As effective altruists who care about the
wellbeing of individuals, it's natural for
us to want to end factory farming, which may
be the greatest source of suffering on earth.
I think it's also natural for us as optimists
and people who believe in technology to think
that perhaps the end of factory farming is
imminent or even inevitable.
You may have seen headlines recently that
clean meat is just around the corner.
US meat consumption is falling, that the end
of meat is nigh in the world, and while there
have certainly been a lot of exciting developments
recently, these are all headlines from six
to seven years ago.
The unfortunate reality that we have to confront
is that factory farming is not inevitably
going to come to an end.
The reality is that right now, factory farming
is continuing to grow.
This is a graph that shows the number of farm
animals, including fish, vertebrate farm animals,
on farms globally, and as you can see, there
are more farm animals today in factory farms
than ever before in history, and it's continuing
to grow at the same rate as it has been for
the last 20 years.
So what can we do about this?
Obviously we need to take a number of approaches
to this problem, including ones focused on
technology, but I want to focus today on three
things that I think have been driving this
increase in the number of animals in factory
farms, and that I think offer particularly
important, tractable and neglected approaches
to reducing farm animal suffering.
The first is the plight of birds and specifically
chickens.
So what you see in this graph is that over
the last 50 years, the number of mammals alive
on factory farms globally has barely increased,
while the number of chickens alive at any
point in time has significantly increased,
up to a point of 23 billion alive at any point
in time.
That equates to over 60 billion slaughtered
annually because most of these chickens are
broiler chickens who live short lives.
And so when we think about what we can do
to improve the plight of birds and particularly
chickens, it comes down to two types of these
birds.
The first, you're probably familiar with,
is the plight of layer hens.
And you see here, this is a photo I took in
India last year at a battery cage facility.
It's hard to imagine a more intense form chronic
suffering that you can inflict on an animal.
We know from preference studies that these
birds, given a chance to get to a nesting
box.
They'll push through a cage door as hard as
they will to get to food after 24 hours of
deprivation.
So the mere fact that they're not getting
access to a nesting box here - we know there
are similar desires to get to perches to get
to dust bathing ability - shows you the degree
of behavioral deprivation inflicted on these
animals, typically for more than a year at
a time.
The good news is that there has been progress.
And so the first progress that we've started
to see has been over the last four years,
initially in the US, going to corporations
and securing pledges to get rid of battery
cages.
Now up to a point, those pledges, if implemented,
will benefit about 275 million hens a year.
Those campaigns have now gone international,
working in Europe, in Latin America, increasingly
in Asia, and have reached a point that those
international pledges are set to benefit about
130 million hens a year if implemented.
But of course that raises the question of
will they be implemented?
Here's the evidence that we have today.
These are the latest figures.
As of last month, there were 55 million cage
free hens in the US.
Now that's a significant increase from a few
years ago when there were fewer than 20 million
cage free hens in the US, but obviously there's
still a lot of work to be done, and so one
of the priorities for the movement within
affecting layer hens is getting the implementation
of these pledges that have already been secured.
The other priority is reaching the other group
of chickens, the broiler chickens, so as most
of you probably know, are a different strain
of chicken that are raised separately from
laying hands, and are raised for meat.
And as you'll see in this photo that I took
of a broiler chicken in India, their problem
is less that they're in cages - they're normally
not in cages - and more the way that they've
been bred in the first place, that they have
been bred to suffer.
There have been studies done on broiler chickens
with leg problems, which is a common ailment
amongst chickens, in which they've been offered
feed laced with pain relief or feed laced
without pain relief, and chickens who don't
have these leg problems, who don't have these
genetics, show no preference between the two.
The chickens who do have these leg problems,
the chickens like this one here, that have
been bred to grow too large, too fast, choose
the pain relief laced feed, suggesting to
us that these birds are in chronic pain.
And when we're talking about 16 billion alive
at any point in time, about 60 billion a year,
given the short lifespan, that's a huge amount
of potential suffering.
So what can we do to alleviate it?
Obviously one thing is to reduce the amount
of chicken that people eat.
And I'll talk a little bit about some of the
efforts in China on that later on.
The other thing we can do is to reduce the
suffering of each chicken, and so advocates
have been working in the US over the last
two years to secure five asks of companies.
The first is to change the breed, to move
away from these breeds of birds that are in
constant pain.
The second is to reduce the overcrowding in
chicken barns.
