Contractor RA to Peter Singer, Princeton
Fai
Karma: 1,892
I don’t get the impression that the majority of animal advocates are strongly motivated by reducing animal suffering,
I wonder if you can clarify the actual group of people you are referring to by “animal advocates. animal advocates in general?
Thank you for the post! I have a question: I wonder if the effects on wild animal welfare of your interventions and donation are being accounted for?
Thank you for your answer! I agree that it probably makes sense to focus on one thing first and build a track record there (before trying other things).
I am also quite confident that caged broilers are the very small minority of broiler productions in Africa. But I think this might (or might not) actually be a reason to believe that it is something impactful to work on—If we believe that it could become much more popular later and we can do something to prevent it or slow it when it is still small.
For instance, there were, as far as my research goes, virtually no broilers raised in cages in China in 2010. And then in roughly 2011-2014, some academic and commercial research (some government subsidized) on caged broiler systems came out and some seemingly experimental commercial caged broiler farms emerged. Industry news articles (like this) still described this new practice as emerging but the very small minority. But it seemed to have kicked started in 2015, and in 2023, the Chinese government formally endorsed caged broiler system as the preferred broiler raising system in China, and said in their report that in 2023, 70% of white feathered broilers in China were already raised in cages. I think retrospectively, maybe something could have been done to prevent or slow down this trend.
I changed the link to Ghana 1. Thank you for the reminder!
I decided to move my reply to GeorgeBridgwater to this level of the thread, since I think the reply thread I created there deserves to be on its own and not be crowded out and sidetracked so heavily. But I do find this comment to be somewhat important so I reposted it here.
I want to reply to the point that attribution is fair concern. I worked directly in the animal movement before, and I have witnessed some suspected double/multiple counting of the same impact, and at least a part that is overlapping.
But here’s something important to know: Even if, say, two charities “double count” their contribution to an impact, it doesn’t mean one or both of them neccesarily have over reported their counterfactual impact. Why? Consider this toy example (long philosophical discussions):
Scenario A: Two rescue teams, one consisting of 3 rescuers and another consisting of 4, can together save 10 kids in danger. If one of the teams—in fact, one of the 7 members, don’t join, the 10 kids cannot be saved and will die.
Analysis of counterfactual impact: Since either team opting out would mean the kids would all die. So in the case of both (full) teams working together and saved 10 kids, each team’s counterfactual impact is 10 kids! In fact, if you break it down, each rescuer’s counterfactual impact is saving 10 kids (and can therefore each honestly claim that this is so)
If you are still interested, it could get more interesting here, especially for the donors.
Now consider scenario A’: Turns out that all of these rescuers each demand an expensive safety equipment in order to agree to go ahead. Each equipment costs $100. A total of $700 is required to save 10 kids.
Analysis of A’: Even though each team’s counterfactual impact by deciding to go ahead would have been saving 10 kids. A single donor donating $300 to one team and then $400 to another won’t have the counterfactual of saving 20 kids by the $700 donation! Instead, the $700 donation’s counterfactual impact is saving 10 kids.
Moral of A’: A donor could be donoting to two projects with total counterfactual impact of X+Y, while still possbily have a counterfactual impact from the donation that is smaller than X+Y. In fact, I suspect this might be happening within the cage-free movement space.
It could get even weirder, consider scenario A″: The only two donors who can donate in time, can only donate $300 and $400 respectively (let’s say it’s only possible for them to draw out these amounts in time). The $300 and $400 donations would each have the counterfactual impact of saving 10 kids. This is not just due to the fact that there are now two decision makers (donors), but also that each donor has a hard constraint that only allows them to donate $300/$400, making the another donation “neccessary” in a different sense than the $300/$400 in A’.
It could even weirder still, but it would basically become useless beyond here (if not earlier), and also useless for EA in general. So I won’t go into them.
Welcome to the EA forum and the EA world! And thank you for considering giving to effective charities. And no less importantly, thank you for being transparent about your donation decision reasoning, it is really admirable.
I weak upvoted your post and voted disagree (X), and I am going to explain why I disagree, and I hope I am communicating in an inviting and constructive way.
My biggest gripe with corporate outreach is that the animal charities only play a small role in companies reducing animal suffering. You see, in order for a company to make a pledge to transition to, say, cage-free hens, you first want the company to want to do so. That requires will from the investors, consumers, and industry peers. The amount of influence that the charities can have on the will is pretty small.
