This issue is moderately neglected. Current spending is likely between $100 million and $10 billion per year, depending on how you count commercial investments in animal product alternatives.
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There are likely well over 100 billion animals living in factory farms at present.1 Most experience extreme levels of suffering over the course of their lives due to intense confinement and the removal of body parts. The meat industry is also one of the largest contributors to climate change, with about 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
- View Highlight
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Note that despite decades of advocacy, the percentage of vegetarians and vegans in the United States has not increased much (if at all), suggesting that individual dietary change is hard and is likely less useful than more institutional tactics.
- View Highlight
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You might expect any long-run benefits of improving animal advocacy to be significantly smaller than long-run benefits of improving the welfare of humans, because increasing the wellbeing of humans lets them contribute more to the economic development of their society. Read more on this argument.
- View Highlight
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(highlight:: What kinds of solutions might contribute to solving this problem?
• Social advocacy to reduce meat consumption, create better conditions in factory farms, or support the development and marketing of animal product alternatives. This can be done through a variety of tactics, including corporate campaigns, lobbying, litigation, and investigations that expose and publicise cruelty to animals in factory farms.
• Developing plant-based, fermented, or cultivated alternatives to animal-based foods.
• Capacity-building, such as recruitment, training, or research to determine the most effective advocacy methods.)
- View Highlight
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Effective animal advocacy nonprofits report that most struggle to hire high-quality candidates for leadership, fundraising, and lobbying roles. Other research confirms the need for more strong candidates for leadership and fundraising roles and suggests that a number of other roles can also be difficult to fill, such as IT roles. If you’re an especially good fit, other roles could also be promising, such as in marketing or research.
- View Highlight
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People with high earning potential can donate to animal advocacy work. Effective animal advocacy nonprofits report that a lack of funding is their most important bottleneck. For example, Jon Bockman of Animal Charity Evaluators told us that animal advocacy nonprofits have lots of enthusiastic volunteers, but not enough funds to hire them — meaning that funding is the greater bottleneck in this problem area (unless you have the potential to be a leader and innovator in the movement). This means the problem is unusually funding-constrained.
- View Highlight
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Entrepreneurs, engineers, and researchers are needed to work on developing and marketing meat substitutes.3
- View Highlight
-

• Work at effective animal advocacy nonprofits or the capacity-building nonprofits that support their work (such as Animal Charity Evaluators.
• Take a high-earning job, and donate to the charities recommended by Animal Charity Evaluators or to EA Funds’ Animal Welfare Fund.
• Work at companies developing plant-based, fermented, or cultivated alternatives to animal-based foods. Possible role types include marketing, operations, engineering, business development, technical product-focused research, and software development.
• Pursue a career in politics or policy to encourage change from the inside, or build career capital that you can later apply to lobbying roles.
• Conduct academic research relevant to animal product alternatives or animal advocacy strategy.
• If you have a public platform (e.g. as an academic, journalist, or politician), promote and advocate for reduced meat consumption and improved conditions of factory farms.
• Volunteer for organisations working on the problem.
• Become vegetarian or vegan, and promote animal advocacy, veganism, or reducing meat consumption to your friends and colleagues.
• See many more suggestions in our interview with Lewis Bollard, as well as in this blog post (which is organised by different backgrounds and skills).)
- View Highlight
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(highlight:: • Podcast: Ending factory farming as soon as possible with Lewis Bollard
• Podcast: Going undercover to expose animal cruelty, get rabbit cages banned and reduce meat consumption with Sharon Nunez and Jose Valle
• Other effective animal advocacy resources from Rethink Priorities
• Podcast: Bruce Friedrich makes the case that inventing outstanding meat replacements is the most effective way to help animals
• Podcast: How exactly clean meat is created & the advances needed to get it into every supermarket, according to food scientist Marie Gibbons
• Why Farmed Animals? by Animal Charity Evaluators, which explains the number of animals vs amount of donations
• How to make an impact in animal advocacy, which discusses Charity Entrepreneurship’s survey results from 30 leaders and researchers in the animal advocacy movement)
- View Highlight
-

