Context

Last year, I shared on this forum my growing skepticism about cultivated meat and the case for being more critical about where we direct resources in the alternative protein space. That post focused specifically on cultivated meat but the broader question behind it, one I had actually started working on before writing that post, is: if we look at the full landscape of alternative proteins, which ones actually deserve priority?

This question matters because, as with any cause prioritization exercise, resources are limited. Every dollar, every policy push, every year of R&D directed toward a suboptimal alternative is a resource not spent on a more promising one.The recent collapse of Ynsect despite €600 million in investment is a painful example of misallocated resources in the French alternative protein landscape, but the problem runs deeper than individual company failures. If we systematically back the wrong horses, we slow down the entire protein transition, and with it our ability to act on climate change and animal welfare.

This kind of prioritization thinking, which I'd say was directly inspired by EA principles, led me to write a scoping review that was recently published in npj Science of Food. The rest of [...]

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Outline:

(00:15) Context

(01:49) The problem with how we currently evaluate alternatives

(03:16) What the paper found

(03:43) Plant-based meats: the clear frontrunner

(05:13) Single-cell proteins: promising but uncertain

(06:24) Cultivated meat: still facing the problems I flagged last year

(08:18) Insects: the least promising option, despite popular assumptions

(10:27) Caveats

(11:05) A personal note

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First published:

March 3rd, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/TMbrMxusL2ptW6pCF/comparing-alternative-proteins-which-ones-should-we

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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A short post to put a feeling down in words...

One of the aspects of EA thinking I love the most is the way it sanctions caring, and caring broadly.

In a world faced with so many woes, caring is scary and often isolating. But EA says it's okay to care, and creates an entry point to a wonderful, wide world of other people who do, too.

People who care and make it known often become the target of pushback, especially when what they care about isn't widely, legibly socially sanctioned. In my days of street advocacy, this pushback often looked like passersby questioning why I cared about the cause I had turned up for and not [fill-in-the-blank alternative].

This was frustrating. Often, I did care about that other cause too; I was just not focusing that hour of my day on it.

EA asks a similar question, but it feels very different.

The question of focus is less:

“Why are you working on that instead of something that actually matters?”

And more:

“Your cause has value, but have you considered whether this alternative might warrant more of your attention?”

Because EA is a question. And in asking the [...]

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First published:

March 5th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/vqDbLgSzZdoT6CzBK/ea-gives-permission-to-care-about-many-things

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is a link post.

Following the release of the teaser earlier this year, Animal Ethics has now launched AI & Animals: A Documentary. The full film is freely available to watch and share at www.AIandAnimals.org.

The documentary examines how advances in AI may affect the lives of nonhuman animals, both negatively and positively. It features 16 advocates and academics discussing:

• How AI systems could increase animal suffering in factory farming
• How AI-driven research and monitoring can scale efforts to reduce wild animal suffering, and help develop research methods that do not harm animals?
• The risks of embedding speciesist values in large language models and other AI systems, and what can be done about them
• How animal advocates can use AI tools to increase the effectiveness and reach of their work

Contributors include Peter Singer, Jonathan Birch, Jeff Sebo, Oscar Horta, Bernice Bovenkerk, Matti Wilks, and others. The full list is available at AIandAnimals.org.

Most animal advocates are still unaware of the risks and opportunities that AI presents for animals. Meanwhile, the industry is already using AI to increase the efficiency of animal exploitation. History has shown us the cost of being reactive rather than proactive. We failed [...]

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First published:

March 3rd, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Nm5utfEwtQFnHDGLh/launching-ai-and-animals-a-documentary

Linkpost URL:
https://www.animal-ethics.org/animal-ethics-launches-ai-animals-a-documentary/

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

My name is Abbey, and I work at cG on the Capacity Building team. I’m posting to share an informal update about our excitement for biosecurity capacity building.

We’ve seen incredible progress in the field of technical AI safety and governance, and a lot of that is thanks to fieldbuilding programs.

We now think that on the margin, it's likely that biosecurity is neglected relative to AI safety. AI progress will likely significantly increase the capability of a bad actor (including a rogue AI) to engineer dangerous pathogens, and we’d like to grow the number of people preparing defenses against that scenario.

