I'm sharing an article by Rose Patterson from Animal Rising (AR), which responds to an EA criticism of AR's campaigns to block new factory farms in the UK.
When we started our Communities Against Factory Farming campaign to stop every new factory farm from being built, we thought it would be a crowd-pleaser! Who in the animal movement could argue that this could actually be a bad thing? However, we’ve heard it repeatedly over the past year, particularly coming from some in the Effective Altruist community: “The production will just move to other countries, where conditions are even worse.”
This argument reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of how social movements work and what we’re actually trying to achieve. Let me explain why.
Rose goes on to cover several counter-arguments: that some lives will be "saved" before production elsewhere scales up, that campaigns to block new factory farms can be coupled with campaigns to prohibit low welfare imports, and that the campaigns help to build the animal movement and set an important precedent.
I think that the piece is discussing an important criticism. As context, here's a version of the argument from Martin Gould at Open Philanthropy:
Halting plans for a large, polluting factory farm feels like a clear win — no ammonia-laden air burning residents’ lungs, no waste runoff contaminating local drinking water, and seemingly fewer animals suffering in industrial confinement. But that last assumption deserves scrutiny. What protects one community might actually condemn more animals to worse conditions elsewhere.
Consider the UK: Local groups celebrate blocking new chicken farms. But because UK chicken demand keeps growing — it rose 24% from 2012-2022 — the result of fewer new UK chicken farms is just that the UK imports more chicken: it almost doubled its chicken imports over the same time period. While most chicken imported into the UK comes from the EU, where conditions for chickens are similar, a growing share comes from Brazil and Thailand, where regulations are nonexistent. Blocking local farms may slightly reduce demand via higher prices, but it also risks sentencing animals to worse conditions abroad.
The same problem haunts government welfare reforms — stronger standards in one country can just shift production to places with worse standards. But advocates are getting smarter about this. They're pushing for laws that tackle both production and imports at once. US states like California have done this — when it banned battery cages, it also banned selling eggs from hens caged anywhere. The EU is considering the same approach. It's a crucial shift: without these import restrictions, both farm bans and welfare reforms risk exporting animal suffering to places with even worse conditions. And advocates have prioritized corporate policies, which avoid this problem, as companies pledge to stop selling products associated with the worst animal suffering (like caged eggs), regardless of where they are produced.
Saulius also discusses relevant concerns in this piece.
Thank you for writing this Rose – I think it’s very useful to have some of this discussion in the open and also clearly explained. I’m also a big fan of the way this can be used to gain media and get people involved in animal issues.
However, I disagree on some points, and will explain why below:
I think implying that EAs or people who have this critique are surrendering is pretty insulting to all the groups doing great work, in the UK and more broadly. For example, The Humane League UK, Open Cages UK, and Animal Equality UK are all doing great work to get hens out of cages in the UK, improving the living standards of meat chickens, winning legal protections for fish, and much more. They have impacted the lives of literally 500 million meat chickens and helped get tens of millions of hens out of cages each year.
To me, this seems like a worrying sign of hubris: only thinking the work you’re doing is “radical” enough or addressing the “real” problem.
2. Stopping new farms could hold back improving the lives of animals
Something you didn’t mention is another aspect people are concerned about: stopping new farms holds back welfare reforms that will tangibly improve the lives of chickens.
Thanks to the amazing work of groups in the UK, 7 major retailers committed to giving their meat chickens 20% more space. Estimates are that this will improve the lives of 500 million chickens each year, out of the total 1+ billion meat chickens raised in the UK. However, giving chickens 20% more space reduces the number of chickens per shed. If you block the extra floor space needed, which some producers are trying to build, other companies may not give their chickens more space. Or, similarly bad, those companies could source more from abroad, often at lower welfare. That’s not the outcome we want. Ideally, we can work on campaigns that don’t make the work of other animal advocates more challenging, which is why I have some mixed feelings here!
Of course, you could try to avoid this via not targeting the higher-welfare farms, which I and others have suggested previously. However, I don't think you have clarified your position on blocking planning permission for farms where it is required to make welfare improvements. Anima have made this distinction for their campaign in Poland, for example.
