Lewis Bollard: evaluation

Transcript context

…On net, is there a Kuznets curve here? Initially they get wealthy enough to afford the most economical forms of meat, which are battery cages, etc., 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 it just that you keep eating more meat through this whole process? Even if it gets slightly more ethical, the amount of meat consumption will rise 2x or 3x. So wealth always correlates with more suffering, basically. It's mixed. So far globally, wealth has heavily correlated with more suffering. The drive of people getting richer has led to them eating far more meat and far more of that coming from factory farming. 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 bring about reforms that actually reduce the total amount of suffering. I think it is quite likely that Germany has passed the top of that curve and is now on the other side of diminishing total animal suffering. The critical thing to bear in mind is that this does not happen on its own. In Germany, this happened because there are very talented advocates who harnessed that public opinion and concern to drive corporate reforms to the retailers and to drive government policy reforms. We need to do that. I don't think you can just count that people are going to get to a certain degree of wealth and this is going to happen. I think it only happens if there is advocacy to mobilize that public opinion. A difficulty that these animal welfare policies have had is that 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. States in the US who have tried to do this have had this problem. Countries in Europe that have tried to do this have had this problem. How do you solve the lowest common denominator problem in animal welfare standards?…

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