Although this blog used to have a wider purpose, it now principally operates as the host of a newsletter about effective animal advocacy and broader moral circle expansion. The newsletter goes out each month, summarising: New research and effective animal advocacy content News and updates Jobs and grants Virtual or local events Conferences. You can sign up to get this newsletter by email here. It is also shared on the Effective Animal Advocacy – Discussion Facebook group. Formerly, the aims of the blog were: Reflections and recommendations for the effective animal advocacy community: Review ..read more

Here are a couple of results from within surveys (not focused on wild animal issues) that suggest that people assign more moral value to non-sentient environmental systems and biodiversity than they do sentient individuals. I think that, intuitively, we all know that people do this, but this social science research provides further evidence: 1) A paper on “Moral Expansiveness: Examining Variability in the Extension of the Moral World” asked participants to rate 30 different entities by the “moral standing” that they deserved. “Low-sentience animals” (chickens, fish, and bees) were deemed by pa ..read more

At EAG London, 2019, we encouraged the attendees of the farmed animal welfare meetup event to pick a smaller sub-group to join for the majority of the session. I hosted a sub-group discussing “movement-wide bottlenecks.” The 9 participants (including myself) included individuals working at 3 ACE-recommended “top charities,” 4 EAA researchers, and the 2 co-founders of a new animal advocacy organisation. I asked them the following question: “To what extent is each of the following a bottleneck for the farmed animal movement? (1 is that this is never a practical limiting factor. 3 is that this is ..read more

Disclaimer: I am an employee of Sentience Institute but, as usual, this post represents entirely my own views. There are already excellent resources considering the effectiveness of grassroots protests and how to maximise their effectiveness. These include: Animal Charity Evaluators’ report on protests. The list of likely positive and negative outcomes seems quite comprehensive, and the relevant evidence is clearly summarised. Sentience Institute’s foundational question summaries, especially on confrontation vs. nonconfrontation, individual vs. institutional interventions and messaging, and ..read more

This is a linkpost to a post I have written on the EA Forum. Below, I have copied over the summary. Click the link above for the full post. Organisations such as the Centre for Effective Altruism and 80,000 Hours, as well as the individuals involved in local effective altruism (EA) groups, have conducted excellent work supporting aspiring EAs to do good. However, these organisations and many of the individuals involved in local EA groups focus predominantly on supporting work on reducing existential risk (x-risk), either directly or indirectly, especially extinction risk. The communities of ot ..read more

In March 2019, Open Cages UK ran a poll through YouGov as part of their #TescoTruth campaign. The poll had 2,049 respondents. The results may be directly useful for other UK advocates for informing campaign strategy and messaging decisions. They may be of interest more widely, but the questions may be too specific to be of much direct use to advocates in other countries. Thanks to Connor Jackson and Open Cages for running the poll and sharing its results. You can see the full results here. In one question, “Generally speaking, which, if any, of the following are/would be important to you when ..read more

Announcing the effective animal advocacy community directory! This is a list of people who are interested in animal advocacy and effective altruism and would be happy for you to reach out to them to ask questions or arrange a 1-1. If you want to add yourself to this list you can fill out a form on the link in the top left. The idea is to facilitate connections and networking. We recommend copying this sheet into your own drive to sort by particular columns (e.g. to find local advocates or sort by primary area of expertise/interest). I hope you find it useful! Directory: https://tinyurl.com/yxz ..read more

At this link you can download a video of a talk I gave to Brooke, a horse welfare charity. The talk was intended to discuss some elements of EA that I thought would be useful to an animal organisation that doesn’t focus on farmed animals. (Feedback on the content or delivery is very welcome! Drop me a message at james_a_harris@hotmail.co.uk ..read more

Price: *** Ease of use: ***** Value for EAA beginners: ***** Value for EAA pros: **** Disclaimer: I work full-time for Sentience Institute. This post represents entirely my own views, rather than those of  my employers. Given that I work with Jacy, I am not the best person to write a review of the book, but I thought it was worth including the book on But Can They Suffer, so that the site can continue to list reviews of books from members of the EAA community. To some extent, The End of Animal Farming has a dual audience: 1) animal advocates seeking to integrate the perspectives and insight ..read more

Price: *** Ease of use: *** Value for EAA beginners: **** Value for EAA pros: ***** As ever, this post reflects my own views, not those of my employer. I previously reviewed Effective Altruism Global (London, 2017) here. I also attended EAG in 2018, and I wanted to update the review. If you’re interested, read the 2017 review first for context on how EAG works; this additional review is intended to add further comment after EAG has had time to change and develop and after I have been involved in the EA community for a further year, including taking on a full time role at Sentience Institute ..read more