3. Stopping imports, or phasing out factory farming, is not easy nor likely to happen soon
I also don’t think the fur farming example supports your point that “Import restrictions become politically inevitable because they’re supported by the movement we’ve built and aligned with farming interests.” – Imports of fur continue to this day, 25 years after we banned it in the UK.
Farmers say they want equal import standards, but their actual top issues are loosening planning rules so they can build more sheds and fighting inheritance tax. Even now, the UK signs trade deals allowing lower-welfare meat. Getting those laws passed is slow and uncertain – we can’t assume they’ll follow automatically.
The UK is currently on track to align veterinary standards with the EU, which means the UK loses the ability to block imports from the EU (our main trading partner) as well as some other countries like the US, Canada, Brazil and more I’m not aware of. This doesn’t make me very optimistic that we should pursue strategies that only seem good if we ban imports. Read more about this here.
Similarly, I disagree with:
I also believe it can end – we just have very different timelines. It seems like (but correct me if this is wrong) you think this is possible within the next few years? Personally, I would put it around 20-50 years away, given the strength and size of the industry, and the fact that social change always moves more slowly than people expect. Given that this is an industry that has been stable or growing for the past decades, I think there needs to be pretty exceptional evidence if you think it will end in the next few years.
To be clear, I think it is good to be ambitious and go for big wins. But, I think it has to be moderated with some clear-eyed thinking on what is actually possible, so we don’t spend limited resources on campaigns that have a minisucile chance of winning – like trying to ban factory farming in the UK – and therefore miss a better opportunity to help animals.
4. You overstate how much these wins actually help animals
Stopping a new farm in the UK might prevent animal farming locally, but I think it’s unlikely that the effects are long-lived.
You say:
I think this is somewhat true, and it is a complicated dynamic. But I don’t think it’s right to say it takes 30 years to scale up imports or production. For example, you might have:
(Although this is also based on other complex stuff like breeders, hatcheries, catching slots and farms being the right specification for UK buyers).
Other reasons why imports can easily increase:
But overall, yes, there might be some period of time where supply is reduced, so prices are increased and demand drops slightly. This would be a good outcome! But this also comes at the cost of animals being in worse conditions – this report found 95% of Britain’s current or potential trade partners have lower farm animal welfare standards than the UK. So, it’s not obvious to me which side wins overall for actually improving the lives of animals.
Then I think a reasonable question is: is it the best use of our time and energy to be pursuing things that only help animals for a few months or in unclear ways? Especially if it may clash with the work of other advocates?
5. Movement-building is valuable but not self-justifying.
One of this campaign’s strongest points is that “we are building a movement” and changing public consciousness. I totally agree that movement-building is valuable. Every time we get more people to care about factory farming, whether through fighting a local farm proposal or reading a news story about a campaign, that’s a win. Social change does require people power and cultural shifts, and local campaigns can be a catalyst for that. I also agree that these victories energise activists; feeling that “we can win” boosts morale and engagement for future, bigger fights.
However, I would also note that movement-building is only as good as the direction the movement goes. Building a large, passionate movement is a means to an end – the end being less animal suffering. All of the points above make me unsure whether if this is the best thing to build a movement around. To take an extreme example: we’ve seen very large, well-organised movements pushing harmful agendas in politics (e.g. the anti-abortion movement). The mere fact that we “built a movement” doesn’t guarantee we did something positive for the world.
Overall:
I think we agree on a bunch of stuff: we need to urgently help animals, we should fight it on multiple fronts, and building public support is essential. Where I worry is that stopping one farm might not save the lives we think it does – because those animals appear in someone else’s barn or another country’s statistics, sometimes in worse conditions. Especially if this work makes other animal advocacy campaigns more challenging to win, and it uses our precious time and energy.
One thing I would be curious to hear from you and other people in AR: What evidence would you have to see to change your mind that this campaign isn’t the best use of your time? I think having a few of these in mind is pretty important.
For example, if I had the following evidence, I would be convinced that this campaign is worthwhile pursuing:
Most importantly, I appreciate that this discussion is happening! It shows that we are trying to figure out how to make positive change for animals in this complicated and messy world.
Wow, I was about to write a similar comment, but you said it much better than I would have.
I just have a question about the “farms that operate at 80% full capacity.” Are you sure there are many such farms? I’d imagine most operate on thin margins, so it would be unusual for them to have unused sheds or significant spare capacity without a good reason. That said, Vasco listed other ways farmers could increase supply to meet demand quickly without building new farms in this comment. For what it’s worth, LLMs seem to disagree about how important such effects are.
