Animals currently make up the vast majority of sentient beings. As many as 2.8 trillion animals might be killed for food each year, and there are many more animals in the wild.^[1] Although many experts agree that animals display some signs of sentience, it remains an open question which animals are sentient, and how we should compare welfare between species. Nevertheless, the welfare of animals is potentially a hugely important issue.

Despite its importance, this focus area is highly neglected: animal charities receive only 3% of charitable donations, and 99% of that money is focused on pets, who make up less than 0.1% of all domesticated animals.^[1]

The area also appears to be somewhat tractable. Open Philanthropy estimates that past corporate cage-free campaigns have spared about 120 years of suffering in battery cages per dollar donated.^[2]

Some have argued that, if one takes the view that future beings matter morally, interventions that seek to reduce short-term animal suffering may not be as cost-effective as interventions that seek to influence the far future. In response, others have argued that animal welfare will also have strong beneficial effects on the far future.^[1] An objection to that argument is that it would be remarkable if an intervention selected for its short-term effects just happened to have better long-run consequences than all other interventions.^[3] In addition, critics have noted that there are theoretical reasons for expecting human interventions to have better long-run effects than animal interventions.^[4] The considerations bearing on this issue are numerous, complex, and hard to assess, and the debate is currently unresolved.^[5]

Further reading

MacAskill, W. & Meissner, D. (2020) Cause prioritization: Farm animal welfare, in 'Acting on utilitarianism', Utilitarianism, October.

Reese, Jacy (2016) Why animals matter for effective altruism, Effective Altruism Forum, August 22.

Whittlestone, Jess (2017) Animal welfare, Effective Altruism, November 16.

Related entries

animal cognition | animal sentience | effective animal advocacy | farmed animal welfare | wild animal welfare

^{^}
Reese, Jacy (2016) Why animals matter for effective altruism, Effective Altruism Forum, August 22.
^{^}
Bollard, Lewis (2016) Initial grants to support corporate cage-free reforms, Open Philanthropy, March 31.
^{^}
Lewis, Gregory (2016) Beware surprising

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Cultivated meat

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Related entries