Daniela Waldhorn 23 Jun 2022 18:01 UTC
8 points
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on: Who’s hiring? (May-September 2022)
Rethink Priorities is incubating a new organization–temporarily called the Insect Welfare Project–and we are looking for an Executive Director! This person will initially join us at Rethink Priorities while working to build the project into a successful independent organization.

This is a pivotal decade for the insect farming industry: consumer attitudes are in flux, regulations are being considered and written for the first time, and new factories are being designed and built. Now is the best time we might ever have to influence this sector and help animals farmed and harmed in the trillions.

If you’re interested in this opportunity, please apply by July 17, 2022. Otherwise, we greatly appreciate your help in sharing this open position with anyone in your network you think would be a good fit. Thanks!

Daniela Waldhorn 25 Feb 2021 19:14 UTC
28 points
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in reply to: Ula Zarosa’s comment on: AMA: Lewis Bollard, Open Philanthropy
Hi Ula! I agree with you. I myself stopped working directly as an animal advocate after being mobbed, harassed, and listening to regular discriminatory comments for being a woman, an immigrant, and because of my origin. I’ve seen so many activists going through the same.

In my case, the continued support of other advocates, especially of the Encompass community (www.encompassmovement.org), has been invaluable. I highly recommend it.

Second, I also believe that it’s time to stop normalizing activists’ mistreatment and discriminatory practices, especially in organizations where there is evidence that these issues are structural. In this regard, it’s very disappointing that organizations with ongoing and severe management and leadership problems continue to receive large grants or support from the EA community.

Third, I think organizations should develop active policies to prevent these situations from happening in the very first place. We should not have more advocates burning out or leaving the movement to take this issue seriously.

I’m glad that you’re also concerned about this problem, and I’d be happy to talk about this further with you :). I’m also open to discussing it with Lewis– if he considers it appropriate.

Daniela Waldhorn 25 Feb 2021 16:51 UTC
17 points
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in reply to: Ula Zarosa’s comment on: AMA: Lewis Bollard, Open Philanthropy
Thanks for pointing this out, Ula. I’m aware that several activists in other organizations have also suffered similar situations, along with derogatory comments because of their origin and gender.

Daniela Waldhorn 25 Feb 2021 10:01 UTC
51 points
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on: AMA: Lewis Bollard, Open Philanthropy
Hey Lewis!
1. What kind of work would you like to see done for invertebrates?
2. What kind of work would you like to see done for animals living in the wild?
3. Are there key research questions that you think would contribute to advance these two areas’ tractability?
Thanks!

Daniela Waldhorn 8 Apr 2020 14:44 UTC
5 points
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in reply to: Tobias_Baumann’s comment on: Coronavirus and non-humans: How is the pandemic affecting animals used for human consumption?
Hi Tobias!
Thanks for commenting. That’s a very interesting question. Probably, after the pandemic, people may be more concerned about safer and healthier food, and more open to messages about public costs and other problems associated with animal farming. But for now, this is just a hypothesis that should be empirically tested, as Peter says.
However, I disagree with the idea that coronavirus doesn’t have anything to do with animal farming. There is extensive evidence about how factory farms provide an ideal breeding ground for highly pathogenic viruses, worsen by the abusive use of antibiotics. Researchers Cynthia Schuck and Wladimir Alonso have recently published a report about this issue available here.

Coronavirus and non-humans: How is the pandemic affecting animals used for human consumption?

Daniela Waldhorn7 Apr 2020 8:40 UTC

72 points

7 comments20 min readEA link

Daniela Waldhorn 13 Feb 2020 10:16 UTC
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in reply to: adamShimi’s comment on: Snails used for human consumption: The case of meat and slime
Interesting, thank you!

Daniela Waldhorn 12 Feb 2020 12:20 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: adamShimi’s comment on: Snails used for human consumption: The case of meat and slime
Thanks for your comment, adamShimi! Do you have a sense of the profile of people that find eating snails disgusting? I wonder if it’s a generational issue, for example. In Spain, eating snails now seems to be much more prevalent among older generations than among the youngest population.

