Switzerland fails to ban factory farming – lessons for the pursuit of EA-inspired policies?

By Eleos Arete Citrini @ 2022-09-25T19:25 (+184)

Today, the Swiss electorate could have voted for the abolition of factory farming (25 years from now [1]). But, in aggregate, we did not. By a depressingly large margin. The participation (as share of the electorate) was 52.3%, of which 37.1% voted in favour of the initiative. Securing, on top of the voter majority, the cantonal majority, which would have also been required, was even further out of reach: "Canton Basel City was the only of the 26 regions to approve the idea." The initiative was launched by Sentience Politics. More info about the initiative and the results in this swissinfo.ch article (in English): Voters reject ethical overhaul of animal farming rules  

In my impression, the most influential argument of the camp against the initiative was that factory farming just doesn't exist in Switzerland.[2] Even if it was only one of but not the most influential argument, I think this speaks volumes about both the (current) debate culture and the limits of how hopeful we should be that relevantly similar EA-inspired policies will soon see widespread implementation .

A key question is: What does relevantly similar mean here? A key argument, from a purely egoistic perspective, against abolishing factory farming is that, to some extent probably hard to precisely estimate in advance with much confidence, animal products will become more expensive. 1) Maybe many future EA-inspired policies would not have such costs, 2) arguably many future EA-inspired policies won't even (need to) be voted on by the electorate (in some cases it might even be sufficient to get a handful of key individual actors on board), and 3) probably there are other reasons why I have more reason to be hopeful about EA-inspired policies than I feel right now.

But still... Rarely in the history of Switzerland has there ever been an initiative that, from an EA perspective, has been of higher moral significance and simultaneously, from an EA perspective, of lower controversiality. The fact that the electorate of Switzerland (notably roughly the richest country in the world) failed to vote to abolish factory farming 1) is a testament to just how far we, as world optimisers, still have to go and, slightly more controversially 2) serves as a reminder that we can philosophise as much as we want: to the extent that bridging the gap from global priorities research and longtermist macrostrategy to the "real world" turns out to present even more of a challenge than we previously thought, we would better rethink our allocation of resources along what I'd roughly conceptualise as a theoretical/fundamental/"ivory tower" – practical/applied/"real world" dimension.[3]

1) Where do/might you (dis)agree with me? Am I missing an important consideration?
2) What's your reaction to the initiative and results?
3) What (tentative) lessons from this can we draw for the future pursuit of EA-inspired policies (within and beyond non-human animal welfare)?
 

  1. ^

    "Should the factory farming initiative have been accepted, farmers would have had up to 25 years to adapt to the rules."

  2. ^

    While I admit the term factory farming is open to interpretation and that the extent to which fundamental interests of farm animals are systematically violated is lower in Switzerland than in most other countries, I encourage people who are skeptical as to the existence of factory farming in Switzerland to search for facts and videos on this topic. It may be less horrible than in most countries, but it is still horrible to be your average farm animal in Switzerland.

  3. ^

    Which I find ironic given that research on the value of global priorities research compared to other endeavours is a key question within, well, global priorities research.

Jonas Vollmer @ 2022-09-26T15:35 (+161)

I was one of the people who helped draft the constitutional amendment and launch the initiative. My quick takes:

(* An initiative passing doesn't just require a majority of the voters, but also a majority of the voters in a majority of cantons (states), which is a target that's much harder to hit for non-conservative initiatives. Even if >50% of the voters were in favor, this would've been unlikely to happen.)

 

Separately, I think the effective animal activism community should be much clearer on a long-term strategy to inform their prioritization. By when do we expect to get meat alternatives that are competitive on taste and price? At that point, how many people do we expect to go vegetarian? Is there a date by which we expect >50% of the developed-world population to go vegetarian? To what degree are policies shaped by precedents from other countries? I think this sort of thinking has happened to a substantial degree for AI alignment/deployment, but not much for animal activism. Instead, everyone is running cost-effectiveness analyses with relatively short time horizons and a direct focus on animal lives improved. (This might be reasonable if you're very pessimistic about large-scale shifts away from meat consumption anytime soon.)

These sorts of macrostrategic considerations could then inform whether to let an initiative like this one fail, or to make a concerted effort to actually win it, e.g., deploying a campaign budget of $5m, an experienced campaign team, plus a data science team.

