By Nick Cooney

June 6, 2013

Back in 2003, I interned at Farm Sanctuary’s shelter in Watkins Glen. Of all the animals I met during that time, my favorite was a piglet named Bella Maria.

Due to health problems, Bella Maria lived in an individual pen in the shelter’s hospital building. Because she didn’t have any pig friends, I’d make it a point to spend fifteen minutes with her every day, giving her belly rubs and scratching between her ears. It became such a routine that when I’d arrive and call out her name, she would immediately start grunting excitedly and running in circles in anticipation. Bella Maria was someone to me — someone funny, lovable, and fiercely alive.

At Farm Sanctuary, we get to know farm animals as individuals. But most Americans don’t get that chance. Many are unaware of Farm Sanctuary or unable to visit one of our shelters. Few have even met a farm animal face-to-face. To the majority of Americans, a pig is a just a slab of bacon: not a someone but a something.

But we can change that. We can bring the sanctuary to the people. Since the 1980s, Farm Sanctuary has worked to shift the public toward a vegan diet by disseminating photos and videos of the cruelty of factory farming and by telling the stories of our sanctuary residents.

In 2011, I returned to Farm Sanctuary to manage the newly launched Compassionate Communities Campaign, created to expand on that tradition of outreach. This project and its volunteers have already brought the sanctuary to the people in a big way. In the past year and a half, nearly 1.4 million people have watched a well-packaged video or read a stylish booklet that shares the stories of Farm Sanctuary’s residents and exposes the cruelty of factory farming.

1.4 million people have seen or read the heartwarming stories of Nikki, Symphony, and Fanny, three charismatic Farm Sanctuary residents. 1.4 million people have learned about the cruelty these individuals endured on factory farms, and they’ve learned that they can prevent that cruelty by leaving animals off their plates.

What Came Before, our 10-minute video narrated by actor Steve-O, made waves after CNN aired a news segment on it. The Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, The Huffington Post, and dozens of other news outlets followed suit. Celebrities from Newark Mayor Cory Booker to NHL star Georges Laraque tweeted the video to millions of followers. In the past six months, nearly a million people have watched What Came Before online.

Meanwhile Something Better, our 16-page booklet, has been distributed across the country by hundreds of Farm Sanctuary volunteers. The results of a study conducted by Farm Sanctuary and The Humane League on two university campuses this past fall suggest that, for every two booklets distributed, one fewer animal will be subjected to a lifetime of misery on a factory farm (see our previous blog post for the details). Volunteers distributed more than over 400,000 booklets in the past year and a half.

A decade ago, I had the opportunity to know a special pig as the individual she was. Now millions of others are getting the chance to meet and understand individual farm animals as those of you involved with Compassionate Communities help to introduce the public to the delightful residents of Farm Sanctuary and to the importance of plant-based living. In the process, we’re sparing hundreds of thousands more Nikkis, Symphonys, and Fannys from lives of pain.

By Nick Cooney

January 15, 2013

Leafleting — passing out information about factory farming and vegan eating — is one of the most common ways that animal advocates promote vegan eating in the United States.

The group Vegan Outreach, which pioneered and popularized vegan leafleting, passed out almost 3 million leaflets last year, and other groups chipped in millions more. Compassionate Communities volunteers have been distributing our Something Better leaflet, which shares the Farm Sanctuary experience, the realities of factory farming, and info on meat-free eating, to hundreds of thousands of people.

But just how effective is leafleting? How many readers actually change their diet, and how many animals are spared a lifetime of misery? Should volunteers prioritize leafleting over other forms of animal advocacy?

For the first time ever, we have answers to those questions! In the fall of 2012, Compassionate Communities teamed up with The Humane League to measure the true impact of leafleting on a college campus.

How It Was Done

Early in the fall semester, staffers from The Humane League visited the main campuses of two large state schools on the East Coast, the University of Delaware and the University of Maryland. They distributed thousands of leaflets outside the dining halls of each school. The leaflets distributed were an equal mixture of Farm Sanctuary’s Something Better leaflet and Vegan Outreach’s popular Compassionate Choices leaflet.

About two months later, they returned to campus with surveys to see how much students’ diets had changed. They stood outside the dining halls and asked students passing by if they would take a survey. Students did not know what the survey was about prior to stopping and agreeing to take the survey. After agreeing, only those who actually received a leaflet earlier that semester were allowed to take the survey. Nearly 500 surveys were completed.

