Can you tell us a bit more about which animal welfare ballot initiatives and other policies are on your radar to research?
It’s worth mentioning that Switzerland has a referendum coming up to ban factory farming, with campaign headed by Sentience Politics. Basically, it will require all farmed animals (and animal product imports) to be farmed according to organic standards. Some discussion here; based on the polls described here, it looks pretty promising. (The Swiss did reject a dehorning ban earlier, though.)
It seems like it’s worth looking into bigger changes like this. EDIT: just came across this on my Facebook feed:
A new poll, commissioned by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for a Livable Future and released Tuesday, surveys voter sentiment on banning CAFO construction for the first time. Polling group Greenberg Quinlan Rosner surveyed 1,000 registered Democrats, Republicans, and Independents from across the nation and found that 43 percent of respondents favored a national ban on the creation of new factory farms, as opposed to 38 percent of respondents who oppose a ban. But in Iowa, where more than 400 additional registered voters were asked the same questions, sentiment flipped: more people opposed a ban than favored one.
(...)
Interestingly, the divisions intensified once poll respondents were given additional information from both sides of the issue. They were read factual statements in support of a moratorium, which cited concerns about health and environmental impact, and statements arguing for preservation of the status quo, which emphasized the benefits of a plentiful supply of cheap meat. After reading those statements, nationwide support for a ban rose from 43 percent to 49 percent, but opposition rose almost as much, from 38 percent to 42 percent.
Surprisingly, no mention of animal welfare on that page.
Also, will Charity Entrepreneurship’s research influence which interventions you look into? They’ve done both a lot of exploratory and in-depth research. What orgs have research that you expect to most influence your research direction?
Thanks for the question. We have forthcoming work on ballot initiatives which will hopefully be published in January and other work that we plan to keep unpublished (though accessible to allies) for the foreseeable future.
In addition, we have some plans to investigate potentially high value policies for animal welfare.
On CE’s work, we communicate with them fairly regularly about their work and their plans, in addition to reading and considering the outputs of their work.
Maybe an interesting (but probably too ambitious) ask would be to extend the Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture Act to farmed animals (and imports) at the state-level or even more locally, or otherwise remove exceptions. I think such a survey could tell us a lot about attitudes towards farmed animals, at least.
Can you tell us a bit more about which animal welfare ballot initiatives and other policies are on your radar to research?
It’s worth mentioning that Switzerland has a referendum coming up to ban factory farming, with campaign headed by Sentience Politics. Basically, it will require all farmed animals (and animal product imports) to be farmed according to organic standards. Some discussion here; based on the polls described here, it looks pretty promising. (The Swiss did reject a dehorning ban earlier, though.)
It seems like it’s worth looking into bigger changes like this. EDIT: just came across this on my Facebook feed:
Surprisingly, no mention of animal welfare on that page.
Also, will Charity Entrepreneurship’s research influence which interventions you look into? They’ve done both a lot of exploratory and in-depth research. What orgs have research that you expect to most influence your research direction?
Thanks for the question. We have forthcoming work on ballot initiatives which will hopefully be published in January and other work that we plan to keep unpublished (though accessible to allies) for the foreseeable future.
In addition, we have some plans to investigate potentially high value policies for animal welfare.
On CE’s work, we communicate with them fairly regularly about their work and their plans, in addition to reading and considering the outputs of their work.
Maybe an interesting (but probably too ambitious) ask would be to extend the Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture Act to farmed animals (and imports) at the state-level or even more locally, or otherwise remove exceptions. I think such a survey could tell us a lot about attitudes towards farmed animals, at least.