Replacing chicken meat with beef or pork is better than the reverse

Guest post by Vasco Amaral Grilo; please also see this exchange, which directly led to the below. The following is, in a way, an elaboration of this from 2017.

Eating one serving of chicken instead of red meat:

• Decreases total healthy human life by 1.20 nanosecond (beef) and 0.0394 ns (pork) per person-year.
• Causes tens of hours of pain for a factory-farmed chicken.

​The views expressed here are my own, not those of my employers. Thanks to Matt Ball for inviting me to write something on the trade-offs between animal welfare and greenhouse gas emissions of replacing chicken meat, and feedback on the draft.

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Replacing beef or pork with chicken meat decreases greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but has major negative impacts on animal welfare. I estimate that replacing one serving of:
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• Beef with one from chicken meat from broilers in a conventional scenario, decreases GHG emissions by 6.44 kgCO2eq, but also leads to:
  • 27.8 h more of annoying pain.
  • 29.3 h more of hurtful pain.
  • 4.59 h more of disabling pain.
  • 2.79 s more of excruciating pain.
    
    
• Pork with one from chicken meat from broilers in a conventional scenario, decreases GHG emissions by 0.212 kgCO2eq, but also leads to:
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  • 27.6 h more of annoying pain.
  • 28.3 h more of hurtful pain.
  • 4.27 h more of disabling pain.
  • 2.56 s more of excruciating pain.

I calculated the above increases in the time animals spend in pain due to replacing beef or pork based on data from the Welfare Footprint Project (WFP) for broilers. I guess my assumptions underestimate the badness of replacing beef or pork. I assumed cows’ conditions are as bad as those of broilers in a reformed scenario, and pigs’ conditions are as bad as those of broilers in a conventional scenario. I think cows and pigs usually have better conditions, such that I overestimated the time they spend in pain, and therefore underestimated the increase in pain linked to replacing beef or pork.

Here is how WFP defines:

• Disabling pain (2nd most intense). “Pain at this level takes priority over most bids for behavioral execution and prevents most forms of enjoyment or positive welfare. Pain is continuously distressing. Individuals affected by harms in this category often change their activity levels drastically (the degree of disruption in the ability of an organism to function optimally should not be confused with the overt expression of pain behaviors, which is less likely in prey species). Inattention and unresponsiveness to milder forms of pain or other ongoing stimuli and surroundings is likely to be observed. Relief often requires higher drug dosages or more powerful drugs. The term Disabling refers to the disability caused by ‘pain’, not to any structural disability”.
  
  
• Excruciating pain (most intense). “All conditions and events associated with extreme levels of pain that are not normally tolerated even if only for a few seconds. In humans, it would mark the threshold of pain under which many people choose to take their lives rather than endure the pain. This is the case, for example, of scalding and severe burning events [in “large areas of the body, dismemberment, or extreme torture”]. Behavioral patterns associated with experiences in this category may include loud screaming, involuntary shaking, extreme muscle tension, or extreme restlessness. Another criterion is the manifestation of behaviors that individuals would strongly refrain from displaying under normal circumstances, as they threaten body integrity (e.g. running into hazardous areas or exposing oneself to sources of danger, such as predators, as a result of pain or of attempts to alleviate it). The attribution of conditions to this level must therefore be done cautiously. Concealment of pain is not possible”.

The decreases in GHG emissions due to replacing one serving of beef and pork are 0.0961 % and 0.00316 % of the GHG emissions per capita in 2023. Do you feel like decreasing your annual GHG emissions by these justifies tens of hours more of annoying pain, tens of hours more of hurtful pain, a few hours more of disabling pain, and a few seconds more of excruciating pain? I do not. Consider whether you would accept such trade-offs if it were your or others’ pets experiencing the additional pain.

There has been some research on how GHG emissions increase mortality from non-optimal temperature. Bressler (2021) calculated that 4.43 kt of additional CO2eq in 2020 would cause one extra human death in total from 2020 to 2100. Based on this, I estimate that 1 kg of CO2eq results in a total loss of 2.43 min of healthy life across all humans and years, or 0.186 ns per person-year (1 ns is 10^-9 s). Consequently, replacing one serving of beef and pork decreases total healthy human life by 15.6 min (beef) and 0.513 min (pork), or 1.20 ns and 0.0394 ns per person-year. Note the negative effects of the additional CO2eq are negligible until 2055 (see Fig. 3 of Bressler (2021)), so they are not only infinitesimal on a person-year basis, but also very uncertain given the difficulty of predicting now what will happen after 2055.

Do you feel like the above negative effects, a few minutes of healthy life lost in total spread across billions of humans over roughly a century, which is not more than a few billionths of one second per person-year, justify one sentient individual experiencing tens of hours more of annoying pain, tens of hours more of hurtful pain, a few hours more of disabling pain, and a few seconds more of excruciating pain? I do not.

​Maybe replacing chicken meat with beef or pork could be harmful to wild animals because they require much more land? I agree decreasing the number of wild animals would be bad if their lives were worth living, but no one really knows whether this is the case or not. There is room for lots of suffering due to thirst, starvation, predation, disease and parasitism.

You can always replace chicken meat with plant-based foods for health reasons or if you are very concerned about GHG emissions. I am not, but I have been following a plant-based diet for 5 years. However, if you, like many, find it hard to decrease your overall meat consumption, I encourage you to replace chicken meat with beef or pork. You would significantly decrease suffering.