Specifically, our Biosecurity and Pandemic Preparedness team's research suggests that there are four pillars of pathogen-agnostic defenses that can significantly reduce bio x-risk; and because these are defensive measures (with less dual-use potential), we want to broadly encourage people to work on them. Some projects, like red teaming, could involve infohazards that warrant more caution; you can check in with the BPP team if you want to do work like this or encourage it.

The measures are:

• Personal protective equipment (‘PPE’)
• Pervasive physical barriers and layers of sterilization (‘biohardening’)
• Pathogen-agnostic early-warning systems (‘detection’)
• Rapid, reactive [...]

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First published:

March 5th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/N9tDHooyZzACmSmhj/a-call-for-biosecurity-fieldbuilding

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

We, the Center on Long-Term Risk, are looking for Summer Research Fellows to explore strategies for reducing suffering in the long-term future (s-risks) and work on technical AI safety ideas related to that. For eight weeks, fellows will be part of our team while working on their own research project. During this time, you will be in regular contact with our researchers and other fellows, and receive guidance from an experienced mentor.

You will work on challenging research questions relevant to reducing suffering. You will be integrated and collaborate with our team of intellectually curious, hard-working, and caring people, all of whom share a profound drive to make the biggest difference they can.

While this iteration retains the basic structure of previous rounds, there are several key differences:

• We are particularly interested in applicants who wish to engage in s-risk relevant empirical AI safety work (more details on our priority areas below).
• We encourage applications from individuals who may be less familiar with CLR's work on s-risk reduction but are nonetheless interested in empirical AI safety research. Our empirical agenda focuses on understanding LLM personas, in particular how malicious traits might arise.
• We are especially looking for individuals seriously [...]

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Outline:

(01:51) About the Summer Research Fellowship

(01:55) Purpose of the fellowship

(03:29) Priority areas

(05:36) What we look for in candidates

(07:11) Program details

(07:26) Program dates

(07:38) Location & office space

(08:10) Compensation

(08:33) Program length & work quota

(08:53) Application process

(09:28) Stage 1

(09:52) Stage 2

(10:16) Stage 3

(10:44) Stage 4

(11:13) Why work with CLR

(13:13) Inquiries

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First published:

March 2nd, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/cJBgd6cCke6FQPL5p/clr-summer-research-fellowship-2026

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

For those not working in the space this probably isn't on your radar, but the animal advocacy movement just secured a huge win with Ahold Delhaize, convincing the fourth-largest supermarket company in the US to set the strongest cage-free policy of any large US retailer:

1. A roadmap with benchmarks to fully eliminate caged egg cartons, expand cage-free offerings, and increase the percentage of cage-free sales.
2. A pledge to annually report on its progress.
3. At all 2,000+ locations, placing large, promotional shelf tags in front of cage-free cartons to differentiate cage-free and caged cartons for consumers. 

This was a giant campaign. My understanding is that other companies were watching to see if this campaign would succeed or fail, to see if they would need to follow suit. In addition to the animals helped, this win will add pressure for competitors to do the same.

This was a coordinated effort among many groups, including: Center For Responsible Food Business; Animal Equality; International Council for Animal Welfare; The Humane League; Mercy For Animals; Compassion in World Farming; Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade and Animal Activist Collective.

Animal Equality states that this will affect 5-7 million hens. I know a lot [...]

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First published:

March 4th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/2wePKArWWr4Xx6Zvf/some-good-news-ahold-delhaize-to-go-cage-free

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Cross-posted from my personal notes. I'm sharing this because I think the EA/AI safety community needs to hear it, and because I've been living it.

I lead AI safety work in Nigeria. When I tell people this, the most common reaction is a polite pause , the kind that says: that's interesting, but is that really AI safety?

I want to argue that it is. And that the gap it represents is one of the most neglected problems in the entire AI safety ecosystem.

The Situation on the Ground

I'm based in Ibadan, Nigeria. I am part of the AI Safety Fundamentals: AI Governance cohort for Nigeria under AI Safety Nigeria, and I hold an AI Lead appointment under the ITU — the UN's agency for ICT. In my day-to-day work, I deploy AI systems in low-resource healthcare settings, build multilingual NLP tools for communities that global AI largely ignores, and try to translate AI safety discourse into something meaningful for African researchers and policymakers.

Here's what I observe from that vantage point:

The global AI safety community is, with very few exceptions, a Western conversation. Its canonical texts were written in Oxford and Berkeley. Its conferences happen in [...]

