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.

April 10, 2013

One of the key pillars of Farm Sanctuary’s mission is to change the way people view and treat farm animals. Another key pillar is to promote a compassionate vegan lifestyle.

Compassionate Communities was created to do both of these as efficiently as possible. Occasionally in this blog we share updates about what our volunteers are doing around the country to change hearts and change diets. This week, we share a few examples of the feedback we get from those whose hearts and diets have changed as a result of the Compassionate Communities Campaign.

“I found [your Something Better leaflet] on a cafeteria table and decided to become vegetarian after reading through it. I think that is a good way to raise awareness without being intrusive…I would like a stack of maybe 50 so I can pass it around our school campus.”
        – DongNi Zhang

“It’s been almost 6 months since I first saw your video and I almost immediately became a vegetarian after that. It was the thing that really made me change my opinion on meat…It has been really easy for me to change into a meat-free diet and instead of missing eating meat, it kind of disgusts me now knowing what’s behind a hamburger or a chicken cutlet.”
        – Anna Segarra

“I am taking meat out of my diet. Thank you so much again, I love animals and I would hate for them to be slaughtered for the sake of my taste buds! I cannot wait until I get my meat-free meal guide. God bless you!”
        – Abby Baca

“I’m a 15 year old girl who never imagined to go vegetarian; however after seeing how horribly these animals are being treated I could never see myself going back.”
        – Louella Dent

“Since I saw your video my life changed. I have been almost 4 months without meat and I have been feeling pretty good and confident about my decision. I thought it was going to be harder but so far it has been a lovely journey for me.”
        – Daniela De Los Rios

“This video is the reason I am now vegan! That’s all it takes to change minds and hearts to become vegan is to see truth of what’s on our plates … I have also joined some local animal rights and vegan groups here in Phoenix AZ. Every voice will help open eyes and save lives! Bless you and your work!”
        – Angel Cullen

“I’m happy to tell you that I no longer eat meat since the first day I saw your video! If you have a farm nearby that might need some help with the animals I can help any weekend, and I will be very happy to do so.”
        – Diana Pais

“I had heard that this type of behavior was common throughout the industry. But I just couldn’t believe that our fellow human beings could be that cruel. Obviously I was wrong…God forgive them. And I am going to try to become meat-free in my diet.”
        – Mike Onofrietti

“This is going to change my life. I have been flirting with becoming a vegetarian for years but have hesitated … Thank you so much! PS, I am 82 years old but plan to live to be 102 because I am in excellent health.”
        – Eloise Peterson

“This is so sad, I am not eating meat anymore, because animals are just like humans, and if they’re suffering, then I’m not eating meat.”
        – Brandy-Latisha Lee

“Great work by the way … I have now been a full vegan for 2 months!”
        – Aly MacNeill-Weir

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February 27, 2013

Imagine you’re standing in a dining room before a massive table set with 100 plates. Spread on the plates are all the chickens, cows, and pigs an average American consumes in one year. Americans eat a lot of meat, so the plates are piled high with animal flesh.

If you tally up the plates, you’ll find that 44 plates contain chickens, 30 contain cows, and 26 contain pigs. Given this table, it makes sense that our movement places roughly equal focus and resources on cows, chickens, and pigs. Right?

Wrong. This table represents the weight of the meat Americans eat, but it doesn’t reflect the number of animals they eat.

In place of the table, picture all the actual, live animals that were farmed and slaughtered to produce that meat. Looking at this collection of animals, you notice something strange: there’s a large mass of chickens and only the occasional cow or pig dotting the landscape. Where are all the pigs? Where are all the cows?

Because chickens are so much smaller than cows and pigs, many more of them must be slaughtered to produce the same amount of meat. To get the same amount of meat that can be obtained from a single cow (or four pigs), more than 200 chickens must be killed. That’s why, despite the fact that people eat almost as much pork and beef as they do chicken, they eat many, many more chickens than they do cows or pigs.

For farm animal activists, what truly matters is not the amount of meat that is consumed but the number of animals that are harmed and the amount of suffering caused. Our movement’s outreach efforts, however, are based largely on the illusory dinner table: we tend to direct our resources according to how often animals are consumed, not how many are consumed.

