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What Animal Advocates Can Learn from The World of Wine · The Animal Advocate

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Welcome to the Animal Advocate. And if you're listening for the first time because
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someone shared this episode with you, I'm really glad you're here
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today for the holiday season and the end of the year, we're doing
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something a little different. It's a reflective time of year for
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a lot of us, and when I'm not teaching animal law or working on policy,
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that reflection often happens with a glass of wine nearby.
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Not in a glamorous, influencer way, more in
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a why is this so hard and what are we missing? Way
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over time, over a couple of glasses of wine, a few
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ideas started to come into focus for me. The wine
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world has figured out how to win people over in ways that
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animal advocates, dealing with far higher stakes, still
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struggle with. What I'm talking about isn't
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wine itself. It's the way the world of wine
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thinks about persuasion. How an industry built
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around something optional learns to invite people in,
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keep them engaged, and let their interest deepen over
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time. So today I want to explore
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what animal advocacy can learn from that.
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Yeah, I know it probably sounds like the sex up for a really niche TED
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Talk, but stay with me. By the end of this episode, I
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think you'll start noticing advocacy lessons in places you didn't
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expect, even if you don't care about wine at all.
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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 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@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 to
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hear on future shows. So, on to today's
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topic.
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Let me start with something the wine world understands instinctively,
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and advocates often get wrong. Imagine you walk
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into a wine shop. You're not an expert. You just want something
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that tastes good with dinner, and the person helping you immediately
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starts describ a $200 bottle of aged Barolo
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Earthy complex, the kind of wine that really rewards
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serious knowledge of terroir. You'd leave
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not because you hate wine, but because that interaction made
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you feel like you weren't the right kind of person to be there.
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Now, the uncomfortable connection. That's how
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animal advocacy often sounds to People encountering it for the first time.
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Time. We tell people how unbelievably cruel, intense
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confinement of farm animals is. Pigs in gestation crates,
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hens in battery cages, which can feel like a personal
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attack if they didn't know any of this five minutes ago.
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We open with suffering before we've established any trust.
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It's like saying, hi, nice to meet you. Let me
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immediately overwhelm you and maybe even judge you.
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And then we're surprised when people shut down. That has
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absolutely happened to me. Winemakers figured
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out a long time ago that approachability matters.
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They create easy entry points, bottles that don't
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require expertise, emotional stamina or a background
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lecture. So what's our version of that?
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Maybe fighting puppy mills, keeping animals together with
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their pets, helping people afford basic veterinary care?
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Or protecting survivors of domestic violence and their animals.
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These are issues with immediate moral clarity to most people.
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People don't have to revise their identity to care about them.
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They don't have to overcome fear or defensiveness first.
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Animal advocates often confuse seriousness with
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effectiveness. Wine people figured out long ago
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that approachability changes behavior. Once
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people trust you, once they feel invited rather than
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tested or judged, they're far more open to deeper
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conversations later. There's a second
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thing the wine world does better than we do. They're obsessive
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about context. They use a word, terroir,
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to describe how place shapes everything. Soil,
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climate, rainfall, slope. You
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don't grow whatever you want. Wherever you want, you grow.
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What can thrive where you are.
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Animal advocates, by contrast, often act as if
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context is optional. We take a law that passed in one
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city and assume we can transplant it someplace else,
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unchanged. And when that fails, we blame the community
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instead of the strategy. Winemakers don't fight
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their land. Burgundy doesn't waste energy wishing it could
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produce bold Cabernets. It leans into Pinot Noir
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and becomes extraordinary because of it. Your
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community is your terrain, and that
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matters in two different ways. First, it
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affects how you talk about an issue. Take outdoor
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housing for dogs in extreme weather. In a city, the
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messaging is straightforward. No one wants to see a dog chained
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outside in a snowstorm. But in agricultural areas,
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you might be talking to people with working dogs who've lived outdoors for
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generations. If you come in sounding like you're lecturing
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farmers about how to care for their animals, you've already lost.
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So the messaging has to adjust. Not the goal, the way you
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talk about it. But context doesn't just change the
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message. Sometimes it changes the law itself.
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In Arizona, outdoor housing laws focus on shade,
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access to water and preventing heat stroke. In
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Minnesota, the same concern shows up as insulation,
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windbreaks and protection from frostbite. Same
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goal, protecting dogs from dangerous conditions. But the
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conversation that works in Phoenix and the ordinance that passes there
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won't look the same as what works in rural Minnesota.
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Different places have different realities. Adapting to them
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isn't compromise, it's competence.
