Note: This piece was originally published by Jess Whittlestone in 2017. It has been updated by other authors in the time since. Some figures in the piece may not be up-to-date; be sure to note the age of any sources linked in the footnotes.

Introduction

One of the greatest problems in the world today may be the suffering of animals in the meat industry. In 2015, roughly 9.2 billion animals were raised and slaughtered in factory farms in the US alone, in conditions likely to cause extreme suffering.

This problem seems to be incredibly neglected. Many experts now believe that animals have conscious experiences, and are capable of experiencing pain. We tend to give much more weight to the suffering of humans than to the suffering of animals - this is potentially a form of “speciesism”, valuing animals much less than they deserve.

There are things we can do to help solve this problem. Three main types of intervention look promising: persuading people to change their diets, lobbying for better welfare standards, and developing alternatives to animal products. However, the evidence in this area is not as strong as it is for global health interventions.

This profile sets out why you might want to work on improving animal welfare - and why you might not. This area looks particularly high-impact if you think animals’ capacity to suffer is similar to that of humans, and the treatment of animals is unlikely to improve naturally as humanity makes progress.

The case for animal welfare as an important cause area

How can you tell where your resources will do the most good?

Heuristics: We can use rules of thumb to focus our attention. In particular, we might look for important problems that are being neglected by others, or interventions for which there is lots of evidence, and a possibility to gather more (value of information).

We can use rules of thumb to focus our attention. In particular, we might look for important problems that are being neglected by others, or interventions for which there is lots of evidence, and a possibility to gather more (value of information). Quantitative estimates: We might look at studies which estimate the cost-effectiveness of interventions, based on empirical data from randomised control trials (RCTs), althought there aren't RCTs for many of the most promising interventions in animal welfare.

We might look at studies which estimate the cost-effectiveness of interventions, based on empirical data from randomised control trials (RCTs), althought there aren't RCTs for many of the most promising interventions in animal welfare. Historical evidence: For interventions, like corporate campaigning, where it isn't possible to run effective RCTs, we might try to assess whether the intervention caused the company to change, and then use figures on the scale of the change to estimate the impact of the intervention.

Animal suffering is large in scale

Each year, tens of billions of animals are raised for meat and slaughtered on factory farms. This is many times more than the total number of humans alive today (~7 billion). A report on the conditions of modern factory farming by the Humane Society of the United States details how dire these conditions can be. Chickens raised for meat are kept in densely populated sheds with large amounts of waste accumulating . Egg-laying hens are packed together in small cages, while male chicks are ground up alive or gassed. Some dairy cows are kept inside all year round and more than half of them are separated from their calves within 14 hours of birth . Breeder pigs are kept for years in stalls where they cannot even turn around.

It has also become clear that factory farming is harming the environment. A report by the Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that animal agriculture accounts for 14.5 percent of all human-induced emissions.

The problem of animal suffering looks even larger in scale when we also consider wild animals, which vastly exceed factory farmed animals in number. For example, it’s estimated that between 0.97 and 2.74 trillion wild fish are caught and slaughtered each year for human consumption. Many more wild animals suffer in the natural environment.

Animal welfare is neglected

Especially given the scale of the problem, animal welfare seems incredibly neglected. Around 97% of philanthropic funding in the US goes towards helping humans. The remaining 3% is split between the environment and animals. Even within the funding spent on animal welfare, only 1% goes towards farmed animals, although over 99% of domesticated animals are farmed animals. In total, an estimated $10-40 million is spent each year on reducing animal suffering in factory farms, roughly a tenth of a cent per animal. Work to improve the welfare of wild animals is even more neglected.

It seems like we can make progress

There is a small but growing base of evidence on animal welfare interventions which suggests that there are cost-effective ways to make progress on this problem.

Campaigns to try to get large companies to reduce their impact on animal suffering are one of the most promising types of intervention. Corporate campaigns to date have resulted in cage-free pledges from around 100 companies, sparing about 60 million hens annually from confinement. Lewis Bollard (Program Manager for animal welfare at the Open Philanthropy Project, and fund manager for the Animal Welfare Fund) conservatively estimates that these campaigns will spare about 38 hens a year from cage confinement per dollar spent - and may save up to 250 hens a year from confinement (depending on how the money spent on these campaigns is counted).

