Vegan Outreach - Tactics/philosophy

Tactics/philosophy

Vegan Outreach's mission is the reduction of the amount of suffering in the world. They focus on people's food choices for three reasons:

The number of animals raised and killed for food each year in the United States exceeds any other form of exploitation, involving numbers far greater than the total human population of the earth. Ninety-nine out of every 100 animals killed in the United States each year are slaughtered for human consumption.

- The intensity of farmed animal suffering: the overcrowding and confinement, the stench, the racket, the extremes of heat and cold, the attacks and cannibalism, the hunger and starvation, the illness.

- Exposing factory farms and advocating ethical eating is perhaps the most readily accessible option for reducing suffering in the world. Every day, every single person makes decisions that affect the lives of farmed animals. Inspiring someone to change leads to fewer animals suffering on factory farms.

Vegan Outreach's printed materials advocate for informed, ethical eating. Furthermore, suggestions for alternative foods, information on staying healthy on a plant-based diet, and tips for advocacy are included in brochures. Vegan Outreach suggests that one's guide shouldn't be an endless list of vegan ingredients but rather doing one's best to stop cruelty to animals.

In other words, the focus isn't so much personal beliefs or specific choices, but rather the animals and their suffering. Vegan Outreach encourages people to become advocates because if someone believes that being vegan is important, being the most effective advocate for the animals must be seen as even more important. The impact of one's individual veganism—several hundred animals over the course of a lifetime—pales in comparison to what he or she can accomplish by being an example to others. For every person inspired to change his or her habits, a vegan's impact on the world multiplies.

Matt Ball suggests that a focus on purity and minutae will hinder the animal advocacy movement:

Conversely, for every person convinced that veganism is overly-demanding by obsessing with an ever-increasing list of ingredients, we do worse than nothing: we turn someone away who could have made a real difference for animals if they hadn't met us. Currently the vast majority of people in our society have no problem eating the actual leg of a chicken. It is not surprising that many people dismiss vegans as unreasonable and irrational when our example includes interrogating waiters, not eating veggie burgers cooked on the same grill with meat, not taking photographs or using medicines, etc. Instead of spending our limited time and resources worrying about the margins (cane sugar, film, medicine, etc.), our focus should be on increasing our impact every day. Helping just one person change leads to hundreds fewer animals suffering in factory farms. By choosing to promote compassionate eating, every person we meet is a potential major victory.... It is not enough to be a righteous vegan, or even a dedicated, knowledgeable vegan advocate. The animals don't need us to be right, they need us to be effective. In other words, we don’t want to just win an argument with a meat-eater, we want to open people's hearts and minds to a more compassionate lifestyle. To do this, we have to be the opposite of the vegan stereotype. Regardless of the sorrow and outrage we rightly feel at the cruelties the animals suffer, we must strive to be what others want to be: joyful, respectful individuals, whose fulfilling lives inspire others. Only then can we do our best for the animals.

— Matt Ball "How Vegan?", veganoutreach.org.