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Fai

1968 karmaJoined
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Bioethics

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PhD student (in bioethics) in the National University of Singapore

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Fai
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100% agree

We should prioritize slowing the spread of industrial animal agriculture in future high-production regions over investing in advocacy in currently high-production regions that remain neglected in terms of farmed animal advocacy.

I support this, I gave an EAGx (Singapore) talk basically arguing for this (maybe a more general point, that we should focus much more on prevention)

Thank you for the post. I have a follow-up question which I hope you or Givewell can answer: Do Givewell also give cage systems to people in need, or teach them how to use cages, or both? I am asking because I have seen livelihood projects that do one of these. If my memory is not wrong, they include FAO, World Bank, the Dutch Government, and Heifer (yes, they don't just give cows, they give chickens too and teach them how to use cage systems).

Hi Cameron, 

Did you see Chytrid Fungal Infection and Frog Welfare — EA Forum?

It would be great if you can respond to it too.

Fai
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Thank you very much for writing the post. Albeit unsurprising, it's somewhat disheartening to see this post being much less popular than the frog slaughter one. I have to say excluding tractability, I probably care about this issue than frog slaughter more.  

 

Do you have a sense of the tractability (which includes making enough people care about this) of this issue, and what can be done to increase it? 

Hi Lewis, this podcast interview, and the match fund is really exciting. I learned many new things in this.

I wonder if you have plans to touch more on fish welfare. And is it possible that you can touch on invertebrate welfare (despite it being out of scope now for OP)?

 

We discuss two contradictory views about factory farming that produce the same conclusion: that its end is either inevitable or impossible.

Usually when I say anything to you it's about practical stuff, but this time it's going to be pedantic, please excuse me this time.

I think strictly speaking contradictory statements can't be both false (and of course can't be both true). And these two statements can be both false, and I think they are indeed both false (as you pointed out clearly). 

I think statements that can't be both true but can be both false are called contrary statements? (I only studied logic in Chinese so I am not sure).

Thank you for suggesting that you are willing to support a potential solution to this. 

This gave me an idea, maybe if enough of us signaling that we are willing to donate/work/volunteer for this potential new charity, we can make it come true?

I am certainly willing to allocate the majority (see update below) of my next years' donations to this potential charity (or this year, if this charity can come this fast), and provide free advisory service to it. 

 

UPDATE: On reflection, maybe it was too quick a decision to pledge that it should be the "majority" of my next years donations before further investigations on other alternatives. But I am very sure it will be significant (if this charity do come into existence).

Fai
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Thank you so much for this important post. This could be a low-hanging fruit. And I hope I can shed some light on where the fruit trees might be located.

I am not sure about the non-Asian countries that export frog legs to Europe, but I quite certain that it's pointless to try to directly convince/force processing factories in Asia to kill frogs in more humane ways. The way to go is to affect how the demand side behaves. 

And I think it's not the best strategy to try to use education/adovcacy to try to reduce frog leg consumption. At least not as a standalone strategy. But it could be part of other work like corporate engagement and lobbying. 

I also think corporate engagement work, like the Carrehour win PETA seems to be associated with, won't have a significant effect on the number of frogs beings raised and killed inhumanely. I believe the reason is that the demand is simply way higher than supply (and prices are like super high because of that), meaning that whatever amount of frog legs that Carrefour gives up would be picked up by someone else. This is pretty much regardless of how large of a purchaser Carrefour are, because other supermarkets and restaurants can't buy enough anyway, they would just likely pick those up. 

I think the way to go is to get European countries (main target would be France) or EU at large to ban frog legs that were killed inhumanely. And I think a strategy that can be tried is to get charities other than PETA to do basically the same investigations and then protests.

Fai
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"Freshness" being perceived as important for taste is definitely true in China. In some wet markets in China, frog vendors try to skin the frogs first and keep the head intact, and only cut the heads off when a customer verifies that that frog is alive, and then buys the frog.

To be "fair", some processing factories in Asia who exports to Europe cut the heads of the frogs first, so those frogs suffer way less (but still horrifically).

I am not sure why there is a high variety of methods for killing frogs for the same product. But I guess it might be because different factories just try to find different ways for killing frogs in the quickest ways, and it happens that it largely depends on their workers' hand skills and their equipment?

Fai
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"Frogs: Leg removal without anaesthesia." is an understatement of what could happen to frogs used to produce frog legs endure. A lot of them in processing factories in Asia are skinned alive first and put or hang (using a hook piercing through their eyes or feet) there, until another worker has time to cut off their legs. 

I didn't put up links to videos about the practice, but if you want to know the extent of suffering, it should be easy to find. (I just realised the OP put up a video too, after typing the comment)

I will write another comment related to strategy.

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