Happy to have a new significant contribution from Peter Singer, but disappointed to read that this will further fuel the fallacy that meat production contributes to climate change due to cattle belching.
Duarte M
Karma: 23
Excellent to see the U.K. take a leading role in this, and seeing the political narrative finally shift from just climate change and occasionally sprinkles of pandemics and nuclear war, to all kinds of X risk.
This is really fantastic news overall! 👏
Not sure on the dehorning and beak trimming though, that sounds like virtue signalling more so than an evidence based policy.
Not sure dehorning would be a good thing considering the deaths and mutilations caused by animals using their horns.
Great post!
I must say, this anxiety is what happens when people adopt Utilitarianism as a moral philosophy instead of the actual goal of EA—to donate a certain % of first world incomes in an effective way. The jump to “maximise utility always” is one that can only lead to paralysis, anxiety, and nihilism, as many more capable than me have pointed out.
Thanks for sharing. This is an example of why naive utilitarianism can be harmful. EA needs to more clearly adopt a framework with duties of care, and personal rights. I dare call it “common sense ethics”.
I would add that having children in the West is a huge net good on society, even if that means fewer shrimp have their welfare improved. (We can think about EY’s argument on hiccups here)
The economy is a positive sum game, meaning children add more than they take, and there simply would be no wealth to distribute otherwise. If we think on a long enough time horizon, the only way to improve everyone’s welfare significantly is by having more children in productive areas.
Agreed. The “KPI” here should be welfare, not deaths.
Salmon is a carnivorous fish which means that choosing salmon instead of live carp could cause more animals to die.
This is more or less irrelevant if those deaths cause no suffering.
Still, very interesting analysis. Thanks for sharing OP.
I completely agree with this. As a (Americans read: neo) Liberal that thinks the Green movement does far more harm than good, some of the political campaigning I’ve seen EAs do really puts me off and makes me question the entire movement. SBF’s lobbying of politicians in the US is another example of egregious misuse of funds.
Until those checks and balances are in place, we should be focusing on directing funds to the most impactful causes. That should be the beginning and end of EA in my opinion. Politics is almost never the best ROI approach to anything, using EA’s own methodology to calculate impact. There will of course be exceptions, but I find it hard to believe any amount of money will be better spent trying to influence a government as opposed to buying malaria nets.
We also need to avoid thinking and framing our actions as a group identity. It’s to be expected that people come to different and opposing conclusions even within a movement with clear stated principles. As such, political action shouldn’t be done in the name of the group as a whole.
I very much doubt the reason it’s won’t be made privately available is due to Pfizer thinking it wouldn’t be worth it. More likely it’s down to sufficient stock being available in the NHS for the cohort that will be receiving it, and the government not wanting to add more demand, which would increase the cost per dose for the NHS.
It’s perverse, but a likely consequence of the Beveridge style universal healthcare system used in the U.K.
Other places in Europe will certainly provide it.
Muito interessante! Obrigado pela partilha. Têm orçamento da Open Philanthropy para contratar mais tradutores ou é tudo com base em voluntariado?
I’m all for diversity of thought, but I really hope EA doesn’t become a vehicle for the ideas stemming from critical social science.
These diatribes against agriculture in the EA movement really sadden me.
One thing this piece has not considered is the physical possibility of agriculture without animals. Specifically with regards to the nitrogen cycle.
It also doesn’t consider agro-silvo-pastoralism, or the downsides of eliminating all forms of animal agriculture on ecosystems, especially those suffering from increased desertification due to climate change.
Finally, this text doesn’t seriously consider agricultural systems which are clearly a net positive from a consequentialist point of view. One suggestion I would make to the team is to explore the regenerative beef industry in the U.K.. Another example would be Joel Salatin’s Polyface farm in the USA.
This is excellent, thank you for your research.
Even setting aside the organic argument, an insistence on extensive agricultural alone is also negative for the environment due to the lower output per hectare. Lots of literature has been written on this.
TL;DR: This initiative would have led to bad consequences and the EA movement needs to be more evidence-based when it comes to animal agriculture. I leave a few suggestions to improve animal welfare more effectively below.
In my opinion, this topic is the one where the Effective Altruism movement is the most in its ivory tower still. Everything I’ve read on this topic by the EA community, like Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation or the chapter dedicated to it in What We Owe The Future showcases a total separation from reality. I think we’re all on board with the idea that we should reduce harm in our farming as much as possible, but claims like 99% of meat being factory farmed are just intuitively false to anyone that has spent any significant amount of time in the countryside and farms outside of the USA. Most countries don’t even have industrial farming. It’s either wrong out of genuine ignorance, or purposeful scope creep to advance an agenda (for lack of a better term) - neither of which lends it credibility or help the cause reduce harm.
Another issue I would raise is that utilitarians seems to remove their consequentialist ethos when discussing economics of agriculture. The well-intentioned arguments aimed at reducing harm often lead to more harm in practice. The Green agenda is politically ideological and pseudoscientific at its core, and the arguments commonly put forward, not least by this initiative, are derivatives of this framework.
Take a few of the claims on the initiative’s website[0]:
This petition, specifically, makes claims like “A drastic reduction in the consumption of animal-based food is needed”.
“Numerous scientific studies show how industrial animal husbandry is disastrous for the environment and detrimental to our health.”
It is more harmful to the climate than all global traffic combined and – due to the cultivation of soy monocultures for animal fattening – it is also responsible for about 90% of all deforestation in the Amazon. Animal products require 83% of the world’s agricultural land (pasture land and cultivation of animal feed), but only provide us with 18% of the calories.
Most of this is just not true.[1][2] It stems from a conflation between biogenic greenhouse gas emissions and anthropogenic fossil fuel emissions. The former is part of the natural carbon cycle, with animals playing a crucial role in maintaining healthy ecosystems which acts as a carbon sink. Needless to say, the latter is the cause of climate change, and the shift to artificial fertiliser would only exacerbate fossil fuel emissions, as well as deterioration of soils and abandonment of the vast, vast, majority of agricultural land—pasture.
Extensive, or organic agriculture shows absolutely no health benefits whatsoever, is extremely harmful for the environment as it requires far more land, and uses outdated techniques and chemicals which pose a much larger risk to our health and the environment. In fact, capping organic agriculture might do a lot for the environment and food security in Switzerland.
In particular, the sheer volume of antibiotics used on intensively farmed animals is a serious security threat.
This claim is true, but besides not being entirely related to intensive vs extensive agriculture other than at a question of scale, routine administration of antibiotics has been forbidden for about 20 years in Switzerland, and will be forbidden from this year across the entire EU. The principal cause of antibiotic resistance is its use in feed, which has been banned in Switzerland since the turn of the century.
This is to say nothing of the horrendous working conditions of people whose job involves killing animals all day, every day.
This claim may be true in many countries, but this isn’t a subject directly related to this initiative and I would wager that the expected value of investing on improving working conditions in Switzerland might be limited.
Smaller farms can hardly withstand the price pressure. They have to produce more and more meat for less and less money. At the same time, «factory farms» are shooting up, trampling on animal welfare, routinely using antibiotics and importing huge quantities of animal feed from abroad.
Reducing the consumption of animal products can therefore directly improve the security of supply for Swiss agriculture.
Another argument that showcases a lack of understanding of the agricultural sector. Switzerland can never be self-sufficient on plant agriculture, its geography allows for animal husbandry and little else. Switzerland exports cheese, not pears. The choice is between producing livestock and producing nothing, you can’t grow soy beans extensively in alpine valleys. In the future, we may be able to create vast warehouses with vertical plant farming, but that is not the current reality.
This brings me nicely to another important topic that one grapples with in the subject of agriculture. The quote above is a full admission that this proposal would increase food prices. In the middle of a supply-side inflationary shock, the best initiative the EA community could come up with would have led to an even larger increase in food prices. This alone would be reason enough to be rejected, however the point I want to make here is that this is an extremely regressive end result. This would substantially hurt the poorest in society, even in a relatively wealthy country like Switzerland, and that touches on people’s perception of fairness. Fairness is one of the most important moral axes in human psychology according to Haidt’s moral foundations theory.
Going Forward
What would a good initiative propose to reduce harm in agriculture?
Framing—Focus on specifics
The largest critique of this initiative was the idea that “there is no factory farming in Switzerland”. In fact, even the supporters of the legislation agree:
“It’s true that we don’t have a lot of big farms in Switzerland,” says legislator Martina Munz, whose Social Democratic party favors the ban. “But we have a lot of things we can do better when it comes to animal welfare. It’s not just the number of animals in the group, it’s also about how they’re kept, it’s about slaughtering and transportation.”
It is understandable that when the framing implies there is something in society which is widespread and horrible, people’s first instinct is to reject the claim on the grounds that this just isn’t the case. On the other hand, if you asked Swiss people if they’re in favour of keeping animals in good conditions, not housing thousands of birds together in disgusting conditions, etc. I’m sure they would agree.
Why not a series of initiatives to improve husbandry practices?
Perhaps a focus on silvopasture?
How about an initiative to promote the use of food waste in agriculture even more? China is currently processing food waste with cockroaches and using them to feed pigs.
2. Scientific legitimacy, not politically compromised
Lots of the arguments used in this initiative are copied over from the George Monbiot, far left/Green playbook. This means it’ll naturally alienate the vast majority of the population, not least those with the most skin in the game—farmers. Lets base initiatives on the best available evidence. Cows can be an even larger carbon sink than they are now when fed the right additives and with sustainable grazing practices [3]. Let’s leave the vitriol to politicians and work on scientifically sound solutions.
3. Fair outcomes
The expected value from these policies needs to be more obviously positive. We can’t demand a trade-off between abundant food for the poorest in society, and animal welfare as the latter will always lose out, especially in this context of already existing relatively high-welfare standards and high food prices. One example of a policy with fair outcomes here would be to propose cage-free egg production. It’s entirely possible to produce cheap eggs intensively with uncaged, and even free range chickens.[4]
[0] https://factory-farming.ch/
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW8BclS27aI
[2] https://www.canadianfga.ca/uploads/source/006_Karen-Haugen-Kozyra.pdf
[3] https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/making-cattle-more-sustainable
[4] https://www.thepoultrysite.com/articles/a-closer-look-at-the-cage-free-revolution
What if we have two native tongues?
This is so cool. A few ideas which I’m not fit to write:
-
Next generation Geothermal https://elidourado.com/blog/geothermal/
-
Policy and technological advancements to increase residential construction in the U.K.
-
Research on the best health system models
-
Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion
-
Oscillating water column technology (wave energy)
-
Digitisation and simplification of government services/law (a la Estonia and Próspera)
-
Drug regulation reciprocity
-
Just a shame it’s during working hours! All the best with the event.
This is the first decent post I’ve read on the subject on this forum. Thank you, it gives me hope that EA has not completely lost the plot when it comes to the intersection between animal advocacy and diet.
I would add that for those of us that eat a Mediterranean diet, Veganism presents a significant trade-off in terms of diet quality.
For those of us in Southern Europe, it also has a trade-off on environmental impact due to the nature of agro-silvo-pastoralism here (although that is outside of the scope of a mere forum comment).