Based on the choice of words from the EU Commission President in her "state of the union" speech today, it seems as though the EU is indeed shelving the planned transition to cage-free hens supposed to be proposed this month, as part of a general change in strategic direction from it's top-down "Farm-to-Fork" strategy to some more bottom-up "strategic dialogue" approach.
If true, pretty big defeat for the EU animal movement.
Probably a lot to do with current food inflation, prices, Ukraine war etc and pressure from industry and farmers
There's still som...
Good sign.
Still has to go through a lot of negotiations and industry will obviously seek to water it down by claiming it's not economically feasible to do at all, or at least anytime soon. Also see the secondary Metaculus question- conditional on the European Union agreeing to ban cages, when will the phase out for cages end?
I think this is a really positive indication that builds on the many other positive indications we've had from the Commission that they will try push for an ambitious animal welfare reform, but I wouldn't want to overplay the EFSA opinion. It's harder to imagine a path to a cage-free transition in a world where EFSA came out against cage-free or was more muted in its support, but the fact that many EFSA opinions are ignored and watered down show that it is low down on the list of necessary but not sufficient factors.
The two Metaculus questions I set up on ...
You can read what Jason Crawford had to say on the topic here when
Peter Wildeford asked:
https://twitter.com/peterwildeford/status/1520911804288966656
Peter: What do progress studies people think about nonhuman animals?
Jason : It's not discussed much. There are probably a range of views. Personally, my current position is that we shouldn't be inhumane or needlessly cruel, but that animals aren't on the same moral level as humans
Peter: Do you think modern factory farming is inhumane?
Jason: I've only read a little bit about it, and what I rea...
OurWorldinData also wrote something like this and had a visualization too
https://ourworldindata.org/poverty-minimum-growth-needed
They also write
"If we want to know how much the distribution of Ethiopia would need to change to reduce the share in poverty to Denmark’s level we can read it off the two parameters that describe the distribution – the average level of income and the inequality of those incomes.
Ethiopia has a much lower average income: an increase of average incomes is called economic growth and to increase the average from $3.30 per day to $55 w...
Hi Stijn,
Interesting post!
I have a few questions about your meat-to-animal conversions.
1. In the "Deathprint of meat" section you clearly cite the sources for the meat-to-emissions conversions, but not the meat-to-animal conversions. From reading further down the piece it seems they probably come from Saja, K. (2013). Is that correct?
2. Saja (2013) seems to calculate 2 kg of chicken meat for "Average animal products per one animal life", which would be 0.5 chickens per 1kg though in your table you have 0.667 for animals killed per kg meat for chicken meat....
Thanks for this,
Just wanted to note a misframing of the slaughterhouse ban post. You have written
"found ~40% supported banning slaughterhouses or said ‘don’t know / no opinion’ to questions, highlighting a large discrepancy"-which I think is taken directly from the latest "EA & LW Forums Weekly Summary" rather than the slaughterhouse ban post.
This makes it seem like 60% opposed and then 40% combined EITHER supported or had no opinion, when in fact the 2017 Sentience Institute result was 43% supported, 11% chose don't know, 46% o...
We should also note that Norwood (one of the authors who replicated SI’s original 2017 study) this year ran a new slaughterhouse ban survey experiment ([Britton & Norwood 2022](https://doi.org/10.1017/aae.2022.17)) and found lower support. (I only just received the data from them so I couldn’t include it in the post).
Here is my summary from just skimming the article and quickly aggregating the data.
They test a hypothesis that the question ordering in the 2017 SI study cued respondents' ideal self (like whether voting is a moral virtue) ...
Thanks for reading and engaging with our work!
Thanks for engaging with the report. I'll offer a response since Tapinder's summer fellowship has ended and I was her manager during the project. I've made a general comment in response to Tristan that applies here too.
On your comment specifically, the "malthusian trap" is empirically not always supported. A population can approach or be at its carrying capacity and still have adequate resources, for instance if they simply do not reproduce as much due to less resource surplus.
Thanks for engaging with the report. I'll offer a response since Tapinder's summer fellowship has ended and I was her manager during the project.
Firstly, as a response to both you and Max.
Those are very fair concerns. I tend to think that in the very nascent WAW field tractability is such a big issue that focusing only on the most painful deaths of wild animals leaves us with few (if any?) tractable things to do. Until we gain greater knowledge of what to do, there is value in some WAW resources going towards trying out things that look more tractable. In ...
