The Animal Turn
Animals are increasingly at the forefront of research questions – Not as shadows to human stories, or as beings we want to understand biologically, or for purely our benefit – but as beings who have histories, stories, and geographies of their own. Each season is set around themes with each episode unpacking a particular animal turn concept and its significance therein. Join Claudia Hirtenfelder as she delves into some of the most important ideas emerging out of this recent turn in scholarship, thinking, and being.
The Animal Turn
Bonus: FarmKind and Effective Altruism with Thom Norman
Thom Norman joins Claudia on the show to discuss the work of FarmKind and the tenets of effective altruism. They talk about FarmKind’s compassion calculator and how it strategically doesn’t include vegan messaging. They discuss the organizations FarmKind supports and some of the critiques levelled against effective altruism.
Date Recorded: 20 March 2025
Thom Norman is the co-founder of FarmKind, a nonprofit dedicated to accelerating the end of factory farming by expanding the coalition of people working to protect farmed animals. After a career as a nuclear energy lawyer, Thom launched FarmKind to create new pathways for compassionate people to make a meaningful difference for animals suffering in factory farms. Working with expert evaluators and grant-makers, FarmKind identifies and promotes highly effective charities that are creating tangible improvements in farm animal welfare while building a more sustainable food system. Their innovative Compassion Calculator offers an alternative to the traditional "go vegan" message, helping people understand how strategic donations can create substantial impact regardless of their dietary choices.
Featured:
- FarmKind
- What’s Effective Altruism and what are some alternatives? With Alice Crary and Lori Gruen on Think Like a Vegan
- Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer
- Animal Liberation by Peter Singer
- Moral Ambition by Rutger Bregman
- S6E5: Abolition with Gary Francione on The Animal Turn
- S6E6: Social Movement Mobilization and Feminism with Corey Lee Wrenn on The Animal Turn
- What’s Effective Altruism and what are some alternatives? on the Think Like a Vegan Podcast.
- Plant Based Treaty
- Good Food Institute
Animals in Politics, Law, and Ethics researches how we live in interspecies societies and polities.
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iROAR brings together podcasts that aim is to make the world a better place for animals.
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The Animal Turn is hosted and produced by Claudia Hirtenfelder and is part of the iROAR Network. Learn more on our website.
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This is another iRaw podcast. Just to say really up front, is we think that these charities are great charities. They're not the only great charities.
Thom Norman:So we're not making the claim that there aren't other amazing charities out there. We think about our charities in kind of two buckets. One is trying to improve the lives of the animals that are suffering in factory farms right now. So this is where a lot of the welfare improvement stuff comes in farms right now. So this is where a lot of the welfare improvement stuff comes in um classic example is the humane league and other organizations working on corporate commitments to try to improve the number of um chickens that are cage free, for example, and these have been highly successful.
Thom Norman:So in the last 15 years in the us we've moved from about four percent of chickens living in outside of cages being cage free um to 40 percent of of egg-laying chickens being cage-free. So a massive change in the number of chickens that are confined in a battery cage for their entire life, which, on the best available evidence, is a significant amount of suffering that they experience in their lives. That has been improved on. And then the other part of what we do is thinking about the future of food and can we move? Simply improving the lives of animals right now? It matters, it's important, but it's not the whole picture. We need to get to a point where we have a an alternative food system, because we need it for the climate, we need it for animals and we need it for our for our own health welcome back to the animal Turn podcast.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:Today I'm pleased to be speaking to Tom Norman. Tom is the co-founder of FarmKind, a non-profit that aims to make money and get money to charities and organizations that are offering solutions and alternatives to factory farming. Tom and I had an interesting conversation about farm kind and about effective altruism. Effective altruism is a concept or maybe should better be called a movement that I've heard bandied about a fair deal, but in all honesty I'm not really sure I understood or got what the term was about. So I thought who better to talk to than someone who's working in that space? So in this episode Tom tells me a bit about his organization, farmkind, and we touch a bit on the tenets of effective altruism. I must admit that a lot of the tenets of effective altruism made me a bit uncomfortable, but I wasn't exactly sure why. I think there was something to do with the calculations or, you know, deciding to privilege some narratives over others. But I wanted to be fair to Tom and the work of Farmkind and I wanted to probe some of those underlying logics. So in today's episode we speak a bit about the absence of veganism in Farmkind's messaging, as well as the general tendency of effective altruism to privilege programs that focus on animal welfare instead of animal rights. Tom explains how farmkinds' compassionate calculator helps people to contribute to animal issues and to make the impacts of their actions and contributions more understandable. Since recording this episode in March I know it's been a little while I came across an interview on the Think Like a Vegan podcast in which the host speaks to Laurie Gruen and Alice Crary about affective altruism, and I think if you want to learn a bit more about affective altruism and the ways in which it works and the ways in which several animal studies scholars are thinking about it, that episode would make a nice coupling with what you're going to hear about today. Tom was extremely generous with his thoughts and his ideas, and he was open to saying that this is an experimental model and that they're trying to figure out ways to get money to places that make a difference. So I enjoyed having a conversation with Tom. I hope you enjoyed listening to it and please, please, please share your views and your thoughts about the show with others. You can rate and review the episode on Spotify, podchaser, apple Podcasts or anywhere you listen. Really, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode and other contents that we've made here on the Animal Turn. As always, a huge thank you to Animals in Philosophy, politics, law and Ethics, apple, a research group at Queen's University kind of my little home group when I was studying there for sponsoring this podcast.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:Tom, welcome to the Animal Turn podcast. It's great to have you on the show. We touched base a couple of months ago when Jamie sent me an email saying you had been on his show, which is the Sentientism Podcast, which he's done a remarkable job with, and he said that he thinks I would be interested in chatting with you and he was curious to see how our conversation would go. And always willing to what's the word I'm looking for Always willing to cater to Jamie's needs, I thought, sure, why not Let me have Tom on the show? I was curious to hear a little bit more about your organization and also your thinking around FarmKind. So it's great to have you on the show, tom. Perhaps we can jump straight into the interview with you telling me a little bit about yourself and how you came to be interested in animals.
