How I Learned to Love Shrimp

Thom Norman on whether diet change is a counterproductive ask (and what we could do instead)

• Amy Odene & James Ozden

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There are never-ending conversations in the animal advocacy movement about whether diet change is an effective ask for the public. Today, we speak with Thom from FarmKind on why he thinks asking people to donate, rather than change their diet, can be a much more promising approach.

We speak about why behaviour change is difficult, the many benefits of donating, what other social movements have used as their asks, as well as the different experiments FarmKind has run in their quest to figure out how to best raise funds for animal advocacy. 

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Thom:

Asking people for donations, if it's successful, solves one of the biggest problems we have in the movement. Estimates are that our movement for ending factory farming has about less than $300 million globally, which means that we have about as much money roughly as McDonald's makes in a week of profits to spend to help 80 billion land, animals, trillions of stations, andans and fish as well, which is obviously nowhere near enough money. The ASPCA alone has more money than we do, so this is a real kind of David and Goliath fight. In fact, the meat industry is worth $2 trillion, which means that if it was David and Goliath because we're nerds and we worked this out it would Goliath would. Goliath would be so tall that the earth's atmosphere would reach up to about his belly button. That's the kind of scale difference between between the animal movement and the meat industry here.

James:

There are never-ending conversations in the animal advocacy movement about whether diet change is an effective ask for the public. Today we speak with Tom from Farmkind on why he thinks asking people to donate rather than change their diet can be a much more promising approach. We speak about why behaviour change is particularly difficult, the many benefits of donating, what other social movements have used as their asks, as well as the many different experiments Farmkind has run in their quest to figure out how to best raise funds for animal advocacy Without further ado. Hope you enjoy the conversation. Hey everyone, today we are joined by Tom Norman, who's the co-founder of Farmkind, a non-profit that helps people support effective charities working to end factory farming. A former nuclear energy lawyer, tom shifted careers after recognizing the urgent need to address animal suffering and create pathways for everyone to contribute to solutions. So welcome, tom. Thank you for having me. First things first. What is something you changed your mind on recently and why?

Thom:

So recently I've been going on a bit of a journey around AI in the animal space, especially questions like precision livestock farming. We have these short-term problems. We've got factory farming right now that we need to deal with. This seems a bit speculative, but I'm, I think, increasingly both coming to believe that this, the change, is going to happen very quickly, as you know, with ai changing so many things in the economy, but also that there is maybe a possibility that this could actually be good for animals too. So I think it's a really interesting fast-moving part of our movement that I think we in general, as people who care about animals and their suffering, need to be, certainly need to be paying a lot of attention to and making sure that we try the best we can to make it go well, I'm always not fully sure what people mean when they say precision livestock farming.

James:

Can you expand exactly what that means? And we mean by like it going well and like what that may look like for animals.

Thom:

What we mean is using artificial intelligence and monitoring software, so it could be cameras or monitoring devices put onto animals to really precisely understand what's going on with the animal.

Thom:

And this allows you, on the kind of the negative side, to be really precise about controlling the food that the animals get and things like this, so you can really control the inputs, only give them as just as much as they need in order for you, for example, to produce your products as easily as possible.

Thom:

But on the plus side, you could use these kinds of technologies to, for example, pick up on diseases much more quickly and so identify early on when animals are ill and help them out much more quickly. It could help you with other kinds of signs of distress or suffering in animals and then allow you ill and help them out much more quickly. It could help you with other kinds of signs of distress or suffering in animals and then allow you to use, potentially, automations and robotics or have human interventions that can then come in and solve these problems. So it could be good because it could allow. There are reasons why farms might also want to prevent diseases, for example in their animals, but it also could be bad in that it just makes farming way more efficient and so more animals are produced, or that it reduces, for example, the amount that they need to feed animals.

James:

So the animals are growing, but they're always hungry, or something like this but it seems like when you said at the very beginning that actually you become a bit more optimistic on this. Maybe you want to expand on that particular thing yeah, I think optimistic from a really low base.

Thom:

I still think like probably this will be bad, but the I've spoken to a few people in the movement who are paying a lot more attention to this, the shrimp welfare project guys, for example, who are kind of excited, and I at least think that it's possible that this will go well. I'm a pessimist by nature.

James:

I think so well yeah, it's good to, even if you're overall negative, to like maybe be I still have like some shift in opinion or like some calibration towards some of what people think. Is it still useful? Well, we will not be talking about precision lifestyle calming today, although obviously could be a very interesting topic for another conversation. Uh, no, but we're going to talk about somewhat of the work farm kind does. But also, maybe more broadly, is what should we be asking for as animal advocates, like, what should we? What should we be asking kind of the public or people? We talk to people who are interested in our issue, what they, what should they be doing when they kind of engage with our issue? And so one thesis I've heard you outline before is behavior change is not a good ask. We should not be asking people to necessarily, you know, give up meat, totally go vegan. Do you want to expand on why? I think that's the case?

Thom:

the kind of way I like to think about this is in some sense our campaign to end factory farming should be easy, because actually most people already agree with us.

Thom:

So about 75 percent of americans in polls think that factory farming is bad. They really don't like the way animals are treated. 50%, or just under 50%, of people say that they want a total ban on factory farming. We have this widespread support. It crosses party political lines, all this kind of stuff and yet actually obviously the problem is getting way worse, not better, globally speaking speaking, and I think part of this is because we are just really not doing a very good job of turning these people who agree with us into active supporters of our goals and our mission, and I think a big part of that is that the perception, certainly for many people, is that what they, what they're supposed to do, the only way that they can help is to change their diet, and I think that there is some evidence now that this is actually not only sort of switches people off, but it also actively can turn them from supporters into antagonists.

James:

So in some cases, Do you want to touch on that evidence? What have you seen that makes you think actually the behavior change avenue isn't the best one?

Thom:

There are two kind of things here. There's asking people to change their diet makes them actually makes them feel more powerless and it can also increase their resistance. So on powerlessness, basically the way that many people think about the food system is through their interaction with the food system. This happens, like you know, when you engage anytime you engage with a complicated system a lot, you kind of think you understand it even though you just engage with it. So the silly analogy I've used is like the toilet. I think it's easy to think you know what, how a toilet works, because you use it every day at least I hope you do. But like, actually I could not explain to you how a toilet works. And there's like fascinating studies where people are asked to draw bicycles and they have like the, the chain, like connected to, like the front wheels or like just like nothing. It doesn't make sense because people see these things all the time but they don't understand how these systems work.

