Author Bios:
Carter Dillard is the policy adviser for the Fair Start Movement. He previously served as an Honors Program attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice and with a national security law agency before developing a comprehensive account of reforming family planning for the Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal.
Beatrix Homler is an animal and human rights activist based in New York. She is the head of communications at the Fair Start Movement, a consultant at Rejoice Africa Foundation, and a board member at the Education for African Animal Welfare Foundation. Homler made a significant career shift to advocate for those who are marginalized and in need of support. Her academic background in fashion-business development and psychology allows her to approach challenges with a unique blend of strategic thinking and empathy. Born in Europe, she speaks Hungarian, Slovak, Czech, English and French.
Summary Points:
Major funders directed wealth into food products rather than family reform for their own profit, not to benefit animals or people. This had dire consequences. Animals and marginalized groups suffer, but not the funders.
The growth driving the climate crisis will harm the health of humans more than vegan products will help.
Activists are willing to go to prison for animals usually not knowing that manipulative growth was undoing the benefit to animals. It’s on funders now to back equity over growth as their sacrifice.
Introduction
The shift by some of the largest animal rights funders to focus on vegan consumerism is falling short of its ideals for animals and is serving mainly to enrich wealthy funders at cost to others. Animal rights as consumerism has proven to be a form of growth-washing, allowing deadly, unchecked and inequitable growth to undo the progress made for farmed animals.
The focus on vegan products as the solution reinforces the harmful attitude that animal rights, as a movement, relies on changing our consumer behavior (i.e., what we eat) rather than our ideals of justice, particularly social and natural justice.
The clear-eyed view is knowing that infinite economic growth as a goal does so much more harm to nonhuman animals and children alike than minuscule vegan sales do good. A large portion of funding in animal rights not only went into the vegan food movement, but into years of corporate campaigns.
Those agreements resulted in animal agriculture merely trading one form of cruelty for another or breaking their commitments completely. Touting the latest vegan brands as a way to end animal exploitation and environmental degradation is akin to arranging deck chairs on the Titanic, or more accurately readying lifeboats for funders and their kids while many others will drown.
Let us not forget that billions of animals are suffering every single day. The horrors of factory farming, the unimaginable fear animal experience in laboratory testing, the slow and painful death due to loss of habitat. The demand grows as population grows. What remains is the misery of innocent beings.
No true animal lover would back a system that creates demand for more meat. Consequently, more suffering and death for innocent animals.
Social Justice Versus Consumerism
The animal rights movement’s move from animal law and policy to food capital evaded the most effective solution for the future majority, and at catastrophic cost.
By ignoring the numerous harms of endless growth, a portion of the movement and its funders have failed to address ecological overshoot, massive global inequality (and resulting political turmoil), and ever-increasing demand for animal products. Meat production is not decreasing. In fact, from 2010 to 2022, US meat production increased by over 13 percent.
Only a just and sustainable future will liberate animals and humans alike. That is why if we truly believe in effective animal rights, that we must bring the movement into the social justice fold. Concentrations of wealth and power rely on aggressive consumerism that exploits animals, people, and the planet. They are most responsible for the climate crisis, massive global inequality, and the increasing harm to farmed animals and wildlife.
Accomplished leaders of specific organizations must advocate for positive change and adapt the only true and legitimate way of reducing animal cruelty.
It's not just about food.
Grey2K USA is an organization attempting to end commercial greyhound racing. Their work provides crucial support to exploited greyhounds. Just like any kind of animal exploitation, greyhound racing is projected to increase substantially in next 20 years.
Also, the biggest threat to greyhounds lies in underground organizations. These races are entirely unregulated and yet again, it is the dog who suffers, and often dies, in the race.
The organization currently takes no position on non commercial racing.
The best way to achieve our ideals for animals and humans for all is by dismantling unjust wealth and control through the bottom up empowerment of people, starting when they are born. This means ensuring equitable family planning and paying reparations to those who will suffer the most from the climate crisis and global instability: Women and children in vulnerable nations. By shifting from profit-driven policies to ones that empower people, we can ensure fair opportunities for all and reduce our impact on the planet and animals.
Many Leaders in Animal Rights Speak Out
“Fundraising for nonprofits is incredibly difficult because of widespread dishonesty. The vast majority of nonprofits lie to funders. In my experience, funders know it but claim they are powerless. Despite knowing specific nonprofits have lied to them, they continue to fund them because they believe the nonprofits are effective overall. But what about the opportunity cost and counterfactual? What else could the money do, if it supported honest nonprofits? How do they know the organization wouldn’t do better with an honest leader? Running an honest nonprofit in this environment is almost impossible.” - Anon, nonprofit executive with over 2 decades of fundraising experience.
