I think it doesn't really matter too much in the end, because by far the greatest proportion of funding goes to reformism.
We can't get to thinking about questions of abolitionist reforms or "pure" abolition without first asking fundamental questions about the unjust foundations of animal advocacy that simply funnel people into "frankenchicken" campaigning, or adjusting the gas in the pig slaughtering system. The alternative to this is some sort of "veg" or less meat promotion (reducetarianism).
Abolition v welfare doesn't even cut it, because many "new welfare" organisations simply say they're working towards abolition when they're collaborating with industry, and getting tens of millions of pounds to do so. Or we're being sold magic bullets like lab meat that ought to have been on supermarket shelves years ago.
One of the problems is funding, another that follows is disenfranchisement, and what it means to be outside Singer's "big tent", and the nonprofits (Effective Altruist), influencers, media, think tanks, "thought leaders", that drive that inequitable system which is based on promoting a monoculture of alignment, rather than plurality and critical thinking.
Hi Kevin, thanks for sharing and for your frankness.
We think that a lot of what you've named isn't unique to our movement. Most social justice movements wrestle with funding and power shaping which strategies get amplified, and which get sidelined as 'too pure' or 'not pragmatic enough'. Even looking at historical movements, this tension shows up well beyond just funding.
At Project Phoenix, where we find inspiration isn't in solving some of these issues top-down, but in building from the bottom-up - a network of local, self-sufficient animal freedom groups who aren't dependent on big funders, and who can pursue what feels both practical and radical for their own context. That's why a key workstream of Project Phoenix is the Animal Freedom Network. We think this kind of plurality is fundamental to creating dynamic and strategic freedom movements that can go the distance: lots of different groups testing different approaches, rather than one funded model deciding what is the most 'effective' approach.
We also are seeing a lot more collaboration and strategic thinking happening in other corners of the movement ecosystem, which we're excited about. But you're right, a lot more plurality, creativity and critical thinking from different perspectives is needed.
We'd love to hear your thoughts on how this could be addressed?
Thank you so much for this article. It's given me a new way to look at welfare reforms-- something I (as a sort of pragmatic abolitionist) struggle with. The question you pose --“Would this reform make the bigger fight of animal freedom easier or harder in the long term?” is key to how we should proceed with any campaign. (And I’ve ordered a copy of This is an Uprising.)
Thanks so much, Ginny. We'd love to hear your thoughts on This is an Uprising once you've read it. Another book we'd recommend is Practical Radicals: Seven Strategies to Change the World (although we're not fans of their underdog/overdog analogy for obvious reasons).
A brilliant article expressing many of the issues I’ve struggled with our efforts to end animal harm, then wondering if we’ve unintentionally made the situation worse. Unintended consequences seem to be an unnamed enemy until now so I’m glad we can recognise and organise our thinking as you suggest. I do worry about “effectiveness” as it relates to the animal movement. Do orgs like EA do more harm than good?
Thanks Emma. From the comments we're getting on here, as well as direct messages, it sounds like a lot of people are concerned that some efforts have or could unintentionally make things harder for our movement in the long term. And we think this is something every freedom movement should always be holding front of mind when planning campaigns or deciding on asks.
On EA - this is an approach rather than a single org, so it depends on who's applying it and how. Its 'cost effectiveness' framing has helped to move money towards farmed animal issues, which has been historically underfunded. And it has helped direct money to building movement capacity in neglected global regions. But the same framing of being 'cost effective' means it tends to favour measurable, short-term wins over harder-to-model (and measure) system change and narrative change that happens over longer timeframes, and is fundamental to durable change. So we'd say it depends on the campaign/ask and the story it's telling, rather than whether something is 'EA' or not.
Often, it's only with hindsight that we know if something is truly 'effective'. But we think there's a lot to learn from other freedom movements, as well as trying to take a long-term perspective when thinking about campaigns and asks, and whether they can help weaken the system and shift the narrative to achieve durable change.
I agree with this, but also find it hard to measure. How do you know a particular welfare campaign will help the industry and not damage it in the long term? It is also the case that welfare campaigns don't complete and then everyone goes home. They work on the next campaign. So I find all this difficult to judge even though what you have laid out here is nice in theory.
