Eva Meijer

Eva Meijer

“There is a huge amount of information about the ways in which animals express themselves, speak to each other, mourn losses, fall in love, do all of these things that we tend to think of as solely human…”

Eva Meijer is at work in her living room. She researches, writes, paints, photographs and makes music around the themes of animal and human language, politics and communication. Her PhD thesis in philosophy, titled 'Political Animal Voices' (University of Amsterdam) was awarded the Praemium Erasmianum Dissertation Prize in 2018. Currently, she works as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam. North Holland, Netherlands. 2022. Sabina Diethelm / #unboundproject / We Animals Media

A philosopher, prolific writer, artist, and singer-songwriter, Eva Meijer seems to have her fingers in every pie imaginable. When I catch her, she has just returned home to the Netherlands from Poland where, she tells me with surprisingly little fanfare, she may have become the first person on Polish television to advocate for better care for animals.

She is both forthright and self-effacing, describing her role simply as “to say what needs to be said” to promote a different way of thinking about and relating to non-human animals. “I’m not afraid to use words like ‘language’ or ‘culture’ [in relation to animals],” she explains.

Growing up with animals, Meijer felt a special connection with them early on, becoming vegetarian when she was eleven. She began writing songs and poems at fourteen and studied singing and art at the Royal Conservatoire and Royal Academy of the Arts, before pursuing philosophy.

Whether academic or artistic, for Meijer each form is simply a new language through which she can give meaning to different experiences. “I’m lucky that I have many ways of ‘singing the world,’” she muses, reciting French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty.

“Philosophy is a lot about being critical of existing hierarchies and violence, but also about showing the world differently,” she explains, “so in that sense I think it’s not so different from art because you can make people look at things that they take for granted and reconsider it.”

Her PhD thesis and resulting books Dierentalen (Animal Languages) and When Animals Speak explore the use of language in animal groups and between human and non-human animals, making the case that animal language is, in fact, political.

“Bird Cottage”, one of 14 books written by Eva Meijer. She researches, writes, paints, photographs and makes music around the themes of animal and human language, politics and communication. She has written 14 books which have been translated into over 20 languages. North Holland, Netherlands. 2022. Sabina Diethelm / #unboundproject / We Animals Media

“There is a huge amount of information about the ways in which animals express themselves, speak to each other, mourn losses, fall in love, do all of these things that we tend to think of as solely human,” Meijer explains.

“It changes everything, because our societies are built around the idea that humans are the only rational animals, the only creators of meaning, the only cultural animals, social animals . . . [and] the other animals have been excluded from so much of that.”

Her post-doctoral research at the University of Amsterdam takes these ideas a step further. Since many animals have clear ideas about how they want to live, Meijer argues that their capacity to make decisions about that life and to maintain it should be respected and protected.

“If you have a perspective on life and it matters to you, then it should matter democratically too,” she argues.

Humans, for our part, need to engage in conversation with other animals as active participants in their own existence. This means listening to what they have to tell us about their own experience, about the kind of future they want, and what relationship—if any—they want to have with us. The recognition of animal agency, believes Meijer, “is one of the most important tasks of humanity and justice.”

Whilst this might sound idealistic or outright strange to some, Meijer emphasizes that there are already places where this co-creation is happening, particularly outside of Western social constructs.

“There are indigenous communities that have different relations with non-human animals and see themselves positioned differently with regard to them, and already accept a lot more of their agency,” she explains.

She gives the example of a community in Indonesia that hunts together with crocodiles, representing a kind of understanding around co-existence and resource sharing. In an urban environment, this might look like decolonizing landscapes, reducing the number of roads and infrastructural developments, and relinquishing land back to other species.

In developing different stories about humans and animals and how we can live together, says Meijer, “the presence of actual animals is something that matters a lot.” She currently shares her home with two dogs, Romanian strays Olli and Doris, mischievous ex-laboratory mice, and three rescued guinea pigs.

Olli in particular, she tells me, is “great to think with about these questions, because he’s been living on the streets for five years . . . It was never a question of me dominating him, he’s his own person. Even if I would want to possess him in some sense, it’s simply impossible.”

Meijer gives frequent public talks, where she meets many people who are hungry for a different relationship with animals.

