Should vegans oppose animal welfare?
An adversarial collaboration exploring whether vegans should oppose campaigns that aim to marginally improve animal welfare.
Should vegans oppose animal welfare campaigns? At first glance, that seems absurd. But there is a good case to be made that they should.
My curiosity about this debate sparked during a lively dinner conversation with my good friends Mark and Stef. They are known for their ardent veganism, so I hoped to discuss some animal welfare efforts promoted by effective altruists. To my surprise, they adamantly opposed those initiatives. Intrigued, I spent two intense hours trying to grasp their perspective.
Though I understood their arguments, I disagreed with their conclusions. They felt similarly towards me. Realizing we were talking in circles without identifying our core disagreement, we decided to co-author an article.
The rationale for writing something together is that it is difficult to define terms precisely in a normal conversation while simultaneously holding all the arguments in your head. It’s simply a cognitive challenge, which can create the illusion of disagreement. I felt that writing down our viewpoints would help us uncover the crux of our disagreement—if indeed there was one. If there was a disagreement, my secondary goal was to explore what evidence would cause us to change our minds.
The remainder of this article is the outcome of our collaboration.
Understanding abolitionist veganism
Throughout our conversation, Mark and Stef unpacked the stance of abolitionist vegans. Abolitionist vegans exclusively advocate for the complete abolition of all forms of animal exploitation and use, not just for health or environmental reasons but primarily from an ethical standpoint. They believe in the rights of animals to live free from human use and ownership and view any form of animal exploitation as inherently wrong, regardless of how well animals are treated. For example, owning a pet would be considered a curtailment of an animal's autonomy and, therefore, immoral. They advocate veganism as a moral baseline and do not promote animal welfare reform.
That perspective forms the core of this debate. That's because measures to improve animal welfare endorse the notion that animals are commodities to be used by humans – more on that later. However, before exploring our disagreement, we wanted to establish a baseline of agreement.
Where we agree
First, we agree that suffering is bad. We also agree that most animals, especially those humans consume and use daily, are likely sentient (capable of suffering). Therefore, we would endorse actions that minimize net suffering for all sentient beings over time.
We believe that abolishing animals' property status would reduce the net suffering of sentient beings in the long term. Removing their property status would legally acknowledge animals as sentient beings with intrinsic value rather than mere objects or commodities. This shift would lead to the establishment of laws and social norms that protect their welfare and ensure that they receive the same respect and care currently extended to humans.
The crux of the disagreement
Our core disagreement is whether efforts to improve animal welfare increase or decrease animal suffering over time. We agree that advocating for either animal ownership abolition or welfare improvements would be morally wrong if they were known to increase animal suffering in the long run.
We disagree because we have different theories of change. Jordan believes welfare improvements increase the likelihood of people adopting and living by a vegan worldview. However, Stef and Mark think welfare improvements further entrench the idea that animals can be human property, decreasing the chances of people adopting and practicing an abolitionist perspective. They feel improving welfare does not align with or result in abolishing animal exploitation.
Below, we detail our thinking further. First, we explore the case against supporting animal welfare, then the case for it. Next, we consider what evidence could change our views and conclude by sharing how our perspectives have shifted while writing this article.
The case against supporting animal welfare
By Stefanie and Mark
We all agreed on the premise that abolishing the property status of animals worldwide would astronomically lower net suffering in the world because it would effectively end all animal exploitation. The central point of our argument is that we believe that vegans actively supporting animal welfare campaigns is counter-productive to the pursuit of abolition, thereby inhibiting the goal of reducing suffering in the long-term. Here’s why…
Firstly, on a fundamental level, the welfarist position conflicts with the vegan position. By definition, vegans reject all animal exploitation and use, no matter how the animals are treated.
"Veganism 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…” – The Vegan Society
The welfarist position is the exact opposite of this. The welfarist position is that we should seek to treat animals more “humanely” within the systems of their exploitation, but does not oppose the exploitation itself. The welfarist position does not fundamentally reject the exploitation of animals for food, clothing, or any other purpose. It merely aims to regulate animal exploitation. Welfarism and veganism are morally inconsistent positions. Therefore, it would be morally inconsistent for vegans to support animal welfare campaigns.
