Replacing chicken meat with beef or pork is better than the reverse

By Vasco Grilo🔸 @ 2024-12-04T17:38 (+48)

This is a linkpost to https://www.onestepforanimals.org/blog/replacing-chicken-meat-with-beef-or-pork-is-better-than-the-reverse

This is a crosspost for Replacing chicken meat with beef or pork is better than the reverse, which was written by me, and published on One Step for Animals' blog on 27 November 2024. One Step for Animals is an organisation aiming to cost-effectively decrease animal suffering by asking people to stop eating chickens.

The views expressed here are my own, not those of my employers. Thanks to Matt Ball for inviting me to write something on the trade-offs between animal welfare and greenhouse gas emissions of replacing chicken meat, and feedback on the draft.

Replacing beef or pork with chicken meat decreases greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but has major negative impacts on animal welfare. I estimate that replacing one serving of:

I calculated the above increases in the time animals spend in pain due to replacing beef or pork based on data from the Welfare Footprint Project (WFP) for broilers. I guess my assumptions underestimate the badness of replacing beef or pork. I assumed cows’ conditions are as bad as those of broilers in a reformed scenario, and pigs’ conditions are as bad as those of broilers in a conventional scenario. I think cows and pigs usually have better conditions, such that I overestimated the time they spend in pain, and therefore underestimated the increase in pain linked to replacing beef or pork.

Here is how WFP defines:

The decreases in GHG emissions due to replacing one serving of beef and pork are 0.0961 % and 0.00316 % of the GHG emissions per capita in 2023. Do you feel like decreasing your annual GHG emissions by these justifies tens of hours more of annoying pain, tens of hours more of hurtful pain, a few hours more of disabling pain, and a few seconds more of excruciating pain? I do not. Consider whether you would accept such trade-offs if it were your or others’ pets experiencing the additional pain.

There has been some research on how GHG emissions increase mortality from non-optimal temperature. Bressler (2021) calculated that 4.43 kt of additional CO2eq in 2020 would cause one extra human death in total from 2020 to 2100. Based on this, I estimate that 1 kg of CO2eq results in a total loss of 2.43 min of healthy life across all humans and years, or 0.186 ns per person-year (1 ns is 10^-9 s). Consequently, replacing one serving of beef and pork decreases total healthy human life by 15.6 min (beef) and 0.513 min (pork), or 1.20 ns and 0.0394 ns per person-year. Note the negative effects of the additional CO2eq are negligible until 2055 (see Fig. 3 of Bressler (2021)), so they are not only infinitesimal on a person-year basis, but also very uncertain given the difficulty of predicting now what will happen after 2055.

Do you feel like the above negative effects, a few minutes of healthy life lost in total spread across billions of humans over roughly a century, which is not more than a few billionths of one second per person-year, justify one sentient individual experiencing tens of hours more of annoying pain, tens of hours more of hurtful pain, a few hours more of disabling pain, and a few seconds more of excruciating pain? I do not.

Maybe replacing chicken meat with beef or pork could be harmful to wild animals because they require much more land? I agree decreasing the number of wild animals would be bad if their lives were worth living, but no one really knows whether this is the case or not. There is room for lots of suffering due to thirst, starvation, predation, disease and parasitism.

I believe the major drawback of replacing chicken meat with beef or pork is that these may well be worse for your health.

You can always replace chicken meat with legumes to improve your health, save money, or if you are very concerned about GHG emissions (I am not). I have been following a plant-based diet for 5 years. However, know that replacing chicken meat with beef or pork significantly decreases suffering.

core_admiral @ 2024-12-08T02:11 (+13)

I am not a medical doctor and this is not medical advice but one nice thing about this swap is that you replace chicken with beef without really any nutrient deficiency concerns. K2 is the only thing commonly mentioned to be higher in chicken than beef, and

This isn't to count against anyone striving to eliminate all meat, of course, but in terms of recommendations we could - on my view - push harder on the PR for replacing chicken without having to worry about nutrient deficiencies.

  1. ^

    One paper reports "MK-4" and the other "K2" but note that MK-4 is one type of K2 and it seems here that it's the only form present in either meat so that doesn't explain the discrepancy.

