TL;DR: This initiative would have led to bad consequences and the EA movement needs to be more evidence-based when it comes to animal agriculture. I leave a few suggestions to improve animal welfare more effectively below.
In my opinion, this topic is the one where the Effective Altruism movement is the most in its ivory tower still. Everything I’ve read on this topic by the EA community, like Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation or the chapter dedicated to it in What We Owe The Future showcases a total separation from reality. I think we’re all on board with the idea that we should reduce harm in our farming as much as possible, but claims like 99% of meat being factory farmed are just intuitively false to anyone that has spent any significant amount of time in the countryside and farms outside of the USA. Most countries don’t even have industrial farming. It’s either wrong out of genuine ignorance, or purposeful scope creep to advance an agenda (for lack of a better term) - neither of which lends it credibility or help the cause reduce harm.
Another issue I would raise is that utilitarians seems to remove their consequentialist ethos when discussing economics of agriculture. The well-intentioned arguments aimed at reducing harm often lead to more harm in practice. The Green agenda is politically ideological and pseudoscientific at its core, and the arguments commonly put forward, not least by this initiative, are derivatives of this framework.
Take a few of the claims on the initiative’s website[0]:
This petition, specifically, makes claims like “A drastic reduction in the consumption of animal-based food is needed”.
“Numerous scientific studies show how industrial animal husbandry is disastrous for the environment and detrimental to our health.”
It is more harmful to the climate than all global traffic combined and – due to the cultivation of soy monocultures for animal fattening – it is also responsible for about 90% of all deforestation in the Amazon. Animal products require 83% of the world’s agricultural land (pasture land and cultivation of animal feed), but only provide us with 18% of the calories.
Most of this is just not true.[1][2] It stems from a conflation between biogenic greenhouse gas emissions and anthropogenic fossil fuel emissions. The former is part of the natural carbon cycle, with animals playing a crucial role in maintaining healthy ecosystems which acts as a carbon sink. Needless to say, the latter is the cause of climate change, and the shift to artificial fertiliser would only exacerbate fossil fuel emissions, as well as deterioration of soils and abandonment of the vast, vast, majority of agricultural land—pasture.
Extensive, or organic agriculture shows absolutely no health benefits whatsoever, is extremely harmful for the environment as it requires far more land, and uses outdated techniques and chemicals which pose a much larger risk to our health and the environment. In fact, capping organic agriculture might do a lot for the environment and food security in Switzerland.
In particular, the sheer volume of antibiotics used on intensively farmed animals is a serious security threat.
This claim is true, but besides not being entirely related to intensive vs extensive agriculture other than at a question of scale, routine administration of antibiotics has been forbidden for about 20 years in Switzerland, and will be forbidden from this year across the entire EU. The principal cause of antibiotic resistance is its use in feed, which has been banned in Switzerland since the turn of the century.
This is to say nothing of the horrendous working conditions of people whose job involves killing animals all day, every day.
This claim may be true in many countries, but this isn’t a subject directly related to this initiative and I would wager that the expected value of investing on improving working conditions in Switzerland might be limited.
Smaller farms can hardly withstand the price pressure. They have to produce more and more meat for less and less money. At the same time, «factory farms» are shooting up, trampling on animal welfare, routinely using antibiotics and importing huge quantities of animal feed from abroad.
Reducing the consumption of animal products can therefore directly improve the security of supply for Swiss agriculture.
Another argument that showcases a lack of understanding of the agricultural sector. Switzerland can never be self-sufficient on plant agriculture, its geography allows for animal husbandry and little else. Switzerland exports cheese, not pears. The choice is between producing livestock and producing nothing, you can’t grow soy beans extensively in alpine valleys. In the future, we may be able to create vast warehouses with vertical plant farming, but that is not the current reality.