Jonas Vollmer @ 2022-09-27T16:35 (+6)

Given that a majority of (the voter majority of) cantons needs to be in favor ("Ständemehr"), a ~16 percentage point increase in yes voters would have allowed for the initiative to pass. That's a pretty large difference. 

Things that could have been done to make it more likely that the initiative passes:

  • Release shocking results of an undercover investigation ~2 weeks before the vote. Maybe this could have led to a 2-10% increase?
  • Have a much larger campaign budget ($5m or so). Maybe another 2-7%?

So with some extra resources and luck, this may have been possible to win, perhaps.

Tobias Häberli @ 2022-09-27T17:56 (+22)

Release shocking results of an undercover investigation ~2 weeks before the vote. Maybe this could have led to a 2-10% increase?


My understanding is, that they did try to do this with an undercover investigation report on poultry farming. But it was only in the news for a very short time and I'm guessing didn't have a large effect.

A further thing might have helped:

  • Show clearly how the initiative would have improved animal welfare. 
    The whole campaign was a bit of a mess in this regard.  In the "voter information booklet" the only clearly understandable improvement was about maximum livestocks – which only affected laying hens. This lead to this underwhelming infographic in favour of the initiative [left column: current standards, righ column: standards if initiative passes].

    The initiative committee does claim on their website, that the initiative will lead to more living space for farmed animals. But it never advertised how much. I struggled to find the space requirement information with a quick google search, before a national newspaper reported on it. 
Jonas Vollmer @ 2022-09-29T01:44 (+1)

Excellent points, thank you!

Charles He @ 2022-09-27T00:31 (+6)

I was one of the people who helped draft the constitutional amendment and launch the initiative. 
 

This project seems hard and important. Your work seems impactful, as you mentioned, it seems noticeable and impressive to 37% support of banning a harmful industry.

As Mo Putera also suggested, would it make sense to further write up what you and others did on this project? 

  • Maybe a write up would add depth, communicate the challenges faced, publicize the project, as well as give some sense of how to get started on similar object level work? 
    • For example, I have no idea how to get a “constitutional initiative” started, or “how connected” someone would need to be (which could be easier because of EA networks/EA aligned people). 

Useful work on animal welfare policy seems like it would apply to other initiatives. 

(I understand you are busy. Maybe it make sense to hire an assistant or use some other service to help write this up?)

Jonas Vollmer @ 2022-09-27T01:09 (+15)

The short version is that it's pretty easy for anyone to launch one if you have $500k in funding, it's really hard to get the wording of the constitutional amendment right, and the base rate of initiatives passing is just ~10% so it's hard to actually be successful. I already published a similar write-up here, which explains some of the background, and there is a general overview of ballot measures.

I'm not planning to produce a longer write-up because I don't expect me producing a write-up will directly enable useful work. I don't expect  more Swiss ballot initiatives to be especially promising (though there might be cool ideas around), and ballot initiatives work quite differently elsewhere. The basics of how Swiss ballot initiatives work are easy to google and well-documented in the media (including English ones). I also wasn't involved with the campaigning, so I can't really comment on that.

Charles He @ 2022-09-27T00:40 (+5)

Separately, I think the effective animal activism community should be much clearer on a long-term strategy to inform their prioritization. By when do we expect to get meat alternatives that are competitive on taste and price? At that point, how many people do we expect to go vegetarian? Is there a date by which we expect >50% of the developed-world population to go vegetarian? To what degree are policies shaped by precedents from other countries?

 

These thoughts seem both really important and quite deep and thoughtful.

I don’t know the answer at all, but I have a few questions that might be useful (they might advance discussion/ intent). Please feel free to answer if it makes sense.

  • Is this related to what people call a “theory of victory” or vision? 
    • If so, I have questions about the use of “theory of victory”. I’m uncertain, in the sense I want to learn more, about the value of a “theory of victory” in farm animal welfare. 
      • If we reduced animal suffering by 50-90% in a fairly short time, that seems really good and productive. What does a theory of victory contribute  in addition to that?
        • Maybe it provide a “focal” or “tipping point”, or is useful for morale, rhetoric, getting further allies or resources? 
        • Maybe it has coordination value. For example, if we knew at "year Y" that meat alternatives would be at “cost parity”, coordinating many other campaigns and activities at the same time would be useful
  • Are you imagining this "long-term strategy" to come from the EA community (maybe in the sense of EA farm animal leaders agreeing, or people brainstorming more generally, or Rethink Priorities spinning up a project), or do you think it would come from a more external source?
  • I'm not certain, but I'm probably not very optimistic about large-scale shifts from meat consumption in a short time frame[1]. I’m interested in facts or even just a formidable narrative that could change this non-optimistic view. Do you or anyone else know any thoughts about this?
     

