Hi! I run Legal Impact for Chickens (LIC).
alene
Karma: 1,237
Got it. I think I understand what you’re saying. I’m not as good with math so I’m not sure if I followed the calculations. But to try to put what you’re saying in less mathy terms, I think you’re basically saying:
1) There are WAY WAY WAY more nematodes than farmed animals.
2) Nematodes are significantly less likely to be sentient than farmed animals.
3) But the fact that there are WAY WAY WAY more nematodes than farmed animals still means that, from an expected value perspective, one would still expect the effect of farming on nematodes to be much bigger than the effect of farming on farmed animals.
Is that right?
Like, if you could enter a deal where a person is guaranteed to pay you $1 up front, but in exchange you accept a 6% chance that the person will later take $4,810,000 from you, it’d be a bad deal to make, even though the most likely outcome is you simply gain a dollar and don’t pay anything. Is that a good analogy?
Thank you for this interesting, weird, surprising, and important post. It is a mind f*ck.
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Question: You say, “In particular, it is crucial to know whether [soil nematodes, mites, and springtails] have positive or negative lives.”
Is another crucial question to find out whether soil nematodes, mites, and springtails are sentient at all?
To me, reading this, the main emotional / System 1 reaction I had was, “But those animals are SO small and SO different from me. I can’t even see them! It’s hard for me to believe they’re sentient.” I looked briefly on the EA Forum and found this: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/jYdmcrgAj5odTunCT/demodex-mites-large-and-neglected-group-of-wild-animals (“Strictly speaking, it’s unclear whether Demodex mites are sentient. But this is mostly because nobody has researched this question—for many groups of invertebrates where people have looked (e.g. insect groups), the science does support these groups being sentient. To me, it seems plausible enough that Demodex mites are sentient that we should be giving serious consideration to their interests.”).
What is your opinion on how likely these small animals are to be sentient? E.g. do you think it’s more like 10% likelihood or more like 90% likelihood?
To me “whether they have positive or negative lives” seems to imply that you think they likely do have lives with a valence one way or the other, as opposed to just unvalenced lives like we imagine plants and bacteria have. But maybe that’s not what you meant.
I realize that there are SO many animals that even a small chance of them being conscious is a big important moral thing for us to consider. So to be clear I’m not trying to push back on caring about them even if the likelihood of them being conscious is only like 10%. I’m just curious what you think.
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Update: After posting this, I just googled to see what soil mites look like up close. And the pictures I found of them are SO CUTE. They just look like little bugs, with cute little legs and stuff. So that makes me change my System 1 reaction to a new System 1 reaction of “Oh, of course these little cuties are sentient.” :-)
This is SUCH a great post. Very needed. Thank you Aaron!
Woah! This is really interesting and surprising to me. Thank you so much for letting people know!
This is a REALLY good point. Thank you for posting this. I come from the animal rights movement. We have a similar problem in that movement. People in the AR movement tend to feel isolated, because they care so much about animals and perhaps they feel that the rest of the world, their family, and their society doesn’t get it. So they are so eager to meet and befriend another AR person. It’s really fun to make friends so easily! I love how quick other AR people are to trust me when they find out I’m an animal advocate. But there’s also a downside to the trust in AR, similar to what you’re describing. People can be too trusting when they’re part of an ethical movement like AR or EA. And it can let others take advantage of them. I even imagine that people who want to take advantage of others might intentionally be motivated to join ethical communities like EA, AR, charity work, religious work, political activism, etc., so they can be accepted more easily with fewer questions. (Not sure—Just a hypothethis.) Thank you for writing this!
This is such a cool and interesting post. And it totally helps understand why things for humans seem like they’re materially getting better in many ways, but our culture involves a lot of people saying a lot of negative things about how humanity is doing. I love that you’re challenging the assumption that people accurately remember, or accurately report their memory of, their own happiness! This is super smart and matches my own experience of what it’s like to be a human. Often, I’m not super sure how happy I’ve been over the past week, or the past day. When someone asks me, it feels like a hard question. All I can remember is how I feel right now. And even that can sometimes be hard to articulate.
And thank you for mentioning that GDP growth could still be bad due to its effects on animals!
Thank you for posting this important question—and for mentioning Legal Impact for Chickens.
We have done some work to attempt to improve broiler chicken welfare through the U.S. government’s executive branch, by submitting comments on proposed United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) regulations. We asked USDA to address broiler welfare in its salmonella response, and to make chicken-meat companies warn growers about animal-welfare issues. And we asked the National Poultry Improvement Plan (NPIP) to give birds more space in order to avoid deadly diseases.
