EA - Animal welfare certified meat is not a stepping stone to meat reduction or abolition by Stijn

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Animal welfare certified meat is not a stepping stone to meat reduction or abolition, published by Stijn on March 4, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.Summary: evidence from a survey suggests that campaigning for farm animal welfare reforms and promoting animal welfare certified meat could in the long run result in a suboptimal state of continued animal suffering and exploitation. Campaigns to reduce or eliminate animal-based meat and promote animal-free meat substitutes are probably more effective in the long run.Note: this research is not yet published in academic, peer-reviewed literature.The debate: welfarism versus abolitionismThere is an ongoing debate within the animal advocacy movement, between so-called welfarists or moderates on the one side and abolitionists or radicals on the other side. The welfarist camp aims for welfare improvements of farm animals. Stronger animal welfare laws are needed to reduce animal suffering. The abolitionists on the other hand, want to abolish the property status of animals. This means abolishing the exploitation of animals, eliminating animal farming and adopting an animal-free, vegan diet.The abolitionists are worried that the welfarist approach results in complacency, by soothing the conscience of meat eaters. They argue that people who eat meat produced with higher animal welfare standards might believe that eating such animal welfare certified meat is good and no further steps to further reduce farm animal suffering are needed. Those people will not take further steps towards animal welfare because of a believe one already does enough. Complacency could delay reaching the abolitionist’s desired goal, the abolition of the exploitation of animals. Animal welfare regulations are not enough, according to abolitionists, because they do not sufficiently reduce animal suffering. People will continue eating meat that is only slightly better in terms of animal welfare. In the long run, this results in more animal suffering compared to the situation where people adopted animal-free diets sooner.In extremis, the welfarist approach could backfire due to people engaging in moral balancing: eating animal welfare certified meat might decrease the likelihood of making animal welfare improving choices again later.Welfarists, on the other hand, argue that in the short run demanding abolition is politically or socially unfeasible, that demanding animal welfare improvements is more tractable, and that these welfare reforms can create a momentum for ever increasing public concern of animal welfare, resulting in eventual reduction and abolition of animal farming. According to welfarists, animal welfare reforms are a stepping stone to reduced meat consumption and veganism. Meat consumers will first switch to higher quality, ‘humane’ meat with improved animal welfare standards in production. And after a while, when this switch strengthens their concern for animal welfare and increases their meat expenditures (due to the higher price of animal welfare certified meat), they will reduce their meat consumption and eventually become vegetarian or vegan.The stepping-stone modelWho is right in this debate between abolitionists and welfarists? There is no strong empirical evidence in favor of one side or the other. But recently, economists developed an empirical method that can shed light on this issue: a stepping stone model of harmful social norms (Gulesci e.a., 2021). A social norm is a practice that is dominant in society. In its simplest form, the stepping stone model assumes three stones that represent three social states. The first stone represents the current state where people adopt a harmful social norm or costly practice L (for low value). In the example of food consumption, this state corresponds with the consumption of convention...