Interview with Jo Anderson, Research Director at Faunalytics

For over ten years, Jo has investigated key social psychological issues such as persuasion, judgment, and decision-making, exploring how these concepts can be used to make the world a better place for humans and animals. And this week, we had the pleasure of interviewing her!

What projects of your own/of Faunalytics are you excited about at the moment?

Within the research department, where I am, I'm excited about the depth and breadth of the work we're doing at Faunalytics these days.

It's really aimed at tackling the problems of animal agriculture as the complex, systemic issue that it is, with research on as many pieces of it as we can. To give you a few examples: In one study, our researcher Zach Wulderk is comparing the tractability, by demographic, of approaches from meat reduction to voter campaigns to higher-welfare products, which will provide data that can be used to contextualize or weight the maximum potential impact of different approaches.

“Our library has just passed 5,000 summaries of useful research--mostly academic--to keep advocates up-to-date on how science can inform their work.”

Another project, led by Andrea Polanco, has involved a fascinating investigation of different methods for combatting direct and indirect subsidies to animal agriculture, as well as the industry's reaction to some of them. That work will be published next week, so I expect that it may be out by the time this blog post is.

And our third researcher, Coni Arévalo, is working with Sentient Media to look at the media's role in suppressing or ignoring the connection between climate change and animal agriculture, with an analysis of how often it's mentioned in articles about the climate compared to other causes.

In 2023, our original research will continue to take a deeper dive into the politics and economics of animal protection, the movement itself, and some of the opportunities we see for collaboration and self-improvement. 

At the same time, our library has just passed 5,000 summaries of useful research--mostly academic--to keep advocates up-to-date on how science can inform their work. Like the original research, the library provides data to support advocating for animals from every angle--more so even in that it's able to include information on every advocacy issue, from animals used in science to urban wildlife and every aspect of animal farming in between. Even advocates who are laser-focused on one particular issue benefit from learning about adjacent problems. 

This question is pretty hard to answer succinctly because I'm excited about all of it! You can get more details about what's coming up across the board in a blog post I wrote, or about or research (in-progress, published, and upcoming) here.

What do you think the future holds for animal advocacy?

My feeling is that the future of animal advocacy will be a bumpy ride, but with more wins than losses in the grand scheme. If we get caught up in mourning recent failures like a loss in court or a negative poll--or even celebrating recent victories--it's easy to lose the big picture.

One recent publication of ours, Local Action for Animals as a Stepping Stone, really drove this home for me. Lawyers are used to progress being slow and sometimes following a two-steps-forward, one-step-back trajectory, and that was a mindset I picked up a bit while supervising this project.

The more we as a movement focus on incremental change--through political and educational institutions, through encouraging consumers to take small steps, through speaking to corporations directly--the more I think we'll see this sort of short-term vacillation but long-term improvement.

But we need to look at it as a long-term investment and not get discouraged, the same way you would with a financial investment that goes up and down in the short term but improves over many years.

Could you share a few words of advice for people wanting to get into animal advocacy?

Absolutely.

Something I didn't realize at all before I got involved with Faunalytics is that animal advocacy can look like almost anything: talking to restaurants about adding more plant-based options to their menus, doing data entry for your favorite nonprofit, becoming a veterinarian who challenges the status quo, and so much more. Some of the options can make full careers, some don't.

For volunteer options, you can check nonprofits, but when people ask this kind of question, they're usually thinking more career-oriented. So I'd suggest that you start from the question of how you can use your career to protect animals, bearing in mind that many of the answers don't involve working for an animal nonprofit!

For instance, getting into politics or education gives you all kinds of influential options, and there are many fields like the vet example previously (or animal welfare science or agriculture or many others) where people speaking up for farmed animals are few and badly needed. 

Who inspires you in the animal advocacy space?

I can't choose just one person...

I am perhaps most inspired by the groups and individuals that are banding together into coalitions, alliances, working groups to create cohesive, coordinated efforts as a movement. I think this is some of the most difficult and most important work to undertake, and I have great admiration for those who do it well.

I won't give examples because I would inevitably leave someone out, but I will say that groups doing this work in regions of the world with smaller or more disparate animal advocacy communities are particularly inspiring to see.

What gives you hope for the future?

I feel hope for the future when I see evidence that not only are younger generations more aware and doing better than we Millennials have done for animals and the climate, but that it's more than the typical generational difference: This might be controversial because animal advocacy is theoretically independent of the political spectrum, but the fact that recent data suggests Western Millennials are the first generational cohort not to become more conservative as we're aging gives me so much hope for the future.

If over the next 5, 10, 20 years all generations start pulling in more or less the same direction with respect to social justice and responsibility, that will be a first, at least in living memory. The long-term looks a lot brighter when you look at those generational trends.

I also have a sense that there are more coordinated efforts among animal advocacy groups, and between animal advocacy groups and other movements, like the climate movement -- all of which is key to creating a major shift over time.