As part of Charity Entrepreneurship's 2023 Top Ideas contest, will we select "Animal advocacy organization at the EU-wide level" as a top Preventive Animal Welfare intervention?
Idea overview
This charity idea aims to promote stricter animal welfare policies throughout the European Union. With indications that the EU is considering significant updates to its animal welfare legislation, the charity could work to counteract the influence of the meat lobby, and ensure that proposed laws remain strong. The charity may advocate for specific high-priority policy changes, such as banning all mutilations, or implementing stricter stocking density regulations. The precise policy ask is to be determined. Alternatively, the charity could conduct investigations to hold policymakers accountable for their previous commitments, ensuring promises made are followed through.
Preventive animal welfare
This year our focus is on interventions and policies that prevent future harms done to animals, as opposed to solving current problems. We will be looking for interventions that, as well as having some short run evidence of impact, will prevent future problems, i.e., have the biggest impact on farmed animals in the future, say 35 years from now.
We intend to select 2-4 ideas out of the 10 presented to recommend to entrepreneurs who enter our incubation program. This market resolves YES if this idea is chosen; NO otherwise.
About the contest
In partnership with Charity Entrepreneurship, Manifold is sponsoring a $2000 forecasting tournament to inform which ideas end up selected
You can win part of a $1000 prize pool as a forecaster, for best predicting which interventions we choose.
You can win one of ten $100 prizes for posting an informative comment on Manifold that most influences our decision.
For contest details and all markets, see the group CE 2023 Top Ideas.
1,000🏅 Top traders
| # | Name | Total profit |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ṁ147 | |
| 2 | Ṁ116 | |
| 3 | Ṁ35 | |
| 4 | Ṁ30 | |
| 5 | Ṁ26 |
The benefit of lobbying the EU is that EU laws are often broader applicable than only inside the EU. This is called the Brussels effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels_effect
I was surprised to see this on the list. This option does not seem very neglected? There is already the Eurogroup for Animals, ProVeg, and many animals groups lobbying in Brussels. What is a new group going to add?
This charity would only be a good bet if it identified as niche that is not currently filled by one of these other organisations.
I think this is a particularly likely option given the fact that the upcoming legislation provides such a great opportunity for action. I also think work in accountability of legislators is a great idea that could have some strong positive effects both in the EU and in the broader animal welfare community if this type of work is effective. Ultimately, I think the market is at a good spot so I made only a small bet.
Why limit focus to EU? Overall EU meat consumption doesn't seem exceptional:
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_meat_consumption
the advocacy seems transferable outside the EU, and the EU seems on the expensive side; is the EU more willing to implement those policies? It doesn't have exceptional rates of those avoiding the industry either:
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_by_country
It is the 3rd largest singular market in the world, but I'd love to see EU focus compared to India, China, and US
@PatMyron I think it's reasonable to think that getting stricter animal welfare regulation passed is more tractable in Europe than in the rest of the world (and I don't think vegetarianism rates are that indicative of readiness to enact such policies).
Plus, with ~750m people it is a huge political bloc, third only to China and India (which seem much less likely to pass this kind of regulation at their level of development).
@finnhambly There is also a widely proposed effect whereby EU legislation is disproportionally influential on other countries. The EU and European cultures are very powerful in global institutions and policy and regulatory ideas can spread easily from them.