Introducing AIFAW — Farmed Animal Welfare in Uganda

This is a crosspost from the new Animal Welfare Alignment Newsletter by Anima International. You can subscribe on Substack if you are interested in following these efforts. Audio reading also available on Substack. The goals of this post are to: 1. Raise a question I see as crucially important to the goal of aligning AI to animal welfare...

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Let's taboo the V-word

lincolnq·2d ago·8m read

“How long have you been v*g*n?” This is one of the most common icebreakers at animal protection events. It’s a baseline assumption, and it mostly holds true: if you’re out advocating for animals not to be tortured or abused, realistically these days you are v**n, or close. And it makes for good conversation. It seems fairly safe to assume when you meet strangers. But this assumption is hurting the movement in a way which we don’t always notice: someone new comes into the sp...

Counting animals: Stable population size is not equivalent to priority level

abrahamrowe, mal_graham🔸·1d ago·16m read

AI Use Note: Main body text entirely human written. Claude (Opus 4.8) helped develop models of animal life histories in the appendix. Cross-posted from Good Structures. Executive Summary * Animal advocates sometimes make claims like “there are X of this animal...

Recent opportunities to take action

Why this work matters here

East Africa's animal agriculture sector is growing fast and the welfare infrastructure to match it is almost entirely absent. No enforced national welfare laws and almost no data. We are trying to build that foundation now before industrial systems become fully entrenched and change becomes exponentially harder.

What we have done

Our most significant work has been direct on community and government engagement, getting animal welfare into policy conversations at the national level in Uganda. This has taken many years of relationship building though slow but real.

We have also produced a documentary on pig welfare conditions in Uganda, filmed on the ground, showing the reality of how pigs are kept, transported and handled in our context

(It contains distressing content).

What we are looking for

Volunteers with skills in research, M&E, communications or campaign strategy

Researchers interested in collaborating on welfare measurement in informal smallholder systems

Anyone who has navigated similar challenges and is willing to share what they learned

I would genuinely welcome feedback on our approach, connections to relevant people or simply a conversation with others doing this work.

Happy to answer any questions below

kirumira Julius, Executive Director, AIFAW

aifaw.org