Other orgs have sued the U.S. government executive branch to try to slow down slaughter line speeds. Faster slaughter line speeds are worse for chicken welfare.
None of the above-mentioned efforts were focused on fast-growth breeding, though. There’s definitely more that needs to be done.
Most people have a strong drive to perpetuate humanity. What makes EAs special is that EAs also care about others’ suffering. So EAs should focus on trying to make sure the future isn’t full of suffering.
Update on Harvey’s Market: A quick victory!
The butcher shop says it stopped selling foie gras thanks to LIC’ lawsuit.
“Harvey’s Market . . . discontinued the sale of foie gras once notice of this lawsuit was received,” according to the butcher shop’s answer to our complaint.
Thank you so much for posting this. This is something I worry about a lot but I’m terrible at explaining it. The way you explain it makes much more sense. Thank you. ❤️
I guess the main reason is because the arguments we’re making are right on the law. So I feel that we are bound to eventually win.
The example that immediately comes to mind for me is how animal lawyers finally established that the Endangered Species Act (ESA) prohibits the abuse of captive endangered and threatened animals.
The ESA states that it’s illegal to kill, harm, or harass any animal whose species is threatened or endangered. So if you read the law objectively, it looks like it should prevent the abuse of captive endangered or threatened animals in a circus or a roadside zoo. But circuses and roadside zoos used to routinely beat and neglect animals like endangered Asian elephants, lemurs, tigers, etc. And they wanted to be able to continue doing so.
The ESA also says that, if someone violates the ESA, any citizen who is harmed by that violation can sue. So it makes it very easy for private citizens to protect endangered or threatened animals even when police and prosecutors are busy with other tasks.
The circus and the roadside zoos didn’t want the ESA to apply to them. And they had access to lots of money and good lawyers.
So, for years, somehow, the private wild animal ownership industry was able to continue violating the ESA without repercussion—even when animal lawyers tried to sue.
Finally, though, lawyers at the Animal Legal Defense Fund brought a landmark case called Kuehl v. Sellner. Kuehl v. Sellner successfully established that it’s illegal to abuse captive endangered and threatened animals. Now, courts seem to accept that premise without question.
The cool thing about the U.S. court system is that it’s designed to be a place where you can win if you’re right on the law—even if your opponent has more money and political power than you. It doesn’t always live up to that promise right away. But eventually, it often does.
Hi Vasco Grilo! Thank you for being awesome. I’m so sorry but I don’t have anything quite like that right now.
This is such a good post, and I agree very much. You said so many things that I have been thinking and wishing I knew how to say. Thank you so, so much for writing this, @ElliotTep!
I agree we should focus on reducing suffering. And I have other reasons, too, in addition to the points you brought up.
Other reasons:
1. The problem with factory farming is the suffering it causes. So, we should focus on the real problem—the suffering. When we talk about fighting factory farming, we are actually only talking about a proxy for our real goal. (The real goal is to decrease suffering.) I think it’s better to focus on the real goal. Because focusing on a proxy can always have unintentional consequences. For instance, if we focus only on ending factory farming, we may decide to do something like tax methane emissions. That tax may cost the meat industry money. It may decrease the number of factory farms that get built. It may raise the price of beef and thus decrease the amount of meat that gets sold. But if it causes beef prices to go up, people will eat more chicken. And then the methane-tax intervention will result in more suffering. This is just one of many examples.
2. I have recently been learning first hand that a lot of people in the meat, egg, and dairy industries have serious concerns about the treatment of animals. There are slaughterhouse workers, contract growers, corporate meat-industry employees, and ag executives who really want to improve animal welfare! But, naturally, almost none of these people want to end animal farming. Because, as @Hazo points out, that would mean ending their livelihood. We are more likely to succeed at improving animal welfare if we can work collaboratively with these concerned people in the meat and egg industries. These are the people who deal with farmed animals on a day-to-day basis, and who have the biggest impact on farmed animals’ lives. I think selecting a goal that we can work towards together with people within the industry is highly worthwhile.
