At some point around the inception of Effective Altruism and then Effective Animal Advocacy the animal movement transitioned from a sometimes well-meaning group of nonprofit animal welfare organizations, to what is essentially a billionaire service class that utilizes animal advocacy as a vehicle for spending philanthropy. Animal advocacy became less about what it is we owe other animals, than a vehicle to drive the careers of a few people, and those leaning into them.
KEVIN WATKINSON: At some point around the inception of Effective Altruism and then Effective Animal Advocacy the animal movement transitioned from a sometimes wellmeaning group of nonprofit animal welfare organisations, to what is essentially a billionaire service class that utilises animal advocacy as a vehicle for spending philanthropy.
In the beginning Effective Animal Advocacy “dovetailed” with an ideologically pragmatic group of nonprofit leaders; the Effective Altruists didn’t ask formative questions about animal advocacy, they simply jumped onboard with organisations like The Humane League, Mercy for Animals, Animal Equality and the Humane Society of the United States, which were busy factory farming cage free eggs and launching campaigns to factory farm slow growing chickens. These were the number crunching strategists that had already created a niche through dividing the vegan movement, and sought to dominate the narrative and direction of farmed animal advocacy.
Animal advocacy became less about what it is we owe other animals, than a vehicle to drive the careers of a few people, and those leaning into them. “Leaders” like Coman-Hidy cycled through The Humane League to run programs tasked to distribute the wealth of crypto billionaires. Others from The Humane League advise on the movement of money towards ideologically aligned nonprofits through distributing EA Funds. Lewis Bollard controls hundreds of millions of dollars and moves funds to “welfare” charities. He used to work at HSUS, as a policy advisor to Pacelle, and was mentored by Pacelle and Shapiro.
Core pragmatic ideologues like Shapiro, Cooney, Friedrich and Ball became the biggest pumps of tech solutionism through alt-proteins and lab meat. They pivoted away from factory farming cage free eggs to focus more on alt-proteins, or what is sometimes more generally branded as “veg”, or the less meat side to Peter Singer’s better meat1. The hype train left the station and for years people would turn up on social media soliciting funds for Israeli lab meat companies, or simply peddling lab meat “game changer” PR.
Why do we even need animal advocacy when you can just swap in a tastier, cheaper, more accessible alternative to “real” meat? Perhaps if the Effective Altruists really believed in lab meat and alt-proteins they wouldn’t have spent so much time on factory farming cage free eggs. Wouldn’t Just Egg or some other product simply usurp the “real” thing? In the long term future won’t animal exploitation be redundant? So just how much value is in cage free campaigns anyway? This is not something they seem to have bothered to think much about. SOURCE
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