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Lewis Bollard on Dwarkesh Patel: Why Chicken Beats Lab Meat

How in ovo sexing spared 200 million chicks without changing consumer habits; cultivated meat is illegal in seven US states, leaving only welfare reform.

Dwarkesh PatelhostLewis Bollardguest
Aug 7, 20251h 8mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 7:18

    The astonishing efficiency of factory farming

    1. DP

      Today, I'm chatting with Lewis Bollard, who is farm animal welfare program director at Open Philanthropy. And Open Philanthropy is the biggest charity in this animal welfare space. So Lewis, thanks so much for coming on the podcast.

    2. LB

      Thanks for having me on.

    3. DP

      Okay, first question: At some point, we'll have AGI. How do you just think about the problem you're trying to solve? Are you trying to make conditions more tolerable for the next 10 years until AI solves this problem for us? Or is there some reason to think that the interventions we're making, in terms of improvements like anovosexing or cage-free eggs, et cetera, will have an impact beyond this transformative moment?

    4. LB

      I think that the end of factory farming is far from inevitable. Every year, w- we're factory farming about 2% more animals-

    5. DP

      Mm-hmm.

    6. LB

      ... globally. I think there are two possible trajectories we could go down. One is the trajectory that we have been on for the last century, which is technology has made factory farming ever more efficient, resulted in evermore animals being abused in evermore intensive ways.

    7. DP

      Yeah.

    8. LB

      There is a trajectory where we reduce the number of animals on factory farms, where we reduce the suffering of each of those animals. So even if we get AGI, I- I am really optimistic that that will accelerate forms of technological progress. It will bring us better alternative proteins. It will improve the humane technology. But there are still huge cultural and political obstacles to alternatives. So the cultural obstacles are that most people want real meat. I mean, most people have the option already of plant-based meat that tastes about as good as real meat. And-

    9. DP

      Does it? I don't know.

    10. LB

      Well, so this is the debate. That's fair. This is a debate, but I don't think that's just the obstacle that people have. I think there are a lot of people who say, "I'm just not interested in, you know, the alternative. I want the real thing." And then there's also the political obstacles. So let's say that AGI solves cultivated meat for us. Well, cultivated meat's already illegal in seven US states.

    11. DP

      Mm.

    12. LB

      It- it's might soon be illegal in the entire European Union. So by the time we get AGI, will they even be able to sell it anywhere? So again, I think there's a huge amount of good that technology can do in this space, and I'm optimistic that AGI can accelerate that hugely. But at the same time, I think we should prepare for the significant possibility that AGI does not end factory farming, that actually this is an incredibly efficient system that has persisted through all kinds of technological changes-

    13. DP

      Mm.

    14. LB

      ... and that could persist through this technological change.

    15. DP

      And sort of what is it that makes it so efficient?

    16. LB

      So the, the basic efficiency is th- the animal, and the chicken in particular-

    17. DP

      Yeah.

    18. LB

      ... has evolved over a very long time (laughs) to be a- a- a being that can take in a relatively small amount of grain and convert it very efficiently into a form of protein that people like to eat.

    19. DP

      Okay.

    20. LB

      So the feed conversion ratio for chickens, the amount of grain you put in to get meat out, is like two, 2X.

    21. DP

      Mm.

    22. LB

      And that grain is incredibly cheap.

    23. DP

      Right.

    24. LB

      And the rest of the production process is incredibly cheap because they've, they've removed everything that costs money around, like, treating the animals well and providing comfort and all that stuff. They've just gotten rid of it all.

    25. DP

      Right.

    26. LB

      So they've gotten it down to the point where it's insanely cheap. So you're trying to beat the price of grain times two plus a few extra costs.

    27. DP

      Mm.

    28. LB

      And that is, that is actually a really hard, really hard target to meet. And, and that's why factory farm chicken is so insanely cheap today.

    29. DP

      May- maybe an intuition pump here is we've been spending on the order of hundreds of billions of dollars a year in order to replicate human intelligence, and human intelligence has been developed, I don't know, it depends on when, when you start counting, uh, intelligence has started evolving. But, like, on the order of hundreds to tens of millions of, uh, years ago, evolution has been trying to optimize for this intelligence thing, and we've had to spend all this effort in order to replicate it. Converting calories into meat has been something that evolution has been optimizing for billions of years, right? So everything from the immune system, to growth factors, to delivering nutrition, et cetera, texture whatever. This is like, this is what evolution was working on the entire time. Um, so it, it makes sense why this is actually such a tough problem. Are you, are you ready to throw some cold water on your friends?

    30. LB

      (laughs)

  2. 7:18 – 9:54

    It was a mistake making this about diet

    1. DP

      So, um, whenever a discussion like this comes up, it's often phrased in the context of personal behavior. Like, I think people will be assuming that w- what we're gonna get up to is, like, this, um, push to make you vegetarian. And I ha- I happen to have been vegetarian. I grew up a Hindu, and so I've, like, never eaten meat, um, and then I just stayed a vegetarian after, um, I was no longer a Hindu. Um, but then I started prepping to interview you, and I'm like, "Fuck, this might..." (laughs)

    2. LB

      (laughs)

    3. DP

      I don't know how valuable this is. E- especially if we look at some of these, um, online charity evaluators, and you're just like, "A dollar of your donation will offset this much meat eating," and you're like, "I... What are we doing here?" But anyways, um, vegetarianism overrated? (laughs)

    4. LB

      (laughs) I think we made a mistake as a movement-

    5. DP

      Yes.

