Just thought I'd share a reference that may be useful when quantifying the animal welfare impact of pet food - it quantifies environmental impacts taking into account the effect of pet food purchases incentivising keeping more livestock, and it seems to me like a similar approach could be used to quantify animal welfare impacts.
We ourselves raised £30k seed funding for our org from someone who owned a dairy farm. He was looking for an org with a bold, abolitionist strategy.
I read that as saying that this dairy farm owner wanted to support a campaign to abolish use of animals by humans - is that right? Surprising if so! I wonder how they square that with owning the farm.
Thanks for posting an update about the outcomes and your reflections. It sounds like the right lesson that it would be good to consult more widely in the movement before trying similarly risky approaches.
I just wanted to ask a somewhat technical question about the estimate of the amount raised:
We estimated donations attributable to this campaign by looking at donations that (a) occurred after the first news coverage and before January 18th, (b) came from donor who had never donated through our platform before, (c) weren’t attributable to any other source [i.e. they didn’t use a matching code and they didn’t choose one of our other campaign when answering the “where did you first come across FarmKind?” question in the optional post-donation survey]. Our less conservative estimate counted all donations meeting these three requirements. Our conservative estimate only counted donations which either (a) were made through the offset calculator widget, (b) said they heard of us in a news article, or (c) donated a very specific number that very likely came from our calculator e.g. $209. We manually excluded 10 donations for which we have evidence that they weren’t caused by this campaign.
This doesn't sound like it takes into account that (I guess) there would have been some amount donated through FarmKind without the campaign i.e. donations from new donors in that period not indicated as being linked to a campaign. What effect would subtracting this "background donation rate" have e.g. if it were based on a representative previous recent period of similar length (maybe from October-November or something if Christmas distorts things)? Or is this accounted for in a way I've not understood?
There hasn't been backlash to this campaign from average people, only EAs and animal advocates.
I think non-EA animal advocates count as being part of the general public in Nick's usage? From what I've seen it's been going down badly with them so far...
Thanks for engaging Aidan. Things may be clearer once we see any follow up I guess, but this strategy seems like it could come across as duplicitous, and rather risky not just for the organisations involved but also the wider EA movement, given the desire to seem trustworthy after the events of the past couple of years.
Thanks Thom for responding. I wasn't actually aware of who FarmKind were when I wrote my post above. It looks like a very good project overall, thanks for your work in the space.
Your response doesn't answer for me the question of why it was decided to create such an anti-vegan campaign (at least in its webpage). I can see there could be a lot of good done by persuading people who are unlikely to try a vegan diet to donate. But something along the lines of "If you don't want to be vegan but want to help animals, try this instead" or even "If you hate Veganuary, here's how to beat vegans at their own goals" or something would seem to suffice (but with better words...). Creating a webpage full of negative messages about being vegan doesn't seem necessary, and seems to me to actually be misinformation, given I'm not aware of anything showing that the typical Veganuary participant's experience is like what is presented.
Having read the article in the Telegraph, I didn't think it was actually that bad - it seemed to be mainly arguing for promoting donations rather than diet change, and didn't actually seem to put veganism down (except for bringing up "vegan dogma"). (Though I wouldn't agree that putting on a meat-eating challenge is ethically OK.) So being negative about veganism doesn't seem to have been necessary to get publicity, so it makes it seem even stranger why the campaign web page takes this line.
It doesn't seem to have been picked up by any substantial media outlet other than the right wing UK press - I'd have thought it would be desirable to get a broader reach, since I'd guess that people on the political left would be more likely to donate, and I wonder if being less adversarial might have worked better.
It would be good to see follow up analysis of what impact on donations the campaign actually has.
Cooperation: We let Veganuary know about our intention to launch this campaign at the very start of our planning process and have kept them informed throughout.
Aidan says here that it is a "bit". That would seem to imply that Veganuary are collaborating with you on this. Can you say if that's accurate? If there's a follow up, it would seem good to highlight it to people here.
Our funders: FarmKind made the decision to launch this campaign. Organisations and individuals that have provided FarmKind with funding are not endorsing the campaign and it would be a mistake to equate past funding of FarmKind with support for our approach.
One of the things that people are going to do with a campaign like this is try to see who is funding it. Currently if you click the "Transparency" link at the bottom of the campaign page, it goes to a list of FarmKind's funders, including the EA Animal Welfare Fund. It's then going to at least raise the possibility in people's minds that these funders implicitly endorse the campaign. Unless you've switched to self-funding, it does seem like these funders' money is being used to finance it (including individual donors to the EA AWF). Would it not be normal to check with funders before launching a campaign that's expected to be controversial? Particularly if their own donors might feel attacked by the campaign? It seems like it creates a fair amount of potential for blowback against the EA animal welfare movement.
If there is some complex strategy involving coordination with Veganuary or others, I'd hope it was discussed with a diverse range of experienced people in the animal welfare space and got their endorsement.