Working to promote alternatives to meat consumption may also be a promising approach. While people have eaten vegetarian and vegan diets for thousands of years, we've only recently begun to produce products that don't just substitute for meat (e.g. tofu), but also mimic its appearance, taste, and texture, to such a degree that a large fraction of meat-eaters might be happy to make the switch.

Many restaurants, including large franchises, have recently begun serving vegetarian or vegan options based around products from companies like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat. Consumer sales of meat alternatives have also risen sharply in recent years. The proportion of vegetarians and vegans seems to be rising in some countries (like the United Kingdom and the United States), though global data is hard to come by. Attempts to replicate meat on a cellular level are also underway, and could someday produce affordable meat that is identical to what we eat today, but does not cause the slaughter of animals.

While global meat consumption has been rising as people become wealthier, it now seems possible that we could reach a future where people have overwhelmingly adopted meat alternatives – not out of moral concern for animal welfare, but because they offer a similar consumption experience at lower prices. Organizations like The Good Food Institute and New Harvest are working to encourage scientific, political, and entrepreneurial progress toward this goal.

Overall, cost-effectiveness analyses suggest that there are opportunities to have a large impact on animal welfare. The evidence from corporate campaigns seems particularly promising. However, the evidence base here is still relatively small, which suggests we should be less confident in these estimates of direct cost-effectiveness than we are for similar estimates around global health interventions.

This is because we might think that most interventions are not very cost-effective, so we should be skeptical of weak evidence of high impact. However, it also suggests that it may be worthwhile to invest more resources into evaluating the impact of animal welfare interventions. This could help us to make better decisions in future - focusing our efforts elsewhere if these interventions do not seem to be effective, and scaling them up if the results are more promising.

To summarise, we believe that it’s possible to have a large impact in animal welfare because of the issue's:

Scale: Tens of billions of animals suffer and are slaughtered in factory farms annually. Orders of magnitude more animals suffer in the wild.

Tens of billions of animals suffer and are slaughtered in factory farms annually. Orders of magnitude more animals suffer in the wild. Neglectedness: Less than 3% of all philanthropic funding goes towards helping animals, and only a tiny proportion of that funding actually going towards the animals who suffer the most.

Less than 3% of all philanthropic funding goes towards helping animals, and only a tiny proportion of that funding actually going towards the animals who suffer the most. Cost-effectiveness: Corporate campaigns have had some large successes in persuading big companies to change their practices, and rough calculations suggest that these campaigns could be extremely cost-effective.

Corporate campaigns have had some large successes in persuading big companies to change their practices, and rough calculations suggest that these campaigns could be extremely cost-effective. High value of information: Because this issue could offer strong opportunities for high impact, but we don’t yet have strong evidence on those opportunities, doing more research could help us to decide how many resources we should devote to it.

Some concerns about prioritising animal welfare as a cause area

Some people object to the idea of reducing factory farming by claiming that eating meat is natural - or that we need to eat meat in order to be healthy. There are a few important points to note in response to these concerns.

Eating meat is natural

First, something being “natural” does not necessarily mean that it is good. For example, it is natural for children to go unvaccinated, and for many to die very young as a result. But this state of affairs seems clearly wrong.

Second, even if some amount of predation were natural and necessary, factory farming is not particularly natural. Hens are not naturally kept in tiny cages indoors, and cows are not naturally separated from their calves. At best, wanting to do things that are “natural” could justify personally hunting animals and eating them - but not buying factory farmed, prepared meat from the supermarket.

Moreover, many of the unnatural conditions in factory farms are avoidable. We have the resources to raise animals in a more humane way, alleviating their suffering.

We need to eat meat to be healthy

Many people defend the mass production of meat by arguing that we need meat in order to be healthy. However, it’s far from clear that humans today need to eat animals or animal products, with some evidence suggesting that vegetarians and vegans are in fact more healthy than meat-eaters.

