Insanity over plant-based food labeling in Australia

Here we go again…

Today, the Regional Services Minister Bridget McKenzie of the National Party will “ask a food regulation forum to back her bid to have Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) review terminology and crack down on imitation and so-called fake foods“. Fake foods as opposed to, what, real foods?

Laws are taking hold in France and Missouri, USA, which restrict the use of labels such as ‘meat’ and ‘milk’ to describe plant-based foods, even when they are clearly labelled as plant-based. For example, no more ‘plant-based meat’ or ‘soy milk’.

I’ve written about this before, and I’m frustrated that I need to write about it again. Apparently Australian Federal Government ministers don’t read my blog, because if they did, they’d surely see how their argument doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Let me go through a few key points in response.

“[Senator McKenzie] said farmers feared their businesses were at risk because shoppers often did not realise they were buying plant-based products, rather than products from animals.”

The products are very clearly labelled as plant-based. Below is a picture of the plant-based mince available in Australia that kicked up a fuss earlier in the year. For Senator McKenzie or farmers to suggest that a consumer might get confused and accidentally buy this instead of meat from an animal is an insult to their intelligence.

Senator McKenzie is also missing the point. People are buying these products not because they are confused, but because they are concerned about their health, the environment, and the suffering of innocent non-humans.

“[Senator McKenzie] said as an increasing number of consumers were not eating animal products because of allergies or philosophical beliefs, “that’s their decision but we need to be careful [we] don’t confuse the marketplace and we still protect the reputation, hard earned by our clean, green farmers”.”

Somewhere along the way we seem to have romanticised animal farmers – they can do no wrong. What exactly do you mean by clean and green, Senator McKenzie? Clean as in lack of disease and animal suffering? To dissuade you of this notion which I am sure you have zero risk of being biased in, please watch this recently released documentary which shows exactly how animals are being farmed in Australia.

Green, as in animal agriculture being one of the leading causes of anthropogenic global warming? This UN report is over a decade old but has gone largely unnoticed by governments and traditional environmental charities.

“Federal National Party politicians have been vocal critics of plant-based protein products being labelled as mince.”

This is the most ridiculous claim out of them all. The word ‘mince’ refers to the production process, not what the product is made from. To mince means ‘to cut up into very small pieces’. One can mince plants just as they can mince animal products. The fact that the National Party has been comfortable with the existence of fruit mince pies for years and have made no comment on them recently reveals their true motive.

Please sign the petition here to demand that such a law is never passed in Australia.

I live in Nazi Germany – A short story

An audio reading of this short story is available here.

Adabelle awoke on the cold concrete floor and struggled to her feet. She was young, barely 3 years old, and without a scrap of education was unable to express her thoughts in what we would call words. But she felt.

The room was damp and cold, and her bones ached like one many times her age. The white slabs of her bed were caked with the dried blood of yesterday. There were no toilets, and the room smelled accordingly. She shivered and huddled in the corner. She had no clothes to speak of. Around her she could hear the others beginning to stir.

She had been torn from her mother at a monstrously young age, and truth be told she did not remember her, only the dim recollection of a scent and a kiss. Her tormentors had taken her to a government experimentation complex hundreds of miles from where she was born, and it was all she knew.

A shrill whistle sounded as the doors opened, and the occupants of the room cried out in terror. A man in uniform strode confidently towards Adabelle’s cell and stopped before it. “This one.” The man’s smaller assistant rattled with a pair of keys and opened the stiff, aging door. He grabbed Adabelle roughly by the neck and threw her out, where she fell awkwardly and scraped her knees. “Move!” Adabelle did as she was told, and hobbled towards the main door. She had quickly learnt not to express her pain through sound. The men loved it, and would kick her again and again to hear her despair.

The day usually began with Adabelle being restrained on a metal bench and given a sedative before other substances were injected; all while a man stood taking notes and a camera recorded the scene. Adabelle couldn’t know, but they were testing a new drug with potential for accelerating brain functionality in their own race. Today though, the sedative wasn’t applied, and Adabelle immediately knew something was different. She was terrified, but kept silent, lest they hear her beating heart.

The uniformed men swapped stories and jokes as they tied her down. “Can you believe Franz passed out when I was showing him how to perform artificial insemination yesterday? What a baby.” Satisfying themselves that the restraints were taut, they turned to a spectacled man in a white coat. “What are we doing with this one today, sir?”

