To maximize our impact, animal advocates in the U.S. need strategies for working with politicians and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. This Faunalytics study helps us understand how to leverage conservative values to help animals.

Key Findings

1. Animal protection goals align with several values and issues that are important to U.S. conservatives. Our analysis of 71 conservative values and issues found 22 that align well enough to serve as potential inroads for advocates to present animal issues as nonpartisan or bipartisan. These values provide key insights into the best narrative frameworks when advocating for animals to conserve audiences and stakeholders.
2. The values that most correspond to pro-animal actions are: Health (which can be used to promote plant-forward diets, advocate against the harms of factory farming and potential zoonotic outbreak from animal agriculture), Honesty (which can be referenced in the fight against ag-gag laws and misleading “humane” labels, or can even prompt consumers to avoid meat companies that have lied about welfare), Reason (which can be called upon with respect to how unreasonable many aspects of factory farming and animal use in experimentation actually are), Economic Fairness (which can help level the playing field between animal and non-animal meat products in the marketplace), Freedom of Speech (which is relevant to advocacy for ag-gag bans, fairer labeling, and the right to protest), and Family and Community (which can come into play when advocating against industrial animal agriculture).
3. Republican legislators may be most swayed by finding common ground on economic issues, as these values were most apparent in their past actions. Conservative legislators’ voting records and bill introductions demonstrated the strongest adherence to this value, suggesting that they may be more responsive to animal protection work that aligns with them. For instance, taxpayer money being unnecessarily spent on animal research when ethical alternatives exist goes against the value of responsible government spending.
4. Some conservative values like Economic Freedom and constitutional rights may take precedence over other conservative values, which could hinder animal protection efforts. Constitutional and Economic values are foundational for U.S. conservatives and may be closely related to the success or failure of animal protection goals. For instance, Economic Freedom has come up on multiple occasions when blocking the passage of pro-animal legislation, despite Animal Welfare also being a conservative value, so animal advocates should be prepared for conservative arguments based on these constitutional values. Another example is the value that conservatives place in their Families and Communities, which provides common ground with animal advocates who want to increase regulations on slaughterhouses that negatively impact the health of local communities. However, if the affected communities are primarily immigrant families, conservatives’ concern for national security and immigration in particular may take precedence, possibly resulting in the rejection of the bill.
5. Republican legislators have demonstrated that they value animal welfare and may support animal welfare legislation. Animal advocates may find the greatest success in gaining support from Republican lawmakers for legislation protecting companion animals. While we did not find evidence of as much success with animal welfare bills meant to protect wild animals and farmed animals, bills relating to wild and farmed animals still had much Republican support behind them, with many Republican legislators co-sponsoring these bills and casting votes in favor of them.

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