Lewis Bollard: evaluation

Transcript context

…Could we make chickens or pigs with no brains? Because it’s the suffering we care about. To the extent that their bodies are just these incredibly well-evolved bioreactors for converting grain into meat whereas optimization has led to more and more cruelty in the past, in this case, this is the ultimate optimization. They're not moving around at all. They are literally just a machine for producing more meat. The suffering is in some sense inefficient, if they're pecking at other animals, if they're catching on wires, etc. This is something that it would be better, even economically, to eliminate. You're right. The suffering is uneconomical at the level of an individual animal. 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. If you can cram twice as many animals into a barn, it doesn't matter if 10% more of them die. That's been the underlying model of this industry. The reason welfare gets neglected is that it has a slight cost, but the efficiency gains are so much greater. I agree we should try and find things to reverse that. I am personally more optimistic about these kinds of incremental reforms. The average person listening to this is not thinking, "Oh yeah, I'm really pumped for the brainless chickens to come along and just persuade me." But they're not pumped about the cultivated meat either, right?…

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