My guess is that the people reading the EA Forum are much less judgmental than the average vegan and generally, there will be a selection effect such that people who are actually willing to think reasonably and be 90% vegan won't be the judgmental ones anyway. So, probably for people here, it's not harmful to recommend people be non-judgmental strict vegans for signalling reasons. 

I love this idea! Some questions from me:

• The likelihood of cultivated meat being approved for sale in the EU?
• How many more (and ideally, which) US states will ban cultivated meat by the end of 2025, 2026 and 2027?
• What percentage of companies will follow through on their 2025 cage-free commitments?
• What percentage of companies will follow through on their 2026 BCC commitments?
• Likelihood of [insert major country here] passing legislation to ban cages
  • I would be keen to see this for the UK and also the EU but that is probably just proximity bias!
  • This could also work for other legislation e.g. banning low-welfare imports, fish stunning, etc
• The likelihood of major [insert country here] retailers committing/following through to plant protein ratios (e.g. 40% of total protein sold being plant-based by 2030)
  • Countries that come to mind for this would be UK, US and European countries like Spain, France, etc.
  • It could also be interesting to have a question on if this leads to additional fish & chicken consumption, if data is available

Some context: I work for an animal welfare-focused foundation and these are some things I've personally been interested in knowing about over the past 1-2 years!

This is great Lizka! Thanks for writing it up and beautifully illustrating it. Relatedly, what do you use for your diagrams? 

Very cool, thanks for doing this! It's a big and neglected topic for sure. 

A few months ago, I actually spent a day looking into farmed frog welfare (so slightly different to what you point at, which is the painful procedures done to wild and farmed frogs). I'll post my exec summary below in case others are interested. You can see the full doc here.

Overall recommendation

Approximately 1 billion frogs are farmed each year for food, and there is a similar number alive on farms at any one time. Despite this, the vast majority of them (93%) are farmed in China, meaning it is very challenging to advocate for ways to improve their lives. The most promising approach would be via targeting US imports of frog legs, which amount to approximately 58-146 million frogs killed per year. However, there are very few organisations working on this and it’s not clear what leverage groups would have to affect US imports or sellers. Overall, I expect that there are more cost-effective ways to help other groups of very populous animals, such as chickens, fish or shrimp. 

Executive Summary

• I estimate there are around 1 billion frogs killed each year for food, with around 950 million alive at any one time.
  • See my summary spreadsheet here for calculations and assumptions around lifespan, mortality, etc.
• FAO statistics suggest that 93% of frogs are farmed in China, 5% in Vietnam and approx 1% in Thailand.
• Overwhelmingly, China is the most important country for frogs but the obvious challenge is that there are very limited ways to affect the Chinese animal industry.
  • This is especially true for frogs as most of them are consumed internally, rather than exported
• That said, the US is a moderate importer of frogs, so there is some scope for advocacy. The size of US imports is approx. 58-146 million frogs killed per year.
  • The vast majority of these (99.9%) are imported as frog legs
• For reference, there are approx. 380 million hens and 1.1 billion broiler chickens alive in the US at any one time.
  • Also for reference, there are 400 million fish alive in the US at any one time and my rough guess is that the US imports an additional 800 million farmed fish per year
• The US import market seems more important than the EU market, as the latter is made up primarily of wild frogs caught in Indonesia, rather than farmed frogs.
  • This rests on the assumption that wild frogs have better lives than farmed frogs, which I feel relatively confident about.
  • See Appendix on EU Imports for more information about the EU
• The data is very limited and poor for most aspects of the frog farming industry so I am very uncertain about key factors like:
  • How long does it take for a frog to reach slaughter weight
    • I’ve seen disagreements between 2 months to 1 year, which would significantly change the number of frogs alive at any one time
  • To what extent are EU imports mostly wild-caught or farmed? Specifically thinking about how much of Indonesia’s frog production which is 80% of EU imports
  • How much of Chinese frogs are exported or consumed internally?
• Ways you could help frogs
  • Support expansion of California-style live import bans to other states and cities (In Defense of Animals secured a ban on live imports of bullfrogs into California in 2023)
    • You could work with wildlife conservation groups that are worried about frog farms spreading diseases like chytrid fungus.
    • This would only be limited to live imports (less than 25% of total weight and approx. 2.5-5% of total frog numbers) - roughly 2-7 million frogs per year.
  • Advocate for federal/state import regulations based on environmental damages, zoonotic diseases and biosecurity
    • E.g. push for stricter biosecurity requirements around frog imports or support requirements for species labelling and origin documentation
      • This would definitely slow the industry down as it’s very informal currently
• My recommendations would be:
  • If interested in exploring some advocacy around US imports, it would be worthwhile to speak with In Defense of Animals and the Bullfrog Action Group which worked on the California Imports Ban
  • Further research (I couldn’t find these very easily)
    • What percentage of US frog imports are live vs frozen?
    • Which states are the largest importers of frog legs?
  • Consider whether frogs are the biggest bang for the buck we can find to help animals or it might be easier and more effective to focus on other highly farmed species e.g. fish, shrimp or chickens.
    • I expect that there are currently much more cost-effective ways to help fish, shrimp or chickens due to existing nonprofit infrastructure, availability of information, non-Chinese markets and leverage over those supply chains.
    • Also, it’s unclear to me who are the right groups to work on frogs (basically no one is working on it now so it would need some effort to get this going)

I haven't seen the data she is referencing but 20% seems way too high - that implies like we spend $50-60M as a movement annually on infighting, which doesn't make any sense at all?

