In my 8 years of volunteering for several Animal Rights/ Animal Welfare groups, including The Humane League, PETA, Anonymous for the Voiceless, and Direct Action Everywhere, I have observed that most volunteers and paid staff are truth-seeking and completely truthful and transparent with the public. For example, we do discuss amongst ourselves and with the public how to have a healthy and balanced vegan diet. For example, we discuss that as vegans, we should make sure to get supplements of vitamins and minerals we need, including vitamin B12 and omega 3. Also, we sometimes discuss eating enough protein. There’s even a PETA brochure that is a vegan starter kit that shows mock meats - a brochure that we sometimes offer to those interested. Furthermore, we sometimes mention this great resource to learn more about how to optimize nutrition for a long and healthy life: https://nutritionfacts.org/ Also, I sometimes share the website of PubMed for reading of primary research on food and health.

Theory of change discussions are so important! In our non-profit, we frequently compare how our theory of change is in relation to the US Civil Rights Movement, global female suffrage movement, equal marriage movement, and other movements that were successful in achieving their goals. I think it’s important to make sure we seem to be on track to achieving our goals. One of our goals is abolishing animal agriculture world-wide. I think other orgs in the space of animal welfare/ animal rights can benefit from making sure they are on track to achieve in an effective and efficient way their goals.

It would be great to see research on potential effectiveness of ballot initiatives that would ban Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), otherwise known as animal factory farms, and initiatives that would simply limit them, such as banning construction of new ones and expansion of existing ones. These are the ballot initiatives our organization is working on.

Hi Vasco, I just read certain portions of this document that you linked. My main feedback on this document is that you or whoever is the author does not appear to think that animals who have large brains, such as pigs and cows/bulls, deserve as much compassion as humans. This is what stood out to me in reading this document.

I oppose creating “net-happy farmed animal lives” when animals will be killed by humans because when someone is created to be used their whole life and then murdered, I don’t see that as an optimally happy life. It’s like a woman giving birth to a child only to murder them at age 3. It’s better not to plan to have the child and not to conceive them in order to murder them later. If I have a child and love them my whole life, help them, and never want to use them for anything, then this is an optimally happy life. Also, I have cats and never want to use them for anything that they would not want. I only give them unconditional love and feed them a vegan diet according to information I got from a veterinarian who specializes in cat nutrition. So my cats have optimally happy lives. I believe humans should stop breeding other individuals in order to use and murder them. It’s better overall if humans focus on helping others who already share the planet with us or who will be born in the future and help them live optimally happy lives. As for farmed animals who are already born, humans should help them live out their natural lives as optimally as possible and not kill them. This would be overall best net outcome for everyone.

When hens are raised for their eggs, most of the baby roosters who are born as well in the hatcheries get brutally murdered. Animals raised on pastures for meat, are brutally murdered as well. There is no humane way to kill someone who wants to live. Thus, initiatives such as bans on animal factory farm expansion or initiatives to phase out animal factory farms completely appear to be more effective in helping animals long-term than initiatives that improve a little bit lives of a limited number of animals.

I think that it is effective to support organizations that work towards ending animal agriculture. There is at least one animal rights organization that employs effective tactics and has a plan with a reasonable chance of success to end animal agriculture in several countries. I think it is effective to support these types of organizations in order to prevent billions of animal from being bred on factory farms.

In the US, looks like ballot measures have been effective in recent years in significantly reducing the number of animals who will be raised for slaughter. Donating to these organizations would be an effective way to help reduce suffering of animals long-term. Would be good to see organizations recommended to donors that focus on ballot measures that will reduce the number of animals who would be raised for slaughter. Ballot measures are often expensive, and so these organizations would benefit from funding to run new ballot measure campaigns.

I’m happy to see the topic of tactics to transition away from animal farming discussed here! For further reading about tactics to achieve animal liberation, I suggest reading this blog post about a 40 year roadmap to abolish animal factory farming from an animal rights group that I volunteer with: https://www.directactioneverywhere.com/theliberationist/some-big-updates-to-dxes-roadmap-to-animal-liberation

Maybe the conference could be renamed or its description amended to say “for EA leaders”. Then people who get rejected would take it less personally that they weren’t accepted.