When I learned about the true scale of factory farming, I was miserable. I couldn’t believe I’d never given it more thought. What followed was a brief burst of optimism — surely if others knew about this, they'd make the right choices. They didn't. Year after year, factory farming kept growing, people kept eating more animals, and my optimism curdled into bitterness, then anger, then doom.

It felt like only a small fraction of people cared enough to dedicate real energy or resources to this cause. Even among those who did, disagreements outnumbered agreements. Should we give animals a good life on sanctuaries, or prioritize reducing expected suffering at scale? Should we focus on saving lives or averting suffering? And more recently, should we forget Veganuary, or forget Farmkind? For a long time, I used such questions as a purity test — one mismatch in answers and that was it: you didn’t really get the cause.

I suspect I wasn’t alone. Accept this mindset, and bitterness becomes inevitable. We resent those who disagree, retreat into bubbles, and bond over shared ‘vystopia’ (a real subreddit for sharing the dread and dystopia of living in a non-vegan world).

The Golden Era of Cooperation

But step away from the animal movement for a moment, and you’ll find the world is far more cooperative than it seems. Cooperation is so deeply embedded in our societies that we take it for granted.

Consider the routine “double thank-you” moments that fill our lives, exchanges where everyone walks away better off:

How many times have you paid $1 for a cup of coffee and after the clerk said, “Thank you,” you responded, “Thank you”? There’s a wealth of economics wisdom in the weird double thank-you moment. Why does it happen? Because you want the coffee more than the buck, and the store wants the buck more than the coffee. Both of you win.

We live in the golden era of cooperation. We cooperate across greater distances, with an ever-broadening coalition of communities, cultures, societies, and nations — as evidenced by increasing global trade. We even cooperate across time, global debt is just promises between strangers across generations.

But why do win-wins take off? Because when everyone benefits, no one resists. And when no one resists, making progress is easier.

Our world presents countless opportunities to make everyone better off. It’s up to us to adopt this mindset and create win-wins for everyone involved, including animals.

Being an ally doesn’t require shared ideology. We can cooperate with almost anyone. Consider these scenarios where our interests align with unlikely partners:

• Male chick culling: We want to spare male chicks from being killed on their first day of life; egg industries want to use in-ovo sexing to avoid incubating unprofitable chicks. Either way, we spare billions of chicks.

• Factory farm reform: We want fewer animals in factory farms; factory farms want to reduce “excess” deaths from disease so they don’t need to breed replacements. Either way, fewer animals suffer.

• Alternative proteins: We want cultivated meat to displace factory-farmed meat; governments may invest in these technologies for self-reliance and biosecurity. Either way, these projects get funded.

• Consumer adoption: We want consumers to choose plant-based or cultivated meat for moral reasons; many will choose it simply because it’s tasty, cheaper, or nutritious. Either way, what matters is that they choose it.

Once you adopt a win-win mindset, strategic alignments appear everywhere.

But hold on a minute!

Since the win-win mindset is so powerful, it's tempting to think: if only others saw the world this way, we could create so much more impact. But here's the thing, if we could make progress by convincing everyone to see the world our way, we wouldn't need win-win strategies at all!

Not everyone in this cause shares the same principles. Some seek virtue; others seek to maximize utility. If progress for animals required every conservative to become a progressive, every deontologist to become a utilitarian, or every meat-eater to become a vegetarian, I wouldn’t expect much progress at all.

My guess is that a power law applies to advocacy — a small set of pragmatic approaches may drive most of the results. But trying to convert other advocates to these approaches misses the point. People do what they’re motivated to do. The real win-win is that we grow the total impact on reducing animal suffering.

It helps to remember that animal welfare enjoys overwhelming public support.

If we can work with every group on win-wins — inside or outside the animal movement — we may go further and make a bigger difference for animals. Advocates for individual behavior change are allies. So are those donating significant money, resources, or careers. Everyone’s an ally.

I recently made a surprising discovery that people have learned the same few lessons in pursuit of making the world a better place. This post is inspired by this thought-provoking podcast episode by FED, a non-profit working towards expanding economic liberties in India. A lot of this information may be enlightening for others who, like me, were born after the economic liberalization in India.

However, as someone interested in social movements and moral progress, I was fascinated by another realization. Regardless of your endeavor — be it fighting for more economic development, a sustainable future, or better welfare for humans and animals — the same few themes, levers of change, and pitfalls stand out.

