Thank you! This is a very practical way to get people to do something. Though I will admit, I get an odd feeling about sharing it, because I feel rather dogmatic about not harming animals. I am working on this, because I know that 50% of the world eating half as much meat is more likely to happen than 50% of the world going vegan. And if the former happens, it's overall better for the animals.
I totally relate with the emotional difficulty of putting aside feelings about others harming animals in order to best enable them to make the world better, in whatever ways are both realistic and most impactful for them. It’s hard! But I think it’s really important and I think is making me a more effective advocate within my real-world social interactionsÂ
It's clearly better in the short term. I think it's less clearly better in the long term: eating meat makes people more likely to deny the relevance of animal minds, so their motivation to promote animal welfare might not be sustained in the long run. Conversely, this effect might cause people who go vegan to actually become increasingly non-speciesist over time (I'm extrapolating from the results of the study, but I think it's a fair assumption).
I haven't read more than the abstract of the referenced article, as access is restricted, but the abstract suggests that the reason that people deny the existence of animal minds is due to their dissonance between not wanting to cause harm to things that have minds and enjoying eating meat. Imposing offsets on oneself would seem to reconcile this dissonance: you enjoy an activity that causes harm and because you have this aversion to harm you couple that with an activity that has commensurate harm reduction.
Although it is possible that meat consumption with offsets could have a corrosive effect on one's perception of animals as moral patients, I would not infer this from the linked article, based on the psychological mechanisms described in the abstract.
Right, I agree that's possible.
But I doubt most people are so rational. Climate offsets present an importantly different case - at least some are a true offset, where no more carbon is added to the atmosphere, so no additional or different harm is done. With animal offsetting, no more harm is done, but a different harm is. Most people would still feel bad about causing harm to that particular individual - and so they will still be insentivized to deny their moral relevance, even if they offset.
So I think this is likely to vary by person, depending on how tied their emotional response is to individuals vs abstract suffering.
I don't know that the contrast between climate and animal offsets is so strong. The harm caused by consuming animal products is also indirect in most cases in relation to the consumer: the animal consumed is already dead and has already suffered whatever harms the factory farming system inflicted on it, so your action harms it no further. The harm you are actually doing are increasing the demand for the product.
The set of people eating meat that choose to offset and those that choose not to probably have a very different psychological environment regarding the animals consumed, I would think.
I’d love to hear opinions: do you think introducing a step between veganism and omnivorism (like plant-forward diets) is more persuasive for many people? Also curious what role storytelling or visuals play in changing habits effectively.
We've previously shared on the forum FarmKind's calculator to help meat-eaters offset the animal welfare impact of their diet through donations (like carbon offsets).Â
You can see our original post and the discussion about the calculator here.
One thing we've heard from early adopters is "this is great, and I think my [friend/family member] would be into this, but I'm not sure how to explain it to them". Understandable!Â
Explaining to people that even if they're not willing to change their diet, they can still help improve the lives of farmed animals through donations, without making them feel judged for their diet can be hard. Many people are quite defensive when it comes to their diet, and have come to associate calls for them to help farmed animals with judgmental vegans, even when they're not being judged at all.
To make it easier for people to share our calculator with friends and family so that they can take their first step in what will hopefully be a lifelong journey of taking action to help animals, we've made a 1 minute explainer video:
If you've tried convincing loved ones to change their diet and concluded that they're not going to be willing any time soon, or if you've never tried because you think it's more likely to backfire than go well, consider sharing this alternative way that they can help.
Cool video! And congratulations again on your podcast slam dunk of a fundraiser.Â
Yeah that podcasts impact was amazing to watch