Thanks for raising this question, itās something I have thought a lot about as well.
You may find this post interesting, which I wrote just a few weeks ago.
TL;DR: I think it is extremely unclear which lives are net positive or negative and knowing the answer to this question is extremely hard. Factoring in this uncertainty leads to a stronger emphasis on (1) welfare-improving interventions (e.g., moving from factory farming to organic farming) and (2) interventions that reduce the number of lives that very likely seem not worth living (e.g., those of layer hens in battery cages).
I am quite skeptical whether different types of animals in organic farming conditions have lives worth living. But it seems like a reasonable strategy to try to move in this direction.
Thanks! Indeed thinking along the same lines although I have a much stronger intuition that most human and wild animal lives are lives worth living. From the comment section I liked
The link to the talk on wild animal welfareāwhile it makes the point that evolution is complicated and not guranteed to increase welfare welfare for all animals, I think I share their assumption that pain is an evolutionary tool for animals to stop doing things that will harm them (which would stop working if it would be overly abundant). In a similar way pleasure can be argued to encourage taking actions to achieve fitness-improving goals, so youād expect them to always somewhat balance out unless in niche cases where pain/āpleasure donāt have an effect on reproductive success (like an especially painful death, or a factory farm where activities from the animals donāt have an effect on their fitness).
The link to the neutral point discussion although most considerations seem more relevant for human lives (e.g., the ethical issues around legalising assisted suicide) I found it interesting that the estimated neutral point moves ādownā as people have lower average life satisfaction (e.g., 2 for UK and 0.5 for Ghana and Kenya).
Somewhat unrelated to this but I read your work for Animal Advocacy Africa. How do you look at the welfare of animals farmed in more traditional settings there? E.g., chickens in a village or small cattle herds by roaming tribes like the Kenyan Maasai? Just from looking at them I always guessed that they have a āgood lifeā but curious what you think! From some conversations I understood that factory farming also becomes more prominent in Kenya but the majority still seems to be farmed in more traditional settings.
I think the traditional settings are better for animal welfare, though there are huge differences and Iāve come to realise that traditional vs. intensive is a bit of a false dichotomy (but itās useful for communication purposes). To lay out my perspective in a bit more detail (I am not an animal scientist or anything and more of a generalist researcher who has read some of the work done by Welfare Footprint Project an others, attended some webinars, etc.):
I assume the worst settings to be the highly intensive settings without any proper regulations (e.g., factory farms in Europe have at least some welfare standards that they need to adhere to, while in many African countries this does not exist which can lead to really bad outcomes). The growth of factory farming in regions without proper regulation worries me a lot.
Second worst are probably intensive settings with better regulations (e.g., factory farms in the U.S. with enriched cages).
I also think that traditional/āsmallholder settings can be quite bad for animals, if their owners do not have the resources to provide proper care for them (e.g., adequate feed, housing, etc.). The upside here is that there usually arenāt that many animals farmed in those settings, but the quality of life can be quite bad as well, I think.
Semi-intensive or somewhat more financially stable forms of smallholder farming seem better. Not sure where you live, but I am thinking about smaller farmers as they still exist in Europe for example, where they are able to provide proper housing, feed, etc. and have not intensified their production as much.
The best are probably the kind of settings you envision, where farmers have the required resources and intentionally give animals more space and care about their welfare (organic, pasture-raised, etc.). But I imagine this to be more of a Global North phenomenon.
All of these categories are of course still heavy simplifications (e.g., enriched battery cages and deep littre systems for hens could both fall into the better-regulated factory farming settings category). And of course none of this tells us much about which (if any) of these lives are net positive/ānegative, but we already discussed that :)
Sorry for the long answer, but hope itās relevant/āinteresting. I think our top priority should be to avoid the worst outcome on this list (the first bullet point), which is what we are trying to do at AAA. Also because the numbers in that category could grow massively (also think about largely unregulated industries such as shrimp or insect farming).
Final point: I think people strongly underestimate the extent to which animal agriculture is already industrialised in parts of Africa (I did so too before digging deeper into this). This 2022 source cites 60% of hens in Africa being kept in cages. There tend to be a lot of smallholder farmers, but they keep quite a small number of animals per capita, so their animal numbers are outweighed by bigger industrial producers.
Thanks for raising this question, itās something I have thought a lot about as well.
You may find this post interesting, which I wrote just a few weeks ago.
