An Interview with Dan Shannon, CEO of The Humane League

Can you tell me a bit about your journey from your earliest efforts in animal advocacy to where you are now, as the new leader of THL?

I started my journey in animal advocacy in college, leading an animal advocacy student group on my campus called the Wesleyan Animal Rights Network (WARN). We worked on a range of animal protection projects and campaigns, from coordinating volunteer shifts at our local animal shelter to advocating for vegan menu options at our campus dining halls. A few years after I graduated, WARN successfully passed the first-ever student government resolution calling for all of Wesleyan’s dining halls to use exclusively cage-free eggs.

When I graduated, I joined People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) in their campaigns department, working on corporate factory farming campaigns. In this role I had the opportunity to work on, and eventually lead, campaigns to get companies like Burger King, Safeway, and KFC/Yum! Brands to adopt basic but meaningful improvements to animal welfare in their farm supply chains. I also had the opportunity to work with Whole Foods to adopt their first-ever, industry-leading standards for farmed animal welfare.

After years of working in PETA’s campaigns department, I was given the opportunity to step into a leadership role overseeing peta2, PETA’s youth division. Our goal with peta2 was to make animal rights one of the major “issues of the day” for high school and college students. We did this through working with youth celebrities and influencers like rock bands, hip-hop artists, and extreme sports athletes; tabling at music festivals and concert tours; and engaging young people through emerging (at the time) tools like social media and email. peta2 grew to have more than a million social media followers—the single largest non-profit social media audience at the time—and more than 300,000 active members of our youth activist network, the peta Street Team.

After ten years with PETA, I moved on to doing campaigns and organizing work in a different way. I joined a firm called Purpose that works with non-profit organizations like the ACLU, companies like Starbucks, and philanthropies like the Gates Foundation to help strengthen and scale their campaigning and organizing work in a consulting capacity. In this role, I had the opportunity to design and launch campaigns and campaigning programs on issues ranging from refugee rights to reproductive justice, and for organizations ranging from UNICEF to Feeding America. I also had the opportunity to lead projects with a number of animal rights organizations, including PETA and World Animal Protection.

After another ten years with Purpose, I became Chief Partnerships Officer at Tides, a leading non-profit intermediary organization providing donor advised funds (DAFs) to donors, and fiscal sponsorship services to “doers.” Tides, and its doer and donor partners, use these charitable tools to enable grassroots movement-building and organizing work on issues ranging from climate justice to defending our democracy.

I see this role as CEO of The Humane League as the logical next chapter in my career. Animal protection has always been a passion area for me, dating back to the earliest days of my career. And campaigning and organizing are two of my core areas of professional expertise. To be offered the opportunity to take the helm at an animal protection organization focused on campaigns and organizing to end factory farming is a dream come true for me, and it’s a challenge that I don’t take lightly.

Is there a particular moment from your past work in animal welfare that sticks with you? If so, can you say more?

Part of our peta2 program involved organizing student animal protection conferences at college campuses across the country, where often over a hundred students would take several days away from their studies, personal lives, and other commitments to learn more about animal protection and how they could be involved. Spending time with these young people, and seeing their boundless energy and enthusiasm for the fight to protect animals from abuse, filled me with a tremendous amount of optimism and hope about the future of our movement.

In the course of your work on past social justice campaigns, such as your work with UNICEF or Global Citizen, is there a success or a challenge that you overcame that you’re most proud of?

Here’s a constant challenge that every social movement faces: how do we get people to pay attention? In the mid-2010s, I had the opportunity to work with UNICEF on strategies for getting people to pay more attention to the growing youth refugee crisis caused by geopolitical conflict, increasing income inequality, and climate change in many parts of the globe. Traditional UN approaches, like declaring June 10th World Refugee Day or publishing extensive research reports on the scope of the challenge, weren't breaking through—and I understood why. People are busy, and they don’t have much attention to give outside of their families, their friends, and their livelihoods. In order to reach people, you need to meet them where they are—engaging with the things that already have their attention, rather than trying to redirect it to something new.

At the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, a group of refugee athletes were scheduled to compete in the Games as a unified team for the first time. Few things garner more global attention than the Olympics, and we saw this as an incredible opportunity to focus some attention to the growing youth refugee crisis. I led a massive, coordinated effort between UNICEF, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the International Olympic Committee, and NBC Sports to build a global “fan club” for the all-refugee Olympic team, reaching millions of people around the world with positive messages about refugees as folks turned their attention to the Olympics.