The third is to improve living conditions,
in particular litter, lighting and enrichment.
Four is to move to a less cruel method of
slaughter.
And the fifth to ensure the auditing of those
pledges.
There's already been significant progress
to date: Burger King, Subway, major food service
companies in the US have committed to these
pledges.
And those advocates are right now engaged
in the toughest fight of all: the fight to
get McDonalds to give up this incredibly cruel
system of raising chickens.
McDonalds accounts for about three to four
percent of the chicken purchased in the US
every year.
So the decisions they make will have a huge
impact directly on chickens, about 270 million
chickens a year in their supply chain.
But will also have huge knock-on effects,
so it's critical that advocates win this campaign
to ensure better conditions for chickens in
the US, and I think likely, too, in the future
around the world.
This brings us to the second issue, the only
group of animals, or vertebrate animals, that's
larger than chickens on farms.
And that's farmed fish.
So this graph shows the increase in the number
of farmed fish, individual farmed fish, over
time globally.
The best estimate now is that at any point
in time, there's between 75 billion and 140
billion farmed fish, confined in fish farms
globally.
The estimate is that there may be another
1 to 2 trillion wild caught fish who are slaughtered
globally.
Most of them very small fish.
And so this graph doesn't quite represent
that.
This graph shows more the trend line.
This is in terms of tonnage rather than in
terms of individuals because we don't have
good individual data for wild caught fish.
But what you can see is the trend over time
is one in which wild caught fish is not increasing.
Farmed fish is increasing rapidly.
And so if something that's appealing about
focusing on farm fish, it's not just that
they're more directly under our control, there's
a greater lifespan of chronic suffering to
affect, but also the fact that this is a trend
line hitting in a very bad direction.
So I want to tell you just a little bit about
visiting a fish farm in India last year.
And to me what was surprising about it is
that from a distance, a fish farm really doesn't
look that bad.
So, all the commercial facilities we visited
were like this.
Huge ponds the size of multiple football fields.
You don't obviously see overcrowding, you
don't obviously see incredibly dirty water.
We know very little about what these fish
are experiencing beneath the surface, but
you don't immediately see the problems.
But I think somewhere where you do immediately
see the problems is when you look at the slaughter
of these fish.
This is the photo that I took at one of these
fish farms last year, and the method of killing
fish, both farm fish and wild caught fish
globally, is truly barbaric.
So these fish will be hauled out of the water.
Many of them were crushed to death underneath
each other.
Some of the other ones were live disemboweled,
and the ones that weren't suffocated over
the course of several hours.
So we followed some of these fish to a live
market, where they were still alive hours
after they had been caught.
And I think the thing which is most striking
with this particular welfare issue is how
simply it could be solved.
So, technology already exists to stun fish.
Electrical stunning technology is relatively
cheap.
Some European companies like Tesco already
require this throughout their supply chain
and yet we see that over 90 percent of the
fish globally are not stunned prior to slaughter.
So in addition of course to wanting to reduce
the number of fish, there were some really
simple things that with a bit of pressure,
there's the potential to reduce a huge amount
of chronic suffering, over 100 billion farmed
fish a year, potentially over a trillion wild
caught fish a year, if we could get stunning
technology in place.
The other positive trend on fish recently
is the attention that the issue has gotten
from the media.
So just in the last year, we've seen headlines
from the Washington Post in terms of looking
at the scientific consensus that fish feel
pain, from the Smithsonian magazine, again,
talking about fish pain, from the New York
Times, talking about fish depression and increasing
evidence that fish can feel depression just
like we can and just like we know that mammals
and likely birds can too.
From NPR, talking about the way that wild
caught fish are being treated.
And from USA Today talking about progress
in Switzerland and potential progress in the
UK toward banning the boiling alive of lobsters
and crabs.
The third major driver of the increase in
the number of farm animals globally is China.
So as China has gotten richer over the last
20, 30 years, we've seen a dramatic increase
in the number of farmed animals in China.
This graph shows you the portion of the world's
farm animals of each variety that are housed
in China currently.
And what you see is for chickens, it's about
a fifth to a quarter.
For pigs it's about half the world's farm
animals, for farmed fish, it's over half the
world's farmed animals.
And this is not a case of China exporting
to the world for the most part, though there's
a little bit of that.
This is primarily for domestic consumption,
and so if you care about the plight of animals
on farms, you have to care about China and
the trajectory of this issue in China.