Secondly, animal welfare campaigns perpetuate the “humane myth” and make people feel better about exploiting animals. The humane myth refers to the belief that animal exploitation can be humane, good, and ethical. When welfarists campaign to ban a particular farming practice, they perpetuate the humane myth by implying that the alternative practice (whatever that may be) is more humane and, therefore, morally acceptable. Take the campaign to “ban battery cages”, for example. When an organization says, “if you care about egg-laying hens, help us ban battery cages, it’s a horribly cruel practice”, not only are they condemning the use of battery cages, they are implicitly endorsing the alternative (let us assume it is free-range eggs). If they actually manage to achieve the goal of banning battery cages, they celebrate until the cows come home and thank their donors profusely for being “kind to animals”. There is an implicit message that free-range eggs are humane, good, and ethical. Apart from being untrue and speciesist (the things we do to animals would never be labeled as humane if they were done to humans), the problem with this is that it makes people feel more comfortable about exploiting animals and potentially less likely to become vegan. Anecdotally, we have seen this time and time again in our vegan activism. Many people who are not vegan proudly talk about how humane Australian animal farming is, and how they only buy animal products that are free-range, organic, grass-fed, RSPCA-approved, etcetera. They use this as a reason not to be vegan. We as vegans are then forced into the position of trying to undo the effects of animal welfarism by dispelling the humane myth and presenting the case of why all animal exploitation is morally wrong, regardless of how the animals are treated.
Thirdly, we do not believe that welfarism in itself involves incremental steps toward abolition. Not only is abolition not the goal of welfarism, but even on a practical level we are not convinced that continuous reformations will somehow lead to abolition. Regulating or even abolishing some farming practices (such as battery cages or even factory farming as a whole) will not likely lead towards the abolition of animal exploitation if the attitudes of the consumers (i.e., that it is okay to use animals) and their demand for animal products remain unchanged. So long as the attitudes and demand remain, the government and industries will always be working towards making animal products more accessible, despite welfare reforms. Additionally, all the non-food related ways in which we exploit animals will persist.
Lastly, animal welfarism largely places moral responsibility on industries and the government, rather than consumers. We think this is counter-productive, because at the end of the day, it is the consumers who need to change their attitudes and behaviors to achieve abolition. Welfarist campaigns do not clearly promote a vegan message or invite people to consider veganism. In fact, a “go vegan” message is actively avoided in animal welfare campaigns (we assume this is because that is not the goal of the campaign and they want to maximize potential donations from non-vegans). Instead of placing due responsibility on the consumers to change their behavior, welfarists give consumers an easy way out by asking for donations or signatures. Whilst welfare campaigns may invoke empathy regarding the plight of animals, the message being sold is that the answer to the violence is just more regulations and to ban certain practices, rather than to stop using animals.
To be clear, it is not the practical effects of welfare reforms on individual animals that we reject (of course we would prefer an egg-laying hen to have more space to move rather than less space to move) but it is the means to get there – perpetuating the welfarist ideology at the expense of promoting an unequivocal vegan message – that we reject and believe to be counter-productive in the long-term. After all, it is not a dichotomy. It is not either “less space to move” or “more space to move”. There is a third option: no exploitation, veganism.
In summary, there are several moral and practical issues with animal welfarism that deserve serious consideration. Due to these issues, we believe that overall, animal welfarism is counter-productive rather than helpful in achieving the abolition of animal exploitation, and therefore vegans should not support animal welfare campaigns. We believe that the most effective and fastest path toward abolition surely has to be for vegans to put any spare time, energy, and resources into engaging in vegan activism with an unequivocal vegan message.
The case for supporting animal welfare
By Jordan
The use of animals is deeply entrenched in our current economy and ways of life. Therefore, solely relying on moral advocacy is insufficient to transition the world to veganism. Instead, I view the critical point of leverage as altering the broader food environment. I see enforcing higher animal welfare standards as an important step in transforming this environment, thereby accelerating the adoption of veganism.
People are not vegan for practical and economic reasons. Plant-based alternatives to meat and dairy products are often less accessible, less desirable, and more expensive. Adopting a plant-based diet requires lifestyle changes that can be difficult to sustain long-term. This struggle is similar to many other lifestyle changes people aspire to, like using less social media and regularly exercising.
In most of these cases, the best way to change behavior is by changing the environment. If plant-based proteins were as easy to find, appealing, and cheaper than animal products, most people would likely stop eating meat. Crucially, in such a world, advocating for the abolition of animal ownership would be much easier because you are not fighting against entrenched ways of living.
That raises the question: how can you make plant-based products relatively more desirable, accessible, and cheaper? One way is to make animal products more expensive. The current situation allows the food industry to create animal products using practices that most consumers would find unacceptable if they knew about them. This enables companies to produce animal products at astonishingly low prices. If those companies were forced to farm animals in a way that the average consumer found acceptable, using animals would be dramatically more expensive.