I think your impression is quite far from the truth at least when it comes to the cage-free egg movement. A short summary is that the whole global trend of cage-free shift/pledges is virtually entirely due to the work of animal charities and advocates. The short explanation of how they did so was that they used the combination of friendly outreach (called the “good cop strategy”) and threatening actions (called the “bad cop strategy”) to both try to lure companies to pledge, and when they don’t do so, use threatening actions to incur costs to companies that don’t pledge. Too much details about the bad cop actions is both hard to read, and might incur some strategic risks so I won’t go into them here. But the short story is that bad cop strategies do increase at least the perceived costs (by their public relations departments or top management), sometimes actual costs, of companies.
Also, in case you wonder, good cop strategies are there for a reason too. First, “giving someone a chance” before threatening actions is likely seen as a more civilsed strategy. Second, you might be surprised how many companies would just pldege after the friendly outrech. (a true story: the sourcing manager of a mid-sized company were themselves shocked by how horrific the battery cages of their egg suppliers were, and tried to convince their company to pledge, and they did)
you first want the company to want to do so
So you are right that for a change to happen, we need the companies to want to do so, but animal charities don’t just aim at companies that already want to change, or wait for companies to suddenly want to do so. They first try to be friendly, if it doesn’t work, they try to force something out.
THL estimates that their global corporate accountability work spared more than 3.4 million hens from cages in 2024
2022 revenue: $17,807,227
This gives us a ballpark estimate of $5 per hen spared from a cage. But given the fact that they only play a small part in this kind of progress happening, let’s say 10%, the ballpark estimate becomes $50. Not so great.
I think you are heavily underestimating the impact of effective animal charities. Estimates of the effectiveness of cage-free egg campaigns are typically like “38 to 250 hens spared per dollar” or “Corporate campaigns affect 9 to 120 years of chicken life per dollar” (instead of $per hen spared). But let’s set even that aside, I wonder if you can share a bit more about your reasoning here.
Let’s set aside the issue that the year don’t match. I think first, it’s wrong to take the whole revenue (or expense for that matter) as a divider as THL also spend their money on other programs, such as regranting, movement building, education etc.
But more importantly, if you want to apply a 0.1 discount multiplier to their impact per dollar, you are essentially applying it to their claimed number of hens spared. But your reason for doing so was that you believe only ~10% of this change was actually due to THL. But it seems to me in their language they are trying to state the impact due to their work. So even if you believe that charities like THL played a small part in the corporate decisions to go cage free (which I disagree), you don’t need to discount if they are only reporting impact that they believe to have been caused by their work. So is your reason for discounting stemming from a belief that they (gravely) over-reported their impact?
Hi Vasco,
I lean much more to your side than Nick’s on the subject matter, but I strongly agree with Nick and Michael’s suggestion that saying the “meat eating problem” is much less provoking than the “meat eater problem”. You can actually count myself as another data point that this terminology change makes me feel less uncomfortable. (even as someone who believe this effect is probably real in the short term)
I am interested in knowing if some of the downvoters mind to explain their decision to downvote (vs or in addition to disagreeing vote)?
Disclaimer, I weak upvoted, as for many other posts I read that I find to have potentially meaningful contributions and communication style that are proper enough.
Thank you for writing this!
I want to point out that besides the informational value, I find it personally encouraging and heartwarming to read the part where you expressed your appreciation to donors and advocates in the space, and your vision. I think I might learn from you and try doing more of this in some of my writings. Thank you for doing that.
Thank you for writing this up, I particularly like that you analysed different potential interventions.
I wonder if the scope of the strategy global? Or do you start with areas with higher opportunities, such as EU?
In general, I would find this amount of time difficult to commit. But someone recommended this to me. 5-10 minutes in I was already convinced to finish it. It fact, I listened to it twice.
But this might be an one-off event.
Thank you for the work!
I learned so much from this episode, and updated my views regarding insect sentience, and the ethics of insect treatment too. I highly recommend this to almost all EAs.
Thank you for your detailed reply! I admire your courage to raise this issue in front of your colleagues/the locals there—I am not sure I would find the courage to do so.
I have some hope that there might at least be ways to reduce the % of factory farming there will be in poor countries in the world in the future. Some EAs are working on it and I am trying to see what I can help there too.
I have recently done a bit of research on the intensification of animal agriculture in Africa. I have a few comments to make in response to yours.
I am very confident that people in poor countries like Uganda eat way less animal products than the global average. But I am not sure that they all don’t eat factory farmed animal products. I think I have quite a high level of belief that your claim about the meat consumption patterns of the people in the areas in Uganda you work in. But I don’t think we should generalise to: “All people in very poor countries don’t eat factory farmed meat”.
I think a very important fact we should recognize is that factory farming clearly exist and is booming and intensifying quickly in Africa, including Uganda, or even poorer countries such as Burundi and South Sudan. This means that the meat-eating problem (convinced by JWS’s comment that we should change the wording, even though I don’t agree about all the things said in the comment), if it is a problem at all, is going to get worse in Africa and other parts in the world with many people in extreme poverty.
