Your educative and informative work about animal behavior and welfare is outstanding: it has helped me to change my perspective towards animal wellfare topics: I approached them with a very black-and-white mindset before,but through your well-thought and informative posts, I realized that the present situation in animal welfare is much more complex. However, this leaves me with many doubts about what groups truly work towards animal welfare, and therefore are worth supporting.(1/2)

why-animals-do-the-thing:

There is any set of guidelines you recommend following for deciding which groups to support?

It really comes down to figuring out what agendas and end-goals you’re willing to support, and what practices you’re okay with, and then doing a ton of research. Not just on their website, but who supports them and who hates them and what recent things have they been involved with. 

Some things to consider when doing that:

Welfare vs Rights rhetoric:

I always say that people who understand the current political meaning of the term ‘animal rights’ will always say they support animal welfare when asked. The animal rights movement is very different than the push for increased animal welfare. So it’s super important to vet the rhetoric of organizations and look at the wording they use. If they talk about inherent rights, any philosophy by Peter Singer, dominion or domination of animals by man, or compare animal use to slavery and rape, those are clear signs they’re more influenced by animal rights ideology than animal welfare science. Good rhetoric talks about welfare assessments, the five freedoms, and generally sounds more like science outreach than a public opinion campaign. 

Involvement with national organizations or community advocacy: 

Are they independent or heavily tied in with a national org? Do they work with local law enforcement to do education, or partner with a local college? Associations can tell you a lot about the underlying ethos of the group and if they’re more practical and focused on welfare or a supporting local subset of a larger, more ideology-based group. 

Policy on issues you support: 

Some animal rights organizations have an end goal of getting rid of all pets and removing them from human dominion, which a lot of people don’t realize. PETA for sure, and also HSUS if you read their messaging closely. Born Free isn’t super anti-pet, but they balance that out by wanting to destroy all zoos and exotic animal captivity, which bothers some people but not others. Some groups are really focused on agricultural welfare improvements and don’t get involved with zoos or pets or hunting. You’ll want to weigh the position statements on the issues you care about against each other and see if you support the way that measures up. 

Professional involvement: 

does the organization actually have people from animal industries employed or consulting? Some rescue organizations will say they’re really into solving, for example, chicken abuse – but they won’t have a single consultant or staff member who has worked with chickens to be able to help them make judgement calls or inform practices of places they’re working with. I’ve run into a lot of small organizations who are super proud of having someone with a criminal justice degree who specialized in animal cruelty on their team, but yet can’t list off a single person with professional animal management experience who is working with that specialist. This information can be hard to find but is absolutely worth calling them or sending emails to ask about, because places that really care about welfare instead of ideology will have informed professionals involved.