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Why Public Opinion Is the Most Underrated Tool in Animal Advocacy · The Animal Advocate

• 0:01
  Welcome back to The Animal Advocate. As someone who teaches
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  law students and supervises pro bono legal work for the benefit of
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  animals, I've spent the better part of two decades
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  thinking about one question: What kind of
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  advocacy really improves the lives of animals?
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  Is it public education? Is it passing laws?
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  Is it litigation? And for a long time,
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  I kept trying to figure out which one mattered most,
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  which one we should be investing our limited resources in,
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  which one really moved the needle. And the answer I've come
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  to, after teaching and working on legislation
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  and sitting on the board of a shelter and watching lots of
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  campaigns play out, is this. Public
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  opinion has to move first, and when it moves far
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  enough, everything else follows.
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  Sometimes that shift in opinion makes the passage of a law possible.
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  Sometimes it makes a law unnecessary because
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  once enough people see something differently, demand
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  changes, industries adapt, and the practice
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  fades on its own. And that second outcome—change
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  without a law—is often better than people
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  realize. Because laws require enforcement.
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  Enforcement requires money, people, and
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  infrastructure. And when it comes to animal issues, those
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  things have been in short supply.
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  Welcome to The Animal Advocate, where we arm animal
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  lovers with the information and inspiration you need to become
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  effective advocates. I'm your I'm your host, Penny Ellison,
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  and I've taught animal law and advocacy at the University of Pennsylvania
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  since 2006. If you've ever thought,
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  "Someone should do something about that," I'm here to guide you
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  on your journey to being that someone. You can
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  find us on the web at AnimalAdvocacyAcademy.com.
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  And that's where you'll find show notes and resources, and you can
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  send us your comments on episodes. And ideas for topics you'd like
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  to hear on future shows. So, onto today's
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  topic.
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  Let me give you a sense of what I mean about enforcement.
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  The Federal Animal Welfare Act covers more than a million
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  animals in roughly 17,500 facilities
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  across the country: research labs, zoos,
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  breeders, dog dealers, animal exhibitors.
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  The agency responsible for enforcing it is the USDA's
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  Animal and Plant— The agency responsible
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  for enforcing it is the USDA's Animal and Plant
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  Health Inspection Service, or APHIS.
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  As of early 2025, APHIS Animal Care
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  had about 115 inspectors to cover all
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  17,500 of those facilities.
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  That's one inspector for every 150 or so
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  licensed operations. And keep in mind, these are operations of
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  all different kinds involving all different species.
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  And that number of inspectors, it's been dropping. The agency
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  lost about 25% of its overall workforce in early
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  2025 through the government's cuts.
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  One expert who has tracked this for over 20 years said the inspector
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  count may now be as low as 77, the lowest
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  she's ever seen. The USDA's own inspector
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  general has repeatedly found that enforcement is inadequate.
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  A 2025 audit found that 80% of dog breeders
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  reviewed had at least one violation, and
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  95% were not being inspected according to the
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  agency's own schedule. Fines, when they're issued
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  at all, have historically been discounted by an average of
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  86% from the maximum allowed, to the
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  point where the inspector general said violators treat them as a cost of
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  doing business. I'm not bringing this up to be
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  discouraging. I'm bringing it up because it tells us something about
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  strategy. When we pass a law that
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  depends on inspectors going onto private property to check
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  compliance, and we don't adequately fund the enforcement,
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  the law doesn't do what we hoped it would. The law is on the
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  books, the violations continue.
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  So when there's a way to change an industry practice through shifting public
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  opinion and consumer demand rather than relying on an
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  enforcement system that barely functions, that's worth
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  paying attention to. And we have real examples of
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  exactly that happening. Let me start with something that,
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  for many of us, was just a normal part of childhood:
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  circuses. For generations, elephants were the
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  centerpiece of American circus culture. They were marketed as
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  majestic, intelligent, almost magical animals.
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  Families took their children to see them, people felt affection
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  for them and awe, and very few people thought about
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  what their lives were actually like. But behind the
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  scenes, concerns were building for decades.
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  Advocates documented the use of painful bull hooks to drag
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  the elephants around. They documented chaining.
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  They documented long hours of confinement and the stress
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  of constant transport. In the early
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  2000s, a coalition of groups including the
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  ASPCA and other animal protection organizations
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  brought a lawsuit against Feld Entertainment, the parent company
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  of Ringling Brothers, arguing that the treatment of elephants
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  violated the Endangered Species Act.