“People feel that there’s something wrong with the way we treat animals, but at the same time they’re very accustomed to it, and when you speak to them about it, then it helps them to articulate that it’s not normal,” explains Meijer. “This is why I like speaking about language, because it always has this element of wonder in it.”

Despite the violence our societies enact on animals, she also holds a lot of hope in the power of activism.

“We can participate in a struggle for change, and this will make a difference,” she insists. “Even living differently is a form of activism, so my whole existence feels very activist.”

When she moved a few years ago to a rural part of the Netherlands, Meijer noticed that many frogs and toads undertaking a centuries-old migration to food sources were being hit by cars while attempting to cross busy roads. In response, she began a “frog and toad group” through which locals assist the frogs and toads to travel safely from gardens to larger ponds.

This kind of localized activism can be powerful. In the two years the group has existed the narrative in the town about frogs and toads has shifted from one of apathy to one of care.

“These are all small-scale experiments to become more attentive, more aware of the fact that we share this planet with other animals,” says Meijer.

“I honestly feel that we are not here for ourselves but that the whole meaning of life is to be a good person for others and to make a change in the world for them, and when you can do that, that’s a gift, and also humbling.”

Meijer’s most recent novel, Zee Nu, was published in March 2022 by Uitgeverij Cossee. 

Written by Anna Mackiewicz
Photography by Sabina Diethelm

Brenda Sanders

Brenda Sanders

“I’m so glad that I’m such a stubborn person and nobody can tell me what to do…. If I had listened, I never would have seen how much people want this change.” ~ Brenda Sanders

Growing up in the Baltimore housing projects, Brenda Sanders didn’t know what real food was. With no local grocery store nearby, her single mother instead bought food from a converted school bus.

“I feel weird even calling it food,” she admits. “It was the most processed, most unhealthy, salty, sugary, fatty animal products that you could think of— the cheapest crap. That was what was being trucked in and dumped into our community, because that’s all that we were worth. So I just grew up thinking that’s what food was.”

In the Penn-North neighborhood, Sanders and friends transformed a vacant lot into a thriving community garden. It served as a safe haven for birds and other wildlife, and provided vegetables for residents until it was closed (after two seasons) by the city for development. Photo by: Jo-Anne McArthur / #UnboundProject / We Animals Media.

Years later, living in the low-income neighborhood of Penn-North, where the closest grocery store was two bus rides away, she stumbled across an eye-opening community meeting: University students were presenting a recent study that had compared the health outcomes of two neighborhoods in Baltimore—an affluent white community and a low-income black community. The study revealed a 20-year difference in life expectancy, but surprisingly the main factor was not stress, nor income, but diet.

Sanders had been vegan for ten years and realized that she had knowledge to share about healthy eating.

“I felt like I could make a difference. It was audacious!”

She emptied her savings account, bought an assortment of cooking equipment, and started Better Health, Better Life. She knocked on the doors of churches and community centers, and anywhere that would have her.

She was met with disbelief and told time and again that these communities did not care about their health, and they would not eat vegan food. But if Sanders is anything, she is determined.

“I’m so glad that I’m such a stubborn person and nobody can tell me what to do!,” she says now, laughing. “If I had listened, I never would have seen how much people want this change.”

She ran cooking demonstrations and shared all she had learned about the health benefits of a vegan diet, sometimes to one person, sometimes a hundred. Wherever she went, people were eager to learn, and parents wanted better choices for their children. They left armed with recipes and printouts.

In Penn-North, Sanders and some friends set about transforming a vacant lot into a community garden. It was a labour of love. They moved mattresses, bed frames, and old tires, and Sanders contracted tetanus in the process. Soon local children became curious, and came out to help weed and build garden beds. They planted kale and collard greens, cucumbers and tomatoes. As the lot transformed, wildlife came to the garden—bluebirds, cardinals, praying mantis, and squirrels—animals that the kids had never seen before. The elders followed and soon it was a thriving community.

Unbeknownst to them, however, the lot had been tagged for development. City officials began harassing the community, citing obscure regulations, and after two seasons, the garden was closed.

Sanders knows it was political.

“These cities have a plan for bringing in higher income folks and doing the whole urban development thing, and building this project that brings the community of low-income people together around a shared vision disrupts that, and they will find ways to deter you.”

