Don't give up meat if it's too hard

There are more effective ways to reduce animal suffering with lower personal costs

It’s hard to catch Effective Altruists in moments of logical inconsistency or sentimentality. Here’s a little tip that points to one of them - A 2019 survey by Rethink Priorities found that just under half of Effective Altruists polled claimed to be vegan (from a fairly large sample of over 2,500 respondents). Any time I meet a vegan EA, I oscillate between the desire to express admiration for them and the itch to point out the inconsistency between their philosophical beliefs and dietary choices. Since most EAs aren’t exactly thin-skinned, I end up doing both (after having witnessed

Connor Tabarrok

doing this skillfully at a conference we were both at).

First things first, I don’t deviate one bit from the canonical EA line on factory farming being one of the gravest moral errors of our time. If there were a referendum on ending factory farming tomorrow (which legislating sufficiently high animal welfare standards would effectively do), I would not only vote to end factory farming but also devote a significant proportion of my time convincing others to do the same. I would do so knowing full well its implications - the price of meat that’s already above the bar would skyrocket to make it unaffordable, at least for a few months. After the market somewhat readjusts, the supply of meat would never rise to the same levels. In other words, my actions would have a lot of leverage. It would reduce consumption by everyone, perhaps even accelerate the process of bringing cultured meat to the market, but even if that were years away, it would still be worth it.

For now though, over 95% of my meals contain animal products. You can charge me with motivated reasoning (and part of it very well may be) but for me and many others, for whom going vegan or vegetarian would be a significant personal sacrifice, I’d argue it’s irrational to die trying when there are much better ways to reduce animal suffering. In economic terms, animal suffering is an unpriced negative externality, one that keeps the price of meat artificially low. If you refuse to buy this low-cost product, it’s a bit like refusing to take a Taxi to fight climate change. You’ve refused to participate in one transaction with a negative externality and that certainty counts for something, but you’ve done little to fight the system. Your consumption preferences don’t change laws, prices or other people’s consumption patterns, that will continue to perpetrate horrific crimes against farmed animals. 

The ideal type of action would move us all closer as a society towards pricing this externality. Or bringing the price of substitutes down such that meat becomes less competitive. As an individual, you probably won’t pass a new law single-handedly. But even the smallest action you take to facilitate systemic change acts uniformly on millions if not billions of consumers, thus multiplying the impact of your actions. Moreover, any systemic change will also likely stick, improving standards for billions of future animals as well. Such changes impose the lowest costs on humans per unit benefit to animals. If you’re someone who really enjoys meat, you probably won’t reduce your consumption even if prices increase by 20%. But several people who don’t value meat as highly will. So lobbying for such changes is a much more efficient way of reducing animal suffering, inducing behavioral changes first in those humans that value eating meat the least.

Before I delve into what these high-leverage actions look like, I want to pre-empt an argument that some of you are itching to make. Well, why not do both.? If eating meat is wrong, you should abstain from meat consumption AND do these “high leverage” actions. You’ll save even more animals, won’t you? Yes; the most moral thing to do would be to find the most effective way to improve animal welfare AND abstain from consuming meat. But presumably, you don’t just care about animal welfare. Each behavior change or action you take has a personal cost to you in terms of time, effort and money. Each minute you spend on one thing is another minute you don’t spend on something else. I happen to think animal welfare is undoubtedly something that deserves your attention. If you actually don’t really like meat, and it would be relatively low effort for you to give up meat, sure, give it up. But before you start struggling to find a path towards “veganism” and figuring out a careful supplementation regime, I would urge a rational inspection of opportunity costs. 

The cost of giving up meat.

I don’t have to convince myself of this. It’s not even so much that I love meat, it’s that I find most meals unpalatable without meat. That itself is a huge cost. For the short periods I’ve tried going meat-free, I also experienced lower energy levels and digestive health (but I’d guess the former is made up and the latter just means tolerating a longer adjustment period). If you’re not like me and are the type of person that was able to cut meat consumption in half without giving up anything of significance, good on you. Do that. Regardless, it’s uncontroversial that veganism or anything close to it necessitates careful and regular supplementation. Fun fact: 47% of the population in North India is deficient in B12 (want to guess what’s driving that?). So even if you don't particularly enjoy meat (which a lot of us do), there are costs in terms of time, money, attention, and effort. I’m sure you can find papers that point to long-term health benefits of giving up meat, but even if true, this is a non-sequitur. If the health benefits haven’t convinced you to give up meat, you’re probably getting something out of it. I’m here to tell you what to do about that.

The benefits of giving up meat

It’s worth doing a quick back of the envelope calculation. At the limit, assume all your protein intake is in the form of factory farmed chicken of the lowest ethical standards - the worst product from an animal welfare perspective. Say you eat chicken 3x a day - about 250 (0.55 lbs) grams each serving. That’s 750 grams (1.75 lbs) of chicken a day, well over the average protein intake. That’s 275 kilograms of chicken ( or~600 lbs) per year. The average chicken in America weighs about 5.7 pounds . This amounts to consuming ~105 chickens a year. Most chickens lead horrendous lives so that’s pretty jarring. But almost no one eats that much chicken. Even if you eat half of that, saving 52.5 chickens every year is not something to scoff at. So what should you do?

