dark thoughts lead me to more dark thoughts: what solutions to current problems are we missing out on because those fields are too primitive? We may be in irreversible climate warming that could have been avoided with sufficiently developed technologies. Could the widespread suffering of animals in agriculture be avoided if we learned how to grow meat in bioreactors on a mass scale? The vaccine for COVID-19 came quickly because the world had an incentive to develop a COVID-19 vaccine. How many other diseases could be eradicated by vaccines if the world put enough investment into developing those technologies? SpaceX did not invent the idea of reusable boosters by having them land instead of burning up in the atmosphere, but they refined and perfected the technology to make it happen.

Many of these technologies could have been invented sooner should there have been sufficient interest in making their development happen. This list goes on and is highly speculative, but even if a fraction of an enumerated list was true, we could be missing out on living in a substantially better world right now.

Alternatives Enable Change

What we can do right now depends on the tools we have available. What problems we can solve depends on the knowledge and technology created. This implies we approach the application of technology with care. Developing synthetic viruses to kill everyone, for example, is not within my definition of technology that I am advocating here. Optimizing how to kill everyone obviously would not help us achieve our goal of making a better future.

Better tools and solved problems create alternatives. Alternatives allow us to make better choices. Mass scaling of cotton allowed us to not use sheep’s wool. Kerosene replaced whale oil for lamp fuel. Cultivated meat will replace animal farming. Biotechnology such as in vitro and in silico experiments will replace animal testing.

Asking for us to stop testing on animals with no clear alternative has fallen on deaf ears. While there have been many victories - and perhaps more animals would be tortured in labs without the important work of activists campaigning against vivisection - millions of animals still suffer some of the worst pains imaginable in labs across the world. Asking us to stop eating animals without alternatives has proved to be nearly impossible. Asking people to never turn their lamps on so that we stop killing whales to harvest their blubber for oil would have never worked. Asking people to stop running their refrigerators to save the ozone would have resulted in a massive environmental problem because people would not have done so.

Behavioral change for moral reasons at a societal level is hard. Having alternatives makes the transition from causing harm to not causing harm easier. We want to keep living with at least the same level of consumption and quality of life without sacrifice. The only way to do that is to create alternatives: support and push the boundaries of science, technology, and thought.

The Pursuit of Technology is a Moral Good

A moral problem implies a moral agent has the ability to choose a variety of actions.

The choices one can select on a given moral problem are bound to the context and material conditions of the time. “Lying is immoral” is a moral statement for only those that have the ability to lie and possess the understanding of what lying is. Not calling an ambulance when someone is gravely injured cannot be immoral if the year is 1349 AD, and twenty four hour emergency ambulances do not exist. If someone lacks the material resources to choose a moral answer then surely we cannot call them immoral.

Technology can create new moral problems for us because technology expands our options for a given situation. Continuing with the emergency healthcare example: the existence of ambulances and hospitals create moral problems because we can decide to ignore the needs of someone suffering and not call for an ambulance. Whereas before ambulances existed, we were absolved of any potential moral responsibility. Despite new technology creating new moral problems for us, most of us would say life saving technology like doctors, ambulances, and hospitals are a good thing.

More Choices, Better Choices

More choices means a greater chance of selecting a better outcome. Stranded from a plane crash with no hope of help coming, those lacking survival skills might turn to cannibalism – something normally considered deeply abhorrent. Since they lack choices, our judgement for what is excusable in this situation changes. If you are reading this, then you probably have a plethora of choices on what to eat, which makes eating things like humans or other sentient animals potentially immoral.

If more choices to a moral problem allows us to select better answers then is it not a moral imperative to create more options to choose from? If so, scientists, technologists, and knowledge creators are behaving morally by creating the option for future people to adopt alternatives. That is, building technology and knowledge is good.

Another example: Suppose a population is dying of a disease. If there is nothing we can do, then we cannot act immorally. No cure for the black plague existed during the 1300s, so no one did anything wrong by withholding the nonexistent cure. Now suppose we have a cure for a disease. Is withholding the cure immoral? Maybe. What if we don’t have the means to mass produce it? Then probably not. But what if we did have the means to send it across the world cheaply and easily, sparing the lives of millions. Would it then be immoral to withhold it? Now that we finally have the choice to act on the manner. We can take action. Without a cure that was easily available, we had no choice. In our final version of the scenario, having sufficient technology and materials available allows us to make the better choice (that is, to save the population). Does this not imply that there is an urgency in creating cures for diseases? What if we don’t have cures because we have not invested enough time and research into them, whereas if we had invested in them previously, we could be living in a better world today?

The idea of developing technology as a moral good takes us into unintuitive scenarios. Most people think of doctors as saving lives. But what if driverless cars cause less wrecks than having humans drive cars? It could then be argued that allowing humans to drive is immoral. So scientists working on driverless cars are creating the option for us to select the better choice, the moral thing to do. Does this not imply that there is an urgency in creating driverless cars given the amount of lives that technology will save?

What About the Bad Stuff?

We can point at technologies that have caused harm such as factory farming, nuclear bombs, and burning fossil fuels causing air pollution and climate change, and claim technology is not a cure to problems but in fact, only adds to suffering. While indeed some technology has caused immense suffering, we have to put this in perspective.

We have to look at the past: Most of history is the story of high child infant mortality rates, mass poverty, death by trivial issues such as ear infections. History is full of suffering we are only now starting to address and solve, and we are only able to do this through technology. I firmly believe that the fact we can consider the suffering of others and take action to reduce that suffering is proof we have progressed as a society.

We also have to consider the future: A mass extinction is when there is rapid biodiversity loss. We are currently in the middle of the sixth mass extinction. The sixth is caused by humans. Some would use this to say humans are a cancer or virus that needs to be eradicated. I believe we can chastise ourselves less as we try to work on technology and organize society such that we stop the current levels of extinction, and make life on Earth such that there will never be a seventh mass extinction. The first five were unavoidable since there was no power around to stop them. We avoid a seventh only by creating technology. Therefore, we should embrace technology and guide it to the best of our abilities. After all, what is it we are trying to do with knowledge, science, technology, and philosophy if not to make a better world?

Is Technology a Cheap Solution to Moral Problems?

Suppose we agree that eating animals is wrong. The solution is then to not eat animals. Do we need cultivated meat for this to happen? Cultivated meat is meat grown in bioreactors from animal cells harmlessly acquired from a living animal where the meat is identical to the animal-slaughtered meat. Is waiting for cultivated meat to be readily available before stopping animal slaughter for food not circumventing the problem given we can stop the slaughter now? Should we not be making behavior changes to align with our morals instead of expecting technology to fix our problems?

I sympathize with this criticism. In fact, criticism about whether technology lets us cheat our way into being more moral is permissible is what spawned this essay. Right now, many Americans are eating some of the most unhealthy foods imaginable and becoming obese in the process. Instead of moving towards a whole-food plant-based diet and maintaining an active lifestyle, they take the drug Ozempic for weight loss. Eat what you want while losing weight? That is every over-weight person’s dream.

The situation is not so clear cut, however. There could be long term issues with Ozempic that we don’t know yet. Users of the drug might be losing weight, but due to lacking the proper nutrients of a balanced diet, they could still experience a variety of health issues. Assuming those concerns are not true, is taking a fat burning drug such a problem then? If people can maintain their level of happiness while also being healthier, why not?

Would it not be a greater victory if people mustered the strength for behavior change? Discipline and mettle are virtues, are they not? But perfection should not be the enemy of good. We should take the wins we can in hopes of forging a better future. Fundamentally, I see no difference between using technology like weight loss drugs or cultivated meat to solve problems that make life better than monitoring a volcano for activity or hurricanes coming to shore so we can evacuate cities to save lives. All this technology has the same purpose.

Most importantly, when you consider the viewpoint of innocent bystanders that become victims in our choices - such as animals in farms or in labs - they do not care why they are saved or spared a life of misery, only that they are. Whether it is the will of people to stop the evils of factory farming or technology allowing us put an end to animal agriculture, those animals do not care so long as the torture stops. To this end, I welcome any productive solutions.

Conclusion

I have given numerous examples of technologies solving problems. I have edited out many more. If you are interested in more details, there is an overwhelming amount of data in Stephen Pinker’s Enlightenment Now. This tome is loaded with data showing just how much better life is for the modern human compared to our ancestors.

What I find to be most encouraging is we are now able to consider entities beyond humans such as animals (including insects) and the environment. Animals and the environment have been neglected from our circle of compassion, but there is a growing movement dedicated to them. Science, technology, and the dissemination of knowledge is key to making progress for all those worthy of moral consideration.

In virtue ethics, what is morally right is what a virtuous person would do. A virtuous person is one who upholds virtues. Being a virtuous person is challenging in difficult times, but this is precisely when embracing virtues is most important. Virtues form a foundation or backbone we can lean on. I will not be comparing virtue ethics to other ethical frameworks, but we will use virtues as pieces of identity to ground ourselves in what we want to accomplish and how. Virtues will be our guides.

Some virtues: honesty, courage, justice, temperance, wisdom, compassion, generosity, fidelity, integrity, kindness, prudence, magnanimity, magnificence, wittiness, liberality, patience, modesty, indignation, caring, friendliness, and industriousness.

One approach is to identify a virtue to work on, meditate on our knowledge and current behavior with this virtue, and then challenge ourselves to uphold this virtue more. As we continue this cycle of refinement, we embody the virtues more and therefore have a greater impact for the animals. This will take different forms for different people. Below we review some virtues and how they apply to activism.

Courage

Paraphrasing the fantasy author Joe Abercrombie, “Fear is good. Fear means we have room to practice courage.” To be courageous is to face fears.

I am an introvert known for saying “I want animal liberation so I can go back to reading comic books and playing videos.” I don’t want to talk to people, let alone groups of strangers. So when I was approached to be a tour guide at Piedmont Farm Animal Refuge, my reaction was an automatic “hell no!” - at least in my head. But to the Founder of the sanctuary, I said “Absolutely. However I can help is what I will do.”

I knew I had to overcome my feelings of introversion and overall uncomfortableness of speaking in front of others in order to help animals. I could not rationally come up with a reason why I should stay home on tour days. Fear of speaking and engaging with strangers is not an excuse. Those are merely obstacles to overcome in the quest for animal liberation.