    6. LB

      ... making this about personal diet.

    7. DP

      Right.

    8. LB

      I think it's, it's great when folks wanna make a personal diet decision, whether that is eating less meat or meat from more humane sources. But the focus should not be on the individual. This is not how large-scale social change occurs. I think we need government reform, I think we need corporate reform. And people can be a part of that regardless of what they eat, regardless of what their diet is. I think that we need people to be advocates and funders and supporters of this cause.

    9. DP

      So how did we end up in this position where so much, um... I think when people think about animal welfare, they, they think PETA, they think of, like, uh, protesters who are encouraging individuals to, to give up meat consumption. At the same time, these charities which are so effective at corporate or policy change are just, like, so r- so neglected. Um, how did this end up being the landscape of animal welfare, activism, and funding?

    10. LB

      Yeah, I, I think it's a puzzle. I mean, it, it seems so obvious that you could have far larger scale change at the level of governmental change and, and corporate change. And instead, we get fixated about whether someone is completely vegan or vegetarian or, like... And I think what happened is when people started learning about this issue initially, it was just a few people, and they felt totally powerless to achieve larger scale change. And so they understandably focused on themselves. And then it started to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It started to become an end in itself, where it was about personal purity as much as about the impact you were having on the issue. And it's much easier to measure your own personal purity than it is to measure your total impact on reforming factory farming. And so I think it just became this kind of inward focus. And the good news is I think that has changed tremendously in the last decade. I think the movement has gone from being one that was obsessed with personal purity, obsessed with dietary choices, to one that is much more obsessed

  3. 9:54 – 16:16

    Tech that’s sparing 100s of millions of animals/year

    1. LB

      with impact.

    2. DP

      Okay, so this is why I really wanted to do this episode, which is I think people will be aware that there's a general problem here, but the actual politics and the actual economics, the actual state of the technology landscape here, there might be interventions which are stupendously effective, um, which we would overlook just because people are not aware of what's actually happening in this space. So on that point, to use an analogy from global health and poverty, the Against Malaria Foundation estimates that it saved on the order of 180,000 lives or something, which is a lot. And but then you compare it to China liberalizing brought a billion people out of poverty. That, that's just, like, a many, many orders of magnitude bigger impact. In animal welfare, do, do you have some, like, big take about what the, uh, China liberalizing equivalent in this space is?

    3. LB

      Yeah, I think there have been three large-scale drivers of progress so far.

    4. DP

      Okay.

    5. LB

      So the first has been government policy. So advocates got the European Union to set basic animal welfare standards. That is billions of animals every year.

    6. DP

      Mm.

    7. LB

      Billions every year. Then there's corporate reforms. And we see the same thing, that there's this incredible scale across these corporate supply chains. I mean, McDonald's just implemented its pledge to go cage-free in the US. That alone is seven million hens every year out of cages just in the McDonald's supply chain. And then the third lever is technology. One example would be in ovo sexing as a new technology that can get rid of the need to kill male chicks in the egg industry. The unwanted chicks are, are killed at birth. And in ovo sexing has already spared about 200 million chicks from that fate. So there are these giant drivers, and the good news is we're just getting started with them. There is the potential, I think, to help tens of billions of animals through these drivers.

    8. DP

      Mm. Uh, okay, I wanna go into in ovo sexing. Yeah, just the fact that you can have a new technology and you can have basically, uh, improvements where things aren't getting more expensive. Maybe in the future, they'll actually get cheaper because of this technology. At the same time, you're having improvements in animal welfare. The problem, of course, with this industry has been that in the past, increases in efficiency have been coupled with increases in cruelty. So I wanna understand whenever the trend goes in the opposite direction, what causes that to be the case? So what is the history of this technology? How does it work? Why did it take so long for it to, um, come into common practice?

    9. LB

      Sure. Yeah, so I mean, the, the historical basis...... is a story of technology doing harm, which was (laughs) we, initially, the egg industry and the meat chicken industry separated-

    10. DP

      Mm-hmm.

    11. LB

      ... because they realized they could grow meat chickens to be optimized for weight gain and laying hens to be optimized for laying eggs. That meant that the laying egg industry had no need of the male chicks because they couldn't lay eggs, and they couldn't grow fast enough to be meat chickens. And so what they decided was to just kill them on the day they were born.

    12. DP

      Mm.

    13. LB

      And so the standard practice, and this is about eight billion chicks globally every year, are just thrown in a giant meat grinder or suffocate in their bags-

    14. DP

      Right.

    15. LB

      ... the day they're born. Crazy. This new technology is basically the application of existing technologies, uh, to scan the eggs in advance and work out whether they're gonna be male or female, and then you can just get rid of the male eggs very early in the incubation phase. And this technology went from ten years ago just being a vague idea to today it's already a third of the European egg industry.

    16. DP

      Mm.