  2. ^

    I only take 1 drop; 1000iu is technically over the RDA for vitamin D (though safely below the generally accepted tolerable upper limit of 4000iu and you might have good reason to take more; I personally get some outside of this supplement as well) and K2 doesn't technically have an RDA (the RDAs are based on K1) but I find 100mcg on top of the rest of my diet to intuitively be fine. 

Vasco Grilo🔸 @ 2024-12-08T10:57 (+2)

Thanks for the comment! I have added the following to the post, before the last paragraph:

The supposed health benefits of replacing red with white meat are also questionable.

@core_admiral , I follow these recommendations on supplementation.

Vasco Grilo🔸 @ 2024-12-08T17:35 (+2)

The supposed health benefits of replacing red with white meat are also questionable.

I have looked more into this, and now believe than chicken meat is healthier than red meat. So I updated the last 2 paragraphs of the post to:

I believe the major drawback of replacing chicken meat with beef or pork is that these may well be worse for your health.

You can always replace chicken meat with legumes to improve your health, save money, or if you are very concerned about GHG emissions (I am not). I have been following a plant-based diet for 5 years. However, know that replacing chicken meat with beef or pork significantly decreases suffering.

I strongly updated your comment now because it prompted me to look into the health aspect of the replacement, which I think is important, and was previously missing from the post.

huw @ 2024-12-05T02:03 (+6)

I went through your estimates, and I actually found it more persuasive that buying broilers from a reformed scenario seems to get you both a reduction in pain and a more climate-positive outcome. I feel like the title and tone of the post set up an artificial tension between caring about animals and caring about the climate (under the constraint that you still want to eat meat)! Am I misinterpreting you?

Robi Rahman @ 2024-12-05T03:42 (+4)

I actually found it more persuasive that buying broilers from a reformed scenario seems to get you both a reduction in pain and a more climate-positive outcome

How did you conclude that? How are the broilers reformed to not be painful?

huw @ 2024-12-05T04:28 (+4)

I am not very familiar with the terminology, but from context clues such as:

I assumed cows’ conditions are as bad as those of broilers in a reformed scenario

That ‘conventional scenario’ is referring to conditions a la most factory farming, and ‘reformed scenario’ is referring to more humane conditions, including free range. But there’s a good chance I just misinterpreted this?

Regardless, whatever you think the reformed scenario is, it sure seems like it would be advantageous to switch your chicken consumption to it!

Vasco Grilo🔸 @ 2024-12-05T11:32 (+4)

Thanks for the discussion!

I actually found it more persuasive that buying broilers from a reformed scenario seems to get you both a reduction in pain and a more climate-positive outcome.

There is a reduction in pain due to replacing chicken meat from broilers in a conventional scenario with that from a reformed scenario. However, replacing chicken meat from broilers in a reformed scenario with beef or pork still reduces annoying pain by tens of hours, hurtful pain by tens of hours, disabling pain by around 1 hour, and excruciating pain by tenths of seconds. I have now added numbers for these reductions in the sheet, which I got from the numbers below I already had in the sheet for the time in pain by animal.

That ‘conventional scenario’ is referring to conditions a la most factory farming, and ‘reformed scenario’ is referring to more humane conditions, including free range. But there’s a good chance I just misinterpreted this?

Both scenarios involve factory-farming. The conventional scenario respects a faster growth rate, 60 g/d in the United States (US) and 62 g/d in the European Union (EU). The reformed scenario respects a slower growth rate, 45 to 46 g/d.

However, I estimate the welfare per chicken-year of the reformed scenario is 92.9 % larger than that of the conventional scenario, accounting for both pain and pleasure, and adjusting WFP's time in pain[1] (for my post on replacing chicken meat by beef or pork, I did not adjust WFP's time in pain). That is quite close to 100 %, which would imply neutral lives in the reformed scenario. So, given uncertainty, it might be that replacing beef or pork with chicken meat from broilers in a reformed scenario increases animal welfare besides decreasing GHG emissions.

The vast majority of chicken meat comes from broilers in a conventional scenario, so replacing chicken meat with beef or pork is still better than the reverse. Yet, I would say at least chickens’ lives can become positive over the next few decades in some animal-friendly countries. In this case, I think replacing beef or pork by chicken meat would be beneficial.

huw @ 2024-12-05T21:56 (+4)

Thank you—this is a great clarification! Appreciate your work!

