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All of JamesÖz 🔸's Comments + Replies

Reflections on FarmKind’s January media campaign
JamesÖz 🔸*3
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The campaign raised an estimated $16,700--$59,300

Is this not some evidence that the target audience exists? 

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Sarah70
But it cost $18,098 to reach this audience, the key question isn’t whether they can reach them, it’s whether the campaign is likely to create a net new impact for animals. Why it was likely a loss, even if we take their most generous estimates, is because their calculations don’t appear to account for (a) donations displaced as a result of this campaign (I think we’ve all seen/heard people publicly and privately saying they’ve withdrawn donations to them) (b) time and resources diverted across the movement by the conflict they’ve generated, or  (c) what they likely would have raised anyway without targeting Veganuary based on their other campaigns. If the goal is donations for farmed animals, why choose a strategy that predictably creates backlash and movement conflict while also targeting the ‘highest-hanging fruit’. From an expected value perspective, it’s hard to see why this dominates lower-friction alternative.
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InTheSky
Meh. Not really, no. They didn’t ask donors if they were compelled by their forget Veganuary campaign, which strikes me as a very sloppy omission when testing a risky approach. Really, they should have been even more granular than that, such as asking donors if they are donating to stick it to vegans—I’d be inclined to believe that those types of donors will never donate again, because they’re animated by a media fervor about wimpy vegans, not by compassion for farmed animals. The high end of that estimate range is definitely not reasonable. But anyways, obviously some cohort exists anywhere you look, but my point is that this is not a significant target audience—FK argue that most people aren’t vegan and aren’t headed in that direction, but even fewer people are omnivorous offsetters, and even fewer are moving in that direction. Also, that someone was compelled to donate by this campaign doesn’t imply that they wouldn’t have done so without its anti-vegan elements, nor that their attitude to veganism is so intensely negative that there’s no harm in representing the movement to them as ineffective, annoying, and worthy of dismissal.
Aidan Alexander14
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Also our thousands of donors over the past 12 months. Many of them email us expressing that our compassion calculator is exactly what they’re been looking for and/or that they’ve been put off by other animal advocates in the past and find our website refreshing.

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Offering higher salaries than social-sector peers
JamesÖz 🔸21
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talented people who never enter the social sector because they can't afford the pay cut.


FWIW I don't like this framing. These people can almost certainly afford the pay cut, because probably if you get a job as a researcher/employee at some average US nonprofit, you are making above the US median and in the top few % globally. 

But yes, it's more likely to tempt people who would otherwise not work for a nonprofit.

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MxLucchese 🔸
Sure, I agree that "can't afford" is doing a lot of work there, and most people considering nonprofit roles are coming from positions of relative privilege (especially globally). I should have clarified that I'm benchmarking large nonprofits, large philanthropies, and for-profits versus other nonprofits.  What I meant is more about opportunity costs and life constraints rather than subsistence: someone with student loans, family to support, or who's trying to afford living in/near a high-cost city might find the financial gap genuinely prohibitive, even if they're still well-off in absolute terms.  Also, smaller nonprofits typically offer minimal or nonexistent benefits: limited healthcare, no retirement matching, sparse parental leave, while also having high education requirements and geographic constraints (often expensive cities). 
NickLaing's Quick takes
JamesÖz 🔸18
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Given your expertise is in global health, I do think it's likely that you're less well-calibrated on how reasonable your animal welfare comments are relative to your global health ones! So you may think it's a reasonable critique but someone who is a die-hard animal person may have already thought about your comment and know there is a common counterpoint that negates it (which you haven't heard yet). Obviously, the inverse could be true for global health comments.

But I agree that this shouldn't have been downvoted on karma grounds!

(Also, sometimes your co... (read more)

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NickLaing
"Also, sometimes your comments do give me "I am sceptical of most things animal welfare" vibes, so people might be reacting to a real or perceived difference in values about how much animals matter)." i think this seems part of my point/the problem. i probably do have a difference in values? (maybe) about how much animals matter, but I would still be in the top 1 -5 percent of humans on the "caring about animals" front. If I'm giving you "skeptical of most things animal welfare vibes" then i think it might help to recalibrate to appreciate perspectives outside of an animal welfare bubble at it were. Someone commenting at all in an animal welfare thread on the EA forum means they are likely to be extremely high on the "cares about animals" axis, unless they are trolling or downright abusive. Even someone who seems highly sceptical about animal welfare by your lights. But even someone who doesn't think animals matter at all should be able to make reasonable-ish comments without necessarily getting karma downvoted. The less echo chamber the better.
Visionary Pragmatism: A Third Way for Animal Advocacy
JamesÖz 🔸5
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Intervention evaluators and funders should ensure that interventions are evaluated based on their ability not just to help animals directly, but to build power and generate learning value for the movement.

My impression is that most funders are already doing the above (we are too).

