Regarding farmers, their economic sector is caught between increasing productivity and saturation of demand (the Engle curve), and consequently agriculture and husbandry have been losing weight in GDP since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. From the perspective of farmers, animal welfare requirements are an opportunity to increase their share of the GDP. This is exactly the same situation as that for the energy-producing sectors as consequence of climate change: the need to decarbonize is a clear boon to utilities, and now the industry is very supportive of “Net Zero”.
Unfortunately, there is an important difference between both cases: the international competition that utilities face is almost nonexistent, whereas farmers suffer from external competition. They rightfully fear that welfare requirements will only affect local producers, and their net result would simply be losing their market share.
Consequently, the animalist lobby shall focus above all in fighting international competition to local farmers.
To my understanding, Animal Policy International is a great org trying to advocate for policies to not import lower welfare animal products, within their resource constraints. This is effectively fighting the international competition to local farmers. They could certainly use more help and/or resources to implement these policies worldwide, but I did want to point out part of the animalist lobby is focusing on this.
This is true:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/L6wdRBCh3izCD244t/farmers-in-the-animalist-coalition
Regarding farmers, their economic sector is caught between increasing productivity and saturation of demand (the Engle curve), and consequently agriculture and husbandry have been losing weight in GDP since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. From the perspective of farmers, animal welfare requirements are an opportunity to increase their share of the GDP. This is exactly the same situation as that for the energy-producing sectors as consequence of climate change: the need to decarbonize is a clear boon to utilities, and now the industry is very supportive of “Net Zero”.
Unfortunately, there is an important difference between both cases: the international competition that utilities face is almost nonexistent, whereas farmers suffer from external competition. They rightfully fear that welfare requirements will only affect local producers, and their net result would simply be losing their market share.
Consequently, the animalist lobby shall focus above all in fighting international competition to local farmers.
To my understanding, Animal Policy International is a great org trying to advocate for policies to not import lower welfare animal products, within their resource constraints. This is effectively fighting the international competition to local farmers. They could certainly use more help and/or resources to implement these policies worldwide, but I did want to point out part of the animalist lobby is focusing on this.
That is good news, but is it a general understanding in the Animal advocacy community?