Donate 10$ a month

1. Support effective animal charities (eg. cage free campaigns): Chickens are the most tortured species on the planet (and we are 100% responsible). The use of battery cages is a significant cause of misery, cramming multiple chickens into a space that constrains most natural movements, inducing myriad debilitating physical ailments and psychological trauma. Animal advocacy has been successful in getting corporations to make pledges/commitments to going cage free. Organizations such as The Humane League make sure that corporations are held accountable and follow through on the commitments they make. Saulius Simcikas from Rethink Priorities estimates that a dollar spent on such campaigns has improved anywhere between 9 to 120 chicken life years (by making them cage-free). Assume the bottom end of that effectiveness range and a 10$ annual donation will buy you 90 chicken life years. The average life of a chicken is ~1.5 months in the US, which means your donation of 10$ will save 720 chickens from a caged existence. Now you could argue that chickens still have a net negative life in farms, so you have only made things less bad by removing cages. But let’s say being cage free reduces total suffering by 20%. This would be the equivalent of saving 144 chickens. Still better than going vegan. There’s tons of uncertainty around all of those numbers and to be safe, I would recommend something more like 10$ a month instead of a 10$ annual donation. Moreover, Humane League comes recommended from multiple sources that I trust. In fact, iI’ll put my money where my mouth is right now (you can verify the time and date of my recurring donation)

Click Here - Do it Now

2. Support the alt. proteins industry: There’s a case to be made that alternative proteins and food technology in general is what will end up making a step change in animal suffering. Buying these products on the market is fine, but it’s again, voting with your consumption - not very effective. I’d recommend donating to an organization like the Good Food Institute, that supports the entire alt. proteins ecosystem. By finding and funding promising research opportunities and advocating for favorable public policy towards alternative protein, they attempt to accelerate research in and adoption of suffering-free products.

If you’re interested in exploring other effective organizations in the space, this report by Founder’s pledge might be a good starting point.

Make others suffers along with you

This might seem obvious to some of you but guess what - you going vegan for two weeks has the same impact as hosting a dinner party for 15 people with vegan food. Insofar as you’re hosting an event and enjoying the food isn’t the primary motivation, consider ordering from a good vegan restaurant to multiply your impact. The food at vegan restaurants in NYC (like this one) or San Francisco (like this one) is genuinely good, although I’d guess it won’t be easy on your digestive system if you keep going back. This is basically a consumption strategy, but with more leverage. A side benefit of this is the signaling effect. This might be a good opportunity to tell people about why you chose to do this. Some people might call you weird for trying to increase philanthropic impact by ruining their dinner, but even if 1 person gets it, they’ll do the same at their parties, further multiplying your impact. I once told someone at a party that I mostly stopped eating chicken; and I heard from a mutual friend that it made them give up chicken, which brings me to my next point.

Consume low-impact meat

Multiple friends who work in animal welfare (vegetarians themselves) have told me that most cows in the United States (and Europe) probably have net positive lives, whereas chickens have by far the worst and easily net negative lives. Moreover, even if cows had slightly net negative lives, for every gram of protein, you’re killing far fewer cows than chickens. It’s worth reading Scott Alexander’s piece on this in which he also addresses arguments around climate change and the possibility that cows might suffer more.

If you eat meat and live in a big city like New York or San Francisco and can afford to buy ethical meat instead, look for one of these two labels - Animal Welfare Certified or Humane Certified. Most labels don’t mean what you think they mean, as this piece states. You could argue that every dollar you spend on ethical meat can be donated to those charities instead. This is true. Personally, I live around grocery stores that stock one of these two labels, and they don’t seem a lot more expensive than the alternatives in those stores. Also, I care more about these labels when I buy chicken. With beef, I mostly don’t bother looking for humane options. 

Lastly, if you don’t enjoy meat all that much and think giving it up would be fairly easy but find yourself worried about the impact on health, use supplements like Creatine and Whey Protein. Yes, they’re not technically vegan but they’re animal by-products which have an almost negligible footprint in terms of animal welfare.

Arguments against my position

Signaling. Making a personal sacrifice signals to other people that you’re serious about the cause, thus inspiring other people to action. I’d find this a lot more persuasive if there wasn’t also a sizable chunk of the population that finds vegans and vegan culture reprehensible. I could make an equally plausible sounding counter-argument that it’s better to show that one can contribute to animal welfare without making extreme personal sacrifices or associating with a part of the culture they have misgivings about.

I’ll make one concession that

Regan Arntz-Gray

pointed out - if you work at an animal welfare charity and consider yourself an animal welfare advocate, then perhaps it could be a bad look to not be doing everything you could do to reduce animal suffering, including going vegan. But if you’re a normal person with normal friends, you should be trying to spread the message that it’s possible to have an impact while still leading the life you broadly want to lead.

I’m aware of the vulnerability to a reductio argument. Well, why not do anything and everything you want that may be morally wrong and then try to offset all the harms you commit via donations? Well, because, for societal functioning, we need to hold everyone to minimum standards without which institutions would collapse. You can’t donate your way out of breaking laws or even spreading misinformation. Rules have their place. Having said that, when we face a problem that society is mostly ignoring, that we have no rules or norms, the best course of action is to think on the margin to identify the best ways to develop those norms and standards for EVERYONE - beyond just changing your personal rules to match what societal rules should look like in some idealistic state.