Edit 1/29: Funding is back, baby!
Crossposted from my blog.
(This could end up being the most important thing I’ve ever written. Please like and restack it—if you have a big blog, please write about it).
A mother holds her sick baby to her chest. She knows he doesn’t have long to live. She hears him coughing—those body-wracking coughs—that expel mucus and phlegm, leaving him desperately gasping for air. He is just a few months old. And yet that’s how old he will be when he dies.
The aforementioned scene is likely to become increasingly common in the coming years. Fortunately, there is still hope.
Trump recently signed an executive order shutting off almost all foreign aid. Most terrifyingly, this included shutting off the PEPFAR program—the single most successful foreign aid program in my lifetime. PEPFAR provides treatment and prevention of HIV and AIDS—it has saved about 25 million people since its implementation in 2001, despite only taking less than 0.1% of the federal budget. Every single day that it is operative, PEPFAR supports:
> * More than 222,000 people on treatment in the program collecting ARVs to stay healthy;
> * More than 224,000 HIV tests, newly diagnosing 4,374 people with HIV – 10% of whom are pregnant women attending antenatal clinic visits;
> * Services for 17,695 orphans and vulnerable children impacted by HIV;
> * 7,163 cervical cancer screenings, newly diagnosing 363 women with cervical cancer or pre-cancerous lesions, and treating 324 women with positive cervical cancer results;
> * Care and support for 3,618 women experiencing gender-based violence, including 779 women who experienced sexual violence.
The most important thing PEPFAR does is provide life-saving anti-retroviral treatments to millions of victims of HIV. More than 20 million people living with HIV globally depend on daily anti-retrovirals, including over half a million children. These children, facing a deadly illness in desperately poor countries, are now going
That's incredible, if it's a true leak. I assume the prior for leaks of this kind being true should be quite high? There doesn't seem to be much incentive for anyone to create and distribute a false leak of animal welfare standards.
Good sign.
Still has to go through a lot of negotiations and industry will obviously seek to water it down by claiming it's not economically feasible to do at all, or at least anytime soon. Also see the secondary Metaculus question- conditional on the European Union agreeing to ban cages, when will the phase out for cages end?
This is really fantastic news overall! 👏
Not sure on the dehorning and beak trimming though, that sounds like virtue signalling more so than an evidence based policy.
Wow.
Banning CO2 slaughter and mutilations seems... way ahead of anything I would have guessed might happen soon. I would've guessed that at least a ban on dehorning is way outside the range of plausible things that would be done for animal welfare.
Are we worried beak trimming ban is net neg? Because of increased pecking/deaths from cannibalism & infected wounds.
Seems net-neg. Research here using 10 commercial farms who each kept a flock of beak-trimmed hens and non-beak-trimmed hens.
"omitting beak trimming had negative consequences for the condition of plumage, skin, and keel bone, and tended to increase mortality, highlighting the risk of reduced welfare when keeping layers with intact beaks."
Not sure dehorning would be a good thing considering the deaths and mutilations caused by animals using their horns.
This is amazing! Thank you so much for sharing this. I agree with Ariel that there is not much incentive to leak fake animal welfare standard changes so this is very promising. This seems like a great time for groups in other countries to ride off the momentum and take the opportunity to create higher and more uniform welfare standards internationally.
Further evidence that the leak is genuine. The alleged new standards are consistent with recent known statements from the EU.
No way. I had started doubting the whole "arc bends towards justice" thing, but it just bends slowly. Too slowly for the animals being tortured to death right now, and it's not really "justice" as long as the systematic perpetrators aren't made to face up to it somehow, but ok, I won't be fussy about it as long as the trajectory gets us to where we need to be.