I’ve written this in my personal capacity and all views are my own. I didn’t even integrate Claude’s suggested improvements. Thanks to Zoe Sigle for the feedback on an earlier draft of this post.
Edit: I see a couple of people disagreeing. If you think the overall thrust, or specific claims are wrong, please do feel free to add it in the comments.
Edit 2: Thanks to the many commenters I think my position is focused more at 'ending factory farming in our lifetimes or next few decades', rather than ending factory farming altogether.
Summary
- Many animal advocates frame the goal of the movement as "ending factory farming".
- I see why it’s a tempting message, both to hold onto internally, and when pitching to people new to the movement.
- Yet, I think the reality is that we might never get there.
- I think the framing therefore leads to the following problems:
- Unrealistic hope leads to disillusionment and burnout.
- You should count counterfactual wins, not the absolute numbers.
- A lack of strategic clarity when developing a theory of change.
- Leads to a poor allocation of resources.
- I think a better approach is to focus on reducing suffering for as many individual animals as possible.
- Helping millions and billions of farmed animals as an amazing achievement. Focusing on the win as a % of all farmed animals is the wrong frame.
- We celebrate charities that fight against malaria for saving lives,, not "failing" to end malaria or preventable diseases.
What’s the problem?
I see a lot of animal advocates confidently assert that the goal of our movement as ‘ending factory farming’. Strategic discussions ask how will we end factory farming? And when?
I don’t think there are any guarantees we’ll ever reach this goal. We might, but we definitely might not. Cultivated meat is unlikely to be cost-competitive for a long time or maybe even ever, plant-based adoption has stalled in recent years, small welfare improvements around the world are slow and hard won, and lower-income countries are poised to eat far more meat as they become wealthier in the coming decades. If you disagree…this post might not make much sense.
So I get why advocates frame the issue this way. It gives us something to hold on to, a desperately yearned for light at the end of the unfathomable tunnel that is our modern food system. It’s hard to get new people involved by pitching a problem with no solution. It’s depressing. It’s (seemingly) more compelling to pitch someone on joining the inevitable tidal wave that will solve the biggest moral catastrophe of our time.
And yet, I think this approach is a mistake. Instead, we should emphasise ‘reduce as much animal suffering as possible’ (or something similar).
But first…
Why is the current framing bad?
- Unrealistic hope leads to disillusionment and burnout. If your motivation as an advocate is built on the promise that factory farming will end in our lifetime, what happens to that motivation if you wisen up? What happens when plant-based consumption decreases, or meat consumption rises? For some advocates, this probably (speculatively?) leads to disillusionment, leaving the movement, and contributes to burnout.
- You should count counterfactual wins, not the absolute numbers. I think it’s simply the wrong way to measure our success. Our job is to do as much good as we can. You can’t control headwinds or tailwinds. And a $300m a year movement is up against a trillion-dollar industry! If reality throws us a formidable meat lobby, our biggest success might be hindering them, and that is a huge win. If global meat consumption grows due to economic development, improving welfare conditions on those farms might be the best we can do. And if we succeed, we should celebrate the billions of lives counterfactually helped.
- A lack of strategic clarity when developing a theory of change. For advocates who buy that we will end factory farming, this might mean that they are more likely to pursue interventions and theories of change that will do just that: end factory farming. This leads to conversations about how do we mimic previous social movements that have ‘won’ like the emancipation and gay marriage movements. While I think this work can be valuable, I often see it discussed in ways I think are insufficiently clear-eyed about why this problem is much harder and disanalogous.
- Leads to a poor allocation of resources. The hope of ending factory farming is sold via specific interventions or combinations of interventions. People in the movement then fundraise and work on those interventions, which I think are often a poor use of resources compared to other interventions. My tentative hot takes on some of those interventions are cultivated meat (still worth pursuing but often oversold), the idea that many animal farmers will transition to farming crops, that due to climate change meat will be too expensive and so investors should wisely stop investing, and many more.
So what’s the solution?
I would frame things this way, and I think you should too: Factory farming of animals is not a single issue that we count in terms of percentage won. It is the 70 billion terrestrial and trillions of aquatic individuals that suffer immensely each year, and our goal is to help as many of them as possible. Each of them is worth helping. Each individual helped, or spared from being brought into existence, is worth celebrating. Because the totality of factory farming is such a large problem, and so neglected, we have an extraordinary opportunity to reduce an immense amount of suffering for millions and billions of individuals.
Getting McDonalds to go cage-free spares ~7 million hens from cages each year. 7 million individuals who feel happiness and pain and whose lives are meaningfully improved. I hope the funders and advocates who helped achieve this feel like heroes for this win alone. Now of course we could say these advocates only helped 0.1% of the egg-laying hens in our food system, and barely made a dent. This is true. It’s also the wrong framing.
