Shifting Public Perception
Increasing public acceptance for plant-based foods is likely both the most important and the most complicated task in food system transformation. However, from countless conversations with family, friends, and people at our street outreach events, we have identified a long list of convictions that lead people to believe they cannot or should not adopt a more plant-based diet.
Most of these challenges fall into the 3N’s described by Melanie Joy—that eating meat is normal, natural, and necessary. Some of these beliefs are deeply philosophical or require expert knowledge, taking significant time and effort to change. However, other beliefs could be easily tackled with basic research and data. For example, while people often assume plant-based food is too expensive, a recent analysis by GFI Europe showed that some meat substitutes in the UK are already more affordable than conventional meat—an insight especially relevant during times of economic uncertainty.
Context Awareness
A growing body of research, led by groups such as Animetrics and Faunalytics, demonstrates that sociocultural awareness is essential for plant-based advocacy. Consequently, approaches that work, say, in the US may be ineffective when blindly applied to different regional landscapes. Or, vice versa, there can be opportunities applicable only for certain local contexts.
One of these kinds of opportunities can lay in something that most animal rights organizations actively avoid: religion. We suppose that in Eastern Europe, a predominantly Christian Orthodox region, a tailored communications strategy leveraging religious Lent may be a strong stepping stone for people to adopt a more plant-based diet. However, as any hypothesis, this requires rigorous validation before it can be put into practice.
Or, a locally contextualized follow-up to GFI’s research can be a market study of the price points of plant- and animal-based products that produce a consumer behavior shift.
Ultimately, the problem is that advocacy too often relies on improperly generalized assumptions instead of context-specific social research.
The Research Lab
To uncover and address reluctant and negative public perceptions towards plant-based foods, we propose establishing a dedicated R&D lab within our organization. The lab will conduct localized, context-aware research through longitudinal public opinion surveys, focus groups, sentiment analysis across digital spaces, and other relevant methods.
The primary outputs of these activities will be action-oriented, publicly available resources designed to empower the broader advocacy ecosystem. These will include comprehensive public sentiment reports, market data analyses, localized messaging playbooks tailored for strategic communication with government officials, private companies, and targeted audiences. Furthermore, the lab will produce adaptable to other regions research frameworks and practical training modules that can be utilized by local advocates and media creators with evidence-based strategies for food system transformation.
The Communications Center
Alongside researching, testing, scaling, and disseminating context-aware knowledge and methodologies for plant-forward food transformation, we want to create a Communications Center. This center will:
- Train local advocates and media creators.
- Facilitate and support the exchange of ideas.
- Equip local advocates with useful knowledge and insights for their communications with government officials, private companies, and online communities.
Open-Source Commitment
We believe that knowledge should not be siloed, and that it should be open and accessible. Therefore, a core pillar of this lab will be an open-source commitment. All reports, findings, and datasets will be shared freely with the global animal rights and plant-forward advocacy movement. We hope our research can be turned into practical application useful in similar contexts across Eastern Europe and beyond.