If the latter—which I think, after long-reflection, is the more plausible version, even though it is more prima facie unintuitive—then that is practically sufficient, but not necessary, for concentrating on the near-term, i.e. this generation of humans; animals won’t, for the most part, exist whatever we choose to do. I say not necessary because one could, in principle, think all possible lives matter and still focus on near-humans due to practical considerations.
You could rescue or even buy animals from factory farms. Plausibly, doing this for factory farmed chickens could be very cost-effective with such person-affecting views. Buying them from factory farms in developing countries, especially, perhaps. Buying factory farmed animals would be pretty uncooperative with the rest of the animal movement, though, and if you assign some moral weight to asymmetric or symmetric totalist views, this could be pretty bad in expectation (although the expected effect on supply is less than one per animal saved, so this might not look actively harmful with symmetric views).
EDIT: The value of information question is interesting. Suppose it would take you 2 months to research and carry out a rescue/buy for factory farmed chickens raised for meat. Then it wouldn’t be worth even looking into, because the chickens alive when you start will all have been killed already. But if someone does enough of the work for you that you could do it within about a month, then it could be worth it to do. Egg-laying hens live longer, probably about a year or two.
Working on abortion might be similar for someone who thought death was bad.
Yes, agree you could save existing animals. I’d actually forgotten until you jogged my memory, but I talk about that briefly in my thesis (chapter 3.3, p92) and suppose saving animals from shelters might be more cost-effective than saving humans (given a PAV combined with deprivationism about the badness of death).
You could rescue or even buy animals from factory farms. Plausibly, doing this for factory farmed chickens could be very cost-effective with such person-affecting views. Buying them from factory farms in developing countries, especially, perhaps. Buying factory farmed animals would be pretty uncooperative with the rest of the animal movement, though, and if you assign some moral weight to asymmetric or symmetric totalist views, this could be pretty bad in expectation (although the expected effect on supply is less than one per animal saved, so this might not look actively harmful with symmetric views).
EDIT: The value of information question is interesting. Suppose it would take you 2 months to research and carry out a rescue/buy for factory farmed chickens raised for meat. Then it wouldn’t be worth even looking into, because the chickens alive when you start will all have been killed already. But if someone does enough of the work for you that you could do it within about a month, then it could be worth it to do. Egg-laying hens live longer, probably about a year or two.
Working on abortion might be similar for someone who thought death was bad.
Yes, agree you could save existing animals. I’d actually forgotten until you jogged my memory, but I talk about that briefly in my thesis (chapter 3.3, p92) and suppose saving animals from shelters might be more cost-effective than saving humans (given a PAV combined with deprivationism about the badness of death).