    17. LB

      Uh, and just got introduced to the United States. We got the first eggs coming out in the United States now. So this is a technology that is growing rapidly and I'm really optimistic can, can ultimately end this problem globally.

    18. DP

      And how much was this driven by policy versus the tech being mature enough for it to be economical?

    19. LB

      I think it was both. So first, there was some policy up front which was because advocates had drawn attention to this practice of killing male chicks.

    20. DP

      Right.

    21. LB

      There was real impetus by governments and philanthropists to support kickstarting this technology. And my estimate is it was about $10 million, very little amount of-

    22. DP

      Right.

    23. LB

      ... public and, and philanthropic money that kickstarted this technology, got it to a point where startups could start to implement the technology.

    24. DP

      I'd be curious to understand exactly, because MRIs have existed for a while, PCRs have existed for a while, so why it took this long for this to be economical, what, what the nature of that cost curve was. And I'm especially interested to understand this because it seems to imply that, look, I mean, we didn't have to come up with some brand new tech in order to enable this. So are there other things where somebody who is somewhat familiar with the technological landscape... People are always looking for startup ideas, right?

    25. LB

      Yeah, yeah.

    26. DP

      Should they just spend a couple of days at a big poultry farm or, um, pig farm or something and see if things can't be improved?

    27. LB

      Yeah, I think there's huge potential for technologists here. I mean, there is a lot of low-hanging fruit because this is primarily a commodity business that has only done things that reduce the price or increase production levels.

    28. DP

      Yeah.

    29. LB

      It is not invested in animal welfare. And as a result, you find these things it's doing that just seem archaic. Like, the way that it is castrating piglets is with a blunt knife and, like, no pain relief. And so in that case, there was a new technology of immunocastration, an injection that achieved the same effects. And it- and it was very easy to develop. And so I think there are a whole lot of other practices like that out there.

    30. DP

      Right.

  4. 16:16 – 28:21

    Brainless chickens and higher welfare breeds

    1. LB

      worse.

    2. DP

      Could we make chickens or pigs with no brains, right? 'Cause there's the suffering we care about. So to the extent that their bodies are just these incredibly well-evolved bioreactors for converting grain into meat, whereas optimization has led to, um, more and more cruelty in the past. In this case, like, this is the ultimate optimization, right? They're not moving around at all. They're, um, they are literally just a machine for producing more meat. Um, yeah, and then the, the suffering is, in some sense, inefficient, right? Like, it causes them to, you know, if they're pegging at other animals, if they're cutting caught in wires, et cetera, this, this is something that, like, it would be better even economically to eliminate.

    3. LB

      I think you're right. The suffering is uneconomical at the level of an individual animal. So, like, the animals that we have selected for and the way we have treated them result in more of those animals dying, more of them having all kinds of welfare problems. The problem is that it is collectively more efficient. So, like, if you can cram twice as many animals into a barn-

    4. DP

      Right.

    5. LB

      ... it doesn't matter if 10% more of them die.

    6. DP

      Yeah.

    7. LB

      And so that's been the underlying model of this industry-

    8. DP

      Yeah.

    9. LB

      ... is that the reason welfare gets neglected is, yeah, it has, like, a slight cost, but the efficiency gains are so much greater. So I agree we should try and find things to reverse that. I mean, I am personally more optimistic about these kind of incremental reforms. Like, I think the average person listening to this is not thinking like, "Oh yeah, I'm really pumped for, like, the chicken, the brainless chickens to come along and like, just persuade me."

    10. DP

      But they're not pumped about the cultivated meat either, right?

    11. LB

      No, sure. And, and, like, this, but this is why you need a whole bunch of different approaches, right? Like this is why, because, like, there's no one solution that is going to satisfy everyone. And what I would say on the, on genetics is what feels way more achievable to me i- in the near term is to get rid of the genetic physical problems that ail these animals. So for instance, we've bred these chickens to be mutants that, like, collapse under their own weight. We know that we can breed for far higher welfare birds that are still commercially viable. And indeed, there are companies and there, there are places like Denmark where the industry has already moved entirely toward these higher welfare birds that have way better welfare outcomes, that suffer way less.

    12. DP

      What's different about them?

    13. LB

      So, so the first thing about them is they are more balanced overall. So where the industry has just selected for rapid breast meat growth and for really efficient feed conversion-... these birds have been bred to have robustness. So, they have broader legs, so like their legs don't collapse. They have better cardio systems, so they don't develop all these cardio problems. And, in general, they've just been bred for welfare outcomes. Like we're just like, "Let's just breed a bunch of birds and find the ones that die less and, like, generally s-"

    14. DP

      And are they, are they less economical?

    15. LB

      They're slightly less economical. I mean, this is why. Because they have been, they haven't been ruthlessly selected-

    16. DP

      Right.

    17. LB

      ... for those two, two variables, the breast meat yield and, and feed conversion. So they cost a little bit more, and this is why you need advocacy to get people to adopt them, right?

    18. DP

      Right.

    19. LB

      And so there has been huge advocacy in France, in Germany, in Denmark to get this. And in fact, just last month, uh, the largest French chicken producer, the LDC Group, committed to moving its two main brands to these higher welfare genetics.

