I was part of a panel a few months ago called ‘How can we best help animals?’ in Sydney. We talked about effective animal advocacy and had speakers from three different perspectives – Kai McBeth on local grassroots advocacy, Alex Vince on non-profits, and Emma Hurst on political change for animals.
You can watch the recording here!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=38PUzCPd-V8
To my knowledge, the benefit to humans of having less animal product consumption globally has never been quantified, despite there being a number of proposed mechanisms for how this could be the case (e.g. public health, climate change, antibiotic resistance, etc.). This scoping study, the first of its kind, estimates that a donation of $1,999 to The Humane League (the animal charity suggested by Animal Charity Evaluators to be the most effective at reducing animal suffering/animals farmed) today is estimated to result in 0.23 human lives saved in the short term, and 0.0039 human lives saved from 2030 to 2050. By way of comparison, $1,999 is the amount estimated by GiveWell to save a human life if donated to the top rated human charity, the Malaria Consortium’s seasonal malaria chemoprevention.
The level of uncertainty in this analysis is large, and many assumptions were made. I expect and hope for a lot of criticism, and intend to amend the analysis in an ongoing manner. This page represents the latest version (02/11/2018), while a history of amendments can be seen here.
Many forms of animal advocacy that focus on reducing the consumption of animal products have the obvious primary benefit of reducing farmed animal suffering. They also have numerous possible secondary benefits that may help reduce human suffering, including reduced greenhouse gas emissions, slower global antibiotic resistance, potentially reduced public health burden, and possibly improved food security and equality.
Given these secondary benefits, I’ve often therefore wondered how much supporting the most effective non-human focused charities (e.g. those that aim to reduce non-human animal product consumption) is at reducing human suffering compared to the most effective human focused charities. If it turned out to be the case that they were more effective at reducing human suffering, it could be a game changer. If this were the case, rationally motivated people should start supporting the best non-human charities rather than the best human charities, even if they didn’t care at all about non-humans. For those of us who care about all sentient minds, this would be a win-win.
Despite the potential for this, I haven’t really seen any attempts to quantify the flow-on benefits. The closest I’ve seen was this ACE post by Ben West in 2012, though it only covers climate change.
One must of course be cautious of motivated reasoning while making this analysis – I might be biased during my assessment towards making the human benefits of supporting non-human charities stronger, or the benefits of supporting human charities weaker. I will do my best to show all of my assumptions, estimates, calculations and rationale in full. I encourage people to recreate my conclusion, either from scratch or using my assumptions, and to let me know what they came up with.
This analysis is intended as a scoping study, and should be read as such. It is not intended to be a final, conclusive report. There are of course many improvements that could be made, and I may address them at a later date. At this time, I aim only to create interest in a comparison which I think is important but seriously neglected.
First, we need to look at what the best non-human and human charities are, and what they do. For this, I will use the top recommended (as of 17/09/2018) non-human and human charities from Animal Charity Evaluators and GiveWell respectively.
One may reasonably wonder why I picked these charities rather than those focused on reducing suffering or saving lives in the future or far future (i.e. hundreds to billions of years from now), given that they may be orders of magnitude more effective at achieving our goals if we care equally about future lives. I accept this argument, but stick to short term charities mainly because comparing the best far future charity to help non-humans and the best far future charity to help humans would be extremely difficult and highly (even more so) uncertain.
ACE’s top rated charities are currently Animal Equality (AE), The Humane League (THL) and the Good Food Institute (GFI). While I am a strong supporter of what GFI does, a full cost-effectiveness analysis has not been performed (e.g. an estimate of how many less animals eaten per dollar donated). The reviews and models of THL and AE suggest that $1* donated to them would spare 15.833 and 0.095 animals from life in industrial agriculture respectively. As THL appears to have a significantly higher average impact for reducing the number of animals farmed, we will use them for the comparison.
The models were made on Guesstimate, which uses Monte Carlo simulations to arrive at the average impact values. I ran the simulations for each of THL and AE 30 times and took the mean. ACE has written up an explanation of their cost-effectiveness estimates here.
The methodology for determining the impact of reducing animal product consumption on each of the cause areas (e.g. public health, climate change) is non-obvious and will be done on a case by case basis. Even allowing for assumptions, there may be room for substantial improvement, and so encourage critiques of these areas specifically.
For simplicity, I will generally be focusing on the consumption and reduction in consumption of land animals. Multiple conflicting estimates of the number of land animals farmed per year exist, and I have chosen the somewhat mid-range estimate of 80 billion land animals farmed per year (70 billion in 2013 and rose from 60 billion in 2008, so I assumed the same trend from 2013 to 2018).
It should be noted here that these reductions in animals farmed are not instantaneous. The reductions are spread across the average time that someone remains vegan (for example). Throughout the analysis, I assume that the reductions are instant and apply to the current year. This is not accurate, but I don’t foresee it significantly affecting the estimates.
GiveWell present a list of 9 top rated charities. From these, three are recommended primarily due to their effectiveness at reducing mortality (the others are recommended for their potential to increase income and consumption). These three charities are the Against Malaria Foundation (AMF – $3,753 per life saved, using 2018 figures), Malaria Consortium’s seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC – $1,999 per life saved), and Helen Keller International’s vitamin A supplementation program (VAS – $2,692 per life saved). Malaria Consortium’s SMC programs (MC from here for short), appears to be the most effective, and so this value will form the baseline that THL must beat in order to be more effective at reducing human suffering than the best human charity.
In other words, we investigate the effect of donating $1,999 to THL on reducing human deaths ($1,999 to THL = 31,650 less land animals farmed – 0.0000395625% of total land animals farmed).
Evidence suggests that populations with a high proportion of plant-based food in their diet have lower blood pressure, a lower risk of type 2 diabetes, a lower risk of death resulting from cardiovascular disease, and a lower risk of cancer. Diets containing a high amount of red and processed meats are estimated to have contributed to around 584,000 human deaths globally in 2015. This refers to deaths at all ages, while GiveWell’s analysis refers to the ‘cost per outcome as good as averting the death of an individual under 5’.
