Big Numbers Hurt Animals (still)

Several people have forwarded recent articles about animal issues, all of which feature mind-numbing statistics. So here are bits from posts in 2014 and 2016:

One of my many, many regrets is that in the years after I stopped eating animals, I would lapse into Carl Sagan mode and talk about the "billions and billions" of animals who were killed for food each year. It was only later that I realized that using big numbers was actually undermining my efforts to convince people to take a step to help animals.

This article by Scott and Paul Slovic discusses the issue in more detail. Excerpt:

How big do the numbers have to be for insensitivity to begin? Not very, it turns out. 

Consider the recent death of the Syrian child Aylan Kurdi when his family braved the choppy seas off the coast of Turkey. The image of Aylan lying face down on the beach captivated the world’s attention and even, in short order, resulted in refugee policy changes in countries as far away as the United States. But 14 Syrian children drowned in the Aegean Sea the next day. Did you notice? Did you care? 

And even 14 is much higher than necessary to desensitize us.... “Compassion fade” can occur when an incident involving a single person expands to as few as two people. 

Of course, this is a hard issue to deal with constructively, given that most people care more about and relate better to individual mammals, while the vast majority of factory-farmed animals are birds. But at the very least, we should stop talking about how many billions of animals are killed and talk more about individual stories, especially the brilliance of individual birds.

As Stalin said, "One death is a tragedy, but a million is a statistic."

This Psychology Today article discusses the dynamics in detail; excerpt:

Mother Teresa once said, 'If I look at the mass I will never act.' When Stalin and Mother Teresa agree on a point, I sit up and pay attention. It turns out that the human tendency to turn away from mass suffering is well documented. Deborah Small and Paul Slovic have termed this phenomenon the collapse of compassion. It's not simply that as the number of victims goes up, people's sympathy levels off. No, when the numbers go up, the amount of sympathy people feel goes perversely down. And with it goes the willingness to donate money or time to help.

This has obvious implications for animal advocacy. Many vegans talk about how many billions and billions of animals are killed every year. But as the above article relates, this just numbs people.

Furthermore, in the face of unfathomable numbers, one burger or chicken nugget seems negligible -- indeed, less than negligible.

Obviously, if we are going to create a world where all these animals aren't killed for us to eat, we have to convince people not to eat animals. [Duh] We need to be psychologically insightful in our efforts to do this, instead of repeating facts / stories that move us. Indeed, if something is meaningful to us as long-time vegans and activists, it is almost certainly not the best way to reach someone who currently eats meat.

Big Numbers Hurt Animals, Revisited

One of my biggest regrets is that for years after I stopped eating animals, I would lapse into Carl Sagan mode and talk about "billions and billions" -- how many animals were killed for food each year, etc. It was only later that I realized that using big numbers was actually undermining my efforts to convince people to take a step to help animals.

This article by Scott and Paul Slovic discusses the issue in more detail. Excerpt:

How big do the numbers have to be for insensitivity to begin? Not very, it turns out. 

Consider the recent death of the Syrian child Aylan Kurdi when his family braved the choppy seas off the coast of Turkey. The image of Aylan lying face down on the beach captivated the world’s attention and even, in short order, resulted in refugee policy changes in countries as far away as the United States. But 14 Syrian children drowned in the Aegean Sea the next day. Did you notice? Did you care? 

And even 14 is much higher than necessary to desensitize us.... “Compassion fade” can occur when an incident involving a single person expands to as few as two people. 

Of course, this is a hard issue to deal with constructively, given that most people care more about and relate better to individual mammals, while the vast majority of factory-farmed animals are birds. But at the very least, we should stop talking about how many billions of animals are killed, and talk more about individual stories, and the brilliance of individual birds.

Big Numbers Hurt Animals

As Stalin said, "One death is a tragedy, but a million is a statistic."

