I’m pretty sure I’m the only journalist at a mainstream US news outlet focused exclusively on the animal welfare beat.
It can be a bit lonely at times, but it’s also an immense honor, and I give Vox enormous credit for blazing this journalistic path when they hired me six years ago.
Much of my work focuses on what, in my view, is one of the key moral issues of our time: The factory farming of animals for meat, milk, and eggs.
Some 88 billion land animals — mostly chickens — are raised and slaughtered for food each year, and as our reporting has helped to reveal, most are in hellish conditions. Add fish to this global body count and the number balloons to nearly 1 trillion.
The numbers are overwhelming, and so whether I’m covering the food system, the international pet trade, the ethics of zoos and aquariums, or the collapse of fur farming, I like to come back to two simple questions: What is life like for each individual animal trapped in these systems, and what can be done to help them?
As I try to answer these questions, I promise not to guilt trip my readers. But I also promise not to sugarcoat reality. Indeed, I think too often we shy away from confronting animal cruelty because it’s so heart-wrenching to witness. But I’m a believer in the idea that the only way out of a problem is through. And so I do my best every day to investigate, explain, and seek solutions to the plight of the many animals with whom we share this planet.
And through it, I’ve only become more fascinated and enchanted by the animal kingdom — especially the most overlooked species. Did you know, for example, that mice giggle when they’re tickled? That chickens have social lives and can do basic math? Or that there’s a fish species that’s demonstrated the ability to recognize itself in the mirror?
That’s what I love about reporting and writing for Vox: The opportunity to go deep, be curious, and strive for both moral clarity and balanced rigor.
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