Thom Norman:Yeah, sure, happy to. So I'm Tom. I am the co-founder of Farmkind. We're an organization essentially dedicated to trying to close the funding gap, or help close the funding gap for the animal movement. So, um, in in, roughly speaking, 290 million dollars are donated each year for um factory, for tackling the issue of factory farm animal welfare and trying to move away from factory farming, which is arguably the biggest cause of animal suffering in the world right now.
Thom Norman:And we, this is just simply not enough. Money like. There's not not even close. You know the the meat industry is worth two trillion dollars. Um, this is a tiny fraction. It's about what mcdonald's makes in profit in two weeks, and we have this for the entire world for the whole year. Um, and the thing is, there are lots of people out there who donate to animals. Uh, lots of people out there who donate to animals. There's people out there who love animals but they're not helping farmed animals, and our mission is to try and reach many of those people and find ways to essentially show them that their values, their existing values and beliefs, mean that it makes sense for them to start helping farmed animals, particularly by donating to some of the best charities working on this issue.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:Were you always involved in volunteer work? Slash fundraising work? Is this your background? What's your backstory?
Thom Norman:No, I am a rank amateur at this stuff. So my background is before starting this, I was a lawyer. I worked for the UK government on nuclear energy policy and things like this, and essentially I knew that I wanted to try to do something with my career that was trying to have a positive impact for animals, and I found out that this was a huge issue within the movement Along with talent, arguably the biggest bottleneck for animal organizations and it seemed like an issue that really needed more people working on it. So me and my co-founder, aiden, who has a background in consulting, thought we could give this a go and see if we could. We had some ideas and we could see if we could try, but we are definitely very much sort of learning how to, how to fundraise and how to engage people, how to do you know these things like marketing. So, yeah, we're definitely sort of on the learning curve, I would say.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:Wonderful, and what got you originally interested in animals? When did this come to you as a problem? When we were like, wow, we need to be talking about animals.
Thom Norman:Yeah, so, as with many big sort of changes of mind in my life, uh, it starts with my, my partner and my now wife, uh, and we were sitting on a on a tube train in london, um, and there was, you know, every every sort of january in the uk, lots of animal charities put up kind of like posters and signs about about um sort of veganism and animals and things like this. We have veganuary is a big thing in the uk and it was one of these kind of in front of us and she started talking to me about, about um sort of veganism and animals and things like this. We have veganuary is a big thing in the uk and it was one of these kind of in front of us and she started talking to me about about this and I at the time I was kind of like basically living off of um microwave chicken curry, because I was a young um man living on my own in london with like no time, and I just immediately got very defensive in this conversation about about animal welfare and sort of saying like well, you know, it's, obviously it's the government needs to do something. We shouldn't, you know factory farm animals, but it's not it's, you know it's not anything to do with me, it's. It's the government needs to, like put better regulations in.
Thom Norman:And the main spark for me was just I realized after that conversation just how quickly I got defensive and just how quickly I started feeling annoyed and like that I was being harassed and I thought I didn't show up to that conversation the way I wanted to.
Thom Norman:There's something, there's something that was motivating me to get disproportionately annoyed quickly in this conversation, and so I thought like, maybe, maybe I'm wrong, maybe there's something in this and maybe I should be thinking about this more, more carefully. And that was really the, for me, the sort of starting point for then reading books, um, like, for example, the work of Peter Singer. Jonathan Saffron Furr has a great book called Eating Animals as well um, and this was my introduction to learning more about the issue and also thinking about my own ethics and how my values intersected with how I was behaving and how I was eating and how I was thinking about animals. And this really, yeah, this was sort of the starting point that led, over over a number of years, to me becoming a vegetarian and a vegan and then eventually saying like this is the issue that I want to dedicate my, my life and my career to, and try to make a some sort of positive change with.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:Mm-hmm. So I do have a question kind of about the intersection, I guess, of veganism and farmkind, because when you go onto farmkind it's decidedly not a vegan website. None of the charities you showcase are explicitly vegan. The Compassion Calculator doesn't include the vegan diet on its calculations, so I found myself kind of almost the antithesis to what you were here finding being like. Hmm, this seems like a very curious omission in an organization that is gearing itself towards helping animals, that veganism seems quite absent on the website. Now I realize guests maybe don't yet know what farm kind is, so perhaps I'm going to give you a double whammy in telling us a little bit about what farm kind is. You can maybe also reflect on how this is tied to or against veganism to or or against veganism.
