How I Learned to Love Shrimp

This is another of our guest-hosted episodes, where I hand the mic to someone who knows a particular area much better than I do. Today’s host is Elissa Lane, CEO at Global Food Partners, who works with farmers and food companies across Asia to help them transition to cage-free.

Elissa speaks with Janet Helms, Senior Manager of Global Sustainable Food Sourcing, Animal Health and Welfare at McDonald’s, where she leads the company’s global animal welfare strategy, including its cage-free and broiler welfare commitment work. Janet is a vet by training. She started out caring for dairy herds of up to 3,700 cows, then moved into animal welfare certification and sustainable sourcing at IKEA before joining McDonald’s. Importantly, these are Janet’s personal views and don't represent McDonald’s! 

As you might imagine, working for McDonald’s, Janet was relatively guarded about what she shared. Nonetheless, I think this is a pretty interesting insight into how large food companies are improving animal welfare and what the people who work there are thinking. We don’t often get to hear from someone inside one of the world’s largest food companies, so I think this will be useful for anyone working on corporate advocacy.

Elissa and Janet talk about how McDonald’s US went fully cage-free ahead of its 2025 deadline, what suppliers need before they’ll invest millions in new barns, and why McDonald’s doesn’t have a global cage-free policy. Janet also covers some newer work on broiler welfare, including lighting that gives chickens darker areas to take cover in, and AI tools that help farmers monitor their birds.

Finally, they discuss what Janet wishes animal activists understood about how change happens inside big companies. Janet even turns the tables a few times and asks Alyssa what she’s learned from helping farmers in Asia go cage-free.

Enjoy the conversation!

Chapters:

(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:05:30) - Janet’s Career and approach to animal welfare 
(00:11:13) - How McDonald’s US transitioned to cage-free eggs 
(00:19:32) - Adapting Cage-Free Strategies Across Regions
(00:30:54) - Cage-free progress in Asia 
(00:36:53) - What Makes a Cage-Free Supply Chain Ready

(00:42:26) - Broiler welfare
(01:00:11) - What Janet wishes advocates understood (and next steps for McDonald's)
(01:07:18) - Industry collaboration 
(01:11:56) - Hope for Cage-Free Progress

With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

Note: My (James') views here are my personal opinions and don't represent those of Coefficient Giving.

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - it means a lot to us!

My guest today is Thomas Manandhar-Richardson, also known as Richie, from Vegan Hacktivists, an organisation providing free technology, design and data support to animal advocacy groups. Before joining Vegan Hacktivists, Richie was Research Director at Bryant Research, and he now also helps run Amplify, a programme teaching animal advocates how to make better use of AI.

There’s no shortage of somewhat vague discussion about how AI might transform our work, so we wanted to make this conversation as practical as possible. We talk about where AI can already save advocates significant amounts of time, how to give these tools enough context to produce genuinely useful work and some concrete ways they can support research, strategy and everyday organisational tasks.

We also discuss where advocates shouldn’t rely on AI, why humans still need to make the final decisions and what the animal movement could look like if these tools continue improving at their current pace.

Whether you’re already using AI every day or you’ve tried ChatGPT once and wondered what all the fuss was about, I think you’ll find this pretty useful. Enjoy the conversation!

Chapters:

(00:00:00) - Introduction
(00:10:14) - How Greener by Default uses AI
(00:16:38) - How most animal orgs use AI today
(00:22:12) - Context Is King
(00:36:25)-  Do you need to know how to code? 
(00:40:58) - AI for information gathering
(00:44:19) - Essential AI tools today
(00:49:28) - Ignore some shiny things
(00:54:04) - Possible risks
(00:59:18) - Quickfire use cases

Resources:

• AI daily brief podcast
• Ethan Mollick for beginners
• Amplify for Animals
• Vegan Hacktivists
• Richie’s substack

With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

Note: My (James') views here are my personal opinions and don't represent those of Coefficient Giving.

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - it means a lot to us!

My guest today is Taj Uppal, an animal rights activist and lawyer. We recorded this conversation while Taj was facing two felony charges and more than six years in prison for rescuing two baby goats from an industrial dairy farm in California. Since recording, a judge has reduced those charges to misdemeanours. The case is not over, but the most serious threat discussed in the episode has now been removed, which is great news. Nonetheless the consequences for Taj have been substantial, including losing a job offer at a major law firm and potentially putting his legal career at risk. 

