Anomaly (2015) on Factory Farming

 Anomaly, Jonathan, “What’s Wrong with Factory Farming?” Public Health Ethics 8(3): 246-254, 2015. 

• Today’s factory farms got to this condition through competitive pressures to reduce costs. 

• Three “moral” problems concern: (1) zoonoses; (2) antibiotics; and (3) cruelty. These problems are not reflected in market prices for animal products. 

• Close (indoor) confinement is a breeding ground for the creation and spread of pathogens. Some of these pathogens can spread to humans. Is it justifiable to use a production method that threatens pandemics and otherwise endangers human health? 

• Antibiotic use is prevalent in factory farms – in part because antibiotics can help promote growth. Massive use of antibiotics and the close confinement allow antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria to develop and thrive and infest the local environment… and sometimes to spread to humans. 

• Anomaly suggests antibiotics be taxed, banned for growth promotion or to fight unhealthy farm conditions, and overseen by veterinarians. “Allowing farmers to administer antibiotics indiscriminately is tantamount to allowing them to decide how much harm they would like to inflict on other people [p. 251].” 

• Farm animals and “traditional” practices are often excluded from coverage of animal welfare laws.

• “Germany has banned cages and crates for all farm animals [p. 250].” Improving conditions of confinement and eliminating antibiotics are not especially costly measures.

Sunstein on Animal Welfare Cascades

Sunstein, Cass R., “’It’s A Cookbook’: Animal Welfare Cascades.” Harvard Public Law Working Paper No. 21-48, June 14, 2021.

• The title of this article draws upon a Twilight Zone episode where aliens who are visiting the earth possess a book with the originally confidence-inspiring title, "To Serve Man." A second Twilight Zone episode is referenced, where Martians keep humans as zoo animals.

• Sunstein explores the possibility, which he welcomes, that we will see a swift, massive shift for the better in our treatment of animals.

• Drawing on work by Timur Kuran (of Private Truths, Public Lies fame) and others, Sunstein identifies four factors that help to produce swift turnabouts: (1) preference falsification; (2) diverse thresholds; (3) interdependencies; and (4) group polarization. 

• Preference falsification is where people, in public, misrepresent their true beliefs, perhaps because of societal oppression or just an interest in matching what others claim to believe. Diverse thresholds is the notion that some people are willing to be ice-breakers, willing to publicize their true beliefs even when there is no evident support; others will join in as the scale of the minority opinion grows. [Note the emperor's new clothes example: everyone publicly lied about the emperor's clothing, until one child spoke the truth -- the rest then joined in.]

• "Interdependencies" refer to the complex connections among people and those varying thresholds, suggesting that very similar conditions could nonetheless result in extremally different outcomes due to small changes in interdependencies. Group polarization recognizes that when people holding similar ideas get together, the group often moves in a more "radical" direction, because of information exchange and/or a desire for individuals to develop and maintain a strong reputation within their group. 

• The four factors, their complexity and their interactions, mean that accurate predictions cannot be expected about social revolutions. "We might think that a practice was bound to change, but it really was not. It happened to change. The same is true if it does not fall. It happened not to change [p. 7]."

• A side note (page 8) on preference falsification. Preferences might be endogenous with respect to the status quo -- and carnism is a pretty entrenched status quo! People might be accepting of the status quo, not noticing the water they swim in -- though that acceptance could itself change when alternatives are brought to their attention.

• With respect to preference falsification, many people must have more-or-less unspoken or unacknowledged reservations about our treatment of animals, but are loath to bring up those reservations or give them much sway. Sunstein recounts the extreme vitriol (including death threats) sent his way when he was undergoing Senate confirmation for his former government post, based on his exaggerated reputation for being excessively animal-friendly. He indicates that he has held back somewhat on animal welfare in the wake of the vituperation. 

• With respect to animal welfare, the four factors suggest that an increase in vegetarianism, for instance, could become contagious. Pro-animal acts by celebrities, or trusted individuals, or even unexpected people ("surprising validators [p. 10],” like macho vegan athletes), can be helpful in initiating a cascade. 

• The movement for a more just relationship with animals will transform preferences, not just reveal them.

Leitzel and Shaikh on Animal Standing in Cost-Benefit Analysis

This blog has been part of an effort to produce some social science papers concerning animal welfare and economics, and the first of those papers is now available: "The Economic Standing of Animals," by Jim Leitzel and Sabina Shaikh. The paper can be downloaded here. 

