Why I struggle to donate to animal welfare charities
And why alternative proteins feel like a much easier sell
Note: a bit of experimental writing, mostly about feelings.
I hate animal suffering, and especially factory farming. I feel it deeply, like in other people’s plates. I often imagine my own cat, Vega, suffering as other animals do in those farms, and I feel a mixture of deep sadness and powerlessness. Even a bit of anger.
Yet, I often don’t feel attracted by the idea of donating to animal welfare charities. The reason is not that this is my second favourite cause: there certainly are other important causes too, but I usually gravitate towards a portfolio approach: since I am not solving any “problem” on my own anyway, there is some cold comfort in helping solve many.
Still, I struggle to donate to animal welfare charities. It’s also not about lack of evidence or rigour, despite it generally being much more handwavy than for global health interventions: my heart does not crave rigour, even when my head does.
I think the reason I struggle is that advocacy and lobbying – the main activity for most animal welfare organisations – is a particularly hard sell for my heart. Don’t get me wrong: I know how much good corporate campaigns for caged egg-laying hens have achieved. I also think a similar success could be achieved with other animals, and would be delighted to see so.
However, animal advocacy is a tough sell. When you think of what each donation achieves, you can consider dozens or hundreds of innocent animals. But really, what we are funding is more protests, or boycotts, or negotiations with the companies or government agencies involved in factory farming. It is already complicated to feel satisfied with preventing malaria in people we will probably never know. It is even more complicated to extend the circle of empathy to non-human animals, especially when the vast majority of people around you think you are somewhat naive, weird and perhaps even radical[1]. But we are asked even further: to dedicate scarce resources – resources that could prevent children dying – to pressure and protest campaigns instead.
It also takes a significant dose of imagination to see how advocacy achieves full victory. The path for malaria is clearer: a combination of vaccines, nets, chemotherapy and perhaps gene drives that will obliterate the terrible Plasmodium disease. Our ancestors eliminated smallpox, and now it is our time to follow through with malaria. That is the sort of heroic story that energises my efforts.
Unfortunately, my heart complains that the vision for factory farming is much weaker. Some argue that if humanity could end slavery, it should also be able to end factory farming. Ending factory farming could echo the story of civil rights or the end of slavery: moral courage hammering the decision makers until meat eating is socially unacceptable. Unfortunately, humans have a strong preference for never admitting their behaviour so far has been deeply mistaken. Instead, it’s easier to provide lip service against animal suffering, but pick a socially acceptable excuse to change nothing in the behaviour.
Fortunately, I see some convoluted and torturous path to victory: I think most of the reason for people finding it acceptable to eat meat is that they and everyone they know do it. In other words, it is a rationalisation for behaviour. For example, omnivores who buy cruelty-free cosmetics are among the most receptive groups to behaviour change in light of animal welfare information (post here). This suggests alternative proteins might become significantly powerful in changing behaviour: once people stop eating meat for some time because they are satisfied with the alternative, they won’t look back.
It is for this reason that I believe it will be so important to make alternative proteins the socially acceptable, cool and fun way of eating. Not a sacrifice at all, but quite the contrary: a social plus instead of a sacrifice. I feel we need to give people an excuse to feel they are actually good guys. Fun, meatless food is the perfect one.
But alternative proteins have failed, haven’t they? I suspect that not really. Part of the issue that I currently see is that we are framing alternative proteins as direct substitutes for animal products. That is the wrong approach: disruptive innovation sparks when new products address a different market from the mainstream, see “The Innovator’s Dilemma”. That means that initially alternative proteins will not displace – but complement – animal products. This feels disappointing, and there is a chance they will progress no further than that. However, a small initial market, distinct from the mainstream, will give alternative proteins the beachhead necessary to keep innovating and improving, progressively eroding and undermining the animal-product mainstream “advantages”. Thus, I suspect that rather than tracking substitution metrics, for now it will be more informative to track the technical progress in alternative proteins, both in experience and in price, the two key factors.
Finally, in contrast to advocacy campaigns, alternative proteins have a great pitch: it’s not just about the animals, but also about the climate, the increased risk of famines, pandemics, and antimicrobial resistance, which already kills more people than malaria.
For this reason, I have started donating to The Good Food Institute, and I am excited about their work.
