Holding the government to its animal pledges
“We need to create a mainstream, grassroots movement ecosystem that works in synergy and is convened around shared goals,” says Dr Laila Kassam. Picture: Alamy.
With thanks to Rhiannon Keen for research and writing.
The new Labour government brought with it a host of animal and nature rights pledges, promising “the most comprehensive animal welfare package in a generation.” This included promises to bring back the Kept Animals Bill provisions in full, ban the use of snare traps, accelerate the phasing out of animal testing, bring back the Hunting Trophies Ban in full, and end trail hunting.
During campaigning, Labour’s Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Steve Reed MP, said: “For too long, too many animals including the world’s most endangered species, have been left to suffer in silence. The Conservatives are on the side of animal cruelty. Labour will end it. The next Labour government will introduce the biggest boost to animal welfare in a generation to end animal cruelty and protect Britain’s most loved pets.”
But initial actions didn’t bode well. Ahead of winning the election, Labour vowed to “end the ineffective badger cull” in its manifesto. After just over one month in power, the government confirmed that Labour will continue to allow pre-existing cull licences, killing up to 30,000 more badgers.
On September 29th, The Empathy Project hosted a people's assembly at the Vegan Party Conference, at Kensington Town Hall, to discuss the question: “How can we hold the Labour government to their animal rights pledges?”. Hosted by Trust the People, the event brought together groups, networks, animal rights activists and advocates to explore shared knowledge and work out next steps.
The speakers were Juliet Gellatley, founder and director of consumer campaign group Viva!; Dr Carol Treasure, co-founder and CEO of XCellR8, the world’s only truly cruelty-free and vegan testing lab for cosmetics and chemicals; Susanna Feder, philanthropy and fundraising manager, Animal Equality UK; Kerri Waters, co-founder of Vegans Support Farmers, a campaign backing farmer-led demands to transform a broken food system; Laila Kassam, co-founder and former Co-Director of Animal Think Tank, a grassroots organisation building a social movement for animal freedom in the UK and Kate Fowler, Director of Communications & Campaigns for Gen V, a non-profit dedicated to educating people about the environmental, ethical, personal, and public health benefits of adopting a plant-based lifestyle.
All brought with them a wealth of experience. One theme loomed large: the need for a mass movement of animal lovers coming together around shared goals.
In November 2022, Animal Equality UK released a joint report with Animal Law Foundation
“Propose a licencing system in the farming industry”
Animal Equality UK conducts undercover investigations on farms and in slaughterhouses; publishes reports and lobbies politicians. Philanthropy manager Susanna Feder referred to a current campaign: the enforcement - or lack - of existing laws to protect farmed animals, based around the charity’s joint report with Animal Law Foundation called The Enforcement Problem, launched November 2022.
“We often hear that the UK has some of the highest animal welfare standards [in the world] but we’ve found extreme animal suffering in every facility we've investigated here in the UK,” said Feder, grimly. “Over four years, fewer than 3 percent of all of the UK’s 300,000 farms were investigated, with only 0.33% of all complaints resulting in prosecution. That's three in a thousand.” When prosecutions do happen - “on very, very rare occasions - they take years to go to court. And the sentences are always tiny and negligible.”
Solutions are two fold, says Feder. Firstly, Animal Equality UK proposes a licensing system for those who farm animals commercially. Secondly, the government needs to support farmers in a transition to plantbased food systems.
“Under the licensing system, only facilities that pass frequent and robust inspections would be allowed to operate,” said Feder. “This system would mean that farms pay for a license to operate, and they would receive penalties and possibly non-renewal of licenses if they don't comply with the licenses and the law.”
Feder suggests the public go to their MPs to discuss the report’s findings and demand a licensing system. “By doing that, we can show politicians that the UK public cares about farmed animals as much as we care about wild animals, endangered species and our animal companions,” she ended.
Watch the full speech here.
After five decades of campaigning, the export of live animals for fattening or slaughter was finally banned in May. Picture: Viva!
“Demonstrate the public are overwhelmingly in support of change.”
“The only time you actually get a government to change the law is when public sympathy is overwhelmingly in support of that change,” said Viva!’s Juliet Gellatley. “Politicians are not the leaders, they are the followers,” she said, bluntly.
To build that support, groups need collaboration between diverse agencies and a variety of tactics. Gellatley cited the campaign around the export of live animals for fattening or slaughter, which was finally banned on May 20, 2024, after five decades of campaigning.
“All kinds of people came together to make this happen,” said Gellatley. “We shared images and videos of the calves, held marches and rallies at local ports to bring in regional media across the UK, supported local groups, held a school competition and enlisted celebrities.” The aim: to show that people “from different socio-economic groups, different ages, different genders were coming together on this.” And they targeted industry - the ferry companies who were transporting the calves, the airports. “And they all fell, one by one by one,” says Gellatley. “We were making change happen before it even got to the point of changing the law.”
Watch the full speech here.
“Grassroots power is a key source of power in any social movement,” said Dr Laila Kassam. Picture: unknown.
“Build a grassroots movement that works in synergy around shared goals.”
For Dr Laila Kassam, of Animal Think Tank, the issue is power. “At present, our movement doesn't have the power it needs to hold the new Labour government to account. And this is due to a number of factors that we need to strengthen in the movement.”