  • Fund researchers to look into and advise the movement on:
    • which milestones it should aim towards (including confidence levels for those recommendations). This would potentially reap huge benefits with relatively few movement resources - I could imagine even just a team of 3-5 full-
... (read more)
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Dilan Fernando
That's interesting, James, and an update for me - if you happen to have any top sources at hand that point to how different funders are thinking, that would be really useful. I 100% agree that there's no predetermined set of milestones, and that any long-term strategising we do needs to be robust to an ever-changing world. To clarify, my suggestion to fund researchers is not intended to suggest those researchers should direct the movement from the top-down, as that majorly risks locking us in to suboptimal paths--but that they can surface possibilities that the rest of us might be missing, and provide information to help the rest of the ecosystem make better decisions. The value isn't in creating a rigid roadmap, but in helping the movement have a clearer shared understanding of what we're building toward and what capacities we might need--and in updating that understanding as the world changes. This is my understanding of the value provided by think tanks in other movements, and strategy personnel in large corporations who engage in vision-setting, scenario-planning and the like.  More broadly, what I'm pointing towards is what I think of as the movement's 'strategy function' - the capacity to step back, look at the whole system, and help different actors coordinate toward shared goals. I'm curious whether you think the movement currently has sufficient capacity in this area, even if you think dedicated researchers aren't the right form for it? In this realm I'm only really aware of Animal Think Tank's long-term strategy project and some work at Rethink Priorities that never quite took off. Do you have others in mind? From my own awareness, (a) we've dedicated very little movement resource to this kind of work; and (b) I would really hesitate to rule out an entire area of work just because a couple of projects have not delivered, as there are all sorts of reasons that can happen.
The Crisis EA Cannot Afford to Ignore
JamesÖz 🔸11
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Thanks for posting this Allegra! I was actually looking into this the other day and one thing that stopped me from giving as an individual donor was understanding exactly how cost-effective groups working on this are. My general understanding is that traditional humanitarian efforts aren't particularly cost-effective if your goal is to help the most people (I think largely because these efforts raise lots of money through salience and they are not as rigorously designed as GiveWell charities might be - but these might not be true in this case). 

Do you have any information or research into Emergency Response Rooms or other groups working in Sudan on how many people they are helping or lives they are saving? 

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Allegra_P
Great question! I completely understand wanting to see rigorous data on cost-effectiveness. You're right that traditional humanitarian efforts don't always meet the same standards as GiveWell charities. However, the Sudan context presents some unique challenges for quantitative measurement. I know of two independent research reports on ERRs: 1. Social Science in Humanitarian Action Platform (SSHAP) case study (June-August 2024, published October 2024) affiliated with the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and the Institute of Development Studies (linked here: SSHAP report) 2. ACAPS report (October 2024) - ACAPS is an independent humanitarian analysis organization (linked here: ACAPS report)  What we know about ERR impact: Both reports confirm ERRs are operating at significant scale. Between 2023-2024, ERRs provided first aid, delivered medicines including for chronic diseases, mapped safe evacuation routes, supported IDPs in shelters, established communal kitchens, distributed food, and operated hospitals and local health facilities. Between December 2024 and May 2025, after over 1 million people returned to Khartoum, ERRs initiated water and electricity infrastructure repairs, rehabilitation of damaged health facilities, and provision of food and health services. The challenge with quantifying lives saved: Both reports acknowledge a critical limitation: ERRs are volunteer networks operating in active conflict zones, not formal organizations with monitoring & evaluation systems. ERRs face time-consuming reporting obligations that volunteers describe as onerous and a mismatch with their communal neighborhood accountability mechanisms. They use transparency with their local communities rather than the formal impact metrics international NGOs produce. Why ERRs might be more cost-effective than you'd expect: 1. Extremely low overhead: Volunteers have worked unpaid for over two years, meaning nearly 100% of donations go directly to services 2. Access
Visionary Pragmatism: A Third Way for Animal Advocacy
JamesÖz 🔸14
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Yeah I agree with this. Specifically, I don't think that basically anyone working on cage-free/alt proteins/most pragmatic issues would agree with the statement below (I think approximately everyone thinks we should pursue several effective approaches, not just one). 

A search for the (one) most effective approach. For example it’s not uncommon for advocates to say the movement should converge on one specific approach, such as alt-proteins/cage-free campaigns/legal advocacy/whatever — with an implication that we should significantly discount other appr

... (read more)
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Dilan Fernando
Cheers for engaging James, I appreciate you spending the time on this.  1. On your second point about timelines: I agree to the extent that talking about theories of victory in fine-grained detail would only be more relevant on shorter timelines. But even on longer timelines (e.g. whether it's 50 or 200 years), I'd argue we need theories of victory in broad strokes - at least outlining what major outcomes we are reasonably confident would need to happen. Otherwise how can we make bets on what capacities we need to build now? For example, can we be confident that we're currently investing enough in mechanisms to shift public opinion, or our ability to engage in lobbying? These are just examples - the main point is, I think we should map the terrain even if roughly so we have a better sense of where to walk.    2. On the "one approach" claim: This is a fair point, it's probably the least prevalent of the three characteristics I ascribe to short-term pragmatism, and I was a bit hesitant about it. I think it's largely absent amongst organisational leaders (though I wouldn't say zero). I decided to include it anyway as I have encountered it plenty in broader movement culture from different camps, and I think culture amongst non-leaders still matters. I've seen e.g. claims that things like cage-free, nonviolent disruption, and more recently very often alt-proteins, are "the most effective thing" and the key to changing things for animals. But overall I think in recent years, we've moved away from searching for silver bullets and more towards acknowledging that multiple approaches are needed.   
Are we wrong to stop factory farms?
JamesÖz 🔸18
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I would +1 to all of the above (and probably in stronger terms!).

Additionally, from yet unpublished research we've done in the UK and also talking to people who work on food policy in the UK government, the number one thing people care about for food right now is cost. So the odds of getting any kind of significant progress to block loads of factory farm expansions and/or close existing ones, which will both increase the cost of food, will be extremely small. For example, Labour's current plan is the weaken planning regulations to allow more chicken sheds ... (read more)

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Are we wrong to stop factory farms?
JamesÖz 🔸82
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Thank you for writing this Rose – I think it’s very useful to have some of this discussion in the open and also clearly explained. I’m also a big fan of the way this can be used to gain media and get people involved in animal issues.

