An Interview with Fatma Sueda Evirgen
Sueda talks with us about her organisation, Animetrics, and shares recent findings on Turkish consumers’ perceptions of what farming practices are permitted under halal food production. The results highlight a “powerful entry point” for animal advocacy.
Sueda, could you briefly introduce yourself.
Hi, I’m Sueda (she/her). I’m a behavioural and experimental economist and a co-founder of Animetrics. I will soon be joining the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB) as a postdoctoral researcher on a project focusing on promoting prosocial behaviour. I recently completed my PhD in Economics at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, where my research focused on identifying biases—such as those based on ethnicity—and studying the causal effects of institutional structures on social and economic outcomes. Social justice has always been at the heart of both my academic work and personal commitments. In recent years, this commitment has expanded into advocacy for non-human animals. Together with my then-flatmate (now co-founder) Gülbike Mirzaoğlu, we started Animetrics to help bring evidence-based and accessible research to the animal advocacy movement. Alongside my academic work, I engage in cross-movement work, by organising talks that highlight the common ground between animal advocacy and other social justice movements to encourage collaboration and exchange of strategies.
You are one of the co-founders of Animetrics. Could you briefly introduce your organisation. What makes Animetrics unique?
Animetrics is a research and capacity-building organisation dedicated to supporting advocates with evidence-based insights and practical tools. We are a team of four: myself, my co-founder Gülbike Mirzaoğlu, and our long-term volunteers Megan Jamer and Sophie Weiner. Gülbike holds a PhD in Economics and specialises in social contagion and experimental economics. She also gives lectures on animal rights/welfare and environmental issues—having delivered over 25 so far, and counting—in collaboration with the Middle East Vegan Society. Megan is our fundraising advisor and has been helping us shape our fundraising efforts with a great mix of strategic insight and practical experience. Sophie is our creative design and communications volunteer, helping us make our research more accessible and engaging for a wider audience.
At Animetrics, we prioritise research projects based on the needs of advocates. This means working across a wide range of topics. At the moment, our primary focus is on understanding attitudes toward farmed animals within Muslim communities and the MENA region. We’re especially interested in the regional, cultural, and religious dynamics that shape how people engage with farmed animal issues.
Gülbike and I founded Animetrics after long conversations about how we could best contribute to the movement. In those discussions, we identified several critical gaps: while excellent research exists, very little is conducted in the Global South. Economists are largely underrepresented in this space, and, too often, research doesn’t reach advocates or address their most immediate needs. These gaps matter, because the advocacy movement operates with extremely limited resources, and we can’t afford to make strategic decisions without context-specific evidence. We use our expertise to fill these gaps.
What makes us unique is our integrated approach. We co-design research projects with advocates and support them in applying findings to real-world strategies. Our work includes original and collaborative studies, and free capacity-building services like research support and training for advocates and organisations on how to generate and use evidence effectively.
Your team recently published a report of research you did with Muslim consumers in Turkey, exploring their perceptions of what is “halal” when it comes to animal welfare practices. What inspired this research, and what were some of the key findings?
This research was inspired by personal experience. Through conversations in our Muslim families and communities, Gülbike and I often encountered the assumption that halal food automatically ensures high animal welfare standards. That is unfortunately not the case. Advocates working with Muslim populations echoed this perception and pointed out a lack of data on how widespread these beliefs are or how people might respond if they were corrected. That sparked our study.
We surveyed around 800 Muslim adults in Turkey, where halal is the norm for food production, to explore two questions:
- How much do consumers know about whether common industrial farming practices are allowed under halal rules?
- And how might learning the truth affect their willingness to buy these products or consider plant-based alternatives?
Participants were presented with six common practices linked to animal welfare concerns: chick culling, debeaking, cow and calf separation, lack of required long-term medical care, absence of protection for animals’ natural lifespans, and inadequate space for chickens to exhibit natural behaviours. They were asked whether they believed each practice was permitted under halal food production. If they answered incorrectly, we shared the correct information and then asked how it might influence their purchasing decisions and openness to plant-based options.
The results showed major knowledge gaps: for each practice, over half of our participants either believed it was forbidden or were unsure. Once informed, many said they’d be less likely to buy products involving those practices, and a smaller but meaningful share said they would consider plant-based alternatives. Responses varied across the sample. Certain groups—such as women, older adults, individuals who place high importance on halal, and those who view animal welfare as central to halal—were more likely to respond strongly to the new information.
The results showed major knowledge gaps: for each practice, over half of our participants either believed it was forbidden or were unsure.
What were some of the practices that consumers thought were forbidden under halal food production rules, but were in fact permitted?
The most widespread incorrect belief was the belief that long-term medical care is legally required in halal production systems. When presented with the statement, “In facilities where halal products are made, it is legally mandatory for animals with permanent injuries or who are no longer productive to receive long-term care and medical treatment,” nearly half (47.2%) of respondents incorrectly believed this is true. In reality, no such legal requirement exists within halal food production in Turkey.
A similar proportion (46.8%) also believed that halal standards require chickens to be given enough space to express natural behaviours—another incorrect assumption. Many participants also wrongly believed that the other farming practices were prohibited. In all cases, at least one in four participants held incorrect beliefs about what halal food production allows.
Your team observed that consumers with gaps in their understanding of what is halal showed increased intentions towards plant-based eating. What do you think explains their openness to shift their diet in response to learning that their assumptions were mistaken?
In our study, 70% of participants stated that they believe animal welfare is essential to halal. This suggests that welfare considerations may play a central role in how consumers evaluate the acceptability of animal products. When participants were presented with accurate information showing that certain industrial farming practices are permitted under halal standards, they may have experienced a sense of mismatch between what they believe halal should represent and what the industry currently allows. This may have triggered cognitive dissonance: a recognition that their beliefs about halal food conflicted with the actual conditions under which it is produced.
In this context, plant-based alternatives may have appeared more consistent with their ethical and religious values. This interpretation is supported by several patterns in the data. Participants who viewed animal welfare as central to halal were more likely to express increased intentions toward plant-based options, possibly because the new information directly challenged their beliefs. Similarly, those who had incorrectly believed a practice was prohibited under halal rules showed stronger shifts than those who were merely unsure, suggesting that this conflict shaped how participants responded. Another important insight is that beliefs about religious compatibility may shape openness to dietary change, as participants who saw plant-based diets as compatible with Islam were more likely to consider such alternatives.
How might Muslim consumers’ beliefs and commitments to eating halal be a platform for advocating for more plant-forward diets?