Thom:

And the food system is like this like we go to the shops all the time. We think we understand how food is produced, but obviously we only see the shops and what this does is it makes people think that the only mechanisms for affecting the food system are something to do with buying food in the shops. I'm sorry, in other words, like changing what you're buying, like a boycott in the shops. I'm sorry, in other words, like changing what you're buying, like a boycott, going vegan. And then they say, well, nobody else is going to do that like, because they all like meat and they all eat. So even if I change what I'm eating, I kind of get all the costs of changing. I have to, you know, buy new, work out how to cook new things, don't get to eat some of my favorite foods and nothing is going to change because nobody else is going to change what they're doing. So people feel powerless, they feel like there's nothing they can do.

Thom:

And an organization, pax Forna, did some great focus grouping and surveys on this and kind of pulled out some of these trends. And then the other piece, as I mentioned, is kind of this resistance which comes from the meat paradox, which I'm sure many of your listeners will be familiar with, which is this kind of cognitive dissonance that's created when we think about both caring about animals and thinking that factory farming is bad and want to eat products and the easiest way to resolve the meat paradox for somebody is simply to start actually pretending that, like factory farming is not a problem, or saying to themselves factory farming is not a problem. They can avoid the issue, they can explain why it doesn't actually happen or why it's not so bad really, and this actually then motivates them to stop agreeing with us and to find reasons why we're wrong, because it's the easiest way for them to resolve this cognitive dissonance in their mind.

James:

I'm always kind of skeptical of using things like oh you know, many people agree with us. You know, these polls say 70% of people on end factory firing, on end factory farming. It's like when you really like kind of dig down, actually, like explain to them exactly what that means. It's like okay, your meat will actually increase in price by like 80 percent and we'll have way less animals and farmers will maybe go out of business, all this kind of stuff. Suddenly that number drops rapidly and I think everything.

James:

Parties has one survey where they did kind of like elucidate this a bunch more and the support number was that more like 20 rather than like 50 or 70. So I guess part of me is like, do we actually have that much support? Because I'm actually actually not sure about this. I think maybe for some things like banning the worst practices, but if it's actually, like you know, saying that we should kind of end factory farming, I'm actually not sure. I guess. Do you have any thoughts on that? Or like, what do you think is like even relevant to, I guess, what you're?

Thom:

proposing I I agree with you that 75 or these, any survey, any survey number, there's a there's always a big difference between what people say they'll do and what they that they actually want and what they actually will do in practice. Right. What I do think is it's indicative of the fact that people agree, at least in principle, with a lot of, and that their intuitions and their values are very pretty well aligned with with us. And I think even at these lower numbers, like 20 percent and things like this is like a sea change, an amount of number of people, right, and so even let's say it was about 20 of people who are really on board, that's still enough to really start to change the culture and to really start to create, create change.

Thom:

I also think that it depends on how you explain the food system. So pax fauna have done some again in the same research, talking to people about framing things in terms of evolving the food system and the way that we develop the food system. So factory farming solved a problem in the past in terms of producing cheap meat that people wanted to eat and lowering the cost of meat, and the need is not to go back to some past but to evolve the food system to the future with, for example, new ways of producing foods like cultivated meats and these sorts of things that can create a new food system that's both sort of sustainable for the planet and also produces food that people like, and I think so.

James:

I think it also depends on, like, how we frame this and how we talk to people about these things, and this will change how, how engaged people are yeah, I mean, I agree that 20 is still major and that's, you know, about 20 times the number of vegans we currently have in like the uk and in the us and europe. So yeah, a huge, a huge change. Do you think the solution to this is possible through just asking for more mild behavior change? I think you know one common thing that used to happen a lot is everyone should go vegan. I think most people are like okay, like you said, it's actually quite a hard thing to change everything. You eat three days, three times a day, and change your food, your clothes and everything else. So maybe we should ask people to you know, be a reducetarian. It's like eat vegetables, like have a vegetarian meal like most nights of your week, etc. Etc. Do you think that's a better solution?

Thom:

So firstly to say just to be really clear, I know you know this, but I'm not saying that going vegan doesn't work for anybody, right? Like, clearly there are some people for whom it does. It's just that when we look at the literature it seems that there are some groups who are completely resistant to this and different. You know, it probably has a fairly small market right and I think reducitarianism is also going to be attractive to some number of people. It is helpful.

Thom:

I think it has a wider appeal, but it still falls foul of those kind of psychological mechanisms I was talking about, because it still has people thinking in terms of this kind of like the frame of the boycott or the frame of the shop, and not thinking, not sort of envisioning in their mind changing the system overall. And so I think it still can fall foul of people feeling ultimate powerlessness or ultimately that we can't actually make change because all I'm doing is buying a bit less meat. How can that make a difference in such a massive system? And so I think reframing people's way of approaching this from from you know it's on you as a consumer to change how you behave to the system needs to change and actually you can play a role in helping to make that system change. I think it's an important kind of reframing of the picture that just more mild diet change asks don't actually get us to.

James:

Yeah yeah, it makes sense.

James:

It's obviously you are, yeah, a former a former uh lawyer in the government department for Net Zero and I guess there's an interesting climate example here where it's like actually the climate movement for a long time did actually talk about things like you should recycle and do your food waste and don't use plastic straws and all this kind of stuff. And the big diet changing message is the problem of like maybe we both think it's not the best, the most effective and it's very hard, whereas like recycling is, you know's not the best, my most effective ask and it's very hard, whereas like recycling is, you know, not that effective. It's also it's kind of easy. It's like why do you think the climate movement maybe they kind of have spoken about personal diet, personal decisions like in, like lifestyle decisions, and that seems to have not been a huge detriment to their success?

