This is a cool idea! As you note, we’re wary of telling grantees how to run their organizations. We’ve generally preferred to fund groups that can work with grantees to help them implement best practices that work for them. For example, Scarlet Spark, Mission Realization Partners, and (previously) Sharpen Strategy. But we’ll think about whether we could prepare an anonymized write up like you suggest. 

Fun question! Here’s a rough hierarchy, with my most optimistic up top. Note that these are averages globally, and some approaches might be much more promising in certain countries, or when done by certain groups.

Corporate animal welfare campaigns
Alternative proteins
Farm animal welfare technologies and innovations
Movement-building in LMICs
Legislative animal welfare advocacy
Movement-building in rich countries
Institutional meat reduction
Litigation for farmed animals
Persuading people to be vegan
Holistic food systems reform
Farm transitions

Of course there are lots of other interventions being tried! Let me know if you want my thoughts on any others.

No. I think it’s near impossible to slow the growth of a major industry like aquaculture. You could slow its growth in particular countries but, so long as demand remains constant, production will just expand elsewhere. That’s especially true given the vast majority of aquaculture is in countries where we have no hope of slowing its growth. 

You could try to reduce demand for farmed fish, but we’ve never succeeded in reducing demand for such a popular food in the past. (And even if you did, people would probably just switch to wild-caught fish. This might just boost demand for farmed fish, since wild-caught fish are supply constrained, and most people view wild-caught and farmed fish as interchangeable, so most marginal fish demand is satisfied with farmed fish.)

Alien invasion.

We’re about a quarter of global farmed animal welfare advocacy spend, based on a broad definition of such advocacy, i.e. including alt protein work, vegan advocacy, etc. We’re a larger share of what I’d consider evidence-based or EA-aligned advocacy. Depending on what you include in that category, we’re about half to two thirds of funding for such work.

It would be very valuable to have additional major funders! For example, I’m excited to see the Navigation Fund coming online shortly. In addition to enlarging the pie of total farmed animal welfare funding, new funders could add a greater diversity of perspectives and provide more stability for groups. (We’ve seen that groups majority funded by us are often wary of investing in long term growth because they’re nervous about being so reliant on one funder.)

I spend a chunk of my time trying to bring new major funders into the space. We’re also funding work with Farmed Animal Funders and Focus Philanthropy toward the same goal. I welcome ideas on how we could do better at this!

Thanks Aidan. I agree that much social change is nonlinear and hard to predict. I also agree that violent opposition preceded some significant social changes, though I'm more inclined to see that as a symptom of the issue having achieved high social salience rather than as a cause of the change.

I studied historic social movements in college and it's been my hobby since, and it's left me wary of extracting general lessons from past movements, since I think they often fit our prior beliefs. For instance, I see in the US civil rights movement a movement that for decades clocked up small achievable incremental legal and political wins in service of several larger incremental wins (two key federal laws and several Supreme Court rulings) but that failed in its more radical goals (racial and economic equality). I see in gay marriage a movement that largely sidelined radical calls to end marriage and other oppressive institutions in favor of a disciplined focus on a quite narrow practical goal: marriage equality. And I see the US abolitionists' radical goals and tactics as largely a failure alongside the UK abolitionists' more moderate ones, which achieved abolition decades earlier and wit... (read more)

I'm excited about the growing field of the economics of animal welfare, including research papers like the two you mentioned. I'm not sure the field will play a significant role in increasing the spending on animal welfare interventions (though curious to hear how you see that happening). But I see a number of important other roles it can play:

• Influencing public policy, by allowing the integrating of animal welfare benefits into cost-benefit analysis. I've seen a number of animal welfare regulatory proposals be stopped in part because regulators assigned zero value to the animal welfare benefits.
• Influencing effective advocacy. I think experiments, like those done at college dining halls on the meat consumption impacts of lectures and leafletting, can lead us toward more cost-effective interventions.
• Influencing the rest of academia. For example, my sense is that fields like environmental economics currently often exclude animal welfare from their considerations, leading to conclusions that can help the environment but harm animal welfare.

