While either attacking each other or patting ourselves on the back on Facebook, this is the real world: “Retail demand for chicken is off the charts,” Wall Street analyst Jeremy Scott told Investor’s Business Daily today. As a result, the stocks of companies converting chickens into food are soaring — seeing increases exceeding 50% in 2017. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), American per capita consumption of chicken is at an all-time high. As a result, animal agriculture companies like Tyson and Sanderson are planning on opening new processing plants with the ability to kill more than 1.25 million birds per week. These statistics are a sobering reminder that the world is not going vegan. Most people’s desire to eat animals continues to outweigh their concerns about animal agriculture’s environmental impact and sustainability, cruelty to animals, and health risks. Animal products remain ubiquitous. This is why One Step refuses to promote fantasies. This is why we are dedicated to fact-based advocacy. Please click and be a part of it. Thanks.
11 Comments
Some of you who follow us on Facebook have probably seen the really excellent work being done by One Step Australia! They now have their own Facebook page, where they talk about their various projects. For example, along with Mandy, One Step’s amazing designer, One Step Australia has developed wheelie stickers for bins – taking the message to every passer-by ever week! You've probably realized the issue they face. You count on the rest of us in One Step to provide honest and fact-based information. Vincent Berraud and team also know that to be maximally effective in Australia, they also need to have country-specific information. Thus, for the past months, Vincent Berraud has been consulting with experts in the country, and gathering up the most relevant chicken-friendly products available for people throughout Australia. The result is a new Australia-specific booklet, again produced in collaboration with Mandy. The booklet is now in the final preparation for printing. This is where you come in! As you probably know, the more booklets we can print at once, the cheaper it is per piece. How many people we can reach per dollar – and how many chickens we can spare – depends on how much money we can put toward this printing. Please consider making a special donation today for the chickens in Australia. If you are donating within the US, your donation is fully tax deductible. Every dollar of every donation you make is doubled, dollar-for-dollar – reaching twice as many people! Please click here and make a special donation for Australian chickens! Thanks so very much!! Matt Ball Co-founder and President A few highlights from One Step, and a few sample quotes from our outreach threads. Thanks so very much – your dedication is literally reaching millions every month and making a huge difference! By advisor and ultra-marathoner, Dan Kuzma, talking about his experiences at Youngstown State. I have been busy giving guest lectures to start off the semester, and my two favorites were when I got to talk to a Writing 2 class regarding One Step For Animals (in order to give them some potential research topics). I distributed 1S booklets to each student in the two classes. My presentation consisted of a basic introduction, showing the One Step Matters video, then elaborating further showing the two graphs regarding farmed animals. I made a point of always coming back to animals, specifically chickens. I asked the class: How many chickens are in a bucket of chicken? How many buckets of chicken do you think people consume? I also noted the cost of chicken per pound and cited Chipotle's pricing for meats - chicken is $0.50 cheaper than Steak and Carnitas. I mentioned how One Step is different from other organizations, based on our decades of experience and learning from our mistakes, while using current data regarding consumption trends and studies on effective advocacy to hone in on what is conceivably the best approach to reduce animal suffering. I also made certain to not alienate anyone or make it seem like the talk was about me, even though I had to talk a bit about myself and share my Steps in getting here. (We know that people like stories, so this helped maintain attention.) I did speak briefly on health and well-being by sharing my story because it added some humor. When I was 16 and seeking more information about vegetarian health and nutrition, my then-doctor basically lied to me. I told them not to be misled by any claims of inferiority or superiority regarding meatless diets. Always track the source! I got some great questions and feedback, one regarding One Step's overall goal - reduce suffering or stop the slaughter? I told the student that we would all like to see the slaughter stop. But we know that nothing, including civilizations, changes overnight. So we want to reduce suffering now. If the slaughter stops 100 years from now, at least fewer animals suffered in that time, rather than more animals suffering while waiting for liberation to occur. We especially don't want more animals to suffer when people could have easily taken practical steps, such as excluding chickens from their diet. It may not seem like a great deal for the cows, pigs, and sheep, but let's remember how many chickens it takes to fill a bucket of chicken - how many wings, how many breasts, how many thighs/legs? I also got a question about laws to protect animals, to which I asked the class, Who drives over the speed limit? Do you always get pulled over when you speed? I mentioned there is some strength in recognition by laws, but the lack and futility of enforcement weakens the laws. I referenced undercover videos of factory farms to illustrate that the industry is not scared of breaking laws. And since politics changes, we cannot rely upon laws completely. I had a couple students tell me after the presentation that they were not aware of all of this and that they were very impressed with the One Step approach. One student told me that the estimated 24 chickens per year is probably too conservative, based on how many chickens he thinks is in a bucket of chicken and how much chicken that he and his family and friends consumes. He said he is going to seriously attempt to eliminate chicken from his diet, acknowledging the data provided by One Step and the overall arguments for reducing animal suffering. He said he also likes the format of the booklet - it is not wordy, it visually appealing, the message is clear and well-received, including great recommendations for how to take One Step. You might find it hard to believe, but at Ball State on Wednesday, September 20, One Step co-founder Joe Espinoa handed an advocacy booklet to person #600,000! 