I think broadly there are three levers of change:

• Culture sets what people do by default

• Policy sets what people are incentivized to do

• Technology sets what is possible to do at all

Culture

Most of us know how powerful culture is, we’ve felt it. So many of the things we do are really just because of culture. From trivial things like how we greet each other or what colors we prefer to even the big things like our attitudes towards risk or what diets we follow. So many times it feels like a choice we’ve made but can’t seem to pin down the reason we do it.

One of my favorite examples of the power of culture is vegetarianism in India. I wasn’t raised a vegetarian, but I knew many friends who were vegetarian growing up. In most cases, I found the reason for their vegetarianism strange. It was exceedingly rare for any vegetarian I met to cite concern for animals, ethics, or anything intrinsic to them as one of their primary reasons. Apart from the odd person who was motivated by morality or disgust of handling meat, the overwhelming majority usually cited allegiance to their familial practices, rituals, religion, and culture as their only motivation. Back then, as a teenager who made my whole personality about challenging the existing norms, I found such justifications perplexing — and yet it made me realize the power of culture quite early on.

However, I don’t think I’m special to have noticed the power of culture. As they discussed during the podcast, this seems to be the go-to lever for most groups trying to change the status quo of what matters to them.

Many groups start out with the hubris that the Sisyphean task of changing culture is most definitely surmountable, and that they are best poised to make it happen. In fact, most spend their entire lives like Sisyphus attempting to roll the stone of culture up the hill only for the stone to roll back down. Of course, as the famous existentialist philosopher Camus points out, “One must imagine Sisyphus happy”; I too think most people engaged in trying to change culture are actually happy with their act of resistance, and with their attempts to change culture — sometimes even to the detriment of the outcomes that they actually care about. I’ve been there too and I’ve written about some of my lessons here:

The thing about culture though is that no one person or community can really tame it or control it. Things change! Going back to my previous example of vegetarianism, among other factors, the grip of culture on this issue has weakened in India. What I’ve experienced personally through anecdotes also lines up with the data. The per capita meat consumption is rapidly increasing.

Raising awareness about important issues, especially those outside the Overton window, is most definitely an uphill battle. Even still, culture remains a powerful lever, for you never know when the Overton window shifts or what actually gets it to move.

Policy

So many things we pursue in our day to day lives are the results of broad scale incentives at play. Policy, for example, determines what we do for a living (nationwide industrial policies), how much we work (labor laws), where we choose to live (zoning policies), or what we choose to eat (food subsidies).

Since this is such a powerful lever, it is also a closely guarded lever of change (“downstream of culture” - as they mention during the episode).

I still believe policy is a more realistic pathway for issues where there’s majority support — such as ending extreme poverty or reforming factory farming — even if individual behaviors don’t align with these objectives (and perhaps never will).

The thing to realize here is that policies don’t just determine these first order effects of what is or isn’t permitted, they also in fact help shape the incentives that power people.

Another aspect of this lever is that good policies are not intuitive to us most of the time. Policies with the best of intentions can still lead to disastrous outcomes. In economics this is sometimes referred to as “The Cobra Effect”. I found the origin story of this term interesting:

This name was coined by economist Horst Siebert in 2001 based on a historically dubious anecdote taken from the British Raj. According to the story, the British government, concerned about the number of venomous cobras in Delhi, offered a bounty for every dead cobra. Initially, this was a successful strategy; large numbers of snakes were killed for the reward. Eventually, however, people began to breed cobras for the income. When the government became aware of this, the reward program was scrapped, and the cobra breeders set their snakes free, leading to an overall increase in the wild cobra population.

Technology

Technology has consistently enabled a small group of committed individuals to dramatically change the way societies work. This is, after all, what most budding social movements aspire to achieve. What surprises me about this lever is that society leaves it largely unguarded.

For instance, prior to the invention of the printing press, books were expensive and education was a privilege reserved only for the elites. It was the invention of this new technology that actually helped usher in a new era of education and level the playing field. In the modern age, the same argument could be made for the invention of the personal computer, the internet, search, phones, or AI. Every one of these tools has further democratized access to information, freeing us from the limited scope of ideas that were previously constrained by the location of our birth. As many economists have argued, the story of human progress and has mainly been the story of technological progress.

There's nothing new about discounting technology. In the year 1798, the economist Malthus famously predicted that population growth would outpace food production, leading to inevitable cycles of famine, disease, and war. His name is now a pejorative: "The Malthusian Trap”. Of course, his predictions couldn’t be further from the truth, as just this week Our World in Data posted how the opposite has been true for the last half century.

