I agree with this, although I'm not an expert on cattle rearing. It seems to me like cows on grazeland generally have net positive lives, and cows on feedlots have arguably net negative lives (although it still seems way less bad than a pig or chicken CAFO). The longer a cow spends on pasture the more likely they had a net positive life, e.g. 100% grass-fed cows in the US might have pretty decent lives. 

I agree that the elections results were disappointing for animals, and particularly that the EATS act seems significantly more likely to pass in a republican-controlled government.

However, I think you're a little too pessimistic on what this means for animal-focused policy work in general. The ballot initiatives that failed this cycle were mostly abolitionist / vegany in vibe, which I think is significantly less popular than initiatives that are welfarist in vibe like Prop 12.

The EATS Act is primarily pushed by industry lobbyists, and doesn't necessarily reflect that these sorts of laws are getting less popular. 

I think you're spot on, and I appreciate you writing this post. However, I think you've maybe missed the most important reason that you're correct, which is that the focus on ending factory farming makes the movement significantly less accessible to the broader public than it otherwise could be.

Most people are broadly on board with welfare changes that animal activists push for (e.g. moving away from battery cages or gestation crates), but less on board with "ending factory farming." And they're even less on board if it's made explicit that what most activists mean by ending factory farming is achieving a world with no or significantly less meat than there is now. 

A lot of the paths to greater impact for the movement go through harnessing broad public support, or building broad coalitions. This is significantly harder to do when the center of gravity of the movement is around something so radical in relation to public opinion. More so when the focus on ending farming pushes the movement towards theories of change that are also unpopular, such as veganism and cultivated meat.

One might counter this by saying that social movements need a radical flank, and I think there's merit to this argument. However, the current animal groups pretty much all use messaging around ending factory farming, even the ones perceived to be more "moderate." I would argue that the movement right now lacks a moderate flank.

Another reason the framing is bad that you don't mention is that it makes the industry significantly more skeptical of activists. All businesses look skeptically on external activists to an extent, but I think this is especially so in animal agriculture. Producers know that when activists advocate for e.g. cage-free reforms, their actual goals are to get people to eat fewer eggs, and eventually to get people to stop eating (factory-farmed) eggs all together. Some activists say this explicitly in public. For producers, this makes the activism a battle over the future existence of their industry, not a debate over current practices on the margin, making progress significantly more challenging. 

Animal welfare is more important and more neglected, although tractability is less clear.

Hi saulius - thanks for those thoughts (and for your previous work on this issue).

Re pet stores, that could also be an impactful way to go, although a few considerations suggest to me it might not be as impactful. Many of the reptile stores that sell large amounts of mice seem to be small local businesses, not large companies with brands they'd want to protect. There are some international pet companies like PetCo that sell rodents, but I don't think their volume is that big. Also, many of the smaller pet stores specialize in reptiles, so perhaps people who shop at those stores would have a sense of what's going on and not be so upset by it, whereas people that go to zoos probably don't think at all about how the animals are fed. I agree with your point about auditing, I think there's still more work to do in figuring out exactly what change you'd ask for.

It's definitely possible that lots of rodents are fed to other types of animals, particularly birds of prey, although it's not something that came up much in our research. The UK report at the very end talks about this a lot, which I found somewhat surprising. I don't have a good sense of how much this might change our estimates.

The point about average age is something we indeed thought about a lot and asked a few industry people about this. For example, rodent imports are reported by weight, so we tried to estimate the average size of the rodents to figure out how many rodents were being imported. We ended up estimating that the average mouse was a "fuzzy" or "small" which would make them 5-21 days old. For rats it was "pups" and "weaned" which would make them 14-28 days old. I think these were just gut estimates though, so could be wrong.

I appreciate the kind words, although to avoid taking too much credit I should say that this research was conducted under the umbrella of an existing organization, although we elected to not publish under the name of that organization for various reasons :)

Thanks for your work trying this out, and for this informative writeup!

One thing you might consider for next time on the outreach side is the notion of "leading with value." I think you're right that fish farmers will get lots of sales-y outreach all the time, so even if you're framing yourself as "farmer friendly," you probably need some way to grab their attention or stand out. 

One way to do this is to first find a way to provide some sort of value to them before you've officially connected. What this looks like will differ based on the audience, but it seems like you developed strong expertise over the course of your research that I think opens up some options, even for an under-resourced group. For example:

• You could develop some super clear and easy to read resources for farmers and put them up on your website. For example, you could write up a "market snapshot" that discusses all of the ESS products on the market, and their relative merits. Or you could map out which seafood companies are using which machines, so that companies can easily compare what they're doing to their competitors. Then, when you do outreach, you can start with those resources and say "I wanted to make sure you saw this. Also, we'd love to have a conversation to understand what other information we could provide that would be useful." 
• It's often surprisingly easy to get articles publishes in trade press for smaller industries like aquaculture. For example, you could closely track what's happening with ESS around the world, and then when there's e.g. a development in Asia or North America you can pitch that story to trade journalists in Europe along with a quote from you. Or you could pitch an oped directly for trade press that outlines the basic case for using ESS. Then, when you reach out to producers you can lead with a link to the article as a demonstration of your expertise.

Generally I think business will be unlikely to engage with a new entity unless they have a strong sense there will be some value for them in it. If you can find some way to provide even a little bit of value to them immediately, then I think they would be more likely to engage. Just a thought!

Are there any notable differences in your ability to have impact in the different areas you conduct research? E.g. one area where important novel insights are easier / harder, or one area where relevant research is more easily translated into practice

Have you considered doing an Animal Charity Evaluators review? I personally think Rethink puts out some of the most important animal-related research out there! 

Thanks Kevin! You pose a great question, and I'm not sure about the answer. I'm hoping to learn more as I get further along with this. A few hypotheses come to mind:

• The large meat companies are the most powerful voices in the sector, and they have interest across all types of animal products. In particular, they have a lot of influence in the NCBA, which is the main group that one might think would be interested in these arguments. 
• Cultural factors that define the space of possible things that one could do to help ranchers. Similar to why I haven't really heard about this strategy from the animal welfare side of things, despite it being (as you say) pretty straightfoward.