I would also say that the campaign web page loses credibility by calling competitive eaters "experts" (I've seen this in comments in non-EA spaces) - why would anyone go to such people for expertise on how to best help farm animals through donating? To me, relevant "experts" would be people knowledgeable about welfare campaigns and ethics.
I think there should also be considerably more nuance around the idea of offsetting impacts of meat-eating - calling it "like carbon offsetting" seems misleading as they seem different in a number of significant ways, which may affect what people want to decide to do.
I doesn't seem "lighthearted" to me - it seems quite serious. OK, the browser "game" is quite silly. But if it's meant to be lighthearted then that seems to have not come across to quite a lot of people... Trying to appeal to people who don't want to adopt a vegan diet is fine, but I don't think attacking another group's effort and the idea of veganism in general is.
It doesn't really seem honest to me. It ignores all the experiences of people who didn't find it particularly problematic or even positive to do Veganuary.
Encouraging such donations could be good, and advocating for diet change doesn't seem to be favoured in EA. Advocating a "moral offsetting" approach to meat consumption is probably controversial I guess, but within realms of the plausibly reasonable. There doesn't seem to be anything gained by being negative about veganism though, and not doing that would seem robustly better.
Edit - perhaps it could be argued that a campaign against veganism may more effectively raise attention than if no criticism were made. That would still seem to me to be an excessively risky and divisive strategy, though. And it makes claims that don't seem to generally be correct about veganism and says some other silly things, which doesn't seem like a good way to go.
The idea seems to be to promote a message to not give up animal products, but rather donate to organisations that effectively campaign to improve farm animal welfare (including EA favourites like The Humane League, Fish Welfare Initiative and the Shrimp Welfare Project).
Promoting donating to such organisations seems all well and good, but it puts out very negative messages about being a vegan (which apparently means you will have "annoyed friends and family" and "got bloating from plant protein" etc.). This has got a lot of negative attention from vegan groups that I've seen. The website seems a bit ridiculous in places e.g. its "expert" views are just those of some eating champions. [Edit - OK that last bit was the authors being tongue-in-cheek.]
Interestingly the person who seems to be doing the PR, Toni Vernelli, used to do the PR for Veganuary, and wrote on the forum defending it less than a year ago: link. It's unclear if they actually changed their mind or have some other motivation to change their stance.
Anyway, it seems like quite a controversial initiative, unnecessarily negative about veganism and quite poorly put together [edit - OK that last part was unfair, more effort had gone into it than I'd initially realised]. As a donor to the EA Animal Welfare Fund, it's not something I'd expect to be paying towards myself [edit - following discussion, I'll withhold judgement from here until we see how it all plays out].
Just thought I'd share a reference that may be useful when quantifying the animal welfare impact of pet food - it quantifies environmental impacts taking into account the effect of pet food purchases incentivising keeping more livestock, and it seems to me like a similar approach could be used to quantify animal welfare impacts.
Alexander et al., 2020, "The global environmental paw print of pet food", Global Environmental Change, 65, 102153, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2020.102153 . Here's a free-to-access version: https://drive.google.com/file/d/17dpVo9QByHpe0NxyHUiR2VfYRnhLs71X/view
I read that as saying that this dairy farm owner wanted to support a campaign to abolish use of animals by humans - is that right? Surprising if so! I wonder how they square that with owning the farm.
Thanks for posting an update about the outcomes and your reflections. It sounds like the right lesson that it would be good to consult more widely in the movement before trying similarly risky approaches.
I just wanted to ask a somewhat technical question about the estimate of the amount raised:
This doesn't sound like it takes into account that (I guess) there would have been some amount donated through FarmKind without the campaign i.e. donations from new donors in that period not indicated as being linked to a campaign. What effect would subtracting this "background donation rate" have e.g. if it were based on a representative previous recent period of similar length (maybe from October-November or something if Christmas distorts things)? Or is this accounted for in a way I've not understood?
I think non-EA animal advocates count as being part of the general public in Nick's usage? From what I've seen it's been going down badly with them so far...
Thanks for engaging Aidan. Things may be clearer once we see any follow up I guess, but this strategy seems like it could come across as duplicitous, and rather risky not just for the organisations involved but also the wider EA movement, given the desire to seem trustworthy after the events of the past couple of years.
Thanks Thom for responding. I wasn't actually aware of who FarmKind were when I wrote my post above. It looks like a very good project overall, thanks for your work in the space.
Your response doesn't answer for me the question of why it was decided to create such an anti-vegan campaign (at least in its webpage). I can see there could be a lot of good done by persuading people who are unlikely to try a vegan diet to donate. But something along the lines of "If you don't want to be vegan but want to help animals, try this instead" or even "If you hate Veganuary, here's how to beat vegans at their own goals" or something would seem to suffice (but with better words...). Creating a webpage full of negative messages about being vegan doesn't seem necessary, and seems to me to actually be misinformation, given I'm not aware of anything showing that the typical Veganuary participant's experience is like what is presented.
