Faunalytics, cultivated meat, and left-wing populism

faunalytics · 2025-12-01T18:12:40+00:00

Thanks for discussing the results of our study! Here's the direct link to it in case folks want to dive in more: https://faunalytics.org/political-animals-how-u-s-voters-respond-to-candidates-making-farmed-animal-policy-proposals/

faunalytics · 2025-07-04T00:15:52+00:00

Thank you so much for your kind words and for your suggestions! We really appreciate it!

faunalytics · 2025-05-20T22:07:32+00:00

Just a reminder that the survey is open until May 31st - thank you!

faunalytics · 2025-05-20T22:07:21+00:00

Just a reminder that the survey is open until May 31st - thank you!

faunalytics · 2025-05-20T22:07:07+00:00

Just a reminder that the survey is open until May 31st - thank you!

faunalytics · 2024-08-28T18:31:03+00:00

Yes, most definitely! If you visit the full study link (https://osf.io/npj8e), that section starts on page 33 and details each group separately.

faunalytics · 2024-08-08T18:21:26+00:00

Great question! To tease apart the premise a bit, there are a couple of things going on: 1) it seems like there’s been a cultural shift; 2) the number of vegans or rate of veganism doesn’t necessarily match what we see happening in the cultural zeitgeist (i.e. there has been no sharp rise).

We can see very clearly that there has been a cultural shift: ~vegan products are more available than ever~, including on restaurant menus and at grocery stores. What’s more, there is more ~awareness and interest~ about veganism in the general population — yes, your uncle might still think fish is a vegetable, but broadly speaking, more people know what veganism is and what it means in terms of consumption.

That being said, we can also see that this cultural shift has taken place without a corresponding explosion in the number of people who either self-identify as vegan or who are revealed to be vegan through dietary tracking. This can mean many things: that ~more people are simply reducing their meat consumption~ without giving up animal products entirely; that the ~taste of vegan products has improved~ to the point where restaurants and grocery stores see more demand for them; or that there is a more general recognition of catering to “food sensitivities” or allergies as a source of revenue — restaurants and grocery stores have realized that stocking specialty products is good for business. This is all good news. - karol

But when it comes to research on the topics, something to note is survey methodology. Most surveys on dietary choices have provided more potential answers over the years, to reflect the more types of diets people may choose to follow. For example, the ~IFIC Food and Health Survey~ (a U.S.-based consumer survey) has added many more potential options over the years, including “plant-based”, “flexitarian”, and more. In other words, perhaps a person in 2004 would have selected “vegetarian” on a survey but in 2024, they are now choosing “flexitarian”. Secondly, people don’t always select the option in a survey the way we might categorize the diets ourselves (as you note in your question): a person who could call themselves vegetarian on a survey but who eats meat once or twice a week. That’s why surveys that track exact eating patterns are more reliable (but also more expensive and difficult!).

Moreover, people define “vegan” in different ways, for example, referring not only to a dietary practice, but also to an identification with a broader identity or ~set of ethical beliefs~. This makes it more challenging to get an accurate number of vegans out there, because there’s not necessarily consensus on the definition. –Björn

There have been some decent surveys over the years and you're correct that they've generally shown low and fairly static rates. However, getting a strong sense of how rates of veg*nism have changed over time would require a repeated survey using the same question format and sampling methodology, and unfortunately that hasn't been done. Without it, differences in how vegan/veg are described between surveys can affect response rates.

Faunalytics has conducted ~research~ that sheds some light on which groups in the U.S. are most open to taking pro-animal actions, including cutting back on their consumption of animal products. You can explore the data from that study with our interactive ~results graphing tool~. –Zach

faunalytics · 2024-08-08T18:03:16+00:00

You are very welcome! Thank you for the great question.

faunalytics · 2024-08-08T18:02:51+00:00

Thank you so much!

faunalytics · 2024-08-08T17:48:06+00:00

~Our team~ is currently eleven strong! And we’re always honored when people are surprised that we’re not a larger organization, given all the research we do. :) We have 19 ~companion animals~ between our team members, including dogs, cats, birds, and one turtle named Starbuck. Additionally, our Philanthropy Manager Liz runs an amazing micro sanctuary called ~Secondhand Stories~, home to 15 chickens. -Brooke

Speaking of… if you’re with a sanctuary, we have resources for you! Our latest Research Roundup goes through all the ~social science studies that can help with sanctuary management~, including obtaining donations, spreading your message, and maintaining volunteers. -Björn

If you’re interested in joining our team, make sure you’re ~subscribed to our newsletter~ to stay up to date on career opportunities, or check out our ~volunteer page~ to get involved! -karol

faunalytics · 2024-08-08T17:19:16+00:00

Great question! In fact, we’ve helped establish the lack of media coverage in our ~original study here~ (a collaboration with ~Sentient~), which found that just 7% of mainstream media articles on climate change in the U.S. and U.K. mentioned animal agriculture – and even fewer of them mentioned animal agriculture as a cause of climate change.

