Farmed cows and pigs (and other mammals) account for a tiny fraction of the disability of the farmed animals I analysed.
The annual disability of farmed animals is much larger than that of humans, even under the arguably very optimistic assumption of all farmed animals having neutral lives.
The annual funding helping farmed animals is much smaller than that helping humans.
I think the 1st point holds for most countries (not only China), and the 2nd and 3rd for basically all countries. I could have a title like “Farmed animals are neglected, both globally and China”. However, I think this could be read as farmed animal welfare being more neglected relative to its scale in China than in other countries. I believe this is true[1], but it is not necessarily implied by the points above.
I estimate China accounts for 33.3 % of the disability of farmed animals, but only 2.20 % of the philanthropic spending on farmed animals. I suppose one could argue these numbers are interesting, and the title could reflect them, but I am wary of communicating that more funding should to China without having looked into the respective cost-effectiveness (i.e. not only scale and neglectedness, but also tractability, which is arguably lower in China).
This seems unnecessarily precise and long. I don’t think many people would get a different takeaway from the current title but it has over twice as many words.
Thanks for the suggestion, Seth. I am a little wary of adding “disability” to the title, because I have not relied on actual disability of farmed animals:
In agreement with the above [description of how I calculated the annual disability of farmed animals], disability of farmed animals throughout this post refers to the potential for increasing their (affective) welfare up to the level of fully healthy animals. In contrast, the global burden of disease study (GBD) focuses on actual disability.
Thanks for the comment, Kaleem.
I think the 1st point holds for most countries (not only China), and the 2nd and 3rd for basically all countries. I could have a title like “Farmed animals are neglected, both globally and China”. However, I think this could be read as farmed animal welfare being more neglected relative to its scale in China than in other countries. I believe this is true[1], but it is not necessarily implied by the points above.
I estimate China accounts for 33.3 % of the disability of farmed animals, but only 2.20 % of the philanthropic spending on farmed animals. I suppose one could argue these numbers are interesting, and the title could reflect them, but I am wary of communicating that more funding should to China without having looked into the respective cost-effectiveness (i.e. not only scale and neglectedness, but also tractability, which is arguably lower in China).
As a potential title, maybe “Disability among farmed animals is neglected relative to human disability”? or something like that
This seems unnecessarily precise and long. I don’t think many people would get a different takeaway from the current title but it has over twice as many words.
Thanks for the suggestion, Seth. I am a little wary of adding “disability” to the title, because I have not relied on actual disability of farmed animals: