PhD student (in bioethics) in the National University of Singapore
Fai
Karma: 2,055
Thank you for this very helpful post. I am insipred to reflect on my often muddled and repetitive writing style, and then improve.
Do you know if the Centre for Biomedical Ethics was consulted?
I am trying to ask. I will PM you when I get an answer.
It would also be very interesting to know how the university and IRB approval worked here.
I will try to investigate too.
Please feel free to email me to keep in touch. Or add me on linkedin.
Clarification: They commissioned the YLL School of Medicine, particularly the Life Science Institute, to validate the idea of using CL1 to build datacentres. Of course they won’t commission a centre for bioethics to do that.
Excuse me for posting this two times:
By the way, I am a PhD student at the Centre for Biomedical Ethics under the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, which is commissioned to be in charge of the validation of the idea in Singapore. I am not sure what I, or even our centre can do (personally, I didn’t know this was happening until I saw this post). But if anyone can think of anything I should do, let me know. (if you think there might be infohazard, feel free to PM or email me)
By the way, I am a PhD student at the Centre for Biomedical Ethics under the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, which is commissioned to be in charge of the validation of the idea in Singapore. I am not sure what I, or even our centre can do (personally, I didn’t know this was happening until I saw this post). But if anyone can think of anything I should do, let me know. (if you think there might be infohazard, feel free to PM or email me)
Thanks for sharing! I have a follow up question:
This is why we are intentionally spending more of our effort looking for opportunities in Africa to prevent and roll back intensive farming methods liked caged hen farming
Is the rise of caged broiler systems also under your radar? That includes its rise in China (where this system started), Asia, and Africa.
Thank you for the post!
Protect numerous and neglected species from intensive confinement systems as new forms of animal agriculture emerge
I wonder if you consider the potential rise of meat consumption in Africa due to the projected wealth increase in many African countries to be one of the greatest new factory farming crisis? And if yes, do you consider that to be one of the greatest priority areas?
I actually don’t have anything substantive to say. But since I often read your posts and not comment or say thank you (but I usually upvoted), so for once I would like to say thank you for your interesting, stimulating, and often important work!
Thank you for the clarifcation! And thanks for engaging in the conversation!
Thanks for the reply!
it would make sense to focus on layers in the Middle East until hitting diminishing returns there.
I wonder why you hold this view. It seems to me that for the caged layer issue, it’s a reversion problem because the vast majority of laying hens in the Middle East are already caged, while for the caged broiler issue, it can still be seen as a prevention problem because many broilers are still not yet in caged systems. And it seems to me that it’s plausible that a prevention might be easier and more effective than a reversion?
Thank you for the post! I have a question.
3. Cage-free farming in the Middle East
I wonder if this org, if incubated, might potentially expand to the issue of caged broiler farming?
We should prioritize slowing the spread of industrial animal agriculture in future high-production regions over investing in advocacy in currently high-production regions that remain neglected in terms of farmed animal advocacy.
I support this, I gave an EAGx (Singapore) talk basically arguing for this (maybe a more general point, that we should focus much more on prevention)
Thank you for the post. I have a follow-up question which I hope you or Givewell can answer: Do Givewell also give cage systems to people in need, or teach them how to use cages, or both? I am asking because I have seen livelihood projects that do one of these. If my memory is not wrong, they include FAO, World Bank, the Dutch Government, and Heifer (yes, they don’t just give cows, they give chickens too and teach them how to use cage systems).
Hi Cameron,
Did you see Chytrid Fungal Infection and Frog Welfare — EA Forum?
It would be great if you can respond to it too.
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 (see update below) 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.
UPDATE: On reflection, maybe it was too quick a decision to pledge that it should be the “majority” of my next years donations before further investigations on other alternatives. But I am very sure it will be significant (if this charity do come into existence).
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.
Thank you for the post! I am glad that this is on the radar! (broiler cages in particular, but also in general, thwarting the growth of certain industries or practices)