Question
Do you think decreasing the consumption of animals is good/bad? For which groups of farmed animals?
Context
I stopped eating animals 4 years ago mostly to decrease the suffering of farmed animals[1]. I am glad I did that based on the information I had at the time, and published in online journals of my former university a series of 3 articles whose title reads “Why we should decrease the consumption of animals?”. However, I am no longer confident that decreasing the consumption of animals is good/bad. It has many effects:
Decreasing the number of factory-farmed animals.
I believe this would be good for chickens, since I expect them to have negative lives. I estimated the lives of broilers in conventional and reformed scenarios are, per unit time, 2.58 and 0.574 times as bad as human lives are good (see 2nd table). However, these numbers are not resilient:
On the one hand, if I consider disabling pain is 10 (instead of 100) times as bad as hurtful pain, the lives of broilers in conventional and reformed scenarios would be, per unit time, 2.73 % and 26.2 % as good as human lives. Nevertheless, disabling pain being only 10 times as bad as hurtful pain seems quite implausible if one thinks being alive is as good as hurtful pain is bad.
On the other hand, I may be overestimating broilers’ pleasurable experiences.
I guess the same applies to other species, but I honestly do not know. Figuring out whether farmed fish, shrimps and prawns have good/bad lives seems especially important. Together with chickens, they are arguably the driver for the welfare of farmed animals[2].
Decreasing the production of animal feed, and therefore reducing crop area, which tends to:
Increase the population of wild animals, which I do not know whether it is good or bad. I think the welfare of terrestrial wild animals is driven by that of terrestrial arthropods, but I am very uncertain about whether they have good or bad lives. I recommend checking this preprint from Heather Browning and Walter Weit for an overview of the welfare status of wild animals.
Decrease the resilience against food shocks[3]. As I wrote here:
The smaller the population of (farmed) animals, the less animal feed could be directed to humans to mitigate the food shocks caused by the lower temperature, light and humidity during abrupt sunlight reduction scenarios (ASRS), which can be a nuclear winter, volcanic winter, or impact winter[4].
Because producing calories from animals is much less efficient than from plants, decreasing the number of animals results in a smaller area of crops.
So the agricultural system would be less oversized (i.e. it would have a smaller safety margin), and scaling up food production to counter the lower yields during an ASRS would be harder.
To maximise calorie supply, farmed animals should stop being fed and quickly be culled after the onset of an ASRS. This would decrease the starvation of humans and farmed animals, but these would tend to experience more severe pain for a faster slaughtering rate.
As a side note, increasing food waste would also increase resilience against food shocks, as long as it can be promptly cut down. One can even argue humanity should increase (easily reducible) food waste instead of the population of farmed animals. However, I suspect the latter is more tractable.
Increase biodiversity, which arguably increases existential risk due to ecosystem collapse (see Kareiva 2018).
Decreasing greenhouse gas emissions, and therefore decreasing global warming.
I have little idea whether this is good or bad.
Firstly, it is quite unclear whether climate change is good or bad for wild animals.
Secondly, although more global warming makes climate change worse for humans, I believe it mitigates the food shocks caused by ASRSs[5]. Accounting for both of these effects, I estimated the optimal median global warming in 2100 relative to 1880 can range from 0.1 to 4.3 ºC. I think the plausible range of the optimal global warming is even wider, because I have neglected many sources of uncertainty in my estimate above (like the impact of ASRSs on the energy system, which depends on the fraction of energy coming from fossil fuels).
Improving human health[6], and therefore increasing productivity / economic growth.
Better health is good because it leads to greater wellbeing, but economic growth has questionable longterm effects.
In the last few hundred years, economic growth has been associated with better living conditions (good), but also with higher existential risk (bad).
I think the focus should be on differential progress, but I do not know whether better health, and greater economic growth contribute positively or negatively to that.
Decreasing the risk from pandemics linked to zoonotic diseases.
Mitigating antimicrobial resistance:
From Carrique-Mas 2020, “the greatest quantities of antimicrobials (in decreasing order) were used in pigs (41.7% of total use), humans (28.3%), aquaculture (21.9%) and chickens (4.8%). Combined AMU in other species accounted for < 1.5%”.
Boeckel 2015 projects that “antimicrobial consumption [in livestock production] will rise by 67% by 2030 [relative to 2010]”.
Expanding the moral circle to farmed animals, as changes in behaviour (eating less animals) can cascade into changes in values (caring about animals).
This is good for farmed animals, but might be bad for wild animals if they have negative lives, and consuming less animals spreads memes of non-interference and environmentalism.
On the other hand, the reduction in the consumption of animals could be good for wild animals if achieved through increasing the concern for all forms of suffering, regardless of whether or not it is caused by humans.