To me, perhaps a bigger issue is anticipation. Once investors know that new farms face a high risk of being blocked or delayed by protests, they may (a) decide not to build farms at all (but someone else might build them instead), (b) shift their plans to other countries where protests are less likely, or (c) submit more planning applications than they really need, expecting some to be blocked. And if investors in other countries see a disruption in UK supply, they might also respond by building more farms abroad. If that’s true, the first few farms blocked might have much more impact than those blocked later, once the market has adjusted to the likelihood of farm-blocking efforts.
I feel a lot more optimistic about this direction than you. It's a theory of change that you seem to think is unrealistic, when I think it is highly realistic, and thus you're focused on the downside risks when I think the upside is potentially huge and worthwhile.
My theory goes something like: we block all factory farm expansions -> people realize that we don't want factory farmed products in the UK at all -> public opinion shifts quickly -> multiple policy changes are now simultaneously possible: we ban new factory farms, start working on closing/improving existing ones, and ban low welfare imports.
We know political winds can shift and change can happen quickly, like same-sex marriage. We know activism is critical to such change. We know momentum is crucial for activism, and as a result we need to see consistent wins. This strategy is actively and consistently producing wins in a cause area that really struggles to produce wins.
Sure, there are many ways it can fail. Nobody is claiming this will definitely work. But the evidence you are looking for seems either downstream (like the government policy commitment) or irrelevant to the theory of change (where or how quickly do imports replace UK products). Sure, they are relevant to the downside, and I can definitely imagine ways that downside risk can make the upside not worth it, but when I look holistically I am pretty optimistic overall even seeing the risks.
The evidence which would convince me to stop is mainly loss of momentum on the short term strategy. If blocking factory farms at the planning stage stopped working, for example, and activists spent a year trying hard to restart it but failing, then I would change my mind. I don't think I would want to stop in most cases if it were creating backlash (because backlash triggers discussion and can be useful) but I would want to study the form of backlash carefully.
I also think that if there were other activist strategies that were working better, I would want to stop this one and move onto higher priority strategies. But to me this is one of the ones that's working best.
"we block all factory farm expansions -> people realize that we don't want factory farmed products in the UK at all -> public opinion shifts quickly -> multiple policy changes are now simultaneously possible"
I think this ToC is much less clean than it sounds.
Note: there was a case, Animal Equality v North East Lincolnshire Council recently which Animal Equality claim sets president for animal welfare as a material consideration. They are wrong to claim this. The dispute wasn't about whether or not animal welfare is capable of being a material consideration and so remarks regarding this point are obiter. The Council did not dispute the point (they won on other grounds). This is good, but it might be that the council chose not to dispute this for tactical reasons (I don't know enough about planning law to say either way.)
I would +1 to all of the above (and probably in stronger terms!).
Additionally, from yet unpublished research we've done in the UK and also talking to people who work on food policy in the UK government, the number one thing people care about for food right now is cost. So the odds of getting any kind of significant progress to block loads of factory farm expansions and/or close existing ones, which will both increase the cost of food, will be extremely small. For example, Labour's current plan is the weaken planning regulations to allow more chicken sheds to be built (to reduce the cost of food) so for them to do a full U-turn would be a miracle, in my opinion.
I also think these battles will be in a relatively small number of rural constituencies, with relatively small populations, so I don't expect there to be any major impacts on national public opinion. And as Thom says, most people already say they agree with us, despite paying for lots of factory-farmed meat. So I'm unsure if trying to change the number of people who say they don't want factory-farmed products in the UK is even a useful goal (but I also don't know what a better metric might be).
Slightly tangential, but the current UK government (and also a bloc in the opposition) want to make it harder to block or stall developments at the planning stage. If the campaign stops working, I think the most likely explanation would be YIMBY-ist reforms, not anything directly related to animal rights. Not sure if that undercuts your point or not.
Fantastic answer, very thoughtful and clear. Thanks!
Great points, James!
I estimate the reduction in consumption is (1 - "cumulative elasticity factor (CEF)")*"annual production of the target farm"*"expected years of delay of the start of the farm's operations (D)".