 

  1. ^

    The people I have met in the past, who advance the idea of a major, upcoming, shift, seem to rely on narratives focused on personal dietary change. Upon examination, their views seem really inconsistent with data that the % of the population that is vegan/vegetarian seems to be flat over decades. 

    To me, some groups or initiatives seem to be communicating mainly with subcultures that are historically receptive to animal welfare. It seems the related /consequent information environment could unduly influence their judgement.

Jonas Vollmer @ 2022-09-27T01:18 (+8)

I share your general pessimism, but I'm curious if bigger shifts are possible on a 10-30y timescale. I think progress in alternative protein might help with that, and I'd like to have better forecasts on how that will develop, and what the implications are.

A "theory of victory" might be premised on assuming success, which would be a bad assumption to make, but insofar as we're not doing that, that's what I have in mind.

I expect this long-term strategy to come from EA; don't really think anyone else would do a good job (though of course happy to be surprised).

emre kaplan @ 2022-09-25T19:40 (+60)

It was a bet worth taking and we likely learned a lot. We will keep fighting the good fights. I feel grateful to all the people who worked hard on this.

Greg_Colbourn @ 2022-09-26T08:30 (+19)

I think 37% is pretty encouraging. Perhaps if it's run again in 5 years it could pass? There are signs we could be close to a tipping point, such as 100% vegan Burger Kings.

Mo Putera @ 2022-09-26T03:46 (+16)

I'd be interested to read a postmortem -- why it failed, lessons learned, etc.

minthin @ 2022-10-20T14:08 (+1)

And a rating of which campaign tactics worked and did not.

Lauren Maria @ 2022-09-25T22:47 (+16)

Maybe banning factory farming would be more successful if we were to take an approach similar to The Paris Agreement. So we would basically need countries to a) agree this is a serious issue that needs resolution b) take individual approaches to slowly reducing their contributions to factory farming (regardless of whether or not factory farming "occurs" within their country). I know there are some EAs with their hands in the UN now, so one can only hope they make this a priority. 

 

Guy Raveh @ 2022-09-25T23:12 (+13)

I admire your ability to persevere and use this to ask important questions and learn lessons - personally my sadness in response currently overwhelms most of this ability.

The only thought I have is that maybe we need to invest in EA becoming not just an intellectual and practical project, but also a mass movement with appeal to the public.

Peter @ 2022-09-27T20:20 (+9)

I work in US politics and I'm more knowledgeable about the United States, but a few points come to mind:

  1. Incremental ballot initiatives are more likely to pass than sweeping ones (at least in the USA)
  2. The meat and agribusiness lobbies are incredibly powerful
  3. Positively framed initiatives are generally more likely to pass than ones that take something away or focus on something negative. But arguments opposing changes are generally more likely to win over ones supporting changes. Most initiatives fail. 

As for what this would look like with positive framing, it would probably take some careful thought but maybe end up with ballot text something like "Healthy/Natural Farms Initiative - ensure all farm animals live in healthy, safe, and humane conditions"

If we combine that with something more incremental, it might look like "Open stables initiative" "Ensure farm animals live free from disease causing overcrowding and confinement" or "have __ time outside cages." A more specific narrow initiative may have helped against arguments that "factory farms don't exist" which is perhaps harder to pin down what it means to people. 

A series of narrow initiatives could potentially be more effective at eroding cruel conditions over time than a binary yes or no abolish ballot initiative that takes effect in 25 years since there are more chances for change to accumulate and less change on the ballot all at once. 

*I don't really know much about specific policy interventions or mechanisms of change that would be narrow and impactful in the factory farming space, so someone else could probably improve these. 

minthin @ 2022-10-20T14:11 (+1)

Great points--especailly the positive framing. On the surface it seems valid, although I'd want to see evidence to support the positive framing perspective. Also, I really like how you give examples to back up your points.