It could be argued that averting the death of an individual under 5 would be better than averting the death of someone who is, say, 70, who would be more likely to die sooner anyway. To rectify this in a simple manner, I propose the following. If what we value is the life years increased rather than reducing deaths per se, a person under 5 would have about twice the number of remaining life years as the average person dying due to the causes outlined in the above report (assuming an equal distribution of deaths at given ages, which of course is unlikely). In this case, we would halve the 584,000 to 292,000 for a roughly transferrable statistic.
I take the above value as a lower bound, as it does not include deaths due to diets low in vegetables, whole grains, nuts and seeds, and fruit. I would expect to see these deaths reduced somewhat with less widespread animal product consumption. I didn’t include them as the link was much less clear. However, determining how many fewer deaths might result from less animal product consumption due to these factors should be a high priority, since the total number of deaths caused by them globally is 10.191 million (5.096 million after age of death normalisation).
I didn’t include deaths caused by diets high in sodium, which may or may not be reduced with less animal product consumption. I didn’t include deaths caused by diets low in seafood, since the nutrients, omega-3 in this case, can be sourced elsewhere. I also didn’t include deaths caused by diets low in calcium, as this can be sourced from non-animal products as well as animal products. It is plausible that there will be an increase in deaths due to diets low in omega-3 or calcium as animal product consumption is reduced, but there may also be a decrease as information about the existence of plant-based alternatives is disseminated along with the work of animal charities like THL. Having said that, it is possible that in developing countries, fish and dairy products are just more accessible and cheap than plant-based alternatives such as brussel sprouts or bok choy.
We can now use this to estimate how many fewer human deaths will result per $1,999 donated to THL, or per 31,650 fewer animals farmed (0.0000395625% of total land animals farmed). For public health, we will assume that if we went from 80 billion to zero animals farmed for a given year, it would result in deaths due to diets high in red and processed meat consumption going from 584,000 to zero for that year. 0.0000395625% of 584,000 is 0.12, thus, a donation of $1,999 donated to THL would result in 0.12 human lives saved in a once off. To think of this in another way, donating $1,999 each year would result in another 0.12 human lives saved each year. Note that this could see a up to a potential 20-fold increase if we were to include deaths due to diets low in vegetables etc. that would be mitigated if less animal products were consumed.
Climate change is projected to cause 250,000 deaths per year from 2030 to 2050. From the source, I can’t tell whether this refers simply to deaths at all ages, but I assume this is the case. As above, we should alter this value to be in line with the GiveWell metric of ‘cost per outcome as good as averting the death of an individual under 5’. Using the rationale and methodology discussed above, this gives us 125,000 deaths per year from 2030 to 2050.
Animal agriculture is one of the leading causes of anthropogenic climate change, contributing 18% of greenhouse gas emissions (determined in 2006), while a more recent study suggests animal agriculture has contributed 23% of the total warming as of 2010. To determine the number of human deaths averted as a result of reducing the number of animals farmed, we need to determine how a reduction of emissions this year by 23% would affect the number of human deaths from 2030-2050. Ideally, accounting for this would require the following.
This is significantly beyond the scope of this study. A second best option would be to find an existing study which says something like “A reduction of X emissions this year would result in X fewer deaths from 2030-2050”, and then use it to see what a reduction of 23% of emissions this year would mean for deaths from 2030-2050. I don’t believe such a study exists, but if it does this will make this part of the analysis somewhat more robust, and I would ask that you point me to it. In lieu of any such study, I will make some assumptions to come up with a number.
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This is harder to quantify than public health, as some of the emissions which will impact future effects of climate change (from 2030 to 2050) have already been emitted, while some are yet to be emitted. Reducing animal product consumption from 80 billion animals to zero for a given year will result in a reduction of emissions of 23% for that year, but the effect of this on the deaths from 2030-2050 are unclear. If we can assume that the emissions over the 30 years will roughly plateau, perhaps we can assume that half the emissions that will affect deaths from 2030-2050 have already been emitted. Thus reducing animal product consumption to zero for this time period might be expected to reduce the relevant emissions by half of 23% (11.5%).
We might then be able to say that reducing animal product consumption to zero for a given year would reduce the relevant emissions by 1/30th of 11.5% (0.38%). We could then suggest that this would reduce the number of deaths over the period of 2030-2050 by 0.38%. I don’t expect this to be a simple relationship, let alone a linear one, but in lieu of any idea what a better model would look like, I will take the simplest one.
Therefore, I simplistically assume for this calculation that reducing animal product consumption to zero for a given year would reduce the number of deaths from 2030-2050 due to climate change per year by 0.38% of 125,000 (475). We can now use this to predict how many fewer human deaths will result per $1,999 donated to THL, or per 31,650 less animals farmed (0.0000395625% of total land animals farmed). 0.0000395625% of 475 gives 0.00019 lives saved per year, or a total of 0.0039 from 2030 to 2050. This is significantly lower than I expected, but it’s a benefit we might expect to become stronger as we allow for more future time frames (e.g. from 2030 to 2060).
This assessment does not include other environmental impacts of animal agriculture, such as desertification and local impacts, e.g. the spraying of animal waste matter in to the air which is breathed in by local residents. It also doesn’t include deaths due to particulate matter from coal power plants and fossil fuel powered vehicles, which is breathed in by local residents. One study suggests that reducing emissions by 50% by 2050 could prevent 100 million early deaths via this mechanism alone. Given that animal agriculture has a non-trivial use of energy (much of which is coal) and transport, we could expect reducing animal agriculture to play a role in this.
