Our Campaigns and Accomplishments in

2021

Another year at Animals Now leading the fight for animals in industrialized farms: We won the long struggle for a ban on cages in the egg industry. We supported 190,000 people around the world to discover a vegan diet. We amplified animals’ voices in the media, in parliament, in schools and universities, and even in the UN.

close up portrait of chicken free range chicken

We convinced corporate giants to commit to stop using caged eggs

As part of an international coalition to drive corporate responsibility toward animals, we have been advocating for the removal of eggs from cages from supply chains. A number of international corporations have already set a date for the completion of the move, and many are already going cage-free. We are working to make sure these commitments become a reality and to convince others to take a stand against caged eggs.

This year we participated in an international campaign which demanded that Toridoll (a large restaurant company that owns 9 different food chains) stop using caged eggs in all its restaurants worldwide. With activists from all over the world, we launched a campaign – And we won! Within 4 months, Toridoll issued a global commitment to phase out caged eggs in all of its restaurants.

map of the world with pins map of the world with pins

Challenge 22 continued to take on the world

In 2022 we welcomed over 190,000 new participants to our Challenge 22 groups – a 52% increase compared to the previous year! Our dedicated team of mentors and dietitians provided support, tips, and lots of recipes to everyone who joined us. The kindness and commitment of our wonderful volunteers worldwide is what makes Challenge 22 the best place to experiment with a vegan lifestyle – and succeed. And recently we started expanding to WhatsApp groups and exploring other avenues to spark more meaningful connections with people.

Our Community Project is thriving. We collaborated with 11 projects from across the world that have welcomed over 100,000 people to their local vegan Challenges – that’s 54% more than last year! The project means participants can access resources and recipes in their own language, from mentors who are part of their community and can offer them the best support. Programs in Thailand, Bulgaria, Lithuania, New Zealand, and Vietnam are just some of those joining our mission to spread animal rights and veganism worldwide!

man giving lecture to kids with a slideshow about animals behind him man giving lecture to kids with a slideshow about animals behind him

We invested in future generations and educated for compassion

This year our educational programs welcomed thousands more students: "Share the World", our program of lectures and workshops on animal rights, and "Change Begins On Your Plate", educational sessions on sustainable eating with an emphasis on plant-based food.
Both programs combined reached over 33,000 teenagers and adults in 2022, in hundreds of lectures and workshops held across 168 educational establishments. We also gave lectures to Ministry of Health employees, soldiers, trainee teachers, students, prisoners, and more.

We created new content on animal rights on our ‘Live Act’ website, which is accessed by thousands of people every month, across a variety of subjects and age groups. This year we launched a special page for youth movements providing activity sets to inspire young minds. We even joined training days and summer camps to see the sessions in action.

We co-produced several extracurricular educational events, including: A webinar for educators (with about 130 participants) on "learning and teaching about food and the climate"; A meeting for teachers before World Animal Day, where we hosted representatives from the Freedom Farm sanctuary and the program for elementary students "Animals With Us"; And the "Climate of Change" conference in collaboration with prominent environmental organizations, which was a unique opportunity for teachers to exchange ideas and learn new information about animals, the environment, and our future.

giant bilboard sign in Jerusalem against chicken cages giant bilboard sign in Jerusalem against chicken cages

We won the battle to ban cages!

A historic moment in the fight for animals in Israel: after a long struggle led by Animals Now, the government approved regulations to prohibit confining chickens in cages in the egg industry, which will ease the suffering of millions of animals. The regulations were drafted following our petition to the High Court, which caused a moratorium on reform amounting to hundreds of millions of shekels and obliged the Ministry of Agriculture to act.

To put this issue in the spotlight, we ran an extensive advertising campaign including a huge billboard in Jerusalem showing caged chickens (photographed by our investigative team), 350 signs on bus stops and buses in the major cities of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, a radio broadcast, and a social media campaign.

On a political level, we worked with the Ministries of Agriculture and Finance and with members of parliament to gather support, we managed to make significant improvements to the regulations and block attempts to stall or add problematic clauses. We also promoted vital changes to egg quota regulations. We will continue to work at all levels to ensure the implementation and enforcement of these regulations – until every cage is empty.

Animals Now's website shown in a phone in someone's hand Animals Now's website shown in a phone in someone's hand

We brought the fight to the public

We reached tens of millions of people online! Our websites reached over 2.3 million people this year. Thousands of people follow us for recommendations, community, and recipes.

The Facebook and Instagram pages of Animals Now and Challenge 22 reached over 6.5 million impressions on the Israeli pages and over 45 million impressions on the international pages. We published 35 videos on YouTube that totalled 1.4 million views, and about 200 videos on TikTok that received more than 2 million views.