For something similar, see David Manheim's 2021 list
Net worth & Charity Pledges
Elon Musk: $205 billion - Giving Pledge (GP), 50%
Jeff Bezos: $200 billion - No pledge (None)
Bernard Arnault:$159 billion - None
Bill Gates: $151 billion - GP, ~100%
Mark Zuckerberg: $136 billion - Non-specific, 99%
Larry Page: $126 billion - None
Sergey Brin: $121 billion - None
Steve Ballmer: $107 billion - None
Larry Ellison: $101 billion - GP, 95%
Warren Buffett: $101 billion- GP, 99%
Thanks Jamie! We struggled a lot with this issue when writing the post.
I'm not really sure I see a problem or a difference with the "which megaproject ideas can we think of?"/ "how rapidly will we get diminishing returns on further investment in various plausibly cost-effective project ideas?" distinction. I think if the answer to the second question is "quickly and with only a few million $" then you cut the idea from the list. It's part of the way to arrive at answers to "which megaproject ideas can we think of?". Other ideas floated seeme...
Thanks for your thoughts on the different approaches Zane, do you have an estimate of when your proposed approach would bear fruit in terms of a scalable intervention?
As Sebastian noted, in-ovo is already being done in two countries with chick culling prohibition legislation, and the Metaculus forecasting community median estimates most eggs produced in the EU will be sexed before hatching by October 2025, and most eggs produced in the USA will be sexed before hatching by 2033 (but a major U.S. supermarket chain will sell “no-kill eggs” in at least 25 sta...
How do you think this approach (make male chickens lay eggs if I understand correctly) compares to other solutions being proposed/rolled out:
the various in-ovo sexing technologies to find the male eggs and destroy them/or process them into commerical eggs before they hatch- Respeggt eggs are already available for sale in Germany, France, and The Netherlands and Open Phil has funded the Egg-Tech prize
change the sex of the embryo in the egg https://www.theguardian.com/food/2021/jan/31/good-vibrations-sound-waves-eggs-ethical-slaughter-male-chicks
cre
For those interested in participating in the Metaculus tournament, I have written up an essay on my reasoning.
Makes sense. Made a few edits along those lines.
Genuinely appreciate suggestions on how to make our summaries more useful to readers, so thanks again.
(Note that I've replaced that exact sentence with a new paragraph about plant-based and conventional meat production volumes in response to a comment from Stefan.)
Thanks!
The production volumes were not chosen as a comparison to plant-based meat. It was more that we started with an upper target we thought would be meaningful (arriving at the >50M metric tons in 2051) and then wanted to add an intermediate time prediction. >1M metric tons we thought could indicate cultured meat was "on track" since it would have exceeded mere startup volume, and then t...
Thanks for the suggestion. I've added a few production numbers of plant-based and conventional meat after the first table in the results section to provide this context.
One reason we didn't ask questions about "what % of meat production will be cultured meat in 20XX" was that it would require forecasters to also produce models of total meat production (including plant-based and funghi-based meat). This seemed overly taxing and could introduce a lot of unclear underlying assumptions. We did ask "What will total global conventional meat and seafood pro...
One reason we didn't ask questions about "what % of meat production will be cultured meat in 20XX" was that it would require forecasters to also produce models of total meat production (including plant-based and funghi-based meat).
Yeah, I'm not saying there was any problem with the questions you gave to the forecasters. My comment concerned how to present the findings to the readers of this article.
I've added a few production numbers of plant-based and conventional meat after the first table in the results section to provide this context.
Fwiw I would also ...
Another example for "V. Factory farming might spread to space - Some proponents of space colonization include factory farming in their plans"
"North Carolina State University is now taking applicants for its Nuggets on Mars program [ . . .] The multi–step, year–long program will involve teachers learning STEM principles behind poultry production and the unique challenges of raising chickens on Mars [. . .] At the end of the program, the participants will be tasked with putting together a unit for their class focused on developing ideas on way...
Just listing here the things I've found helpful and seconding some of them that have already been mentioned in other comments
More than 10,000 EU citizens have completed the EU animal welfare survey in the last week alone. Good work!
H/T Jan Sorgenfrei for informing me about the response number update.
Thanks for adding that Anima link Peter. Following the video guide on that page is what I would suggest anyone filling in this survey do for the most impact, unless they have strong reasons to answer the questions differently.
I'd also add that in the last section "14. Is there any other comment you would like to add?", which the video doesn't cover, one may want to use that space to address other issues such as requesting bans on octopus farming and fur farming (though I personally am a little sceptical the EU can/will outright ban an entire sector)
Just want to flag that animal advocacy organizations in the Open Wing Alliance (OWA) and Eurogroup for Animals (EfA) networks have been trying to coordinate the responses to this survey to ensure a consistent ask is made.