Currently, 700,000 people die per year due to antimicrobial-resistant diseases. If trends continue without any major difference, this figure could reach 9.5 million dead per year by 2050. As above with public health and climate change, we should alter this value to be in line with the GiveWell metric of ‘cost per outcome as good as averting the death of an individual under 5’. Using the rationale and methodology discussed above, this adjusts the figures to 350,000 per year and 4.75 million per year by 2050.
It is currently hard to say how much of these figures are due to the use of antibiotics in the global livestock industry, however growing evidence does point to factory farming being a major contributor.
In a population of bacteria, there will be some proportion (~< 1 in a million) with a natural resistance to a given antibiotic. Antibiotic use imposes a selection pressure on bacteria. The antibiotic will kill the bacteria, leaving the naturally resistant bacteria, allowing it to selectively reproduce. Increased use increases likelihood of the bacteria exposed becoming resistant to antibiotics, however the relationship between antibiotic use and resistance is not clear and likely not linear. Other studies go further to say that, despite the possibility, it is unclear whether antibiotic use in farming results in any increase in antibiotic resistance, due simply to a lack of data and analysis.
Given this, it seems fair to conclude that it is not yet known whether a reduction in animal farming (and therefore antibiotics use in farming) would result in any meaningful reduction in human deaths due to antibiotic resistance. This is not to say that the evidence points to this, but rather that there is not yet much evidence either way. Despite this limitation, I would like to estimate an upper bound for the benefit, if it were discovered that there was indeed a link. Thus all following calculations in this section should be interpreted as a possible upper bound if a link were confirmed.
In addition, the following is an argument that favours the possibility of a link between the intensification of animal agriculture generally and human deaths (C. Nelson, pers. comms.). Zoonoses (emerging human pathogens with non-human animal origins) comprise 60% of currently known infectious agents. The intensification of animal agriculture has increased the risk of zoonotic diseases, examples of which include SARS, avian influenza and hepatitis E. By providing an ideal environment for pathogens (including a large number of hosts and animal-human contact), they can jump more easily to the human population.
To estimate the impact of fewer animals farmed on preventing these deaths, we first need to determine what proportion of antibiotic use is in animal farming. Around 80% of antibiotic use in the US is on farm animals, and 75% for the EU and US combined. THL appears to operate primarily in the US, and so I will use the 80% figure. In other words, we stand to reduce antibiotics usage and (I am assuming) antibiotic resistance-related deaths by up to 80% (therefore 280,000 per year and up to 3.8 million per year by 2050).
There are some questions I don’t know the answers to. Would a reduction of antibiotic use of 50% today result in half the people currently dying per year due to antimicrobial-resistant diseases, or does the impact of past antibiotic use carry over to this year? The answer is almost certainly somewhere in the middle, and most likely leaning towards the past antibiotic use being the leading contributor. Would a temporary drop of 50% this year alone result in any meaningful difference in the number of deaths in 2050? Again, it would probably make some difference, but not a linearly proportional difference.
For simplicity, I will propose that a reduction of antibiotic use of 50% today will result in 50% less deaths the following year due to antimicrobial-resistant diseases. This doesn’t quite seem right, since one can suppose that if in 2049 antibiotic use is dropped by 50%, it probably wouldn’t reduce the number of deaths the following year by 50%, since many of the diseases will have already become resistant. Unless given strong rationale to propose otherwise, I will use this direct, short-term only relationship as a proxy.
We can now use this to predict how many fewer human deaths will result per $1,999 donated to THL, or per 31,650 less animals farmed (0.0000395625% of total land animals farmed). As with climate change, the effect here is harder to quantify than public health.
Therefore, 0.0000395625% of 280,000 gives 0.11 deaths averted per year for $1,999 donated to THL.
This pathway should be tempered with the knowledge that, in some regions at least, agricultural antibiotic use has fallen (12% from 2011 to 2014 in 24 EU countries) due to increased awareness of the negative implications of antimicrobial resistance. Alternatives to antibiotic use have been successful so far, for example vaccine use and better farming practices. However, total antibiotic use in animal farming is still projected to grow by just under 70% from 2010 to 2030. In particular, the use of antibiotics in BRICS countries is expected to grow by 99% by 2030. Relevant to this, it is not clear whether animal advocacy would be more or less effective in BRICS or developing nations.
Using the US as an example, there are over 500,000 slaughterhouse and meat-processing workers. From 2004 to 2013, an average of 15 ‘meat and poultry workers’ died from injuries at work per year. As of 2016, the proportion of workers sustaining a notable injury is “in the 10 percent and below [range]” (higher than that of manufacturing), though there are reasons why the rate of injuries is likely to be greatly under reported. Another study shows that in 2001 14.7 percent of full-time workers sustained an injury, which was the highest rate of any industry in the US. More information about the treatment of slaughterhouse workers in the US can be found here.
Given that slaughterhouse workers would transition from this industry to another, which would have its own injury and death rate (almost certainly lower than slaughterhouse workers), it seems difficult to measure the impact of donations to non-human charities on human deaths via this pathway. It is almost certainly positive, but small (relative to the above pathways).
We can simplistically visualise the impact by assuming that all of the workers would transition to a similar industry, e.g. manufacturing, and examine the difference in injury rate. The US Department of Labor estimates that, in 2016, the nonfatal occupational injury rate of private industry was 2.9 total recordable cases per 100 full-time equivalent workers. Total recordable cases includes minor injuries, and is therefore an upper bound for the above measure of ‘workers sustaining a notable injury’. This would be a substantial reduction in human injuries, and presumably deaths.
There is also a compelling argument that the environment of working in a slaughterhouse or factory farm has ongoing adverse mental health effects on employees. These may include violent tendencies, which would affect their own lives and that of others, possibly resulting in death. Again, the link here is sufficiently unexplored that I will not include it in the numerical assessment.
A large amount of plant food globally is fed to farmed animals. Producing one kg of beef protein requires seven kg of plant protein as feed stock, not to mention the vastly increased water and energy costs (Australian beef is one notable exception to this, given they are mostly pasture raised, but chickens and pigs in Australia are not exceptions). Given this, there is a compelling argument that if less of this plant food was fed to animals, there would be more to feed to humans, potentially alleviating some of the issues associated with food scarcity, particularly in developing nations.