Thom Norman:Yeah, so we are certainly not against veganism. Um, what we do and to start with, what we do is, uh, we think of ourselves as kind of like a, a bit like a sort of uh product tester or evaluator, like witch or wire cutter or something like that, but for animal charities. So we work with experts, uh, grant funders and charity evaluators to try and find really really good charities that have a track record of delivering results for animals, whether that's improving the lives of animals today in factory farms or building a suffering free future through things like alternative proteins, people eating more plant-based, these kinds of things. And then we try to kinds of things. And then we try to find, we try to identify these charities and then promote them to the general public as a great way to make a meaningful difference in the lives of animals today and in the future. So that's like the core of what we do.
Thom Norman:One of our sort of um, if you like, kind of products or the way that we do this is this thing called the compassion calculator, which is a little controversial, I think, for some, especially some vegans, but is essentially um, a bit like an offset calculator, but for animal welfare in your diet. So specifically, what it does is it says okay, if you want to make as much of a positive difference for animals as an or suffering reduction, I should say, as if you stopped eating animals entirely from where you are right now this is how much you would need to donate to the charities that we support, based on their historic effectiveness. As we, as we identify and we do quite a lot of research to try to make that accurate um, and we're quite we're sort of quite conservative about like how good these charities are. So we're not definitely trying to not not undersell like how much you did donate, but it works out about 23 dollars per month for the average western omnivore diet and we have, like you have, sliders, so for an individual, they could like change it for their, for their own diet. The reason that compassion calculator doesn't have a vegan option is because vegans are already not eating animals and therefore their their donation would be zero according to our calculator.
Thom Norman:Um, although we do have a version for vegans to like offset their family members and like we have people who've donated. We had a lady actually, who donated over over christmas. She got into an argument with her family about um about animals, and so, to sort of, as a little kind of petty protest, she donated all the money that they gave her for christmas to sort of offset their diets and their animal consumption, which I thought was was quite lovely, but yeah, I guess. So why are we not promoting veganism on our site? Why are we not telling people that they should go vegan? The reason is pretty simple. So, um, to take the us as an example, um, about five% of people in the US are vegetarian or vegan and that number has been like quite static for quite a number of years. On the contrary, about 14% of people in the US donate to some kind of animal charity. Many people in the US donate to charities.
Thom Norman:So we think that there is evidence that this kind of go vegan message, the typical message of the animal movement it has cut through with a group of people. And when you look at studies on how easy is it to persuade people to change their diet based on different interventions, it's clear that it works for some people, but it's also clear that it's not working for a lot of other people. But other asks, other things we can ask people to do might be able to reach other groups of people and and donating seems to be one of those. We know that more people do it than than are prepared to go vegan and indeed there was some really interesting analysis recently from animal charity evaluators looking at barriers to giving and in their top five reasons that people gave, um actually worrying that they were going to be asked to to go vegan or um we're going to be told to sort of become an animal activist was one of the key reasons that people cited as a sort of barrier to giving.
Thom Norman:So we think that by separating your diet from do I care about animals, do I think that they should be treated better and do I want to help to make that happen, we can open the movement up to more people who otherwise feel left out.
Thom Norman:They feel like it's not for them and fundamentally and this is the key thing for us and where all our thinking comes from we think that means that there is less animal suffering. Ultimately, and for us, what's more important than any particular sort of point of principle is trying to make the lives of animals better and trying to get towards the end of factory farming and animal agriculture faster. And so we we think we're open, very much open to being told that we're wrong about this. We're not wedded to any particular thing other than trying to make animals lives better, but we think that this is a promising approach for doing that, and that's the reason that we explicitly say on our website this is for you, regardless of your diet. You can be vegan and support these charities. You can be non-vegetarian, you can be a nominivore, and you can still make a difference by donating.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:I understand. So I mean, I know that similar research has been done with regards to restaurants. The Vegan Society here in Austria does a lot of consulting with restaurants and I watched Felix not give a presentation and he said you know, one of the worst things restaurants can do is actually put the label vegan in their name or in a dish, because it stops people who would otherwise, you know, read what sounds like a tasty meal Braised brinjal with garlic and rice sounds really good. But if you put vegan braised brinjal, all of a sudden it becomes a kind of political move. So I do understand that where the title of vegan is put or not put can have, I guess, an impact on how people respond to both organizations and to restaurants and the ways in which they give money.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:So I understand that, and you did say kind of animal organizations a lot in your discussion there. I just want to be clear. So when you're focusing and saying animal organizations, you're explicitly focused on organizations that have this kind of intersection of animals and food. You're not thinking here about conservation. And when you said 14% of Americans give towards animal charities, is that towards animal charities that are at this intersection of animals and food, or does that also include animal charities that are looking at things like conservation and extinction etc?
Thom Norman:Yeah, that's a good point. So, yeah, we focus specifically on charities that are working to help the animals in industrial animal agriculture. So factory farming is the way we describe it, because that's how people kind of normally understand this, and that 14% is animal donations generally. So the majority of animal donations go to companion animal charities, so your shelters and things like this. That's about 97% of donations to animal organizations. A little bit goes to animals in laboratory testing, so trying to end lab testing for animals and things like this, and then around about 3% of donations to animal charities go to factory farmed animals.
