Week 5 - Questions

Global Priorities — Tutorial Sheet 4 — Week 5
Animal Welfare
Core readings
Lewis Bollard: Lessons learned in farm animal welfare
CAGE-FREE CAMPAIGN
2014, advocates started campaigning on cage-free reforms

 Few companies had made these pledges
Campaigns went global in 2016
 Retailers like Tesco and Carrefour, food manufacturers like Nestle and Starbucks
have made partial or complete global cage-free commitments
 The biggest one: Walmart
 Major egg producers made a public commitment and started to build up cage-free
[supply chains]
 Put companies didn’t buy cage-free eggs – producers backed down too
Ensuring the implementation
1. Pass laws that effect corporate supply chains

2. Public reporting – transparency!
 Many other companies are not yet publicly reporting their progress
 Fulfil their pledge on time
 In 2019, McDonald's said they're one-third of the way toward being
cage-free
3. Partial-implementation progress
 Focusing on the biggest grocery chains (Walmart)
 Just one-quarter of the hens are cage-free in the United States today
PLANT-BASED MEAT
Biggest IPO 2019: Beyond Meat

3x is the weight of grain to weight of meat
 Producers are producing chicken for less than $1 per pound
 Costs: almost entirely feed, leaving 30% for everything else: the labour, barns,
chicks
 Feed is incredibly cheap
 3:1 ratio from feed to usable meat
Challenge: price!
 Chicken is insanely cheap
 Three times the nation’s average price for [real] chicken pieces
Product matters
Marketing matters
Chicken is going to be a much harder market to enter than beef
We need to be able to convert feed into plant-based protein more efficiently than a broiler
chicken does
 3:1 ratio of feed to usable meat, so we need to beat that ratio to be price-
competitive with chicken
WHERE MONEY GOES
Lot more money is coming in – need to go into the plant-based sector, not just certain
brands
Money doesn’t go where the animals are
 Money is still overwhelmingly being directed toward the United States and
Western Europe
 BUT land-based farm animals are in Asia (and farmed fish)
25 billion land + 55 billion farmed fish
Where money is spent and where it is produced is different
Focus on Asia
India: advocacy and campaign against cage-free

Fish advocacy (pártfogás): 99% of animal killing if we include wild-caught fish
Guardian | Industrial farming is one of the worst crimes in history
Ethical questions:
 Sensations and emotions
 Die on a production line
Humans colonised America, wiping out in the process about 75% of its large mammals
Agricultural revolution
Domesticated chicken is probably the most widespread bird in the annals of planet Earth
Domesticated farm animals particularly cruel is not just the way in which they die but
above all how they live
Living conditions:
 Farmers need to provide food and water to animals – ensuring their survival and
reproduction
 Domesticated animals have inherited from their wild ancestors many physical,
emotional and social needs that are redundant in farms
 They lock animals in tiny cages, mutilate their horns and tails, separate mothers
from offspring, and selectively breed monstrosities
OpenPhil | What Happened to Plant-Based Meat?

Stagnant plant-based meat sales
Americans are quitting plant-based meat due to high prices, worse taste, and questionable
health benefits.
three times the retail price of chicken
taste have gotten better in recent years
unnatural” and “ultra-processed
consumers say they want less processed products
2019-20, as Burger King launched the Impossible Whopper and Beyond Meat IPO – huge
media attention
COVID may have helped
OWiD | Adopting slower-growing breeds of chicken would reduce animal

suffering significantly
Further reading / listening
Andrés Jiménez Zorrilla on the Shrimp Welfare Project (80k podcast)

300 billion and 400 billion shrimps per year are produced for human consumption
(farmed shrimps) = number of humans who have ever walked the Earth
wild-caught shrimps – tens of trillions
Cofounded in 2021
The evidence for shrimp sentience

 Shrimp could possibly be sentient (érzés)
Reimagining meat: The scientific case for alternative proteins (YouTube)

Tutorial Questions
Q1. “Animals are the main victims of history”; “Industrial farming is one of the
worst crimes in history”. Discuss.
In scale and intensity it is

4 billion this year
Agricultural farming was not always there
Q2. Below is the “distribution of the world’s land mammals” graph which appeared
in the lecture. Was there anything in the graph that you found surprising or
striking?
Ever since humans came into the picture the farm animals skyrocketed, wild life is
disappearing
Humans: strongest species, but we live in an environment where not always the strongest
and fittest survive.
With animal welfare we don’t have enough data
We overconsume animal products
Q3. Contrast the diet recommendations for a meat eater who wants to minimise
suffering vs. one who wants to minimise their carbon footprint per kilogram of meat.
How should a rational person think about the trade-offs involved?
Killing 1 chicken result in less meat than killing 1 cow.