    20. DP

      Why, why not think that they will just be eaten up in terms of their welfare impact? To the extent that the economics of the industry for a century have been cram more things in, you know, figure out how to optimize along axes which just make the animal incredibly unhealthy and, um, immiserated for longer and in more extreme ways. Like, okay, we'll come up with an de novo sexing, but then there will be another thing which is the equivalent of gestation crates. Why think that, even technologically, the thing that is favored is the, um, is the suffering-free optimizations?

    21. LB

      Yeah. I mean, I, I think you're right. This is the story of a lot of the industry's efforts to improve welfare.

    22. DP

      Yeah.

    23. LB

      So for example, there was a study back in the '90s where they taught chickens how to select pain relief laced feed, and they found the broiler chickens were all selecting the pain relief laced feed, suggesting they were all in chronic pain.

    24. DP

      Yeah.

    25. LB

      And the industry said like, "Don't worry, we'll address it. Like, we'll strengthen their legs." So they went away and they, like, strengthened their legs for a bit. And then they were like, "Wow, it's great. Like, the chickens have stronger legs now. Like, they can, like, go and eat more stuff and we can put more weight on those legs." (laughs) And so then they made them, like, bigger and essentially undid those gains. And in recent years, we've seen the mortality rate in the industry rising again and getting worse, so presumably they have just pushed so far again in that direction.

    26. DP

      Right.

    27. LB

      So, I think that's a major risk. I think this is why you need government or corporations involved. This is why you need government setting down a baseline standard saying, "You can't go below this welfare floor." For instance, in Denmark, the government is strongly encouraging the move toward these higher welfare breeds and looking to ban low welfare outcome breeds entirely.

    28. DP

      Yeah.

    29. LB

      And you need to maintain those, you need to maintain those higher welfare outcomes. Uh, and I think this is what you need in corporate supply chains too. So this is also what you see with, like, the French retailers moving away from these low welfare breeds. You need them to maintain those standards, because you're right, the industry left to its own, on its own will always find a race to the bottom.

    30. DP

      Mm. So, potentially, we could find ways to make animals even bigger, um, with the future forms of biological progress that some of my guests, uh, talk about. It's already the case that it's better to eat beef than chicken, because cows just have so much more meat per brain. Um, what if we just governed the myostatin inhibitor genes or whatever, and then now there, there's even more meat per cow. Is it, is that better because you have more meat per cow, or is it worse because it's potentially going to lead to the same dynamic of these overgrown, uh, more suffering animals? Um, which way does that tilt?

  5. 28:21 – 37:26

    $1 can prevent 10 years of animal suffering

    1. DP

      Yeah. Okay, so the positive spin on that can be that because of how big the problem is and how, um, neglected it is, the ability of any one person to have a big impact might genuinely shock them. So let's get into that. You are the biggest funder in this space, but cumulatively between you and the others, what is the amount of smart money that is being allocated to this problem?

    2. LB

      Yeah, so we think less than $300 million is being devoted to all work globally around every possible solution to factory farming across every country, and less than 200 million of that is what you would probably consider smart money, going to evidenced-based effective interventions. So to put that into perspective, philanthropic climate advocacy alone is 50 times bigger than that. The, the work of cat and dog shelters and rescue groups in the US alone, 25 times bigger than that. There are individual conservation and poverty charities that are five to 10X bigger than that. So this is a tiny amount of money for the purpose of social reform, and yet it has achieved a huge amount impacting hundreds of millions, billions of animals.

    3. DP

      What would happen if the amount of funding in this space doubled from the 200, 300 million you mentioned that is being spent smartly? I know you'll say there's a bunch of things we could optimize around, right? There's so many neglected issues. But is there an immediate thing which you're like, "This is, this is the thing that is directly at the margin. The next 100 million or the next 10 million would enable this"?

    4. LB

      Uh, I think additional funding would be transformative. I mean, we have a playbook that works on a number of these issues. So one of the first things would be holding companies to account for animal welfare policies they've already made.

    5. DP

      Mm.

    6. LB

      We've got huge numbers of companies that made commitments to getting rid of battery cages and are now trying to back out of them or ignore them. With additional campaign funding, we could hold them to those and, as a result, immediately improve the conditions of millions of animals. For years, the industry used these battery cages that are these microwave oven-sized cages. They cram as many hens in as they can and they, they leave them there for years. And we know consumers don't think this is acceptable, but the industry doesn't disclose their use of them. It's not like when you pick up a pack of eggs, it has a big thing saying, "From cage to hands," or, like, an image of where they came from.And so advocates went to the largest retailers, the largest fast food chains and said, "You need to move away from this because your consumers already expect this of you. This is what your consumers clearly want and clearly don't accept this practice." And they got pledges from almost all of the largest food companies, not just in the US but globally-

    7. DP

      Hmm.

    8. LB

      ... to move away from these practices, and we're already seeing that this transition has already spared over 200 million hens a year from these battery cages. So the US has gone from less than 10% cage-free to 47% cage-free. The European Union is now 62% cage-free. This is a huge transition.

    9. DP

      How do they do this?

    10. LB

      So, I mean, they, they captured th- this, this basic divide between what consumers expected was already happening and what was actually happening.

    11. DP

      I, I loved this, uh, specific example of... Like, there, there's a super tractable thing that is, like, immediately available with the next millions of dollars in funding. Is there a particular charity which works on these campaigns in particular?