TL;DR: I think it is extremely unclear which lives are net positive or negative and knowing the answer to this question is extremely hard. Factoring in this uncertainty leads to a stronger emphasis on (1) welfare-improving interventions (e.g., moving from factory farming to organic farming) and (2) interventions that reduce the number of lives that very likely seem not worth living (e.g., those of layer hens in battery cages).
I am quite skeptical whether different types of animals in organic farming conditions have lives worth living. But it seems like a reasonable strategy to try to move in this direction.
Thanks! Indeed thinking along the same lines although I have a much stronger intuition that most human and wild animal lives are lives worth living.
From the comment section I liked
The link to the talk on wild animal welfareāwhile it makes the point that evolution is complicated and not guranteed to increase welfare welfare for all animals, I think I share their assumption that pain is an evolutionary tool for animals to stop doing things that will harm them (which would stop working if it would be overly abundant). In a similar way pleasure can be argued to encourage taking actions to achieve fitness-improving goals, so youād expect them to always somewhat balance out unless in niche cases where pain/āpleasure donāt have an effect on reproductive success (like an especially painful death, or a factory farm where activities from the animals donāt have an effect on their fitness).
The link to the neutral point discussion although most considerations seem more relevant for human lives (e.g., the ethical issues around legalising assisted suicide) I found it interesting that the estimated neutral point moves ādownā as people have lower average life satisfaction (e.g., 2 for UK and 0.5 for Ghana and Kenya).
Somewhat unrelated to this but I read your work for Animal Advocacy Africa. How do you look at the welfare of animals farmed in more traditional settings there? E.g., chickens in a village or small cattle herds by roaming tribes like the Kenyan Maasai? Just from looking at them I always guessed that they have a āgood lifeā but curious what you think! From some conversations I understood that factory farming also becomes more prominent in Kenya but the majority still seems to be farmed in more traditional settings.
Thanks for your interest in our work!
I think the traditional settings are better for animal welfare, though there are huge differences and Iāve come to realise that traditional vs. intensive is a bit of a false dichotomy (but itās useful for communication purposes). To lay out my perspective in a bit more detail (I am not an animal scientist or anything and more of a generalist researcher who has read some of the work done by Welfare Footprint Project an others, attended some webinars, etc.):
I assume the worst settings to be the highly intensive settings without any proper regulations (e.g., factory farms in Europe have at least some welfare standards that they need to adhere to, while in many African countries this does not exist which can lead to really bad outcomes). The growth of factory farming in regions without proper regulation worries me a lot.
Second worst are probably intensive settings with better regulations (e.g., factory farms in the U.S. with enriched cages).
I also think that traditional/āsmallholder settings can be quite bad for animals, if their owners do not have the resources to provide proper care for them (e.g., adequate feed, housing, etc.). The upside here is that there usually arenāt that many animals farmed in those settings, but the quality of life can be quite bad as well, I think.
Semi-intensive or somewhat more financially stable forms of smallholder farming seem better. Not sure where you live, but I am thinking about smaller farmers as they still exist in Europe for example, where they are able to provide proper housing, feed, etc. and have not intensified their production as much.
The best are probably the kind of settings you envision, where farmers have the required resources and intentionally give animals more space and care about their welfare (organic, pasture-raised, etc.). But I imagine this to be more of a Global North phenomenon.
All of these categories are of course still heavy simplifications (e.g., enriched battery cages and deep littre systems for hens could both fall into the better-regulated factory farming settings category). And of course none of this tells us much about which (if any) of these lives are net positive/ānegative, but we already discussed that :)
You may find the concept of a āanimal welfare Kuznetz curveā interesting. Though Iām not sure how strong the evidence behind this is.
Sorry for the long answer, but hope itās relevant/āinteresting. I think our top priority should be to avoid the worst outcome on this list (the first bullet point), which is what we are trying to do at AAA. Also because the numbers in that category could grow massively (also think about largely unregulated industries such as shrimp or insect farming).
Final point: I think people strongly underestimate the extent to which animal agriculture is already industrialised in parts of Africa (I did so too before digging deeper into this). This 2022 source cites 60% of hens in Africa being kept in cages. There tend to be a lot of smallholder farmers, but they keep quite a small number of animals per capita, so their animal numbers are outweighed by bigger industrial producers.
Thanks so much for writing out all of this!
I am really surprised by the 60% number. Will update my internal model ;)
And fully agree that highly intensive farming with no regulation is the worst of both worlds and very worthwhile to work on. Thank you for that work!!