Changes in values can potentially be locked (for example, via advanced artificial intelligence), and therefore have beneficial/harmful longterm effects.
Decreasing the number of potential working animals like cows, which could be useful in scenarios where there is a major widespread loss of industry or electricity.
There is also uncertainty regarding how much a decrease in consumption translates to a reduction in production, but I think this mainly affects the magnitude of the overall effect, not its sign. It looks like Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation Now does not adequately address my concerns.
For further context, feel free to check Brian Tomasik’s essays on reducing suffering, which introduced me to the indirect effects of changing the consumption of animals. I believe this post is a good place to start. Bear in mind Brian subscribes to negative utilitarianism.
My answer
Having the previous factors in mind, I do not know whether it is good/bad to decrease the consumption of animals at scale. Brian tends to agree:
If I could press a button to reduce overall meat consumption or to increase concern for animals, I probably would. In other words, I think the expected value of these things is perhaps slightly above zero. But my expected value for them is sufficiently close to zero that I don’t feel great about my donations being used for them.
I also feel like decreasing the consumption of animals is positive, but suppose I am biassed towards overweighting the identifiable decrease in severe pain caused to factory-farmed animals. I guess welfarist approaches (e.g. corporate campaigns for chicken welfare) are more robustly beneficial than abolitionist ones (e.g. promotion of veganism), but both arguably decrease the consumption of animals, which can be either beneficial or harmful.
In any case, I plan to continue following a whole-food plant-based diet[7], because:
I would say it makes me healthier and happier, and therefore more productive.
It makes me happier not only due to improved health, but also because causing severe pain to factory-farmed animals would feel pretty bad.
Based on these data from the Welfare Footprint Project, supposing each broiler provides 2 kg of edible meat, and that the elasticity of production with respect to consumption is 0.5[8], eating 100 g of chicken causes 75.4 min (= 50.27*60/2*0.1*0.5) of disabling pain if it is produced in a conventional scenario, and 25.9 min (= 17.26*60/2*0.1*0.5) if in a reformed one[9].
I guess (hope?) I am overall contributing to a better world, in which case increased productivity is good.
These arguably do not apply to the general population. I believe it is quite hard to tell whether a random person is overall making a positive/negative contribution to the world, essentially for the same reasons I prefer differential progress to economic growth.
Nevertheless, I suspect most people would claim they are overall contributing to a better world. Consequently, according to the reasoning above, they would decide on eating animals based on impacts on productivity, i.e. adopt the “anything goes” approach described by Rob Bensinger. Overall, boycott-itarianism, only eating animals which have sufficiently high welfare, seems better.
Finally, it is worth noting the impact of a random person on farmed animals can apparently be neutralised at a very low cost. I guess it is of the order of magnitude of 0.147 $/year (= 4.64/31.5), as I estimated:
The cost-effectiveness of corporate campaigns for broiler welfare is equivalent to creating 31.5 human-years per dollar.
The lives of all farmed animals combined are 4.64 times as bad as the lives of all humans combined are good.
Even if the real cost is 100 times higher, most people would more easily donate 14.7 $/year (= 0.147*100) to, for example, Animal Charity Evaluators’ top charities than follow a plant-based diet?
Acknowledgements
Thanks to David Denkenberger, Stijn Bruers, Julian Jamison, and Ariel Simnegar for feedback on a draft[10].
- ^
In addition, improving health, and mitigating global warming played a minor role. Fun fact, Lewis Bollard’s 1st appearance on The 80,000 Hours Podcast was an important part of my investigation of the conditions of farmed animals.
- ^
Note I also care about the welfare of large animals like pigs and cows/bulls.
- ^
I first heard about this from Michael Hinge’s appearance on Hear This Idea.
- ^
Additionally, a smaller population of animals would result in a smaller stock of animals and edible animal feed, and larger stock of plant-based foods to be eaten during the ASRS. Nonetheless, these effects would be smaller than the reduction in the production of edible animal feed.
- ^
This occurred to me during a meeting with people from Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters (ALLFED).
- ^
The EAT-Lancet diet only has 12.2 % (= (153 + 30 + 62 + 19 + 40)/2500; see Table 1) of calories coming from animals, and, according to the results of 3 approaches, would decrease adult deaths by 21.7 % (= (0.19 + 0.224 + 0.236)/3; see Table 2). This suggests decreasing the consumption of animals improves health at the margin, even if it is unclear whether the optimal consumption of animal products is zero.
- ^
Fruits, vegetables, cereals, legumes, berries, nuts, seeds, herbs, spices, water, and supplements.
- ^
The elasticity will be something between 0 and 1, so I used 0.5. However, it looks like there is significant uncertainty.
