AMA: Lewis Bollard, Open Philanthropy

Thanks for the question Michael. A few thoughts:

1. I think cultivated meat could be a game-changer. It seems to have a clear route to competing with the most expensive animal products (think foie gras or bluefin tuna) and to improving plant-based meats as an additive at a low percentage. But the biggest prize would be if cultivated meat could compete with cheap animal products at scale. We commissioned this report because we’re uncertain about whether cultivated meat can reach that price point.
2. The report outlines a number of major technical challenges to lowering the cost of cultivated meat. I encourage people to read the whole report. But the tl;dr is that growing animal cells in bulk is really hard, and in particular constraints on bioreactor size and sterility make this really challenging. As a result, you should probably be skeptical of claims that cultivated meat will be price-competitive at scale within the next decade. 
3. I think how much the report should update you beyond that depends on your priors, and what they’re based on. For someone who thinks, based on media articles or some general intuition like Moore’s Law, that it’s inevitable that cultivated meat will become price-competitive, this might be a pretty large negative update. But for a scientist at a cultivated meat startup this probably isn’t much of an update at all.
4. My biggest takeaway is that we need more publicly available work on the science of cultivated meat. Because most of the research is being done by startups who need to protect their IP, not much gets published. So I’d love to see this paper serving as one input in an ongoing scientific discussion, rather than being the final word. In that vein, I recommend this Techno-economic assessment of animal cell-based meat, published last year by UC Davis scientists. And I’m looking forward to a similar assessment that GFI commissioned, which should be released any day now.
5. Otherwise I feel pretty unsure on the right takeaways / way forward. This does make me more pessimistic that startups can reach cost-competitiveness within a time frame that investors will accept — though it’s possible they’ll find a business model in competing with pricier animal products or blending with plant-based. And I think it suggests the need to diversify approaches, e.g. in also pursuing plant-based and fermentation approaches, and moral advocacy, given there’s no one sure silver bullet here. But it also makes me think there’s greater importance to more patient academic research on cultivated meat, since it suggests a longer timeline and the potential payoff remains huge.

This is a super important question, I'd love this to be addressed since it also seems to me this is very pessimistic and extremely important. This is not only a huge part of GFI's or ProVeg Incubator's work that probably absorbs a lot of money but it also was this kind of "hope" for animal activists like myself. Would it be reasonable to shift more resources towards alt proteins?

Coming back to this as I just asked Bruce Friedrich (Director of GFI) a question about this in a presentation he was giving:

He said that GFI doesn't agree with this report and thinks it is less credible than the techno-economic analysis supported by GFI because:

• This report didn't work with any companies under NDA whereas GFI's analysis had 11 (I believe)
• This report also didn't work with any national scientific agencies where GFI worked with that of Singapore. 

Generally he (and the scientists at GFI) seem much more optimistic that cultivated meat can reach price parity with the cheapest animal products and he said if they didn't think they would, they would focus less on cultivated meat. So that's a slightly more positive update in the cultivated direction for me and thought it might be interesting for people who are also concerned about this. 

Hey Daniela! 

1. Invertebrates: I’d love to see more research on invertebrate sentience and welfare, of the kind that I know you and Rethink Priorities are doing. We’re also excited to see more advocacy on the welfare of aquatic invertebrates, which seems like it may be more politically feasible than work on other invertebrates’ welfare. For instance, we recently funded Crustacean Compassion to push for the inclusion of crustaceans in UK animal welfare laws. I’d love to see more researchers and advocates working on invertebrates, since the numbers are obviously huge and my sense is that a lot of low-hanging fruit remains. For instance, I was very pleasantly surprised to see CP Foods, the world’s largest shrimp producer, last year announcing an end to eyestalk ablation — it would be great to see more work on reforms like this.
2. Wild animals: I’m excited about the work that Wild Animal Initiative is doing to build an academic field of research in welfare biology. I think we need a lot more research on questions like the relative welfare of different species in different ecosystems and the prevalence and severity of various welfare harms like disease and starvation. I’d also like to see more study of the total welfare implications of things that humans are already doing to actively manage wildlife, for instance existing government wildlife vaccination and predator control programs. I think one potentially promising aim would be to have animal welfare become a goal of government land management policies, alongside existing goals like preserving game species, maximizing biodiversity, etc. 
3. Research Qs: in addition to the questions above, two questions I’m always interested in for advancing tractability are (a) what are the low-hanging fruit for reforms, and (b) what are the key obstacles to progress? For instance, on aquatic invertebrates, I’d love to see a survey of shrimp and prawn producers on how hard various welfare reforms seem, and what’s stopping them from implementing them. I’m guessing the most common obstacle will be cost. But I’d be especially interested in reforms where the obstacle is more like “we’d need to see a pilot project to show that’s commercially feasible.” For instance, given CP Foods is ending eyestalk ablation after minimal pressure, I’m guessing this is a low-hanging fruit, and I’d be interested in researching how we could get other shrimp producers to follow suit. 