In this episode, we have a pretty personal and reflective conversation about civil disobedience and open rescue and the role these tactics have in helping animals. Taj explains why he no longer sees direct action as a silver bullet, but still believes that the sacrifice it involves can generate dialogue, give activists credibility and be a deeply transformative, even spiritual, experience.

We also discuss when civil disobedience is most likely to work, why it should often come after other campaigning methods have been exhausted and the legal, practical and community infrastructure needed to support people taking these risks. We even reverse the interview for a while, with Taj asking me about my own experiences with Extinction Rebellion and Animal Rebellion. This is a topic very close to my background, so I really enjoyed having this conversation with Taj, and thought it was a pretty interesting and even coverage of some of the benefits and risks of taking more high-risk action.

A quick plug, unrelated to this great conversation with Taj: A group I volunteer with, UK Voters for Animals, is hosting a mass lobby day on the 10th of November, where we're bringing over 100 people to Parliament to meet their MPs about ending frankenchickens, which is a cruel fast-growing breed of chicken. We had over 100 people come last year, with 30 meetings with MPs, which was a huge success for the first-ever mass lobby day for animals. This year, we want it to be even bigger, so if you're in the UK and want to come along, you can sign up here.

Chapters:

(00:00:00) Introduction
(00:08:24) Facing trial for open rescue
(00:10:19) The other personal impacts of rescue
(00:17:39) Why this farm? Why these goats?
(00:22:17) Why sacrifice matters
(00:35:06) How the hardship has shaped Taj
(00:39:49) James' civil disobedience story
(00:45:24) Taking action despite uncertainty 
(00:52:28) What can we learn from Ridgeland farms? 

Resources:

• Taj’s Substack: https://tajblog.substack.com/
• Taj’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/taj__uppal/
• “How Long? Not Long” by Dr. King
• Why we can’t wait - MLK
• Moral Ambition by Rutger Bregman

With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

Note: My (James') views here are my personal opinions and don't represent those of Coefficient Giving.

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - it means a lot to us!

My guest today is Nina Friedrich, the Executive Director of High Impact Professionals (HIP). HIP helps experienced professionals move into work tackling some of the world’s most pressing problems, including farmed animal welfare. Nina has a PhD in mathematics from Cambridge University and previously worked as a software engineer and strategy consultant before making a career change towards more altruistic work herself.

In this episode, we talk about why moving into animal advocacy can be such an impactful and fulfilling choice, particularly for people who already have years of professional experience. We discuss which skills the movement needs most, the trade-offs involved in changing careers and how people can test the waters for what they might want to do, before quitting their jobs.

We also explore HIP’s different programmes, common mistakes job applicants make and also what animal advocacy organisations could do better when trying to attract experienced professionals.

As a heads up, this episode is pitched at a slightly different audience than usual. If you already work in the movement I think you'll still get something out of it, but I think this conversation will be most useful for someone who is wondering whether they should transition to working in the movement. Also, if you know someone who has been considering changing careers to help animals, please share this with them! 

Chapters:

(00:00:00) - Introduction
(00:02:35) - Rethinking Coding Agents
(00:07:21) - What HIP Actually Does
(00:12:19) - Why People Join HIP
(00:14:57) - Why Farm Animal Welfare
(00:20:35) - Funding And Movement Growth
(00:23:03) - Skills Needed To Scale
(00:36:05) - Impact Beyond Nonprofits
(00:39:05) - Finding the Right Org Fit
(00:41:47) - Strategic Job Search
(00:44:54) - Boards and Ecosystem Mapping
(00:45:42) - Key Resources and Mentoring
(00:51:29) - Inside Impact Accelerator
(01:01:13) - Common Application Pitfalls
(01:04:24) - Closing Questions

Resources:

