This is a special post for quick takes by defun. Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page.
I think the reason is that it doesn't really have a target audience. Animal advocacy interventions are hundreds of times more cost-effective than global poverty interventions. It only makes sense to work on global poverty if you think that animal suffering doesn't matter nearly as much as human suffering. But if you think that, then you won't be convinced to stop working on global poverty because of its effects on animals. Maybe it's relevant for some risk-averse people.
I wonder if Open Philanthropy thinks about it because they fund both animal advocacy and global poverty/health. Animal advocacy funding probably easily offsets its negative global poverty effects on animals. It takes thousands of dollars to save a human life with global health interventions and that human might consume thousands of animals in her lifetime. Chicken welfare reforms can half the suffering of thousands of animals for tens of dollars. However, I don't like this sort of reasoning that much because we may not always have interventions as cost-effective as chicken welfare reforms.
Yeah, perhaps if you care about animal welfare, the main problem with giving money to poverty causes is that you didn't give it to animal welfare instead, and the increased consumption of meat is a relative side issue.
One potential audience is people open to moral trade. Say Pat doesn't care much about animals and is on the fence between global poverty interventions with different animal impacts, and Alex cares a lot about animals and normally donates to animal welfare efforts. Alex could agree with Pat to donate some amount to the better-for-animals global poverty charity if Pat will agree to send all their donations there.
Except if you do the math on it, I think you'll find that it's really hard to come out with a set of charities, values, and impacts that make this work. Pat would have to be so close to indifferent between the two options.
(And if you figure that out, there's also all the normal reasons why moral trade is challenging and practice.)
Also, you can argue against the poor meat eater problem by pointing out that it's very unclear whether increased animal production is good or bad for animals. In short, the argument would be that there are way more wild animals than farmed animals, and animal product consumption might substantially decrease wild animal populations. Decreasing wild animal populations could be good because wild animals suffer a lot, mostly due to natural causes. See https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/topics/logic-of-the-larder I think this issue is also very under-discussed.
I've been thinking about the meat eater problem a lot lately, and while I think it's worth discussing, I've realized that poverty reduction isn't to blame for farmed animal suffering.
(Content note: dense math incoming)
Assume that humans' utility as a function of income is U(c)=lnc (i.e. isoelastic utility with η=1), and the demand for meat is Q(c)=Acε where ε is the income elasticity of demand. Per Engel's law, ε is typically between 0 and 1. As long as ε<η, U′(c)>Q′(c) at low incomes and U′(c)<Q′(c) at high incomes.
For simplicity, I am assuming that the animal welfare impact of meat production is negative and proportional to −Q(c). (As saulius points out, it's unclear whether meat production is net positive or net negative for animals as a whole. Also, animal welfare regulations and alternative protein technologies are more common in high-income regions like the EU and US, so this assumption may not apply at the high end.) If this is true, then increasing a person or country's income is most valuable when that person/country is in extreme poverty, and least valuable at the high end of the income spectrum.
The upshot: the framing of the meat eater problem as being about poverty obscures the fact that the worst offenders of factory farming are rich countries like the United States, not poor ones, and that increasing the income of a rich person is worse for animal welfare than increasing that of a poor one (as long as both of them are non-vegan). I feel like it's hypocritical for animal advocates and EAs from rich countries to blame poor countries for the suffering caused by factory farming.
I feel like it's hypocritical for animal advocates and EAs from rich countries to blame poor countries for the suffering caused by factory farming.
I don't think this is what the meat-eater problem does. You could imagine a world in which the West is responsible for inventing the entire machinery of factory farming, or even running all the factory farms, and still believe that lifting additional people out of poverty would help the Western factory farmers sell more produce. It's not about blame, just about consequences.
I realise this isn't your main point, and I haven't processed your main argument yet. It would make a lot of sense to me if transferring money from a first-world meat eater to a third-world meat eater resulted in less meat being eaten, but I'd imagine that the people most concerned with this issue are thinking about their own money, and already don't consume meat themselves?
The meat-eater problem is under-discussed.