Q4. In terms of carbon output, is it more important to eat local foods, or foods which
are inherently lower in carbon (such as nuts)?
Q5. What were some of Lewis Bollard’s “Lessons learned in farm animal welfare”?
Corporate reforms
Success of Cage free campaigns
Commitment of big players are crucial in the supply chain – because at the end of the day
we buy our products from them
Securing and implementing corporate reforms – set achievable goals
The first lesson learned in farm animal welfare of Lewis Bollard is the implementation of
corporate reforms. The cage-free eggs campaign launched in 2016 involving many well-
known retailers and manufacturers such as McDonald’s, Whole Foods, Costco, Kroger
and so more.
But commitment to a certain cause and doing the implementation are two different things.
Stricter regulations and law enforcement can certainly help the transition process.
The second thing, public reporting cannot be as regulated, however in my opinion if
companies publicly state what they have achieved in terms of animal welfare or other
environmental goals that will bring them a kind of respect from customers. So, they will
certainly benefit from it in that sense.
Q6. The readings for this week included an article called “Adopting slower-growing
breeds of chicken would reduce animal suffering significantly”. What was the basic
reasoning? What were the types of pain discussed? Does this type of approach to the
problem seem reasonable, or would you go about it some other way?
4 types of pain
Reducing the more extreme pain
Reduce will drive the prices up – make meat mor e expensive
Government could impose taxes if fast growth is applied
Q7. What happened to plant-based meat?
While plant-based meat seems to be a good alternative there are some concerns. In 2019
Burger King launched the Impossible Whopper and Beyond Meat’s IPO received a huge
media attention. Since then, the sales of plant-based meat is stagnant. There are multiple
reasons why many people are quitting plant-based meat. One of them is due to high
prices: a beyond burger is three times the retail price of chicken. Then there is the
question of the taste. While it has gotten better in recent years, these products often fall
into the category of ultra-processed foods, which implies questionable health benefits.
There is a trend that consumers are looking for less processed products.
Q8. What are issues raised this week which were not on this sheet but which you
would like to discuss? (Feel free to start with this question.)
One thing I would like to delve more into more is the topic of cultured meat or more
known as lab-grown meat. This is a process to meat production that involves growing
animal cells in a laboratory environment, and it doesn’t involve an animal's body. This
process can be the solution to animal suffering and cruelty in the meat industry. Cultured
meat can improve animal welfare by eliminating the need for large-scale animal farming
and slaughter. The technology itself is already available. However, there are multiple
concerns surrounding such as regulatory approval, consumer acceptance, and there is the
question of the nutritional profile, taste, and texture of cultured meat. But I am a firm
believer that if we overcome those challenges, lab-grown meat can be a successful
alternative to the traditional products.
Benefits:
 Less contamination – less likely to be infected by bacteria
 Fewer antibiotics – traditionally raised livestock are often given antibiotics to help
keep them healthy – antibiotic resistance
 Less environmental impact
 Kinder to animals
Concerns:
 Not vegan
 Huge price – but as technology advances, the cost of cultured meat should go
down
 Public opinion – lab-grown meat just doesn’t sound appetizing

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Global Priorities — Tutorial Sheet 4 — Week 5

Lewis Bollard: Lessons learned in farm animal welfare

2014, advocates started campaigning on cage-free reforms

Ensuring the implementation

1. Pass laws that effect corporate supply chains

Biggest IPO 2019: Beyond Meat

WHERE MONEY GOES

India: advocacy and campaign against cage-free

Guardian | Industrial farming is one of the worst crimes in history

OpenPhil | What Happened to Plant-Based Meat?

OWiD | Adopting slower-growing breeds of chicken would reduce animal

Further reading / listening

Andrés Jiménez Zorrilla on the Shrimp Welfare Project (80k podcast)

The evidence for shrimp sentience

Reimagining meat: The scientific case for alternative proteins (YouTube)

In scale and intensity it is

Killing 1 chicken result in less meat than killing 1 cow.

Q7. What happened to plant-based meat?

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