Include animal suffering in institutional impact calculations
We’ve made our animal suffering estimates easier to use for institutional purposes, with per-kilogram and per-pound estimates of animal suffering and death at the point of wholesale purchase. You can use these numbers with food service managers and food procurement officers to convey the impact of their purchase decisions on animals. Combine them with estimates of climate impact to make the biggest difference: See our blog for details.
A lot of the work that’s being done with institutions is driven by a desire to reduce the carbon footprint. But we don’t want to focus too hard on the relative climate impact of different animal products because when they’re graphed, it gives the impression that switching from beef to chicken or fish is a huge improvement. That impression leaves animal suffering out of the equation. For a more inclusive way of thinking about the issue, we have to consider animal impact in the same breath as climate impact.
How many lives and days of suffering go into U.S. consumption of animal products every day?
When entrepreneurs and manufacturers create new plant-based products, what should they prioritize? When individuals want to incrementally reduce their consumption of animal products, what should they cut out first? The information you’ll find here is designed to answer those questions.
The infographics below list products like scrambled eggs, pork ribs, or fish filets. They rank each animal product by its impact on animals in the U.S. Further context can be found in our related blog post.
Top 10 Impactful Products
These infographics show the 10 products that could have the greatest impact for animals in the U.S. if they were replaced with plant-based or cultivated alternatives. They can be used by entrepreneurs, manufacturers, and advocates for large-scale reductions in animal suffering and death.
For Reducing Days Of Suffering
For Reducing Lives Taken
Looking for a spreadsheet that includes all 97 products? The dataset for total U.S. impact has it:
Top 3 Impactful Products Per Category
These infographics show the 3 most impactful products per category (chicken, pork, dairy, etc.), taking into account typical serving sizes and overall U.S. popularity. They can be used by companies who need to determine which specific consumer product to pursue first.
For Reducing Days Of Suffering
For Reducing Lives Taken
Looking for a spreadsheet that includes all 97 products? The dataset for total U.S. impact has it:
Wondering About Your Impact Per Serving As An Individual?
If you are a consumer or advocate trying to understand which foods on someone’s plate are most harmful to animals, the information below is for you.
While the infographics above describe the products with the greatest total impact on animals, their relative impact is partially determined by the popularity of various products. These individual-level lists describe the impact that a single person can have by cutting out one specific product versus another, all else being equal. They show the days and lives affected on a per-serving basis.
Top 10 Impactful Products For Individual Consumers
For Reducing Days Of Suffering
For Reducing Lives Taken
Looking for a spreadsheet that includes all 97 products? The dataset for individual impact has it:
Top 3 Impactful Products Per Serving In Each Category
These infographics show the 3 most impactful products per serving in each category. They can be used by individual consumers who want to cut out specific impactful products.
For Reducing Days Of Suffering
For Reducing Lives Taken
Looking for a spreadsheet that includes all 97 products? The dataset for individual impact has it:
Methodology Overview
The full documentation, sources, data, and code are available on the Open Science Framework.
This is a simplified overview of the methodology by which we arrived at the estimates in the infographics. For a detailed description of every step and data source, see the full Methodology document.
First, we got reports of which animal products people eat from a nationally representative, in-person survey of over 8,000 people in the U.S. We then categorized every food people reported eating in terms of the animal products and product formats it used. For example, chili con carne was categorized as containing ground beef, and the average weight for the beef portion of chili con carne was estimated from standard serving sizes provided with the dataset.
We multiplied our estimates of how much of each product people consume by the number of animal lives and days of suffering that go into each kilogram of edible animal product, using data from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), as well as a long list of articles and resources produced by industry, academics, or advocates — the most reliable and unbiased source we could find for each estimate. The full list of sources is available in our detailed Methodology document.
The number of animal lives and days of suffering that go into each kilogram of edible animal product differs substantially for beef, pork, chicken, turkey, dairy, eggs, fish, and shellfish. This was the most challenging part of the process, as those estimates have to incorporate all of the following calculations:
- Amount of edible product per animal,
- Amount of product loss between slaughter and consumption due to various factors,
- Pre-production mortality (because animals who die before producing a consumable product should still be accounted as losses),
- The number of “feeder fish” who are killed and fed to other animals (pigs, chickens, and other fish),
- The number of male chicks and male calves who die as an indirect effect of farming hens and dairy cows,
- Average lifespan per animal (to calculate days of suffering), and
- Price elasticities due to changes in supply and demand if consumption levels change.
Finally, to ensure that the above calculations and eccentricities did not bias the results, we weighted the final consumption estimates to known USDA totals. This ensures that the totals by product (pork, eggs, etc.) are accurate, while all the steps in between provide important adjustments to our estimates of the impact of individual product formats (sausage, breaded cutlet etc.), which was the central goal of this analysis.
As one final note on the methodology, some readers may have encountered other impact estimates where subjective multipliers are applied to the amount of suffering experienced. We did not do so, treating each day of life as one day regardless of the quality of that life. Although we believe that differences in quality of life and suffering are probable, biases due to anthropomorphization or lack of sufficient data are also likely and, in our view, more problematic. It is worth noting that many of those animals for whom quality of life is likely lowest (e.g., layer hens, farmed fish) are already high on the impact list for other reasons. Any reader who would prefer to recalculate the estimates with additional subjective days of suffering can do so using the data and code files available on the Open Science Framework or contact us for support.
Research Team
This analysis was performed by Ali Ladak (MA), Clara Sanchez Garcia (MDS), and Jo Anderson (PhD), with additional support provided by Joe Millum (PhD). We are grateful for financial support provided by a grant from the Food System Research Fund. Our sincere thanks to the many people who provided feedback on the estimation: Tom Billington, Marco Cerqueira, and Haven King-Nobles of the Fish Welfare Initiative; Galina Hale and David Meyer of the Food System Research Fund; Lewis Bollard of Open Philanthropy; and Saulius Šimčikas of Rethink Priorities.
