Quick takes

If you ever need a classic rap song to communicate your desire to be more influential in animal philanthropy, just say: I wish I was a little bit taller I wish I was a Bollard

I have been disappointed by the support some EAs have expressed for recent activist actions at Ridglan Farms. I share others’ outrage at the outcome of the state animal cruelty investigation, which found serious animal cruelty law violations but led to a settlement that still permits Ridglan to sell beagles through July and to continue in-house experimentation. But I personally think the tactics used in the recent open rescues, including property damage and forced entry to remove animals, violate reasonable moral bounds on what actions are permissible in response to the belief that a serious harm is occurring. My views here stem from contractualist views of democratic legitimacy and from concerns about the non-universalizability of principles that justify lawbreaking, though I think a purely act utilitarian calculus also supports them. Regarding universalizability, in a society where many people believe that different forms of irreparable harm are occurring (e.g. viewing abortion as murder, climate change as destroying the sacredness of the natural world, immigration as ending western civilization), I worry that moral principles that allow for significant lawbreaking when one believes that irreparable harm is occurring could easily lead to great damage if broadly followed (consider for example what it would be like to live in a country where hundreds of activists were regularly smashing their way into abortion clinics, energy companies, and refugee assistance nonprofits with sledgehammers and crowbars). Regarding the legitimacy of the law, I think reasonable contractualist views can give us obligations to follow the law when the processes by which the law is determined are legitimate, and that democracies with universal suffrage qualify as such (even granting that certain groups such as animals and future generations are impossible to enfranchise).[1] Therefore, I think that if we are trying to make decisions under moral uncertainty and give meaningful credences to

I went to jail yesterday in Wisconsin. I helped rescue 23 beagles in a large mass open rescue against a factory farm, Ridglan Farms, near Madison. We were trying to push the police to act on documented animal cruelty at Ridglan. Instead they arrested me and 26 other activists. I wrote a blog post about why I did it.. Excerpt: More info and stories from Wayne Hsiung: https://blog.simpleheart.org/p/im-in-jail-for-rescuing-dogs-its If you're in the DC area, I'll be sharing more about my experience at Revolutionists' Night, an animal welfare meetup, this Thursday. Reach out for an invite. [Edited to add:] I believe there is a lawful basis for this action and I intend to fight any attempted prosecution in court! I'm not advocating any illegal activity, of course.

Book Review: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro TLDR:  (spoilers follow, you can also read here) This book is the equivalent of seeing someone wear a lovely, thick, warm, knit sweater on a sunny beach. The sweater plot is so nice, but I keep thinking it would really be more at home in a different location genre. bffr This book makes no sense as a sci-fi(-ish) novel. For context, it is about a group of clones, created so they can eventually become organ donors. Unfortunately, this premise falls apart if you think about it for even a minute. How were these children born? There are only two options here: they were grown in vats or they were born to human mothers. If they were grown in vats, then this world has technology advanced enough to gestate embryos. In which case, wouldn’t it be easier to use this wonderful technology to simply grow organs in vats? Surely growing a single organ has to be easier than growing a whole baby. If they were born to human mothers, then where are the mothers? Do they have mixed feelings about this whole setup? Are they trying to rescue their kids? The closest analog to them in our world would be surrogates who carry pregnancies for others, and surrogates don’t disappear once kids are born. Some of them like to keep in touch with ‘their’ kids or at least know of them. Some of them follow up on ‘their’ kids to make sure they’re safe; this is how some scandals about baby factories have come out. Are the mothers in this timeline okay with the kids they birthed being treated like this? How do the clones not realize what’s coming? For almost their entire childhood, clones only realize what’s going to happen to them at the most abstract level. They know, but they don’t truly get it. In the book, this is explained away by the schoolteachers being really careful about how they disclose information about the clones’ fates; they do it in a way that is truthful but muted. Except there is no way a school could maintain the level of infose

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

One happy news for the world - Poland just banned fur farming. The legislative battle is over, the president of the country signed the bill, which is the last chapter of the process.

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.

Does anyone know whether there's a way to buy cultivated (lab-grown) meat now? I've always wanted to host a cultivated meat barbecue and invite my omnivorous friends, but I have not been able to find any cultivated meat that's currently commercially available.