The beginning was the hardest. I rehearsed constantly before the tour. I was assigned as the sheep tour guide. What are all the sheep facts? I know the names of all the sheep, but don’t mix them up! Let’s see… That is Lurther and that is… Oh god, a family is approaching to visit. There was a child. I’m never around children! How do I talk to children? They better not run and chase the sheep! What is my opening line? Oh yeah… “Hello. Welcome.” We all smiled.

Everything went fine from there, and being a tour guide only got easier. I’m still introverted, but I greatly enjoy the opportunity to talk to the public about our sanctuary. Furthermore, I’m grateful for the privilege and opportunity to take on this role. Remedying the plight of the animals is our moral responsibility. Taking this responsibility seriously means I need to face my fears, and that is, to exemplify courage.

Tourgoers are easy since they want to be at the sanctuary to learn from you. What about strangers on the street? Here we can employ the virtues of temperance and patience.

Temperance and Patience

“Animals were bred to be food, so what will happen to all the animals if we don’t eat them? You want them to go extinct?” - We have all heard such nonsense while speaking with non-vegans. We want to lay into the person with an hour-long lecture about how wrong they are siting all the facts, figures, and logic that science and philosophy have to offer. But we should not. Instead, we should practice temperance with our reactions and patience when talking with individuals.

Temperance is practicing moderation or restraint. When we sign up for a Cube of Truth or find ourselves in conversation with someone in the public at a protest, what is the objective we are trying to accomplish? We want to educate the person on the realities of animal agriculture and encourage this person not to participate in the normalized exploitation of animals. This means, that to be effective, we should model our behavior in the conversation towards this goal. We should suppress the automatic emotional responses that we so dearly wish to give and instead focus on how to nudge the person to our side.

Patience is similar but with a subtle difference here. We know the many responses people have about why it is permissible to continue exploiting animals is nothing more than misinformation and marketing from the industry or deep-seated traditional rhetoric. But for that person, these are serious thoughts. A struggle for me is remembering not everyone knows what I know and not everyone is an edgy troll looking for a fight. We should accept people where they are and have the patience to guide them through their concerns so they walk away more informed.

This cannot be stated enough, so I’ll repeat: Doing this is challenging. Practicing virtue is hard. It takes deliberate thought and discipline. It requires us to be conscious of what we do and reflect on how to be better. Practicing virtue could be considered a virtue. But we do it because we are committed to helping the animals.

If before any event you say “I am <insert your name>. I am an animal rights activist. I will embody the virtues of courage, temperance, and patience. That is who I am.” and then go do the action, you will have a profound impact on all of those around you.

There are many more virtues. They can all be adapted to what you need to accomplish.

Ambition - strive for deep, meaningful goals instead of doing the same thing over and over.

Honesty - we do not need to embellish the truth. The horrors of animal agriculture can speak for themself.

Humility - Every day, every situation, every event, and every conversation, these are all learning opportunities. Know we may never have everything right, and we can refine our approach through constant humility. Debug Your Bug is a YouTuber who posts 1-1 vegan outreach conversations with random people on the street, but lately, he posts those conversations stating what he should have said differently. He is practicing humility, and encouraging us to do the same.

What I have talked about is with speaking to strangers or performing on the street since that is familiar territory for me. But virtues can be applied to any form of activism. Whether you work in policy, administration, fundraising, economics, operations, or similar, we can all practice virtue.

Frugality - perhaps you spend too much money on going out to eat or other indulgences you could do without. Practice the virtue of frugality to save money for donations or travel to activist events such as Animal Activism Collective convergences.

Epistemopile - a seeker of knowledge. One pathway to saving billions of animals is creating cultivated meat. Making cultivated meat a reality might be the strategic goal that resonates with you, so becoming obsessed with chemistry and synthetic biology could be a virtue. We still don’t know how we can scale cultivated meat. There is room for multiple Einsteins in the area. Learning how bioreactors work may not feel like animal liberation, which is why focusing on virtues centers us. The virtues remind us of the identity we are manifesting.

Discipline - We live in a world where every device wants our attention with pings and notifications. Social media companies have PhD psychologists and marketers behind them to make those platforms addictive. It takes discipline to say “no” to these distractions and practice discipline to focus on the important task we know we should be doing.

Of all the virtues, discipline might be the most important. Showing up day after day despite the obstacles to learn, grow, communicate, teach, create, plan, and execute all requires discipline. Discipline brings us back to the beginning with identity. Saying “I am an animal rights activist” is to instill the virtue of discipline in my behavior because obstacles do not stop a disciplined person.

If you are interested in making progress for the animals then you should be interested in improving yourself. As animal advocates, we should always reflect on our actions to boost our abilities. Each of us has something we can improve, and often, everyone has something they are afraid even to start. These areas for personal growth should be welcomed, analyzed, discussed, and taken action upon. Making ourselves better will lead us to have more impact for the animals.

From a quiet, introverted reader who only wants to sit in the back of any event to now someone speaking out in front of a restaurant, having the responsibility of talking to the police and keeping activists out of trouble, public speaking at a fundraising event, and being interviewed for the evening news, I have grown tremendously over the past few years. I created this substack solely to refine my writing skills and expose myself more. I from a few years ago would not recognize who I am today. I know that sounds cliche (because it is) but having gone through this growth made me realize anyone who has said “If I can do it, anyone can,” (another painful cliche) is probably telling the truth. We are capable of so much more than we give ourselves credit for.

This growth is partly from applying what I’ve studied in the self-improvement genre. Books from Ryan Holiday’s series on stoic philosophy to James Clear’s Atomic Habits and YouTubers Tina Huang and Dan Coe, there is a never-ending supply of advice on improving yourself.

Yeah, and now you are adding this heap! What gives?

Unlike those self-help gurus, I’m not interested in making a living off telling people how to be better by continuously pumping out new content. I have, however, found all of their advice distills down to one concept: identity. Who you think you are drives your actions. All that is required for self-improvement is defining who you are.

Suppose you want to get up early and hit the gym every day, so you enroll in a 6 am fitness class. You read Atomic Habits and watch some YouTube videos. You are prepared. You set your alarm and put it across the room from your bed so you have to walk to turn it off. Getting up and walking helps to wake your body up. It also has a simple puzzle to solve before the alarm goes off to force your brain to wake up. Your pre-workout drink sits ready next to your alarm so you don’t have to muster up the energy to schlep down the hallway into the kitchen. Conveniently, you slept in your gym clothes, so no need to change. You are ready to make your class!

This is called “setting yourself up for success”. You control your environment so that you do whatever task you need to do with minimal effort. If you have to go through all that just to get yourself in the gym then I’d argue you do not want to go to the gym. Making the road easy to travel down does not matter if you fundamentally don’t want to travel down that road. That is, your core identity is a person who does not want to get up and go to the gym.

Identity is central to the equation of self-improvement. If you want to go to the gym, be the person who goes to the gym. It does not matter what is against you. The person who sets their environment up to make it easy to go to the gym lacks the identity that they are a person interested in fitness. The person who goes to the gym when they have a long day at work, have car problems, are hungry, and wants to read Josh Baldwin’s latest substack is the person who is interested in fitness. Their identity governs their actions. You can read Josh Baldwin’s substack later (which is still important!).

Epictetus was a Greek philosopher born into slavery (yes, this example is a little more extreme than going to the gym). He realized though that his masters could not control his mind. While he might lack power in external events such as being owned by another person, Epictetus could control his internal thoughts. He could choose his identity. This led him to be a master of his mind even if others controlled his body. He chose to be like the person who goes to the gym regardless of the obstacles.

Identity is central to training in the military. Boot camp is for breaking down individual identities and bringing up the identity of a soldier. Everyone wears the same clothes, sleeps in the same room with the same bed with the same haircuts, eats the same food, does the same drills, and conforms to doing push-ups and running with the same form. Everyone loses a sense of who they are to become one identity. The Few. The Proud. The Marines.

Great, but how does this help me rescue animals?

There is no shortage of folks interested in helping animals but stay on the sidelines because they are too afraid of the megaphone or getting in front of city council or too tired at the end of the day or don’t know anyone else in their area to work with. There is always a reason not to do something. We cannot control these environments to make these actions easy for us, similar to how the want-to-be gym goer sets up their alarm, pre-workout drink, and gym clothes. Talking to the city council will always be intimidating. Organizing an event when you know no one else is extremely difficult. What if your voice breaks or you forget what you were saying while shouting into a megaphone?

None of that matters if you have the identity of an animal rights activist willing to rise to the occasion. Instead of being scared of the city council, be a force that the city council will be scared of. You won’t be tired at the end of the work day if you have the identity of an animal defender set to do all you can to help those locked in sheds and cages. Organizing an event by yourself is simply an opportunity to meet new people to start your city’s activism community.

Reading interviews by Animal Liberation Front members, they all say they got tired of the slow movement of politics and lack of results from protests. They wanted immediate, more meaningful actions. This leads to breaking into farms and facilities to rescue animals or cause material damage to equipment. These are normal people who took on the identity of wanting to immediately rescue animals regardless of the heavy risk. Their perception of themselves changed their behavior. No one sets out wanting to break the law under the cover of night. They choose to because they believe that is how they can most help animals. It is now who they are.

Like Epictetus, we need to state our identity. Who do you want to be? Do you want to be a person that helps animals? If you want to help animals, make that your identity and do whatever needs to be done. It is that simple. Embody the Nike slogan: Just do it. You don’t second guess or doubt yourself because your identity is one of commitment to the animals. You are an animal rights activist. Now go act like it.

This piece expands on the content of The Power Of Farm Animal Sanctuaries by defending the work of farm animal sanctuaries from the principles of Effective Altruism. When I say sanctuaries in this piece, I am referring to effective farm animal sanctuaries that maximize their impact on rescue, vegan outreach, and the vegan community.

Effective Altruists: “Show me the data.”

What is Effective Altruism (EA)? EA is applied utilitarianism. Or, if you are not a moral philosopher, EA is the deliberate practice of maximizing one's effort at reducing suffering since reducing suffering is the most important (if not the only) moral imperative. Quantifiable suffering is the currency in which effective altruists make decisions.

