I'm working on building a better understanding of what strategies to prioritise when wanting to do the most good for animals but I haven't wanted to rely solely on EA sources and books recommended among EAs so I've participated in some animal advocacy groups in Finland as well.
One thing that has stood out to me, is that in EA we almost explicitly talk about 'animal welfare' whereas that term is seldom used in the animal advocacy spaces I've been to in Finland. For example, talking about'animal rights' is a more common.
Right now I'm reading a Finnish book on politics and animals where they discuss the differences between the animal protection movement and animal rights movement and how they've over time have converged. I once asked the author about 'welfarist'/reductionary vs. abolitionist approach knowing that there is internal disagreements in the movement around this topic. The brief response was that we're all working towards the same goal of eventually ending factory farming.
Why is it that 'animal welfare' is a term so widely used in EA? I assume it is not a random choice.
I guess (some people) might have negative associations with 'animal rights', from more radical activism done by some animal rights organisations. When doing marginal improvements e.g. through corporate campaigns, improving 'animal welfare' might avoid this and also result in less cognitive dissonance for the parties. On the other the framework of animal rights can also be valuable, acknowledging that non-human animals should have rights to wellbeing, the same way there are human rights and children's rights. Does this make sense to you?
Is it then rather a difference in the theory of change of the actors? An organisation focused on legislations and policy making might focus on animal rights while those advocating for more humane industry practices talk about animal welfare? Where does the vegan, consumer focused movement stand in this? Would Open Philantropy's farmed animal welfare unit do different grantmaking decisions if its name was OP farmed animal rights? Same for EA Funds animal welfare fund.
Curious to hear different thoughts. And please share a bit of your relation to EA/FAW/animal advocacy if you're comfortable, so it's easier to put the comments in context.
[This does not represent the opinion of my employer]
I currently mostly write content for an Effective Giving Initiative, and I think it would be somewhat misleading to write that we recommend animal charities that defend animal rights -people would misconstrue what we're talking about. Avoided suffering is what we think about when explaining who "made it" to the home page, it's part of the methodology, and my estimates ultimately weigh in on that. It's also the methodology of the evaluators who do all the hard work.
My guess would be that EA has a vast majority of consequentialists, whose success criterion is wellbeing, and whose methodology is [feasible because it is] welfare-focused (e.g. animal-adjusted QALYs per dollar spent). This probably sedimented itself early and people plausibly haven't questioned it a lot so far. EA-aligned rights-focused interventions exist, but they're ultimately measured according to their gains in terms of welfare.
On my side, I think it's already hard as it is to select cost-effective charities with a consequentialist framework (and sell it to people!), and "rights" add in a lot of additional distinctions (e.g. rights as means vs as ends) which makes it hard to operationalize. I can write an article about why we recommend animal welfare charity X in terms of avoided counterfactual suffering, but I'm clueless if I had to recommend it in terms of avoided right infringement, because it's harder to measure, and I'm not even sure of what I'm talking about.
I'd be happy to see people from other positions give their opinion, this is a strictly personal view.
Fair enough! Thanks for sharing this perspective as well. I guess that a rights-based animal charity evaluator would focus more on making change through legislation and litigation, failing to notice other approaches to improve animal welfare. However, there could be something that the current approach of EA orgs is missing more easily, which the rights-based lens would include.