There are still risks that a vegan diet can lead to deficiencies in certain micronutrients, such as B12 and Omega 3. It’s relatively easy to find vegan foods that contain these nutrients (such as dark green vegetables and fortified cereals/drinks), and/or to take supplements, but this does require a bit of thought and effort.

Why might you not choose to prioritise animal welfare as a cause area?

Animal welfare seems to be a promising cause area. But there are also several reasons why you might be unconvinced by this analysis, or why you might think that a different cause area is likely to hold even greater opportunities to do good.

You might think the evidence for the effectiveness of interventions in this space is not strong enough

The evidence base here is still relatively weak, especially when compared to global health interventions. It is normally clear exactly where and how more money directed towards global health can improve and save lives. By contrast, much less research has been done on animal welfare interventions.

However, even if there is not enough evidence to say that the most promising animal welfare interventions are definitely highly impactful, there seems to be a significant probability that this is the case, which could make the expected value high.

You might think we should prioritise helping humans over helping animals

Strength of evidence aside, you might choose to prioritise human-centred cause areas over animals simply because you think that improving human lives is a higher priority. Deciding how to prioritise animal welfare relative to the problems faced by humans depends on a number of complex issues:

1. The significance of animal suffering relative to human suffering

Though it seems likely that animals have the capacity to suffer and feel pain, it seems reasonable to be more confident of human consciousness than of animal consciousness. We have direct evidence of the former, but we still know very little about which physical or functional characteristics are needed to create conscious experience. Depending on how much more confident we think we should be of human consciousness, this might suggest assigning considerably less moral weight to animals than humans, and therefore prioritising interventions in human welfare.

There are other reasons you might decide to prioritise human welfare. You might believe that humans’ greater cognitive complexity means that their capacity to suffer is greater or more significant. For example, perhaps freedom and dignity are more important for humans than they are for animals. Or perhaps you think that more complex forms of consciousness - the ability to reason and reflect, for example — are more important than pleasure and pain, and that only humans are capable of experiencing these.

2. The indirect effects of poverty interventions versus animal interventions

Human societies are capable of development in a way that animal societies are not, and so we might think that the indirect effects of human-focused interventions will be greater. However, improving attitudes towards animals might increase our circle of empathy generally, which could itself have positive indirect effects.

However, improving the lives of humans could also have negative indirect effects for animals, since people generally eat more meat as they get richer. This is sometimes known as the meat-eater problem.

You might think it's possible to have a greater impact focusing on the long-run future of humanity

The long-run future could be incredibly morally important. We could have billions or even trillions of descendants. This means that even a low probability of improving the lives of future generations, or ensuring that humanity survives into the future at all, could be significant. (We make this case in more detail in our profile on the long-run future.)

In the case of animals, focusing more on the long-run future might mean focusing more on changing attitudes and reducing speciesism, and less on changing present-day farming practices.

One argument in favour of this:

Animal farming may change dramatically in the future (e.g. if meat alternatives continue to grow in popularity), so it can be hard to target farming practices in a way that will remain relevant.

relevant. However, society's attitudes toward animals are likely to influence how we treat them in a variety of contexts. This means that work to change attitudes might have an impact in a wider range of possible futures than work on farming practices.

Summary

The problem of animal suffering is huge in scale: each year, at least tens of billions of animals live in dire conditions and are slaughtered on factory farms.

farms. The current state of evidence suggests we should put a high probability on animals being conscious and able to suffer.

suffer. The problem of animal suffering is incredibly neglected relative to its scale, with less than 3% of total philanthropic funding going towards animal welfare, and less than 1% of that funding going towards factory farming — the practice that accounts for more than 99% of animals used and then killed by humans.

humans. There is also good reason to think that the problem is relatively tractable: campaigning of various forms has been shown in the past to be effective at changing individual and institutional behaviour as well as regulations around the treatment of animals. Also, inovation in the food industry seemss like a promising way to make it easier for people to avoid animal products.

products. However, these interventions are not as well-proven as some focusing on human welfare, such as global health interventions.

interventions. Whether you believe this to be the most important cause depends on: how important you think it is to have strong evidence of effectiveness; how confident you are that animals are conscious; and how important you think it is to focus on the long-run future of civilisation over more immediate problems.

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