This announcement was written by Toby Tremlett, but don’t worry, I won’t answer the questions for Lewis.
Lewis Bollard, Program Director of Farm Animal Welfare at Open Philanthropy, will be holding an AMA on Wednesday 8th of May. Put all your questions for him on this thread before Wednesday (you can add questions later, but he may not see them).
Lewis leads Open Philanthropy’s Farm Animal Welfare Strategy, which you can read more about here. Open Philanthropy has given over 400 grants in its Farm Animal Welfare focus area, ranging from $15,000 to support animal welfare training for two veterinary researchers, to a three-year-long $13 million commitment to support Anima International.
Lewis has a BA in Social Studies from Harvard and a Law degree from Yale. Before starting at Open Philanthropy in 2015, he worked as, amongst other things, a Policy Advisor at the Humane Society of the United States.
Things I recommend reading/listening to to find out more about Lewis’s work:
- Lewis Bollard on the 7 most promising ways to end factory farming, and whether AI is going to be good or bad for animals - 80,000 Hours Podcast.
- Lewis’s previous Forum AMA.
- A written interview with Current Affairs, outlining why Factory Farming is a moral priority.
- Lewis’s Farm Animal Welfare Research newsletter. Recent posts have been crossposted to the Forum as:
Consider asking Lewis about:
- Lessons he has learned from historical activists.
- How Open Philanthropy chooses its focus areas: why chicken and fish?
- How you could most effectively help animals with your time or money.
- What he’s most excited about in the farm animal welfare space.
- What he thinks is behind the decline in plant-based meat sales.
- How he thinks about moral weights and tradeoffs between species.
- How he thinks EA has influenced the animal welfare movement.
- How he thinks AI may affect animal welfare.
- How to build career capital for a career in animal welfare.
But, as always, ask him anything!
To what extent does Open Philanthropy (OP) use Rethink Priorities' welfare ranges to compare interventions targetting different species? What else does OP use?
OP currently uses the welfare ranges that Luke Muehlhauser produced as part of his 2018 moral patienthood report. He lists species’ ranges here, though we use point estimates he produced internally. Luke’s numbers are steeper / more hierarchical than Rethink’s.
We sometimes test the sensitivity of species-specific grants to using Luke or Rethink’s welfare ranges. So far this hasn’t often been action-guiding, since we’re already primarily funding work focused on the most numerous farmed vertebrates (chicken and fish) and our funding on invertebrate welfare is more limited by other factors.
What’s a view you hold most EA-minded animal advocates would disagree with?
My views are pretty aligned with most EA-minded animal advocates. But in the interests of finding disagreement, here are a few possibilities:
Sorry to not be more disagreeable ;)
Many grantee organisations report the lessons they learnt to their donors. Open Philanthropy must have accumulated a lot of information on the best practices for animal welfare organisations. As far as I understand, grant makers are wary of giving object level advice and micromanaging grantees. On the other hand, many organisations already spend a lot of time trying to learn about the best (and worst) practices in other organisations. Could Open Phil animal welfare team prepare an anonymised write up about what their grantees report as the reasons for their successes and failures?
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.
If you had to place the different kinds of work within farmed animal welfare (e.g. corporate pressure campaigns, alternative proteins, persuading people to be vegan, etc) into different tiers based on how optimistic you are about them (e.g. 'very optimistic', 'moderately optimistic', etc) what would they look like?
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.
What percent of farmed animal welfare advocacy does Open Phil fund? How valuable would it be for the cause area to have additional major funders?
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 for the announcement, Toby! Thanks for doing an AMA, Lewis!
What are your best guesses for the mean, and 5th and 95th percentiles of the marginal cost-effectiveness of Open Philanthropy's (OP's) animal welfare grants in DALY/$? For reference:
- I arrived at a mean/expected marginal cost-effectiveness of corporate campaigns for chicken welfare of 15.0 DALY/$ (= 8.20*2.10*0.870), assuming:
- Campaigns affect 8.20 chicken-years per $ (= 41*1/5), multiplying:
- Saulius Šimčikas’ estimate of 41 chicken-years per $.
- An adjustment factor of 1/5, since OP thinks “the marginal FAW [farmed animal welfare] funding opportunity is ~1/5th as cost-effective as the average from Saulius’ analysis [which is linked just above]”.
- An improvement in chicken welfare per time of 2.10 times the intensity of the mean human experience, as I estimated for moving broilers from a conventional to a reformed scenario based on Rethink Priorities’ median welfare range for chickens of 0.332.
