Fund: Animal Welfare Fund

Payout date: November 21, 2019

Payout amount: $415,000.00

Grant author(s): Lewis Bollard, Natalie Cargill, Karolina Sarek, Alexandria Beck, Kieran Greig

Grant recipients:

• Plant Dining Partnerships – $40K
• Forgotten Animals – $30K
• Jakarta Animal Aid Network – $20K
• Crustacean Compassion – $40K
• Faunalytics – $40K
• Sinergia Animal – $35K
• Fair Fish International – $20K
• Wild Animal Initiative – $85K
• Rethink Priorities – $135K

Plant Dining Partnerships - $40k

Campaigns to further stock plant-based options at major selling points. Plant Dining Partnerships (PDP) is a new group that focuses on increasing the range of plant-based options at important points of the foodservice industry. We think they have concrete and reasonable plans to target several major chains and many foodservice providers with campaign tactics such as petitions, social media interactions, and garnered media coverage. We find it appealing that key PDP staff have considerable relevant experience and domain knowledge from their previous corporate campaign work with The Humane League. Overall, we see PDP’s approach and specific focus as a valuable addition to the movement’s overall institutional campaign efforts.

Forgotten Animals - $30K

To begin farm animal welfare outreach in Russia’s largest farming regions. Russia has the world’s fifth largest population of farmed land animals (about 830M alive at any time), but only very limited farm animal welfare work. This would support Russian animal advocate Tatyana Balandina to train with a European farm animal welfare group and begin outreach to producers and government on the importance of animal welfare. In particular, she would prepare an economic analysis making the case for reform and attend industry exhibitions to perform outreach with producers.

Jakarta Animal Aid Network - $20K

Supporting farmed animal advocacy in Indonesia. Many analyses cite Indonesia as one of the globe’s most important emerging markets, and in terms of number of farmed animals, Indonesia may only trail China and India. Similarly, Indonesia is likely in the top 10 countries in terms of total animal products consumed. Despite this, the country has very little organized factory farming advocacy. Jakarta Animal Aid Network is one of the only exceptions, and they’re interested in becoming one of the first Indonesian groups to join the Open Wing Alliance. We are excited that this group has an interest in completing corporate outreach, as well as investigations, and happy to offer support for them to further focus upon and implement farmed animal advocacy tactics.

Crustacean Compassion - $10K

Campaign seeking protection of crustaceans under UK Animal Welfare Act. This all-volunteer group is pursuing a narrow but important goal: to extend the legal protections of the UK Animal Welfare Act to decapod crustaceans like crabs and lobsters. They believe that Brexit may create an opportunity to do this, given the UK government is reconsidering its animal welfare laws for once EU directives cease to apply. They’ve already organized a public petition and open letter by 56 scientists, lawyers, and celebrities in support of the move. Although we can’t be sure that crustaceans are sentient, their huge numbers — perhaps 250-600B farmed globally every year — create the potential for huge suffering if they are. We view this grant as a pilot to test Crustacean Compassion’s ability to absorb more funds.

Faunalytics - $40K

To support two new studies. Faunalytics aims to empower animal advocates with access to the research, analysis, strategies, and messages that maximise their effectiveness to reduce animal suffering. We hope that their proposed new studies will provide advocates with useful data and actionable recommendations in high-priority areas such as fish and chicken welfare (Study: Reducing Fish and Chicken Suffering) and advocacy in LMICs (Study: Cultural Barriers and Supports to the Reduction of Animal Product Consumption).

Sinergia Animal - $35K

Reducing the suffering and consumption of farmed animals in promising but neglected countries in the global south. Singeria Animal have contributed to many corporate cage free commitments, and have been instrumental in securing a cage-free commitment from the hamburger chain Carl's Jr. in Chile and French retailer Carrefour in Argentina. We hope this funding will allow Sinergia Animal to further expand their work into the global south, focusing especially on countries lacking in farmed animal advocacy organizations.

Fair Fish International - $20K

General support. Fair Fish International has been involved in establishing a database (FishEthoBase) to make available all ethological knowledge on fish in the wild and in captivity, with a focus on improving fish welfare in aquaculture. Farmed fish welfare a priority for effective animal advocacy given the likelihood that farmed fish suffering is very large in scale, the neglectedness of the issue (even within farmed animal advocacy), and the tractability of interventions. We’re excited about Fair Fish International’s research and it’s potential for improving the welfare of farmed fish.

Wild Animal Initiative - $85K

Research to improve understanding of wild animal lives and identify tractable interventions to help them. In recent years the interest and concern about wild animal suffering have grown significantly, nonetheless, there are empirical uncertainties that need to be addressed with research before any action can be taken. Wild Animal Initiative aims to grow welfare biology as a field and to increase the quality of the research on this topic and reduce uncertainty around the assessment of the wild animal lives and cost-effectiveness of near-term interventions to address that problem.

Rethink Priorities - $135K

Research to help farmed and wild animals. Rethink Priorities focuses on conducting empirical research on neglected causes. Following up on our previous grants to Rethink Priorities, we are continuing to provide funding for their animal welfare focused research in 2019 and 2020. With this additional funding, they plan to research and analyze (i) policy opportunities in and outside of ballot measures (in and outside the US), (ii) multiple case studies to better understand wild animal lives, (iii) provide next steps for invertebrate welfare as a cause area and search for actionable interventions, (iv) quantify the number of vertebrates affected by humans that haven’t been previously enumerated, (v) and run surveys to better understand attitudes and opportunities for helping animals.