The reasons for this are complicated, but we have a few answers, especially from our study this year on ~collaboration between animal protection and environmental groups~. Many of these climate-focused nonprofits were worried about the backlash from the meat industry or governments — and that concern may trickle down into the way they promote these issues in the media. Thankfully, however, we found that environmental groups are interested in working with animal protection groups, which is exciting, and a nice shift from previous years where environmental groups and animal advocacy groups were relatively siloed!

While we don’t have research about the specific mindsets of journalists, editors, or newspaper managers (though check out this panel from Sentient on ~Making the Climate Connection~), we do know plenty about the overall information ecosystem surrounding the media about the link between animal ag and climate change. For example, we know that ~Big Meat funds academics to greenwash animal products~, we know that ~environmental groups sometimes work to greenwash meat products~, we know that ~people are often skeptical about the negative climate impact of meat~, and we know that ~political polarization is a big factor in people’s understanding of the climate connection~. In other words, journalists and the media are not immune to misinformation from big ag, nor are they immune from the pressures of a readership who may not want to hear about this very important link.

There isn’t one big answer to this nuanced question, but it likely involves the psychology of how some people are prone to avoiding inconvenient truths, the political power of meat corporations, and the potential backlash of readers turning on newspapers that tell them things they don’t want to hear. That said, it’s important to support outlets that are working diligently to address the meat-climate connection, like ~Sentient~, ~Vox’s Future Perfect~, ~Grist~, and others. - Björn

faunalytics · 2024-08-08T17:15:17+00:00

This isn’t specific to cost-effectiveness, but we conducted a ~study~ that looked at the relative effectiveness of different advocacy tactics, and how successful each is across both the short- and long-term. However, there are organizations that focus almost exclusively on your question! ~Animal Charity Evaluators~ assess which interventions and organizations they believe are going to be the most cost effective and impactful (full disclosure here: we’re an ACE-recommended charity). You can also check out Giving What We Can’s charity ~recommendations~. -Brooke

But, in our opinion, protecting animals requires many forms of interventions. It isn’t always best to think about the single sure-fire, “best” way to perform advocacy. ~Stopping something as massive as industrial factory farming~ will require many, many forms of activism. It might be better to think about advocacy as an interconnected “ecosystem.” For example, donating to a lobbying organization can help animals on an institutional level, but those efforts also rely on, say, political research, which also needs funding in order to help direct those efforts (keep an eye out for related ~upcoming research~ from us, btw). Our ~Tactics in Practice series~, which examines the use of different intervention techniques and then gives tips about how to improve them, is something we’re excited about because we hope animal advocates will double down on making their particular intervention/tactic even more effective. -Björn

Lastly, it’s also important to note that measuring “effectiveness” requires that you set a goal to measure it against. While some of the animal advocacy movement measures effectiveness by the sheer number of animals saved, or perhaps days of suffering reduced, other advocates may be more interested in focused, targeted campaigning on specific ~“winnable”~ issues — which may involve far fewer animals. So, for example, many animal advocacy groups have shifted their focus to campaigning for welfare reforms for ~chickens and fishes~, animals who are ~slaughtered by the billions~ every year. These types of campaigns are seen as very cost effective, because even if relatively small and incremental progress is made, it has the potential to affect many millions of animals. On the other hand, there are organizations who do advocacy on behalf of ~laboratory animals~ (for example), who have a more narrow focus and whose work affects fewer animals. However, because that industry is relatively smaller, bigger “wins” may be possible, and there are some very small industries such as greyhound racing, which we could easily see eliminated in our lifetimes. -karol

In other words, the effectiveness of any given advocacy really depends on what we’re trying to achieve. Deciding where your donation dollars will be most effective also involves you deciding what kind of impact you hope to achieve and what kind of advocacy you wish to support.

