Peter Singer to donate more than $300K to help factory farmed animals
Philosopher Peter Singer has been awarded $1 million as the winner of the 2021 Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture. As is fitting of both the ‘father of effective altruism’ and the author of the extremely influential book Animal Liberation, Singer plans to donate a third of the money to the most effective organisations working to end factory farming. As for the rest, half will go to the organisation he founded to fight poverty, while he is asking the public for suggestions for where to donate the remainder.
Writing in Project Syndicate last week, he points out that since Animal Liberation’s publication in 1975, “Factory farming remains a horror, ruthlessly exploiting tens of billions of land animals every year, and vast numbers of fish, too. Animal production is also a major contributor to climate change, and adds to the risk of pandemics.” He will choose the most effective organisations to donate to as recommended by Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE).
Effective altruism is a philosophy and social movement that advocates the use of evidence and reasoning to determine the best way to benefit others, rather than doing what feels good or what you personally care about the most. This is based on utilitarian ethics; doing the most good for the greatest number of people. ACE applies this framework to assess the effectiveness of charities dedicated to advocating for nonhuman animals.
So what are the top charities recommended by ACE that are likely to receive a share of Singer’s prize money?
1. The Albert Schweitzer Foundation
This non-profit “works to improve animal welfare standards through their corporate outreach, corporate campaigns, and legal work.” It has a particular focus on farmed fish and chickens, which are both exploited in the largest numbers and often the least protected animals in the industrial food system, working with corporations to implement welfare improvements for farmed chickens, such as through the European Chicken Commitment and expanding the work on their Aquaculture Welfare Initiative.
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Those who see the welfarist approach to animal agriculture as insufficient or a way of entrenching industrial animal agriculture may disagree that such an organisation is truly helping animals. But welfarists would point out that as long as the food system functions as it does, improving the conditions in which chickens and fish are farmed does matter.
2. The Humane League
The Humane League operates in the UK, the U.S., Mexico, and Japan, also advocating for welfare reforms in animal agriculture. Additionally, it works to reduce meat and dairy consumption through the promotion of Veganuary. ACE rates it for, among other things, its strong movement-building and monitoring of corporate compliance with welfare regulations.
3. The Good Food Institute (GFI)
GFI works in the U.S., Brazil, India, Hong Kong, Singapore, Europe, and Israel, to “increase the availability of animal-free products through supporting the development and marketing of plant-based and cell-cultured alternatives to animal products.” It engages in a mix of legislative advocacy, lobbying, corporate engagement, event organizing, research, and campus outreach. Helping alternatives to animal-based foods to gain funding and traction in different contexts is a really important way to move away from animal agriculture. But one caveat from ACE is that it seems “relatively uncertain when cell-cultured animal products will be competitive because their success depends on progress in research, development, and legal conditions.”
4. Wild Animal Initiative (WAI)
WAI is a U.S.-based organization working on a relatively neglected issue: how to alleviate the suffering and improve the welfare of wild animals. It conducts and promotes research on the subject, and ACE believes “that WAI’s goal of building an academic field for wild animal welfare is an ambitious but promising avenue for creating long-term change.”
While WAI does not directly help farmed animals, many wild animals are unseen victims of animal farming, through habitat loss, being hunted for competing with resources such as grazing land and water for livestock and catching diseases that emerge from factory farms.
Claire Hamlett is a freelance journalist, writer and regular contributor at Surge. Based in Oxford, UK, Claire tells stories that challenge systemic exploitation of and disregard for animals and the environment and that point to a better way of doing things.
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