How many vegetarians and vegans are there?:

Vasile’s Substack on this topic

And an earlier guest blog post Vasile wrote about the same issue

Pew 2016 - 9%

Gallup 2018 - 8% (deceptively saying 5% vegetarian and 3% vegan with the headline describing the number as “few”. Many interpret this to mean that the 3% is part of the 5% (since vegans are necessarily also vegetarian), but it is actually additive. Also note higher numbers in younger age groups

Vegetarian Resource Group - How Many Vegetarians and Vegans are There?

What are the lowball figures?

Faunalytics - You can see that they do show growing numbers, but much lower than other sources. This info leads them to recommend less radical tactics, such as “Encourage Change In Many Forms” ie. reducing meat rather than becoming vegan.

Defaulting to vegan meals:

Science Direct

About Jeff:

Jeff Sebo is Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, Affiliated Professor of Bioethics, Medical Ethics, Philosophy, and Law, Director of the Center for Environmental and Animal Protection, Director of the Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy, and Co-Director of the Wild Animal Welfare Program at New York University. His research focuses on animal minds, ethics, and policy; AI minds, ethics, and policy; and global health and climate ethics and policy. He is the author of The Moral Circle and Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves and co-author of Chimpanzee Rights and Food, Animals, and the Environment. He is also a board member at Minding Animals International, an advisory board member at the Insect Welfare Research Society, an advisor at Eleos AI, and a senior affiliate at the Institute for Law & AI. In 2024 Vox included him on its Future Perfect 50 list of "thinkers, innovators, and changemakers who are working to make the future a better place."

About The Moral Circle:

Today, human exceptionalism is the norm. Despite occasional nods to animal welfare, we prioritize humanity, often neglecting the welfare of a vast number of beings. As a result, we use hundreds of billions of vertebrates and trillions of invertebrates every year for a variety of purposes, often unnecessarily. We also plan to use animals, AI systems, and other nonhumans at even higher levels in the future. Yet as the dominant species, humanity has a responsibility to ask: Which nonhumans matter, how much do they matter, and what do we owe them in a world reshaped by human activity and technology? 

In The Moral Circle, Jeff Sebo challenges us to include all potentially significant beings in our moral community, with transformative implications for our lives and societies. This book explores provocative case studies such as lawsuits over captive elephants and debates over factory-farmed insects, and compels us to consider future ethical quandaries, such as whether to send microbes to new planets, and whether to create virtual worlds filled with digital minds. Taking an expansive view of human responsibility, Sebo argues that building a positive future requires radically rethinking our place in the world.

Resources Mentioned:

The Moral Circle by Jeff Sebo

Jeff’s article: Toward a Global Ban on Industrial Animal Agriculture by 2050

Sunaura Taylor, Beasts of Burden and Disabled Ecologies

Becca Franks’ work on fish welfare

Connect + Take Action:

Consider how your actions impact even the smallest beings—and where uncertainty calls for compassion.

Reflect on where *you* fit in this movement. You don’t need to do everything. Just something.

Join us as we keep asking the hard questions about what liberation means—and how we win.

Read and watch more of Vasile's research and join our community at winforanimals.org

In this episode, we explore how to leverage vegan identity in movement building and what it means to call people in when someone expresses a belief or action that diverges from our shared vegan values. Instead of rushing to revoke someone’s vegan identity over a disagreement about zoos, pet food, or other imperfect choices, what if we made space for complexity and growth?

This doesn’t involve abandoning values or loosening standards. It’s about saying “I know this isn’t who you are, and you can do better, let’s work this out and get you back on track” We talk about why we think this type of calling in might actually be more effective than calling out.

Referenced in this episode:

Loretta J. Ross on calling in:

“Calling out assumes the worst. Calling in involves conversation, compassion, and context.”

Bryan, C. J., Master, A., & Walton, G. M. (2014). “Helping” versus “being a helper”: Invoking the self to increase helping in young children. Child Development, 85(5), 1836–1842.
Link to study (PDF)

Vestergren, S., & Uysal, M. S. (2022). Beyond the choice of what you put in your mouth: A systematic mapping review of veganism and vegan identity. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 848434. Link To Study

Read and watch more of Vasile's research and join our community at winforanimals.org

Disability rights were on our minds after the fascism episode, so we talk about how as vegans, we should understand disability and fight for inclusion. You will get to hear the rarely heard part of our couple meet-cute, wherein Devs and Vas love each other for their disabilities, not in spite of them.