This Psychology Today article discusses the dynamics in detail; excerpt:

"Mother Teresa once said, 'If I look at the mass I will never act.' When Stalin and Mother Teresa agree on a point, I sit up and pay attention. It turns out that the human tendency to turn away from mass suffering is well documented. Deborah Small and Paul Slovic have termed this phenomenon the collapse of compassion. It's not simply that as the number of victims goes up, people's sympathy levels off. No, when the numbers go up, the amount of sympathy people feel goes perversely down. And with it goes the willingness to donate money or time to help."

This has obvious implications for animal advocacy. Many vegans talk about how many billions and billions of animals are killed every year. But as the above article relates, this just numbs people.

Furthermore, in the face of unfathomable numbers, the one burger or chicken leg someone is going to eat that day seems negligible -- indeed, less than negligible.

Obviously, if we are going to create a world where all these animals aren't killed, we have to convince people not to eat animals. We need to be psychologically insightful in our efforts to do this, instead of repeating facts / stories that move us. Indeed, if something is meaningful to us as long-time vegans and activists, it is almost certainly not the best way to reach someone who currently eats meat.

Finally: we are not only looking to get people to stop eating animals. Rather, we need them to maintain that change, be a positive example of compassionate living, and to help advocate for the animals. In other words, we need to think strategically about our advocacy -- not just the immediate impact.

If we do this, change can grow exponentially!

Understanding the Numbers for Better Advocacy

2023: For updated views, please see Losing My Religions. 
You can read for free (just click on "Start Reading Now" to get the pdf).

Thanks so much.

If you find this at all useful, please share with others. TY.

Presented at the Animal Rights Conference, AR2015

Welcome and thanks for coming.

If I say anything that seems like a criticism or judgment, it isn’t meant that way. I’ve made many mistakes in my life – mistakes that have actively hurt our efforts on behalf of animals. We are all fortunate there has been so much research of late that can guide our efforts to help animals as much as possible.

I want to share this research and the relevant numbers with you today. These facts totally changed my approach to advocacy, although they didn’t do so right away. It took me a long time to get over my personal biases and accept and act on reality.

To set the stage, I was not raised a vegetarian, or even a liberal. I didn’t have any clue what went on in the world. I just knew I loved groovy pants!

Admit it: Adorbs!

When I went vegetarian and became an activist in 1980s, I adopted the “Do Something, Do Anything” mode of activism.

This basically defaulted to focusing on whatever was high profile, whatever was in the news, whatever pissed me off the most.

I did march with the anarchists in DC against the first Gulf war. That made a difference! 

 And I did whatever felt best – and this was generally something angry and in-your-face. I wasn’t trying to figure out what would make the biggest difference.

It took me years to come to the most important insight:

I know it goes without saying, but there is an unfathomable amount of cruelty in the world. We simply don’t have the ability to address it all. When we choose what to focus on, we are saying we’re not going to be working on behalf of anything else.

I know this is harsh. But it is a simple logistical truth.

This matters because over the past 40 years, we’ve not done the best job.

For example, this graph shows per capita meat consumption in the U.S. While beef has declined, chicken consumption has more than doubled. Given how small birds are, this means many many more animals are dying every year, compared to when Peter Singer published Animal Liberation.

I know we all have a much greater affinity for mammals than for birds.

 But not only are chickens being killed in vastly greater numbers than cattle or pigs, they are suffering absolute horrific and unfathomable cruelty.

We need to do better.

So what do we know that can help us improve as activists, that can help us actually make real progress toward a better world for animals?

You’ve probably all seen this slide from Animal Charity Evaluators:

It is the most important graph in my entire presentation. The bottom line is that to a first approximation, every animal killed in the United States is a farm animal.

Compare that to this graph, showing where animal-related charitable donations go:

Now, farm animals are the tiny sliver in the bottom right.

In short, when trying to make a difference for animals, we’re working with one hand tied behind our backs, because resources are in no way allocated proportionally.

Unfortunately, it is even worse than that.