In no particular order:

• Double down on what works. Our most successful grants have mostly been cases where we scaled up an already successful campaign or program.
• Focus on tractability. Many projects are focused on large-scale and neglected problems. The distinguishing factor in which ones help many animals is typically how tractable the space they’re operating in is.
• Align on clear goals. Early on we had a number of grants where we disagreed with the grantee on how well things had gone. We’ve found that aligning on specific and measurable goals upfront keeps grants on track and makes renewal discussions easier.
• Create feedback loops. One of the biggest challenges in funding longer-term theories of change is knowing whether they’re on track or not. The best solution we’ve found so far is to build feedback loops, even if only on intermediate outcomes, into the grant plan.
• Make more one-off trial grants. I see two problems with funding new ideas: not enough get funded, but too many keep getting funded after the idea has failed. I think the antidote is to make more one-off trial grants, with no expectation of ongoing funding.

I think journalism can help farmed animals by reporting regularly on their plight. For an upcoming newsletter, we tracked the number of news articles on factory farming related topics (e.g. farm animal cruelty) against articles on climate change, over the last decade. While both numbers rose, the number of articles on climate change rose at a much faster rate. I think the lack of media coverage of factory farming contributes to political and public apathy on the issue.

I’d especially like to see articles or investigations into the actions of specific corporate and legislative players. Corporate executives and politicians have the most power to stop farm animal cruelty. But they can easily ignore the issue when the media lets them. So I’d like to see more articles asking why specific corporations are underperforming on animal welfare relative to their competitors, or why specific politicians are opposing popular reforms. 

I see lots! Here are the ones that first come to mind:

• Analysis paralysis. I've seen a bunch of philanthropists spend years trying to learn and perfect their strategy before giving any money. I think they'd learn more, and do more good, by viewing giving as an iterative process, where they can give, learn, and strategize simultaneously.
• Wanting to solve every problem at once. I often see philanthropists deride alt proteins because they're still "ultra-processed" or welfare reforms because they don't "change the system." Unfortunately my experience has been that when philanthropists seek solutions that solve every problem at once, they normally end up solving none of them.
• Following future stories, over past track records. I see some philanthropists fall for ideal stories of the future (e.g. "this campaign will end factory farming by X date"). I'd encourage these philanthropists to review whether the group's past track record suggests they have any hope of achieving their story's ending.
• Too must trust in our future selves. I've seen philanthropists who say they're saving to give in future or just that they'll step up their giving when they retire, get richer, or whatever. I've also see

• I’ve become more excited about the prospects of investor advocacy to secure corporate animal welfare progress, thanks mostly to the work of The Accountability Board.
• I’ve become more optimistic about the prospects of climate funders supporting alt protein advocacy and research, thanks to the recent entry of several major climate funders into the space.
• I’ve become more pessimistic about legislative reform, after seeing industry successfully defeat or stall popular farm animal welfare reforms in the EU and the UK.
• I’ve become more pessimistic about the likely future market share of plant-based meats, in light of the fall in sales over the last few years. 
• I’ve become more optimistic about cooperative industry outreach in industries that haven’t yet tackled animal welfare, after seeing the openness of some portions of the aquaculture and insect farming industries to addressing animal welfare proactively.

I'm excited to see governments spending more on alternative protein research and farm animal welfare improvements. I agree that accelerating this work is a priority.

On alternative proteins, I wrote a little while back about public support for alt protein R&D and how we can accelerate it. We're supporting groups like the Good Food Institute, Food Frontier, and Danish Vegetarian Foundation to do so.

On animal welfare, I'm excited to see the EU and some European governments (e.g. Denmark, Netherlands, Germany, UK) considering funding farmers to adopt higher welfare practices. Grantees working on this include Compassion in World Farming and the Albert Schweitzer Foundation.

I see a few major challenges:

• Weak demand for plant-based meat. We’re funding advocacy to significantly increase public funding of alt protein R&D, to produce better and cheaper products, which we hope will boost demand.
• Corporations delaying implementing their animal welfare policies. We’re funding additional advocacy to hold companies accountable for their commitments, including through shareholder advocacy.
• The European Commission shelving its proposed farm animal welfare legislative revision. We’re funding advocates across Europe to represent the interests of the majority of Europeans who support these reforms.
• A lack of new successful advocacy approaches. We still have a pretty limited number of advocacy approaches with a track record of significantly reducing animal suffering. We’re funding groups trying new approaches, like Innovate Animal Ag and the Shrimp Welfare Project, and are happy to see others doing so too.
• Insufficient funding and over-reliance on one big funder. Our space has far less funding than comparable areas like climate change or human rights. We’re funding Farmed Animal Funders and Focus Philanthropy to work on this, and we're open to trying other approaches as well.
   

