The work of The Humane League and other animal welfare activists led 161 new organisations to commit to using cage-free products, helping free millions of chickens from cruel battery cages.
The EU Commission said it will “put forward a proposal to end the ‘disturbing’ systematic practice of killing male chicks across the EU” — another huge win for animal welfare campaigners.
Fish welfare was discussed in the UK Parliament for the first time ever, featuring contributions from effective-altruism-backed charities.
The welfare of crabs, lobsters and prawns was recognised in UK legislation thanks to the new Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill
Rethink Priorities, meanwhile, embarked on their ambitious Moral Weight Project to provide a better way to compare the interests of different species.
Of these, it seems like the first, third, and fifth items have clear EA links, but the second and fourth are less clear. I’d be interested to hear if there were EA-linked orgs significantly involved in advocacy around either the UK animal sentience legislation or the EU commission male chick culling ban proposal.
(1) reduce the chance that effective altruism does end up co-opting and/or incorrectly taking credit. (I don’t expect that Shakeel was intentionally trying to do this.)
(2) Lower priority, but I was intrigued about how the phrase “in EA” was being used more generally. Context: I think that what gets counted as “EA” or not often rests a lot on self-identification, which I don’t see as a particularly important or useful consideration. I’m more interested in whether projects seem cost-effective (in expectation), or at least whether people seem to be actually be putting the ‘core principles’ of EA to good use. (Here’s CEA’s list on that.) I suspect what’s going on here though is more about whether the projects have been Open Phil funded.
The animal welfare items were:
Of these, it seems like the first, third, and fifth items have clear EA links, but the second and fourth are less clear. I’d be interested to hear if there were EA-linked orgs significantly involved in advocacy around either the UK animal sentience legislation or the EU commission male chick culling ban proposal.
I’m a “long time” “animal welfare” “EA” and I’m confused by Jamie’s thread here.
I agree that I think it’s possible to co-opt and take credit, and this is bad.
I’m not sure this has happened here. I don’t understand Jamie’s purpose. I’m worried his comment is unnecessarily disagreeable.
It’s good to have good people (EA) do good work on animal welfare. It’s great if this list draws attention to work that we think EAs should support.
Yeah, no particular purpose other than to
(1) reduce the chance that effective altruism does end up co-opting and/or incorrectly taking credit. (I don’t expect that Shakeel was intentionally trying to do this.)
(2) Lower priority, but I was intrigued about how the phrase “in EA” was being used more generally. Context: I think that what gets counted as “EA” or not often rests a lot on self-identification, which I don’t see as a particularly important or useful consideration. I’m more interested in whether projects seem cost-effective (in expectation), or at least whether people seem to be actually be putting the ‘core principles’ of EA to good use. (Here’s CEA’s list on that.) I suspect what’s going on here though is more about whether the projects have been Open Phil funded.