This is a tough one. I recently surveyed a dozen of the most informed  and aligned people on their estimate of the  average welfare gain per life-year -- a mix of aligned animal welfare scientists and EA researchers -- and got a very wide range of answers. There's lots of reasons for that uncertainty but the biggest is that the underlying broiler welfare science isn't all that helpful. That's in turn mainly due to a combo of (1) it's really hard to measure the subjective experience of animals (preference tests are the best evidence we have, but they're not that helpful for cases with many interacting variables), and (2) most welfare science hasn't traditionally focused on the subjective experience of animals, but instead on weakly related factors like mortality and health.

But there's a broad consensus amongst the informed / aligned researchers that the welfare gain of the Better Chicken Commitment outweighs the potential increase in life-years. This is mainly because the higher welfare breeds most likely to be adopted are only slightly slower than conventional breeds -- we're most likely talking about a 10-20% increase in days, not a >30% increase or anything. (Some approved breeds are much slower, but no big producer is going to adopt them.) And a little bit of that increase in days will be offset by decreased demand at a higher price point. By contrast, the welfare reforms -- especially on breed and stocking density -- seem likely to make a pretty substantial difference to outcomes like chronic pain and stress.

FWIW, my very rough estimate is that, accounting for the life span increase, the BCC will alleviate ~40% of the suffering of US broilers and ~25% of the suffering of EU broilers. (The EU number is lower because EU broilers start in better conditions than US broilers.) But those are very rough numbers -- my 80% confidence interval would span something like 5-75% of suffering reduced. And I think others reasonably have very different estimates here. 

This is a major question for us, and one we continue to research. Our current very rough estimate is that our average $ spent on corporate campaigns and all supporting work (which is ~40% of our total animal grant-making) achieves the equivalent of ~7 animals spared a year of complete suffering. We use this a rough benchmark for BOTECs on  new grants, and my best guess is this reflects roughly the range we should hope for the last pro-animal dollar. 

Of course there are many caveats!  They take two forms. First we have lots caveats on the number above. There's lot of empirical uncertainty: about the # of animals impacted by each corporate campaign, the likelihood of implementation of each corporate pledge,  how much the campaign sped up the reform relative to the counterfactual, the welfare of animals before the corporate reform, how much the reform improves that welfare, etc. And there's a lot of moral uncertainty: about how to compare acute and chronic suffering, how to compare welfare improvements with sparing an animal from living in a factory farm at all, how to compare across species etc. 

Second, we have caveats on how to apply the benchmark and how much to expect it to reflect the last pro-animal dollar. The biggest uncertainty is the future pace / tractability of reforms. As noted above, our space has proven hard-to-predict on a five year timeline -- some campaigns have gone far faster than we expected, some much slower. So it's of course much harder to predict progress on a 50+ year timeline for a last pro-animal dollar.  That said, I think the best we can do is make lots of predictions and continue to score how they go -- we've been doing that for five years now, and seem well-calibrated even as we remain unsure on lots of specifics. And while I think there are plenty of good reasons why things might get less cost-effective over time, I think there are also plenty of good reasons why things might get more cost-effective. 

I'd love to see more EA researchers (a) trying to independently assess the cost-effectiveness of various animal interventions, (b) trying to estimate the cost-effectiveness of the last pro-animal dollar, and (c) making and scoring predictions on key milestones. 

Thanks for drawing attention to this important issue Ula. I’m very sorry to read of the experiences you and others have shared, which I’ll address here and in separate replies to Daniela and Eze’s posts below. 

I completely agree the animal movement needs to do better to ensure it’s a safe place for all its employees and volunteers. We’re supporting a number of groups and individuals working to create a more inclusive and supportive global movement. For instance, we’re major funders of Encompass, ACE, and Animal Advocacy Careers, as well as a number of regional efforts (like a new China EAA fellows program). And in response to complaints last year about the FAST listserv not being a safe place, we funded Amanda Cramer to work full-time on fixing it. But there’s a lot more work to do, and we’re always looking for new initiatives we could fund to help.

More broadly I think our movement needs to continue to professionalize its approach to management, HR, and employee development. I’ll address more specific issues around sexual harassment and mismanagement in my answers to Daniela and Eze below. But I’ll say for now that we’ve encouraged grantees to raise salaries and invest more in management training, and have provided funding to support both aims. And we’re very supportive of Neysa Colizzi’s work to improve leadership and governance at a number of our major grantees, for instance by coaching executive directors and assembling new independent boards.

On the specific examples you gave: we’re supportive of the action that Anima International took in the case you describe, and my understanding is that the employees affected are still with Anima and supportive of how the situation was resolved. (I don’t think I can say any more without violating their confidentiality.) I don’t know the answers on the ProVeg case — they’re not a grantee and we’re limited in our ability to inquire into issues at non-grantees.

Thanks for pointing this out, Ula. I'm aware that several activists in other organizations have also suffered similar situations, along with derogatory comments because of their origin and gender.

In my experience this problem is unfortunately wide and common in so many organizations :(

Hi Ula,

Can you describe the problems more specifically and consider the thoughts below?

I think abuse or exploiting someone’s gender, race, or outright sexual misconduct is an abomination.

But what about the perspective that “bad work environments” are a separate, distinct issue from this kind of abuse?

Work environments in any organization can become terrible and this comes from mismanagement or predatory management.

