18 Ways Animal Outlook Changed the World for Animals in 2018

Thanks to your unwavering support, we continue making the world a better place for animals. It has truly been a landmark year for Animal Outlook. With you at our side, our undercover investigations expose the truth, our legal team fights for justice, and our corporate campaigns change menus and minds.

To wrap up 2018 and get inspired for the new year ahead, we’re excited to share with you 18 ways we’ve changed the world for animals this year.

In no particular order, here’s what we’ve accomplished in 2018 because you stand united with us.

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1. Exposing High-Speed Slaughter Horrors

Animal Outlook’s shocking investigative footage taken inside Maryland chicken slaughterhouse Amick Farms is reaching tens of millions of people around the world after breaking in the Washington Post  and sparking international coverage. This footage uncovered the horrors of high-speed slaughter of birds as the federal government  allows more chicken plants to increase already dangerously fast kill line speeds from 140 birds to 175 birds per minute.. The gut-wrenching video shows birds being punched and thrown, as well as evidence that birds may have been scalded alive.

2. Documenting Factory Farming’s Toll in Hurricane Florence

In September, Animal Outlook investigators were on the ground — and in the air — in North Carolina, documenting how the devastating toll of Hurricane Florence was multiplied by destructive factory farms. Amidst devastating flooding, they documented the heartbreaking aftermath: animals left to die, and huge factory farm waste cesspools spilling into waterways and heavily populated communities along the Cape Fear Watershed.

3. Providing Vegan Food to Local Families

In partnership with Martha’s Table and the Capital Area Food Bank, Animal Outlook’s TryVeg was able to become a proud sponsor of the Joyful Food Market at Drew Elementary school in Southeast DC for the 2018-2019 school year, providing nutritious vegan food to kids and families. This fully vegan “market” pops up at the Ward 7 school every month, offering students 15 lbs each of fresh produce and healthy non-perishables along with simple recipes and lessons on nutritious plant-based eating.

4. Serving Vegan Food, Inspiration & Resources to Thousands

TryVeg’s Vegan Food & Lifestyle Coach Jessica Carter shared vegan eating across the country this year, creating simple and delicious original recipes on TryVeg.com, and hosting many live vegan cooking demos for pre-vegans hoping to learn how to make their plate more compassionate–including giving everyone a taste of delicious vegan cooking, with thousands of free samples given out this year. These demos included some of her 40+ new recipes on TryVeg.com, including jackfruit croquettes, fricassee chickpea & cauliflower collard wraps and cookie dough nice cream.

5. Our vegan BOCA campaign encourages Kraft Heinz to think vegan

We’ve been pressuring Kraft Heinz to “kraft” a better BOCA brand by fully ditching dairy in their vegetarian line. This year, the company even debuted the first-ever vegan “turkey” burger, and just recently announced that a majority of the brand (8 of 12 products) is now vegan. As we continue to make steps toward a dairy-free brand, Kraft Heinz is also investing more in plant-based options.

6. Urging the USDA to Halt Dangerous High-Speed Slaughter of Birds and Pigs

In addition to our new investigation of Amick Farms, this year Animal Outlook fought high-speed slaughter, one of animal agriculture’s most dangerous developments, on many fronts. We mobilized against high-speed pig slaughter by delivering a quarter million petition signatures to USDA headquarters in Washington, DC, submitted legal comments to the federal agency, grilled the USDA at the Maryland Poultry Conference, and even teamed up with Rob Zombie to stop the high-speed horrors.

7. Taking Tyson to Task For Torturing Birds

An Animal Outlook investigation prompted cruelty charges against the owner of a Tyson-contracted factory farm. This year, we continued to put the pressure on Tyson with a presence at Tyson’s hometown marathon, and a message in the sky over a Tyson-sponsored poultry festival saying cruelty won’t fly.

8. Making History in California

In collaboration with other animal protection organizations, Animal Outlook encouraged California voters to vote yes on historic Proposition 12 this Election Day. The landmark legislation passed with 60 percent of the vote and will ban cages for egg-laying hens, gestation crates for pregnant pigs, and veal crates for calves, as well as ban the sale of products made from keeping animals in these cages, which are so small they can barely move their entire lives.

9. Record-Breaking VegWeek VegPledges

2018 brought our biggest VegWeek ever, with more than 9,300 people pledging to explore vegan eating. With support from celebrity endorsers like Alicia Silverstone, VegWeek inspired more people than ever to enjoy the flavorful and fun world of vegan foods for at least seven days. Polls taken after the VegWeek showed that at least 53 percent of participants who went into the week as meat-eaters had eliminated meat from their diet entirely.