For many Muslim consumers, halal is not just a set of dietary rules. It’s closely tied to values such as compassion, stewardship, and avoiding unnecessary harm. This is reflected in the fact that a large share of participants in our study identified animal welfare as a core aspect of what halal means to them. This connection offers a powerful entry point for advocacy.
For many Muslim consumer, halal is not just a set of dietary rules. It’s closely tied to values such as compassion, stewardship, and avoiding unnecessary harm.
By highlighting where current production practices fall short of these values and showing how plant-based foods can meet halal requirements while avoiding animal welfare concerns, advocates can open constructive, values-aligned conversations. Framing plant-forward diets not only as compatible with Islamic principles but as an expression of them, may make these options more compelling. This is especially true when messages are tailored to resonate with cultural, religious, and ethical priorities within the communities being engaged.
See here to read the full report
For more information about Animetrics, visit their website here
Cover image by Tolis Dianellos
Interview and blog by Jared Piazza
Thank you for an inspiring and unforgettable PHAIR 2025 Animal Advocacy Conference in Edinburgh! 🌱
Over the past few days, we witnessed something truly special: a coming together of 200 brilliant minds and compassionate hearts from all over the world. Researchers in the social and behavioural sciences and dedicated animal advocates joined forces to explore how we can better understand human behaviour and create meaningful, lasting change for animals.
From groundbreaking research on a range of topics such as dietary choices and veganism, effective approaches to advocacy, and the psychology of human-animal relations, to creative strategies and real-world campaigns led by non-profit organisations, each presentation and discussion reminded us just how powerful this community can be when science and advocacy work hand in hand.
To our incredible speakers: thank you for sharing your expertise so generously and for challenging us to think deeper and act bolder. Special thanks to Brooke Haggerty, Christopher Hopwood and Peter Singer for their keynote talks.
To our tireless volunteers: thank you for the countless hours you gave to make everything run smoothly: Sam Vellana, Annalyse Ellis, Ali Ladak, Mia Patel, Georgia Harlow, and Maria Ioannidou.
Thank you to everyone who volunteered to chair conference sessions: Maria Ioannidou, Jared Piazza, Rebecca Gregson, João Graça, Matthew Ruby, Luke McGuire, Stefan Leach, Christopher Hopwood, Willem Sleegers, Chris Bryant and all symposium chairs.
To our generous sponsors: thank you for believing in this mission and making this conference possible: ProVeg International, Bryant Research, Beyond Carnism, Animal Think Tank, Animal Ethics, and Food Systems Research Fund.
A very special thank you to the conference chairs, Steve Loughnan and Matti Wilks, whose vision, dedication, and hard work made this conference a reality.
And to every participant who joined us, asked questions, exchanged ideas, and opened your hearts: thank you. Your commitment to building a kinder, more compassionate world is what makes this movement so powerful and so hopeful. As we return to our daily work, let’s carry forward the connections we’ve made, the knowledge we’ve gained, and the shared sense of purpose that unites us.
As Chris Hopwood stated in his keynote: “Our treatment of animals is the moral crisis of our time, and we are up against it. Most people are not yet with us, but we have the science, and we have each other.”
Until next time 💚
Kristof Dhont, President PHAIR Society
The PHAIR Animal Advocacy Conference 2025 is just around corner and we are very much looking forward to it.
The conference programme and full schedule (with list of titles and abstracts) are now available on the conference website (https://phair2025.co.uk/programme/). You will also find information about the venue and travel information on the website.
The conference opens on Wednesday July 2nd with a public talk from Professor Peter Singer from 6-7pm. The conference then runs from Thursday July 3rd – Saturday July 5th, with Keynote talks by Professor Christopher Hopwood (University of Zurich) and Brooke Haggerty (Executive Director at Faunalytics).
Don’t miss the main Networking Event on Thursday July 3rd at 7pm (at The Caves), generously supported by ProVeg International, and our canape event at the Conference centre directly after the keynote talk on Friday, generously supported by Bryant Research.
Connect with us on Instagram @phair_society or Facebook @AnimalAdvocacyConference for photo and video updates throughout the conference and let’s use #PHAIR2025 across all platforms.
We thank ProVeg International, Bryant Research, Beyond Carnism, Animal Think Tank, Animal Ethics, and Food System Research Fund for their generous support! The PHAIR Animal Advocacy Conference 2025 would not be possible without them.
Faunalytics is excited to host their fourth annual remote symposium, Fauna Connections, for animal advocates on September 18, 2025 (tentatively 12pm-5:30pm EDT).
They invite academics and scientists from the social and behavioral sciences, or related disciplines, to submit a presentation abstract focusing on a synthesis of research. They are particularly interested in comprehensive talks, such as expert overviews (think of it as a mini-lecture you can give to advocates), that provide a deeper understanding of topics relevant to animal advocacy.
For more information and submission guidlines: https://faunalytics.org/fauna-connections. Applications for presentations are due by June 20th.
If you are interested, please apply! And please share this opportunity with anyone you believe would be interested in presenting at this symposium. Thank you so much!
The International Association of Vegan Sociologists is welcoming submissions for individual presentations or panels for their 2025 annual online meeting “Senses & Emotions”, Oct 4-5, 2025.
Call for Paper Deadline: May 31, 2025
The 2025 IAVS annual meeting will showcase research related to veganism, animal rights, and sociological theories of emotions/senses. Participants are invited to consider how emotions and sensory experiences are integral to understanding and challenging nonhuman animal exploitation.
Proposals and queries should be sent to info@vegansociology.com by 31st May 2025. Submission guidelines and further information can be found on the conference webpage: https://www.vegansociology.com/conference/
Potential topics include (but are not limited to):
- Nonhuman animals as minded, feeling beings: how are animals’ emotions or sensory experiences minimised or acknowledged in society and/or vegan sociology research?
- Veganism, activism and emotional labour: How do activists navigate the emotions involved in advocating for other animals? What role does emotional labour play in vegan activism?
- Socialisation of emotions & animal exploitation: How are emotional norms or ‘rules’ around nonhuman animals socialised in ways that challenge or support vegan ways of being?
- Sensory experiences and the Body: how can vegan sociology help us to explore human and nonhuman animals’ felt experiences of the social world?
- Vegan Sociological perspectives on particular emotions: e.g. how might explorations of disgust, desire, grief, joy, sadness further our work for nonhuman animals
- Innovative research methods for exploring sensory elements of the multispecies social world: e.g. Emotional/Sensory mapping, visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory methods
- Representations of nonhuman animal emotions: ‘happy’ exploited animals, suicide food, attempts to build empathy
- Digital emotions and online vegan communities
- Intersections of species, race, gender, and emotional politics
Time to Register
Join us in Edinburgh for the PHAIR Animal Advocacy Conference, July 2–5, 2025!
