Effective Altruism
The vast majority of people understand altruism as an inherently ethical action. Still, a systemic problem with it is that the overwhelming majority of altruistic acts range from at most somewhat effective to sometimes counterproductive. This is often due to not basing actions on evidence, not dedicating our time and resources to the right cause, or even just focusing on something that won't benefit much from additional help. Most altruism hinges on emotion and intuition, not reason and evidence.
In light of this, recent years have seen the growth and development of the Effective Altruism (EA (No, not that EA)) movement, which seeks to prioritize causes and look at what the best available evidence says to have the maximum possible impact. Various organizations such as GiveWell, The Life You Can Save, Giving What We Can, among others, have sprouted that help people know how to not only live more altruistically, but able to make the biggest impact they possibly can.
Since Veganism is easily the biggest thing the average person can do to reduce their harm to the world, both to animals and the environment, effective altruists often advocate for reduction in consumption of animal products as part of their ethos, and of course, Vegans who focus on animal rights, should also care about whether or not their actions are having the biggest effect towards achieving their goals.
Despite the noble intentions of members of the EA movement, and the massive amount of good it has done for the world, there are tons of aspects of it that warrant criticism.
Veganism in Effective Altruism
We believe that for most human-related causes, while they still deserve support, overshadow animal rights issues. This even happens in Effective Altruism, with the vast majority of money, time, and resources going to charities that prioritize issues like mosquito netting (to prevent malaria), providing vitamin A to children, and deworming communities. These of course are all important, but there are dozens of charities for animals in agriculture meant to relieve their suffering.
There's a massive discrepancy as far as funding is concerned. GiveWell, the top effective altruism charity evaluator for human causes, received about US$415 million in donations from 2024-2025[1], with about US$64 million of that going to their Top Charities.[2]. Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE), the top effective altruism evaluator for animal issues, has received US$12 million total since 2017 for its own top charity fund.
This discrepancy is further highlighted by the amount of money it takes to save one human life compared to saving many animal lives. According to GiveWell, their top charities can save one human life for several thousand dollars. This is largely due to the massive funding it has already received. All the low hanging fruit for saving lives have been taken, and now the people these charities can save are increasingly hard to get at, mainly people in very remote villages away from cities, or areas with poor oversight. Meanwhile, according to some of the best charities on ACE, that several thousand dollars can save hundreds or even thousands of animals per donation, due to these charities getting comparatively limited funding. If we want to reduce the most amount of suffering per dollar, it seems incredibly obvious that this is the main way forward.
As far as reducing suffering in the world, Veganism and animal rights advocacy is by and far the best way for the average person to achieve this. While of course a human life does have more worth than an animal's life, it is incredibly myopic and self-limiting to only focus all attention on human related causes. Does one human life really have THAT much more worth that we can largely ignore animal lives? Factory farmed animals are absolutely worthy of moral consideration, and have intelligence levels that rival very young humans. Considering that billions of animals suffer under animal agriculture, it seems antithetical to the whole idea of EA to not give them more attention, especially considering how it's also a main contributor to climate change.
This isn't just us being cynical. The founders of GiveWell have made statements to the effect of "Yeah, we don't think animal rights stuff is worth prioritizing over human rights issues."[3] It's one thing to claim your organization wants to focus exclusively on human related issues, that's one thing. But they have officially decided that animal issues don't hold a candle to human issues, which coming from a so-called Effective Altruist is absurd beyond comprehension.
What do these charities do?
The top ACE charities engage in a variety of actions, ranging from improving animal welfare, advocating reduction in animal products, funding the development of vegan alternatives, to political and corporate campaigns. All of these are extremely important towards helping animals, both in terms of reducing their suffering and the number of animals being bred on farms. Which of these methods is the most effective towards helping animals, all of them serve as very easy ways to help just by donating a few bucks. If you have a hard time deciding, we'll discuss the intricacies of each of the main charities so you can decide for yourself, though giving a little to many charities can also be worth doing (but at the same time, this may dilute your impact compared to choosing one area and focusing).
