This report summarizes results from Rethink Priorities’ second annual gathering of animal advocates (held in July 2023). Highlights include advocates’ perceptions about how the field should allocate resources.

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.

Understanding the US public’s levels of support for radical actions such as banning slaughterhouses helps to inform animal advocates’ proposals and messaging. In contrast to previous surveys conducted by others, this report presents preregistered studies that cast doubt on the extent to which the public actually supports radical action against factory farming. The researchers suggest that polling responses to broad questions may not be reliable indicators of actual support for specific policies or messages. Instead, they recommend testing people's responses to more detailed messages and policy proposals, paying special attention to how radical messages compare to counterfactual moderate messages.

Is it worth the effective altruism (EA) community trying to accelerate the growth of cultured meat production? Should EA just let market forces move it forward? Should EA invest directly in cultured meat R&D or identify high-leverage ways to increase funding? Or should EA just not invest in it because it is insufficiently promising?

The story of how cultured meat becomes widespread involves overcoming many technical challenges. We review techno-ecomonic analyses (TEAs) of cultured meat, and evaluate their disagreements. The main cruxes of disagreement across the TEAs are: approach to the research question, investor payback timelines, food grade versus pharmaceutical grade bioreactors, the costs of media (growth factors and amino acids) at scale, and the limits of cell-engineering needed to reduce media consumption needs.

Of 273 predictions cultured meat predictions found, 84 have resolved - nine resolving correctly, and 75 resolving incorrectly. Additionally, another 40 predictions should resolve at the end of the year and look to be resolving incorrectly. Overall, the state of these predictions suggest very systematic overconfidence. Cultured meat seems to have been perpetually just a few years away since as early as 2010 and this track record plausibly should make us skeptical of future claims from producers that cultured meat is just a few years away.

A significant share of Americans are uncertain (24%-45% don’t know) about their attitudes toward insect farming. This suggests that consumers may be particularly responsive to information on insect farming and that these views are largely “up for grabs”. There may be a large first mover advantage to whomever first ends up informing consumers most clearly. More Americans oppose a ballot measure to ban insect feed for farmed animals (49%) than support it (29%). We did find high levels of support (52%-65%) for the idea that insects (honeybees, ants, termites) were capable of feeling pain.

The European Commission is planning to revise and expand the scope of European Union animal protection policies with new legislative proposals in late 2023, likely followed by another ~12-24 months of negotiations before being passed into law. The effective animal advocacy movement should attempt to have the most impact during the policy formation stage and to prioritise which countries need to be targeted to ensure proposals are not significantly weakened before passing into law. I’ve recently written two reports to contribute to strategic discussions, here and here. The two reports total more than 57,000 words. Below is an overview of the project, the main recommendations, and a summary of the main arguments.

Rethink Priorities conducted a survey to see how live shackle slaughter resonates with consumers to engender support for reforming this practice. We also tested whether controlled atmosphere systems are a popular alternative. We found that clear majorities of Americans (including among those who eat chicken) agree that live-shackle slaughter is inhumane and would switch brands to avoid live-shackle slaughter or pay more for meat produced using controlled atmosphere systems instead.

The European Union may be an arena where there are promising opportunities to improve farmed animal welfare through legislation due to historic legal precedents, high public concern for farmed animals, a professional animal protection movement, and new momentum for legislation. Pushing for higher minimum farmed animal welfare standards in law has brought many victories in Europe, but laws are only as good as their implementation. As the animal welfare movement continues to push for higher legal standards for a wider range of farmed animals, one should also pay attention to whether these standards are being practiced in reality. In this report by Rethink Priorities, we focus on the European Union as an example of legislative protection of farmed animal welfare and detail the mechanisms by which compliance is sought.

As part of Rethink Priorities' research into European Union farmed animal welfare policy, here we sketch out some points we think are important to consider when assessing whether EU law is an important arena to work on for improving the lives of farmed animals. This is an entry in a series by Rethink Priorities that will examine how EU animal welfare laws are made and enforced, the type of laws that are most successful, and the impact of EU standards abroad via trade policies. This work may help inform the funding strategies of those concerned with EU level animal welfare legislation, the lobbying and advocacy activity of groups directly involved in the EU, and policy makers interested in designing EU laws most likely to be complied with.

There are many ways of measuring engagement in EA, from membership of various groups to a range of actions such as donating to or working on an EA cause area. Self-reportedly highly engaged EAs tend to participate in a wide variety of activities and be members of multiple EA groups (e.g., local group, EA Facebook, EA Forum, GWWC). The most common activities that EAs engaged in were donating (81% of EAs), reading an EA book (64%), and changing careers based on EA principles (51%). A narrower slice of EAs previously worked at an EA organization (13%), posted on the EA Forum (13%), received 80,000 Hours career coaching (12%), or currently work at an EA organization (10%) . Self-reported engagement seems to be well correlated with activities undertaken and lower levels of engagement were related to nonmembership of EA groups (local group, EA Facebook, EA Forum, GWWC).