One way to think about EA is if you had $100 to use, how would you spend it to reduce the most suffering possible? A non-EA-aligned donor might round up at the grocery store or give to the Salvation Army or Habitat for Humanity. EA would argue one should donate towards stopping malaria with bed nets in the poorest of countries or building robust defenses from biological weapons since the potential suffering is far greater than constructing an impoverished person a home. EA looks at numbers. This is called the utilitarian calculus. Simply add up the amount of suffering for various causes, and whichever contains the most suffering is the cause area to focus on.

We do utilitarian calculus so that we are data-driven in our decisions. How do we know we are reducing the most suffering if we lack the data backing up that claim?

When applying these methods in animal advocacy, we must consider the type of activism we do and how we allocate funds. Which organizations do we support? Should we hire another person? Is a billboard worth renting or is that money better spent on creating cultivated meat? This can be a challenging exercise, especially if one has invested so much time and resources into a particular tactic or strategy. EA can be a hard pill to swallow since it often challenges our deep biases. Yet we owe it to the 70+ billion animals that are going to be slaughtered this year that we are effective with our actions.

For example, Animal Charity Evaluators published this graphic showing the number of donations between dog and cat and farmed animal organizations versus the number of animals impacted. This chart implies dogs and cats get a significant amount of donations while suffering a fraction of the total amount of suffering. Hence, EA argues we should spend more on farm animals instead of our beloved companion animals to do the most good.

EA has grown in popularity since its inception in the 2000s. Anyone seeking to do good in the world is not free from its criticism and methods. Organizations are essentially being forced to provide proof their group is doing the most good. Individual actions are similarly scrutinized. Faunalytics is an EA-aligned organization that does a variety of surveys and experiments on effective tactics within the animal movement attempting to root out how best to, say, approach topics of animal rights with the public or how the public perceives plant-based and cultivated meat. They put all actions under the microscope to ensure we are doing the most good we can for the animals.

Factory Farming is a core problem in Effective Altruism

How does one show EA alignment? For a problem to be a focus for EA, one must show the problem is neglected, important, and solvable. Factory farming already meets these criteria as a core problem for EA:

• Neglected - Too few people work on ending factory farming

• Important - Given the massive scale of suffering within factory farms, ending factory farming is important

• Solvable - We have solutions ranging from banning factory farms through legislation to promoting individual diet changes to technological innovations by creating plant-based and synthetic substitutes

More details at 80000 hours factory farm write up.

Farm animal sanctuaries work with farm animals and seek to make factory farming obsolete, so farm animal sanctuaries are working on an EA problem. What remains is defending the approach of farm animal sanctuaries against other strategies for stopping factory farming.

Defending Sanctuaries from Effective Altruism

When strategies or organizations come under attack as not being EA-aligned, defending against EA comes in two forms: arguing against utilitarianism or the availability of data.

Sell the Vatican, spend the money on ending factory farming

If you do not agree with utilitarianism then you might feel this discussion is a waste of time. The problem is that EA is growing in influence and controlling the flow of money from everyday donors and large foundation grants. So the task of arguing against utilitarianism becomes difficult for those who do not have a utilitarian philosophical leaning while soliciting donations from those who do.

As a utilitarian myself, I find these arguments extremely weak because their arguments boil down to trying to defend a different value metric than suffering. This is hard to do. Trying to convince me I should give my money to support the arts or give a child a bike when billions of chickens are in sheds living lives not worth living is an argument that will fall on deaf ears. Those problems do not compare.

Philosophers have been discussing different value metrics since the dawn of utilitarianism. EA with its practical approach is forcing those value systems into action. Are all values equal? Or does one reign above the rest? Attempts claiming suffering is not the most important value in animal advocacy can be found in a previous post about the Sierra Club or Hope For the Animals podcast.

Data, Data, Data

The second approach to defending against EA criticism is to talk about data gathering and measurements. EA prides itself on being data-driven. We need data to show how our actions, programs, and organizations are effective in reducing suffering. But what happens if you cannot get that data? When an animal rights activist has a conversation with a person on the streets and gives them a flyer, how can we know the impact that has? Will they throw the flyer into the trash or be so inspired to go make the documentary Dominion? If we funnel large amounts of money into government lobbying, what are our chances of success, and how many animals does that impact?

Many EA-aligned organizations attempt to discover this data. Faunalytics - mentioned previously - primarily work on this issue. Sentience Institute researches previous social justice movements to discover data about their successes and failures so that we in the animal liberation movement can learn from them. The Humane League believes their utilitarian calculus shows fighting to get egg-laying hens out of cages is one of the most effective uses of your dollar.

However, ask every hardcore EA-aligned animal rights activist and none of them can tell you definitively what strategy is most effective. If we truly knew, we would be doing that and only that. Instead, the animal rights movement is a collection of different people with different areas of expertise attacking the same problem from every angle possible. While some might argue the cringe stunts by PETA are less effective than getting friendly with a local politician to ban the sale of fur in your city, finding complete and trustworthy data comparing strategies is hard, if not impossible. Hence we should be wary of anyone saying they know the one path to achieve our goal of a vegan world. A plurality of approaches should continue to be supported until data on what is truly effective appears. I believe in the end all approaches will converge on each other.

Karen Davis of United Poultry Concern (UPC) recently wrote an article in a similar vein as this section. While she hits many of the same points I do, she dismisses EA thoughts due to the lack of statistical inference that can be done when measuring various approaches in animal advocacy. However, I believe we can embrace EA and support farm animal sanctuaries. If she had any EA supporters, after reading her article, they would be forced to choose between EA or UPC. Instead, if she showed how she is aligned with EA then she could keep those supporters.

My defense lies in the fact that we cannot effectively measure what works, but given farm animal sanctuaries have a unique approach (connecting people to farm animals) along with the ability to do outreach and community building, Effective Farm Animal Sanctuaries should continue to be supported.

Support from EA Organizations

It is worth noting that sanctuaries have been called out and supported by other EA organizations. Two major EA-aligned organizations have written about the power of sanctuaries and how they can be effective. This faunalytics report surveys tour-goers at Farm Sanctuary to see the level of the tour’s impact as variables are changed. Animal Charity Evaluators wrote about how a sanctuary could be effective, which I took a lot of inspiration from.

William MacSkill is one of the founders of EA thought. When asked in 2019 what the typical EA forum reader likely gets wrong, William says the role of small wins and symbolic actions. I quote his reply here at length because William is so influential in the EA space. The fact that he is supporting symbolic actions to motivate and inspire others is huge for those EA supporters thinking they need spreadsheets and math formulas to figure out how to do good in the world.

“I think a lot about Henry Spira, the animal rights activist that Peter Singer [Singer is another colossal figure in the EA world] wrote about in Ethics into Action. He led the first successful campaign to limit the use of animals in medical testing, and he was able to have that first win by focusing on science experiments at New York’s American Museum of Natural History, which involved mutilating cats in order to test their sexual performance after the amputation. From a narrow EA perspective, the campaign didn’t make any sense: the benefit was something like a dozen cats. But, at least as Singer describes it, it was the first real win in the animal liberation movement, and thereby created a massive amount of momentum for the movement.

I worry that in current EA culture people feel like every activity has to be justified on the basis of marginal cost-effectiveness, and that the fact that an action would constitute some definite and symbolic, even if very small, step towards progress — and be the sort of thing that could provide fuel for a further movement — isn’t ‘allowable’ as a reason for engaging in an activity. Whereas in activism in general these sorts of knock-on effects would often be regarded as the whole point of particular campaigns, and that actually seems to me (now) like a pretty reasonable position (even if particular instances of that position might often be misguided).”

Esther the Wonder Pig is one pig. Yet she is a symbol for all pigs. Her caregivers acquired her when she was young, and that forever changed their life. This one pig motivated them to take up the cause of animal liberation by creating a sanctuary and promoting veganism. However, so many people know about Esther because their caregivers had a unique approach: making Esther a celebrity. They use creative content and social media to make life with Esther fun. We love seeing what outfits she has on today or how the boy pigs are flirting with her. This to an EA might seem a waste of time, but just like Henry’s win against the New York’s American of Natural History was small, these actions over years continued to accumulate massive results.

So when we look at strategies for animal liberation and world veganism, how can we set ourselves up for success when strategy so often appears to be the roll of dice? Given we have only a handful of wins in the animal rights world, what strategies should we be pushing forward?  Do we push for abolition or welfare? Educational vegan outreach or systematic changes? Do we work above ground in the government and regulatory agencies or under the cover of night like the Animal Liberation Front? Do disruptive protests hurt the movement or are they key to winning small battles to chip away at speciesism? 

I don’t know the answer to most of these questions (sorry to disappoint!). Still, I want to review various strategies organizations employ, explain their theory of change, and how they lead to justice for the animals. I endorse those strategies that include the most tactics and impact points. Impact points are areas that could be affected by a given strategy. The ultimate goal for a particular action could be Z, but along the way, you could be impacting A, B, and C. This multi-faceted approach allows us to roll the dice more often leading to more chances of positive impact even if we miss our ultimate goal. 

For definitions, note that strategy and tactics are different. A strategy contains a diagnosis of the current state of the situation, a plan of action, and the goal state. Various tactics are employed in our actions to achieve the goal where the outcome is different from the current state. Tactics are the actions we take for a strategy to reach its intended goal.

This is a huge topic, and I can only barely scratch the surface here. We also have to understand the sacrifices people are willing to make. Commitment to getting felony charges requires much more than standing on a street corner talking to passersby. Even being naked for the animals might be for a select few. As much as we might want everyone to be deeply committed, revolutionary activists, this likely not going to happen. We can only encourage and inspire others in areas they are willing to give.

Cube of Truths

A Cube of Truth (cube) is when activists hold monitors in public showing footage of factory farm conditions and slaughterhouses. While gruesome, the public is largely unaware of the specific norms in the animal agriculture industry. This shows everyday citizens what happens behind the windowless sheds. The industry does not want this footage shown which is why filming is illegal in some states.

The strategy here is education. Educate enough people, get them to reduce their consumption of animal products or go vegan, and eventually, we win. 

I’m not inclined to call education a strategy even though some people focused solely on vegan outreach and groups like Anonymous for the Voiceless or We The Free would. Education should be used as a tactic. Our impact point with cubes is talking to people in hopes they make lifestyle changes. There are marginal leadership, organization, and public speaking benefits to running a cube, but all these come with more forms of activism. 

