I’ve litigated for farmed animals for over two decades.

The benefits of the work I did have been largely reversed by status quo pro-growth policies that ignore the rights of children and that disfavor the global majority who are struggling under the weight of generations of birth inequity.

Inequitable growth and unsustainable demand have put more animals in factory farms and done more harm to vulnerable communities than ever before, as detailed here.

Child equity impacts cannot be separated from animal welfare impacts.

I now urge anyone who wants to help animals to ask one simple question of anyone claiming to do good for them: How are you accounting for children coming into the world, including ensuring their rights and equal opportunities in life? How are you ensuring a basic system of justice that does not enrich some children at deadly cost to others and undo the claimed impacts through growth?

We don’t talk about how growth and inequitable birth positionality undo the work we do because it benefits the lawyers involved – like me, and those who fund us.

A new coalition – truthalliance.global – is bringing legal actions to ensure public interest interventions account for inequitable growth in their cost/benefit assessments and impact reporting. Those who truly represent the vulnerable cannot compete against the wealth of those who omit inequitable growth as a key factor in public interest outcomes.

Rather than use an illegitimate system that starts by exploiting infants and animals, the coalition urges all to tell the truth – to state impacts in context – and legitimate systems by deriving legal authority and entitlements to wealth from the empowerment of those subject to them.

The coalition has already moved to set a standard for such disclosures at the United Nations, African Union, and with the California Attorney General, and will soon challenge decades of claims by foundations and academic institutions that hid the fact that micro-level interventions were and are being undone by macro and upstream factors benefiting some at deadly and illegal cost to others.