And it’s not only that a larger number of chickens are killed. Chickens also endure more days of suffering than any other farm animal, other than some farm-raised fish. We get this amount by multiplying the number of animals that are eaten by how long each one lives and suffers on a factory farm. Chickens also suffer particularly cruel treatment on factory farms.

When we carry out vegetarian outreach without considering the relative suffering caused by different animal foods, we are bowling with blindfolds: we can’t know where to aim, and our success will be limited. It’s time to remove the blindfolds and knock down as much animal cruelty as we can.

If we see farm animals as individuals, and we want as many individuals as possible to be protected from cruelty, then we should focus first on getting the public to give up eating chickens. Having that focus will enable us to save more lives and spare more suffering.

Consider, for example, that getting someone simply to cut their chicken consumption in half spares 14 animals per year a lifetime of misery. If someone were to give up eating chickens entirely they would spare about 28 animals per year from a lifetime of misery.

At the very least, our outreach efforts should place greater focus on chickens. We should tell people that the first and most important thing they can do to help farm animals is to cut out or cut back on eating chickens.

Ben Davidow is the author of the forthcoming e-book Thinking Outside the Cage: Leading Farm Animal Advocates on How to Have a Meaningful Impact, in which a modified version of this essay will appear.

Nick Cooney is the Compassionate Communities Campaign manager at Farm Sanctuary.

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dinner plate photo by Dave Le (CC: AB-NY-ND); hen photos by Farm Sanctuary

January 30, 2013

Welcome to February, the season of love and of listening to your heart!

Listening to our hearts can lead us in beautiful directions, but leading with our hearts when it comes to activism is not always the best way to effect change. Selling, on the other hand, is all about persuading or influencing an individual to change or take a course of action. And, that’s our goal — to create change — so we’re all going to take a mini crash course in sales!

As compassionate salespeople, we should see every interaction as an opportunity to sell someone on a healthier lifestyle and new way of looking at animals. Our “product” is a lifestyle of compassionate choices that lead to better health, a better planet, and a better life for all animals.

If you are new to sales, I’d like to introduce you to a long-standing technique — the Feel, Felt, Found approach. This sales approach can be highly effective in our conversations about animal rights and veganism.

As illustrated in Nick Cooney’s book Change of Heart, studies show that people are more likely to make a change when they empathize with others who have experienced a similar change or challenge.

The Feel, Felt, Found approach opens the door for that empathy.

First, become the listener. As the listener, you validate how the person feels, and you hear their objections or concerns.

Second, you assure them that they are not the only person to have felt this way. Many others have faced similar same challenges, so they are not alone in their thoughts. This is a powerful approach. Again, as illustrated in Nick’s book, people statistically are more likely to make a change based on their knowledge of what others are doing. Validating that someone is not alone in his or her concerns is comforting and persuasive in your communication.

Third, alleviate their fears by letting them know what you and others have found.

Here’s an example. A common response to the idea of becoming vegan is, “I could never give up cheese. I love cheese.” Here is the Feel, Felt, Found response:

I definitely understand how you feel. I felt that way, too. I was a big cheese and Greek yogurt fan myself. Lots of other people have felt that way too — it’s probably the number one concern when people consider adopting a vegan diet. What I found is that I don’t really miss cheese at all. And these days, there are so many good plant-based cheese options that it’s really easy to have a cheese pizza or cheesy lasagna that’s delicious. 

I always try to express excitement about my experience as a vegan. This is actually pretty easy because I have found so many things to be excited about. But I digress.

Use the “found” comment as an opportunity to key into whatever you know about the person you are talking to. If they are analytical types, your “found” statement might sound something like this:

What many people have found is that you lose your craving for dairy altogether because dairy is addictive. Dairy has a protein called casein, which, when broken down in digestion, can act like an opiate, meaning it has a calming effect. This is helpful for a baby calf, for example, because it creates a calming effect and promotes bonding with his mother. Mother Nature is smart: She knows that a calf needs to nurse to grow, so this addictive effect will keep the calf coming back for more. But humans drinking cows’ milk can feel that same calming, addictive effect. Once you’ve removed dairy from your diet, you remove the addiction. Not only will you not crave cheese, milk, or any other dairy, but I found that my skin got clearer and my energy level increased.

