Executive summary: The scale of farmed animal suffering vastly exceeds the mortality risks from engineered pandemics, suggesting a need to prioritize animal welfare over biorisk mitigation.
Key points:
Farmed animal suffering is estimated to be at least 100 times greater than the mortality risk from engineered pandemics.
Annually, approximately 211 billion animals are slaughtered for meat, resulting in around 9.58 billion human-equivalents of suffering.
While biorisk focuses on extinction-level pandemics with an expected death toll of ~3.8 million per year, industrial farming’s impact on well-being is substantially larger.
Uncertainties include the subjective nature of welfare estimates, potential underestimation of DALYs from farming, and the possible severe consequences of pandemics leading to increased animal suffering.
The author highlights the need for more rigorous comparisons of Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) lost between farming and pandemics.
Recommendations include prioritizing animal welfare in cause prioritization due to its significantly larger scale of impact.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.
Executive summary: The scale of farmed animal suffering vastly exceeds the mortality risks from engineered pandemics, suggesting a need to prioritize animal welfare over biorisk mitigation.
Key points:
Farmed animal suffering is estimated to be at least 100 times greater than the mortality risk from engineered pandemics.
Annually, approximately 211 billion animals are slaughtered for meat, resulting in around 9.58 billion human-equivalents of suffering.
While biorisk focuses on extinction-level pandemics with an expected death toll of ~3.8 million per year, industrial farming’s impact on well-being is substantially larger.
Uncertainties include the subjective nature of welfare estimates, potential underestimation of DALYs from farming, and the possible severe consequences of pandemics leading to increased animal suffering.
The author highlights the need for more rigorous comparisons of Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) lost between farming and pandemics.
Recommendations include prioritizing animal welfare in cause prioritization due to its significantly larger scale of impact.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.