10. First-Ever Virtual DC VegFest

After DC’s state of emergency forced us to cancel our annual DC VegFest for the first time ever, we got creative — inspired by the many festival-goers who love our event — and took the fun to thousands on Facebook in our first Virtual DC VegFest. Exciting speakers including Carol Adams and Ginny Messina, RD (Protest Kitchen), Dr. Neal Barnard (President, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine), and Mike Wolf (Animal Outlook’s Director of Investigations) joined us for the live broadcast, as well as some of our DC VegFest sponsors like Busboys and Poets and Karner Blue Capital.

11. Animal Outlook’s Outreach & Education Team Took Part in More Than 70 Events

This year our Outreach team reached out nationwide, taking part in more than 70 events and directly connecting with people to inspire compassion. We shared more than 5,000 free vegan food samples. Through our “go vegan in eight weeks” program and MeatOut Mondays newsletter, we sent more than two million supportive emails to pre-vegans. We also stayed in touch via Facebook Live events where we reviewed new vegan products (like the Boca Turk’y Burger and Hungry Harvest), and interviewed awesome vegan activists like Elysabeth Alfano, Vegan Evan, Jane Velez-Mitchell and Dotsie Bausch.

12. Beyond The Lies Reached More Than 12,500 People 

Throughout Summer 2018, more than 12,500 people spoke with our dedicated Beyond The Lies tour crews and watched our four-minute video exposing the truth behind the closed doors of the meat, dairy, egg and fish industries. Our  team traveled with the Warped Tour and held pay-per-view outreach events in 36 cities in 24 states.

13. New Vegan Options at Starbucks

After an Animal Outlook campaign prompted Starbucks to offer non-dairy milk options, we continued to ask for more vegan items on the coffee giant’s shelves. In 2018, we prompted Starbucks to announce a new line of vegan foods, and the chain debuted vegan ice cream pops in select locations and released a fully vegan cookie nationwide. In light of these victories, we’re continuing to pressure the chain to release another vegan cookie flavor.

14. Dunkin’ Donuts Testing Vegan Donut Recipes

Consumers nationwide are asking Dunkin’ for a vegan donut to dunk in their dairy-free coffee, and after pressure from Animal Outlook campaigns and a letter from former Dunkin’ executive Glenn Bacheller, the massive donut chain has told us that it’s testing recipes for a vegan donut.

15. Animal Outlook + Blue Horizon’s Groundbreaking Partnership to Change Farms

In a game-changing new project, Animal Outlook has partnered with Blue Horizon to launch the development phase of an exciting project that will convert animal farms to farms growing plants.

16. Ending a Barbaric Chicken Industry Practice

After Animal Outlook’s investigation of a Tyson Foods farm revealed the cruel practice of using “nose bones” on hidden camera for the first time (promptly ending it at Tyson, Perdue, Wayne Farms and House of Raeford), we have campaigned tirelessly for the end of this archaic practice — and nearly wiped it out industrywide. This year, we were able to confirm that at least 17 out of the top 20 poultry producers in the United States have stopped using, or do not use these cruel practices. We continue pressuring the National Chicken Council to abolish this cruel practice entirely.

17. Putting Animals in the Media Spotlight

Animal Outlook’s work for animals and our hard-hitting investigations were splashed across headlines from major news outlets this year including The Washington Post, The Guardian, Mother Jones, VegNews and many more.

18. Empowering Vegans

To help thousands of people turn over a new leaf by trying vegan eating, we’ve updated our Vegan Starter Guide. Full of delicious vegan recipes, reasons for going vegan, and handy tips and tricks, our Vegan Starter Guide is completely free and available online. This year we also updated our Veg Guide to DC. Free as well, this is the go-to comprehensive list of vegan and vegan-friendly restaurants in Washington, DC, Northern Virginia and Maryland. Between these fresh new resources and our guides to Eating Sustainably, Easy Vegan Recipes, and more, we distributed a whopping total of about 28,000 pieces of literature this year.

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It has been quite a year, and your support has made it possible for us to achieve all of these victories for animals–and more. Help us ring in the new year and hit the ground running in 2019 by making a matched donation this December.

With a generous donor doubling all December donations, your gift will go twice as far for animals. Plus, donors will receive an exciting free gift.

As we forge ahead into the New Year, thank you for standing at our side and helping us demonstrate the power of truth, justice and compassion.