Effective animal advocacy movement building: a neglected opportunity?

This is a linkpost to a post I have written on the EA Forum. Below, I have copied over the summary. Click the link above for the full post.

Organisations such as the Centre for Effective Altruism and 80,000 Hours, as well as the individuals involved in local effective altruism (EA) groups, have conducted excellent work supporting aspiring EAs to do good. However, these organisations and many of the individuals involved in local EA groups focus predominantly on supporting work on reducing existential risk (x-risk), either directly or indirectly, especially extinction risk. The communities of other cause areas, such as the effective animal advocacy community (EAA, i.e. the intersection of effective altruism and animal advocacy) have comparably less access to movement-building services than do those in the EA community who prioritise reducing extinction risks. There is likely substantial unmet demand for movement building services in EAA.

EAA movement building projects are suggested that might meet this demand. Some of these projects may be best-suited to volunteers, some to new, targeted organisations, and some to existing EAA organisations. Some general considerations of the advantages and disadvantages that each of these has for taking up EAA movement building opportunities are listed.

Open Cages UK YouGov poll results

In March 2019, Open Cages UK ran a poll through YouGov as part of their #TescoTruth campaign. The poll had 2,049 respondents. The results may be directly useful for other UK advocates for informing campaign strategy and messaging decisions. They may be of interest more widely, but the questions may be too specific to be of much direct use to advocates in other countries.

Thanks to Connor Jackson and Open Cages for running the poll and sharing its results.

You can see the full results here.

In one question, “Generally speaking, which, if any, of the following are/would be important to you when purchasing meat from a supermarket?” participants could select as many options as they liked. Only 25% of respondents selected either “none of these” or “don’t know,” with between 44% and 60% of respondents selecting various included welfare considerations.

Only 30% selected the option “That the animal’s life was as long as possible,” which was substantially lower than the next lowest option. From a utilitarian perspective, if animals are suffering badly, as it seems likely that factory farmed broiler chickens are, then extending their life is morally undesirable. However, this point feels slightly counterintuitive and I would have expected the numbers of people selecting this option to be similar or higher than other options.

Three other questions were asked:

  • Only 19% agreed with the statement: “Supermarkets are honest about the welfare of the chickens they sell.” It is unclear whether this reflects a general distrust of supermarkets or distrust of supermarkets specifically on farmed animal issues. In either case, it suggests that anti-industry messaging may find a receptive audience in the UK.
  • 72% agreed with the statement: “When buying chicken, people should know if the chicken had a healthy life.”
  • 44% agreed with the statement: “Selective breeding is good as long as the animals have no health problems.”

I can’t see many consistent demographic trends. Female respondents were slightly more supportive of the various animal asks, which is unsurprising. I am more surprised that there is a lack of strong, consistent trends in comparisons between certain variables that I would have expected to show them, such as London and the South compared to other areas, or older participants compared to younger participants. I don’t place much weight on this, however, because the questions are not all structured in a way that makes the pro-animal position clear: agreeing with the second question shows support for both “selective breeding” and animals having “no health problems” and agreeing with the fourth question may reflect distrust of supermarkets and companies in general, rather than on the issue of chicken welfare specifically.

Effective animal advocacy community directory

Announcing the effective animal advocacy community directory!

This is a list of people who are interested in animal advocacy and effective altruism and would be happy for you to reach out to them to ask questions or arrange a 1-1. If you want to add yourself to this list you can fill out a form on the link in the top left.

The idea is to facilitate connections and networking. We recommend copying this sheet into your own drive to sort by particular columns (e.g. to find local advocates or sort by primary area of expertise/interest).

I hope you find it useful!

Directory: https://tinyurl.com/yxzq4tgk
Link to fill out info: https://forms.gle/ZeboW4h22aBHN6S88
Suggested questions to use when reaching out to someone through the EAA directory: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1w2MUkRKc3cNVh3cTqv-Ni7WIZjlJ3-0WrFHptJIbrc8/edit?usp=sharing

Note, there are other directories that have partially overlapping purposes (e.g. https://eahub.org and https://researchfund.animalcharityevaluators.org/collaboration-directory/) although I expect that this is still sufficiently different to justify the time input.

Note, I may take a week or so to update the directory with everyone who enters their info, so expect it to be much more filled one week or so after this post!