This Simple Framework Predicts Progress for Animals in 2026

Veganism seems like it’s in free fall. The market for alt meat is in collapse. Progress on animal welfare, beyond cage-free eggs, has stalled. And one of the few animal rights stories to garner significant attention in 2025—the trial of Zoe Rosenberg—ended with an animal rights advocate in jail. Yet I remain more optimistic than ever about the prospects for animal rights, and that’s partly because of something called a SWOT analysis.

In 1965, four scholars at Harvard Business School proposed a simple analytical tool for decision-making: Strengths (S), Weaknesses (W), Opportunities (O), and Threats (T), or SWOT. While their framework is far from perfect, strategic analysis of this sort is an important factor in solving complex problems. That includes the achievement of animal rights. It’s with that in mind that I thought I’d end the year with a SWOT analysis.

Strengths: Institutions are moving

• Capacity to shift institutions. Twenty years ago, the movement had hardly any institutional victories to speak of. For example, there were literally zero state farm animal protection laws on the books when I started as an animal advocate in 1999. Today, there are at least 44. From the growing momentum of welfare reforms to dramatic victories in court, the movement is developing the capacity to change, not just individuals, but systems of cruelty.

• Movement unity. Movements require coordination of large numbers of organizations and people to succeed. The Civil Rights Movement’s passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, for example, was caused in part by the historic alliance among the Big Six (leaders of the nation’s most prominent racial justice groups) that resolved internal battles that had plagued the movement for a decade. The animal rights movement has not yet achieved a coalition along the lines of the Big Six, but it’s remarkable how little infighting we are seeing today, relative to the raging battles over abolitionism/animal welfare from the 2000s, or the circular firing squads we saw developing in the 2010s over racial justice and #MeToo.

Weaknesses: No one’s paying attention

• Falling attention. Attention is the currency of social movements, especially in the age of social media. And attention on animal rights and veganism is falling. See, for example, Google search interest in veganism. Interest increased steadily through 2020 then dropped off a cliff. Attentional trends are similarly poor for “animal liberation” and “animal rights.”

• Lack of innovation. The 2010s were an era of creativity. From vigils to disruptions to the first successful vegan influencers, diverse approaches to animal rights were pushing the envelope. But the 2020s have seen mostly more of the same. This breaks one of the ironclad rules of social movements. You can’t keep doing the same thing and expect change.

Opportunities: The end of animal testing

• Animal experimentation. The viral stories about Anthony Fauci and lab animal abuse have created a powerful bipartisan coalition against the use of animals in research. Polling data shows growing and robust opposition to the practice. And multiple nations, including the UK and the US, have indicated they would like to end the use of animal experiments. Our victory against Ridglan Farms, the nation’s second largest dog breeding and research facility, could be the first domino in the end of animal testing.

• Voluntary prosecution. The one exception to the poor attentional climate over the last 5 years has come from criminal trials. This is not surprising, as legal battles have been among the most important narrative platforms in the history of social justice, as I argued in the Harvard Law Review. Even when animal advocates have “lost” in court, as in Zoe’s recent case or in the Nonhuman Rights Project’s battles over animal personhood, they have generated enormous attention and sympathy. Zoe’s case, for example, was covered in The New York Times (twice), Washington Post, and on the front page (twice) of the San Francisco Chronicle. We need to do more of this.

Threats: The narrowing moral circle

• Declines in civic participation. People are becoming more isolated and disengaged, and that is an existential threat for social movements. After all, movements require, well… movement. And a lethargic public is not willing to move. Particularly troubling is the large decrease in civic and social engagement among young people. The recent No Kings protests, for example, had lots of boomers but very few in their teens or even 20s. That is bad for anyone seeking change, as young people are a key demographic.

• The rise of moral tribalism. The animal rights movement asks humanity to expand its moral frontiers. But across the world, morality is moving in the opposite direction: inward rather than outward. People who are “different” — immigrants, people of color, minority religions, etc. — are seen as enemies rather than fellow members of a shared moral community. To win the future, animal rights advocates will have to fight against the trend towards tribalism and defend a world of moral universalism.

How does it all add up?

A SWOT analysis is not meant to be predictive. It sets out factors impacting success but offers no formula for predicting it. However, I’ll end my last newsletter of 2025 with this editorial gloss: the SWOT factors that weigh against us are much less important than the ones that weigh for us.

The shift toward institutional approaches, and the rising movement unity, are dramatic changes from what came before. So too is the effort to make repression backfire through voluntary prosecution. And, importantly, these changes are likely to endure. In contrast, the weaknesses and threats to the movement are temporary and fragile. The attentional weakness of the movement, for example, is part of a cycle of waxing and waning disruption that will inevitably shift in the other direction, so long as activists are innovative and willing to sacrifice. And the rise in moral tribalism will not survive over the long term, almost by definition. The story of human civilization is one where only nations with inclusive, cooperative moral visions survive.

There is, however, one overriding strength above all others that gives me confidence in the movement’s prospects in 2026. That is the law of social entropy — the irresistible force pushing the world towards equality, and animal rights. In the past 200 years, social justice movements virtually always win once they start moving up the moral escalator. It’s hard to stop progress once you’ve taken the first step.

It’s indisputable we’ve taken that step for animal rights. Our greatest strength is that the moral escalator, driven by the law of social entropy, will take us all the way to the top.