Sorry I’ve been unclear—let me clarify: When we use the term ‘offset,’ we mean it in a quantitative sense—doing an amount of good for animals that’s comparable in magnitude to the harm caused by one’s diet. Whether this good deed makes eating meat ethically equivalent to not eating meat is a complex philosophical question that reasonable people can disagree on. But for someone who is going to eat meat either way (which describes most of our users), adding a donation that helps farmed animals is clearly better than not adding that donation.
The calculator is simply a tool to help people understand what size of donation would create a comparable scale of positive impact to their diet’s negative impact. We’ve found this framing resonates with people who care about animals but aren’t ready to change their diet
Sorry I’ve been unclear—let me clarify: When we use the term ‘offset,’ we mean it in a quantitative sense—doing an amount of good for animals that’s comparable in magnitude to the harm caused by one’s diet. Whether this good deed makes eating meat ethically equivalent to not eating meat is a complex philosophical question that reasonable people can disagree on. But for someone who is going to eat meat either way (which describes most of our users), adding a donation that helps farmed animals is clearly better than not adding that donation.
The calculator is simply a tool to help people understand what size of donation would create a comparable scale of positive impact to their diet’s negative impact. We’ve found this framing resonates with people who care about animals but aren’t ready to change their diet