Keyvan Mostafavi

Ditch­ing what we are good at: A change of course for An­ima In­ter­na­tional in France

Fight­ing an­i­mal suffer­ing: be­yond the num­ber of an­i­mals killed

• Keyvan MostafaviOct 10, 2024, 7:36 AM

  51 points

  26 ∶ 1

  on: Key­van Mostafavi’s Quick takes

  I’m grateful for the articles @MichaelStJules writes on the forum. He seems to be motivated by a deep desire to understand what will benefit moral patients.

  For example, I particularly value his sequence on the impact of fishing on fish welfare (The moral ambiguity of fishing on wild aquatic animal populations and other articles)

• Keyvan MostafaviMay 29, 2024, 1:14 PM

  23 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Cost-effec­tive­ness of School Plates

  With the French branch of Anima International, we also made similar estimates to evaluate our work with school and university canteens in France. We plan to make a post about this analysis. The results made us decide to look for more effective interventions.
  
  A few points about your post:

  • We used a similar methodology as you. In particular, we didn’t estimate the number of animals lives saved, but the number of days of suffering averted (as you did). See our recent post: Fighting animal suffering: beyond the number of animals killed

  • in France, the breakdown of different types of animal products is different in canteens than in households (relatively less chicken meat is eaten in canteens than in households for instance). It may also be the case in the UK, which would decrease or increase the cost-effectiveness, depending of which types of meat are over-represented in canteens

  • even if we advocated mainly for plant-based meals in France, often our partners implemented vegetarian meals, which often contained eggs. Since egg meals (particularly coming from caged hens) cause a lot of suffering (approximately as much as in chicken meals), it signifcantly lowered our effectiveness. So it would be worth checking in your analysis that the meals were shifted to 100% plant-based ones

  • all this discussion doesn’t take into account the long-term effects of having children eating more plant-based when they are young. We tried to review the scientific litterature about such effects, but we concluded that it hasn’t been studied enough to support continuing this program.

[Question] Should some peo­ple start work­ing to in­fluence the peo­ple who are most likely to shape the val­ues of the first AGIs, so that they take into ac­count the in­ter­ests of wild and farmed an­i­mals and sen­tient digi­tal minds?

• Keyvan MostafaviMay 17, 2025, 7:58 AM

  16 points

  4 ∶ 1

  on: The Daily Show did a seg­ment on EA and Shrimp Welfare Project

  I asked a friend for his opinion — he’s very supportive of EA ideas and familiar with them, but not directly involved in the community. He said:

  It’s funny and well done enough to go viral, and people are influenced by what others think — something funny and cool makes everything behind it seem cooler too. It also goes against the potentially boring /​ patronizing /​ nerdy vibe that’s probably the first impression someone gets if they don’t know anything about the topic (especially if they’re not into science). So I’d say it’s psychologically much more impactful than trying to “raise awareness” in a classic way.

  Shrimp aren’t seen as sentient enough in people’s minds for a quick two-minute marketing stunt to make them reconsider their views.

  I think this is a really good way to market it.

• Keyvan MostafaviJan 31, 2024, 2:13 PM

  15 points

  6 ∶ 0

  on: Lower-suffer­ing egg brands available in the SF Bay Area

  I’m french so I have nothing to say directly about your question, but I would like to emphasize that most types of eggs are almost certainly way worse than beef and pig when considering animal suffering.
  Using Faunalytics estimates, eating these different dishes creates this quantity of suffering :
  

  • chicken : 0,1 animal live et 5,2 days in farm

  • pork : 0,002 animal life and 0,33 days in farm

  • beef : 0,0004 animal life and 0,33 days in farm

  • egg (omelette) : 0,01 animal life and 4,9 days in farm

  And it doesn’t account for the relative badness of being a broiler vs a laying hen vs a pig vs a beef.
  
  Also, the Welfare Footprint project estimates that cage-free hens live better lifes than caged hens, but still painful lifes.
  
  

• Keyvan MostafaviFeb 23, 2025, 6:49 PM

  10 points

  3 ∶ 0

  in reply to: JoA🔸’s comment on: Ditch­ing what we are good at: A change of course for An­ima In­ter­na­tional in France

  It’s hard for me to assess how influential Brian is and was, but I agree it’s probably big.

  Many of his articles moved me a lot. He writes about animals with deep care and is really serious about not harming them. Even insects, which most people—including me—don’t naturally feel much empathy for. I remember feeling grateful several times while reading his articles that at least some people have such altruism for animals.

• Keyvan MostafaviFeb 27, 2025, 5:41 PM

  6 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Ramiro’s comment on: Ditch­ing what we are good at: A change of course for An­ima In­ter­na­tional in France

  Yes, eradicating the New World screwworm was part of the initial 94 ideas we listed. This idea didn’t make it to the second round because we have a preference for operating in France, and because navigating the Latin America context as French people seemed difficult.
  
  I find this idea very promising as it could reduce a huge amount of animal suffering. Although I was wondering how sure we are that a death caused by the screwworm is worse than the average death in nature for those animals.

• Keyvan MostafaviFeb 23, 2025, 7:35 PM

  6 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Larks’s comment on: Ditch­ing what we are good at: A change of course for An­ima In­ter­na­tional in France

  I’m not exactly sure why universities use fewer eggs than school canteens. My best guess would be that when school canteens offer vegetarian options, they’re more of a side dish rather than a fully developed meal. They might not have the space, resources, or time to prepare a dish with multiple ingredients, so they rely on eggs and omelets as a quick and easy solution. Universities, on the other hand, are used to preparing several complete meals and generally have more staff available to do so.

• Keyvan MostafaviOct 30, 2024, 6:03 PM

  6 points

  2 ∶ 0

  on: The goal isn’t ‘end fac­tory farm­ing’, but re­duce as much suffer­ing as possible

  I found your article very useful.
  Similar thoughts to the ones you express here led me to write this post: Fighting animal suffering: beyond the number of animals killed

• Keyvan MostafaviMay 30, 2024, 10:50 AM

  5 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: The moral am­bi­guity of fish­ing on wild aquatic an­i­mal populations

  Strongly upvoted, as I think this is a very important question, and I’m glad you tried to answer it. The same goes for your other two articles on the effect of fishing. Thanks for your work.
  
  I would also love to see similar analyses done on the impact of reducing the number of farmed animals on wild animal suffering, with different species studied separately. I am aware of Brian Tomasik’s work, but given the importance of this topic, I would like to see more research in this area (and if more work has been done, please point it out to me).

• Keyvan MostafaviMay 27, 2024, 1:16 PM

  5 points

  1 ∶ 0

  on: Fight­ing an­i­mal suffer­ing: be­yond the num­ber of an­i­mals killed

  Another good example of the difference between the number of animals killed and the number of animals alive at any point in time is with shrimps and insects. This report (Shrimp: The animals most commonly used and killed for food production, see figures 1 and 2) from Rethink Priorities estimated that in 2020 :

  • the total number of farmed shrimp killed per year is equivalent to 40% of the number of farmed insects slaughtered to produce food and feed and others that die prior to being processed

  • the total number of farmed shrimp alive at any moment is equivalent to 270% the number of insects alive at any point in time on farms

  (Note that the number of insects farmed may have increased since 2020)
  Thanks @William McAuliffe for pointing that out to me.

• Keyvan MostafaviFeb 23, 2025, 6:54 PM

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Karla Still 🔸’s comment on: Ditch­ing what we are good at: A change of course for An­ima In­ter­na­tional in France

  We were already part of Anima International when we were Assiettes Végétales. So the name change was about better reflecting the new strategy. But we were also thinking for some time that having such a specific name tied to a specific strategy (“Assiettes Végétales”) was bad for strategic flexibility.

• Keyvan MostafaviMay 29, 2024, 3:39 PM

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Michael St Jules 🔸’s comment on: Shrimp Paste and An­i­mal Welfare

  Thanks Michael! I was asking myself exactly these questions when reading the article.

• Keyvan MostafaviMar 5, 2024, 7:01 PM

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Re­think Pri­ori­ties’ Welfare Range Estimates

  @Laura Duffy @Bob Fischer
  A question about your methodology : If I understand correctly, your placeholders are probability-of-sentience-adjusted, but your key takeaways are not (since they are “conditional on sentience”).
  Why having adjusted for sentience in your placeholders but not in your key takeaways ?

• Keyvan MostafaviJul 3, 2024, 4:16 PM

  3 points

  1 ∶ 0

  on: The promises of work­ing on cul­tural change to move for­ward an­i­mal welfare

  Thanks for the post. I’d like to see this topic discussed a bit more among the EA community.
  In particular, I’d like to see more of the following:

  • people explaining why they don’t get involved /​ fund interventions aimed at cultural change for animals. I think there are good reasons not to get involved. But, in my opinion, it would be useful for the movement to explicitly states the arguments underlying this situation.

  • a few organizations (not too many, so as not to cannibalize the robust and well proven work being done on cages or BCC for example) testing cultural change interventions, and doing their best to measure results. I like what the Social Change Lab is trying to do, for example.

• Keyvan MostafaviMay 31, 2024, 8:54 AM

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Amanda Hansen ’s comment on: Sus­tain­able fish­ing policy in­creases fish­ing, and de­mand re­duc­tions might, too

  I feel exactly the same as you :). Thanks Michael!

• Keyvan MostafaviApr 8, 2024, 9:00 AM

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: saulius’s comment on: EAA is over­in­vest­ing in cor­po­rate welfare reforms

  @saulius Any update on this point ?

• Keyvan MostafaviOct 30, 2024, 6:06 PM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: The goal isn’t ‘end fac­tory farm­ing’, but re­duce as much suffer­ing as possible

  Could you develop this part please? The “why this problem is much harder and disanalogous” part.

  
  A lack of strategic clarity when developing a theory of change. For advocates who buy that we will end factory farming, this might mean that they are more likely to pursue interventions and theories of change that will do just that: end factory farming. This leads to conversations about how do we mimic previous social movements that have ‘won’ like the emancipation and gay marriage movements. While I think this work can be valuable, I often see it discussed in ways I think are insufficiently clear-eyed about why this problem is much harder and disanalogous.