Thanks for sharing this! I had considered attempting some sort of back of the envelope calculation like this myself so I’m glad to see your effort.
I also found it interesting to see some of your guesses/assumptions, like “Suppose without cell-based meat, humans will use farm animals for another 10.000 years at 10^11 animals per year.” I think that, if a more rigorous cost-effectiveness analysis was attempted, it would be good to survey experts on their intuitions on some big questions like that.
This sort of modelling is definitely not my forte, so apologies if I’m misunderstanding. Am I right in saying that the model currently assumes *no* diminishing returns? I.e. that the 100 millionth dollar donating to cultivated meat R&D is equal to the 1st dollar? I think that the value of additional contributions on the margin is the important (and difficult) thing to estimate.
Animal Charity Evaluators estimates a cost-effectiveness of around 10 farm animals spared per euro donated to its top recommended charities. This is an order 10 lower than cell-based meat R&D.
I’m not sure that ACE’s CEAs should really be compared to your CEA. The methodologies are very different. E.g. ACE’s CEAs exclude any uncertain, medium-term effects, whereas your CEA is essentially entirely based on those sorts of medium-term effects (I say medium-term to distinguish effects on farmed animals in the next few centuries from effects on other future sentient beings such as artificial sentience).
A couple of lower importance comments, for the main thrust of your post:
Based only on the responses of non-vegans who answered that they reduced their animal product consumption, it requires roughly 1000 leaflets for one equivalent conversion to veganism.
ACE’s meta-analysis provides less reason for optimism than the study you refer to.
We can also estimate the overall cost-effectiveness of animal advocacy campaigns. The US population has an order of magnitude 10^8 people. Suppose meat consumption is decreased by 10% due to people becoming reducetarians, vegetarians or vegans. Suppose 10% of this reduction is due to animal advocacy campaigning… This means cell-based meat R&D is about 1000 times more effective than average animal advocacy.
I think that this misses most of the impact of most animal advocacy campaigning. I don’t see the main effect of animal advocacy campaigning as being to cause diet change in the short-term. Apart from the indirect positive effects for future sentient beings such as artificial sentience (which could apply similarly to cultured meat R&D success and animal advocacy success), I see the main effects as being:
Attitude change (among decision-makers and/or the public), which makes transformative change in laws and regulations more likely. I.e. this brings the abolition of factory farming closer, and increases the likelihood that it will ever be abolished.
In the short term, there may also be a reduction of animal suffering from welfare reforms, which your model and comparison hasn’t accounted for, even though most animal welfare organisations seem to see this as the main positive outcome.
about the 10.000 years assumption: that is only used to calculate a high estimate of clean meat R&D. I’m not so worried if that is an overstimate.
My calculation assumes indeed no diminishing returns for clean meat R&D. I don’t expect diminishing returns in the short run, when so much need to be researched. In my model, the decreasing neglectedness accounts for diminishing returns. When funding and investments by others increses to 1 billion dollars, the cost-effectiveness decreases with a factor 10. Anyway, the point is that clean meat R&D is a good opportunity in the short run, for the next 10 or 20 years.
ACE’s CEA methodology is different indeed, but Im not convinced that it is really incomparable to mine. A basic assumption is that ACE’s top charities who are not involved in clean meat (i.e. the charities except Good Food Institute), are not capable of eliminating animal farming before clean meat can.
The CEA of leafleting could be an overestimate indeed. The study that I did, was not randomized controlled.
About missing the impact of animal advocacy: I’m sceptical about the possibility of attitudinal change: just like the expectations of leafleting were too high (not strong evidence of behavioral change), the expectations about other animal rights advocacy could be too high as well. The case for clean meat is different: in the past we already have striking examples of animals being replaced by more than 90% within 50 years due to new technologies (e.g. horses → cars, whale oil → kerosene, messenger pigeons → telephone/telegraph, sheep wool → synthetic fibers, animal insulin → human recombinant DNA insulin, rabbit skin tests for cosmetics → human skin tissueand perhaps now movie animals → CGI animals). These transitions were independent from animal rights campaigning.
I do see much room left for attitudinal change, in particular moral circle expansion (see e.g. https://stijnbruers.wordpress.com/2020/03/17/consider-remarkable-animal-capabilities-to-expand-the-moral-circle/), but perhaps after 10 or 20 years, when clean meat is already well on track and lost its opportunity for more funding (and returns diminished). Also, once people automatically decrease their animal meat consumption, they suffer less from cognitive dissonance, which means attitudinal change might become easier.
I’m skeptical about the welfare reforms strategy. For me to be indifferent between the current welfare reforms and an X% reduction of animal farming, I think X is very low, probably lower than 10%. For example cage free eggs: I don’t believe that, if all battery cages were abolished and chickens had free range, that count for more than a 10% improvement in welfare, and probably a 0% in animal rights. Given moral uncertainty, I put some probability on a rights-based ethic where animals should not be used as merely a means. Also, some of the future possible welfare reforms could be so difficult, that clean meat (or animal-free eggs) will arrive sooner, making the welfare reforms campaigns obsolete. Also, welfare campaigns are also much less neglected than clean meat R&D.