However, I disagree on some points, and will explain why below:

  1. Your article came across as demeaning to and ignores the great work being done in the movement 

“You don’t get there by doing nothing locally and hoping for the best globally.”

“And perhaps most importantly, it offers no coherent alternative except surrender.”

I t... (read more)

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CB🔸
Fantastic answer, very thoughtful and clear. Thanks!
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Vasco Grilo🔸
Great points, James! I estimate the reduction in consumption is (1 - "cumulative elasticity factor (CEF)")*"annual production of the target farm"*"expected years of delay of the start of the farm's operations (D)".  CEF = "price elasticity of supply"/("price elasticity of supply" - "price elasticity of demand"). CEF = 1 if supply was infinitely more elastic than demand. In this case, there would be no reduction in consumption because this would be solely determined by demand. CEF = 0 if supply was infinitely more inelastic than demand. In this case, a leftwards shift in the supply curve would directly translate into a reduction in consumption because this would be solely determined by supply. Figure 8.2 of Norwood and Lusk (2011) has values for CEF. For chicken meat, CEF = 0.76, which means a leftwards shift in the demand curve by 1 kg decreases consumption by 0.76 kg. It also means a leftwards shift in the supply curve by 1 kg decreases consumption by 0.24 kg (= 1 - 0.76). This suggests the years of impact from targeting a broilers' farm are 24 % of those one would expect if consumption of chicken meat was solely determined by supply. The delay can be calculated from D = "probability of i) farm being built in the original place"*"delay of the start of the farm's operations given i)" + "probability of ii) farm being built elsewhere"*"delay of the start of the farm's operations given given ii)" + "probability of iii) farm not being built"*"lifetime of the farm".
saulius15
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Wow, I was about to write a similar comment, but you said it much better than I would have.

I just have a question about the “farms that operate at 80% full capacity.” Are you sure there are many such farms? I’d imagine most operate on thin margins, so it would be unusual for them to have unused sheds or significant spare capacity without a good reason. That said, Vasco listed other ways farmers could increase supply to meet demand quickly without building new farms in this comment. For what it’s worth, LLMs seem to disagree about how important such ef... (read more)

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lincolnq
I feel a lot more optimistic about this direction than you. It's a theory of change that you seem to think is unrealistic, when I think it is highly realistic, and thus you're focused on the downside risks when I think the upside is potentially huge and worthwhile. My theory goes something like: we block all factory farm expansions -> people realize that we don't want factory farmed products in the UK at all -> public opinion shifts quickly -> multiple policy changes are now simultaneously possible: we ban new factory farms, start working on closing/improving existing ones, and ban low welfare imports. We know political winds can shift and change can happen quickly, like same-sex marriage. We know activism is critical to such change. We know momentum is crucial for activism, and as a result we need to see consistent wins. This strategy is actively and consistently producing wins in a cause area that really struggles to produce wins. Sure, there are many ways it can fail. Nobody is claiming this will definitely work. But the evidence you are looking for seems either downstream (like the government policy commitment) or irrelevant to the theory of change (where or how quickly do imports replace UK products). Sure, they are relevant to the downside, and I can definitely imagine ways that downside risk can make the upside not worth it, but when I look holistically I am pretty optimistic overall even seeing the risks. The evidence which would convince me to stop is mainly loss of momentum on the short term strategy. If blocking factory farms at the planning stage stopped working, for example, and activists spent a year trying hard to restart it but failing, then I would change my mind. I don't think I would want to stop in most cases if it were creating backlash (because backlash triggers discussion and can be useful) but I would want to study the form of backlash carefully. I also think that if there were other activist strategies that were working better, I would
Why you should eat meat - even if you hate factory farming
JamesÖz 🔸7
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My guess is that the people reading the EA Forum are much less judgmental than the average vegan and generally, there will be a selection effect such that people who are actually willing to think reasonably and be 90% vegan won't be the judgmental ones anyway. So, probably for people here, it's not harmful to recommend people be non-judgmental strict vegans for signalling reasons. 

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Aidan Alexander
They're probably less judgmental than average. Also perhaps poorer social skills on average. Do I back us to have the required tact? :P But in all seriousness, the answer to "is it positive for social signalling to have an extra vegan EA forum reader" could defs be different to "is it positive for social signalling to have an extra vegan". I had the latter in mind when I questioned the signalling value
Call for questions on animal-focused forecasting tournament
JamesÖz 🔸*9
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I love this idea! Some questions from me:

  • The likelihood of cultivated meat being approved for sale in the EU?
  • How many more (and ideally, which) US states will ban cultivated meat by the end of 2025, 2026 and 2027?
  • What percentage of companies will follow through on their 2025 cage-free commitments?
  • What percentage of companies will follow through on their 2026 BCC commitments?
  • Likelihood of [insert major country here] passing legislation to ban cages
    • I would be keen to see this for the UK and also the EU but that is probably just proximity bias!
    • This could also
... (read more)
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ITN 201: pitfalls in ITN BOTECs
JamesÖz 🔸2
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This is great Lizka! Thanks for writing it up and beautifully illustrating it. Relatedly, what do you use for your diagrams? 