Open Rescue

Simple Heart is led by Wayne Hsiung who has taken part in numerous open rescues and encourages a mass movement of open rescues. An open rescue is when activists go into a farm or slaughterhouse to rescue animals on film with their faces not covered. This approach is akin to smashing a car window on a hot day to save a dog dying of heat. Wayne and others have captured multiple felony charges, most of which get dropped right before trial. However, the goal behind open rescues is to get companies in court to defend their practices. The public will not be on the side of the animal ag industry, hence why so many changes are dropped.

This strategy is so powerful that the Harvard Review published a piece defending the practice of open rescue. 

Impact points are numerous: press, media, talking to friends and family about personal experiences inside the facilities, and court cases that lead to precedences for future court cases. Each of these impact points has the power to change individuals similar to a cube, but Simple Heart is adding on systematic changes by trying to change the law. From the rescue stories, media coverage, and court cases, each step has the power to cause change. 

A Word on System Level Changes

Systematic level changes have the power to force others to change. For example, it does not matter what your views are on slavery because you cannot own a person in the United States. We could ask and pressure companies to remove asbestos from insulation or lead from paint or ban those products entirely. We could ask consumers to not buy eggs from caged hens or pressure corporations to enact cage-free policies. Similarly with fur, foie gras, down, etc. Policies and legislation have a far-reaching impact affecting many individuals while consumer demand-driven initiatives like educational outreach seek to change individuals one by one. Individual changes can create a base market demand for boycotting a particular product. This can aid as a foundation and example for policy changes, for it would make no sense to ban something everyone fully supports.

Animal Liberation Front

The Animal Liberation Front (ALF) is a large subject with many books written about their history. They are a clandestine group of individuals taking part in often illegal activity under the darkness of night. Some members of the ALF take part in rescues taking individuals directly from factory farms, only they cover their faces and do not expose themselves. They do not want to be caught. Being caught could mean prison. And if you are in prison, you cannot be helping animals. 

The strategy here is direct sabotage against an industry or farm causing economic damage with the bonus of saving some individuals. Spray painting inside an industrial shed you have visited puts fear into animal farmers causing them to waste money on security. In the case of fur farms, mink are released and go directly into the wild by the thousands causing the farms to close down immediately. 

Such tactics make some feel uneasy due to the illegal activity and suggest we need to stay above ground playing by the rules of the law. Those in the ALF however see it from the opposite direction. Above ground, legal activities are too slow and sometimes fail. Burning down a vivisection lab has immediate benefits for the animals. 

Farm Sanctuaries

I have written about the power of farm animal sanctuaries. In summary, effective sanctuaries provide homes for animals, vegan outreach, and community. Sanctuaries can support individuals rescued from open or ALF rescues adding to all the impact points of open rescue and the ALF. 

The impact points are additionally as large as the organization can make them. Farm Sanctuary has worked with numerous policy initiatives. Rowdy Girl Rescue supports animal farmers wanting to transition to plant farming. Press, interviews, art, education, community support, and more are all impact points. Allowing school trips or volunteer hours to be made at a sanctuary is an excellent way to talk about animal agriculture to kids who may not be exposed to this information. 

Some of these impact points can be achieved at organizations other than sanctuaries, but sanctuaries have the added benefit of meeting the individuals most impacted by animal agriculture: the animals. The animals are a multiplier of what we do and why we do it.

Ballot Initiatives 

When polled, most of the public is against factory farming, but then when asked if they would go vegan, they say “no”. Personal change is hard unless the individual is sufficiently committed to the cause. Ballot initiatives try to tap into the public’s disgust of factory farming while not telling them to change their diet. If enough of these broad, systematic changes happen, people will naturally find themselves without animal products having not done anything other than vote.

In 2024, two such major initiatives are happening. Pro-Animal Future in Denver, Colorado has two ball initiatives. Measure 308 will ban the sale of new fur products in Denver, and Measure 309 will phase out slaughterhouses in Denver. In Sonoma County California, End Factory Farming in SoCo is supporting an initiative to ban factory farms in the county. This impacts 21 factory farms. Should one pass, the slaughterhouse and factory farm ban could set up momentum for other cities to propose similar bans. Once the world sees something is possible, it is no longer impossible. Once the mental hurdle is removed, the goal is easier to achieve.

The impact points are everywhere because the tactics employed are numerous: door knocking, phone calls, texting, postcards, holding large banners over a highway, news segments, coordination, and partnership with other organizations and companies in the area, benefit events, op-ed and opinion pieces, and more. Each of these educates individuals on the horrors of animal agriculture while supporting systematic changes.

Ballot initiatives along with any other strategy that directly challenges the industry will also cost the industry time and money. Hiring lawyers to fight against open rescues or having to pay for ads to get people to not vote for the bans is a tax on the industry that we should welcome. Animal agriculture exists in its current form due to government subsidies because the industry makes so little profit, so any additional cost to their system is a win on its own. 

Pressure Campaigns

Henry Spira’s pressure campaign to stop the study of the sexual preferences of mutilated cats and the makeup industry testing makeup on animals, SHAC attempting to stop one of the largest vivisecting companies, recent foie gras campaigns by Animal Activism Mentorship, and fur campaigns by CATF, all show pressure campaigns have a history of wins. 

Pressure campaigns focus on building an animal liberation movement through winnable campaigns targeting some particular aspect of a company that is easy for the public to get behind. Pressure campaigns need the public’s support on the issues they are protesting against. Using public sentiment, activists expose a company doing what most people are against as pressure for change. For example, most of the public is against foie gras, so targeting restaurants with highly focused messaging and pressure around foie gras causes them to drop the diseased, fattened duck liver.

While outreach to the public can happen, such as educating the public on how foie gras is produced, pressure campaigns do not target individuals. They want companies to change by taking the demand to their front door (both literally and figuratively). The impact points are immediately decreasing the demand for animal exploitation and movement building. 

One by one, companies selling fur and designers signing a fur-free policy will eradicate the fur industry. No need for individuals to change. No need for legislation (though most would support following up with legislation to keep fur from ever coming back). Through constant and consistent pressure across animal enterprises, pressure campaigns remove them.

These small wins grow over time, allowing activists to understand the tactics to set their sights on larger targets. This is movement building, and movement building alone is an important component for our ultimate goal. We all need community, and a community built on winning is all the better.

Conclusion

These are only a handful of strategies to consider and the amazing organizations that use them. There are more such as enshrining into law rights for non-human animals by the Non-Human Animal Rights Project, unleashing a torrent of lawsuits against animal abusers by the Animal Legal Defense Fund, Humane Society Of the United States, and PETA, or making meat absolutely by growing meat not from animals by the Good Food Institute. Each has a role in normalizing the concept that exploiting animals is wrong. 

A great way to judge effective strategies is to consider what the animal agriculture industry is afraid of. Animal Agriculture Alliance publishes annual articles around strategies and organizations they most fear. This is a blessing to activists since it tells us exactly what we should focus on.

Which strategy is the best? Which will have the greatest impact? While many passionate activists lay out their reasons for a particular strategy, it remains to be seen which one(s) will free the animals of their neverending cycle of abuse by humans. The general advice I hear is that for anyone wanting to be involved, involve yourself in whatever you are best at and most interested in. If you hate street outreach but love editing videos, do that. Maybe you can excel at being an undercover investigator while others thrive at fundraising. Whatever you choose, do it and do it now to the maximum of your ability. The animals cannot wait.

Many books, papers, and talks attempt to link other social justice movements with animal liberation. They show how fights for liberation among historically oppressed human groups are connected to the struggle for animal justice. 

Examples:

Aphro-ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism From Two Sisters by Aph Ko and Syl Ko shows that white supremacy is rooted in the idea that animals have no moral value, so when we animalize other groups, they then no longer have moral worth.

Eternal Treblinka by Charles Patterson links Nazi oppression and genocide against Jewish people with oppression and the brutality used against animals in the farming industry. Concentration camps were modeled after slaughterhouses.

How to Unite the Left on Animals by John Tallent shows how various Leftist ideas of justice and morality fit perfectly within veganism.

I have read many more. However, the issue I have with all these books is that while they link philosophy and analysis to veganism and animal liberation, there is a severe lack of practicality in what this information means for an activist. What are we to do with this new knowledge?

Oscar Horta (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Horta) believes there is a difference between changing one's attitude and changing one's behavior. The “go vegan” message is about changing someone's behavior. “Go vegan” has been around for a long time, and there does not appear to be any difference in the number of vegans in the last several decades. Hence, Horta argues, we should focus more on changing attitudes. If we get enough people to start viewing animals as sentient beings worthy of moral consideration then behavioral changes will come as people will be more open to these changes. 

Possibly without knowing it, the authors I listed above were working on attitude changes. They get readers to see how various struggles in repressed human populations are parallel to animal struggles from an intellectual standpoint. Any action is up to the reader to discover.

From the angle of changing attitudes, the books above have been a smashing success. After all, violence is violence and oppression is oppression. Justice is for anyone of moral value, so once animals have moral values, all the arguments line up and all the counterarguments equally fail. 

Given the philosophy and analysis of the arguments that link human and non-human oppression, perhaps we can learn from other social justice movements’ tactics and strategies since they have put theory into practice. Other justice movements have already struggled to organize and make change, so we could model our actions after them.

Enter: Bury the Chains by Adam Hochschild

Bury the Chains reviews the history of banning slavery in England from around 1780 to 1830. I picked up this book because it specifically reviews campaigns, tactics, people, and strategies, some of which failed while others succeeded. Given how slavery was completely inundated in all countries across the world at the beginning of the 1700s, how then did the mightiest country in the world end such the common practice of slavery? Whatever they did to overcome such a problem surely animal rights activists can learn from them.

Indeed, abolitionists employed many tactics that we do: education, boycotts, political leaders, religious leaders, sabotages, and revolts. Slavery supporters had to deal with issues outside their control such as diseases or wars against neighboring countries. Beyond this, the French Revolution played a key part in abolishing slavery with the French’s notion that all men deserve liberty (Which they only meant the white common man, not the black man. However, the seed was already planted. Just as ideas of liberating humans work perfectly for liberating animals, the idea that common white men deserve liberty is the same argument as suggesting any black person deserves liberty).

Bury the Chains is a fascinating book on its own. However, two key points stood out that differentiate the animal justice movement from the movement to abolish slavery or any other human-focused social justice movement. And this is exactly what the listed above books are missing. These points are: The victims cannot speak for themselves and the victims cannot fight back.

