ANIMAL RIGHTS WATCH

JUMPING THE GUN: A post-mortem on veganism and plant-based meat is premature

“Plant-based eating has lost its appeal”, “Vegan burgers are losing the culture war over meat”, and “Why the vegans lost”. These eulogies for veganism tend to downplay this critical point: taking on the meat industry — a monster machine with unparalleled lobbying and marketing resources — was never a fair fight. Since the rise in popularity of plant-based meat alternatives, the meat industry has actively campaigned to undermine them, portraying these products as unhealthy and unnatural. This is not the time for a plant-based post-mortem. The success or failure of the vegan movement cannot be measured solely by profit, market power […]

It’s Asymmetry: When animal rights advocacy is expected to carry human struggles (and not vice versa)

Animal rights activists are expected to center human struggles — whether through labor justice, racial equity, or anti-colonial narratives — to be seen as relevant or inclusive. Meanwhile, their own cause — the liberation of nonhuman animals from systemic use, commodification, and enslavement — is treated as secondary, optional, or even distracting. This reveals a structural bias: inclusion is not mutual. Animal rights activists are asked to stretch their ethics across species and systems, while others remain comfortably within anthropocentric boundaries… The concept of collective liberation is often invoked to justify the expectation that animal rights activists should integrate human […]

UNBOUNDED: Jane Goodall saw nature as a spiritual sanctuary

When asked whether she identified with a particular faith tradition, Jane Goodall smiled impishly and replied, “Is the forest not a cathedral? For me, it is, with its canopies of trees and beautiful lights.” For her, the sacred was not confined to ritual spaces; it was alive in root and branch, in the luminous weave of life itself. That was Jane Goodall’s genius: an eloquence that dissolved boundaries between science and spirit, between human and animal, between nature as backdrop and nature as sanctuary… It was the summer of 2000, at the United Nations’ World Peace Summit of Religious and […]