As animal welfare standards rise, so do costs. This is an important change because people's food choices are sensitive to price changes. Gradually enforcing higher animal welfare standards shifts demand toward vegan options. Importantly, from the consumer's perspective, animal products would be no more desirable because they came from the false assumption that animal farming was more humane. Enforcing these standards simply brings them in line with the way they think animals were farmed.
By making animal products more difficult to consume (because they are more expensive and less accessible), it becomes easier to change people's perspectives. That is partly because people's beliefs tend to follow their behaviors. When behavior is hard to change, we resist changing our minds. As vegan products make up more of our diet, we become more open to adopting a vegan worldview. Additionally, people often incrementally shift toward veganism. Improving animal welfare can raise public awareness about animal conditions and foster greater empathy. This expanded awareness can serve as a stepping stone for more people to adopt veganism or support abolitionist goals.
Taken together, enforcing animal welfare standards is not necessarily at odds with abolitionist goals. Vegan advocates can pressure food companies to meet the animal welfare standards expected by customers while still encouraging those customers to adopt a vegan diet. They can do this by informing companies that they will expose inhumane farming practices to consumers. The less humanely animals are treated, the worse the potential brand damage. This can motivate companies to adopt higher standards. Additionally, that market pressure is motivating companies to increase their investment in plant-based alternatives, further accelerating our reduced dependence on animal exploitation. In fact, several major meat producers, including Tyson Foods, Nestlé, and Cargill, have made significant investments in plant-based protein companies and research and development to expand their range of alternative protein products.
Critically, as animal products become a smaller part of the economy, policy reforms entrenching a vegan perspective can follow more readily. This is because the power and incentive for interest groups to resist such reforms will decline.
A further benefit of enforcing animal welfare standards is that it can reduce suffering today. Fully abolishing animal exploitation is an ambitious long-term goal. In the meantime, supporting welfare improvements can reduce the suffering of millions of animals currently in exploitative conditions. Even if abolition efforts completely fail or the world ends, some suffering will have been mitigated.
Granted, there are potential downsides to enforcing animal welfare standards. For one, shockingly cruel farming practices can motivate people to go completely vegan. In a sense, the cruelty of factory farming today makes the ethical case easier. Nonetheless, many people know factory farming is awful, yet still consume animal products. Or they make temporary diet changes, then revert because their environment doesn't support veganism. Given this, I see changes to the broader food environment as critical for sustainable change.
Importantly, I am not suggesting vegans stop direct moral advocacy (that is, telling people they should go completely vegan). The world could potentially stop exploiting animals for economic reasons alone without a major shift in perspective on their moral status. However, we may discover new profitable animal uses in the future. So, in my view, vegans should persist in advocating for animal rights while also changing the broader food environment by pushing for the enforcement of higher animal welfare standards and continuing to innovate plant-based products.
In summary, enforcing stricter animal welfare standards not only reduces current animal suffering but is also an important strategic step in accelerating the transition to a vegan world. Conversely, denigrating small animal welfare improvements allows food producers to continue intolerable practices, helping them maintain unreasonably low costs that skew food choices toward more animal products.
Evidence that would change our beliefs
The statements in this section represent some of the key beliefs underlying our alternative theories of change. Our differing levels of confidence in these beliefs are a driving factor behind our disagreement on the best path forward. Consequently, evidence that significantly shifts our views on these beliefs would change our perspectives on the most effective strategies and campaigns to minimize animal exploitation and suffering over time. This section is our attempt to be explicit about what those sources of evidence would be.
Belief one: Enforcing higher animal welfare standards will reduce animal consumption
We would update our belief in this statement…
If enforcing higher animal welfare standards actually increased the consumption of animal products.
For example, if we saw that countries or states that introduced higher animal welfare standards started consuming more meat than those that didn't adopt those standards.
If enforcing higher animal welfare standards doesn't result in sustained increases in the cost of non-vegan products.
For example, if companies that introduced higher welfare standards were able to reduce the cost of animal products—and crucially those productivity gains can reasonably be attributed to their adoption of higher welfare standards. This might happen, for example, if the animals became less likely to die as they were being raised due to improved living conditions.
If alternative proteins were cheaper and indistinguishable from meat, and people still showed a strong preference for meat.
This would suggest that people's food choices are less sensitive to price and quality than we think. Therefore, interventions aimed at manipulating those factors are unlikely to have an impact.
Belief two: Changing the “food environment” so that people consume less animal products will make them more likely to adopt vegan views
We would update our belief in this statement…
If people's consumption of vegan products didn’t impact their willingness to adopt a vegan worldview.