This brings me nicely to another important topic that one grapples with in the subject of agriculture. The quote above is a full admission that this proposal would increase food prices. In the middle of a supply-side inflationary shock, the best initiative the EA community could come up with would have led to an even larger increase in food prices. This alone would be reason enough to be rejected, however the point I want to make here is that this is an extremely regressive end result. This would substantially hurt the poorest in society, even in a relatively wealthy country like Switzerland, and that touches on people’s perception of fairness. Fairness is one of the most important moral axes in human psychology according to Haidt’s moral foundations theory.
Going Forward
What would a good initiative propose to reduce harm in agriculture?
Framing—Focus on specifics
The largest critique of this initiative was the idea that “there is no factory farming in Switzerland”. In fact, even the supporters of the legislation agree:
“It’s true that we don’t have a lot of big farms in Switzerland,” says legislator Martina Munz, whose Social Democratic party favors the ban. “But we have a lot of things we can do better when it comes to animal welfare. It’s not just the number of animals in the group, it’s also about how they’re kept, it’s about slaughtering and transportation.”
It is understandable that when the framing implies there is something in society which is widespread and horrible, people’s first instinct is to reject the claim on the grounds that this just isn’t the case. On the other hand, if you asked Swiss people if they’re in favour of keeping animals in good conditions, not housing thousands of birds together in disgusting conditions, etc. I’m sure they would agree.
Why not a series of initiatives to improve husbandry practices?
Perhaps a focus on silvopasture?
How about an initiative to promote the use of food waste in agriculture even more? China is currently processing food waste with cockroaches and using them to feed pigs.
2. Scientific legitimacy, not politically compromised
Lots of the arguments used in this initiative are copied over from the George Monbiot, far left/Green playbook. This means it’ll naturally alienate the vast majority of the population, not least those with the most skin in the game—farmers. Lets base initiatives on the best available evidence. Cows can be an even larger carbon sink than they are now when fed the right additives and with sustainable grazing practices [3]. Let’s leave the vitriol to politicians and work on scientifically sound solutions.
3. Fair outcomes
The expected value from these policies needs to be more obviously positive. We can’t demand a trade-off between abundant food for the poorest in society, and animal welfare as the latter will always lose out, especially in this context of already existing relatively high-welfare standards and high food prices. One example of a policy with fair outcomes here would be to propose cage-free egg production. It’s entirely possible to produce cheap eggs intensively with uncaged, and even free range chickens.[4]
claims like 99% of meat being factory farmed are just intuitively false to anyone that has spent any significant amount of time in the countryside and farms outside of the USA
I don’t think this is the claim typically being made. Rather, X% of farmed animals, as individuals, not by weight, are factory farmed. The vast majority of farmed land vertebrates are chickens, and the vast majority of them are factory farmed. The vast majority of farmed vertebrates (land or aquatic) are farmed fish, and the vast majority of them are factory farmed. Factory farms produce disproportionate numbers of animals relative to the number of farms, and countryside farms are badly unrepresentative of the average animal’s life. To be fair, this is a subtle issue, and we shouldn’t expect people to have a good sense of such numbers just through experience.
We estimate that over 90% of farmed animals globally are living in factory farms at present. This includes an estimated 74% of farmed land animals (vertebrates only) and virtually all farmed fish.[1] However, there is substantial uncertainty in these figures given the land animal estimates’ heavy reliance on information from Worldwatch Institute with unclear methodology[2] and limited data on fish farming.
“Most of this is just not true.[1][2] It stems from a conflation between biogenic greenhouse gas emissions and anthropogenic fossil fuel emissions. The former is part of the natural carbon cycle, with animals playing a crucial role in maintaining healthy ecosystems which acts as a carbon sink.”
