Hi Vasco! Thank you for your question! For next year, we are planning to research some funding-related questions for wild animals. More generally, our approach is to engage directly with funders to highlight impactful opportunities. For example, this year, we hosted several talks with various philanthropic institutions aiming to increase funding for some farmed invertebrate interventions. We also conducted research to inform the strategy of an organization bringing in new funding into the space. It’s something we’re excited to keep building on!
Daniela Waldhorn
Karma: 1,378
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!
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.
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.
Hey Lewis!
What kind of work would you like to see done for invertebrates?
What kind of work would you like to see done for animals living in the wild?
Are there key research questions that you think would contribute to advance these two areas’ tractability?
Thanks!
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.
Interesting, thank you!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I agree with Jason. Additionally, I probably wouldn’t be a researcher if I didn’t work for an organization like RP because of operational costs, security/risk, and well-being reasons. But more importantly, since I’m at an early stage of my career as a researcher, if I worked independently, I wouldn’t count on the support of my team and researchers with more experience. That would make it very difficult for me to improve and develop professionally as a researcher.
¡Gracias por tu interés y tu colaboración, Mati!
Thank you for your interest and collaboration, Mati!
Thanks!
Good question about repellants. Indeed, if food were the limiting factor, repellants would be much more effective. But in agricultural lands, crops constitute a superabundant source of potential food. In these landscapes, invertebrates like some insects or snails do not seem to be mainly limited by the amount of available food –instead, access to quality feed appears to be a matter of greater importance.
Therefore, deterring insects typically move off on to a new crop, where they do not necessarily compete for food, and their populations can thrive. So it is unclear whether repellants will actually reduce populations of target invertebrates. That is why repellents are only used occasionally in crops. They work better as a part of a strategy that incorporates other forms of population control.
Hi Tobias!
Thanks for your interest and your stimulating feedback. In general, I think that people do not have an elaborated position about these issues. But we are typically resistant to ideas that conflict with our beliefs, and, as you say, if one rationalization does not work, in all probability, we will make up a new excuse in order to dismiss a “troubling” or “crazy” position.
Unfortunately, there is no direct evidence about this specific effect in how we morally think about invertebrates. In fact, the psychological barriers here described are, in several cases, mere hypotheses based on existing knowledge. Thus, to what extent these psychological barriers operate, and the role of the radical flank effect and other mechanisms are issues that should be empirically addressed.
I also share your impression that, in some contexts, we may have the chance to promote welfare measures for some invertebrates, like octopuses, crabs, or lobsters. Crustacean Compassion’s work in the UK is a good example in this regard. Surprisingly, some of their demands are shared by the Labour Party, and an animal welfare organization linked to the Conservative Party. I still wonder under what circumstances this is possible –(i) on behalf of which species and why (i.e., what factors make us more likely to consider some invertebrates rather than others), and (ii) what makes a society more suitable for such demands. Do you have any other suggestions in this regard?
Hi Tobias!
Thanks again for sharing your views. Regarding the role of further research, first, we should keep in mind that the scientific literature in invertebrate sentience is still scarce, and the extent to which invertebrates have been investigated varies. Thus, there are some particular species about which there is a comparatively great deal of knowledge (e.g., fruit flies). But for several other taxa, potentially consciousness-indicating features have not been investigated at all. It is unknown if many invertebrate taxa display particular anatomical, physiological, or behavioral functions that seem to be necessary for consciousness (e.g., nociceptors in honey bees). Especially in these cases, I think further research may significantly reduce current uncertainty.
Additionally, we should consider that the scientific community does not agree that many invertebrate taxa are sentient. Probably, the only exception are cephalopods. In this case, we have seen how further research has led to relevant ethical discussions and specific welfare measures on the use of live cephalopods in science (at least, in Europe). Some researchers believe that in the future, other invertebrate taxa will face similar challenges, and additional research will promote further discussions on invertebrate welfare. Similarly, new research would also contribute to identify the most determining factors in invertebrates’ quality of life and prioritize forms of intervention.
Nevertheless, lack of scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent potential suffering –especially in cases of potential threats of serious or irreversible harms. Do you have other ideas about this?
Your question about society’s lack of moral concern for invertebrates is very interesting. In general, existing knowledge about our attitudes towards invertebrates mostly looks into occurrent, spontaneous, or superficial responses that people tend to experience in the course of their everyday life (e.g., disgust, as you say). But, importantly, those attitudes do not necessarily reflect people’s views on the moral consideration of invertebrates, or their actual behavior towards these animals. For example, even if someone feels disgust towards insects, that does not necessarily entail that she believes they are not sentient, that their pain does not matter or that using insecticide is morally innocuous. Apparently, most people have not even thought about these issues as moral problems and, in turn, may hold a collection of unreflected ideas. If you’re interested in this, I’ve just published a new post about our attitudes towards invertebrates and challenges.
Hi Tobias!
Thanks for commenting. You’re right. All else equal, smaller organisms or those with less intense experiences may have relatively less positive and negative experiences. However, since smaller individuals are typically r-selected, while they can suffer in large numbers, they usually live relatively short lives. Thus, two shifts happen –one of which drives the net balance of suffering up, and the other which drives the net balance of suffering down:
First, as the more organisms in a species fail, the more cases of suffering there are relative to enjoyment.
Second, as the number of organisms which fail increases, based on an evolutionary constrained optimization, the degree each organism suffers may decrease. Evolution may put relatively less weight on suffering since suffering becomes more costly for genes in expectation the more organisms experience it. In the case of r-selected individuals (who are typically smaller), if indeed evolution is optimizing, then their shorter lifespan may serve to attenuate their suffering.
Because these two effects go in opposite directions, as the number of failing organisms rises, total suffering may come to exceed overall enjoyment, or the opposite may occur instead. In other words, while greater intensity of experience would lead to more suffering relative to enjoyment, a higher rate of evolutionary failure relative to success may have a surprisingly ambiguous effect.
For the time being, given this trade-off between number and degree of suffering, it is not possible to conclude whether suffering or enjoyment predominates in nature. Additionally, it should be noted that the question of how evolution produces positive and negative experiences is highly uncertain.
Hi Vasco,
Thanks so much for your question and interest in our work!
Is there a way of supporting RP’s wild animal welfare research without any unrestricted funds currently supporting it moving to other work (including research on farmed animals)?
Yes, absolutely. Since we do not currently have any unrestricted funds allocated to wild animal welfare, a restricted donation to this area would not cause funding shifts between departments, or animal welfare sub-causes. Instead, it would directly increase our capacity for wild animal welfare work. In fact, wild animal welfare is the least funded area of our animal welfare portfolio, despite its importance and potential for impact.
Our animal welfare work is primarily funded through restricted donations for specific projects or sub-causes, with most directed toward non-invertebrate and non-wild animal priorities. Only ~11% of RP’s overall funding is unrestricted, and based on our current plans, donating to the Animal Welfare Department would not result in unrestricted funds being redirected elsewhere.
We take donor preferences very seriously. For larger donations, we’re happy to explicitly increase the budget for a department, sub-cause, or project by the exact amount of your contribution, eliminating any potential fungibility concerns entirely. For small donations (relative to project costs), there may be practical limitations if a project requires significantly more funding to proceed, but we’ll inform you if this is the case and will always work to honor donor preferences.
Please let me know if you have any other questions!