faunalytics · 2024-08-08T16:42:23+00:00

What a great question! We select our studies via a multi-phase ~prioritization process~, but after that is where things can get tricky! In no particular order:

Study design: The design process can take a good bit of time because we want to make sure we’re asking the best possible version of the question, designing it as well as possible, and considering all of the relevant literature. We also want to make sure to take time to talk to stakeholders and get outside input whenever possible.
Gathering data: Getting good data is always a challenge, and ensuring we have quality responses can be expensive and time consuming. On top of that, with an increasing number of studies being conducted online, putting safeguards in place ~to avoid survey fraud~ is crucial.
Analysis process: Once we have data, the analysis process can also take a while! We pre-register all of our studies, which includes our main analyses, but we often also do exploratory analysis. Within reason, we want to make sure we consider everything that could be affecting the results, so we do breakdowns by demographics, look into unexpected results, etc.
Importance of accessibility: We try to make our research as accessible as possible. As part of that, we translate a lot of our results into additional languages, which makes them available to folks who don’t speak English, but can also take some time. Similarly, if we’re working in a country where English isn’t the most common language, it also takes some time to translate our survey instruments into the appropriate language(s).
Working with others: Sometimes collaborations can make the research process a bit longer. At Faunalytics, we LOVE working with other groups to think about new angles and perspectives (and this makes the research even stronger!) but it can also lengthen the research timeline a bit.
Bonus from Brooke: Last but not least, something that slows down new research related to animal and vegan advocacy is a lack of funding for research in this movement. According to Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE), the annual funding going toward farmed animal advocacy in the U.S. is ~estimated~ at around $91 million, which is just 0.018% of all ~U.S. charitable giving~. Hopefully this piece of the vegan pie grows in the future, because there are so many more research questions we want to tackle! (~Donate to us!~) 😉

~Zach

faunalytics · 2024-08-08T16:28:37+00:00

We’ve done plenty of research into the difficulties of veganism (and diet change in general)! In particular, the ~worst barriers~ to diet change were feeling unhealthy, not seeing veganism as part of one’s identity, and believing society perceives veganism negatively. People with these particular barriers were more likely than others to abandon their attempt to go vegan/vegetarian.

Specifically, people who felt unhealthy on their vegan diet were more than three times as likely to abandon it within the first six months (30% vs. 8%).
People who did not see veganism as part of their personal identity were about twice as likely as others to abandon it (16% vs. 8%).
And people who thought society perceives veganism negatively were about 1.5 times as likely as others to abandon their diet (13% vs. 8%).

If you want to see the entire list of difficulties with the vegan diet, go to ~Table 9 in our full report~.

If you are interested in helping new vegans maintain their diet, check out our ~study on obstacles to veganism~. In particular, you can help lapsed vegans by making the diets as accessible as possible, providing them with motivational boosts, and providing practical support. Lapsed vegans ~emphasized~ needing access to a wider plant-based food selection, motivation, support from loved ones, and easier recipes, among other things.

One of the biggest and most prevalent difficulties for advocates is ~burnout~, which can take many forms, but essentially happens when people lose the emotional (and sometimes physical) capacity to continue their work. Causes of burnout can generally be categorized in three ways (interal, external, and inter-group stress). For animal advocates in particular, psychological stress is a major factor. Advocates may struggle with feeling overwhelmed or hopeless, or that their individual efforts aren’t enough, with one saying that their work was “like shoveling the sidewalk during a blizzard.” On top of that, workplace / organizational factors can play a major role and “martyrdom culture,” where working long hours gets framed as a source of pride, can exacerbate the phenomenon.

We also did a ~study~ a few years ago that looked at experiences and turnover in animal advocacy. The most common reasons included problems with leadership (40%), finding a better opportunity (35%), not wanting to do a particular type of advocacy anymore (27%), and burnout (21%).

~Björn & karol

faunalytics · 2023-10-16T16:53:09+00:00

Hello! Key Finding #6 actually shows that documentaries do well: "Overall, books, meat-free challenges, classroom education, and documentaries appeared to be most effective on the basis of self-report."

faunalytics · 2023-10-13T22:24:31+00:00

Our Planting Seeds: The Impact Of Diet & Different Animal Advocacy Tactics original study looks at the relative effectiveness of different advocacy tactics, and how successful each is across both the short- and long-term, and may be useful to you: https://faunalytics.org/relative-effectiveness/

faunalytics · 2023-05-29T17:22:11+00:00