This pathway to fewer human deaths is significantly more complicated than the others, and so I intend to put it aside. If at a future time I can better analyse this (please send me evidence for or against this pathway being a positive factor), I will revisit the analysis and include it. The below quote is interesting, but seems like exaggeration at best, even for a utilitarian like myself who is happy to admit that my spending money on leisure activities is basically killing others due to opportunity cost.
“Every day 40,000 children die in the world for lack of food. We who overeat in the West, who are feeding grains to animals to make meat, are eating the flesh of these children.” Thich Nhat Hanh (2003)
A concern about land use change can be addressed here. Some worry that there are arid regions where livestock are raised that would not be suitable for growing plant food. It should be pointed out here that 90% of animals globally are factory farmed and fed plants, resulting in inefficient resource use. One should expect there to be less farmland required, not more, if there were a global shift to veganism, and there are some plant foods that can be grown in arid regions, such as hemp and almonds. The land could also be used for other purposes, such as cotton farming or carbon sequestration. A report on further analysis on land use change (focused on Australia) can be found here.
Animal agriculture is a major economy in most parts of the world. Transitioning away, even slowly, might be expected to have some economic impacts. In particular, some animal farmers and slaughterhouse workers may lose their job as a result of reduced demand for animal products. Given that industries have come in and out of existence all the time when replacements arrive (e.g. horse-and-cart replaced with cars and whale oil replaced with kerosene), I don’t foresee this having any long term negative impacts. I also don’t foresee the short term impacts of lost jobs outweighing the human lives saved (let alone non-humans), but it is important to consider this.
At the very least, work should be done by governments, non-profits and industry bodies to assist farmers in transitioning to other jobs, either plant farming or something else. Also, as stated above, other work can be done with the land used to farm animals. A report on further analysis on economic factors as the result of a shift to veganism (focused on Australia) can be found here.
It costs $1,999 to save a human life by donating to Malaria Consortium’s seasonal malaria chemoprevention. Summarising the effects on human lives saved from the public health, climate change and antibiotic resistance pathways, we get the following benefit for $1,999 donated to The Humane League:
Or in other words:
This means that even if you only care about humans, a donation to The Humane League is about one quarter as effective at preventing human deaths than the best GiveWell rated charity, Malaria Consortium’s seasonal malaria chemoprevention. However, the evidence for the former is of course significantly less robust. If you also consider the 31,650 non-humans spared a life of suffering in a factory farm, I believe it becomes increasingly harder to justify supporting the best human-centric charities over the best non-human-centric charities.
I’ve assumed a lot of things throughout this analysis, some due to necessity (relevant numbers are simply not available) and some due to a lack of time and expertise (more accurate assumptions could potentially be made). Given the startling outcome of this research, I believe improving the accuracy and efficacy of this research to be of utmost priority. In particular, there is the potential for the actual number of lives saved via the public health pathway to be significantly higher, and the number of lives saved via the antibiotic resistance pathway to be lower.
I would also like to see other mechanisms examined in this analysis, such as the reduction of deaths due to more fruit and vegetable consumption and less particulate emissions as the result of fewer animals farmed.
This analysis only examined lives saved, not quality adjusted life years (QALY’s) to also account for improvements in the quality of life of individuals. It is hard to say whether this would make supporting non-human charities more or less attractive from a purely human-centric view. Future research should seek to examine the effect on QALY’s for a more complete and ethically relevant (from a utilitarian perspective) analysis.
I am aware of concepts such as the optimisers curse and the risk of sequence thinking vs cluster thinking, and am further aware that they are likely relevant here, but I have not taken them in to account. Future work should critically examine all possible sources of biases and statistical failures.
I have made little to no attempt to estimate the uncertainty, which would be large, instead only using mean values and carrying them through the analysis. This could be done in Guesstimate, and is something I intend to do in a future version of this work. It would also be valuable to generate upper and lower bounds (say at the commonly used but completely arbitrary 95% confidence intervals) for the final estimates. Using the mean effectiveness of ACE recommended charities and the mean effectiveness of GiveWell recommended charities may be another way to make the analysis more robust.
Despite the potentially high number of human deaths resulting from antibiotic use in animal farming, it seems surprising that there has been so little research in to the existence of a relationship. I am not a pathogen researcher and consider biology to be my weakest science, so I don’t intend on ever researching this further myself, however I would consider this to be of utmost importance. If you are a researcher in this field or are considering entering it, this would be a highly important research question.
Given that governments claim to at least care about their own human population, it is surprising to me that no governments to my knowledge have bothered to examine these pathways, let alone quantify them. I have written previously about the possibility for a government public health campaign around reducing animal product consumption to save money via the public health burden alone. Governments should seriously consider the possibility that reducing the animal product consumption of their citizens is a neglected and impactful way of reducing human deaths and suffering, as well as saving money.
A donation of $1,999 to The Humane League today is estimated to result in 0.23 human lives saved in the short term, and 0.0039 human lives saved from 2030 to 2050. By way of comparison, $1,999 is the amount estimated by GiveWell to save a human life if donated to the top rated human charity, the Malaria Consortium’s seasonal malaria chemoprevention.
This outcome surprised me, and I expect it will surprise you too. Unless they can find fault with my argument or calculations, I strongly encourage the reader to, if they currently support human-centric charities, to consider switching some or all of their charitable giving to non-human-centric charities.
I expect to edit this post significantly in the coming days. I will do this as transparently as possible. It is a certainty that I have missed critical information and/or arguments, some of which may substantially alter the numbers and conclusions. I believe it would be far better to edit the post to reflect these updates rather than leave it an potentially redo the analysis at a later date.
Again, I urge you to engage with this in every way. If you support human charities and cannot find fault with my analysis, you should start supporting the most effective non-human charities.