There’s only ONE WEEK left to register at early bird price. Or support our work by buying a Supporter ticket! Don’t miss the opportunity and complete your registration now: https://phair2025.co.uk/register/
Public Lecture by Peter Singer
The conference begins with an in-person, public talk by Peter Singer (July 2, 6-7pm). RESERVE your seat HERE!
Journalists have bestowed the tag of “world’s most influential living philosopher” on Peter Singer. He was Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics in the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University from 1999-2024, where he now holds the rank of Emeritus Professor of Bioethics.
Singer first became well-known internationally after the publication of Animal Liberation in 1975. Some of his other books are: Practical Ethics, The Expanding Circle, Rethinking Life and Death, Pushing Time Away, The Life You Can Save, Ethics in the Real World, Why Vegan?, Animal Liberation Now, and, most recently, The Buddhist and the Ethicist.
In 2012, Singer was made a Companion of the Order of Australia, the country’s highest civilian honour. In 2021 he was awarded the Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture, and in 2023, the Frontiers of Knowledge Prize for the Humanities, from the Spanish BBVA Foundation.
Social Event: Ceilidh with Live Music
On Thursday evening, we will host a Ceilidh (with live Scottish band) at The Caves. This evening will provide the perfect networking opportunity in an informal and inspiring setting, while enjoying drinks and tasty plant-based food. More details will follow.
Book your Accommodation
Book your room at budget-friendly rates in the Holland House, located on the site of the conference where all the action is: https://phair2025.co.uk/accommodation/ Enter the code PHAIRALOC at time of booking to secure your room from the PHAIR reserved accommodation block.
Alternatively, you can stay on-site in 4 star university hotels The Scholar Hotel or The Scott Hotel with a discount using the code PHAIR25.
Keynote Speakers
Brooke Haggerty, Executive Director of Faunalytics
Chris Hopwood, Professor at the University of Zurich & Editor-in-Chief of PHAIR
We are pleased to welcome many esteemed colleagues and speakers who will be delivering a diverse range of symposia, talks and workshops. Our conference website will be updated regularly when more information becomes available.
Cover photo credit: Jo-Anne McArthur / We Animals Media
This blog post was originally written for The Vegan Society, published Friday, 24 January, 2025. Re-posted for the PHAIR Society with permission.
In this blog post, Jared Piazza considers recent findings from developmental psychology regarding children’s relationship with animals and animal products. He argues that children make an ideal audience for vegan education, and also considers the many practical challenges in reaching this audience.
Children care about animals
Children have a special relationship with animals. From a young age, children are deeply interested in animals and seek interactions with them. One study gave 1- to 3-year-olds an opportunity to play freely in a room where there was a live animal (e.g. a hamster, lizard, etc.) and many attractive toys available. Children spent more time interacting with the animal than any of the toys, and this was true even when the animal was a spider.
In society, we try to make sure that children’s interactions with animals are pleasant. Children watch television shows that have animal characters as protagonists. Parents take children to local farms and petting zoos where they get to feed animals and watch them being cared for. Children are taught to care for companion animals and to respect wildlife outside their home.
Because of these foundational experiences, most children develop a fondness for animals and care deeply about their wellbeing. Indeed, some recent studies have shown that children’s concern for animals at times eclipses that of adults.
For instance, Matti Wilks and colleagues presented a group of American adults, and a group of 5- to 9-year-olds, with theoretical moral dilemmas in which they could save either a person or an animal. Adults resoundingly chose to save the person over the animal, whereas children were much more divided about whom to save.
Children’s heightened concern for animal lives even shows up in their judgments of eating animals. Luke McGuire and colleagues found that British children, ages 9 to 11, rated it less permissible to eat animal products, compared to adults. Children also judged it more important to treat farmed animals (e.g. pigs) well. When asked to justify the wrongness of eating animals, British children tended to invoke concerns about animal rights and welfare.
An emerging, developmental puzzle
This emerging research on how children think and reason about eating animals raises an interesting developmental puzzle. We know that most children around the world are raised in families where eating animal products is commonplace, and most children themselves eat animal products. So:
Why do many children who eat animal products also judge it wrong to do so?
It could be a case of children being morally inconsistent – saying one thing while consciously doing another. More likely, it reflects a degree of naïveté in children’s understanding of the food they eat and where it comes from.
Young children may not realise that much of what they eat comes from animals and that it requires harming animals to create these products. This may be especially true of children raised in urban environments where they have little to no involvement in animal farming and the processes by which animal products are generated.
Are children unsuspecting meat eaters?
There are only a few studies that have explored what children know about the production of animal products. At least one study, with urban American children, found that they can struggle to identify which foods come from animals.
In that study, Erin Hahn and colleagues asked American 4- to 7-year-olds to sort foods according to their plant versus animal origins. They gave the children two boxes: one covered in leaves (denoting a plant source) and another covered in fur (denoting an animal source). Overall, the children performed reasonably well on this task; however, they did make a number of errors. For example, almost half of the children thought that cheese was from plants, and about 40% thought that bacon and hotdogs came from plants. Even chicken nuggets were commonly miscategorised, despite the word “chicken.”
Categorising foods according to their plant versus animal origins may be challenging for urban-raised children for multiple reasons. For one, research by Heather Bray and colleagues suggests that urban parents sometimes avoid having frank conversations with their children about the origins of animal products. Omnivorous urban parents were more likely than rural parents and vegetarian parents to tell ‘white lies,’ dodge, or deflect probing questions from their children. Such maneuvers are meant to spare children from the harsh realities involved in meat production, but they might also keep children guessing about where their food comes from.
Children’s poor performance on this food-origins task could also reflect misunderstandings children have about the task itself. Another way to test children’s knowledge is to see if they can identify which animals are used for food. Heather Henseler Kozachenko and I adopted this approach. We presented 18 animals to two groups of British children, 6- to 8-year-olds and 9- to 11-year-olds, and asked them to identify “which animals do people eat?”
When asked this way, both groups of children were pretty good at identifying which animals are eaten. For example, 91% of 6- to 8-year-olds, and 91% of 9- to 11-year-olds, correctly identified that chickens are eaten by people; 96% of older children understood that pigs are eaten (80% of younger children), and 85% of older children indicated sheep are eaten (73% of younger children). Where children struggled most was correctly identifying animals that are eaten by people outside of their own culture – for example, knowing that there are people who eat frogs, sharks and octopuses.
