Bad omens for US farmed animal policy work?

By Tyler Johnston @ 2024-11-06T21:03 (+99)

I fear the policy landscape for farmed animal protection work is looking more and more bleak.

The election results from last night have reinforced this fear, with animal-friendly measures failing across the ballot, a Republican trifecta set to rule for at least two years, and RFK Jr. in line to act as appointed czar of HHS/FDA/USDA. So I thought I would write up a quick memo of the signals that have me worried:

Abolitionist ballot measures lost big in 2024.

The election results aren’t final yet, but there were two major ballot initiatives in liberal cities this year concerning factory farming. I suspect these could have been motivated in part by surprising findings that nearly 50% of US citizens supported banning both slaughterhouses and factory farms. But as predicted by Rethink Priorities, things did not pan out this way.

In Sonoma County, California, where Harris is currently leading by a nearly-50-point margin, Measure J would have banned CAFOs (factory farms) in the county. With 75% of the vote in, it lost by a 60-point margin, with 85% (!!) of the county voting against the measure.

In Denver, Colorado, where Harris is currently leading by a 60-point margin, Ordinance 309 (which would have banned slaughterhouses in the city) lost by a 30-point margin.

Other animal-rights-flavored measures around the country also failed:

Another ordinance in Denver, 308, which would have banned fur sale, and has been successfully passed in democratic cities previously, lost by 15 points. Colorado’s Proposition 127, which would have banned trophy hunting of big cats, lost by 10 points.

In Florida, voters favored enshrining a constitutional “public right to fish and hunt,” which could preempt animal protection laws banning cruel hunting practices, by 34 points.

I know there are theories of change that motivated some of these initiatives that don’t actually include winning the vote — considerations like building momentum, forcing animals into the political conversation, gaining experience and laying the groundwork for future initiatives, etc. But it sure would have been nice if we lived in a world where we could actually get these laws passed.

Incrementalist ballot measures — previously some of the movement’s biggest wins — may simply be undone.

Many people reading this will remember the celebrations when Proposition 12 — the strongest and most meaningful (IMO) farmed animal protection law in the world — was passed by a wide margin in 2018. I think a lot of the excitement for policy work we see today may have been downstream of successful campaigns like this one, or the previous success of MA Question 3 and CA Proposition 2.

The bad news is that these laws face continued threats of simply being undone. The most notable example is the challenge to Proposition 12 which luckily failed at the US Supreme Court. Massachusetts’ Question 3 also faced a string of challenges and narrowly survived.

But now both of these laws may simply be preempted by the EATS act, a piece of legislation that the animal agriculture industry hopes to add to the farm bill, and which would ban state-level prohibitions on the sale of cruelly-raised animal products from other states. They’ve fought for this for multiple years in a row — in 2023, Metaculus gave it a 30% chance of passing. Now it’s back in 2024, where it may or may not be renewed in the lame duck period.

These are just the known threats. With a Republican trifecta set to rule for at least the next two years, I fear things aren’t looking good for pro-animal policies at the federal level, and thus the state level (since there is so much political appetite to preempt state-level protections).

We have opponents on the left and the right.

The reason a Republican trifecta concerns me is in part because it’s largely been Democrats who have publicly opposed the EATS Act. But when it comes to animal protection, the partisan divide really isn’t all that clear or consistent.

As previously mentioned, abolitionist ballot measures recently failed in blue cities, including a fur ban measure which had previously passed in many blue cities in California, Massachusetts, and Colorado. The Denver slaughterhouse ban initiative ended up facing landslide opposition from the democratic party. I worry this is some evidence — albeit very weak — of a potential vibe shift among the left that matches the rightward shift across the country.

Also, in the fight over Proposition 12, it was the Biden justice department that supported pork producers and sided against the state of California, and the liberal justices on the court were split 2-1 on the final decision.

I think both political parties realize that “banning meat” has become a meme. Republicans want to accuse Democrats of planning it, as Trump repeatedly did on the campaign trail. Democrats want to signal, through promises and through action, that they have no such plans.

Supporting legislation to improve the lives of farmed animals, and thus likely raise costs for farmers and consumers in the process, is going to be political anathema for a long time. This isn’t new — I think it is part of why our biggest political wins have come from citizens’ initiatives so far — but see the past two sections; ballot measures aren't looking good right now. And the stronger the “Democrats want to ban cows” meme is, the harsher I fear the counter-signaling response from both parties will be.