I believe this shouldn’t just be an area of interest to individual donors, but also to funds, advocacy organisations, and governments.
For the purposes of this argument, I have ignored the ‘rich meat eater problem’ (people tend to eat more animal products as they get wealthier), although it is quite important to be aware of for anyone deciding whether to support a human or non-human centric charity via donations or otherwise. I will explain what this is and why it is important in Appendix A.
Also, in Appendix B I examine the impact of reducing human deaths by being vegan personally.
The rich meat eater problem is the idea that as populations or individuals move out of poverty and become more affluent, they will on average consume more animal products. This is because animal products are often relatively expensive and resource intensive. There are two key factors operating here in seemingly opposite directions. As a population becomes more affluent and their public health conditions improve (e.g. reduced childhood mortality), they consume more animal products (bad), but the population growth also goes down, leaving less people to consume animal products in the long run (good).
As an example, in 1982, the average Chinese citizen ate 13 kg of meat per year, while in 2016 they ate 63 kg of meat per year, a figure predicted to increase to 93 kg per year if the trend continues uninterrupted. For the good effect to outweigh the bad effect, development in China would have had to result in the population being around 5 times smaller than it otherwise would have been without development. This is simply unrealistic, which is why I conclude that the negative effects (for non-humans) of the rich meat eater problem vastly outweigh the positive.
The rich meat eat problem has been part of my transition from focusing on near term human causes to long term non-human causes. In addition to the (in my opinion) vastly greater scale of suffering of non-humans, the greater neglectedness and the high degree of solvability, I worry that helping humans might harm non-humans.
This wasn’t directly related to the initial question so I put it in an appendix, but obviously if donating to an animal charity designed to reduce animal product consumption can save human lives, it follows that consuming animal products increases human deaths. I wanted to consider this additional question while I had the relevant figures available.
Using elasticity estimates, ACE estimates that one person consuming 30 fewer land animals (the average number of animals killed for their flesh consumed by a US meat eater in a year) results in 1.8-21 fewer animals farmed. This was calculated using Guesstimate, and so using the same methodology above (taking the mean of 30 simulation runs), I get 7.8 fewer animals farmed per year per person not consuming land animals.
This is 0.00000000975% of the total 80 billion land animals farmed per year. We can now multiply this by the number of humans expected to die via each of the above pathways. If we are ignoring the increased risk of your own death, that leaves us with climate change and antibiotic resistance.
As above, given that we expect to be able to reduce deaths due to climate change per year from 2030 to 2050 by 475 per year (by eliminating all animal farming in a given year), multiplying it by the above percentage gives us 0.000000046 humans saved for a single year from 2030-2050, or 0.00000097 in total from 2030-2050 per year you are vegan.
As above, given 280,000 deaths per year that we expect to be able to reduce today due to antimicrobial resistant diseases, multiplying it by the above percentage gives us 0.0000273 humans saved per year you are vegan.
This gives a total of 0.0000283 humans killed per year one isn’t vegan. To put this another way, there is around a 1 in 35,000 chance per year that one not being vegan will result in the death of another human.
For comparison, driving a car for 400 km in Australia increases one’s risk of death by 1 in 1 million. The average Australian drives 15,530 km per year, resulting in an increase in one’s risk of death by ~39 in 1 million, or 1 in 25,757. This makes the risk of dying in a car crash per year a little higher than the risk of killing someone by not being vegan pear year. I don’t know whether knowing this would make someone more or less likely to be vegan (or drive), but it might be useful for your decision making.
Note that this particular figure is almost entirely dependent on the antibiotic resistance pathway being the case, which while theorised, hasn’t yet been proven. If animal agriculture didn’t contribute meaningfully to antibiotic resistance, the benefit to humans of one person being vegan would only be around 1 in 1 million.
* For simplicity, all monetary values will be in US dollars.
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).
Laugh all you like @kathyparker2206, but there's an even easier solution. If you don't like seeing animals suffer, don't pay people to breed them. Not contributing to non-human exploitation is easier than ever.https://t.co/quCMsZKvTM#vegan #veganism
— Michael Dello-Iacovo (@MichaelDello) August 7, 2018
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.
Recently, Australia has had a wave of bans on plastic straws and plastic bags from being available at many bars, restaurants and supermarkets. The main objective appears to be to reduce the amount of plastic that ends up in the ocean (the famous Great Pacific Garbage Patch comes to mind). This plastic often breaks down in to microplastic – small particles that don’t further break down and end up being eaten by small fish, thus entering the food chain. A laudable goal to be sure.
However, given what I know about the relative effectiveness of interventions, I wonder if this is the most effective (or even relatively effective) at reducing plastic relative to other things one can do. I will note that I already have pre-existing opinions on this, but will do my best to make an unbiased assessment.
There are two ways to look at this. One is to consider the actions of an individual. In other words, how effective is it for me to stop using plastic straws and bags relative to doing some other thing. The other way is to consider it from the perspective of a business or other actor such as a campaigner who is seeking to get businesses stop stocking such items. I will focus on the first one. Examining the impact of working to reduce plastic bag and straw use in general relative to reducing plastic use in other cases seems hard and not well suited for a brief examination.
First, I will estimate the volume of plastic used in these two cases by the average Australian.
Woolworths [an Australian supermarket] currently gives out more than 3.2 billion single-use HDPE plastic bags every year, and according to a 2009 study, about 1 per cent of those, or 30 to 40 million, find their way into the environment. [From here]
Woolworths isn’t the only source of plastic bags in Australia, but it’s a good start. We can probably assume that the 1% figure of these bags getting to the environment is representative of the bags as a whole. A fact sheet by Keep Queensland Beautiful states that Australians use 4 billion plastic bags each year. This doesn’t seem to agree with the previous stat, as it’s unlikely that Woolworths accounts for 80% of the plastic bag distribution.
