I canāt think of a compelling theory of change for arthropod welfare that omits consideration of avian welfare, and I worry that your line of reasoning (despite the generally robust calculations you include) neglects two larger concerns:
The idea that, for the sake of increased total welfare, we should neglect a smaller but still significant harm, may border on naive utilitarianism. While chicken welfare reforms may, on balance, increase total suffering, there is no doubt that they directly and significantly reduce the immense suffering of factory-farmed chickens. The horrors of factory farming are too great to dismiss, even if in this case there is an extremely uncertain chance that they might reduce harm elsewhere. A better solution could be to work with farmed chicken welfare advocates to investigate ways of rearing chickens more humanely which do not (or are at least less likely to) increase insect suffering.
Outside of (and sometimes even inside) EA, insect welfare is a tough sell. I think an even tougher sell is insect welfare which comes at the cost of the welfare of birds, mammals, or other animals. Like Cameron, I have a hard time imagining a society that takes insect welfare seriously while subjecting farmed animals of other species to intense suffering, and so I worry that moving away from this kind of chicken welfare reform actually moves us further from adopting the reforms needed to decrease insect suffering in the long term.
That being said, I do think this is well worth discussing, and I appreciate your efforts to move things along with quantitative data!
Hi Vasco,
Thanks for that first point ā I was using ānaive utilitarianismā in a broader sense which I now realize made my point less clear. What I meant was that I worry about the type of thinking that allows for serious harm if it increases net welfare, e.g. disregarding rights violations so long as they lead to the greatest total good. I donāt disagree with your modelling, but worry more generally about reasoning which permits these other types of harm.
Your second point is fair and helps me understand your post better. Thanks for that!
I am not convinced of your third point. There are just so many insects in the world that I think it would be hard to improve their welfare on a large scale without some level of societal investment. However, until we have more research on insect welfare and related potential interventions, I think this one will be hard to resolve.
Thanks again for sparking this great discussion!