Arturo Macias @ 2024-12-05T09:50 (+4)

I think that the real divide is CAFO (Concentrated Animal Farming Operation) species vs non-CAFO. Runminants (sheep and beef) are at least partially fed on pastures, so they do not live in permanently overcrowded farms, with high agression and stress. 

Between the two main CAFO species (chicken and pork) I have not strong opinions: given neuron counts and brain weigth, I think pigs are more morally valuable than chicken, while chicken live worse lives: hard to decide. 

While I find vegetarianism utopic, in my view, CAFOs can be overcame (see  here).

Vasco Grilo🔸 @ 2024-12-05T12:58 (+2)

Thanks for the comment, Arturo.

I think that the real divide is CAFO (Concentrated Animal Farming Operation) species vs non-CAFO. Runminants (sheep and beef) are at least partially fed on pastures, so they do not live in permanently overcrowded farms, with high agression and stress.

Total welfare is the product between population and welfare per animal-year. The conditions determine the welfare per animal-year, but the population is inversely proportional to the edible meat per animal-year. Chickens grow slower than cows and pigs, so more chickens are needed than cows or pigs to produce a given amount of edible meat. Consequently, holding conditions constant, assuming negative lives, it is still good to replace chicken meat by beef or pork. Assuming positive lives, the opposite would be true.

Between the two main CAFO species (chicken and pork) I have not strong opinions: given neuron counts and brain weigth, I think pigs are more morally valuable than chicken, while chicken live worse lives: hard to decide.

There are more farmed fish and shrimp than pigs.

Rethink Priorities' median welfare range of pigs is only 1.55 (= 0.515/0.332) times that of chickens. You may be interested in the post Why Neuron Counts Shouldn't Be Used as Proxies for Moral Weight.

While I find vegetarianism utopic, in my view, CAFOs can be overcame (see  here).

You may like How to Be a Techno-Optimist for Animals.

Arturo Macias @ 2024-12-05T16:06 (+3)

I have read both the RP and the post against neuron counts, and I find them unconvincing. Let's take this: "There are studies that show increased volume of brain regions correlated with valanced experience, such as a study showing that cortical thickness in a particular region increased along with pain sensitivity".

There is no way to know what is related to "pain sensitivity", because all we know about consciousness comes from extrapolation. The only valanced experience you can observe is your own. Even if you find that a given part of the brain is related to pain, what matters most is not the size of that part of the brain but if there is a self to feel the pain.

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/3nLDxEhJwqBEtgwJc/arthropod-non-sentience

There are not "royal paths" to understand consciousness. There is a "pretty hard problem of consciousness" between you and any exercise of consciousness attribution and no checklist nor neural similarity will easily bridge that gap. 

jackva @ 2024-12-04T19:14 (+4)

Great piece!

You can always replace chicken meat with plant-based foods for health reasons, or if you are very concerned about GHG emissions. I am not

I think signaling that you don't think GHG emissions are important does not help your message here / makes this less convincing that it would otherwise be!

Vasco Grilo🔸 @ 2024-12-04T19:36 (+2)

Thanks, Johannes!

I think signaling that you don't think GHG emissions are important does not help your message here / makes this less convincing that it would otherwise be!

You may well be right. I tend to think it is good to be honest about one's views if readers would want to know them, even if they make the piece less persuasive in some sense. Some readers worried about climate change may also find it interesting that deaths from non-optimal temperature are predicted to decrease in the North for something close to the median global warming scenario[1], which contrasts with claims that the impacts of global warming is increasingly large even there.

  1. ^

    This is not to say that global warming is beneficial. Deaths from non-optimal temperature might decrease more with less warming.

Richie @ 2024-12-06T20:05 (+3)

I would note that if you find this analysis convincing but weight negative climate effects more than Vasco does, it really is cows that have the hugely negative climate impact; other animals have dramatically lower carbon footprints. So you might consider eating pork as a middle ground between animal welfare and climate.

That said, in many countries like the UK, most pigs have very low welfare in factory farms and most cows are always outside on pasture so probably have non-hellish lives. In the UK the trade-off between suffering and climate impact when it comes to meat choice is mostly inescapable. Organic pork I believe is raised outside but is less than 1% of the market so you may not be able to find it.

In other countries, cows are often kept indoors their whole lives. Though that is terrible, it does mean that ditching beef becomes a no brainer if you simultaniously care about climate and suffering. In those cases, the least of all evils would be pork, but know that there's still quite a bit of suffering going on.