• Coefficient Giving AI enablement blog
• HIP blog post on AI for EA Forum
• AI windfall newsletter by Lewis Bollard
• Animal Advocacy conferences
  • Animal and Vegan Advocacy Summit (global)
  • care eu conference
  • VARC (UK)
• HIP Impact Accelerator Program
• Talent Directory:
  • For Talent
  • Recruiter Access
• HIP Book “The High-Impact Professional's Playbook” 
• Further free HIP resources
• HIP Pledge Club
• Blog post “Finding a High-Impact Job: Stand Out by Going the Other Way”
• Join our newsletter: 
• Follow Nina on LinkedIn
• Ambitious Impact - animal welfare incubation round 
• Magnify Mentoring
• You Can Just Do Things, Cate Hall (2026): 
• The GiveWell podcast

With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

Note: My (James') views here are my personal opinions and don't represent those of Coefficient Giving.

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - it means a lot to us!

This is a new kind of episode! I am trialling something where I am asking other people to be the interview host, rather than me. This has many benefits, one of them being you get a break from hearing my voice. But you also get to hear from a broader range of talented advocates who know much more about a certain area than I do, giving a much richer conversation. 

The first guest-hosted episode is run by Jesse Marks, Program Officer at The Navigation Fund, who interviews Jiri Krupa, who runs the Growth & Impact Group.

This episode focuses on how campaigning organisations can better engage their supporters, members and activists, to win more campaigns. Jesse & Jiri both discuss the power you can build via better supporter engagement, as well as the strong financial engine of regular monthly donors to support your work long-term.

Chapters:

(00:00:00) - Intro: more effort means more impact 
(00:08:17) - Pros and cons of grant funding / major donors 
(00:10:45) -  of Regular Donors in Campaigns
(00:17:29) - Supporter-centered communication
(00:21:24) - Misconceptions about fundraising
(00:30:47) - How to balance fundraising and campaigning
(00:34:14) - Training the trainers 
(00:46:03) - A concrete story of the importance of engagement 
(00:53:50) - The value of sharing failures
(01:02:14) - Understanding the health of an audience
(01:10:12) - Closing questions 

Links & resources from the episode:

• [email protected]
• Year-end support group
• Growth & Impact academies
• The Power of Moments, a classic airport book:
  https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/34466952-the-power-of-moments
• Substack: Thomas Coombes
  https://www.hope-based.com/ 
• Mailing list:  Do Something. Anything. Paul de Gregorio / Rally, UK
  https://www.pauldegregorio.com/
  
  

With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

Note: My (James') views here are my personal opinions and don't represent those of Coefficient Giving.

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - it means a lot to us!

My guest for today is Anne Hilhorst, CEO of Wakker Dier, a Dutch animal welfare organisation. She joined Wakker Dier when she left university 15 years ago and plans to be there for another 15 years!

Besides the impressive longevity of their staff, Wakker Dier is a really impressive and interesting organisation that I knew very little about. Thanks to them, no supermarket in the Netherlands has sold eggs from caged hens since 2006, no fast-growing breeds of chicken since 2021 and over 90% of the retail sector has a meat reduction goal. 

This is already an amazing list of accomplishments, and far from all of what they’ve achieved too. There seem to be a few things about them that helped, which I’ll unpack with Anne in this episode. Some key themes include that they spend over 90% of their effort & resources in getting companies in particular to stop supplying the cruelest products, spending around one third, yes that’s 33%, of their budget on advertising for campaigns and they even read books about the companies they are targeting, to learn what makes them tick.

Chapters:

• (00:00:00) - Cold intro: going big on advertising
• (00:05:24) - Recent rollbacks by retailers
• (00:10:51) - What Wakker Dier does
• (00:14:43)- How long it took Wakker Dier to end fast-growing chickens
• (00:21:52)- Pressure through spending millions on advertising
• (00:31:52) - The importance of praise
• (00:36:33) - Plofkip: the origin
• (00:47:23) -When to ask for full commitments vs immediate implementation
• (00:52:12) - Asking supermarkets for meat reduction - how is it going?
• (01:06:22) - Closing 3 questions

Resources:

• Wakker Dier's website
• Book: The lonely Quest of Unilever’s CEO Paul Polman 

Enjoy the episode! 

With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

Note: My (James') views here are my personal opinions and don't represent those of Coefficient Giving.

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - it means a lot to us!