Thom:

yeah, so I mean, I guess there's two things. One, actually, when you look at surveys of what people are prepared to do for the climate, changing their diet ranks like always at the at the far bottom. So there might just be something specifically about this. This ask, and whether you have a plastic straw or a paper straw is sort of it. Maybe it's a mild inconvenience when you're being asked to give up. You know the foods that you have, maybe incredibly fond memories of that you remember, like christmas dinner or all this kind of thing. Like many men relate eating meat to their masculinity, like this is like this is pulling on more fundamental parts of our identity than than how we drink our ice lattes, or whatever you've given yourself away, tom

Thom:

ice cold beers instead, yeah, yeah. But then I think the other, the other component is, I think actually the climate movement is also I think it seems to me, from from very much from the outside but realizing that maybe focusing so much on individual change is also a strategic mistake and that we need to be thinking at the higher level because obviously, in terms of climate, individual change is not what it ultimately is going to solve our climate problems. It is going to have to come at the level of, like, government investment in producing cheap energy and things like this, and so actually you do need to address these, these questions, at that higher level of the system. People, individual people, can be part of that, but trying to put it on their shoulders to be the change is both, I think, just in an inaccurate framing of the problem and also a hard sell yeah, yeah, I definitely agree that.

James:

Yeah, in climate terms, it doesn't seem to be the best way to fix climate changes. We're going to recycle, and, but in the animal world it's much more common. You'll hear like pushback from media or like various influences be like oh, these vegans, like they're moralizing, telling you what to eat, or isn't it on the environmental side? Actually, you don't hear that, but yeah, it's more like the oh, actually it's like net zero is driving up the cost of energy and like taking away jobs. So, yeah, it's like some, some interesting, different critique. But anyway, we don't dwell on this. Let's say people are listening to this and I think many people probably have either come to similar realizations or, at least you know, had similar thoughts about, like, what should we be asking people to do? And I guess, what do you think is a good alternative?

Thom:

At FarmKind. The kind of alternative that we are putting forward is incredibly simple, and it's donating to charities that are doing a really good job on working on changing the system. So we we built a thing called the compassion calculator, which allows people who are non-vegans to basically put in what they eat on a regular basis and we will say okay, if you want to do just as much good as going vegan, you can donate this amount. For the average omnivore, that's about 23 a month and you can do. You can help animals as much as you would were you to completely change your diet and kind of that.

Thom:

The most obvious reasons why this is good is from the movement point of view, is you can't, we can. You can only not eat the animals you are otherwise going to eat. But you can donate functionally and you know as much money as you have, right. So you can help a lot more animals potentially by donating than you could even by changing your diet. And secondly, as a movement, we have a massive funding problem, which maybe we can talk about in a little bit. But then, from the from the point of view of the, the individual who who's sort of being presented with this option, it's really easy, you know, setting up a direct debit for a small amount of money that's affordable to you. You can do it once and then forget about it, and we go on the rest of your life and just be stacking up your, your impact for animals as you go, as you go along, right, and then it is also actually really, really effective. You know, we know that some charities doing amazing work for animals.

James:

They they are for really tiny amounts of money, preventing a huge amount of suffering and doing a lot to help us to evolve to this new food system, and so it really is actually making a massive difference I guess the basic idea is you know if you stop eating animals and you go vegan, you know a normal omnivore eats roughly like like 200 animals a year all in, including like fish and uh kind of small aquatic animals. So then you know if you stop doing that you maximally you're kind of averting maybe 200 animals. But you know some charities I'll just name drop shrimp welfare project. I think by their own calculations they can not not save the lives of, but like reduce the suffering of, around a thousand shrimp per dollar. So it's like actually just by giving ten dollars you're like orders of magnitude. It's doing better than your diet change and I guess is that kind of the main piece is driving, I guess the compassion calculator and like yeah, what people can achieve with more than just a diet yeah, yeah, I think so.

Thom:

I think fundamentally, it allows us, if you like, to massively scale up our impact with animals way more than we can by by just changing our diets yeah, and maybe one thing I assume you don't something you mentioned to me.

James:

I don't know if you publicize this too much. It's like it's not just something for people who are not currently vegan or vegetarian to do to offset the diet. In fact, it's people who are currently also following a plant-based diet. One one framing you said is like you can offset your, your past, whatever years of non-vegetarian veganism, or you could just give, because that that's good as well, right? So I guess how much we push those two angles and how's that reception?

Thom:

been. Yeah, I think that's a really good point. This is not a. We're not trying to sell people, don't go vegan. We're trying to say this is an alternative. Right, and you can do both at the same time. I do both. I give and I also am a vegan.

Thom:

We had a donor, for example, who got into an argument with their family over Christmas about the way animals are treated and so decided to donate the money she was given for Christmas to farm animals, almost to sort of, despite her recalcitrant family members, right? So there's all kinds of different reasons. You could, you can donate, you can offset your friends and family, you can offset your, your past self. You could simply just do it to to increase the amount of good you can do for animals. And so, yeah, this is, this can be for everyone, and I think that one of the reasons that you you mentioned before that often veganism can can be perceived as moralizing, and I think part of the reason for that is there was.

Thom:

I was looking at a recent literature review and they identified this kind of like when you are perceived to be reducing people's autonomy and agency by telling them what to do, this kind of creates a backlash effect, but I don't want to do that and I think that, possibly because it's this, we have this one message of like unlike with climate change. Where you can, you can drive less, you could change your straws, you can recycle yeah, there's actually quite a lot of different things you can do to help the environment. We're like saying this one thing. It's more like we're telling people what to do and actually opening up the options. So, even if you see donating as an alternative way to do good and to help animals, I think it just also maybe helps with this thing about like being perceived as telling people what to do.

James:

Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I, I do agree that predominantly it's been one thing it's like change your diet, but actually I think most of us right now agree that there's a plethora of things, which is you can also donate, you can volunteer for a group, you can go find a job, and there's actually many things that we haven't been talking about historically, which I think I think you're definitely right in that you know, no one likes yeah, and do you have any interesting kind of anecdotes or case studies of, I guess, your work or the reception to this compassion calculator in practice, like do people just hear about it and go, oh, finally, like I didn't want to, I couldn't change my behavior, but this is exactly like now I can get engaged in some way.

Thom:

So we had one I was talking to one person at the at the weekend actually, who their partner. They had kids recently. They wanted to go vegan and try to go vegan several times but for various sort of health reasons, their doctors have been like you can't, you should stop doing this, especially when they had kids. They were the doctors were telling them you know, you really need to start eating some, some animal products, and like who knows if the doctors were were right or not, I, I obviously can't. I can't say, but that's the, when your doctors are telling you to do that, unsurprisingly, you take their advice. That seems.

