Keep your eyes on the food system

I follow a handful of vegan YouTubers, like Natalie Fulton and Roger Yates. Perhaps my favorite, though, is Jake Conroy, who goes by the moniker Cranky Vegan. He’s a former member of the SHAC 7, a group of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty defendants who I looked up to when I first became interested in nonhuman rights in the mid-2000s.

His videos are funny, informative and professionally-made. I appreciate hearing Conroy’s perspective, even when I disagree with it. That’s how I felt after watching his last video, which made the case there wasn’t much that could be done at this historical juncture for farm animals and thus activists should focus on more low-hanging fruit.

For Conroy, this meant focusing on work against the use of animals in the fur and entertainment industries, among others. I’ve said before a frequent temptation for me, as someone working to advance cellular agriculture, is to shift my focus toward efforts to ban fur and circuses, which is now very much within the realm of the possible.

So I sympathize with this view. Ultimately, however, I came to the conclusion that as tempting as it was to focus on an area where it was feasible to outlaw a whole category of animal exploitation, the truth is these categories are actually minuscule in terms of the number of nonhumans used, when compared to the food system.

The one part of the food system where Conroy thought progress was possible was the foie-gras industry. This is actually less appealing to me than efforts to ban fur and circuses, because, in those cases, I think there’s a decent chance consumers will choose a non-animal alternative, with the undesirable options prohibited.

Someone who wants a jacket with a fur trim might instead select a jacket with faux fur. Someone who wants to take their kids to the circus might instead bring them to the movie theater. On the other hand, if foie gras is outlawed, I think there is a very good chance the consumer who wants it will settle on another high-priced animal dish.

I mostly agree with Conroy when he argues, “I don’t think we as a movement are in a position to take on something as large as animal agriculture, which is disappointing and upsetting to say. Maybe someday, but today isn’t that day. What we should be doing instead is building a foundation for next generations to stand and build on.”

That said, I disagree there is nothing we can do for farm animals in the here and now. I’ve read all the animal-rights criticism of welfarism, and largely agree with it, but if the choice was between an abolitionist goal that benefited millions of nonhumans in the fur industry and a reformist goal that benefited billions in the food industry, I’d be torn.

Thankfully, I believe there are small ways we can work to fight animal agriculture in the here and now, while building a foundation for future generations and retaining an abolitionist approach. For example, I’ve been encouraging grassroots activists to push the government to support increased public funding for cultivated-meat research.

I frequently feel discouraged as a lone protestor outside the offices of my elected officials. However, such a funding request very much falls within the realm of the possible, in my view. The United States and other governments already provide limited money for this research. More activists pushing the issue would certainly help, though.

If cultivated meat can deliver on its promise to provide slaughter-free protein that tastes the same as traditional meat and is less expensive, I think it would make the general public significantly more open to abolitionist perspectives in relation to animal agriculture. Even low adoption rates of the protein would have an enormous impact.

Assume, for the sake of argument, the existing meat market kills a trillion aquatic and land animals per year. Cultivated meat replacing one percent of that market would spare billions of creatures annually. I certainly wouldn’t oppose efforts to ban fur or circuses, but I think as animal activists we need to keep our eyes on the food system.