3. Factory farming isn’t the only thing that’s bad. All suffering is bad. Animal testing causes severe suffering that’s likely worse per individual than the suffering caused by factory farming. My understanding is that the scale of animal testing on mice and rats isn’t actually known, and most numbers we see leave them out. Wild animals also suffer. Rodents suffer when they’re bred in pet stores to sell to snake owners. Fish presumably suffer in large numbers in the pet trade. I’m not sure if people count insect farming as factory farming, but it’s a concerning new trend that could theoretically cause even more suffering than at least what most people think of as factory farming. New forms of mass suffering could be invented in the future. If AI is sentient, people (or AI) could cause AI to suffer on massive scales. Digital minds could be created and replicated and made to suffer in huge numbers. If we fight factory farming, that doesn’t help move the needle on other forms of suffering. If we focus on the suffering itself, maybe we can move the needle generally. For instance, if we work to create an anti-suffering ethic, that would be a more helpful ethic to create in the long run than a pro-vegan or anti-factory-farming ethic. Because the anti-suffering ethic would move us to help factory farmed animals while also staying vigilant about other forms of suffering.
4. Elliot’s point about how ending factory farming is an unrealistic goal also worries me for another reason: The effect of the slogan on longtermist EAs who hear animal-focused EAs say it all the time. Animal people keep saying “Factory farming is going to end. Factory farming is unsustainable.” To me, an AR person, I know to translate that slogan to “I’m trying to get myself hyped up! I’m trying to inspire others to join me on a crusade!” Because I know, sadly, what an uphill battle it would be to end factory farming. And I think most AR people know that. But to someone who doesn’t spend their whole life focused on animal welfare, it’s not obvious that this statement is just an inspirational quote. It sounds like the speaker is literally predicting that factory farming is going to end. And I worry that longtermist EAs, who may spend slightly less time paying attention to the trends in animal agriculture, may just hear the slogan and take it at face value. Here’s why I worry about that: It seems that many longtermist EAs are working hard to try to preserve humanity, or at least consciousness, for as long as possible. And many longtermist EAs seem to assume that life in the future will be net positive. This assumption seems to involve assuming that factory farming will end, and that it won’t be replaced by anything even worse (see point #3). I worry that longtermist EAs may be outsourcing their thinking a little to animal EAs. And animal EAs are falling down on the job by just giving an inspirational slogan when we should give the truth. If it’s true that we have no realistic expectation of suffering decreasing in the future, and no reason to believe factory farming will end before humanity ends, we should make sure longtermists know that. That way, longtermist EAs can plan accordingly.
Woot woot! So extremely grateful to the AWF.
Hi! :-) I chose the option of creating an independent post, but thought maybe I should also comment here to link to it?
Cruelty --> Liability: Legal Impact for Chickens’s room for funding & marginal impact
Thank you so much for doing this, @Toby Tremlett🔹 !
This seems like such a cool opportunity! Spencer is so smart and kind.
This is a really interesting article. Thank you for writing it. I hope it’s true that farmed animal welfare will one day be net positive. I fear that the treatment of farmed animals seems to be getting worse, rather than better, over the course of human history. But I hope I’m wrong. Or maybe it’ll be a boomerang-shaped change, where the treatment of animals is currently getting worse, but things are about to do a 180 and start moving in the other direction? I hope we EAs can make that happen.
Oh, got it! I am so sorry. I’m American and have a very American-centric worldview. I was thinking of organic as referring to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Organic certification. I therefore feel like I pretty much totally missed what you actually meant by your post. I’m sorry! 🇪🇺
This is an interesting and important post.
I don’t know the answer to the question you pose about whether, on average, animals used for organic food production have net positive lives. I’m thinking there’s probably a lot of variation based on animal species, what product the animal is being used for, and how well-run the organic operation is. All that makes it harder for me to try to compute an average in my brain.
But I have a question and a thought.
The question: I’m wondering why you chose to explore organic in this post, as opposed to other food labels that are more exclusively focused on animal welfare. Organic seems to me like it introduces some distracting elements. Because my understanding is that a lot of the organic requirements are aimed at protecting consumer health, the environment, and naturalness. But there are other food labels that are more exclusively aimed at protecting animal welfare, like the various tiers of Global Animal Partnership labels. That said, I’m imagining you may have a specific reason in mind for focusing on organic.
The thought: Legal Impact for Chickens is suing Alexandre Family Farm, which advertises its products as certified organic, for starving cattle; pouring salt into animals’ eyes; dragging disabled cows across concrete; leaving calves to die while isolated in small, filthy, individual hutches; and more. I would not want to be one of those cows. That said, others in the organic farming community, like the Northeast Organic Dairy Producers Alliance and the Regenerative Organic Alliance, have come out to condemn Alexandre. And some of Alexandre’s cruel practices explicitly violate organic rules. So it’s possible that most animals used for organic agriculture do have net positive lives.
I’m curious to hear other peoples’ thoughts.
Got it. Thank you so much for explaining so patiently!