Thom Norman:That 14% doesn't include conservation or environmental work, which I guess is another group, but yes, does help animals as well.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:Okay, so it's not really two weeks worth of McDonald's profits that goes towards helping animals and animal industrial. Probably like a day or worth of McDonald's profits that goes towards helping animals and animal industrial. Probably like a day or two of McDonald's profits that go towards helping across the world, and I think kind of focusing on donations and this kind of act of giving to organizations. I'm relatively new to the idea of effective altruism, but this does sound a lot to me like effective altruism, so maybe you could explain a little bit about what effective altruism is and how this is connected in that way.
Thom Norman:Yeah, sure, happy to. So, yeah, we definitely see our approach as certainly inspired by effective altruism and aligned with many of those ideas, with many of those. Those ideas very basically, um, the idea of effective altruism comes down to trying to think quantitatively about how much, um about the good that we're doing and trying to find ways to maximize either the amount of suffering we're reducing or the amount of, I guess, positive affect that we're we're producing through intervention, intervention. So in the space of animal welfare, effective altruists are very focused on suffering reduction and looking for data to indicate, okay, what kinds of interventions so what charities, what programs are, as best as we can understand from the available data, giving us the most suffering reduction per dollar that we invest or per amount of a given resource. And so a lot of effective altruists focus in kind of two areas in the animal space. One is on industrial animal agriculture and the other is actually on wild animal suffering and things. This is a much more sort of exploratory area but thinking about are there interventions we can do to reduce the suffering of wild animals? Like, are there ways that, without being very disruptive to the environment, could we reduce the suffering? Because it seems like there is a huge amount of suffering of wild animals.
Thom Norman:But one of the other things I think that's interesting about effective altruism is it definitely it's very unspeciesist.
Thom Norman:So even within some parts of the animal movement, people might gravitate towards the more charismatic animals, the larger animals, but effective altruism says no.
Thom Norman:What matters is, to the Bentham quote, can they suffer? And that is what we care about. And so often you'll have effective altruist charities thinking about things like, okay, insects at least some species of insects seem to be sentient. As far as we know, insect farming is a potentially massive source of suffering, so can we do something to prevent that? Or one of the charities that we've identified as a key charity is the Shrimp Welfare Project, which works to try to improve the lives of prawn shrimps, which are the most farmed animal outside of insects in the world, and specifically works to try to improve the ways in which they're slaughtered, because currently there is almost no concern about their welfare at that point in time, and so it's a very, it's an approach that simply looks, I guess I would say, how much suffering can we reduce or prevent for the resources that we have? And and very focused on that as the key thing to think about, when it comes to um, how we, how we try to help animals okay, that's.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:That's really interesting and I did see what you were doing there with the shrimp welfare as well as the fish welfare um institute right initiative, the fish initiative because there is very limited, even in terms of animal welfare, focus on these animals right In terms of thinking through animal welfare and animal welfare projects, there's often a focus on mammals pigs and cows, as well as on pigs right Things like gestation crates. So I understand going back to what we were talking about earlier this kind of logic of separating the discourse of veganism from farm kind. I'm with you and I understand why that's strategically important to bring money in. However, it seems as though the organizations that you're supporting are overwhelmingly welfare organizations. Is that also by design? Because I suspect that there are some that have pretty overt movements. You know there are sanctuaries etc. Or things like the plant-based treaty. They are perhaps more overtly vegan, but they are very effective charities to include. So what's the thinking behind which charities you decide to include or exclude in in farm kind?
Thom Norman:yeah, that's a really good question. So the first thing I just to say really up front is we think that these charities are great charities. They're not the only great charities, so we're not making the claim that there aren't other amazing charities out there. We think about our charities in kind of two buckets. One is trying to improve the lives of the animals that are suffering in factory farms right now. So this is where a lot of the welfare improvement stuff comes in. Classic example is the Humane League and other organizations working on corporate commitments to try to improve the number of chickens that are cage-free, for example, and these have been highly successful. So in the last 15 years in the US we've moved from about 4% of chickens living outside of cages being cage-free to 40% of egg-laying chickens being cage-free, so a massive change in the number of chickens that are confined in a battery cage for their entire life, which, on the best available evidence, is a significant amount of suffering that they experience in their lives. That has been improved on.
Thom Norman:And then the other part of what we do is thinking about the future of food and can we move? Simply improving the lives of animals right now? It matters, it's important, but it's not the whole picture. We need to get to a point where we have an alternative food system because we need it for the climate, we need it for animals and we need it for our own health, and so we work with charities like, for example, the Good Food Institute, which is very much focused on the development of alternative proteins whether that's cultivated meat or plant based proteins, and fostering that market so that we can improving access to plant-based foods and lobbying governments to create more pots of money to help farmers transition out of animal agriculture.