- A ratio between humans’ healthy and total life expectancy at birth in 2016 of 87.0 % (= 63.1/72.5).
- The above 15.0 DALY/$ is 1.50 k times the 0.01 DALY/$ (= 50/(5*10^3)) respecting GiveWell's top charities, whi
... (read more)If there were 1 blog article on animal welfare that you would want everyone to read so that we were all up to speed on the topic, what would it be?
Do you think there are promising ways to slow down growth in aquaculture?
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.)
What's going on with the progress on breeds for the Better Chicken Commitment? I've heard it hasn't been going well. But I think I also read the BCC hadn't actually settled on breeds until after many commitments were made, so we wouldn't expect them to start making progress on breeds until after that, anyway. But I think we have settled on approved breeds for a while now.
Yeah both statements are true. The US Better Chicken Commitment lacked a list of approved breeds for many years due to delays at the Global Animal Partnership, which was in turned delayed by a study on breed welfare outcomes at the University of Guelph. My understanding is that a lot of those delays were due to attempts by the Guelph researchers to address concerns from the breeding companies about how to ensure the fairness of the study's methodology. Of course the breeding companies dismissed the study's results -- finding welfare problems wit their fastest growing breeds -- anyway.
My understanding is that most US companies with BCC pledges are yet to make any progress on adopting higher welfare breeds in their supply chains. I suspect that's mostly because it's the most expensive change in the BCC, since higher welfare breeds grow slower and have a worse feed conversion ratio. But it doesn't help that most major US chicken producers have refused to even meet their corporate customers' requests to raise higher welfare breeds.
As usual, things are going better in Europe. The Danish and Dutch retail sectors now sell almost entirely chicken from higher-welfare breeds, while I think French retailers are making solid progress. Still, there's a lot more work to do!
The year is 2100 and factory farming either does not exist anymore or is extremely rare. What happened?
Alien invasion.
If I donate 1 k$ to an organisation which is significantly funded by Open Philanthropy, how much less money in expectaction will Open Philanthropy grant to that organisation? I think corporate campaigns for chicken welfare are super cost-effective, so I am tempted to donate to The Humane League (THL). According to Animal Charity Evaluators, they have a funding gap of 10.5 M$ for 2024 to 2025. However, as I commented elsewhere:
I would also be curious about your thoughts on the sentence just above.
There are two separate funging worries here. First, will donating more to THL mean that OP gives less to THL? Answer: probably not, for a few reasons. (1) One factor limiting our funding for THL and other groups is how much of their budget we're both comfortable with OP being. So donating to them could actually increase our giving by lowering our portion (though see next point that any additional funds will come from elsewhere within the farm animal welfare budget). (2) Room for more funding / neglect is only one consideration in our grant sizing for groups, including THL, and (3) Our grant sizing for big grantees like THL is quite coarse: we only consider it once every three years and are unlikely to be swayed by small fluctuations in their funding.
Second, will donating to THL mean that OP gives less to farm animal welfare? Answer: almost certainly not. OP’s farm animal welfare team has a set budget, so even in the unlikely event we funged your gift to THL, our funds would go to other animal groups instead. In theory, new outside funding could lead OP to view farm animal welfare as less neglected, affecting our budget, but I don't think perceived lack of neglect is a limiting factor on our budget. (And I don't think it would become one until funding increased by a huge amount, e.g. >$50-100M.)
Fwiw, I still personally donate to THL (and other groups).
What are your thoughts on replicating the success of prop 12/question 3 in new states as well as campaigning for new initiatives in Massachusetts and California (e.g. chick culling ban)? Is anyone working on this?
I’m not aware of anyone currently working on this. The immediate priority is to stop Congress from preempting Prop 12 / Question 3 and other laws like them. House Republicans have put text in their version of the Farm Bill to do so, so there will be a major fight on this in the coming months.
If we survive that fight, I’d like to see more ballot measures with popular farm animal welfare reforms. There are a few constraints to be aware of:
- Only 22 US states allow for useful citizen-initiated laws. (Another four allow for veto referendums or constitutional amendments, neither of which would work for us.) Most are conservative-led states where the legislature would likely overturn a pro-animal initiative result, leaving perhaps 10 states where we could bring these measures.
- An initiative needs to be simple enough to attract votes (confused voters vote no), but complex enough to address the biggest animal welfare challenges (e.g. try defining higher welfare broiler breeds in a way the average voter will endorse). This limits the number of topics that can be covered.
