Blog – Phauna

Profit Matters

Beyond Meat, probably the most iconic plant-based brand in the US, has never had a profitable quarter. Eat Just, maker of Just Egg and, lately, cultivated meat, has had to raise money recently and might still be in dire financial straits. Many smaller plant-based startups have come to investors looking for additional funding, only to find that investors are increasingly saying “no thanks” because they are sick of losing money. Management at many of these companies are incredibly idealistic and …

Animal People

“There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting animal people, and we are acting accordingly.” Yoav Gallant, Defense Minister of Israel We have felt horrified and saddened watching the US-supported bombing in Gaza. We’ve been sobered and frightened on behalf of 2 million vulnerable civilians, half children, whose lives and livelihoods are completely at the mercy of an enraged and powerful military force. We’ve felt helpless as Israel unilaterally cut off electricity, water, …

Scalability and Funding

Looking through lots of grant applications, I’ve been struck by the disconnect between what people want to do and the pool of funding available. There are lots of impactful ideas, but sadly there isn’t enough money in the movement to fund them all. Most of the applications we receive don’t address the funding question. After all, you’re here at Phauna because we’re supposed to solve that problem, right? We’d like to if we could! But it feels about like this: …

In Defense of the Meat Tax

In February last year, Animal Ask published a study “Investigating whether a meat tax campaign could be a recommended intervention for improving the lives of factory farmed animals”. Faunalytics posted a synopsis entitled The Downside of Meat Taxes. I feel concerned. The meat tax is a potentially exciting and impactful policy goal which represents a unique approach. It deserves further research and consideration, but I’m afraid that isn’t happening because of the impact of the aforementioned publications and the value …

On Counting Chickens

Within the animal freedom movement, I have noticed there exists a desire to quantify our efforts. Sometimes we may look at a particular intervention or approach and ask the question: “how many animals are going to be helped?” or “how much suffering is going to be mitigated?” I think there’s a fairly good reason for wanting to quantify: so that we might know how to value different interventions or approaches, at least relative to each other. This seems a futile …

What we’d like to see more of

For AVA 2022, we’re handing out postcards that list some of the types of things we’re excited to fund (see below). This post elaborates on our thoughts. We’re especially excited to support projects that: Build Movement Power This is partly covered in this post, but to be more concrete and specific, we feel that grassroots activism on behalf of animals has never been done in a scalable way. There is, fortunately, a small body of research about social movements, and …

Positive Expectancy Advocacy

So the churches were strengthened in the faith and grew daily in numbers. Bible, Acts 16:5 My career has been in high-frequency and quantitative trading. I’ve been using computers to trade markets for about 15 years. One of the key concepts that successful quantitative traders understand (and poker players too!) is that of expected value. This is a technique for making decisions under uncertainty. The basic idea is that the value of an action, a position, or a bet is …

Why Strength?

We don’t have the power yet to make the types of changes that we wish to make. Imagine what kind of power we would need to have in order to redefine the legal status of animals away from property and towards individuals with rights. Or replacing animals and animal products in the US food system. Or passing Rose’s Law. These are major changes that are going to require a massive amount of power to achieve. When you are up against …

Why Culture?

I’m going to argue that a focus on human culture is necessary and illuminating on our path to achieve liberation. It’s also a good approach, because it bolsters all of our other work. Finally, it’s neglected, so we should prioritize it. A focus on human culture is necessary, because cultural norms are why most animals suffer. It’s cultural norms that both allow and encourage people to eat meat. It’s cultural norms that both allow and encourage most vegans and vegetarians …

Why not? Animal Welfare Edition

Why not focus on welfare reforms? The main arguments I can see for working on welfare as opposed to liberation work are: (1) it’s good for movement building, (2) it gets people thinking about animal issues, (3) it contributes to an economic theory of change, and (4) it helps animals directly. Let’s unpack these a bit. (1) Welfare work is good for movement building. It’s true that welfare campaigns such as OWA have been extremely successful at bringing people together. …

Why liberation?

I use the term liberation in order to contrast with other types of work done on behalf of animals, such as animal welfare or animal advocacy. At Phauna, we’re especially interested in supporting groups who are doing liberation work, for a few reasons. We think it’s more neglected than other types of work. We also think it’s more honest, and that it pays dividends. Finally, we think it’s more exciting. Neglect. As far as I can tell, the vast majority …

On terminology: liberationism

As activists, we often debate whether veganism is a good term or concept to be promoting. The critique says that by centering ourselves and in particular, the consumer choices we’re making, we are taking the focus away from the animals where it belongs. I want to sidestep that debate, because while I understand the above argument, I also understand that people who actively take the step to become vegan out of humility and respect for animals are making a huge …

Yin liberationism

What can you accomplish? […] Generally, you overestimate what you can accomplish when you have a passion for a good idea. And you underestimate the maintenance cost, and you underestimate how challenging it’s going to be to […] enjoy that idea. Michael Saylor As activists, we naturally want to change the world. We see the suffering of non-humans, we see the simple and clear solutions, and we are inspired to take swift and immediate action. This is awesome! I think …