The case for animal welfare as a priority goes something like this: tens of billions of land animals are killed for human consumption in factory farms. The conditions in the factory farms would be considered torture if a human was subjected to them. There is a reasonable case that the suffering of these animals—even if they have a reduced capacity for suffering—is tremendous. In fact, the amount of suffering inflicted on animals may be greater than the amount of suffering humans experience by orders of magnitude. The case is even more overwhelming if we consider fish. More so if we consider wild animals. One thoughtful writer reaches the conclusion that factory farming is the worst thing ever. Thus, any efforts to improve the conditions of animals or reduce their consumption could be extremely impactful.

Since most people have little moral concern for animals, reducing this suffering is a daunting task. Moreover, most people find drastically changing their diet—such as for weight loss—to be exceptionally difficult. Even highly morally motivated people who agree that they should be vegan and understand that there is a lot of animal suffering still fail. For these reasons, some are very enthusiastic about laboratory-grown meat. If meat grown in a lab was vastly less expensive, it would become widely adopted without the need for a vast change in moral perspective.

Lab-grown meat would be a vast improvement, but it is worth considering what could be lost. If those tens of billions of animals never exist, they never experience happiness. This is not much of a concern for those who believe their net welfare is way below zero—an exceptionally reasonable belief. However, it is possible to conceive of a different world. Imagine that the tens of billions of animals being farmed experience the exact opposite of intense suffering—an unending bliss. Some have forwarded this as a potential EA cause through the use of pharmaceuticals and others are working on editing some specific genes (faroutinitiative).

I have a different proposal: we could use genetic enhancement to create animals who experience extremely high levels of happiness in their current conditions. Adoption could be rapid if the animals yielded the same amount of food. Unlike pharmaceutical proposals, adoption could be quick if there are no additional costs since at least a small portion of consumers would be willing to raise brands that have “super happy chickens.” Right now, there is a market for cage-free eggs but people still select less ethically raised eggs because they are less expensive. If the cost of having “happy chickens” is almost zero, then it might be widely adopted by even the most unethical food companies. Similar to how some companies get products certified as Kosher, it does not impose major costs on them.

Is genetic enhancement for animal bliss possible? I think so. We know that animal behavior is highly varied and that certain animals enjoy conditions that others hate. Chickens probably hate being confined to small spaces, but a mole may prefer being in an extremely dark hole. Whether or not an animal suffers depends on their genetics, but we are quickly developing tools that can be used to modify or select certain genetic variants such as CRISPR-Cas9 and genetic screening. We could also select via phenotype through selective breeding. Just keep selecting the happier and happier animals.

Animal breeders have been selecting for higher yield for thousands of years. The returns have far exceeded what many may have thought possible—way outside the boundaries of normal animal behavior. Steve Hsu explains:

To take another example, wild chickens lay eggs at the rate of roughly one per month. Domesticated chickens have been bred to lay almost one egg per day. (Those are the eggs we have for breakfast!) Of all the wild chickens in evolutionary history, probably not a single one produced eggs at the rate of a modern farm chicken.

The extremely high yields have contributed to animal suffering—rather than alleviating it. But breeding to change the psychology of animals is also possible since its subject to the forces of evolution. 

Perhaps other forms of enhancement would be more efficient. We would need to identify the variants associated with suffering and eliminate them. Some are already posing this through gene editing for specific variants (Faroutinitiative). But this might fail if they aren’t causal. And perhaps we could go further—use genetic enhancement on many genes associated with high welfare—not just against suffering. We could get animals that enjoy their conditions. 

Rather than going from 80 billion lives of suffering, we could go to 80 billion lives of bliss. Seems like such a proposal could be immensely important and the expected welfare gain COULD be twice that of eliminating suffering through gene-editing or lab-grown meat.

If the community is receptive, I will write a much more detailed post about how this could be done with genetic enhancement.