The Against Malaria Foundation estimates they’ve saved 185,000 lives in the 19 years they’ve existed. We rightly say that this is exceptional and laudable work. I’ve never heard anyone say that that’s barely a dent, only 1% of deaths from malaria prevented. In global health and development, there isn’t a framing that we’ll ‘end poverty and preventable health issues’. We should do the same for animals and the wins in our movement.
As I said earlier, even if things get worse for animals, there are still wins to be counted. If we manage to ensure only 5 states ban cultivated meat, instead of 8, that is a win to celebrate. If only 30% of the companies fail to meet their cage-free goals because of our work, instead of 60%, that is a win to celebrate. If I personally somehow manage to reduce the growth of the number of animals by 0.02% then that is 20 billion individuals a year who feel and yearn and suffer.
And each one counts.
I thought this was a well-written, thoughtful and highly intelligent piece, about a really important topic, where getting as close as possible to the truth is super-important and high-stakes. Kudos! I gave it a strong upvote. :)
I am starting from the point of being fairly attached to the “let’s try to end factory farming!” framing, but this post has given me a lot to think about.
I wanted to share a bunch of thoughts that sprung to my mind as I read the post:
One potential advantage of the “let’s try to end factory farming!” framing is that it encourages us to think long-term and systematically, rather than short-term and narrowly. I take long-termism to be true: future suffering matters as much as present-day suffering. I worry that a framing of “let’s accept that factory farming will endure; how can we reduce the most suffering” quickly becomes “how can we reduce the most suffering *right now*, in a readily countable and observable way”. This might make us miss opportunities and theories of change which will take longer to work up a head of steam, but which over the long term, may lead to more suffering reduction. It may also push us towards interventions which are easily countable, numerically, at the expense of interventions which may actually, over time, lead to more suffering-reduction, but in more uncertain, unpredictable, indirect and harder-to-measure ways. It may push us towards very technocratic and limited types of intervention, missing things like politics, institutions, ideas, etc. It may discourage creativity and innovation. (To be clear: this is not meant to be a “woo-woo” point; I’m suggesting that these tendencies may fail in their own terms to maximize expected suffering reduction over time).
Aiming to end factory farming encourages us to aim high. Imagine we have a choice between two options, as a movement: try to eradicate 100pc of the suffering caused by factory farming, by abolishing it (perhaps via bold, risky, ambitious theories-of-change). Or, try to eradicate 1pc of the suffering caused by factory farming, through present-day welfare improvements. The high potential payoff of eradicating factory farming seems to look good here, even if we think there’s only (say) a 10pc chance of it working. I.e, perhaps the best way to maximise expected suffering reduction is, in fact, to ‘gamble’ a bit and take a shot at eradicating factory farming.
If we give up on even trying to end factory farming, doesn’t this become a self-fulfilling prophecy? If we do this, we guarantee that we end up in a world where factory framing endures. Given uncertainty, shouldn’t (at least some of) the movement try to aim high and eradicate it?
I’m not sure that the analogy with malaria/poverty/health/development is perfect:
I’m very unsure about this, but I *guess* that a framing of “factory faming is a gigantic moral evil, let’s eradicate it” is, on balance, more motivating/attracting than a framing of “factory farming is a gigantic moral evil, we’ll never defeat it, but we can help a tonne of animals, let’s do it” (?)
*If* we knew the future for sure, and knew it would be impossible ever to eradicate factory farming, then I do agree that we should face facts and adjust our strategy accordingly, rather than live in hope. My gut instinct though is that we can’t be sure of this, and there are arguments in favor of aiming for big, bold, systemic changes and wins for animals.
These are just some thoughts that sprang to mind, I don't think that in and of themselves they fully repudiate the case you thoughtfully made. I think more discussion and thought on this topic is important; kudos for kicking this off with your post!
(For those interested, the Sentience Institute have done some fascinating work on the analogies and dis-analogies of factory farming vs other moral crimes such as slavery - eg here and here.)
I like the thought process and the sentiment, but I think big goals are a critical guiding light for the future. "Reducing suffering as much as possible" is neither inspirational enough nor concrete enough to rally behind.
"End factory farming" is a clearer a inspiring rallying point, the same way we in global development do talk about ending poverty, and yes eradicating Malaria. The millennium and sustainable development goals use those kind of terms and I believe help light the way.
Call me naive, but I think distant hope is more likely to keep people going than lead to burnout, as long as we are realistic about our short term goals. I don't think ending factory farming is unrealistic long term.
(I didn't read all the comments so someone else might have said this already)
I think this post is admirable for trying to persuasively correct a mistake you see people making — but I end up disagreeing because of equivocation between end factory farming and end factory farming within our lifetimes.