We agree with what you say. There isn't a clean formula to any of this, and social change is always going to be complex and messy. We often can't know for certain in advance - we can only make the best strategic judgement possible with the information available at the time.
The four questions we offer - as a way to determine if a campaign or approach could be strategic - are more of a filter to help sharpen thinking and take a longer-term perspective, not a guarantee of an outcome. Some of this is only really knowable with hindsight - or even debatable in hindsight!
On campaigns not stopping and 'going home' - that's a good point, and it's actually part of what 'movement power' is trying to capture: not just what one campaign wins, but what capacity, relationships and public understanding it leaves behind for the next stage.
So yes, in practice this is messy and contested. But we think it's better to have organisations debating which asks can weaken the system and which might unintentionally strengthen it, rather than not asking the question at all. We think debate and critical analysis is a sign of a healthy and dynamic social movement, which can help us be more creative, experimental and innovative as a movement.
Another stonking article full of measured thought provoking debate.
Re:
“They urge pragmatists to think bigger, and radicals to stay practical rather than pure.”
I struggle greatly with pragmatism as I believe it’s holding up the world. I have stopped apologising for being an abolitionist. It was the mighty and great Karen Davis, who founded United Poultry Concerns who helped me on this journey.
If I were to be pragmatic, there is relief in a welfarist approach but I struggle with accepting that farmed animals are treated marginally better but the end result is misery and slaughter.
Your articles also greatly help - thank you PJ - you are all fab!
Thanks so much, Sarah. We're glad to hear our articles help.
We understand where you're coming from, and it's something we grapple with too. We're still on a journey with all this (and still have so much to learn). We think it's about finding that sweet spot between meeting people where they're at and seeing how far we can take them, in a way that doesn't feel like we're forsaking what we believe or doing a disservice to our animal cousins.
There's another great book, Practical Radicals (https://practicalradicals.org), that dives into this tension too. It defines practical radicals as "organizers who hold big visions for transforming society and are willing to do what it takes to win in the real world", which requires avoiding the dangers of both pragmatism and utopianism.
We don't think it's about seeing an approach as strictly 'welfarist' or 'abolitionist', but asking of any campaign or ask: can this communicate an important piece of the vision and help weaken the system in some way? Pure pragmatism risks settling for what's easy, whereas pure utopianism risks never landing with audiences and feeling implausible. So we definitely need to be practical while still being as radical as it's possible to be.
This is key. Animal welfare work isn't inherently wrong, but it has to be situated within a broader framework of abolition. Thank you for this!
"In the animal freedom movement, we often judge demands by whether they sound ‘abolitionist’ or ‘welfarist’. But that binary isn’t always useful.
Achieving a ‘welfare’ demand can reduce suffering while also weakening the system that produces it. Or it can provide false reassurance to the public, reinforce unhelpful narratives, and help the system adapt.
Achieving an ‘abolitionist’ demand can expand the horizon of what people believe is possible. Or it can be merely symbolic if it alienates key audiences, doesn’t build movement power, or doesn’t create openings for further progress."
Thanks Lauri. We totally agree with you that it's more useful to see how welfare asks can fit within a broader framework of abolition. Thanks for sharing that.
I believe the animal welfare industrial complex is now among the greatest obstacles to making even the smallest progress towards changing how we view other animals.
An example of how insidious this kind of campaigning is: bird killers in the UK are using welfare reforms as an excuse to expand their operations.
"UK looks to relax planning rules for factory farms after industry lobbying" - The Guardian
"The industry says it needs more space to house chickens due to voluntary commitments to lower stocking density. Critics say these welfare commitments are voluntary and planning conditions do not guarantee lower stocking densities will be maintained over the long term."
“This requires additional space to simply bring us back – in bird numbers – to where we were previously."
That animal agriculture is actually a threat to food security isn't something animal protection organizations spend much effort informing people of.
You can be sure that once they have their Lebensraum, and the environmental crises start to seriously affect the food system, they will again invoke food security to undo the relevant welfare reforms. Which they can do whenever they want.
I'm well past giving APO's and effective altruists the benefit of the doubt. They campaign in a way that degrades other animals and takes their status as objects for granted, while handing their exploiters win after win.