The man looked up from his clipboard and squinted at Adabelle. “New combat gear just came in from HQ, state of the art. This helmet is supposed to defend against supersonic projectiles, even fired at point blank range.”

The larger guard, already sweating a little in anticipation, gave a smirk. It was usually his job to carry out the experiment while the other man stood by as back up. “Think it’ll win us the war, sir?” He said.

“If it’s as good as they say it is. Which I guess we’ll find out by the end of the day, courtesy of our friend here.” The men roared with laughter, and the big guard landed a punch in Adabelle’s ribs for good measure. It was only her head they needed today. As she regained her breath, Adabelle was dimly aware of something being strapped to her head. The men put on ear protection, and one of them grabbed what looked like a long metal rod.

“Clear!” Before Adabelle could react, a deafening sound erupted through the room as a pneumatic metal slug collided with her head. She couldn’t think, and she let out a weak grunt. “Clear!” Again the slug hit her head. This time she felt it less, and the edges of her vision started to cloud and darken. If she knew numbers, she would have lost count of how many times she heard that cacophony.

Hours later, she felt herself stirring, ears still ringing.

“Aw shit sir, I think we went a little too hard. She’s toast.” A bright light filled her vision as the spectacled man looked down at her, torch in hand. The helmet was removed, and she felt rough hands touching her bruised head. Forgetting herself in the moment, she let out a short squeal of pain and was rewarded with a swift punch.

“Success. But I guess not even a German helmet can protect a soft, weak head like this.” A thumb pressed down on Adabelle’s skull, and the men laughed. “I think she’s done. Take her outside with the others.”

Adabelle passed in and out of consciousness as she was dragged outside by her legs. The guards grabbed and threw her into the back of a truck. With a start, Adabelle noticed she was in a cage with more of her people of different ages, all bruised and defeated in their own way, and that she had lost sight in her right eye. The truck shook to life and began moving. A short time later, it pulled up at another facility, where everyone in the truck was thrown out and forced up a ramp into a building. The building was full of machinery and technology reminiscent of where she had spent her life, yet somehow different. It smelled of… death.

“By damn I love technology!” The driver cried out as he drove his prisoners up the ramp. “Who would have thought we could kill a thousand in an hour? Unthinkable!”

“The gas chamber isn’t working today.” Said another man in uniform. “Take them to the killing floor.” The driver’s face fell.

“Right.”

As Adabelle entered the building, she looked up with her good eye and could see dozens of people observing the procession from a gantry. Many were in uniform, some were in white, and a few were in civilian clothes. There was a range of expressions from amusement, to hatred, to indifference. Only one man looked as though he might be outright sad. A single tear rolled down his cheek. His lips began to move, and if Adabelle could speak, perhaps she might have been able to make out what the man was mouthing.

“You poor souls. We have learned nothing. To you and all the others, we are Hitler.”

The guards in the room had whipped themselves into a frenzy and were kicking, punching and prodding the prisoners along with whatever they could lay their hands on. They were rounded into a small, long pen in the middle of the room where they couldn’t turn around. A man came along with the same metal rod and began firing slugs into the unprotected heads of the cows in front of him, whistling as he walked. “I’m gonna get you, I’m gonna get yoouuu.” Thunk thunk thunk. Adabelle’s turn came, and in a panic she angled her head away. The slug only glanced her skull, and the man walked on, still singing his tune. Adabelle felt the slug still stuck in her skull, and the warm rush of fluid down her face. She knew in that moment the meaning of hell.

The sound had ended, and the floor tipped to her right as the bodies slid down the slick floor to a lower level. One by one they were strung up and raised off the ground. Many were paralysed but completely aware when the final blow was dealt and their life left them in pulses. In that moment, Adabelle wished death on her tormentors, just as they wished death on her and all of her kind. And they gave her just that.

You can see my previous animal rights focused short story here, Salvation and Salivation.

Would Australians starve if we stopped farming animals?

An objection to not farming non-human animals that is common in Australia is that most Australian farm animals are raised in pasture land or arid land that would otherwise not be suitable for growing crops. Therefore, if everyone in Australia was vegan, we would starve. Or something like that.

When people think of Australian farmed animals, they usually think of cattle, sheep and goats, which are more likely to be pasture raised (but not always). People rarely think about the chickens and pigs, which are much more commonly kept in factory farms and fed a diet of grain and other farmed plant food. Using the average from 1994-2016 from FAO, in Australia there are 27.4 million beef cattle, 95.3 million sheep, and 2.7 million goats. For animals mostly raised in factory farms and fed grain, there were 2.5 million pigs, 1.1 million turkeys, and 87 million chickens (although note 551 million chickens were slaughtered in 2012 – this dichotomy is due to their short lifespans). Once we examine the statistics, Australia doesn’t quite seem like the land of pasture farming anymore.