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Lizka
Thank you! I used Procreate for these (on an iPad).[1] (I also love Excalidraw for quick diagrams, have used & liked Whimsical before, and now also semi-grudgingly appreciate Canva.) ---------------------------------------- Relatedly, I wrote a quick summary of the post in a Twitter thread a few days ago and added two extra sketches there. Posting here too in case anyone finds them useful:  1. ^ (And a meme generator for the memes.)
Frog Welfare
JamesÖz 🔸66
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Very cool, thanks for doing this! It's a big and neglected topic for sure. 

A few months ago, I actually spent a day looking into farmed frog welfare (so slightly different to what you point at, which is the painful procedures done to wild and farmed frogs). I'll post my exec summary below in case others are interested. You can see the full doc here.

Overall recommendation

Approximately 1 billion frogs are farmed each year for food, and there is a similar number alive on farms at any one time. Despite this, the vast majority of them (93%) are farmed in C... (read more)

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qjtva
Thanks for putting this together I’m actually working on understanding amphibians and reptile farming as part of my PhD research. From what I’ve seen, the data is rarely available in English — and the scale is unfortunately much more horrendous than most people realize. I have some primary data from 2017 and also published a paper on this not long ago: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2590332225001022?dgcid=coauthor (unfortunately the main industry report was removed from China's academy of engineering website no so long ago, although there should be plenty of info available in Chinese –– grey literature/government annoucements, etc) If you (or anyone else here) are interested, we could maybe put together a short report to make a very basic estimation of the numbers of frogs being farmed in China, and the species involved.
Why I am more optimistic about the animal movement this year
JamesÖz 🔸*4
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I haven't seen the data she is referencing but 20% seems way too high - that implies like we spend $50-60M as a movement annually on infighting, which doesn't make any sense at all?

I'm also not sure we should consider organisations fundraising for their own work as infighting - that seems to broaden the definition far further than is useful / what most would consider as infighting.

(I agree the Animal Rising campaign against RSPCA is both regrettable and an example of genuine infighting but I think that's the most major case recently and I can't imagine the... (read more)

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Carley Betts
Yep, 20% does feel too high to me. But I think it's hard to define infighting. The RSPCA stuff is an obvious example of it, but depending on how far you broaden the definition I feel some sympathy for the view that a fair amount of energy is wasted on it. I think Melanie Joy has worked with a number of orgs and gotten insight that others might not get in their positions, especially granters. Things coming to my mind on this are a bit more day-to-day/mundane than your things:  - I think groups competing for funds at a country level, regional level and global level does create resentment in those that get more funds or support, and this can result in groups working together less well or not getting on because they view each other as competitors - In some campaigns it is not clear who 'won' due to multiple orgs targeting companies, with many wanting the recognition/credit, or to be the first to announce it to supporters/media. It's plausible that this creates tension among orgs, that is not helpful - Groups disagreeing on theories of change, for example where we should put resources - some might think everything should go on accountability and try and turn others against orgs that disagree with this. Or some might be annoyed that other groups are too nice and won't give up their 'good' relationships with companies, seeing them as threatening important co-campaigns, which can fracture collaboration - Departmental disagreements within orgs, with corporate engagement teams not wanting campaign teams to go after companies, causing fragile relationships and resentment with teams unable to properly advance their work. In my experience this has happened in non EA style orgs. I'm not arguing strongly that infighting is a huge problem. But I do think it's plausible that the above scenarios are not very rare, and even if individually some feel insignificant I think they are likely unhelpful collectively  
Why I am more optimistic about the animal movement this year
JamesÖz 🔸5
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If you're going to make big claims like the one below, IMO you should give specific examples and evidence rather than talking negatively about a large set of organisations.

I have a lot of concerns about how much money is being pumped in to animal welfare orgs with seemingly very little real-world impact coming out - not the case for every org of course, but quite a few.

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SiobhanBall
Fair enough. As one example, what about WAI? Millions and millions in funding so far, but I can’t discern their real-world impact for animals. 
Eating Honey is (Probably) Fine, Actually
JamesÖz 🔸28
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I see BB did a more expansive reply on Substack but just commenting on a couple of things:

  1. Beekeepers are further incentivized to keep their hives living and healthy, which likely is a positive contributor to farmed bee welfare.

This seems not that strong at all? You could make the exact same case for chicken or egg farmers  but I don't think many people would be arguing that those chickens have net positive lives.

  1. Finally, the empirical evidence for welfare is both limited and mixed but in my opinion points mildly towards farmed bees having net positive
... (read more)
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Linch*15
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First of all I should mention that the Forum post above is only a subset (~22%, ~850 words) of the whole Substack post (~3700 words) that covers the summary and intro. Totally fine if you didn't notice that, it's my fault for not making the formatting more transparent.

I see BB did a more expansive reply on Substack

(I don't think his reply was more expansive than yours; don't sell yourself short!)

This seems not that strong at all? You could make the exact same case for chicken or egg farmers  but I don't think many people would be arguing that those ch

... (read more)
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Don't Eat Honey
JamesÖz 🔸9
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I'm no expert but my guess (and partially confirmed by some googling) is that they've been bred for docility/traits that make them more likely to stay rather than leave. o3 also suggests:

  • Queen pheromones – a chemical “social glue” that keeps workers oriented to this queen and this cavity. If the queen dies or her pheromone output drops, cohesion collapses and bees drift or abscond. (So seems like the queen partially acts as an anchor to keep the rest of the bees and as long as her life is devoid of intense stress, she stays.)
  • Investment already sunk – comb,
... (read more)
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Reflections on 7 years building the EA Forum — and moving on
JamesÖz 🔸10
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Thank you for your amazing work on building the EA Forum! Having been involved in a few different communities/social issues, there is no discursive & knowledge-sharing infrastructure even close to the quality of the EA Forum. It's a true asset to the EA movement and no doubt responsible for lots of impact, be it understanding new priority cause areas, high-impact careers or something else!