I think the goal is to end factory farming, & my sense is most of the harms you're worried about only accrue when people have an unrealistic sense of how likely that is overall (not guaranteed) & how soon that might happen (maybe not for a very long time, or perhaps ever).
See some (limited) discussion of this in 80k's new factory farming article which I was reading earlier today by coincidence.
Yeah I agree with this and wish I was clearer from the get go.
This is such a good post, and I agree very much. You said so many things that I have been thinking and wishing I knew how to say. Thank you so, so much for writing this, @ElliotTep!
I agree we should focus on reducing suffering. And I have other reasons, too, in addition to the points you brought up.
Other reasons:
1. The problem with factory farming is the suffering it causes. So, we should focus on the real problem—the suffering. When we talk about fighting factory farming, we are actually only talking about a proxy for our real goal. (The real goal is to decrease suffering.) I think it's better to focus on the real goal. Because focusing on a proxy can always have unintentional consequences. For instance, if we focus only on ending factory farming, we may decide to do something like tax methane emissions. That tax may cost the meat industry money. It may decrease the number of factory farms that get built. It may raise the price of beef and thus decrease the amount of meat that gets sold. But if it causes beef prices to go up, people will eat more chicken. And then the methane-tax intervention will result in more suffering. This is just one of many examples.
2. I have recently been learning first hand that a lot of people in the meat, egg, and dairy industries have serious concerns about the treatment of animals. There are slaughterhouse workers, contract growers, corporate meat-industry employees, and ag executives who really want to improve animal welfare! But, naturally, almost none of these people want to end animal farming. Because, as @Hazo points out, that would mean ending their livelihood. We are more likely to succeed at improving animal welfare if we can work collaboratively with these concerned people in the meat and egg industries. These are the people who deal with farmed animals on a day-to-day basis, and who have the biggest impact on farmed animals' lives. I think selecting a goal that we can work towards together with people within the industry is highly worthwhile.
3. Factory farming isn't the only thing that's bad. All suffering is bad. Animal testing causes severe suffering that's likely worse per individual than the suffering caused by factory farming. My understanding is that the scale of animal testing on mice and rats isn't actually known, and most numbers we see leave them out. Wild animals also suffer. Rodents suffer when they're bred in pet stores to sell to snake owners. Fish presumably suffer in large numbers in the pet trade. I'm not sure if people count insect farming as factory farming, but it's a concerning new trend that could theoretically cause even more suffering than at least what most people think of as factory farming. New forms of mass suffering could be invented in the future. If AI is sentient, people (or AI) could cause AI to suffer on massive scales. Digital minds could be created and replicated and made to suffer in huge numbers. If we fight factory farming, that doesn't help move the needle on other forms of suffering. If we focus on the suffering itself, maybe we can move the needle generally. For instance, if we work to create an anti-suffering ethic, that would be a more helpful ethic to create in the long run than a pro-vegan or anti-factory-farming ethic. Because the anti-suffering ethic would move us to help factory farmed animals while also staying vigilant about other forms of suffering.
4. Elliot's point about how ending factory farming is an unrealistic goal also worries me for another reason: The effect of the slogan on longtermist EAs who hear animal-focused EAs say it all the time. Animal people keep saying "Factory farming is going to end. Factory farming is unsustainable." To me, an AR person, I know to translate that slogan to "I'm trying to get myself hyped up! I'm trying to inspire others to join me on a crusade!" Because I know, sadly, what an uphill battle it would be to end factory farming. And I think most AR people know that. But to someone who doesn't spend their whole life focused on animal welfare, it's not obvious that this statement is just an inspirational quote. It sounds like the speaker is literally predicting that factory farming is going to end. And I worry that longtermist EAs, who may spend slightly less time paying attention to the trends in animal agriculture, may just hear the slogan and take it at face value. Here's why I worry about that: It seems that many longtermist EAs are working hard to try to preserve humanity, or at least consciousness, for as long as possible. And many longtermist EAs seem to assume that life in the future will be net positive. This assumption seems to involve assuming that factory farming will end, and that it won't be replaced by anything even worse (see point #3). I worry that longtermist EAs may be outsourcing their thinking a little to animal EAs. And animal EAs are falling down on the job by just giving an inspirational slogan when we should give the truth. If it's true that we have no realistic expectation of suffering decreasing in the future, and no reason to believe factory farming will end before humanity ends, we should make sure longtermists know that. That way, longtermist EAs can plan accordingly.
Thanks for the comment Alene. I think I agree with all of it and that it does a great job of articulating things I didn't get to or think of.
I thought about this question over the last few months while drafting our strategy and vision. A few thoughts and observations:
Some other EA organizations also seem to have adopted directional visions instead of static visions describing an ideal world. 80k had this in their 2014 business model:
"Our aim is to have the biggest possible social impact."
and they currently have this more detailed blog post about the meaning of social impact.
