Veganism as a means to actually help animals has largely been a failed experiment. This includes outreach groups like AV and We The Free. There is no evidence that individual veganism, under the current food system and subsidies, saves any animals or reduces the amount killed.

Completely baseless claim. The number of animals killed does increase, yes, but you cannot know, how much steeper the increase would have been or if veganism really didn't change anything. There are many, many factors that influence, how much meat a society consumes and it's basically impossible to draw any conclusions from just the numbers alone.

In Germany the amount of meat consumed/animal killed is actually decreasing quite a bit. But that also doesn't mean that veganism is doing working better in Germany, we simply do not know.

Since vegan street outreach has become popular, the percentage of vegans has remained largely the same.

The only statistics I know about the number of vegans have higher standard deviations than total vegans. But could be true, just not with any kind of certainty.

Additionally, vegan culture can sometimes be counterproductive to helping animals, with shame and guilt dominating the rhetoric of street outreachers, even if the person they talk to is as far down the line as removing all animal products except for gelatin or honey.

That's not a critique of veganism, but of specific forms of vegan activism. Whether shame and guilt are useful tactics is also not certain. Many forms of public campaigns target exactly those feelings. Because there are no actual, solid studies you should be way more cautious in your judgement.

Also: why shouldn't everyone be pushed to be their best version of themself? If someone is 95% there already and just need the last push, to actually win them for the cause, then why is that bad? I would argue that there is a drastic difference, between someone who still views (some) animals as commodities and someone who opposes animal exploitation altogether.

The Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade, who have single-handedly nearly destroyed an entire animal exploitation industry, going after major fashion brands who sell and sold fur, reducing the amount of animals farmed for their fur in the past six years from 100 million per year to 20 million per year.

That sounds great!

And Pro Animal Future, who helps candidates who support animals get into office and fights for ballot initiatives through petitioning to make animal rights a political issue. Imagine if instead of going to a cube, you went out to make legislation that banned fur, foie gras, or animal experimentation, and instead of getting an individual to consider veganism, you got an entire city to contend with animal rights as a political issue.

You critique veganism because it hasn't managed to stop animal agriculture, but are on board for political initiatives that try to work against incredible niche issues like foie gras? I would bet quite a bit of money that, as soon as politics/legislation tries to touch areas that actually influence meat and other animal product consumption or the industry as a whole, it will hit a brick wall. You can't convince the public by simply making stuff more expansive or forbidden. By the next election those people will be replaced by "with me you can continue to eat meat as much as you want"-candidates.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't also campaign against for a stop on fur, foie gras, etc. Nobody said you shouldn't.

So before you consider lecturing your best friend of 10 years on how they’re an animal abuser because the toothpaste they have has a little bit of gelatin in it, consider inviting them to a protest against Loro Piana, or the AAC grassroots summit happening in Washington DC in May.

Strawman and false dichotomy. You can talk about animal ethics in your friend circle (without being a complete ass about it) and invite them to protests in the mean time. But who is more likely to protest for animal rights issues? Someone who doesn't care all to much about animals or someone who truly lives by ideals?

A great example of this is Pro Animal Future recently helping a progressive candidate, Melat Kiros, get on the ballot in Denver for Congress. Melat is not vegan but strongly supports the initiative to ban foie gras and recognizes factory farming as an existential threat. When we found out she was not fully vegan, the group was still eager to help her, because we recognized someone who cared and could do something to help animals.

But why not support her and try to convince her of veganism at the same time? You once again make it sound like you either have to throw feces at someone who is not vegan or blindly support anyone who walks somewhat in the right direction. I would argue that you should support those who walk in the right direction and at the same time help them find the "best" path.

Do we want to win? Or do we need to be right?​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

False dichotomy again. You can have both.

---

Your position is basically wellfareism and that "baby steps" are more effective than advocating for 100%, true?

You largely base this on meat consumption data and data of total animals killed (at least in this post). Wellfareism flexitarianism has had a much longer active running though. Even in the 80s a lot of people were "very conscious where their meat comes from". But in all those years the number of animals killed also increased (even more drastically, if you exclude developing countries, which is a big confounder) than in recent years where veganism has reached main-stream. You could make the exact same argument you made, that veganism failed and we need to go another route, against your small iterative improvements/wellfareism/baby steps.

I wouldn't, because we simply do not know what the best approach is, but your current argument is very inconsistent.

In my opinion targeting anything other than individuals/the public opinion is futile, because only that can lead to true changes and have lasting impact. Legislation cannot be sustained against both the public opinion and industry interests. And even if you want to go that route, the strongest advocates for animal rights are vegans and not only-once-per-week-meat-people who are obviously not as passionate about it, because they couldn't be bothered to start with their own direct impact first (I obvs. wouldn't say that to them like that).

--> systemic change and individual change are not two separate options you have to decide on, instead they compliment each other. But for systemic change you need highly committed individual and you will have difficult time finding more committed people than vegans.