One might reasonably suppose that it is no mistake that the type of farmed animal Australians are most familiar with are cows and sheep. If Australians knew what happened in chicken/pig farms (even free range, which are usually as bad), and all slaughterhouses, they might not eat animals. The pasture raised animals are the ones we see in advertisements of struggling farmers, not the chickens stepping over the decaying bodies of their fellow species in ‘free range’ farms.

It takes many kg of plants to make 1 kg of animal flesh (often at a 7 to 1 or greater ratio). We should be able to assume that these plants could be consumed by humans as well, but even if that is not the case, if we didn’t grow whatever plant it was, we could grow crops for humans in their place. If we assume that most of the plants fed to non-humans in factory farms in Australia are sourced in Australia (I think this is reasonable), we should still have enough food to feed Australians even if we eliminated all animal farming in Australia. We wouldn’t even need to repurpose arid land to grow crops that are suited to those climates (e.g. almonds and hemp), although we may want to do this anyway.

To put this another way, we would have so much spare land for growing crops for people if we stopped farming chickens, pigs and turkeys that it would almost certainly make up for the lost ‘food’ from farming cows, sheep and goats, and then some.

Los Angeles banning fur is great, but why not leather too?

The city of Los Angeles has banned the sale of new fur products. This is a fantastic outcome – there is no justification for the harms caused to animals raised for their fur when so many perfectly fine alternatives exist. The state of California is relatively progressive on issues relating to animals (San Francisco also banned fur sales earlier in the year), but one must wonder how best to use this momentum to have fur banned in other cities in the US and globally.

I also wonder how this momentum might be used to gain traction on related issues, such as banning the sale of leather. I have always found it interesting that the wearing of fur has been so strongly disdained by the public for so long, while the wearing of leather is seen by most (besides probably just vegans) as being benign. I’m quite unsure why this is the case, both involve the killing of a non-human to turn their bodies into clothing.

The only meaningful perceived difference I can think of is that cows, the animal leather is most commonly taken from, are also exploited for their flesh and milk, while fur animals are generally not (although I doubt most people think about it this much). However, the production of leather isn’t really a by-product, according to the documentary Dominion. Leather production is an economic factor in its own right, and thus buying leather should be expected to result in more cows being farmed.

If you have celebrated the banning of the backward practice of selling animal fur as clothing, please also consider not buying animal skin for clothing. If you’re feeling really adventurous, you can even consider not engaging in the ultimate unnecessary use of animals – using their flesh and excretions for food.

Asteroids and comets as space weapons

A video version of this is available here.

Introduction

Approximately 66 million years ago, a 10 km sized body struck Earth, and was likely one of the main contributors to the extinction of many species at the time. Bodies the size of 5 km or larger impact Earth on average every 20 million years (one might say we are overdue for one, but then one wouldn’t understand statistics). Asteroids 1 km or larger impact Earth every 500,000 years on average. Smaller bodies which can still do considerable local damage occur much more frequently (10 m wide bodies impact Earth on average every 10 years). It seems reasonable to say that only the first category (>~5 km) pose an existential threat, however many others pose major catastrophic threats*.

Given the likelihood of an asteroid impact (I use the word asteroid instead of asteroid and/or comet from here for sake of brevity), some argue that further improving detection and deflection technology are critical. Matheny (2007) estimates that, even if asteroid extinction events are improbable, due to the loss of future human generations if one were to occur, asteroid detection/deflection research and development could save a human life-year for $2.50 (US). Asteroid impact mitigation is not thought to be the most pressing existential threat (e.g. artificial intelligence or global pandemics), and yet it already seems to have better return on investment than the best now-centric human charities (though not non-human charities – I am largely ignoring non-humans here for simplicity and sake of argument).

The purpose of this article is to explore a depressing cautionary note in the field of asteroid impact mitigation. As we improve our ability to detect and (especially) deflect asteroids with an Earth-intersecting orbit away from Earth, we also improve our ability to deflect asteroids without an Earth-intersecting orbit in to Earth. This idea was first explored by Steven Ostro and Carl Sagan, and I will summarise their argument below.

