Animal Rights

Ethical Capital was founded as Invest Vegan LLC. The name changed; the premise hasn't. This screen is the most direct expression of what the firm is: we don't invest in companies that treat animals as inputs, extractable resources, or constrained entertainment.

Most funds that call themselves ethical don't exclude factory farming. Fewer still screen for animal testing across both product lines and conduct. We do both — and have since day one.

We apply the veil of ignorance across species. If you didn't know whether you'd be born as the cow or the consumer, you would not design a factory farming system. Cows form preferential social bonds. Whether animal interiority is real is not the question — the applied ethology literature settled that decades ago. The question is whether you're pricing it.

Factory farming. Industries built on treating sentient beings as inputs. Meat, dairy, eggs, hides, furs, exotic leather. The screen is broad because the harm is broad.

Animal testing. The FDA Modernization Act 2.0 (2022) authorized non-animal alternatives — but it is an authorizing statute, not a prohibition. Animal testing remains de facto required in most product categories and all major international markets. The regulatory direction favors alternatives, but the transition is measured in decades, not years. Where we hold companies that conduct animal testing, substantial countervailing evidence is required: demonstrated social impact, strong financials, a defensible opportunity set. They are exceptions, not policy drift.

Entertainment. Zoos, circuses, racing. Constrained lives for commercial purpose, without justification proportionate to the harm.

Animal welfare violations are not isolated signals. Companies that treat animals as inputs tend to apply the same cost-externalization logic to labor, supply chains, and environmental footprint. The management orientation rarely stays confined to one category of harm.

— Sloane Ortel, Founder & CIO