I am most optimistic about the impact of technology on society in the long run. I am positive that technology can help us figure out how to give people what they want without the associated harms or externalities.

The most iconic demonstrations of technological progress have usually been straight lines on a semi-log graph. These are pictures compressing a thousand small improvements. They show how you can make exponential progress on some metric of productivity in a linear amount of time, which is an incredible feat of human ingenuity. Here’s one such graph about a technology that I’m really excited about: in-ovo sexing. This tech helps us eliminate the standard practice of male chick culling in the egg industry.

Caveats to Human and Technological Progress

That being said, conservatively, hundreds of trillions of sentient beings have paid the price for human progress, and this is unlikely to change in the near future. However, I remain optimistic. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that every human isn’t just a stomach but also a brain. The more humans flourish, the more talented people there are to change culture, draft policies, and invent new technologies to address the world's most pressing problems.

Speaking for myself, being able to take care of my basic needs (as well as my family’s needs) always superseded any other global issue. Similarly, apart from the ~15% of the population that lives in the developed world, very basic necessities still motivate the majority of human existence. It's nearly impossible for even the best messages or policies to make someone care about issues like climate change or animal welfare when their primary concern is how to feed and house their family.

Closing Thoughts

What about the interplay of these three levers? New technology has the potential to change culture, which can then help shape policy. A famous example to this effect is the discovery of fossil fuels, which helped humanity move away from whale oil as a primary source of fuel for lighting. This also changed our culture from being whale killers to being conservationist whale watchers, which eventually led to whaling bans almost everywhere.

hu·man: of or characteristic of people’s better qualities, such as kindness or sensitivity.

Being compassionate is literally in our name. I am positive we can advocate, legislate and invent our way towards a kinder and better world.

There’s a better way to think about individual impact: your counterfactual impact i.e. what would happen if you vanished overnight, would your absence be felt by the animals?

Counterintuitively, for the vast majority of people who’ve focused primarily on individual actions, the answer is “not really.” If you’ve already cut out most animal products from your life, you’re avoiding a lot of harm to animals. After all, the lowest harm you can get to in the best case scenario is zero!

Rutger has a good quote about this in his latest book Moral Ambition (highly recommend reading it):

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Not doing harm is great, aligning your actions with your values is also great! But it’s worth thinking beyond that to figure out actions that could actually help even more animals.

The Leverage of Systemic Change

Consider what happens when highly effective advocacy organizations run corporate campaigns. A single successful campaign can change conditions for millions of animals across an entire supply chain.

For example: The Humane League recently won its cage-free campaign against Subway. This may not seem like a big deal, but as a result of this single campaign, 22,000+ Subway outlets will phase out eggs from caged hens by November 1st, 2025, which impacts 340,000+ hens per year each of whom currently lives their entire 12-18 month lives in tiny battery cages.1 That’s significant progress! (If you are skeptical about the impact of going cage-free, I recommend checking out this Our World in Data article: Do better cages or cage-free environments really improve the lives of hens?)

But here’s the remarkable part: if you were a volunteer for THL, this required roughly 1-2 hour of advocacy every month for about ~6 months to win this campaign. Think about that! ~6-12 hours of your time could help improve conditions for 340,000+ hens each year, over their entire lives. No other personal action comes close to this kind of leverage.

Something else I found surprising at the Animal and Vegan Advocacy (AVA) Summit earlier this year is that the farm animal movement runs on roughly ~$200 million per year globally.2 To put that in perspective, that’s 1/20th of what Americans spend on halloween costumes annually! According to Animal Advocacy Careers, there are only about ~800 full-time jobs in animal advocacy worldwide on their job board annually.

This means your contribution, whether it’s money, time, or skills, can have an outsized impact simply because the movement is so resource constrained. Every additional dollar or hour of work can help significantly expand what’s possible.

Lewis Bollard recently gave a TED talk on reforming factory farming and posted a list of actionable steps for individuals interested in making a difference:

1. Advocate: tell the companies you buy from that you expect them to adopt and implement better animal welfare policies. Sign up to advocate with The Humane League here: https://t.co/rWNShuMhpY

2. Lobby: ask your politicians to end the cruelest practices. For Americans, ask Congress to not wipe out state farm animal welfare laws in the upcoming Farm Bill. Take action here: https://t.co/i7SoIgmWCk

3. Donate: fund effective advocacy that is driving changes. One good option is the FarmKind Giving fund: https://t.co/DUN2Jx2V68

4. Work on the issue: devote your career to fighting factory farming. Animal Advocacy Careers is one good resource: https://t.co/z0TwGL66Il

5. Learn more: educate yourself on factory farming and what you can do about it. Watch videos on YouTube, quiz ChatGPT on details, read a book like Animal Liberation Now. Here’s a good video to start with: https://t.co/spZ5yfbXdo

6. Buy fewer factory-farmed products. In the US + Europe, almost all chicken, eggs, and pork are from factory farms. Choose pasture-raised or plant-based alternatives instead.

