Every year, many billions of animals are killed for food, as animal advocacy organizations regularly run digital and mass media campaigns to persuade consumers to reduce or eliminate animal-based products from their diets. These campaigns require financial resources which could be invested in other forms of outreach, but do they work? 

The report presented in this summary investigated whether digital and mass media meat reduction campaigns effectively spare farmed animal lives and, if they do, whether they are cost-effective. Specifically, this study focused on four questions that can inform campaigning strategies, which are:

1. What is the real impact of meat reduction campaigns on the lives of animals?
2. Should animal advocacy movements invest more or less resources in these campaigns? 
3. Could mass media campaigns be particularly impactful in developing countries?
4. Could meat-reduction campaigners join forces with climate funders? 

Before diving into the results, it is worth noticing that, in the report and in this summary, the term “meat consumption” refers to all animal-based foods, not just meat.

Understanding If Meat Reduction Campaigns Work

As a first step, the authors consulted the existing literature on the effectiveness of diet change campaigns. One key resource reviewed 100 experimental studies testing the success of meat-reduction messages for health and environmental reasons. The results suggest that these messages may be effective in the short term. In fact, the review found that individuals exposed to such messages were about 22% more likely to express the intention or to actively reduce their meat consumption. 

Unfortunately, intention doesn’t always lead to action and, when reviewing studies recording actual behavior (both self-reported or observed in an experimental setting) and experiments surveying the participants after 7+ days from exposure to meat reduction messages, this percentage falls to 9% or — as the report demonstrates — as low as 4.5%. 

Good to Know

Investigating the effectiveness of meat-reduction reduction campaigns is not easy due to several limitations. Self-reporting, for example, can be an unreliable way to measure behavior due to the risk of desirability bias. This means that, when the study participants report their intentions or actions — for example reducing meat consumption — they may respond according to social expectations and not based on their real intentions.

Another problem is the lack of experimental studies focusing on the long-term influence of exposure to meat-reduction messages. For example, what happens after one or more months? 

Calculating Cost-Effectiveness

Next, the researchers performed a cost-effectiveness analysis to assess how many farmed animal lives could be saved per each U.S. dollar (USD) invested in meat-reduction campaigns. 

The assumption behind this analysis is that: Meat eaters see the campaign > they reduce or eliminate meat and other animal products from their diet > this causes a reduction in the demand of animal-based foods > fewer animals are farmed, and more animal lives are spared. 

After consulting the available scientific evidence, four possible scenarios were considered:

1. Meat reduction campaigns spare 3.7 animals/USD. This is considered the most likely scenario (~45% likelihood).
2. More frequent meat-reduction advertising can led to the sparing of 9.1 animals/USD. This is an optimistic yet unlikely scenario (~10% likelihood). 
3. If campaigns have a lower cost and meat reduction is sustained over a longer period of time, 84.4 animals lives are spared per US dollar. This scenario is highly optimistic because it assumes that campaigns are cheap and meat reduction long-lasting (~5% likelihood). 
4. Campaigns bear no results and 0 animal lives are spared. This is a pessimistic yet not so unlikely scenario (~40% likelihood). 

Key Findings

The results presented in this report suggest that each USD invested in digital and mass media meat-reduction campaigns can spare an estimated 3.7 farmed animal lives. Approximately 90% of these would be chickens and farmed fishes. The researchers also found that meat-reduction campaigns can be easy to scale and there is solid evidence of their positive impact on the lives of farmed animals. However, their effectiveness may vary and they may not be particularly cost-effective. For this reason, the authors suggest caution and see no need to further increase funding. 

The researchers also noted that there isn’t enough evidence on the impact of meat-reduction campaigns in developing countries. People in developing countries already consume less meat than people in the global North. However, low-cost mass media campaigns (e.g., radio campaigns) could still have an impact as part of a broader animal advocacy strategy.

Animal advocacy movements can use these insights to inform resource allocation. While the report suggests that meat-reduction reduction campaigns can spare farmed animal lives, they should not be considered the most effective advocacy approach available.