But Sanders would not be deterred. It was time to go bigger.

She reached out to fellow vegan and restaurateur, Naijha Wright-Brown of The Land of Kush, and together they dreamed up a free vegan festival that would connect people interested in veganism to vendors, speakers, and educational resources.

Over 1,200 people came to the first Vegan Soulfest in 2014.

“It was way more people than were supposed to be in that building!” she confides. By 2019, the event attracted over 14,000 attendees. “It just took on this momentum— it was like a freight train.”

Sanders was helping bring healthy eating choices to Baltimore’s black community, but she still saw veganism as a health issue, not an animal one. Then one day while shopping for shoes, she noticed they were made from kangaroo leather, and something clicked.

She began searching online and discovered an animal rights movement she hadn’t known existed, especially in Baltimore. Bolstered by this newfound network, she moved from knocking on doors to establishing a dedicated vegan community center called Thrive Baltimore. Here, she could run regular classes and expand her offerings to include a four-week vegan education program, film screenings, guest chef cooking demos, and cooking competitions.

People kept coming back, they brought their friends, and it just kept growing—she estimates they’ve reached tens of thousands.

“The events at Thrive got so big, we were busting out of the seams,” she says, then smiles. “Baltimore is different now because of the work we were able to do out of Thrive.”

The more she worked, the more she realized it wasn’t just about health.

“The mission was so much bigger, and the issues were so much more expansive than these health disparities,” she says. “Now we’re talking about climate, and about animal abuse, and about environmental racism.”

In answer, she founded the Afro-Vegan Society, a project rooted at the intersection of human health, animal rights, and social justice. Their annual Veguary program, held during the month of February to encourage people to try vegan living, has helped thousands transition to a vegan lifestyle.

Baltimore was better informed than ever about the benefits of veganism, but access to vegan foods there remained a problem: with access. Vegan foods either weren’t available in the community, or they were too expensive.

Sanders describes The Greener Kitchen as a work of magic.

“It was the wackiest idea, out of all the things that I set out to do… Affordable, accessible, vegan convenience food doesn’t exist, and I thought ‘well, it should.’”

With her characteristic can-do attitude, she gathered a crew of chefs and producers to create a line of vegan foods that were just that.

 

While making healthy, real food that is as cheap as foods filled with chemicals hasn’t been easy, she has proved it is possible. The line of plant-based meats, sauces, and cheeses, all quick and easy to prepare at home, are made in-house to create employment opportunities. The key is keeping it local. Although they could grow the business and stock products at supermarkets, Sanders knows this would price people out: “Then it’ll be only for people who can afford to shop at Whole Foods, and people in the hood won’t have access to it again.”

Both Thrive Baltimore and The Greener Kitchen were forced to close during the pandemic. Not one to have her plate empty though, Sanders used the time to launch the Food & Justice podcast for the Defund Big Meat campaign.

“What I want to do with this show,” she explains, “is to expose the filthy underbelly of our food system and for people to learn everything they didn’t know so that we can start to make more informed choices and choices that are in our best interest.”

“My next goal is to reach millions,” Sanders says before breaking into a smile.

And if anyone is capable of it, she is.

Written by Anna Mackiewicz
Photos by Jo-Anne McArthur

Erin Wing

Erin Wing

“The mother cows turned to look at me and I could feel that they were asking me for help. You may not speak the same language, but you can understand when they’re asking you for something. They started to vocalize and I interpreted it as an act of mourning.”

At just 25, Erin Wing went undercover and spent the next two years working at chicken, dairy, and salmon farms documenting the institutionalized abuse of animals in these industries.

She was attracted to the work because of a deep connection she felt with animals who were her companions through childhood experiences of household violence, and it was this history that convinced her she was right for the role. But even she wasn’t prepared for all that would follow.

“I definitely went in bright-eyed and bushy-tailed,” laughs Wing. “I thought: I will do one investigation that will change everyone’s perspective, and everyone will be vegan within a year.”

Now the Deputy Director of Investigations at Animal Outlook, Wing relinquished her anonymity to speak out about what she saw on several American farms, and her testimony is confronting.

Foremost in her stories is the constant presence of violence.

