I think people working on animal welfare have more incentives to post during debate week than people working on global health. The animal space feels (when you are in it) very funding constrained, especially compared to working in the global health and development space (and I expect gets a higher % of funding from EA / EA-adjacent sources). So along comes debate week and all the animal folk are very motivated to post and make their case and hopefully shift a few $. This could somewhat bias the balance of the debate. (Of course the fact that one side of the debate feels they needs funding so much more is in itself relevant to the debate.) 

Can we call it the Meat EatING problem? The currently labelled "meat eater problem" has been referred to a number of times during debate week. The forum wiki on the “meat eater” problem summarises it like this. “Saving human lives, and making humans more prosperous, seem to be obviously good in terms of direct effects. However, humans consume animal products, and these animal products may cause considerable animal suffering. Therefore, improving human lives may lead to negative effects that outweigh the direct positive effects.” I think this an important issue to discuss, although I think we should be extremely sensitive and cautious while discussing it. On this note I think we should re-label this the meat eating problem, as I think there are big upsides with minimal downside. 1. Accuracy: I don’t think the core problem actually the people who’s lives we are saving, its that they then eat meat and cause suffering. I think its important to separate the people from the core problem as this better helps us consider possible solutions 2. Persuasion: I think we’re more able to persuade if we discuss the problem separated from the people. I can talk about the “meat eating problem” with non-EA friends and it will be hard but they might understand, but if through the very name of the issue I make the people themselves the problem, that can easily make me seem callous, and people can switch off. 3. Fairness: Even if you disagree with me on accuracy and double down that the core problem is the people, I think its pretty unfair to lump the label of a serious philosophical problem on the poorest people on earth - people with little education who are often just trying to survive and have never had the chance to consider this issue.  It seems to me that this problem was mainly thought up and developed by the EA community (which is great), and we could probably just decide to call it something different from here on out. I’m asking the forum team to consider changing the name on the wiki as well. NB: @JWS 🔸 proposed this name change a couple of months ago, which got me thinking about it again.

Future debate week topics? 1. Global health & wellbeing (including animal welfare) vs global catastrophic risks, based on Open Phil's classifications. 2. Neartermism vs longtermism. 3. Extinction risks vs risks of astronomical suffering (s-risks). 4. Saving 1 horse-sized duck vs saving 100 duck-sized horses. I like the idea of going through cause prioritization together on the EA Forum.

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The plant-based foods industry should make low-phytoestrogen soy products. Soy is an excellent plant-based protein. It's also a source of the phytoestrogen isoflavone, which men online are concerned has feminizing properties (cf. soy boy). I think the effect of isoflavones is low for moderate consumption (e.g., one 3.5 oz block of tofu per day), but could be significant if the average American were to replace the majority of their meat consumption with soy-based products. Fortunately, isoflavones in soy don't have to be an issue. Low-isoflavone products are around, but they're not labeled as such. I think it would be a major win for animal welfare if the plant-based foods industry could transition soy-based products to low-isoflavone and execute a successful marketing campaign to quell concerns about phytoestrogens (without denigrating higher-isoflavone soy products). More speculatively, soy growers could breed or bioengineer soy to be low in isoflavones, like other legumes. One model for this development would be how normal lupin beans have bitter, toxic alkaloids and need days of soaking. But in the 1960s, Australian sweet lupins were bred with dramatically lower alkaloid content and are essentially ready to eat. Isoflavone content varies dramatically depending on the processing and growing conditions. This chart from Examine shows that 100 g of tofu can have anywhere from 3 to 142 mg of isoflavones, and 100 mg soy protein isolate can have 46 to 200 mg of isoflavones.