PhD student (in bioethics) in the National University of Singapore
Fai
Karma: 1,951
Thank you very much for writing the post. Albeit unsurprising, it’s somewhat disheartening to see this post being much less popular than the frog slaughter one. I have to say excluding tractability, I probably care about this issue than frog slaughter more.
Do you have a sense of the tractability (which includes making enough people care about this) of this issue, and what can be done to increase it?
Hi Lewis, this podcast interview, and the match fund is really exciting. I learned many new things in this.
I wonder if you have plans to touch more on fish welfare. And is it possible that you can touch on invertebrate welfare (despite it being out of scope now for OP)?
We discuss two contradictory views about factory farming that produce the same conclusion: that its end is either inevitable or impossible.
Usually when I say anything to you it’s about practical stuff, but this time it’s going to be pedantic, please excuse me this time.
I think strictly speaking contradictory statements can’t be both false (and of course can’t be both true). And these two statements can be both false, and I think they are indeed both false (as you pointed out clearly).
I think statements that can’t be both true but can be both false are called contrary statements? (I only studied logic in Chinese so I am not sure).
Thank you for suggesting that you are willing to support a potential solution to this.
This gave me an idea, maybe if enough of us signaling that we are willing to donate/work/volunteer for this potential new charity, we can make it come true?
I am certainly willing to allocate the majority of my next years’ donations to this potential charity (or this year, if this charity can come this fast), and provide free advisory service to it.
Thank you so much for this important post. This could be a low-hanging fruit. And I hope I can shed some light on where the fruit trees might be located.
I am not sure about the non-Asian countries that export frog legs to Europe, but I quite certain that it’s pointless to try to directly convince/force processing factories in Asia to kill frogs in more humane ways. The way to go is to affect how the demand side behaves.
And I think it’s not the best strategy to try to use education/adovcacy to try to reduce frog leg consumption. At least not as a standalone strategy. But it could be part of other work like corporate engagement and lobbying.
I also think corporate engagement work, like the Carrehour win PETA seems to be associated with, won’t have a significant effect on the number of frogs beings raised and killed inhumanely. I believe the reason is that the demand is simply way higher than supply (and prices are like super high because of that), meaning that whatever amount of frog legs that Carrefour gives up would be picked up by someone else. This is pretty much regardless of how large of a purchaser Carrefour are, because other supermarkets and restaurants can’t buy enough anyway, they would just likely pick those up.
I think the way to go is to get European countries (main target would be France) or EU at large to ban frog legs that were killed inhumanely. And I think a strategy that can be tried is to get charities other than PETA to do basically the same investigations and then protests.
“Freshness” being perceived as important for taste is definitely true in China. In some wet markets in China, frog vendors try to skin the frogs first and keep the head intact, and only cut the heads off when a customer verifies that that frog is alive, and then buys the frog.
To be “fair”, some processing factories in Asia who exports to Europe cut the heads of the frogs first, so those frogs suffer way less (but still horrifically).
I am not sure why there is a high variety of methods for killing frogs for the same product. But I guess it might be because different factories just try to find different ways for killing frogs in the quickest ways, and it happens that it largely depends on their workers’ hand skills and their equipment?
“Frogs: Leg removal without anaesthesia.＂ is an understatement of what could happen to frogs used to produce frog legs endure. A lot of them in processing factories in Asia are skinned alive first and put or hang (using a hook piercing through their eyes or feet) there, until another worker has time to cut off their legs.
I didn’t put up links to videos about the practice, but if you want to know the extent of suffering, it should be easy to find. (I just realised the OP put up a video too, after typing the comment)
I will write another comment related to strategy.
Thank you very much for the post! I agree with a lot of things you said here.
Underrated (undervoted) post.
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?
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?
Hi Cameron,
Did you see Chytrid Fungal Infection and Frog Welfare — EA Forum?
It would be great if you can respond to it too.