EA Should Invest in Animal Liberation and Diet Change Advocacy

I want to start by noting that I am enthusiastic about everything that the EA animal welfare movement has accomplished. I am enthusiastically supportive of all of the campaigns that make living and dying conditions less bad for farmed animals. 

I worked on such campaigns for almost 20 years, and I'm incredibly proud of that work. 

That said, I do think it's a strategic error that the EA animal movement has so thoroughly moved on from advocacy for animal liberation and diet change. 

There are two central arguments that I hear in EA circles and that I think are worthy of reconsideration:

1) These efforts have been tried and failed. Let’s move on. 

2) Everyone agrees with us on factory farming, so let’s focus there and stop talking about whether eating meat is unethical; that’s where we meet overwhelming pushback.

I don't agree with either of these statements, and I believe that some of the influx of money we’re expecting for animals should be spent on animal liberation and diet change advocacy.

Here are some thoughts and questions that I think support my point-of-view. I look forward to hearing what others think. 

1) The value of saying what’s true, because it’s true

EA places a hefty premium on saying things that are true, noting that this free exchange of ideas tends to lead to the best outcomes. Most recently, that’s been one argument in favor of talking about animal suffering when we discuss the harms of factory farming. 

It strikes me as obviously true that there’s no moral difference between eating a dog or a pig, a cat or a chicken; if anything, eating a well-treated dog or cat would be morally preferable to eating a factory farmed chicken or pig. 

It’s also true that other animals have the same range of emotions and feel pain in the same way and to the same degree that we do. As slaughterhouse designer Temple Grandin has written, other animals may suffer much more than humans do, since for many (most?) non-human animals, the mental and physical anguish of confinement or mutilation is, in that moment, their entire world.

Finally, it’s simply true that eating animals entails paying for abuse so extreme that almost everyone is repulsed by it. 

But as far as I'm aware, we have no one with an EA mindset focused on how we make these arguments most effectively. And it seems that none of the potential influx of AI funding is going to go toward changing societies in the direction of these observations. 

Is that the right decision? I doubt it. 

2) Are there other justice movements that ignored the fact that they were justice movements? 

I understand that the abolition, suffrage, and other liberation movements took what they could get and didn't demand  immediate and only liberation, of course. If all you can get is better laws around education, Sundays off, and so on -- then that's what you agitate to make happen. 

But have other liberation movements owed some part of their success to focusing only on welfare improvements and the most extreme rights violations? 

Did any of them avoid the intellectual and ethical foundations of their movements and their most fundamental demands for justice? 

Because that’s what EAs are doing with regard to animals, or so it seems to me.

3) Might an aversion to liberation messaging be sending top talent to other cause areas? 

In my new book Meat, chapter 5 is mostly about why I don’t think vegan and meat reduction advocacy will stop the upward trajectory of global meat consumption, at least until we have price and taste competitive alternative meats. 

But I also point out that a belief in vegetarianism and/or animal liberation motivated many cultivated meat founders to start their companies. It's also why almost all of the sector’s early investors chose to fund them. 

I'm pretty sure the cultivated meat industry would not exist if not for investors who believe in animal rights. 

(As an aside, rumors of cultivated meat's death have been greatly exaggerated -- see my Substack essay on this topic, which will post on Saturday morning ET).

I think this observation is even more true where farm animal welfare is concerned: I don’t know everyone in the EA animal welfare movement, but I know all of the OGs, and I’m pretty sure they are all vegan. I’m also pretty sure all of them got involved in animal protection because of their belief in animal rights. 

If we don’t tell the world why animals matter (i.e., that their suffering is not significantly less important than our suffering), will we attract people with the passion and focus on maximum impact that comes with knowing you’re in a liberation struggle? 

4) Did animal liberation advocacy make farm animal welfare improvements possible? 

It seems to me quite possible that advocacy on behalf of animal liberation is what shifted the Overton Window with regard to farm animal welfare. If so, would continuing to push for animal liberation and diet change have a positive impact on what’s possible in the realm of farm animal welfare? 

Put another way, if people don’t think animals have interests that matter, are they going to care what happens to them? 

Or in more practical terms: Yes, we have the world on our side where factory farming is concerned, but it’s not a top issue for almost anyone — other than those of us who believe in animal liberation. Should this observation change how we think about our advocacy? 

It’s all well and good to say “95% of Americans agree with us,” but if the issue is largely an afterthought (as it is for almost almost everyone), perhaps it's worth putting some resources into changing that. 

As just one example, would our efforts on behalf of farm animal welfare be more successful if some part of our movement were focused on making sure that every single student who graduates from one of the world’s top 100 universities has spent 4 years saturated in animal liberation and diet change messaging? 

Lawrence Tribe believes in animal liberation. So does Cass Sunstein. And Richard Dawkins. So did Charles Krauthammer. And Jane Goodall. 

What would it look like to make sure everyone coming out of an elite university, anywhere in the world, is clear on the concept? Making that happen would not be expensive, relative to the influx of resources we’re expecting. 

My guess: There are dozens of great ideas that could change the global zeitgeist in the direction of animal liberation and a plant-based diet (especially as alt meats get better and come down in price). 

5) Might AI and a massive influx of funds change what animal liberation and veg advocacy can accomplish? 

I think it’s fair to say that the vast majority of EA animal welfare advocates see diet change and animal liberation advocacy as incapable of making much difference. 

We tried. It failed. 

This concept is captured by Aidan Kankyoku’s recent Sandcastles essay, where he says this: “In the decades since Animal Liberation, plenty of people have dared to dream of a world without animal farming. They’ve all failed to make that world a reality, or even bring it one step closer. And before you try to get clever with me, I promise you there isn’t some other magic word people haven’t sufficiently incanted. Whatever you think makes your abolitionist movement special … people have tried it before.” 

Here’s my full response to his precise argument. The key points are these:

A failed attempt does not test an idea for all time. It tests one version of that idea, pursued by particular people, with particular methods and resources, under particular conditions. All aspects of those conditions change, and with them the potential for success. 

Animal liberation and diet change advocacy have never operated at the scale that may soon be possible with 1) AI and 2) dramatically more resources. 

Either one of those could be game-changing for their impact on past interventions that failed and, perhaps, for coming up with new ideas that have tremendous merit. 

Plus, if “people have tried it before — it didn’t work” were a decisive objection, most or all previous successful movements would have been abandoned, since no movement was successful out of the gate and few (or no) tactics have been successful on their first iteration, I don't believe. 

It's my understanding that most (perhaps all) social justice movements looked like failures for a really long time before they succeeded.

Conclusion: What I am not saying

I do want to be clear on one thing: I am also not suggesting that farm animal welfare groups should adopt animal rights or vegetarian talking points. I agree with the idea that each group should focus on what it’s best at, and it should frame its work for maximum impact.

So GFI is not a diet change advocacy organization, and we’re not an animal rights organization; and I don't think we should be. We have no diet litmus tests. I open my book Meat with the line: “Let me get one thing out of the way right now: I don’t care what you eat.” 

And for the purposes of both GFI and the book, I meant (and mean) it. 

My concern is this: EA appears to have largely walked away from the moral foundation of our work on behalf of animals. So among the breadth of strategies that EA animal welfare supports, there appears to be scant (and in many cases zero) room for diet change advocacy and no room at all for animal liberation work. 

That feels to me like it’s probably a mistake.