On a purely ideological basis, I would have placed myself as a "strong agree". However, on a more practical level, I am concerned that the most popular animal welfare interventions (specifically corporate campaigns) may have a risk of actually having a negative impact on animal welfare. For example, if corporation X signs a promise to switch to higher welfare standards, its comms/PR around this switch might be so effective that an individual who could otherwise have been convinced to reduce their meat consumption on animal welfare grounds (or even go vegan, the best possible outcome), actually feels satisfied that their choice to continue consuming meat from corporation X is ethical and therefore continues to consume meat at the same or even greater rate. Maybe this is baseless speculation, but intuitively, this feels like a real risk which hasn't been explored enough.
Even though the expected value of corporate campaign work is high, I feel instinctively very uncomfortable donating money to an intervention that has what I worry is a real chance of actually making the issue worse. This might just reflect my personal low appetite for risk.
By contrast, I can't think of an equivalent problem for popular GHD interventions - the worst outcome in this context appears to be that money is donated to an intervention that, in reality, isn't as effective as assumed, and the money could therefore have been better spent elsewhere.
As a result of all of this, I have bumped my response down to only a "slightly agree" rather than a "strong agree".
Thanks for writing this up - I really agree, from my own experience and also anecdotally from others I've met. I wrote about exactly this recently on the forum too, though I think you make the point much more clearly!
On a purely ideological basis, I would have placed myself as a "strong agree". However, on a more practical level, I am concerned that the most popular animal welfare interventions (specifically corporate campaigns) may have a risk of actually having a negative impact on animal welfare. For example, if corporation X signs a promise to switch to higher welfare standards, its comms/PR around this switch might be so effective that an individual who could otherwise have been convinced to reduce their meat consumption on animal welfare grounds (or even go vegan, the best possible outcome), actually feels satisfied that their choice to continue consuming meat from corporation X is ethical and therefore continues to consume meat at the same or even greater rate. Maybe this is baseless speculation, but intuitively, this feels like a real risk which hasn't been explored enough.
Even though the expected value of corporate campaign work is high, I feel instinctively very uncomfortable donating money to an intervention that has what I worry is a real chance of actually making the issue worse. This might just reflect my personal low appetite for risk.
By contrast, I can't think of an equivalent problem for popular GHD interventions - the worst outcome in this context appears to be that money is donated to an intervention that, in reality, isn't as effective as assumed, and the money could therefore have been better spent elsewhere.
As a result of all of this, I have bumped my response down to only a "slightly agree" rather than a "strong agree".
Thanks for writing this up - I really agree, from my own experience and also anecdotally from others I've met. I wrote about exactly this recently on the forum too, though I think you make the point much more clearly!