Why we exist
Food systems are moral choices made visible.
Food systems as ethical systems
Every society must answer a fundamental question: how shall we feed ourselves? The answer is never merely technical. Every meal is the outcome of countless decisions: how land is used, how water is managed, how workers are treated, how animals are raised, how ecosystems are affected, and how the benefits and burdens of production are shared. These decisions collectively reveal the relationship a society chooses to have with animals, people, and ecosystems.
Food systems are therefore ethical systems, and decisions about food should be informed not only by what is economically possible or technologically feasible, but also by what is evidence-based, ethically defensible, and consistent with the long-term flourishing of animals, people, and ecosystems.
Cage netting · Dunga Beach
Our ethical position
Our central commitment is that animals possess intrinsic value: an animal matters in itself, and not only for what it provides to others. An animal is not a resource. It is a life.
We hold this position on the basis of evidence rather than sentiment. From the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness in 2012 to the New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness in 2024, a broad scientific judgement holds that humans are not unique in possessing the biological basis of conscious experience.1 This understanding extends to the animals at the centre of our own work. Fishes respond to injury in ways that indicate felt pain rather than simple reflex,2 and on this evidence professional bodies including the American Veterinary Medical Association accept that fish should be granted the same consideration as other vertebrates with respect to relief from pain.3 A realistic possibility of sentience is sufficient to create an obligation to take an animal’s welfare seriously.4
Two horizons, one commitment
If sentient animals possess intrinsic value, the conclusion that follows is not that their use should be perfected. It is that their use should be reduced, and over time ended, wherever nourishing alternatives exist. At the same time, billions of animals are alive within present food systems, and their suffering is not suspended while the future is built.
Where the Foundation works to improve conditions for farmed aquatic animals, it does so as an obligation to the animals now living, not as an endorsement of the systems that contain them. Reducing harm within a system and working to move society beyond that system are the same commitment applied to different horizons.
A note from the founder
During a period of study in India I encountered ahimsa, the principle of non-harm, not as a theory but as a practice. When I returned to Kenya I wanted to give it a practical and grounded form, something that could be tested against real conditions and real constraints, in the places where people actually make their food choices.
Lasting change requires evidence that can withstand scrutiny, practical solutions that can be adopted in diverse contexts, and ethical principles that remain constant even as knowledge and circumstances evolve. Pendo Earth was created to contribute to that work.
— Rachel Kabue, Founder
References
1. Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, Francis Crick Memorial Conference, University of Cambridge, 7 July 2012; New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness, New York University, 19 April 2024 (K. Andrews, J. Birch and J. Sebo).
2. L. U. Sneddon, ‘Evolution of nociception and pain: evidence from fish models’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 374 (2019).
3. Position of the American Veterinary Medical Association that fish merit the same consideration as other vertebrates regarding relief from pain.
4. New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness (2024), holding that certainty is not required and that a realistic possibility of sentience warrants consideration of welfare.