Thom:

That seems broadly sensible to me they were saying that this is perfect, because I've always felt that, you know, I've always engaged with the this issue and always wanted to do something, but had kind of written off diet change.

James:

It's just not possible, at least for them, and so that, I think, is exactly the kind of person for whom this, this approach, and particularly this kind of like framing it as an offsetting, I think really works, because it directly links the idea of like your values, the thing that you're feeling kind of bad about right now maybe, which is the fact that you're continuing to eat these animal, these animal products that you know don't accord with your values, with a solution I think the offset is an interesting one, because I think you could, I think definitely make arguments saying you know the offset is an interesting one, because I think you could, I think definitely make arguments saying you know, the donation is also like a foot in the door mechanism, such that you start doing one positive thing for animals and then maybe over time that grows and you like, maybe you volunteer, you get a job and maybe in the end you actually do change your diet, and this was like under the first step of the journey.

James:

But then in some ways I think but maybe you know, we shouldn't be expecting that as the end goal for the reasons we said. And so I guess I'm kind of torn on like whether it's good to think about it and like a foot in the door or actually no then then my mind's still too focused on diet change and I should be a bit more like open-minded.

Thom:

So I think it's possible that you, like the mechanism is definitely possible that, like, your action can follow your beliefs, but your beliefs can follow your actions right.

Thom:

So it could be that once you start doing things that a person who cares about animals would do, like donating, that this reinforces that part of your identity and makes you want to do more things.

Thom:

But I think it is really important in this that we don't simply that this asking of people to donate doesn't simply become just a cheeky new way of trying to get them to change the diet. Asking people to donate doesn't simply become just a cheeky new way of trying to get them to change the diet. Like we have to really mean this right. Like if we're going to get people to believe that what we're saying is like there are multiple ways to help and they're all. They're all equally legitimate. We have to actually internalize that and not, you know, say things like I don't know, you know, if someone was vegan and they stopped being vegan, that they never really cared about the animals, for example, or these kinds of things where we sort of deify almost diet changes, like this special thing, and really actually say like look what, however, you're helping animals. If you're, if you are helping, then that is what counts yeah, that makes sense.

James:

When I think about other social movements, I can't recall that many examples. Obviously I haven't been involved with all of them, but I can't think of that many examples where the donation ask is very kind of forefront and obviously the effect of altruism movement is a key one. But I think of climate and I think it's like you know I see it mentioned somewhat. It's not a huge thing, but it's not like a front and center kind of like this is what we really want, I guess. I guess how do you kind of square that with, I guess, what? I see your views.

Thom:

Yeah, you're not saying that should be the main thing, but it should be like a prominent option in terms of how people can help yeah, yeah, I think so and I think, like you you kind of said before, like for some people changing their career, both of us are working in this, in this space, right, like that's. One of the ways that we're trying to help is by by dedicating our career. Other people volunteer regularly, but the thing is, in any of these social movements, actually, like people generously donating, do you sit behind the movement, because no social movement can can run without, without resources. And you know, in the history books maybe those aren't the people who get kind of written about. It's the people who are on the barricades or, you know, doing the speeches or or advocating in parliament or whatever it is. But actually the people who are providing the money to allow this work to happen are an incredibly crucial part of every social movement I agree and I agree, yeah, and maybe that bit isn't written about.

James:

I think I was thinking of a funny example. There's, um, a famous group called opor who overthrew the serbian dictator uh in 1999, and there's a good documentary about them. But there's a very blasé statement happened through the documentary saying, oh, how are you funded? And they said, oh, we got 20 million dollars from the cia. It's funny, both for, like, the geopolitical reasons, but it's like, oh, actually, what you, what you think, is like incredibly scrappy, kind of inspiring, and like a radical punky, anarchist group in like serbia is actually also, like you know, a very well-funded group by the american government. Anyway, do you have any sense of like to what extent we should be trying to unify our asks as a movement, or do you think it's, you know, the group's doing political advocacy should focus on political actions and the group's doing donations should focus on donations and like that's the kind of the healthy way. This crumbles.

Thom:

I think broadly yes, and like, obviously, often, when we're kind of talking about like, what should, what should the animal movement do or something, we kind of imagine that we have some sort of way of like getting everyone to go together, which, yeah, which obviously is just untrue, like all sorts of different people will come in with their own theories of change and their ideas, and I think this is good, because actually we're all none of us really know the answer.

Thom:

We're all work, trying to work it out, making some guesses and some assumptions and try and testing things right out right, and so it makes sense to want a broad range of approaches going on at once so we can maximize the chance that we get the right ones. Uh, that having being said, I think we have to also be aware that we have a brand collectively out in the world, and we might internally understand the differences between all the different groups in there, so how they sit on the spectrum of different approaches to animal welfare. But from the outside, everyone just sees us as kind of like the crazy vegans or whatever. Whatever. It is right, and so I think we do want to think carefully if you're doing things that are very sort of forthright campaigning around diet change. I think you want to consider how that's coming across and maybe how that is affecting the general public's perception of the broader movement and whether that is actually, overall, a positive thing to be doing I guess have you guys had much success, or do you think there are many good role models?

James:

so I guess the kind of thing you're advocating for is people who kind of care deeply about animals, but not necessarily changing their diets in the most ways, but are you know, maybe giving good amounts of money to help animals, like it's like, do you think there's a possibility that we can kind of change the narrative that's kind of out there of like yes, the crazy radical vegans are being something a bit more moderate and maybe includes the kind of stuff you're asking for?

Thom:

um, yeah, I think so. So I don't think it's just us who are saying this, um questioning this kind of like go vegan message, right, I think there's a wider movement within, within animal space to think, okay, we need to think about this more and people are reducing reports and things on this, on this question, thinking maybe we need to sort of have a strategic step in terms of the impact. I think we can look at sort of maybe, like the the aid movement is like a really good example right where, like, actually, that is most people's connection to helping people in foreign countries and, um, you can point to amazing things that people's money has done and the ways that it's, you know, saved many, many lives. I mean right now, actually, with the aid cuts, many people are exactly making this argument right, like how vital our money is in in saving lives and things like this.