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Why you can justify almost anything using historical social movements
JamesÖz 🔸6
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Interested to hear more, but I would not expect blocking oil depots to be effective either. Why would it? It may be related but its not so compelling to the average observer. Compare with the example I used, of sit-ins, which are eminently compelling. If you compare ineffective strategies with ineffective strategies you will pick up noise and low order effects.

I mean there are probably a bunch of protests that you don't think make sense that had positive impacts (see some here) but specifically I would point to Extinction Rebellion blocking roads about cli... (read more)

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D0TheMath
Why you can justify almost anything using historical social movements
JamesÖz 🔸14
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The social movements that worked had reasons they worked. The structure of the problem, the allies they were likely to find, and the enemies they were likely to have resulted in the particular strategies they chose working. Similarly for the social movements which failed. These are reasons you can & should learn from, and your ability to look at those reasons is the largest order effect here.

I take the point about being too humble but I'm not sure I fully agree with this bit above! Specifically, I think there are some random factors around luck, person... (read more)

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D0TheMath
Interested to hear more, but I would not expect blocking oil depots to be effective either. Why would it? It may be related but its not so compelling to the average observer. Compare with the example I used, of sit-ins, which are eminently compelling. If you compare ineffective strategies with ineffective strategies you will pick up noise and low order effects. I think we agree. Both for the successes and failures you should ask “was this a fluke?”, as you should always do.
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SiebeRozendal
I don't think that this is a point against DoTheMath. It's just more information to learn from, but in this case learning that you can't just copy the method (if they were lucky) or need to develop/find the right personal connections etc.
Cost-effectiveness of Anima International Poland
JamesÖz 🔸7
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Very cool work, thanks Saulius & Nuno for doing it and Anima for commissioning!

I'm particularly interested in the stopping new factory farms campaign and am keen to understand how you think about this. I drew some very rough graphs to help me get my head around this and curious if you are modelling this in a similar way. I'll leave aside the impact on the price of meat, although, I anticipate there may be some small increase when supply is more constrained. 

Specifically, you note that you estimate that this will delay farms by, on average, around ... (read more)

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saulius
The scribble is indeed very beautiful. In your graph above, it looks like impact for a lot more than one year. I assume it's something like this:   The red line here is what would've happened without Stop The Farms campaign, and blue line shows that it's different for a little while with the campaign. But I assume that the market soon (like within a year) returns back to the same growth trajectory, and it's as if we never did anything, except that maybe farms are build in a different country. Chicken production is growing and I don't think this will change in the relevant timeframe of few years.
Request for Guidance: Reaching Out to Charities Before Publishing Reviews and Our Concerns
JamesÖz 🔸4
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Yep fair enough! That was one bit I wasn’t sure about and can definitely see the downsides of sharing too early. I guess the trade-off I was considering was Vetted Causes’ time spent on the evaluation but definitely think an advance finished version with two weeks notice would be something most groups would be happy with.

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Hypotheses on how we can mobilise people for animal welfare
JamesÖz 🔸5
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Love that you wrote this up and shared Emre! I definitely think we need more people having this kind of discourse publicly so appreciate you contributing.

I wanted to share some mostly anecdotal things from my experience in AR and XR in what seems to have worked for building deep/committed engagement from volunteers & activists:

  • I definitely resonate with the importance of social connections for building engagement. I thought XR and AR did this very well with things like: spending time together in an office, hanging out after work, shared housing[1], enc
... (read more)
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Request for Guidance: Reaching Out to Charities Before Publishing Reviews and Our Concerns
JamesÖz 🔸42
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IMO the risks you state are much less severe relative to missing key information about a specific charity (as likely happened with your Sinergia work) and therefore misleading people. This also makes people less likely to take your claims seriously in all future reviews.

Risk 2: Unconscious biases from interacting with charity staff.

When we evaluate a charity, we want to evaluate them based on their work, not based on how much we like their employees. Accordingly, we do not want to acquire unconscious biases. 

If anyone has solutions to this problem, pl

... (read more)
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Lorenzo Buonanno🔸
I strongly agree that the benefits of sharing the evaluation greatly outweigh the risks, but I'm not sure if sharing the it relatively early is best 1. There is a risk of starting a draining back-and-forth which could block or massively delay publication. See e.g. Research Deprioritizing External Communication which was delayed by one year 2. It would cost more time for the org to review a very early draft and point out mistakes that would be fixed anyway 3. It could cause the org to take the evaluation less seriously, and be less likely to take action based on the feedback   I think the minimal version proposed by @Jason of just sending an advance copy a week or two in advance is an extremely low-cost policy that mitigates most of the risks and provides most of the benefits (but some limited back-and-forth would be ideal)
Take action to help insects: UK government consultation [5-10 minutes]
JamesÖz 🔸3
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You can fill out the consultation although I’m not sure if your views will be considered the same as a UK resident. Doesn’t hurt to try though! 

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Take action to help insects: UK government consultation [5-10 minutes]
JamesÖz 🔸6
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Also, we're trying to gauge roughly how many are filling this out so please agree vote this comment if you've done the consultation - thank you!