I'm also not sure we should consider organisations fundraising for their own work as infighting - that seems to broaden the definition far further than is useful / what most would consider as infighting.

(I agree the Animal Rising campaign against RSPCA is both regrettable and an example of genuine infighting but I think that's the most major case recently and I can't imagine there has been more than $0.5-1M spent on it collectively).

In terms of collaboration, some recent positive examples:

• ICAW & Animal Activism Collective doing grassroots cage-free work together
• Revolutionist's Night & VARC in the UK being a nice crossover of people from the more grassroots-y + NGO sides of the animal movement
• Eva from Pax Fauna and Dave CH talking about AVA about the benefits of grassroots and corporate work together
• Wayne Tsuing and Lewis Bollard doing a talk at AVA about reconciling each other approaches to help animals and showing respect for each other

If you're going to make big claims like the one below, IMO you should give specific examples and evidence rather than talking negatively about a large set of organisations.

I have a lot of concerns about how much money is being pumped in to animal welfare orgs with seemingly very little real-world impact coming out - not the case for every org of course, but quite a few.

I see BB did a more expansive reply on Substack but just commenting on a couple of things:

1. Beekeepers are further incentivized to keep their hives living and healthy, which likely is a positive contributor to farmed bee welfare.

This seems not that strong at all? You could make the exact same case for chicken or egg farmers  but I don't think many people would be arguing that those chickens have net positive lives.

1. Finally, the empirical evidence for welfare is both limited and mixed but in my opinion points mildly towards farmed bees having net positive lives, or at least better than pollinators in the wild.

How come you're using pollinators in the wild as the reference point? I would assume the counterfactual is less honeybees are bred/managed, so the reference point should be whether their lives are worth living at al,l rather than having less suffering than wild bees (taking the latter half of your clause).

1. Bees are not locked down and have exit options like swarming. Thus, revealed preferences point towards them preferring to be in managed hives over wild ones.

Again, it would be perfectly rational for bees to stay in managed scenarios if they believe their lives will go from -5/10 to -8/10 by swarming. But I also generally think this is a weak argument for the reasons BB laid out e.g. bees being bred for docility, queen bees having their wings clipped, in conjunction with pheremones from the queen.

With this, it feels like most of your "On balance, I think it’s likely that farmed bees have net positive lives." argument falls away.

Also, I'm curious to hear more about your thinking on:

1. I think many EAs take it as a given that insects have net negative lives. I think this is a mistaken inference drawn from swapping intuitions of K-selected species unto the actual experiences of r-selected species.

I'm no expert but my guess (and partially confirmed by some googling) is that they've been bred for docility/traits that make them more likely to stay rather than leave. o3 also suggests:

• Queen pheromones – a chemical “social glue” that keeps workers oriented to this queen and this cavity. If the queen dies or her pheromone output drops, cohesion collapses and bees drift or abscond. (So seems like the queen partially acts as an anchor to keep the rest of the bees and as long as her life is devoid of intense stress, she stays.)
• Investment already sunk – comb, brood and the bulk of their honey are immovable. Walking away means writing off weeks of labour and risking starvation.
• Risk calculus – only ~20 % of natural swarms survive to become established colonies; absconding is even riskier.

Absconding (leaving the hive) is triggered by intense stress: chronic overheating, prolonged food dearth, heavy predator or beekeeper disturbance, or severe parasite loads (notably Varroa)

Thank you for your amazing work on building the EA Forum! Having been involved in a few different communities/social issues, there is no discursive & knowledge-sharing infrastructure even close to the quality of the EA Forum. It's a true asset to the EA movement and no doubt responsible for lots of impact, be it understanding new priority cause areas, high-impact careers or something else!

Interested to hear more, but I would not expect blocking oil depots to be effective either. Why would it? It may be related but its not so compelling to the average observer. Compare with the example I used, of sit-ins, which are eminently compelling. If you compare ineffective strategies with ineffective strategies you will pick up noise and low order effects.

I mean there are probably a bunch of protests that you don't think make sense that had positive impacts (see some here) but specifically I would point to Extinction Rebellion blocking roads about climate or Just Stop Oil doing something similar.

I think we agree. Both for the successes and failures you should ask “was this a fluke?”, as you should always do.

I may be being obtuse but are you implying that Extinction Rebellion was a fluke? As if so, I don't agree with that! My view is that the founders had a pretty good design and plan, based on historical context and research, and with enough attempts, they managed to start something at the right time.