For arguments sake, let’s assume 4 billion bags per year with 1% of those reaching the environment. That’s 40 million bags per year, or about 1.5 per Australian. Assuming you’re consuming about the average (or were before the bans and public pressure), switching from single-use plastic bags to an alternative should mean 1.5 less plastic bags in the environment per year.
I found it surprisingly hard to find a value for the weight of a single-use plastic bag. In lieu of just weighing one myself, the best I could do was this document from a website called fighttheplasticbagban.com which gave a value of 9.3 grams. This actually seems kind of high to me. This results in a value of 13.95 grams in the environment per person per year. I’m very open to revising this if someone can find a more reputable estimate.
I will also note that alternatives to single-use plastic bags aren’t necessarily better for the environment, and could actually be worse. Just one example of this is that a ban on plastic bags results in an increase in bin liner plastic sales. This is the same kind of mindless optimism I see in other areas including fair trade, organic food, and some renewable energies. Just because something sounds good, doesn’t mean it is better in all aspects.
A review of the ACT ban in 2012 found that bin liner sales had indeed increased by 31 per cent a year after the ban came into place.
But a second review in 2014 found that sales had settled back down to pre-ban levels. [from here]
Australians use around 10 million plastic straws each day, or 3.65 billion per year. For lack of a figure I’ll assume 1% of these end up in the environment as well, giving a figure of 36.5 million. This gives about 1.4 straws less in the environment per person per year.
It was also hard to find an estimate of weight for plastic straws, but this paper suggests around 0.45 grams, or 0.63 grams in the environment per person per year. This gives a total of 14.58 grams in the environment per person per year from the combined sources.
We’ve examined the effectiveness of a ban on single-use plastic bags and straws. Let’s now look at two alternatives.
A vegan lifestyle is well-known to significantly reduce ones’ impact on the environment in general (as well as farmed animal suffering), but lets’ suppose we are specifically interested in plastic. When one thinks of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, images of plastic bottles and bags probably comes to mind. However, 46% of the total trash is estimated to be fishing nets (much of which is made of plastic), with the majority of the rest being miscellaneous fishing gear, not consumer plastics.
Accepting this, it still seems hard to estimate the relative impact of purchasing fish vs consumer plastics. With consumer plastics we can easily measure volume, however to estimate the impact of fishing we would need to calculate the volume of nets used per person per year, as well as the relative rate of loss to ocean of consumer plastics vs fishing gear. Simplistically, one could argue that since the volume of plastic in the ocean is mostly from fishing gear, eliminating fish from ones’ diet should have a greater impact than eliminating consumer plastics.
One estimate suggests 640,000 tonnes of fishing gear is left in the ocean per year. That’s an average of 84 grams per person per year (globally). However Australians consume around 28 kg of fish per year as of 2013, while average consumption globally was 16.4 kg in 2005. Assuming the fish Australians consume is about as plastic-polluting as the global average, we should multiply our 84 grams per person by 1.7, giving 143 grams.
Eliminating your use of plastic straws and bags might seem easier than adopting a plant-based diet for many people (though I’d argue it’s easier than you probably think), but you’d be kidding yourself if you thought you were having a big impact by doing only the former.
Whenever I talk about the environmental benefits of a vegan lifestyle, I feel compelled to tell my cautionary tale. I believe it is possible that advocating for the environmental benefits of veganism could actually increase farmed animal suffering. In short, this is because the primary cause of environmental damage from eating animals is from red meat. If this causes people to eat less red meat and more poultry or fish, they would be causing more sentient minds to suffer, since it takes many chickens or fish to get the same volume of food as a cow.
This case is a little different, since I’m talking about the damage of fishing, but I would still encourage anyone convinced by my argument to try veganism rather than just eat no fish*.
It seems likely to me that the plastic from straws and bags is only a small part of what a consumer consumes, even if we ignore fishing nets. One has to wonder whether reducing their plastic use in other areas could have a vastly greater impact.
As of 2016, Australia produces around 3 million tonnes of plastic per year. Around 130,000 tonnes of this plastic is estimated to end up in the ocean each year. Interestingly, this is 4 times the proportion of plastic from bags that ends up in the environment. This gives 5.4 kg of plastic in the ocean total per person per year. I don’t know the spread of the different sources or how easy it is to do anything about them, but we can clearly see that the amount of plastic in the environment as the result of plastic bags and straws is very small indeed (0.01458 kg.pa vs 5.4 kg.pa).
It seems reasonable to say that reducing your plastic use in general would have a greater impact than just eliminating your plastic bag and straw use.
Some have claimed that the ban on plastic straws is actually ableist, because some people rely on plastic straws to be able to drink. This makes sense, and I think the ban should perhaps be a little more nuanced to allow for this case (e.g. bars/restaurants can still give someone a straw if they need it for health/safety reasons). They could also use biodegradable or reusable straws, but not all of these are safe for the consumer (can pose a choking hazard, aren’t positionable, etc.).
However, one has to wonder – if someone is relying on a straw for safety reasons, why don’t they bring their own? Not all venues stocked plastic straws to begin with, so what did people who needed them do in those cases?
I think the ban on plastic straws and bags is ineffective. Not only that, I think it is a serious waste of time and money. One might retort with something like ‘it’s surely better than doing nothing’, but it gives people a false sense of achieving something and solving the problem. Of course, you could (and should) do all three of the above.
One surprising take away of this for me was that the plastic released to the environment from fishing was still a very small part of the plastic released to the ocean in general.
Some of my peers have started putting estimates on the time it takes to write posts like these, so I’ll start doing the same. This took me around 2 hours total to research and write.
* I’d like to share my disdain for pescatarianism here. It is potentially worse than doing nothing at all, but people think they are either reducing animal suffering or environmental damage.
Edit – It has been noted to me that the issue with straws is not just the volume of plastic, but the shape. It can pose a choking hazard more easily than some other plastics. Fair enough, but fishing nets also trap marine life pretty easily.