Key Results

Quite simply, the results were phenomenal. About 1 out of every 50 students who received a leaflet indicated they became vegetarian or pescatarian as a result. Just as importantly, 7% of students (1 in 14) said they now eat “a lot less” chicken, a lot fewer eggs, and a lot less dairy as a result of getting the leaflet. 6% eat a lot less fish, and 12% eat a lot less red meat.

Furthermore, about 1 in 5 students said they shared the leaflet with someone else who then began to eat less meat.

What does all this mean for animals? After accounting for social desirability bias (people over reporting changes in their diet), the results suggest that for every 100 leaflets you distribute on a college campus, you’ll spare, by a conservative calculation, a minimum of 50 animals a year a lifetime of misery. That’s one animal spared for every two leaflets you distribute!

And that’s just in the first year. The number of farm animals spared grows much larger once you factor in the number of years that people maintain their diet. It also grows larger once you count the ripple effects of people persuading their friends and family to change. And we haven’t even begun to count the many hundreds of wild fish who will also be spared.

The bottom line is this: With each hour you spend leafleting on a college campus, you will truly spare hundreds of farm animals from a lifetime of daily misery. The data is in. The facts are there. College leafleting is an absurdly effective activity for individuals and for organizations who want to make their community a more compassionate one.

For more details on the study, including additional findings, charts, and how social desirability bias was calculated, scroll down to the supplementary blog post below or click here.

To order Something Better leaflets today and get started leafleting in your community, email us at activist@farmsanctuary.org.

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By Nick Cooney

January 15, 2013

This is Part 2 of a blog post on the impact of college leafleting. To read Part 1, scroll up to the blog post above or click here.

Additional Results

What else did the study tell us?

For one thing, those who were getting a leaflet for the first time ever reported almost twice as much diet change as those who had received one before. (“Diet change” here means number of animals spared by diet change, calculated as described below in the “How the Impact was Calculated” section). Once you account for social desirability bias, that difference becomes even larger. Those who received a leaflet for the first time were at least twice as likely to make a change in diet, and they could possibly have been as much as four times as likely. (There’s no way to know for sure where the number falls on that range since we don’t know the exact level of social desirability bias.)

College juniors reported more dietary change than other class levels, followed at a distance by sophomores, then seniors, with freshmen reporting the least amount. This was true despite the fact that freshmen were far more likely to be receiving a leaflet for the first time (which should have led them to report the most dietary change).

Most likely juniors reported more dietary change due simply to the margins of error in the chicken consumption category because that represents nearly all of the difference between juniors and other grades. However, sophomores and juniors were also more likely than freshmen and seniors to say they now ate “a lot less” animal products, which plays a part as well.

It’s possible therefore that sophomores and juniors may be the grades most likely to spare the greatest number of animals after getting a leaflet, even after accounting for the fact that many of them have received a leaflet before.

On that note, the survey also found that about 57% of those leafleted had already received a leaflet before. The likelihood of having received a leaflet generally increased with grade level.

10% said they looked at the leaflet less than 10 seconds; 30% viewed it for 10 seconds to a minute; 45% for 1 to 5 minutes; and 15% looked at it for more than 5 minutes.

How the Impact was Calculated

To view a copy of the actual survey that students filled out, click here.

To calculate the number of animals impacted (i.e., spared), we used rounded versions of these estimates of the number of animals impacted by the average American meat-eater each year plus this data to factor in dairy and egg consumption. We declared the average meat-eater to impact 28 chickens, 2 egg industry hens, 1/8 beef cow, 1/2 pig, 1 turkey, and 1/30 dairy cow each year. Others may prefer to translate the number of animals spared into days of suffering and level of suffering spared per year, but we translated the data into number of animals impacted per year.

We assigned values to each category in the survey as follows:  “I eat more” of a product was calculated as a 30% increase in consumption of that product; “I eat a little less” was calculated as a 10% decrease; “I eat a lot less” was calculated as a 40% decrease; “I stopped eating this product” was calculated as a 100% decrease; “I eat the same amount” and “I did not eat this product to begin with” were calculated as no change.

If you’re interested, you can check out the graphs of reported dietary change for each product category here: chicken – red meat – fish – eggs – dairy. Statistics lovers can download the raw data from the study here.

Accounting for Bias

This survey had no “non-response bias” because students were approached randomly on campus, and they did not know what the survey was about prior to agreeing to take it.

Non-response bias is when people who decide to respond to a survey are more likely to respond in a certain way. If the survey were emailed to potential respondents, we would have expected to see a large non-response bias. Those who had changed their diet would probably be more inclined to fill out the survey.