Thanks for sharing this! I had considered attempting some sort of back of the envelope calculation like this myself so I’m glad to see your effort.
I also found it interesting to see some of your guesses/assumptions, like “Suppose without cell-based meat, humans will use farm animals for another 10.000 years at 10^11 animals per year.” I think that, if a more rigorous cost-effectiveness analysis was attempted, it would be good to survey experts on their intuitions on some big questions like that.
This sort of modelling is definitely not my forte, so apologies if I’m misunderstanding. Am I right in saying that the model currently assumes *no* diminishing returns? I.e. that the 100 millionth dollar donating to cultivated meat R&D is equal to the 1st dollar? I think that the value of additional contributions on the margin is the important (and difficult) thing to estimate.
I’m not sure that ACE’s CEAs should really be compared to your CEA. The methodologies are very different. E.g. ACE’s CEAs exclude any uncertain, medium-term effects, whereas your CEA is essentially entirely based on those sorts of medium-term effects (I say medium-term to distinguish effects on farmed animals in the next few centuries from effects on other future sentient beings such as artificial sentience).
A couple of lower importance comments, for the main thrust of your post:
ACE’s meta-analysis provides less reason for optimism than the study you refer to.
I think that this misses most of the impact of most animal advocacy campaigning. I don’t see the main effect of animal advocacy campaigning as being to cause diet change in the short-term. Apart from the indirect positive effects for future sentient beings such as artificial sentience (which could apply similarly to cultured meat R&D success and animal advocacy success), I see the main effects as being:
Attitude change (among decision-makers and/or the public), which makes transformative change in laws and regulations more likely. I.e. this brings the abolition of factory farming closer, and increases the likelihood that it will ever be abolished.
Wider momentum for further animal advocacy campaigning and moral circle expansion.
In the short term, there may also be a reduction of animal suffering from welfare reforms, which your model and comparison hasn’t accounted for, even though most animal welfare organisations seem to see this as the main positive outcome.
Thanks
about the 10.000 years assumption: that is only used to calculate a high estimate of clean meat R&D. I’m not so worried if that is an overstimate.
My calculation assumes indeed no diminishing returns for clean meat R&D. I don’t expect diminishing returns in the short run, when so much need to be researched. In my model, the decreasing neglectedness accounts for diminishing returns. When funding and investments by others increses to 1 billion dollars, the cost-effectiveness decreases with a factor 10. Anyway, the point is that clean meat R&D is a good opportunity in the short run, for the next 10 or 20 years.
ACE’s CEA methodology is different indeed, but Im not convinced that it is really incomparable to mine. A basic assumption is that ACE’s top charities who are not involved in clean meat (i.e. the charities except Good Food Institute), are not capable of eliminating animal farming before clean meat can.
The CEA of leafleting could be an overestimate indeed. The study that I did, was not randomized controlled.
About missing the impact of animal advocacy: I’m sceptical about the possibility of attitudinal change: just like the expectations of leafleting were too high (not strong evidence of behavioral change), the expectations about other animal rights advocacy could be too high as well. The case for clean meat is different: in the past we already have striking examples of animals being replaced by more than 90% within 50 years due to new technologies (e.g. horses → cars, whale oil → kerosene, messenger pigeons → telephone/telegraph, sheep wool → synthetic fibers, animal insulin → human recombinant DNA insulin, rabbit skin tests for cosmetics → human skin tissueand perhaps now movie animals → CGI animals). These transitions were independent from animal rights campaigning.
I do see much room left for attitudinal change, in particular moral circle expansion (see e.g. https://stijnbruers.wordpress.com/2020/03/17/consider-remarkable-animal-capabilities-to-expand-the-moral-circle/), but perhaps after 10 or 20 years, when clean meat is already well on track and lost its opportunity for more funding (and returns diminished). Also, once people automatically decrease their animal meat consumption, they suffer less from cognitive dissonance, which means attitudinal change might become easier.
I’m skeptical about the welfare reforms strategy. For me to be indifferent between the current welfare reforms and an X% reduction of animal farming, I think X is very low, probably lower than 10%. For example cage free eggs: I don’t believe that, if all battery cages were abolished and chickens had free range, that count for more than a 10% improvement in welfare, and probably a 0% in animal rights. Given moral uncertainty, I put some probability on a rights-based ethic where animals should not be used as merely a means. Also, some of the future possible welfare reforms could be so difficult, that clean meat (or animal-free eggs) will arrive sooner, making the welfare reforms campaigns obsolete. Also, welfare campaigns are also much less neglected than clean meat R&D.