Opposing the factory farms from which 99% of our meat comes requires the most basic moral commitment
The reason the claim might be misleading is that it is using ‘meat’ as a shorthand for ‘meat animals’ rather than eg ‘carcass weight’.
That seems very misleading! I think normal people interpret meat as a mass noun, with a pound of chicken being similar to a pound of beef. To make the example more extreme, suppose in the future 99.99% of all meat-by-weight was synthetic lab-grown, and 0.01% was from chickens. According to the OP’s methodology, 100% of meat would come from factory farms, but this seems clearly contrary to how any ordinary person would describe the situation.
To be clear the Sentience Institute itself is beyond reproach, describing their approach as being “We estimate that 99% of US farmed animals are living in factory farms at present”, which is totally unambiguous.
I’m quite sympathetic to the idea of moral arguments treating the basic unit of ‘meat’ as being the animal—that seems to be the morally relevant unit
That seems very misleading! I think normal people interpret meat as a mass noun, with a pound of chicken being similar to a pound of beef. To make the example more extreme, suppose in the future 99.99% of all meat-by-weight was synthetic lab-grown, and 0.01% was from chickens. According to the OP’s methodology, 100% of meat would come from factory farms, but this seems clearly contrary to how any ordinary person would describe the situation.
To be clear the Sentience Institute itself is beyond reproach, describing their approach as being “We estimate that 99% of US farmed animals are living in factory farms at present”, which is totally unambiguous.
I’m quite sympathetic to the idea of moral arguments treating the basic unit of ‘meat’ as being the animal—that seems to be the morally relevant unit
Agreed, the issue is with the OP, not SI.