Defense Date
2025
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Department
Public Policy & Administration
First Advisor
Sarah Jane Brubaker
Second Advisor
Sarah E. Raskin
Third Advisor
Ashley R. Dobbs
Abstract
The animal agriculture industry annually slaughters roughly ten billion land animals in the United States. What can be done to improve their welfare and lessen their suffering?
Over the past decade, the problem of farm animal welfare and suffering has drawn increasing interest from the effective altruism community, a loose movement of utilitarian advocates seeking technocratic solutions to social problems (Singer, 2015). As effective altruism has become a more potent driver of the animal welfare movement, an increasing number of nonprofits have begun engaging in political advocacy for farm animal welfare. Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz’ Open Philanthropy is the largest charitable foundation explicitly motivated by the values of effective altruism as well as the world’s most prolific donor to animal welfare. The new source of capital and ideology from effective altruists contrasts with and challenges the dominance of establishment groups like the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), which is primarily concerned with companion animals, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), which seeks to abolish the status of animals as property.
This pragmatic, inductive case study uses the multiple streams framework developed by Kingdon (2011) to perform a qualitative analysis of political strategies used by moral activists in the 2023-2025 congressional session during drafting of the Farm Bill. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with lobbyists, current and former congressional staffers, and other stakeholders and subject matter experts in the fall of 2023. The qualitative aspect of this study seeks to answer the question:
How do moral activists make sense of their efforts to incorporate farm animal welfare policies into the Farm Bill during the 2023-2025 congressional session?
The specific aims of this case study are:
1. To describe moral activists’ approaches to political change in their work to incorporate farm animal welfare policies into the Farm Bill during the 2023-2025 congressional session; and
2. To describe strategies that moral activists used to lobby for the inclusion of farm animal welfare in the Farm Bill during the 2023-2025 congressional session.
This study will be useful for animal advocates seeking to direct limited human and financial capital to political strategies that may ameliorate humankind’s largest contributor to nonhuman animal suffering.
Rights
© The Author
Is Part Of
VCU University Archives
Is Part Of
VCU Theses and Dissertations
Date of Submission
4-18-2025