Together, these two initial studies suggest that American and British children’s knowledge of animal products is incomplete at best. Yet, they are far from naïve in their understanding of which animals are eaten. More research is needed to get a fuller picture of what children know about animal products and how this knowledge develops, especially in populations outside of the Western world.
From unsuspecting to aware and attached
Even when children can reliably identify which foods come from animals, and which animals are eaten, this knowledge alone is probably not enough to deter them from using and consuming animal products.
It is learning about the harsh realities involved in animal agriculture – particularly what happens to animals in large-scale factory farming and how these industrial farms negatively impact the health of our planet – that tends to motivate adults to abandon animal products. However, this is also the sort of food-systems knowledge that children tend to lack and are commonly shielded from.
Such “shielding” practices are likely guided by good intentions. Parents don’t want to upset children or cause issues for themselves at home. However, one potential long-term consequence is that children learn to stop asking questions and continue to consume animal products unabated. By the time children do learn about these realities – for example, when they are teenagers or young adults – they have already built up a strong attachment to animal products and are motivated to keep eating them, despite the conflicted feelings they may experience. Efforts to intervene become much harder once these attachments are in place.
We know from research by João Graça and others that many adults have strong attachments with meat, founded on a lifetime of eating and enjoying meat. Furthermore, we know that adults who have strong attachments to meat are more likely to defend animal agriculture and are less interested in replacing meat in their diet; for example, with plant-based alternatives. Adult meat eaters engage in a range of psychological mechanisms to maintain their positive attachment to meat, including objectifying animals used for food and disregarding information that could potentially change their attitudes about so-called ‘food’ animals.
Thus, from a psychological perspective, childhood may be the best time to intervene in order to reduce animal consumption and encourage more sustainable and cruelty-free options. In summary, this is because it is during childhood that people:
(1) care a lot about animals,
(2) are still forming attachments to food, and, as a result,
(3) are the least motivated to defend their current eating practices.
Arguably, this combination of heightened concern for animals and weaker attachment to animal products make children the ideal audience for vegan advocacy. Indeed, Heather Henseler Kozachenko and I recently found that children displayed none of the typical motivated defences adults exhibit when reasoning about ‘food’ animals.
In this new study, we presented adults and British children ages 6 to 12 information about the level of intelligence of animals commonly used for food (e.g. chickens, cows), or regarding animals not commonly eaten (e.g. kākāpō). They made judgments of the acceptability of killing animals for food and eating them (e.g. “eating hamburgers”), either from their own perspective or another person reflecting on this information.
Adults in these tasks tended to do two things:
- they judged that it is worse to harm animals described as more intelligent than it is to harm animals described as less intelligent, but only when the animal being described is not eaten by humans: in other words, they responded strategically to animal intelligence information;
- they thought other people would act on this animal intelligence information more than they actually did themselves – that is, they showed ‘self-other distinctions’ in their moral judgments.
By contrast, children did not show these hallmark motivated reactions. They tended to condemn harming and eating animals at rates higher than adults; they did not make use of animal-intelligence information strategically; and they did not exhibit self-other distinctions in their judgments.
This research is preliminary and it bears replicating with children of different ages and nationalities, but it does suggest that children may be less motivated to defend the normative practice of eating animals, compared to their adult counterparts.
Practical challenges of vegan education with children and future directions
As future stewards of the planet, children represent an important demographic for vegan education. As we have seen, children may be somewhat open to replacing animal products in their diet. Furthermore, research suggests families are often supportive of children who want to make such changes.
Nonetheless, advocates of vegan education – such as The Vegan Society’s Education Network – face a number of practical barriers when working with children and families:
- How can educators teach children about the poor treatment of factory-farmed animals, while simultaneously being considerate of their emotions and sensibilities and the concerns of parents and gatekeepers?
- How do educators introduce children to plant-based alternatives in a positive way and get schools to subscribe to more plant-based options? Is it best to focus on the health benefits of such a change, ordoes raising the environmental and moral issues also help?
- How can advocates mitigate parents’ reasonable fears about the disruptive consequences of their children adopting a plant-forward diet – for example, the need for families to learn new foods, new recipes, and cultivate new eating practices? What do we tell parents of ‘picky eaters,’ who are less willing to try novel foods?
These are some of the more difficult questions we need better answers to and should occupy the research agendas of those interested in vegan advocacy. We also need more research examining individual differences within childhood, since there is likely significant variability in children’s concern for farmed animals, their empathy, and degrees of openness to dietary change.
Children represent an important group in the consideration of a more compassionate food system because on the whole they care about animals and their attachments to animal products are still in development. Children may be the ideal audience for vegan education, but there are plenty of practical challenges involved in reaching them during this conducive period – challenges that deserve more attention from researchers and vegan educators seeking to inspire future generations of animal advocates.
Blog post by Jared Piazza, originally written for The Vegan Society here. Re-published with permission for the PHAIR Society.
Cover photo by Rowan S
We are excited to announce the 2025 edition of the PHAIR Animal Advocacy Conference.
The conference will take place July 2–5, 2025 at Pollock Halls at the University of Edinburgh, in Edinburgh, Scotland. The conference begins with a public talk by Peter Singer held on July 2, and the main programme runs July 3–5.
The conference brings together researchers from social and behavioural sciences, and animal activists and advocates from around the world. We are interested in research on a range of topics relevant to animal advocacy including how we think about and relate to non-human animals, dietary choices and veganism, and effective approaches to animal advocacy.
The call for presentation submissions will be announced in November.
For more information and updates: phair2025.co.uk
An interview with Dr Marielle Stel about her recent research published in Anthrozoos on the value of perspective taking for attitude change. Do role reversal interventions work? If so, what might they be doing?
Marielle, could you briefly introduce yourself?
My name is Marielle Stel and I am currently working as an associate professor at the University of Twente (The Netherlands). I graduated as a social psychologist with specific interests in empathy and behaviour change. The research I’ve conducted so far can be broadly described as empowering individuals and society to enhance their safety for both physical threats (disasters and crises, including pandemics and climate change) as well as social threats (other people’s antisocial, egocentric behavior, deception). In my recent lines of work, I have been studying how to facilitate behaviour change towards a more compassionate and sustainable world, for instance, by aiming to increase the moral standing of animals. Regarding my personal interests, I love spending time with my four rescue cats, taking relaxing walks in nature, and bouldering.
You recently investigated a ‘role reversal’ intervention to change people’s attitudes and behavioural intentions towards using animals. What inspired this research and what were some of the key findings?