Use your best judgment on how to frame the conversation, but you get the drift.

Whatever response you choose, always give the person you are talking with an opportunity to digest what you’ve said and to respond with their thoughts. This is another key ingredient to being a good salesperson — remember when to be quiet and try to talk less, not more, than the person you are speaking with.

Practice the Feel, Felt, Found approach in other aspects of your life so that it becomes natural in your vocabulary. This approach is more than a sales technique; it’s also a useful framework for many interactions in life. When we are discussing being vegan, our non-vegan friends or family can feel threatened or judged, and that can result in combative discussions. By using the Feel, Felt, Found approach, you stay grounded in the conversation and can maintain a non-confrontational exchange of thoughts.

And, on that topic, we shouldn’t ever judge others. We all have non-vegan friends and family who are kind, caring, and loving. It’s important to understand that each of us is on his or her own journey. Not everyone you speak with will be receptive to you, and not everyone you talk with will change. That is not our choice to make. However, being a compassionate advocate, providing information when engaged with someone, and offering help without judgment is one of the best things we can do to be a voice for animals.

So, happy compassionate selling!

Jaime T. Surenkamp is the founder of VeniceBeachVegan and is a compassionate, passionate advocate for animals.

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photo credit 1: cloud_nine via photopin cc ; photo credit 2 : Bindaas Madhavi via photopin cc ; photo credit 3: ‘J’ via photopin cc 

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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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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January 1, 2013

Looking back over the past twelve months, what can we say but “thank you!” Thank you for helping to make Farm Sanctuary’s Compassionate Communities Campaign a success. Thank you for helping to spare tens of thousands of farm animals from a lifetime of misery. Before we dive into a new year of advocacy, let’s take a quick look back on 2012 and what we, together, achieved for animals.

The Campaign kicked off in March of 2012 with the launch of our groundbreaking compassionatecommunities.org website. For the first time ever, farm animal advocates now have a one-stop shop for learning how to carry out effective veg advocacy programs in their community. With how-to videos and guides and a library of some of the most thought-provoking essays and videos around, it’s no wonder thousands of grassroots advocates in the U.S. and abroad joined the Campaign in the months that followed.

Meanwhile, the Compassionate Communities blog dug into the latest research to provide eye-opening advice for animal advocates. We discussed why the phrase “meat-free” may be better than “vegetarian”; looked at who former vegetarians are and why we lost them; busted the myths that are told inside the vegan bubble; showed the neuroscience behind caring vegetarians; and took a data-based look at the impact of welfare reforms on vegan advocacy.

As Compassionate Communities volunteers got active, local veg dining guides, both printed and online, began popping up around the country. Residents of cities like Pittsburgh and Rochester, among many others, now have an easy way to find veg food near them, and local activists and grassroots groups have a great resource to direct the public to.

The summer of 2012 saw the launch of our snazzy new 16-page veg advocacy booklet, Something Better. Over the course of the year, Compassionate Communities volunteers distributed more than 265,000 copies of Something Better and other literature to people around the country, bringing Farm Sanctuary and its animal ambassadors to a wide audience of people across the country. This included over 55,000 vegetarian starter guides distributed through businesses and newsstand racks, as well as nearly 200,000 booklets handed out at colleges, festivals, and on busy city streets.

In the fall, we hit the road for our Compassionate Communities tour, traveling to 11 key cities around the country to rally grassroots advocacy efforts. Hundreds of local animal advocates came out for our workshops on effective veg advocacy and signed up to get active for farm animals. Many joined us for hard-hitting outreach events, from the beaches of Florida to the universities of Portland to the cold streets of Boston.

In November, Compassionate Communities launched its hard-hitting new video, What Came Before. The 10-minute film short, narrated by TV and movie star Steve-O, introduces viewers to individual animals rescued by Farm Sanctuary, exposes the cruel realities of factory farming, and strikes a hopeful note by pointing out the benefits of a meat-free diet. In its first two months, more than 180,000 viewers saw the cruel reality of What Came Before, with many leaving heartfelt messages or comments about how the video inspired them to go vegetarian.