7. Talk about factory farming. Share videos and podcasts. If you have a public profile, post about it. Factory farming thrives in the dark. So one of the best things you can do is to shine a light on it.

Focus on maximizing your counterfactual impact

When it comes to individual lifestyle changes, your counterfactual impact is capped by the number of animals you personally would have consumed. But in addition (or instead), if you contribute to systemic change through advocacy, donations, or career choices, you can multiply your impact by many orders of magnitude.

I highly encourage you to take action on some of Lewis’ recommendations above. If you have suggestions on how to maximize counterfactual impact, I’d love to hear them!

Share

What's not obvious is that mammals such as cows only produce milk for a short while (usually ~10 months) post pregnancy. This means cows have to be repeatedly impregnated, their calves are separated from them, and if the calves are male, they are often slaughtered.1 When you understand this, it becomes easier to empathize with those who are deeply passionate about advocating against dairy consumption.

Looking back on my own journey, it wasn't until I watched a documentary about the dairy industry in India that I really grasped the widespread nature of this cruelty.2 This led me, like many others, to advocate for an all-or-nothing approach to quitting every animal product, especially dairy.

All through that time, I never paused to wonder: was this disproportionate focus on dairy having as much impact as I had imagined?

Giving up dairy doesn’t spare as many cows as we'd like it to

On average, a US consumer consumes about 660 pounds (or 300 kg) of milk per year,3 counting the milk needed to make various dairy products like cheese and yogurt.

While a typical US dairy cow produces ~24,000 pounds (that’s about ~11,000 kg) of milk in a year — which is roughly from a single pregnancy and lactation cycle.4

This means it would take about ~36 people giving up dairy for an entire year to spare just one cow from a single pregnancy (and one calf from being slaughtered). Or, put another way, a single person would need to avoid dairy for about 36 years to achieve the same reduction.5

By this measure, I have more than a quarter century to go before I can say I've spared a single dairy cow from factory farming, simply because of the huge amount of milk produced by one cow in just one lactation cycle.

Meanwhile, the average American eats the equivalent of a whole chicken roughly every two weeks —that’s around 28 chickens per year.6 Over those same 36 years, that adds up to more than a 1,000 chickens bred and slaughtered in factory farms.

To put this into perspective, try naming the mother cow and her calf. I thought of Gauri and Nandu! Try to think about the suffering they’re spared when someone gives up dairy. Now, try to think of more than a thousand names for all those chickens. Can you picture that? Honestly, I can't even begin to imagine that many names, let alone grasp the scale of their suffering.

Prioritizing advocacy against dairy is also understandable on a biological level. Research shows that our empathy and compassion tend to decrease as the evolutionary distance increases.7 Most people, including many animal advocates, naturally feel more compassion toward mammals—our evolutionary cousins—than toward birds or other vertebrates who are more distantly related to us. This bias isn't necessarily about the number of animals suffering or how intensely they suffer, but about how easily we can connect with them emotionally.

What matters in the end is what works

I am well aware that for many passionate vegan advocates the most important metric in the universe is the total number of vegans. I used to think this way, too. After all, if someone chooses to go vegetarian instead of vegan, that does nothing for this metric regardless of how many animals are spared from their suffering.

But I’ve come to realize that what truly matters to animals is the outcome of our actions, not our intentions or ideals. The most important question then is: are fewer animals suffering in factory farms because of what we’re doing? Animals don’t care about how pure our motives are. To them, what matters is whether they are suffering less. Hence, advocating for whatever is most likely to result in a helpful change for animals is what matters.

Ultimately, even if our goal is to make a big difference for cows specifically, it might actually be more effective to focus on systemic changes. For example, pushing corporations to drop plant milk surcharges, supporting the development of alternative milk technologies (like plant-based, precision fermentation, or cultivated dairy) to displace huge volumes of milk, and fighting for legislative reforms in factory farming. Each of these actions can have a much larger impact—way beyond just sparing Gauri and Nandu.

PS:

If you are interested to learn about the suffering per serving of animal products, others have famously calculated the relative scale of these numbers a long time ago.