Unfortunately, these issues might be systemic at all nonprofit organizations because management ability and resources are low, and the “business model” is very performative and this can reduce intellectual honesty. Also a key resource is a stream of both passionate and pliable volunteers, who are both difficult to manage and less able to resist abuse.

If this perspective is correct, it could be difficult to solve because these are root causes. For example, even if you could richly fund and staff a few organizations with great difficulty, you cannot police all organizations that would pop up.

I think my thought in my comment is basic and I may lack knowledge of the specific events.

What do you think about what I said?

Interesting Q! I think there's a lot that would surprise 2015-me. A few highlights:

1. Plant-based meat: I didn't expect Impossible to get into Burger King so quickly, the popularity of the Beyond Meat IPO,  the  surge in sales of plant-based meat in US retail over the last few years, or the resulting investing boom in the space in the last few years. I think following the industry more closely would have given me a bit more foresight here, but I'm not sure it would have resulted in a lot more good grants, since there are limited grant opportunities (and the top investment opportunities all got taken without us). 
2. Corporate campaigns: I didn't expect advocates to so quickly get most large North American food and European food businesses to commit to go cage-free, or to succeed in extending these campaigns globally. But I also didn't expect US broiler welfare campaigns to get as slowed down as they have. I think the main update here is the significance of momentum. I think one wrong lesson would be that we should ask for more -- this was a lesson that we took from rapid US cage-free progress which I think led us to ask for too much on the US broiler ask. 
3. Mismanagement and sexual harassment at some groups. I think the movement had more internal problems than we realized, see e.g. the above comments. As a funder it's hard to learn about these issues -- you're mostly talking to group leadership and it's hard to have informal conversations with regular employees. But I think these issues have updated us on a number of things, including the importance of (a) trying to have more informal conversations with non-leaders, (b) requiring strong sexual harassment policies and procedures from grantees, (c) encouraging orgs to invest in org-development, e.g. higher salaries, and better governance, e.g. independent boards.

I could go on. There are many more things that have surprised me, though I think most have been positive and due to the fact that we're still a young fast-growing movement where there's less of a stable baseline to predict forward. 

This one's tricky because I think the limiting factor on promising new interventions is more often a lack of talent wanting to pursue them -- and established groups not wanting to do too many things at once -- rather than a lack of support or good ideas. (To be clear: I think the movement as a whole is funding constrained; this only applies to new speculative interventions.)

Here's a non-exhaustive list of new interventions I'd like to see tried which I think some EAs would be well-positioned to do: 

• Working with large aquatic invertebrate companies to assess and improve welfare.
• Working with insect farming companies and investors to implement welfare standards.
• Piloting new fundraising approaches, e.g. optimizing  online small-donor response to fundraise for EAA groups.
• Piloting new corporate campaign approaches to strengthen existing campaigns, e.g. new online campaign tools etc.
• Running EA-aligned fellowships to build the pipeline of diverse talent for our movement.
• Solving very specific alt-protein scientific challenges, e.g. replicating the texture of a particular species like shrimp.
• Engaging with international institutions (e.g. OIE, FAO, IFC, EBRD) and banks (e.g. Rabobank, BNP Paribas) that already have farm animal welfare standards to strengthen and implement them.

A few caveats on what this list isn't: (1) my "top priorities" -- I've excluded lots of great ideas that people are already pursuing or which I think would be hard for people to pursue without significant capital or specific expertise, (2) all the new interventions I'd like to see -- I only spent 10 mins on this and would likely change the list with more reflection, (3)  a guarantee we'd fund a new initiative on one of these topic -- this would also depend on whether the people who wanted to launch the initiative had the necessary expertise / experience, and how good their plan was. That said, if you think you're well-positioned to launch a new initiative on one of those topics, please do reach out to me. 

Thanks for the questions Eze. I encourage readers to also check out my answers to Ula and Daniela above, since they apply here too. I’ll focus here on your specific questions about how Open Phil addresses problems at grantees.

In general, when we learn of problems at grantees — like mistreatment of employees — we first try to learn more about the specifics of the situation. We then have a range of proportional responses we consider and adjust depending on how they go. This ranges from extensive discussions with grantee leadership to specific demands of them (e.g. that they adopt an independent board or investigate a particular case) to ultimately cutting off funding.

We have cut off funding to grantees that have proven unwilling to address major problems. But we do treat this as a last resort after all attempts at internal leverage and change have failed. We take this approach because we’re such a large portion of most grantees’ funding that us cutting off funding will typically result in them having to lay off employees, in some cases many. For this reason we often find that employees raising concerns with us don’t want us to cut funding to their employer (to be clear, this is not dispositive — it’s one consideration). In that case we also lose our leverage to insist on improvements.

I can’t get deeply into the specifics of any individual or organization. But I’ll say broadly that we have engaged extensively with Animal Equality leadership about the issues you’ve identified, and used our leverage to push for a number of changes there — and we’ll continue to do so. I would like to hear more about your experience and other cases you’re aware of — I've just emailed you about this.

First of all, I would like to explain that I have just registered on the forum to maintain anonymity and not to harm anyone.