Cultivated meat is under fire. The Trump admin won't make this any better.

More evidence of “banning meat” being a meme, and politicians wanting to make extremely costly signals to show how much they support animal agriculture — two states have already preemptively banned the sale of cultivated meat. Two more states have considered it (including swing state Arizona, where it passed in the state House, and which has previously adopted cage-free regulations).

Bear in mind that its potential for sale is dependent on the FDA and the USDA, whose approval of cultivated meat products is not a foregone conclusion. With the Trump administration set to take control of both agencies, things don’t look good. Vice President-elect JD Vance called cultivated meat “disgusting fake meat” and “highly processed garbage.” RFK Jr. is a health fanatic who has opposed technological innovations including vaccines, pesticides, and fluoridated drinking water.

So what next?

Maybe political change without real, proactive electorate buy-in is putting the wagon before the horse. So what if this were true? The effective animal advocacy movement has been fighting a battle on multiple fronts. When one isn’t working, the obvious solution is to invest more in others.

If it’s true that US policy work for animals is looking worse and worse, a rational solution is just to adjust our portfolio and invest more in interventions including direct corporate engagement, technological innovation[1], and even individual change.

Another option is to invest more in international work — I continue to be optimistic about policy progress being made in the EU, as well as corporate engagement work in Asia. As important as the US is to me (as a lifelong resident) and to the world (as an economic leader), it still only accounts for a small fraction of animals used and killed on factory farms.

Tl;dr I fear the vibes for US policy work are off, at least in the near term.

  1. ^

     Here I’m thinking of technological solutions to animal suffering on factory farms, as is being pursued by Innovate Animal Ag, as well as technological progress on alternative proteins as is being pursued by groups like the Good Food Institute. I think the latter is still worthwhile despite the political hostility toward it since (1) America is not the entire world, and (2) cultivated meat that achieves triple parity (across price, taste, and convenience) will be a much harder technology to oppose.

Yelnats T.J. @ 2024-11-07T15:31 (+26)

I see one piece of important analysis is missing: the money differential

Campaigns that lost in 2024 (TLDR: 4 of the 5 were outspent)

 

Previous campaigns that won (TLDR: 0 of the 3 were outspent)


The correlation between money spent/outspending your opponent is clear. 

Tyler Johnston @ 2024-11-07T17:27 (+6)

This is interesting and exactly the sort of consideration I was worried my anecdote-based feelings could miss. A bit of googling suggests to me that there is some evidence in favor of increased spending correlating with significant changes in ballot measure outcomes (I've heard it's more uncertain with electoral politics). 

If it's true that the ballot initiative failures were just a funding issue rather that a broader reflection of the electorate's willingness to support, I think that'd be a big deal, and maybe an argument in favor of investing more in this work.

Also, side note — I'm really surprised that there was such weak opposition to Prop 12, especially given the costs to industry and the fight it's put up since then. It makes me wonder of Ballotopedia missed anything here.

Yelnats T.J. @ 2024-11-07T18:23 (+3)

I'm of the opinion EAs are underutilizing ballot/voter initiatives. This is something I plan on writing up on the Forum at some point. (If anyone is interested in exploring voter initiatives as an intervention, please reach out)

The veto of SB 1047 should also raise the salience of ballot initiatives in EA.

Yelnats T.J. @ 2024-11-07T18:24 (+2)

I think one of the most compelling cases is using voter initiatives for political system reform.

The short argument is that a large portion of EA has bought into policy as high EV because the high-leverage impact more than compensates for the hits-based nature of it. However, upstream of policy is politics. Generally, the problem is not a lack of solutions but a lack of political will. Yet, even upstream of politics is the political system which creates the selection effects for who gets into office and the incentives that act on them while in office.

Political system reform, while more challenging to quantify, theoretically has very very very high ROI because you are addressing the coefficient of a coefficient acting on policy.

However, legislators have proven resistant to changing the rules of how they got to power. Hence, prominent people/organizations in the money-in-politics and electoral reform space have opted to use ballot initiatives to circumvent the legislature.