This graph, from Harish Sethu’s “Counting Animals” blog, shows the advertising budgets of companies that exploit animals, compared to the full operating budgets of animal advocacy organizations. Just to be clear, the big circles are simply the advertising budgets for Cargill, McDonald’s, etc. The advertising budget of just one of these companies dwarfs the combined operating budgets of PETA, HSUS, MFA, etc.

Now I know this isn’t happy news. I realize this can all seem overwhelming, even hopeless. It is not entirely unreasonable to look at these numbers and just want to work on whatever project is right in front of us, whatever pisses us off.

And yet, before we move on, I want to hit you with one more piece of bad news. According to a number of surveys, including the most recent one by the Faunalytics (Humane Research Council), the vast majority of people who go vegetarian or vegan eventually go back to eating animals. Specifically, 4 out of 5 people who go veg then quit!

It would be bad enough to realize that we’re throwing away 80% of advocacy efforts. But it is actually worse than that. Everyone who quits being veg becomes an anti-spokesperson for compassionate eating – a public (and often loud) example against taking any steps to help animals. Ginny Messina has written more about this (1, 2, 3).

So with all that said, what else do we know that might actually help us?

First, let’s consider this graph from Ben Davidow, which shows the relative number of animals harmed by the standard American diet. 

And you can see that the vast, vast majority of animals harmed are birds.

To look at it a different way, we have this graph from Mark Middleton at AnimalVisuals, showing the number of deaths to produce a million calories of different foods, including grains, vegetables, and fruits:

 He explicitly concludes, “Leaving chicken and eggs out of our diets will have the greatest effect on reducing the suffering and death caused by what we eat.”

Again though, I don’t want to just focus on death.

 I would much rather be a field mouse living free until killed by a combine harvesting soybeans, compared to a chicken whose entire life is utter agony.

And I don’t mean this as hyperbole. Harish did an analysis of how many chickens actually suffer to death before making it to the slaughterhouse:

 These birds die of disease, or are killed because they aren’t growing quickly enough, or their legs break leaving them unable to make it to water, or have their hearts just give out. Harish’s calculations show that so many chickens suffer to death that their number dwarfs all those killed for fur, in shelters, and in labs. Again – this isn’t the number of chickens killed overall, just the number who suffer to death before even getting to slaughter.

The numbers are incredible. Again, based on research by Harish, Joe Espinosa notes that the average American consumes about two dozen land animals a year.

If one person decides to give up eating birds – just birds – they go from being responsible for the deaths of over two dozen land animals a year to fewer than one.

Fewer than one!The converse is also true: 

Anything that might possibly lead someone to replace red meat with chickens will lead to a lot more suffering and killing, as noted by Ginny Messina.

Between 2008 and 2012, there was a decline in the consumption of chickens (which has, sadly, reversed in the ensuing years). I would love to say that this decline in killing has been driven by a rise of vegetarians and vegans. However, as Nick Cooney notes in Veganomics, the change has actually been driven by meat reducers – people who are eating more meat-free meals, but aren’t vegetarian.

Also from Veganomics, Nick notes that people who buy “humane” animal products eat less meat than the average American. They are also more likely to go vegetarian.

This is a hard bit to swallow. My reaction is to want to attack people who specifically rationalize eating animals. But the data show these people are actually our allies – people we should embrace and encourage.

Turning to recidivism, the data show that people who go veg for health reasons are the ones who go back to eating meat.

The single biggest difference in motivation between those who are currently vegetarian and those who used to be vegetarian is concern for animals.

This is backed up by The Humane League Labs, which showed concern for animals is what inspires lasting dietary change.

So clearly, we need to keep animals at the center of our efforts to help animals!

Research has also told us more about how we can refine our message in such a way as to get the most change for animals.

The Humane League Labs specifically pointed out that we should not focus on dairy.

 Not only because of the numbers, but because it is the last thing people think they can give up. Rather, we should focus on chickens, which people can give up and actually makes the biggest difference in the numbers.

This relates to research I was a part of this past spring at the University of Arizona. One of the many interesting take-aways from those studies was that the general public thinks veganism is impossible, and vegans are, to put it kindly, annoying.