Share Feeding Progress

Background on Progress Studies

Progress studies is an intellectual movement that emerged from a recognition that human prosperity has increased dramatically over the past few centuries, yet we lack a systematic understanding of how and why this occurred. This idea was proposed by Tyler Cowen and Patrick Collison in their article "We need a science of progress"1. This movement asks: What factors accelerated human progress? And how can we deliberately foster more of it?

The movement describes progress as sustained improvements in human welfare and agency. Generally speaking, economic prosperity and technological advancement have enabled us to solve more challenging and ambitious problems, which have in turn helped us to live more fulfilling lives. At its core, this movement considers the pursuit of progress to be a deeply humanistic endeavor, recognizing that human flourishing matters and that material progress is a means to achieve it.

Jason Crawford, founder of the non-profit the Roots of Progress Institute, frames it as "techno-humanism"- the view that progress in science, technology, and industry are good because they ultimately promote human well-being and flourishing.

Some key insights2 I took away from progress studies are:

1. Appreciation of progress - Recognizing genuine improvements that have been made and celebrating them (see graphs below).

2. Progress is not inevitable - It requires deliberate action, proper institutions, and cultural support.

3. Progress is problem-solving- It's about identifying challenges and systematically addressing them.

4. Progress creates feedback loops - Each advancement enables more advancements.

And most importantly,

5. Progress requires optimism - Not blind optimism, but as Jason puts it - "active solutionism" that recognizes the problems but believes in human ingenuity to solve them.

The Progress Studies Framework for Animal Welfare

While lot of these are great ideas, I don't completely agree with the progress studies movement on everything, notably its exclusive focus on human well-being. However, I believe some of its insights can be applied to improving farm animal advocacy, welfare, and rights. Humans have a collective demonstrated ability to problem solve ourselves out of crises, even if self-inflicted, and I believe we can do the same for farm animals.

Solutions like diet changes that make progress for farm animals but result in a reduction of choices for people may seem like a step backward from a progress studies perspective (until alternatives are available). However, in the long run, this may yet be considered social progress, similar to how we view moral victories in history.

Here are some ways we can apply the progress studies mindset to animal welfare:

1. Celebrating progress for animals - We need to continue to share wins and celebrate meaningful improvements that have the potential to help animals, this helps maintain motivation and demonstrate that positive change is possible (see graphs below).

2. Progress for animals isn't inevitable - It requires deliberate action through advocacy, entrepreneurship, donations, innovation and effective institutions.

3. Problem solving for animals - This means trying different approaches and pursuing what works. Being philosophically correct is cool but more importantly let’s make sure that our ideas actually translate to impact.

4. Creating virtuous cycles - Better alternatives to animal-products create a flywheel effect of increased competition & innovation, reduced costs, increased adoption and more investment in the industry. Social initiatives like Veganuary and Meatless Mondays help shift cultural norms, making plant-based diets more accessible. Each step forward in animal welfare builds momentum for bolder reforms, expanding both protections and rights for animals.

5. Problem-solving over pessimism - A progress focused mindset can help paint a more actionable and optimistic picture of the work needed to improve conditions for farmed animals, instead of fostering pessimism towards the current crisis or developing a misanthropic view of the world.

PS: An example of technological progress that go beyond advocacy for personal abstinence or creating better alternatives is in-ovo sexing. This technology can prevent up to 7 billion3 macerations of baby chicks, every year. Here’s an excellent article about this (and more) from Asimov Press.

Asimov Press

Before They Hatch

If one of our ancestors were to walk into a modern supermarket, they would be shocked by its abundance. Meat, eggs, and dairy—which at various points in history have been scarce, expensive, or contaminated,—are now common, affordable, and safe…

Read more

2 years ago · 1 like · 1 comment · Robert Yaman

I also recommend checking out Robert’s substack for ideas on progress studies and animal welfare.

Subscribe now

1: We've Been Trying Vegan/Vegetarian Outreach for Longer Than We Realize (With Limited Results)

While advocacy has raised some awareness and sparked some cultural shifts, it hasn’t yet translated into widespread, lasting behavior change on the scale we’d hoped. Animal rights groups have run countless demonstrations, disruptions, and documentaries. In fact organizations like Vegan Outreach have distributed millions of pro-vegan pamphlets every year since the early 2000s, PETA’s YouTube videos have reached 100s of millions of viewers.

