Monthly Spotlight: Alianima
Our Monthly Spotlight series shares the work of animal advocacy organizations, in their own words. This month, we spoke with Patrycia Sato, co-founder and president of Alianima, a Brazilian nonprofit working to improve the lives of farmed animals. Many companies make animal welfare commitments but don’t follow through. Alianima tracks their progress, works with producers and policymakers, and pushes for protections for overlooked animals like fishes. Brazil is the world’s fourth-largest tilapia producer, yet these fishes’ welfare gets little attention.
Read on to learn about Alianima’s wins, their challenges, and how an ACE Movement Grant supports their work for aquatic animals.
Could you introduce Alianimas and the core problem your work is trying to solve?
Alianima is a Brazilian nonprofit working to improve the lives of farmed animals. Our team combines scientific expertise, corporate engagement and public policy advocacy to ban harmful practices and advance meaningful protection for egg-laying hens, pigs, chickens killed for meat and aquatic animals. The core problem we address is the gap between recognizing that animals raised for human food matter and changing the current farmed animal system. Animals continue to experience severe confinement, painful procedures, and inadequate conditions, while corporate commitments and public policy advances do not always translate into better lives.
We work at the points where decisions can affect entire supply chains. We engage companies to adopt stronger animal welfare standards and support implementation through technical and science-based dialogue and training. Our four annual reports provide complementary ways of monitoring: Pig Watch and Egg Watch track corporate commitments and implementation, while Fish Watch and Broiler Watch assess sector practices, identify animal welfare gaps, and inform our efforts to secure corporate commitments in areas where these are not yet established in Brazil. We also work with policymakers and partner organizations to strengthen institutional work and advancements.
Our approach combines constructive engagement with public accountability. A commitment is an important starting point. Our goal is to help ensure that it translates into lasting improvements for animals.
What are some of the biggest wins you’ve had so far?
One of our most important achievements has been making corporate accountability a sustained part of Brazil’s animal welfare conversations. Through initiatives such as Pig Watch and Egg Watch, we turn company disclosures into accessible information to help stakeholders and civil society identify gaps and demands follow-through. These reports also help us direct our engagement where it is most needed. Our work has contributed to securing stronger corporate commitments, while maintaining attention on implementation after commitments are announced. We noticed that many companies, despite having announced commitments, were not actually working to fulfill them. Consequently, monitoring and publishing information about their transition has served to expose these companies and pressure them to make progress and effectively honor their commitments.
Another milestone was the Technical Cooperation Agreement (ACT, in Portuguese), between Alianima, Brazil’s Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (MAPA), and the Brazilian Associations of Pig Producers (ABCS). It creates a framework for encouraging better practices under Brazil’s pig welfare regulation (IN 113), bringing civil society, government and producers into a shared implementation effort.
These achievements reinforce one another: corporate monitoring identifies barriers, technical engagement helps address them, and institutional cooperation creates opportunities to extend improvements across the sector. Together, they demonstrate how a focused organization can influence decisions well beyond its own size.
What are the most significant challenges you currently face in advancing your mission?
Our biggest challenge is turning commitments into consistent implementation. Companies may announce ambitious animal welfare policies, yet progress can stall when deadlines approach, investment is delayed, or responsibility is dispersed across suppliers. Implementation requires coordination throughout the supply chain as a whole. Producers need clear demand signals and workable transition plans, buyers need to align purchasing practices with their commitments. Brazil’s regional differences add complexity. A strategy must account for variations in infrastructure, supplier availability and technical capacity while maintaining clear — but ambitious — animal welfare expectations.
We also face the challenge of securing attention for animals whose suffering is “less visible”, particularly fishes and other aquatic animals. Building recognition of their needs must go hand in hand with practical reform.
Addressing these barriers requires sustained funding for technical work, relationship-building, monitoring, and follow-up. These activities are essential to ensuring that an announced change becomes a lasting improvement in animals’ lives. This is one of the reasons Alianima works with end-to-end engagement, from companies, to producers and policymakers, so that these incentives match and animal welfare continues to advance as a whole.
Alianima connects animal welfare to social and environmental justice. What does that look like in practice?
For Alianima, connecting these issues means examining how food systems affect animals, people, and the environment we all share, and bringing those connections into public debate. We have translated this approach into concrete initiatives by proposing public hearings in the Brazilian Congress. For instance, we proposed a public hearing on sustainability in the production and consumption of animal-based foods. This created space to discuss food production as a matter of public responsibility.
In our communications, we consistently address issues that cut across animal agriculture, such as emissions and the climate crisis, land use and feed inefficiency, water and ecological footprints, and One Health —such as antimicrobial resistance (AMR) resulting from the misuse of antibiotics—with companies and producers. We are members of the Ministry of Health’s “One Health” Committee, where we contribute to the development of policies regarding AMR within the livestock sector.
In the past, we also partnered with Indigenous activist and communicator Samela Sataré-Mawé on an environmental manifesto, and produced educational content exploring the relationship between animal exploitation, climate justice, biodiversity loss and One Health. Recognizing interconnected harm helps us build broader alliances and advocate for changes that take those affected seriously.
How has the ACE Movement Grant helped strengthen Alianima’s work?
The ACE Movement Grant has supported an important strategic priority for Alianima: advancing protection for aquatic animals in Brazil. Brazil is the 4th largest tilapia producer in the world. Despite this high production in the country, their welfare remains widely overlooked. We have been trying to negotiate a commitment to tilapia welfare with companies and producers.
Thanks to the grant, we are also able to keep an aquatic animal specialist on the team, who has been dedicated to scientific production, providing technical support for corporate dialogue, political advocacy, and participating in industry events—including delivering presentations and conducting training sessions for producers.
A key resource in this work is Fish Watch, our annual report. It monitors sector practices, identifies animal welfare challenges and makes technical information accessible to all stakeholders. In a context where corporate welfare commitments for those animals are not yet established, Fish Watch provides an important evidence base for dialogue and advocacy in Brazil. As a follow-up, we also organize events such as webinars with experts and producers, creating opportunities to share knowledge, discuss challenges and engage stakeholders in aquatic animal welfare.
We are grateful to ACE for helping us sustain dedication to this neglected area and build the foundations for lasting improvements in aquatic animals’ lives.
Disclaimer/Note:The responses in this spotlight were provided by Alianima and reflect the organization’s own account of their work.
ACE is dedicated to creating a world where all animals can thrive, regardless of their species. We take the guesswork out of supporting animal advocacy by directing funds toward the most impactful charities and programs, based on evidence and research.
