You make a plausible, vivid case in this comment for why factory farming might be lower risk (workers wear PPE and buildings are designed to lower infection risk). And as I said in my reply above, I fully accept that there’s a plausible case why factory farming might pose a lower risk for zoonosis than non-factory farms. I’m just not certain and would want to see a sufficient amount of hard, high-quality evidence.
Consider also that factory farms, by lowering costs and driving up supply, cause a greater amount of animals to be produced than would counterfactually be the case on small farms. People would eat less meat, fewer farm animals would be raised, and there would be less opportunity for viral exposure by farm workers because the industry would be smaller as a whole.
You claim to “have the cites,” but don’t share them because you “distrust the EA forum to handle scientific expertise?” I’m a biomedical engineering graduate student. I eat citations for breakfast lunch and dinner. I barely trust them when I can read them. I trust arguments without citations even less. All that stuff about “distrusting EA forum” and “hoping not to make the case or codify” doesn’t make sense to me, and neither does the bit about “a good argument to begin a conversation with an expert.”
To be clear, I am not making a confident claim about whether or not factory farming is better or worse than other forms of farming or alternative industrial structures. I’m saying that it’s probably a very complex question and that we should not make casual guesses about the answer—we should rely on evidence, and if we don’t have it, we should admit our uncertainty.
You make a plausible, vivid case in this comment for why factory farming might be lower risk (workers wear PPE and buildings are designed to lower infection risk). And as I said in my reply above, I fully accept that there’s a plausible case why factory farming might pose a lower risk for zoonosis than non-factory farms. I’m just not certain and would want to see a sufficient amount of hard, high-quality evidence.
Consider also that factory farms, by lowering costs and driving up supply, cause a greater amount of animals to be produced than would counterfactually be the case on small farms. People would eat less meat, fewer farm animals would be raised, and there would be less opportunity for viral exposure by farm workers because the industry would be smaller as a whole.
You claim to “have the cites,” but don’t share them because you “distrust the EA forum to handle scientific expertise?” I’m a biomedical engineering graduate student. I eat citations for breakfast lunch and dinner. I barely trust them when I can read them. I trust arguments without citations even less. All that stuff about “distrusting EA forum” and “hoping not to make the case or codify” doesn’t make sense to me, and neither does the bit about “a good argument to begin a conversation with an expert.”
To be clear, I am not making a confident claim about whether or not factory farming is better or worse than other forms of farming or alternative industrial structures. I’m saying that it’s probably a very complex question and that we should not make casual guesses about the answer—we should rely on evidence, and if we don’t have it, we should admit our uncertainty.