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Animals don't benefit when good laws fail because we
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insisted on a one size fits all approach.
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One more thing the wine world gets right is restraint.
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Walk into a good wine shop and you'll notice they don't carry everything
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they curate. Now look at the average
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advocate's life. We're fighting puppy mills and factory
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farming and wildlife trafficking and cosmetic testing and
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housing discrimination. And it goes on and on.
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At some point, this stops being commitment and starts
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being more like chaos. I used to think
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caring about everything made me more serious. In reality,
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it can make you scattered. I once laughed out
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loud when I realized that my life goal, the one I intended to
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finish before I died, was end all animal
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suffering. Yeah, not exactly a model of
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doability. I'm still working on this. But I've
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learned that curation isn't indifference to other problems.
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It's strategy. When everything is a priority,
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nothing is. When you try to be an expert in everything,
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you end up being effective at very little. So
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pick your lane. Become useful somewhere
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specific. That's how change happens.
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One more important strategy is storytelling.
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Wine isn't sold with spreadsheets.
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It's sold with stories about place
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and failure and resilience and tradition.
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Because people don't buy facts, they buy versions
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of themselves. Animal advocacy often
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leans heavily on numbers. And numbers matter, for sure.
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But stories change identity.
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This is Samson. That's what Steve Hughes told me when I
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interviewed him about bringing animal welfare education into schools.
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Samson was the dog who started it all for him, his reason for
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dedicating his life to teaching young people about compassion.
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One dog, one relationship. That's what made years
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of work feel necessary. Or this
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family had to surrender their dog not because they were irresponsible or
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the dog did anything wrong, but because their landlord drew an
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arbitrary line about the maximum weight. For dogs
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tell a story that brings people in.
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These stories don't ask people to become someone new. They ask
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them to live up to who they already believe they are.
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That's persuasion.
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Finally, there's another lesson from winemaking that I find harder to
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accept. But it might be the most important,
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winemakers think, in decades. They plant
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vines knowing that they may never see them reach full maturity.
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They invest in work whose payoff may come long after
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they're gone. Advocates have been working for
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years in many cities, including here in Philadelphia, on
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ending horse drawn carriage rides. Progress was
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slow. Sometimes I felt like nothing was happening. But
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slowly, steadily, carriages are disappearing.
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And now we're seeing new alternatives emerge, like carriages
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powered by electricity that preserve the charm without the
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animal welfare problems. That kind of change doesn't happen
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in a single campaign cycle. It happens because people
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kept working, adjusting their strategy and showing up
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even when it felt pointless. That way of
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thinking has changed how I approach advocacy, and it's
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shaping how I think about this podcast going forward.
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As we head into 2026, the animal advocate will keep its
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weekly rhythm, which means one episode every week,
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just not always the same kind. Every other
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week will be deeply researched, structured episodes like you're used to
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the long aged vintages. That's me. Long aged.
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On the alternating weeks, episodes will be shorter and more
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conversational reflections on what I'm seeing and what's
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shifting for advocates right now. I'll also share
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biographical pieces about advocates, past and present to keep
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you inspired and hopefully spark new ideas.
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Some episodes need time in the barrel, others are best
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tasted while they're still forming. So here are
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my lessons from the vineyard Lower the barrier to
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entry, respect where you are,
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curate your focus, always lead with story
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and think long term. And at the heart of all this,
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invite people to the table. I found that conversation,
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sometimes helped along by a glass of something you love, goes
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further than confrontation ever does. As we close
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out 2025, I want to wish all of you a happy, healthy
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New Year. Thank you for being part of this community,
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for caring enough to keep learning, and for doing the quiet,
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steady work that adds up over time. And if you
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know someone who wants to turn their compassion into better laws and policies for
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animals, share the podcast with them. We're
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building something here and we need more voices.
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Here's to 2026 cheer.
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That's it for today. The Animal Advocate Podcast is brought to
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you by the Animal Advocacy Academy. You can find
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episodes and show
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notes@animaladvocacyacademy.com
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along with a link to our Facebook and LinkedIn pages where we
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discuss our podcasts and we'd love to discuss your thoughts and
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experiences there. If you're interested in learning more about
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protecting animals, subscribe to the show so you get every
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episode when it comes out. If you have any questions on
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this or any other topic related to animal law, email
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them to podcastnimaladvocacyacademy.com
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and we'll make sure to get them answered. We'll either email you back
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or feature them in a future episode, or both.
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And remember, Compassion is great, that
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compassionate action is infinitely better. Until
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next week, Live with Compassion.