Happy World Environment Day! Last year I wrote a post about what you can do for the environment. This year I’m doing something similar, but going for a lighter format. Enjoy!
Days like these are great opportunities to reflect and make sure we are doing all we practically can to protect the environment. Today, I’d like to focus on two small things that we as individuals can do which are highly effective but not very often talked about.
Within a particular cause area, some charities can be as much as 1000’s of times more effective than others. So if you’re going to donate to an environmental charity, it’s crucial to make sure your $$ are having the most impact they can. One stand out environmental charity is Cool Earth.
Cool Earth works to stop deforestation, and are so effective that $1.34 US donated to them reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 1 tonne of CO2-equivalent. As of 2016, this was one of the best charities for reducing GHG emissions.
The average American uses about 20 tonnes of CO2 per year as of 2006, so you could offset a years worth of emissions for just $26.8.
Over the past few decades, the impact of the livestock industry on the environment has become increasingly clear. Below I’ve outlined a few key statistics to show just big the impact is (stats are relative to the average US meat eating diet).
Adopting a plant-based diet is more effective for reducing your CO2 emissions than forgoing showers, having solar panels, and using bikes instead of cars.
So what can you do about this? Well for starters, you should definitely consider not having any animal products today (I might be too late for that), but also you should consider having less or no animal products in the future. It’s becoming easier every day with increasing access to cheap, delicious plant-based food.
I initially stopped eating meat because I became convinced that it was one of the most effective things I could do to help the environment, and it was way easier than I expected. I’d like to encourage everyone to try it. Just start with one vegan day a week and work from there.
Great tasting food doesn’t have to contain animal products. If you live in Sydney check out Soul Burger for some plant based deliciousness, like this ‘chicken’ and ‘bacon’ burger (my weekly guilty pleasure)!
If you need some help or inspiration, check out this guide.
For a more detailed look at the research behind the environmental impacts of the livestock industry, start with these: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6392/987 http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.HTM
This is something I’ve thought a lot about but have not really expressed much in writing. When it comes down to it, almost everyone cares about non-human animals in some way. No one really wants to see a pig, or a cow, or a dog or a whale suffer, just as no one really wants to see a human suffer. Even with this in mind, many people say that they just can’t go vegan because it would be too hard, too expensive, they enjoy the taste of animal products too much, or they are worried about their health.
All of these concerns can and have been addressed, but let’s suppose we grant that some people just don’t want to be vegan themselves, even if they care about non-human animals. Assuming this individual (possibly you, dear reader) is rational, they should be happy if there are more vegans in the world, even if they never become one themselves. After all, a lot of people care about the environment, but go to varying lengths of effort when it comes to recycling etc. However, they are still happy for the sake of the environment when someone else goes to more effort than them.
Unless you can find a flaw here, you must surely agree that people who care about non-human animals must at the very least be happy about there being more people in the world trying to reduce animal suffering. Having accepted this, know that there are many ways you can reduce animal suffering without being vegan yourself.
One of the most effective ways to do this is to donate money to a highly effective animal charity. I am a big fan of the work that Animal Charity Evaluators do, particularly their recommendations on effective animal charities. For as little as a $10 donation to one of these charities, it’s possible to spare dozens of animals from a life of suffering. Even for a non-vegan, this is a very small sacrifice to make to have a huge impact. Check out their top recommended charities here, or consider donating directly to ACE to maximise your impact.
I truly believe that, if you care about non-human animals but don’t support non-human animal charities, unless you are financially unable, or you think that there are more effective ways to reduce suffering with your money, there is surely some serious cognitive dissonance going on.
After a short hiatus, the Morality is Hard podcast is back with a new interview featuring Elie Hassenfeld, one of the co-founders of GiveWell. Find the interview on iTunes, below or here!
https://soundcloud.com/michael-dello-iacovo/episode-6-eli-hassenfeld-givewell-and-how-to-get-the-most-out-of-a-donation
Elie Hassenfeld and I spoke about the charity he co-founded with Holden Karnofsky, GiveWell, and how it analyses charities to determine how effective they are at alleviating suffering.
We also spoke about Open Philanthropy Project, a sister organisation of GiveWell, which started with the question of “How can we accomplish as much good as possible with our giving?”
Unfortunately due to venue and time constraints, we had the record the interview in the back room of a restaurant, and you can heard some of the chatter in the background. I hope that doesn’t take away from the content too much!
If you’re interested in finding out how to make sure your charitable donations are having as much impact as possible, this is the interview for you.
Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook to stay up to date with the podcast and to join the discussion.
A few weeks ago I joined Michael Barticel on his podcast The Good People Effect to chat about charity, asteroids, and everything in between. You can now listen in here!
I enjoyed Michael Plant’s article in The Conversation today, ‘Which party’s manifesto promises would make Britain happiest?‘ Plant attempts an evidence-based approach to choosing which party to vote for by reading their manifestos. Despite it being basic and limited, I’m very glad it exists, and I think there should be more attempts to select an objectively best party to vote for.
Call me a radical, but I think people should vote for the party that will do the most to increase happiness. If a party’s policies won’t reduce misery and help people have more pleasant, fulfilling lives, what are they good for?
You may recall that myself and Hugo Burgin attempted a similar analysis in 2016 for the Australian Federal election. As we said then, “We say ‘attempted’ because such analyses are incredibly complex (which is possibly why none exist), although we believe that some attempt at picking the best party is better than no attempt.”
Voting correctly is a lot more important than people often think it is. Again, in 2016 Burgin and I said:
“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). 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.”
I do have some concerns around Plant’s analysis. I want to stress first that I’m not necessarily criticising Plant for this. He was (presumably) operating alone, with limited time and resources, and also had a limited number of words on the article to play with. I’m just outlining what I would want in an ideal analysis. Having said that, my concerns are as follows.