While this survey did not have non-response bias, we do need to watch out for people giving inaccurate answers. Numerous studies have found that people will often over report consumption of things they think they are supposed eat more of (such as fruits and vegetables) and under report how much they eat things they are supposed to eat less off (like red meat.) Researchers call this “social desirability bias.”

Students in this study may have guessed that the survey takers wanted them to answer that they had eaten less meat. As a result, some of those who said they changed their diet probably did not. Others may have over reported how much meat they cut out of their diet. This bias was probably highest among those who said they ate “a little less” of an animal product.

Thankfully, biased answers don’t account for all of the change reported in this study. How do we know? Because different groups reported very different rates of change. For example, people who were getting a leaflet for the first time reported almost 90% more change than those who had received leaflets in previous semesters. (Change here is indicated as number of animals spared by dietary change.)

Both groups should answer with about the same level of social desirability bias. So if all of the reported change was simply due to bias, then the dietary change reported should have been roughly the same whether or not people had received a leaflet before.

However, there were major differences in reported change between those who received leaflets before and those who hadn’t, between those who received one leaflet versus the other, and between students of different grade levels. Out of nine subgroups measured, the groups with the lowest amount of reported change spared 88 and 101 animals respectively. Even if we assume that 100% of that reported change is fraudulent and is merely the result of social desirability bias, it would suggest that for the other subgroups measured, the amount of actual change was the total number of animals helped minus approximately 90 animals (90 animals being the amount of animals not actually helped but reported due to social desirability bias). The remaining subgroups helped between approximately 115 and 250 animals per 100 leaflets (before accounting for social desirability bias).

The raw data, as a whole, once adjusted to be equally representative of all grade levels, suggests that 141 farm animals will be spared for every 100 leaflets distributed on a college campus. Considering that, and considering our estimation of a maximum social desirability bias of around 90 animals spared per 100 leaflets distributed, we can make a conservative estimate that, at a minimum, about 50 of those 141 animals reported to be spared were actually spared. In summary, for every 100 leaflets distributed, we can conservatively estimate that approximately 50 farm animals are spared each year from a lifetime of misery.

The actual number is almost surely higher. And the conservative estimate is significantly higher among certain subgroups. For example, the conservative estimate for students who never before received a leaflet and who now received a Something Better leaflet is roughly 150 animals spared for every 100 leaflets distributed after accounting for social desirability bias. And again, all of the numbers become dramatically higher once you include the multiple years a person maintains their change, the ripple effects as they spread their dietary change to others, and the number of wild fish spared.

One other area for possible inaccuracy in the results stems from the fact that the survey chose not to define what “more,” “a little less,” or “a lot less” meant. Rather than have respondents indicate a percentage change in consumption of each product, we simply assigned estimated values to each change. While we attempted to be conservative in our estimates of what each change meant, it’s possible that our estimates were out of line with what respondents meant.

If we discard all partial changes (a conservative step, since at least six times as many people report reducing each product as report increasing it), look only at those who stopped eating products entirely, and account for social desirability bias, we can still estimate that for every 100 leaflets distributed a conservative minimum of 20 farm animals are spared per year from a lifetime of misery by individuals who have completely removed a product from their diet. The actual number is surely higher than this, and it would be inaccurate to use this as a best estimate, but we can view this as a minimum bound for the amount of change produced just by those who have completely eliminated one or more products:  1 farm animal spared per year for every 5 leaflets distributed.

For more details, additional spreadsheets of results, questions about methodology, or anything else, feel free to email me at ncooney@farmsanctuary.org .

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By Nick Cooney

October 2, 2012

Two months. Eleven cities. Tens of thousands of people educated about the cruelties of factory farming and the benefits of vegan eating. Hundreds of volunteers taught how to become more effective advocates for animals.

That was the goal of the Compassionate Communities national tour as it kicked off on a sunny San Francisco afternoon last week. Compassionate Communities Manager Nick Cooney led a workshop on effective advocacy for farm animals. Touching on research covered in his book Change Of Heart, Nick explained how animal advocates can become more persuasive when speaking to family, friends and the public about farm animal issues. Volunteers shared their personal experiences and networked with one another to make plans for carrying out Compassionate Communities programs together.

Immediately after the workshop, volunteers headed to a festival to distribute vegan food samples and pass out hundreds of Farm Sanctuary’s new “Something Better” veg advocacy leaflet. Others headed downtown to leaflet hundreds of tourists and locals shopping in San Francisco’s bustling downtown area. The next day, the advocacy work continued at the University of California at Berkeley where we distributed information to 1,800 students on the reality of factory farms and the benefits of veg eating. One student even doubled back to mention that she changed her life and her diet two years ago as a result of receiving a similar booklet.