I do think this issue is subtle, and people on both sides often get it wrong or go too far. FAO even put out a piece aiming to correct bad simplifications (https://news.trust.org/item/20180918083629-d2wf0). Being part of a natural carbon cycle (even with no consistent new net emissions) doesn’t mean there’s no warming impact. Methane levels in the atmosphere will be higher than with less ruminant farming since that carbon would spend less of its time in plants or in the soil and be released relatively more as methane than CO2, and methane is more potent than CO2 per amount of carbon. Furthermore, ruminant farming is increasing, so methane levels are increasing. Your source [2] acknowledges some of these considerations.
Yeah, this is an instance of the natural fallacy, where if a claim is shown with a natural label, it immediately means that it’s good/healthy/climate change reducing/etc.
As an animal advocate myself, I agree that animal advocates often exaggerate the environmental impact of animal agriculture, intentionally or not.
I haven’t checked the specifics for this campaign, and I don’t know much about the situation in Switzerland, so won’t comment on that unless I look further into it.
So, I’m not that familiar with this legislation, but I think the (key) purpose behind the banning of factory farms, would be a major political, legislative win that has a strategic value.
But the comment’s main arguments are:
Factory farming is minimal in Switzerland, so this legislation doesn’t do much
There are big negative consequences to this legislation banning of farms (price increases, food security).
Don’t these two points conflict with each other? Also, neither undermines the main purpose of the legislation mentioned above.
Other comments:
I’m confused what “ivory tower” and “consequentialism” add here—I’m sure EA has a big consequentialist streak, but I’m not sure how relevant that is to reducing torture on factory farms, or reduce huge mortality from diseases like malaria.
Similarly, whether I agree or don’t agree with unfairness or not, I’m unsure what “moral axes in human psychology according to Haidt’s moral foundations theory” adds.
RE: Regressiveness, I think it’s possible to model price increases due to policy changes, and I would expect to see numbers if this was significant.
Dealing with regressiveness, pigovian taxes, and progressive taxes have been a thing for a long time, and seem to be tools we can use.
“claims like 99% of meat being factory farmed”, but I can’t find this claim on this post or on the website. Where did you get this and what was the context it was used in?
I think your comment is full of mistakes and misinterpretations, and at least one of them is:
Extensive, or organic agriculture shows absolutely no health benefits whatsoever, is extremely harmful for the environment as it requires far more land, and uses outdated techniques and chemicals which pose a much larger risk to our health and the environment.
As far as I understand, the initiative would’ve adopted the welfare standards of organic agriculture, without any of the other characteristics of organic food that cause the things you mentioned.
Even setting aside the organic argument, an insistence on extensive agricultural alone is also negative for the environment due to the lower output per hectare. Lots of literature has been written on this.
Yeah, the comment seems to overstate the problems of the law (except maybe the food prices one.) And that’s despite disagreeing with environmentalism or it’s goals.
TL;DR: This initiative would have led to bad consequences and the EA movement needs to be more evidence-based when it comes to animal agriculture. I leave a few suggestions to improve animal welfare more effectively below.
In my opinion, this topic is the one where the Effective Altruism movement is the most in its ivory tower still. Everything I’ve read on this topic by the EA community, like Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation or the chapter dedicated to it in What We Owe The Future showcases a total separation from reality. I think we’re all on board with the idea that we should reduce harm in our farming as much as possible, but claims like 99% of meat being factory farmed are just intuitively false to anyone that has spent any significant amount of time in the countryside and farms outside of the USA. Most countries don’t even have industrial farming. It’s either wrong out of genuine ignorance, or purposeful scope creep to advance an agenda (for lack of a better term) - neither of which lends it credibility or help the cause reduce harm.
Another issue I would raise is that utilitarians seems to remove their consequentialist ethos when discussing economics of agriculture. The well-intentioned arguments aimed at reducing harm often lead to more harm in practice. The Green agenda is politically ideological and pseudoscientific at its core, and the arguments commonly put forward, not least by this initiative, are derivatives of this framework.
