I would also like to add to the other comments that EA Intro Fellowship has included a book section titled "All Animals Are Equal" for quite some time.
I suspect most of the impact of veganism comes from its social/political side effects rather than the direct impact of the consumption. I believe it's better to mostly think about "what kind of meme and norm should I spread" as most of the impact is there.
This is a huge public service and I really appreciate 80000 Hours publicly sharing this much of its thinking and progress. As a founder, I learnt a lot about how to run an organisation thanks to all those public documents of 80000 Hours. Thank you for setting a high bar for transparency in the community.
You might find the first week of this reading list helpful.
I think he's not commenting on it much anymore since this issue isn't really a major priority. But I think he used to advocate for infanticide in a larger set of circumstances(eg. when it's possible to have another child who will have a happier life). The part about infanticide isn't that relevant to any kind of work EA is doing. But his views are still debated in animal advocacy circles and I am not sure what exactly his position is.
Does anyone know why Singer hasn't changed his views on infanticide and killing animals after he had become a hedonist utilitarian? As far as I know, his former views were based on the following:
a. Creation and fulfilment of new preferences is morally neutral.
b. Thwarting existing preferences is morally bad.
c. Persons have preferences about their future.
d. Non-persons don't have a sense of the future, they don't have preferences about their future either. They live in the moment.
e. Killing persons thwarts their preferences about the future.
f. Killing non-persons doesn't thwart such preferences.
g. Therefore killing a person can't be compensated by creating a new person. Whereas when you kill a non-person, you don't thwart many preferences anyway so killing non-persons can be compensated.
I think after he had become a hedonist this person/non-person asymmetry should mostly disappear. But I haven't seen him updating Animal Liberation or other books. Why is that?
Disclosure: I am currently working at an organisation running cage-free campaigns.
I love this post! I really like the stepping stone model, it brings a lot of clarity to this debate. A few quick thoughts:
B12, iron and vitamin-D deficiencies are quite common among general population, even more so among vegans. I would suggest you to have a blood test for those.
Best of luck!