Animal activism in the business school: Using fierce compassion for teaching critical and positive perspectives

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Abstract

This article explores a practical approach to teaching animal ethics in food systems as part of a business course. We argue that tackling such complex and emotionally charged topics is vital to shifting unsustainable and hurtful behaviours towards more positive futures. Our teaching example outlines a pedagogy of courageously witnessing, inquiring with empathy and prompting positive action; an activist approach we term fierce compassion. These three layers blend positive and critical perspectives in a classroom to address contentious issues of large-scale industrial animal production hitherto largely neglected in a traditional business curriculum. While acknowledging that academic activism is controversial, we argue that fierce compassion – noticing the suffering that is remote and often systemically hidden – can inform and structure education towards more post-anthropocentric and just futures for all living beings – human and nonhuman alike.

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Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers

T Nemecek, J Poore (2018)

Food's environmental impacts are created by millions of diverse producers. To identify solutions that are effective under this heterogeneity, we consolidated data covering five environmental indicators; 38,700 farms; and 1600 processors, packaging types, and retailers. Impact can vary 50-fold among producers of the same product, creating substantial mitigation opportunities. However, mitigation is complicated by trade-offs, multiple ways for producers to achieve low impacts, and interactions throughout the supply chain. Producers have limits on how far they can reduce impacts. Most strikingly, impacts of the lowest-impact animal products typically exceed those of vegetable substitutes, providing new evidence for the importance of dietary change. Cumulatively, our findings support an approach where producers monitor their own impacts, flexibly meet environmental targets by choosing from multiple practices, and communicate their impacts to consumers.