Ten wins for animals in 2025, take action on UK animal welfare, explore advocacy opportunities in Kenya
Your farmed animal advocacy update for late December 2025
Hi there! 👋 As 2025 winds down, we at Hive (and many fellow animal organizations) are closing our year with gratitude—and a few last updates! Before the holidays fully kick in, catch our final highlights of the year, and get ready for the 2025 Resource Roundup landing in early January, packed with the tools, guides, and opportunities that shaped the movement this year.
The most popular link from Hive Highlights early December 2025 was for Anthropic’s survey. The survey is closed, but you can read about it here.
To kick off today’s Hive Highlights, here are our 3 top picks from across the movement:
From Movement news
🐖 Animal Welfare: Lewis Bollard highlights ten major wins for farmed animals in 2025, showing how advocates secured reforms affecting billions of animals—from cage-free progress and crate bans to fur farming bans and alternative protein investments.
From Jobs & Opportunities
🔥 Opportunities: The UK Government releases its Animal Welfare Strategy. Email your MP, DEFRA ministers, and the Prime Minister to push for legislation. Use this tool to generate a message to your MP.
From Resources
📚 Research: Animal Ask maps animal advocacy opportunities in Kenya, highlighting high-impact avenues including improving commercial chicken welfare, introducing a farmed fish code of practice, strengthening humane slaughter enforcement, boosting backyard chicken vaccination, and supporting wild animal disease reduction efforts.
We appreciate your curiosity about the latest efforts to help more farmed animals around the world. Thank you for reading!
Warmly,
Sofia, Angel, and the Hive team
How to navigate Hive Highlights
Every two weeks, Hive sends you the latest updates (click to jump):
Movement news: Covering 🐖 Animal Welfare, 🥗 Plant-Based Food & Alternative Protein, ⚖️ Policy, Legislation, and Law, 💪🏾 Animal Advocacy Org Updates, and 🎲 Other
Jobs & Opportunities: Covering 💼 Jobs, 💡 Skilled volunteering, 🔥 Opportunities, 💰 Funding, and 🤝 Upcoming External Events
Resources: Covering 📚 Research, 🎙️ Podcasts, 📙 Books, and 🎥 Videos
Hive updates: Covering the latest from our team!
Other ways to read this newsletter: Extensions Jetwriter AI (to summarize posts) or Read Aloud.
🐖 Animal Welfare
Björn Ólafsson reviews the evidence and finds plant-based defaults to be the most effective nudge we know.
Rethink Priorities launches Part 1 of its 3-part series examining how AI technologies affect farmed aquatic animals.
Wladimir J. Alonso and Cynthia Schuck develop Food Welfare Explorer, a prototype app using AI to provide approximate, tentative animal welfare analyses based on food pictures or descriptions.
🥗 Plant-Based Food & Alternative Protein
Abhi Flores-Kumar makes the case for scaling research and development funding for alternative proteins to unlock a viable protein transition.
Chinese cultivated meat producer Joes Future Food commissions what is claimed to be the country’s largest cultivated meat pilot plant.
Educated Choices Program and the Good Food Institute launch “Pioneering Protein: Exploring Career Paths in Food Innovation,” an online resource bringing cutting-edge food innovation into classrooms worldwide.
Thai government agency kicks off a campaign calling for a transition to a plant-rich food system, citing better health, climate, and economic outcomes.
⚖️ Policy, Legislation, and Law
Malaysia’s Islamic authority declares cultivated meat can be halal—a first for a Muslim-majority country.
The UK Government publishes its Environmental Improvement Plan 2025. Explore the documents via a NotebookLM chatbot built by Thomas (Richie) Manandhar-Richardson.
US Senator Adam Schiff introduces legislation to direct more than $500 million in federal support over the next five years toward research and development for “alternative proteins.”
💪 Animal Advocacy Org Updates
AGORA is a new organization that supports local activists to run leadership retreats and, eventually, national conferences.
Rethink Priorities releases three donor guides for farmed insects, farmed shrimp, and wild animal welfare—fields with enormous impact potential but challenging information environments. It will also launch a Neglected Animals Giving Network in early 2026 to provide donors with private briefings and personalized guidance. Complete this expression-of-interest form to learn more.
Several organizations release their 2025 reviews:
Sinergia Animal launches 2025 white paper “Cage-Free Eggs: Global Transition Towards Acceptable Business Models.”
🎲 Other
Ruben van den Bulck and Lotte de Lint share a retrospective of an animal welfare career event they organized.
💼 Jobs
Administrative Assistant, We Animals. Remote, Canada. Apply by 8 January, 2026.
Campaign Coordinator, Animal Policy International. Remote, global. Apply by 9 January, 2026.
EU Policy Manager, Animal Policy International. Remote, Brussels. Apply by 9 January, 2026.
Communications and Mobilization Lead - International, Sinergia Animal. Remote, a capital city in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Indonesia, or Thailand preferred.
Communications Lead - Latam, Singeria Animal. Remote, Santiago de Chile.
Director, Association Végétarienne de France. Paris, France.
Finance Director, Madre Brava. Remote, the Netherlands.
Influence Manager and Web Team Coordinator, L214. Remote, France.
Key Account Manager and Senior Social Media Manager, Albert Schweitzer Foundation. Remote, Berlin.
Photo & Video Editor, We Animals. Remote, Canada.
Senior Manager, Communications, UPSIDE Foods. Emeryville, CA.