2022 CEA:
"CEA's overall aim is to do the most we can to solve pressing global problems — like global poverty, factory farming, and existential risk — and prepare to face the challenges of tomorrow."
What I primarily need from a vision statement is to succinctly and clearly communicate my goal to my team, supporters, and the general public. The problem with static vision statements is that they are unable to properly communicate what we are trying to do.
Making the ideal world come sooner or making it more likely to come is only one part of doing good. Another important part of doing good is affecting non-ideal worlds by making them less bad or making the worst futures less likely. It becomes more difficult to explain my focus on harm-mitigation with a static vision statement, because in many cases harm-mitigation doesn't obviously make the ideal world come sooner. I think harm mitigation is worthwhile even if it has zero impact on when the ideal world comes.
On the other hand, one main distinction that both the general public and animal advocates are primarily interested in is whether the organization is against all animal farming or not. Directional vision statements make your position on this unclear. When you say "I'm trying to do the most good for the animals", people(both mainstream public and animal advocates) keep asking you "I don't get it, are you a vegan organisation or not?".
Pretty much all animal advocacy organizations I know of have static vision statements describing an ideal world. I'm still confused about what is the best way to proceed here.
I understand the appeal of focusing on immediate, measurable reductions in animal suffering and the disillusionment many animal advocates feel regarding our ability to achieve our ultimate goal as a movement. But I believe that limiting our ambition to merely "reducing suffering" in the short term undersells the potential of this movement, risks complacency, and most importantly, fails to capitalize on the momentum we are currently experiencing.
To elaborate further on why maintaining the goal of ending factory farming is crucial, and how it is indeed an achievable goal, I've written a separate post outlining the key factors contributing to our potential success. These factors include:
While acknowledging the importance of immediate suffering reduction, we must not lose sight of our ultimate goal: ending factory farming. By embracing technological advancements, strategic thinking, and the power of exponential growth, we achieving this ambitious goal within our lifetime is entirely possible.
Hi Sam, I'm wondering how much of our difference in optimism is in our beliefs about the likelihood of ending factory farming in our lifetimes vs what is the best framing. You say in your blog post that there's "a realistic chance of ending this system within our lifetimes". Do you care to define a version of 'ending this system', pick a year and put a percentage number on 'realistic chance'? If you pick a year and definition of ending factory farming, I can put a percentage chance on it too and see where the difference lies.
These numbers can be very rough of course, not asking for a super well calibrated prediction, more of just putting a number on an intuition.
By "ending factory farming," I mean a 95% reduction in animals raised in intensive industrial farming operations globally by 2060. Predicting the likelihood of this is complex, but I'd estimate it as:
10-30% if we continue with current strategies and resource allocation.
35-50% if we effectively leverage exponential technologies and focus on strategic leverage points.
55-70% if we achieve exceptional movement coordination and execute optimally on key interventions.
These are rough estimates, and many unknowns could influence the outcome. It's easy to get caught up in predictions, but the future of factory farming rests in our hands. Our strategies, dedication, and ability to overcome challenges will ultimately determine success or failure.
Instead of fixating on a fixed probability, we should adopt a mindset of radical responsibility.
Every animal advocate can shift the odds. Imagine two extremes:
The reality will fall somewhere in between. But the key takeaway is this: we are not passive observers, we are active participants in shaping the future for animals.
Edit: Just re-read this and realised the tone seemed off and more brisk than I meant it. Apologies, don't comment much and was trying to get out a comment quickly.
Finally, I have to ask were your comments written by an LLM? The general structure, length, tone, and some of the specific lines in it ("probability of success skyrockets towards 100%") struck me as LLM sounding. If so, how come? Genuinely curious if this is the case.
Thanks for the answers. Sounds like a big crux for us is that I am sadly much more cynical about (a) how much optimism can shift probabilities. I think it can make a difference, but I don't think it can change probabilities from 10% to 70%. And (b) I am just much more cynical on our chances of ending factory farming by 2060. I'd probably put the number at around 1-5%.
My point was that the 10-70% range reflects different outcomes depending on the actions we take, not just optimism as a feeling or a belief. Optimism can certainly motivate us to act, but without those actions, it has little to no impact on the actual probabilities.
It seems our main disagreement lies in how we view these probabilities. I see them as dynamic and heavily influenced by the actions we take as a movement, while you seem to view them as more static and inherent to the situation, essentially outside of our control.
I think that's an extremely important distinction because it fundamentally shifts how we approach this challenge. If we believe the odds are fixed, we become passive observers, resigned to whatever fate has in store. But if we recognise our power to influence those odds through strategic action, technological innovation, and effective execution, we become active participants in creating the future we want. This empowers us to take responsibility, to strive for optimal solutions, and to push beyond the limitations of the status quo.