“Those environments are meant to take away all the better parts of yourself, all the parts that feel compassion, that feel happiness, that feel kindness, because you can’t really feel much of anything,” she says. Workers must become desensitized in order to survive.

At a salmon farm in Maine – the first-ever investigation of a salmon factory farm in America – she remembers looking into a bucket where a salmon was slowly suffocating to death. Noticing her discomfort, a co-worker tried to reassure her: “It used to bum me out, the way we kill these animals – but then you get used to it.”

It was through stolen moments with the animals – like lingering in the back area of a milking facility to show the cows a moment of affection – that Wing managed to stay connected to her humanity. When you see the animals for who they are, she says, “it’s hard to ignore that better part of yourself that says, ‘is what I’m doing right?’”

Despite the personal toll, Wing is quick to re-centre the animals. “It is all about them,” she insists.

“I describe this job as existing in solidarity with them, seeing their experiences first-hand, and coming away with the animals’ testimony.”

When asked about the worst things she has seen, Wing doesn’t hesitate – there are countless examples. She describes an injured cow being dragged and hoisted 20 feet into the air by her hips and sprayed in the face with a high-pressure hose.

In her last investigation, at Dick Van Dam Dairy, a factory farm in Southern California, the violence was visceral and constant with workers beating the cows every single day. “I was being affected in a way that I wasn’t able to control,” she remembers. “The degree of violence was pulling me back into memories, situations that I hadn’t been in since I was young. And I realized this was very dangerous for me mentally.”

She knew that her remaining time as an investigator was limited.

“I describe it as maintaining this dam inside of myself, and after every investigation there was one crack in the dam, and then another. There was no way I could keep going and keep up the facade of just being another worker. I knew that once that dam broke I would be at risk of losing a part of myself that I was afraid I would never be able to get back: that ability to connect to other animals in a way that is meaningful.”

Wing believes that the public seeing this footage will be surprised not only by the abuse, but also to discover what animals who are farmed are really like – which is precisely why footage captured undercover is such an important resource.

“We hope to change public perception of animals, and hopefully people see them as being worthy of our protection, and that their suffering does matter,” says Wing.

She recounts one night shift at the dairy farm, finding two newborn calves dead in the dirt.

“The mother cows turned to look at me and I could feel that they were asking me for help. You may not speak the same language, but you can understand when they’re asking you for something. They started to vocalize and I interpreted it as an act of mourning.”

This is one reason that the animal agriculture industry operates under such secrecy, says Wing. “They don’t want people to see that these animals are sentient, that they have family units, that they can show affection, that they are intelligent in many different unique ways.”

Sometimes footage is compelling evidence bolstering legal action against offending facilities. From the four investigations that Wing undertook, one chicken farm was closed, and the owner banned from working with animals for a year. The other three facilities are still operating.

While working in the field felt like she was shouldering the immense responsibility of the work alone, retiring from investigations has allowed Wing to feel part of a greater movement working together toward a better world for animals. “It’s what I always wanted to do with my life ever since I was a little girl.”

Looking to the future, she is excited about Animal Outlook’s new Farm Transitions program, which will help farmers transition from farming animals to farming plants.

“It’s an alternative that is offered to farmers that shows that you don’t have to participate in these animals’ suffering, you don’t need to desensitize yourself, there is another way and a better way.”

Erin Wing, Deputy Director of Investigations at the animal advocacy NGO Animal Outlook, spends time with Lola at Wildwood Farm Sanctuary & Preserve.

Erin Wing, Deputy Director of Investigations at the animal advocacy NGO Animal Outlook, spends time with Lola at Wildwood Farm Sanctuary & Preserve. Photo: Jo-Anne McArthur / #unboundproject / We Animals Media

Wing doesn’t think she could ever go back to a life outside of animal advocacy after all that she has seen. And despite the horror, she still has hope: “I see the future as being very bright.”

A big thank you to Wildwood Farm Sanctuary & Preserve for hosting Unbound’s photo shoot with Erin Wing.

Written by Anna Mackiewicz
Photos by Jo-Anne McArthur

Zoe Weil

Zoe Weil

“I realized that this was the work I wanted to do, and I just had to figure out how to do it.”

