Why Veganuary’s Founder Stopped Saying “Go Vegan”
He built one of the biggest vegan campaigns in the world, but his new project doesn’t mention veganism at all.
I used to think talking about factory farming was a cop out.
If you really cared about animals, you’d push for an end to all of their exploitation, not just the worst of it. I used to make arguments like that a lot, but factory farming might just be one of the most important things for animal advocates to focus on.
Matthew Glover co-founded Veganuary, one of the biggest behaviour change campaigns our movement has ever produced. He’s been advocating for animals for over 15 years. And his new project, Project Slingshot, does something that might make some vegans uncomfortable: it doesn’t ask anyone to go vegan. Actually, it doesn’t mention the word at all.
Matthew’s reason for that might surprise you:
“I actually think we’re going to create more vegans by not asking people to go vegan than actually asking people to go vegan.”
On Veganuary, he said:
“I still think Veganuary is great and we want it to grow. So it’s not that I personally have dropped the idea of promoting veganism.”
Matthew still supports Veganuary and vegan messaging, despite trying a different strategy. I feel it’s important to clarify that before we get into the rest of the interview.
This post covers the highlights of our conversation. I saved a few questions for the video, the last one I asked him is especially interesting and his answer deserves a full listen. More on that at the end.
Meeting people where they are
Depending on the country, between 70-90% of meat, dairy and eggs comes from factory farms. Most people are funding that without really realising it, without understanding it, or without thinking about it enough.
But what’s interesting is that most people in the West already think factory farming is a problem. They’re not on the fence, they’re against it. Matthew’s Project Slingshot is aiming to meet them there.
There’s a term in psychology for this, stage matching. If you’ve got an ask, you work out where the person you’re talking to actually is, and match your ask to that stage. Project Slingshot’s read is that the public is already at the stage of disliking factory farming, so that’s where they’re meeting them. They’re working where people already are and building from there.
So the message isn’t “go vegan.” As Matthew explained:
“We’re not here to tell you what to eat. We trust your intelligence. Go and do your research. We’re just here to tell you that you’re being lied to.”
Their strapline is “Don’t buy it.”
And according to Matthew, dropping the vegan demand changes how people respond.
“People are less defensive when they’re looking at our content. They’re more open-minded. They’re coming to us and then they’re asking us, ‘No, actually, what should I eat? How should I avoid factory farming?’”
He called it a Trojan horse. Bring people in with satire, wit and transparency, let them arrive at the obvious conclusion themselves, and you’ve got someone who feels like they worked it out rather than someone who feels cornered.
It’s already working
Slingshot is piloting in London, and its first campaign targets the use of gas chambers to kill pigs in the UK. They made an explainer video about it and showed it to 18 non-vegans, filming their reactions.
“Out of 18 people, all of them agreed that it was inhumane. But by watching it, they started questioning, can killing animals ever be humane? Many of them started saying, ‘I’m going to go vegetarian, I’m going to go vegan, I’m not going to eat pork anymore.’”
No one was asked to go vegan, but some seemed like they were heading towards that direction anyway.
Then there’s the political side. They built a petition to ban the gas chambers that’s already passed 30,000 signatures. They also built an email your MP tool. You put in your postcode, it finds your MP, and a pre-written email goes out. The responses started coming back.
“Over 50 (MPs) have actually responded. A lot of these politicians are saying, ‘We weren’t fully aware of this. Thanks for letting us know. I’m going to raise a question.’”
The leader of the Lib Dems has come out on their side. So has the leader of the SNP in Westminster. Even Nigel Farage’s team has responded. They’ve also had over 7,000 emails sent to the CEO of McDonald’s.
“Our job is to be this upstream narrative pressure engine that’s putting pressure on the system.”
Matthew described Slingshot as a radical flank, but a professional, creative, well thought through one. The idea is to make enough noise that the door opens for other organisations to walk through and negotiate.
Making factory farming toxic
So how do you actually do this? Matthew was blunt about one thing first. As a movement, we haven’t always looked as good as we could.
“Top notch, world class design from now onwards. That’s what people will see.”
Then there’s the structure. Every campaign follows the same three beats:
The industry lie
The “Don’t buy it”
A satirical reality
On the gas chambers campaign, that reality reads: the pigs get gassed and you get gaslit.
