Artificial Meat Will Be Even Harder Than Artificial Intelligence – Lewis Bollard

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This episode was a deep dive with Lewis Bollard on the surprising economics of the meat industry. Lewis leads Open Philanthropy’s strategy for Farm Animal Welfare.

Why is factory farming so efficient? How can we make the lives of the 23+ billion animals living on factory farms more bearable? How far off are the moonshots (e.g., brainless chickens, cultivated meats, etc.) to end this mass suffering? And why does the meat industry have such a surprising amount of political influence?

For decades, innovation in the meat industry has actually made the conditions for animals worse. Can the next few decades of tech reverse this pattern?

Read the transcript: https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/lewis-bollard
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dwarkesh-podcast/id1516093381?i=1000721073740
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1skct0aT2AZgA2KGD11DPR?si=54f40cb984f44db6

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TIMESTAMPS
00:00:00 – The astonishing efficiency of factory farming
00:07:18 – It was a mistake making this about diet
00:09:54 – Tech that’s sparing 100s of millions of animals/year
00:16:16 – Brainless chickens and higher welfare breeds
00:28:21 – $1 can prevent 10 years of animal suffering
00:37:26 – Situation in China and the developing world
00:41:41 – How the meat lobby got a lock on Congress
00:53:23 – Business structure of the meat industry
00:57:42 – Corporate campaigns are underrated