Quick takes

Humans have actively worked against promoting the welfare of wild city rats throughout history. Aside from primates, they are some of the most closely related non-human animals to H. sapiens, yet we know very little about how they live outside of laboratory settings (i.e., often dystopian, prison-like conditions). In order to enhance their welfare in the wild and in laboratories, there is a huge need to develop and deploy technologies to study their behavior. Such studies would also benefit global human health and biosecurity efforts because rats can serve as vectors of disease, sources of infrastructural damage, and pose a threat to stored foods.  There are very few researchers working in this space across the globe, and I am one of the few (pre-PhD, looking for programs where I can complete my doctorate) who has the experience with + concern for rats and software/hardware/IoT development & design skills necessary to push this area of research further in a manner that embraces total harm-reduction (as opposed to eliminationist) thinking/strategies.  Am I in the right place for starting conversation(s) on this topic? Should I repost this some other way? Hopefully I'm posting this in the correct context + idea development status, it's my first post on the site. I found out about the potential for research funding opportunities last weekend while attending a conference at GWU Law School and figured it is worth a shot, given the sad state of affairs with research funding lately. 

I have been disappointed by the support some EAs have expressed for recent activist actions at Ridglan Farms. I share others’ outrage at the outcome of the state animal cruelty investigation, which found serious animal cruelty law violations but led to a settlement that still permits Ridglan to sell beagles through July and to continue in-house experimentation. But I personally think the tactics used in the recent open rescues, including property damage and forced entry to remove animals, violate reasonable moral bounds on what actions are permissible in response to the belief that a serious harm is occurring. My views here stem from contractualist views of democratic legitimacy and from concerns about the non-universalizability of principles that justify lawbreaking, though I think a purely act utilitarian calculus also supports them. Regarding universalizability, in a society where many people believe that different forms of irreparable harm are occurring (e.g. viewing abortion as murder, climate change as destroying the sacredness of the natural world, immigration as ending western civilization), I worry that moral principles that allow for significant lawbreaking when one believes that irreparable harm is occurring could easily lead to great damage if broadly followed (consider for example what it would be like to live in a country where hundreds of activists were regularly smashing their way into abortion clinics, energy companies, and refugee assistance nonprofits with sledgehammers and crowbars). Regarding the legitimacy of the law, I think reasonable contractualist views can give us obligations to follow the law when the processes by which the law is determined are legitimate, and that democracies with universal suffrage qualify as such (even granting that certain groups such as animals and future generations are impossible to enfranchise).[1] Therefore, I think that if we are trying to make decisions under moral uncertainty and give meaningful credences to

With Who Let the Docs Out now taking applications, here are a couple of quick thoughts from an evaluation of Blackfish. Blackfish is the film everyone points to. A few years ago I looked at whether it actually caused SeaWorld’s troubles, using stock market data and interviews with 26 people from marine parks, zoo associations, animal welfare NGOs, the film crew, marine science and narrative research. (Blackfish paper; plain-English write-up in The Conversation). We used General Elimination Methodology to test the competing explanations. Some didn’t hold up. In 2013 SeaWorld’s Orlando and California parks lost visitors while Universal and Disney gained them, so tighter household budgets can’t explain the drop. Blackfish did contribute to the fall in attendance and share price, the redesigned orca show and the end of the breeding programme. Interviewees put its impact down to four things: * Distribution. CNN aired it roughly 40 to 50 times, and the CNN branding made it read as news to a lot of viewers. * Content. Empathy for Tilikum, plus anger at a company that had not been straight with the public. * Timing. It landed on decades of campaigning, along with Free Willy, The Cove and the book Death at SeaWorld, and campaigners were ready to use it. * SeaWorld’s own response, which was slow and defensive. Some advice for farmed animal documentary filmmakers: 1. Ask who will pick the film up and use it. Blackfish had a single company to target and campaigns ready to go. 2. Budget for distribution as seriously as production. 3. Views and social engagement tell you about reach. Plan from the start how you’d find out whether anything changed, even if the answer is qualitative. Happy to talk to any filmmakers or funders thinking about evaluation.

Ridglan Farms, the notorious beagle-breeding facility in Wisconsin raided twice by activists this year, is officially shutting down. The pressure on them has been intense because the case has attracted quite a sizeable national attention: Glenn Greenwald, Jennifer Welch (I've Had It podcast), Lara Trump and Robert F. Kennedy have all commented on Ridglan decrying the horrors there. Lewis Bollard tweeted this out recently: https://x.com/Lewis_Bollard/status/2066542219134452209 Figured I'd share this since some EAs (including myself) were involved in the campaign to get it shut down. A big part of our theory of change was to get this kind of attention. The real question is how to extend to animals more broadly than just dogs, of course, but even this counts as a big win.

I went to jail yesterday in Wisconsin. I helped rescue 23 beagles in a large mass open rescue against a factory farm, Ridglan Farms, near Madison. We were trying to push the police to act on documented animal cruelty at Ridglan. Instead they arrested me and 26 other activists. I wrote a blog post about why I did it.. Excerpt: More info and stories from Wayne Hsiung: https://blog.simpleheart.org/p/im-in-jail-for-rescuing-dogs-its If you're in the DC area, I'll be sharing more about my experience at Revolutionists' Night, an animal welfare meetup, this Thursday. Reach out for an invite. [Edited to add:] I believe there is a lawful basis for this action and I intend to fight any attempted prosecution in court! I'm not advocating any illegal activity, of course.

Quick take only for now because this is basically a social media post: Updates on the Animal Futures tournament in progress: https://uj-animal-futures-update.netlify.app/ Some highlights: Solid participation, one cultivated-meat approval question already resolved, and a mixed bag of forecasts for animals. Some good "news" for advocates: Forecasters give the Save Our Bacon Act 3% and the Canary Islands octopus farm 1%, expect about half of Europe's top 20 grocers to have shrimp welfare commitments, and see in-ovo sexing spreading in the EU (~44% of layers) (but barely in the US ~3%). Less good, especially for the US: ~80% for at least one more state cultivated-meat ban, 2% for plant-based reaching 10% of US retail by 2031, and low expected fulfillment of 2026 corporate chicken pledges. But I think predicting the future doesn't help much unless it informs decisions. Help us: Who should we be sharing this with? What forecast would change a grant, campaign, or policy decision? Decisionmakers: what threshold matters, and what evidence would you need? Add your comments here, on that page, or DM. And you can still play: https://www.metaculus.com/tournament/33016/ Metaculus Sentient Futures

If you ever need a classic rap song to communicate your desire to be more influential in animal philanthropy, just say: I wish I was a little bit taller I wish I was a Bollard

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.