Asteroid deflection as a DURC

A dual use research of concern (DURC) refers to research in the life sciences that, while intended for public benefit, could also be repurposed to cause public harm. One prominent example is that of disease and contagion research (can improve disease control, but can also be used to spread disease more effectively, either accidentally or maliciously). I will argue here that DURC can and should be applicable to any technology that has a potential dual use such as this.

Ostro and Sagan (1998) proposed that asteroid impacts could act as a double edged explanation for the Fermi paradox (why don’t we see any evidence of extraterrestrial civilisations?). The argument goes as follows: Those species that don’t develop asteroid deflection technology eventually go extinct due to some large impact, while those that do eventually go extinct because they accidentally or maliciously deflect a large asteroid into their planet. This has since been termed the ‘deflection dilemma‘.

The question arises: does the likelihood of a large impact increase as asteroid deflection technology is developed, rather than decrease? The most pressing existential and catastrophic threats today seem to be those that were created by technology (artificial intelligence, nuclear weapons, global health pandemics, anthropogenic global warming) rather than natural events (asteroid impacts, supervolcanoes, gamma ray bursts). Humanity has survived for millions of years (depending on how you define humanity), yet in the last 70 years have seen the advent of nuclear weapons and other technology that could meaningfully cause a catastrophic at any time. It seems possible therefore that the bigger risk will be that caused by technology, not the natural risk.

Ostro and Sagan (1994) argue that development of asteroid deflection technology is at the time of writing (and presumably today) premature, given the track record of global politics.

Who would maliciously deflect an asteroid?

Ignoring accidental deflection, which might occur when an asteroid is moved to an Earth or Lunar orbit for research or mining purposes (see this now scrapped proposal to bring a small asteroid in to Lunar orbit), there are two categories of actors that might maliciously deflect such a body; state actors and terrorist groups.

A state actor might be incentivised to authorise an asteroid strike on an enemy or potential enemy in situations where they wouldn’t necessarily authorise a nuclear strike or conventional invasion. For example, let us consider an asteroid of around 20 m in diameter. Near Earth orbit asteroids of around this size are often only detected several hours or days before passing between Earth and the Moon. If a state actor is able to identify an asteroid that will pass near Earth in secret before the global community has, they can feasibly send a mission to alter its orbit to intersect with Earth in a way such that it would not be detected until it is much too late. Assuming the state actor did its job well enough, it would be impossible for anyone to lay blame on them, let alone even guess that it might have been caused by malicious intent.

An asteroid of this size would be expected to have enough energy to cause an explosion 30 times the strength of the nuclear bomb dropped over Hiroshima in WWII.

We can temper the likelihood of this scenario by speculating that it is unlikely for some state actor to covertly discover a new asteroid and track its orbit without any other actor discovering it, considering there are transparent organisations working on tracking them. However, is it possible that a government organisation (e.g. NASA) could be ordered to not share information about a new asteroid?

What to do about this problem

Even if we don’t directly develop asteroid deflection technology, as other technologies progress (e.g. launching payloads becomes cheaper, propulsion systems become more efficient), it will become easier over time anyway. Other space weapons, such as anti-satellite weapons (direct ascent kinetic kill projectiles or directed energy weapons), space stored nuclear weapons, and kinetic bombardment (rods from god) will all become easier with general improvements in relevant technology.

The question arises – even if a small group of people were to decide that developing asteroid deflection technology causes more harm than good, what can they meaningfully do about it? The idea that developing asteroid deflection technology is good is so entrenched in popular opinion that it seems like arguing for less or no spending in the area might be a bad idea. This seems like a similar situation to where AI safety researchers find themselves. Advocating for less funding and development of AI seems relatively intractable, so they instead work on solutions to make AI safer. Another similar example is that of pandemics research – it has obvious benefits in building resilience to natural pandemics, but may also enable a malicious or accidental outbreak of an engineered pathogen.

Final thoughts

I have not considered the possibility of altering the orbit of an extinction class body (~10 km diameter or greater) in to an Earth intersecting orbit. While the damage of this would obviously be much greater, even ignoring considerations about future generations that would be lost, it would be significantly harder to alter the orbit of such a body. Also, we believe we have discovered all of the bodies of this size in a near Earth orbit (Huebner et al 2009), and so it would be much harder to do this covertly and without risking retaliation (e.g. mutually assured destruction via nuclear weapons). The possibility of altering the orbit of such bodies should still be considered, as it poses an existential/catastrophic risk while smaller bodies do not.