To better understand your perspective, could you provide your estimated probabilities for ending factory farming by 2060, considering these scenarios:
I'm really interested in seeing how your probabilities compare across these scenarios, especially for scenarios 2 and 3. While 1-5% might seem understandable (albeit quite pessimistic) for scenario 1, where we assume minimal change, it seems considerably less likely that those odds wouldn't drastically increase with the improved strategy and execution described in scenarios 2 and 3.
To put it into perspective, imagine a basketball team with a 1-5% chance of winning a game. If they then acquire a star player, develop a brilliant new strategy, and execute it flawlessly, wouldn't their chances of winning increase substantially? Similarly, in the fight against factory farming, if we effectively leverage exponential technologies, coordinate our efforts optimally, and execute our strategies with precision, it seems almost impossible that our probability of success wouldn't see a major boost.
Hi Sam, I'm finding it hard to respond to your request because IMO the scenarios are too vague. To use your basketball metaphor, a specific player is something that I can integrate meaningfully into a prediction, but executing the strategy flawlessly is much more nebulous. Do you have specific ideas in mind of what scenario 3 might look like? How much increased funding is there? I think to make a good conditional prediction it would need to be something we could clearly decide whether or not we achieved it? Raised an extra $50m for the movement has a clear yes/no, whereas "achieve maximum coordination and efficiency" seems very subjective to me.
I'm also leaning towards thinking of the movement's objectives in terms of “reducing as much animal suffering as possible” rather than “ending factory farming”. That said, I'm more hesitant about what you draw from this distinction, concerning the more or less reasonable levels of ambition we might want to aim for.
When I hear animal sanctuary managers criticize effective altruism and justify their appeals for donations by explaining that “each one counts”, I'm hardly convinced: sure, every animal saved is a victory, but is it really the best we can do with these donations? It seems doubtful, given the derisory impact compared to the scale of the problem.
I find myself raising a similar objection here to the question of how ambitious we should be. Definitely, “If only 30% of the companies fail to meet their cage-free goals because of our work, instead of 60%, that is a win to celebrate.”, but is that really the best we can do with the money we spend? Maybe it is, yes. But the low impact relative to the scale of the problem still makes me wonder if we can't do better than that, by looking for other ideas for even more cost-effective interventions, including those directed towards a longer-term impact, which seek to take us towards a society where we've reduced suffering so much that there's no more factory farming (or even no more farming at all, or where we actively seek to take animals' preferences into account beyond the simple avoidance of suffering). And it seems to me that this questioning stems from the very principles of EA: to seek an ambitious impact, without stopping at what we've already tried so far, even if it didn't seem so bad.
The harsh reality for funders and project leaders is that it's excruciatingly difficult to predict what might have the greatest impact in reducing suffering, even if only on the scale of a few decades. Could redirecting all the money devoted to corporate campaigns towards a patient effort of cultural influence through elite education and lobbying to spread antispeciesist values reduce suffering much more dramatically on the scale of a few decades, with greater cost-effectiveness? The uncertainty is so large that I have the impression that we're tipping over into a debate of confronting more or less optimistic intuitions, in which it's really difficult to reach firm conclusions.
Therefore, I find it hard to be convinced by the passage where you emphasize your doubts about interventions aimed at long-term abolition ("The hope of ending factory farming is sold via specific interventions or combinations of interventions. People in the movement then fundraise and work on those interventions, which I think are often a poor use of resources compared to other interventions."). It seems to me that one could say something quite similar based on the same uncertainties: the hope of reducing suffering in the short term is sold via specific interventions or combinations of interventions. People in the movement then fundraise and work on those interventions, which may be a poor use of resources compared to other interventions (which aim to reduce suffering much more drastically, but over a longer period of time).
Since in the end, we still have to choose which interventions to fund or engage in, I believe it's best to recognize that these choices are based on intuitions, and to make them explicit (while trying to assess their relevance): do I have the intuition to be risk-averse and focus on interventions whose impact can be measured in the short term? Or am I prepared to risk allocating fewer resources to avoiding hours of intense suffering for today's hens, in order to fund projects that aim to reduce suffering much more drastically, but on a century-long scale, and with an expected value that becomes absurd to calculate, as it can both hit the ceiling or turn out to be negative? Do I have a hunch that we should choose our battles using RP's moral weights, or am I having trouble with the postulates on which their calculations are based? Etc.
In this respect, I find it interesting to move forward in this debate by asking:
- How each of us goes about approximating the probability of finding interventions that would be so effective in reducing suffering as to bring about the end of factory farming in, say, 50 years' time?