SummaryBot @ 2024-12-04T22:26 (+3)

Executive summary: Replacing chicken meat with beef/pork significantly reduces animal suffering, and the greenhouse gas emission benefits of doing the reverse don't justify the additional animal pain caused.

Key points:

  1. Replacing beef/pork with chicken reduces emissions but causes 27+ hours of additional animal pain per serving, including several hours of severe "disabling pain"
  2. The climate benefits are small: replacing beef saves 0.0961% of per capita emissions, while replacing pork saves 0.00316%
  3. The climate impact on human health is minimal - about 15.6 minutes of total healthy life lost across all humans for beef replacement
  4. While beef/pork require more land which could affect wild animals, it's uncertain whether wild animal lives are net positive given natural suffering
  5. The author recommends either adopting a plant-based diet or, if reducing meat is difficult, replacing chicken with beef/pork to minimize suffering

 

 

This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.

Miquel Banchs-Piqué (prev. mikbp) @ 2024-12-12T11:01 (+1)

I am sorry but I really don't like and don't find useful at all these kind of posts. Besides, I thought the aim of this forum is giving information, not advocating. Although this post provides some very good calculations and information, it misses the key point --it is 100% value-dependent-- and the post is plain advocacy. I'm not against the bottom line, I'm really not decided in this topic (though I tend to lean to the contrary position), but it is really uncomfortable (? probably not the word I'm searching for) to see this here.

"Replacing chicken meat with beef or pork is better than the reverse". Well, as said above, this is so if one holds your values or similar ones all else equal. You don't say how much pain would you agree to exchange for how much CO2. I find it totally understandable, I don't think anyone can give a good answer for their thresholds --I certainly don't have one for mine-- but this makes the whole post bullshit. "I think this, here are some not complete calculations that I say support thinking this, but if the calculations were different I state no reason to make anyone think I would stop thinking this. Don't you think that these calculations support this?"

You are not sure whether wild animal's lives are worth living, so you don't account for land. Well, it is alright, but it is again a values thing. In addition, we actually do know that the diversity and size of natural ecosystems are important not only for the "natural" world, also for us humans, so it should be accounted for. Health effects are mentioned, great. But not quantified and compared as well.

Making numbers can be useful to get the sense of problems, but reaching a conclusion through numbers is only possible if one is able to make all the numbers needed with enough accuracy. It is no problem to give rough estimates, of course, but they carry large errors and errors compound, so pretty soon conclusions cannot be based solely on making numbers over rough estimates. In addition, rough estimates are usually values-based, so why not just state the values? One can very well argue "this rough estimate seems to me larger than this other rough estimate and so on, and based on my values, then, this conclusion follows". Calculations can aid such comparisons. But your argumentation is not like this at all.

Compare the paragraph "Do you feel like the above negative effects (...) justify (...)? I do not" to "Based on my values the results of these quick calculations do not seem to justify (...)". It reads very different. And subsequently you give additional information relevant for whether or not the thing is justified! How can anyone decide if something is justified before having all the relevant information?

This post seems like just a rationalisation of your values. So, better plainly state what you feel, give arguments and uncertainties, maybe support some of those arguments with some calculations, but do not focus on calculations and, particularly, do not pretend that the solution follows from those calculations. And, please, acknowledge that this is a values thing. You have yours, I have mine, and everybody has theirs.

I don't have any intention to be harsh with you or this post --sorry if I've been too direct, I already spent way too much time writing to polish the text. I just tried to be comprehensive because these issues are quite common in this forum, and I really think they are harmful. Seeing the reality is the first step needed to be able to change it and numbers can put a scientific and objective gloss on things that are completely or mostly values-led. Let's avoid it or/and be clear with what we do!

[Edit: And please, for those of you who don't agree with the comment, spell out your disagreement instead of downvoting to hide it. A couple of sentences suffice.]

Vasco Grilo🔸 @ 2024-12-16T21:33 (+2)

Thanks for the comment, Miquel.

Although this post provides some very good calculations and information, it misses the key point --it is 100% value-dependent-- and the post is plain advocacy.

I think most people would prefer decreasing human healthy life by a few minutes across billions of humans over roughly a century over soon causing to one pet tens of hours more of annoying pain, tens of hours more of hurtful pain, a few hours more of disabling pain, and a few seconds more of excruciating pain.