- ^
Since the book “All the Lives You Can Change: Effective Altruism for Christians” was published recently, I felt compelled to note that a positive notion of radicality – with this precise meaning – has frequently been highlighted in (Catholic) Christian teachings. For example, in Veritatis Splendor, St. John Paul II states:
“Jesus brings God’s commandments to fulfilment, particularly the commandment of love of neighbour, by interiorizing their demands and by bringing out their fullest meaning. Love of neighbour springs from a loving heart which, precisely because it loves, is ready to live out the loftiest challenges. Jesus shows that the commandments must not be understood as a minimum limit not to be gone beyond, but rather as a path involving a moral and spiritual journey towards perfection, at the heart of which is love (cf. Col 3:14). Thus, the commandment “You shall not murder” becomes a call to an attentive love which protects and promotes the life of one’s neighbour.”I think Christian teachings have rarely clearly stated that animals are “one’s neighbour”, even though the standard interpretation of the well-known Parable of the Good Samaritan is to argue for an expansive interpretation of the circle of moral consideration. Additionally, standard Christian teachings have emphasised unconditional compassion (“Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” Matthew 25:40), and St Francis of Assisi famously treated animals as brothers and sisters in God’s creation, to which that verse of Matthew should arguably apply:
“When he considered the prime source of all things, he was filled with more abundant piety, calling creatures, no matter how small, by the name of brother or sister, because he knew they had the same source as himself” (First Life of St. Francis). St. Francis was not a vegetarian nor a vegan, though.Similarly, in Laudato Si’ and citing the Catechism, late Pope Francis writes that “The Catechism firmly states that human power has limits and that ’it is contrary to human dignity to cause animals to suffer or die needlessly”.
All of this seems to point to a conclusion that the Catholic church is working towards, but, as many of our fellow human beings, are not really willing to accept it yet.
Change ‘alternative proteins’ to ‘cultivated meat’ and then I agree almost entirely.
I don’t think humanity will ever give up meat of our own volition. I’m not even sure that all the collective efforts and actions of vegans/vegetarians/advocates have caused a counterfactual decrease in meat production. I’m thinking about posing that question on here in its own post.
But once there’s an alternative to slaughter meat that tastes the same, is priced the same, and enjoys enough public acceptance to be bought in small-at-first, then swiftly increasing volumes… only then will factory farming stop existing. If there’s another path to ending factory farming in our lifetimes, then I don’t see it. And the downvotes I get when I talk about this dun’t help me see it, neither (grumpy cat face).
All else is re-arranging furniture on the Titanic, I fear.
Of course, the path is far from guaranteed. I’m personally on a quest to get to the fundamentals of what the path truly entails, what are the things holding it back, how do we win the fight for public acceptance (perhaps this is the most challenging potential ‘failure mode’), what are the tech barriers, how can they be overcome, how much investment is still needed (a lot), and on and on.
Good post, perhaps we can move towards being less apologetic in stating our conviction for alternative proteins and/or cultivated meat. I’m fine with APs, I just think they’re a stop-gap on the train to cultivated-town.
I basically agree, though my impression is that the rest of the solutions will play a complementary role.
I’m in the “killing/eating animals is (mostly) fine but torturing them/giving them intensely negative lives is not” camp. To me giving farm animals reasonable lives would basically be total victory (in this small slice of the total animal suffering).
I think the idea of “ending meat eating” without PBM seems very impossible in the medium term (10-30 years) (and maybe impossible with PBM), but forcing the government to regulate farms (adding as much utility as possible, with an allowed +30-50% price increase, effectively a tax on suffering) seems totally possible to me. Maybe not quite yet because we are too poor but at some point pretty soon (like potentially when the elasticity of meat starts approaching 0). I think the parsimonious answer is that people do in fact have compassion for farm animals. Just not as much as for dogs and they gain more from their suffering. I’d expect if we double US GDP in the next ~15 years even without a lot of other culture changes (ignoring that ai will rule the world for sec.) it will be much more politically palatable to ban (or tax) animal torture of all mammals at least.
I’m sure ACE and others have thought much more about this and have actual psychological evidence, for my part I guess I just feel a little bit optimistic that humanity can fix this soonish.
I’ve struggled with the same question. I care deeply about reducing animal suffering, but I often find myself more drawn to solutions that create viable alternatives than those that rely primarily on changing people’s minds.
I also mostly agree with your point about advocacy. While I think advocacy and awareness-building matter, I’m skeptical they can achieve the scale of change we need on their own. My intuition is that giving the world’s meat eaters better alternatives is likely to have a much larger long-term impact.
