Thanks for writing this post – the summary of lead levels in various fruits/vegetables was especially interesting.
I also found this article helpful in unpacking the Consumer Reports study. My takeaways are (1) Huel is fine and (2) Consumer Reports is not as trustworthy as I thought.
Thanks for that first point – I was using "naive utilitarianism" in a broader sense which I now realize made my point less clear. What I meant was that I worry about the type of thinking that allows for serious harm if it increases net welfare, e.g. disregarding rights violations so long as they lead to the greatest total good. I don't disagree with your modelling, but worry more generally about reasoning which permits these other types of harm.
Your second point is fair and helps me understand your post better. Thanks for that!
I am not convinced of your third point. There are just so many insects in the world that I think it would be hard to improve their welfare on a large scale without some level of societal investment. However, until we have more research on insect welfare and related potential interventions, I think this one will be hard to resolve.
I can’t think of a compelling theory of change for arthropod welfare that omits consideration of avian welfare, and I worry that your line of reasoning (despite the generally robust calculations you include) neglects two larger concerns:
The idea that, for the sake of increased total welfare, we should neglect a smaller but still significant harm, may border on naive utilitarianism. While chicken welfare reforms may, on balance, increase total suffering, there is no doubt that they directly and significantly reduce the immense suffering of factory-farmed chickens. The horrors of factory farming are too great to dismiss, even if in this case there is an extremely uncertain chance that they might reduce harm elsewhere. A better solution could be to work with farmed chicken welfare advocates to investigate ways of rearing chickens more humanely which do not (or are at least less likely to) increase insect suffering.
Outside of (and sometimes even inside) EA, insect welfare is a tough sell. I think an even tougher sell is insect welfare which comes at the cost of the welfare of birds, mammals, or other animals. Like Cameron, I have a hard time imagining a society that takes insect welfare seriously while subjecting farmed animals of other species to intense suffering, and so I worry that moving away from this kind of chicken welfare reform actually moves us further from adopting the reforms needed to decrease insect suffering in the long term.
That being said, I do think this is well worth discussing, and I appreciate your efforts to move things along with quantitative data!
This is a good point. To be fair, I do think animal advocacy groups working on cage-free hens or other animal welfare interventions are aiming to make these changes permanent (or at least as permanent as the industries they are a part of). However, at least one recent case shows how easily even a seemingly permanent change of this kind can be undone.
I suppose the question comes down to your confidence in the existence of a tipping point at which alternative proteins take over. Given the evidence I've seen, it remains far from certain that alternative proteins will fully displace animal products no matter how much we support the relevant industries; in this case, it seems more productive to support alleviating the worst of the suffering that currently takes place in factory farms. Even if we agree that cultivated meat will at some point in the future fully displace animal-based foods, if this is in the far future we still might be able to do more good supporting animal welfare reforms that will see us through until then.
However, my hope is that this counterargument turns out to be true, and that alternative proteins do reach exactly this kind of tipping point in the near future. This post was in large part my attempt to turn this hope into something more certain, one way or the other.
I think this is potentially a really important use for alternative proteins. While plant-based pet food has been around for some time, it hasn't quite caught on, and I don't want to wade into the debate around whether cats can thrive on protein from plants. This is why cultivated meat in particular might be really valuable here. It also makes intuitive sense that people might be willing to feed cultivated meat to other animals, even if they have concerns about eating it themselves, and that this might eventually help to normalize cultivated meat in general.
That being said, I couldn't find any good research or evidence of success in this area, which is why I didn't delve into it here. It seems like a promising area for research, and now that there is a limited amount of cultivated meat on sale as dog food in the UK perhaps we will start to get some data.
Thanks, Jacob – for this and for your paper from 2023, which first caused me to question many of my assumptions in this area, which in large part led to this post. I agree that I am overly reliant on self-reported surveys here (this was largely because they were what I could most easily find), so I'm excited to dig into some of these papers measuring outcomes and I appreciate your sharing them.
As someone with more expertise in this area than I have, what would you say is your own answer to the question I'm posing here? I get the sense that you are not very optimistic about the potential for alt proteins to displace animal-based meat, but I would love to know what nuances there might be in your views, how confident you are, and what unknowns you are still curious about.
I've been doing some work around the effectiveness of funding alternative proteins and found this very helpful. Thanks for putting in the time and sharing your results!