- How does one go about assessing what does or does not constitute a “poor use of resources”?
I found your article very useful.
Similar thoughts to the ones you express here led me to write this post: Fighting animal suffering: beyond the number of animals killed
I think you're spot on, and I appreciate you writing this post. However, I think you've maybe missed the most important reason that you're correct, which is that the focus on ending factory farming makes the movement significantly less accessible to the broader public than it otherwise could be.
Most people are broadly on board with welfare changes that animal activists push for (e.g. moving away from battery cages or gestation crates), but less on board with "ending factory farming." And they're even less on board if it's made explicit that what most activists mean by ending factory farming is achieving a world with no or significantly less meat than there is now.
A lot of the paths to greater impact for the movement go through harnessing broad public support, or building broad coalitions. This is significantly harder to do when the center of gravity of the movement is around something so radical in relation to public opinion. More so when the focus on ending farming pushes the movement towards theories of change that are also unpopular, such as veganism and cultivated meat.
One might counter this by saying that social movements need a radical flank, and I think there's merit to this argument. However, the current animal groups pretty much all use messaging around ending factory farming, even the ones perceived to be more "moderate." I would argue that the movement right now lacks a moderate flank.
Another reason the framing is bad that you don't mention is that it makes the industry significantly more skeptical of activists. All businesses look skeptically on external activists to an extent, but I think this is especially so in animal agriculture. Producers know that when activists advocate for e.g. cage-free reforms, their actual goals are to get people to eat fewer eggs, and eventually to get people to stop eating (factory-farmed) eggs all together. Some activists say this explicitly in public. For producers, this makes the activism a battle over the future existence of their industry, not a debate over current practices on the margin, making progress significantly more challenging.
It's been clarified in the comments that with the statement "I think the reality is that we might never get there" what was meant was that we might not end factory farming within our lifetime. Well, if your focus is on reducing suffering, why does it matter less if that suffering is reduced in the next generation, or the one after that?
Animals will continue to suffer terribly as long as factory farming exists. Changing the size of cages, or the exact type of feed given, only changes that suffering by degrees. But others have pointed out that we are making progress towards the long-term goal of ending factory farming altogether. Doing so will reduce animal suffering much more dramatically, and that seems like a long-term goal worth pursuing to me.
I see the potential for this argument. I particularly like the emphasis on celebrating counterfactual wins, that some people may not immediately see as wins.
However I'd like to see more elaboration on how it actually results in different tactics and framing.
So I like the definition of "helping as much animals as posible" but when exactly does this lead to different tactics to ending factory farming?
Given that most people define factory farming as a system that uses practices that are known to cause suffering (stocking densities way too high, lack of natural light and ability to express natural behaviours, frankenchicken genetics), I think both your framings lead to more or less the same policies.
For example, I'd argue that many animal advocates consider cage free campaigns to be a goal on the way to eliminating factory farming, because confining animals is a key feature of factory farms. In fact, in the US factory farms are formally called "confined animal feeding operations" (emphasis mine)
It's also not clear to me why "ending factory farming" is less defined than "preventing animal suffering".
I think for the folks in the 'ending factory farming' camp that (IMO) are not being realistic, this can lead to adopting specific theories about how all of society will change their minds. This could include claims about meat being financially unviable if we just got the meat industry to internalise their externalities (the word just is doing a lot of lifting here), or theories about tipping points where once 25% of people believe something everyone else will follow, so we need to focus on consciousness-raising (I've butchered this argument, sorry to the folks who understand it better).
I find that ending "factory farming" in the western world is possible in less than 40 years. The real problem here is veganism: people need animal proteins, and by pushing veganism, the animal welfare activist look like crazy bolsheviks.
What is the animal welfare equivalent of socialdemocracy? In my view, expanding the rumninants husbandry (becuase the true horror is farmed hens and pork), killing fishes by electrical stunning instead of suffocation, and above all, join with western farmers for total protectionism, because farmers are for efficiency (and cruelty) mostly for fear of foreing competition.
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/L6wdRBCh3izCD244t/farmers-in-the-animalist-coalition
At the end, electrical utilities are the main lobby for climate change mitigation. Western farmers can be the same for animal welfare.
Thanks for writing this Elliot!
I really enjoyed reading this, and I really appreciate you pointing out that each animal helped matters, because I think that’s a very important point that people often forget. I also agree it’s important to be honest about what is feasible in the foreseeable future.
I am, however, more optimistic than you about ending factory farming. I think society has gradually been becoming more conscious of animal welfare issues and most people support ending factory farming. It might take 50 years, 100 years, but I think eventually this will translate into people caring enough to fight against powerful systemic forces. I’d be interested to hear what you think are the big differences to past social movements (the fact that animals can’t speak for themselves is obviously one!)