CEF = "price elasticity of supply"/("price elasticity of supply" - "price elasticity of demand"). CEF = 1 if supply was infinitely more elastic than demand. In this case, there would be no reduction in consumption because this would be solely determined by demand. CEF = 0 if supply was infinitely more inelastic than demand. In this case, a leftwards shift in the supply curve would directly translate into a reduction in consumption because this would be solely determined by supply.
Figure 8.2 of Norwood and Lusk (2011) has values for CEF. For chicken meat, CEF = 0.76, which means a leftwards shift in the demand curve by 1 kg decreases consumption by 0.76 kg. It also means a leftwards shift in the supply curve by 1 kg decreases consumption by 0.24 kg (= 1 - 0.76). This suggests the years of impact from targeting a broilers' farm are 24 % of those one would expect if consumption of chicken meat was solely determined by supply.
The delay can be calculated from D = "probability of i) farm being built in the original place"*"delay of the start of the farm's operations given i)" + "probability of ii) farm being built elsewhere"*"delay of the start of the farm's operations given given ii)" + "probability of iii) farm not being built"*"lifetime of the farm".
There's some data from the ONS on this, graph below. Here's the fur data separately (see the "Whole world" row). The ban took effect on 1 Jan 2003. So this seems to be true, although I guess demand for fur was already falling.
Global development is an animal welfare issue. The wealthier a country is the more free time and resources the population has to entertain the idea that animal torture is bad.
If you or I were living in a favela in Brazil struggling to get by we probably wouldn't have animal welfare on our radars as a political concern. We'd have bigger problems. Give us a comfy middle-class life and maybe we'd have room to care.
Having a strong precedent for this in countries like the UK and trying to nudge foreign standards with welfare-based import controls both help, but development is critical.
This doesn't seem to be borne out by the data on the effects of economic growth on total animal suffering.
The meat-eater problem is an issue with people going from not being able to afford meat (dreadfully poor) to being able to (only slightly less poor).
I’m talking about development beyond those very low levels
What EAs typically fund as "global health and development" is this very low level. I am skeptical what you say is significantly true at most higher levels. It seems to me that if this is your true reason you should fund either direct research into lab-grown meat, progress studies, or longtermism.
You're skeptical that concerns for animal welfare track with socioeconomic development? The animal welfare movement has arisen and mainly operates in rich countries
Progress studies and longtermism sound good in theory and then in practice they don't seem to have produced anything beyond theory, which is not that helpful.
The randomista movement that produced the RCTs GiveWell based its recommendations on was a response to the longstanding failures of development economics to actually make an impact on development.
I am skeptical that socioeconomic development increase animal welfare at any point. This is a bit like saying that there weren't any environmentalists before the Industrial Revolution, and there are a lot of environmentalists since then, so clearly this whole industry thing must be really good for the environment.
Environment is an interesting example because you go from complete poverty (no environmental impact) to middle income (rampant growth, environment not a priority, think Brazil/Indonesia and their rainforests, or manifest destiny USA and their forests) so impact worsens, then at high income concerns about environment become more of a priority so you get environmental protections.
Unless the goal is to prevent people rising out of poverty entirely (it shouldn’t be) the best outcome comes from faster development
But the environment (and animal welfare) is still worse off in post-industrial societies than pre-industrial societies, so you cannot credibly claim going from pre-industrial to industrial (which is what we generally mean by global health and development) is an environmental issue (or an animal welfare issue). It's unclear if helping societies go from industrial to post-industrial is tractable, but that would typically fall under progress studies, not global health and development.
Genuinely curious: who here would class themselves as an EA animal advocate would agree that "the political will for a phase-out will never materialise, and that we’ll be forever optimising suffering within a system we’ll never dismantle." ?
Like, it might be my experience, but I cannot ever hearing an EA animal advocate express this idea. But I could be wrong?
A few people hold something maybe close to this view (e.g.) but I do think that’s a bit of a straw man argument.
I agree, I basically believe this, at least within my lifetime / timespans that seem reasonable to think strategically on, and I think I count as an animal advocate! I'd prefer this not be true obviously, but it seems pretty likely to me.
My sense is this feeling is not uncommon among very EA animal advocates — e.g. I can think of 5-10 people offhand who I would bet would agree, including people in leadership roles at animal organizations.
Ah cool, thanks for that context!