That being said, given the scale of silk farming, advocacy on this issue could plausibly be highly cost-effective when compared on a species-neutral basis to interventions to reduce vertebrate farmed animal suffering.
It would depend on the specific intervention (or issues of tractability and neglectedness), but the scale of silk farming seems most likely lower than chicken farming (for meat and eggs) after adjusting for moral weight and probability of sentience, at least by my judgement. In your table, you have 41-99 billion silk worms alive on average at any time, but the global chicken population is ~20 billion at any time, so the silk worm population is only 2-5 times larger. I’d guess the average chicken has it more than 5x worse than the average silk worm in expectation after accounting for moral weight and probability of sentience, and either alone could do it.
According to these tables, chickens (red junglefowl) have 221,000,000 neurons in their whole nervous system and 61,000,000 neurons in their sensory-associative structure (the pallium/DVR), whereas the insects in these tables have at most 1,180,000 neurons in their whole nervous systems, and span 2,500 (common fruitfly) to 200,000 (common cockroach) in their sensory-associative structures (the corpora pedunculata), so a chicken should have > 187x more overall and >300x more in their sensory-associative structure, specifically. If we use linear weighting for moral weight, this would be >187x more moral weight per chicken than per silkworm, and with square-root weighting, >13x more, before accounting for probability of sentience.
Interestingly, larval zebrafish only have 100,000 neurons in their whole nervous system according to the first table, 10x less than common cockroaches and some bees, so I’d guess it would be less than this for silkworms, and chickens would have >2,000x more neurons overall.
Ya, fully banning silk might be (much) more feasible than banning chicken meat/eggs, although Lewis said he thinks meat chicken welfare reforms reduce 5-75% of their suffering (~40% in the US, ~25% in the UK), so full bans are only a few times better in expectation, in suffering terms. (I’m don’t have a strong view on this.)
Thanks for this post!
It would depend on the specific intervention (or issues of tractability and neglectedness), but the scale of silk farming seems most likely lower than chicken farming (for meat and eggs) after adjusting for moral weight and probability of sentience, at least by my judgement. In your table, you have 41-99 billion silk worms alive on average at any time, but the global chicken population is ~20 billion at any time, so the silk worm population is only 2-5 times larger. I’d guess the average chicken has it more than 5x worse than the average silk worm in expectation after accounting for moral weight and probability of sentience, and either alone could do it.
According to these tables, chickens (red junglefowl) have 221,000,000 neurons in their whole nervous system and 61,000,000 neurons in their sensory-associative structure (the pallium/DVR), whereas the insects in these tables have at most 1,180,000 neurons in their whole nervous systems, and span 2,500 (common fruitfly) to 200,000 (common cockroach) in their sensory-associative structures (the corpora pedunculata), so a chicken should have > 187x more overall and >300x more in their sensory-associative structure, specifically. If we use linear weighting for moral weight, this would be >187x more moral weight per chicken than per silkworm, and with square-root weighting, >13x more, before accounting for probability of sentience.
Interestingly, larval zebrafish only have 100,000 neurons in their whole nervous system according to the first table, 10x less than common cockroaches and some bees, so I’d guess it would be less than this for silkworms, and chickens would have >2,000x more neurons overall.
Removed
Ya, fully banning silk might be (much) more feasible than banning chicken meat/eggs, although Lewis said he thinks meat chicken welfare reforms reduce 5-75% of their suffering (~40% in the US, ~25% in the UK), so full bans are only a few times better in expectation, in suffering terms. (I’m don’t have a strong view on this.)
Maybe work on fur bans is a useful comparison?