Hide table of contents

TLDR; When considering veganism why isn't the trade-off between the welfare of the farmed animals and the wild animals the farm replaces considered? 

Disclaimer: Medium term listener, first time poster, and definitely non-expert in moral philosophy or ethics.

When considering the veganism in with respect to animal suffering (for now ignoring the climate, land use, efficiency etc) the debate is rarely set out in terms that makes sense to me.

Using the example of the welfare of the animals involved in egg farming, to me the intuitive, consequentialist, analysis is to trade-off:

  • The reduction (or increase) in welfare of the chickens not existing  vs:
  • The change in welfare of the animals that would habitat the land use given up by a the chicken farm if it were abandoned, less whatever land is used to farm the protein I replace eggs with.

However there doesn't seem to be much in the way of analysis or debate in this space, which makes me question whether I am missing something fundamental.

On the contrary:

So instead, with limited guidance, I perform a subjective analysis, namely : "do I think its more likely than not that some free-range** chickens have better quality of life than the wild animals they replace".  

My observation is: 

  • Free-range chickens are allowed to exhibit natural behaviours and are gifted a few luxuries beside : housing/ constant supply of food/ (imperfect) protection from predators / (limited) treatment for disease and a death likely to be quicker than in the wild. 
  • Wild animals- they get the natural behaviours minus the luxuries

So I conclude that eating free-range eggs is net positive, in ethical terms.


But that conclusion appears to put me at odds with the much of the EA community so presumably my analysis is flawed.

Ways I could be wrong:

  • Judging wild animal suffering is hard. So safer just to stay off the eggs. Counter: "Hard" doesnt normally stop the debate in EA..
  • "Free-range" has a vague definition so its hard to analyse. Counter: as above
  • I have not considered the number of wild animals replaced by a chicken farm - and is likely nWild > nChickens
  • The climate and land use arguments are big enough to justify veganism without getting into the weeds of suffering trade-offs. Counter: Foodimpacts.org suggests there is interest in trading off climate and suffering
  • Caged eggs are by far the more numerous in the US. Counter: Not in europe, and caging farm animals will be banned in 2027.
  • Any number of other reasons... 

*This is a unfair- it is not the point of the tool, and 1 person questioned this in the thread in which was posted. But the fact it was only 1 is my point, and the author of the data it was based on didn't seem to interested in the caged/non-caged distinction either.

**The free-range descriptor is obviously important here, but more often than not the comparison is to caged animals in EA forums. Why? Surely most EAer's considering veganism already eat free-range meat & dairy?

18

0
0

Reactions

0
0
New Answer
New Comment


1 Answers sorted by

There are some articles, although I think they typically consider conventionally raised (mostly factory farmed animals), not free range ones, except cattle. Cattle often live on pasture, but chickens are rarely free range; cage-free systems are mostly very densely packed barns.

From a negative utilitarian perspective including invertebrates: https://reducing-suffering.org/vegetarianism-and-wild-animals/

If I recall correctly, from a classical utilitarian perspective excluding invertebrates: https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.592.6722&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Assuming wild animals have bad lives on average: https://reflectivedisequilibrium.blogspot.com/2013/07/vegan-advocacy-and-pessimism-about-wild.html?m=1

Do you know if the eggs they sell as “pasture raised” are any better?

I would guess so. There are still some potential welfare concerns: harms from producing eggs almost daily, slaughter, chick culling, maybe beak trimming, maybe keel bone fractures, predators. I haven't really looked into this, though.

I also don't know how often they need to be on pasture to qualify as "pasture raised".

Also spent hens are almost always sold to be slaughtered, where many are probably exposed to torture-level suffering. I remember looking into this a while back and only found one pasture farm where spent hens were not sold for slaughter. You can find details for many farms here: https://www.cornucopia.org/scorecard/eggs/

Thanks Michael these looks like interesting links

I'm still left with the impression though that this is a bit of a niche interest, and unsure why.

To a new comer to EA, veganism almost seems axiomatic 

Comments1
Sorted by Click to highlight new comments since:

These free range animals are unlikely to fully subsist off the natural land. To feed them you need to buy or grow crops, which is another land use. It's very hard to make an EA argument in favor of humans eating higher on the food chain than is necessary. 

I think what may be missing from your analysis are different alternatives than the two you propose. For example, you've only considered using the land for free-range animals vs wild animals. You haven't considered using it for plant based protein sources to feed humans. You haven't considered using it as an animal sanctuary. And you haven't considered ways to reduce the harms/suffering that come to wild animals on this land. 

Nor have you considered the wider impact of expanding wild animals' habitats by gifting them this land. What is the larger impact of the existence of farmed animals on this land for wild animals in nearby habitats? 

And if they are raised and killed in these ways you deem "humane" then must their meat be used for humans? Is there a better use for it? For instance perhaps to feed wild carnivores? Or rescued carnivores? Is it really most efficient to use them to feed humans who have so many other choices?

Curated and popular this week
 ·  · 10m read
 · 
I wrote this to try to explain the key thing going on with AI right now to a broader audience. Feedback welcome. Most people think of AI as a pattern-matching chatbot – good at writing emails, terrible at real thinking. They've missed something huge. In 2024, while many declared AI was reaching a plateau, it was actually entering a new paradigm: learning to reason using reinforcement learning. This approach isn’t limited by data, so could deliver beyond-human capabilities in coding and scientific reasoning within two years. Here's a simple introduction to how it works, and why it's the most important development that most people have missed. The new paradigm: reinforcement learning People sometimes say “chatGPT is just next token prediction on the internet”. But that’s never been quite true. Raw next token prediction produces outputs that are regularly crazy. GPT only became useful with the addition of what’s called “reinforcement learning from human feedback” (RLHF): 1. The model produces outputs 2. Humans rate those outputs for helpfulness 3. The model is adjusted in a way expected to get a higher rating A model that’s under RLHF hasn’t been trained only to predict next tokens, it’s been trained to produce whatever output is most helpful to human raters. Think of the initial large language model (LLM) as containing a foundation of knowledge and concepts. Reinforcement learning is what enables that structure to be turned to a specific end. Now AI companies are using reinforcement learning in a powerful new way – training models to reason step-by-step: 1. Show the model a problem like a math puzzle. 2. Ask it to produce a chain of reasoning to solve the problem (“chain of thought”).[1] 3. If the answer is correct, adjust the model to be more like that (“reinforcement”).[2] 4. Repeat thousands of times. Before 2023 this didn’t seem to work. If each step of reasoning is too unreliable, then the chains quickly go wrong. Without getting close to co
 ·  · 1m read
 · 
JamesÖz
 ·  · 3m read
 · 
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