I think we also need to be careful about celebrating small wins too much. My understanding is that cage-free or something similar is like going from -100 to -90 on a welfare scale. That’s still good, but the bigger difference is between -90 and 0. That’s one reason I think our goal should still be to end factory farming, at least in regions where there is growing support for animal welfare.
In practice, I’m not sure whether that would change which actions we take, but maybe it should push us more towards building the democratic institutions that allow people to raise their voice about animal welfare (eg. Australian Alliance for Animals reforms), over say corporate campaigns. I’d also be keen to hear what other interventions you’re less pessimistic about (the "many more" from your post).
Thanks again for sharing your thoughts!
I agree Lucas, I'm also optimistic about this. I feel like it's too early in the movement to rule out a more ambitious vision like this, especially when there's still so many stones left unturned like democratic institutional reform.
Elliot (and anyone else who's interested) I'd love to discuss further with you on strategy - join us at EAAA, we discuss this kind of thing regularly 🙂 https://www.facebook.com/groups/eafta/?ref=share&mibextid=NSMWBT
Hi Lucas, I like your point about being careful about celebrating small wins too much. To me the big difference between going from -100 to -90 and going from -90 to 0 is I see the expected value calculation as very different because the first one (going cage free) is clearly quite tractable, whereas the second one (reducing egg consumption?) I see as being really hard and unclear how to pursue it.
I definitely think there should be some effort that goes towards 'ending factory farming' type work. But I'm also quite skeptical of many proposed solutions. Or at least I think the people putting forward the proposals are too optimistic. This is maybe too big a question to ask in a forum comments section, but what's the path to ending factory farming in 50 or 100 years? What probability do you think we'll get there in that time frame?
Hey Elliot, sorry for the slow response on this.
Yeah for sure, it's hard to know how the EV calculation pans out. Using my made-up numbers, the interventions that end factory farming would need to have >10% as much chance of success to be better - I think that is plausible but there's so much uncertainty here.
Agree these are big questions that are hard to discuss online, but let's chat when we get a chance in person!
Thanks for writing this!
I’ve really struggled with this when writing AAC’s mission and vision statements. Historically our vision and mission statements have been much more pragmatic and realistic like speeding up the end of animal suffering through increasing talent density etc etc. and I agree with Emres point on the difficulty of communicating what we are doing to a broader audience. These kind of static vision statements whilst being pragmatic seem to be less inspirational to external stakeholders, staff and smaller donors.
So I’m leaning towards changing AAC to have a more broad directional vision statement because I think this is more likely to inspire actions and isn’t that the point of visions? So I guess my question is, do you think that organisations are really genuinely aiming for this goal with the thought that we should strive to achieve it in our lifetime and in their plans or do you think we are just trying to inspire action and that really our theories of change are more in line with the things we do have power over. If AAC was able to increase talent density in the movement and fix the talent bottlenecks I’d be pretty happy with us an organisation and think we’ve done “our bit” but I don’t think that would inspire my staff.
Thanks, Elliot.
There is another point which makes me especially in favour of focussing on reducing suffering, and also increasing happiness. Ending factory-farming only increases animal welfare if factory-farmed animals continue to have negative lives forever, whereas I would say they may become positive in the next few decades at least in some animal-friendly countries.
Good point. I feel weird admitting it but it does seem like some cows probably have net-positive lives right now
Agreed. I guess farmed animals have positive lives under the conditions required by the Naturland standard.
I agree with this, although I'm not an expert on cattle rearing. It seems to me like cows on grazeland generally have net positive lives, and cows on feedlots have arguably net negative lives (although it still seems way less bad than a pig or chicken CAFO). The longer a cow spends on pasture the more likely they had a net positive life, e.g. 100% grass-fed cows in the US might have pretty decent lives.
You need to consider the counterfactual in its entirety. Ending factory farming increases net welfare if being inhabit the space of the factory farms have more positive welfare than the beings on the factory farms.
I find it incredibly hard to believe that any alternative to factory farming will have an even lower level of welfare, regardless of whether factory farmed animals have lives worth living or not.
Thanks for the comment, Tristan.
I agree factory-farmed animals having positive lives is not sufficient to justify continuing factory-farming. If one is confident that i) wild animals have positive lives, ii) the effects of factory-farming on wild animals are much larger than those on farmed animals, and iii) factory-farming decreases the number of wild animals (as animal products usually require more land than plant-based ones), then ending factory-farming would be good to increase animal welfare when accounting for both farmed and wild animals. However, I am not arguing for reaching positive factory-farming, and then maintaining it forever. I am arguing for having the ultimate goal of increasing animal welfare, which I think is robustly good, unlike ending factory-farming or maintaining positive factory-farming forever.
