Copy/pasted from Facebook, so please forgive the casual language. A lot of other comments brought up a lot of other issues as well:
I have many issues with the reasoning presented in the article. For example, it’s right to consider the potential damage of creatine deficiency, but improper to fail to consider all the potential health benefits that outweigh these potential damages. There are tons of other benefits that the article ignores, like the signalling and idea-spreading benefits of veg*nism.
And one claim that struck me as particularly wild is the assumption that “free range chickens have lives that are at least neutral.” Free range chickens live absolutely horrible lives. Here’s some of the least gruesome footage (Edit: Forgive my vagueness. Clearly there is footage online of happy chickens. I meant realistic footage of chickens in industrial agriculture.) I can find. Note that’s of a “Certified Humane” farm, which is a more stringent qualification than free range.
Also, the whole concept of, “Only perform an action if you it’s worth the monetary-equivalent cost to you,” seems antithetical, or at least orthogonal, to the concept of effective altruism. If eating animals is worth a few dollars to you, that’s probably just selfishness rather than a more cost-effective alternative. The proper EA argument would be that veg*nism causes damage to productivity that outweighs its benefits, which I think is unjustified, but could at least work theoretically.
These are just a few of the many issues I see in the reasoning.
I can say with ~95% certainty that those hens are pets or are living on a “hobby farm.” I’ve kept chickens in similar conditions; there’s just no way it could be profitable as a commercial project. There are a handful of independent farmers using “chicken tractors” to raise their hens on pasture (e.g. Grazin’ Angus), but their eggs are extremely difficult to find and run up to $10/dozen.
If you want to understand how commercial animal products are actually produced, Googling “happy chickens” is not going to be helpful.
Jacy said he couldn’t find any less gruesome footage
I spent about 10 seconds and found some less gruesome footage
Suggesting he didn’t search very hard.
Yes, there are other arguments one could make. Certainly googling “happy chickens” is not a reasonable way to get an unbiased estimate of chicken happiness. But when someone makes patently false claims about lower bounds, it is an appropriate response.
That’s a good point. But I’m not sure what would have been a more diplomatic way. My point was not merely that Jacy was mistaken—it was additionally that he was being intentionally dishonest. I had assumed that being somewhat oblique about this would be considered more diplomatic than simply saying “you are being dishonest”, but perhaps I was wrong.
I think it’s important in general to challenge people who degrade the quality of debate in this way. If you have a suggestion for how to do this better in future I would genuinely appreciate it.
The point Jacy was contesting was about the happiness of free-range chickens whose eggs could feasibly be subsidized. He didn’t pull that quote out of thin air; he was responding to a specific proposal about commercially-raised chickens. Pet chickens are not in any way relevant to the question of whether commercially-raised “free-range” chickens live neutral, positive, or negative lives.
I hope this was an oversight rather than a purposeful red herring.
A reasonable supposition, but it’s easy to find less gruesome videos of large-scale chicken farming. For example, this video of reasonably happy looking commercially farmed chickens was trivial to find on google. So even if we interpret his argument in that way he still can’t have looked very hard.
Eggs from pasture-raised chickens are not very hard to find in Berkeley. Their nutritional advantage over grain-fed eggs was enough for me to switch to them. Yes, they cost $8 to $10 per dozen.
Copy/pasted from Facebook, so please forgive the casual language. A lot of other comments brought up a lot of other issues as well:
I have many issues with the reasoning presented in the article. For example, it’s right to consider the potential damage of creatine deficiency, but improper to fail to consider all the potential health benefits that outweigh these potential damages. There are tons of other benefits that the article ignores, like the signalling and idea-spreading benefits of veg*nism.
And one claim that struck me as particularly wild is the assumption that “free range chickens have lives that are at least neutral.” Free range chickens live absolutely horrible lives. Here’s some of the least gruesome footage (Edit: Forgive my vagueness. Clearly there is footage online of happy chickens. I meant realistic footage of chickens in industrial agriculture.) I can find. Note that’s of a “Certified Humane” farm, which is a more stringent qualification than free range.
Also, the whole concept of, “Only perform an action if you it’s worth the monetary-equivalent cost to you,” seems antithetical, or at least orthogonal, to the concept of effective altruism. If eating animals is worth a few dollars to you, that’s probably just selfishness rather than a more cost-effective alternative. The proper EA argument would be that veg*nism causes damage to productivity that outweighs its benefits, which I think is unjustified, but could at least work theoretically.
These are just a few of the many issues I see in the reasoning.
How hard did you look? Here’s the top google hit when I google ’happy chickens. They look pretty happy to me.
I can say with ~95% certainty that those hens are pets or are living on a “hobby farm.” I’ve kept chickens in similar conditions; there’s just no way it could be profitable as a commercial project. There are a handful of independent farmers using “chicken tractors” to raise their hens on pasture (e.g. Grazin’ Angus), but their eggs are extremely difficult to find and run up to $10/dozen.
If you want to understand how commercial animal products are actually produced, Googling “happy chickens” is not going to be helpful.
I think you misunderstand my point.
Jacy said he couldn’t find any less gruesome footage
I spent about 10 seconds and found some less gruesome footage
Suggesting he didn’t search very hard.
Yes, there are other arguments one could make. Certainly googling “happy chickens” is not a reasonable way to get an unbiased estimate of chicken happiness. But when someone makes patently false claims about lower bounds, it is an appropriate response.
It wasn’t the most diplomatic way to get across the point though.
That’s a good point. But I’m not sure what would have been a more diplomatic way. My point was not merely that Jacy was mistaken—it was additionally that he was being intentionally dishonest. I had assumed that being somewhat oblique about this would be considered more diplomatic than simply saying “you are being dishonest”, but perhaps I was wrong.
I think it’s important in general to challenge people who degrade the quality of debate in this way. If you have a suggestion for how to do this better in future I would genuinely appreciate it.
The point Jacy was contesting was about the happiness of free-range chickens whose eggs could feasibly be subsidized. He didn’t pull that quote out of thin air; he was responding to a specific proposal about commercially-raised chickens. Pet chickens are not in any way relevant to the question of whether commercially-raised “free-range” chickens live neutral, positive, or negative lives.
I hope this was an oversight rather than a purposeful red herring.
A reasonable supposition, but it’s easy to find less gruesome videos of large-scale chicken farming. For example, this video of reasonably happy looking commercially farmed chickens was trivial to find on google. So even if we interpret his argument in that way he still can’t have looked very hard.
Eggs from pasture-raised chickens are not very hard to find in Berkeley. Their nutritional advantage over grain-fed eggs was enough for me to switch to them. Yes, they cost $8 to $10 per dozen.