Carl Shulman wrote:Summary: Human meat consumption seems to seriously reduce wild animal populations. This has previously been considered an additional bad effect of meat consumption. However, some animal advocates claim that wild animal populations' aggregate welfare is so negative as to dwarf domestic animal suffering. Some of these advocates also favor spreading veganism, which on this view would seem to have the immediate effect of greatly increasing animal suffering. This tension should be addressed by advocates in cost-effectiveness estimates and research.

Hi Carl,

I've finally had a chance to read this. I've been vaguely aware of the problem for awhile, but your essay has lead me to downrate promoting veganism at least a little bit. I agree that this problem needs to be addressed more prominently by pro-veg people.

Overall, I have some intuition that promoting veganism/vegetarianism/meat reduction/anti-speciesism is still important for the long-run future and that it's plausible that promoting veganism/vegatarianism/meat reduction is the most efficient way of promoting anti-speciesism. But I'm not confident in either of those views. Additionally, I think Brian's point about climate change is also important.

I think the interaction between this problem and the Poor Meat Eater problem is very interesting, though.