Daniela Waldhorn 7 Feb 2020 16:04 UTC
31 points
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in reply to: Julia_Wise🔸’s comment on: Snails used for human consumption: The case of meat and slime
Hey Julia! I partially address that point in the section that Linch indicated. As you say, whether snails have a capacity for valenced experience is still uncertain. When compared to bivalves, snails have more diverse and specialized sensory organs. As snails are motile and active foragers, they display a wider range of behaviors, and that is reflected in greater neural complexity. For instance, snails show nociceptive responses, like avoidance behavior in response to high temperatures (not surprisingly, several sources that provide instructions for cooking snails mention the attempts of snails to escape boiling water). However, relatively little is known about the anatomical organization and actual functions of most neurons in their ganglionic regions.
I must admit that I haven’t investigated any bivalves in detail. Still, for what I know, the case for snail sentience is much better than the evidence for bivalve sentience.

Snails used for human consumption: The case of meat and slime

Daniela Waldhorn6 Feb 2020 17:00 UTC

89 points

8 comments26 min readEA link

Daniela Waldhorn 8 Jan 2020 20:58 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: utilitarian01’s comment on: Opinion: Estimating Invertebrate Sentience
Hi!
Although the possession of nociceptors is perhaps some evidence of a capacity to feel pain, it is certainly not by itself “a good indicator” of that capacity. If nociceptors are not connected to centralized information-processing structures, these neurons could trigger reflexive reactions (i.e., similar to spinally mediated responses in mammals), but that would not imply that the nociceptive input is consciously perceived (in humans, see Becker et al., 2012; Dubin & Patapoutian, 2010). If we understand consciousness as suitably integrated information (Oizumi et al., 2014), the projections of nociceptors to integrative information-processing structures is a crucial aspect to examine when judging the probability that a nonhuman individual is conscious.
In the case of C. elegans, unlike other invertebrates, they do not seem to have a specific neural region for the processing of spatial information and organization of movement. In other words, movement and stimuli discrimination do not appear to be integrated in a manner sufficiently similar to the vertebrate midbrain (see Altun & Hall, 2011; Kato et al., 2015).
However, it should be noted that some noxious stimuli reactions have been identified in C. elegans, specifically, physiological responses to nociception and moving away from a noxious stimulus. However, heat-evoked escape responses in these animals, for example, are considered highly stereotypical, and a reflexive reaction (Leung et al., 2016).
Finally, when I used the term “simple” [nociceptive behaviors] here I specifically meant: (i) nociceptive responses can be identified, but they do not necessarily account for noxious stimulus intensity and direction, (ii) absence or insufficient indicators of ‘long-term’ learning and memory, and (iii) absence or insufficient indicators of motivational tradeoffs. Given our findings (summarized here), C. elegans seem to mostly display simple nociceptive responses.

Daniela Waldhorn 13 Dec 2019 16:34 UTC
12 points
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in reply to: Kirsten’s comment on: We’re Rethink Priorities. AMA.
I applied to RP when I decided to make an important change in my career. If RP hadn’t hired me, I’d have kept trying it at different EA organizations, maybe as an intern. Yet, I would likely have ended up working in a management position at a local NGO.

Daniela Waldhorn 13 Dec 2019 16:06 UTC
10 points
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in reply to: MichaelStJules’s comment on: We’re Rethink Priorities. AMA.
Yes, now I’m more careful while walking outside.
After our research on invertebrates, I also placed a net in some windows at home, and I purposefully keep them closed as long as possible to prevent any flying insects from visiting us and being “welcomed” by my cats.

Daniela Waldhorn 13 Dec 2019 16:03 UTC
14 points
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in reply to: Ben_West🔸’s comment on: We’re Rethink Priorities. AMA.
I do think that the chances of bivalves being sentient are quite low. However, I do not eat them because I’m already used to a plant-based diet, and given our uncertainty, I adhere to the precautionary principle in this case.
In general, I would not recommend consuming marine invertebrates produced in countries where trawling is not banned, given its impact on other aquatic animals for whom there is a high probability that they are sentient (i.e., fish and other vertebrates).
Still, I’m unsure about the consequences of promoting bivalve consumption, even if they are farmed. I’m concerned about how some people might interpret such a message –e.g., they may assume, without much thought, that consuming other more complex invertebrates (e.g., shrimps) is equivalent.