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  That case went on for years. It was hard fought,
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  and in the end, it was dismissed, not because the court ruled that
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  Ringling's treatment of elephants was acceptable, but because
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  the court found that the plaintiffs lacked standing to bring the case.
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  That's often a problem in cases trying to protect animals.
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  So the merits of the argument were never even reached.
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  If you look at that moment in isolation, you might say the
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  advocacy failed. Only
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  it didn't, because at the same time that the litigation was
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  playing out, and in part because of the press it was getting,
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  public awareness of how the elephants and other animals in the circus
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  were being treated was growing. A federal ban on the
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  use of animals in circuses was a long shot, to say the least.
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  But because people were increasingly alarmed at what they'd learned,
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  cities began passing local bans on the use of wild
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  animals in traveling shows. One by one,
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  Boulder, Colorado, Stanford, Connecticut,
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  Hallandale Beach, Florida, San Francisco,
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  Irvine, Pasadena, Santa Monica, city after city
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  in California. And it wasn't just the coasts. Places like
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  Eureka Springs, Arkansas, Richmond, Missouri,
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  Collinsville, Illinois all passed bans. By
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  2016, dozens of local jurisdictions had already said,
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  "Not here." And that mattered for a very practical
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  reason: circuses are traveling operations.
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  When more and more cities became off-limits, It became harder
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  to plan tours and harder to sell tickets and
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  especially harder to stay profitable. So even
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  though the lawsuit was lost, the pressure didn't go away. It
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  grew. And in 2016, Ringling Brothers
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  announced that they would retire their elephants from touring performances.
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  They cited changing public attitudes. They cited the
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  difficulty of operating in places that were adopting restrictions.
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  And within a year, the traditional Ringling Brothers Circus with
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  animals shut down entirely.
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  But that's not the end of the story, because the circus didn't
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  disappear. I saw a commercial just this week. Kids
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  laughing, acrobats, music, that
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  same sense of wonder, but no animals.
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  Today's version relies on human performers and technology,
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  not elephants. No federal law banning elephants in
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  circuses made that happen. Public opinion made that
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  happen. And once enough people saw it differently, the
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  business model just didn't work. Since Ringling closed,
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  the momentum has only accelerated. Today, 12 states
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  have passed bans or restrictions on wild animals in traveling shows,
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  and nearly 200 local jurisdictions across 36-7
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  states have done the same. But the industry had already
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  changed before most of those laws were on the books. The laws
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  confirmed what the public had already decided.
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  That same pattern played out with SeaWorld. For
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  years, orca shows were presented as educational, even
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  inspirational. You know, the killer whales? Families felt like they
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  were connecting with something extraordinary. Then, in
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  2013, The documentary Blackfish came out. Now,
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  you may not have agreed with every aspect of the film, but it
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  changed the conversation. It told a story that people hadn't heard
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  before. It framed captivity in a new way.
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  Public opinion began to move. Attendance
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  dropped. Celebrities spoke out. And
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  partnerships shifted. And in
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  2016, SeaWorld announced it would end its orca breeding
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  program. The whales currently in its care would be the last
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  generation there. A few years later, the theatrical
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  orca shows were phased out and replaced with presentations
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  focused on natural behaviors and education.
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  Are the whales still in captivity? Yes.
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  Did this solve everything? No. But a
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  single documentary changed how millions of people felt about orca
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  shows.. And once that feeling changed, the company changed
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  its practices—not because a law forced it to,
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  but because the market demanded it. We've seen it happen
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  in fashion, too. Go back a couple of decades and fur was
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  still widely accepted in mainstream culture. You saw it on
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  runways, in department stores, in high-end brands.
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  It was framed as luxury. Then advocates
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  focused on how animals were raised and killed.
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  Campaigns became more visible. High-profile designers began
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  announcing they were going fur-free, and a lot of celebrities
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  stopped wearing it. Not enough, but a lot.
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  And over time, consumer attitudes shifted.
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  The global fur market has declined dramatically in the last
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  decade. Many major fashion houses have publicly committed
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  to abandoning fur. Entire countries have begun phasing
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  out fur farming. What used to signal status
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  started to signal something else, and once people stopped buying,
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  the designers pulled back, the retailers stopped stocking it,
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  and the farms started closing. So what
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  do these three examples have in common? In each
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  case, people consciously or unconsciously
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  connected some aspect of their identity to that use
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  of animals. People loved elephants and whales and
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  the family experience they had seeing them together up close.