I also think that focussing on increasing the welfare of factory-farmed animals (instead of ending factory-farming) is more conducive to making people care about the welfare of wild animals. People justify ending factory-farming as a way of perserving nature, but I believe this may well backfire because wild animals may have negative lives. There is huge uncertainty about whether wild animals have positive/negative lives, so I would say it is more prudent to have the robustly good ultimate goal of increasing welfare.
Can you elaborate on why you think we will never eradicate factory farming? You point to near-term trends that suggest it will get worse over the coming decades. What about on a century long time scale or longer? Factory farming has only been around for a few generations, and food habits have changed tremendously over that time.
I think it's important to consider how some strategies may make future work difficult. For example, Martha Nussbaum highlights how much of the legal theory in the animal rights movement has relied on showing similarities between human and animal intelligence. Such a "like us" comparison limits consideration to a small subset of vertebrates. They are impotent at helping animals like chickens, were much legal work is happening now. Other legal theories are much more robust to expansion and consideration of other animals as the science improves to understand their needs and behavior.
Using your line of argument applied to the analogy you provided would suggest that efforts like developing a malaria vaccine are misguided, because malaria will always be with us, and we should just focus on reducing infection rates and treatment.
Hi Matthew,
I think my analogy isn't claiming that we shouldn't try to end malaria because it will always be with us, but rather that we shouldn't view ending malaria as making a small dent in the real fight of ending preventable deaths, but that rather we should view it as a big win on its own merits. In fact I think ending cages for hens in at least Europe and the US is a realistic goal.
I think we might never eradicate factory farming. I think it's plausible that we end factory farming with some combination of cultivated meat, moral circle expansion, new generations having more progressive views, and who knows what AGI might bring to the table. I just don't think that it's inevitable. I do agree that on the timescale of centuries things get very hard to predict. My post is more aimed at discussions that focus on ending factory farming in our lifetime.
Could you develop this part please? The "why this problem is much harder and disanalogous" part.
Good question, I wasn't sure how much to err on the side of brevity vs thoroughness.
To phrase it differently I think sometimes advocates start their strategy with the final line 'and then we end factory farming', and then try to develop a strategy about how do we get there. I don't think it is reasonable to assume this is going to happen, and I think this leads to overly optimistic theories of change. From time to time I see a claim about how meat consumption will be drastically reduced in the next few decades based on a theory that is far too optimistic and/or speculative.
For example, I've seen work claim that when plant-based meat reaches taste and price parity, people will choose plant-based over conventional meat, so if we raise the price of meat via regulation, and lower the cost of plant-based, there will be high adoption of plant-based, and meat reduction will be 30% lower by 2040 (those numbers are made up, but ball-park correct). I think these claims just aren't super well founded and some research showed that when a university cafeteria offered impossible and regular burgers, adoption was still quite low (anyone know the citation?).
Hi Elliot, I cite a couple of studies similar to that in my review Price-, Taste-, and Convenience-Competitive Plant-Based Meat Would Not Currently Replace Meat; I suspect you're thinking of Malan 2022.
Thanks for your reply Elliot.
I was specifically asking about your views on why the problem animal advocates are trying to solve is much harder and disanalogous than the problem the emancipation and the gay marriage movements were tryng to solve.
Hmm I'm not sure if I have a very considered answer to this question, except for the main argument that I think it's much harder for people to see animals as having rights/moral value since they look different, are different species, and often act in foreign ways that make us more likely to discount their capacity to feel and think (e.g. fish don't talk, scream, or visibly emote).
I've recently been coming across content that on some level discuss how some aspect 'X' is / shoud be different in the pro-animal movement.
One example is the disproportionate amount of focus that goes into consumer activism over institutional change. I'm not an expert in social movements, nor have I spent much active time studying them, but the sense I get is that other social movements like ending slavery, and feminism have involved focusing on institutional and scalable changes. In this example, X = type of change we should focus on.
In this post, I would say X = the goal of the pro-animal movement.
In both instances, X is different for the pro-animal movement than in other forms of social movements.
I wholeheartedly acknowledge that nonhuman animal oppression is a beast that none other parallels so there ought to be some differences in the way we approach bringing about change in this area. But I inevitably also wonder if there is some level of embedded speciesism involved when we differentiate nonhuman animal oppression from human-specific oppressions.
I agree Aditi, I think there's still a lot we can learn from from other social movements that has not yet been fully applied yet; still lots of work to do and opportunities 🙂
How about both lens? I could see the 'end factory farming' framing and dreaming big be really good for some folks, particularly young people with lofty ambitions who are not yet in the movement. I think it was particularly helpful for me to have this framing when joining the movement!
We could also advocate for near-term suffering reduction as a lofty goal within itself, given the right context (i.e. within EA)!