Nithin Ravi @ 2024-11-07T21:43 (+1)

In the US context, I am curious how tractable mail-in ballot reform is. This was passed in Arizona in 1991 and Colorado in 2013, although I'm unsure what the progress looks like at a large scale.

Jason @ 2024-11-07T22:49 (+5)

It seems plausible that J/309/etc advocates knew at some point that the initiatives were very unlikely to pass, and that low financial investment from that juncture onward was thus more a consequence of low public support earlier in the campaign season more than a cause of low public support.

Does anyone have information that could evaluate that possibility, such as longitudinal records of spending and polling outcomes?

MarcusAbramovitch @ 2024-11-07T03:22 (+13)

I think it's worth pointing out that while the US might be the most influential country on the world stage, the vast majority of animals do not reside in the US. A plurality of EAs may be in the US but it's important to remember that the US isn't the whole world and while this may be a small set back, I'm quite hopeful for the animal movement as a whole.

Tyler Johnston @ 2024-11-07T17:19 (+1)

Agreed! I tried to mention this in the last paragraph but probably should have emphasized it elsewhere. Thanks for pointing it out.

agagagwaka @ 2024-11-06T22:13 (+13)

Agreed. The silver lining may be Vivek Ramaswamy, who seems committed to animal welfare.

https://x.com/VivekGRamaswamy/status/1853441547825504394

justsaying @ 2024-11-07T00:26 (+3)

Unfortunately I don't see Vivek as being directly influential on animal issues. Politico mentioned him as possible head of the department of homeland security, which would keep him busy elsewhere and away from animal issues. Really hope I am wrong about this, I was also viewing him as a possible silver lining.

MarcusAbramovitch @ 2024-11-07T03:20 (+6)

Interesting I'm quite bullish on Vivek for animal issues since I think he ver much has the ear of Trump insofar as that matters and on a random Thursday, he could just get a bunch of executive orders through. Trump is far less ideological than most.

JamesÖz @ 2024-11-08T18:42 (+9)

There are also reasons why this might be the most animal-friendly US administration ever:

Basically, this is a great example of the importance of working in a bipartisan way. If the animal movement had been more focused on building political allies on both sides of the aisle, this could actually be some of the best opportunity to pass anti-factory farming legislation. 

david_reinstein @ 2024-11-07T15:11 (+7)

Perhaps a 'side point', but as bad as the RFK anti-science skepticism is, I think it may actually cut in favor of animal welfare. Unwarranted health fears may combine with warranted considerations to bring concerns over the human risks of large-scale animal agriculture? Bad epistemics but may put this on the map? 

(Note, as I discuss here  I think RFK is a huge risk/disaster on the health and pandemic risk front).

Nithin Ravi @ 2024-11-06T21:41 (+7)

What do you think about losses like these being a trigger for backsliding on other farmed animal work? 

For instance, the Animal Ag Lobby saying something like, "Look people don't care about animal welfare. Even progressive cities turned this down." Could this effect trigger something like the EATS act getting passed? I don't have an informed opinion on this, but it seems like a significant backfire risk.

I'm also worried that 308 (Denver's fur ban) would have passed without 309 (Denver's slaughterhouse ban) being right next to it. The Denver Democrats anti-endorsed both measures which may not have happened if the measures were run separately (total guess on that one, but it passed in Boulder which has very similar demographics).

At the same time, perhaps there is very significant social change & radical flank effects from forcing the vote on abolitionist work! Looking for insight.

ASuchy @ 2024-11-07T11:43 (+5)

Thanks thanks for breaking it down Tyler!

In adjusting the portfolio, I think it is also important to consider how important we think US policy is in total for overall change for animals in the US vs the other areas we could dig more into. If we think it is very important, then the current situation might be the reason we need to invest more into US policy work and think more deeply about why the situation is perhaps playing out differently to Europe. FWIW I  also am optimistic about policy in the the EU.

For example, a difference I see in animal organizations in the EU compared to the US is I think many of the EU organizations are more focussed on externally appearing as politically neutral than they are in the US. And at the same time it is really interesting how you've shown how the ballot initiatives have panned out in the liberal cities here.