The Victims Cannot Speak for Themselves

Human liberation struggles are rooted in the assumption that humans can relate and speak to other humans. A chicken cannot learn to speak English or write essays about their struggles. A cow cannot lobby governments or start a podcast. Pigs typically do not start 501(c)3’s.

Animals do have their own language. Spend the afternoon with chickens and you will hear a variety of words. While we do not know what some of them mean, our inferences are safe to make when we can hear the screams in a slaughterhouse. We can hear the cries of a mother cow as her calf is taken from her so that we can steal her milk. But since they are not human, we write off their screams as something else, something that does not matter. We act as if the pain of a baby pig getting their tail cut off without anesthesia is somehow fundamentally different if we got one of our appendages cut off. 

So when I say the animals cannot speak for themselves, I partly mean we do not listen to them. That is why we make metaphors in our arguments relating animals to ourselves or open farm animal sanctuaries so we can see animals as being similar to ourselves. We try to get human animals to relate to non-human animals, to get people to see that animals are just like us in all things that matter.

The Victims Cannot Fight Back

Slave revolts were common in the Caribbean during the 1700s. Black and African American people could have a million-man march on Washington. They can sit at white-only counters in restaurants or the front of the bus in protest. A wife could refuse various services to their husband until women had the right to vote. The French had a violent revolution to bring liberty to every citizen. The US had a civil war to end slavery.

All these struggles and many more had the oppressed fighting directly against the oppressor. Fish cannot do that. Beagles are used for animal testing because of their extremely docile nature and a general trust of humans. Animals fighting back are extremely rare stories. Pigs have no tools or power at their disposal to break out of a gestation crate and burn down a slaughterhouse. 

These sentient, conscious beings fundamentally have no control over their damned fate.

Where to Go From Here?

These two points, while obvious when pointed out, keep us from mirroring other social justice movement’s tactics and strategies. The animals only have us to speak up and fight for their justice. No one else will do it. Only those who understand the injustice and are willing to do something about it will make any changes. This means we must employ greater courage, mettle, and ingenuity in animal liberation since we are outnumbered by people who believe animals are here for us to use.

We have to approach the practicality of animal liberation with these two facts in mind. They should shape our strategy. A few ideas:

Inspiration - We need to inspire people to join the cause and take action. From donating to protesting to calling on congress members, encouraging people to become active is fundamental to growing the movement. Protests with five activists send a different message than a protest with one hundred activists. The impact of ten people calling a restaurant to drop foie gras pales in comparison to a thousand people. Greater numbers send a greater message, so encouraging people to get active is foundational to accomplishing our goals. Furthermore, more activists means normalizing the idea of caring about animals. Having more activists removes the concept of “crazy PETA animal people” from society.

Every activist should be tasked with inspiring other non-activists to be involved. This is not a job just for leaders and organizers. Bringing others into the fold should goal for all activists. 

Inclusion - The animals do not care if vegans or non-vegans free them from the shackles and blades at a slaughterhouse. Baby chicks funneled into a blender do not care what political ideology you subscribe to. Liberating animals from their suffering should be the focus and we should not fracture our tiny movement with political or moral purity infighting. 

Every time non-animal political stances are brought up in a space for animal rights, one is risking alienating someone else and pushing them away. Is this worth it? If you believe so, I encourage you to watch Dominion, and while animals are being brutalized, tell them that you simply could not work with someone of a different political stance. I’m sure the animals will understand as they bleed out.

Impact - We need winnable campaigns. Everyone likes to win. Winning is inspiring. If we take the plight of the animals seriously then we owe it to them to fight the battles we can expect change. This does not mean we should not dream big (we absolutely should), but we should be sure we are making progress for the animals. If we find something is not working, we should drop that tactic and move on without ego or regret. The animals don’t have time to waste.

Let me know if you have any others to add to this list.

The fact that animals cannot speak or fight for themselves means we cannot expect them to take up arms or call for boycotts. This responsibility falls onto us. Go do something for them today.

Italy is currently making itself unattractive by restricting itself from taking part in the expanding field of research and production of lab-grown meat [1] while the rest of the world continues to invest more in their efforts [2, 3, 4, 5]. 

Italian government cites health and food tradition as the major reasons for the ban. Here, we will focus on the appeal to tradition argument, though the health argument is just as dubious. 

Invest in the Future

The British owned most of the world at one point in history through the invention of capitalism which required the ruling class to take a risk on radical new ideas instead of doing what has always been done [6]. The British were not smarter, more skilled, stronger, or more rich. What allowed them to expand was the willingness to invest in a product or procedure to turn a profit later. Land and humans are finite resources that one can demand only such much from them. Instead, finding ways to work more efficiently or creating tools that increase production can lead to a more rich society. 

The best modern example of “invest in the future or be left behind” is from Dubai. Dubai historically makes most of its money from oil. However, the leaders of Dubai understand oil is a finite resource and that the world is actively moving away from oil. To protect themselves, they are investing money in infrastructure and business to foster research in science and technology, thus securing a future other oil-only producing countries may not have the opportunity to live in [7].

For Italy to ban an emerging sector is to close its doors on not only being a leader but even allowing itself to evolve with the times. As the rest of the world is investing in the future, Italy is choosing to remain in the past. Such actions mean they will not reap any of the economic rewards. To profit, one must invest. This is a tale as old as Capitalism itself.

Banning lab-grown meat ultimately hurts traditional animal farmers by limiting their future job prospects. Animal farmers will one day wake up to a world where lab-grown meat is in demand, and no one is available to pay for the expensive, unhealthy, polluting remains of once-living animals. These farmers will be out of a job with handicapped mobility due to their lack of skills and knowledge. Instead, Italy could be investing in lab-grown meat and including traditional animal farmers in that research and production.

Transfarmation - A Model for Policy

Transfarmation helps animal farms stop farming animals and instead farm plants. Multiple organizations work on this with numerous success stories such as Mercy for Animal [8], Rancher Advocacy Program [9], and in Europe, we have TransFARMation [10]. The process of moving from animal agriculture to plant agriculture is a multiple joint effort involving plant farmers, economists, and government assistance with grants. This is a win-win because farmers maintain an income without any bitterness towards animal activists or government officials who banned a particular product. No need to sue to tell oat milk companies they cannot call their product “milk” if one is no longer in the dairy industry but instead in the oat industry.

A similar program to transfarmation could be set up for animal farmers in Italy (or anywhere for that matter). The plan is simple: divest in farming animals and have those farmers join the production of lab-grown meat. The key is government grants. Having public money available for farmers to learn a new trade is imperative to avoid economic disruptors like lab-grown meat. 

Luddites was a 19th-century movement against new technology as new machines were going to take their jobs. They feared the machines were going to render them obsolete. Instead, the government and industry could have invested in the new technology and their people so that everyone wins. A similar story played out recently with the Writer’s Guild strike where, among other things, writers feared AI would take their jobs [11]. How many times does this story need to play out? Even if we selfishly only care about the economic output of our country and not about the individuals that make up our society, we need to invest in people’s futures to allow continuous economic value to be created amongst new technological disruptions. 

The More Fundamental Problem of Tradition

Another argument can be made, though a less powerful one since money makes the world go round, not logic and morals. However, given the Italian government’s reason for banning research and production of lab-grown meat is rooted in a common logical fallacy known as an appeal to tradition, this should be ringing bells to alarm the masses that something is not right [12].

Without fear of sounding hyperbolic or dramatic, I believe “tradition” is the most evil word in the English language. Tradition renders otherwise thinking minds useless. Tradition looks into the past for answers about our future. Tradition says no to logic, reason, and evidence, and instead takes the simple route of "We have always done it this way." 

The worst part about tradition is that at some point in history, the tradition was a new thought and a new practice. If defenders of a tradition go back in history far enough, they were at one point radical. Defenders of tradition are stuck in a mental block where they believe this is how things always worked. Traditions had to start somewhere.

So to staunchly defend a position that was once radical, unwilling to consider alternatives, simply because “this is what we have always done” when we in fact have not always done this, is a complete violation of sanity. And when the position involves the mass killing of sentient beings, contributes to deforestation, water waste, greenhouse gases, biodiversity loss, and increases in diseases such as heart disease and type II diabetes, that position needs to be under the most critical analysis of all. Criticism should not be swept under the rug in the name of tradition. Such “reasoning” is an insult to all those who have suffered and will suffer under animal agriculture. 

Too much is at stake. While it is easier to pretend we know what our forefathers and foremothers wanted, we should instead ask if this destructive path of animal agriculture is what they would have wanted for us. Maybe they did farm and kill animals to eat. But if they knew it was aiding in the destruction of ourselves and the planet and causing the suffering to animals well beyond how our ancestors farmed, would they be proud we are hard headly plowing forward in their name? I hope the younger generation solves problems that make their lives and their children more well-off, and that they do not waste time with logical fallacies trying to do what they believe I wanted.

Conclusion

Instead of asking what we have done previously, we should be asking who and what we want to be in the future. Possibilities have never been more open which is why traditionalists have been louder than ever. We can do better, have to do better, and Italy could be leading this charge instead of fighting it. 

[1] https://www.greenqueen.com.hk/italy-cultivated-meat-ban-lab-grown-cell-cultured-plant-based-labelling-eu-giorgia-meloni/

[2] https://apnews.com/article/cultivated-meat-lab-grown-cell-based-a88ab8e0241712b501aa191cdbf6b39a

[3] https://www.greenqueen.com.hk/cultivated-meat-japans-sustainable-future/

[4] https://www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2023/11/20/german-government-to-boost-alternative-proteins-with-38m-investment

[5] https://www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2023/04/14/uk-government-invests-12m-in-sustainable-protein-hub

[6] Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari

[7] https://www.popsci.com/dubai-science-tech-innovation/

[8] https://thetransfarmationproject.org/

[9] https://rancheradvocacy.org/

[10] https://www.transfarmation.org/home-1

[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Writers_Guild_of_America_strike

[12] https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Appeal-to-Tradition

Intuitional Ethics

IE are moral decisions made without thinking. Only when questioned about why we did an act do we attempt to justify the act with words. These are our “gut feelings”. IE goes by other names like Natural or Commonsense Ethics. Attempting to justify IE actions brings us into the endless debates on how we should act. This makes up much of the history of ethics.

