Jo Anderson of Faunalytics and Saulius Šimčikas of Rethink Priorities on research for effective animal advocacy

The Sentience Institute Podcast

We [Faunalytics] put out a lot of things in 2020. Some of the favorites that I [Jo] have, probably top of the list, I’m really excited about our animal product impact scales, where we did a lot of background research to figure out and estimate the impact of replacing various animal products with plant-based or cultivated alternatives. Apart from that, we’ve also done some research on people’s beliefs about chickens and fish that’s intended as a starting point on a program of research so that we can look at the best ways to advocate for those smaller animals… [Rethink Priorities’] bigger projects within farmed animal advocacy include work on EU legislation, in particular our view of how much do countries comply with EU animal welfare laws and what we can do to increase compliance. Jason Schukraft wrote many articles about topics like how the moral value of animals differs across species. There has been a review of shrimp farming. I [Saulius] finished an article in which I estimate global captive vertebrate numbers. And Abraham Rowe posted an article about insects raised for food and feed which I think is a very important topic.

• Jo Anderson and Saulius Šimčikas

There have been many new research posts relevant to animal advocacy in 2020. But which are the most important for animal advocates to pay close attention to? And what sorts of research should we prioritize in the future?

Jo Anderson is the Research Director at Faunalytics, a nonprofit that conducts, summarizes, and disseminates research relevant to animal advocacy. Saulius Šimčikas is a Senior Staff Researcher at Rethink Priorities, a nonprofit that conducts research relevant to farmed animal advocacy, wild animals, and several other cause areas associated with the effective altruism community.

Topics discussed in the episode:

• Faunalytics and Rethink Priorities’ research in 2020 relevant to animal advocacy (1:40)
• Jo and Saulius’ work on polling about fish welfare (5:37)
• The impact of replacing different types of animal products (12:27)
• To what extent should animal advocates focus on legislative campaigns rather than corporate campaigns? (16:29)
• Experiences and turnover in the animal advocacy movement (24:33)
• New research on the difficulties of scaling up cultured meat (28:15)
• New research about the promise of lectures to reduce students’ animal product consumption (32:16)
• Charity Entrepreneurship’s (many) new intervention reports (36:54)
• How the idea of longtermism should affect animal advocacy (39:32)
• Other exciting effective animal advocacy research published in 2020 (45:51)
• How does all this research actually lead to impact for animals? What is the theory of change? (50:06)
• How do you decide or prioritize which specific research topic to pursue? (56:41)
• What are the pros and cons of working on multiple cause areas within a single research nonprofit? (1:00:11)
• What are the pros and cons of various different types of research? (1:05:21)
• What are the main bottlenecks that the farmed animal movement and its contributing research organizations face? (1:18:17)
• What routes into effective animal advocacy research roles did Jamie, Jo, and Saulius take and what is the relative importance of effective animal advocacy familiarity vs. formal research experience? (1:23:49)

Resources discussed in the episode are available at https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/podcast

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