Hi Michael, thanks for commenting and sharing your insights.
Thanks also for sharing that Guardian piece. It's a current example of exactly the dynamic we flagged with the Better Chicken Commitment - welfare commitments being used to justify expanding the system's capacity, with no guarantee the welfare gains even hold long-term. And we agree that some campaigns frame animals in a way that can reinforce harmful narratives, rather than helpful ones. You're right that this risk isn't limited to orgs that only want 'better welfare' - it can happen even when the intent is animal freedom, which is exactly why we think the strategic test matters.
That said, we do think there's a distinction worth making. Some organisations' vision is better welfare, full stop. Others believe in animal freedom and see welfare reforms as steps towards it - even if those steps sometimes backfire, just as abolitionist campaigns sometimes can too. This article is referring to that second group (those focused on animal freedom), regardless of the approach they take.
We wouldn't consider welfare-only orgs as part of the animal freedom movement (given that freedom isn't their mission), but we'd still see them as important allies on specific campaigns that many groups can unite behind.
Ending animal factories is one example of an ask we think is both practical and radical. It doesn't end all exploitation, but it's a crucial milestone on the way there.
Thanks for the Humane Myth link. We're fans of a lot of their work (as well as the documentary they helped produce - Peaceable Kingdom).
Yes, Peaceable Kingdom is an excellent documentary. Thank you for your reply.
IMO factory farming discourse has legitimated the system as a whole, and I don't see it as a stepping stone to abolition. How is ending 'intensive' exploitation, specifically, even feasible?
Most people will say they're against it, but in the US, for instance 99% of farmed animals are exploited in these systems.
Also, many APO's who express vague abolitionist sentiments ally themselves with animal killer interest groups. Take Global Food Partners, a "proud" board member of the International Poultry Welfare Alliance, whose Impact Incentives are endorsed by some of the largest APO's in the world.
I've asked a number of them, including GFP themselves, about their association with some of the world's most violent animal killers, but they either sidestep the issue or ignore it altogether. Something very cynical is going on here.
Can you please tell me how large you believe this second, sincere group to be, and who are they exactly?
Thanks for sharing. We think there's validity to your opinion that factory farming discourse can legitimise the system as a whole, by reinforcing the narrative that there's a 'right' way and a 'wrong' way to farm and kill animals. We think it's strategic for the movement to stay mindful of this. At Project Phoenix, we're in the planning stages of research exploring how campaigns against factory farming can point to greater change beyond that, rather than risk being seen as the final destination.
From research we've been part of, most UK participants support ending factory farming, but far fewer support ending all farming of animals. So building public support for meaningful change means meeting people where they're at and seeing how far we can take them. We see ending animal factories as a vital way to shrink and weaken a harmful system and let more animal-friendly alternatives emerge and establish, and then shift the status quo.
We're curious - if you don't see ending factory farming/animal factories as a stepping stone, and don't see ending 'intensive' exploitation as feasible, how do you see animal freedom as achievable? What do you see as the necessary stepping stones for getting there?
We understand your concern about organisations forming alliances with parts of the system, and how that can lend it greater legitimacy. Our next blog post actually explores this very issue, as it's related to a campaign we're involved with.
On sizing and naming the 'sincere' second group - we don't think we're best placed to do that, when we're not privy to other organisations' strategy meetings and detailed theories of change. We don't think 'sincerity' is necessarily verifiable from a mission statement or website, and it's more about whether an org's actual asks and alliances track toward reduced scale and reduced legitimacy for the system. That's part of why we keep coming back to the strategic test, rather than a "who's really abolitionist" test.
We have seen many organisations adopt a plurality of approaches within their own campaigning - some asks pushing for a complete end to something, others pushing for reforms to the system. Some orgs are more overtly 'abolitionist' than others, but many still point towards a future where all animals are respected and protected by law. We think different degrees of overtness likely appeal to different audience segments, and we think a range of approaches across many orgs/groups is needed to engage a wider cross-section of people.
I think it doesn't really matter too much in the end, because by far the greatest proportion of funding goes to reformism.