Unfortunately, the case you give as an example of Animal Equality is not the only one of bad practices towards their employees. As a former employee of Animal Equality, I have witnessed on numerous occasions harassment at work, abuse of authority, lack of transparency, lack of democracy, falsification of statistical data and fraudulent campaigns by the international direction.

It is very sad, it would be good if finally the appropriate actions were taken so that these bad practices do not continue.

This is such a sad thing to learn :(

I was an employee of Animal Equality for years and I have witnessed several cases of harassment from the leadership. Retaliation and harassment are common practices in the organization. Unfortunately, Animal Equality is a dictatorship. If you are an employee and you disagree to some degree with the leadership you might be fired without any prior notice. Even people that exceed the goals and expectations for the role are fired without any previous bad feedback. 

In order to avoid more retaliation for the current staff, I suggest that OPP requires a strict policy and process in which Animal Equality's directors must follow in case they want to lay off someone. 

PS: I am also writing with an anonymous name since I don't feel safe showing my name. 

this is really serious

I guess there are two pieces here. The first is the cause prioritization question of how we'll prioritize expanding farm animal welfare vs other focus areas. That's mostly above my pay grade -- it's a decision leadership will make informed by Open Phil's cause prioritization research. But I'm confident that Open Phil is committed to remaining a major funder in this space, and optimistic about our future trajectory.

The  second piece is how our focus within farm animal welfare work will evolve. We're revisiting our strategy now, so I hope I'll have more to share in a few months. But I can tell you that two broad challenges are (1) weighing proven tractable interventions (e.g. corporate cage-free and broiler welfare campaigns) against more speculative and potentially larger scale work (e.g. fish welfare, expanding the movement in East Asia), and (2) weighing scaling up existing effective organizations against funding more new promising initiatives. We'll continue to do a mix of all the above -- the key Q is how we prioritize our time and funding between each of them. 

I haven't given this much thought. I expect the combination of securing and implementing cage-free and broiler welfare commitments to remain the chicken-welfare focus for at least the next decade (maybe a bit less in Northern Europe, more in Asia etc). Fish welfare is the obvious candidate for the next major welfare issue, though there's no shortage of other welfare issues to address (gestation crates, aquatic invertebrates, etc). I wouldn't want to speculate on what will come next, since I expect it will depend on how things go in the next few years and which issues appear most tractable when we're ready to move on. 

I'd like to see more independent research on these programs, especially research that  goes beyond self-reports. The area where we have the best data on diet change -- dining hall studies on lectures and leaflets -- suggests a huge gap between self-reported consumptions / intention, and actual consumption, especially when the self-reports are being collected by the group doing the advocacy. I think the key Qs are:

• How many people who sign pledges counterfactually wouldn't have gone veg anyway?
• How much do pledge signers actually reduce animal product consumption?
• How long do those reduction effects endure?

In favor of such programs, I would add there are some promising  signs that Veganuary may be fueling broader positive changes in the UK, where it's most established:

• Google Trends data shows UK interest in veganism increasing, with searches peaking each January. (The UK govt's Food and You surveys are less clear on whether rates of veg*ns are increasing in the UK -- there's a slight trend of vegans increasing and vegetarians decreasing, but the %s are so small I'd take this with a grain of salt.)
• A lot of UK food chains have started launching new vegan products in January, often citing Veganuary. E.g. Tesco, Pizza Hut, Gregg's. Of course they might have just introduced these at another time instead, but it does weakly suggest Veganuary is building corporate interest.
• The recent Faunalytics Twitter Trend survey found that Veganuary attracts lots of tweets, most of them positive. (Though it did also find that all diet-related tweets surge in January, suggesting Veganuary doesn’t deserve all credit for  the increase in interest in veganism that month.)

Thanks for the questions Brian, and for the work you're doing in the Philippines. We estimate the Philippines has the 10th highest number of vertebrate farmed animals alive at any time -- mostly farmed fish -- but we currently only have one Filipino farm animal grantee.  So I'd love to hear from you and  other Filipinos interested in doing EA animal advocacy. (Anyone reading this can email info@openphilanthropy.org or message me.) On your questions:

1. Your ranking of issues looks good to me. My main advice in your situation would be to look primarily at  tractability in making this ranking. Our general experience in nations with lots of animals but less existing advocacy (e.g. China, Indonesia, Vietnam) is that tractability trumps scale (and neglect is largely irrelevant, since most approaches are neglected). Of course there are limits to this -- don't start a farm sanctuary. But within the large-scale issues you're considering, I'd focus on which is most tractable, both because we've seen huge differences in this between issues and because I think the most important thing is to get some initial progress, which will then make it easier to advance all issues. 
2. On the Open Phil side I'm excited to fund any promising new farm animal or alt-protein work in the Philippines (and in other large Southeast Asian nations). That's true for how I think about the EA Fund too, though I'm only one of four managers there. 

Hey Brian, 

We would also love to have a conversation with you regarding your ask considerations. Our recently formed organisation works with animal advocacy groups to prioritise and optimise asks. 

You can check out our work at animalask.org

Let me know if you would like to chat about this further. 