Thanks to the support of our donors, Compassionate Communities also launched a massive online advertising campaign to bring What Came Before and resources on vegan eating to the computer screens of hundreds of thousands of young women around the country.

All told, Farm Sanctuary’s Compassionate Communities Campaign was able to directly reach nearly half a million people in 2012 with printed literature or video on the cruelties of factory farming and the benefits of vegan eating, inspiring dietary change and saving the lives of farm animals. Your involvement and support have spared tens of thousands of individuals like “The Doctor” from a lifetime of misery.

On behalf of all of us at Farm Sanctuary, have a Happy New Year! We look forward to working with you in 2012 to achieve even more for animals!

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December 11, 2012

Regardless of your political affiliation, there’s a lot to learn from the 2012 presidential election – a lot to learn about effective vegan advocacy.

No, neither candidate uttered the word “vegan,” or even addressed the issue of factory farming on the campaign trail. But, as the Los Angeles Times and New York Times reported in the weeks following the election, the political game has shifted permanently as a result of the Obama campaign’s successful use of data analysis and social psychology to win over swing voters in battleground states.

Here’s what it looked like on the ground. First, a team of 50 “data nerds” spent months compiling more than 80 pieces of information about individual voters in swing states – everything from age to household income to voting history to magazines they subscribe to. Using that data, a mathematical model was created to predict how likely any individual voter was to vote for Obama. Special efforts were then made to target hundreds of thousands of voters who, according to the model, were on the fence but who could be persuaded to vote for Obama.

Meanwhile, a team of behavioral scientists was advising the campaign’s get-out-the-vote department on the finer points of persuasion. Canvassers used subtle tactics such as getting likely Democratic voters to sign a written commitment to vote or informing them that most of their neighbors vote – tactics that increased people’s likelihood of showing up at the polls on election day.  The rest, as they say, is history. Swing state after swing state, as well as the general election, went to Obama.

Just what does this mean for the future of veg advocacy? We can ignore these results – or, we can steal a page from the Obama campaign’s playbook and begin making data-driven decisions in our veg advocacy work. To be more specific, we can look to data to figure out who we should focus our veg advocacy efforts on, and how we can best reach them.

Who

With only limited time and money, it makes sense to target our veg advocacy towards those we are most likely to persuade. For example, because young people are more likely to go vegetarian than other age groups, it makes sense to target them. Vegan Outreach focuses most of their leafleting outreach on college campuses for that very reason. Passing out 1,000 leaflets on a college campus is likely to create far more vegetarians and meat-reducers than passing out the same number of leaflets on a city street.

Another benefit of focusing on young people is that when they go vegetarian, they really go vegetarian. A 2009 study from Europe – but likely applicable to the United States – revealed that young people who go vegetarian are much more likely to follow an actual vegetarian diet, free of chicken and fish, than older individuals who say they have become vegetarian.

Similarly, women are more likely to go vegetarian than men. In the United States and Europe, both female vegetarians and female meat-reducers outnumber their male counterparts by a ration of 2:1. Some recent testing by The Humane League found that online vegetarian advertisements shown only to women were about three times more effective than ads shown to men and women equally. Therefore, it makes sense to focus our veg advocacy on women (especially young women) as much as possible.

Apart from age and gender, there are, no doubt, other demographic groups who are more likely to go vegetarian. Art students, fans of punk and indie music, Mac users, and people with tattoos are a few examples. The more we target our veg outreach efforts towards those groups, the more animals we will save.

How

How do we become more effective in persuading individuals to make a change? Thankfully, the very research the Obama campaign relied on is available for anyone to read. Change Of Heart, available in the Farm Sanctuary store, discusses that research and how animal advocates can apply it to their work. Classics in the field of persuasion science, such as Robert Cialdini’s Influence, may also be of interest.

Even beyond the specifics of how and why, perhaps the most basic lessons veg advocates can take from the presidential election is that it pays to understand our audience. It pays big time. And understanding our audience does not mean making assumptions about what will motivate them. It doesn’t mean guessing which groups are most likely to care. Understanding our audience means looking at the data and then making data-based decisions. If it can shift the tide in a multibillion dollar election campaign, then it can certainly shift the tide towards a more compassionate world as well.

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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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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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