Some other concerns that seem to me to be consistent with motivated reasoning in animal welfare have been:
Our treatment of diet change effects (including from alternative proteins) on wild animals, especially wild aquatic animals, but also generally through land use change. Mostly this has been to ignore these effects, or with wild aquatic animals, sometimes count the direct short-run deaths averted, but ignore additional deaths (including from future fishing!) from larger populations than otherwise due to reduced fishing pressure, and effects on non-target species. That being said, this is also a very complex and subtle problem, so maybe ignoring these effects is reasonable or EASs genuinely didn’t know it could backfire (but weren’t so interested in finding out), although I would then also ignore the direct fishing effects, too.
The assumptions that cage-free is better for egg-laying hens and that slower growing breeds are better for chickens farmed for meat. There are of course arguments/considerations for each, but I haven’t seen anyone (publicly) carefully weigh the considerations against, i.e. higher mortality in egg-laying hens in cage-free systems, more meat chickens alive at any moment to produce the same amount of meat with broiler reforms. I think these issues are being addressed now, through the work of https://welfarefootprint.org/.
Hmm, I guess I hadn’t read that post in full detail (or I did and forgot about the details), even though I was aware of it. I think the argument there that mortality will roughly match some time after transition is pretty solid (based on two datasets and expert opinion). I think there was still a question of whether or not the “short-term” increase in mortality outweighs the reduction in behavioural deprivation, especially since it wasn’t clear how long the transition period would be. This is a weaker claim than my original one, though, so I’ll retract my original claim.
FWIW, although this is completely different claim, bone fracture is only discussed in that post as a potential cause of increased mortality in cage-free systems, but not as a source of additional pain regardless of mortality that could mean cage-free is worse and would remain worse. The post was primarily focused on mortality and behavioural deprivation/opportunities. Fractures have since been weighted explicitly here (from https://welfarefootprint.org/research-projects/laying-hens/).
Some other concerns that seem to me to be consistent with motivated reasoning in animal welfare have been:
Our treatment of diet change effects (including from alternative proteins) on wild animals, especially wild aquatic animals, but also generally through land use change. Mostly this has been to ignore these effects, or with wild aquatic animals, sometimes count the direct short-run deaths averted, but ignore additional deaths (including from future fishing!) from larger populations than otherwise due to reduced fishing pressure, and effects on non-target species. That being said, this is also a very complex and subtle problem, so maybe ignoring these effects is reasonable or EASs genuinely didn’t know it could backfire (but weren’t so interested in finding out), although I would then also ignore the direct fishing effects, too.
The assumptions that
cage-free is better for egg-laying hens and thatslower growing breeds are better for chickens farmed for meat. There are of course arguments/considerations for each, but I haven’t seen anyone (publicly) carefully weigh the considerations against, i.e.higher mortality in egg-laying hens in cage-free systems,more meat chickens alive at any moment to produce the same amount of meat with broiler reforms. I think these issues are being addressed now, through the work of https://welfarefootprint.org/.https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/farm-animal-welfare/how-will-hen-welfare-be-impacted-transition-cage-free-housing
Hmm, I guess I hadn’t read that post in full detail (or I did and forgot about the details), even though I was aware of it. I think the argument there that mortality will roughly match some time after transition is pretty solid (based on two datasets and expert opinion). I think there was still a question of whether or not the “short-term” increase in mortality outweighs the reduction in behavioural deprivation, especially since it wasn’t clear how long the transition period would be. This is a weaker claim than my original one, though, so I’ll retract my original claim.
FWIW, although this is completely different claim, bone fracture is only discussed in that post as a potential cause of increased mortality in cage-free systems, but not as a source of additional pain regardless of mortality that could mean cage-free is worse and would remain worse. The post was primarily focused on mortality and behavioural deprivation/opportunities. Fractures have since been weighted explicitly here (from https://welfarefootprint.org/research-projects/laying-hens/).