I have also chosen to largely not focus on other types of space weapons (see this book for an overview of space weapons generally) for similar reasons – the potential for dual-use is less clear, thus in theory making it harder to set up such technologies in space. It would also be more difficult to make the utilisation of such weapons look like an accident.

Future work

A cost benefit analysis that examines the pros and cons of developing asteroid deflection technology in a rigorous and numerical way should be a high priority. Such an analysis would consider the expected value of damage of natural asteroid impacts in comparison with the increased risk from developing technology (and possibly examine the opportunity cost of what could otherwise be done with the R&D funding). An example of such an analysis exists in the space of global health pandemics research, which would be a good starting point. I believe it is unclear at this time whether the benefits outweigh the risks, or vice versa (though at this time I lean towards the risks outweighing the benefits – an unfortunate conclusion for a PhD candidate researching asteroid exploration and deflection to come to).

Research regarding the technical feasibility of deflecting an asteroid into a specific target (e.g. a city) should be examined, however this analysis comes with drawbacks (see section on information hazards).

We should also consider policy and international cooperation solutions that can be set in place today to reduce the likelihood of accidental and malicious asteroid deflection occurring.

Information hazard disclaimer

An information hazard is “a risk that arises from the dissemination or the potential dissemination of (true) information that may cause harm or enable some agent to cause harm.” Much of the research in to the risk side of DURCs could be considered an information hazard. For example, a paper that demonstrates how easy it might be to engineer and release an advanced pathogen with the intent of raising concern could make it easier for someone to do just that. It even seems plausible that publishing such a paper could cause more harm than good. Similar research into asteroids as a DURC would have the same issue (indeed, this post itself could be an information hazard).

* An ‘existential threat’ typically refers to an event that could kill either all human life, or all life in general. A ‘catastrophic threat’ refers to an event that would cause substantial damage and suffering, but wouldn’t be expected to kill all human life, which would eventually rebuild.

Why I support the Australian Animal Justice Party and why you should too

Ever since I got interested in politics, I had always been hesitant to align myself with a given party. My rationale was mainly that I like to update my beliefs based on evidence and rational thought, and I worried that if I became a member of a party, I would become biased. Even if I wasn’t biased, there would be an external perception that I was, and it might be harder encourage others to vote for what I thought was the best party.

Also, it would be fair to say that I don’t agree with any Australian party on all of their policies and priorities. Of course, there are some that I agree with more, but I like to vote in elections based on the current landscape, not a pre-committed allegiance.

Voting for the best party is important – more so than many might first assume. I’ve written about this before. To recap:

“People often say that you’re unlikely to have any impact when voting, or that the impact of your vote is so small that it’s not worth thinking about, but this is only true if you only care about yourself. In Doing Good Better, Will MacAskill simplistically estimates that the expected value of voting for a US citizen, when spread out across all citizens in USA, is around $5,200 USD (~$7,000 AUD at the time of writing [and I believe the value for an Australian voter is quite similar]). That is to say, on average, $5,200 of the budget will be spent differently as a result of your vote (see the appendix for a more detailed explanation of why this is so). This means it’s very important to vote for the party that will spend the budget in the best way possible.

The impact of your vote on you personally, however, is worth significantly less than $1. So unless you think you’re really, really important, you should probably vote for the best party for others in general.”

While many in the effective altruism and effective animal advocacy space are quite comfortable to say they believe a particular charity, intervention or career path is effective at reducing suffering and why, few are comfortable talking about why they think a given political party is effective at reducing suffering (relatively speaking), and I think that’s a shame. We need to change the culture of talking about politics to one that is truth-seeking and open to changing minds.

Part of it may be the perception of bias, and I want to talk about this. After years of consideration, I currently think that the Animal Justice Party is the party that I expect to most reduce suffering if they are successful (e.g. get more votes, funding, seats etc.). As a result, I went to AJP events, I eventually became a member, and now I am considering becoming significantly more involved with the party in to the future. My involvement follows my research. It is not the case, at least now, that I would support or promote the AJP because I am a member.

People often assume that one’s motivation is biased if they promote X, but the rationale can come from the other direction. People can believe the evidence and therefore act on it, and political parties are no exception. We should be wary of someone who says the party they support is the best party because [insert evidence], but not outright distrustful.

With that preamble, I want to talk a little about why I am a supporter of the AJP, and why I think you should be too (before the perception of my bias becomes even stronger, if it’s not too late). In fact, I think you should be a supporter of the AJP even if you aren’t vegan, for similar reasons that I put forth in my post about why you should support animal charities even if you aren’t vegan.