We were interested to what extent some of the existing interventions used by animal activists (e.g., Peta) would indeed lead to a change in attitudes and behaviours towards animals. We choose to investigate the role reversal intervention (click here for the video) as it included aspects that could theoretically change speciesism (e.g., creating awareness of how animals are being treated, facilitating taking the animal’s viewpoint, and emotional reactions towards observing unjustified suffering).
In two studies, we showed that this intervention led participants to more strongly intend to reduce their harmful behaviour towards animals, compared to a control condition with no video intervention. These behaviours included reducing the use of products for which animals were used (e.g., meat, dairy, cosmetics, medicines) and using animals for entertainment. Further analysis showed that this reduction in behavioural intentions was due to participants feeling a sense of injustice. There were no effects of the intervention on speciesist attitudes or signing an animal rights petition. So this intervention shows promise as people intended to change some behaviours that cause animals harm.
Could you say more about the ‘role reversal’ element of the video intervention. This seemed to depict animals as perpetrators of exploitative acts on humans. How might portraying humans as victims at the hands of animals increase our sympathy for animals who suffer at our hands?
We hypothesised that due to the role reversal element, the video may facilitate taking the animals’ viewpoint. Showing the reversed roles of animals and humans leads people to have to switch mentally. Furthermore, by showing a parallel world, activists hope that people become more aware of what we are doing to our animals and how awful this would be when the same would happen to us humans.
You are right that the animals become the perpetrators here, but it seems that the overarching message came across rather than the thought that animals would and could do that to humans. This is, for instance, reflected in increased feelings of injustice reported by participants when having watched the video, which in turn reduced intended harmful behaviours toward animals.
Do you worry that, in some contexts, it might backfire to portray animals as the perpetrators of violence?
I do not worry about that for the reasons just mentioned. However, if animals were portrayed as perpetrators of violence consistently and for a long period of time, for instance, in the media, on product packages, etc., it indeed may influence people’s attitudes towards animals negatively.
The ‘role reversal’ video seems to be increasing behavioural intentions via a sense of injustice. How might ‘role reversal’ images create this sense of injustice?
That is a good question. Feelings of injustice can be elicited when people learn about the suffering while taking perspective. So together with showing how animals are being treated (which does not necessarily have to be role reversed) and the role reversal aspect, this sense of injustice may have been elicited when watching the video. We did not find, however, that the video influenced perspective taking in itself, but it did influence feelings of injustice. Also, we did not have a condition showing these same pictures but without the role reversal. Thus, we cannot be certain whether this specific aspect of the video is necessary to obtain the effects.
Do you think this ‘role reversal’ method may be more effective than just having participants assume the perspective of victimised animals? Is this something you are currently testing?
No, I do not think it is necessarily more effective. Here, we were interested in whether these often-shared illustrations would actually have an effect. I believe that facilitating perspective taking more directly, for instance, by explicitly asking people to do so, might be more straightforward. Also, you do not have to worry about possible unwanted perpetrator effects.
We are not (yet) currently testing whether the video without role reversal would be as effective. We did conduct related studies on perspective taking. In two studies, we demonstrated that showing the suffering of animals alone is not sufficient to reduce speciesism (see preprint here). We showed that taking the perspective of the animals is crucial to obtain a reduction in speciesist attitudes and actual animal product consumption.
Importantly, the prejudice literature suggests that we should facilitate “imagine-self” perspective taking (imagining oneself in the situation of another individual) rather than “imagine-other” perspective taking (imagining how the other individual feels). Vorauer and Sasaki (2014) reported that the imagine-other perspective taking actually hindered prejudice reduction as this type of perspective-taking ironically led participants to focus more on how their own group was viewed by the outgroup rather than how the outgroup feels.
The video intervention was accompanied by sad music. Is the sad music essential to the intervention? Does it create a mood or tone that is essential for the intervention to work?
We did not test this, but I am guessing that the sad music is not essential for the intervention to work. It does create a mood that may strengthen the effect. That would be interesting to investigate. Happy music would probably reduce or neutralise the effects as some people may then interpret the illustrations as being funny.
The intervention altered people’s behavioural intentions but not their speciesist attitudes. Could your measure of speciesism be contributing to this null finding? (The Speciesism Scale is generally used to measure stable attitudes that vary between people rather than within.)
We agree it is indeed tricky to try and change such a stable attitude. Yet, we are interested in trying to find this ‘holy grail’: if/when people would change their beliefs about humans being morally superior, together with how morally acceptable they regard using animals for human aims. This would hopefully change their compassionate and sustainable behaviour more consistently. In the recently conducted perspective-taking studies I just talked about (see preprint), our intervention did reduce speciesist attitudes, measured with the Speciesism Scale.
Next steps: What are some outstanding questions from this research? Where would you like to take this research?
In general, my research focuses on the broader outstanding question of what aspects are needed to reduce speciesism and social dominance. Most people do not want to harm animals, yet they still do. I am interested in how to best inform and help people to reduce this inconsistency and overcome the many barriers that exist.
How would you like to see such an intervention applied by animal advocates?
The ‘how’ does not really matter to me, when the knowledge we create is helpful for animal advocates. When published, all interventions will be freely available to use. But the knowledge can be applied in other ways as well; for instance, by explicitly asking people to take the perspective of animals when showing images of animal suffering.
Questions for Dr Marielle Stel? She can be reached by email at m.stel@utwente.nl or via LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marielle-stel-a110915/
Interview questions and blog by Jared Piazza
Cover photo by: Alexander Andrews
Cover photo credit: Linda Robert
A brief interview with Professor Chris Hopwood, Editor-in-chief of the PHAIR Journal, about the history and purpose of the ‘roadmap for collaboration’ available here.
What is the brief history of this document? What motivated its production, how did it come together, and who has been involved?
A few years ago, I started consulting on a project with Courtney Dillard and Andie Thompkins from Mercy For Animals (MFA) to conduct survey data on attitudes about farmed animals and plant-based foods across 23 countries. During our work together, it became clear to me that there are important differences in the way academics like me and advocates like Courtney and Andie approach our work. This collaboration has been wonderful for me so far, and hopefully MFA has also seen it as a success. However, there were some differences in perspective along the way that I wished I had considered ahead of time.
For instance, my practice is to always post all my materials, data, and script for other researchers to access, use, and check my work, but there are obvious reasons why this is not advisable in an advocacy context. Another example is that the outlets that are most impactful for scientists (peer-reviewed journals like PHAIR) are not the same as the outlets that are most impactful for advocates (more publicly visible blogs, social media, and targeted communications to members), and this can affect the way studies are conducted and how the results are written up. These are not things I really thought fully about before beginning this project with MFA, but I spent a lot of time thinking about them during our work together.
