I agree with this, for the most part. Itās a conclusion that I also reached.
I think this is a reason why we should not try should to debate veganism itself, and instead should focus on factory farming.
(Note: at least from what Iāve seen, people in EA tend to focus much less on veganism itself than in the rest of animal rights movementsābut this is less true in the āclean meatā side of EA that you quote in the sources you searched for)
Iāve also seen some in EA arguing that we shouldnāt spend much time advocating people to go away from beef, for a variety of reasons:
A kind of influential person in EA on the topic of wild animal suffering argues that promoting the avoidance of dairy could have negative impact for reasons Iāll let you uncover: How Does Vegetarianism Impact Wild-Animal Suffering?
For the reasons above, I would think that spending much time on replacing beef with something else wouldnāt be that effective. This is why Iām not that convinced by attempts to do that by the āclean meatā side of things.
However, there are also reasons that athough itās pretty clear that āconventionalā farming is unsustainable, Iām not so convinced that ārecommending a switch to regenerative agricultureā is very tractable, despite being in general important:
As the top comment said, almost all the meat you can buy today is from factory farms (in rich countries). So in practice, recommending a switch to only sustainable meat would be hard as well.
Plus, trying to push for a switch to regenerative agriculture, while very important, would be extremely hard as well, since many activists have already been pushing for a more sustainable agriculture with limited results.
There are a lot of entrenched interests there, pushing for subsidies, influencing laws, and since they are more concentrated than small family farms they have more leverage.
On the moral side, thereās little chance that people will care about rodents killed in crops if they donāt care about the animals killed to go into their plates
A message like āstop eating meat except if you can be very sure of where it comes from despite poor labelling and living far away from the farmā is harder to share and act on than ājust stop eating meatā.
I mean, how do you personally manage to act on that in restaurants or the like?
It also opens the door to rationalizations like āwell, Iām sure the beef Iām eating has had a good lifeā.
Iām sure the author of Sacred Cow is aware of these points (and probably points to this elsewhere).
But even if I understand the message, Iām not sure this implies that many changes in the way EA do things now (except for the clean meat side of things, where I agree a focus on beef isnāt the best).
I agree with this, for the most part. Itās a conclusion that I also reached.
I think this is a reason why we should not try should to debate veganism itself, and instead should focus on factory farming.
(Note: at least from what Iāve seen, people in EA tend to focus much less on veganism itself than in the rest of animal rights movementsābut this is less true in the āclean meatā side of EA that you quote in the sources you searched for)
Iāve also seen some in EA arguing that we shouldnāt spend much time advocating people to go away from beef, for a variety of reasons:
It could lead to a switch to chicken, leading to overall more deaths The deathprint of replacing beef by chicken and insect meatāEA Forum 1
Cows are a very small number of animals killed : Le mouvement animaliste devrait-il arrĆŖter de parler des vaches ? (in Frenchāin France, for every cow killed, about 600 chicken are killed, with much worse living conditions)
We shouldnāt focus on convincing people to go vegan because of poor track record (Want to help animals? Focus on corporate decisions, not peopleās plates. - Vox)
A kind of influential person in EA on the topic of wild animal suffering argues that promoting the avoidance of dairy could have negative impact for reasons Iāll let you uncover: How Does Vegetarianism Impact Wild-Animal Suffering?
For the reasons above, I would think that spending much time on replacing beef with something else wouldnāt be that effective. This is why Iām not that convinced by attempts to do that by the āclean meatā side of things.
However, there are also reasons that athough itās pretty clear that āconventionalā farming is unsustainable, Iām not so convinced that ārecommending a switch to regenerative agricultureā is very tractable, despite being in general important:
As the top comment said, almost all the meat you can buy today is from factory farms (in rich countries). So in practice, recommending a switch to only sustainable meat would be hard as well.
Plus, trying to push for a switch to regenerative agriculture, while very important, would be extremely hard as well, since many activists have already been pushing for a more sustainable agriculture with limited results.
There are a lot of entrenched interests there, pushing for subsidies, influencing laws, and since they are more concentrated than small family farms they have more leverage.
On the moral side, thereās little chance that people will care about rodents killed in crops if they donāt care about the animals killed to go into their plates
A message like āstop eating meat except if you can be very sure of where it comes from despite poor labelling and living far away from the farmā is harder to share and act on than ājust stop eating meatā.
I mean, how do you personally manage to act on that in restaurants or the like?
It also opens the door to rationalizations like āwell, Iām sure the beef Iām eating has had a good lifeā.
Iām sure the author of Sacred Cow is aware of these points (and probably points to this elsewhere).
But even if I understand the message, Iām not sure this implies that many changes in the way EA do things now (except for the clean meat side of things, where I agree a focus on beef isnāt the best).