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Outline:

(00:42) The Situation on the Ground

(02:19) Why This Is an AI Safety Problem, Not Just an AI for Good Problem

(05:15) What Im Actually Doing About It

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First published:

March 2nd, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/TzPwowQL3qH4EHYbt/the-ai-safety-conversation-is-missing-1-4-billion-people

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is a link post.

Major food companies in the UK, including KFC, Nando's, Wagamama, and Burger King, have dropped their pledge to improve the welfare of chickens.

The pledge in question is the Better Chicken Commitment (BCC), a six-point welfare initiative that corporations can voluntarily sign up to implement. Arguably, the most notable parts of the pledge are the creation of a maximum stocking density of 30kg/m2 or less, compared to the current UK standard of 39kg/m2, and the transition to slower-growing breeds of broiler chickens.

What implications does this kind of thing have for the cost-effectiveness estimates of charities like The Humane League where putting pressure on corporations to sign pledges to improve welfare is a large part of their work? How common is it for companies that sign these pledges to bail on them, actually?

(this post made from a temporary throwaway account)

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First published:

March 3rd, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/AzjB2dLf5i4PhZcMd/kfc-nando-s-wagamama-and-burger-king-drop-pledge-to-improve

Linkpost URL:
https://earthlinged.substack.com/p/kfc-nandos-wagamama-and-burger-king

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is a link post.THL's David and Goliath Story

When I joined The Humane League (THL) back in 2019, I expected them to have thousands of volunteers. After all, THL managed to strong-arm hundreds of major US corporations into adopting cage-free egg policies, creating an industry-level shift[1]. The reality I found was much different. Most of the events I attended had half a dozen protestors, a dozen at most. These numbers were reflected in the protest photos I saw from other cities. Multiplying the number of volunteers at an individual protest by the number of cities with active chapters, you get a figure that comes out to around 100 to 200 active volunteers nationwide[2]. That's fewer people than my high school graduating class.

And it's not like these volunteers are spending significant amounts of time on activism, either. When I started attending THL's protests and participating in their digital campaigns, I quickly found that I could run through all the available actions for the month in a couple of hours. Over the course of a year, these time commitments add up to somewhere between 10 and 20 total hours. To put it in another light, I spent more time last [...]

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Outline:

(00:12) THLs David and Goliath Story

(02:06) The Anatomy of Pressure Activism

(07:56) Implications for the Movement and You

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First published:

March 3rd, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/MKsh838GuSdQYM3g6/the-200-person-revolution

Linkpost URL:
https://thechickencoup.substack.com/p/the-200-person-revolution

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

TLDR: Welfare interventions in aquaculture don't reliably transfer across species, so each species requires independent research and implementation. I introduce "target populations" as a unit of analysis to quantify how many groups exist. From 2000 to 2023, the number of species comprising 85% of aquaculture production grew from 14 to 22. This means the structural cost of covering the same share of the industry has grown substantially, independent of how well any single intervention performs. This is a portfolio problem, not an intervention problem, and many major producing countries are trending towards further fragmentation.

Summary

In terrestrial agriculture, one species (the domestic chicken) accounts for 89% of all farmed vertebrates. That lack of species diversity is part of what made cage-free campaigns scalable and tractable: the same welfare issues recurred across farms, enabling one intervention to address the same problem everywhere, and similar farm contexts made that intervention feasible everywhere.

Aquaculture does not have this structure. 22 species (e.g. Mrigal carp, Atlantic salmon) comprise 85% of farmed aquatic vertebrates, and 260 more account for the rest. This diversity has not consolidated over time. The number of species comprising the top 85% of production has increased from 14 to 22 [...]

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Outline:

(00:53) Summary

(03:38) What is a target population?

(04:06) Species distance is one dimension

(06:15) Other dimensions matter too

(07:04) Example: sea lice in Atlantic Salmon

(08:29) How many target populations are there in aquaculture?

(11:21) Trends in species diversity over time

(11:26) Global Trends

(11:57) Country Trends

(13:10) Fragmentation is a portfolio problem, not an intervention problem

(14:30) Do outcome-based standards sidestep this cost?

(15:51) What this means for the movement

(16:22) Recommendations

(18:54) Author Notes

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First published:

March 3rd, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/gs9b8zdZ9oEgsxs9N/aquaculture-fragmentation-is-a-portfolio-problem-ceas-miss

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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