That said, I think corporate campaigns have demonstrated real impact, and getting governments and regulators on board will be crucial as well. These approaches seem complementary rather than competing.
I also have a tremendous amount of respect for activists doing this work. Immersing myself in footage from factory farms and the often-hostile reactions to it has had a real impact on my mental health. I’ve found it difficult to engage with that content day after day. For me, it’s easier to stay engaged through cultivated meat and alternative proteins, where I feel a greater sense of hope. But I deeply appreciate the people willing to do the difficult work of confronting animal suffering directly and asking the rest of us to pay attention.
That’s one reason I’m so interested in cultivated meat. I think it may be one of the few paths with the potential to reduce animal slaughter on a truly massive scale. If the largest meat companies eventually make the transition, I suspect it will be driven less by concern for animals and more by lower costs, less disease risk, greater supply chain stability, and better economics. At some point, it may simply become the better business decision.
I’ve been a monthly donor to GiveDirectly for years and recently considered moving those donations entirely to GFI. In the end, I decided to do both.
Thanks for the thought-provoking post.
P.S. I also thought the recent Peter Singer, Lives Well Lived podcast/Youtube episode with Bruce Friedrich from GFI was a great listen and worth checking out.
Fully agree with everything you point out.
Executive summary: The author feels emotionally unmotivated to donate to animal advocacy because advocacy-driven change is hard to visualize and celebrate, whereas alternative proteins offer a more compelling and hopeful path to ending factory farming by making meat-free choices attractive and socially acceptable.
Key points:
Although the author strongly opposes factory farming and supports a portfolio approach to giving, they struggle to feel drawn toward donating to animal welfare charities.
The main obstacle is not cause prioritization, evidence quality, or rigor, but that funding advocacy activities such as lobbying, protests, and corporate campaigns feels emotionally less satisfying than direct interventions.
The author finds it difficult to imagine a clear path to ending factory farming through moral persuasion alone because people often resist admitting their past behavior was wrong.
The author believes much meat consumption is sustained by social norms and rationalization, and that alternative proteins could enable lasting behavior change by giving people a practical reason to stop eating meat.
They argue that alternative proteins should be framed as enjoyable, socially desirable products rather than sacrifices or direct replacements for animal products, and that progress should be assessed through improvements in price and quality rather than substitution rates.
The author is optimistic about alternative proteins because they can appeal not only to animal welfare concerns but also to climate, famine, pandemic, and antimicrobial resistance risks, which is why they have chosen to donate to The Good Food Institute.
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.
Can you perhaps explain how this is different from say, AMF where what we are actually funding is pyrethroid production, manufacturing plants that create polyethylene nets people to hand out the nets?
In these campaigns the meat producing companies could engage in similar advertising that would lead to a negative sum game. More generally, in malaria there’s no human adversary. Perhaps I don’t like playing bad cop, even when I know it’s necessary.
Let me clarify that I totally get why this is important and necessary, and I take parts in THL campaigns, but it’s not something that I feel attracted to.
I don’t think they could and I don’t think that is what is happening. I don’t think any meat producing companies could… engage in some kind of similar advertising.
I think they already do it, under the premise of supporting local and rural farmers.
Can you explain how they’re the same?
It’s always possible to describe things in a very unflattering way, where you talk about some inputs as opposed to your goal or just describe it in a pessimistic light (eg, cheap/stingy vs. frugal). The OP describes “protests, or boycotts, or negotiations” as not something he wants to fund, but I think if you talked about funding pyrethroid production, that would also not be something he wants to fund, though that’s another way of describing insecticide-treated bednets. You could also go even worse and talk about “mass genocide of insects” or something.
To put it another way, I think global health people (who I have deep respect for) would be pretty upset and rightly call out someone writing a post where someone said they didn’t donate to global health charities since they don’t want to fund the chemical manufacturing industry, which is what we are actually purchasing.
I think I did not do a good job of framing this post. My goal was not to criticise the people working in animal welfare organisations, quite the contrary! I think they are doing very necessary work, and I am really grateful to them, especially given how weird this looks to most people. In other words, I am not claiming that these feelings are right, only that they exist.
The goal of the post was instead to reflect on something I feel (and presumably others feel too), which may be dragging donations to those organisations. In my case, this applies to politics too.
I think that’s fair. I appreciate that you engage with this problem that I think most people ignore.