I see the potential for this argument. I particularly like the emphasis on celebrating counterfactual wins, that some people may not immediately see as wins.
However I’d like to see more elaboration on how it actually results in different tactics and framing.
So I like the definition of “helping as much animals as posible” but when exactly does this lead to different tactics to ending factory farming?
Given that most people define factory farming as a system that uses practices that are known to cause suffering (stocking densities way too high, lack of natural light and ability to express natural behaviours, frankenchicken genetics), I think both your framings lead to more or less the same policies.
For example, I’d argue that many animal advocates consider cage free campaigns to be a goal on the way to eliminating factory farming, because confining animals is a key feature of factory farms. In fact, in the US factory farms are formally called “confined animal feeding operations” (emphasis mine)
It’s also not clear to me why “ending factory farming” is less defined than “preventing animal suffering”.
I think for the folks in the ‘ending factory farming’ camp that (IMO) are not being realistic, this can lead to adopting specific theories about how all of society will change their minds. This could include claims about meat being financially unviable if we just got the meat industry to internalise their externalities (the word just is doing a lot of lifting here), or theories about tipping points where once 25% of people believe something everyone else will follow, so we need to focus on consciousness-raising (I’ve butchered this argument, sorry to the folks who understand it better).
I see the potential for this argument. I particularly like the emphasis on celebrating counterfactual wins, that some people may not immediately see as wins.
However I’d like to see more elaboration on how it actually results in different tactics and framing.
So I like the definition of “helping as much animals as posible” but when exactly does this lead to different tactics to ending factory farming?
Given that most people define factory farming as a system that uses practices that are known to cause suffering (stocking densities way too high, lack of natural light and ability to express natural behaviours, frankenchicken genetics), I think both your framings lead to more or less the same policies.
For example, I’d argue that many animal advocates consider cage free campaigns to be a goal on the way to eliminating factory farming, because confining animals is a key feature of factory farms. In fact, in the US factory farms are formally called “confined animal feeding operations” (emphasis mine)
It’s also not clear to me why “ending factory farming” is less defined than “preventing animal suffering”.
I think for the folks in the ‘ending factory farming’ camp that (IMO) are not being realistic, this can lead to adopting specific theories about how all of society will change their minds. This could include claims about meat being financially unviable if we just got the meat industry to internalise their externalities (the word just is doing a lot of lifting here), or theories about tipping points where once 25% of people believe something everyone else will follow, so we need to focus on consciousness-raising (I’ve butchered this argument, sorry to the folks who understand it better).