What do I mean by supporter? I mostly mean signing up as a member ($30 AU per year*), and voting for them, but could also include other stuff. Of course, this doesn’t mean you are committing to support them for life. For a while this was a major source of reservation for me in not becoming a member. But I reserve the right to part ways with the party if I disagree with them or think supporting another party would be more effective. But I think that if you are more confident than not that a party is ‘best’, you should support it until you think otherwise.

The first political party I felt strongly about was the Greens, due to my concerns about human rights and the environment. However, I worry that the Greens don’t go anywhere near far enough for non-humans, and hold, in my view, anti-science policies around energy (e.g. they are strongly opposed to nuclear energy, and make little to no reference of the environmental harms of the livestock industry). They are ‘pretty good’, but I am confident that AJP largely addresses these concerns and then some.

One thing I find partly but not completely surprising is that many vegans, vegetarians, and others concerned largely with animal suffering, don’t vote for or support the AJP. Perhaps they think AJP doesn’t go far enough still, or that there are other important issues. But to this, I say that AJP arguably goes the furthest thus far, and that you may as well vote first preference for AJP, and second preference for the presumably larger party you believe is better informed about other issues.

So, dear reader, if you trust my judgement and impartiality (and if not at least consider and look in to it), you should sign on as an AJP member and vote for them at the state and federal level unless some valid information changes your mind. As an AJP member you will have a stronger say over their priorities, as well as increasing the strength of their influence on Australian politics. In the words of AJP themselves:

“Every additional member means added strength, funds and political capital for the AJP to pursue its animal protection agenda. Your membership sends a message to the other parties that animal protection is a political force to be reckoned with – one that our members are prepared to put their vote behind.”

If you want to look at some of my thinking on different parties, you can see this analysis I did with Hugo Burgin on 6 parties at the time of the last federal election in 2016, though note that it is somewhat out of date and my views have shifted somewhat.

Finally, a quick reminder that voting for a party that is relatively unlikely to gain a seat in Australia is not a wasted vote, captured perfectly by this comic.

* Even if you donate all or much of your disposable income to effective charities, as I know some of my friends and readers do, I still think this is a highly impactful use of your marginal $30.

Why do vegans talk about veganism so much?

Being a vegan, I meet many people who get on some level why I am vegan, but just don’t understand why vegans talk so much about non-human animals and how they are treated in farming. I have come up with a story which, I hope, will enable you to understand, even if you don’t agree. I want you to really try and visualise yourself in this scenario and be honest with yourself for maximum effect. My goal here is not to convince you to be a vegan, but to convince you that, if you were vegan, you would want to talk about it all the time too.

Imagine you lived in a society where 99% of the population ate humans. These humans are farmed in ways that bring about unimaginable suffering, and they are killed at very young ages. When you find out how most of your food is made, you make a decision to stop contributing to it. You stop purchasing human products.

But most of your friends and family still eat humans. You might go to dinner with friends and see them eating humans around you. They ask you why you don’t eat humans and you explain. They might crack a few jokes, or say that these humans are bred for food, so it’s ok, or that they are less intelligent, so it’s ok. They might say that it’s necessary to eat humans for survival or to be healthy, but you know it’s not.

Perhaps you would feel compelled to tell your friends what really happens in human farms, and why it is wrong to eat them. I can almost guarantee that you wouldn’t be silent. You would want to tell everyone, and wouldn’t care if people thought you were being too ‘pushy’ or ‘preachy’. When your friends listen but ignore your plea, you might start to feel helpless and dejected. You might think about the footage of humans suffering, and know that it doesn’t have to be that way. Your friends are good people, so you just can’t understand why they choose to continue eating humans.

Perhaps you disagree that non-humans should be given ethical consideration. Perhaps you think that the taste of their flesh outweighs their suffering. But through this hypothetical, you can now see why vegans talk about it so much. Because we do think non-humans are as or almost as worthy of moral consideration as humans. We know how easy it is to reduce the suffering caused by animal agriculture, and it is hard for us to live in a society where 99% of people disagree with us. If you don’t think you can understand, then you are deceiving someone, and it’s probably yourself.

 

Helping Aussie farmers in a drought? There are better opportunities

Lately, I feel like the motivation for me to write a post on a particular topic comes from having had a series of debates on social media about it until I get frustrated enough that I want to write out my thoughts in full so I don’t have to talk about it anymore. This post is no exception.