EAs in the survey reported total donations of $16.1M USD in 2018. The median annual donation in 2018 was $683.92. The median annual donation in 2018, excluding those who joined EA in 2019 was $990. This is higher than the median annual donation in 2017 of $832, excluding those who joined EA in 2018. 1.3% of donors accounted for 57% of donations.

74% of EAs in the survey currently live in the same set of 5 high-income English-speaking western countries as in 2018. The share of EAs living outside of the USA and Europe is slightly larger (4%) than in 2018 and larger among newer EAs than veteran EAs. 40% of EAs live in cities with fewer than 10 other fellow EAs. While Global Poverty is a high priority cause area for EAs around the world, EAs in the USA appear to prioritize Cause Prioritization less than their peers elsewhere and EAs outside the USA and Europe appear to prioritize Climate Change more. When pressed to choose only one of the traditional broad cause areas of EA (Global Poverty, Animal Welfare, Meta, Long Term Future, Other) the Long Term Future/Catastrophic and Existential Risk Reduction is the most popular among EAs in the USA and Europe. EAs living outside of the USA and Europe reported the largest shares of non-engaged or only mildly engaged EAs, possibly stemming from their obstacles to participating in “high engagement activities”.

The most popular career paths that effective altruists in the survey (EAs) plan to follow are in earning to give roles (38%) and working at EA organizations (37%). 50% of EAs have only one planned broad career path. Two of the top four significant barriers to becoming more involved in EA were not enough job opportunities that seemed like a good fit for me (29%) and too hard to get an EA job (23%). 462 (38%) EAs have at least 3 years work or graduate experience in the most popular skills highlighted as important talent needs for EA in a recent 80, 000 Hours/CEA survey of EA leaders. 1,014 (58%) EAs want to become more involved in the community by pursuing a career in an EA-aligned cause area.

Global Poverty remains the most popular single cause in our sample as a whole. When pressed to choose only one of the traditional broad cause areas of EA (Global Poverty, Animal Welfare, Meta, Long Term Future, Other) the Long Term Future/Catastrophic and Existential Risk Reduction is the most popular (41%). 42% of EAs have changed their cause area focus since they joined the movement. A majority (57%) of those who changed cause moved away from Global Poverty, and a majority (54%) moved towards the Long Term Future/Catastrophic and Existential Risk Reduction.

This is the first in a series analysing the results of the 2019 EA Survey. We collected 2,513 valid responses from EAs in the survey. EAs in this year’s survey look demographically much like those in past years. A majority are between the ages of 25-34. 71% reported their gender as male. 87% reported that they identify as white. 86% reported being agnostic/atheist/non-religious. 46% reported being vegan or vegetarian. 72% affiliated with the Left or Center Left politically. Over 90% have attained or are in the process of completing a post-secondary degree. 20% have attended one of the top 20 universities in the world for their undergraduate studies.

We surveyed 176 local EA groups, from over 40 different countries, including 66 student groups, 78 city groups and 21 national groups. The number of local groups has rapidly grown, but has begun to plateau. The majority of groups are relatively new, with the median age being 3 years and 43.15% of groups founded in the last 2 years. Local groups are disproportionately made up of students relative to the EA community as a whole, with even city groups being on average 40% students. Overall, 14,392 people engaged with local groups in 2019, 2,124 people regularly attended EA groups’ events, and 1,498 members were reported to be highly engaged with the EA community.

In this essay, we discuss the opportunities that deliberative reforms offer for improving institutional decision-making. We begin by describing deliberation and its links to democratic theory, and then sketch out examples of deliberative designs. Following this, we explore the evidence that deliberation can engender fact-based reasoning, opinion change, and under certain conditions can motivate longterm thinking. So far, most deliberative initiatives have not been invested with a direct role in the decision-making process and so the majority of policy effects we see are indirect. Providing deliberative bodies with a binding and direct role in decision-making could improve this state of affairs. We end by highlighting some limitations and areas of uncertainty before noting who is already working in this area and avenues for further research.

RC Forward moved $4.4M CAD (~ $3.3M USD) from Canadian donors. $430K to $3.7M of donations may have been counterfactually caused by RC Forward. RC Forward appears to have increased donations by 11% to 500%, with a best guess of 25% to 35% Donating to RC Forward seems between 3 to 55 times more effective than donating funds directly to the EA charities which RC Forward regrants to.