We ran public outreach activities all over Israel – on the street, at universities and colleges, and at major events: Pride, White Night in Tel Aviv, Vegan Fest, and more. We took part in the Climate March, including the planning and production, developing materials for educators, and operating information and action stands. We signed up over 2,000 people to Challenge 22 at these events and thousands more pledged to change their eating habits after talking with us!

We continued to fight for animals on all fronts

close up on chickens inside a cage

We stopped cages in the meat industry, too

Another milestone in our fight to end the cage age: the Ministry of Agriculture has finally blocked the use of cages in the meat industry! In recent years, we have been waging a public struggle against a new threat that was hovering over chickens in the meat industry – confinement in cages. This would have exacerbated the already horrific conditions that chickens currently live in.

First, the Ministry of Agriculture authorized a huge caged chicken facility as the horrific home to about 3 million chickens per year. Research was initiated to investigate whether being confined in cages harms chickens’ well-being, despite there already being conclusive evidence for this. Animals Now fought against the proposal, submitted petitions to the courts, got the issue in the media spotlight, submitted a scientific assessment to parliament, and even conducted an investigation that exposed abuse of chickens in that facility.

Thanks to Animals Now and our supporters fighting back, and due also to evidence of harm done to chickens from the Ministry of Agriculture's investigations, we again managed to stop the cruel use of cages for chickens.

human hand holds a dog hand with the Knesset in the background

We were a voice for the animals in parliament

We made the voices of animals heard in parliament, advocating for them at every opportunity. In addition to our intensive work to ban cages, we initiated meetings with officials to promote legislation to stop live transports. We participated in debates on the bills to ban the restraining and mutilation of pigs, to prohibit glue traps, and a ban on poisoning wild animals (which were pre-read), on bird flu, and more.

We also took part in animal rights and welfare lobby meetings and presented several shortcomings in the enforcement of the Animal Cruelty Act. Before the elections, with ‘Let the Animals Live’ and others, we held the "Political Animal" panel with candidates from different parties, moderated by journalist Ran Binyamini. Over 300 people came to the conference, and thousands more watched it live.

Our key demand was the transfer of responsibility for the Animal Cruelty Act to the Ministry of Environmental Protection. We promoted this demand in a campaign with ‘Let the Animals Live’, and over 29,000 emails were sent to the political parties.

tiny baby lamb in a cage

We exposed cruelty on farms and fought to bring abusers to justice

Our investigative team continued to expose the harm done to animals bred for food, and gave evidence in 17 cases this year. 8 employees who worked at the Soglowek slaughterhouse were convicted of offenses against the Animal Cruelty Act following the Animals Now slaughterhouse investigation in 2015. The lengthy legal process finally ended in a plea deal, resulting in a suspended sentence and low fines (intended for the Animal Protection Fund). This year our legal team submitted 8 appeals to parliament following the closure of complaints without investigation, as well as a series of freedom of information requests.

earth on a plate, hands holding knife and fork

We demanded policy to discourage animal-based food consumption

At the United Nations climate conference, we promoted the inclusion of food production and consumption in the plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, with the aim of reducing animal-based food.

In Israel, we took a significant part in the discussion of the government committee for the adaptation of food systems for the climate crisis. This committee was established to implement the road map for sustainable food systems that was submitted to the UN last year, which includes a national goal to reduce the consumption of animal-based food by 50% by 2030!

Acting on behalf of a broad coalition of environmental, nutritional, and animal organizations, we demanded subsidies for plant-based products, government support for businesses reducing the production and sale of animal food, a reduction in the serving of meat in state institutions, and more.

distant shot of a ship of the live exports

We challenged an economic policy that will increase meat consumption!

In a scandalous move, the Ministry of Finance announced their intention to scrap import duties on beef and processed meat products. This would inevitably lead to an increase in meat consumption. We challenged the plan, along with Greenpeace, Let the Animals Live, the Clinic for Environmental Justice and Human Rights at Tel Aviv University, the Environmental Regulation Clinic at Bar Ilan University, and more. Even when the draft bill was published, we called for it to be dismissed, along with various health, environmental and animal organizations, and the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Environmental Protection expressed a similar position.

Not only did the Ministry of Finance choose not to listen, it also decided to transfer over 125 million US dollars (approximately 430 million shekels) to the beef industry, as part of a plan to maintain the (previously temporary) tax exemption on importing live calves. Our coalition appealed to the Legal Advisor to the Government demanding the bill be scrapped. After they declined, we submitted a petition to the High Court, which was also backed by a number of health and environmental experts. The first hearing will take place soon, so watch this space.

Join us for another active year transforming the reality of animals for the better!
Want to take action but don't know how? Here’s how you can make an impact:

She Needs You Now
Donate
Your donation will help end their suffering
Animals-Now donation background image
She Needs You Now
Donate
Your donation will help end their suffering