Animal Ethics activities in 2024: A year of antispeciesist advocacy

In 2024, Animal Ethics has continued to expand our global reach with education and outreach addressing speciesism, wild animal suffering, and longtermism. Through educational initiatives, international outreach, academic partnerships and innovative technology, we have worked to raise awareness and promote ethical considerations for all sentient beings.

As always, we are grateful for the support of our donors and volunteers, without whom these achievements would not have been possible.

Highlights of 2024

Using new technologies: Launching Senti, our AI assistant

In March, we launched Senti, our AI assistant to answer questions about animal ethics, wild animal suffering, and longtermism. This adaptive tool, developed thanks to the pro bono services of Freeport Metrics, makes complex ethical discussions more accessible to a global audience.

Educational Outreach

Our educational program Animal ethics in the classroom, created in collaboration with the University of Santiago de Compostela and Aula Animal, continued to grow. In April, we updated our website with new resources:

• Two training video courses for secondary and university teachers, along with audio podcasts

•  A compilation of teaching materials for university education such as articles, bibliographical references, conference videos and our video course on wild animal suffering

• Teacher reviews of implemented materials

• A report on aquatic animal sentience

We presented these new materials in an online gathering with members of our teacher network and through a tour of talks across 10 Spanish universities, through which we reached approximately 250 people.

Global Presence and Multilingual Engagement

We expanded our accessibility this year by releasing our website in Arabic, which brings us to 12 languages. This allows us to reach an audience of approximately 5.3 billion people globally.

Educating through audiovisuals

Recognizing the power of digital media in engaging younger generations, we produced the following audiovisual content:

• A series of 62 videos entitled Animal Ethics: An Overview on our YouTube channel, addressing various issues related to animal protection.

• A series of 14 videos explored topics related to longtermism and the risks of future suffering, each accompanied by supporting texts to deepen the discussion.

• Our documentary Seantience, which explores aquatic animal sentience and what their lives are like. This project aims to generate greater empathy toward these often-overlooked beings by featuring footage of the conditions of exploitation and testimonies from prominent scientists and philosophers.

• Our monthly Ethicast program continued to provide a platform for discussing central themes of animal ethics with activists and experts.

• Hundreds of reels, carousels, and other posts on our social networks.

Academic and Advocacy Conferences

Our team participated in numerous international conferences and events:

• Collaborated with the University of Santiago de Compostela to organize the workshop Ethics, politics and animals with the participation of Gary O’Brien, Angela Martin, Pablo Magaña and Oscar Horta.

• Attended the AVA Summit in Washington, D.C. with the talk Current efforts to expand wild animal advocacy internationally.

• Presented the talk Changing attitudes toward digital sentience through antispeciesist advocacy at the Artificial Intelligence, Animals and Digital Minds Conference in London.

• We participated in the event Conversation Circle: 10th World Day to End Speciesism organized by the NGO Forum Animal with the talk Why reject speciesism and what this implies in practice.

• We attended the CARE conference in Poland, running the workshop Wild Animal Suffering advocacy work: A guide for beginners.

• Our Asia Coordinator gave the talk Wild animal suffering: not just important and neglected: tractable! at the Asia Farm Animal Day (Hanoi, Vietnam), and also at EAGx India (Bengaluru).

• We presented our educational program Animal ethics in the classroom at the VeganaGal vegan fest in Vigo (Spain)

• Next month, we’ll be speaking at multiple universities across Brazil as well as attending the AVA Summit in São Paulo. You can see the schedule here!

• In June, Animal Ethics member Oscar Horta talked about new challenges and strategies in animal advocacy in Durham, North Carolina for a group of animal advocates. He also participated in the Wild Animals Summit at NYU. He spoke at the International Conference on Disaster Ethics about how and why it is important to apply wild animal welfare science to rescuing wild animals, and at the IX Colloquium on Animal Law with the talk The suffering of wild animals matters: What we can do

• Animal Ethics member Luciano Cunha gave three interviews for online radios where he discussed speciesism and ethical issues related to wild animals. They are available in Portuguese on the Boa Nova Radio (1 and 2) and the Papo no Auge program. He also gave the talk In relation to the moral consideration of animals, is there a minimum degree of convergence between the different perspectives of normative ethics? at the animal law seminar Immanuel Kant and animals: new perspectives organized by the Federal University of Paraná and the talk New questions for ethics and what they have to do with sentience at the event Diálogos sobre o (in)consciente organized by the Federal University of Uberlância (UFU).

Ongoing Collaborative Courses

We continued our courses in collaboration with Brazilian universities. These are the courses we taught this year:

• An introduction to the debate on the moral consideration of nonhuman animals

• Nonhuman animals and the harm of death

• Ethical theories and nonhuman animals

• The suffering of wild animals

• Animal Ethics: An overview

• Crash Course: The essentials of animal ethics

• Animal Ethics in the Practice of Effective Altruism: An Introduction

Empowering Key Stakeholders

We provided training sessions to groups from different fields:

• Online talks for Effective Altruism groups in Japan and Hong Kong, including “Animal advocacy: a longtermist approach.”

• A Portuguese Study Group on longtermism, where 6 people met weekly to discuss related texts

• Four online workshops for members of our teacher network

Support Our Mission

Your support makes our work possible. By contributing, you help us continue expanding our educational initiatives, conducting critical discussions, and advocating for the most neglected. Consider supporting us and please contact us if you have any questions.

Together, we can create a better future for all sentient beings.