Why it’s important to fill out this consultation
The UK Government is currently consulting on allowing insects to be fed to chickens and pigs. This is worrying as the government explicitly says changes would “enable investment in the insect protein sector”. Given the likely sentience of insects (see this summary of recent research), and that median predictions estimate that 3.9 trillion insects will be killed annually by 2030, we think it’s crucial to try to limit this huge source of animal suffering.
Overview
* Link to complete the consultation: HERE. You can see the context of the consultation here.
* How long it takes to fill it out: 5-10 minutes (5 questions total with only 1 of them requiring a written answer)
* Deadline to respond: April 1st 2025
* What else you can do: Share the consultation document far and wide!
* You can use the UK Voters for Animals GPT to help draft your responses.
* If you want to hear about other high-impact ways to use your political voice to help animals, sign up for the UK Voters for Animals newsletter. There is an option to be contacted only for very time-sensitive opportunities like this one, which we expect will happen less than 6 times a year.
See guidance on submitting in a Google Doc
Questions and suggested responses:
It is helpful to have a lot of variation between responses. As such, please feel free to add your own reasoning for your responses or, in addition to animal welfare reasons for opposing insects as feed, include non-animal welfare reasons e.g., health implications, concerns about farming intensification, or the climate implications of using insects for feed.
Question 7 on the consultation: Do you agree with allowing poultry processed animal protein in porcine feed?
Suggested response: No (up to you if you want to elaborate further).
We think it’s useful to say no to all questions in the consultation, particularly as changing these rules means that meat producers can make more profit from sel
What does "this is unauthorized" mean?
Lizka is the only person who has ever done this. I wouldn't want it to look like I was doing something that was given the CEA stamp of approval.
Have removed
What is our median estimate for how many lives EA global development has saved?
Naively, $1.6B/$5k ~330k deaths averted[1]? Adjust down because some spending is less effective than AMF. Adjust up because of AMF cost/life inflation.
(Or equivalent)
Is there solid on-the-ground evidence of this effect? annual worldwide malaria burden is on the order of 500k/year, at least in theory 330k total (reframed, 33k/year spread out across 10 years) should maybe be large enough to show up in the summary statistics if you do diff-in-diff studies etc.
A lot of this wouldn't show up in malaria, e.g. last year 39% of GiveWell funds directed went to malaria programs. But yeah, still would be interested to see data.
Where can I find estimates of total "EA influenced" giving outside of foundations?
I want to get an idea of how much money (outside of these totals) has been influenced by EA. This would include EA influenced individual donations (e.g. GWWC, EA Funds, etc.) but NOT money from large donors like OpenPhil/GiveWell/FTX.
Recommended charities might have these estimates for their organizations individually, but does this data exist in aggregate?
What is a 90% CI on how many lives EA global development has saved?
What is the yearly growth rate of EA?
This article cites 14% but I can't find that figure from Rethink https://80000hours.org/2021/07/effective-altruism-growing/#how-quickly-has-the-number-of-engaged-community-members-grown
How many chicken equivalent QALYs has EA created? 90% CI
This is a poorly defined question, but people sometimes ask about impact and I'd like a number that is both easy to understand and likely to be correct.
Ideally this would bundle the welfare of all animals less [sentient] than dolphins.