Courtney, Andie, and I agreed that it might be helpful to the field for us to try to parse these kinds of issues and to encourage productive advocacy-science collaboration more generally. We enlisted two colleagues who we knew would have significant experience and good ideas about this – Andrea Polanco from Faunalytics and Chris Bryant from Bryant Research. Together, the five of us generated a draft that aimed to:
- define important terms related to advocacy-science collaboration,
- distinguish the relative strengths of advocates/advocacy organizations and scientists/universities,
- highlight some challenges that can come into advocacy-science collaboration,
- describe principles and best practices, and
- provide a few salient examples.
We solicited feedback from members of the animal advocacy research community and got a lot of great ideas. We also presented this draft at the Animal Advocacy Conference in Kent this summer, and got very helpful feedback from the attendees about our own blind spots, some issues to cover or emphasize, and other ways to improve the document. We used this feedback to revise the document into the version that is currently posted at https://phairsociety.org/advocacy-science-collaboration/.
What is the aim of the document and what is your hope for how academics and advocates will use it?
Best practice would be for animal rights advocates and psychological scientists to fully consider these kinds of issues ahead of time and come to a transparent agreement about how they would be handled during their collaboration. Our idea was to generate a document that could guide people at the outset of this kind of work.
What do you see are the main benefits of scientists and advocates working together?
The underlying idea of this project was that there are considerable benefits to animal rights advocates and psychological scientists working together. Collaboration can help both psychological scientists and advocates.
One thing I have struggled with most of my career, like most of my colleagues, is the nagging existential question about whether I am spending my time doing anything useful. My mid-career turn towards research on human-animal intergroup relations largely reflects an attempt to have a real impact. But to fulfil whatever potential I might have, I needed to go beyond conducting studies whose end goal is publication in peer-reviewed journals to figuring out what kind of research would be most helpful. Nobody knows more about what kind of research is needed than the people who are trying to apply research in their day-to-day work. Psychological researchers like me can therefore learn a lot about the kinds of research questions to ask by working closely with advocates.
Conversely, we believe advocacy will be most impactful to the extent that it is based on evidence. Of course, there are many ways to define impact and evidence, and we hope to have been inclusive of different perspectives in our approach. Across different approaches, the careful application of scientific methods increases rigor and confidence in any findings, and psychological scientists therefore have expertise that can be helpful to advocates.
One example that has been preoccupying me lately is the question of how effective meat reduction interventions that use psychological techniques to target individual behavior change are. There have been a few review papers published in the last couple of years listing the various factors that ostensibly make these kinds of interventions effective (e.g., see Harguess et al., 2020; Kwasny et al., 2022; Mathur et al., 2021). These papers may give advocates the impression that they should be using such techniques in their work. However, I am skeptical: meat reduction intervention studies typically:
- measure attitudes rather than actual behavior change,
- they rarely include meaningful follow-ups,
- there are few replications,
- and I am concerned about selective reporting or “publication bias” (studies that find an effect are more likely to have been published than studies that don’t).
In general, my observation is that the more rigorous a study is, the less likely a robust effect is found. This concerns me, because it raises the possibility that advocacy groups are using valuable resources on interventions that may appear to have some evidence and efficacy based on a review of the literature, even though the evidence is pretty thin. People whose day jobs are on the ground doing actual advocacy cannot be expected to deconstruct the scientific literature or design the kinds of studies that can rigorously test intervention hypotheses. This is where psychological scientists can help.
What are some of the major challenges to collaboration?
We outline several domains of challenge in the document, including:
- Bias. For instance, there may be anti-scientific bias among certain people in the advocacy community, who have a strong intuitive sense that what they are doing is right and should be effective. Conversely, there is a risk that researchers doing research on this politically-tinged topic may be perceived by other academics as biased.
- Tensions regarding goals and values. Advocates are generally interested in changing the world to be better as quickly as possible. Scientists are generally interested in learning about the nature of the world, and this usually involves a lot of mulling, replicating, and reconsidering. In many cases, advocacy proceeds by moving forward with the best information available, whereas science is generally most productive if progress is cautious and slow. As an example: From my scientific perspective, we do not have strong evidence that meat reduction interventions are an effective use of resources. But what is an advocate to do, throw up their hands and stop trying things until better evidence is available?
- Communication. Both the way we communicate with one another and with outside groups. To one another: the norms about roles and expectations within a collaboration may differ so much that you do not see them coming. It is naturally best to clarify these differences ahead of time. Outside: scientists tend not to be as good at explaining the relevance of our findings to the public as advocates. This is a great example of why it can be so fruitful for us to work together.
Where can interested readers find the document?
The document is posted on the PHAIR Society website at https://phairsociety.org/advocacy-science-collaboration/.
If you have any thoughts, comments, or suggestions, please share them with me, Chris Hopwood, at chopwoodmsu@gmail.com.
For further discussion of the roadmap, check out this blog post by Faunalytics.
PHAIR contributor: Jared Piazza
We are thrilled to announce the 2023 edition of the Animal Advocacy Conference: Insights from the Social Sciences.
The conference will take place June 22-24, 2023 at the University of Kent, UK.
We will bring together researchers from different fields in the social and behavioral sciences, and animal activists and advocates from around the world.
Learn about the latest ideas, findings and campaigns in the following domains:
- The psychological, social, and societal factors shaping how we perceive and think about animals, human-animal relations, and animal welfare and rights
- The impact of advocacy and activism strategies related to animal rights, veganism, meat reduction and reduction of other animal products (e.g., dairy, eggs)
- The social and behavioral science of animal cruelty, meat consumption (and other animal-product consumption), vegetarianism/veganism, and speciesism
- The connections and intersections between human-animal relations and human intergroup relations as well as between animal ethics and other social justice domains including environmentalism, feminism, and anti-racism
This conference uniquely bridges the gap between academic researchers and activists/professionals in the field of vegan and animal rights advocacy. The conference will create a stimulating environment where academics and activists/advocates exchange relevant knowledge, engage in lively debates, share their ideas, and can start collaborations.
Call for Submissions
The submission portal will open on November 2, 2022. We invite academic and research submissions in three different formats: Oral Presentation, Symposium, Poster Presentation.
For more information and updates: blogs.kent.ac.uk/animaladvocacy
An interview with graduate researcher Gina Song Lopez
Feature image credit: Vernon Raineil Cenzon
The voluntary abstention from animal-derived food products, or veganism, is said to have both a long- and short-history. The concept of animal-product abstention has a deep and prevailing cultural history throughout the Middle East and Asian countries as well as being central to many religious philosophies including ancient Jainism, Hinduism and Buddhism.