Amy

I'm only one of four fund managers, and I'm only describing my personal approach. For me scale and neglect typically operate as an initial threshold -- I'm not excited about something that could never affect >1M animals or that is already fully-funded or likely to be. But most submissions for the Fund pass this threshold, so estimates of potential tractability / cost-effectiveness become most important. To assess this, I especially consider:

• The track record of this intervention: has it been tried before; if so how did it go; are there reasons to think this group will do better/worse than previous efforts?
• The track record of the applicant: have they already achieved wins; if yes, how scaleable do those wins seem; if no, are there reasons to think they could in future?
• The plans: how plausible do the plans seem;  will we know if they succeed or fail; how big a win would it be if the plans succeed?

Two thoughts here:

1. I wouldn't over-update based on my experience in management consulting. I only worked in it for one year and at one firm. Of my friends currently or formerly in management consulting  my rough sense is only ~half agree with my  take. E.g. my brother has been in management consulting for 7+ years and disagrees with me, and he's smarter than me :)
2. I think the confusion is partly caused by the term "management consulting"; I think "business consulting" is more accurate. My experience has been that the big consulting firms mostly solve specific business problems (e.g. how to cut costs by 10% without hurting sales) not management ones. So I wouldn't necessarily expect someone who does a few years at a big consulting firm to be a great manager.
3. That said, seeing mismanagement problems in our movement has updated me on the value of bringing in people from outside our movement with greater management experience. That could come from consulting, but I think could just as easily come from experience managing at other big firms or nonprofits that value good management. 

This is a tough one. I'm most confident in the cost-effectiveness of corporate campaigns, especially on cage-free and broiler welfare, because there's a tight feedback loop and easily measurable results. But I think a number of more speculative longer-term interventions could plausibly turn out to be more cost-effective -- they're just  higher variance. Some candidates for plausibly most cost-effective longer-term interventions:

• Any scaleable intervention for improving fish welfare, especially of the most numerous farmed species (e.g. common carp) and wild-caught fish (at capture and slaughter).
• Any tractable work in the countries with the largest number of farmed animals (the top 3 are China, India Indonesia, and the rest are here)
• Any work that enables a breakthrough on the taste and price of alternative proteins that directly compete with fish, crustaceans, chicken, or eggs. 

Interesting Q's:

1. New interventions I'd like to see: I think my answers to Michael and Ula above cover my immediate thoughts here.
2. The impact of protest groups: I feel pretty unsure on this -- it's obviously hard to measure. My prior is that there's a lot of value to building a bigger grassroots movement demanding action on factory farming, but that there's always a risk that provocative tactics will alienate more people than they bring in. So it's about striking that balance, and I'm uncertain on the right place to strike it. I'm not inclined to suggest anything I'd like to see them do since I don't follow their work that closely and I don't think they're seeking my advice. 
3. Aligning with the environmental movement: I also feel unsure on this. There are number of places where animal and environmental objectives don't perfectly align, e.g. see efforts to substitute from beef to chicken and fish, which has worse welfare impacts. But I also think there's a lot of overlap and scope for animal and environmental advocates to align on mutual interests, like advocating for government funding to advance alternative protein research. 

Thanks for the questions Jose. 

1. Intercontinental consolidated  & well-funded EAA orgs: I'm not sure this is the dominant model. E.g. the five biggest groups you're probably thinking of (THL, MFA, GFI, CIWF, Animal Equality) had combined 2019 budgets of ~$50M, out of a global movement total of ~$180M. I think that's less consolidation than most movements. That said I don't have a strong prior on whether international consolidated orgs or smaller local ones are most effective. We've since similar success levels and challenges amongst both types of groups, and tend instead to focus on the track record, plans, etc of each opportunity discretely, rather than based on the type of group it belongs to. 
2. Mistakes young Western EAA orgs can avoid in growth. A few thoughts: (a) treat employees well and taking management seriously -- see e.g. the comments above, (b) focus on just the 1-3 most promising issues / interventions -- we see a lot of orgs overstretched trying to do too many things, (c) set and track clear metrics for program success, and drop programs if they consistently fail to meet them -- we see a lot of status quo bias to keep doing things that are no longer working. 
3. Viable interventions in China. Mainly I see limited scope for Western orgs to do new work in China -- we're most excited about new Chinese initiatives and international orgs with well-established programs. The things we've been most excited about: (a) promoting alt-protein, especially the business opportunity, (b) positive corporate outreach on animal welfare, (c) building the number of EA-aligned Chinese animal advocates. 

If you haven't already, you should reach out to the Good Food Institute!

Hi Maxtandy, that's cool that you're becoming a food scientist! We definitely need more of them. I don't have a strong view on this question, and suspect it may depend more on the specifics of your situation -- which scientific skills you're strongest in and which research + job opportunities you see. I broadly see the need for a lot more research on both plant-based and clean meat -- and the related field of fermentation. 