Thom Norman:So we have both pieces we are helping animals right now and we're helping to develop the future of food we tend to. There's a very simple reason, I guess, why we don't talk as much about that second piece, and that's because we know that when it comes to donating, people really, really want to know okay, how is my money helping animals right now? And the story with these welfare changes is just very much easier to communicate, it's much more concrete for people, it's easier for them to understand, and so we tend to start there. But we're also working on these other things that I think are a very key part of the sort of theory of change here.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:When it comes to animal welfare, kind of a key critique that's often leveled against it. Is also this kind of focus on single issue campaigns instead of systemic change right. So focusing on ending fur wearing or fur wearing of coats, for example and these are really important. Or fur wearing of coats, for example, and these are really important. I think when you have a country that recently stopped furring a furring farming mink, this is a really substantive change for the mink that are involved and a reduction of the breeding of mink who will, in future, be killed. So a single-issue campaign can have really huge impacts and effects.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:But I have had guests on the show before, such as Gary Francione and Corey Ren, who have argued that. You know, I was always I've got to be honest, I was always in the camp that you have to have animal rights and animal welfare at the same time. I think it's practical and it's pragmatic and you need to think about these things at the same time. Like you said at the beginning, you need to take people where they are. But when I spoke to these two, they were also very clear in their critique of saying, well, some of these campaigns can actually undermine and underestimate the achievements of that goal, that future goal, but I hear. What I'm really happy to hear is that you do have a kind of long-term vision and goal in mind.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:It's not a single issue campaign. You are trying to support a host of charities that have varied and interesting and important foci. Even if I don't necessarily completely agree with all of them, I think the fact that you have charities that meet a whole host of different needs and desires is probably quite important. So how many charities are under Farmkind's umbrella?
Thom Norman:Yeah, so we currently recommend six charities. They are the Humane League, which works pretty much on corporate campaigning, mainly on chicken welfare, both egg-laying chickens and broiler chickens, but also some fish. We work with Synergy NML, which I mentioned, who do similar work as well as some access to plant-based food, particularly in the global south, which is a, you know, key, important, hugely neglected in terms of animal advocacy and also where some of the um, where farming, factory farming, is growing fastest. So it's really, really important. The fish welfare initiative which you mentioned in the shrimp welfare, which work on fish farm fish mainly in India and shrimp fairly globally. And the Danish Vegetarian Foundation, who do some great work in all kinds of different areas. They have many, many projects. And then the Good Food Institute which, as I say, is nurturing the alternative protein industry globally.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:Okay. And what does FarmKind do? So all of these organizations exist already, they were there. And what does FarmKind do? So all of these organizations exist already, they were there. What does FarmKind do? Does FarmKind just bring them all together on one website? Or, like, what are you doing behind the scenes? Are you actively campaigning for each of these organizations? Like how does it work?
Thom Norman:Yeah, yeah. So what we do is. So step one is to identify these charities. As I say, we work with expert evaluators and grant makers to come up with a sort of list of six great charities, and then our job now is to try to bring them to the attention of people who don't know about them and aren't currently donating to them, and persuade those people or advocate for those people to start donating. So that's why we have things like our compassion calculator. That's why we we do um our work kind of coming on to various podcasts and um engaging with journalists and and people who write kind of blogs and all this kind of stuff, to try to um find people who are not giving money to these charities and get them to to start giving more, more money to these organizations. Um, so that's that's the core of our work is essentially putting very simply, we are kind of this non-profit marketing arm for these, for these charities if you like, and will, these six charities?
Claudia Hirtenfelder:will they rotate over time or is this a long-term commitment to these charities? What, what kind of agreement do you end up having there?
Thom Norman:yeah. So we have no, no plans currently to change the charities, but um, we will. We will keep it under review. Um, our kind of key focus right now. So we're a really young organization. We started almost a year ago now in um, at the beginning of early on in 2024 um, and we are focused pretty exclusively on making sure that we can actually fundraise substantial amounts of money for these organizations. Um, once we can do that, once we can prove we've proved our model, we can say okay, yeah, we can.
Thom Norman:You know we are doing, we are moving meaningful amounts of new money to, to the animal factory farming movement. Then we are, it will become much more interested in kind of okay, where, where do we need to put this money? Like, is there, are there better options? Like what's the need right now, and things like this. But we think that it makes no, it doesn't make a lot of sense for us to kind of spend a lot of you know, more time um kind of tweaking and um and changing the charities we support when in until we're we're kind of moving really, really substantial amounts of money okay and yeah, I was thinking again just about this idea of charities and kind of, the core of what we're talking about here is where resources go and how resources are made.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:And you know, I think we spoke a little bit about, perhaps, fatigue around the word veganism, but there's also a fatigue around being asked to give constantly, right, like every newsletter you subscribe to, every organization you happen to be aware of is asking you to give and give, and you can somehow get fatigued by it, tired of it and numb to it.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:I suppose to some extent right. So I guess what you're doing here is to try and really highlight who matters in the conversation. But in that move of saying who matters, you're also perhaps directing from other organizations, which I know is not your intent. But my question then becomes a lot of people view their way of contributing to animals, ending factory farming, assisting in animal welfare, whatever their key goal is. Perhaps they start an organization. Maybe that's not the best way forward. That's not the best way forward. Maybe starting a charity or another NGO is not the best use of resources.
Thom Norman:But actually, amplifying those that exist.
Thom Norman:Would you agree with that Sort of in a somewhat caveated way, I would agree with that so I think there is a real problem in the movement, particularly with sort of the value of death. So there's a decent amount of of funding, particularly from large grant makers, for brand new organizations and like, if you have a really good idea there is. There are a lot of people out there who want to fund new, interesting things and then, um, clearly, large, established charities are able to find sort of fairly sustained um funding. But there's a big gap in the middle where you're not brand new and you haven't got yet to a kind of like really scaled up program that's delivering like consistent results and things like this, and you haven't got that kind of brand recognition, all the sorts of things you need to kind of sustain a large organization. And this is a real problem for charities. So they will start maybe, well, they even it doesn't mean that they're failing, they might be doing really good work, but they struggle to get that, that money, because there aren't funders in that kind of middle, middle category often, and this is because but it all comes down to the fact that just there is a very small amount of money in the movement altogether and so people are allocating in particular ways, um, given their priorities, and that means it's really, really difficult.
