Vegan Activism Isn’t Reducing the Number of Animals Killed… Yet
From All-Creatures.org Animal Rights/Vegan Activist Strategies Articles Archive

FROM Vegan Justice League VJL
April 2020

We at the Vegan Justice League think it’s critical to turn people vegan, and into activists. Every outreach conversation, every direct action, every type of vegan activism matters. We don’t mean to imply otherwise. What we’re saying is that in order for our vegan activism to have its full effect, we must eliminate subsidies to animal agriculture.

Our vegan activism isn’t saving animals’ lives. It seems an outrageous claim; we know. We’ve said this in our messaging on social media, and are clarifying what we mean here.

The short answer is this: subsidies and bailouts insulate animal agriculture mega-corporations from the laws of supply and demand. As we read headlines touting the rise of veganism and reducitarianism, we also checked, and double-checked USDA data. And the data was clear:

Animals are being bred and slaughtered in this horrific system of exploitation whether we eat vegan or not.

If you feel slighted or hurt by what we’re saying, we understand where you’re coming from. We have a pretty good idea of how you may be feeling about the message that VJL is delivering. We felt similarly when we first started to realize that the government was undermining our vegan activism with our tax dollars. (We’re still fuming about it to be honest).

What we found, however, is that we have a way to fight back. Before we get into that though, let’s clarify some issues, and show some data.

Let us start by clarify one point: we at the Vegan Justice League think it’s critical to turn people vegan, and into activists. Every outreach conversation, every direct action, every type of vegan activism matters. We don’t mean to imply otherwise. What we’re saying is that in order for our vegan activism to have its full effect, we must eliminate subsidies to animal agriculture.

Until we do, these subsidies will continue to protect animal agriculture producers from the laws of supply and demand. So while we activists make progress toward a vegan world, unfortunately, so long as the system stays the same, animal exploiters will continue operating, fully untethered from our choices in the marketplace.

Our founder, Connie Spence, is a data broker; she’s a statistician by profession. The woman’s got a head for numbers. When she first went vegan, she too thought she was saving animals. It wasn’t long til she started looking at the actual numbers to discover the real story. She looked at shelf space percentages in the supermarkets, the amount of surplus meat being stored in federal facilities, point-of-sale indications of demand trends, etc. What she found was just what we’ve been saying here – that despite changes in demand, animal agriculture was increasing production no matter what.

But the animal agriculture lobby has insulated itself from the laws of supply and demand. The system is rigged....

Please learn more about Vegan Justice League

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