Hey Lewis, 3 of us in EA Philippines are doing some research/scoping work on how Filipinos can make an impact on local farm animal welfare and/or alternative proteins, so these questions are going to be oddly specific:
1. If you could advise 3 generalists who could spend ~5 hours per week each on one or two of the following issues by doing research/direct work/advocacy on them, how would you rank the 5 issues below, and why?
Local fish welfare
Local layer chicken welfare
Local pig welfare (which is heavily affected by the current outbreak of African Swine Fever)
Local broiler chicken welfare
Local alternative proteins (probably through focusing on growing the number of startups or companies making plant-based food)
The ranking above is currently how I think we should prioritize between the different issues, but they’re still very tentative. We’ve done ~30 hours of desk research to draft an initial problem profile on local land animal welfare, and had 7 expert interviews already with players working on these problems locally, including Animal Kingdom Foundation for layer chickens / cage-free, Humane Society International for plant-based advocacy, Worth the Health Foods (a plant-based startup), Fish Welfare Initiative, the Bureau of Animal Industry (on chicken welfare and the animal welfare act), and PAWS (Philippine Animal Welfare Society). We haven’t done as much research on pig welfare or alternative proteins, which is partly why I’m ranking them lower. (The 2 other people I work with in EA PH may disagree with my ranking above).
2. Also, is your answer above the same as how would you rank the 5 local issues above on which ones you (whether through OpenPhil or the EA Animal Welfare Fund) would be more excited to fund?
We can discuss more about the research we’ve done so far with you via email. We were planning to email you about this and ask even more questions within the next 1-2 weeks, but I thought of trying to ask this question ahead on your AMA, in case you wanted to share rough thoughts on this publicly!
Thanks for the questions Brian, and for the work you’re doing in the Philippines. We estimate the Philippines has the 10th highest number of vertebrate farmed animals alive at any time—mostly farmed fish—but we currently only have one Filipino farm animal grantee. So I’d love to hear from you and other Filipinos interested in doing EA animal advocacy. (Anyone reading this can email info@openphilanthropy.org or message me.) On your questions:
Your ranking of issues looks good to me. My main advice in your situation would be to look primarily at tractability in making this ranking. Our general experience in nations with lots of animals but less existing advocacy (e.g. China, Indonesia, Vietnam) is that tractability trumps scale (and neglect is largely irrelevant, since most approaches are neglected). Of course there are limits to this—don’t start a farm sanctuary. But within the large-scale issues you’re considering, I’d focus on which is most tractable, both because we’ve seen huge differences in this between issues and because I think the most important thing is to get some initial progress, which will then make it easier to advance all issues.
On the Open Phil side I’m excited to fund any promising new farm animal or alt-protein work in the Philippines (and in other large Southeast Asian nations). That’s true for how I think about the EA Fund too, though I’m only one of four managers there.
We would also love to have a conversation with you regarding your ask considerations. Our recently formed organisation works with animal advocacy groups to prioritise and optimise asks.
Hey Lewis, 3 of us in EA Philippines are doing some research/scoping work on how Filipinos can make an impact on local farm animal welfare and/or alternative proteins, so these questions are going to be oddly specific:
1. If you could advise 3 generalists who could spend ~5 hours per week each on one or two of the following issues by doing research/direct work/advocacy on them, how would you rank the 5 issues below, and why?
Local fish welfare
Local layer chicken welfare
Local pig welfare (which is heavily affected by the current outbreak of African Swine Fever)
Local broiler chicken welfare
Local alternative proteins (probably through focusing on growing the number of startups or companies making plant-based food)
The ranking above is currently how I think we should prioritize between the different issues, but they’re still very tentative. We’ve done ~30 hours of desk research to draft an initial problem profile on local land animal welfare, and had 7 expert interviews already with players working on these problems locally, including Animal Kingdom Foundation for layer chickens / cage-free, Humane Society International for plant-based advocacy, Worth the Health Foods (a plant-based startup), Fish Welfare Initiative, the Bureau of Animal Industry (on chicken welfare and the animal welfare act), and PAWS (Philippine Animal Welfare Society). We haven’t done as much research on pig welfare or alternative proteins, which is partly why I’m ranking them lower. (The 2 other people I work with in EA PH may disagree with my ranking above).
2. Also, is your answer above the same as how would you rank the 5 local issues above on which ones you (whether through OpenPhil or the EA Animal Welfare Fund) would be more excited to fund?
We can discuss more about the research we’ve done so far with you via email. We were planning to email you about this and ask even more questions within the next 1-2 weeks, but I thought of trying to ask this question ahead on your AMA, in case you wanted to share rough thoughts on this publicly!
Thanks for the questions Brian, and for the work you’re doing in the Philippines. We estimate the Philippines has the 10th highest number of vertebrate farmed animals alive at any time—mostly farmed fish—but we currently only have one Filipino farm animal grantee. So I’d love to hear from you and other Filipinos interested in doing EA animal advocacy. (Anyone reading this can email info@openphilanthropy.org or message me.) On your questions:
Your ranking of issues looks good to me. My main advice in your situation would be to look primarily at tractability in making this ranking. Our general experience in nations with lots of animals but less existing advocacy (e.g. China, Indonesia, Vietnam) is that tractability trumps scale (and neglect is largely irrelevant, since most approaches are neglected). Of course there are limits to this—don’t start a farm sanctuary. But within the large-scale issues you’re considering, I’d focus on which is most tractable, both because we’ve seen huge differences in this between issues and because I think the most important thing is to get some initial progress, which will then make it easier to advance all issues.
On the Open Phil side I’m excited to fund any promising new farm animal or alt-protein work in the Philippines (and in other large Southeast Asian nations). That’s true for how I think about the EA Fund too, though I’m only one of four managers there.
Hey Brian,
We would also love to have a conversation with you regarding your ask considerations. Our recently formed organisation works with animal advocacy groups to prioritise and optimise asks.
You can check out our work at animalask.org
Let me know if you would like to chat about this further.
Amy
Awesome, I’ve messaged you on the forum!