The Nonlinear Library EA - Fighting animal suffering: beyond the number of animals killed by Keyvan Mostafavi
May 14, 2024
22:12
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Fighting animal suffering: beyond the number of animals killed, published by Keyvan Mostafavi on May 14, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
Animal advocates are driven by a common belief: animals should not suffer. Quantifying suffering involves considering the duration and intensity of animals' pain. This nuanced approach reveals that focusing solely on the number of animals killed can obscure the true extent of their suffering. Welfare improvements and reducing the number of farmed animals both contribute to decreasing total suffering, each addressing different aspects of the problem.
By delving deeper into the complexities of animal suffering, we can better advocate for meaningful change.
Summary
Animal activists have various motivations to help animals, but the majority of them agree that animals should not suffer.
Suffering is difficult to measure and define, but it is important to try to do so, as it allows us to prioritize which animals need the most help. One approach is to define different intensities of suffering (excruciating, disabling, hurtful, and annoying), and then to look at the number of hours that animals spend in each one of these different states. Ultimately, the two critical components of suffering are its duration and intensity.
The number of animals killed alone is not a sufficiently precise proxy for the time they spend in farms or their average suffering, making it inadequate for prioritizing between different species.
Improving welfare conditions and reducing the number of animals farmed both play significant roles in decreasing the total amount of suffering, although they impact different aspects of the suffering equation (intensity vs. duration).
For animals like broiler chickens and egg-laying hens, reforms such as adopting European Chicken Commitment standards and cage-free systems significantly reduce suffering.
The challenge of understanding the scope of animal suffering
The injustice of animal farming is inconceivable. By the time you're done reading this post, more than
1 million broiler chickens will have been slaughtered. At the exact moment these lines are written, around
100 billion fishes live in horrendous conditions in
farms around the globe. The overwhelming scale of the problem is the main driver for most activists - we're in constant triage and we want to help animals as much as possible with our limited resources. However, the scale of this problem can also deceive us if we are not careful enough.
One well-known challenge in this context is
scope insensitivity - the human brain struggles to grasp the magnitude of problems relative to their size. Despite this, it seems that modern animal advocates demonstrate a relatively strong ability to distinguish differences in vast numbers. They tend to prioritize farmed animals over companion animals, or farmed chickens over many other species of farmed animals.
However, advocates must consider another potential pitfall when assessing scope - fixating solely on the number of animals killed while ignoring other crucial considerations, such as suffering.
To illustrate the moral significance of this distinction, we will use an imaginary example of two animals. Please note that it will include some description of animal suffering and death (as we will do in other parts of the article). Let's imagine two dogs - Alan and Nala. Both of them were just diagnosed with an identical terminal and aggressive cancer. Their lives from that point on will be filled with unmanageable, excruciating pain.
After careful consideration and observation, Alan was euthanized by the vet after one month. Unfortunately, Nala was living with an impoverished family that had no resources to afford veterinary care, and thus the procedure was delayed by 11 months. In this example, both dogs were euthanized within ...
Animal advocates are driven by a common belief: animals should not suffer. Quantifying suffering involves considering the duration and intensity of animals' pain. This nuanced approach reveals that focusing solely on the number of animals killed can obscure the true extent of their suffering. Welfare improvements and reducing the number of farmed animals both contribute to decreasing total suffering, each addressing different aspects of the problem.
By delving deeper into the complexities of animal suffering, we can better advocate for meaningful change.
Summary
Animal activists have various motivations to help animals, but the majority of them agree that animals should not suffer.
Suffering is difficult to measure and define, but it is important to try to do so, as it allows us to prioritize which animals need the most help. One approach is to define different intensities of suffering (excruciating, disabling, hurtful, and annoying), and then to look at the number of hours that animals spend in each one of these different states. Ultimately, the two critical components of suffering are its duration and intensity.
The number of animals killed alone is not a sufficiently precise proxy for the time they spend in farms or their average suffering, making it inadequate for prioritizing between different species.
Improving welfare conditions and reducing the number of animals farmed both play significant roles in decreasing the total amount of suffering, although they impact different aspects of the suffering equation (intensity vs. duration).
For animals like broiler chickens and egg-laying hens, reforms such as adopting European Chicken Commitment standards and cage-free systems significantly reduce suffering.
The challenge of understanding the scope of animal suffering
The injustice of animal farming is inconceivable. By the time you're done reading this post, more than
1 million broiler chickens will have been slaughtered. At the exact moment these lines are written, around
100 billion fishes live in horrendous conditions in
farms around the globe. The overwhelming scale of the problem is the main driver for most activists - we're in constant triage and we want to help animals as much as possible with our limited resources. However, the scale of this problem can also deceive us if we are not careful enough.
One well-known challenge in this context is
scope insensitivity - the human brain struggles to grasp the magnitude of problems relative to their size. Despite this, it seems that modern animal advocates demonstrate a relatively strong ability to distinguish differences in vast numbers. They tend to prioritize farmed animals over companion animals, or farmed chickens over many other species of farmed animals.
However, advocates must consider another potential pitfall when assessing scope - fixating solely on the number of animals killed while ignoring other crucial considerations, such as suffering.
To illustrate the moral significance of this distinction, we will use an imaginary example of two animals. Please note that it will include some description of animal suffering and death (as we will do in other parts of the article). Let's imagine two dogs - Alan and Nala. Both of them were just diagnosed with an identical terminal and aggressive cancer. Their lives from that point on will be filled with unmanageable, excruciating pain.
After careful consideration and observation, Alan was euthanized by the vet after one month. Unfortunately, Nala was living with an impoverished family that had no resources to afford veterinary care, and thus the procedure was delayed by 11 months. In this example, both dogs were euthanized within ...