How We Win: Achieving Animal Liberation in Our Lifetime

We are back after a summer hiatus!

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

Read Vasile’s substack on the same topic

Referenced in the Episode:

Our earlier episode - Bullshit: Greenwashing Animal Agriculture

Vasile’s earlier research on academic capture in the U.S. - 'Cowgate:’ Meat Eating and Climate Change Denial

Fiction book recommendation: Venomous Lumpsucker

Join Our Community:

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

John Sanbonmatsu and Vasile were mentioned in this recent episode of The Vegan Report (Ep. 109, Feb. 24, 2026). Here is the relevant excerpt and Vasile’s response:

The Vegan Report: [B]ecause you even debated some of those outspoken people like John Sanbonmatsu or Vasile Stanescu. In any case, you know, what do you make of that distinction from animal advocates from this technology? How do you explain how they are truly skeptical in the prospects of cultivated meat?

Bruce Friedrich: I mean, I think there's a pretty complete overlap between the people who are opposed to improvements in farm animal welfare and the people who are opposed to cultivated meat. And the argument is pretty similar. The argument against welfare reforms is that we are granting the property status of animals and that in doing so, we're setting back veganism.

The argument against cultivated meat is that we're granting the idea of animals as consumable and again, setting back animal rights. I think both of those are just transparently bad arguments and I think they both really suggest a kind of remarkable lack of empathy for the animals who are in those conditions. And I really just can't even understand it.

From The Vegan Report: The End of Factory Farming!? With Bruce Friedrich | Ep. 109, Feb 24, 2026

Vasile’s response: My concerns about cultivated meat are not about a lack of empathy for animals. It is disappointing to see that characterization. My concerns are structural and political.

For example, much of the industry has relied on fetal bovine serum (FBS), derived from the blood of unborn calves, as a growth medium. Even if companies aim to transition away from FBS, it is not yet clear that fully animal-free, scalable alternatives are viable. Some current research explores inputs such as ocular fluid and other animal-derived components.

There is also a growing body of peer-reviewed research suggesting that cultivated meat may, depending on production methods and energy inputs, generate green house gas emission even greater than factory farms.

Finally, leaders within the industry have openly discussed hybrid products that combine cultivated cells with conventionally farmed animal inputs, positioning this as a pathway to greater profitability and market expansion. That raises serious questions about whether the technology displaces industrial animal agriculture or expands it.

I do agree with Bruce on one point: he says he cannot understand the critique. That is an honest statement. There is a genuine strategic divide in the movement about whether technological substitution transforms animal agriculture or simply expands it. 

Most importantly: disagreement about strategy is not indifference to animal suffering; that characterization is what has harmed us as a movement for a long time. It is unfortunate he would choose to frame our disagreement in those terms

Debate: first half: https://howwewin.squarespace.com/videos/v/66xhzljk9ztd2fcarjhmbnpf2fer4r

Second half: https://howwewin.squarespace.com/videos/v/l38zdy5c37l2cc8mmn4kbkcxaes6r3

Interview on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Glr3tQRmNFA

Join Our Community

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

References from this Episode

Vegetarian/Vegan Statistics

For more on how Vasile calculated that 9% ± 3% of Americans are vegetarian or vegan, see Episode 15 (October 13th) and follow the links in those show notes.

Government Subsidies for Animal Agriculture

Animal agriculture receives massive government support through multiple mechanisms. In addition to propping up prices, subsidies take Americans’ tax money and give it to animal farmers directly, and indirectly by subsidizing animal feed crops much more than fruits and vegetables:

Direct Subsidies

USDA livestock subsidies top $72B

Indirect Subsidies

Why Your Salad Costs More than a Burger: The Truth About Government Subsidization of the Meat & Dairy Industries

Public Lands Grazing

Grazing is subsidized by allowing livestock on public lands at a fraction of market cost.

Additional Resources

Read about how government cheese works here

Climate & Energy Discussion

Podcast

The Climate Pod: The Energy Transition Myth (w/ Jean Baptiste Fressoz)

Book

More and More and More: An All-Consuming History of Energy by Jean Baptiste Fressoz

Join Our Community

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

Vasile’s Slaughterhouse Capitalism Essay in Current Affairs: How Industrial Slaughter Became the Blueprint for Modern Capitalism

Other sources discussed in this Episode:

Nature’s Metropolis by William Cronon

Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust by Charles Patterson

My Life and Work by Henry Ford and Samuel Crowler

Beyond Dehumanization: A Post-Humanist Critique of Solitary Confinement by Lisa Guenther

Mechanization Takes Command by Sigfried Giedion

Visions of Social Control by Stanley Cohen

Video: Anna Delvey got permission from ICE to do DWS with Ankle Bracelet

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

Critical Terms in Animal Studies edited by Lorie Gruen

Beyond Biopolitics: Animal Studies, Factory Farms, and the Advent of Deading Life by James Stanescu

Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein

Christchurch Mosque Shootings Wikipedia Page

Chatbot Psychosis Wikipeda Page

Grundrisse by Karl Marx

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

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

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

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