Thom Norman:So if you're starting a new organization, you have to just be aware that you are, in effect, unfortunately competing with a bunch of other organizations for a really limited amount of money. There is this there is a real lack of funding for continued, sustained work, even for really good organizations. What is can be a really good thing. If people are interested in kind of being entrepreneurial, they want to kind of get in and do do really impactful, exciting things. Actually can be going and working for an existing organization that's still quite small and this can be, I think, a really good way to um, to still have essentially the same impact, be still be in the same environment, still be kind of doing the same kind of like highly autonomous problem solving, building the, the you know the plane as you try and take off, kind of stuff, but without kind of further stretching a really, really tight budget.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:Do you think that there's going to be more money coming towards animal agriculture as an issue in the near future? Because it seems to me that there are a number of relatively new advocacy groups that do have a kind of overt focus to end factory farming in some shape or form, that have grown relatively quickly and have gained quite a bit of prominence. So do you think that there is a shift happening in terms of how people are thinking about and allocating their money towards animal-related causes?
Thom Norman:Yeah, there have been some recent quite exciting new large grantmakers entering the space and things like this, and yeah, there are certainly churches. I think in general, public awareness of this issue is growing around the world, certainly in the West, and I think the understanding that these issues intersect with, for example, environmental issues is becoming much more prevalent. So GFI is a really good example of an organization that, while it's doing great things for animals, focuses very heavily on the environmental aspects of alternative proteins and this unlocks like a vast amount more funding and opportunities for them than if they were kind of focused on purely on the animal welfare aspects of their work.
Thom Norman:So I think there are some, some promising um, some promising signs and things, but fundamentally we are starting for a really low base where it just is a very small amount of money at the moment, um, and so a very small amount of resources, and so we yes, things might be improving a little bit, but there's a long, long way we need to go.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:So, in terms of kind of revenue models, it seems as though a lot of the money is coming either from grants or organizations that have made grants available, or this kind of canvassing of individuals who give to related charities. What work is being done to kind of change government models of giving and subsidizing? Because it seems to me that when we're talking about food systems, we have to also be talking about government subsidies that are making it inherently cheap to produce factory farmed meat, whereas those same kind of subsidies are perhaps not being applied to plant-based agriculture or amplified in that way. So yeah, and I think again, the focus on alternative proteins is slowly starting to change this. You're seeing, for example, quite a bit of investments in pea protein now as alternative meats rise, and perhaps that's an avenue for future subsidies. But yeah, I'm just curious what kind of movement is happening with regards to bringing funding towards these models through government.
Thom Norman:Yeah, yeah.
Thom Norman:So I think this is a really important aspect movement um that if you account for all the subsidies that goes to the, the meat industry um, in terms of um, both like direct and indirect subsidies, you would increase the um cost of meat by about 170 percent. So there's a massive price um price reduction, um for, uh for for these products, compared to, say, the plant alternatives. Um. There is some great work being done um dvf, one of the charities that we recommend. They've done some, some amazing work um opening up pots, large pots of money, to help farmers to transition out of um animal farming and into more environmentally sustainable um animal um plant farming. Um. So there's some great work being done. I think, though, there is obviously also.
Thom Norman:You know, the political arena is not a kind of neutral playing field. The meat lobby is hugely powerful. Big agricultural lobbies in general are extremely powerful. They're one of the largest lobbies, for example, in America, and they are actively pushing policies that kind of go in the other direction. So things like these crazy preemptive bans, and they are actively pushing policies that kind of go in the other direction.
Thom Norman:So things like these crazy preemptive bans on alternative proteins that you're seeing in some US states and in Italy, for example, ag laws and also just entrenching their existing subsidies, which the vast majority of these subsidies go to the very largest companies. So all these problems make it more difficult and, as we've seen in the UK recently, farming and farmers from a relative to the size, their size in the economy, having massive outsized political power and so trying to kind of move money away from farmers or things like this, this, this is a very politically toxic, difficult thing to do. Instead, taking the approach of okay, let's leave their subsidy alone and try and create, create new subsidies or new, new options for alternatives, I think is a is probably a more sensible approach because it's a little bit less confrontational. But yeah, this is a really important problem but also extremely difficult problem to make progress on.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:When you kind of couple together the power of meat lobby groups and, of course, dairy lobby groups and how much sway they have in terms of how policies and money move, it is political.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:But in terms of, as you said kind of at the beginning, in terms of core goals, I think of, just at the end of the day, having a reduction in the number of animals who are harmed, ideally moving, yeah, having a reduction in the number of animals who are harmed, ideally moving, yeah, having a reduction in the number of animals that are harmed.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:I mean, imagine if when you went into a supermarket your milk and your meat was 170 times more expensive, right, and you see the kind of protests happening now with regards to the spike in egg prices in the US, because I really don't think people have a solid, firm grip on how expensive. You know taking even the ethics out of this for a minute how expensive it is to produce meat and milk and eggs. You know people are kind of stunned how much water et cetera is involved in the process and if you just add up economically how much that's worth, it's not reflected on the stores. But then I think you are kind of seeing a reduction in some plant-based foods where they were quite expensive and they're reaching some sort of market parity?