    12. LB

      Well, I think that one great way to support them is to support a diversified portfolio of groups. So, uh, there's a group, FarmKind, that allows people to donate to a variety of groups, and two of those groups that you can donate to through that platform, the Humane League and Synergy for Animals, are both working on exactly this.

    13. DP

      I think people just might not be aware of the ratio of dollars to suffering averted in this space. Um, yeah, if, if, if you can give some sense of what we're talking about, uh, do- dollar to suffering here.

    14. LB

      Sure. So the work to get hens out of cages has already spared over 200 million hens-

    15. DP

      Right.

    16. LB

      ... from cages. The work to improve the lives of broiler chickens has already benefited over a billion-

    17. DP

      Yeah.

    18. LB

      ... animals. That's just every year. And so-

    19. DP

      Wait, sorry. Two- it's 200 million a year?

    20. LB

      200 million a year.

    21. DP

      Oh, sorry, I missed that.

    22. LB

      Yeah.

    23. DP

      I thought it was a cumulative across...

    24. LB

      No, no, no. So the cumulative number were already well north of 500 million hens or into the billions of, of broiler chickens. And if you assume these things weren't just around the corner, they weren't just gonna happen anyway, if you think you probably sped up progress by years, decades, maybe it would never have happened-

    25. DP

      Right.

    26. LB

      ... then that's cumulative impact over those years and decades-

    27. DP

      Yeah.

    28. LB

      ... is giant. I mean, we're talking billions. We're talking tens of billions. Now, the amount of money spent just on, like, those corporate reforms, that was less than $100 million a year, uh, over a couple of years. And so it, it... We're, we're talking about a ratio that is far less than one to 10 of a dollar per year of, of animal, uh, wellbeing improved.

    29. DP

      Wait, so $1... You're saying $1 can do more than 10 years of a better, um, uh, a more humane life? That is stupendous, right?

    30. LB

      Yeah.

  6. 37:26 – 41:41

    Situation in China and the developing world

    1. DP

      Okay, so let's talk about, um, other countries because you are not only the biggest funder in this cause area in the United States, but globally, and in, obviously, an animal suffering in Sri Lanka or China is just as bad as an animal suffering here. So what is especially promising, especially given that more people in these countries will start eating meat and this problem is getting worse over time and it's getting worse because people are getting wealthier and eating more meat, what seems like the most useful intervention or the u- u- useful thing to understand about, um, uh, what to do about that?

    2. LB

      Yeah, I think there are a couple of things. So the first is countries where their protein consumption is rapidly growing and there is not yet a deeply entrenched animal agricultural industry have the ability to do things differently, and, in particular, they have the ability to support alternative protein work without that being politically toxic. And so, for example, we see China investing very heavily in cultivated meat research. The majority of patents coming out globally on cultivated meat now are coming out from public universities in China. So this is, I mean, this is a case where it's just, like, the US is being overtaken because we have this entrenched industry that is, that is ferociously lobbying. I also think there's a potential to extend animal welfare policies globally. So we're seeing multinationals like Unilever and Nestle and even Burger King saying, "We shouldn't have cages in our supply chain globally." And this creates the potential to spread best practices just in the same way that factory farming spread from the United States globally.

    3. DP

      But factory far- farming spread because it was cheaper.

    4. LB

      Right.

    5. DP

      Not because there was some law passed that everybody else felt, felt the need to copy.

    6. LB

      That's right. That's right. So, so we had essentially the, the, uh, economic efficiency spread factory farming.

    7. DP

      Right.

    8. LB

      And in some cases, that can spread higher welfare tax. So for example, in ovo-sexing technology, once that has been de-risked enough, once it has, has been scaled up in the Europe and the US, I'm optimistic it will become cheaper-

    9. DP

      Yeah.

    10. LB

      ... and then it will just be scaled out globally for a number of reasons. But there's also, uh, we can spread moral progress. So, I mean, we know that people in these countries also care about animal welfare. And I, I had a fascinating conversation. I went to a trade show and I talked with a company that manufactures crates, manufactures gestation crates, and I was like, "You know, what do you think about the future sales of these crates?" And they're like, "Well, we already have stopped selling them in Europe and the US." And I was like, "Yeah, do you think you're gonna be able to sell them in Asia forever?" And they're like, "No way." Like, as Asia gets, like, richer and is, like, on social media and sees the images and things, like, they're not gonna be cool with this either. Like, we know there is a li- a limit to how long we're gonna be able to sell these things for, and I think that gives me some optimism, that I think as countries get richer, they generally get more concerned about this issue, and that then enables them to adopt animal welfare reforms as we've seen in the West.

    11. DP

      Mm. On net, is there a Kuznets curve here where initially they get wealthier, wealthy enough to have, afford the most economical forms of meat, which are battery cages, et cetera, and then they get even wealthier so that they can afford the potentially slightly more expensive versions of meat which are more humane? Or on net is just, like, you keep eating more meat through this whole process so even if it gets slightly more ethical, the amount of meat consumption will have, like, uh, 2X or 3X? So, um, wealth always correlates with more suffering, basically.

    12. LB

      Yeah, it's mixed.