Many at Fair Start have seen funders withdraw their promised funding when faced with having to admit their famous family-based wealth might have been made at deadly - and now, through fair start reforms, compensable - costs to others.
We have seen organizations fundraise on sensational endangered species cases knowing the work was being undone at a macro level by growth-based impacts driving mass extinction.
These same organizations also backed lawsuits that sought to establish domestic and anthropocentric standards for the climate crisis, long after all knew that the crisis could not be addressed on a domestic level and that anthropocentric standards would kill countless innocent victims.
Those who benefit from policies that allow infinite growth will talk about animals while overrunning them, and as temperatures rise. That amounts to redefining the goal of public interest work itself and eliminating the ideal of one day having a legal system that functionally protects all species—not just humans.
Birth equity is still a threat to many interests. This is what animal rights and the law must pivot to come from animals’ eyes: From their perspective, do they care for the reasons that led to their suffering, death, and extinction, or is growth what matters?
The key to resolving all of these symptoms - each grave in its own right - is facing the systemic, structural inequities and attitudes of entitlement that have brought our societies increasingly to their knees.
"Humans have a moral duty to live in peace with nonhuman animals and to protect the environment. Fulfilling this duty will require us to critically analyze the way we have ordered our human societies and to dramatically reverse course. We must redefine the rights of nonhuman animals and human children, curb human population growth, and re-envision our interrelated systems of consumption. We are called to build a more compassionate world, where children’s needs are met and nonhuman animals are treated not as resources for our consumption but as our fellow earthlings who, like us, have a right to be free from avoidable suffering and injustice.” Mirais Holden, Animal Rights Attorney & Activist, The Simple Heart Initiative.
"Having worked for mission-driven organizations most of my career, I know good intentions do not always produce good results. I support the FSM because it focuses on the root of our intertwined and inextricable challenges, making it a model that has the potential to truly 'lift all boats'." -- Kara V.
As Elizabeth Putsche, Founder and Executive Director of For All Animals put it: “To truly measure the impact of our efforts to protect animals and the environment, we cannot review metrics in a vacuum. It is far too easy to manipulate impact by hyper-focusing on one positive outcome or extrapolating beyond acceptable mathematical standards. This not only presents a false narrative of success, but typically ignores the negative reactive implications. The Fair Start approach requires us to examine individual crises as part of a whole and highlights the global impact the recognition of a basic legal right to equity could bring.”
Until there is a change in the vast global inequality and infinite growth, the exploitation of animals will continue to outpace progress that is made. Only by shifting to a more equitable and sustainable system, accomplished through a fair start in life, can we achieve a fair and ecologically stable future for all of the planet’s inhabitants.
Esther Afolaranmi and others have been promoting structural changes through ethics, law and public policy instruments that lead us in the right direction. Their work needs to be heard if we are to take a highly unequal, dysfunctional society and set it on a wiser and more just path. We are at a crossroads of human civilization - where we find ourselves facing many symptoms of ecological overshoot playing out in our climate, the loss and degradation of nature and environmental resources, and social, economic and political tensions. From floods and fires to the loss of snowpack and water, the extinction of species, to road rage, strained service delivery, corruption, unemployment, crowding, the threat of autocracy and partisan violence - all are destabilizing our societies.”" - Phoebe Barnard, Affiliate Professor, University of Washington, member of the Club of Rome’s Planetary Emergency Partnership.
"Investing in birth equity as the first human right can save countless human and nonhuman lives.” - Lindsay Larris, wildlife and animal rights attorney
"Treating birth equity as the first human right can do more for animals - human and nonhuman - can ensure those working in public interest don't unwittingly undo their own work by just accepting destructive growth. I support Fair Start reforms." - Jessica Blome, Environmental and wildlife attorney
“While there is no "optimal" human population, the evidence suggests that a sustainable global population of 3B is an optimistic number given that we long ago entered a continuously intensifying state of ecological overshoot, accumulating ever more massive amounts of ecological debt that must be paid down if we are to avoid the ongoing (and ever worsening) climate catastrophe, ecological destruction, and the resulting human misery. Adding 80m additional people to the planet each year - the equivalent of 10 NYCs or an additional Germany each year is definitely not a recipe for addressing this crisis. Fortunately, by simply investing (heavily) in empowering strategies focused on women and girls worldwide can hasten the already inevitable demographic transition that would relieve the unrelenting pressure we have foisted on our planet - and help us meet our commitments to the next generation under the UN's 1959 Declaration of the Rights of the Child.” - Dr. Chris Tucker, Chairman of the American Geographical Society, and formerly Chief Strategic Officer of In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital fund.
