MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: Is it even possible to convince people to stop eating meat?

Since the 1970s, animal advocates have poured a lot of resources into persuading people to go vegan. Organizations ran expensive advertising campaigns, handed out millions of pamphlets at universities, lectured in classrooms, and penned letters to the editor and op-eds in newspapers, among many other tactics. But in spite of all the effort, American meat consumption kept rising. By 2015, the largest animal advocacy organizations were shifting their focus toward political and corporate campaigns to ban some of the most egregious factory-farm practices, like tiny cages for pigs and egg-laying hens.

KENNY TORRELLA: Factory farming is a particularly wicked problem to solve. It’s a moral atrocity, involving the confinement and slaughter of hundreds of billions of animals globally each year. It’s a blight on the environment… Yet factory farming produces something almost everyone wants and that has become culturally, economically, and politically entrenched: cheap meat, milk, and eggs.

Despite strong public concern for cruelty to farmed animals and large swathes of Americans telling pollsters that they’re trying to cut back on meat, we keep eating more of it. And research has shown that it’s nearly impossible to persuade most people otherwise. But a new study, which hasn’t yet been published and is currently under review at an academic journal, might complicate that consensus…

Seth Ariel Green, a research scientist at Stanford University’s Humane and Sustainable Food Lab,… and some colleagues published a meta-analysis, which is currently under peer review, looking at more than three dozen rigorous studies designed to persuade people to eat less meat. Overall, the studies found little to no effect. (It’s worth noting, however, that a few studies involving much lengthier interventions, like reading an essay and joining a 50-minute group discussion or sitting through a lecture, have demonstrated sizable effects)…

Green’s findings align with a change in the animal rights movement that took hold around a decade ago. Since the 1970s, animal advocates have poured a lot of resources into persuading people to go vegetarian or vegan. Organizations ran expensive advertising campaigns, handed out millions of pamphlets at universities, lectured in classrooms, and penned letters to the editor and op-eds in newspapers, among many other tactics. But in spite of all the effort, American meat consumption kept rising.

By 2015, the largest animal advocacy organizations were shifting their focus toward political and corporate campaigns to ban some of the most egregious factory-farm practices, like tiny cages for pigs and egg-laying hens. Some groups also advocated for technological change — namely, making plant-based meat taste better, more affordable, and more widely available. The idea was that instead of trying to influence one person at a time, which had proven so difficult, they’d instead change the food system.

The pivot produced a lot of tangible progress for animals: Over a dozen states have restricted cages for farmed animals, and plant-based meat tastes better and is more widely available than ever. But I’ve wondered whether animal advocates have given up on public persuasion too soon, and in turn, made it harder to maintain their hard-won institutional and technological progress…

Progress won through corporate or political campaigns might struggle to withstand backlash “if there isn’t also culture change happening and people’s attitudes shifting” about factory farming, Laura Driscoll, a social scientist who works at the Stray Dog Institute — a foundation that funds groups working to reform the food system…

Compared to straightforward metrics like how many pigs are still trapped in cages, culture change is “harder to understand and harder to measure,” Driscoll said, so it’s hard to know how much animal rights groups should invest in it. And if it works, it takes a lot of time and repeated exposure to get there. A study participant may not alter their meat consumption after watching one video or reading an essay, but they might change over time if they hear about it enough — and hear persuasive messages that appeal to them.

Currently, people are receiving very few messages about factory farming or meat reduction, as it’s rarely covered in the news or discussed by politicians. Videos about the issue hardly ever go viral, and animal advocacy groups have pulled back from education and persuasion. SOURCE…

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