Take a few of the claims on the initiative’s website[0]:
Most of this is just not true.[1][2] It stems from a conflation between biogenic greenhouse gas emissions and anthropogenic fossil fuel emissions. The former is part of the natural carbon cycle, with animals playing a crucial role in maintaining healthy ecosystems which acts as a carbon sink. Needless to say, the latter is the cause of climate change, and the shift to artificial fertiliser would only exacerbate fossil fuel emissions, as well as deterioration of soils and abandonment of the vast, vast, majority of agricultural land—pasture.
Extensive, or organic agriculture shows absolutely no health benefits whatsoever, is extremely harmful for the environment as it requires far more land, and uses outdated techniques and chemicals which pose a much larger risk to our health and the environment. In fact, capping organic agriculture might do a lot for the environment and food security in Switzerland.
This claim is true, but besides not being entirely related to intensive vs extensive agriculture other than at a question of scale, routine administration of antibiotics has been forbidden for about 20 years in Switzerland, and will be forbidden from this year across the entire EU. The principal cause of antibiotic resistance is its use in feed, which has been banned in Switzerland since the turn of the century.
This claim may be true in many countries, but this isn’t a subject directly related to this initiative and I would wager that the expected value of investing on improving working conditions in Switzerland might be limited.
Reducing the consumption of animal products can therefore directly improve the security of supply for Swiss agriculture.
Another argument that showcases a lack of understanding of the agricultural sector. Switzerland can never be self-sufficient on plant agriculture, its geography allows for animal husbandry and little else. Switzerland exports cheese, not pears. The choice is between producing livestock and producing nothing, you can’t grow soy beans extensively in alpine valleys. In the future, we may be able to create vast warehouses with vertical plant farming, but that is not the current reality.
This brings me nicely to another important topic that one grapples with in the subject of agriculture. The quote above is a full admission that this proposal would increase food prices. In the middle of a supply-side inflationary shock, the best initiative the EA community could come up with would have led to an even larger increase in food prices. This alone would be reason enough to be rejected, however the point I want to make here is that this is an extremely regressive end result. This would substantially hurt the poorest in society, even in a relatively wealthy country like Switzerland, and that touches on people’s perception of fairness. Fairness is one of the most important moral axes in human psychology according to Haidt’s moral foundations theory.
Going Forward
What would a good initiative propose to reduce harm in agriculture?
Framing—Focus on specifics
The largest critique of this initiative was the idea that “there is no factory farming in Switzerland”. In fact, even the supporters of the legislation agree:
It is understandable that when the framing implies there is something in society which is widespread and horrible, people’s first instinct is to reject the claim on the grounds that this just isn’t the case. On the other hand, if you asked Swiss people if they’re in favour of keeping animals in good conditions, not housing thousands of birds together in disgusting conditions, etc. I’m sure they would agree.
Why not a series of initiatives to improve husbandry practices?
Perhaps a focus on silvopasture?
How about an initiative to promote the use of food waste in agriculture even more? China is currently processing food waste with cockroaches and using them to feed pigs.
2. Scientific legitimacy, not politically compromised
Lots of the arguments used in this initiative are copied over from the George Monbiot, far left/Green playbook. This means it’ll naturally alienate the vast majority of the population, not least those with the most skin in the game—farmers. Lets base initiatives on the best available evidence. Cows can be an even larger carbon sink than they are now when fed the right additives and with sustainable grazing practices [3]. Let’s leave the vitriol to politicians and work on scientifically sound solutions.