For example, we expect that people forced to eat a vegan diet for non-moral reasons would be more likely to agree with abolitionist arguments because they do not have to fight cognitive dissonance. If that were not the case, strategies aimed at changing the broader food environment are not likely to be effective at changing people's moral reasoning.
If examining the case study of human slavery shows that practical and economic factors did not play a significant role in abolition.
Our understanding is that as the Northern states of America industrialized, they reduced their economic reliance on slavery and began phasing it out in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In contrast, the agrarian Southern states, heavily dependent on slave labor, continued supporting slavery. However, if there was evidence of declining support for slavery before increased industrialization, it would lower our confidence in this theory of change.
Belief three: Direct moral advocacy is not sufficient for realizing abolitionist goals
We would update our belief in this statement…
If direct moral advocacy (that is, telling people they should go completely vegan) started to show meaningful traction without any changes to the food environment.
For example, if regions of the world that focused on direct moral advocacy had steeper and sustained increases in veganism, it would suggest that is an effective strategy, and strategically changing the food environment might not be necessary.
Belief four: Animal welfare messaging has unintended consequences that hinder abolitionist goals
We would update our belief in this statement…
If animal welfare messaging didn’t increase people's consumption of animal products.
A concern is that animal welfare messaging might cause people to switch to consuming more humane animal products that they enjoyed more, which would increase their consumption of meat. However, our concern about this risk would decrease if we saw that people did not start consuming more meat after being exposed to animal welfare messaging.
If people exposed to animal welfare messages are no less likely to agree with abolitionist arguments.
A concern is that promoting welfarism (instead of a clear vegan message) will make people more likely to think that it is okay to exploit animals as long as it is done humanely. That, it turn, might make them less likely to support policies that enforce complete abolition. Our concern about this risk would decrease if it were shown that people exposed to animal welfare messages were no less likely to agree with abolitionist arguments.
How our views have changed
Jordan’s closing thoughts
Before writing this article, I vaguely thought it might be optimal to ignore direct moral advocacy (i.e., explaining why people should be vegan and encouraging habit change) and instead focus entirely on tackling the practical and economic barriers first. I believed such efforts would be mostly fruitless until society reduced its reliance on animal products. However, I have softened this view. I now see moral advocacy as an important complement to efforts focused on veganism's practical and economic obstacles. One reason for this shift was learning more about the Quaker movement's vital role in abolishing slavery. I learned that before their advocacy, the notion that slavery could be immoral was completely foreign. Without their efforts, slavery might persist today.
A second compelling argument that shifted my view was that humans may yet discover alternative uses for animals beyond current applications. So, if animal exploitation ends for economic reasons alone, it could resurge as new animal uses emerge. Similarly, we might create or find new sentient beings to exploit. Establishing a social norm and legislation that exploitation is unethical safeguards against future moral regressions.
Taken together, my current view is that enforcing higher animal welfare standards will accelerate abolitionist goals. However, it is not obviously so. It is possible that there could be massive societal shifts in attitudes and behaviors without significant changes in the relative cost and quality of vegan food. Given that uncertainty, it is reasonable for some vegans to focus on moral advocacy over attempts to increase the cost of animal products strategically.
Given the complexity of this issue, I don’t think it is a good use of energy to dissuade other vegans from pursuing different approaches. Rather, I believe the vegan community should pursue a diversity of approaches, as the optimal path forward is unclear.
Mark and Stef’s closing thoughts
Before writing this article, we were mainly thinking about the problems with welfarism from a philosophical point of view; that is, the idea that the welfarist approach is morally inconsistent with an abolitionist approach. After taking the time to understand Jordan’s perspective, we acknowledge that perhaps we could give more consideration to the economic and practical effects of welfarism. Additionally, Jordan has got us thinking more about psychological theories of behavior change and how this could apply to veganism. We definitely want to learn more about this.
We agree with some of Jordan’s main points, including that it is important to make vegan food more accessible (and animal products less so), and that exposure of what goes on in the industries can help foster empathy for animals. We tend to think that perhaps these things could be achieved in ways other than welfare campaigns and reforms (e.g., getting rid of animal product subsidies, investing in vegan businesses, exposure of what goes on in the industries whilst promoting veganism, etc.).
In public discourse about animals and morality, the paradigm globally is still very much focused on “treatment” as opposed to “use”, and we still think that this needs to change. We believe vegans could stand to focus more on promoting a vegan message. Even if vegans completely opted out of welfare campaigns, it seems likely that non-vegans would continue to run them anyway.
We still believe that vegans should not support animal welfare campaigns, and instead view these campaigns with a more critical lens. But at the very least, this article has made us question whether vegans should go out of their way to oppose and speak out against such campaigns.