Some regions of rural Australia are currently experiencing their worst drought in 100 years. This surely affects all farmers (and users of water), but it seems the media has chosen to focus on how it affects animal farmers. It has sparked a lot of attention, from news articles, to it being a major talking point on political Q&A show Q&A and countless businesses pledging to give some of their profits from a certain day or item to farmers (usually through a charity called Buy a Bale which gives stock feed, money and volunteers to farmers).

This issue has also divided many vegans. Most are against the idea of helping animal farmers e.g. by donating to Buy a Bale, but some are also urging vegans to support the farmers to alleviate the suffering of the animals affected by the drought. This would be a hard pill for vegans to swallow, but I would like to argue that, even if you were open to supporting animal exploitation in some cases, to do so here would be highly irrational.

The suffering of the humans and non-humans affected by this is clearly awful. However, in thinking about supporting the farmers, vegans and non-vegans alike have completely ignored the concept of opportunity cost. That is to say, if one were to spend or donate a dollar in one way, they are forgoing other opportunities to spend or donate the dollar in other ways.

By supporting animal farmers, you are forgoing much more effective opportunities to help humans (e.g. Against Malaria Foundation where you would save a life for an average of $6,000 AU), or animals (e.g. Vegan Outreach). It seems quite hard to argue that giving stock feed, money or volunteers to animal farmers would be more effective at alleviating either human or non-human suffering than any of the current top rated giving opportunities (e.g. GiveWell for humans, and Animal Charity Evaluators for non-humans).

Even if you disagree with the research put out by either of these organisations, you must surely recognise that the chances of Buy a Bale being the best bet for reducing suffering are very low. Check your biases – are you supporting Buy a Bale because you think it is the best thing to do, or is it because it is a topical issue currently that is in the news and a lot of other people are doing it?

“Will you buy a parmy and help our farmers and animals?”
Public: Yeah!
“Will you donate to an effective international development or animal charity outside of a media cycle?”
Public (usually): Eh

Any one dollar you donate to help animal farmers is one dollar you could otherwise use to reduce suffering more effectively. Yes, the suffering of animal farmers and their animals is sad, but it’s sad because they suffer. If we care about suffering, we should be open-minded about how best to reduce it.

I also want to say that I’ve seen some quite awful things said about farmers by vegans in the context of this drought. Things have been said along the lines of ‘I’ll pay for the farmers to be shot alongside their animals’. Threats of violence are never ok, and it’s not even useful to say it, regardless of whether it is a joke or not. All suffering is bad, and that includes the suffering of humans who harm animals. We can be sad about their suffering without condoning the suffering they cause non-humans.

If you have seen any comments like these, please know that they are not representative of animal advocates in general. In any case, how a minority of people in a movement or who hold an idea act should not affect your opinion on the movement or idea itself. After all, I have also received death threats from a variety of meat eaters and farmers, but I do not in any way believe this to be representative of meat eaters or farmers as a whole.

In much of the conversation about this, people are turning to climate change and the increased likelihood and severity of droughts. Some are playing a political blame game, while others are condemning the energy industry for their part in climate change. I do find it somewhat ironic that no one seems to be talking about the role of animal agriculture in increasing climate change (it’s one of the leading contributors) which in turn affects animal agriculture (and all users of water).

In particular, I’m disappointed in Q&A for completely neglecting this in their discussion on Monday (yes, I’m calling you out Tony). It has gone on for so long that it is starting to feel like undeclared interests, rather than complete ignorance.

As a final point, if you don’t like seeing animals suffer, don’t pay people to breed them. Be vegan.

Response to criticism of Aspeys’ cruise

A recent video has accused vegan activist James Aspey of hypocrisy. From what I can gather from the video, Aspey has taken part in a cruise with a number of vegans, where he gave talks which the video accuses of ‘preaching to the choir’. The video argues that Aspey contributed to environmental damage by taking part in the cruise, and is therefore hypocritical.

It seems like the main objection here is not that Aspey spent money and time on the cruise. If they were criticising the money he spent on the travel, arguing that what he is spending it on is ineffective at reducing suffering and that there were more effective things he could be doing with it, I’d be inclined to agree. But a) that doesn’t seem to be the argument, and b) we all spend money on things we don’t need when we could be further reducing suffering.