We can't get to thinking about questions of abolitionist reforms or "pure" abolition without first asking fundamental questions about the unjust foundations of animal advocacy that simply funnel people into "frankenchicken" campaigning, or adjusting the gas in the pig slaughtering system. The alternative to this is some sort of "veg" or less meat promotion (reducetarianism).
Abolition v welfare doesn't even cut it, because many "new welfare" organisations simply say they're working towards abolition when they're collaborating with industry, and getting tens of millions of pounds to do so. Or we're being sold magic bullets like lab meat that ought to have been on supermarket shelves years ago.
One of the problems is funding, another that follows is disenfranchisement, and what it means to be outside Singer's "big tent", and the nonprofits (Effective Altruist), influencers, media, think tanks, "thought leaders", that drive that inequitable system which is based on promoting a monoculture of alignment, rather than plurality and critical thinking.
Hi Kevin, thanks for sharing and for your frankness.
We think that a lot of what you've named isn't unique to our movement. Most social justice movements wrestle with funding and power shaping which strategies get amplified, and which get sidelined as 'too pure' or 'not pragmatic enough'. Even looking at historical movements, this tension shows up well beyond just funding.
At Project Phoenix, where we find inspiration isn't in solving some of these issues top-down, but in building from the bottom-up - a network of local, self-sufficient animal freedom groups who aren't dependent on big funders, and who can pursue what feels both practical and radical for their own context. That's why a key workstream of Project Phoenix is the Animal Freedom Network. We think this kind of plurality is fundamental to creating dynamic and strategic freedom movements that can go the distance: lots of different groups testing different approaches, rather than one funded model deciding what is the most 'effective' approach.
We also are seeing a lot more collaboration and strategic thinking happening in other corners of the movement ecosystem, which we're excited about. But you're right, a lot more plurality, creativity and critical thinking from different perspectives is needed.
We'd love to hear your thoughts on how this could be addressed?
Thank you so much for this article. It's given me a new way to look at welfare reforms-- something I (as a sort of pragmatic abolitionist) struggle with. The question you pose --“Would this reform make the bigger fight of animal freedom easier or harder in the long term?” is key to how we should proceed with any campaign. (And I’ve ordered a copy of This is an Uprising.)
Thanks so much, Ginny. We'd love to hear your thoughts on This is an Uprising once you've read it. Another book we'd recommend is Practical Radicals: Seven Strategies to Change the World (although we're not fans of their underdog/overdog analogy for obvious reasons).
A brilliant article expressing many of the issues I’ve struggled with our efforts to end animal harm, then wondering if we’ve unintentionally made the situation worse. Unintended consequences seem to be an unnamed enemy until now so I’m glad we can recognise and organise our thinking as you suggest. I do worry about “effectiveness” as it relates to the animal movement. Do orgs like EA do more harm than good?
Thanks Emma. From the comments we're getting on here, as well as direct messages, it sounds like a lot of people are concerned that some efforts have or could unintentionally make things harder for our movement in the long term. And we think this is something every freedom movement should always be holding front of mind when planning campaigns or deciding on asks.
On EA - this is an approach rather than a single org, so it depends on who's applying it and how. Its 'cost effectiveness' framing has helped to move money towards farmed animal issues, which has been historically underfunded. And it has helped direct money to building movement capacity in neglected global regions. But the same framing of being 'cost effective' means it tends to favour measurable, short-term wins over harder-to-model (and measure) system change and narrative change that happens over longer timeframes, and is fundamental to durable change. So we'd say it depends on the campaign/ask and the story it's telling, rather than whether something is 'EA' or not.
Often, it's only with hindsight that we know if something is truly 'effective'. But we think there's a lot to learn from other freedom movements, as well as trying to take a long-term perspective when thinking about campaigns and asks, and whether they can help weaken the system and shift the narrative to achieve durable change.
I agree with this, but also find it hard to measure. How do you know a particular welfare campaign will help the industry and not damage it in the long term? It is also the case that welfare campaigns don't complete and then everyone goes home. They work on the next campaign. So I find all this difficult to judge even though what you have laid out here is nice in theory.
Hi Josh, thanks for your comment.
We agree with what you say. There isn't a clean formula to any of this, and social change is always going to be complex and messy. We often can't know for certain in advance - we can only make the best strategic judgement possible with the information available at the time.