James:

Yeah, so I think you can you clearly can get people to think about donations and money as a really integral way that we help make good things happen in the world there's clear reasons why we think that this is an easier ask to make the people, and then we hope, I'm sure, that more people are going to get engaged and you know, either they they do other things later on or they don't, but both are still still valid. What are the benefits of the movement? I guess why do you think donations in particular is useful for the animal movement?

Thom:

And yeah, why focus on that. As well as, I think, being an effective and easy thing for people, for individuals, to do, what's great about this is actually asking people for donations if it's successful, solves one of the biggest problems we have in the movement. Estimates are that our movement for ending factory farming has about less than $300 million globally, which means that we have about as much money roughly as McDonald's makes in a week of profits to spend to help 80 billion land animals, trillions of crustaceans and fish as well, which is obviously nowhere near enough money. The aspca alone has more money than than we do, so this is a real kind of david and goliath fight and in fact, the meat industry is worth two trillion dollars, which means that if it was david and goliath, we because we're nerds and we work this out it would goliath would. Goliath would be so tall that the earth's atmosphere would reach up to about his belly button. That's the kind of scale difference between between the animal movement and the meat industry.

Thom:

Here we clearly have demonstrated with campaigns, like some of the corporate campaigns that have been going on the work that's been doing on cultivated meat, that we can still, you know, win against, against this goliath. We can still improve the lives of animals, and what we really need is more money, both to scale up these interventions that we know work around the world, particularly in parts of the world where factory farming is growing fastest and there are the least protections for animals, but also then to explore more, more potentially really exciting interventions. Go to any animal conference and you speak to so many people with really interesting ideas, creative ideas, ideas, new ways. They want to try to help, and the big reason it's not happening is because there just isn't enough money to fund every potentially promising thing, and so by focusing on trying to activate the public through donations, we can also solve one of the biggest problems that we have in the movement, which is the lack of resource to try everything and to do everything that we think can be good and that we know can work nice.

James:

Yeah, I heard this comparison recently, kind of similar to what you're saying. Some lewis fallout on like if you thought about how much money we had to help every animal on earth. It's like per hen, we have like like less, like less, like 0.01 cents. And then if you go to like shrimp, we have like one cent for every thousand shrimp. We want to try help. So it's like, yeah, if you actually put it in kind of different framings and the goliaths height, what is interesting? Um, yeah, you just see how little money we have a lot of.

Thom:

What we're talking about isn't kind of groundbreaking in the sense of like no one's ever thought that we need money before, or something like this.

Thom:

I think the the thing is, when I talk to people in the movement, they often agree in principle that that actually the trickiest to actually then go and do the thing. So. So I think particularly this this diet change is a big one of these right where lots of people would agree yeah, it would be great if, if more non-vegans were involved in in the movement by donating or volunteering or whatever. But then you actually have to take the further step of like changing the way that you communicate and changing who you're communicating to and really doing the thing. And that's where things often start to kind of come off the road, the rails, right where the ick factor starts to come in for people and they're like oh, I don't really want to ask people to like offset, because isn't that just like paying to not feel guilty anymore or whatever it might be right. And so I think this is this is not so much a conceptually complicated thing, it's.

James:

It's an emotionally complicated thing sometimes to really do the thing yeah, I guess I think that's true, probably in the case of offsets, but I can't, you know, I imagine that most of the large amount of scoops, or even the small ones, you know they want donations and they probably don't care who it comes from. They're not going to do like something like survey of like your diet as you try to donate, so like they probably are. You know in some way doing this by soliciting donations from people who just care about animals. So I guess, yeah, my sense is maybe it's already happening, but yeah, when you overlay the offset framing, then it feels a bit more quid pro quo so yeah, so I think that's right.

Thom:

I don't think people are throwing money away when it's if it comes from you know someone who occasionally eats a cheeseburger or whatever. But I think that so ace animal charity evaluators did some recent research into kind of why people donate and what their, what some of their reasons for not wanting to donate or their hesitations might be, and a big one of those was worrying about how kind of Activistic or whether their money is going to support sort of animal activism, whatever that means. And I think it's a sense that that what donors want is is someone to meet them where they are. I think that's where it gets tricky.

Thom:

It's not that people wouldn't take their money.

Thom:

It's that you have to really think about what the person who you're asking for money, what their motivations, what their values are and like, yeah, like effective altruists get this wrong in that we want to show them lots of spreadsheets and be like.

Thom:

This is the reason why this is good, because the numbers see all these, all these lovely numbers, and really what people want is to be engaged at the level of their values and their emotions, and they want to, they want to feel through that and their donation is a part of a way of like feeling that you are expressing your empathy as well, right, but then I think also other parts of the movement can get this wrong by talking about, you know, things like, for example, framing animals in terms of their rights rather than in terms of protecting animals, and these are these kinds of ways of framing the questions are not things that everyone is on board with actually, and if we want to create this broad movement, we have to meet people where they are, and that can mean actually having to change what we're, what we're talking about and how we talk about those things as well.

James:

And do you have any kind of research evidence that kind of backs up some of the stuff you're saying on maybe why donation appeal is a?

Thom:

promising approach. We obviously don't want to just sort of hypothesize from an armchair about why we think donation is better. So we we worked with an organization called rethink priorities and they run kind of regular surveys and studies and we were able to get some questions into one of their studies on specifically on this. So what we did was we asked we put in front of people a message around changing their diets and we put a message people about donating and we also then actually with our donation message we both kind of directly contrasted it with with diet change and just sort of didn't mention diet change at all.

Thom:

And we were looking to see which of these did people find compelling, like what do people think is what do people find believable and are motivated by.

Thom:

And what we found was that both the donation message itself is was much more was more compelling to people, statistically significantly compelling, and I think particularly it was more compelling with a white, with a wider group of people, than the the diet message. So the people who responded to the diet message more conformed to what we think is traditional animal supporters and whereas the kind of this donation message has broad, seems to have broad appeal with people, which is which is quite exciting. So that provided us with some actual, at least initial, data to suggest that this is this is a promising way to go. Obviously, you know the caveats, that asking people in the survey is different for them actually putting their money down. We would like to, you know, look at this further and try some, both kind of in the real world with our actual work, but also maybe in some some more kind of research, try to really get closer to the real thing. But I think this is provide some promising evidence that this is at least an area worth exploring nice.

