Guiding principles for Vegan Australia's campaigns

Vegan Australia's campaigns are guided by the foundational principles of veganism: that our fellow animals are sentient individuals with their own lives, bodies and freedom, and that they should not be exploited, used, owned or objectified by humans.

Campaigns are one way Vegan Australia puts these principles into practice. They help build public understanding of veganism, challenge the normalisation of animal use and support the social, cultural and institutional changes needed for a vegan world.

Because Vegan Australia has limited resources, our campaigns must be carefully chosen. They are designed to advance abolitionist vegan advocacy, strengthen respect for the rights of animals and help remove barriers to living vegan.

The purpose of our campaigns

The purpose of Vegan Australia's campaigns is to help create a world in which our fellow animals live free from human exploitation, use and ownership.

Our campaigns aim to move society towards a world where:

• people accept the ethical basis of veganism and oppose the exploitation of our fellow animals
• veganism is understood as a matter of justice, not merely a diet or lifestyle
• people understand that vegan diets can support good health, be nutritionally adequate and may provide health benefits
• veganism is seen as normal, practical and necessary
• people are supported to become vegan and stay vegan
• institutions recognise and accommodate veganism
• practical, social and institutional barriers to vegan living are removed
• public policy supports a transition away from animal use and its phasing out

While many campaigns may also have benefits for human health, the natural environment and broader social justice, the central purpose of Vegan Australia's campaigns is respect for the rights of our fellow animals.

How we decide what to campaign on

Vegan Australia supports campaigns that are consistent with a fully vegan world.

This means that a campaign must either directly promote veganism or advance a sub-goal that would still be valid in a society where animals were no longer used by humans.

Examples include campaigns for:

• vegan food in hospitals, schools, aged care, prisons and other institutions
• vegan food to be more accessible in restaurants, workplaces and public settings
• accurate vegan nutrition information
• research into animal-free agriculture and food systems
• recognition of veganism by governments and institutions
• public education about animal rights and veganism
• removal of practical barriers faced by people living vegan

Vegan Australia does not support campaigns whose demands would not apply in a fully vegan world. This includes campaigns calling for animal welfare 'improvements', such as larger cages, different methods of confinement, different slaughter locations, 'free range' animal products, or other reforms that assume animals will continue to be bred, owned, confined, used or killed.

Principles for campaign design

Vegan Australia's campaigns are designed to be:

• strongly vegan: they promote a vegan world or a clear sub-goal of that end point
• explicitly vegan: the word 'vegan' is used wherever it is accurate and useful
• rights-based: they are grounded in respect for the rights of our fellow animals, not in concern only for treatment or welfare
• abolitionist: they challenge animal use itself, not merely the conditions in which animals are used
• practical: they help people and institutions take clear steps towards vegan practice
• accurate: they provide clear, reliable and balanced information
• strategic: they focus on areas where Vegan Australia can make a distinct contribution
• non-duplicative: they avoid using limited resources to repeat work already being handled well by other organisations

A campaign does not need to achieve abolition immediately in order to be worthwhile. However, it must point clearly in that direction and must not reinforce the idea that animal use can be acceptable if carried out in a different way.

Public campaigns should be assessed by whether they help move society towards recognising and respecting animals' rights, not simply by whether they achieve a short-term reform.

Types of campaigns and actions

Vegan Australia's campaigns and actions fall into several broad categories:

• advocating for recognition and support of veganism and animal rights by government bodies and other institutions, including through representations and submissions in areas such as food, health, environment, agriculture, animal law and animal welfare, while using these opportunities to promote animal rights rather than welfare reform
• campaigning through the media by responding to current issues relevant to veganism as well as promoting Vegan Australia campaigns
• educating and inspiring the public to embrace veganism as being ethical, attainable and beneficial
• assisting new and existing vegans, particularly by helping address practical difficulties in living vegan
• participation in, or response to, campaigns initiated by other groups when this advances vegan education

We do not campaign for welfare reforms

Vegan Australia does not campaign for improvements to the conditions in which animals are exploited. Our vision is not a world where animals are used more gently, but a world where they are no longer used by humans.

Welfare reform campaigns risk reinforcing the idea that using animals is acceptable if certain conditions are met. While welfare reforms may lessen some immediate harms, they do not address the underlying injustice of treating sentient beings as property. By suggesting that animal use can be ethical if it is regulated or described as 'humane', they can make people more comfortable with animal exploitation and improve the public image of industries that continue to breed, own, use and kill animals. They shift attention from the injustice of animal use itself to questions about the method, location or intensity of that use.

For this reason, Vegan Australia does not campaign for larger cages, lower stocking densities, different slaughter practices, so-called 'humane' animal products, or other reforms that leave the property status and use of animals intact.

Veganism seeks not merely to reduce suffering within systems of exploitation, but to abolish those systems altogether.

The issue is not only how animals are treated. The deeper issue is that they are treated as resources at all.

Single-issue animal campaigns

Single-issue animal campaigns focus on one species, one practice or one form of treatment. They may draw public attention to serious harms, but they can also narrow the issue in ways that leave the wider system of animal use unchallenged.

Examples include campaigns against fur, caged eggs or gassing by carbon dioxide; campaigns calling for the phase-out of sow stalls; campaigns against forcing animals to race; and campaigns promoting 'free range' eggs.

Vegan Australia does not support single-issue campaigns because they often:

• require little change to the average person's behaviour or beliefs
• concentrate on one species or practice and imply that other forms of animal use are less important or less harmful
• call for legislative or voluntary industry changes to particular treatments of animals, rather than an end to their exploitation
• fail to challenge the underlying issues of speciesism and the assumption that animals may be used by humans
• fail to present veganism as the appropriate response to the violation of animals' rights

Vegan Australia's role is to keep the focus on the root issue: the belief that humans are entitled to use our fellow animals.

Using current issues to promote veganism

Although Vegan Australia does not initiate welfare reform, single-issue or other campaigns that stop short of abolition, we respond to such campaigns and to issues receiving public attention when they provide opportunities to explain why veganism is the ethical response to animal use.

When people are concerned about a particular animal issue, Vegan Australia encourages them to extend that concern to all animals and all animal use. In this way, a public discussion about one practice provides an opening to talk about speciesism, rights and veganism.

This does not mean adopting the limited demand of another campaign. It means using the moment to point beyond reform and towards abolition. In all such responses, Vegan Australia consistently presents veganism as the necessary response to animal exploitation and the long-term basis for ending it.

The same approach applies to campaigns that call for reduced consumption of some animal products. Vegan Australia does not present reduction as the goal, but uses public interest in such campaigns where appropriate to explain why veganism is the ethical response to animal exploitation.

Campaigns for a vegan world

Vegan Australia's campaigns help make veganism more visible, better understood and easier to practise. They also challenge institutions to stop treating animal use as normal, inevitable or beyond question.

This includes campaigns for vegan food access, animal-free product availability, vegan education in schools, vegan recognition in public policy, research into animal-free agriculture, or other changes that help move society away from dependence on animal use.

These campaigns are practical, but they are not merely practical. They are grounded in the principle that our fellow animals are not ours to use.

Conclusion

Vegan Australia's campaigns are guided by a simple but far-reaching principle: animals are not resources, property or objects for human purposes. They are sentient individuals with their own lives and interests.

Our campaigns therefore do more than respond to the most visible harms. They challenge the system that makes those harms possible, promote veganism clearly and directly, and help build the conditions for a society in which the rights of our fellow animals are respected.