Interesting question! I think my relationships with grantees has become more formal / professional over the years, and less informal / friendly. I think a few factors drove this:

• Concern about conflicts of interest, or the perception of them, from being too friendly with any group (I now recuse myself from grant renewal consideration for groups where I'm friends with the leaders).
• Relatedly, not wanting to be perceived as having personal favorites, especially given it's easier for US advocates to become friends with me than advocates in other countries.
• Not having the time to maintain a lot of friendships in the community, mostly because we now have many more grantees than we used to.

I'm not sure if this has made me more or less effective as a grantmaking. On the plus side, it's probably reduced my bias a bit and freed up some time. On the downside, I think I learn less gossip than I used to when I had more informal friendships with grantees, and sometimes this gossip matters to impact. I also miss being friends with such an incredible group of people!

I hope so one day, but I think it's a long way away because there's still so much scope in cage-free and BCC work. In particular, I view the corporate campaign priorities as:

• Completing the EU and US transition to cage-free. They're at ~60% and ~40% cage-free respectively, so there's a lot of work to do to ensure that companies follow through on their cage-free pledges, most of which come due in 2025-26.
• Increasing implementation of existing BCC and ECC commitments. Companies have been slow to implement their broiler welfare policies, especially on breed. 
• Securing new BCC and ECC commitments. Most European and American retailers haven't yet committed to these critical broiler welfare reforms.
• Implementing global and regional cage-free pledges. Cage-free is just starting in key Asian and Latin American markets, so there's a lot of scope to increase percentages there with existing policies.
• Securing new global and regional cage-free policies. I think most of the world's biggest food companies now have global cage-free pledges, but a lot don't, nor do a lot of regional food giants in Asia, LatAm, the Middle East, and Africa.

I'm most excited about reforms that can affect the largest numbers of animals, which normally means focusing on political reforms in the largest nations and states where such reforms are feasible. I think the following reforms are currently most feasible:

• Advocating for the next European Commission revives its stalled farm animal welfare legislative revision proposal, and then ensuring its passed by the European Parliament and Council.
• Advocating for key European nations, especially France, Germany, and the UK, to follow through on promised major farm animal welfare reforms.
• Advocating for governments globally with large public R&D budgets to devote some of that funding to alternative protein research.
• Advocating for sympathetic governments, mostly in Europe, to subsidize the transition to higher welfare animal agriculture.
• Potentially advocating for more US states to adopt popular farm animal welfare reforms, whether through ballot measures or legislatures.

I think the most likely causes of the decline in plant-based meat sales are:

• A failure to meet consumers' expectations on taste and perceived healthiness. There was a high trial rate with a lot repeat purchase rate.
• A significant turn in the media and popular discussion on plant-based meat from overwhelmingly positive (and high volume) to largely negative (and low volume).
• A reduced willingness to pay the price premium for plant-based meat in a period with higher inflation / a perceived cost-of-living crisis.

I think some good strategies to build career capital in the animal welfare spare are:

• Read about current and past interventions in the space, e.g. through books like Ethics into Action and research like Rethink Priorities reports.
• Attend movement events, like the Animal and Vegan Advocacy Summit, and volunteer with groups, e.g. with The Humane League.
• Develop skills most in need in the animal welfare space, which I think include corporate outreach, campaigning, fundraising, people management, and operations.

FWIW, it seems reasonably likely that fishing has increased fish populations on the whole, by disproportionately reducing the populations of more predatory species and increasing the populations of their prey. See Christensen et al., 2014 (only considers fish, not invertebrates) and Bell et al., 2018 (very limited in regional representation).

In general, the effects of fishing on welfare seem quite morally ambiguous, when you consider the effects on population sizes across species, tradeoffs between species, uncertainty about whether their lives are overall bad or overall good: The moral ambiguity of fishing on wild aquatic animal populations.

I also suspect efforts to make fishing more sustainable actually just increase fishing, while outright bans seem politically infeasible; see my other recent post Sustainable fishing policy increases fishing, and demand reductions might, too.