My guest today is Thorbjørn Schiønning, also known as Toby, who is the Director of Communications and Campaigns, and co-founder of Anima International. He’s been involved in animal rights for 15+ years, specialising in corporate outreach, campaigning and media work. 

In this epsiode, we speak about the recent huge success for chickens in Norway – where the Norwegian chicken industry agreed to phase out fast-growing broiler breeds, affecting over 70 million animals, by the end of 2027 – the first time a country has taken such major action to help chickens raised for meat. More importantly, we spend a bunch of time discussing Anima International’s strategy when it comes to corporate campaigning, and why they’ve come up with a new term, “fair cop” which they feel is a better approach to the well-known concepts of good cop and bad cop.

Toby has lots of useful advice for anyone interested in campaigning and advocacy: why threatening big campaigns can be counterproductive, why more campaign groups should build a war chest of campaigning funds, why most campaigners should wait longer before escalating and much more. 

I learned a lot about corporate campaigning strategy from this one and this is coming at a really critical time in the movement, both for cage-free and our work on broilers, so hope you all enjoy!

Chapters:

• (00:00:00) - Intro
• (00:03:04) - Should we block new farms?
• (00:08:19) - Norway’s breakthrough for chickens
• (00:16:06) - Why animal groups should focus on fewer issues
• (00:23:12) - Focusing on commitments vs implementation?
• (00:28:06) - What fair cop means
• (00:36:13) - How to campaign when you're in it for the long haul
• (00:47:25) - The value of patience & dialogue
• (01:07:43) - Anima's £1 million war chest for campaigning
• (01:13:39) - Poker, backgammon and developing good judgement
• (01:21:43) - Good news, recommendations, and where to find Anima

Resources:

• Jan's talk at the CARE conference on "fair cop"
• Toby's article on fair cop
• Anima Norway's announcement on broiler win 
• Welfare Footprint on how important the BCC is for chickens
• Never Split the Difference - book on negotiation 
• Anima  international blog + careers page

With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

Note: My (James') views here are my personal opinions and don't represent those of Coefficient Giving.

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - it means a lot to us!

This episode, I spoke with Seth Ariel Green, a research scientist at the Humane and Sustainable Food Lab at Stanford university. He recently published a meta-analysis called “Meaningfully reducing consumption of meat and animal products is an unsolved problem” (EA Forum summary here) where he reviewed over 30 papers and hundreds of interventions on the topic. Seth also writes about the science of meat reduction on his Substack, called Regression to the Meat, which I highly recommend checking out for some accessible and fun to read writing about meat reduction.

We talk about why Seth is more sceptical than most about plant-based defaults, what actually works when it comes to changing people’s food choices, why some research in this space is misleading and new interventions to shape diets and food choices that he is excited about. 

Chapters:

(00:00:00) Cold intro

(00:00:53) Introduction to Seth and his work

(00:05:38) What are defaults and why is Seth sceptical

(00:19:55) The best paper on defaults - what does it mean for advocates?

(00:28:50) What does the research on meat reduction say?

(00:34:25) Is 5 percentage points a small or big change in meat consumption?

(00:43:20) What actually works in reducing meat consumption?

(00:50:18) Potential interventions that Seth is excited about

Resources:

• Seth's blog 
• Wayne Hsiung’s New Yorker interview
• Ginn, J., & Sparkman, G. (2024). Can you default to vegan? Plant-based defaults to change dining practices on college campuses.
• Finkelstein et al (2012). The Oregon health insurance experiment: evidence from the first year. 
• Jalil, A. J., Tasoff, J., & Bustamante, A. V. (2023). Low-cost climate-change informational intervention reduces meat consumption among students for 3 years
• Hope, J. E., Green, S. A., Peacock, J. R., & Mathur, M. (2025). Taking a bite out of meat, or just giving fresh veggies the boot? Plant-based meats did not reduce meat purchasing in a randomized controlled menu intervention
• Edwards, D. M., Ondish, P., & Neff, R. (2025). Increasing meatless options to decrease meat consumption
• Kramer, L. A., & Landry, P. (2025). How the Sausage Is Made: Testing the Effectiveness of an Informative Video in Promoting Sustainable Food Consumption. 
• Kenny Torella’s Is it even possible to convince people to stop eating meat?
• Warren belasco: food, the key concepts 
• Join our lab’s seminar email list! 