A very important note needs to be introduced here: I think we one species of farmed animals we should focus a lot on is the chicken (and also fish farming, maybe in 3-5 years time). Some facts about chicken farming in Africa:
It’s one of the cheapest type of meats poor people can afford, in a lot of regions.
Many aid providing foundations/agencies/charities are interested in, if not executing, using chicken farming as a poverty aid intervention. (1, 2, 3, 4)
While it’s hard to find a single broiler chicken farm in North America and Europe raising broiler chickesn in cages (with the exception of Russia and Ukraine—no intention to create drama), there seems to be currently a large wave of new broiler farms emerging in Africa that are going for caged broiler systems
For instance, chicken farming equipment producers in China are very actively trying to sell broiler cages to Africa, and according to my research, 10 broiler cage producers from China (out of 18 I found) are trying to do that.
(Sorry, I can’t share the links or details of my research on this topic here, as I worry about potential info hazards.)
The emergence of new technologies (such as modern caged broiler systems, digital gadgets, and eventually AI) and the popularization of both newer and older technologies (such as vaccines, drugs, feed formulas, and caged layer systems) will drive costs down further.
I think the rise of intensified, caged system raised chickens (both layers and broilers) in Africa (also some countries in Asia and Latin America) should alert and worry us that the “meat eating problem”, if it does not pose a huge problem now, could become much more severe in the future because of the rising per capita consumption of animal products coming from horrific systems. While there might be a lot of strategic/signalling/philosophical issues thinking and calling life-saving or poverty alleviating interventions as “saving meaters/people who harm animals”. I think we should definitely oppose to making things worse for animals in order to lift people out of poverty.
A less important response to your another point: I think it’s very unclear whether farmed animals raised in free range condittions in poor countries live net-positive lives. Firstly, many deadly diseases are very common among free-range (and intensive) chicken farming, such as Newcastle Disease. And awareness to use vaccines to reduce such diseases is nowhere near widespread. Secondly, debeaking of chickens is very common (including in Uganda), and presumably mostly without anesthesia/pain relieve. Thirdly, it seems very common to transport chickens like this (and in some cases kept tied like this even after arriving at the market, until they are sold) in Africa and poorer parts of Asia. Fourthly, I saw some nasty slaughters—let’s say they are at least as nasty as most chicken slaughters in the world. Finally, we have to consider that chickens raised for meat don’t live for many days in their life to compensate for these pretty intense suffering. IMO it’s more likely than not that most chickens raised in free range conditions in poor countries live net-negative lives.
(I weak upvoted your comment and chose “disagree”, even though I don’t 100% disagree with you.)
Thank you for writing the post! I hope more people in EA will pay more attention on this strategy.
For instance, I think it will be even more important to make use of story telling to advocate for wild animal welfare.
I also want to point out that story telling can be (and should be, IMO) combined with science. For example, these comics by Joan Chan are pretty effective..
written about my Richard Chappell
Minor stuff: Is this meant to be “written about by Richard Chappell ”?
Thank you for writing this! I will keep this in mind and add it to the list of important issues when I think about strategies to help animals in China.
Hi Michael. I think AI can reduce cost spent on feed. It can’t change the cost of the feed but it can change how much they need to use. For example, a lower mortality rate already means less feed per kg of product.
Second, feeding could be optimized by reducing wasted feed. For example, there are AI systems built for fish farming that uses image recognition to identify the number of uneaten pellets in the water as an indicator or whether the fish is overfed at the moment. If yes, the system lowers the number of pellets dispensed and this reduces the number of pellets uneaten and get dropped to the bottom of the pond of leak from the bottom of a cage in the case of fish farms on the sea. Another way of doing it is to tell from the activeness of the fish. Or combined.
AI could also improve the whole feeding scheme to improve the feed conversion ratio.
Hi Aashish, thank you for your reply!
Re: your first question, I think I am very concerned about the impact of PLF techs in the global north, but it’s kind of inevitable already—it will happen anyway. I think the question is how to make it develop into more animal friendly versions.
Re: your second question, I am starting to discuss with fellow advocates within the momvent on strategies to react to AI/PLF development in factory farming. I think I only have rough ideas that might be worth discussing further, but nothing worth actually implementing yet.
I think I don’t have good answers to your last question because I know close to nothing about factory farming (or anything) in Africa.
Thanks for writing the post!
A meta-question: Could it be more truthful, maybe potentially less triggering, if you name the title “Chicken welfare reforms may be harmful (or more beneficial than current estimates) accounting for effects on wild arthropods?” instead?