I don’t like cruise ships either, but most people don’t donate all of the money they would spend on leisure activities on donations to the worlds most effective environmental or vegan charities (as much as I do wish people would donate more). Are we not all doing the same every time we spend money on ourselves instead of reducing environmental damage or suffering?

I didn’t see a figure for the volume of emissions per person as a result of going on the cruise, but I’d be very surprised if it were more than a few tonnes. This amount can be offset via a donation of several dollars to Cool Earth. If we ignore the money being spent on the cruise that’s could otherwise be donated (that doesn’t seem to be the objection here?), anyone spending $10 on a meal when they could spend $5 and donate $5 is causing roughly the same degree of damage, unless you don’t think that an inaction can be as morally culpable as an action. I think you probably already believe this, since many people would agree that walking past someone dying and not saving them when you could for no cost is as bad as killing them yourself.

Of course, I still think spending too much money on leisure activities is bad (I still do it more than I’m happy with) and encourage people to consider donating more to effective charities (for ones own happiness, as well as for the greater good), but if we are upset with Aspey for taking part in the cruise, we should be upset with some 90% of vegans who spend money on leisure activities.

I could steelman the video by expanding the argument to saying that Aspey would have been better off giving the money to an effective cause and doing some advocacy locally. I don’t know the content of Aspeys’ talk, and in fact the video makes no effort to address it (the creator of the video, KARen Savior, is a well known critic of Aspeys’ work), but let me also steelman his involvement. If he was using the talk to get the other vegans to become more effective advocates for animals, that may well have been a decent (still not the best) use of money.

We don’t like to think about it, but every time we spend money on ourselves, there is an opportunity cost.

As an aside, I have had some incredibly frustrating conversations about the original video here and here, including receiving ad hominem attacks and a variety of other fallacies.

The intriguing history and ethics of having a lawn

From a young age I had resolved to never have a lawn if I owned my own house. This might seem incredibly trivial, but as I’ll show, it isn’t. Lawns are something I have thought about again several times throughout my life, each time becoming increasingly validated in my decision to not have a lawn.

My first (and perhaps partially childish) motivation was a general dislike for gardening. My childhood home had a large garden and I helped out from time to time. I didn’t see the point at the time, though I understand now that there are some benefits to property value and people can derive some enjoyment from having a lawn (though I never really did).

Many years later, I learned an interesting fact from Yuval Noah Harari’s book Sapiens about the history of lawns. Here are some quotes:

“A young couple building a new home for themselves may ask the architect for a nice lawn in the front yard. Why a lawn? ‘Because lawns are beautiful,’ the couple might explain. But why do they think so? It has a history behind it.”

“Well kept lawns demanded land and a lot of work, particularly in the days before lawnmowers and automatic water sprinklers. In exchange, they produce nothing of value. You can’t even graze animals on them, because they would eat and trample the grass. Poor peasants could not afford wasting precious land or time on lawns. The neat turf at the entrance to chateaux was accordingly a status symbol nobody could fake. It boldly proclaimed to every passerby: ‘I am so rich and powerful, and I have so many acres and serfs, that I can afford this green extravaganza.’” [bolded emphasis my own]

The last sentence really stuck with me. It seemed true even today – lawns are almost purely a status symbol. They don’t produce fruit or veggies and barely have a useful carbon storage effect. I felt more justified in my attitude towards lawns.

Around the same time, I had become convinced by arguments about wild-animal suffering. If you are not familiar with this argument, I strongly encourage you to see this introduction, but in short, it is plausible that many wild-animals (including invertebrates such as insects) have lives with more suffering than wellbeing. If you accept this, then at the least you should accept that it would be wrong to bring these lives in to existence (for the same reason it is wrong to bring farmed animals in to existence when they will experience so much suffering).

Creating a lawn can be an effective way of increasing insect suffering, as it increases the available plant biomass for insects to breed and increase their population. Brian Tomasik argues for having gravel instead of lawns to reduce insect suffering. Tomasik’s rough estimate shows that the amount of suffering one can reduce by replacing a lawn with gravel is immense.

Having lawns can even be bad for the environment, especially if you regularly mow them. The carbon that would otherwise be stored in the grass is cut off and released to the atmosphere via decay. Some carbon would be stored in the ground in the grass and humus still, however the emissions from mowing ones’ lawn should outweigh this. As an alternative, white gravel would reflect sunlight, having a net cooling effect compared to grass, which would absorb heat.

Long story short – I don’t ever want a grass lawn and I wish this view was more commonly held – it’s more important than it seems at first glance.