However, it was only in 1944 that the term ‘vegan’ was coined by Donald Watson and his wife Dorothy, to describe a then new sub-group of vegetarians who additionally abstained from the consumption of dairy and eggs for the purpose of animal welfare.
Despite its rich cultural history, much of what we know about the progression of the vegan or vegetarian (veg*nism) movement today comes from research and perspectives which utilise so-called “WEIRD” (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) samples.
To expand our historical and cultural understanding of veg*nism, we sat down with Gina Song Lopez, a graduate researcher studying the expansion of veg*nism in the Sino-Cultural Sphere (specifically: China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong). Here is what she had to say.
Gina, could you briefly introduce yourself?
Hi! My name is Gina Song Lopez (宋芝蘭 Sòng zhīlán/Song Chih Lan in Mandarin Chinese). I did my BA at the University of Queensland, Australia, where I majored in Political Science and International Relations. After graduation I moved to Taiwan where I completed my MA in Asia-Pacific Studies at National Chengchi University. Now I am a second-year doctoral student at the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies at Lund University in Sweden. My research interests are largely focused on environmental politics and sociology in Asia, sustainability studies, Sci-Tech, and critical animal studies. Outside of research I really enjoy watching anime, drinking boba tea, and training Brazilian jiujitsu (I am not skilled at all though).
You recently started your doctoral research looking at the expansion of vegan and vegetarianism in the Sino-Cultural Sphere. What inspired you to take on this research?
This is a bit of a story. For my Master thesis I wanted to focus on Taiwan’s environmental movements at first. There is a bit of an established academic space for researching environmentalism in Taiwan, especially in the context of social movements and environmental politics and policy. However, around the time I was to start writing my proposal two things happened. First, I realized that beyond aspects of conservation and wildlife protection, animals themselves and concepts such as animal rights or animal welfare were largely absent or marginal in the literature. Second, veganism, as known in the West, started to gain traction in Taiwan with a few groups of very passionate and hardworking activists who I came to know. So, I realized that something important was happening and I needed to research it. After completing my MA thesis on the topic of the Animal Protection Movement in Taiwan, I knew that I wanted to take this to the next level and pursue a PhD. Then in 2019, with the publication of the EAT-Lancet report, I decided that I wanted to specifically explore the cultural and regional nuances of promoting plant-based diets in East Asia, starting with veg*nism and animal advocacy movements.
Can you give a brief overview of the history and the current state of the vegan and vegetarian movement in the Sino-cultural sphere?
When it comes to talking about the history of veg*nism in the region there is an important distinction and acknowledgement that needs to be made. To begin with, veganism and vegetarianism in the sense of ‘meat abstinence’ in East Asia has existed over millennia due certain religious practices (Buddhism, Daoism, etc). Also due to religion, meat avoidance has also often been coupled with concepts such as ‘mercy for animals’ or ‘respect for life’. However, while there are certain and significant overlaps, vegan and vegetarian practices are now in flux in the region.
The newer generation of vegans and vegetarians are more concerned with the environment, health, and of course, animal ethics. As for modern history, before the popularization of veg*nism this past decade, there was a ‘secular’ vegetarian project during the early 1900s where a group of intellectuals promoted plant-based nutrition for self and national development (see the work of Angela Ki Che Leung and Jia-Chen Fu). In the more immediate record, there are also some contextual and timeline differences.
In Taiwan, where I am most familiar with and have been researching the longest, the Life Conservationist Association (LCA) began promoting animal rights first in the 1990s. They produced the first Chinese Mandarin translation of Singer’s ‘Animal Liberation’ and led the charge for the passing of the Animal Protection Act in 1998. There are now several other prominent NGOs like the Environment and Animal Society of Taiwan (EAST), the Taiwan SPCA, Kindness to Animals (KITA), and Taiwan Animal Equality Association (TAEA). There are also university clubs and societies for animal protection and animal ethics discussions. As well as more international connections, you can find some Anonymous for the Voiceless chapters around Taiwan now. Taipei even joined the Official Animal Rights March organized with Surge Activism in 2019. Due to the COVID19 pandemic, many things were on hold for a while. As soon as things began opening up, the Taiwan Vegan Frenzy and the No Meat Market, the two main periodic vegan fairs on the island, resumed their events.
In China, vegetarian university clubs have also been quite active, as well as other social meet-ups and vegan advocacy groups like Vegans of Shanghai. To my knowledge, the Good Food Fund (GFF) has been a key driver in the movement in the past few years. Jian-Yi, the founder of GFF, was also involved in the establishment of the China Vegan Society which was launched this year along with the Meatless Monday campaign. The CVS just held a three-day VegFest in Beijing with reportedly over 10,000 participants in October. Hong Kong is certainly smaller in size and population compared to the previous two. Yet they also have an AV chapter with a monthly Cube of Truth and a HK Pig Save group connected to the Save Movement.
Much of what we know about the progression of vegan and vegetarianism has largely come from research which utilises so-called “WEIRD” (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) samples. With your insights into the Sino-cultural sphere, do you feel that this has produced a biased view of the movement?
Yes and no. To be fair, the emergent field of vegan studies was a project that began in a WEIRD setting. It’s where concepts such as animal rights and animal ethics entered academic discussions and began drawing attention. Anyone researching veg*nism knows of the Oxford Vegetarians. The West is also where veganism as we know it–from Straight Edge counterculture to vegan celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Joaquin Phoenix–have been operating. Now, with the globalizing power of the internet and people like me going back and forth between continents working and studying abroad, veganism and vegetarianism is spreading around the world. Many people are learning about veganism and animal rights and adapting it to their own cultural and political contexts and thus diversifying what veg*nism looks like. In the case of China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, I argue that local advocates are in fact ‘translating’ veg*nism. Re-interpreting the meaning of meatless diets and human-animal relations against the backdrop of prevalent cultural and religious practices. I think what is important is to begin taking notice of these local movements, expanding accounts of veg*nism to other geographies and cultures as its adapted, and see what can be learned from each other.
I argue that local advocates are in fact ‘translating’ veg*nism. Re-interpreting the meaning of meatless diets and human-animal relations against the backdrop of prevalent cultural and religious practices.
What are some common misconceptions about the state of the movement within the Sino-Cultural sphere?