Having read the article in the Telegraph, I didn't think it was actually that bad - it seemed to be mainly arguing for promoting donations rather than diet change, and didn't actually seem to put veganism down (except for bringing up "vegan dogma"). (Though I wouldn't agree that putting on a meat-eating challenge is ethically OK.) So being negative about veganism doesn't seem to have been necessary to get publicity, so it makes it seem even stranger why the campaign web page takes this line.
It doesn't seem to have been picked up by any substantial media outlet other than the right wing UK press - I'd have thought it would be desirable to get a broader reach, since I'd guess that people on the political left would be more likely to donate, and I wonder if being less adversarial might have worked better.
It would be good to see follow up analysis of what impact on donations the campaign actually has.
Aidan says here that it is a "bit". That would seem to imply that Veganuary are collaborating with you on this. Can you say if that's accurate? If there's a follow up, it would seem good to highlight it to people here.
One of the things that people are going to do with a campaign like this is try to see who is funding it. Currently if you click the "Transparency" link at the bottom of the campaign page, it goes to a list of FarmKind's funders, including the EA Animal Welfare Fund. It's then going to at least raise the possibility in people's minds that these funders implicitly endorse the campaign. Unless you've switched to self-funding, it does seem like these funders' money is being used to finance it (including individual donors to the EA AWF). Would it not be normal to check with funders before launching a campaign that's expected to be controversial? Particularly if their own donors might feel attacked by the campaign? It seems like it creates a fair amount of potential for blowback against the EA animal welfare movement.
If there is some complex strategy involving coordination with Veganuary or others, I'd hope it was discussed with a diverse range of experienced people in the animal welfare space and got their endorsement.
I would also say that the campaign web page loses credibility by calling competitive eaters "experts" (I've seen this in comments in non-EA spaces) - why would anyone go to such people for expertise on how to best help farm animals through donating? To me, relevant "experts" would be people knowledgeable about welfare campaigns and ethics.
I think there should also be considerably more nuance around the idea of offsetting impacts of meat-eating - calling it "like carbon offsetting" seems misleading as they seem different in a number of significant ways, which may affect what people want to decide to do.
I doesn't seem "lighthearted" to me - it seems quite serious. OK, the browser "game" is quite silly. But if it's meant to be lighthearted then that seems to have not come across to quite a lot of people... Trying to appeal to people who don't want to adopt a vegan diet is fine, but I don't think attacking another group's effort and the idea of veganism in general is.
It doesn't really seem honest to me. It ignores all the experiences of people who didn't find it particularly problematic or even positive to do Veganuary.
Encouraging such donations could be good, and advocating for diet change doesn't seem to be favoured in EA. Advocating a "moral offsetting" approach to meat consumption is probably controversial I guess, but within realms of the plausibly reasonable. There doesn't seem to be anything gained by being negative about veganism though, and not doing that would seem robustly better.
Edit - perhaps it could be argued that a campaign against veganism may more effectively raise attention than if no criticism were made. That would still seem to me to be an excessively risky and divisive strategy, though. And it makes claims that don't seem to generally be correct about veganism and says some other silly things, which doesn't seem like a good way to go.
There is a new "Forget Veganuary" campaign, apparently part-funded by the EA Animal Welfare Fund:
https://www.forgetveganuary.com/
https://www.farmkind.giving/about-us/who#transparency (the "Transparency" link on the campaign page)
Reddit link to news article that calls this a "meat-eating campaign" and discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/1px018m/veganuary_champion_quits_to_run_meateating/
The idea seems to be to promote a message to not give up animal products, but rather donate to organisations that effectively campaign to improve farm animal welfare (including EA favourites like The Humane League, Fish Welfare Initiative and the Shrimp Welfare Project).
Promoting donating to such organisations seems all well and good, but it puts out very negative messages about being a vegan (which apparently means you will have "annoyed friends and family" and "got bloating from plant protein" etc.). This has got a lot of negative attention from vegan groups that I've seen. The website seems a bit ridiculous in places e.g. its "expert" views are just those of some eating champions. [Edit - OK that last bit was the authors being tongue-in-cheek.]
Interestingly the person who seems to be doing the PR, Toni Vernelli, used to do the PR for Veganuary, and wrote on the forum defending it less than a year ago: link. It's unclear if they actually changed their mind or have some other motivation to change their stance.
Anyway, it seems like quite a controversial initiative, unnecessarily negative about veganism and quite poorly put together [edit - OK that last part was unfair, more effort had gone into it than I'd initially realised]. As a donor to the EA Animal Welfare Fund, it's not something I'd expect to be paying towards myself [edit - following discussion, I'll withhold judgement from here until we see how it all plays out].