This issue is moderately neglected. Current spending is likely between $100 million and $10 billion per year, depending on how you count commercial investments in animal product alternatives.
- View Highlight
-

There are likely well over 100 billion animals living in factory farms at present.1 Most experience extreme levels of suffering over the course of their lives due to intense confinement and the removal of body parts. The meat industry is also one of the largest contributors to climate change, with about 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
- View Highlight
-

Note that despite decades of advocacy, the percentage of vegetarians and vegans in the United States has not increased much (if at all), suggesting that individual dietary change is hard and is likely less useful than more institutional tactics.
- View Highlight
-

You might expect any long-run benefits of improving animal advocacy to be significantly smaller than long-run benefits of improving the welfare of humans, because increasing the wellbeing of humans lets them contribute more to the economic development of their society. Read more on this argument.
- View Highlight
-

(highlight:: What kinds of solutions might contribute to solving this problem?
• Social advocacy to reduce meat consumption, create better conditions in factory farms, or support the development and marketing of animal product alternatives. This can be done through a variety of tactics, including corporate campaigns, lobbying, litigation, and investigations that expose and publicise cruelty to animals in factory farms.
• Developing plant-based, fermented, or cultivated alternatives to animal-based foods.
• Capacity-building, such as recruitment, training, or research to determine the most effective advocacy methods.)
- View Highlight
-

Effective animal advocacy nonprofits report that most struggle to hire high-quality candidates for leadership, fundraising, and lobbying roles. Other research confirms the need for more strong candidates for leadership and fundraising roles and suggests that a number of other roles can also be difficult to fill, such as IT roles. If you’re an especially good fit, other roles could also be promising, such as in marketing or research.
- View Highlight
-

People with high earning potential can donate to animal advocacy work. Effective animal advocacy nonprofits report that a lack of funding is their most important bottleneck. For example, Jon Bockman of Animal Charity Evaluators told us that animal advocacy nonprofits have lots of enthusiastic volunteers, but not enough funds to hire them — meaning that funding is the greater bottleneck in this problem area (unless you have the potential to be a leader and innovator in the movement). This means the problem is unusually funding-constrained.
- View Highlight
-

Entrepreneurs, engineers, and researchers are needed to work on developing and marketing meat substitutes.3
- View Highlight
-

• Work at effective animal advocacy nonprofits or the capacity-building nonprofits that support their work (such as Animal Charity Evaluators.
• Take a high-earning job, and donate to the charities recommended by Animal Charity Evaluators or to EA Funds’ Animal Welfare Fund.
• Work at companies developing plant-based, fermented, or cultivated alternatives to animal-based foods. Possible role types include marketing, operations, engineering, business development, technical product-focused research, and software development.
• Pursue a career in politics or policy to encourage change from the inside, or build career capital that you can later apply to lobbying roles.
• Conduct academic research relevant to animal product alternatives or animal advocacy strategy.
• If you have a public platform (e.g. as an academic, journalist, or politician), promote and advocate for reduced meat consumption and improved conditions of factory farms.
• Volunteer for organisations working on the problem.
• Become vegetarian or vegan, and promote animal advocacy, veganism, or reducing meat consumption to your friends and colleagues.
• See many more suggestions in our interview with Lewis Bollard, as well as in this blog post (which is organised by different backgrounds and skills).)
- View Highlight
-

(highlight:: • Podcast: Ending factory farming as soon as possible with Lewis Bollard
• Podcast: Going undercover to expose animal cruelty, get rabbit cages banned and reduce meat consumption with Sharon Nunez and Jose Valle
• Other effective animal advocacy resources from Rethink Priorities
• Podcast: Bruce Friedrich makes the case that inventing outstanding meat replacements is the most effective way to help animals
• Podcast: How exactly clean meat is created & the advances needed to get it into every supermarket, according to food scientist Marie Gibbons
• Why Farmed Animals? by Animal Charity Evaluators, which explains the number of animals vs amount of donations
• How to make an impact in animal advocacy, which discusses Charity Entrepreneurship’s survey results from 30 leaders and researchers in the animal advocacy movement)
- View Highlight
-