And I think there are a number of hopeful
signs on that.
So it may be a little hard to read what this
says, but this was a survey done at the end
of last year, 2,000 Chinese consumers.
And they asked them how often they eat each
of these groups.
So in blue means they eat this group of food
every day and red means a few times a week,
green once a week, purple less than once a
week, and the light blue means they never
eat this food.
And what you see is, despite some of the headlines
you may have seen, there's very little vegetarianism
or veganism in China.
There were very few people, less than one
percent, who said that they never ate pork
or never ate other animal products.
However, what you also see alongside of this,
is that the majority of Chinese consumers
in this survey said that they don't eat meat
every day.
In fact, not only they don't eat pork, they
don't eat chicken or other types of meat every
day, and it's far more common to eat it on
a weekly basis.
And will you also see is that Chinese consumers
eat plant protein on a daily basis.
So things like mock meats, things like legumes,
things like nuts often mixed together with
meat dishes.
So for instance, a tofu and pork dish are
regularly part of the diet.
And I think this provides a basis to work
from that we don't have in the US, because
these alternatives are already readily available,
they're already accepted as part of the Chinese
diet.
Here's a graph that shows this in another
format.
So what you see here is in green, plant protein,
in red, animal protein.
You can see in the US, we're incredibly dependent
on animal protein.
About two thirds of our daily protein average
intake is coming from animal-based protein.
When you look at the rest of the world, that's
just far less the case.
So try the average Chinese person and the
average Indian is getting more plant based
protein now than the average American.
And what you see particularly when you look
at somewhere like India, like the rest of
Asia and China is the animal protein segment,
the animal protein segment is not as big as
it's gotten in the US.
And it seems like there's the potential to
shrink that without people going below the
level of daily protein required.
So although we obviously want to increase
the percentage of plant protein, there's also
the potential to simply reduce the percent
of animal protein.
And here's two more causes for optimism.
So what you see on the first slide was, again
the same survey, reported changes in consumption,
so people everywhere always say they're eating
more fruits and vegetables and you can take
that with a grain of salt.
But the thing that I think is interesting
here is that poultry and pork consumption
is reported to be down.
We're actually seeing that showing up in the
national statistics.
Now at the same time, fish and seafood consumption
is up.
So it's not clear that this is totally worked
out net positive, but I think there's a positive
trend there.
I think there's also a positive train in the
increase in plant protein consumption, which
sort of goes against the narrative that China
is moving away from plant protein and toward
animal proteins.
The other thing you see is a receptiveness
to clean meat, which seems to be greater than
the receptiveness that we've seen to clean
meat - meat grown from cells - in the US.
And so if you think that that's likely to
be in the future, down the line, it suggests
China may be a good market for that.
The one other cause for optimism that I want
to highlight is the change within the Chinese
government.
So something you've seen on a number of social
issues in China, for instance, on environmentalism,
is that the Chinese government was traditionally
silent on the matter, but that once Chinese
government officials started talking about
it, they legitimized the issue and were able
to achieve policy changes far faster than
we've achieved them in the US.
And my hope is that this is the start of a
trend like that.
So what we saw last year was what is to my
knowledge, the first time Chinese government
official has spoken in favor of animal welfare,
and indeed the first time that a Chinese government
official has called for animal welfare legislation,
which China doesn't yet have.
And in fact also in the same speech, called
for a set of regulations and technical standards.
And so my hope is we'll start to see the dividends
of that.
So the only final note is to encourage you
at 6:00 PM to go to the Eating Animals documentary,
which is being hosted here.
And a few of us will be on a panel at the
end of that and I look forward to taking your questions
Thanks so much.
Really appreciated the talk.
Um, and if you haven't seen part one, you
can find it on the 80,000 Hours website.
Um, yeah.
So a few questions from the audience.
The first one, meat consumption is on the
rise.
As the world gets wealthier, we see this,
especially in developing world as GDP increases.
How can we go about thinking about preventing
norms to be established before meat consumption
becomes normalized?
Yeah.
This is really interesting.
A really interesting question.
So, there are certainly efforts underway in
parts of the world, for instance, in developing
parts of Asia, to encourage vegetarianism.
I think that it's often hard in a developing
nation context to tell people that they shouldn't
be able to eat something.
And so although I think people often look
at this as the low hanging fruit to stop people
from eating meat before they start eating
it, I tend to be a little more skeptical of
that.