Satire is built into all of it, it’s a core part of the strategy.
“We can have fun making fun of the opposition, because they don’t know how to handle it when people are taking the piss out of them.”
Their strategy is to point at the corporations behind all of this, companies like Hook 2 Sisters, Avara and Cranswick.
“These are the bad guys. It’s their fault, not yours as an individual.”
This allows the public and the animal advocates to focus on a common enemy.
And they want to bring in celebrities. Their first big video, featuring Diane Morgan, Jen Brister, Dr Amir Khan and Matt Pritchard, pulled in 2.9 million views.
The end goal is a kind of social shift.
“I want to get to a point where it’s embarrassing to say you work at Cranswick in the same way as it’s embarrassing to say you work at Philip Morris tobacco.”
“I’m abolitionist at heart. We all are.”
In our circles, “let’s focus on factory farming” is the kind of thing that gets you branded a “welfarist” who’s letting the animals down. But Matthew isn’t a welfarist.
“I’ve been promoting veganism for 15 years. I’m abolitionist at heart. We all are.”
If factory farming ended tomorrow, a lot of people would stop consuming animal products. Not because they’d been argued into it, but because they wouldn’t be able to get them at any reasonable price. Plant based options would be the obvious, available, affordable choice. The end of factory farming would drag a lot of farming and animal exploitation down with it.
Matthew spoke about a shared movement goal: ending factory farming in the UK by 2040.
“We need a united front within the movement.”
I agree with him on this. I think this sort of strategy should be taken seriously in abolitionist spaces.
Don’t shoot your own allies
Some vegans see a non-vegan (or vegan) campaigning against factory farming and immediately go after them for not going far enough. I brought up a recent example of Gary Yourofsky speaking against this sort of thing.
Engage the people who aren’t vegan, sure, but don’t tear someone down while they’re doing something good.
If someone is willing to spread a message about gas chambers and “Franken-Chickens”, they should be the last people we attack, not the first. And underneath all this is something simple about how Matthew sees people.
“I actually believe most people are inherently good. It took me 37 years to go vegan myself. I don’t think I was a bad person, I was misguided.”
And his ask to the vegans who are sceptical of his strategy is modest.
“Just give us a break. Let us do it. If in two years’ time we’ve been always on the underground talking about these issues and we’ve never made a difference, then fine, it didn’t work.”
He’s been here before. Veganuary got hammered at the start too. “It’s just one month, you’ve got to go vegan for life”, all of this sort of criticism. But much of the criticism quietened down when people saw Veganuary was actually doing a lot of good.
Watch the full conversation
In the video we get into a lot more, including how Slingshot is actually landing big non-vegan names where so many of us have failed, and the long game of taking this from London to the EU and the US.
But the part I’d really watch for is the last question I asked Matthew. I asked him if the him from 15 years ago, the one going on demonstrations and leafleting on street corners, would look at what he’s doing now and call him a sellout. His answer is great, and I recommend you watch the full interview.
I used to think talking about factory farming was a cop out. These days, I’m thinking that going hard on factory farming could be a solid strategy for getting us closer to the end of most animal exploitation. What do you think?
If you found this useful, share it with an advocate you think should see it.
That makes strategic sense. Not every effective animal advocacy message has to lead with identity. Sometimes lowering defensiveness opens the door to real behavior change. If Project Slingshot moves people away from animal products, it can complement vegan outreach rather than compete with it.
Intensive farming exists because it is the only system capable of efficiently and rationally meeting the current demand for animal products from the 8 billion people who consume them, both economically and in terms of land use. For these farms to effectively cease to exist, the reduction in demand must be significant enough that they are no longer the appropriate response to the continued demand. I have doubts about the order in which you envision this transition: first, the disappearance of intensive farming, then a final reduction in demand through price. This would imply that the majority of the 8 billion people would reduce their consumption voluntarily and solely through a collective awareness of the necessity of this reduction. I don't truly believe in this spontaneous goodwill from so many people who are generally so insensitive to the fate of animals, the environment in general, or even their own health, as long as they are not directly and undeniably affected by these issues. Problems...as long as these products remain so easily accessible and cheap, especially due to massive subsidies from all governments, a majority of people will want to continue to benefit from them.