Episode Details

Note: This post was crossposted from the Coefficient Giving Farm Animal Welfare Research Newsletter by the Forum team, with the author's permission. The author may not see or respond to comments on this post.

Subtitle: How to crack the cruelty collective action problem

Last month, eight large UK fast food chains — including KFC, Nando's, and Burger King — scrapped their pledges to adopt higher-welfare chicken standards under the Better Chicken Commitment. They blamed supply shortages, demand shocks, even the climate impact of the promised reforms.

But suppose the reforms had been profitable. Does anyone really think these chains would have found those obstacles insurmountable? The reasons were rationalizations, not motivations.

Most cruelty to farm animals today persists for one simple reason: it is profitable. That logic explains far more than the press releases do. The familiar arguments about why cages are “necessary,” mutilations are “for the animals’ benefit,” and slower-growing breeds are “impractical” speak more to the creativity of PR firms than the realities of reform.

It wasn’t always this way — and it need not always be. The agricultural industrial revolution trapped farming in a cruelty collective action problem. How can we solve it?

When cruelty didn’t [...]

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First published:
March 12th, 2026

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/2fZwHSua53d2LekNy/make-cruelty-unprofitable-again

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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