Compare the paragraph "Do you feel like the above negative effects (...) justify (...)? I do not" to "Based on my values the results of these quick calculations do not seem to justify (...)". It reads very different.

I understand you think I am overconfident about my views, but I want the post to represent these, and I worry the updates you suggested would made it sound like I am less confident than what I actually am.

Miquel Banchs-Piqué (prev. mikbp) @ 2024-12-19T19:40 (+3)

I didn't want to go beyond commenting the form --how the post is presented. But as you answered, I'd like to ask you something about the content as well:

I'm so confused on why you wrote the post given the preferences you believe people (EAs?) have and that you are (almost?) vegetarian/vegan. Making the change you propose decreases a bit animal pain... while decreasing the amount of meat one eats decreases it much more. 

Vasco Grilo🔸 @ 2024-12-20T08:18 (+2)

I'm so confused on why you wrote the post given the preferences you believe people (EAs?) have and that you are (almost?) vegetarian/vegan.

I published the original post for One Step for Animals, which targets a general audience (not aligned with effective altruism) that may well find decreasing meat consumption harder than replacing chicken meat with beef or pork (without changing meat consumption much).

Making the change you propose decreases a bit animal pain... while decreasing the amount of meat one eats decreases it much more.

Replacing chicken meat with plant-based foods only decreases pain slightly more than replacing it with beef or pork.

Miquel Banchs-Piqué (prev. mikbp) @ 2024-12-19T19:20 (+1)

Hi Vasco, thanks for the answer and the upvote (I guess it was you).

I think most people would prefer decreasing human healthy life by a few minutes across billions of humans over roughly a century over soon causing to one pet tens of hours more of annoying pain, tens of hours more of hurtful pain, a few hours more of disabling pain, and a few seconds more of excruciating pain.

I first want to say that I imagine you just answered fast and without giving it much thought, so I don't expect this to really reflect your believes. Even so I have to reply what is written.

  1. Maybe it is true that most people would prefer this. It still would be a values-dependent issue.
  2. Even if it would be true that most people feel like this, you cannot pretend that most people feel the same way about a pet than about a random animal, less so about what they regard as food. I mean, take a look around! I hope I don't need to expand on this. We are not speaking about how we think people should feel but how they actually feel.
  3. There are more aspects to the issue besides animal suffering vs (human health issues due to) GHG emissions, and people vary on their values related to these issues. The numbers you do in your post are partial and you don't give any reasoning on why you presumably think that the other aspects of the issue are less relevant and therefore you don't bother to quantify/compare them. 

Maybe you are addressing exclusively EAs. Then, of course, your assertion on people's preferences is much more accurate. Still, 100% values-dependent and with more relevant aspects besides pain and emissions.

 

I understand you think I am overconfident about my views, but I want the post to represent these, and I worry the updates you suggested would made it sound like I am less confident than what I actually am.

It is not an issue about expressed confidence but about not acknowledging that your conclusions are values-dependent. For example, "given my values I am 100% confident that (...), plus I believe that most people (in EA) have similar enough values to mine so that these conclusions apply 100% to them too" expresses total confidence in your views while acknowledges that your conclusions are not universal but values-dependent, so it reflects reality more accurately.

In this line, it is very good that at the end of your post you acknowledge the possible health issues and give people worried about this the option to go in the direction to vegan/vegetarian. Note that this is a veiled acknowledgement that more aspects can play a significant role in your conclusions and that these depend on one's values. Let's make it explicit!

Vasco Grilo🔸 @ 2024-12-20T08:35 (+2)

Hi Vasco, thanks for the answer and the upvote (I guess it was you).

I actually (lightly) downvoted your initial comment because you broadly dismissed the arguments made in the post by asserting they are value-dependent without engaging with the implied empirical claims. There is a sense in which everything is value-dependent, so I find this type of language very unproductive.

I upvoted your last comment about the content.

Even if it would be true that most people feel like this, you cannot pretend that most people feel the same way about a pet than about a random animal, less so about what they regard as food.

Agreed. However, the question is whether there is a relevant difference between causing pain to a random pet and random chicken. Rethink Priorities' median welfare ranges of chickens and pigs are 0.332 and 0.515 (humans have the reference value of 1), so I expect the difference to be quite small from an hedosnistic perspective.