Zoe Weil is one of the world’s revolutionary thinkers. As a leader in humane education – a model that centers around sustainability, humanity, and justice – she advocates a bigger vision for schooling that shows care for people, for other animals, and for the environment. As Weil sees it, students – or, as she calls them, Solutionaries – can be empowered with the knowledge, skills, and will to solve the world’s most pressing problems.

Like all revolutions, it doesn’t come easily. The education system in Weil’s home country of America is in dire need of an overhaul. It centers on traditional curriculum models and standardized testing, which values how much a student knows over their ability to apply learning. Insecure funding causes public schools to steer away from “controversial” topics and unconventional teaching methods. Subjects are taught separately, presenting challenges to multidisciplinary teaching methods that could be more relevant to real-world topics such as climate change or factory farming. Teachers themselves are frustrated and the passion that brought them to teaching is waning.

But Weil’s work is making waves. As well as being the co-founder and president of the Institute for Humane Education (IHE) for which she has developed multiple humane education graduate programs, she has delivered six TEDx talks, and authored seven books for youth and adults on humane education raising a generation of solutionaries, both in the classroom context and at home.

Weil grew up idolizing Dr Jane Goodall, and dreamed of following in her footsteps to work with animals. But, like many of us, by the time she entered university Weil had stopped imagining that future for herself. Instead, she studied English literature before enrolling in law school and promptly dropping out. She couldn’t have known it then, but just as she felt she was at a loose end, a new path was laying itself before her.

Weil began volunteering with a researcher who was working with chimpanzees. Though she couldn’t have been closer to her childhood dream, she found it wasn’t all she’d imagined. “While the research wasn’t painful or invasive, the chimps were still imprisoned, and their futures seemed bleak,” she recalls.

She then worked as a teacher and naturalist at a wildlife centre for injured and orphaned animals, and while she loved teaching young people about animals, she was again confronted with the ethics of the programs, which brought wild animals to schools for presentations.

By this time Weil had been instilled with the love of teaching and returned to university with the aim of becoming a professor. Discovering a program at the University of Pennsylvania that offered weeklong courses to middle school students, Weil saw the opportunity to reach students and, in so doing, change the course of history. She proposed several courses, including one on animal issues and another on environmental issues.

I realized that this was the work I wanted to do, and I just had to figure out how to do it.

To her surprise the animal issues course turned out to be the second most popular of the sixty courses offered that summer, and Weil taught a class full of enthusiastic 12- and 13-year-olds. She found humane education deeply rewarding and felt heartened by the impact she was having. She taught a class about product testing and the animals who suffered severe pain, injury, and death for household and beauty products; the next morning a student came to class bearing homemade leaflets. “While the rest of us were having lunch, he was standing on a Philadelphia street corner handing them out,” she remembers. “He’d become an activist overnight.”

This was Weil’s ‘aha’ moment: “I realized that this was the work I wanted to do, and I just had to figure out how to do it.”

After graduating, Weil began working as a humane educator with a local SPCA, but again she felt that something wasn’t quite aligned. She was only allowed to teach about companion animals, but wanted to extend her compassion-driven brand of teaching to all animal issues. Soon she moved to the American Anti-Vivisection Society (AAVS), where she became their Director of Education, developing a humane education program that she began teaching in schools. It addressed global ethical issues relating to animals and the environment, from product testing and pollution to factory farming and climate change. Animalearn reached 10,000 students across several US cities, and Weil soon began training others to become humane educators, expanding the reach of humane education across the country.

Education is the root system underlying all other systems.

Despite this success, Weil yearned for systemic change. She saw a need for the education system to embrace humane education programming, and for students to have access to ongoing learning on these issues. The obvious access point was the teachers, who could be trained to deliver humane education in their classrooms, as a framework connecting all subject areas.

With this new vision, Weil left AAVS and in 1996 co-founded the Institute for Humane Education. She began creating the first graduate programs, and even a Ph.D. program, in comprehensive humane education. IHE started to offer workshops for teachers around the U.S. and Canada, and now offers online courses and free downloadable resources on a broad variety of issues ranging from compassion, ecology, conservation, extinction, and ethics, enabling teachers to do this work in classrooms on almost every continent.

Most recently, IHE created the Solutionary Program, a comprehensive set of tools that teachers in middle and high schools can use to support students in solutions-focused learning. The program has seen such success that in 2018 the Office of Education in San Mateo County began implementing the solutionary approach as the core educational philosophy for their curriculum. This program will reach over 95,000 students across the county.