While decades of passionate vegan advocacy may have led to a modest increase in the number of vegans, the percentage of vegans/vegetarians in the US hasn't budged much in the last 30 years. Even if we look at more recent data in countries like the UK where some of the most passionate in person and online advocacy has occurred, the percentage of vegans has also remained stubbornly flat (this data is updated every 6 months). One of the largest and only studies of recidivism from 2014 found that 84% of individuals that try plant-based diets return to eating animal products.

All the while, the number of animals slaughtered has grown exponentially (Note: the Y-axis is on a logarithmic scale).

Thoughts and Lessons: Advocacy campaigns should try to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns as well as the number of animals impacted as a result of the campaigns. Additionally, we should also diversify to other strategies that may yield better outcomes for more animals. For all we know, some of the outreach campaigns may have been a net negative for the animals (such as the trend of eating more chickens instead of red meat - more on this here and in a future post).

2: We’ve Had Vegetarian Societies Before, Things Changed

Around 500 BCE, the creators of Buddhism and Jainism promoted principles of non-violence (Ahimsa) that included vegetarianism in the Indian subcontinent. Their influence was so profound that vegetarianism became widespread across significant portions and religions of India. You can still feel the reverberations of these movements today, evident in the prevalence of plant-forward diets, even in meat-eating households (like mine, growing up).

But what's happened since? Despite this deep cultural embedding of vegetarianism, the amount of animal products consumed per capita have continued to grow.

The reasons for this are quite complex but some of the key drivers were: Rising incomes increasing the purchasing power; changing consumer preferences; increased availability of meat; and industrialization of agriculture resulting in cheaper meat. Since the population of India will continue to grow into the mid 21st century, the amount of factory farmed animals will also likely continue to grow (probably exponentially).

Thoughts and Lessons: Even when vegetarian principles become deeply ingrained in cultural and religious norms, a change in economic factors may still drive up the consumption of animal products. This also suggests that values-based advocacy alone may not be enough even if it is widely successful. We may still need to create better alternatives and products, such as plant-based meats or cultivated meat that are simply better than conventional animal products and consistently price competitive.

3: Institutional Reform is an Effective Strategy

Evidence demonstrates that some of the most significant advances in animal welfare came from changing institutions and laws. For example:

• Something as simple as making plant based options the defaults have been a very effective strategy:

• Adding plant-based days at office cafeterias has also been successful, Green Tuesday is one such initiative in India.

• Programs such as School Plates in the UK have already enabled millions of plant-forward meals.

Ironically, even if most people are unwilling to change their personal diets, a big majority of people actually oppose the brutal conditions endured by animals in factory farms. For example, a 2018 ballot initiative in California passed with a strong majority and resulted in the strongest animal welfare law in the US. France and Germany passed laws to ban male chick maceration in 2022.

Thoughts and Lessons: While these small incremental changes seem insignificant towards a vegan world, they've had a significant impact on the number of animals that suffer. Given the number of people that oppose factory farming (but are unwilling to give up animal products), these institutional and systemic changes may offer the most impact. There can also be a compounding effect from advocating for systemic changes that help normalize plant-forward diets.

4: Technology & Alternatives Have Rapidly Ushered in Change

Looking at what's actually moved the needle on animal product consumption throughout history, innovation has consistently outperformed moral persuasion.

Examples include the popularization of margarine, which significantly reduced butter consumption in the 20th century, invention of cars was likely the largest driver of animal welfare by massively reducing demand for horse-drawn carriages, the popularization of faux fur alternatives and subsequent bans have contributed to a decline of the fur farming industry.

This pattern shows up again and again: when good alternatives exist, people adopt them regardless of their ethical stance on animal welfare. The rise of oat milk isn't because everyone suddenly cares about cow welfare - it's because oat milk is delicious, widely available, and competitively priced. Here’s the data for this from the Good Food Institute. One positive point I’d like to highlight is that plant milks already accounted for ~12% of all milk sales in 2023, a number far higher than the percentage of vegans.

My favorite quote on this topic comes from a longtime animal advocate and the founder of the Good Food Institute:

Thoughts and Lessons: Throughout history, technology and alternatives have been more effective at reducing animal product consumption than moral arguments alone. The best hope for animals may lie beyond convincing a few people to go vegan: creating alternatives so good that animal products become obsolete.

Learning from Past and Current Efforts to Accelerate Progress

If we're serious about reducing animal suffering, history offers some guidance. The animals don't and can't care why humans stop exploiting them, they just want to be free from exploitation. Hopefully by learning from our past, we can accelerate progress toward a better future for animals.

To learn more about the past of animal advocacy I recommend this article.