- ^
The Welfare Footprint Project defines disabling pain as follows:
Pain at this level takes priority over most bids for behavioral execution and prevents all forms of enjoyment or positive welfare. Pain is continuously distressing. Individuals affected by harms in this category often change their activity levels drastically (the degree of disruption in the ability of an organism to function optimally should not be confused with the overt expression of pain behaviors, which is less likely in prey species). Inattention and unresponsiveness to milder forms of pain or other ongoing stimuli and surroundings is likely to be observed. Relief often requires higher drug dosages or more powerful drugs. The term Disabling refers to the disability caused by ‘pain’, not to any structural disability.
- ^
Names ordered by descending relevance of contributions.
I’m probably being overly simplistic here, but I think that opposing excessive coercion and gratuitous suffering (rights violations in other words) is very important from a prudent utilitarian perspective. Some may argue that this approach doesn’t apply as much to animals, but perhaps it should as the world becomes less speciesist.
Thanks for commenting, Joe!
I think that is definitely an important point, and it makes me believe the conditions of factory-farmed animals should be improved such that their rights are less violated. However, I do not know whether it outweights other factors like the increased human starvation in abrupt sunlight reduction scenarios, and potentially preventing wild animals from having good lives. Copy-pasting from my reply further down:
I agree that it would be possible for the harms of factory farming to be outweighed by the factors you have mentioned. However, I would be hesitant to strongly believe this without extensive justification. Back of the envelope calculations could be flawed due to bias, incomplete information, setting a bad precedent, flow-on effects, reputational damage, etc.
Another point is that reduced opposition to factory farming could prolong a situation which is both bad for farm animals and probably a suboptimal solution to the problems you have raised (ASRS, wild animal welfare). For example, factory farming might slow the development of more advanced/resilient foods. It could be best to pursue optimal solutions to each problem.
I agree, reality is hard! On the other hand, I would say such points should push us towards being less certain about what is right/wrong. A hallmark of naive utilitarianism is strongly optimising for a single metric (e.g. number of factory-farmed animals) without adequately accounting for other potential important effects (e.g. on wild animals and longterm future).
I think you are alluding to a really important heuristic, which is thinking about what the optimal world would look like, and then figure out what would move us towards it. My ideal world does not include factory-farming (even if factory-farmed animals had positive lives, there likely are more efficient ways of producing wellbeing), which suggests opposition to factory-farming is good.
Nonetheless, opposition to factory-farming may also lead to effects which push against arriving to an optimal world. For example, my optimal world does not include lots of wild animal suffering, and abolitionist approaches to farmed animal welfare may decrease the likelihood of humans deciding to improve the lives of wild animals. So I am more sympathetic to welfare reforms than simply decreasing the consumption of animals.
In terms of ASRSs, I agree preparedness and response plans as well as R&D of resilient foods is more cost-effective at the margin than increasing the consumption of factory-farmed animals. However, directing edible animal feed to humans is probably one of the best approaches to increase food supply during ASRSs.
This calls to mind The Technological Completion Conjecture, which suggests we should focus on the order of inventions rather than whether we want then invented at all.
We could posit some “Moral Completeness Conjecture” in the same way. Then we only need look for the order in which we want interventions (like ASRS risk mitigation & stopping animal factory farming) that improve the world. It’s already trivial that som paths to utopia are much worse than others.
Welcome to the EA Forum, OGTutzauer! Thanks for the interesting thought.
I currently think one should focus on improving the welfare of farmed animals despite all the effects I discuss in the post. For example, I believe way more welfare would be gained by making all farmed animals live fully healthy lives than by eliminating the risk of ASRSs:
I estimated an expected annual mortality rate from ASRSs of 1.95*10^-5 adjusting results from the Centre for Exploratory Altruism Research (CEARCH), which corresponds to 161 k death/year (= 1.96*10^-5*8.2*10^9) for the current population. Assuming 29.2 DALY/death (= 1.98*10^9/(67.9*10^6)) based on the years of life lost and deaths in 2021, the expected annual burden from ASRSs is 4.70 MDALY (= 161*10^3*29.2).
I got 180 k MDALY for farmed animals, i.e. 38.3 k (= 1.80*10^11/(4.70*10^6)) times as much as the above burden from ASRSs.
I’m Not a Speciesist; I’m Just a Utilitarian. Great piece from Brian Tomasik illustrating key differences between animals and humans:
In essence, as I commented, humans are not only moral patients, but also moral agents.
Thanks for writing this. I’m pretty skeptical of your points related to food shocks and abrupt sunlight reduction scenarios, especially given the academic controversy surrounding nuclear winter scenarios (which I don’t believe you’ve adequately updated on despite this controversy being pointed out to you beneath one of your other posts). A nuclear exchange that’s of the magnitude required to potentially cause nuclear winter is also exceedingly unlikely before AGI arrives.