I've spent more than 500 hours consuming EA content and I had never encountered the meat-eater problem until today.
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/topics/meat-eater-problem
(I had sometimes thought about the problem, but I didn't even know it had a name)
I think the reason is that it doesn't really have a target audience. Animal advocacy interventions are hundreds of times more cost-effective than global poverty interventions. It only makes sense to work on global poverty if you think that animal suffering doesn't matter nearly as much as human suffering. But if you think that, then you won't be convinced to stop working on global poverty because of its effects on animals. Maybe it's relevant for some risk-averse people.
I wonder if Open Philanthropy thinks about it because they fund both animal advocacy and global poverty/health. Animal advocacy funding probably easily offsets its negative global poverty effects on animals. It takes thousands of dollars to save a human life with global health interventions and that human might consume thousands of animals in her lifetime. Chicken welfare reforms can half the suffering of thousands of animals for tens of dollars. However, I don't like this sort of reasoning that much because we may not always have interventions as cost-effective as chicken welfare reforms.
Yeah, perhaps if you care about animal welfare, the main problem with giving money to poverty causes is that you didn't give it to animal welfare instead, and the increased consumption of meat is a relative side issue.
One potential audience is people open to moral trade. Say Pat doesn't care much about animals and is on the fence between global poverty interventions with different animal impacts, and Alex cares a lot about animals and normally donates to animal welfare efforts. Alex could agree with Pat to donate some amount to the better-for-animals global poverty charity if Pat will agree to send all their donations there.
Except if you do the math on it, I think you'll find that it's really hard to come out with a set of charities, values, and impacts that make this work. Pat would have to be so close to indifferent between the two options.
(And if you figure that out, there's also all the normal reasons why moral trade is challenging and practice.)
Also, you can argue against the poor meat eater problem by pointing out that it's very unclear whether increased animal production is good or bad for animals. In short, the argument would be that there are way more wild animals than farmed animals, and animal product consumption might substantially decrease wild animal populations. Decreasing wild animal populations could be good because wild animals suffer a lot, mostly due to natural causes. See https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/topics/logic-of-the-larder I think this issue is also very under-discussed.
I've been thinking about the meat eater problem a lot lately, and while I think it's worth discussing, I've realized that poverty reduction isn't to blame for farmed animal suffering.
(Content note: dense math incoming)
Assume that humans' utility as a function of income is U(c)=lnc (i.e. isoelastic utility with η=1), and the demand for meat is Q(c)=Acε where ε is the income elasticity of demand. Per Engel's law, ε is typically between 0 and 1. As long as ε<η, U′(c)>Q′(c) at low incomes and U′(c)<Q′(c) at high incomes.
For simplicity, I am assuming that the animal welfare impact of meat production is negative and proportional to −Q(c). (As saulius points out, it's unclear whether meat production is net positive or net negative for animals as a whole. Also, animal welfare regulations and alternative protein technologies are more common in high-income regions like the EU and US, so this assumption may not apply at the high end.) If this is true, then increasing a person or country's income is most valuable when that person/country is in extreme poverty, and least valuable at the high end of the income spectrum.
The upshot: the framing of the meat eater problem as being about poverty obscures the fact that the worst offenders of factory farming are rich countries like the United States, not poor ones, and that increasing the income of a rich person is worse for animal welfare than increasing that of a poor one (as long as both of them are non-vegan). I feel like it's hypocritical for animal advocates and EAs from rich countries to blame poor countries for the suffering caused by factory farming.
I don't think this is what the meat-eater problem does. You could imagine a world in which the West is responsible for inventing the entire machinery of factory farming, or even running all the factory farms, and still believe that lifting additional people out of poverty would help the Western factory farmers sell more produce. It's not about blame, just about consequences.
I realise this isn't your main point, and I haven't processed your main argument yet. It would make a lot of sense to me if transferring money from a first-world meat eater to a third-world meat eater resulted in less meat being eaten, but I'd imagine that the people most concerned with this issue are thinking about their own money, and already don't consume meat themselves?