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!

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!

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!

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