James:

Yeah, I totally agree that the fact that this kind of confirms some intuitions and hunches and some other research that existed maybe non-animal domains I think, yeah, definitely pretty indicator that it's worth exploring. So, yeah, it's very cool that you and rethink priorities, found this. Do you have any more practical things of like you know a group that's doing outreach? You're not asking someone to change their digress and someone to make a donation to an animal, like an effective animal charity. What are some other things that are like quite like tangible, practical things that people might do if they kind of believe this?

James:

in terms of what things we might ask people to do or no like more like what advocacy organizations might do, what people like, like what you said, it's maybe you're framing animals in a certain way, maybe you're asking them certain things, anything else that comes to mind there.

Thom:

I think there's some things that we could, we should be exploring. Rutger Bregman, in his latest book Moral Ambition, tells this great story, really interesting story, about the origins of the slave anti-slavery movement in the uk and initially it's this kind of ragtag group of people in mainly in the uk who really believe slavery is wrong and they can get no one to listen to them. And one of the kind of breakthroughs at least as he tells it is saying okay, most people don't care about the slaves, but what they do care about is the British sailors on the slave boats and their lives when they're on these boats are actually really terrible. Loads of them die because actually there's like, as the captain of the slave boat, there's kind of an incentive to get as many of the slaves to the destination as possible because they're your product, as it were. They're the that you're going to make money from selling them. But the sailors they're just a cost to you because you have to pay them if they get to the other end. So there's very little incentive to keep them alive and actually kind of horrible, as it sounds to us now. But sympathy for these, these sailors on the slave boats, was initially the thing that the hook that the anti-slavery movement was able to use to get a build broader public support.

Thom:

This, I think, is a kind of fascinating story and I think about, like, what are our versions of this? Talking more about the what it's like to be a slaughterhouse worker or a factory farm worker? Like slaughterhouse working is one of the most dangerous jobs, for example, in the United States, they are done incredibly overwhelmingly by people in very disadvantaged positions. Maybe they are migrants, maybe they are people coming out of prisons, people who can't get any other job, because there's basically no reason you would want to do this job if you had any other choice. So I think that's one framing, another framing, I think, which is much more broad based, but is around public health. So antibacterial diseases are supposed to be a leading killer by 2050 of people worldwide, according to American health authorities, and we feed three quarters of our antibiotics currently to animals. It's a massive driver of this problem.

Thom:

It could cause, you know, this could put all our lives at danger from very simple, you know, getting a cut can then become a dangerous thing, as it was hundreds of years ago, because of this so I think some of these, some of these framings that are not about necessarily about the animals, not about the thing that we really really care about here, which is animal suffering, but are ways to connect the issue to things that a broader range of people can also identify as things that they really care about. I think we're doing a reasonably good job about this. On the climate, for example. Lots of people talk about animals in terms of the climate, but there are other of these kind of hooks that we could be doing more with, I think, to sort of engage more people with this issue I guess my hunch is that I think people caring about you know factory farming for the reason of animal welfare will lead to better outcomes, whatever that means.

James:

Ie you know they'll understand that actually what happens to chickens is vastly more important than what happens to cows, even though the climate impacts of these are maybe kind of flipped. So I guess, like, for example, with the caring about the sailors on these slave ships example, like do you know if I mean made this a tough question, like did they develop, you know, empathy for the actual slaves after developing empathy for the sailors, or was it purely instrumental, like okay, we should abolish this for them, and then maybe a different group of people started caring about the actual slaves my understanding is that sort of it was more sort of a bit of a kind of moral circle expansion thing where people started to care more and more about the issue intrinsically over time in Britain and the government sort of started to take it more seriously holistically eventually.

Thom:

But you needed.

Thom:

One of the things I think is true, and I think this is true of the animal movement is, in the world there are, almost arbitrarily, some issues that you're allowed to sort of regard as serious.

Thom:

In the world there are almost arbitrarily, some issues that you're allowed to sort of regard as serious. So this is really important in like the media and politics, where one of the things that comes across in the research of animal donors is sometimes animal donors actually feel a little bit silly for caring about animals, because there's a perception that it's fundamentally somehow unserious to care about animals. But there are these topics climate, I think, is one of them now like acceptable to care about animals, um, but there are these topics climate, I think, is one of them now like acceptable to care about. It's like it's serious to take this, you know, to care about the climate, the economy, public health, these kinds of things, and so I think like sometimes to get, allow people to start listening to you, you just need, you need to hook into the thing that like is within the overton window yeah, yeah, any rough thoughts on how to make animals stuff more serious.

James:

Is that just that you think it's tying it into current serious issues until eventually it becomes its turn one?

Thom:

I think so. I think I think it's starting with with the things that people already. A general good piece of advice on trying to kind of win people over or get them or persuade them is you can't persuade them that they're wrong. You have to always tell them why they were right all along, to agree with you, you know. And so you're trying to find the things that they already believe in, they already care about, and show them why this, this is part of that thing so pressing on the farm kind and I guess some of the stuff, some of the ways you try to implement this in the real world.

James:

So you guys have done a series of essentially tests of you know. First there's a more of a giving multiplier calculator, then now you have the compassion calculator and then I'm sure you've done plenty of other stuff besides that Can you just maybe expand on? Yeah, some of these tests you ran, maybe for us the multiplier and how that went.

Thom:

Do you? Yeah, sure, so, yeah. So we kind of try and think of ourselves a little bit like almost like a startup, in that what we're trying to do is explore different territory to find kind of our product market fit. You know that the thing that we can, the thing that we can build that has a market for it and that ultimately leads to more money for amazing charities doing great work to help animals. And so the kind of place we started with this was 97 or 95, excuse me of donations currently go in the animal space, go to dogs and cats. So like the 800 million or so dogs and cats and other pets get the vast majority of the donations. What if we could get people who donate to those to also donate to farmed animals?

Thom:

And there is this research by primarily by dr joshua green and lucius cariola, where they did this sort of donation splitting thing with mainly with sort of just any old, any charities, where like basically you split between your favorite charity and like a really effective charity, and this encouraged people to donate more to these really effective charities. And we thought let's do that for farmed animals. So we'll have people split their favorite dogs and cats charity in there and these really effective farmed animal charities and farmed animals will get more money. This, basically, we think it didn't work for us at all. We think the main reason is because it's just too complicated. We were kind of having to explain to people why they should care about chickens and pigs and then also explain this slightly more complicated way to give money. So this was like kind of, yeah, we pivoted away from this like fairly quickly as an organization. When you say it wasn't, working.