1. My current view is that cage-free systems on average relieve ~40% of the suffering of caged systems. As with the above estimate on broiler welfare, there's substantial uncertainty on that -- my 80% confidence interval is probably more like 20-80%. I really liked the new mortality meta-analysis, but I'd emphasize that mortality is just one proxy for welfare, and I think usually not a particularly good one (depending on the cause of mortality, total level, etc)
2. We've funded work to address keel bone fractures, which are a leading mortality cause in cage-free hens. Some of our grantees, like CIWF, also work with food companies to advise them on higher welfare cage-free systems that can limit mortality. But I think there is already a big strong industry incentive, given mortality affects productivity, and do expect you'll see morality decline over time as the industry gains more experience running cage-free systems.
3. I think it's very unlikely (<5%) that potentially increased mortality rates accompanying the adoption of cage-free systems outweigh the benefits. The mortality differences we're talking about are small (a few percentage points over the course of a year vs. e.g. 5% mortality for broiler chickens over 48 days), and the welfare benefits are big (in particular preference tests show hens have a strong desire to nest, perch, and dust bath -- all behaviors they can only perform in cage-free systems).
4. No, I don't think it would have been better to go for a more demanding ask. Per the point above re broilers, I think we've learned that a more demanding ask risks jeopardizing all momentum on the issue. FWIW I'm also not sure a more demanding ask would have reduced mortality. E.g. the most common more demanding ask is for hens to be free-range, which results in higher mortality than indoor cage-free (though I think most free-range hens have better overall welfare due to more behavioral opportunities). 

Thanks for the interesting questions Monica! 

1. Alternatives to pig castration: major producers in a number of countries have already implemented Improvest or similar approaches, e.g. JBS Brasil, producers in a number of Northern European countries. It's crazy to me that US pig producers haven't, despite, as you note, the FDA approval. Your explanation about the processing plants is interesting. I've heard other reasons from industry insiders: (1) the industry is afraid that consumers will view Improvest as a chemical additive, producing a yuk response like hormones, (2) Improvest costs more money and  producers don't care enough to pay that, and (3) farmers are afraid of injecting themselves and rendering themselves insterile (this sounds absurd, but came from a veterinarian who had spent years working in pig factory farms). I would like to see more advocates working on this issue. The challenge is how to prioritize it -- I think existing groups have reasonably chosen to focus their scarce resources elsewhere -- but there could be scope for a new group or individual advocates to work on it. 
2. Economic research on plant-based products: there's actually been quite a few economic papers on this lately. For example I recommend this new paper from Jayson Lusk and colleagues attempting to estimate the cross-price elasticity of demand for plant-based meats. That said, I think there's scope for a lot more, including on questions like the ones you outlined. My sense is that most plant-based companies don't have data analysts and aren't reviewing much data beyond their own sales. They also probably aren't reading econ journals, but I think it's possible to get the most important results in front of them, e.g. via GFI, PBFA, and other groups that support the sector. 
3. Wild animal fertility control: I'm happy to see researchers working on this. My sense is it's mostly being trialed in situations where the alternative is for humans to kill the animals, often inhumanely, e.g. instead of killing elephants in South Africa, wild horses in the US midwest, rats in NYC subways, etc. In all those cases it seems worth pursuing. For many broader uses I think we need more research on the likely second-order effects. E.g.  will reducing the population of X species just increase Y species lower in the food chain?

I'm worried about the growth of industrial-scale insect farming. We don't know if insects are sentient, or if they are how to weigh their experiences against different species. But based on what we do know I think we should consider a significant possibility that they are sentient. And if so, I think there are reasons to think industrial-scale insect farming could be particularly problematic on animal welfare grounds, especially given its huge scale. I recommend this EA Forum post for more details on specific welfare concerns.

I think it depends on how the tax is structured. A tax based solely on climate impacts is likely to fall primary on beef, which could increase consumption of chicken by increasing the price gap between them (an increasing beef-chicken price gap seems to have contributed to rising US chicken consumption over the last few decades). But a tax that also considers other environmental and animal welfare impacts could reduce all animal product consumption.

I was especially interested by this new Nature Communications study, which suggested a German meat climate tax might have a similar impact on beef and chicken prices. But it was based on data assuming a much lower beef climate impact, and higher chicken climate impact, than this Science 2018 meta-analysis, which I think has the most reliable data. 

Thanks for the fascinating comments! As an initial matter, it seems like you know more than I do about plant-based meat production costs, so I hope you'll write something publicly on this. (Or let me know where it is if you already have.) On your questions:

1. Production efficiency: you make a good point about this being a limited share of the pie. I guess my thinking is ~25% of $3.6 is still 90c/lb., and if we're ever going to compete with commodity chicken at <$1/lb, we'll need to make progress on this piece. But I agree there's no silver bullet here and other factors may be more important. 
2. Cheaper ingredients: I don't have a good sense on the scope to bring down flavor costs. Given many of the flavors are already being supplied by big mature companies, like Givaudan, I would expect there's not huge scope. But maybe they're viewing this as a niche premium product and achieving scale would bring in more competition on the flavor side and drive down prices? My guess is the biggest thing we could do here is ditch novel proteins in favor of soy and wheat, and see if there are ways to use a greater portion of cheaper less concentrated versions (e.g. some wheat gluten, instead of just protein concentrates). 
3. Other: I'm curious what you think the other most important innovations are, and what the remaining ~35% of the cost pie is? I've heard distribution and retail inefficiencies are a major challenge on the retail price. But hear less on other factors that could reduce COGS.

