I can’t seem to find much EA discussion about [genetic modification to chickens to lessen suffering]. I think this naively seems like a promising area to me. I imagine others have investigated and decided against further work, I’m curious why.
“I agree with Ellen that legislation / corporate standards are more promising.
I’ve asked if the breeders would accept $ to select on welfare, & the answer was no b/c it’s inversely correlated w/ productivity & they can only select on ~2 traits/generation.”
Dang. That makes sense, but it seems pretty grim. The second half of that argument is, “We can’t select for not-feeling-pain, because we need to spend all of our future genetic modification points on the chickens getting bigger and growing even faster.”
I’m kind of surprised that this argument isn’t at all about the weirdness of it. It’s purely pragmatic, from their standpoint. “Sure, we might be able to stop most of the chicken suffering, but that would increase costs by ~20% or so, so it’s a non-issue”
20% of the global cost of growing chickens is probably in the order of at least ~$20B, which is much more than the global economy is willing to spend on animal welfare.
As mentioned in the other comment, I think it’s extremely unlikely that there is a way to stop “most” of the chicken suffering while increasing costs by only ~20%.
Some estimate the better chicken commitment already increases costs by 20% (although there is no consensus on that, and factory farmers estimate 37.5%), and my understanding is that it doesn’t stop most of the suffering, but “just” reduces it a lot.
Has there been any discussion of improving chicken breeding using GWAS or similar?
Even if welfare is inversely correlated with productivity, I imagine there are at least a few gene variants which improve welfare without hurting productivity. E.g. gene variants which address health issues due to selective breeding.
Also how about legislation targeting the breeders? Can we have a law like: “Chickens cannot be bred for increased productivity unless they meet some welfare standard.”
Note that prohibiting breeding that causes suffering is different to encouraging breeding that lessens suffering, and that selective breeding is different to gene splicing, etc., which I think is what is typically meant by genetic modification.
Naively, I would expect that suffering is extremely evolutionarily advantageous for chickens in factory farm conditions, so chickens that feel less suffering will not grow as much meat (or require more space/resources). For example, based on my impression that broiler chickens are constantly hungry, I wouldn’t be surprised if they would try to eat themselves unless they felt pain when doing so. But this is a very uninformed take based on a vague understanding of what broiler chickens are optimized for, which might not be true in practice.
I think this idea might be more interesting to explore in less price-sensitive contexts, where there’s less evolutionary pressure and animals live in much better conditions, mostly animals used in scientific research. But of course it would help much fewer animals who usually suffer much less.
It was mentioned at the Constellation office that maybe animal welfare people who are predisposed to this kind of weird intervention are working on AI safety instead. I think this is >10% correct but a bit cynical; the WAW people are clearly not afraid of ideas like giving rodents contraceptives and vaccines. My guess is animal welfare is poorly understood and there are various practical problems like preventing animals that don’t feel pain from accidentally injuring themselves constantly. Not that this means we shouldn’t be trying.
Quick thought. Maybe people anticipate this being blocked by governments because it “seems like playing god” etc. I know that would be hypocritical given the breeding already used to make them overweight etc. But it seems to be the way a lot of people see this.
By coincidence, I just came across this layer-hen genetics project that got funding from OP. I don’t know much about the work or how promising it might be.
I can’t seem to find much EA discussion about [genetic modification to chickens to lessen suffering]. I think this naively seems like a promising area to me. I imagine others have investigated and decided against further work, I’m curious why.
Lewis Bollard:
“I agree with Ellen that legislation / corporate standards are more promising. I’ve asked if the breeders would accept $ to select on welfare, & the answer was no b/c it’s inversely correlated w/ productivity & they can only select on ~2 traits/generation.”
Dang. That makes sense, but it seems pretty grim. The second half of that argument is, “We can’t select for not-feeling-pain, because we need to spend all of our future genetic modification points on the chickens getting bigger and growing even faster.”
I’m kind of surprised that this argument isn’t at all about the weirdness of it. It’s purely pragmatic, from their standpoint. “Sure, we might be able to stop most of the chicken suffering, but that would increase costs by ~20% or so, so it’s a non-issue”
20% of the global cost of growing chickens is probably in the order of at least ~$20B, which is much more than the global economy is willing to spend on animal welfare.
As mentioned in the other comment, I think it’s extremely unlikely that there is a way to stop “most” of the chicken suffering while increasing costs by only ~20%.
Some estimate the better chicken commitment already increases costs by 20% (although there is no consensus on that, and factory farmers estimate 37.5%), and my understanding is that it doesn’t stop most of the suffering, but “just” reduces it a lot.
Has there been any discussion of improving chicken breeding using GWAS or similar?
Even if welfare is inversely correlated with productivity, I imagine there are at least a few gene variants which improve welfare without hurting productivity. E.g. gene variants which address health issues due to selective breeding.
Also how about legislation targeting the breeders? Can we have a law like: “Chickens cannot be bred for increased productivity unless they meet some welfare standard.”
England prohibits “breeding procedures which cause, or are likely to cause, suffering or injury to any of the animals concerned”. Defra claim Frankenchickens meet this standard and THLUK are challenging that decision in court.
Note that prohibiting breeding that causes suffering is different to encouraging breeding that lessens suffering, and that selective breeding is different to gene splicing, etc., which I think is what is typically meant by genetic modification.
I think it is discussed every now and then, see e.g. comments here: New EA cause area: Breeding really dumb chickens and this comment
And note that the Better Chicken Commitment includes a policy of moving to higher welfare breeds.
Naively, I would expect that suffering is extremely evolutionarily advantageous for chickens in factory farm conditions, so chickens that feel less suffering will not grow as much meat (or require more space/resources). For example, based on my impression that broiler chickens are constantly hungry, I wouldn’t be surprised if they would try to eat themselves unless they felt pain when doing so. But this is a very uninformed take based on a vague understanding of what broiler chickens are optimized for, which might not be true in practice.
I think this idea might be more interesting to explore in less price-sensitive contexts, where there’s less evolutionary pressure and animals live in much better conditions, mostly animals used in scientific research. But of course it would help much fewer animals who usually suffer much less.
adding on that wholefoods https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/quality-standards/statement-on-broiler-chicken-welfare
has made some commitments to switching breeds, we discussed this briefly at a Chicago EA meeting. I didn’t get much info but they said that going and protesting/spreading the word to whole foods managers to switch breeds showed some success.
It was mentioned at the Constellation office that maybe animal welfare people who are predisposed to this kind of weird intervention are working on AI safety instead. I think this is >10% correct but a bit cynical; the WAW people are clearly not afraid of ideas like giving rodents contraceptives and vaccines. My guess is animal welfare is poorly understood and there are various practical problems like preventing animals that don’t feel pain from accidentally injuring themselves constantly. Not that this means we shouldn’t be trying.
I heard someone from Kevin Esvelt’s lab talking about this + pain-free lab mice once
Quick thought. Maybe people anticipate this being blocked by governments because it “seems like playing god” etc. I know that would be hypocritical given the breeding already used to make them overweight etc. But it seems to be the way a lot of people see this.
By coincidence, I just came across this layer-hen genetics project that got funding from OP. I don’t know much about the work or how promising it might be.