Resources for Farmed Animal Advocacy: 2023 Roundup

Originally published on the Effective Altruism Forum on December 29, 2023.

Tl;dr - This is a curated and useful list of farmed animal advocacy resources that came out in 2023. We (Impactful Animal Advocacy) [Edit: Now Hive!] sent this compilation out in our free bi-weekly newsletter and thought it might be helpful to others in the EA community.

There is not a comprehensive collection of all resources, but if we missed any that you found significant from 2023, feel free to add as a comment.

Enjoy and here is to even more impact for the animals in 2024!🎉

Acknowledgements: thanks so much to our Comms Lead Allison Agnello for this edition, as well as our readers, who viewed this newsletter 20,000 times in 2023! 🙏

Themes

Over the past 12 months of curating Impactful Animal Advocacy (IAA) newsletters, we’ve noticed several trends. Here are two that are prominent in our collection of 2023 resources:
 

🏗️ Movement infrastructure

In the animal advocacy movement’s growth this year, we’ve seen an increase in services provided directly to animal advocates or organizations. There has been so many new initiatives that we developed a Meta resources wiki to keep track of them all! This expansion reflects a recognition of the diverse needs within the community and how projects can benefit from support and area specialization. Here are a few categories of increased infrastructure:

• New meta organizations (The Mission Motor, NFPs.AI, us!)

• Advocate training courses (See section below)

• Supporting groups in developing countries (Animal Advocacy Africa, Good Growth, Thrive)
   

📏 Refining how we measure and compare across species

Given the large number of possible ways to help animals, selecting the most impactful approach can be challenging. This year, we've witnessed a increase in research accessibility and applicability for advocates. This is not just about providing information — it's about helping us integrate this knowledge into practical strategies. As a result, advocates may be better equipped to make informed decisions on where to focus their efforts across different species and geographic regions. Here are a few projects we’ve seen trying to answer key questions:

• How one might compare welfare across species (Moral Weight Project sequence)

• How much pain do different species endure (Welfare Footprint Project) - watch the recording of the workshop we hosted for them here

• How bad is brief, severe pains versus chronic, milder pains (Dimensions of Pain)

• How many animals are impacted, and where (Our World in Data) 

Updates we found helpful

So much has happened this year. Here are a few articles to catch you up 👇

🧐 Looking back at 2023

• The Year in Review: 2023, Sentient Media

• Top animal policy stories of 2023, Sentient Media

• A year of wins for farmed animals, Lewis Bollard

• Top 20 Alt-Protein Stories of the Year, Green Queen

• AgFunderNews’ favorite agrifoodtech stories of 2023

• 2023 Future Perfect 50 recognizes 9 animal advocate changemakers
   

🧠 Some lessons learned

• Running Cage-Free Projects in Africa: Case Studies of Three African Animal Advocacy Organisations

• Abolishing factory farming in Switzerland: Postmortem

• 2 Years of Shrimp Welfare Project: Insights and Impact from our Explore Phase

• Historical farmed animal welfare ballot initiatives

• Animal Rising's Grand National protest: Public opinion impacts

• Stakeholder-engaged research in emerging markets

• Fish Welfare Initiative’s continued work in India and pausing work in China

Resources

🌱 Getting started

New animal subgroups resources:

• Faunalytics Fundamentals: a series of topic overviews and resources, such as on farmed animals, wildlife, invertebrates, etc

• Wild Animals Wiki and a review of contraception methods for wild mammals

• A Primer on insect sentience and welfare

• Shrimp Welfare Sequence, Rethink Priorities

Find a job:

• Animal Advocacy Careers, Tälist and Alt Protein Careers job boards

• Resources on pursuing a career in animal advocacy

Get funding:

• Fundraising for Animal Advocacy Wiki

Attend an event or conference

• Conferences Database: Farmed Animal Advocacy

• Connect For Animals event platform

• Organize or build a community: Community Building Wiki

Other information databases:

• Our World in Data’s Animal Welfare page, data explorer, research, and interactive charts

• Animal Welfare Library

• Animal Data Project

• List of farmed animal advocacy organizations, ACE
   

📣 Advocacy resources

For org leaders:

• An Impact Roadmap, Aaron Boddy shares a comprehensive writeup about program development methodologies

• Leadership Tools, Scarlet Spark

• Founders and leaders resources, IAA (us!)

