Hey everyone! First time poster here, but long time advocate for effective altruism.
I’ve been vegan for a couple of years now, mostly to mitigate animal suffering. Recently I’ve been wondering how a vegetarian diet would compare in terms of suffering caused. Of course I presume veganism would be better, but by how much?
With this in mind I’m wondering is there any resources that attempt to quantify how much suffering is caused by buying various animal products? For example dairy cows produce about 40,000 litres of milk in their lifetime, which can be used to make about 4000kg of cheese. With this in mind one could consider how much suffering a dairy cow endures in their lifetime and then quantify how much suffering they are responsible for each time they purchase a kilo of cheese.
My calculations are of course very imprecise and probably quite flawed, but I’m curious if anyone else has taken a more robust attempt at comparing the suffering caused by various animal products? I realize this may be hard since suffering is hard to quantify.
I suspect most of the impact of veganism comes from its social/political side effects rather than the direct impact of the consumption. I believe it’s better to mostly think about “what kind of meme and norm should I spread” as most of the impact is there.
I’m inclined to agree, although I was curious nonetheless. Also anecdotally it seems like an increasing number of people are basing their diet on calculated C02 emissions, so calculations based on suffering seem like they would be a useful counterpart.
Hey everyone! First time poster here, but long time advocate for effective altruism.
I’ve been vegan for a couple of years now, mostly to mitigate animal suffering. Recently I’ve been wondering how a vegetarian diet would compare in terms of suffering caused. Of course I presume veganism would be better, but by how much?
With this in mind I’m wondering is there any resources that attempt to quantify how much suffering is caused by buying various animal products? For example dairy cows produce about 40,000 litres of milk in their lifetime, which can be used to make about 4000kg of cheese. With this in mind one could consider how much suffering a dairy cow endures in their lifetime and then quantify how much suffering they are responsible for each time they purchase a kilo of cheese.
My calculations are of course very imprecise and probably quite flawed, but I’m curious if anyone else has taken a more robust attempt at comparing the suffering caused by various animal products? I realize this may be hard since suffering is hard to quantify.
https://thehumaneleague.org/article/how-much-milk-does-a-cow-produce
https://faunalytics.org/how-to-quantify-animal-suffering/#:~:text=Number%20of%20days%20spent%20housed%2Fconfined%3A&text=Like%20estimating%20the%20number%20of,more%20suffering%2C%20all%20else%20equal.
I suspect most of the impact of veganism comes from its social/political side effects rather than the direct impact of the consumption. I believe it’s better to mostly think about “what kind of meme and norm should I spread” as most of the impact is there.
I’m inclined to agree, although I was curious nonetheless. Also anecdotally it seems like an increasing number of people are basing their diet on calculated C02 emissions, so calculations based on suffering seem like they would be a useful counterpart.
Thanks for sharing the compilation!
Hi Jack!
You might be interested in https://faunalytics.org/animal-product-impact-scales/#:~:text=Wondering%20About%20Your%20Impact%20Per%20Serving%20As%20An%20Individual%3F and https://foodimpacts.org/ .
In particular, eggs seem to cause a surprising amount of suffering per serving (compared to e.g. milk or cheese)
Both of those resources are excellent and exactly the sort of thing I was looking for. Thank you so much!
Here’s a compilation of such calculations.