Category: Research
In order to reduce animal suffering in India, it’s necessary for the global effective animal advocacy (EAA) community to understand the local context, considering at once the political, economic, and cultural factors that could lead to challenges and opportunities for EAA. Prior to this research, ACE’s understanding of India’s local context was relatively limited—this report outlines our findings, as well as important questions for further consideration. … Read more
With over 1.6 billion farmed land animals kept in Brazil in 2016, these animals account for the vast majority of human-caused suffering endured by animals in Brazil, and yet they are under-represented in advocacy efforts. Due to the vast number of animals farmed for food and other products in Brazil, the potential impact of advocacy on their behalf is significant. … Read more
Farmed fish welfare should plausibly be one of the effective animal advocacy community’s priorities because of the current neglectedness of the issue, the likelihood that farmed fish suffering is large in scale, and the potential tractability of interventions to improve farmed fish welfare. With this in mind, ACE would like to reduce uncertainty about the impact of corporate campaigns aimed at improving farmed fish welfare. We hope that our new report will help us move toward that goal. … Read more
We conduct a survey of donors to ACE and our Top Charities annually to help us understand who is donating to ACE and who is using our recommendations when donating to our Top Charities. It also contributes to our understanding of how much money we are influencing and how it may have been spent otherwise. … Read more
We believe that the animal advocacy movement should work to better integrate diversity, equity, and inclusion into its values. We asked some informed animal advocates for concrete examples of ways that people in the animal advocacy movement can support other movements. … Read more
This report is no longer available to the general public. If you wish to access it, please fill out the form below, stating your purpose for requesting access.
See our 2018 Year in Review for a brief explanation of our reasons for taking down this report, … Read more
ACE believes that in order to be successful, the animal advocacy movement must employ multiple strategies at once. This will allow us to innovate, will increase our probability of finding at least one successful strategy, will help our programs grow, and will help us build upon each others’ … Read more
2017 saw the highest per capita egg consumption in the U.S. in over 20 years. Per capita red meat and poultry consumption in the U.S. has been increasing as well, and is expected to reach a record high in 2018. This does not necessarily indicate a long-term trend, because the recent surge in meat consumption is mostly attributed to an oversupply of chicken and resulting low prices—rather than to increased demand. … Read more
In our new roundtable blog series, we ask a handful of contributors to provide their points of view on complex topics or unsettled questions. We hope that this approach will help us to integrate and learn from multiple perspectives on animal advocacy. … Read more
Sentience Institute (SI)1 is a relatively new think tank within the effective altruism movement. According to SI’s website, the organization was founded in June 2017 with the stated mission of “expanding humanity’s moral circle” through researching the most effective strategies to achieve this goal, … Read more
Leafleting is a common intervention in farmed animal advocacy that is carried out by many organizations. In 2015, Vegan Outreach alone reported distributing close to 3 million leaflets,1 most of which were handed out on college campuses.2 In order to evaluate the effectiveness of leafleting, … Read more
Summary
Last month ACE hosted the 2017 Research Workshop on Effective Animal Advocacy at Claremont Graduate University (CGU) in California. The event was intended to complement our 2016 Symposium on Multidisciplinary Research in Effective Animal Advocacy, held at Princeton University last fall. … Read more
Effective animal advocates (EAAs) are members of the effective altruism movement. They use reason and evidence to identify the most effective ways to help animals, and they act on that evidence.
A central component of EAA is the willingness to revise one’s views in light of new evidence. … Read more
Introduction
ACE employs both qualitative and quantitative strategies in our work to identify highly effective ways to help animals. One way that we evaluate interventions or charities quantitatively is by assigning numerical values to their immediate costs and benefits. We then use those values to calculate a cost-effectiveness estimate (CEE) in terms of “lives spared per dollar” or “years of suffering averted per dollar.”1 These estimates allow us to directly compare different interventions and charities, … Read more
The availability of cost-competitive cultured animal products has the potential to cause a massive decrease in the demand for non-cultured animal products. For this reason, estimates of when cultured alternatives1 will be available at similar prices to farmed animal products meaningfully affect the prioritization of animal advocacy interventions. … Read more
Farmed animal products grown via a cell culture are often referred to as “cultured” or “clean.” For instance, a cell cultured meatball is often called a “cultured meatball” or a “clean meatball.” It is possible that one of these two terms may lead to greater consumer acceptance than the other one. … Read more
In evaluating the effectiveness of farmed animal advocacy messaging, it’s important to take into account the potential impact on attitudes relevant to wild animals. As an example, consider the ways in which typical farmed animal advocacy messages might influence opinions about the provision of pain-relieving medication to elephants who are in the final stages of giving birth. … Read more
Before we began our 2016 charity evaluations, we researched the ways that animal charities use social media and developed a plan to quantitatively estimate the social media impact of each charity. We developed a two-step process for estimating social media impact. … Read more
Introduction
Many people think that whether or not we have moral obligations to animals hinges upon whether animals are sentient. In this short post, we use the term “sentience” to refer to the capacity for “conscious experiences” including “pleasure” and “suffering.” … Read more
Introduction
By reducing their meat consumption, individuals can spare a significant number of animals and prevent years of suffering on factory farms. All of our current top charities have programs designed to encourage people to eat fewer animal products. Some of them also have retention programs that are designed to help current vegetarians and vegans maintain their diets. … Read more
We recently carried out a survey to study the effect of veg advocacy on people’s support for policies that would address wild animal suffering (WAS). While veg advocacy is intended to change people’s diets and reduce the suffering of farmed animals, … Read more
This is the seventh post of our Foundational Questions series. You can read more about this project and see the initial post here.
Summary
We think research should be a high priority of the animal advocacy movement, partly because of the large impact it has in other cause areas such as aid to the global poor. … Read more
We recently released an evaluation of online ads, the third evaluation to use our intervention evaluation form, a standardized template that provides a consistent, rigorous process for evaluating different ways of helping animals.
Our report includes a short write-up that covers the intervention’s strengths, … Read more
Introduction
We’re always excited to see new research on effective animal advocacy, so of course the recent Vegan Outreach leaflet study has caught our attention. The study has many merits. For example, it investigates participants’ self-reported dietary choices, which might contribute to our understanding of how to best help farmed animals. … Read more
This is the sixth post in our Foundational Questions series. You can learn more about this project and read the other posts here.
Summary
Legal personhood for animals is one of the most exciting goals for the animal protection movement because of its potential far-reaching and long-term impact. … Read more
What is the difference in impact between spreading different animal advocacy ideas, e.g. the cruelty of animal agriculture, dietary change, antispeciesism, and wild animal suffering?
This year, we evaluated Animal Ethics, an organization with a core aim of filling perceived gaps in the animal advocacy community. … Read more
Summary
In this post, we elaborate on our thinking about quantitative cost-effectiveness estimates (CEEs). They’ve been a part of our review process since we began reviewing charities, and they are particularly controversial and challenging. First, we summarize the benefits and challenges of CEEs in effective animal advocacy. … Read more
We recently released an evaluation of undercover investigations, the second evaluation to use our intervention evaluation form, a standardized template that provides a consistent, rigorous process for evaluating different ways of helping animals.
Our report includes a short write-up that covers the intervention’s strengths, … Read more
This is the fifth post of our Foundational Questions series. Learn more about this project by reading the initial post Foundational Questions in Effective Animal Advocacy.
Summary
Several of the charities we reviewed in 2015 reported accomplishments based on their social media presence. … Read more
This is the third post in our Foundational Questions series.
Animals are suffering around the world and advocates are also working globally to help them. There are several considerations that could affect the relative effectiveness of animal advocacy in different countries, … Read more