Job search tip: Browse Hive’s Jobs and Careers Resources and follow our Slack’s job feed in the #job-posting channel for new positions daily! You can also view the Animal Advocacy Careers, AltProtein.Jobs, Food Impact Careers, and Probably Good job boards.
💡 Job hunting? Also consider skilled volunteering
Volunteering helps you build skills, connections, context, and credentials, all while creating change for farmed animals. For many people, volunteering is a key step towards working professionally in the movement. For others, volunteering is one of several impactful ways to contribute.
Three places to find volunteering opportunities helping farmed animals:
🔥 Opportunities
Center for Effective Vegan Advocacy offers its online courses for free.
Ireland seeks input to its five-year Animal Welfare Strategy from both the Irish public and international animal welfare organizations. To support, follow the instructions in this Submission Guidance Document. Enter your submission by 2 January, 2026.
Scarlet Spark opens 1-on-1 applications for leaders seeking hands-on strategic and leadership support. Apply by 5 January, 2026.
Shrimp Welfare Project seeks expressions of interest for multiple 2026 roles. Submit by 11 January, 2026.
The Harvard–MIT Impact Research Initiative seeks mentors for its Spring 2025 undergraduate research program, including projects in animal welfare.
The Sentient Futures Project Incubator opens applications to support mentored projects on AI, animals, and future sentience. Apply by 12 January, 2026.
The Thrive Fundraising Accelerator is an online program covering the essentials of effective fundraising. Applications from Global South organizations and BIPOC-led groups in the Global North are encouraged. Apply by 4 January, 2026.
💰 Funding
The Arthropoda Foundation opens Expressions of Interest for its current call for proposals, offering grants up to $10,000 (and up to $50,000 in exceptional cases). Apply by 15 January, 2026.
The India Animal Welfare Funding Circle opens a Request for Proposals to fund Indian nonprofits working on farmed animals, community and working animals, and lab animals, with grants up to ₹75 lakhs or 50% of annual operating expenses. Apply by 15 January, 2026.
The Greg Steltenpohl Pragmatic Visionary Award offers $100,000 to early-stage ventures advancing a plant-centric food system. Apply by 18 January, 2026.
Fundraising tip: Hive’s Fundraising Guide includes a database of current opportunities and key resources on how to fundraise.
🤝 Upcoming External Events
AVA Argentina, 30 January–1 February. Buenos Aires.
Sentient Futures Summit, 6–8 February. San Francisco.
EA Global: San Francisco, 13–15 February. San Francisco.
Events tip: View more on the Connect for Animals (CFA) event list and our Conference Database.
📚 Research
Faunalytics publishes “Globalizing The Factory Farm: International Organizations And The Spread Of Industrial Animal Agriculture,” a study challenging the movement to look beyond multinational corporations and focus on the funders of global agriculture.
Researchers conduct a qualitative analysis of anti-vegan stigma in Italy.
Researchers examine popular, historical, and scientific understandings of the term “flexitarians,” and discuss three challenges with how the term flexitarian has been applied in empirical research.
Rethink Priorities publishes a report on egg product replacement in US prepared foods. You can read the 2-page summary or the full report.
Stockholm Environment Institute and the NYU Center for Environmental and Animal Protection release the report “Integrating Animal Health and Welfare into the 2030 Agenda and Beyond,” calling for greater consideration for animals in the 2030 Agenda and other global development frameworks.
The Center for Animal Law Studies at Lewis & Clark Law School launches the report “A Comparative Analysis of Litigation Strategies in Brazil, India, Mexico and Zimbabwe.”
🎙️ Podcasts
Fork The System:
Future of Foods Interviews:
How I Learned to Love Shrimp:
Our Hen House:
Animal Ag’s Panic Over Plant-Based Diets | Rising Anxieties
The Hen Report: “ Let’s Be Even Louder Than Before” | Animal Rights Media, Fur Ban Victory, Vegan Activism
The Rich Roll Podcast:
🎥 Videos
The Encyclopedia of Animal Law Launch Symposium recordings are available.
Five Decades — One Mission is a six-part video series celebrating the golden anniversary of the founding of the U.S. animal rights movement.
💝 Thank you for powering Hive forward!
As 2025 comes to a close, we’re so grateful for this community’s generosity. Together, we’ve made strong progress toward our $62,000 goal—and there’s still a $31,000 match on the table to double every gift. Your support fuels everything we do—helping advocates connect, collaborate, and launch new projects that change the world for animals. Let’s finish the year strong and carry this momentum into 2026. 💫
— With gratitude, The Hive Team
✍️ Fresh from the Hive blog
This edition features Community Member Spotlight: Rakefet Cohen Ben-Arye, along with a new Beeyond Buzzwords entry—this time on “Hands-on Community Building”—from our series that unpacks terms we use that can mean different things to different people.
🌎 Hive at AVA Summit Argentina
Our Latin America Coordinator, Alexia, is attending AVA Summit Argentina, where Hive and AVA will officially launch their joint Mentorship Program. During the Summit, a meetup will take place to introduce mentors and mentees in person. Apply to be a Mentee (in English, Spanish, or Portuguese) or a Mentor (in English, Spanish, or
Portuguese) by 19 January, 2026. If you have any questions, please reach out to Alexia at alexia@joinhive.org.
Alexia will also be available for 1:1 conversations to meet advocates attending the Summit and learn more about their work for farmed animals across the region!
Thanks for reading our Hive Highlights: late December 2025 edition 🧡 It’s made possible by the incredible work of animal advocates like you.
📰 Submit inclusions for the next edition: deadline is 12 January, 2026.
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