Abstract: 

Should nonhuman animals possess cost-benefit analysis (CBA) standing, and if so, to what extent? A lack of standing for animals does not mean that their interests are ignored; rather, it implies that their interests are only accounted for to the extent that those with standing – humans – feel some regard for animal welfare.

This paper addresses farm animal policy in the United States and looks at how CBAs are altered as animal interests range from “no standing” to “human-equivalent” standing. Even with no standing for animals, the degree of animal welfare offered by current animal agricultural practices is inefficiently low: human preferences for animal welfare are less than fully reflected in the economic and political marketplaces. Policies that counter existing shortcomings in the markets for animal welfare could be paired with transparency measures that would help ensure that consumers and voters are better informed about the conditions under which farmed animals are raised. Uncertainty concerning the appropriate degree of animal standing counsels for the avoidance of policies that would be highly undesirable if the proper extent of standing turns out to be significantly smaller or larger than expected.

Maes et al. (2019) on Intensive Pig "Farming"

Dominiek G. D. Maes, Jeroen Dewulf, Carlos Piñeiro, Sandra Edwards, and Ilias Kyriazakis, "A Critical Reflection on Intensive Pork Production with an Emphasis on Animal Health and Welfare." Journal of Animal Science 98(Suppl. 1): S15–S26, 2019. 

• As the title suggests, both health and welfare are examined in this article, though the bullet-point "summary" here will focus primarily on the welfare discussion.

• "Improved animal nutrition, feed efficiency, health management, environmental control, reproduction management, genetic selection for better performance, and consistency of product quality and delivery to the marketplace have been the main objectives in the development of intensive livestock production [p. S15]."

• Intensive (indoor) pig farming brings many health benefits for the pigs relative to alternative husbandry methods, though often with the excessive use of antimicrobials. Early weaning of piglets, however, heightens stress and also contributes to health problems. 

• The assessment of pig welfare has made significant strides in recent decades. The authors employ the EU-initiated Welfare Quality® assessment [pdf here; 21-minute video here]. 

• Among the pig welfare problems that occur with intensive production are painful tail docking and teeth clipping; little room (indeed, sometimes confinement in tiny crates), little environmental stimulation, little opportunity to engage in normal behaviors such as rooting or nest building; and flooring that is slatted or concrete and contributes to lameness and other health problems.

• The authors offer many suggestions to improve the health and welfare of pigs, such as improving the flooring and enriching the environment, and reducing the painful (and non-anesthetized) surgical procedures. More space per animal (and fewer crates) are high-priority needs.

• How about more transparency?: "informing the public properly about the health and welfare of the animals, and providing greater transparency in farming operations, eventually by providing (digital) visual access to the animal facilities, might be required [p. S22]."

Bonnet et al. (2020) on Regulating Meat Consumption

Céline Bonnet, Zohra Bouamra-Mechemache, Vincent Réquillart, and Nicolas Treich, “Viewpoint: Regulating Meat Consumption to Improve Health, the Environment and Animal Welfare.” Food Policy 97 (101847), December 2020.

• Regulations are perhaps advisable to counter meat impacts on human health, the environment, and animal welfare.

• Many of the health effects are not externalities, in that they come in the form of increased health risks for people who consume a lot of meat.

• Some external health effects present themselves in the form of zoonoses (like Covid-19?) and antibiotic resistance. 

• On the environmental front, animal agriculture involves significant greenhouse gas emissions, along with nasty air and water pollution and deforestation.

• CAFOs could have lower per-animal greenhouse gas emissions than less intensive farming methods. Free-range settings might also undermine some dimensions of animal welfare, too, perhaps by reducing protection against predators.

• Globally, on the order of three-quarters of land used for agriculture is devoted to animal agriculture (pastures, grazing, and the growing of animal feed).

• Major animal welfare concerns include: brief lifetimes spent exclusively in close confinement; lopping off of sensitive body parts without anesthesia; and, quick disposal of male chicks for laying hens, calves for dairy cows. And the numbers of animals affected are immense. 

• "In any case, the immense challenge of evaluating animal welfare does not provide a good enough reason to ignore animal welfare, and may instead warrant a precautionary approach"

• Regulations could target producers as opposed to meat – but such approaches often are hard to implement or are ineffective.

