Even assuming cows and egg-laying hens live equally bad lives (egg-laying hens have it far worse), from one hen you can get about 40,000 calories worth of eggs—from one cow it’s 500,000 calories of beef (rough calculations). I’d definitely say buying eggs is far worse than buying beef.
Of course, if “moral weigth” of a chicken is equal to that of a cow, then, it is always better to sacrifice cows. My view is that moral weight grows more than linearly with relative encephalic mass
I’m not sure about what you mean by “relative encephalic mass”, but you can see a model of the relative harm of various animal products here. It suggests that (ignoring the effects on climate change), you would need to weigh the suffering of 1 cow >50 times more than the equivalent suffering of a hen to consider eggs less harmful per-kcal
You can find more estimates here. The vast majority of estimates consider eggs more harmful than beef, but indeed, they don’t weigh by neuron count (it might be worth noting that, afaik, estimates like QALYs used for humans also don’t weigh by neuron count or brain mass)
Even assuming cows and egg-laying hens live equally bad lives (egg-laying hens have it far worse), from one hen you can get about 40,000 calories worth of eggs—from one cow it’s 500,000 calories of beef (rough calculations). I’d definitely say buying eggs is far worse than buying beef.
Of course, if “moral weigth” of a chicken is equal to that of a cow, then, it is always better to sacrifice cows. My view is that moral weight grows more than linearly with relative encephalic mass
I’m not sure about what you mean by “relative encephalic mass”, but you can see a model of the relative harm of various animal products here. It suggests that (ignoring the effects on climate change), you would need to weigh the suffering of 1 cow >50 times more than the equivalent suffering of a hen to consider eggs less harmful per-kcal
You can find more estimates here. The vast majority of estimates consider eggs more harmful than beef, but indeed, they don’t weigh by neuron count (it might be worth noting that, afaik, estimates like QALYs used for humans also don’t weigh by neuron count or brain mass)
Dear Lorenzo,
Thank you very much. It is clear that there is consensus on the large neg-utility of eggs. I correct this in my post.