I hope you are right to be so optimistic about the future market share of precision-fermented eggs (although I realize this optimism is deliberately built into your model). Even if EVERY (or another company) starts selling significant numbers of these in 2028, you are right to note that estimating their market share after that point is deeply speculative. On the bright side, consumers seem ready to give them a try; alternately, you could draw a parallel with Beyond or Impossible, which show mixedresults at displacing meat even when price isn't a factor.
That being said, to me these uncertainties around alt proteins only strengthen your conclusion – that it's likely better to put our money and resources toward proven interventions around advocacy.
Thanks for writing this post – the summary of lead levels in various fruits/vegetables was especially interesting.
I also found this article helpful in unpacking the Consumer Reports study. My takeaways are (1) Huel is fine and (2) Consumer Reports is not as trustworthy as I thought.
Hi Vasco,
Thanks for that first point – I was using "naive utilitarianism" in a broader sense which I now realize made my point less clear. What I meant was that I worry about the type of thinking that allows for serious harm if it increases net welfare, e.g. disregarding rights violations so long as they lead to the greatest total good. I don't disagree with your modelling, but worry more generally about reasoning which permits these other types of harm.
Your second point is fair and helps me understand your post better. Thanks for that!
I am not convinced of your third point. There are just so many insects in the world that I think it would be hard to improve their welfare on a large scale without some level of societal investment. However, until we have more research on insect welfare and related potential interventions, I think this one will be hard to resolve.
Thanks again for sparking this great discussion!
I can’t think of a compelling theory of change for arthropod welfare that omits consideration of avian welfare, and I worry that your line of reasoning (despite the generally robust calculations you include) neglects two larger concerns:
That being said, I do think this is well worth discussing, and I appreciate your efforts to move things along with quantitative data!
This is a good point. To be fair, I do think animal advocacy groups working on cage-free hens or other animal welfare interventions are aiming to make these changes permanent (or at least as permanent as the industries they are a part of). However, at least one recent case shows how easily even a seemingly permanent change of this kind can be undone.
I suppose the question comes down to your confidence in the existence of a tipping point at which alternative proteins take over. Given the evidence I've seen, it remains far from certain that alternative proteins will fully displace animal products no matter how much we support the relevant industries; in this case, it seems more productive to support alleviating the worst of the suffering that currently takes place in factory farms. Even if we agree that cultivated meat will at some point in the future fully displace animal-based foods, if this is in the far future we still might be able to do more good supporting animal welfare reforms that will see us through until then.
However, my hope is that this counterargument turns out to be true, and that alternative proteins do reach exactly this kind of tipping point in the near future. This post was in large part my attempt to turn this hope into something more certain, one way or the other.
I think this is potentially a really important use for alternative proteins. While plant-based pet food has been around for some time, it hasn't quite caught on, and I don't want to wade into the debate around whether cats can thrive on protein from plants. This is why cultivated meat in particular might be really valuable here. It also makes intuitive sense that people might be willing to feed cultivated meat to other animals, even if they have concerns about eating it themselves, and that this might eventually help to normalize cultivated meat in general.
That being said, I couldn't find any good research or evidence of success in this area, which is why I didn't delve into it here. It seems like a promising area for research, and now that there is a limited amount of cultivated meat on sale as dog food in the UK perhaps we will start to get some data.
Thanks, Jacob – for this and for your paper from 2023, which first caused me to question many of my assumptions in this area, which in large part led to this post. I agree that I am overly reliant on self-reported surveys here (this was largely because they were what I could most easily find), so I'm excited to dig into some of these papers measuring outcomes and I appreciate your sharing them.
As someone with more expertise in this area than I have, what would you say is your own answer to the question I'm posing here? I get the sense that you are not very optimistic about the potential for alt proteins to displace animal-based meat, but I would love to know what nuances there might be in your views, how confident you are, and what unknowns you are still curious about.
I've been doing some work around the effectiveness of funding alternative proteins and found this very helpful. Thanks for putting in the time and sharing your results!
I hope you are right to be so optimistic about the future market share of precision-fermented eggs (although I realize this optimism is deliberately built into your model). Even if EVERY (or another company) starts selling significant numbers of these in 2028, you are right to note that estimating their market share after that point is deeply speculative. On the bright side, consumers seem ready to give them a try; alternately, you could draw a parallel with Beyond or Impossible, which show mixed results at displacing meat even when price isn't a factor.
That being said, to me these uncertainties around alt proteins only strengthen your conclusion – that it's likely better to put our money and resources toward proven interventions around advocacy.