Let me know if you'd be up for a chat some time -- I'm interested to learn from your experience on this. 

alt_protein_vc @ 2021-03-08T16:15 (+9)

Hey Lewis,

Sorry for the delayed and long-ish reply here. 

Distribution and retail inefficiencies: 
I would concur that those are issues. For example, retailers and distributors typically take higher margins on plant-based products vs animal-based ones. I can't really give a good benchmark number here because it changes a fair bit based on country, how the retailer is positioned etc. 
That being said, I think the question worth asking is whether this is a tractable issue at all. My own take is that it isn't particularly tractable (at least in the next decade or two). In my opinion, there are largely two broad scenarios (neither near term) in which a retailer/distributor/foodservice player would have downward margin pressure on plant based meat products: 

i) The product's price, in particular, is literally bringing people into the store that otherwise wouldn't be there (so essentially operating somewhat like a "loss leader" product). Realistically, I think it's unlikely that the average American/European (not the vegans and vegetarians) is going to be picking their retail store based on plant-based meat's price any time soon. 

ii) The production prices come down to a point where it enters the consideration of consumers with higher price elasticities of demand. In other words, today's plant-based consumers are relatively price-insensitive so there's little incentive to drop margins as an intermediary because you're not really losing significant sales from keeping margins high. If one can get the base product prices to a point where the people considering purchase are more price-sensitive, then intermediary margins start to come under more pressure (but more on getting the base product price down below). In the case of beef in the US, I suspect that the key price point where it realistically enters this price elastic consumer's mind is probably a little under the price of retail store beef. I'm fairly uncertain about whether that price point is attainable though I would lean towards the proposition that it is (with just beef though) 

Important innovations: 
I'll preface by saying that while I think it's possible that plant-based meat can undercut beef on price in the next decade, I also think it's fairly unlikely that plant-based in the rough form of Beyond/Impossible will ever be price competitive with something like chicken in the US (even at scale). That's largely because of what I informally call "sidestream inefficiencies". Here's a quick sketch of how I see the larger system working. (simplified so please forgive any minor omissions though please let me know if you think I've majorly missed something) 

Even in my conception of the most "efficient" system, the price of your plant-based meat (let's ignore non ingredient costs for the moment) is actually fairly dependent on how your ingredient provider is monetizing the sidestreams of your ingredients [This issue has already been highlighted by both McKinsey and Breakthrough with the case of pea starch].

So to price compete with chicken in the US, ultimately you need one of two scenarios to play out (I can't think of other ways but anyone else who looks at this area, please feel free to add): 

i) Find a plant that with minimal side stream creation and additives can be processed straight into a good chicken analogoue (maybe this plant exists but I'd deem this fairly unlikely naively). I'm skeptical that a simple soy/wheat flour product can do a good enough job here in terms of product performance but I could be wrong. 

ii) Find a strain of fungi/algae/bacteria that happens to taste like chicken with minimal processing and side streams, is high yielding, isn't a very "picky eater" when it comes to feed AND/OR chance upon a high quality feed which is currently a sidestream that is produced in large quantities, and maybe hated by the producer of the sidestream (for regulatory or other reasons) to the point where they may even pay you to take it off their hands (or at least give it away for close to free). This is a really high bar to reach but more likely than i) in my opinion.   

Summary:
In summary, I think it's worth having more explicit conversations about waste sidestreams/cheap feed pathways and associated organisms that might work well with them. Often people working on these kinds of pathways can be hard to fund from a venture capital perspective because with a totally new organism that the consumer is eating as a whole (in other words NOT Perfect Day's whey or Impossible's heme) the regulatory pathway can be quite challenging/long/uncertain in many jurisdications because there's just no safe history of consumption of the organism. 

TLDR
Humans are really picky eaters and tend to create inefficiencies/waste or low value streams when they eat plants posing as alternatives (making it expensive). So we need to find another relatively not so picky eater (like chicken but not sentient) that can turn low-value things into delicious protein with little waste to compete with animals on price.     

Thanks Irena and nice to meet a fellow debater! I'm pleasantly surprised that anyone still watches that WUDC final :) 

I had a great time debating, and think it  taught me a lot about common reasoning fallacies and problematic arguments. But I think you're alluding to debate's biggest flaw -- that it's not truth-seeking. It rewards you for finding evidence to support your pre-existing position, not to fairly assess the evidence and reach the best answer. 

About that WUDC final: it's funny, but it's so long ago now that it's mostly a blur. I mostly remember us wasting our prep time  debating some minor issues that turned out not to be relevant :) 

Nah, I don't really know. I'm always skeptical of claims that one event or activist ignited a huge change. And I'd note that Israel still has some of the highest rates of meat consumption in the world, despite having a vibrant animal welfare and alternative protein movement. But I'll leave to others with more knowledge of Israel's movement to speculate more here. 