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agagagwaka
For consistency, either upvote it or click agree — not both.
Animal Welfare Fund: Payout recommendations from October to December 2024
JamesÖz 🔸10
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I would find this compelling but I think there are pretty strong social incentives to not disagree publicly with the fund managers so you either need a mechanism to get around that or need someone who is very happy to disagree publicly and incur social/reputational costs 

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The "Progressive Pledge”
JamesÖz 🔸4
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Love this! I actually read this on the GWWC website a couple of weeks ago and increased my pledge from 10 -> 16.5% as a result. Thank you for the inspiration & your generosity! 

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Announcing our 2024 Charity Recommendations
JamesÖz 🔸6
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Yes they do some but the Research Grants Program is on the order of $2-6M and GFI's overall budget is around $42M, so only about 10% of their budget goes towards direct research. I would say a much bigger focus of their work is corporate, investor and policymaker engagement. 

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Announcing our 2024 Charity Recommendations
JamesÖz 🔸8
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FWIW I would consider GFI as doing outreach and advocacy, just applied to the area of alternative proteins.

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PabloAMC 🔸
I would say they also do a fair amount of helping foster an alternative protein market, see eg $1 million dollars in Science and Technology (https://animalcharityevaluators.org/charity-review/the-good-food-institute/2021-nov/) and also has (or had) a research grant program (https://gfi.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Research-Grant-Program-RFP-2023.pdf).
2024 Animal Advocacy Strategy Forum: Event summary and survey results
JamesÖz 🔸2
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Very interesting - thanks for the write-up! Any chance you could share the following information on what these five projects actually are? Feel free to DM if imporant to keep private.

"As a result, five projects to address key challenges faced by the movement were launched, four of which were active as of September 2024 (one was on hold)."

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kierangreig🔸
Thanks James! Someone from our team will DM you shortly. 
Bad omens for US farmed animal policy work?
JamesÖz 🔸78
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There are also reasons why this might be the most animal-friendly US administration ever:

... (read more)
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Marcus Abramovitch 🔸
First, I loved this comment. I think we might have more philosophical animal support in the highest places in this administration than ever before. Second, I'm not going to pretend that animal welfare is predominantly left wing but I've been surprised at the recent reception among right wingers.
Advisors for Smaller Major Donors?
JamesÖz 🔸8
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I work as a grantmaker for a larger donor but as part of my role, I offer pro-bono advising to people giving $50k+ to animal welfare. If anyone is interested in this, feel free to message me via the Forum and happy to help!

(I’ve also advised donors giving $2-10M so feel free to reach out if you want to give at higher amounts too.)

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The default trajectory for animal welfare means vastly more suffering
JamesÖz 🔸16
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Thanks for the kind words Toby! Yes, sadly the trends are not particularly positive at all. 

There actually is some useful OWID data on hens and sadly it's not particularly positive on a global level (they estimate at least 3 billion in cages but I've heard this is likely an under-estimate and it's closer to 4-5 billion).

That said, there is certainly progress in the US and Western Europe, covered in this Vox article. The US cage-free percentage is around 42% now and I believe all cage-free progress across US and Europe equates to around 300 million hen... (read more)

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The default trajectory for animal welfare means vastly more suffering
JamesÖz 🔸3
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Not necessarily as severe as hitting a wall for the next few decades but in brief:

  • I don't think agriculture is one industry that will be transformed that rapidly (e.g. on the order of months or years) due to AI, mainly because:
    • There are lots of traditions and cultural things around food so I don't imagine people will want to dramatically change how they eat over the next decade or two
    • Agriculture involves human feedback loops (e.g. consumers trying products and giving feedback) which makes it hard to accelerate exponentially with AI progress (unlike predict
... (read more)
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RobertM13
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I think you misunderstood my framing; I should have been more clear.

We can bracket the case where we all die to misaligned AI, since that leads to all animals dying as well.

If we achieve transformative AI and then don't all die (because we solved alignment), then I don't think the world will continue to have an "agricultural industry" in any meaningful sense (or, really, any other traditional industry; strong nanotech seems like it ought to let you solve for nearly everything else).  Even if the economics and sociology work out such that some people w... (read more)

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Egregious Cruelty: Humboldt Farm Sued for Putting Salt in Cows’ Eyes, Starving Cattle
JamesÖz 🔸15
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Dumb question incoming: how come you’re doing a lawsuit focused on cows? My impression was that Legal Impact for Chickens is focused on…chickens?

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alene
Thank you for everything you do, James, and for this question! We advocate for all farmed animals. We just have a special emphasis on chickens.
Megaprojects for animals
JamesÖz 🔸2
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Fixed! Thanks for flagging this

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Marietheres Reinke
Thank you so much!
"Denmark will be first to impose CO2 tax on farms, government says"
JamesÖz 🔸4
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Can you unpack your thinking on the complentarities of AP chicken and beef a bit more? My hunch is that the cost differential between beef and chicken is relatively pretty big e.g. the cheapest chicken costs around £2.5/kg and the cheapest mince is £5/kg  (see photo and data below from Hannah Ritchie) so the former is just extremely hard to compete with. As such, I think it's very plausible/likely that we'll get price parity alternative proteins for the cheapest beef but maybe not with the cheapest chicken, in contrast to your comment. 