- A state-wide initiative requires a major campaign and expertise. The group that traditionally ran them, the Humane
... (read more)Do you think Open Philanthropy's animal welfare grants should have write-ups whose main text is longer than 1 paragraph? I think it would be great if you shared the cost-effectiveness analyses you seem to be doing. In your recent appearance on The 80,000 Hours Podcast (which I liked!), you said (emphasis mine):
To be clear, the main text of the write-ups of Open Philanthropy’s large grants is 1 paragraph across all areas, not just the on... (read more)
I think this is a fair criticism. For now, I think the costs to longer write-ups outweigh the benefits. I see the costs primarily as:
The benefit also feels limited given my sense is that few people would read these write-ups, and most wouldn't have the ability to move significant funding or org decision making based on them. But feel free to make the case for this in the replies!
Thanks Vasco. We actually used to share grantees' applications (with their permission) by default. I suspect you can still find them linked on the older grant pages.
My experience was that this significantly limited the information grantees were willing to share in their application, or forced them to create a second application just for sharing. I was also frustrated at how often these were taken out of context. For example, the meat industry used the Guardian's proposal to us to fund content on factory farming (which we posted) as evidence that the Guardian was biased and just in this for the money.
I'm not sure if GiveWell should share less info. But I'd note that they're in a very different position to Open Phil, in that their aim (as I understand it) is to influence individual donors through rigorous analysis. If I thought we could positively influence the donations of lots of individual donors through longer write-ups, I'd probably think it was worth us doing them.
Do you think the nascent field of economics of animal welfare will play a significant role in increasing the spending on animal welfare interventions? To illustrate what I am referring to, I share below the abstracts of 2 pieces of research in that field.
Kevin Kuruc's paper Monetizing the externalities of animal agriculture: insights from an inclusive welfare function (2023):
... (read more)Looking at major changes societies have adopted in the past, the path to these changes has often been nonlinear. A frequently-discussed example is the U.S. civil rights movement, where the extent of violent opposition reached a near zenith just before the movement's largest victories in the 1950s and 60s. Gay marriage in the U.S. was another example: in a 15-year period ending three years before marriage equality was decided by SCOTUS, advocates watched a wave of anti-gay marriage state constitutional amendments succeed at the ballot 30-1. Women's suffrage, the New Deal, and (most extremely) the abolition of slavery were all immediately preceded by enormous levels of opposition and social strife.
How, if at all, does OP account for the frequent nonlinearity of major societal changes when deciding what interventions to support on behalf of farmed animals?
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)
What are some important lessons or things you've learned on how to do grantmaking well over the past 9 years that you would give to yourself when you were starting at OP?
In no particular order:
What role do you think journalism can play in advancing the cause of farmed animals? Can you think of any promising topics journalists may want to prioritize in the European context in particular, i.e. topics that have the potential to unlock important gains for farmed animals if seriously investigated and publicized?
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.
What are some common pitfalls in the field of grantmaking that you encountered, and what advice would you give to new philanthropists to avoid them?
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
... (read more)What are 2-3 of the biggest ways you've updated your thinking in terms of what works / strategies to improve farmed animal welfare over the past few years?
Hi, Lewis, thanks for this AMA.
Hypothetical situation:
Day 1 after OP announces that it will no longer fund animal welfare.
In your opinion, as an expert individual donor and activist,
Thanks for doing this AMA, Lewis!
What's your take on when a promising intervention seems cost-effective enough to be tried? Do you think we should be using something akin to GiveWell's approach, piloting stuff that's estimated to be, e.g., ~10x more cost-effective than further cage-free campaigns, or...? I realise your opinion on this might not correspond to OP's overall stance, but I'd love to hear your thoughts about such existent and upcoming benchmarks and thresholds within EAA. Thank you!
It may be worth considering even interventions that seem less cost-effective than marginal cage-free campaigns, say because:
I suppose for most of these, more careful cost-effectiveness modelling can actually capture these benefits. For 2, ... (read more)
Alexander Berger and Emily Oehlsen described how Open Philanthropy's Global Health and Wellbeing (OP's GHW) cost-effectiveness bar becoming 2 times as high resulted in less future funding for GiveWell's recommendations, but they did not discuss changes to the funding going towards animal welfare interventions. In theory, all animal welfare grants with a cost-effectiveness between OP's previous and current bar would stop being funded. What are these interventions? I think the absence of such interventions would suggest something is not right with OP's prior... (read more)
Are there any interventions that are specially promising to increase the fraction of philanthropic and governmental spending on animal welfare, which is currently tiny? Relatedly, the Danish Action Plan for Plant-based Foods was published in October 2023. According to Good Food Institute Europe:
... (read more)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.
