Causing unnecessary suffering is morally bad. Causing intense unnecessary suffering is morally worse.
Non-humans have the capacity to physically and psychologically suffer. The intensity of suffering they can experience is non-negligible, and plausibly, not that far off from that of humans. Non-humans have a dispreference towards being in such states of agony.
Non-human individuals are in constant and often intense states of agony in farmed settings. They also live short lives, sometimes less than 1/โ10th of their natural lifespan, which leads to loss of welfare they would have experienced if they were allowed to live till old age.
The scale of farmed animal suffering is enormous beyond comprehension; if we only consider land animals, it is around 100 billion; if crustaceans and fish are included, the number is close to 1000 billion; if insects are accounted for, then the number is in several 1000s of billions. Nearly all of these animals have lives not worth living.
The total dollar spent per unit of suffering experienced is arguably more than a thousand times lower for non-humans compared to humans. This seems unreasonable given the vast number of individuals who suffer in farmed settings. Doing a quick and dirty calculation, and only considering OpenPhil funding, we get ~$1 spent per human and ~0.0003 spent per non-human individual. Including non-EA funding into this estimation would make the discrepancy worser.
We are nowhere close to reducing the amount of non-humans in farmed settings. Meat consumption is predicted to rise by 50% in the next three decades, which would drastically increase the number of farmed animals living short, agony-filled lives. We also havenโt yet had a breakthrough in cultivated meat, and if the Humbird report is to be believed, we should be skeptical of any such breakthroughs in the near future (if anything, we are seeing the first wave of cultivated meat bans, which may delay the transition to animal-free products).
Reducing farm animal suffering, via policy, advocacy, and development of alternative proteins, is tractable and solvable (for the last one in the list, we may need moonshot projects, which may imply raising even more funding).
Therefore, the additional $100 million is better spent on animal welfare than global health.
Causing unnecessary suffering is morally bad. Causing intense unnecessary suffering is morally worse.
Non-humans have the capacity to physically and psychologically suffer. The intensity of suffering they can experience is non-negligible, and plausibly, not that far off from that of humans. Non-humans have a dispreference towards being in such states of agony.
Non-human individuals are in constant and often intense states of agony in farmed settings. They also live short lives, sometimes less than 1/โ10th of their natural lifespan, which leads to loss of welfare they would have experienced if they were allowed to live till old age.
The scale of farmed animal suffering is enormous beyond comprehension; if we only consider land animals, it is around 100 billion; if crustaceans and fish are included, the number is close to 1000 billion; if insects are accounted for, then the number is in several 1000s of billions. Nearly all of these animals have lives not worth living.
The total dollar spent per unit of suffering experienced is arguably more than a thousand times lower for non-humans compared to humans. This seems unreasonable given the vast number of individuals who suffer in farmed settings. Doing a quick and dirty calculation, and only considering OpenPhil funding, we get ~$1 spent per human and ~0.0003 spent per non-human individual. Including non-EA funding into this estimation would make the discrepancy worser.
We are nowhere close to reducing the amount of non-humans in farmed settings. Meat consumption is predicted to rise by 50% in the next three decades, which would drastically increase the number of farmed animals living short, agony-filled lives. We also havenโt yet had a breakthrough in cultivated meat, and if the Humbird report is to be believed, we should be skeptical of any such breakthroughs in the near future (if anything, we are seeing the first wave of cultivated meat bans, which may delay the transition to animal-free products).
Reducing farm animal suffering, via policy, advocacy, and development of alternative proteins, is tractable and solvable (for the last one in the list, we may need moonshot projects, which may imply raising even more funding).
Therefore, the additional $100 million is better spent on animal welfare than global health.