600,000 may be hard to believe, but it’s true: Joe is the leading volunteer leafleter of all time! Leslie Patterson rightfully refers to Joe as a hero. Joe replies to One Step’s supporters: “None would be possible without your support putting booklets in my hand, so you are the heroes.” Can you spare just one moment and honor the decades Joe has dedicated to helping animals? A special donation would let Joe know you share his dedication to making a real difference for animals. Anything you can give would mean a lot of Joe, and allow him to have the booklets needed to reach 600,000 more! We've noted before that vastly more chickens suffer to death – even before being taken to slaughter – than are killed in labs, for fur, and in shelters combined. Another way of looking at the situation in the US every year is that about as many chickens suffer to death before slaughter as the total number of cows and pigs are killed combined. Yet another way of thinking about it is that the average person in the US consumes about 25 factory farmed land animals every year. If you can convince someone to totally give up beef, pork, veal, and lamb (reducing red meat is the most common dietary change), as well as dairy, and replace all that only with plant-based foods, the average person would still consume about 25 animals. But if you can convince someone to just stop eating birds, they would be responsible for the death of fewer than one land animal a year – no matter what they ate instead. We can, of course, continue to demand our view of perfection, and nothing less. However, that approach has left animals worse off than ever before. At One Step, we believe we owe it to animals to rethink. So much has been going on lately – it is hard to keep up! A few things you might have missed but will definitely enjoy: “But Why Chickens?” ...as many birds suffer to death even before getting to the slaughterhouse as all the cows and pigs killed combined. “A Hero in My Eyes” Over the past three days off from his regular job as a social worker, Joe leafleted for 19 hours handing out almost 4000 booklets for One Step For Animals. Per-capita animal consumption is at an all-time high.... What do we do now? Chickens just want ... belly rubs! And someone has been busy with One Step's posters! Please be sure to share our Facebook posts and our blog posts! Thanks so very much – your dedication is reaching millions and making a huge difference! At One Step, we often get questions about why we focus on chickens. On the one hand, people write with arguments about how terrible red meat is for the environment or human health. Our bottom line isn’t to save the Earth (which is impossible). We care only about reducing suffering as much as possible. In this realm, anything said against red meat leads to significantly more suffering. As Ginny Messina pointed out, Bad news for red meat is bad news for chickens … and for suffering. The numbers are pretty staggering. The average person in the US will be responsible for the slaughter of about 26 factory-farmed land animals this year. If you could convince them to give up all beef, pork, and dairy, they still would be responsible for the slaughter of over 25 animals. It isn’t all about numbers, though. It is also about the actual suffering. And here the picture gets even bleaker. For example, according to Harish Sethu, about as many birds suffer to death even before getting to the slaughterhouse as all the cows and pigs killed combined. Just think about that. It is no wonder that when Veterinary Professor John Webster said that modern poultry production is “in both magnitude and severity, the single most severe example of man’s inhumanity to another sentient animal.”
Combined with the numbers and the cruelty is opportunity. Given the audience most likely to change, what potential change would have the greatest impact? In this case, the answer is again chickens. And although some measures of aquatic animals killed are extremely large, the suffering caused and opportunity bring us back to focusing on chickens. (Much more on the question of fish in this blog post, and discussed in this podcast.) To learn more about One Step, please read this. Thanks so much! A number of people have suggested that One Step take a different approach: praising and promoting veganism while emphasizing the importance of concern for chicken. This advice makes a lot of sense. The most fundamental rule of fundraising is that people give when the organization makes them feel good. Pointing out that per person consumption of animals is at an all-time high is depressing. Pointing out that vegans are viewed more negatively than any group other than drug addicts is depressing. Why would anyone give to One Step, when they could give to a group that will tell them vegans are awesome and veganism is “winning”? Consider how certain politicians who are supported by Fox News maintain a minimum level of support, no matter what happens. People who watch Fox News only hear the most partisan spin - they never hear the actual facts. It is a comfortable cocoon - constant praise and positive feedback. But what drives One Step is not being popular or making potential donors feel good. What motivates us every day is reducing suffering as much as possible. We believe that only by being honest and facing the facts can we actually have an impact in the real world.
Those of us who run One Step don't claim to have all the answers. For example, we believe that reform work and supply-side work is vitally important. But we do believe that the only way to be effective is to give up on being "Liked" and instead be honest. That is One Step's fundamental core. If you agree, please consider joining and expanding this work. Thanks! You will like this audio interview ARZone did with One Step’s President, Matt Ball.
It was a follow-up to the discussion surrounding the Vox video and CBC interview. |
|