The four questions we offer - as a way to determine if a campaign or approach could be strategic - are more of a filter to help sharpen thinking and take a longer-term perspective, not a guarantee of an outcome. Some of this is only really knowable with hindsight - or even debatable in hindsight!
On campaigns not stopping and 'going home' - that's a good point, and it's actually part of what 'movement power' is trying to capture: not just what one campaign wins, but what capacity, relationships and public understanding it leaves behind for the next stage.
So yes, in practice this is messy and contested. But we think it's better to have organisations debating which asks can weaken the system and which might unintentionally strengthen it, rather than not asking the question at all. We think debate and critical analysis is a sign of a healthy and dynamic social movement, which can help us be more creative, experimental and innovative as a movement.
Another stonking article full of measured thought provoking debate.
Re:
“They urge pragmatists to think bigger, and radicals to stay practical rather than pure.”
I struggle greatly with pragmatism as I believe it’s holding up the world. I have stopped apologising for being an abolitionist. It was the mighty and great Karen Davis, who founded United Poultry Concerns who helped me on this journey.
If I were to be pragmatic, there is relief in a welfarist approach but I struggle with accepting that farmed animals are treated marginally better but the end result is misery and slaughter.
Your articles also greatly help - thank you PJ - you are all fab!
Thanks so much, Sarah. We're glad to hear our articles help.
We understand where you're coming from, and it's something we grapple with too. We're still on a journey with all this (and still have so much to learn). We think it's about finding that sweet spot between meeting people where they're at and seeing how far we can take them, in a way that doesn't feel like we're forsaking what we believe or doing a disservice to our animal cousins.
There's another great book, Practical Radicals (https://practicalradicals.org), that dives into this tension too. It defines practical radicals as "organizers who hold big visions for transforming society and are willing to do what it takes to win in the real world", which requires avoiding the dangers of both pragmatism and utopianism.
We don't think it's about seeing an approach as strictly 'welfarist' or 'abolitionist', but asking of any campaign or ask: can this communicate an important piece of the vision and help weaken the system in some way? Pure pragmatism risks settling for what's easy, whereas pure utopianism risks never landing with audiences and feeling implausible. So we definitely need to be practical while still being as radical as it's possible to be.
Thanks for reading and sharing your insights.
This is key. Animal welfare work isn't inherently wrong, but it has to be situated within a broader framework of abolition. Thank you for this!
"In the animal freedom movement, we often judge demands by whether they sound ‘abolitionist’ or ‘welfarist’. But that binary isn’t always useful.
Achieving a ‘welfare’ demand can reduce suffering while also weakening the system that produces it. Or it can provide false reassurance to the public, reinforce unhelpful narratives, and help the system adapt.
Achieving an ‘abolitionist’ demand can expand the horizon of what people believe is possible. Or it can be merely symbolic if it alienates key audiences, doesn’t build movement power, or doesn’t create openings for further progress."
Thanks Lauri. We totally agree with you that it's more useful to see how welfare asks can fit within a broader framework of abolition. Thanks for sharing that.
Thank you for sharing this perspective.
I believe the animal welfare industrial complex is now among the greatest obstacles to making even the smallest progress towards changing how we view other animals.
An example of how insidious this kind of campaigning is: bird killers in the UK are using welfare reforms as an excuse to expand their operations.
"UK looks to relax planning rules for factory farms after industry lobbying" - The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/apr/02/uk-looks-to-relax-planning-rules-for-factory-farms-after-industry-lobbying
"The industry says it needs more space to house chickens due to voluntary commitments to lower stocking density. Critics say these welfare commitments are voluntary and planning conditions do not guarantee lower stocking densities will be maintained over the long term."
“This requires additional space to simply bring us back – in bird numbers – to where we were previously."
That animal agriculture is actually a threat to food security isn't something animal protection organizations spend much effort informing people of.
You can be sure that once they have their Lebensraum, and the environmental crises start to seriously affect the food system, they will again invoke food security to undo the relevant welfare reforms. Which they can do whenever they want.
I'm well past giving APO's and effective altruists the benefit of the doubt. They campaign in a way that degrades other animals and takes their status as objects for granted, while handing their exploiters win after win.
