Happy birthday! As a present, here are a few thoughts I’d love your take on:
7. Efficiency still matters to producers even as societies get richer. If cultivated meat can deliver the same product more cheaply, lower prices and/or higher margins are still powerful competitive advantages over slaughter meat.
23. Yes—and I wonder whether directly funding things like wildlife rehabilitation could outperform some current WAW research, which seems several steps removed from actually helping animals. Is there a funding level or time horizon at which you’d want to see the field shift more heavily from research/field-building toward interventions?
34. Shouldn’t we focus disproportionately on the shots most likely to score? Presumably the portfolio shouldn’t be evenly spread if some approaches look more promising than others.
7. Agreed. Though I’d note “more efficient” doesn’t mean “cheaper,” as it could make more much more efficient use of much costlier ingredients.
23. I’m skeptical that funding wildlife rehab could ever be cost-effective—my understanding is it costs >$50/animal, or >1,000X worse than farm animal interventions. I think it’s a tricky balance between research and interventions, given I doubt most of the ones we could do today would be cost-effective. (More humane rodent control may be an exception.)
34. Yes, totally agree we should focus disproportionately on the shots most likely to score.
Happy birthday! As a present, here are a few thoughts I’d love your take on:
7. Efficiency still matters to producers even as societies get richer. If cultivated meat can deliver the same product more cheaply, lower prices and/or higher margins are still powerful competitive advantages over slaughter meat.
23. Yes—and I wonder whether directly funding things like wildlife rehabilitation could outperform some current WAW research, which seems several steps removed from actually helping animals. Is there a funding level or time horizon at which you’d want to see the field shift more heavily from research/field-building toward interventions?
34. Shouldn’t we focus disproportionately on the shots most likely to score? Presumably the portfolio shouldn’t be evenly spread if some approaches look more promising than others.
Thanks Siobhan! On your points:
7. Agreed. Though I’d note “more efficient” doesn’t mean “cheaper,” as it could make more much more efficient use of much costlier ingredients.
23. I’m skeptical that funding wildlife rehab could ever be cost-effective—my understanding is it costs >$50/animal, or >1,000X worse than farm animal interventions. I think it’s a tricky balance between research and interventions, given I doubt most of the ones we could do today would be cost-effective. (More humane rodent control may be an exception.)
34. Yes, totally agree we should focus disproportionately on the shots most likely to score.