For decades, Americans have said they oppose cruelty to farm animals—and they've proved it at the ballot box. Still, factory farming remains our dominant model of food production. Why does such widespread moral agreement translate into so little political change? Shannon Campion, executive director of Senterra Funders, believes this contradiction also points toward a solution: If we can turn the public’s moral instincts into political power, we can begin to dismantle factory farming and build a food system that works for animals, people, and the planet alike.

Q: You argue that factory farming so violates Americans' basic moral principles that there is hope for building political consensus around ending it. First, what do you mean by that? 

Shannon Campion:  Americans have long stood against farm animal cruelty. For years, polls have shown that the majority of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents support laws that give farm animals more space, ban the cruelest cages and crates, and guarantee basic humane treatment. And we’ve seen actions align; every state-level farm animal welfare ballot measure has passed, including California’s Proposition 12 in 2018 and Florida’s gestation crate ban in 2002. These measures won support from voters in both urban and rural areas.  

When given the chance to weigh in with their vote, Americans are clear and united. In fact, they’re arguably more united on this than many other ...

FarmKind exists to answer the question: How can we actually help as many animals as possible, as effectively as possible? Instead of focusing on encouraging people to become vegan and vegetarian, they advocate donating to groups that are making a difference. The nonprofit platform takes the difficulty out of donation by hand-selecting effective charities, then showing donors the tangible impact of their money through a "compassion calculator." We asked FarmKind’s Thom Norman why the organization takes the approach it does. 

Q: Why do you think asking people to change their diet isn't effective? Should people change their diet, or is it just that it's not good strategy to prioritize trying to get them to do it?

Thom Norman: Asking people to change their diet is not only ineffective, it often backfires. When someone agrees that factory farming is wrong, which most people do, and we tell them the only way to make a difference is to change their diet, it often triggers the three Ds:

(1.) Denial: people try to explain away the problem or bury their head in the sand.

(2.) Despair: people believe the only way to take action against factory farming is a boycott they can’t see succeeding. 

(3.) Defiance: shaming people and telling them what to do makes them defensive and defiant, turning potential supporters into antagonists.

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Initiative Petition 28 (IP28) is a ballot initiative for the 2026 Oregon election that proposes to ban the intentional injury, killing, and artificial insemination of all animals statewide, which includes a total ban on slaughter, hunting, fishing, and experimentation. IP28 goes far beyond any existing animal welfare policy. Current Affairs spoke to David Michelson, a spokesperson for the IP28 campaign, about why they’re pushing such a radical initiative.  

Q: So why this initiative? 

David Michelson: We believe this initiative will help shift society towards no longer using the killing of animals as a strategy to meet human needs. Given the radical nature of the campaign, we’re aware that it is almost certainly not going to pass in 2026. Despite that, we believe getting it on the ballot now will make it more likely to pass in a future election cycle, and that it will help us build the organization we’d need to keep getting it on the ballot. Our goal is to be persistent, and we take part of our inspiration from the U.S. Women’s Suffrage Movement, which used the same strategy to get the right to vote.

In Oregon in particular, women won the right to vote prior to the 19th ...

Smart Fish Don’t Bite

                                     For John Prados

Only the stupid ones who get caught,

gutted, beheaded, filleted, and eaten

fried or poached or boiled or broiled,

pickled in brine, fed to porpoises raw

at Sea World, canned for family pets.

The smart ones just keep swimming.

You’ll never meet an intelligent fish

because they don’t take the bait,

though they never seem to go hungry.

My friend Gary Metras loves to fish;

ties his own flies, pulls on his waders

and heads for his local river several

times a week, rain or shine, year-round.

Strictly catch-&-release.  Lucky fish,

but not very bright.  He tells me

he often catches the same fish

multiple times.  One of these days,

the guy with the rod won’t be so kind.

This is why we hear ...

The Texas legislature is in the process of passing a law that would allow anyone in the state to sue abortion pill manufacturers and doctors who send abortion pills into Texas. People with no connection to someone seeking an abortion can collect at least $100,000 in damages, according to the New York Times. Abortion is already strictly criminalized in the state, but this is a measure meant to rally citizens as vigilantes, surveilling the activity of doctors out of state. And that’s what makes this law, like a similar one passed in Louisiana, so insidious. 

To begin with, this law is not about preventing women in Texas from seeking abortions. Already, almost all abortions in Texas are outlawed, and this law would not apply to women in the state who seek medicine by mail. Nor would it apply to doctors in Texas, who already face up to life in prison for providing care. This law is about ensuring that doctors elsewhere don’t mail pills to Texas residents. (Doctors who, for what it’s worth, might not even know that a person is a Texas resident, if pills are sent to an address outside the state.) And crucially, these laws are not enforced by the state—they’re enforced by private parties who can sue doctors for damages. 

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