One Step For Animals

One Goal and Five facts drive our actions. In short, One Step works to reduce the number of animals suffering as much as possible. Five hard facts drive One Step: The vast majority of land animals who suffer in the United States today are birds. Almost every argument for vegetarianism or veganism applies much more to avoiding red meat than birds en... vironmental and health arguments especially. It takes more than 200 chickens to provide the same number of meals as one cow. While beef consumption has fallen over the decades, chicken consumption has risen significantly . After a few years of decline, per capita consumption of animals in the US is currently at an all-time high and continuing to move higher, despite all advocacy efforts. (See graph below.) That means the average person in the US is causing more suffering than ever before. The vast majority of individuals (~80%) who go vegetarian or vegan go back to eating animals, becoming active advocates against a compassionate diet . The most important insight driving us is what won Herb Simon his Nobel Prize in Economics: People dont make optimal or perfect decisions. Rather, almost everyone makes choices based on what is a bit better or is good enough. This has direct implications for our efforts. For example, most advocates see their vegan diet as best for water usage (or global warming, or heart disease, etc.). But for almost everyone who actually cares about water usage (or climate change or heart disease, etc.), all they see is chicken being much much better than beef. This is true on just about every measure chicken is noticeably better in terms of environmental impact or health consequences. With our natural affinity for fellow mammals, most people who care think that eating chickens is morally better. Very few people realize just how wonderful chickens are, or that they are each unique individuals, like Red Baron (below). Given these facts and the other information in the links, One Step for Animals mission is two-fold:Read More