    13. DP

      Okay.

    14. LB

      So, so far globally, wealth has heavily correlated with more suffering. I mean, the, the, the drive of people getting richer has led to them eating far more meat and, and far more of that coming from factory farming, and we have overwhelmingly seen that trend across all countries. In a few European countries, we are starting to see the dynamic where once countries have reached a certain degree of wealth, they are able to impa- to, to bring about reforms that actually reduce the total amount of suffering. Like, I think it is quite likely that Germany has passed the top of that curve and is now on the other side of, of diminishing total animal suffering.

    15. DP

      Mm.

    16. LB

      The critical thing to bear in mind is this does not happen on its own. Like, in Germany this happened because there are very talented advocates who harnessed that public opinion and concern to drive corporate reforms with the retailers and to drive government policy reforms.

    17. DP

      Right.

    18. LB

      And I think we need to do that. Like, I don't think you can just count that people are gonna get to a certain degree of wealth and this is gonna happen.

    19. DP

      Mm.

    20. LB

      I think it only happens if there is advocacy to mobilize

  7. 41:41 – 53:23

    How the meat lobby got a lock on Congress

    1. LB

      that public opinion.

    2. DP

      So difficulty that these animal welfare policies have had is even if you outlaw a practice domestically, to the extent that it's cheaper to produce meat that way, people will just import meat produced that way that is made elsewhere, and so states in the US who have tried to do this have had this problem, um, countries in Europe that have tried to do this have had this problem. H- how do you solve the lowest common denominator problem in, um, in animal welfare standards?

    3. LB

      Yeah, it's a huge problem. So advocates in the US passed ballot measures in Florida and Arizona to ban gestation crates, and then the pork industry just imported crated pork from other states into those states.

    4. DP

      Mm-hmm.

    5. LB

      So advocates then went to California and Massachusetts and passed ballot measures that extended the same standards to the sale of pork within the states, said you can't sell pork from crated pigs anywhere. I think that is a critical move, and we're seeing the European Union now considering doing the same thing, imposing animal welfare standards equally on imports. I think that policy is, is critical.... to not just ensuring that you're not getting these, th- these laws undercut, but also to changing the political dynamic. Because domestic farmers, local farmers are gonna be very opposed to any law if they realize they're just gonna get undercut-

    6. DP

      Right.

    7. LB

      ... by out-of-state competition, rightly so. And so I think this is a chance to also change that political dynamic, so they can actually support the law, knowing that they are not at a relative disadvantage.

    8. DP

      Right. Um, and potentially reversed by an upcoming bill, right?

    9. LB

      This is right. So the- the pork industry (laughs) unfortunately has looked at these laws in California and Massachusetts and wants to do everything it can to undermine them. I mean, it knows this is the only way it can be effectively regulated, given it has an absolute hold on the legislature in Iowa and North Carolina, which are the main states for- for pork production. It knows that it needs to stop any other state from setting production standards or- or sale standards. And so it first went to the Supreme Court. At first said, "This is unconstitutional. The states can't do this," and the Supreme Court disagreed. We won at the Supreme Court, and so now it has gone to Congress. And it's saying to Congress, "You need to wipe out these state laws. You need to stop them from doing this." And the unfortunate thing is the- the Senate and the House are both on track to do that. So in the upcoming Farm Bill, there is language that would ban states from passing laws, uh, on the sale standard, on- on animal welfare sale standards on goods. And right now, the default path is that that will pass as part of the Farm Bill in the next few months.

    10. DP

      Okay, so if these advocates are able to pass these laws or ballots at the state level, and it's popular enough that they're passing, why is it at the national level they can't make a ruckus about this and prevent this from getting added to the full Farm Bill?

    11. LB

      The first problem's structural. So at- at the state level, they've had to use ballot measures to get around entrenched lobbies. In this case, things start out in the House and Senate Ag Committees, which are heavily dominated by agricultural interests.

    12. DP

      Yeah.

    13. LB

      The majority of House members, I think, signed a letter against this in the last Congress, but the vast majority of them are not on the- on the Ag Committee. And so the Ag Committee gets to decide what's in this bill-

    14. DP

      Ah.

    15. LB

      ... and the people on the Ag Committee, I mean, they just- the House Ag Committee just hosted a hearing on this. They only invited lobbyists for the industry. They didn't bother to invite a single-

    16. DP

      Right.

    17. LB

      ... opposing witness to their hearing. We're also seeing that the- the industry is much better organized and funded on this effort than advocates are. So the industry is constantly flying out, a bunch of big industrial pork farmers, claiming they speak for the entire industry, telling the legislators this is their number one priority and absolutely has to be done. By contrast, animal welfare groups are not getting the same hearing, so legislators are not taking them as seriously as they take these- as they take these ag groups.

    18. DP

      But shouldn't there be, um, some political constituency that's formed by the pork producers who are using more ethical standards and who are themselves being undercut by these Iowa farm- farmers? Why aren't they, uh, getting flown out to these Congressional hearings and-

    19. LB

      That's exactly right. There is a large constituency of family farmers who support these laws, because it has created a new market opportunity for them-

    20. DP

      Right.