The book referenced last week that we are talking about at the beginning of the episode: Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation by Sunaura Taylor

Definition of “stimming”: The term comes from self-stimulating behavior, although self-soothing behavior is perhaps a more accurate description. Autistic people are known for less socially-accepable “stims” such as hand flapping and rocking, while habits like nail biting and hair twirling are common for all neurotypes. Vasile’s stim is very unique and

The New York Times article we mention about banned words: These Words Are Disappearing in the New Trump Administration

(A sample of words included, since there is a paywall on the article: accessible, activism, advocacy, affirming care, allyship, anti-racism, assigned at birth, barrier, bias, BIPOC, Black, breastfeed + person, chestfeed + person, climate science, cultural differences, DEI, DEIA, disability, discrimination, diversity, equality, equity, exclusion, female, feminism, gender, gender based violence, Gulf of Mexico, hate speech, health disparity, hispanic minority, historically, identity, immigrants, implicit bias, inclusion, indigenous community, inequality, injustice, institutional, intersectional, key populations, Latinx, LGBT, LGBTQ, marginalized, mental health, minority, multicultural, Mx, Native American, nonbinary, oppression, orientation, people + uterus, person-centered, polarization, political, pollution, pregnant person, prejudice, privilege, pronoun, prostitute, race, racial inequality, racism, segregation, sex, sexuality, social justice, socioeconomic, stereotype, systemic, they/them, trans, transgender, transsexual, trauma, tribal, underprivileged, underserved, victim, vulnerable populations, women)

Vasile’s article mentioned in the episode: The Personal Is Political: Orthorexia Nervosa, the Pathogenization of Veganism, and Grief as a Political Act

Read and watch more of Vasile's research and join our community at winforanimals.org

Fascism is, in many ways, the opposite of veganism. This episode is longer than usual, because of just how many ways. We tried to be comprehensive, to give you the tools to talk about these connections, however we still have a lot of things we wish we’d thought of and added. But this conversation is just beginning. I hope this gives you some entry points to thinking about your own anti-fascist solidarity efforts.

Books and other sources referenced in the episode:

Eugenics (and ableism)

Book: Bios: Biopolitics and Philosophy by Roberto Esposito

Book: Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation by Sunaura Taylor - If you read only one book we recommend in any episode, let it be this one!

An example of Singer being protested for eugenical ideas - lets have leaders of the vegan movement that embrace solidarity with everyone that is marginalized

Misogyny

Book: The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegan Critical Theory by Carol J. Adams

Confinement and Technologies of Control

Book: Barbed Wire by Reviel Netz

Citizenship and The State of Exception, aka “loopholes”

Book: State of Exception by Giorgio Agamben

Bestiality loophole for farmed animals: The Meat Industries Bestiality Problem

Slavery loophole for incarcerated humans

EO: Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship - an attempt to strip certain people of birthright citizenship and create a state of exception - if this does not cross the line into fascism, what would?

Empathy

Fighting in the Dark by A R Moxon - let’s do what fascists can’t do

Book: The Lives of Animals by J. M. Coetzee

Read and watch more of Vasile's research and join our community at winforanimals.org

I was lying awake in the middle of the night last night worrying about the current coup dismantling our institutions in the US, and realized: There are probably so many other people loosing sleep with me right now. All of our hearts are racing. We each feel powerless. It made me feel better enough to sleep. This morning Vas and I were talking and we realized we needed to jump on the mic and just get this out today. So there are two more voices letting you know that you are not alone.

Referenced in the episode:

AOC’s livestream from February 3rd

Don’t Believe Him by Ezra Klein

Read and watch more of Vasile's research and join our community at winforanimals.org

We discuss animal realism, the phenomenon that many see a vegan world as “unrealistic” and so do not actually fight for it, but for other half-measures and even weird and dystopian “solutions” to the environmental and moral atrocities of meat production.

Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher

This Chinese cockroach farm houses a billion roaches, kept contained by a moat filled with hungry fish

videos: Cockroach Farm

Cockroaches a cash cow for Chinese farmer who breeds them for food and medicine

The Insect Farmer

cockroach scene from the dystopian movie Snowpeircer

For more from Vasile on colonialism and meat and dairy:

- White Power Milk: Dietary Racism and the Alt Right

- The Whopper Virgins: Hamburgers, Gender, and Xenophobia in Burger King’s Advertising

You can also listen to this talk on Animal Realism

Read and watch more of Vasile's research and join our community at winforanimals.org

Lego Experiment about meaningful work

Water Use and Animal Agriculture

Read and watch more of Vasile's research and join our community at winforanimals.org

CW: The episode discusses sexual violence towards other animals. Some of this episode is tough to talk about.

Referenced in the episode:

Joel Salatin wrote Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal

Here's an example of the industry talking about beef with adjectives.

Open Prairie Pork FAQ "Do the hogs live on an open pasture?: No — simply because hogs need protection from predators and extreme temperatures. Since hogs have very little hair and no sweat glands, they’re sensitive to both heat and cold. That’s why hogs in the Open Prairie Natural Pork program are kept in climate-controlled barns where they get just the right amount of food, veterinarian care and attention."

Hit By A Farm

An article about the bestiality issue - The Meat Industry’s Bestiality Problem

Some of Vasile's research on humanewashing of meat:

Crocodile Tears

New Weapons

Why Loving Animals is Not Enough

Read and watch more of Vasile's research and join our community at winforanimals.org

See earlier episode's show notes, particularly "Meat Eating is Climate Change Denial" for links to the studies showing that animal agriculture must be addressed if climate change is to be addressed.

Examples of possible effective policies:

Denmark Carbon Tax on Animal Ag

Peter Lehner at Earth Justice - does work on changing the farm bill

School Boards - school lunches, curricula, and so on

Call your congressperson about the farm bill, or any other issue that effects animals - use this link to find contact info

On Norm Setting:

Response to the claim that only 2% of US is vegan

Read and watch more of Vasile's research and join our community at winforanimals.org