I'm not sure what the most effective intervention for fish is -- I think it's mostly too early to say. But here's a non-exhaustive list of some promising approaches, with an example of one group working on each:

• UK corporate and policy reforms: Compassion in World Farming
• European corporate reform: Albert Schweitzer Foundation
• European legislative reform: Eurogroup for Animals
• Undercover investigations: Essere Animali
• Working with producers: Fish Welfare Initiative
• Engaging certifiers: Aquatic Animal Alliance
• Researching higher welfare methods: Humane Slaughter Association

I'm optimistic that in the next 2-3 years we can see some more corporate fish welfare policies and a number of new fish welfare standards from fish farming sustainability certifiers. I'm also hopeful that we'll see the first steps toward EU policy reform, though binding regulations will likely take longer.

Yeah don't go to law school :) I think my legal schooling was most useful for understanding US litigation, legislation, and regulation, which is relevant to farm animal stuff and a few other EA causes like bio and AI policy.  I think you could learn as much through listening to some combo of  online courses, books, and podcasts on litigation, legislation, and regulation. E.g. I think books like America's Bitter Pill (on the passage of Obamacare) do a good job addressing a lot of the legislative and regulatory process pieces.

Haha, yes Farm Animal Welfare is only left in US Policy on our website (not internally) and that may soon change too. Watch this space :)

Yeah we've been commissioning a bunch of research from outside experts. In general we do prefer value-aligned researchers, though the expertise is typically more important. I'm most excited when the two align, as I think it has for instance on Cynthia Schuck and Wladimir Alonso, who are producing a series of welfare assessments for us.

In general I think our greatest needs are for expertise in welfare science / biology, economics / stats, and animal cognition / philosophy of mind. But I think the field as a whole has greater needs for alt protein specific scientific fields.

You're right that pork and chicken producers are major obstacles to higher welfare initiatives, especially in the US. I think this will mainly come down to the biggest food companies (especially retailers and fast food chains) telling the producers that they have to change. And that in turn will mainly depend on the work of advocates in mobilizing consumers and the public to demand change.

I recommend the comments of alt_protein_vc above and my newsletter here. 

General attention to new species and issues (e.g. the treatment fo farmed and wild-caught fish) and focused attention on companies and governments' failure to achieve reforms for other large groups of animals (e.g. caged hens).

A few places I think charities / advocates can play a major role: (a) lobbying for govt funding for alt protein R&D, (b) lobbying for a clear regulatory pathway for cultivated meat and novel plant-based meat ingredients (e.g. Impossible's heme),  (c)  educating investors and food companies on the business opportunity, especially around higher impact opportunities (e.g. plant-based fish) and unusual investment setups (e.g. long-term patient funding for deeper R&D).

I'm not sure how much labeling laws matter, and think it probably depends on the specific (e.g. laws merely requiring the product note it is plant-based are less insidious than ones requiring a big "imitation" label). On the pro labeling matters side I'd point to the history of margarine. On the con side I'd point to plant-based milks, which mostly don't use "milk" on their labels.

Potential other leverage points: (1) go to work at an existing animal group and help it better focus on high impact approaches, (2) start a new group focused on a high impact approach and encourage imitators, (3) write pieces about higher impact approaches that could be taken, e.g. on the EA Forum.

Cool that you're designing a MSc dissertation on this! Please share it with me when you're done :)

I'm pretty skeptical of efforts to remove agricultural subsidies from factory farming, both because I think it's really hard and because I'm skeptical that subsidies have a large price effect on meat. (I think people sometimes confuse the fact that farmers really like subsidies with an assumption they must be lowering prices a lot -- I think they're often structured instead to prop up prices.) I'm more optimistic about seeking subsidies for plant-based meat research, and potentially for plant-based agriculture (though I'd note this is a huge field and many  protein crops are already heavily subsidized).

I'm unsure how many resources organizations should devote to social media. We generally don't fund much of this kind of work, so haven't looked deeply into it. I'm not too worried re fatigue, given my sense is our total penetration is still pretty low, but I think it's an open question of how much impact existing social media content has or whether it's mostly just preaching to the converted.

I think the EA Animal Welfare Fund is a good default option, but here are a few reasons people might prefer to give elsewhere:

• You have a strong view that one approach is much more promising or relatively neglected, e.g. research on effective interventions or wild animal welfare.
• You have a relationship with an effective group and enjoy the greater connection and insight into their work of supporting it directly.
• You're aware of or able to fund unique opportunities that the EA Fund isn't,  e.g. political contributions or your friend's project.

A few ideas:

1. Push for a policy that's political feasible at the local level, e.g. a foie gras ban or requirement that the city's public procurement buy less meat or only welfare certified meat.
2. Coordinate with national groups to support larger campaigns, e.g. corporate campaigns.
3. Focus on building talent and political power for the movement, e.g. lots of events etc.

This is beyond my expertise, but I'd be interested to read a post on the topic :)

This is a good idea for a future newsletter. In the meantime, I recommend ACE's standout charity list and our grants database.

I think we should try lots of approaches to diet change, since I don't think we've yet found approaches that we have a lot of evidence that they robustly work. I'm not sure if we evidence that the species that suffer the most are the ones people are most resistant to stopping eating. E.g. there's some evidence people are most resistant to giving up dairy, but less resistant to dropping fish. I agree chicken welfare is a major movement focus, but I'm also very excited about any intervention with demonstrated potential to affect the largest numbers of animals.