Animal Advocacy "Choosing for Maximum Impact", Matt Ball

[Josh James xVx]

This is a slightly older article but it still inspires me and colors my thinking about how to give when I donate some of my money or time for animals:

The key exert:

Based entirely on this first principle, we choose to focus on exposing the cruelties of factory farms and industrial slaughterhouses, while providing honest information about how to pursue a cruelty-free lifestyle. Let me repeat – our emphasis on ethical eating is derived from our first principle, not vice versa. No specific diet has any value in and of itself. Rather, the importance of promoting cruelty-free eating is that it allows us to have the maximum impact on the amount of suffering in the world. There are three reasons for this:

1. The Numbers The number of animals raised and killed for food each year in the United States alone vastly exceeds any other form of exploitation, involving numbers far greater than the total human population of the entire world. Ninety-nine out of every 100 animals killed in the United States each year are slaughtered to be eaten.


2. The Suffering Of course, if these billions of animals lived happy, healthy lives and had quick, painless deaths, then our concern for suffering would lead us elsewhere. But animals raised for food must endure unfathomable suffering.


Most advocacy tends to revolve around detailed stories of individuals, and the story of any individual chicken, pig, or veal calf clearly rivals any other case of cruelty. Indeed, perhaps the most difficult aspect of advocating on behalf of these animals is trying to describe the indescribable: the overcrowding and confinement, the stench, the racket, the extremes of heat and cold, the attacks and even cannibalism, the hunger and starvation, the illness, the broken bones, the failing organs…the near-constant horror of every day of their lives. Indeed, every year, hundreds of millions of farmed animals – many times more than the total number killed for fur, in shelters, and in laboratories combined – don’t even make it to slaughter. They actually suffer to death.



3. The Opportunity If there were nothing we could do about these animals’ suffering – if it all happened in a distant land beyond our influence – then, again, our focus would be different. But exposing factory farms and advocating ethical eating is the most readily accessible option we have for reducing suffering and making a better world! We don’t have to overthrow a government. We don’t have to forsake modern life. We don’t have to win an election or convince Congress of the validity of our argument.

Rather, every day, every single person makes decisions that affect the lives of these farmed animals. Inspiring someone to change leads to fewer animals suffering on factory farms. Convincing one person go to vegetarian spares thousands of animals from the vicious maws of modern agribusiness. Many major national campaigns spend huge amounts of time and money for less payoff. By choosing to promote cruelty-free living, every person we meet is a potential major victory.