EU Food Agency Recommends Banning Cages

I think this is a really positive indication that builds on the many other positive indications we've had from the Commission that they will try push for an ambitious animal welfare reform, but I wouldn't want to overplay the EFSA opinion. It's harder to imagine a path to a cage-free transition in a world where EFSA came out against cage-free or was more muted in its support, but the fact that many EFSA opinions are ignored and watered down show that it is low down on the list of necessary but not sufficient factors.

The two Metaculus questions I set up on the cage-free reform have been pretty steady for a while now (and less optimistic than my median forecast), and I would be slightly surprised if they massively updated based on the EFSA opinion

Will the current European Commission make a proposal before the end of its term in November 2024 to phase out remaining hen cages? 

If the EU bans caged-housing for egg-laying hens, what date will be set as the phase out deadline?.

Just copy-pasting general comments I made on EFSA opinions from my long report on the EU farmed animal revision:

>"Most of the existing EU farmed animal welfare directives have been preceded by a report from an EU scientific committee (which proposes recommendations based on animal welfare considerations and often includes socio-economic impact assessments). There are certainly many cases of scientific reports that have not led to legislation (see the final section in the case studies), so although they may be necessary, they are not sufficient. My rough estimate is that four to six of the 22 to 59 reports since the 1980s on farmed animals that plausibly had species-specific welfare recommendations were used as the basis for legislation (depending on what you count as a relevant recommendation).  On average, when a report was produced and a law proposed by the Commission, then such a proposal came 32 months after the scientific report was completed, but this gap has been as quick as 2 months and as long as 63 months in past animal welfare directives. A baseline might be to expect that with the submission of a scientific report there is a 4%-27% chance it becomes a proposal in the short-term (within 5 years)."

There have been many instances where EFSA recommendations were ignored or severely  watered down. A relevant example being in March 2000, the EU scientific committee produced a report, “The Welfare of Chickens Kept for Meat Production (Broilers)”, and noted problems when densities exceeded 30kg/m2 [. . .] The Commission’s original May 2005 proposal hewed to the 2000 scientific report setting a maximum of 30kg/m2, with exceptional circumstances allowing a limit of 3kg/m2 if the cumulative daily mortality rate was  1%+ 0.06% *" . But the eventual  2007 compromise reached was 33kg/m2-39kg/m2 with a bonus up to 42kg/m2  if certain conditions were met. 

This is why I put a lot of attention of shaping the political landscape of the reform to increase the odds that any positive EFSA opinion turns into real results for animals.


 

I would encourage people who were involved in this to comment. My sense is that this was a huge effort by a bunch of different people, but I'd like to both better understand what happened here and celebrate people for their contributions.

The broiler reforms also seem pretty significant to me, so I probably wouldn't have singled out cages for egg-laying hens in the title. Also, my impression is that we haven't had much recorded progress with breed transitions for broilers (commitments, but not much actual follow-through), and this would force companies to transition, so this could be a bigger win for broilers than it is for egg-laying hens.

The reforms seem roughly in line with the Better Chicken Commitment, maybe somewhat faster growth rates (50g/day max vs 45-46, compared to 61 with conventional breeds): https://welfarefootprint.org/broilers/

I’ve been involved in animal welfare campaigns in Anima International Poland for many years and I need to say that it is amazing to see now EFSA’s report as sort of confirmation of our efforts. We published our first investigation from cage-eggs farm in 2014 and have been doing corporate outreach and policy  work since then. In recent years we also started working on improving the welfare of broiler chickens. My colleagues from Anima International Denmark have been running similar campaigns for an even longer time. Of course we’ve been just a part of huge EU-wide pressure created by organizations working nationally and internationally (Compassion in World Farming, Eurogroup For Animals and many others). It could be said that animal welfare groups in the EU campaigned and put a lot of public pressure to make EU institutions improve the welfare of farmed animals in Europe. 

Obviously EFSA’s report is independent scientific research. But I think it is reasonable to say that years of campaigning (especially about cage-eggs) created the circumstances in which the probability of EFSA working on this topic was much higher than without such campaigns. EFSA reports don’t necessarily lead to legislative changes. However, EFSA report appearing in the context of EU-wide campaigns for welfare improvements has in my opinion much bigger chances to influence the legislation. We should think of EFSA report as scientific and objective but still I think organizations in Europe should celebrate how their campaigns lead to this important change for the animals. Moreover, these reports are important tool for organizations to continue their campaigns and increase the chances of achieving the important goals.

From the point of view of farmed animals welfare organizations in EU and of Anima International, I can say that we wouldn’t be able to run such impactful campaigns without big support from Effective Altruism community, especially from Open Philanthropy and Farm Animal Funders. It is important to recognize here how their financial support brings another step toward real changes. 

One interesting question this raises for me: how does this impact the cost-effectiveness of corporate chicken welfare campaigns in the EU? Would this have been likely to happen without those campaigns? If so, then the counterfactual we were trying to beat was much better than we had anticipated, so the impact of corporate campaigns could be much lower.

On the other hand, if corporate campaigns were instrumental for this, then we should probably treat all of the work and impacts (corporate and regulatory) together in assessing cost-effectiveness.

This is awesome. Thanks for the post.
However, I'd really like to know more about how this (and the corresponding Brussels effect) could interact wit topics such as:

• ESG Financial disclosures regulations regarding animal welfare; 
• Countries' resistance in complying with EU agencies recommandations;
• Countries' internal laws and practices disregarding animal rights / welfare - e.g., Portugal's Supreme Court striking criminal laws regarding torturing animals.

Generally I think the EU is too regulatory. But this is a huge mark in their favour.