The Nonlinear Library EA - Extending Existing Animal Protection Laws by Moritz Stumpe
Dec 4, 2023
01:11:48
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Extending Existing Animal Protection Laws, published by Moritz Stumpe on December 4, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
This report was conducted within the pilot for Charity Entrepreneurship's Research Training Program in the fall of 2023 and took around eighty hours to complete (roughly translating into two weeks of work). Please interpret the confidence of the conclusions of this report with those points in mind.
For questions about the structure of the report, please reach out to
leonie@charityentrepreneurship.com. For questions about the content of this research, please contact Moritz Stumpe at
moritz@animaladvocacyafrica.org.
The full report can also be accessed as PDF here.
Thank you to Karolina Sarek and Aashish Khimasia for their review and feedback.
Executive summary
This research report was conducted as part of Charity Entrepreneurship's Research Training Program. The aim of this report was to explore the potential of extending current animal protection laws, conventions, and directives to adjacent areas, which might be more feasible than proposing entirely new laws. This research focused on identifying and evaluating laws in various geographic regions and prioritising ideas based on their potential impact.
The key findings of the report are as follows:
The Shandong guidelines on chicken handling, transport, and slaughter, passed in 2016, could provide a highly promising area for extending legislation. Several extension ideas are proposed. These issues should be investigated in more depth by consulting with existing animal advocacy groups and experts in China to determine next steps.
The UK's Animal Welfare Act 2006 may also be a promising law to extend. Potential extensions to fishing and/or invertebrates should be investigated further.
The Ohio Administrative Code, Section 901:12, currently only bans caging practices in production. This ban could be extended to sales, thus also affecting state imports. This intervention idea should be passed on to existing animal advocacy groups in the U.S., which they may pursue or investigate further.
EU Regulation 1/2005 and Directive 98/58 could be extended to (farmed) fish. This intervention idea should be passed on to existing animal advocacy groups at the EU level, which they may pursue or investigate further.
Other laws yield less promising ideas for extension.
Overall, these ideas have only been investigated in a relatively shallow manner. This report should act as inspiration for further work and research to determine the real merits of the proposed ideas.
1 Aim
The topic for this report is a scoping exercise, with the goal of looking at existing animal protection laws, conventions, directives, and other regulatory frameworks (called only 'laws' from here on) and see how they could be extended to adjacent areas. This was chosen as a research area because extending existing laws might be more tractable than proposing completely new ones.
The idea was to investigate relevant laws and geographic regions, find potential ideas in this context, and then prioritise those ideas in terms of their promisingness. The most promising ideas were selected to undergo a quick review, based on which recommendations for further research were made.
2 Research process
The basis for this report is
this spreadsheet, which I set up to structure my research. The most relevant, but not all, findings from the spreadsheet are included in this report. Additionally, the report includes findings that were not included in the spreadsheet. Interested readers may thus consult the spreadsheet for further information and details regarding the entire research process.
However, this report acts as a standalone resource and is more relevant than the spreadsheet, summarising the most crucial and action-relevant information from my research. In thi...
This report was conducted within the pilot for Charity Entrepreneurship's Research Training Program in the fall of 2023 and took around eighty hours to complete (roughly translating into two weeks of work). Please interpret the confidence of the conclusions of this report with those points in mind.
For questions about the structure of the report, please reach out to
leonie@charityentrepreneurship.com. For questions about the content of this research, please contact Moritz Stumpe at
moritz@animaladvocacyafrica.org.
The full report can also be accessed as PDF here.
Thank you to Karolina Sarek and Aashish Khimasia for their review and feedback.
Executive summary
This research report was conducted as part of Charity Entrepreneurship's Research Training Program. The aim of this report was to explore the potential of extending current animal protection laws, conventions, and directives to adjacent areas, which might be more feasible than proposing entirely new laws. This research focused on identifying and evaluating laws in various geographic regions and prioritising ideas based on their potential impact.
The key findings of the report are as follows:
The Shandong guidelines on chicken handling, transport, and slaughter, passed in 2016, could provide a highly promising area for extending legislation. Several extension ideas are proposed. These issues should be investigated in more depth by consulting with existing animal advocacy groups and experts in China to determine next steps.
The UK's Animal Welfare Act 2006 may also be a promising law to extend. Potential extensions to fishing and/or invertebrates should be investigated further.
The Ohio Administrative Code, Section 901:12, currently only bans caging practices in production. This ban could be extended to sales, thus also affecting state imports. This intervention idea should be passed on to existing animal advocacy groups in the U.S., which they may pursue or investigate further.
EU Regulation 1/2005 and Directive 98/58 could be extended to (farmed) fish. This intervention idea should be passed on to existing animal advocacy groups at the EU level, which they may pursue or investigate further.
Other laws yield less promising ideas for extension.
Overall, these ideas have only been investigated in a relatively shallow manner. This report should act as inspiration for further work and research to determine the real merits of the proposed ideas.
1 Aim
The topic for this report is a scoping exercise, with the goal of looking at existing animal protection laws, conventions, directives, and other regulatory frameworks (called only 'laws' from here on) and see how they could be extended to adjacent areas. This was chosen as a research area because extending existing laws might be more tractable than proposing completely new ones.
The idea was to investigate relevant laws and geographic regions, find potential ideas in this context, and then prioritise those ideas in terms of their promisingness. The most promising ideas were selected to undergo a quick review, based on which recommendations for further research were made.
2 Research process
The basis for this report is
this spreadsheet, which I set up to structure my research. The most relevant, but not all, findings from the spreadsheet are included in this report. Additionally, the report includes findings that were not included in the spreadsheet. Interested readers may thus consult the spreadsheet for further information and details regarding the entire research process.
However, this report acts as a standalone resource and is more relevant than the spreadsheet, summarising the most crucial and action-relevant information from my research. In thi...