Hi Lewis, and thanks for organizing this AMA,
I'm working on the notion of cultural change concerning the animal issue. It seems to me that you don't address this point in your reflections, and if I'm not mistaken, OP doesn't fund any cultural struggle organizations.
However, it seems to me extremely difficult to achieve the profound advances demanded by the situation for farmed or fished animals without challenging the extreme speciesist ideology of our civilization. And if we consider the fate of wild animals, the prospects are dizzying: they are infinitel... (read more)
Is there a 2nd generation of corporate campaigns for chicken welfare in the works which would build upon the success of cage-free campaigns (hens) and the Better Chicken Commitment (broilers)?
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:
In your view, what are some of the biggest challenges facing the farmed animal movement today and what is Open Phil doing about them?
I see a few major challenges:
In the 80,000 hours interview, you noted that you thought the Animal Protection/Welfare movement ought to embrace being a more political movement. What forms of policy advocacy seem the most promising to you for improvements to nonhuman animals welfare (i.e. pushing specific states to adopt higher legal welfare standards, pushing for federal reforms, pressure on institutions to go plant-based in their catering, etc.)?
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:
What do you think about the possibility of regulatory rather than legislative change? It seems like there is a ton of room within existing legislation (humane slaughter act, 28 hour law, the animal welfare act, and horse protection act) to improve enforcement and apply the existing legislation to more species. For example, AWA recently expanded to include non-farm birds--rodents (e.g. used in research) could be next. The humane slaughter act has terrible enforcement and my (possibly incorrect) reading of the law itself is that it leaves room to expand to m... (read more)
How has your strategy for assessing potential grants evolved over the years, and what key factors do you now consider that you didn’t before?
In what ways have your relationships with grantees changed over the years, and how has this influenced your effectiveness as a grantmaker?
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:
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!
In your recent 80k podcast almost all the work referenced seems to be targeted at the US and EU (except the Farm animal welfare in Asia section).
Thanks for doing this AMA, Lewis! To steal from the suggested questions, what do you think is behind the decline in plant-based meat sales? And what do you think are some good strategies to build career capital in the animal welfare space? Relatedly, what areas in animal welfare change are more skill/talent constrained?
I think the most likely causes of the decline in plant-based meat sales are:
I think some good strategies to build career capital in the animal welfare spare are:
I liked your post
https://farmanimalwelfare.substack.com/p/we-love-animals-why-do-we-torture?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
. What do you think the most promising interventions / donation opportunities are for decreasing ignorance of conditions for animals on factory farms?
Are there organizations for example that make videos on animal welfare and A/B test which resonate best with typical people?
What is your take of the impact of fishing on animal welfare? When it comes to aquatic lives, why should we only focus on farmed aquatic life, not fishing? Why not prioritise work towards the ban of all fishing, esp. industrial fishing?
Some info: fishing alone is responsible for 90% of all lives killed per year for consumption, fishing is also destroying wild aquatic life habitats more than we destroy lands, and it also is affecting all wild lives that depend on them to survive: it is pretty much the largest ecocide in the world, and it is legalized. All t... (read more)
I agree with Michael that a ban on all fishing, or even just industrial fishing, seems politically infeasible. I think it's possible that an island nation heavily dependent on tourism might do this, but that would probably just increase the catch of unregulated fishing ships outside of their territorial waters. I don't see any path to the world doing this.
The other complication is that a ban on wild-caught fishing might just increase the spread of aquaculture, which is worse for each fish involved. Most wild-caught and farmed fish demand is interchangeable -- people are just looking to buy fish. If the wild-caught fish becomes unavailable, I'd expect most of that demand to switch to farmed fish, which would fuel an even bigger boom in aquaculture. Sadly I expect that would be even worse for the fish involved :(
We are though funding work to reduce the suffering caused by current fishing methods. I think work to make the experience of capture and slaughter less horrific is really important.
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.
Industrial animal agriculture is a system that is supported by a wide variety of factors, from beliefs about animals being a "resource" to the way the political system is structured. In theory, we could coordinate our work so that we targeted numerous different driving forces at the same time, in order to maximally destabilize the existing system and replace it with something better. That could look like working for cultural change while developing alt. proteins and helping farmers to transition out of animal ag., to give a very broad example. You'd probab... (read more)