All of Nate Crosser's Comments + Replies

Some of my favorite ideas (some listed above):

  1. Venture philanthropy fund - evergreen fund (profits get recycled to make more investments) to invest in technologies/companies  that improve animal lives (alt proteins, more humane slaughter, conservation, etc)
  2. Hedge fund/venture scout model - turn high performing individuals in non-grantmaking roles into part-time grantmakers by giving them philanthropic budgets to deploy autonomously (and only continue giving them funds if they show "impact returns")
  3. Longtermist Animal Welfare NGO - this seems almost compl
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-3
alene
10mo
Just replying, very belatedly, to say:  You're amazing.

Unfortunately, I don't think it is true that "they would be taken better care of as a matter of course due to how scarce resources are." Our current model of animal agriculture is to operate the system incredibly efficiently overall but with no regard for the welfare of the individual animal. "Animal health" is a billion dollar industry constantly optimizing this. The animals are kept alive with drugs and careful diets but live short lives of physical and mental distress until their bodies quickly reach slaughter age. I imagine this system in space would be even more suffering-causing and unnatural than dark sheds.  Chickens that died, for example, in a space CAFO would probably just be recycled to more chicken feed. 

Hi James, I would love to read these reports. I'm considering doing a deeper dive into this. My email is ncrosser@gmail.com if you're willing to share.

I work in the alt protein industry and am a supporter of New Harvest (NH). I previously worked at their chief "competitor" the Good Food Institute (GFI). I donate to NH because they provide an essential counterpart and counterbalance to GFI. NH also seems more nimble and oftentimes more risk-tolerant or creative, though less operationally excellent and globalized. Their budget is routinely small compared to GFI and yet constantly find ways to add value to the industry. It is hard to imagine the cellular agriculture movement, or alt proteins, without NH. I would urge others in this community to support New Harvest. 

9
IshaDatar
2y
Thanks so much Nate. Couldn't have put it better myself! Really appreciate your support. 

Alene, I think about this all the time! I've thought about starting a project or NGO solely to focus on preventing animal agriculture from being a component of  space colonization. If  we do successfully colonize the cosmos then it could  be that the vast majority of humans will end up living elsewhere than Earth. We could be at a unique point in history where we are actively laying the cultural and technological groundwork for those future societies. I wrote a blog on the space food topic that might interest you  https://ecotech.substack.com/p/spacefood?s=w 

2
alene
2y
You should!!!

Nice idea! As an alt protein investor, I have been waiting for more exciting tofu companies to emerge in the west.  I do like your argument why  we should be promoting tofu right now due to its versatility and uniqueness.  That said, I'd push back on the suggested intervention of promoting rare chinese tofus. There are not existing supply chains or known westernized recipes for them, like there are for simple tofus. Perhaps a better use of resources would be promoting ways of utilizing tofus that people can already readily buy, or even promotion of the true health benefits of soy.

8
George Stiffman
2y
Thanks for your pointers, Nate! I'm also curious - what sorts of tofus have you tried? I'm with you on the challenge of building a new market from the ground up. That said, on the supply side, I'd expect importing palettes of rare tofus would be a lot easier than, say, building a production site or finding suitable co-packers for a new plant-based meat company. Especially since a lot of these tofus are already imported, just on a small scale, but from producers that have a lot of capacity. (It also helps that they can all be frozen, unlike simple tofus.) That's all assuming there's demand - which like you said is tough without existing use cases. My current take, and I could be wrong, is that simple tofus just don't have great product-market fit within western cuisines, and that this is unlikely to change in the short term. This is because of taste, textural, and cooking requirement issues that seem fundamental to firm/soft/silken tofu. (Silken tofu may be a slight exception - it seems to do well blended into baked goods and sauces, but I don't think this will substitute for much animal product consumption.) Rare tofus, while currently unused in western cooking, have a lot of seemingly better-fit use cases, which we've been looking into for our book. (From crazy yuba/tofu skin pastries, to delicious stand-alone protein mains, to natural dumplings, ... ) My bullishness is more of a long-term bet, that rare tofus will eventually fare better than ordinary ones, since the culinary signs seem to point that they could. If these novel culinary uses could get chefs excited, which is something other alt proteins have had trouble with, I think that would have big trickle down effects on demand.

New Harvest, which I think is great, also discontinued what I consider to be their major program (research grants) this year, so it's a head scratcher.

I left GFI in early 2021 for a new opportunity, but stay close with them. Nothing has drastically changed or degraded there. If truly one allegation of "retaliation" against an employee is enough to totally knock off Top Charity, I'm suspicious of the process. We know that The Counter article on the challenges to cultivated meat wasn't the cause -- as has been pointed out -- because New Harvest (a cultivated meat NGO) is still a Standout Charity. Reading between the lines, it seems they think GFI is overfunded. 

Looks like multiple people reporting retaliation and fear of retaliation for voicing disagreements at the organization:

We feel it’s important to note that several of GFI’s current and former employees have reached out to us to provide input on our evaluation of GFI. According to those who contacted ACE and responded to the culture survey, there appears to be several employees (current and former) reporting both retaliation and a fear of retaliation from top leadership for voicing disagreements at the organization. Because ACE prioritizes the confidentialit

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ACE concluded GFI had enough room for more funding:

GFI plans to focus future expansions on their science and technology, corporate engagement, and policy programs, as well as several potential new programs. GFI also plans to expand GFI Asia Pacific, GFI India, GFI Israel, GFI Europe, and GFI Brazil. For donors influenced by ACE wishing to donate to GFI, we estimate that the organization can continue to effectively absorb funding that we expect to come with a recommendation status.

Based on i) GFI’s own projections that their projected revenue will cover the

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