Lewis Bollard: belief

Transcript context

…But factory farming spread because it was cheaper, not because there was some law passed that everybody else felt the need to copy. That's right. We essentially had economic efficiency spread factory farming. In some cases, that can spread higher welfare tech, for example, in-ovo sexing technology. Once that has been derisked enough, once it has been scaled up in Europe and the US, I'm optimistic it will become cheaper and then it will just be scaled out globally for economic reasons. But also, we can spread moral progress. We know that people in these countries also care about animal welfare. I had a fascinating conversation. I went to a trade show and I talked with a company that manufactures gestation crates. I was like, what do you think about the future sales of these crates? They're like, "Well, we already have stopped selling them in Europe and the US." I was like, "Do you think you'll just be able to sell them in Asia forever?" They're like, "No way. As Asia gets richer and is on social media and sees the images and things, they're not going to be cool with this either. We know there is a limit to how long we're going to be able to sell these things for." I think that gives me some optimism. 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. 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.…

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