This is a crosspost for Replacing chicken meat with beef or pork is better than the reverse, which was written by me, and published on One Step for Animals’ blog on 27 November 2024. One Step for Animals is an organisation aiming to cost-effectively decrease animal suffering by asking people to stop eating chickens.
The views expressed here are my own, not those of my employers. Thanks to Matt Ball for inviting me to write something on the trade-offs between animal welfare and greenhouse gas emissions of replacing chicken meat, and feedback on the draft.
Replacing beef or pork with chicken meat decreases greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but has major negative impacts on animal welfare. I estimate that replacing one serving of:
Beef with one from chicken meat from broilers in a conventional scenario, decreases GHG emissions by 6.44 kgCO2eq, but also leads to:
27.8 h more of annoying pain.
29.3 h more of hurtful pain.
4.59 h more of disabling pain.
2.79 s more of excruciating pain.
Pork with one from chicken meat from broilers in a conventional scenario, decreases GHG emissions by 0.212 kgCO2eq, but also leads to:
27.6 h more of annoying pain.
28.3 h more of hurtful pain.
4.27 h more of disabling pain.
2.56 s more of excruciating pain.
I calculated the above increases in the time animals spend in pain due to replacing beef or pork based on data from the Welfare Footprint Project (WFP) for broilers. I guess my assumptions underestimate the badness of replacing beef or pork. I assumed cows’ conditions are as bad as those of broilers in a reformed scenario, and pigs’ conditions are as bad as those of broilers in a conventional scenario. I think cows and pigs usually have better conditions, such that I overestimated the time they spend in pain, and therefore underestimated the increase in pain linked to replacing beef or pork.
Here is how WFP defines:
Disabling pain (2nd most intense). “Pain at this level takes priority over most bids for behavioral execution and prevents most 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”.
Excruciating pain (most intense). “All conditions and events associated with extreme levels of pain that are not normally tolerated even if only for a few seconds. In humans, it would mark the threshold of pain under which many people choose to take their lives rather than endure the pain. This is the case, for example, of scalding and severe burning events [in “large areas of the body, dismemberment, or extreme torture”]. Behavioral patterns associated with experiences in this category may include loud screaming, involuntary shaking, extreme muscle tension, or extreme restlessness. Another criterion is the manifestation of behaviors that individuals would strongly refrain from displaying under normal circumstances, as they threaten body integrity (e.g. running into hazardous areas or exposing oneself to sources of danger, such as predators, as a result of pain or of attempts to alleviate it). The attribution of conditions to this level must therefore be done cautiously. Concealment of pain is not possible”.
The decreases in GHG emissions due to replacing one serving of beef and pork are 0.0961 % and 0.00316 % of the GHG emissions per capita in 2023. Do you feel like decreasing your annual GHG emissions by these justifies tens of hours more of annoying pain, tens of hours more of hurtful pain, a few hours more of disabling pain, and a few seconds more of excruciating pain? I do not. Consider whether you would accept such trade-offs if it were your or others’ pets experiencing the additional pain.
There has been some research on how GHG emissions increase mortality from non-optimal temperature. Bressler (2021) calculated that 4.43 kt of additional CO2eq in 2020 would cause one extra human death in total from 2020 to 2100. Based on this, I estimate that 1 kg of CO2eq results in a total loss of 2.43 min of healthy life across all humans and years, or 0.186 ns per person-year (1 ns is 10^-9 s). Consequently, replacing one serving of beef and pork decreases total healthy human life by 15.6 min (beef) and 0.513 min (pork), or 1.20 ns and 0.0394 ns per person-year. Note the negative effects of the additional CO2eq are negligible until 2055 (see Fig. 3 of Bressler (2021)), so they are not only infinitesimal on a person-year basis, but also very uncertain given the difficulty of predicting now what will happen after 2055.
Do you feel like the above negative effects, a few minutes of healthy life lost in total spread across billions of humans over roughly a century, which is not more than a few billionths of one second per person-year, justify one sentient individual experiencing tens of hours more of annoying pain, tens of hours more of hurtful pain, a few hours more of disabling pain, and a few seconds more of excruciating pain? I do not.