Also, note that in any such scenario, the human population will be far lower than it is today, so the quantity of animal feed is almost certainly not going to be the thing that determines whether humanity recovers from collapse (especially if we’re assuming that such a scenario occurs in the next few decades before AGI, when animal product consumption is expected to be pretty high).
Robin Hanson has also questioned whether farmland used to grow crops for animal feed would be ‘re-wilded’ - at least some of it will be used for development, which will actually reduce wild animal numbers. In any case, whether or not wild animals have net-negative lives is incredibly uncertain.
So, the direct effects on factory farmed animals of reducing consumption, plus lower greenhouse gas emissions (which, given my skepticism about your food shock points, and the fact that climate change probably increases the risk of an existential catastrophe by reducing global stability and increasing the likelihood of extreme/tail-risk climate scenarios), seem to make reducing consumption net-positive.
Nice points!
I did not update my analysis on why more global warming might be good to mitigate the food shocks caused by abrupt sunlight reduction scenarios following the comments because I was already aware of the controversy. I decided to defer to the results of Luisa Rodriguez, who thought about the matter much more than me. My position is similar to the one Toby Ord expresses in The Precipice (emphasis mine):
I agree that:
However, even if animal feed has a negligible impact on the likelihood of recovery, it may influence the chance of collapse.
Agreed, but note that “uncertain effect with zero expected value” + “certain effect with positive expected value” = “uncertain effect with positive expected value”. If the combined effect is sufficiently uncertain, I think it is often better to learn more, and keep options open, instead of acting as if one of the options is robustly good/bad.
I would say this corresponds to the common sense view, and I believe it may well be right. However, because of what I said just above, I do not think we should act as if we are sure that is the case.
I agree that animal feed may influence the chance of collapse, but I again think this will be negligible given high expected animal product consumption pre-AGI and the much smaller human population.
I certainly agree that we should not act as if we are sure, but I also think that saying we are completely “clueless” or “don’t know” is also inaccurate. We should of course take these considerations seriously, and think about them carefully and try to get more information about them (and to be clear, I also discount the climate-related worries for the possibility of AGI arriving before then).
I expect that answering this question overall (for all animals) is hard, but there exist specific animals for which it’s (probably) easy. A chicken farmed in the most egregious factory farmed conditions likely has a materially negative quality of life (as you noted), but also has minimal impact on climate change. I’m not sure how to size the effects of chicken farming on cropland for feed or the oversized-ness of the food system, so it’s possible this example could be rendered more complex by that consideration. Avian flu can be nasty (avian flu has been associated with mortality of c.50% in the past), so chickens seem likely to be a risk factor for pandemics.
Hi Sanjay,
I agree the case for reducing consumption is stronger for factory-farmed chickens (or other animals living super bad lives which have a small impact on global warming).
Hey Vasco—I love how your posts often bring together points about different cause areas, making connections between topics that those focused on particular causes are perhaps either unaware of or choose to ignore because they are complicated and inconvenient!
Do you have an estimate of how likely an abrupt sunlight reduction scenario (ASRS) is to occur over the next (e.g.) 100 years? My intuition is that for the cases of volcanic and impact winters it’s extremely low, perhaps less than 0.1%. In which case it probably comes down to the likelihood and consequences of nuclear war.
I also wonder to what extent food shocks could be mitigated by the development of plant (or fungi) crops that are much more able to tolerate ASRS conditions. I can imagine these sorts of crops might be developed for the purposes of space exploration, e.g. if humans attempt to establish permanent bases on the Moon and Mars over the coming decades.
Thanks, Matt!
Nice that you like them!
I agree nuclear war is the driver of the risk from ASRSs. When I last estimated the risk, I used Metaculus’ community prediction for a global thermonuclear war by 2070, which is currently at 13 %. For the ejection of soot into the stratosphere conditional on a global nuclear war (as defined by the Metaculus’ question), I used the results of Luisa Rodriguez, who thought about the matter much more than me. To estimate the reduction in future value given a certain soot ejection, I relied on historical data about socioeconomic indices plus a bunch of guesses.
Great point, increasing the consumption of animals is far from the only way to increase resilience against food shocks. From ALLFED’s page on resilient food solutions:
High-tech solutions:
Single cell protein from CO₂ and hydrogen.
Food from plant fiber.
Single cell protein that uses natural gas.
Low-tech solutions:
Simple, scalable greenhouses.
Seaweed.
Reallocating food for humans and animals.
Leaf protein concentrate.
Relocation of cool tolerant crops.