Intuitions change over time. Arguing over what is fundamental in IE is nearly impossible due to people in various cultures at various times with various degrees of well-being having different intuitions. Furthermore, those with different levels of emotional capabilities could have trouble agreeing on axioms. Foundational principles of ethics could vary wildly between a psychopath and an empath, to take an extreme example. 

Rational Ethics

RE is the opposite of IE. They disregard our gut feelings and instead seek goals like maximizing utility (increasing pleasure and decreasing suffering), discovering our duties, or formulating rules of how we all ought to live. These frameworks are methodical, typically requiring logic, pen and paper, sometimes diagrams, and plenty of wild thought experiments. The point of thought experiments in RE is to lay bare our intuitions only to show their failings when rationality is applied.

Rational Ethics Criticism

RE has come under fire since its formation for being unrealistic and often too demanding. In laying out the definitions and purpose of IE and RE, it should be clear why this is so. Since RE has us running against our human nature, RE demands we be super-human or perhaps un-human. RE requires us to abandon our commonsense understanding of right and wrong and instead review formulas and rules. Following the conclusions of RE can suggest we have to radically alter our behavior and the structure of society to a point that could make us uncomfortable.

A perfect example of this criticism of a RE is the paper “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” by the famous practical Utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer (PDF). Singer suggests we ought not spend money frivolously on luxuries, and instead donate that money to help alleviate some of the worst ailments in the world such as famine. In particular, it is immoral to spend money on luxuries instead of helping the global poor. He takes several pages to get to this point using thought experiments that first jive with our intuition but then run completely counter to it. After rational analysis, we find the moral thing to do (donate to the famine and poverty relief) goes against our intuitions (buying new clothes, for example, is typically not an ethical issue). The major complaint against this conclusion is that it is too hard to do. Give up all of our extra money to help those less fortunate? Morality is too demanding!

Attacking the core of RE is going for impartiality. Impartiality means a life is a life, and it does not matter whose life it is. If my mother is sick and can be cured for $50,000, should I do it? Being impartial says “no” since that amount of money could save more lives by going after cheaper solutions such as vaccines, deworming pills, and antibiotics for the less fortunate. It is one thing to say we should not fund the local arts in order to help alleviate suffering (“Sell the Vatican, feed the world” says comedian Sarah Silverman) but to suggest we ignore those closest to the center of our moral circle is contrary to our deepest intuitions. This is a perfect example of IE opposing the demands of RE.

Another example that resonates with those of us that allow non-human animals in our moral circle is how to donate and work on behalf of non-human animals. The majority of donations go towards pets even though they are a fraction of the suffering that exists for non-human animals. Not spending money on a cat or dog and instead donating to effective organizations fighting against factory farms nets you more good for your dollar (https://animalcharityevaluators.org/donation-advice/why-farmed-animals/).

In Defense of Rational Ethics

We have to ask ourselves if we want society to run by our intuitional morals where each person potentially has a different reaction to ethical problems, or create a foundation of what we know to be good and strive for that. If we state that the conclusions of RE are moral and we care about morality then it does not matter the difficulty involved with attempting to obtain a moral life. After all, being difficult to do is not a rational argument against rational ethics. It just admits laziness or lack of caring by the accuser. 

This means we are to put faith in our rational thinking which historically has not always yielded ideal results, such as the idea there are inferior genes in some races that made up the eugenics movement in the early 1900s. What if we currently are making such egregious errors today in our rational thinking? Doesn’t that mean we cannot rely on RE either?

I have no doubt we are making similar moral errors in our rational discourse. The conclusions of what actions to take when making moral decisions in 500 years will likely be different from what actions we take today, just as 500 years ago the actions humans took differ from today. This happens because we learn and grow. We study ethics rationally. We create thought experiments to challenge ourselves and our notions of right and wrong.

We have only recently begun to consider future peoples, digital minds, and non-human animals in our ethical thoughts. RE allows us to wade into areas untouchable by IE because we have limited or no intuitions about future populations or non-human animals. We can intuitively say humans of the future matter, but what intuitive actions can we take to ensure their survival? Are these intuitive actions the best possible actions to take? We don’t know, hence needing to analyze these problems and solutions.

The goal of studying RE is not to rationalize our intuitions. We do not need a theory that lets us know our natural instincts are morally correct. Natural instincts exist through adaption to survival under Dwarinian evolution. Instead, the study of ethics should be focused on what is moral regardless of our feelings or the practicality of those findings. 

When discussing animal rights and veganism, it is essential to clarify what context or realm we are discussing. In the academic realm, precise definitions and glorious details are explored at every avenue to maximize correctness and knowledge. The rest of society lives in the non-academic realm I call the realm of practicality. What is correct in some academic papers may not propagate throughout society. Dissemination of knowledge and advocates of this knowledge is required and does not always happen. Real life can get in the way of what is our moral duty on paper. This distinction is rarely (if ever?) called out in casual conversations. But this clarification should be given the effects it can have as we not only apply our ethical theories to the practical world but also as we examine our purpose of developing these theories in the first place.

I am going to make the assumption that both Singer and Donovan develop theories and write about animals because they wish to see an end to animal exploitation. In the academic realm, their thoughts and approaches differ as they seek the most correct and best theories. But in the practical realm, their intentions align in that they want to cease the use and abuse of animals in society.

So in the practical realm, both feminist care theory and utilitarianism theory can be correct (or incorrect) so long as they accomplish the goal of liberating animals. Whether a meat eater is persuaded by the mathematical calculations of Singer or the validation of their emotional response through feminist care theory, if the end result is that the meat eater no longer consumes animals then in the practical realm what does it matter which theory was used? What theory resonants with the animal eater to make them stop is the correct theory, even if every other person subscribes to a different theory.

Peter Singer developed his theory without invoking sentimentality on purpose. The great animal rights activist Henry Spira was drawn to the plight of the animals specifically due to Singer’s hyper-rationalizing. Singer made “an enormous impression on me because of his concern for other animals was rational and defensible in public debate. It did not depend on sentimentality on the cuteness of the animal in question or their popularity as pets” [Ethics in Action, Singer, pg 50]. Had Spira been instead persuaded by feminist care theory and then went on to accomplish all that he did change much of anything? In the practical realm, it is the quantifiable results that are important. The result in Henry Spira’s case is that fewer animals were harmed after learning about Singer’s utilitarian theory.

Dietrich von Haugwitz similarly was compelled by Tom Regan's The Case for Animal Rights: "No book has ever affected me as profoundly as this one... Here finally were the rational arguments that validated my feelings" [source: personal communication with Charles Patterson while writing Eternal Treblinka, pg 207]. Von Haugwitz needed rational arguments to validate his emotions instead of just listening to his emotions as feminist care theory would suggest. Perhaps von Haugwitz would have committed himself to animal rights sooner had he believed emotions were valid in his internal dialog about how to treat animals. But if the end result is the same, does it matter which theory he used?

This essay argues that the means justify the end in this case. Academic philosophers might lose sleep over developing the best ethical theory, and they should as understanding the best ethical behavior is imperative to our continued progress in society. But the 70 billion land animals slaughtered for human use every year, the depletion of our oceans, and the eradication of our native habitats do not care about ethical theories other than that they are used to stop this pointless destruction. If you were a pig in a shed, do you think you would care if a person decides not to eat you because of hyper-rationalizations or emotions? I bet not.

Intro 

Percival starts out by linking animal farming to the destruction of natural habitats and species, a story repeated often in the book. In the opening pages, we learn about how a new medicine called dicolfenac was an anti-inflammatory for cows ended up being poisonous for vultures that normally fed on the cow's body after the cow passed away in India. Beyond the eradication of the vulture population, with no vultures to eat the cows, cow bodies filled the streets leading to illness and disease ravaging the local human population.

The next example involves America's jaguar. The destruction of the Amazon rainforest for cattle farming is driving the jaguar to extinction due to a lack of livable habitats. Our appetites are directly killing off our most majestic native species. 

One would think with such powerful and dire opening statements, Percival's solution to the problem of degrading habitats, environment destruction, and climate change would be to do away with the need for farming animals and dramatically alter our food intake. But like all modern environmentalists, he wants his cake and to eat it too*.

The Meat Paradox was defined by a group of researchers in 2010 as the cognitive and emotional tensions inherent in our relationship with meat. That is, why we as a society can say we are against what happens in slaughterhouses and the deletion of a healthy ecosystem, yet continue eating animals as we do. The meat paradox is the cognitive dissonance we use to justify the continued consumption of meat while simultaneously being against the cruelties involved with consuming meat.

Percival tells the story of our evolution and diet. He admits we were never carnivores or herbivores. The human diet varied across the world at different times as humans were forced to be flexible in different climates and among different resources. 

The solution to all the problems listed throughout the book is regenerative, organic farming (Note: Percival lives in Britain, and their rules around what is and is not organic may differ from the US).  We should allow animals to freely roam, eat grass to fertilize the soil with their manure, and not use chemicals to enrich the soil. Ruminant animals like cows can add to soil quality naturally. Percival says this approach allows the ecosystem to remain in balance and healthy while we enjoy nutritious plants and animals.

I have two issues with this approach:

1. We do not solve the fundamental ethical issue of exploiting animals.

2. This solution looks to the past for solutions instead of exploring and promoting the future we want.

Exploiting Animals

The problem with using organic animal farming as a solution is that it does not address the fundamental moral concern around killing a being that has a family, a subjective experience of life, and does not wish to be killed. We can have ruminant animals on an organic plant farm adding to soil quality such that the animals peacefully live their lives. Why must we kill these animals to eat as well? 

To build up justification, Percival lays out the case that we need to eat animals. We evolved to eat animals, and nutrients found in dense quantities of animal flesh and secretions allowed humans to grow larger brains. The irony is not lost that this justification plays right into the meat paradox, which to Pervical’s credit, he readily admits. 

One reason to support the continued consumption of animals is that animals provide important nutrients that many people across the world are lacking. Page 100 goes into the most detail on why it is a priority for many people across the globe to consume meat as it contains a variety of essential nutrients. Meat is a dense slab of nutrients like vitamin B12, iron, zinc, and fatty acids [pg. 3] that while found in plants, are harder to get adequate quantities of. 