James:

You, just like you know, the initial takeoff of donors wasn't that significant and like you didn't see it growing.

Thom:

The donors that we had were just basically giving to our kind of like the bonus fund that we used to top up the the. The thing we also were running into problems where, like, we were trying to find ways to advertise this in different fields and it was really really hard to like explain this in a way that people like quickly, in a way that people thought made sense surely the giving multiply.

James:

People were like you know, they're doing an okay job, right? I guess, like yeah, they're doing great job. I guess you kind of said you know, maybe maybe there's the additional thing of like you have to also convince them, like why I found animals, but like why do you think it was harder for you to cut through? And and not necessarily for them?

Thom:

yeah, so I think there are. There are two things. I think one is we're trying, we're having to explain two things to you. You know, like, how this thing works and also, uh, you know how to use it. I think the other, the other piece to this is that they also have a really great way for them to talk about. This is that the research they did in the lab. So you know, these are harvard psychologists who did this amazing research and they've got a really great story to tell and obviously we were just taking their work and trying to do it again, and so we don't have that same story to tell yeah, yeah, cool, that makes sense.

James:

So you, you killed the, the multiplier effort. What did you do next? The compassion calculator.

Thom:

Yeah, so we initially built the compassion calculator just essentially as a gimmick, just to sort of we'd done all that.

Thom:

We had all this data on how effective our charities were and we're like, oh you could, you could just compare these to like how, what people eat, and that that'd be fun, wouldn't it?

Thom:

And then we started talking to people about it and they we could see very quickly that people were excited by this and they were switched on and in a way that they weren't by the sort of split and boost idea that we had the kind of giving multipliers to helping, and so we were like, okay, there seems to be something in that and we sort of it's that our organization is a story of kind of in gradually pivoting more and more, like focusing more and more of our energies on this, on this thing, as we've kind of found more that people are excited by and that they want to use it and it seems to be solving a problem for them yeah, I think, yeah, you think prom kind of is an interesting example to me at least of like an organization who's very willing to experiment and then kind of kill programs that aren't working and most people don't like shutting down programs.

James:

But maybe can you say more about like the philosophy of why I guess you want to just try a bunch of stuff and just like cut things that don't work and be a bit more ruthless than most yeah.

Thom:

So I think we have an advantage right where our success metric is really easy to see. Our success metric is are we raising money for charities and other charities? That's it's. It can be a little bit more, it can be a little bit less clear, it can take longer to understand. You know, feedback loops can be longer, m&e is harder, that kind of thing.

Thom:

We are pretty relentlessly focused, we we on trying to to as in trying to achieve our mission, do and do as much good as we can, and really we sort of relentlessly trying to stop ourselves from falling foul of sort of the sunk cost fallacy and also realizing that they're we're trying to break ground. What? The way we think about what we're trying to do is find new ways to raise money. So the movement hat, there are, there is lots of understanding of how to raise money in the movement. You know, there there are people who's that's their job. They've been doing it for a really long time, they're really good at it and they have particular ways of doing it.

Thom:

We are trying to find new ways to raise new money from new, new kinds of donors, and so we really see this as like exploring new territory. And when you're exploring new territory. You, you have to place lots and lots of bets and then you have to really know when to when to fold as well, because, yeah, we're a small team there's currently me and my co-founder, so we can't be doing 70 things at once. We have to be really good at finding the things that are where, the where things are starting to, where there's a positive signal, and then really doubling down on those things nice and I and I mean this is a true both for your programs but also your organization.

James:

I think you know, in the last inside update I think I can I can share, this is like you know you guys are going to have a revaluation period for farmkind as an organization and coming up and at that point maybe you'll decide whether you, you know, either double down on the compassion practice, maybe pivot to another approach, or you'll shut down entirely. And I guess it's not often you see that there are options actually on the table. So I don't know if you want to share a bit more about that.

Thom:

Yeah, we always, we've always felt that like we need to justify our existence and if we felt that we were not actually overall producing, not just raising some money for the movement, but also doing more with all the resources that means the people, the talent that we have, that with farm kind, if we could take those, those resources, those talents, and put them somewhere else and do more with that, we should do that instead. And so we're not. Neither me nor aiden are wedded to. Like you know, just because we founded farm kind doesn't mean we can't go off and go work for somebody else if we think that that would be ultimately more impactful for for farmed animals. And so we're always kind of reassessing like is, should we be? Is this working? Um, enough now to justify us carrying on? And should we be doing? Would we be having more impact if we went somewhere else?

James:

nice yeah, I think it's very refreshing and important like sense of humility to have in terms of, yeah, like what else you could be doing and like it's the best use of funds. Have you guys got other potential plans in mind for if the compassion calculator doesn't work? Give other avenues you're currently exploring that might be like new ways to raise money.

Thom:

There's still, I think, a bunch of unexplored stuff. I think particularly the and I don't know if Aidan and I are necessarily the best people for this, but there is definitely some stuff around those kind of like dogs and cats donors, like we tried the giving multiply thing, but I still think there's, I still think there's a lot of potential in those kinds of donors. You know there's a lot of advantages there and that we already know that they have a propensity to donate to animal charities. We've got a pretty good idea of who they are for that reason as well, and it's like a pretty large market. So more to be explored in that space.

Thom:

Um, we're also really enjoying at the moment we are kind of building our kind of networks and our engagement with, uh sort of the world of podcasting and substack. We recently launched our own podcast. This has been a great opportunity to get to know other people and things like this. So we're quite interested also in in sort of how kind of these sort of parasocial relationships can can lead to, can open up opportunities for donating. I think what's what's more powerful than somebody you trust and that you, you know you have a kind of relationship with you recommending you, you know, donate to this. You know, thl or whatever it might be. This is a kind of strategy for donate for, for raising money that I think is really exciting and something that we're we'd be interested in trying more of that's exciting.

James:

Yeah, I mean I definitely recommend the podcast. Changed my mind, not because I was on it recently, but because it's actually good and it's an important topic and changing your mind. What's not to love? Yeah, I mean I totally agree that the companion animal donors is an interesting market. That I think. No, at least not that I know of that no one has really successfully tapped into, so to speak, and there's been lots of discussion around how do we reach climate funders and climate philanthropy, whereas you think there's another very sympathetic audience sitting on our doorstep. And I think the interesting thing you guys did recently was you did this puppy parade and this kindness animals pledge. So you guys are trying to try out some things and make some inroads, but I guess you found it hasn't been the easiest kind of take off yeah, I think.