Personally being more focussed on corporate engagement work, I notice that US companies need more effort to be held accountable than EU companies. So the US passing legislation would probably reduce the effort needed on corporate accountability work. Whereas, EU legislation will have a smaller impact on corporate accountability work success. Probably not the strongest reason to focus on policy work, but one thing that would make me nervous about us stepping too far away from policy work in a portfolio adjustment.

Jacob_Peacock @ 2024-11-07T06:36 (+5)

Thank you for writing this! It was very helpful learn how these initiatives went and I found my self agreeing with much of what you wrote.

I am curious to learn more of what costly signals you had in mind when you write:

politicians wanting to make extremely costly signals to show how much they support animal agriculture — two states have already preemptively banned the sale of cultivated meat.

My initial thinking was that these were pretty low costs for these politicians: cultivated meat isn't salient to the constituency, there are no sales in the state, and the industry is very small, so no one is really bothered to inflict a cost, but I'm curious what else I should consider.

Tyler Johnston @ 2024-11-07T17:34 (+5)

Good point — in retrospect that was hyperbole on my part, and I should have just said "signals."

I suppose I see banning any industry, especially for politicians who tend to favor free markets, as essentially trading off GDP for whatever cultural/electoral benefits are gained by the ban. But you're right that the cost to the local economy is virtually zero, at least right now. I suppose that will change if cultivated meat can one day be produced affordably at scale.

Jason @ 2024-11-07T12:53 (+4)

What results were people expecting for Measure J & Ordinance 309 specifically?

My (not very informed) take is that most voters would see these kinds of city/county level restrictions on production and processing as largely performative. (They would assume, probably correctly, that the CAFOs and slaughterhouses would just move elsewhere.) Given the broader revealed electoral zeitgeist ("It's the economy, stupid"), I'm not surprised that otherwise potentially sympathetic voters would have little appetite if they perceived these measures as accepting local job losses & tax revenue losses merely to force CAFOs or slaughterhouses to relocate other cities/counties.

justsaying @ 2024-11-08T14:54 (+1)

Thanks for writing this up. I would be really interested in thoughts about whether this makes working on U.S. policy less worthwhile compared to other interventions. Some reasons it might not see that a) there is a lot of infrastructure work to be done on policy that spans multiple administrations, b) there are elements of a trump administration that might be good for animals that we could capitalize on(see for example project 2025 recommendations for cutting farm subsidies; also consider some people in trumps orbit who seem to care about animals and wild influence; also consider that trumps last secretary of ag said more positive things about alt proteins than biden's, etc).

Animal welfare has also been somewhat salient for Republicans. As far as I am aware, they have all been focused on pet-related issues but I still think it says something that it's been a focus. There was the peanut the squirrel saga (arguably not welfare per se, but still revolved around the life of a non-human animal); there was the dog-shooting thing that seemed to sink Kristi Neom; and there was the baseless accusations that immigrants were eating cats and dogs. Maybe there is a way to leverage some of this sentiment into broader animal welfare initiatives?

david_reinstein @ 2024-11-07T15:11 (+1)

Also, fwiw, a Perplexity search mainly agreed with you, with some caveats:

likely that a future Trump administration would attempt to undermine or preempt state legislation on animal welfare standards, particularly those related to farm animals.

Hazo @ 2024-11-07T06:47 (+1)

I agree that the elections results were disappointing for animals, and particularly that the EATS act seems significantly more likely to pass in a republican-controlled government.

However, I think you're a little too pessimistic on what this means for animal-focused policy work in general. The ballot initiatives that failed this cycle were mostly abolitionist / vegany in vibe, which I think is significantly less popular than initiatives that are welfarist in vibe like Prop 12.

The EATS Act is primarily pushed by industry lobbyists, and doesn't necessarily reflect that these sorts of laws are getting less popular. 

Tyler Johnston @ 2024-11-07T17:37 (+2)

But the EATS act would basically nullify the value in any popular incrimentalist state laws, no? That's what has me worried I think. Otherwise I'd be excited about seeing Prop 12-like citizens' initiatives across the country.

Nithin Ravi @ 2024-11-07T21:47 (+1)

EATS act would just allow lower-welfare imports AFAIK. I'm wondering if anyone has an idea of how much this would actually impact welfare (i.e. in a massive state like California, is there enough price incentive to set up factory farms on the border post-EATS?)