Additional... (read more)

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jackva11
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Sure! Here is the unpacked version (trying real hard to sound like an LLM):

There are lots of complementarities (or also just similar effects applied to beef and chicken) that I think complicate a picture focused on short-term marginal consumption shifts:
 

  • (1) I think investor confidence / durable public support is the single-most important predictor of most “easy” technological transformations (APs aren’t like fusion, there isn’t really a world where APs fail for lack of technical feasibility, APs are modular technologies that can be made reliably
... (read more)
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[Linkpost] An update from Good Ventures
JamesÖz 🔸31
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This isn’t true for any of the other sub-focus areas that will be exited though, which I thought was strange. Given that nothing other than digital minds work was listed, how would any potential donors or people who know potential donors know about OP exiting things like invertebrates or wild animal welfare?

(I’m basing those sub-focus areas on the comments in this thread because of exactly this problem - I’m unclear if there’s more being exited or if those two are definitely part of it)

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I bet Greg Colbourn 10 k€ that AI will not kill us all by the end of 2027
JamesÖz 🔸26
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Just flagging that I, and others I know, would also be happy to take folks up on the animal welfare side of this trade if AI-concerned folks are interested! Reach out if so (and happy to discuss basically all amounts above $1,000).

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calebp
I’m an AI-concerned person who would also likely take this bet (or similar bets) against Greg's side, i.e. I don't think that AGI will kill us all by the end of 2027. Please do reach out if you’d like to bet in the $100-$10k range. (Edited for clarity)
John Salter14
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I'd personally strongly consider betting $1000-$10,000 USD so long as it's secured against the value of some illiquid asset (e.g. a building). Please DM me if you're interested in betting that the world ends.

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Announcing UK Voters for Animals!
JamesÖz 🔸2
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Have you seen them on our website here?

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ClimateDoc
Thanks. OK, so currently the situation is one of arguing for legislation to be proposed rather than there being anything to vote on yet?
James Özden's Quick takes
JamesÖz 🔸6
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Mobius (the Bay Area-based family foundation where I work) is exploring new ways to remove animals from the food system. We're looking for a part-time Program Manager to help get more talented people who are knowledgable about farmed animal welfare and/or alternative proteins into US government roles. This entrepreneurial generalist would pilot a 3-6 month program to support promising students and early graduates with applying to and securing entry-level Congressional roles. We think success here could significantly improve thoughtful policymaking on farme... (read more)

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AMA: Lewis Bollard, Program Director of Farm Animal Welfare at OpenPhil
JamesÖz 🔸20
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What’s a view you hold most EA-minded animal advocates would disagree with?

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LewisBollard16
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My views are pretty aligned with most EA-minded animal advocates. But in the interests of finding disagreement, here are a few possibilities:

  • Work to achieve legal personhood for animals is unlikely to help farmed animals.
  • Cultivated meat is unlikely to significantly displace factory farmed meat in our lifetimes.
  • Huel is tastier than Soylent.

Sorry to not be more disagreeable ;) 

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AMA: Lewis Bollard, Program Director of Farm Animal Welfare at OpenPhil
JamesÖz 🔸7
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In your view, what are some of the biggest challenges facing the farmed animal movement today and what is Open Phil doing about them?

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LewisBollard13
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I see a few major challenges:

  • Weak demand for plant-based meat. We’re funding advocacy to significantly increase public funding of alt protein R&D, to produce better and cheaper products, which we hope will boost demand.
  • Corporations delaying implementing their animal welfare policies. We’re funding additional advocacy to hold companies accountable for their commitments, including through shareholder advocacy.
  • The European Commission shelving its proposed farm animal welfare legislative revision. We’re funding advocates across Europe to represent the inte
... (read more)
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AMA: Lewis Bollard, Program Director of Farm Animal Welfare at OpenPhil
JamesÖz 🔸11
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What are some important lessons or things you've learned on how to do grantmaking well over the past 9 years that you would give to yourself when you were starting at OP? 

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LewisBollard20
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In no particular order:

  • Double down on what works. Our most successful grants have mostly been cases where we scaled up an already successful campaign or program.
  • Focus on tractability. Many projects are focused on large-scale and neglected problems. The distinguishing factor in which ones help many animals is typically how tractable the space they’re operating in is.
  • Align on clear goals. Early on we had a number of grants where we disagreed with the grantee on how well things had gone. We’ve found that aligning on specific and measurable goals upfront keeps
... (read more)
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AMA: Lewis Bollard, Program Director of Farm Animal Welfare at OpenPhil
JamesÖz 🔸8
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What are 2-3 of the biggest ways you've updated your thinking in terms of what works / strategies to improve farmed animal welfare over the past few years?

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LewisBollard17
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  • I’ve become more excited about the prospects of investor advocacy to secure corporate animal welfare progress, thanks mostly to the work of The Accountability Board.
  • I’ve become more optimistic about the prospects of climate funders supporting alt protein advocacy and research, thanks to the recent entry of several major climate funders into the space.
  • I’ve become more pessimistic about legislative reform, after seeing industry successfully defeat or stall popular farm animal welfare reforms in the EU and the UK.
  • I’ve become more pessimistic about the likely
... (read more)
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Is there any way to be confident that humanity won't keep employing mass torture of animals for millions of years in the future?
JamesÖz 🔸16
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I'm not convinced that the chances that efforts to end factory farming will (by default) become more likely to succeed over time - what's your thinking behind this? Given the current trajectory of society (below), whilst I'm hopeful that is the case, it's far from what I would expect. For example, I can imagine the "defensive capabilities" of the actors trying to uphold factory farming improve at the same or faster rate relative to the capabilities of farmed animal advocates.