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  In the case of fur, many people felt connected to their mothers and
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  grandmothers wearing fur and felt like it made them look
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  glamorous. And that's what makes this kind of change hard.
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  When something is tied to nostalgia, tradition, or
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  identity, You can't just attack it. If
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  you tell people they're bad for liking something, they'll stop
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  listening. None of these ships—
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  none of these shifts happened because advocates shamed people into
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  caring. They happened because people were given new
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  information and invited to reconsider something
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  familiar: a documentary, a news story,
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  a conversation with someone they trusted. Invited
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  them to take a second look. That's something I
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  talk about in the Four Cs of Animal Advocacy, a free private
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  podcast series I put together about how change really happens
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  for animals. One of those Four Cs is communication:
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  how to talk about issues in ways that open minds instead
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  of closing them. So if you've ever wondered how to have those
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  conversations without making people defensive, That's the— what that
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  part of the series is about. So I'll put the link in the show notes
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  where you can download that. Now, I want to be clear about
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  something. I am not saying we don't need laws. We
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  absolutely do, and I work every day on that.
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  For practices that happen behind closed doors, on private
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  property, like puppy mills, research labs, factory
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  farms, You can't really rely on public opinion
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  alone because the public can't see what's happening. You need
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  laws that give inspectors the authority to go in and check. You
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  need enforcement. The problem, as I described
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  with APHIS, is that we often pass those laws and then
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  don't fund the enforcement. That's its own kind of advocacy
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  challenge, and it's one we need to take seriously. But for
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  practices that happen in public, circuses, marine mammal
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  shows, horse and carriage rides, photo
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  ops with cubs of big cats. There's a different
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  path available because the public can see these things,
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  and when they start to see them differently, the demand drops.
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  And when the demand drops, the practice changes. Even
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  if it's not fully eliminated, there are a lot fewer animals suffering.
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  That doesn't mean you never need a law for these public-facing practices.
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  Sometimes a law is what gets the ball rolling or what prevents
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  backsliding. But the sequence often goes public
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  opinion shifts first, practices start to change, and
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  the law follows to lock in that progress.
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  And that brings me to an issue that we're going to talk about next
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  week: horse-drawn carriages. To many people, carriage
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  rides feel quaint, romantic, family-friendly. You take your kids,
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  you take a photo. What's the harm? And
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  that's exactly why this is such a challenging issue. The starting point
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  isn't cruelty in people's minds. The starting point is affection.
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  But advocates have spent years raising concerns about the physical strain on
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  horses working in traffic, in extreme weather, on
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  hard pavement. They've raised safety concerns, they've
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  documented accidents, they've asked whether this is something that still makes sense
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  in a modern city. If the other examples teach us
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  anything, it's that these conversations take time.
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  You're asking people to reconsider something they associate with happy memories.
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  But it shifted on elephants, it shifted on orcas,
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  it shifted on fur. Not overnight, and we're
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  still working on it, but over years, and not through shaming,
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  through persistent, patient communication.
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  Next week, I'm going to share a conversation with someone who has spent many years
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  working on the horse and carriage issue, and someone who's seen
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  firsthand what that long arc looks like.
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  So for this week's Be the Change action, Think about an animal issue
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  where public opinion hasn't caught up yet. Carriage horses,
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  cub photo ops at roadside attractions, maybe something
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  in your own community. Find one article or one
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  short video that tells the story from the animal's perspective.
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  Then share it with one person. Not in a lecturing way, just in a
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  "I came across this and it surprised me" way. That's how
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  every one of these shifts started. One conversation at a time.
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  Thanks for listening. That's it for today.
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  The Animal Advocate podcast is brought to you by the Animal
• 16:38
  Advocacy Academy. You can find episodes and show notes at
• 16:41
  AnimalAdvocacyAcademy.com,
• 16:45
  along with a link to our Facebook and LinkedIn pages, where we
• 16:49
  discuss our podcasts and we'd love to discuss your thoughts and is experiences there.
• 16:54
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• 16:58
  the show so you get every episode when it comes out.
• 17:01
  If you have any questions on this or any other topic related to animal
• 17:05
  law, email them to
• 17:07
  podcast@animaladvocacyacademy.com
• 17:11
  and we'll make sure to get them answered. We'll either email you back
• 17:15
  or feature them in a future episode or both.
• 17:18
  And remember, compassion is great, but
• 17:22
  compassionate action is infinitely better. Until
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  next week, live with compassion.