Claudia Hirtenfelder:Is that the word? I don't know.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:They are starting to have more reasonable prices and, of course, beans they don't cost much at all. Okay, tom, this has been really interesting. I think we've touched on a lot of what you're doing with FarmKind, so let me do my best to kind of give a little bit of a synopsis. So FarmKind is an organization that focuses on amplifying six organizations that are focused on animal agriculture, and this includes organizations that look at things like animal welfare but also have a vision for a future that is perhaps not contingent on animals as food products. And this is kind of a form of effective altruism, where you're trying to push money, and large amounts of money, to specific organizations that can have a big impact, or, as you call it, a meaningful impact, and ideally you want to meet people where they are. And there is perhaps a strategic separation here of the vegan movement and farm kind to try and just funnel some money strategically here. Does that about sum up? Did I miss anything?
Thom Norman:Yeah, that's great.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:When you say meaningful change last question before we go to your quote what do you mean by meaningful change?
Thom Norman:sorry, in what context did I use that word?
Claudia Hirtenfelder:Well, I mean so. Also on the website, you often say things like you're trying to get money to bring about meaningful change for animals. And yeah, what does this?
Thom Norman:I see, yeah, so I guess what we mean here is concrete or measurable differences in the lives of animals, so a reduction, a reduction in suffering. So we're not interested in although I think there is a role for these, but we're not interested in um funding things that are quite speculative and maybe this will work out and maybe this will you know maybe this will have some flow through effects that are really, really positive. I think there is a role for these more, more sort of experimental approaches, but what we are interested in primarily is a fairly clear um theory of change that leads to specific reductions in animal suffering that we can kind of point to and say like this is this is the expected outcome of the work that this charity is doing, that we're funding. And this comes down to again the number one reason that people worry about their animal donations is they worry about whether it will actually help animals, and so what we're trying to do is say, okay, these are examples of charities that we can be pretty confident will help animals.
Thom Norman:They've been reviewed by experts, People have thought very carefully about this and we can see some quite transparent numbers about how we think these charities will help. That's not to say I just sort of underlined that's not to say that I don't think that there is a role for more experimental approaches and things like this, because I think there is.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:Could you give me an example of some of those changes?
Thom Norman:The changes that our charities deliver? Yes, so I think the obvious example I've mentioned before is this massive move in number of cage-free egg-laying hens. Another example would be the introduction of stunning equipment for shrimp. So, prior to the work of the Shrimp Welfare Project, it was very, very uncommon for people to use electric stunners when slaughtering shrimp, and this meant that essentially, they were being um exfixiated and that was the main way of death. So stunning them before that. This is a a reduction in suffering at the end of their lives. And another example would be synergia that is helping to, and it has um helped over five million pigs um with things like um reduction in number of pigs being put in cell gestation crates and cell stalls. Um and um some of the procedures that are done to baby pigs without anesthetics. So things like the removal of their some of their teeth and things like this that are done with typically done without anesthetic um. So these are all causes of animal suffering that our charities have helped to reduce through their work.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:All right, okay. Well, thank you so much, tom, for your time today, and why don't you tell us your quote?
Thom Norman:Yeah, okay. So I have chosen a quote from Rutger Bregman's new book, which is called Moral Ambition, which is a really, really good book. I would I would strongly recommend it to people. And so he is talking about essentially about pragmatism when it comes to being trying to make positive change. And he says focus too much on intentions and you can lose sight of something else.
Thom Norman:The right thing often happens for the wrong reasons and clever, actimate and clever activists make use of that fact. Take the young abolitionist, thomas clarkson, who never would have been able to start the movement against the slate, against the slave trade, if he'd focus solely on the sluffering, on the suffering of the enslaved. For most britains in the 18th century that seemed a remote concern, far removed from their daily lives. Clarkson knew he needed other arguments against the slave trade, so he turned his attention to the fate of british soldiers, of british sailors on slave ships. Um, and that's that's the, the quote. Um, yeah, I think it's a. It's that one.
Thom Norman:I think is a particularly challenging and it's a, it's a quote that idea of advocating for slaves by advocating for slavers. There's an ick factor to that. I immediately don't like it Right, and it's very challenging to to me and I think many of the way approaches that I think we need to explore in the animal movement immediately. I you know, emotionally I find very distasteful, frankly, immediately. I you know, emotionally I find very distasteful, frankly. But my belief is that my work um and in the in the animal movement and as much as it has an impact, is not about me and it's not about how I feel, but it's about trying to make make life better for the animals, and so I think we need to um. I I certainly feel I need to challenge myself, to be prepared to consider approaches that I might feel uncomfortable about if they are going to be effective, and so that's why I chose that quote.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:Yeah, because I have to admit. So I'm happy you brought up kind of personal factors because, yeah, I'm struggling myself a little bit with this, the kind of contention of which organizations to support and how to support them. You know, when I was on one of your pages you said what did you say? Hate factory farming but love steak. And then you had a quote on the page that said I always felt that changing my diet because of factory farming was overwhelming, but donating to FarmKind lets me help animals in a way that fits within my lifestyle and this kind of fits, I think, to your model of you know, carbon offsetting which is an effective model, you know, when you airlines are doing a good job of kind of gathering money through offsetting.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:But I've always sat a bit uncomfortably with this kind of economic model of okay, so I'm doing this bad thing and I can just pay someone to offset the bad thing I'm doing, whether that's, you know, jetting around the world or eating a steak. But as long as I'm paying someone else, then I'm kind of I get to just like throw off the responsibility a little bit and feel good about myself without necessarily making the hard, substantive changes, whether that's a reduction in your own diet or whatever. It is not flying to a conference.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:That requires hard work and inconvenience, but as long as I can pay someone to offset the things I want, doesn't this just feed into like a broader and maybe this is against your pragmatism, um, but I have to admit I've got this kind of weird ick feeling of just paying, paying our way out of our problems. Is that gonna? Is that gonna end things?