“Life by its very nature imposes both costs - some deadly - and benefits on others. As humans, our job is to find a way to live fairly, minimizing harm and finding ways for our lives to contribute to the flourishing of other lives, and that means taking into account nonhuman animals in a serious way.” - Cheryl Leahy, Executive Director, Animal Outlook
“Animals’ lives depend on the humans with whom they interact, so in many ways animal rights begin with ensuring better child welfare development. Their rights begin with a future where humans leave room for animals, and care for them.” - Scott Beckstead, Lecturer in Law, Willamette University College of Law
“I support the need for work that starts to undo the catastrophic impacts of growth on nonhumans across the globe. I have always criticized a view that treats unchecked economic and population growth as harmonious with efforts to protect animals over the long term. Frankly, I am grateful for these overdue efforts to try and address the linkages between human and animal thriving.” - Justin Marceau, Professor Brooks Institute Faculty Research Scholar of Animal Law and Policy, Sturm College of Law, University of Denver
“I have seen the projection that there will be approximately 9.8 billion human beings on Earth in 2050, followed by the question: how will we feed all of those people? That's a simplistic question. If our planet is to remain habitable, we need to ask different questions, and develop family planning that limits or reduces the number of humans, in a thoughtful and compassionate way. Fair Start is asking the right questions and developing innovative answers.” - Joyce Tischler, renowned animal law professor
"I advocate that Black birth equity, through reparations, should be the primary action taken to resolve consequences such as corporation induced climate change -- in particular, because those who are negatively impacted the most are Black communities in California and their future Black children." - Dr. Amie Breeze Harper, Founder of Critical Diversity Solutions.
A Better Way
All of the above derives from the failure of world leaders to connect family planning to child rights and welfare systems, a move that ensured growth sufficient to create the climate crisis and vast inequity.
That underlying fact, and the failure to address it, means most claims of sustainable, green, regenerative, ecocentric, humane, etc. activities made and being made, were and are false, creating a fantasy world of progress that never existed and masking constant violations of the Children’s Rights Convention and Right to a Healthy Environment.
There are efforts underway to assess climate change causes, and measure and award for loss and damages using restoration policy. But all fundamentally recreate the error that drove much of the crisis after 1948: The absence of sufficient environmental protections in family planning regimes, both to limit emissions well below 300 ppm and to ensure minimum levels of welfare, equity and resources for all children to deal with adversity, like rising temperatures.
The current loss and damage evaluations and restoration goals ignore this fundamental error and would award based on arbitrary baselines that minimize the awards. Moreover, they ignore irrefutable arguments that any form of inclusive, national legitimacy and political obligation deriving from the measurable self-determination of constituents, would require treating accurate and sufficient reparations as preemptive of any conflicting laws and policies
In many cases, Fair Start activists have seen deliberate attempts to hide liability, and minimize reparations, by the families, foundations, nonprofits, companies and governments responsible for exacerbating the crisis over the last several decades – benefitting their mostly white children at deadly cost to children of color.
These efforts sought to reduce the fundamental right of future generations to self-determination instead of survival at best, while their wealthy children profit from a system of entitlements that never compiled with the Children’s Rights Convention and Human Right to a Healthy Environment, and that as such these entities knew was illegal and deadly.
Advocates are now addressing the United States and Europe, with or without government, to now secure accurate climate reparations as equity-based family planning entitlements to ensure not only reduced pollutants, but resource-backed resilience in the children who will be born, in order to ensure the highest form of climate justice and the only one compliant with human rights norms.
Equity, one’s measurable share in a democracy that is diluted as others join and allows for control over the influence others have - ecologically and socially - over you has unique primacy, preemptive effect, and enables furthering of the relevant rights and obligations against those holding specific entitlements owed to future generations by anyone, anywhere, at any time. We can leave extreme wealth made at deadly cost in the polluting nations where it lies or move it and save countless lives. If democracy were now operational, we would not be facing the deaths of countless for something they did not create. Democracy is not now operational for the reasons given below.
Rather than wait for the UN to act, this update will outline a discourse, and series of practical tactics, that would mimic a nonviolent version of South African Defiance anti-apartheid campaigns, using the right to a measurable fair start in life to dismantle birthright white supremacy and intergenerational apartheid. This campaign could move along a daisy-chain border of roughly eighty barrier organizations and individuals in the United States and Europe that - by creating and fantasy world of public benefit while not meeting their obligations as described herein - are allowing largely white-held wealth to kill countless black children. None of the civil disobedience, or more accurately - legitimation, described herein need or should occur in the colonized nations now suffering the brunt of the crisis.