With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

Note: My (James') views here are my personal opinions and don't represent those of Coefficient Giving.

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - it means a lot to us!

Today, we’re bringing you a special highlights episode! It’s a roundup of some of the most interesting conversations we had in 2025. They include:

• Vicky Bond (Madre Brava) on what it's really like to lead in animal advocacy 
• Lewis Bollard (Coefficient Giving) on the strategies that win and traps to avoid 
• Dawn Neo (Global Food Partners) on the 4+ billion hens in cages in Asia and how we can help them
• David Cole (author of Engines of Liberty) on what we can learn from the marriage equality and gun rights movements 
• Carley Betts (Open Wing Alliance), 50th episode special: 5 leaders on key challenges and opportunities
• David Coman-Hidy (The Navigation Fund), 50th episode special: 5 leaders on key challenges and opportunities
• Karolina Sarek (EA Animal Welfare Fund), 50th episode special: 5 leaders on key challenges and opportunities
• Haven King-Nobles (Fish Welfare Initiative) on why high agency is critical for entrepreneurship 
• Penny Tehlilah (Animal Activism Collective) on uniting "welfarists" and "abolitionists" through pressure campaigns
• David Kay (now at Kraft Heinz) on the emerging cultivated meat industry 

Chapters:

• (00:00:00) Cold Open
• (00:01:55) Lewis Bollard on what advocates commonly get wrong.
• (00:05:34) Vicky Bond on overcoming self-limiting beliefs and imposter syndrome 
• (00:09:07) Haven King Nobles on how to help new projects succeed and supporting new founders
• (00:15:48) Penimah Tehilah on how pressure campaigns can unite the movement. 
• (00:29:37) David Kay on the importance of centering animals in our advocacy. 
• (00:33:34) Dawn Neo on changing informal markets and production in low income countries
• (00:36:00) David Cole on the importance of incrementalism in past social movements
• (00:52:25) Carley Betts on moving past good cop and bad cop binaries in campaigning 
• (00:57:17) David Coman-Hidy on the importance of political advocacy
• (01:01:19) Karolina Sarek on progress for shrimps 

For those who miss Amy as a co-host, you’ll be very happy to know that a bunch of these snippets include her too.

Hope you enjoy the episode! 

With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

Note: My (James') views here are my personal opinions and don't represent those of Coefficient Giving.

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - it means a lot to us!

Dawn was one of the first people in Asia working on cage-free reforms  – she started working on Asian farm animal welfare 10 years ago, often as one of the few individuals talking to major food companies about improving the welfare of animals in their supply chain.

Dawn Neo is the director of corporate engagement at Global Food Partners. She works with food and hospitality businesses as well as various stakeholders in the industry to improve farm animal welfare. Prior to joining Global Food Partners, she was the lead for Humane Society International’s farm animal welfare program in Asia. 

Today, we cover lots of important things: Major trends in Asian farming, the 2025 cage-free deadline, how to deal with countries with large informal markets, cultural differences in campaigning and negotiation and much more. 

Chapters:

(00:00:00) - Cold Intro 

(00:00:50) - James' intro and Dawn's background

(00:08:12) - Why Asia is critical for farm animals

(00:12:15) - How countries differ in production systems and why this matters 

(00:17:55) - Who is on track for their 2025 cage-free commitments?

(00:23:17) - What if companies can't meet their commitments? & how do cage-free credits work?

(00:31:13) - Which Asian countries are doing well?

(00:36:48) - Rising egg consumption in Asia 

(00:41:09) - How to tackle informal markets? Should we get new commitments or hold companies accountable?

(00:43:30) - Cultural differences in campaigning

(00:57:09) - The need for patience & self-care in advocacy 

Resources: 

• Global Food Partners LinkedIn
• Global Food Partners podcast
• Global Food Partners contact page
• Jason Hickel – Less is more 

For sending recommendations of future guests: 

• [email protected] 
• James’ LinkedIn: James Özden

With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

Note: My (James') views here are my personal opinions and don't represent those of Coefficient Giving.

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - it means a lot to us!