    21. LB

      ... where they can sell their already higher welfare meat and not be undercut by the industrial stuff. The problem they have is that they are far less wealthy and organized than the industrial pork interests. And so, like, they don't have the money to, like, just fly themselves to DC. They can't stop farming. Like, the people who are actually doing family farming can't just, like, go to DC and, like, hang out for a week, 'cause they need to be farming and, like, looking after the pigs on their farm.

    22. DP

      But, um, th- the- the meat lobbyists also, given that it's a commodity business, you would think that there wouldn't be that much surplus that they can dedicate to political lobbying. So everybody here is, like, not doused in cash.

    23. LB

      (laughs)

    24. DP

      We can't subsidize a couple plane tickets for these family farmers? Like, what's going on?

    25. LB

      So we have- I- I mean, there- there are people who are- who are, uh, funding some of these family farmers to go to Washington, DC, but we could see a far bigger effort. I think that that voice is being hugely neglected-

    26. DP

      Right.

    27. LB

      ... in the debate. The other thing I'll say on- on the- the money the pork industry has is, yes, it's a commodity business, but it's also an o- oligopoly. And so you've got a very small number of firms that process the vast majority of pigs, and they do seem to make outsized profits. So they don't make the kind of profits you would expect, and across these industries, we constantly see price fixing scandals and other antitrust scandals, because it's a very small number of companies and it only requires minimal coordination for them to make- to make greater profits than you would think they could.

    28. DP

      Hmm. That might be good for animal welfare-

    29. LB

      (laughs)

    30. DP

      ... in the sense that if they can extract greater surplus, it makes it more possible for them to potentially invest in animal welfare. Not that they're necessarily doing it, but it would, like- it would make it possible.

  8. 53:23 – 57:42

    Business structure of the meat industry

    1. DP

      So, you- you should describe the f- sort of franchise hierarchy type structure of a lot of these meat companies. But you would anticipate that, yes, the Purdues and Tysons of the world would want a particular thing to happen in terms of political processes. But the farmers who are indebted to these companies often have an adversarial relationship. Why are they able to form an effective political coalition with them?

    2. LB

      Yeah, this is a great point. I think most people don't realize that the way these factory farms are structured is you have these giant corporations, like Tyson Foods or Smithfield. They mostly don't own their own farms. Instead, they have these contract farmers who are essentially indentured laborers. I mean, they- they have a huge loan hanging over their head and they're farming. And so why- why would those people support this? The answer is they often don't. And I think the, uh, agribusiness lobbying associations have done a very good job of pretending they do. So they, uh, present themselves as representing the farmers. But if you look at their boards, if you look at the people who are actually leading these organizations, it's made up of people from the giant agribusinesses and the very largest industrial farmers. They do not have small contract farmers on the boards of these organizations.

    3. DP

      Mm.

    4. LB

      And so I- I think it really is a bit of a bait and switch where they claim to be representing those family farmers but they're not.

    5. DP

      And what is the reason that these contract farmers are willing to work with these large businesses? Because people will often say things like, "Oh, Uber is bad for Uber drivers."

    6. LB

      Mm-hmm.

    7. DP

      And I'm just like, I trust Uber drivers to know what's best for them.

    8. LB

      (laughs)

    9. DP

      Why would these small farmers be working with these companies in the first place if it's uneconomical for them?

    10. LB

      Yeah, so it- it depends. I mean, for some people it is just their, the- the- the least bad option they have, right?

    11. DP

      Mm-hmm.

    12. LB

      Uh, and especially if someone just has a little wee bit of land and they wanna preserve that land and they don't have other skills they can use.

    13. DP

      Mm-hmm.

    14. LB

      But, you know, I mean, I- I was, uh, chatting with this guy, Craig Watts, who is a, a chicken contract farmer for Perdue. And he told me that when he got into the business-... they made all these exorbitant claims to him. I mean, they said, "You're going to be making over $100,000 within years." They, they said, "Just get out this loan and it's going to be incredible." Told him all the things that could go right. And then he got into the business and they slowly started eroding the payments to him. So they slowly started paying him less and less, they slowly got to a point where he was making less and less money. And he wanted out, but by that point, he couldn't get out because he had this giant loan hanging over his head.

    15. DP

      Mm.

    16. LB

      And so I do think you've got a bunch of these people who are stuck in this situation and there aren't easy alternatives, 'cause normally in one area, there will only be one processor that has a slaughterhouse in that area.

    17. DP

      Mm.

    18. LB

      So there's not effective competition going on. Also, often you'll locked in these long term contracts as well. So, there, there is an element of people being locked in this and then there's an element of people just not having better choices.

    19. DP

      Right. And what is the alternative use of that land? So if you didn't work with some centralized processor, is the alternative use of that land for farming? Like if you've inherited some land and you, like, want to figure out what to do with it, what can you do with it?

    20. LB

      I, I mean, I think ideally we would see pasture-based farming in those places and, you know, it doesn't require that much land, for instance, to have a pasture-based chicken farm. The problem is you would need to find a processor that you could work with-

    21. DP

      Mm.

    22. LB

      ... and normally that just doesn't exist. So normally you've only got the giant players in an area and they say, "We just want commodity production. We don't want to fund you to do this pasture raised stuff." And so you get locked into that contract. And so oftentimes people who are doing pasture raised production have to create their entire supply chain by themselves. Like, they, they literally have to build their own slaughterhouse-

    23. DP

      Mm.