• Meat taxes are one way to try to address environmental, health, and animal welfare concerns; better information provision is a second method. Finally, behavioral interventions, such as establishing meatless Mondays, or altering the placement of vegetarian options on menus, or even making vegetarian the default setting in some circumstances, might hold some promise.

Hubbard, Clark, and Harvey (2020) on Markets and Animal Welfare

For various presentations I have prepared bullet-point notes on animal welfare articles. I thought I would migrate some of them to the Animals and Econ blog. These notes are not meant to constitute a summary of the article, but they do convey some of the flavor of the publication, as well as, at times, my own reaction/commentary -- though which bits are which remains a closely guarded secret. Without further ado...

Hubbard, Carmen, Beth Clark, and David Harvey, “Farm Animal Welfare: Do Free Markets Fail to Provide It?” Chapter 2, pages 30-52, in B. V. Ahmadi, D. Moran, and R. D’Eath, eds., The Economics of Farm Animal Welfare, CABI, 2020.

• Many (or most) people say that farm animal welfare means a lot to them, and that they are willing-to-pay for improved animal welfare.

• These expressed preferences do not seem to be widely reflected in purchase decisions for meat, eggs, and other animal products.

• Do the markets for animal products deliver the “socially optimal” amount of farm animal welfare? 

• The authors take the “no direct standing for non-human animals” approach to efficiency – only human interest in animal welfare, not the animals’ own interest, is considered.

• Is animal welfare a public good? (No, with respect to the usual economics sense of the term.) "Clearly, cruelty to animals is a public bad, at least as far as most modern societies are concerned [p. 37]."  Enforced regulations that provide higher welfare do have public good qualities, in that once society establishes higher animal welfare standards, everyone in that society "consumes" it, no individual is excluded, no one consumes products with low animal welfare.

• Consumption externalities might be common with respect to animal products: your consumption of animal products might offend me; nonetheless, those who are offended by what other people consume might have a zero willingness to pay for any animal product, so their preferences for more-humane products will not be expressed within the animal products market per se.

• Animal welfare might be a “credence attribute” -- you can't reliably judge the welfare quality of animal products even after you have consumed them, much less in advance of purchase.

• If I realize that my own choices will have essentially zero impact on animal welfare levels, I might not be willing to pay for higher-welfare products. However, if I know that others are contributing, then I might be willing to pay. That is, a person’s willingness to pay for better animal welfare might depend upon other people paying, too.

• Is more information helpful/desirable? Distrust of current information might be one reason that preferences for higher welfare are not expressed fully in the market -- though surely some people would prefer not to have more animal welfare information directed towards them.

Espinosa and Treich (2020) on Lives Worth Living

Espinosa, Romain, and Nicolas Treich, "Animal Welfare: Antispeciesism, Veganism and a 'Life Worth Living'”. Social Choice and Welfare, 2020; available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s00355-020-01287-7.

The Espinosa and Treich article examines issues right at the heart of this blog's theme, that there is a continuum (from none to equal) of the potential "valuation" of nonhuman animals relative to humans in judging aggregate costs and benefits or overall welfare. Espinosa and Treich build upon Blackorby and Donaldson (1992), offering a model where humans utilities enter the social welfare function at full (unit) weight, while farm animals enter with weight α, 0≤α≤1. (Complete "antispeciesism" is where α=1.) The social planner maximizes social welfare by choosing the quality of life of the animals (better animal welfare costs humans more) and the number of animals raised for human consumption. Humans value eating animals and don't like to pay for better animal welfare, but humans do not directly care about the level of animal welfare. A key feature of the model is that, if animal lives are "worth living" in the sense that, thanks to decent welfare, the lived utility of animals exceeds the baseline nonexistence utility of zero, then humans might end up eating more animals, as the socially optimal number of animals is higher when animal lives have positive value. That is, better animal welfare might lead to less veganism. The higher alpha, then (equivalently, the less human-centric speciesism), the higher optimal animal welfare, and possibly, the greater the eating of animals. 

Espinosa and Treich supplement their theoretical analysis with a survey in which respondents are given capsule summaries of various living conditions for broiler chickens, and asked to indicate whether they believe if, under the specified conditions, the chickens' lives are worth living. The four lowest-welfare scenarios provided in the surveys correspond to French industrial farming conditions, and most respondents do not find the broilers' lives worth living under those conditions. Therefore, the theoretical case for veganism remains secure, at least if our factory farms are not replaced with something offering worthwhile lives for our proto-food!