Maybe replacing chicken meat with beef or pork could be harmful to wild animals because they require much more land? I agree decreasing the number of wild animals would be bad if their lives were worth living, but no one really knows whether this is the case or not. There is room for lots of suffering due to thirst, starvation, predation, disease and parasitism.
I believe the major drawback of replacing chicken meat with beef or pork is that these may well be worse for your health.
You can always replace chicken meat with legumes to improve your health, save money, or if you are very concerned about GHG emissions (I am not). I have been following a plant-based diet for 5 years. However, know that replacing chicken meat with beef or pork significantly decreases suffering.
I am not a medical doctor and this is not medical advice but one nice thing about this swap is that you replace chicken with beef without really any nutrient deficiency concerns. K2 is the only thing commonly mentioned to be higher in chicken than beef, and
The data don’t seem to show a huge difference
Determination of phylloquinone and menaquinones in food. Effect of food matrix on circulating vitamin K concentrations in Table 2 lists chicken leg at 8.5mcg/100g and leg at 8.9mcg/100g with “Beef” at 1.1mcg/100g but it’s unclear what cut of beef they’re referring to. Vitamin K Contents of Meat, Dairy, and Fast Food in the U.S. Diet gets 1.7, 7.2 and 5.1 mcg/100g for ground beef’s low, medium and high fat versions after broiling, much higher than the other number, but then gets 22.1mcg/100g for “chicken, barbecued”, so it’s at least triple the beef number in the same study. Not sure what explains the inconsistency or if there really is one.[1]
It is easily supplemented—I personally use this combined vitamin D & K2 supplement which is from a generally trustworthy (as far as I am aware) brand which nets out to $5c per day if you take the “default” serving amount of two[2] drops (totaling 1000IU D & 200mcg K2). It’s also easily eaten in far greater amounts if you consume Natto, which is vegan and hits a bunch of other things.
In terms of other things that people going plant-based commonly worry about like iron and b12, beef is actually higher than chicken.
This isn’t to count against anyone striving to eliminate all meat, of course, but in terms of recommendations we could—on my view—push harder on the PR for replacing chicken without having to worry about nutrient deficiencies.
One paper reports “MK-4” and the other “K2″ but note that MK-4 is one type of K2 and it seems here that it’s the only form present in either meat so that doesn’t explain the discrepancy.
I only take 1 drop; 1000iu is technically over the RDA for vitamin D (though safely below the generally accepted tolerable upper limit of 4000iu and you might have good reason to take more; I personally get some outside of this supplement as well) and K2 doesn’t technically have an RDA (the RDAs are based on K1) but I find 100mcg on top of the rest of my diet to intuitively be fine.
Thanks for the comment! I have added the following to the post, before the last paragraph:
@core_admiral , I follow these recommendations on supplementation.
I have looked more into this, and now believe than chicken meat is healthier than red meat. So I updated the last 2 paragraphs of the post to:
I strongly updated your comment now because it prompted me to look into the health aspect of the replacement, which I think is important, and was previously missing from the post.
I went through your estimates, and I actually found it more persuasive that buying broilers from a reformed scenario seems to get you both a reduction in pain and a more climate-positive outcome. I feel like the title and tone of the post set up an artificial tension between caring about animals and caring about the climate (under the constraint that you still want to eat meat)! Am I misinterpreting you?
How did you conclude that? How are the broilers reformed to not be painful?
I am not very familiar with the terminology, but from context clues such as:
That ‘conventional scenario’ is referring to conditions a la most factory farming, and ‘reformed scenario’ is referring to more humane conditions, including free range. But there’s a good chance I just misinterpreted this?
Regardless, whatever you think the reformed scenario is, it sure seems like it would be advantageous to switch your chicken consumption to it!
Thanks for the discussion!
There is a reduction in pain due to replacing chicken meat from broilers in a conventional scenario with that from a reformed scenario. However, replacing chicken meat from broilers in a reformed scenario with beef or pork still reduces annoying pain by tens of hours, hurtful pain by tens of hours, disabling pain by around 1 hour, and excruciating pain by tenths of seconds. I have now added numbers for these reductions in the sheet, which I got from the numbers below I already had in the sheet for the time in pain by animal.
