Like a sprout, the animal rights movement slowly germinates beneath the surface, extending its roots, yet remaining invisible to observers. It is only when the sprout breaks the surface that its full force is suddenly unleashed, visible to the world. While the movement’s progress is obscured by carnivorous, consumer patterns, its roots continue to unravel across the moral landscape. Soon enough, these roots will break the surface of complacency and cognitive dissonance, and animal agriculture will fall alongside it.
YA BOI TAJINDER: Veganism has weathered its fair share of hit pieces this year. The Atlantic reported that “plant-based eating has lost its appeal”; the Financial Times declared “the vegans lost”; and even the environmentally-conscious The Guardian acknowledged that “vegan burgers are losing the US culture war.”
Unfortunately, the hit pieces are right… veganism is failing. Despite the proliferation of vegan-options, vegan-ism has never cracked more than 3% of the U.S. population. On a per person basis, Americans are eating more animals than ever before.
This really sucks for the animals who are being eaten, but there is a silver lining. While the hit pieces are correct in assessing veganism, they fail to see that its underlying belief system — animal rights — is more popular than at any time in American history…
that might sound crazy. “If animal rights is so popular,” you might ask, “then why is everyone still eating meat?” In short, these split trajectories are possible because buying is not believing…
Consider your last trip to the grocery store. Did you calculate the carbon emissions of your milk carton? Did you make sure your bananas were ethically sourced? Did you research your eggs’ animal welfare standards?
If you’re like most consumers, the answer is a resounding NO! Our food choices, and our consumer choices more broadly, are rarely a function of carefully reasoned, moral preferences… immediate concerns such as taste, price, convenience, and culture do far more to determine our food choices than far-off concerns like morality…
Once we acknowledge this disconnect between buying and believing, it is easier to see how veganism (a consumer boycott) might diverge from animal rights (a moral worldview). Indeed, this divergence describes our world today — a world where animal rights is measurably rising in popularity. Below, is evidence from three key domains—political ballot initiatives, public opinion polling, and elite endorsement of animal rights — to show that this is so…
(A) Political Ballot Initiatives: Political ballot initiatives are a great way to observe the buying-believing gap. By transforming what is typically an individual, consumer decision (“Should I buy cage-free eggs?”) into a collective, moral decision (“Should we ban caged eggs?”)… Take California’s Proposition 12, for example. Perhaps the strongest animal welfare law of this century, Prop 12 banned the caged confinement of egg-laying hens, passing with a strong, 62 % majority… Similar stories can be told of pro-animal initiatives in Arizona, Florida, and Massachusetts…
(B) Public Opinion Polling: Gallup has been asking… animal rights-related question for 25 years. In its survey on “Acceptance of Moral and Values Behaviors”… Gallup asks a bunch of questions about polarized moral issues… The question pertaining to animal testing asks, straightforwardly, whether medical testing on animals is “morally acceptable or morally wrong.” In 2001, 65 % of Americans said animal testing was morally acceptable. But by 2025, that number has steadily dropped to 47 %…
(C) Elite Endorsement: When we look to the “elite” sectors of society—public intellectuals, academia, politics—it is clear that the moral validity of animal rights (or, at least, the moral atrocity of factory farming) is increasingly recognized. Here are a few prominent intellectuals who have endorsed animal rights (or condemned factory farming). We have Peter Singer, Richard Dawkins, Martha Nussbaum, and Yuval Noah Harari, Angela Davis, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Ezra Klein, and Jane Goodall, RFK Jr., Vivek Ramaswamy, and Joe Rogan… Basically, anyone who seriously thinks about factory farming comes to the conclusion that it is very, very wrong… Within the realm of state politics, there has been a significant increase in the number of farmed animal welfare laws. In the year 2000, zero such laws existed. But today, there are 44 of these laws across 18 states…
Dr. Martin Luther King once compared injustice to a boil. Like a boil, injustice will persist so long as it remains covered. It is only when injustice is exposed “with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light” that it can be cured”… Like a sprout, the animal rights movement slowly germinates beneath the surface, extending its roots, yet remaining invisible to observers. It is only when the sprout breaks the surface that its full force is suddenly unleashed, visible to the world… While our movement’s progress is obscured by carnivorous, consumer patterns, its roots continue to unravel across the moral landscape. Soon enough, these roots will break the surface of complacency and cognitive dissonance, and animal agriculture will fall alongside it. SOURCE
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