Philly Effective Altruism:�Animal Welfare

What will you get out of this?

• Why to consider animal welfare as a cause area
• A cause prioritization framework
• Importance, Neglectedness, Tractability
• How to get involved

Why consider animal welfare?

• Expanding Moral Circle
• Moral Considerations
• Additional Benefits
• Counter-arguments
• Precautionary Principle

Expanding our Moral Circle

Moral Considerations

• Subjective experience and pleasure versus pain
• Sophisticated Cognitive Capacities
• e.g. rational agency, self-awareness, desires about future
• Less Sophisticated Cognitive Abilities
• e.g. learning, nociception, memory
• Biological characteristics
• e.g. cortex, vertebrae, # of neurons/synapses, sense organs, neural nociceptors, opiate receptors, motile vs sessile

Additional Benefits

• Environmental
• Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions
• Land & Water Usage
• Manure Run-off
• Disease Prevention
• Pandemics, particularly from poultry → farmers
• Antibiotic-resistant bacteria
• Dietary Health Benefits

Counter Arguments

• Anthropomorphism
• Capacities for suffering are unique to humans or only certain animal groups
• Saving humans lets them contribute to development of their society

Precautionary Principle

Given threats of serious and negative animal welfare outcomes,

lack of full scientific certainty as to the sentience of the animals in question

shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent those outcomes.¹

1: Birch, J. (2017). Refining the precautionary framework. Animal Sentience: An Interdisciplinary Journal on Animal Feeling, 2(16), p.20.

Cause Prioritization Framework

Importance

Part 1: Scale of Suffering

• Which animals are we focusing on?
• How do we weight animal suffering?

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Part 2: Intensity of Suffering

• General suffering
• Animal-specific suffering

Part 1

Scale of Suffering

• Which animals are we focusing on?
• Biomass
• Breakdown by Farmed Animal
• How do we weight animal suffering?

Biomass

Factory farming is the main human-caused source

of animal suffering

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Source: Bar-On, Yinon M., Rob Phillips, and Ron Milo. "The biomass distribution on Earth." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115.25 (2018): 6506-6511.

Breakdown of Farmed Animals

Source: mammls/birds?, Fish: Saulius Šimčikas

Moral Weight

(hypothetical)

Discounting Animals

Discounted Suffering

Human Population, 7.7 Billion

640M to 1.7B lives

1/100 of a human

Part 2

Intensity of Suffering

• General farmed animal suffering
• Animal-specific suffering

General Causes

General Causes of Suffering (farmed animals)

• Cages and overcrowding
• Physical alterations like teeth-clipping or tail-docking, performed without anesthetic
• Indoor confinement with poor air quality and unnatural light patterns
• Inability to engage in important natural behaviors, like laying eggs in nests or roosting at night
• Illnesses and injuries left unnoticed or untreated, often due to an unmanageable ratio of animals to workers
• Rough or abusive handling by workers, often due to a lack of training, frustration at poor working conditions, unreasonable demands by superiors or poor design of facilities
• Untreated urine causes high level of ammonia which can damage respiratory tracts, eyes, nose, throat, and even burn skin

Animal- Specific

Source: The Humane Society, ASPCA, Open Philanthropy Project

Animal- Specific

Source: The Welfare of Farmed Fish, Compassion in World Farming

Neglectedness

• Philanthropic Spending
• Talent and Organizations

Source: Animal Charity Evaluators, Lewis Bollard, Open Philanthropy Project

Neglectedness of Animal Welfare (Farmed)

Source: Animal Charity Evaluators, Lewis Bollard, Open Philanthropy Project

Neglectedness of Animal Welfare (Farmed)

Before the Open Philanthropy Project started contributing to the cause, only $20M a year were devoted to factory farming. Since 2017, it’s been about $50M.

Source: Animal Charity Evaluators, Lewis Bollard, Open Philanthropy Project

Neglectedness of Animal Welfare (Farmed)

Other types

• Talent
• Dedicated Organizations

Tractability

• Possible Interventions
• Cost-effectiveness estimates for the most effective charities

Possible Interventions

Possible Interventions

• Consumer Changes
• Convincing individuals to encourage them to reduce their meat consumption
• Maintaining farm animal sanctuaries that are open to the public
• Investigative reporting
• Corporate Reform
• Outreach to large institutions to encourage the adoption of “Meatless Mondays”
• Pressuring large food sellers to improve animal welfare practices
• Legal Action
• Litigation against corporations or government agencies
• Legislative advocacy, lobbying, or ballot initiative campaigns
• Development of plant-based meat alternatives or cultured meat

Source: Open Philanthropy Project, Animal Charity Evaluators

Cost Effectiveness

A leading global development organization, the Against Malaria Foundation, is estimated to save 1 human life for

$3,340.

ACE’s cost-effectiveness range for top animal charities is 2.5 - 55 animals saved per dollar or

8,350 - 183,700 animals per $3340.

Source: Animal Charity Evaluators, GiveWell

Effective Animal Advocacy

Advocacy

Research

Funding

Get Involved: Donate

Animal Charity Evaluators Recommendations

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Albert Schweitzer Foundation

• corporate outreach campaigns
• a variety of vegetarian outreach campaigns
• scientific division researches ways to improve the quality of their work.

Animal Equality

• undercover investigations
• grassroots outreach
• corporate outreach

The Humane League

• online veg advertising
• corporate outreach
• leafleting

The Good Food Institute

• promoting and developing competitive alternatives to animal food products
• provide support to cellular agriculture and cultured meat companies, by building relationships with distributors and retailers and driving R&D of the products.

Source: Animal Charity Evaluators

Get Involved: Career

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• Direct Work/Advocacy
• Work at high-impact animal charities
• Work at companies developing plant-based alternatives to animal-based foods (such as Just and Beyond Meat).
• Earn-to-Give: Take a high-earning job, and donate to high-impact charities
• Research: Conduct research on animal consciousness and suffering (such as Rethink Priorities, The Sentience Institute and Faunalytics)

Source: 80,000 Hours Profile on Factory Farming, Effective Thesis

Get Involved: Volunteer

• Volunteer at high impact animal charities
• Some example activities:
• Corporate Outreach
• Legislative Work
• Write to promote discussion
• Tabling
• Pay-Per-View
• Movie Screening
• Protests and Demonstrations
• Veg Fests
• Use your specialized skills (e.g., graphic design, management, event planning) 
• Volunteer at animal shelters, if it will make you more likely to do the prior items
• Tips: Volunteer with a friend, practice self-care, realize limits of volunteering

Sources: Animal Charity Evaluators Article on Volunteering Effectively

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Not sure what to do?

• Get connected to the Effective Animal Advocacy community
• Don’t be afraid to experiment
• If you have experience in this area, and want to get involved, talk to us

Effective Altruism Philadelphia

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