SiobhanB @ 2022-09-27T08:46 (+7)

I think that 37% is a decent result when you consider the difference in budget between our camp (I recently started working for Sentience Politics) and the opposition, who also represented the status quo. For them, it was a sitter. But I'd be sitting less comfortably now.

More than 1 in 3 voters decided that they were prepared to pay a little extra to phase out the most egregious of animal husbandry practices over a period of 25 years.

Over the next 25 years, my crystal ball tells me we will see a mahoosive proliferation of alternative proteins, such that an initiative like this may well not be required anymore. So I think EAs should focus on speeding that process up prontissimo.

It won't be ethics that causes most people to change their diet, nor environmental concerns (overblown as they may sometimes be by animal advocates). It'll be the all-else-being-equal availability of a convenient alternative. Most likely grown in a lab.

As for the animals suffering in the here and now, and where to go in the aftermath of the initiative, I think it would make sense to look at which of the demands garnered the most support, and how to re-package them in such a way to maximise the likelihood of individual success. At the moment, it looks like consumers took the biggest issue with the small spaces that animals are forced to live in. That's a straightforward matter without much room for convolution.

Eleos, I'm not sure that your number 2 is controversial, or that it ought to be, but I am sure that I think it's spot on. Having the kind of resources that the opposition had would likely have made a difference. Perhaps all the difference. This wasn't an exercise in navel-gazing but a huge opportunity to make a, as you say, 'real world' difference under the EA banner. On a side but related note, reading most of the posts on this forum gives me a headache. I'm too thick, along with most of society. We've got to make EA ideas digestible and practicable for the common Jim.

minthin @ 2022-10-20T14:20 (+2)

Incredible news. I see two big benefits of the results:

  1. If 37% of the voters supported the initiative, approximately 30% of the meat eating voter pool signed off on ending factory farming (assume ~5-7%  are vegetarian/vegans. That is noteworthy.
  2. Sometimes an initiative takes multiple attempts before it passes. 

The main rebuttal I see to the "if it doesnt happen in Switzerland then it'll happen elsewhere" argument is that it has to start somewhere. One country can be the catalyst for others.

Florian Habermacher @ 2022-10-04T19:51 (+2)

Couldn't agree more with

In my impression, the most influential argument of the camp against the initiative was that factory farming just doesn't exist in Switzerland.[2] Even if it was only one of but not the most influential argument, I think this speaks volumes about both the (current) debate culture

In a similar direction, there's more that struck me as rather discouraging in terms of intelligent public debate:

In addition to this lie you pointed to apparently being popular*, from my experience in discussions about the initiative, the population also showed a basic inability to follow most basic logical principles:

  1. Even many of the kindest people who would not want to harm animals, believed, as a sort of fundamental principle, it'd be bad to prescribe what animals people can and cannot eat, thinking that, therefore, it is fundamentally not okay to impose (such) animal welfare protection measures.
  2. All while no single person (there will be the odd exception; but it really is an exception) would have claimed that the existing animal welfare laws would be unwarranted/should be abolished/relaxed.
Achim @ 2022-09-27T19:25 (+1)

In my impression, the most influential argument of the camp against the initiative was that factory farming just doesn't exist in Switzerland. Even if it was only one of but not the most influential argument, I think this speaks volumes about both the (current) debate culture and the limits of how hopeful we should be that relevantly similar EA-inspired policies will soon see widespread implementation .

 

Is there any empirical research on the motivation of voters (and non-voters) in this referendum? The swissinfo article you mention does not directly use this argument, it just cites something somewhat similar:

Interior Minister Alain Berset, responsible for the government’s stance on the initiative, said on Sunday that citizens had “judged that the dignity of animals is respected in our country, and that their well-being is sufficiently protected by current legislation”.

and:

Opponents of the ban, including government and a majority of parliament, had warned that the change would have led to higher prices, reduced consumer choice, and floods of foreign products arriving to fill the gap – despite the initiative stipulating that imports would also have to conform to the new standards.

Over the past months, a majority of farmers, led by the Farmers’ Federation, fought vehemently against what they saw as an unfair attack on them as a means to reduce meat consumption in society more broadly.