Thom:

I think that the problem with this, this audience, is that if you're not just going to serve them digital adverts, which is like which is one way you can try and do things, it's really hard to know like where they hang out.

Thom:

You know what you want generally when you're marketing a thing, where you're trying to fundraise, is to find like a really high concentration of the kind of people you know are your sort of your audience and then go there and show them your thing and with your your typical kind of animal charity donor, that's just a bit harder because they they tend to be less, they tend to be a little bit older, female and things like this, and they are generally less, less, less on social media than some other age groups, not going to be necessarily listening to podcasts and things. They more traditional media which are like really hard environments for small organizations to kind of get into and you know it's hard to get into the newspaper on tv and that sort of stuff. So there are some challenges here with this audience, but I think it's a high potential audience if someone can find kind of the right way to crack it.

James:

We've been, we've been experimenting with a few things, but we definitely haven't made it sort of there yet I mean, I think something we haven't spoken about so far is, I think I was very impressed you've crossed the 100k mark for donations raised, I think, since your lifespan, which is not more than a year, and I guess the more impressive thing to me is you more or less averaged 10k, uh, in monthly donation to last like six months, which for me seems huge. Um, so yeah, I guess, do you want to share on like do you feel like you've had like a bit of an inflection point and things are speeding up relative to how they were previously?

Thom:

yeah, so we've been. We've been fundraising now for 10 months roughly and we have raised just over $100,000. So that's yeah, that's great and the sort of trend line is going in the right direction. We're also really pleased that about 40% of our donors overall are repeat monthly donors, which is also, I think, a really healthy sign for our total fundraising.

Thom:

It's funny, when you're building something like this, you feel kind of constantly every day that you don't see like a new donation come in or a new donor come in, so you're like, oh, we didn't do anything, like we didn't achieve anything. But when you take a step back, yeah, I think we've we've done. We're like reasonably happy with how we did. I think we we kind of came in with these really like high expectations of how quickly we would be able to fundraise and we haven't quite met those. But yeah, things are definitely moving in the right direction. I think there's a lot of a lot of positive signs that what we're doing is working and what we need is that kind of we really need that big, that big moment to kind of like really sort of take off and get to the next level.

James:

I think I've seen a bunch of project plans and goals for the year and I think a recurring symptom is people have very ambitious goals and it's actually very hard to achieve those things. So I think this planning fallacy is very ingrained and very hard to shake off, and especially people who are like optimistic and ambitious.

Thom:

So I want to do big things and it's actually hit the real world and not everything goes apart yeah, I think I one of the biggest learnings for in our first sort of six months was to do less. We kind of tried to do every channel all at once, all at the same time, and that was like that was like clearly wrong. And what we've, what we've done, is we've kind of narrowed our focus, both in terms of our audience and what we're trying to do, but also in terms of how, how we try to reach them, and that has allowed us to do a few things really well rather than like lots of things averagely, and that's been a, that's been a real game changer for us for sure nice.

James:

Yeah, focus is forever important and I know how hard you and aiden work, so I'm sure you guys not doing much still. You guys doing quite a lot. To round things up, what was one bit of news you're excited to hear or grateful about recently?

Thom:

yeah, so I was, uh recently at the ai and animals conference. It was a really fascinating conference here in london where jonathan birch, who's a lSE philosopher who does some amazing work on animal sentience and helped to get crustaceans into the decapods, into the animal sentience act in the UK and he's launching a new, a new center for research in the UK on working on animal sentience and some of these questions around things I mentioned at the beginning, around precision, livestock farming and and the sort of the future of how we work, look after animals, and he's an incredibly fascinating guy, a really effective academic in actually taking his, his work and like making that into policy, and so I think that's actually a really exciting development in the uk for animals in the future nice, it's very cool.

James:

what's some media recommendations you'd have to listeners? It it can be books, podcasts or anything else, and obviously your own podcast will be mentioned.

Thom:

So you don't have to mention that.

Thom:

So a great book that is recently out that I definitely would recommend everyone read is Rutger Bregman's Moral Ambition.

Thom:

If you haven't read that yet, it is a very inspiring call to focusing your life on trying to make the world a better place, rather than enriching yourself, and it's beautifully written it.

Thom:

Um, some of the people mentioned in the book I I know as well, which is always nice, it's like I know that guy, so that's always fun. But I would definitely recommend and another, another book actually that I I really love franz deval's writing on animals. I think I find it incredibly inspiring and moving, particularly his book mama's last hug, which is all about kind of the emotional complexity of animals and for us working in this field I think you know it really is a night, it's a, it's a a nice reminder, I think, of what the stakes are in in with the work we do, but also, I think, a great treasure trove, also for explaining to people like actually why the experience of animals really matters, and it's got full of brilliant anecdotes that can help us to like communicate, just like how complex and emotionally varied these, these animals, are. So those would be two recommendations nice, that's awesome.

James:

We'll link them both below. Finally, how can people get more involved in your work? You're hiring more volunteers and where people find you generally.

Thom:

Yeah. So Farmkind is hiring right now. We are hiring our first hire, which is someone to help us particularly with growth and outreach. So if you are, or know anyone who has experience in marketing, in building networks, in taking either, it doesn't have to be, you don't have to be sort of in the animal space, but maybe actually, maybe ideally, some sort of for-profits experience would be, would be great. But have this excitement about our mission and about building a new organization, particularly reaching reaching lots of new people, then please do get in touch. We have an ongoing hiring process that we'd love to be involved in and you can find that at our website, which is farmkindgiving, where all our information is and you can find out about the things we do, the charities we recommend and and all our work there nice.

James:

Yeah, we'll definitely link that job below. Yeah, it's an exciting role and with that, yeah, thank you, tom, so much for joining and yeah, I guess this has been a pretty broad conversation from you. Know, what should we be asking the public to do to help animals and all the way to, I guess, organizing puppy parades and giving multiplier pledges and all this kind of stuff. So, yeah, thanks for this pretty fun discussion. Thank you very much, it was great.