Lewis Bollard on Dwarkesh Patel: Why Chicken Beats Lab Meat

ℹ️ EPISODE INFO

Released

August 7, 2025

Duration

1h 8m

Channel

Dwarkesh Podcast

Watch on YouTube

▶ Open ↗

📝 EPISODE DESCRIPTION

This episode was a deep dive with Lewis Bollard, who leads Open Philanthropy’s strategy for Farmed Animal Welfare, on the surprising economics of the meat industry: Why is factory farming so efficient? How can we make the lives of the 23+ billion animals living on factory farms more bearable? How far off are the moonshots (e.g., brainless chickens, cultivated meats, etc.) to end this mass suffering? And why does the meat industry have such a surprising amount of political influence? For decades, innovation in the meat industry has actually made the conditions for animals worse — can the next few decades of tech reverse this pattern? 𝐅𝐔𝐍𝐃𝐑𝐀𝐈𝐒𝐄𝐑 If you want to contribute to our fundraiser, you can donate at https://farmkind.giving/dwarkesh. FarmKind will direct your contribution to the most effective charities in animal welfare, and I've personally pledged $250,000 as a donation match to double the impact. Please consider contributing, even if it’s a small amount. And, if you’re considering donating $50k or more, please reach out directly to Lewis and his team by emailing andres@openphilanthropy.org 𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐒

• Transcript: https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/lewis-bollard
• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dwarkesh-podcast/id1516093381?i=1000721073740
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1skct0aT2AZgA2KGD11DPR?si=54f40cb984f44db6

𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒 00:00:00 – The astonishing efficiency of factory farming 00:07:18 – It was a mistake making this about diet 00:09:54 – Tech that’s sparing 100s of millions of animals/year 00:16:16 – Brainless chickens and higher welfare breeds 00:28:21 – $1 can prevent 10 years of animal suffering 00:37:26 – Situation in China and the developing world 00:41:41 – How the meat lobby got a lock on Congress 00:53:23 – Business structure of the meat industry 00:57:42 – Corporate campaigns are underrated

🎤 SPEAKERS

• Dwarkesh Patel

  host

• Lewis Bollard

  guest

🧾 EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of Dwarkesh Podcast, featuring Dwarkesh Patel and Lewis Bollard, Lewis Bollard on Dwarkesh Patel: Why Chicken Beats Lab Meat explores why Ending Factory Farming Is Harder Than Building Artificial Intelligence Lewis Bollard, who runs Open Philanthropy’s farm animal welfare program, explains why factory farming is extremely resilient to technological change and why artificial meat alone is unlikely to end animal suffering.

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