Our fellow animals are sentient individuals with rights to their own lives, bodies and freedom. They are not property, objects or resources for human use.
Vegan Australia is guided by a rights-based abolitionist understanding of veganism. The following pages explain the principles behind our work: what veganism means, how those principles guide our campaigns, why language matters and how to speak about animals in ways that challenge speciesism rather than repeat it.
Veganism is grounded in respect for our fellow animals as sentient individuals, not in human preference, charity or sentiment. Animals have their own lives, bodies, relationships and interests. They live for their own sake, not ours, and justice requires that they not be owned, used, confined, bred, killed or treated as commodities.
This page explains veganism as an ethical and political response to speciesism and animal exploitation. It distinguishes the focus of veganism, which is opposition to animal use, from the direct benefits for humans and the planet and the wider connections between animal exploitation and other systems of domination.
Vegan Australia’s campaigns are designed to help move society towards a world where animals are no longer treated as resources, property or objects for human purposes. Campaigns must be clearly vegan, rights-based, abolitionist, practical, accurate and strategic.
This page explains how Vegan Australia decides what to campaign on, why we do not campaign for welfare reforms or single-issue demands and how current public issues can be used to point beyond reform towards veganism and abolition. The aim is not to make animal use appear less harmful, but to challenge the belief that animals may be used at all.
Language shapes how animals are seen and treated. Speciesist language can hide animals’ individuality, make violence sound routine and present animal use as normal, inevitable or acceptable. Words such as 'livestock', 'it', 'processing', 'humane' and 'choice' are not neutral when they erase animals or make exploitation easier to accept.
This page sets out the principles of non-speciesist language. It explains why animals should be referred to as individuals, why euphemisms should not disguise exploitation, why veganism should not be reduced to a personal preference and why human kindness, compassion or love are not substitutes for respecting animals’ rights.
This practical guide applies the language principles to everyday writing, editing and advocacy. It gives examples of terms to avoid, clearer alternatives and sentence-level changes that help recognise animals as individuals rather than objects, products, resources or categories of human use.
The guide covers how to refer to animals, how to avoid industry terminology and euphemisms, how to discuss veganism without reducing it to diet or lifestyle and how to avoid language that centres human virtue rather than animals’ rights. It is not a set of rigid rules, but a resource for communicating more truthfully about animals, veganism and animal use.
The further reading page brings together resources, authors and organisations that have informed Vegan Australia’s rights-based approach to animals, veganism, advocacy, speciesism and language. It is intended for people who want to explore the ideas behind these pages in more depth.
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