As campaigners and organizers, we need to find ways to meet people where they are. We need to engage with the things they already care about, if we’re going to persuade them to care about issues (like factory farming) that they might not realize that they care about yet. I look forward to finding more of those opportunities for The Humane League to engage with new audiences about the suffering of animals on factory farms—and how we can end it.

What did your journey into plant-based living look like? What made you and your partner decide to create plant-based cookbooks?

I went vegan at 17, nearly thirty years ago now, shortly after learning about factory farming for the first time. At the time, there were far more barriers and obstacles to living a fully plant-based life than there are today. I distinctly remember needing to drive two towns over to the only health food store in my area that sold soy milk. Our only meat substitutes were tofu and tempeh (and good luck finding it). I try to remember those days whenever I get a little annoyed at a restaurant that only has one vegan option on the menu, and remind myself of how far we’ve come.

Shortly after our (vegan) wedding, my wife Annie and I started a personal blog as a way to keep in touch with all the family and friends that had come together for our wedding from around the world. We posted photos and recipes of what we were having for dinner, which was often a “veganized” version of a classic family recipe that one of us had grown up eating. From there, we took on an ambitious project to “veganize” our way through the classic Betty Crocker cookbook, which had been a staple in both of our households growing up. Friends and family started sharing these recipes and photos, and before we knew it we had hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands of readers from all over the world that we’d never met. This project led to our first cookbook, Betty Goes Vegan, which features 500 versions of classic, all-American Betty Crocker recipes.

Personally, I view promoting plant-based eating as a critical strategy for ending the abuse of animals raised for food. The cruel, inhumane, and unjust practice of factory farming is the only way to meet the world’s current demand for animal-based foods. The only way to end factory farming is to significantly reduce our consumption of animal-based foods. And while going vegan is a great way to end your personal support of the suffering of animals on factory farming, every bit helps.

Why do you believe in The Humane League’s strategy and theory of change?

Deep in my heart, I believe factory farming is an atrocity of historical proportions, one that future generations will look back on in horror. I also believe that we can end factory farming in our lifetimes—and that The Humane League will play a critically important role in making this happen. THL’s campaigns to convince companies to eliminate the worst abuses of animals on factory farming—like the unimaginable suffering caused to egg-laying hens by cruel battery cages—are hugely important. They demonstrate to corporate decision-makers that alternatives do exist, and that eliminating the worst abuses of animals is a good business decision. They demonstrate to animal protection activists that change is possible, and that our actions matter. And most importantly, they spare millions of animals from the worst abuses right away, while we work towards a complete end of factory farming and the suffering it causes over a longer time horizon.

When you think about the future of THL, what do you envision?

I envision an end to the cruel practice of factory farming, and the suffering it causes for billions of animals around the world, in our lifetimes. This may seem like an audacious goal, and it is. But factory farming is a relatively new development, only gaining widespread adoption in the US in the mid-20th century as new industrialization technologies and practices upended traditional agricultural practices. Now, as we enter the middle of the 21st century, new technologies like alternative proteins, cultured meat, and regenerative agriculture are once again upending how we think about our relationship with, and the production of, animal-based foods. Widespread shifts in consumer behavior, industrial farming practices, and government regulation of agriculture will all be required to end factory farming for good.

THL’s focus on winning campaigns to systematically eliminate the worst abuses on factory farms is already playing a key role in reforming industrial farming practices around the world. I believe that THL can be the most effective corporate campaigning organization in the world, and as such will play a leading role in ending factory farming before the end of the 21st century. I could not be more excited about embracing this challenge as THL’s new CEO.

What gives you hope, or optimism, about the future for animals and the animal protection movement?

My daughter, who is ten, has been a vegan all her life. Seeing how her generation thinks about animals, and about animal protection, gives me a tremendous amount of hope for the future of the animal protection movement. She’s always lived in a world where we can pick up a carton of soy milk at the bodega on the way home from school, or grab a slice of vegan pizza for lunch when we’re out and about on the weekend. She’s done reports for school about how factory farming is bad for people, animals, and the environment, and projects for her Girl Scout troop on how animal enclosures at zoos fail to meet animals’ basic needs. Her point of view on these issues has been universally well-received by her peers and her teachers, who see it as a no-brainer that animals should be protected from cruelty and suffering. I believe the future for animals is in good hands with the young people we’re raising today, and that with their support we can end factory farming in their lifetimes.