Thom Norman:yeah, I. So I, I think, to start with I, I definitely would have agreed with that entirely, probably like sort of a few years ago, and I definitely still feel that my, my own care for animals is very emotional. I have, you know, I have, um I live with some cats and um, I often find myself, when I think about um the ways that um animals like pigs and chickens and things are treated, making that connection between those two, between those two, and thinking about what that would be like. And so for me, um, the treatment of animals and their suffering, it hurts me on a very deep and visceral level, um, and that is where I for all this sort of talk about effectiveness that I do believe in that is also a big part of why I do this stuff, because I really care um, but I think that, ultimately, what what really matters is not, and I think what matters to the animals is not whether people feel bad or whether people feel good, it's like how much are they suffering, and that's.
Thom Norman:I think we have to sort of start there and think. And so the people that our calculator and our work is for are primarily for people who, right now at least, are not going to change. It's not like, oh, they'll change their diet or they'll pay. They are not going to change their diet, and we have, like, there's pretty good um empirical research that suggests there's a lot of people in this, in this bucket, right? Um, interestingly, like, some psychological research suggests that beliefs can follow actions, and so it might be that once you start taking some actions to help animals for example, oh, I give, I give money every month for factory found animals it could be that that actually leads people to like, explore this issue more and eventually become um, potentially make make more diet changes. So I mean, like, the classic example of this is like people who go vegan for the environment and then start caring about animal rights as well, right, and so it might be that, like, actually, this is a sort of, if you like, a gateway drug to a more, a deeper um involvement with animals that stands to be, you know, to be, to be demonstrated.
Thom Norman:I'm not claiming that that is the case, but it's possible. Um, but I think, yeah, I guess, fundamentally, this, this is the thing it's like, okay, would I rather that this person did nothing or would I rather that they did something and that that sort of is is the place. But you know, in the broader thing, like you mentioned, sort of systematic systemic change and things earlier as well. But yes, this, this stuff is important. But when we're actually trying to make change on the ground, sometimes we have to make some compromises, sometimes we have to segment issues off because we can't deal with everything all at once at the same time, and so we have to kind of make these somewhat, sometimes a little bit arbitrary kind of segments of a problem in order to work on a thing that we can actually make some progress on and that all adds up over time and over all the people working on different problems, to a much greater amount of change.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:Yeah, it's definitely a challenging space and I remember hearing gosh. I wish I remembered his name right now. I remember hearing someone on a podcast talking. He was creating alternatives to meat, but he also recognized. So it was, in essence, you know that, like chicken nuggets at McDonald's or fast food places, most people have no idea what they're eating. It's just kind of like yummy-ish deep fried stuff, and his whole goal was to just pretty much make 50% of what that stuff was vegetables, because, as soon as that stuff was.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:You know, instead of a hundred percent meats it became 50% vegetables. Because as soon as that stuff was, instead of 100% meats it became 50% vegetables. I've always found like half and half burgers distasteful. I'm like why would you do that? But then if you've got someone who would be eating 100% beef now, eating 50% of what they would have eaten at a meal, it can make a kind of as you say, a quantifiable change over time. So I'm very curious and keen to see where things go with FarmKind. I know it's a new organization. Thank you for indulging my questions. Before you go, perhaps you could tell us a little bit more about what you're working on now. I'm guessing you're going to keep working with FarmKind. Is there anything else the listeners should be aware of and if they want to learn more, where do they go?
Thom Norman:Yeah, well, thank you. Yeah, this has been a great conversation. So our work at Farmkind is farmkindgiving. That's our website, so wwwfarmkindgiving. There you can find out all about the charities that we recommend and the work that we do. We have a newsletter and we have all the social media and stuff like this. But, yeah, my plans are all focused on trying to make farm kind a success and trying to raise more money to help more animals and help the movement to do more for the animals that are suffering in factory farms right now.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:Wonderful Well, thank you so much for your time today.
Thom Norman:Thank you.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:Thank you to Tom for being on the show and for sharing all of his thoughts and ideas, Thank you to Jeremy John for the logo and Gordon Clark for the bed music and, as always, thank you to Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics Apple for sponsoring the show. This episode was hosted, edited and produced by myself.
Thom Norman:This is the Animal Turn with me, Claudia Hüttenfelder. For more great iRule podcasts, visit iRulePodcom. That's I-R-O-A-R-P-O-D dot com.