Explaining her philosophy, Weil says: “Education is the root system underlying all other systems. If we nurture compassion in children and provide young people with the knowledge and skills to create meaningful positive changes, we will witness the unfolding of a more humane, just, and healthy world for all beings.”

In the time that Weil has worked in humane education, she has propelled its expansion from a field associated with the welfare of companion animals, to a comprehensive and intersectional field that embraces and champions the interconnections between human rights, animal protection, and environmental preservation. Weil’s revolutionary work has carved out a place for compassion, ethics, and responsibility in students’ learning, and has challenged educators to imagine a bigger and more meaningful purpose for schooling. And she shows no signs of slowing down: she is currently writing her eighth book with the bold title, How to Solve the World’s Problems.

It hasn’t been a linear path, but Weil has created a version of that future she imagined for herself as a child, working to improve the lives of animals on a global scale.

Dawn Moncrief

Dawn Moncrief

“The connection is real.”

As Dawn Moncrief sits down for this interview, she is tired and jetlagged from a long intercontinental flight. Even so, she is eloquent and thoughtful. It’s obvious that her knowledge of the food system is immense and that her dedication to reforming it formidable. Moncrief is the founding director of A Well-Fed World (AWFW), a non-profit hunger relief and animal protection advocacy organization based in Washington, DC. It’s a job that takes her all over the world, working with local partners on a strategy to tackle some of the biggest global challenges.

“I was very attuned to issues around hunger,”

The organization is unique in its dual mission to tackle two of the world’s most complex issues: world hunger and the suffering of animals used for food. It’s no small feat, but Moncrief hasn’t let that stop her from working to change the conversation about food justice, and proving that the same foods that are best for people, are also best for animals, and the environment.

Moncrief moved to Washington, DC in the mid-90s to attend George Washington University, where she earned two master’s degrees in international relations and women’s studies, both with a focus on economic development. In DC, she had the benefit of exposure to key policymakers, and the headquarters of major development organizations, providing her with vital insights into the food policy landscape. She had wanted to work on poverty issues for as long as she could remember. “I was very attuned to issues around hunger,” she reflects.

It was at grad school that an acquaintance first introduced her to veganism. Moncrief had been vegetarian since she was a teenager. “I wasn’t politicized around it,” she explains, “I just knew I didn’t want to hurt animals.” She had never heard of veganism, but as she began to research the global impacts of meat, egg, and dairy consumption, she realized that it perfectly aligned with her ideas around food security and hunger. Moncrief could see that meat consumption hurt low-income communities, especially women and children. Her work began to focus on the ways in which the production and consumption of animal-derived foods increases disparities, exacerbates global hunger, and negatively impacts communities’ access to natural resources.

“It’s important to be authentic, to inspire people.”

On sanctuary tour after conference presentation at Farm Sanctuary in Watkins Glen, NY.

Moncrief began to unpack the system that enabled food to be unjustly distributed, with staple food crops being diverted to high-income countries that were able to outbid low-income countries for crop availability. She saw that this put upward pressure on prices, forcing low-income countries to export large quantities of food – both crops and animal products – at high prices, even though their own people were hungry. She learned about animal agriculture companies “land-grabbing” in low-income countries so that they could establish factory farms, which pollute the environment and harm local farmers’ ability to grow food, further increasing hunger. But looking at the organizations working in international development, or even in food policy, she was surprised to find that they wouldn’t advocate meat reduction (not even as “part” of the solution).

After finishing grad school, Moncrief began working with women-in-development organizations, but she felt complicit working within a framework that used meat and dairy in their food programs, while these products caused such devastation.

Fortunately, she chanced upon a presentation by Pattrice Jones discussing animal agriculture and its connection to global hunger. Inspired by jones and other activists connecting the dots and deconstructing the global food system, Moncrief began working within the animal advocacy movement. Eventually she was able to make the Plants-4-Hunger educational campaign that she had started developing in grad school into a gift-giving campaign that helps alleviate world hunger using plant-based foods, a unique take on the traditional ‘animals as food’ gifts programs. When her passion for global food justice eventually called for a dedicated organization, Moncrief founded A Well-Fed World, utilizing the Plants-4-Hunger as their flagship program.