3. Fair outcomes
The expected value from these policies needs to be more obviously positive. We can’t demand a trade-off between abundant food for the poorest in society, and animal welfare as the latter will always lose out, especially in this context of already existing relatively high-welfare standards and high food prices. One example of a policy with fair outcomes here would be to propose cage-free egg production. It’s entirely possible to produce cheap eggs intensively with uncaged, and even free range chickens.[4]
[0] https://factory-farming.ch/
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW8BclS27aI
[2] https://www.canadianfga.ca/uploads/source/006_Karen-Haugen-Kozyra.pdf
[3] https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/making-cattle-more-sustainable
[4] https://www.thepoultrysite.com/articles/a-closer-look-at-the-cage-free-revolution
I don’t think this is the claim typically being made. Rather, X% of farmed animals, as individuals, not by weight, are factory farmed. The vast majority of farmed land vertebrates are chickens, and the vast majority of them are factory farmed. The vast majority of farmed vertebrates (land or aquatic) are farmed fish, and the vast majority of them are factory farmed. Factory farms produce disproportionate numbers of animals relative to the number of farms, and countryside farms are badly unrepresentative of the average animal’s life. To be fair, this is a subtle issue, and we shouldn’t expect people to have a good sense of such numbers just through experience.
For example, from Sentience Institute:
(Edited)
“Most of this is just not true.[1][2] It stems from a conflation between biogenic greenhouse gas emissions and anthropogenic fossil fuel emissions. The former is part of the natural carbon cycle, with animals playing a crucial role in maintaining healthy ecosystems which acts as a carbon sink.”
I do think this issue is subtle, and people on both sides often get it wrong or go too far. FAO even put out a piece aiming to correct bad simplifications (https://news.trust.org/item/20180918083629-d2wf0). Being part of a natural carbon cycle (even with no consistent new net emissions) doesn’t mean there’s no warming impact. Methane levels in the atmosphere will be higher than with less ruminant farming since that carbon would spend less of its time in plants or in the soil and be released relatively more as methane than CO2, and methane is more potent than CO2 per amount of carbon. Furthermore, ruminant farming is increasing, so methane levels are increasing. Your source [2] acknowledges some of these considerations.
I’d recommend this, which also disputes the potential of ruminants to help lands act as carbon sinks: https://tabledebates.org/node/12335
Yeah, this is an instance of the natural fallacy, where if a claim is shown with a natural label, it immediately means that it’s good/healthy/climate change reducing/etc.
As an animal advocate myself, I agree that animal advocates often exaggerate the environmental impact of animal agriculture, intentionally or not.
I haven’t checked the specifics for this campaign, and I don’t know much about the situation in Switzerland, so won’t comment on that unless I look further into it.
I’m skeptical/confused by this comment.
So, I’m not that familiar with this legislation, but I think the (key) purpose behind the banning of factory farms, would be a major political, legislative win that has a strategic value.
But the comment’s main arguments are:
Factory farming is minimal in Switzerland, so this legislation doesn’t do much
There are big negative consequences to this legislation banning of farms (price increases, food security).
Don’t these two points conflict with each other? Also, neither undermines the main purpose of the legislation mentioned above.
Other comments:
I’m confused what “ivory tower” and “consequentialism” add here—I’m sure EA has a big consequentialist streak, but I’m not sure how relevant that is to reducing torture on factory farms, or reduce huge mortality from diseases like malaria.
Similarly, whether I agree or don’t agree with unfairness or not, I’m unsure what “moral axes in human psychology according to Haidt’s moral foundations theory” adds.
RE: Regressiveness, I think it’s possible to model price increases due to policy changes, and I would expect to see numbers if this was significant.
Dealing with regressiveness, pigovian taxes, and progressive taxes have been a thing for a long time, and seem to be tools we can use.
“claims like 99% of meat being factory farmed”, but I can’t find this claim on this post or on the website. Where did you get this and what was the context it was used in?
I think your comment is full of mistakes and misinterpretations, and at least one of them is:
As far as I understand, the initiative would’ve adopted the welfare standards of organic agriculture, without any of the other characteristics of organic food that cause the things you mentioned.
Even setting aside the organic argument, an insistence on extensive agricultural alone is also negative for the environment due to the lower output per hectare. Lots of literature has been written on this.
Yeah, the comment seems to overstate the problems of the law (except maybe the food prices one.) And that’s despite disagreeing with environmentalism or it’s goals.