Neil Dullaghan

This Rethink Priorities report provides a shallow overview of the potential for impactful opportunities from institutional plant-based meal campaigns in the US, France, Germany, UK, Spain, and Italy based on reviewing existing research and speaking with organizations conducting such campaigns.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.