    24. LB

      ... and create their entire supply chain around that, which drives up costs massively.

    25. DP

      Why is that? Because there must be enough consumers who want... Even if it's, um, not a majority of consumers, there must be enough that there's some economic incentive to set up the economies of scale and supply chains that would make it easier to set up such a farm, right? So why doesn't that exist?

    26. LB

      So there are people who are trying. So Niman Ranch, for instance, has done this with independent pork farmers. There was a big effort to do this by Cooks Ventures with pasture raised chicken.

    27. DP

      Mm.

    28. LB

      And unfortunately, they just went out of business. And I think the reason they went out of business is because there is such huge mislabeling across the industry that it's very hard to separate out what's actually better. So for instance, much factory farmed chicken in the US is sold with the label all natural and we know from surveys that people think all natural means the chickens were outside. It actually means nothing. But if you're trying to sell your product as, like, pasture raised next to a product that says all natural and people think it means the same thing-

    29. DP

      Right.

    30. LB

      ... and your product costs $2 more, you're not, you're not gonna get very far, right? And so I think so long as we have this rampant mislabeling, it's very hard for the, for the other players to, to get ahead.

  9. 57:42 – 1:08:04

    Corporate campaigns are underrated

    1. DP

      I guess, uh, I was wondering, so if you... Um, there's, like, normal bananas and there's organic bananas-

    2. LB

      Mm-hmm.

    3. DP

      ... and people are willing to pay quite a bit more for organic bananas. I feel like pasture raised should be in a similar embedding space as, like, organic where, like, organics is a huge industry even though it has dubious, uh, uh-

    4. LB

      (laughs)

    5. DP

      ... medical benefits, um, et cetera. So then the que- the problem is not that if there was accurate labeling you think there might be consumer demand to make this a viable, um, much larger industry, it's just that it's, it's very hard for consumers to identify which is which?

    6. LB

      Yes. So, I mean, I think you actually see that in the egg sector in the US. So within eggs, there is clearer labeling. Cage free actually means something, pasture raised actually means something, you can't put the all natural label on. And what we see is that the pasture raised egg sector is growing rapidly and even then, it is still handicapped by the fact that supermarkets use this as a price differentiation tool so they know that wealthier consumers prefer pasture based eggs and are also less price sensitive.

    7. DP

      Right.

    8. LB

      And so they mark them up heavily.

    9. DP

      Yeah.

    10. LB

      So the, the price you see is way inflated beyond the actual cost difference and yet still that is a rapidly growing sector.

    11. DP

      Okay, so this is one thing I wanted to ask you about. One point you've often made is you have to understand that meat and agriculture generally is a commodity business. Um, in a commodity business you'd expect all margins to be competed away. I think it's in one of your blog posts that for a dozen eggs it costs 19 cents more to have them be cage free, but often chains will charge on the order of $1.70 more for, uh, cage free eggs. So if it's a commodity business, why is it possible for supermarkets to extract this extra margin?

    12. LB

      I think this is the non-commodity part of, of the-

    13. DP

      Mm-hmm.

    14. LB

      ... of the industry but I mean, the, the broader context on those retailers is US retailers... Almost all the top US retailers have made pledges to stop selling eggs from caged hens.

    15. DP

      Mm.

    16. LB

      What they are now saying, a lot of them were meant to do that by this year and a lot of them have not done it. Walmart, Kroger have not followed through. And what they say is, "Well, our, our consumers don't want the cage free eggs because they're way more expensive."

    17. DP

      Right.

    18. LB

      And it's true, they're way more expensive. They're selling them for, like, $1 to $2 more per dozen.

    19. DP

      Right.

    20. LB

      When you look at the underlying production costs, it's only 19 cents difference.

    21. DP

      Yeah.

    22. LB

      And so what we see is these retailers are using this as an opportunity to get a big markup with less price sensitive consumers and are in the process massively hampering their ability to fulfill their commitments. By contrast, Costco went 100% cage free. They followed through on their promise. And what we see is they are now selling cage free eggs for the same price as Walmart sells its caged eggs.

    23. DP

      Mm.

    24. LB

      So there is that competitive pressure. Once cage free becomes the new baseline, it does become the commodity market-

    25. DP

      Right.

    26. LB

      ... and you do see those margins competed away. Same thing in states where they've banned the sale of caged eggs. Cage free eggs now cost the same thing as the caged eggs cost next door.

    27. DP

      Mm.

    28. LB

      So you do see that competed away once it becomes the commodity. It's until it reaches that point that you're seeing these, these crazy margins.

    29. DP

      Interesting. Each of these companies are already, um, making these commitments, in many cases following through on them, to move towards more ethical ways of procuring meat, procuring eggs, et cetera. I think I learned from you that McDonald's is... Has, um, made these commitments or that Chipotle has made these commitments. I didn't learn from McDonald's. Um, what is the reason that this is not a more prominent part of their own advertising given how much consumers, um... How universally popular animal welfare is?

    30. LB

      So the very best companies are advertising this.

Episode duration: 1:08:04

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