I'd encourage anyone interested in filling out this survey to make contact with the OWA or EfA groups (or other effective animal advocacy organizations not in these associations) in your country for advice (the links above show who the member organizations in your country are).
Thanks Neil, that's very helpful. I didn't know about those initiatives. I have since looked for more information about the best way to complete the survey. Someone shared this post from Anima International with me and it seems to be the best guide available. Please let me know if you don't think that it is a good source.
For now, I will add that link and your recommendations for other orgs to contact to the post.
Please let me know if you have any links from those organisations you mention that is immediately usable (e.g., a blog post or video).
Eurogroup for Animals (a European Union lobby group representing other animal advocacy organizations) has encouraged EU citizens to submit feedback in the EU's animal welfare legislative review - though it is better to make a submission on behalf of an organization rather than as an individual citizen.
In addition to answering the multiple choice/tick-box format questionnaire prepared by the European Commission (which addresses cage-free hens and fish welfare among other issues), one can add in a request to ban/restrict such cephalopod farming under t...
Thanks for this breakdown. I'd be curious if other parents here have radically different experiences, especially for kids of different ages.
Also, just to flag that stay at home dads do extremely important work too!
Thanks Misha. Can you share who the author of that document is? Looks like it might be Paul Christiano but I want to be sure.
My assumption is that where effective animal advocacy has theories, they aren't explicitly modelling it around Transformative AI (TAI).
The theories of victory/change I have seen articulated online, IMO, fall into these buckets (I don't have a sense of how popular or far along each of these are):
I would break this down into a) the methods for getting research in front of government orgs and b) the types of research that gets put in front of them.
In general I think we (me for sure) haven’t been optimising for this enough to even know the barriers (unknown unknowns). I think historically we’ve been mostly focused on foundations and direct work groups, and less on government and academia. This is changing so I expect us to learn a lot more going forward.
As for known unknowns in the methods, I still don’t know who to actually send my research to in va...
It has been said before elsewhere by Peter, but worth stating again:read and practice Reasoning Transparency . Michael Aird compiled some great resources recently here.
I'd also refer people to Michael and Saulius' replies to arushigupta's similar subquestion in last year's RP AMA.
+1 to reporting numbers of animals instead of tonnage or biomass. The OWID meat and dairy production page does have a "numbers of animals slaughtered" section, so it would be great for that to be expanded both to other large numbers of animals (like various fish species, crustaceans, invertebrates) and beyond slaughter (such as alive at any one time).
Here are some articles with sources of such data. I haven't really looked into how hard they would be to maintain and update. It is biased towards data collected by Rethink Priorities staff because it was the ...
I write letters to the future when I give. Sometimes I write what the expected value of the giving was, and future me can reflect on how that panned out. Sometimes I ask my future self how did the world turn out (no replies yet). Present me enjoys getting surprise emails from past me and hearing how excited they were by giving and I get some delight in seeing the through line in my values.
I also get together every few months with a select group of friends and we each give a five minute presentation about an idea we want to share (ranging from serious to si...
Fwiw, we tasked a couple of people in Singapore to try get the GOOD Meat cultured chicken nuggets from the 1880 member's club restaurant and they were unable to do so. The restaurant does not serve them directly anymore. It's only possible to order takeout, and they claim to only have 10 portions/week on Thursday lunches. Our volunteer was unsuccessful on two attempts to order them for delivery. We also heard claims that a specific Marriott Hotel serves the nuggets in person but we were unable to find information online and our other volunteer was unable to get it in person.
For those interested, here are the paragraphs that added new information on the CE Delft TEA that I hadn't considered or seen in other TEAs or reviews.
Cell growth
"For bacteria, one may generally subculture in the range of 1:10 to 1:100, depending on the bacterium. For stem cells, which are more fastidious, the highest subculture ratio (i.e. the amount of an old culture one uses to seed or start a new culture) is typically 1:5. This is significantly less than the 1:200 cell ratio that is proposed in the TEA. Experience dictates that if stem cells are sub-cu...
Fwiw, the Good Food Institute have produced a "Statement addressing techno-economic analyses" and a "Preliminary review of technical assumptions within the Humbird analysis"
Thanks for sharing your perspective.
The prediction "it is only a matter of time" has an effect on how to allocate EA resources depending on how long that matter of time is, even with additional resources going towards it, so I'd be curious what time period you'd assign for this and how you came to think that.