Obviously, this doesn’t matter if we only want to promote veganism regardless of the consequences. But if we actually want to make a difference and reduce the amount of cruelty in the world, we should take note of this.

Similarly, many people go back to eating animals because they find it too hard to live up to the demand for purity.

 Again, if we only care about the purity of those who call themselves vegan, then the fact that we’re driving people away is irrelevant. But if we actually want to reduce cruelty, we should do everything possible to both embrace and encourage everyone...

...instead of reinforcing people’s stereotypes and trying to build the smallest, angriest, most exclusive club in the world.

For all the bad news leading off this presentation, there is a great deal of hope and opportunity out there.

A number of surveys have discovered a shocking willingness among the general population to reduce meat consumption.

And if we are going to really help animals, rather than police our club, we can reach these people with an honest, realistic message that actually has a profound impact for animals...

... reducing and eliminating consumption of chickens.

How can we best do this?

These graphs from the Humane League Labs shows that of the advocacy tools available to us, movies, conversations, websites, and online video have proven to be the most impactful.

That conversation is so powerful shows just how important it is that we be positive, effective spokespeople in our daily lives.


I know this is a lot to process in only a few minutes.

But it is truly wonderful that we have so much information available to us, such that we know what positive, constructive steps we can take to help change the world for animals.


Two last thoughts. The first is my favorite quote from Gene Baur.

Even while building the world’s leading farm animal sanctuary, Gene was looking ahead to what will be necessary to make sure that one day, sanctuaries will no longer be needed. We have to go upstream and end the demand for animal products.

And finally a quick note as to why this work matters. For us here, we can debate and argue, philosophize and condemn. We’re all relatively safe and well off, enjoying our sparring and our quibbles.

But we need to realize that our work is a matter of gravest consequences for animals. Recognizing this actually changed my worldview, away from being right to being maximally effective.

We cannot do everything. This is why I strive to know all the facts and make sure my efforts to have the greatest possible impact. Of everything I could be doing, I want to choose the option that reduces the most suffering. I hope you agree, and that this information is useful. Thank you.

For ways to put this info into action, please visit OneStepForAnimals.org 

Actually Useful Comments!

Pre-script: If you read only one link related to this, please read Vincent's great article!


At least someone cares about my financial well being*:

Matt Ball should just get a corporate public relations job at Niman Ranch Meats, Chipotle, or some other corporate animal product food peddler. He’d fit in with the big shots, and the job would fit his philosophy. He make a lot more money, too!

But some people actually read all of my article and Tobias' article, and offered insightful comments:

Carolyn summarizes:

They're asking us to think about why we'd say yes or no - to give the issue serious consideration, therefore seriously considering why we're vegan ourselves.

Gerry gives this example:

Funnily enough, something similar to this came up the other day for me in a way that was not hypothetical. A friend asked me how to deal with family members who would not eat at her house because they refused to eat vegan food (not for any ethical reason but because it was unfamiliar).
    We discussed whether she should agree to cook meat for them the next time they visit if they in turn agreed to try the vegan food on the following visit. If you run the numbers, it means that one less meat meal is consumed (without this Faustian bargain the meat eater would stay home and eat meat both times).
    More importantly, if the visitors ended up liking the vegan dish it could mean that they would broaden their diet to to include more protein from non-animal sources even if they continued to eat meat (as they probably would).
    This situation did not involve my vegan friend actually eating any meat, her compromise was merely to cook meat. It seemed like a good compromise to me

Dobrusia has an even better example:

Some undercover investigators eat meat because otherwise they would blow their cover. It's hard to pretend you're a factory farm worker when you eat tofu. So it's not just hypothetical, extremely devoted activists make this decision, and YES it does help more animals than being vegan for the same period of time.

I brought up Dr. Greger's example of how our pursuit of being ever-more-vegan can actually hurt animals by turning off people from considering it.

Thanks to everyone who actually read the articles and gave thoughtful, non-knee-jerk responses! (*And in case you were wondering, I'm joking re: financial well being.)