Plant doesn’t account for non-human animals (edit – he did mention them briefly, I just missed it), which is a major gap, though he does try to account for non-British citizens. He also doesn’t seem to look at the future or far future. Needless to say, far future effects (e.g. 1,000 years plus) are extremely difficult to predict, so again, this is not a criticism of Plant. He relies on manifestos and promises, which won’t necessarily be kept. An ideal analysis would look at history and likelihood of individual parties meeting their promises.
One reservation around these types of analyses in general is that people might use them to come out with the answer they want, whether consciously or subconsciously, although there are ways around this with sufficient oversight.
My ideal outcome looks something like this: A group of benevolent individuals grants an organisation funding say 1 year prior to an election. This organisation can’t be a non-profit in many countries (e.g. Australia), because they are not legally able to support any one political party. This organisation then produces and releases the report shortly before the election. The majority of the population, being motivated by maximising wellbeing of all sentience over the course of the universe (I wish), votes accordingly.
There is a very real question as to how many people would trust such an analysis. There will probably be some people who will never change the party they support out of sheer mistrust that it didn’t pick their party. The trust may have to be built up slowly over several elections and with strong, impartial oversight. I have no idea how to do this, but I do think it is important and worth dedicating time and money to. People have $5,200 worth of impact every time they vote, and we surely want to see that impact being positive.
As you may have been aware, the Reducetarian Summit was on in New York city last weekend. I went because I was on the fence about whether the ‘reducetarian approach’ to animal advocacy was a good idea (I’ve written about that here), and I wanted to learn more. It was also a pretty great networking opportunity, and it is always nice to meet in person people you have been engaging with online for years.
I also had the pleasure of interviewing Tobias Leenaert, the Vegan Strategist, for my podcast, which you can find here. We talked about the pros and cons of a reducetarian approach. Tobias advocates for an ‘adaptive’ approach, which I like. It involves being flexible and using whichever approach works best for a given situation*. You can also find criticism of this discussion here.
Overall, the talks were mostly on par with what you might expect to see at a conventional animal advocacy conference. There were talks on the impacts of animal agriculture on animals, global health and the environment, as well as on cellular agriculture/plant-based meat alternatives and political lobbying. The main difference with a conventional conference was there a relative lack of discussion about animal rights.
Interestingly, it seemed like most people at the conference were vegan, which surprised me. I had figured that the conference might mostly appeal to people wanting to reduce but not eliminate their animal product consumption, but it seems to have been mostly people with the same mindset as me. They either wanted to learn about the approach, or wanted to improve their advocacy and network.
There weren’t really talks on the pros and cons of a reducetarian approach as I was expecting, so I can’t say I changed my opinion much. I slightly updated towards thinking that reducetarian advocacy could be good in some situations, but as I mentioned previously, I still hold reservations about the way it is currently being done by some people.
The conference was protested by about half a dozen individuals, lead by Harrison Nathan, who has been a critic of various aspects of effective altruism in an animal advocacy context. They stood out the front on the first day with signs, and I went to speak with them. Nathan and I have engaged online about his disagreement with the reducetarian approach, and I share many of the same reservations. I am glad to see that Nathan’s objections come from believing that reducetarian advocacy is ineffective, rather than the more deontologist belief that advocating for anything less than total veganism is always wrong.
I had advised against a protest for fear of it harming the reputation of vegans and reinforcing stereotypes, but I stand pleasantly corrected (as far as I can tell). The protest was very calm and reasonable, and for getting across their views, it seemed successful**.
One recurring theme of the panel talks was a general positivity towards organic food, and a general disdain towards GMO food. This frustrates me. I won’t delve in to the science now, except to say that there is no evidence, health or environmental, saying that we should preference organic or non-GMO food. In fact, GMO food can be designed to have higher food yields, be more nutritious, and more disease resistant. As my friend Michael Selden eloquently put it, “I’m an environmentalist so I’m pro GMO. It’s that simple.” The same Michael Selden (who runs a cellular agriculture fish company) was in a panel on cellular agriculture and spoke positively of GMOs, to my joy. It was a much needed voice in the dark at the conference.
Many people are pro-organic food because they are worried about pesticides, and think that organic food doesn’t have pesticides. This is false – organic food uses organic pesticides, which are not necessarily better and can be worse than synthetic pesticides. For example, copper counts as an organic pesticide. Also, while some pesticides can be harmful, they are probably on average less harmful than you think, and they do provide benefits to food yield etc. Without pesticides, we would need a lot more land and resources to produce the same amount of food. If anything, people should advocate for better and safer use of pesticides than for no use of pesticides.
I also just want to share an exchange I had at the conference which I found quite interesting. I was with a few friends who were all involved with the effective altruism movement, and we were chatting with one woman who had never heard of it before. After explaining the basic concepts, she said, ‘Oh that sounds great, but I’m not earning a lot of money, and I can’t donate much to charity, is there still a place in effective altruism for people like me.
The idea that effective altruism is all about money and donations is an old criticism, but it still comes up from time to time (not that it was necessarily a criticism in this case). But the point is just that taking a high paying job and donating a lot of money to effective charities is just one effective way to do a lot of good that people often overlook, not that it’s the only way. Depending on your situation (interests, skills, network and experience), it might be more or less effective than other things you could do. For example, you could do effective advocacy or research work.
I just found this exchange a good reminder to make sure the message is clear, because I really believe in effective altruism and don’t want people to get the wrong impression of it.
Below are some photos from the conference, including some of my favourite graphs and figures from presentations.
* A valid point was raised to me about saying that ‘it depends’. This could be harmful because it stymies discussion. We can say that it depends and is probably different for different situations, but when it comes down to something like actually putting a message on a leaflet, we need to know what to do.
** Again, a valid point was brought to my attention after writing this. I spoke with the protesters, but most people attending the conference didn’t. Their perception of vegans in general may still have been harmed by the existence/presence of the protest, as they didn’t have the chance to speak with them and hear their arguments or motivation.
