Publications
While our publications are all listed here, they are easier to browse on our research page.
Prospective cost-effectiveness of farmed fish stunning corporate commitments in Europe
Researcher Sagar Shah estimated how cost effective farmed fish slaughter commitments from retailers might be in Europe. His research focused on France, Italy, and Spain because of the large scale of consumption of farmed fish species that don’t benefit from stunning in these countries.
EU farmed fish policy reform roadmap brief
This report builds a strategy based on the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the animal advocacy movement in the European Union (EU) farmed fish policy space.
Shrimp: The animals most commonly used and killed for food production
Decapod crustaceans or, for short, decapods (e.g., crabs, shrimp, or crayfish) represent a major food source for humans across the globe. If these animals are sentient, the growing decapod production industry likely poses serious welfare concerns for these animals.
The Determinants of Adopting International Voluntary Certification Schemes for Farmed Fish and Shrimp in China and Thailand
Voluntary certification schemes (VCS) specify production standards and auditing processes. International VCSs are one of the few current governance tools to improve the welfare of farmed fishes and shrimps. Knowing to what degree farmers register with certification schemes and what influences their decisions may inform future uses of this animal welfare advocacy strategy. This shallow literature review addresses the determinants considered by exporting farmers in China and Thailand.
Does the trajectory of pain matter?
This report is a postscript to "The relative Importance of the severity and duration of pain,” and addresses whether the order of negative and positive experiences matter. For example, is pain worse if it occurs at the end of an individual’s life?
The relative importance of the severity and duration of pain
How should effective altruists decide whether to prioritize interventions that alleviate severe but relatively brief suffering or instead those that alleviate longer-lasting but less severe suffering? When one pain is longer-lasting but less intense than a second pain, the most straightforward way to compare how much disutility they cause is to multiply how much longer by how much less severe the first pain is than the second pain. This report investigates whether this mathematical approach is sufficient for making cause prioritization decisions, requires some amendments, or is fundamentally flawed.
How much do Europeans care about fish welfare? (An analysis of relevant surveys)
Animal advocates have achieved a lot of change for chickens. However, some advocates are concerned that the same approach could not be used to achieve similar changes for fish because people care about fish welfare much less than about chicken welfare. In this article I analyze whether this intuition holds up to scrutiny when it comes to Europe.
Estimates of global captive vertebrate numbers
In this article, I list all the estimates I could find for numbers of vertebrates that are farmed or kept in captivity for various purposes. I also describe some groups of captive vertebrates for which I found no estimates. For some bigger groups of animals that are less well-known amongst animal activists, I also describe trends and main welfare concerns.
Effective animal advocacy resources
This article contains a list of research organizations, newsletters, research libraries, personal blogs, conferences, podcasts, funds, notable written works and other links associated with Effective Animal Advocacy (EAA) movement. The list is biased because I only included resources that I know of.
35-150 billion fish are raised in captivity to be released into the wild every year
Fish stocking is the practice of raising fish in hatcheries and releasing them into rivers, lakes, or the ocean. 35-150 billion finfish are stocked every year. Fish are stocked to: increase the catch in commercial fisheries (probably tens of billions of stocked fish annually), increase the catch in recreational/sport fisheries (billions of stocked fish annually), and restore a population of threatened or endangered species (the number of stocked fish seems to be lower).