UNDERSUNG HEROES
Blood On Your Hands is playing at Southwark Theatre, 17th Jan - 3rd Feb ‘24.
GUEST POST THANKS TO: Chris Bryant, Bryant Research
The Undersung Heroes of the Animal Movement
January 2024
Many people have a strong desire to do work that helps animals, and this has huge benefits for pro-animal organisations.
When I first advertised for a Summer Research Associate at Bryant Research, I didn’t know what to expect. This was a two-year-old company with little-to-no name recognition, a recruitment budget of zero, and offering scarcely more than minimum wage.
I was overwhelmed with the number and quality of applications I received. I had dozens of applications, including from Oxbridge graduates, PhDs, and people with CVs that made me want to sheepishly set my own LinkedIn profile to private.
Almost every person I interviewed was enthusiastic, earnest, and eager to help animals. In the end, I had so many good applicants that I decided to hire two of them – and I still had to reject several who could make five times the salary I was offering on the open market.
Across all hiring, the acceptance rate at Bryant Research is 6.25%. That’s about on par with the acceptance rate at ‘The Big Four’ professional services firms – not bad for a company with no name recognition and very little money. But those applicants didn’t want to work for Bryant Research. They wanted to work for animals.
The Desire To Do Good
There are a lot of talented people who really want to help animals. However, there are very limited resources to employ people to work full-time on this, because the main beneficiaries – the animals – cannot pay for the services provided. The same phenomenon explains why male baldness receives 4 times more research funding than malaria – the resources available to those affected do not reflect the seriousness of the issue. In other words, in animal advocacy, there is a very high supply of labour relative to demand. This has three important implications.
First, it means that anybody who is currently employed in animal advocacy is likely to be talented and driven. Employees in highly competitive sectors will have beaten dozens, or even hundreds, of other applicants to secure their role. As any recruiter for an animal organisation will tell you, when it comes to hiring talented and mission-driven people, we are absolutely spoilt for choice.
Second, it means that there is a downward pressure on salaries in the sector. In any situation where supply is far higher than demand, the price will be reduced accordingly. This means that animal advocates might take home less than their counterparts in more lucrative fields – but it is great news for the animals. Lower salaries in the sector mean that more people can be employed to help animals for the same amount of resources.
Third, it means that people working in animal advocacy tend to be kind and generous people. If this group, as I claim, are both highly skilled and relatively underpaid – it means that they are altruistically rejecting huge pay rises for the privilege of helping animals. I know for a fact that many people in the animal movement have taken pay cuts that amount to several times my salary to move from the private sector. This effectively amounts to a five-figure annual donation to the animal cause. In my book, leaving serious money on the table to help those who need it is as sure a sign of good character as one can look for.
The Aversion To Doing Harm
On the other side of the fence, the livestock industry finds itself in precisely the opposite position. Just as lots of people want to spend their career helping animals – almost nobody wants to spend their career killing them. Suffice to say that slaughterhouses, unlike pro-animal organisations, do not have the problem of being overwhelmed with inbound requests for employment or voluntary roles.
From the British Meat Processing Association website:
Why does the meat industry struggle to attract UK workers?
We often hear reports from our members of difficulty in recruiting UK workers despite comprehensive attempts to attract local labour via social media, advertising and recruitment drives in schools and job centres. There is often a lack of awareness of butchery as a career choice amongst school leavers, and the level of skill required to be a successful butcher.
A common barrier to British people taking up roles in meat processing can be an unwillingness to work in what is perceived to be a challenging environment. Most people, while they eat meat, find it difficult to work in its production partly because of the obvious aversion to the slaughter process but also because it is a physically demanding role.
Indeed, working in meat production is associated with increased rates of depression, anxiety, and PTSD, as well as domestic violence, substance abuse, and suicide. The hard mental toll of slaughterhouse work is explored in a new play, Blood on Your Hands. The gritty production explores how workers, as well as animals, are victims of the industry.
While this probably applies most starkly to slaughterhouse work, it is likely that it applies to a lesser extent to non-slaughter roles in the meat industry, too. To the extent that would-be applicants are reluctant to work in the industrial meat sector, they may demand a higher salary than the job would otherwise warrant.
In reality, salaries in meat production remain woefully low. The UK Government’s National Careers Service estimates the average salary for a slaughterhouse worker to be £17,000 – £25,000; even at the high end, that’s 29% lower than the median UK salary of £34,963. Usually, a relatively low supply of labour and relatively high demand will lead to relatively high wages – but apparently, the meat industry wants to pay the few people willing to do the dirty work as if they were spoilt for choice.
It’s no wonder, then, that so many people leave the meat industry. Some slaughterhouses have a staff turnover above 100%, meaning that more people leave each year than actually work there. If slaughterhouse work doesn’t pay any more than a job in retail or the service sector, why would anybody stay? I worked in retail in my youth, and I know it’s no picnic – but just how obnoxious would a customer have to be before that job becomes less enjoyable than spending all day killing animals?
This high staff turnover imposes an incredible cost on the industry. It means resources are constantly needed for recruitment, training, and associated administration. Higher costs mean higher prices and higher prices mean fewer sales. Humans’ natural aversion to harming animals means that the market adjusts, and fewer animals are harmed as a result.
The Animal Movement’s Secret Weapon
Most people want to do good for others and don’t want to harm others. These tendencies mean that pro-animal organisations are overwhelmed with high-quality people willing to work for a fraction of their market salary, while the meat industry struggles to retain workers due to low pay and horrendous working conditions. Organisations like Citizen Kind, which connects talented and motivated individuals to top opportunities at pro-animal organisations, help to catalyse this dynamic.
The meat industry has many advantages over the animal movement when it comes to revenue, political influence, and social norms. But the animal movement has a secret weapon that the meat industry will never have. We have an abundance of exceptionally talented and motivated people who are so passionate about doing their jobs that they frequently take five-figure pay cuts to do it.
We have the undersung heroes.
Chris Bryant, PhD.
Chris is the Director of Bryant Research and the Head of Policy at the Alternative Proteins Association. He is a social scientist and an expert on alternative protein markets and marketing. He has published several papers on consumer acceptance, policy, nutritional value, and other social dimensions of cultivated meat, plant-based meat, and fermentation-derived animal product alternatives. He has worked with alternative protein companies and non-profits, including THIS, Formo, Ivy Farm Technologies, Aleph Farms, Wild Type, ProVeg International, Mercy For Animals, and the Good Food Institute.