I tend to think that it's, it's perhaps going
to be easier to get people in a place where
they already have all the necessities of life,
and they can start to think more about these
concerns.
So I mean, one cause for optimism is that
you hear a constant narrative about India
eating more meat.
The statistics don't really back that up.
So, the percentage of Indians who are vegetarian
is the same as it was 10 years ago.
The amount of red meat being consumed in India
is down from 10 years ago.
The amount of poultry being consumed is only
slightly up.
The amount of fish and seafood is only slightly
up.
So I think this narrative can be overblown
a bit, but I also think that, well there's
certainly some hope along those lines.
I think we have to be delicate because of
the situation.
Right.
Yeah.
So you also mentioned towards the end, that,
you know, it seemed like a really good sign
that you had a Chinese official backing animal
welfare legislation, but to someone who lives
here, probably not a Chinese citizen, probably
doesn't have access to government bureaucrats
in China.
Uh, this may seem pretty impervious.
Is there something that they could do, particularly
in the China animal welfare context?
Yeah, well, I think certainly for people who
are themselves Chinese or Chinese American,
I think there is more you can do, so I would
certainly encourage anyone who fits in that
category and is interested in animal welfare
to come speak to me or to Brian Tse, who's
also at this conference, and perhaps maybe
here in the audience.
I think that if you're not Chinese, it's likely
that there are things you can do for international
organizations.
Now, whether that's your competitive advantage,
I don't know.
I think it probably depends a bit, but there
are international groups that are working
at the invitation of the Chinese government.
So on the animal welfare side, groups like
Compassion World Farming, World Animal Protection,
and on the meat reduction side groups like
Wild Aid and GOBlue.
Great.
And kind of along these lines, at the beginning
of the talk, you mentioned specific campaigns
like the campaign for McDonalds that seems
to be pushing the frontier in the right direction,
but are there campaigns that you would like
to see and would throw funding behind if only
it existed?
And if so, what are these?
Yeah, so there are certainly a lot of campaigns
that we'd love to see in the long term.
I think that in the short term there's really
a lot of value to focus.
And so although for instance, I'd love to
see campaigns focused on fish, I'd love to
see campaigns pushing for things beyond immediate
cage free on hens, campaigns focused on other
species, I think there was a lot of value
to focusing on one issue at a time.
And so I wouldn't encourage US advocates to
take on other issues right now necessarily.
And I think internationally it really depends
on where things are at.
I think in Europe because things are furthest
along, there' the most scope to advance sort
of new issues like fish, like perhaps mutilations
of pigs, and other of the new welfare issues.
Yeah.
Right.
So for lots of cause areas that EAs focus
on, they are really looking for an evidence
basis and it seems pretty hard to get this
when you're working with an n of five, a really
small number of policy advocacy campaigns.
What makes you think that a campaign may be
something that's worth putting money and support
behind?
Sure.
Well, I think what the corporate campaigns,
we have much more than an n of five.
I mean we have an n of 530 in terms of corporate
victories.
So, and you know, obviously more in terms
of corporate, not victories yet.
So I think on policy it's certainly the case
that it has to be more speculative, where
you're working with the government, where
they perhaps haven't passed something yet.
Although you can look to examples like the
European Union, like India where there have
been policy gains.
And then certainly as far as people are interested
in things like individual dietary advocacy,
there have been more studies, so there have
been more attempts at RCTs, so I think there's
a lot more scope for RCTs in that space in
terms of looking at what messaging is effective
in getting people to care about these issues,
and you're getting them to reduce their meat
consumption.
Cool.
And, final question, is there a progress and
promise in China on the corporate pressure
side?
Not so much on the corporate pressure side.
I think pressure would probably be unwise
in the Chinese context, but I think we are
starting to see some real progress in terms
of corporate outreach, and sort of self initiated
corporate reforms and there are various, more
subtle pressures at play there.
I think for instance, companies that want
to export into the European market, companies
that want to be seen as adopting world class
standards.
And so you are seeing a number of major Chinese
producers now committing to get rid of gestation
crates, which is something the US pork industry
still refuses to do.
And in some cases even to get rid of farrowing
crates, which is something that the US pork
industry has said is impossible.
So I think we're actually seeing a lot of
progress, amongst particular parts of the
industry in China, less from pressure campaigns
and more from sort of targeted outreach and
from technical work helping these companies.
Cool.
Well, with that, thanks so much Lewis, really
appreciate the talk.
