Quick takes

On alternative proteins: I think the EA community could aim to figure out how to turn animal farmers into winners if we succeed with alternative proteins. This seems to be one of the largest social risks, and it's probably something we should figure out before we scale alternative proteins a lot. Farmers are typically a small group but have a large lobby ability and public sympathy.

Potential Animal Welfare intervention: encourage the ASPCA and others to scale up their FAW budget I’ve only recently come to appreciate how large the budgets are for the ASPCA, Humane World (formerly HSUS), and similar large, broad-based animal charities. At a quick (LLM) scan of their public filings, they appear to have a combined annual budget of ~$1Bn, most of which is focused on companion animals. Interestingly, both the ASPCA and Humane World explicitly mention factory farming as one of their areas of concern. Yet, based on available data, it looks like <5% of spending in this category is directed toward factory-farmed animal welfare — despite factory farming accounting for the overwhelming majority of total animal suffering. Given that factory farming is already in scope for these orgs, and that is responsible for the vast majority of animal suffering, it would seem quite reasonable for these orgs to increase their spending on FAW several-fold. I doubt their donors would object!

Should GiveWell offer Animal Welfare regrants on an opt-in basis? The GiveWell FAQ (quoted below) suggests that GiveWell focuses exclusively on human-directed interventions primarily for reasons of specialization—i.e., avoiding duplication of work already done by Coefficient Giving and others—rather than due to a principled objection to recommending animal-focused charities. If GiveWell is willing to recommend these organizations when asked, why not reduce the friction a bit? A major part of GiveWell’s appeal has been its role as an “index fund for charities.” While ACE and similar groups offer something comparable for animal causes, GiveWell has a much larger donor base, and donors often prefer to consolidate their giving into a single recurring contribution. An optional Animal Welfare allocation could serve those donors better while remaining consistent with GiveWell’s stated reasoning.

EA Animal Welfare Fund almost as big as Coefficient Giving FAW now? This job ad says they raised >$10M in 2025 and are targeting $20M in 2026. CG's public Farmed Animal Welfare 2025 grants are ~$35M.   Is this right? Cool to see the fund grow so much either way.

More good news! Norwegian meat industry announced that they will stop using fast-growing chicken breeds by the end of 2027. These breeds are source of immense suffering due to the toll such rapid growth takes on animal's body. This will be the first country to stop using them. More here: https://animainternational.org/blog/norway-ends-fast-growing-chickens

The European Parliament recently submitted a parliamentary question on wild animal welfare! The question focuses on human caused wild animal suffering and such questions generally don't have policy implications - but still, was surprised to see this topic being taken up in policy discourse. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-10-2025-004965_EN.html

At the NIH, Jay Bhattacharya did a lot to reduce animal experimentation and thus reduce animal suffering. As far as ChatGPT can tell, this seems to be completely ignored by the Effective Altruism forum. Marty Makary's FDA is also taking it's steps to reduce the need of animal testing for FDA approvals. Is this simply, because Effective Altruists don't like the Trump administration so they can't take the win of MAHA bringing contrarians into control of health policy that do things like caring more about reducing animal suffering and fighting the replication crisis?

Independent of whether their approach is net positive or negative for factory farming, I feel like FarmKind missed an obvious slogan opportunity: "Have your steak and eat it too!"