This is a linkpost for https://bobjacobs.substack.com/p/which-meat-to-eat-co-vs-animal-suffering
Let me reassure you that there’s more than enough protein available in plant-based foods. For example, here’s how much grams of protein there is in 100 gram of meat
That is misleading because most foods are mostly water, included the (cooked) meats you list, but the first 4 of the plant foods you list have had their water artificially removed: soy protein isolate; egg white, dried; spirulina algae, dried; baker’s yeast.
Moreover, the human gut digests and absorbs more of animal protein than of plant protein. Part of the reason for this is the plant protein includes more fragments that are impervious to digestive enzymes in the human gut and more fragments (e.g., lectins) that interfere with human physiology.
Moreover, there are many people who can and do eat 1 or even 2 lb of cooked meat every day without obvious short-term consequences whereas most people who would try to eat 1 lb of spirulina (dry weight) or baker's yeast (dry weight) in a day would probably get acute distress of the gut before the end of the day even if the spirulina or yeast was mixed with plenty of other food containing plenty of water, fiber, etc. Or at least that would be my guess (having eaten small amounts of both things): has anyone made the experiment?
I've eaten 150+ grams of raw nutritional yeast in a day without much issues. I'd worry more about getting excessive amounts of certain vitamins. I agree though, this is not a feasible thing to do for most people. Also it tastes terrible so I would not recommend.
Thank you for your thoughtful analysis. It's truly a nuanced discussion that the article brings to light. The comparison between CO₂ emissions and animal suffering highlights the moral complexity involved in making dietary choices. I agree that tofu and soy milk stand out as the best options for those who are conscious of both environmental and ethical impacts.
However, as you mentioned, the reliance on specific data points means that we need to stay updated with new research to make informed decisions. It's also important to consider that the sheer scale of suffering in factory farms is often underestimated in public discourse compared to climate change, despite the significant ethical implications.
Your point about the moral equivalence of CO₂ emissions and animal suffering is thought-provoking. It really drives home the importance of considering both factors when choosing what to consume. Hopefully, this discussion will encourage more people to think critically about their dietary habits and make choices that align with their values.
Animal agriculture generates an ungodly amount of animal suffering and greenhouse gas emissions. Ideally, everyone would adopt a vegan diet[1], but since this appears to be too much to ask for most people, the next question becomes: which food is the least bad?
Here we run into an uncomfortable observation. Meat from larger animals tends to produce more CO₂, while meat from smaller animals tends to cause more animal suffering.
This makes intuitive sense: when converting animals into a set mass of meat, more individual animals must suffer if they are smaller. We can see this in the data, e.g., we slaughter 309 million cows per year, while the number of chickens slaughtered exceeds 75 Billion per year.
Let's start by comparing greenhouse gas emissions. Which foods have the lowest CO₂ impact?
Here’s how many kilograms of CO₂-equivalized emissions are produced per kilogram of food (some create methane etc, but that’s accounted for by converting it into the same unit), ranked from worst to best:
Beef (beef herd) 99.48 kg
Lamb & Mutton 39.72 kg
Beef (dairy herd) 33.3 kg
Prawns (farmed) 26.87 kg
Cheese 23.88 kg
Fish (farmed) 13.63 kg
Pig Meat 12.31 kg
Poultry Meat 9.87 kg
Eggs 4.67 kg
Rice 4.45 kg
Tofu 3.16 kg
Milk 3.15 kg
Soy milk 0.98 kg
As we can see, larger animals tend to create more CO₂.
Can we create a similar ranking for animal suffering? Yes we can, if we take the sentience figures from this report and apply it to the production process used to create the meat. Here’s the equivalized days of suffering per kg of food (some have bigger brains etc, but that’s accounted for by converting it into the same unit), ranked from worst to best:
Farmed catfish 290 d
Battery cage eggs 42 d
Farmed salmon 27 d
Chicken 27 d
Turkey 15 d
Pork 3.9 d
Beef 0.8 d
Milk 0.049 d
Tofu 0 d
Soy milk 0 d
As we can see, the smaller animals tend to produce more suffering. The best products on these lists, both in terms of animal suffering and CO₂, are tofu and soy milk.
For those who don't want to go vegan, milk is still comparatively good in terms of both CO₂ and animal suffering, so you might want to go vegetarian then. But for those who want to keep eating meat, we have a dilemma between CO₂ and animal suffering. Compare beef and chicken again. Beef has ten times the CO₂ impact of chicken meat, but chicken meat has 34 times higher impact on suffering than beef.[2]
Now, don’t take these exact numbers as gospel. We’re still in the process of researching this so I expect the exact numbers to change over time. If you want to use different numbers you can play with the calculations using this interactive chart.[3] The important thing is not the exact numbers but rather the orders of magnitude; which clearly point in the direction of meat production with smaller animals creating more suffering.
Farmed fish is terrible in terms of animal welfare and pretty bad in terms of CO₂, so best avoid that. Beef is terrible in terms of CO₂, but comparatively good in terms of animal suffering (the word "comparative" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there). So if you don't care about animals but do care about CO₂, beef is the most important one to avoid. For those who only care about animals, farmed fish and chickens are the most important to avoid.
For those of you who are having trouble weighing the two against one another, consider this: When choosing between, e.g, chicken and beef, you're effectively choosing between creating the equivalent of 89 kg more CO₂ (with beef) or the equivalent of 26 days more torture (with chicken). To put this into context, a campfire produces about 10 kg of CO₂. Would you rather make 9 campfires or start torturing for 26 days?[4] Are people who have a hearth morally equivalent to people who torture every day? Or what about a candle? It produces 0,01 kg of CO₂. Is lighting a candle worse than torturing an animal for a couple minutes? I would say: no, clearly not. The enormous quantity of suffering created in factory farms easily trumps the quantity of CO₂ that it creates.
We hear a lot about climate change in the news and online, while animal suffering gets little attention. But the scale of suffering that is produced in factory farms is unimaginably large. Please consider eating fewer small animals.
I’ve heard people object that they wouldn’t get enough protein if they did this. Let me reassure you that there’s more than enough protein available in plant-based foods. For example, here's how much grams of protein there is in 100 gram of meat:
And here's how much it is for some alternatives:
If you think that this doesn’t apply to you because you only eat “free-range” chicken meat. I’d hate to break it to you but the label of "free-range" is often put on treatments that are not substantially better for the lives of the chickens.
As seen in this great post by Bentham’s Bulldog
One possible reason someone could raise for prioritizing climate change, is that its effects are much more widespread and much longer lived. However, I don’t find this too convincing since the effect of one animal is so astronomically small. With 1.000.000.000.000.000 kg of CO₂ we have created 1.1 celsius of warming, so 89 kg is responsible for like 0,000.000.000.000.098 degrees of warming. The most accurate temperature sensors we have are RTDs who're accurate up to 0.1 degrees. Nothing comes remotely close to be able to detect that. Adding 89 kg to 1.000.000.000.000.000 kg is not even equivalent to a drop in the bucket, it's closer to adding another grain to the Sahara. 89kg is equivalent to flying for an hour. To offset 89 kg you need €6,30 in the EU's emission trading system. What would it take to offset 26 days of torture? Not €6,30 I'll tell you that much. And even if the EU is off by an order of magnitude, it's not €63 either.