Climate-Diet presentation organized by UN Green Group. Dawn Moncrief, speaker with Wendy Werneth organizer. United Nations, Geneva Switzerland

With many organizations focused on technological “fixes” to reduce the negative consequences of meat consumption (such as improving feed conversion inefficiencies or decreasing the inherently harmful environmental impacts of rearing animals for food), reducing consumption through behavior change was dismissed or ignored. Reduction of animal products was unpopular and, importantly, challenged big business. So Moncrief decided to address the issues by connecting with NGOs and influencers to put plant-based hunger and climate solutions on the agenda.

“It’s important to be authentic, to inspire people.”

AWFW addresses the harm done by development programs using animals, and dispelling the myth that animal products are a superior option for people in need of food. Moncrief created the Humane Facts campaign, which unpacks misleading food labeling and exposes the true meaning behind the language of “humane” meat – words like “free-range,” “cage-free” and “grass-fed,” which are used to make consumers feel that they are making healthy and ethical food choices.

Through its partnerships and global grants program, AWFW provides vital funding to organizations to support vegan feeding and farming programs for low-income communities, both in the United States and internationally, as well as farmed animal care and rescue programs Their most significant partnership is with the International Fund for Africa in support of their vegan school lunch program in Ethiopia. “For some of these kids, it’s the only meal they’re getting,” explains Moncrief.

“Not just the overconsumption of meat, but meat itself as a form of overconsumption; so that every time you’re eating it, you’re thinking about how resource intensive that is.”

Through these international partnerships, AWFW is reframing what makes a ‘healthy’ diet and challenging the dependence of the international development industry on animal products to feed people. Instead, it is highlighting the benefits of plant-based food choices for undernourished populations, and proving that veganism can offer a more sustainable solution to world hunger and food security issues.

By shifting to plant-based foods and using veganic farming practices, the impacts of livestock on resource scarcity, environmental pollution, land degradation, and climate change can be avoided. Where animals overgraze and degrade the soil, growing plants helps build health back into the land. Plant-based farming empowers communities, who can feed themselves high-density nutritious foods that also strengthen, rather than pollute, local ecosystems and natural resources. It’s a win-win.

AWFW advocates veg-friendly policies at local and federal levels, working with think tanks and policymakers to incorporate plant-based food strategies into their programs. The organization analyzes research and communicates the food security benefits of plant-based food and farming, thereby advancing structural change that supports its vision of a just food system where all people have enough of the right kinds of food, and in which people are nourished, animals are spared, and the environment is protected.

AWFW’s strength is in its willingness to challenge some of the most harmful – yet accepted – behaviours in society, regardless of backlash from animal industry bodies or other organizations with vested interests.

Food waste is already a topic on the global agenda, but Moncrief is taking it a step further. Her vision is to reframe meat as a form of overconsumption. “Not just the overconsumption of meat, but meat itself as a form of overconsumption; so that every time you’re eating it, you’re thinking about how resource intensive that is.”

While Moncrief is clear that veganism is not a silver bullet for world hunger, she is developing a more nuanced conversation around consumption, and empowering people to understand the impacts of their choices.

“The connection is real.”

“Reducing meat consumption and going vegan does take pressure off the food system so that basic food staples are more accessible to low-income countries,” she explains.

Dawn Moncrief. Photo by Jo-Anne McArthur.

She becomes emotional as she tells the story of a farming family in El Salvador who had to choose between selling their crops to pay for the lease of their land, and feeding their children. Two of their children died.

“These very poor countries with lots of hunger are exporting either meat directly, or food to be used for meat and other animal products, to high-income countries,” she says. “So, the connection is real.”

With Moncrief at work, it’s difficult to doubt that things are changing for animals. AWFW’s strong message and research-based advocacy is making huge strides possible in terms of re-framing the role of animal products in food policy and hunger alleviation. Where other organizations shy away from advocating for unpopular solutions, AWFW sticks to its mission, bringing plant-based hunger and climate solutions into the mainstream, and proving to critics that what helps animals and the environment also helps people – there’s no need to choose.

Learn more and support A Well Fed World
Photos and interview by Jo-Anne McArthur. Text by Anna Mackiewicz.