On Animal Welfare

What to do? I could find a new guy with twenty chickens. I could find a farm where I can go look at the chickens and verify that they aren’t in tiny cages and can do chicken business . But mostly, because I’m on a budget, and because none of my neighbors have twenty chickens, I buy tofu.

But the disadvantage of some of the more extreme views is that those groups have been marginalized, and their voices haven’t been consid -ered when management or regulatory decisions are mad

Faced with sloppy, conflicting, and at times disingenuous messaging over a product that still costs more and tastes worse, it seems only rational if consumers continue to fall back on a simple heuristic: What would your grand -mother eat?

Chinese people don’t reject common vegetarian foods because there is something fundamentally more valuable about meat. They do so because of perceived value — associations of plants with poverty and meat with prosperity

“Ethical cannibalism” is the idea that — wait, I’m kidding, come back. I’ve talked about everything from battery cages to zooplankton. What about the actual humans who produce the food? Well, I care about them too. I try to keep up with boycotts, to buy slavery-free chocolate, etc

I think it’s easy to get emotional about seeing a rat caught in a trap or a kangaroo shot, but I don’t think those direct impacts are the bigger story. The indirect stuff we’re doing through climate, through the spread of species and infectious agents and chemicals, are probably having really profound and accelerating impacts. My feeling is we’re... See more

There are no legal mandates anywhere on earth that food fish or shrimp be killed in a minimally painful way. Often, they asphyx -iate after being hauled into boats. It can take hours. Tofu is cheap. So are beans.

The eventual success of solar wasn’t augured by carefully constructed models of possible future outcomes. Rather, the decision to double down during one of solar’s pessi -mistic periods would have been an expression of determination that the future isn’t set in stone, but is shaped by idealists who take bold action in the face of uncertainty. When... See more

Abolition is an interesting concept. It seems very nonobvious to me that wild animals have higher welfare lives than domesticated animals. J: And I would say that many people would disagree with you directly