For communicators & journalists:

• Narrative research, Animal Think Tank

• Food & Farming Media Network, Sentient Media

• Brand design challenges in animal advocacy, Vegan Hacktivists

• The Commons Social Change Library

Animal Charity Evaluators updates:

• 2023 charity recommendations and Movement Grant recipients

• Updates to their charity evaluations criteria

New Vegan Hacktivist projects:

• Today for Animals, a web app that encourages small, daily actions

• Granti, a comprehensive tool designed to streamline the grant management process for both grantees and funders 

📚 Research resources

Connect with a research community:

• Research to End Consumption of Animal Products (RECAP)

• Join our IAA Slack channel #research

• Subscribe to learn more: The ACE Monthly Research Newsletter

• Some of our favorite work from Rethink Priorities:

• Welfare Range Estimates (part of Moral Weight Project Sequence)

• Price-, Taste-, and Convenience-Competitive Plant-Based Meat Would Not Currently Replace Meat

• Prioritizing Animals of Uncertain Sentience (part of CURVE Sequence)

Some of our favorite work from Faunalytics:

• Comparing U.S. Groups’ Openness to Pro-Animal Actions with graphing tool and subgroup analysis

• Reforming Animal Agriculture Subsidies: A Guide for Advocates

• Which Advocacy Tactics are Most Effective to Change Diets?

• Jurors’ Reflections on the Smithfield Piglet Rescue Trial

• Tech & Data: A Snapshot of the Animal Protection Movement in the Digital Era, Vegan Hacktivists

• Meat consumption and production in developing countries, an agenda for animal advocacy researchers

• Questions to Use in Survey Research and Experiments, Faunalytics

💼 Continuing education

This year, several new courses for animal advocates came out!

• Animal Justice Academy, free online advocacy training program and community has released many new & helpful videos, resources

• List of 9 free courses for animal advocates, compiled by ACE, including:

• Public speaking and Introduction to plant-based campaigns, Anima International

• The Science of Effective Vegan Advocacy online course, Center for Effective Vegan Advocacy / Beyond Carnism

• Introduction to Animal Advocacy course, Animal Advocacy Careers

New university programs launched:

• GW Law’s Animal Legal Education Initiative

• NYU Wild Animal Welfare Program

• Tufts Center for Cellular Agriculture undergrad program

🤖 AI+Animals resources

Artificial intelligence is an upcoming transformative technology that will (and is currently) impacting animals.

Learn about the intersection of AI and animals:

• What AI could mean for animals

• Bringing about animal-inclusive AI

• The AI Bias that’s often overlooked: Speciesism

How to use generative AI in your advocacy:

• AI Prompts for Animal Advocates

• NFPs.AI tutorials

• Videos: AI & ChatGPT in the Movement and other uses for AI in advocacy

Stay updated & engaged: 

• Join the IAA Slack #aidiscussion and #aitools channels

More resources:

• AI and Animals Wiki

• AI for Animals: new website featuring related projects, news, orgs, events, and more

🎧 Media resources

Conference recordings

We (IAA) attended several conferences this year and found them very valuable! It’s why we created a Conferences Database and have shared session recordings:

• Animal & Vegan Advocacy (AVA) Summit

• Animal Advocacy Asia

• Aquatic Life Conference

• Asia Farm Animal Day

• Conference on Animal Rights in Europe (CARE)

• EA Global conferences. Not all talks are relevant to animal advocacy, but here are some of our favorites:

• Bay Area: Bob Fischer on how to compare welfare across species

• Berlin: Chris Popa on intercausal impacts and food system change

• Boston: Cynthia Schuck on quantifying animal suffering

• Nordics: James Ozden on radical tactics within social movements

• European Animal Rights Law Conference

• Fauna Connections

• Good Food Conference

• Reducetarian Summit

🎧Podcast roundup (a → z)

In each newsletter, we share newly released podcast episodes. Here are the podcast channels themselves — feel free to subscribe, listen, and maybe even write a review if you’ve enjoyed their content.

• Animal Amicus

• Cultivating Careers in Alternative Proteins Podcast

• Future of Foods

• How I Learned to Love Shrimp

• Karthik Logic

• Knowing Animals

• Martin Skadal podcast

• Our Hen House

• Sentience Institute

• Sentientism

• Species Unite

📹Documentaries and films

• Ending Real Fur: Fighting the Canadian fur industry

• Poisoned: The Dirty Truth About Your Food: Foodborne illness in the U.S.

• Punk Rock Vegan Movie: Moby-led film about the punk vegan scene

• The Smell of Money: Human Impact of North Carolina pig farms

• Why Did Six Million Brits Sign Up To Veganuary? The Veganuary origin story

📚Books:

Peter Singer releases

• The Buddhist and the Ethicist, co-authored by Professor Peter Singer and Venerable Shih Chao-Hwei, a female Buddhist monastic living in Taiwan

• Animal Liberation Now (and a review of Animal Liberation Now)

Essential Guide for Animal Advocacy, Animal Advocacy Careers’ free e-book

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