A lot of animal welfare work looks hopeless but plant-based meat and corporate campaigns have promise.
Animal Advocacy
Animal Advocacy Leafletting May or May Not Help
Animal Charity Evaluators find through a meta-analysis of six randomized control trials that leafletting is about as likely to increase recipient animal consumption as decrease it. The extended report is here. In short, aggregating the studies using a random effects model suggests that dairy, poultry and red meat (but not egg or fish) consumption are increased when leaflets are distributed. Similarly, leaflets appear to correspond to a decrease in people reporting lacto-vegetarian status.
This is a big claim so its worth doing some further individual checks on the studies showing the counterintuitive claim that leaflets increase meat eating:
- Humane League Labs: An excel spreadsheet with aggregated data can be downloaded, reviewed and matched with the claims in the paper. Both agree that pamphlets save 4.78 animals when provided to high-school students and 1.92 animals when provided to college students. The spreadsheet also provides the info that 5.47 animals were saved in the control. This anomaly (the control outperforming leaflets) is acknowledged in the paper's Post-Script as an anomaly (efficacy of leaflets was not the primary motivation of the paper).
- Animal Charity Evaluators: The Animal Charity Evaluator's study on leaflets finds that an overall pattern of reported reduction in meat consumption swamps any impact from distributing leaflets, similar to findings by Humane League Labs.
These papers appear to largely concur with the Animal Charity Evaluator's review of them so I think this meta-analysis basically infers what I would from just looking at the papers. However, they do raise an interesting question: Why does reported meat consumption systematically fall in control groups? Answering this question seems like it would be helpful in gauging effectiveness of leaflets.
In any case, the ineffectiveness of advocacy methods will reveal itself to be a trend.
The Impact of Animal Welfare Documentaries Seems Low
Three studies were developed to investigate the impact of the 20-minute documentary Good For Us, produced by the human league on meat and animal product consumption. In the first study, participants reported their consumption of categories of meat, animal products, plant foods and "decoy" foods (meant to obfuscate the purpose of the study) after viewing the documentary. In the second study, participants reported their expected dietary change over the next week immediately after watching the documentary (and viewed questions that indicated the purpose of the study). In the third study, information was collected similarly to study one except with more social pressure and requests for pledges. In summary:
| Study | Study Size | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Study 1 | 327, 322 (88% retention) | No difference in consumption ([-6.12, 5.46] oz/week 95% CI) |
| Study 2 | 148, 152 | Big difference in intent ([0.49, 1.02] 95% CI shift in Likert Scale | Study 3 | 333, 332 (33% Retention) | No difference in consumption ([-8.84, 5.41] oz/week 95% CI) |
In short, social desirability bias (the tendency for people to claim something falsely for social reasons) means that studies which measure claimed behavior/intent result in very different outcomes than studies that measure actual behavior. This can lead to potential mistakes where interventions like documentaries appear to matter because people say they do, but ultimately do not change behavior. Faunalytics discusses these points as well.
Temporary Pledges are Temporary
Meat reduction pledges work. That is, a group of people for pledge to do their best not to eat meat during a 28 day period will eat less meat during that period than a group without a pledge. However, one month after the study, the pledge group was consuming similar amounts of meat as the group without pledge. The study also appeared to impact everyone's (pledgers and non-pledgers) attitudes about meat but, in light of similar post-pledge-period behavior and social desirability bias, this may mean little.
These limitations are important to keep in mind as studies with titles like Students Eat Less Meat After Studying Meat Ethics are basing these meat reductions as lasting for "at least several weeks." While temporary impacts on behavior can be created by interventions, I am personally skeptical of their efficiency and robustness to re-application.
Technology has Limited Effectiveness
Lab Grown Meat is Overhyped
Lab-grown meat has occasionally been represented as the ultimate future of meat consumption. If lab-grown meat, at some point, becomes cheaper and more accessible than conventionally farmed meat, it will mostly replace the farming/mis-treatment of animals for food. However, Cultured meat predictions were overly optimistic: Techno-economic analysis of lab grown meat indicates that a large number of technological hurdles must be overcome for cost competitiveness and these are unlikely to be feasible.
Beyond this, lab grown meat mainly piques the interest of people who want to consume real meat but view it as unethical. However, this is only one reason why people currently go vegetarian/vegan. The primary reason is personal health, followed by environmental concerns and animal rights (which contribute similarly). The inherent unnaturalness and similarity to meat of lab-grown meat likely make health moot as a reason and the techno-economic analysis raises doubt about whether lab-grown meat would really be efficient.
Plant-Based Meat Appear Promising
While plant-based foods make it easier to go vegetarian or vegan, the bulk of people interested in these foods are neither. This makes sense as omnivores/meat-eaters can be concerned about personal health and the environment just like vegans are, and may take steps towards plant-based foods in consideration of that.
Given these motivations, plant-based foods hold a strong competitive advantage against potential future lab grown meat competitors. Plant-based foods, by virtue of being made of plants, will have a fundamental structural advantage over lab grown meat in terms of perceived health (which might be considered unnatural at worst or similarly unhealthy to farmed meat products at best). Furthermore, as long as plant-based foods are more efficient than lab grown meat (which will be straightforward, given economic difficulties associated with lab-grown meat), they will have an advantage from an environmental perspective.
My primary concern with plant-based foods centers around attempts to immitate meat. Insofar as plant-based foods are perceived as immitating meat rather than establishing their own unique niche, their existence will imply a higher/more-legitimate status for actual meat. In my opinion, the best plant-based foods are straightforwardly their own dishes, not trying to immitate other things.
Corporate Campaigns Seem Promising
Some estimates around corporate campaigns suggest that they are very cost-efficient at improving animal welfare. While I am not knowledgeable to gauge the numbers as meaningful, companies going cage-free clearly yields positive outcomes and commitments to such acts are probably more reliable than trying to cause individual diet change. Estimates of corporate campaign follow-through suggest that around 30-50% of corporations would follow through on a given commitment. Similarly legal limitation of use of some animals is promising for similar reasons: California and Washington banned the sale and production of eggs from caged hens.
The main charities that work on corporate campaigns are: The Humane League, Mercy for Animals, World Animal Protection, the Humane Society of the United States, Compassion in World Farming, Animal Equality, L214, and Albert Schweitzer Foundation.
What to Do About Things
Recommendations by Others
Brian Tomasik, a main proponent of wild animal welfare suggests the following animal related charities:
- Animal Ethics: Promotes outreach, research and education around the field of wild animal welfare. Brian Tomasik suggests this in part because it was one of the main charities he was aware of doing work for wild animals. Note that a more recent charity, Wild Animal Initiative may also worth consideration here but probably was not around when the list was written. I'm frankly skeptical of the value of academic research/outreach in improving animal welfare, since the core conceit is very conceptually simple.
- Animal Charity Evaluators: A meta charity focused on investigating effective charities for animal welfare, involved in some of the research around advocacy effectiveness discussed earlier. Their current top charities are Faunalytics (informing animal advocates), The Humane League (Movement Building, Veganuary) and Wild Animal Initiative (academic research). Note that animal advocates are not necessarily doing vegan outreach so this is not entirely off the mark.
- Humane Slaughter Association: An organization that supports research, training, and development to improve the welfare of livestock during transport and slaughter. This charity appeals to me because of their direct work with animal industries and tha tangible consequences of that work.
What I'm going to Do
Per the above, my donations are based around corporate campaigns and direct work with industry:
- The Human League ($2500)
- Compassion USA ($2500)
- Mercy for Animals ($2500)
- Humane Slaughter Association ($2500)