Thank you for the work!

I learned so much from this episode, and updated my views regarding insect sentience, and the ethics of insect treatment too. I highly recommend this to almost all EAs.

Thank you for your detailed reply! I admire your courage to raise this issue in front of your colleagues/the locals there - I am not sure I would find the courage to do so. 

I have some hope that there might at least be ways to reduce the % of factory farming there will be in poor countries in the world in the future. Some EAs are working on it and I am trying to see what I can help there too.

I have recently done a bit of research on the intensification of animal agriculture in Africa. I have a few comments to make in response to yours.

I am very confident that people in poor countries like Uganda eat way less animal products than the global average. But I am not sure that they all don't eat factory farmed animal products. I think I have quite a high level of belief that your claim about the meat consumption patterns of the people in the areas in Uganda you work in. But I don't think we should generalise to: "All people in very poor countries don't eat factory farmed meat".

I think a very important fact we should recognize is that factory farming clearly exist and is booming and intensifying quickly in Africa, including Uganda, or even poorer countries such as Burundi and South Sudan. This means that the meat-eating problem (convinced by JWS's comment that we should change the wording, even though I don't agree about all the things said in the comment), if it is a problem at all, is going to get worse in Africa and other parts in the world with many people in extreme poverty.

A very important note needs to be introduced here: I think we one species of farmed animals we should focus a lot on is the chicken (and also fish farming, maybe in 3-5 years time). Some facts about chicken farming in Africa: 

• It's one of the cheapest type of meats poor people can afford, in a lot of regions.
• Many aid providing foundations/agencies/charities are interested in, if not executing, using chicken farming as a poverty aid intervention. (1, 2, 3, 4)
• While it's hard to find a single broiler chicken farm in North America and Europe raising broiler chickesn in cages (with the exception of Russia and Ukraine - no intention to create drama), there seems to be currently a large wave of new broiler farms emerging in Africa that are going for caged broiler systems
  • For instance, chicken farming equipment producers in China are very actively trying to sell broiler cages to Africa, and according to my research, 10 broiler cage producers from China (out of 18 I found) are trying to do that. 
  •  (Sorry, I can't share the links or details of my research on this topic here, as I worry about potential info hazards.) 
• The emergence of new technologies (such as modern caged broiler systems, digital gadgets, and eventually AI) and the popularization of both newer and older technologies (such as vaccines, drugs, feed formulas, and caged layer systems) will drive costs down further.

I think the rise of intensified, caged system raised chickens (both layers and broilers) in Africa (also some countries in Asia and Latin America) should alert and worry us that the "meat eating problem", if it does not pose a huge problem now, could become much more severe in the future because of the rising per capita consumption of animal products coming from horrific systems. While there might be a lot of strategic/signalling/philosophical issues thinking and calling life-saving or poverty alleviating interventions as "saving meaters/people who harm animals". I think we should definitely oppose to making things worse for animals in order to lift people out of poverty. 

A less important response to your another point: I think it's very unclear whether farmed animals raised in free range condittions in poor countries live net-positive lives. Firstly, many deadly diseases are very common among free-range (and intensive) chicken farming, such as Newcastle Disease. And awareness to use vaccines to reduce such diseases is nowhere near widespread. Secondly, debeaking of chickens is very common (including in Uganda), and presumably mostly without anesthesia/pain relieve. Thirdly, it seems very common to transport chickens like this (and in some cases kept tied like this even after arriving at the market, until they are sold) in Africa and poorer parts of Asia. Fourthly, I saw some nasty slaughters - let's say they are at least as nasty as most chicken slaughters in the world. Finally, we have to consider that chickens raised for meat don't live for many days in their life to compensate for these pretty intense suffering. IMO it's more likely than not that most chickens raised in free range conditions in poor countries live net-negative lives. 

(I weak upvoted your comment and chose "disagree", even though I don't 100% disagree with you.)

Thank you for writing the post! I hope more people in EA will pay more attention on this strategy. 

For instance, I think it will be even more important to make use of story telling to advocate for wild animal welfare.

I also want to point out that story telling can be (and should be, IMO) combined with science. For example, these comics by Joan Chan are pretty effective..

written about my Richard Chappell 

Minor stuff: Is this meant to be "written about by Richard Chappell "?

Thank you for writing this! I will keep this in mind and add it to the list of important issues when I think about strategies to help animals in China.

Hi Michael. I think AI can reduce cost spent on feed. It can't change the cost of the feed but it can change how much they need to use. For example, a lower mortality rate already means less feed per kg of product. 

Second, feeding could be optimized by reducing wasted feed. For example, there are AI systems built for fish farming that uses image recognition to identify the number of uneaten pellets in the water as an indicator or whether the fish is overfed at the moment. If yes, the system lowers the number of pellets dispensed and this reduces the number of pellets uneaten and get dropped to the bottom of the pond of leak from the bottom of a cage in the case of fish farms on the sea. Another way of doing it is to tell from the activeness of the fish. Or combined.

AI could also improve the whole feeding scheme to improve the feed conversion ratio.

Hi Aashish, thank you for your reply!

Re: your first question, I think I am very concerned about the impact of PLF techs in the global north, but it's kind of inevitable already - it will happen anyway. I think the question is how to make it develop into more animal friendly versions.

Re: your second question, I am starting to discuss with fellow advocates within the momvent on strategies to react to AI/PLF development in factory farming. I think I only have rough ideas that might be worth discussing further, but nothing worth actually implementing yet.

I think I don't have good answers to your last question because I know close to nothing about factory farming (or anything) in Africa.

Congratulations! 

I wonder if you have any official view/guidance on when and when not to do cross posting (AAF + EA forum), for people who want to post on the Animal Advocacy Forum?

I haven't spent any meaningful time thinking about this question in the context of Africa. But I have a sense of worry that one of the major drivers of factory farming intensification in Africa in the future is going to be a series of technologies called precision livestock farming technologies, which include AI, robotics, cloud computing, cloud-connected electronic gadgets. In particular, AI is going to be the center of all these.

AI and robotics used in factory farming are largely still in their R&D to pilot testing stages in developed countries (U.S., Canada, Japan, EU) and China. I don't see a reason why they will not get to a point where most factory farms in their countries can be, economically speaking (there might be political reasons against employing such technologies), largely run by AI and robots. And I think the costs of these AI systems and robots will go down and eventually be promoted to and sold to Africa. Their economic advantage might grow so huge that they will drive out the small holder farmers who cannot afford these systems.