Alternative Proteins and Fragile Progress

[Note: Exploratory thoughts. I'm thinking this through and would love to hear others' perspectives.]

I've been thinking about animal welfare strategy from a longtermist perspective. My concern is that, while alternative proteins will almost certainly offer short-term gains, the de-emphasis on moral circle expansion means this progress is somewhat fragile over the longer term.

I think work on alternative proteins is valuable and important. I acknowledge it has the potential to dramatically reduce animal suffering in the near term, perhaps even ending animal farming entirely in a best-case scenario.

My concern is that alternative proteins sidestep moral circle expansion altogether. People can reduce meat consumption without changing how they think about animals in any way. This makes progress dependent on, for example, economic circumstances and social trends - both of which can change or reverse.

The Fragility Concern

The Good Food Institute (GFI) works to make alternative proteins as “delicious, affordable, and accessible as conventional meat”. This makes sense as their research has found that taste and price are the primary drivers of food choice. This aligns with the results of studies as far back as 1998, which seems to indicate a consistency in motivation when it comes to food choice. Although consumers are often aware of animal welfare and sustainability issues, these are much less commonly cited as factors that influence food choice. The conclusion, then, is that consumers may opt for alternative proteins instead of meat in cases where it tastes better and costs less.

Understandably, there is now a focus on making alternative proteins tastier and cheaper, with the aim of encouraging people to move from animal-based meat to plant-based alternatives. If they make this change based on the factors mentioned above, then it will be based on incentives, not any shift in values. It would be entirely plausible and morally consistent for someone to place no value whatsoever on animal lives, and still make this change. A hunter could make this change and continue to hunt. A fisherman could make the change and continue to fish. There would be no inconsistency in continuing to kill animals or cause animal suffering while consuming alternative proteins instead of meat.

It seems to me that the extent to which this matters is proportionate to our confidence in predicting future trends in economics and social norms. If we’re talking about the next year, or even the next ten years, then this is less of a concern. If advancements in the development of alternative proteins in the near future produce products that are cheaper and taste better than meat, we can reasonably predict, based on the factors mentioned before, that people will switch – probably not immediately, but over the course of a number of years as the consumption of alternative proteins becomes more normalised and popular. This looks like an unquestionably positive result for the animals alive over the next decade – at least, for the animals exploited and killed to produce meat products. Little would change for the animals exploited in other ways, as in the case of the hunter. 

From a longtermist perspective, there may be trillions of animals at risk of exploitation across the long-term future. Economic and social conditions change. If alternative proteins lose their price or taste advantage in 50 or 100 years, we could see rapid backsliding - and from a longtermist perspective, fragile progress over decades might mean substantially less when weighed against potentially millions of years of future animal welfare.

The Longtermist Implication

EA applies longtermist thinking to issues around, for example, AI risk and safety. Longtermism is less often applied to animal welfare strategy, but it seems that the same logic applies; it is important for us to consider the trillions of animals across millions of years that may lie ahead. If alternative proteins lead to a huge reduction in animal suffering over the next 50 years, that is undoubtedly a hugely significant positive impact for farmed animals. However if, at that point, circumstances change – economic changes, shifting social trends (perhaps animal foods seen as a luxury or a delicacy) – then the value of alternative meat could potentially be lost for the billions of animals that come along after that point. History has shown that progress built primarily on economic incentives or convenience can reverse when there is a change in the relevant conditions; this has been seen with everything from environmental regulations to labour protections.

This raises the question: should we prioritise moral circle expansion instead? From a longtermist perspective, the best possible outcome for animals is, of course, to change how people think about them – to encourage people to expand their moral circle. Efforts to convince people to give moral consideration to animals have prompted only minor changes. Despite significant campaigns promoting veganism in the UK – Veganuary being a notable example –  vegans make up just 1.5% of the population at best guess. It’s not nothing, but it’s a very small proportion of the people who are almost certainly aware of veganism and animal welfare issues. Animal abolitionism, certainly when compared with welfarism, has made marginal gains at best. Welfarism has gotten chickens out of conventional battery cages and pigs out of farrowing crates. People are willing to support changes to improve the lives of the animals they eat, but very few are willing to stop exploiting them altogether.

This puts us in the difficult position of having to either:

1. Accept that fragile progress may be the only progress that is possible, and work to minimise the chances that progress with alternative proteins will, in the future, backslide in a way that is difficult to predict.
2. Invest resources in attempting to make more durable progress by means of moral circle expansion which, as we’ve seen, is slow and difficult.

This problem applies most straightforwardly to alternative proteins, but a similar argument can be made regarding welfare improvements and other such measures. The distinction here is that changes in welfare seem intuitively more durable as a future desire for additional suffering of farmed animals is less plausible than a future desire for animal meat. The issue with welfarism is that the trillions of future animals would still suffer, but perhaps a little less than they otherwise would have.

What This Means

Alternative proteins are genuinely promising for reducing animal suffering in the near term. It is possible that this work will permanently end animal farming for food; I am certainly open to this idea, and I am cautiously optimistic. However, there is a sense that we are focusing on alternative proteins and ignoring the massively inconvenient monster in the corner. Changes based on economic incentives, convenience, or social trends are more fragile than changes based on genuine moral progress. Longtermism asks us to look far down the road, and it can be difficult to predict the economics or social trends of that future world. The most durable way of securing the safety and freedom of animals across millennia is moral circle expansion. 

This doesn't mean abandoning alternative proteins or welfare reforms, but it does mean treating moral advocacy as equally important rather than a lost cause. If trillions of future animals are counting on us to radically shape the lives they will be born into, then it seems to me that we have a duty to continue looking for ways to encourage people to give moral consideration to animals. We’ve been trying to do this for some time with fairly marginal gains, but perhaps there are fresh ways to think about this. Tractability matters, but from a longtermist perspective, durability might matter at least as much. The ideal scenario is continued investment in alternative proteins while also reinvigorating our efforts on moral circle expansion. I'm not suggesting that we should choose one over the other, but that we might be under-investing in the latter because it is less tractable.

I’d be interested to hear what others think about this. Are there any possible advocacy routes that are under-explored? Or perhaps we have reason to believe that alternative proteins will prove more durable than I'm suggesting here?