Both scenarios involve factory-farming. The conventional scenario respects a faster growth rate, 60 g/d in the United States (US) and 62 g/d in the European Union (EU). The reformed scenario respects a slower growth rate, 45 to 46 g/d.
However, I estimate the welfare per chicken-year of the reformed scenario is 92.9 % larger than that of the conventional scenario, accounting for both pain and pleasure, and adjusting WFP’s time in pain[1] (for my post on replacing chicken meat by beef or pork, I did not adjust WFP’s time in pain). That is quite close to 100 %, which would imply neutral lives in the reformed scenario. So, given uncertainty, it might be that replacing beef or pork with chicken meat from broilers in a reformed scenario increases animal welfare besides decreasing GHG emissions.
The vast majority of chicken meat comes from broilers in a conventional scenario, so replacing chicken meat with beef or pork is still better than the reverse. Yet, I would say at least chickens’ lives can become positive over the next few decades in some animal-friendly countries. In this case, I think replacing beef or pork by chicken meat would be beneficial.
Thank you—this is a great clarification! Appreciate your work!
I think that the real divide is CAFO (Concentrated Animal Farming Operation) species vs non-CAFO. Runminants (sheep and beef) are at least partially fed on pastures, so they do not live in permanently overcrowded farms, with high agression and stress.
Between the two main CAFO species (chicken and pork) I have not strong opinions: given neuron counts and brain weigth, I think pigs are more morally valuable than chicken, while chicken live worse lives: hard to decide.
While I find vegetarianism utopic, in my view, CAFOs can be overcame (see here).
Thanks for the comment, Arturo.
Total welfare is the product between population and welfare per animal-year. The conditions determine the welfare per animal-year, but the population is inversely proportional to the edible meat per animal-year. Chickens grow slower than cows and pigs, so more chickens are needed than cows or pigs to produce a given amount of edible meat. Consequently, holding conditions constant, assuming negative lives, it is still good to replace chicken meat by beef or pork. Assuming positive lives, the opposite would be true.
There are more farmed fish and shrimp than pigs.
Rethink Priorities’ median welfare range of pigs is only 1.55 (= 0.515/0.332) times that of chickens. You may be interested in the post Why Neuron Counts Shouldn’t Be Used as Proxies for Moral Weight.
You may like How to Be a Techno-Optimist for Animals.
I have read both the RP and the post against neuron counts, and I find them unconvincing. Let’s take this: “There are studies that show increased volume of brain regions correlated with valanced experience, such as a study showing that cortical thickness in a particular region increased along with pain sensitivity”.
There is no way to know what is related to “pain sensitivity”, because all we know about consciousness comes from extrapolation. The only valanced experience you can observe is your own. Even if you find that a given part of the brain is related to pain, what matters most is not the size of that part of the brain but if there is a self to feel the pain.
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/3nLDxEhJwqBEtgwJc/arthropod-non-sentience
There are not “royal paths” to understand consciousness. There is a “pretty hard problem of consciousness” between you and any exercise of consciousness attribution and no checklist nor neural similarity will easily bridge that gap.
Great piece!
I think signaling that you don’t think GHG emissions are important does not help your message here / makes this less convincing that it would otherwise be!
Thanks, Johannes!
You may well be right. I tend to think it is good to be honest about one’s views if readers would want to know them, even if they make the piece less persuasive in some sense. Some readers worried about climate change may also find it interesting that deaths from non-optimal temperature are predicted to decrease in the North for something close to the median global warming scenario[1], which contrasts with claims that the impacts of global warming is increasingly large even there.
This is not to say that global warming is beneficial. Deaths from non-optimal temperature might decrease more with less warming.
I would note that if you find this analysis convincing but weight negative climate effects more than Vasco does, it really is cows that have the hugely negative climate impact; other animals have dramatically lower carbon footprints. So you might consider eating pork as a middle ground between animal welfare and climate.