Additionally, I'm not sure that the information value about our future prospects, ... (read more)

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finm
Thanks, I think both those points make sense. On the second point about value of information, the future for animals without humans would likely still be bad (because of wild animal suffering), and a future with humans could be less bad for animals (because we alleviate both wild and farmed animal suffering). So I don' think it's necessarily true that something as abstract as ‘a clearer picture of the future’ can't be worth the price of present animal suffering, since one of the upshots of learning that picture might be to choose to live on and reduce overall animal suffering over the long run. Although of course you could just be very sceptical that the information value alone would be enough to justify another ⩾ half-century of animal suffering (and it certainly shouldn't be used to excuse to wait around and not do things to urgently reduce that suffering). Though I don't know exactly what you're pointing at re “defensive capabilities” of factory farming. I also think I share your short-term (say, ⩽ 25-year) pessimism about farmed animals. But in the longer run, I think there are some reasons for hope (if alt proteins get much cheaper and better, if humans do eventually decide to move away from animal agriculture for roughly ethical reasons, despite the track record of activism so far). Of course there is a question of what to do if you are much more pessimistic even over the long-run for animal (or nonhuman) welfare. Even here, if “cause the end of human civilisation” were a serious option, I'd be very surprised if there weren't many other serious options available to end factory farming without also causing the worst calamity ever. (Don't mean to represent you as taking a stand on whether extinction would be good fwiw)
AIM Animal Initiatives
JamesÖz 🔸6
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Obviously, I don't speak for OP or EA AWF fund but they literally only publish 1-3 sentences per grant so I'm not surprised at all if they don't mention it, even if it is a consideration for them. That said, I might just be projecting because this was partially the reason why I supported giving them a grant!

Agree though that stunners aren't literally a one-off and never touch again, but as you mention I think the overall cost of the intervention to animals helped is significantly better for shrimp stunning in my opinion, as well the avenue for industry adoption being much more clear and more likely.

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AIM Animal Initiatives
JamesÖz 🔸2
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Yeah good point re Shrimp Welfare Project! I should have said "most animal funders don't want to subsidise the animal ag industry without a clear mechanism for passing these costs over to the industry".

For example, in the case of SWP, my understanding is that SWP wants to get these relatively cheap stunners ($50k and only a one-off cost) for a few major producers to show both producers and retailers that it is a relatively cheap way to improve animal welfare with minimal/no impacts on productivity. Then, I believe the idea is to get retailers (e.g. like th... (read more)

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Michael St Jules 🔸
But do EAs (and major funders especially) support SWP because they expect SWP to accelerate industry adoption of stunners paid for by the industry (or by others besides SWP/animal advocates)? 1. Its stunner cost-effectiveness analysis and numbers of shrimp helped so far don't reflect this possibility. 2. The ACE review barely discusses stunners, and only really in their section on room for more funding, where stunners account for essentially all the RFMF in 2024 and 2025, and there's no mention of accelerated industry adoption of stunners not paid for by us.[1] 3. The EA Animal Welfare Fund grant just says "Purchase 4 stunners for producers committing to stun a minimum. of 1.4k MT (~100 million) of shrimps/annum per stunner". 1. Stunning equipment will break down over time and eventually need to be replaced. Maybe they're assuming the companies will repair/replace the stunners at their own cost as they break down, but I imagine they expect this to look good with only a few years of impact per stunner (or didn't take into account the fact that stunners will break down). 4. The written rationale of Open Phil's most recent grant to SWP doesn't mention the possibility, either: "Open Philanthropy recommended a grant of $2,000,000 over two years to the Shrimp Welfare Project. Focuses include installing stunners at major shrimp producers, reducing stocking density on shrimp farms in South Asia, and increasing industry awareness of shrimp welfare." 5. Other than by SWP themselves, I haven't seen ~any online discussion of this acceleration. It's possible the grantmakers are sensitive to the possibility of acceleration of industry adoption of stunners paid for by the industry and are granting in part based on this, but it doesn't show up in their written rationales. They say very little about the stunner plans in general, though.   And should we have had similar expectations for feed fortification costs to eventually be passed on and HH to accelerate feed fortifi
AIM Animal Initiatives
JamesÖz 🔸10
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FWIW in the early stages of Healthier Hens, I heard some of the following pieces of feedback which IMO seem significant enough that it may have been a bad decision for CE to recommend a feed fortification charity for layer hens:

  • Feed costs are approximately 50% of costs for farmers, so interventions that make feed even more expensive are likely to be hard to achieve
  • CE's report focuses on subsidising this feed for farmers to lessen the potential risk of the above point, but I think misses the crucial factor where most animal funders don't want to subsidise t
... (read more)
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Michael St Jules 🔸10
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CE's report focuses on subsidising this feed for farmers to lessen the potential risk of the above point, but I think misses the crucial factor where most animal funders don't want to literally subsidise the animal agriculture industry, hence making fundraising quite hard (which did turn out to be true)

I'm not sure if this really explains much or if the funders were acting rationally if it did. As one of its main interventions, SWP is currently buying and giving out electric stunners for free, which is essentially a subsidy in kind. SWP is supported by Ope... (read more)

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James Özden's Quick takes
JamesÖz 🔸9
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Social Change Lab has two exciting opportunities for people passionate about social movements, animal advocacy and research to join our team!

Director (Maternity Cover)
We are looking for a strategic leader to join our team as interim Director. This role will be maternity cover for our current Director and will be a 12-month contract from July 2024. As Director, you would lead our small team in delivering cutting-edge research on the outcomes and strategies of the animal advocacy and climate movements and ensuring widespread communication of this work to key... (read more)

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