Ok, let’s consider this for each type of farmed animal welfare intervention:
Humane slaughter of farmed animals and wild-caught fish. I’m guessing that it doesn’t impact WAW that much.
Reducing animal product production. E.g., diet change advocacy, meat alternatives. Such interventions increase wild populations a lot. If you believe that wild animals live bad lives (which is questionable but I’d give it a 65% probability), then it follows that reducing meat production is likely bad for short-term animal welfare. I personally still think that reducing meat production is good but not for short-term animal welfare reasons. For example, it reduces climate change. According to 80,000 hours, climate change could “destabilise society, destroy ecosystems, put millions into poverty, and worsen other existential threats such as engineered pandemics, risks from AI, or nuclear war.” But I probably wouldn’t myself fund reducing animal product production, at least not with money dedicated to animal welfare, partly due to WAW issues.
Improving farmed animal welfare. Raising higher welfare animals usually requires more resources and more land.[1] So it probably decreases wild animal populations (which is maybe good for WAW?) but causes a bit more of those environmental problems. But I’d say that if environmental costs are ever worth it, this is the case (especially for chickens because they don’t require that much resources per individual either way). I’m not going to sit here with my radiator on and say that chickens should continue suffering bone fractures and not being able to extend their wings because of the small environmental cost.
It seems I hadn’t considered this enough, so thank you very much for the question :)
For example, National Chicken Council argues that slower growing (and hence higher welfare) broiler breeds will have higher environmental costs: more feed, fuel, land, and water will be needed (I think it’s a biased source but the general conclusion makes sense). Similarly, according to Xin et al. (2011), “hens in noncage houses are less efficient in resource (feed, energy, and land) utilization, leading to a greater carbon footprint.” (I adapted this text from this post of mine).
Ok, let’s consider this for each type of farmed animal welfare intervention:
Humane slaughter of farmed animals and wild-caught fish. I’m guessing that it doesn’t impact WAW that much.
Reducing animal product production. E.g., diet change advocacy, meat alternatives. Such interventions increase wild populations a lot. If you believe that wild animals live bad lives (which is questionable but I’d give it a 65% probability), then it follows that reducing meat production is likely bad for short-term animal welfare. I personally still think that reducing meat production is good but not for short-term animal welfare reasons. For example, it reduces climate change. According to 80,000 hours, climate change could “destabilise society, destroy ecosystems, put millions into poverty, and worsen other existential threats such as engineered pandemics, risks from AI, or nuclear war.” But I probably wouldn’t myself fund reducing animal product production, at least not with money dedicated to animal welfare, partly due to WAW issues.
Improving farmed animal welfare. Raising higher welfare animals usually requires more resources and more land.[1] So it probably decreases wild animal populations (which is maybe good for WAW?) but causes a bit more of those environmental problems. But I’d say that if environmental costs are ever worth it, this is the case (especially for chickens because they don’t require that much resources per individual either way). I’m not going to sit here with my radiator on and say that chickens should continue suffering bone fractures and not being able to extend their wings because of the small environmental cost.
It seems I hadn’t considered this enough, so thank you very much for the question :)
For example, National Chicken Council argues that slower growing (and hence higher welfare) broiler breeds will have higher environmental costs: more feed, fuel, land, and water will be needed (I think it’s a biased source but the general conclusion makes sense). Similarly, according to Xin et al. (2011), “hens in noncage houses are less efficient in resource (feed, energy, and land) utilization, leading to a greater carbon footprint.” (I adapted this text from this post of mine).