I haven’t thought too hard about specific charities. Since I work for a relatively young charity startup, I don’t take a very high salary and it wouldn’t make sense to increase my salary just to donate.
If I had a large amount of money to donate, I’d probably pick an animal advocacy charity with a strong, well-backed theory of change that focuses on reforms that a) are large-scale and b) prevent high-intensity suffering. Examples of this might include charities working on cage-free hen reforms, the Better Chicken Commitment, or fish slaughter reform. I suspect Fish Welfare Initiative and Shrimp Welfare Project would also fare well from this perspective.
I haven’t researched this question specifically, so there’s a good chance my specific interventions/charities would change with further consideration.
Since my day job is in animal advocacy, I’m less informed about human charities. Other people probably have better-informed opinions on human charities for preventing extreme suffering than I could. A fair few people have written on the EA Forum about the importance of preventing extreme suffering, so those people might have some well-informed recommendations.
I agree that animal-welfare charities are a good choice. For s-risks, there are the Center on Long-Term Risk and Center for Reducing Suffering.
Personally I’m most enthusiastic about humane slaughter because
as you note in the post, excruciating pain seems vastly more important than lesser pains, and I imagine that slaughter—along with other physical traumas like castration, branding, dehorning, and tail docking—are generally the most excruciating experiences for most food animals
compared with other welfare reforms, and especially compared with meat reduction, slaughter improvements have fewer complicated side effects on wild animals that make the analysis much harder (although work to promote less horrible slaughter can still change consumer demand and prices for animal products, as well as having various other social/etc impacts).
Is there a charity working on fish-slaughter reform? The Humane Slaughter Association does some work in this area, but I wonder if there are other charities doing it. My impression is that most of Fish Welfare Initiative’s work is on welfare during life rather than at slaughter?
sorry, I got your name wrong in my reply (changed now)! I’m going to look into my question further, and read some of https://reducing-suffering.org/ you linked to. That’s as a result of this post:)
Thanks for your positive feedback :)
I haven’t thought too hard about specific charities. Since I work for a relatively young charity startup, I don’t take a very high salary and it wouldn’t make sense to increase my salary just to donate.
If I had a large amount of money to donate, I’d probably pick an animal advocacy charity with a strong, well-backed theory of change that focuses on reforms that a) are large-scale and b) prevent high-intensity suffering. Examples of this might include charities working on cage-free hen reforms, the Better Chicken Commitment, or fish slaughter reform. I suspect Fish Welfare Initiative and Shrimp Welfare Project would also fare well from this perspective.
I haven’t researched this question specifically, so there’s a good chance my specific interventions/charities would change with further consideration.
Since my day job is in animal advocacy, I’m less informed about human charities. Other people probably have better-informed opinions on human charities for preventing extreme suffering than I could. A fair few people have written on the EA Forum about the importance of preventing extreme suffering, so those people might have some well-informed recommendations.
I agree that animal-welfare charities are a good choice. For s-risks, there are the Center on Long-Term Risk and Center for Reducing Suffering.
Personally I’m most enthusiastic about humane slaughter because
as you note in the post, excruciating pain seems vastly more important than lesser pains, and I imagine that slaughter—along with other physical traumas like castration, branding, dehorning, and tail docking—are generally the most excruciating experiences for most food animals
compared with other welfare reforms, and especially compared with meat reduction, slaughter improvements have fewer complicated side effects on wild animals that make the analysis much harder (although work to promote less horrible slaughter can still change consumer demand and prices for animal products, as well as having various other social/etc impacts).
Is there a charity working on fish-slaughter reform? The Humane Slaughter Association does some work in this area, but I wonder if there are other charities doing it. My impression is that most of Fish Welfare Initiative’s work is on welfare during life rather than at slaughter?
sorry, I got your name wrong in my reply (changed now)! I’m going to look into my question further, and read some of https://reducing-suffering.org/ you linked to. That’s as a result of this post:)