There are three, she said: 1) the creation of a mainstream, grassroots movement ecosystem that 2) works in synergy and is 3) convened around shared goals.
“Within any ecosystem, there are usually three foundational theories of change: personal transformation, building alternatives, and then systemic change - shaping or changing the dominant institutions that shape society.” Systemic change requires work from the inside like lobbying and from the outside, such as protest. “Typically, legislative change requires a strong outside game because legislative change follows public opinion but fundamentally, we need both. [But] it's not only the outside game that is missing; we also need a more progressive inside game that’s doing things that are more than incremental welfare change, which is what I see mainly in the animal movement in the UK right now. “
Goals are disparate and unfocused, relying on the each group’s interests. “Different organisations are doing amazing things, but often focusing on different things, [which means] we're losing power. We need to come together as a movement and strategize around these goals,” said Kassam.
“But we also need to be thinking longterm about building a mainstream movement of animal lovers and taking them on a journey through other campaigns; for example, moving from ending testing on dogs to ending testing on pigs and then using that as a bridge towards campaigning around animal agriculture.
“Grassroots power is a key source of power in any social movement. We don't have the resources that the industry has in terms of money, but we do have people and their energy and their creativity and their passion.”
Watch the full speech here.
“We need to reach out across divides,” said Kerri Waters, co-founder of Vegans Support the Farmers.
“Reach across divides.”
Kerri Waters, co-founder of Vegans Support the Farmers, cited two examples of approaches to change. “Take the European Farm Protests. The protests were about the price of diesel, and about new regulations that were coming in. Farmers were upset that they wouldn’t be able to compete with imports that are produced at what they call lower quantity than in the EU. So they protested - and what happened was that the EU rolled back on the animal welfare laws.”
She offered, by contrast, Denmark’s national action plan outlining how the country can transition towards a more plant-based food system. The multi-disciplinary approach inclundes raining chefs in public and private kitchens on preparing plant-based meals, strengthening plant-based skills throughout the education system, increasing exports of Danish-made plant-based foods through embassies while increasing research and development funding. A landmark investment of 1 billion kroner (€168 million) to advance plant-based foods was announced two years ago, most of which went into a new Fund for Plant-Based Foods.
The ambitious roadmap was developed through “working with agricultural lobbies,” Waters points out. “The government is not scared of vegans; they are scared of farmers,” she continues. “Groups like farmers are considered ‘trusted messengers’ by the public. So if we want to ensure that the government sticks to its promises, we need to become those trusted messengers. We need to reach out across divides and come to common understanding and build campaigns around that - and we have to convince them and the public to come with us.”
Watch the full speech here.
“Animal tests have never been validated. It’s just brainwashing.” Dr Carol Treasure. Picture: Bel Jacobs.
“To see change in the animal testing industry, create stakeholder engagement by looking to ethics, science, politics and economics”
“We do need to have full public support if we're going to persuade the government to do anything,” agreed Dr Carol Treasure, co-founder and CEO of XCellR8. While testing for cosmetics is a ‘fairly easy win’ - few beauty consumers want products at the expense of animals’ lives - fundamental medical research can be highly emotional.
“People ask: what does doing away with animal testing mean for the people I love in my life? What if my child has cancer, what if my mum has a terminal disease?’ Dr Carol points out. “The pharmaceutical industry has played that card for decades now, and been behind a lot of misinformation.”
“The opposite is true,” she says. “If funding had been taken away from animal research and put into animal-free techniques decades ago, we would have more cures for more diseases than we currently have. Animal tests are a very faulty benchmark. They've never been validated. It’s just brainwashing.”
To create support around the issue, both the public and industry has to understand that this isn’t an ethical issue, it’s a scientific one. It’s even an employment issue. “We need to create great jobs for the nre generation of scientists coming through, so that they don't feel that, if they go into research, they're going to have to go into animal testing. Non-animal methods already contribute substantially to the UK economy - but they receive a fraction of the current UK research budget. Ethics, science, economics, politics, you've got to tick all the boxes if you want that change.”
Watch the full speech here.
“Be tenacious, creative and bold. Hold the government to its pledges and then press on.”
Kate Fowler, Director of Communications & Campaigns for Gen V, offered this comment in abstentia: “Our goal is to press the government into taking the action it knows is right (and it has promised to) but it does not see as a priority. To do that, we have to build momentum through growing and amplifying public support, through positive and regular media coverage, perhaps investigations that reinforce the need for change. And there must be support from across the movement. We need to build backbench support and use the parliamentary tools available to us to make sure this does not fall off the political agenda.
Above all, we need to be tenacious, creative, and bold. The pledges are important but they are both limited and timid - and where are the protections for farmed animals? We must hold the government to its pledges, and then we must press on again.”
Following contributions from speakers, the audience worked as a focus group to discuss their thoughts on supporting government pledges. From the power of the media to determining the level of public awareness; from further education to the use of positive language in campaigning and communicating regularly with local MPs, the group decided on the most effective methods for grassroots activists, as follows:
Start discussions within your community about the government’s animal pledges in order to raise awareness
Give activists a larger platform
Join or create communities in your area to create a voice for the movement
Ensure you are supporting the movement by buying from ethical businesses
Encourage vegan business owners to collaborate in supporting the movement