Animal welfare industrial complex
https://www.humanemyth.org/glossary/1025.htm
Hi Michael, thanks for commenting and sharing your insights.
Thanks also for sharing that Guardian piece. It's a current example of exactly the dynamic we flagged with the Better Chicken Commitment - welfare commitments being used to justify expanding the system's capacity, with no guarantee the welfare gains even hold long-term. And we agree that some campaigns frame animals in a way that can reinforce harmful narratives, rather than helpful ones. You're right that this risk isn't limited to orgs that only want 'better welfare' - it can happen even when the intent is animal freedom, which is exactly why we think the strategic test matters.
That said, we do think there's a distinction worth making. Some organisations' vision is better welfare, full stop. Others believe in animal freedom and see welfare reforms as steps towards it - even if those steps sometimes backfire, just as abolitionist campaigns sometimes can too. This article is referring to that second group (those focused on animal freedom), regardless of the approach they take.
We wouldn't consider welfare-only orgs as part of the animal freedom movement (given that freedom isn't their mission), but we'd still see them as important allies on specific campaigns that many groups can unite behind.
Ending animal factories is one example of an ask we think is both practical and radical. It doesn't end all exploitation, but it's a crucial milestone on the way there.
Thanks for the Humane Myth link. We're fans of a lot of their work (as well as the documentary they helped produce - Peaceable Kingdom).
Yes, Peaceable Kingdom is an excellent documentary. Thank you for your reply.
IMO factory farming discourse has legitimated the system as a whole, and I don't see it as a stepping stone to abolition. How is ending 'intensive' exploitation, specifically, even feasible?
Most people will say they're against it, but in the US, for instance 99% of farmed animals are exploited in these systems.
Also, many APO's who express vague abolitionist sentiments ally themselves with animal killer interest groups. Take Global Food Partners, a "proud" board member of the International Poultry Welfare Alliance, whose Impact Incentives are endorsed by some of the largest APO's in the world.
https://globalfoodpartners.com/projects/impact-incentives-ngos
I've asked a number of them, including GFP themselves, about their association with some of the world's most violent animal killers, but they either sidestep the issue or ignore it altogether. Something very cynical is going on here.
Can you please tell me how large you believe this second, sincere group to be, and who are they exactly?
Hi Michael
Thanks for sharing. We think there's validity to your opinion that factory farming discourse can legitimise the system as a whole, by reinforcing the narrative that there's a 'right' way and a 'wrong' way to farm and kill animals. We think it's strategic for the movement to stay mindful of this. At Project Phoenix, we're in the planning stages of research exploring how campaigns against factory farming can point to greater change beyond that, rather than risk being seen as the final destination.
From research we've been part of, most UK participants support ending factory farming, but far fewer support ending all farming of animals. So building public support for meaningful change means meeting people where they're at and seeing how far we can take them. We see ending animal factories as a vital way to shrink and weaken a harmful system and let more animal-friendly alternatives emerge and establish, and then shift the status quo.
We're curious - if you don't see ending factory farming/animal factories as a stepping stone, and don't see ending 'intensive' exploitation as feasible, how do you see animal freedom as achievable? What do you see as the necessary stepping stones for getting there?
We understand your concern about organisations forming alliances with parts of the system, and how that can lend it greater legitimacy. Our next blog post actually explores this very issue, as it's related to a campaign we're involved with.
On sizing and naming the 'sincere' second group - we don't think we're best placed to do that, when we're not privy to other organisations' strategy meetings and detailed theories of change. We don't think 'sincerity' is necessarily verifiable from a mission statement or website, and it's more about whether an org's actual asks and alliances track toward reduced scale and reduced legitimacy for the system. That's part of why we keep coming back to the strategic test, rather than a "who's really abolitionist" test.
We have seen many organisations adopt a plurality of approaches within their own campaigning - some asks pushing for a complete end to something, others pushing for reforms to the system. Some orgs are more overtly 'abolitionist' than others, but many still point towards a future where all animals are respected and protected by law. We think different degrees of overtness likely appeal to different audience segments, and we think a range of approaches across many orgs/groups is needed to engage a wider cross-section of people.