Even without having to construct brains, eyes, ears, tails, feathers, Humbird thinks it will still be very expensive at the moment since creating the immune system is so hard to create- so you need pharma grade standards with are expensive (one can dis...
I don't think it's reasonably likely this particular prediction was delayed by COVID-19, given they made this prediction in early 2019 about a product being on offer *in 2019*. I don't think there is much to suggest any impediments to a product roll-out in 2019 from the pandemic since it only started having major impacts/reactions in 2020.
For other predictions in this dataset made by companies, research institutes, and reported in the media it seems likely the pandemic threw up an unexpected obstacle and delay. However, that would presuma...
My colleague Linch asked me “to include a random sample of 9 predictions that resolved negatively.” I numbered the incorrect market/supermarket predictions and then randomised the list of numbers, and used an online random number generator to select nine numbers.
I don't think Anders Sandberg uses the EA Forum, so I'll just repost what Anders wrote in reaction to this on Twitter:
"I suspect we have a "publication bias" of tech predictions where the pessimists don't make predictions (think the tech impossible or irrelevant, hence don't respond to queries, or find their long timescales so uncertain they are loath to state them).
In this case it is fairly clear that progress is being made but it is slower than hoped for: predictions as a whole made a rate mistake, but perhaps not an eventual outcome mistake (we will see...
See some updates in Lewis Bollard's latest Farmed Animal Welfare newsletter https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/WF3Dxes2GJ6QhESfW/an-end-to-cages-in-europe
As some examples, Open Wing Alliance, Compassion in World Farming, Humane Society International/Europe (HSI), and Animal Protection Denmark (Dyrenes Beskyttelse) have already submitted comments to this feedback period.
For the subsequent public consultation process I would again highlight that Alice DiConcetto, of Animal Law Europe recently published a short manual on how to submit feedback to an EU Public Consultation that I think will be valuable for advocates. IMO, feedback will be more impactful if it sends a consistent message but avoids sending dupl...
I'm no expert, and appreciate the honest epistemic status, but I quickly asked an IBS R.D. who said:
"like irritable bowel disease, which is much worse"
->It’s inflammatory bowel disease not irritable. There’s irritable bowel syndrome and inflammatory bowel disease. There’s is no irritable bowel disease.
"there’s not that much you can do to diagnose it"
->IBS is diagnosed based off the Rome IV diagnostic criteria
Did you consider advocacy, as mentioned in a recent Future Perfect piece (talking about vaccine supply generally, not specific to India): https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22440986/covax-challenges-covid-19-vaccines-global-inequity
" Arguably, donors could have a bigger impact by donating to an advocacy group than by donating to Go Give One, though this field is so new that it’s hard to know for sure.
For donors who prefer to invest in advocacy, Dodson and Glassman both recommended three groups: Global Citizen, the ONE Campaign, and the Pandemic Action Netw...
Just noticed that the Animal Pain and Suffering section on the Wikipedia page on Denialism that you mention was deleted 29 November 2019 after discussion about what constitutes denialism.
Hi, I wrote the cause area EA Survey 2019 post for Rethink Priorities so thought I should just weigh in here on this minor point.
Fwiw, I think it's more accurate to say 22% of respondents thought Global Poverty should be at least one of the top priorities, if not the only top priority, but when forced to only pick only one of five traditional cause areas to be the top priority, 32% chose Global Poverty.
The data shows 476 of the 2164 respondents (22%) who gave any top priority cause rating in that question selected Global Poverty and "this should be the to...
Thanks for this!
I see you referenced Matthews et al. (2018), which I haven't read, and wondered if you had also seen the Authoritarian Ruling Elites Database, compiled by Matthews (2019): “a collection of biographical and professional information on the individuals who constitute the top elite of authoritarian regimes.” Each of the project’s 18 datasets focuses on a particular regime, such as the military dictatorship that ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990. The biographical data-points include gender, occupation, dates of birth and death, tenure among th
Thanks!
So, directionally if not literally, are you suggesting that in policy BOTECs, rather than assuming a policy will happen eventually and have indefinite impacts, so we only need add in how many extra years of impact occurred by the intervention succeeding now rather than later - we should be including a metric “how many years will this have impact for” and assigning ~100 years. And then take your data suggesting 80% of policies that barely passed were still in place 100 years later, but 40% of those that barely failed are. So should we be doing something like: That 100 year value (Probability of passing * 80%) - That 100 year value (probability of failing * 40%)