Quick takes

EA Animal Welfare Fund almost as big as Coefficient Giving FAW now? This job ad says they raised >$10M in 2025 and are targeting $20M in 2026. CG's public Farmed Animal Welfare 2025 grants are ~$35M.   Is this right? Cool to see the fund grow so much either way.

On alternative proteins: I think the EA community could aim to figure out how to turn animal farmers into winners if we succeed with alternative proteins. This seems to be one of the largest social risks, and it's probably something we should figure out before we scale alternative proteins a lot. Farmers are typically a small group but have a large lobby ability and public sympathy.

More good news! Norwegian meat industry announced that they will stop using fast-growing chicken breeds by the end of 2027. These breeds are source of immense suffering due to the toll such rapid growth takes on animal's body. This will be the first country to stop using them. More here: https://animainternational.org/blog/norway-ends-fast-growing-chickens

One happy news for the world - Poland just banned fur farming. The legislative battle is over, the president of the country signed the bill, which is the last chapter of the process.

Independent of whether their approach is net positive or negative for factory farming, I feel like FarmKind missed an obvious slogan opportunity: "Have your steak and eat it too!"

I built an interactive chicken welfare experience - try it and let me know what you think Ever wondered what "cage-free" actually means versus "free-range"? I just launched A Chicken's World - a 5-minute interactive game where you experience four different farming systems from an egg-laying hen's perspective, then guess which one you just lived through and how common that system is. Reading "67 square inches per hen" is one thing, but actually trying to move around in that space is another. My hope is that the interactive format makes welfare conditions visceral in a way that statistics don't capture. The experience includes: * Walking through battery cage, cage-free, free-range, and pasture-raised systems * Cost-effectiveness data based on Rethink Priorities' research on corporate campaigns * A willingness-to-pay element leading to an optional donation to THL via Farmkind I'd welcome feedback: * Any factual errors I should correct? (The comparative advantage of early adopters here! Most of the fact-finding and red-teaming was done by LLMs.) * What would make it more useful to you personally? (You'll probably give me more useful feedback this way than if you try to model other users.) * What would make it work better as an outreach tool? (I built this with non-EA audiences in mind.) Try it: https://achickens.world/. (Backup link here if that doesn't work.) PS thanks Claude for the code, plus THL, RP, Farmkind for doing the actual important work; I'm just making a fun tool. This was a misc personal project, nothing to do with my employer.

Potential Animal Welfare intervention: encourage the ASPCA and others to scale up their FAW budget I’ve only recently come to appreciate how large the budgets are for the ASPCA, Humane World (formerly HSUS), and similar large, broad-based animal charities. At a quick (LLM) scan of their public filings, they appear to have a combined annual budget of ~$1Bn, most of which is focused on companion animals. Interestingly, both the ASPCA and Humane World explicitly mention factory farming as one of their areas of concern. Yet, based on available data, it looks like <5% of spending in this category is directed toward factory-farmed animal welfare — despite factory farming accounting for the overwhelming majority of total animal suffering. Given that factory farming is already in scope for these orgs, and that is responsible for the vast majority of animal suffering, it would seem quite reasonable for these orgs to increase their spending on FAW several-fold. I doubt their donors would object!

Hey folks! I wanted to share a quick update on fundraising for the Center for Wild Animal Welfare (CWAW), as the year draws to a close, and as people consider finalising their end-of-year giving.  Our original forum post, announcing the launch of the Center and setting out the giving opportunity, is here.  We’ve had a great response, and have successfully raised our core Year 1 budget - whoop! The $60,000 1:1 donor match has been fully used up, so further donations to CWAW won’t be matched.  We are still gladly accepting donations, which will be used for ‘stretch’ items in CWAW’s budget - things such as public polling and focus groups to inform comms and policy development, contracting experts for advice on specific policy areas, subscriptions for parliamentary and media monitoring, joining professional and policy networks, running events such as policy report launches, improving our website, and expanding our capacity for ‘mainstream’ fundraising. We think that these items offer substantial value for money at the margin.   If you’d like to support our mission, it’s super easy to donate, and there are a variety of tax-efficient giving options (for various countries). Please see the original forum post for full details.  If you’re considering making an end-of-year gift, and have any questions - whether to help you weigh up the strength of CWAW as a giving opportunity, or on logistics - please feel free to reach out to Ben and I at team@wildanimalwelfare.org.  I’m also delighted to share that we will be launching a newsletter to keep people up to date about CWAW’s work. Whether you’re a donor or not, if you’d like to receive this, please do sign up here.  Cheers, and happy new year!