What is not laid out is how the malnourished across the world will get organic meat raised on a regenerative farm. We don't even send our cheap factory-farmed meat to the hungry, so why would we send the expensive good stuff? Furthermore, if meat is suggested as a vitamin of sorts for essential nutrients, why then not suggest an actual vitamin? This would be easier to create, and ship (smaller and no refrigeration or fear of rancid meat), and without requiring the mental gymnastics of the meat paradox. Percival seems fundamentally against any form of chemicals and drugs, so I assume the idea of vitamins as a pill is not suggested for this reason. But what is more important: the allegiance to organic farming or helping to get essential nutrients into the malnourished?

"An equally robust body of science says that we have been eating animals alongside plants for well over a million years, and we are biologically adapted to benefit from both. If ... animals have a role to play in our farming system, then it seems we would benefit nutritionally from eating them" [pg. 18]. Again, we look at the situation only from the human benefit side, not the animals we are consuming. Could we benefit nutritionally from eating some animals? Probably. Could we benefit nutritionally from eating only plants? Probably. Only the latter does not require invoking the meat paradox. Why not focus on a plant-based diet then? Instead of spending resources researching and promoting organic meat, why not spend those resources on optimizing a plant-based diet?

If we remove the idea that we need meat and understand there are other avenues to pursue essential, quality nutrients, then we understand we no longer need to farm animals. The meat paradox can vanish from modern society and become something only historians study.

Veganism

Percival says "veganism is an ethical stance which typically entails the exclusion of animal foods from the diet" [pg. 13]. While true, it is important to note veganism is an ethical stance against exploiting and causing suffering to non-human animals. Veganism goes beyond a mere diet. So while Pervical's book is about food, it is important to understand a vegan is against more than farming animals. Talking about veganism only in reference to diet dilutes what veganism is about and what a vegan lifestyle entails. 

He does give a fair account of veganism quoting at length scholars such as Jeremy Bethnam and Peter Singer in Chapter 2. In fact, Percival gives grotesque imagery involving his time at a slaughterhouse watching animals die and their bodies mutilated. He later cites the inherent harms for humans both mentally and physically with working in slaughterhouses. While this chapter gives an accurate view of veganism (if not a case for veganism), organic meat does not solve any of the points veganism brings up. The killing, exploitation, and suffering still exist on an organic animal farm, even if it only produces less killing, exploitation, and suffering. Why bother making an evil act less evil instead of doing something good?

The dilemma is whether we use ruminants to fertilize the soil or mine minerals like phosphorus using fossil fuels to enrich the soil artificially. "If we are to end our food system's reliance on fossil fuels and unsustainable inputs - as we surely must - then animals will have an important role to play". Given Percival works as the Head of Policy for Soil Association, I am going to assume Pervical knows what he is talking about when it comes to soil quality and sustainability. So let's assume animals have a role to play in allowing us to grow crops without the use of mining, transporting and spraying fertilizers. Why must these animals be consumed then? Why not let the animals live on the land where their manure fertilizes the soil, and go about their natural lives? We can have organic vegetable and fruit farming without the slaughter of animals, thus avoiding the meat paradox.

"I witnessed a murder. I use these words deliberately, for that is what I saw. I did not witness an illegal act, but her death was a murder." [38] Again we are confronted with the immoral action of killing animals, yet this does not sway the author from his stance on organic animal farming. He is essentially saying we have to be immoral even though he agrees with vegans: "I believe they are correct, these vegans. I think they speak the truth." [pg. 22]

Percival sums up his rejection of veganism: "PETA, Earthling Ed, and Kip Andersen are not marginal voices. The reimagining of meat, not only as unethical, but as pollution, plutonium, and toxic to our health, runs through the vegan movement, a distorting influence amplified by the purity domain. The reality - that meat is natural, nutritious, and can even be necessary - is rejected because it can arouse dissonance and disgust. The truth - that we are empathetic omnivores, creatures characterized by evolutionary contradiction - is felt to be unpalatable, leaving a foul taste upon the world-be herbivore's tongue." [104]

History is full of subjects that get reframed as unethical (slavery, eugenics) or as pollution and toxins (tobacco, fossil fuels, lead paint). Evolving from our past is not necessarily a recipe for doom. This dissonance created in us should be a red flag. Something is wrong, and our brain is seeking to make sense of the contradictory information it is receiving. If we are empathetic omnivores, then let us face this dissonance and rid ourselves of this tax on our minds.

Solutions in the Past

The backdoor out of agreeing with "meat is murder" is making the case that humans are required to eat some animal flesh in order to be healthy. Between pages 40-41 Percevial begins distancing himself from the ethical issue by suggesting meat is sometimes necessary, and therefore not murder. A variety of examples of past and present cultures, such as the Eskimos, are given as examples of those of us that require the consumption of animals. Many animal rights scholars and activists are able to let the Eskimos pass on this moral dilemma of eating animals, but Percival uses the Eskimo’s habitat of limited food to justify what we purchase in the supermarkets. If an indigenous culture does not have a choice, leave them alone. If we do have a choice then we enter the realm of morality.

We spend all of chapter 3 entitled "Hunting" reviewing how ancient and indigenous tribes hunted and their respective rituals around the killing of animals. While I imagine the author wanted to study how ancient cultures handled the meat paradox, throwing it in this book without explicitly saying so makes one feel as if he is using other cultures to excuse the continued exploitation of animals in our current society. What the Inuit, Tukano, and Yukaghir do has no bearing on what the vast majority of us that read this book buy at the grocery store. Are these expeditions into the meat paradox in the past used for nothing more than telling the tale, or are they used to support the continued use of animals?

From the meat paradox perspective, it makes sense to explore other cultures and time periods to understand how they handled the psychological effects of killing sentient beings. However, given this book argues for organic meat, I cannot help but feel these sections are an elaborate "If indigenous cultures can eat animals then so can I," which to paraphrase Earthling Ed "If you appropriate indigenous cultures to justify your continued abuse of animals then I don't think you take morality seriously."

The organic and regenerative farmers interviewed fundamentally believe we need to farm animals. "I believe that farming animals is the right thing to do." from Alex in Wales [pg. 109]. This style of reasoning is like a conservative longing for the better days of the past. As if our future is bound by the systems of animal eating of the past. These farmers want a system that as closely as possible resembles how we ate meat before animal modern animal farming. The reasoning is "it was better back then" instead of "how can we do better for the future?" This logical fallacy is known as the fallacious appeal to tradition.

He discusses the use of fertilizers in crop farming as if all are bad. No discussion of hydroponic farming and only a couple of sentences on lab-grown meat. These systems could use fewer resources rendering the fear of "chemicals" negligible. No paragraphs were given on the fact that much less land is required for a plant-based diet. We would use a lot less resources if we only limited growing crops from the land (https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local). 

Fertilizers and GMO crops were developed for a reason. Organic farming is not easy. Farmers literally gamble every year that there won't be a drought, flood, plague, insects, etc. coming to destroy the harvest. Again, Percival seems to be more concerned with how we are farming (in that organic is the one true way) than how many people we are helping.

The chapter "Evolution" is interesting in that it develops more around the meat paradox. But once again, given this book is about exploring the meat paradox while also prescribing a solution to farming troubles, I cannot help but wonder if this chapter is to support the idea of eating animals because we evolved eating animals. Is stating our history of eating animals to support the continued eating of animals? And similarly to the previous chapter, this looks at the past for answers instead of envisioning what we want for our future.

Conclusion

The book ultimately has two purposes: one is to examine the history and current trend of how societies deal with the meat paradox, and the other is to promote the idea of organic farming, in particular organic animal farming. These are two separate subjects that get intertwined throughout the book making it seem as if organic animal farming is the answer to the meat paradox. As if we treat animals better, our cognitive dissonance will no longer be required.

In "Emergency", we are confronted with the coming end of times and how not using animals for food would substantially contribute to alleviating the coming doom. Percival says meat eaters need to consume much less meat and of greater quality. My ultimate issue with the book, leaving the ethical concern behind, is why the solution is to reduce and not eliminate. If the issue of climate change is so dire, why settle for half-assed solutions? Many people won't consciously change their diet and many people cannot, so shouldn't those willing to take action not take the most action they can by eliminating animals on their plates entirely? Taking a more "extreme" approach will help balance those that cannot or will not change.

"After decades of environmental campaigning, here we are, staring down the barrel of this century. David has slain Goliath [Goliath being the battle with climate change] in skirmish after skirmish, but Goliath is a many-headed hydra, and with each head lopped, another rises in its place. It is now so late in the day, and the odds are stacked squarely against us. The weight and momentum behind this monster is simply too much. I can reach no other conclusion. I would not bet on a happy ending" [230] - This dismissal view of the future is all the more reason to take the more "dramatic" step of not eating animals at all. The more we do, the better our chances of humanity surviving and thriving in the future.

"The fact remains that we are not herbivores... Many of us can subsist on a plant-based diet, but there are ecological and nutritional barriers to a world in which no animals are consumed, and they are not trivial." [239] - So let's work on the non-trivial making them trivial instead of promoting sub-par solutions to a dire problem. 

Footnote

* I believe most of the modern (past 20 years or so) environmental movement has been to discover solutions that allow one to continue consuming the things we enjoy while reducing the impact on the environment instead of calling for the end of frivolous consumption.

The universe, for some reason or no reason at all, created life. In particular, the universe used evolution to create conscious life. Our survey of the scene concludes that life is rare, and conscious life is even rarer. Conscious life is capable of thinking and feeling and discovering more about the universe that created it which is exactly what we have historically been doing. We as a species like to build, explore, and grow.

As our creation of tools and understanding of science progressed, we have been able to expand the creation of even more tools and understand even more science. This progress loop is a function of conscious life. The more we learn about the universe, the more we can then learn about the universe in the future. While we cannot say the universe wants to maximize this function (because we do not know what the universe wants, if it wants anything at all), we can nonetheless say the universe has this function for conscious life. Since we have historically been feeding this function, pushing it to greater and greater bounds, I am willing to believe the purpose of conscious life is to maximize this function. In particular, this means creating tools and building our databases of knowledge is the purpose of life since doing those things is how we expand our consciousness.

