Hey! Are you aware of Elizabeth Irvine's work? She has a paper where she talks about how C. Elegans is plausibly not conscious, but meets a lot of the current criteria people use for consciousness. She uses this as a way to critique these criteria. I tend to agree with her and think that the criteria people use for consciousness are pretty made up. I think consciousness research could be moved forward with methods like the ones from this paper. (I think Birch wrote something that exposed me to this paper.)
Interesting point! I was kind of thinking along the lines of ASuchy, like, I would guess that a big portion of people shop at Walmart? I like your thinking!
I don't know! But from putting some things together, to me it doesn't seem clearly related to EA funding? It seems to me that the first cage-free funding from OP was a million dollars to THL in Feb. 2016. So, there were many fast food commitments before that. Many grocery commitments happened that month and in the next couple months: February - Target, Trader Joe's, Ahold March - Safeway, Kroger, Delhaize, Save a lot, Aldi April - Walmart June - Grocery Outlet July - Publix Someone else would have to say if those were due to changes from the new funding..?
As for quick changes in farming, I think of factory farming as developing pretty fast, but I don't know much about the history! I feel like there's gotta be some other practice that went from 0 to > 50% in less than a decade somewhere at some point :P Thanks again!
This is very helpful and interesting, thank you for the information! Would most/all of the follow-up campaigns that THL have done be findable online? For instance, when I search stores like "Trader Joe's cage free" I don't find much besides things from 2016, and I assumed that meant that there weren't follow-up campaigns. Is that impression probably right?
In writing this, I was reminded of the possibility of a pretty different corporate ask: pressuring large food companies to invest in animal welfare research or alternatives to animal-derived foods. I'm curious if there's been any recent thinking or doing related to this idea. Procter & Gamble is an example of this outside of the food industry, pressured in part by Henry Spira. In Peter Singer's biography of Henry Spira, Singer catalogues P&G's subsequent efforts to progress non-animal safety testing, which were quite extensive and successful. I don't really understand why P&G kept that going and invested so much into it. Inertia? Pride? Predicted efficiency gains? I don't know, but it seems like it could be good to have in food.
Hey! Are you aware of Elizabeth Irvine's work? She has a paper where she talks about how C. Elegans is plausibly not conscious, but meets a lot of the current criteria people use for consciousness. She uses this as a way to critique these criteria.
I tend to agree with her and think that the criteria people use for consciousness are pretty made up. I think consciousness research could be moved forward with methods like the ones from this paper. (I think Birch wrote something that exposed me to this paper.)
Thanks for the feedback!
This is such sweet feedback, thank you so much! You made me smile; I'm glad my enthusiasm came across!
Interesting point! I was kind of thinking along the lines of ASuchy, like, I would guess that a big portion of people shop at Walmart? I like your thinking!
Thank you so much!
I don't know! But from putting some things together, to me it doesn't seem clearly related to EA funding?
It seems to me that the first cage-free funding from OP was a million dollars to THL in Feb. 2016. So, there were many fast food commitments before that. Many grocery commitments happened that month and in the next couple months:
February - Target, Trader Joe's, Ahold
March - Safeway, Kroger, Delhaize, Save a lot, Aldi
April - Walmart
June - Grocery Outlet
July - Publix
Someone else would have to say if those were due to changes from the new funding..?
As for quick changes in farming, I think of factory farming as developing pretty fast, but I don't know much about the history! I feel like there's gotta be some other practice that went from 0 to > 50% in less than a decade somewhere at some point :P Thanks again!
I never thought about the "we used to do bad things" part! Thank you for this comment!
This is very helpful and interesting, thank you for the information! Would most/all of the follow-up campaigns that THL have done be findable online? For instance, when I search stores like "Trader Joe's cage free" I don't find much besides things from 2016, and I assumed that meant that there weren't follow-up campaigns. Is that impression probably right?
In writing this, I was reminded of the possibility of a pretty different corporate ask: pressuring large food companies to invest in animal welfare research or alternatives to animal-derived foods. I'm curious if there's been any recent thinking or doing related to this idea. Procter & Gamble is an example of this outside of the food industry, pressured in part by Henry Spira. In Peter Singer's biography of Henry Spira, Singer catalogues P&G's subsequent efforts to progress non-animal safety testing, which were quite extensive and successful. I don't really understand why P&G kept that going and invested so much into it. Inertia? Pride? Predicted efficiency gains? I don't know, but it seems like it could be good to have in food.
I'm glad this post exists! The first and sixth graph are not showing the same thing; I think the sixth is just North America data?
This is a great question that I hadn't thought of! I will try to find some first-person accounts sometime.