That said, in many countries like the UK, most pigs have very low welfare in factory farms and most cows are always outside on pasture so probably have non-hellish lives. In the UK the trade-off between suffering and climate impact when it comes to meat choice is mostly inescapable. Organic pork I believe is raised outside but is less than 1% of the market so you may not be able to find it.
In other countries, cows are often kept indoors their whole lives. Though that is terrible, it does mean that ditching beef becomes a no brainer if you simultaniously care about climate and suffering. In those cases, the least of all evils would be pork, but know that there’s still quite a bit of suffering going on.
Executive summary: Replacing chicken meat with beef/pork significantly reduces animal suffering, and the greenhouse gas emission benefits of doing the reverse don’t justify the additional animal pain caused.
Key points:
Replacing beef/pork with chicken reduces emissions but causes 27+ hours of additional animal pain per serving, including several hours of severe “disabling pain”
The climate benefits are small: replacing beef saves 0.0961% of per capita emissions, while replacing pork saves 0.00316%
The climate impact on human health is minimal—about 15.6 minutes of total healthy life lost across all humans for beef replacement
While beef/pork require more land which could affect wild animals, it’s uncertain whether wild animal lives are net positive given natural suffering
The author recommends either adopting a plant-based diet or, if reducing meat is difficult, replacing chicken with beef/pork to minimize suffering
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.
I am sorry but I really don’t like and don’t find useful at all these kind of posts. Besides, I thought the aim of this forum is giving information, not advocating. Although this post provides some very good calculations and information, it misses the key point—it is 100% value-dependent—and the post is plain advocacy. I’m not against the bottom line, I’m really not decided in this topic (though I tend to lean to the contrary position), but it is really uncomfortable (? probably not the word I’m searching for) to see this here.
“Replacing chicken meat with beef or pork is better than the reverse”. Well, as said above, this is so if one holds your values or similar ones all else equal. You don’t say how much pain would you agree to exchange for how much CO2. I find it totally understandable, I don’t think anyone can give a good answer for their thresholds—I certainly don’t have one for mine—but this makes the whole post bullshit. “I think this, here are some not complete calculations that I say support thinking this, but if the calculations were different I state no reason to make anyone think I would stop thinking this. Don’t you think that these calculations support this?”
You are not sure whether wild animal’s lives are worth living, so you don’t account for land. Well, it is alright, but it is again a values thing. In addition, we actually do know that the diversity and size of natural ecosystems are important not only for the “natural” world, also for us humans, so it should be accounted for. Health effects are mentioned, great. But not quantified and compared as well.
Making numbers can be useful to get the sense of problems, but reaching a conclusion through numbers is only possible if one is able to make all the numbers needed with enough accuracy. It is no problem to give rough estimates, of course, but they carry large errors and errors compound, so pretty soon conclusions cannot be based solely on making numbers over rough estimates. In addition, rough estimates are usually values-based, so why not just state the values? One can very well argue “this rough estimate seems to me larger than this other rough estimate and so on, and based on my values, then, this conclusion follows”. Calculations can aid such comparisons. But your argumentation is not like this at all.
Compare the paragraph “Do you feel like the above negative effects (...) justify (...)? I do not” to “Based on my values the results of these quick calculations do not seem to justify (...)”. It reads very different. And subsequently you give additional information relevant for whether or not the thing is justified! How can anyone decide if something is justified before having all the relevant information?
This post seems like just a rationalisation of your values. So, better plainly state what you feel, give arguments and uncertainties, maybe support some of those arguments with some calculations, but do not focus on calculations and, particularly, do not pretend that the solution follows from those calculations. And, please, acknowledge that this is a values thing. You have yours, I have mine, and everybody has theirs.
I don’t have any intention to be harsh with you or this post—sorry if I’ve been too direct, I already spent way too much time writing to polish the text. I just tried to be comprehensive because these issues are quite common in this forum, and I really think they are harmful. Seeing the reality is the first step needed to be able to change it and numbers can put a scientific and objective gloss on things that are completely or mostly values-led. Let’s avoid it or/and be clear with what we do!
[Edit: And please, for those of you who don’t agree with the comment, spell out your disagreement instead of downvoting to hide it. A couple of sentences suffice.]