Concrete examples of expanding consciousness: The human eye can only see a sliver of the electromagnetic spectrum. Using computer vision technology, we can capture light waves in the non-visual spectrum, convert the values into the visual light spectrum, and display them on a screen. Thus, we achieved night vision. Telescopes and microscopes allow us to see far beyond the native zoom features of our eyeballs. We can control evolution (to an extent) with artificial selection and forced breeding of genetic material expanding life's capabilities, such as GMO drought-resistant foods. It is estimated that this century we will create sentient AI robots. These beings will have unparalleled abilities to continue expanding their own consciousness, thus discovering even more about the cosmos that created it.

One question might be if it is necessary for conscious life to expand consciousness. We as a species do not have a choice in history. The events of history happened regardless of our opinion of them. Expanding our knowledge of the cosmos has been something we have been doing since the first creation of tools. While some individuals and societies might regress to simpler times, they cannot escape the desire to understand and maintain their worldview. Even religion fits into the category of expanding consciousness since religion seeks to explain the cosmos and metaphysics. To not want to expand consciousness means to give up consciousness. Therefore, expanding consciousness is necessary for conscious life. We are fated to be curious about the universe that created us.

If the purpose of life is to expand consciousness then morality should be defined such that expanding consciousness is moral, and hindering the advancement of new knowledge and exploration is immoral. Morality then becomes utilitarian-like calculation about our actions except towards expanding consciousness and not vague words like calculating "good". Or, "good" becomes what actions aid us in learning and creating. 

Moral philosophy is often presented as very rigid and searching for the absolute. While I am making a claim about the one purpose of life and how it influences morality, the one rule of expanding consciousness can be taken rather loosely. For example, going on vacation, playing a game, or watching a movie is not necessarily against our moral duty since our minds and bodies need time to rest (moderation, of course, being key). Raising children is vital since they could grow up to help expand consciousness, so maintaining a healthy family and community fits into our moral duty. 

The moral duty of expanding consciousness has a wide range of ethical implications. Some examples:

• Should we care for the environment? To destroy the environment means we cannot adequately live and prosper, and therefore cannot expand our consciousness. So we should take care of the environment.

• Should we exploit animals? Expanding our moral circle to include animals [1], potential aliens, sentient AI, and any other moral patients [2] has direct positive benefits for ourselves. Leaving the cruelty aspect aside, there are many benefits of not using animals. Animal agriculture is a major contributor to climate change [3]. Not experimenting on animals requires us to find new in vitro and computational models for biological experiments. Plant-based and lab-grown meat requires new science that will be required for space colonies (or do you think there will be cattle ranchers on Io?) Furthermore, we would not want the same treatment done to us by, say, AI or aliens, because that would limit our potential. That is, we should not play “betray” in the prisoner’s dilemma [4] since playing “betray” is not optimal.

• If expanding our consciousness is a moral duty, this places a positive value on consciousness beings in both quantity and quality. Having more humans means more problems get solved, more knowledge gets created, and more new hypotheses get generated for testing. Increasing the quality of life such as a right to quality education or fighting for global health allows more able minds to expand humanity’s consciousness.

• We can at times justify other ethical frameworks within the one purposed here. It might take an egoist to build an empire of new technology allowing electric vehicles and novel rocket systems to get us to Mars [5]. It might take a hedonist to build the technology to create a hedonist reality [6]. Virtues are the ones that help expand consciousness. Most juggernauts in the Effective Altruism community are act utilitarians which often involve helping humanity. In turn, helping humanity helps expand our consciousness.

• There are many more implications that could be teased out in another essay.

Knowledge is the key to our survival. Even if we control climate change, circumvent nuclear disasters, create safe and loving AIs, and defend against all possible biological weapons and viruses, one sufficiently sized asteroid could end all conscious life on Earth. Whether we build an asteroid defense system or populate space, we need new knowledge on how to do these things to protect ourselves. Knowledge requires expanding our consciousness of how the universe works and how we can control it. Our biological function is to reproduce. But our survival requires us to understand the world around us and proactively prepare for the worst of scenarios.

How to do Good Work

Since the goal is to expand consciousness, how best can one work towards this? There are three subcategories: direct work, tools and inquiry enhancements, and ancillary functions.

Direct Work: This one is the most obvious. Work directly on questions that when answered expand our knowledge. Scientists, philosophers, software engineers, economists, and artists are all such examples.

Tools and Inquiry Enhancements: While most people do not separate themselves from this line of work, this category nonetheless exists. Someone doing direct work might ask a question about the nature of high-energy particle physics while someone else might be creating the tools required to see those particles as they fly at high-energy. The latter are enhancing the tools the former uses to answer direct questions. Philosophers could be refining what it means to do science. Statisticians design new forms of experiments and sampling. Mathematicians might create new math that will be used by engineers decades later. All these roles and projects exist to create better tools and methods of inquiry to then help those doing direct work. In practice, many of these two categories will overlap.

Ancillary Functions: These are roles less talked about in spaces where one considers how to do good in their career such as 80000 hours [7]. Take a company like Beyond Meat. While they require organic chemists and molecular biologists to create plant-based meat, at the time of this writing, no such positions are open at Beyond Meat. Current positions include HR, accounting, distribution operations, and Asian brand ambassadors. The “meat” processing plants require packing, quality inspection, and distribution. Policy experts work with regulatory agencies to ensure the product meets safety standards. Marketing and content creation are required for social media and general web presence. All of these roles are required to keep Beyond Meat afloat, yet do not have anything to do with directly expanding the knowledge and capabilities of plant-based meat. Since they are required, they should not be shunned, overlooked, or considered less important than the scientists working on plant-based meat.

This approach to doing good for work is broader than Effective Altruism. Effective Altruism aims to do the most good one can do while I’m suggesting doing at least some good with one’s work. My motivation is from a common criticism (at least on the sub-reddit [8]) for Effective Altruism from individuals in their mid-life, with a family, unable to go back to school for a Ph.D., etc. yet still want to contribute. Instead of discouraging those individuals, they could navigate their careers and skills to seek out work in tools and inquiry enhancements or ancillary functions. They could still do some good work. And unlike Effective Altruism, doing good is not minimizing utilitarians' notion of suffering, but helping to expand our consciousness. One could work outside Open Philanthropy's cause priorities [9] and still be following their moral duty. That said, anyone able to work within Effective Altruism’s most pressing problems probably should.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016328721000641

[2] https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/topics/moral-patienthood

[3] https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk

[6] https://www.hedweb.com/

[7] https://80000hours.org/

[8] https://www.reddit.com/r/EffectiveAltruism/

[9] https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/

For the purpose of this essay, we will limit ourselves to low-hanging, easy opportunities. I'm not suggesting vegans are to join an animal rights group and take to the streets. For example, I regularly get into conversations at work about being vegan. Since someone has started the conversation out of curiosity about my veganism then it is easy for me to reply in such a way that would encourage them to be vegan or at least consider animal ethics.

Our question on vegan moral obligation breaks down into two questions: 1) What does it mean to be vegan and 2) what does it mean to be morally obligated to do something?

1) What does it mean to be vegan? Most (at least online) use the Vegan Society's definition of veganism which is "A philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment. In dietary terms, it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals." [1]

This definition lays out the guidelines but gives no indication of why a vegan would be vegan. Reasons often include improving one's health, environmental concerns, and concerns for the treatment of animals. I am going to argue vegans for their health and vegans for the environment do not exist. Only vegans for the animals exist.

Buying leather, make-up test on animals, down-feathered pillows, wool socks, and a variety of other non-consumable products do not affect one's health, therefore should be no concern for a health-conscious vegan. However, that contradicts the definition of veganism since one is to avoid all animal products, not only animal-based food. Vegans that are vegan solely for their health cannot exist and are on a diet called plant-based. Health might be a major component of why one is vegan, but cannot be the sole reason for being vegan since they must be concerned with animal-based or animal-tested products that do not affect health.

The argument for environmental vegans not existing is similar to the argument for why health-based vegans do not exist. Most vivisection is not detrimental to the environment. For example, the tests done on mice have no major impact on the environment. An environmental vegan does not care about the mice, which means they are not vegan by definition. The environment might be a major component as to why one is vegan, but to be vegan means there must be a concern for the mice in labs outside of concern for the environment.

This means one can only be vegan for the animals. To be vegan for the animals means one is concerned about the well-being and treatment of animals, which is why one avoids the use and exploitation of animals and animal-derived products. Our main question becomes if a vegan is concerned about the animals, is being vegan enough? Should the vegan be morally obligated to speak out for the animals since speaking out has the potential to help more animals the vegan is concerned about?

2) What does it mean to be morally obligated? If one is vegan for the animals, is that not enough? I believe in many social and economic causes, but I am obligated to speak out for those as well? Why would veganism be special?

Another word for moral obligation is moral duty. If one believes in morals and that one should act morally then we can say one has a duty to their morals. "Being moral" is similar to saying "it is my duty to be moral". For example, if one thinks it is moral to be vegan then it is one's moral duty to be vegan.

To be morally obligated to speak out on behalf of the animals means that one thinks that it is moral to speak on behalf of the animals. And to not speak out would be immoral.

Why then is it our duty to speak for the animals but not other social justice causes? The issue comes down to scale and neglect in this area. Speaking out is low effort for potentially high impact. Whereas other causes (climate change, LGBTQ+, anti-war, etc.) all have considerably more resources allocated to them. As someone that has made the conscious decision to be vegan in face of the normalization of the exploitation of animals, the gravity of the plight of animals hangs over us daily. Over 70 billion land animals are slaughtered by humans for humans every year, and this does not include sea life (where the number of individuals impacted is so large they are counted in weight) and animals are driven out by other human activity such as new construction developments or climate change [2].

These numbers (to put it lightly) are staggering. As people concerned for animals, taking low-hanging opportunities to talk to others about the plight of animals is absolutely negligible compared to the suffering we impose on non-human animals. That is, if we are concerned for the animals, it as our moral duty to influence others in order to help more animals given the sheer volume of abuse and overall neglect by society on this issue. An individual being vegan allows that individual to be absolved of immoral behavior towards animals, but we need a vegan society to end the exploitation and harm caused to non-human animals by the hands of humans.

The intention of this essay is not to cast blame or judgment on vegans saying they are acting immorally. Being perfectly moral regardless of which ethical framework one subscribes to is impossible. However, if it is our duty to be moral then we must strive to be as moral as possible. And in this case, that means speaking out for the non-human animals that cannot.

[1] https://www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/definition-veganism

[2] https://thehumaneleague.org/article/animal-slaughter