One thing you hear a lot when talking veg*nism or animal advocacy both inside or outside of Asia is that it is easy to promote such concepts because of the cultural-religious context. As mentioned above, there are overlaps for sure and in fact there is a sense of shared goals with some veg*n Buddhist groups. So, this is somewhat true, but their dynamic is actually more complex. This is perhaps better illustrated by the fact that there is a conceptual gap when translating ‘vegetarian’ or ‘vegan’ to Chinese. Recently I was having a conversation with an informant about the word ‘vegan’ in Chinese and she mentioned that it has been a source of debate. This is interesting because there are about five broad categories of meatless diets in Chinese (‘full/pure vegan’ [全素 quán sù/純素 chún sù]; ‘ovo-vegetarian’ [蛋素 qàn sù]; ‘lacto-vegetarian’ [奶素 nǎi sù]; ‘lacto-ovo vegetarian’ [奶蛋素 nǎi dàn sù]; ‘plant-based allium/allium vegetarian’ [植物五辛素 zhíwù wǔ xīn sù]) and only one sort of fits the word ‘vegan’, which is usually translated as ‘full/complete vegetarian’ (全素 quán sù) or ‘pure vegetarian’ (純素 chún sù). So, they have had to be creative and come up with variations for ‘plant-based’. For example, 蔬食(shūshí, ‘shū’ means vegetable and ‘shí’ means food), or 植物基 (zhíwù jī, which literally means ‘plant-based’).
For the launch of Meatless Monday in China, GFF and CVS founder Jian-Yi also mentioned that they had to think about what type of wording/characters they would use in Chinese to make sure people understood what it was about. They went with 蔬适周一 (shū shì zhōu yī). Which is a wordplay that sounds like 素食 (sùshí, ‘veg*n’) but is also a homonym with “舒适” (shūshì) which means ‘comfortable’ or ‘cosy’ (no relation to the delicious vinegared rice wrapped in seaweed you might crave for lunch, which is spelled 壽司 [‘shòusī’] in Mandarin Chinese). They did this, in part, because the term 素食 (sùshí), the most common translation for ‘veg*n food’, is generally infused with religious connotations. ‘Sù’ may mean ‘veg*n’, but it can also mean ‘plain’, ‘essence’, or ‘element’.
Another issue is that religious veg*ns do not consume alliums (garlic, onions, chives, etc). So, a dish might appear perfectly vegan for someone in the West and local non-religious veg*ns, but then exclude most of the local veg*n population. To address this issue, products may be labelled 五辛素 (wǔxīn sù, ‘allium veg*n’). However, 五辛素 (wǔxīn) products may contain eggs or milk. So, you see how complicated things can get.
Other than that, perceptions about the state of the movement really depend on who you ask and what their advocacy priorities are. For example, veganism and plant-based diets are certainly gaining prominence. Awareness about animal welfare is also more widespread now but ideas about animal rights are still quite novel. So, mobilizing people around animal liberation motives, like many other places, is not always possible.
What unique facilitators and barriers does the Sino-cultural sphere face in terms of the progression of vegan and vegetarianism?
As elaborated above, the context of veg*n religious practice is perhaps both, the most unique facilitator and barrier. There are certainly other socio-political and cultural aspects. In his research on social movements, sociologist Michael Hsiao from Academia Sinica once said that Taiwan has ‘a demanding civil society’. This certainly rings true with the work of vegan and animal advocates and the demonstrations, lobbying, and petitions they are involved with. In China, according to a 2019 consumer study, food neophobia is not much of a barrier. People are more willing to try new plant-based and cultivated meat products. So, it is not surprising that significant changes are also coming from industry, supermarket shelves, restaurants and coffee shop menus.
As for barriers, commensality aspects and health concerns are top of the list. In terms of commensality, especially at home or eating out with friends, communal eating is important. Sharing cài (菜) (meat and/or vegetable dishes) that complement the fàn (飯) (rice or other starch and grains) plays a role in family and social relations. Many people who go veg*n and live with family often must navigate this and eat ‘side or edge’ vegetarian food (鍋邊素). Meaning that they only pick the vegetables and plant-protein contained in a dish and avoid the meat part.
In terms of health, while the American Dietetic Association (now, ‘Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics’) might have established its position on the nutritional adequacy of appropriately planned veg*n diets, in the Sino-cultural context there is also the influence of Traditional Chinese Medicine. I am less versed on this aspect and have only recently began exploring it. However, people in East Asia do often talk about having to avoid/eat certain foods for their properties in TCM. Therefore, promoting veg*nism in the region from a health perspective definitely needs to engage more with TCM in order to reach and address local understanding of meatless diets and nutrition-based challenges. Unlike the word ‘vegan’, the phrase “what about protein?” (蛋白質怎麼樣？Dànbáizhí zěnme yang?) translates very easily into Chinese.
In the western world, the rise of veganism has been met with a rise in anti-vegan attitudes, does the movement in the Sino-cultural sphere come up against the same sort of resistance? If so, what does vegan resistance look like in the Sino-cultural sphere?
Fortunately, this degree of resistance and anti-veg*nism has not really happened so far. People might be surprised and curious to find out that someone would go meatless for non-spiritual reasons, but most often just assume it is because of religious reasons. Plant-based products like ‘faux meat’ and tofu have been conspicuous in Chinese vegetarian cooking alongside the existence of vegetarian Buddhism. Thus, veg*ns and plant-based food have usually had their own space and have not had to deal with such anti-veg*n reactions other than navigating family and social meals. The movement is also still small comparatively to the West. Many people still have never heard the word ‘vegan’. The only instance I am aware of in terms of public backlash was of a news piece from China a couple of months ago where a kindergarten in Chengdu was providing vegetarian meals to children. There was a social media post that led to public concerns about the children’s nutrition. The kindergarten was ordered to change its menu to adhere to national regulations.
What does the future of vegan and vegetarianism look like in the Sino-cultural sphere?
It’s looking promising! Being away from Taiwan for a bit over a year and now back for fieldwork I can notice a difference. Vegan advocacy is diversifying, not only with street activism and fairs. Hardworking and passionate advocates are trying to find the most effective ways to pass their message and engage with policy. Now there is also even more plant-based options around. I came back to find local brands of oat and almond milk at the neighbourhood supermarket. The establishment of the China Vegan Society this year is also a big step forward and I am excited to see what happens next.
Would you like our readers to be able to get in touch with you, and if so, how can they do so (e.g., Twitter, email, etc.)?
Sure! Readers can contact me via email (chih-lan.song@ace.lu.se) or follow me on Twitter and IG @veggyacademic.
Authors: Rebecca Gregson & Jared Piazza
PHAIR Society 