The tour then headed north to Portland, Oregon, and from there on to Seattle, for three more workshops and a half dozen additional outreach events. All told, over 150 Compassionate Communities volunteers joined us for workshops in San Francisco, Portland and Seattle, and over 9,000 members of the public were reached with information about factory farming and vegan eating.

As the tour rolls on to other key cities –  Boston, New York, Miami, Chicago, Atlanta, Washington DC, Phoenix, and Los Angeles – the groundswell of local advocacy for farm animals will continue. We are building compassionate communities one city at a time – and we hope you’ll join us in our work!

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September 11, 2012

Farm Sanctuary’s Compassionate Communities Campaign will be hitting the road this fall, traveling to eleven major cities to help kick off the campaign. In each city we’ll be holding a dinner or lunch, a workshop on improving your advocacy skills, and local veg outreach events. If you live in or near one of these cities, please join us! For details, email: activist@farmsanctuary.org.

Compassionate Communities Fall 2012 Tour

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By Nick Cooney

June 12, 2012

All of us tend to think with a closed mind. Many studies have shown a basic human tendency when it comes to hearing new information. If it fits what we already believe, we uncritically accept it. If it contradicts what we believe, we search for a reason to dismiss it. We even get a rush of pleasure when we think we’ve found that reason!

There are many ideas that we animal advocates accept as true without thinking critically about them. Below are three examples of how what we hear in “the vegan bubble” isn’t always true.

Bubble-Buster 1: Even if slaughterhouses had glass walls, not everyone would be vegetarian

It’s true that a lot of people who go vegetarian do so after seeing the cruelty inside of factory farms and slaughterhouses. But it’s naïve to think that if we simply show the public how animals are mistreated, they will change. The vast majority of people who see what goes on inside factory farms and slaughterhouses continue eating meat. Why?

That simple question should be seen as a jumping-off point for us as animal advocates. Of course we have to keep showing people pictures and video of factory farming. These materials are some of the most powerful tools we have for creating new vegetarians. And even if only 1 in every 100 (or 500) people we reach makes a change, that’s still a phenomenally effective use of time and money. But we also need to figure out what more people need. For example, many people also need to know how to change their eating habits. When that’s the case, how can we help?

The fact that most people who see what goes on in factory farms do not go vegetarian also underscores the importance of improving living conditions for animals that are eaten, like the recently-introduced federal hen bill would do.

Bubble-Buster 2: Vegans do not live a cruelty-free lifestyle

Eating vegan is a great way to put our compassion for animals into practice, and it’s the right thing to do. A danger of acting ethically, though, is that it can cause us to look down our noses at others. (Some vegans even have a particular disdain for vegetarians!). That’s not good for promoting vegan eating. If people get the impression that you think you’re better than they are, they’ll tune out.

So, here’s a reality check to keep us grounded. We vegans kill animals – many animals – with our consumer choices. For example, windows kill nearly a billion birds a year, and cell phone towers kill tens of millions more. Cars cause a painful death to well over 100 million animals a year in the U.S., and pesticides do the same.  Over a trillion fish are killed each year by U.S. power plants. We all contribute to our share of those deaths when we buy and use windows, cell phones, cars, non-organic food and electricity.

Of course, none of us are perfect. By being vegan, we reduce the amount of animal suffering and death in the world. That matters! Yet as we go about our advocacy, let’s do it without the attitude that we are so much better than and so different from everyone else.

Bubble-Buster 3: Vegetarianism is not a white, upper middle class phenomenon

Those who don’t support vegetarian eating sometimes decry it as a white, upper middle class phenomenon. Unfortunately, many in the animal advocacy movement believe the same thing. Sometimes it leads to a good bit of hand wringing. But statistics show that this is simply not true.

In terms of race, Americans of Asian or Indian descent are most likely to be vegetarian. Caucasians are much less likely, coming in third. African-Americans are nearly as likely as Caucasians, with Latinos trailing close behind.  (Teenagers are the one group where whites are more likely to be vegetarian. But they still trail Asians and Indians.)

While there is some connection between income and vegetarianism, it is not dramatic. It is also not linear. (In other words, those with the lowest incomes are not the least likely to be vegetarian; those with the highest incomes are not the mostly likely to be vegetarian.) Vegetarian eating does not belong to any one economic class.

What else do we animal advocates tell ourselves that is not true? Thinking critically is important if we want to be as effective as possible for animals.

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