Michelle Lavery

🐷🐔🐟 Associate Program Officer, Farm Animal Welfare Science @coeff_giving
🎓 PhD (fish behaviour + welfare)
🐈 cat mom
👀 views are my own

[Michelle Lavery @JMichelleLavery]

I’m launching a $7M RFP for humane fish slaughter tech via @coeff_giving
Over 100 billion farmed fish are slaughtered yearly. We think only ~0.5% are reliably stunned beforehand. For the trillion+ wild-caught fish, most suffocate slowly in air or low-oxygen water. 🧵
🎥@WeAnimals

[Michelle Lavery @JMichelleLavery]

Zoe Sigle has put together an analysis of how much the animal welfare movement can absorb, and it's a lot! Check out her post for a breakdown of what our $120M absorbance capacity could be effectively spent on 💸

[EA Forum Posts @EAForumPosts]

"The $120 Million Question: How will it help animals?" by Zoë Sigle 🔹

[Astera Institute @AsteraInstitute]

ICYMI an essay competition specifically for active researchers: 1st prize $30K, 2nd $10K, 3rd $5K. Public submissions only:

https://t.co/MjWz5X8MeK 🧵

[Michelle Lavery @JMichelleLavery]

@onsoc63 @coeff_giving @WeAnimals This is what we know about it so far, beyond the company's claims! https://t.co/DrmpzdPZFt

[Michelle Lavery @JMichelleLavery]

I’m launching a $7M RFP for humane fish slaughter tech via @coeff_giving
Over 100 billion farmed fish are slaughtered yearly. We think only ~0.5% are reliably stunned beforehand. For the trillion+ wild-caught fish, most suffocate slowly in air or low-oxygen water. 🧵
🎥@WeAnimals

[Michelle Lavery @JMichelleLavery]

Applications are open until July 1, 2026. We’re offering a $4,000 honorarium to top 125 applications. Of those, we'll invite 5–30 candidates to submit full proposals, with ~$7M in funding available.
Apply now: https://t.co/x96ReXBkPO

[Michelle Lavery @JMichelleLavery]

We welcome applications from engineers (electrical, mechanical, maritime, process), academic and industry researchers, startups, nonprofits, and interdisciplinary teams. We don’t think you need fish welfare expertise to find a great solution!

[Martin Gould @MartinVGould]

Norway – where over 70 million chickens are raised for meat every year – will become the first country in the world to stop using fast-growing chicken breeds. The result of years of strategic advocacy from groups like @Anima_Int

[Lewis Bollard @Lewis_Bollard]

Advocates achieved some major wins for factory-farmed animals this year. Here are 7 of the biggest:

1. New European laws: Switzerland adopted a world-first meat labeling rule requiring disclosure of painful things done to animals; Slovenia, Spain, Scotland, Sweden, and Norway advanced reforms on cages, piglet castration, salmon welfare, and broiler breeds. The EU opened a consultation on new farm animal welfare laws, with a consultation generating 150,000+ public submissions.

2. Cage / crate reforms: the US hit 46% cage-free and the top 3 US fast food chains (McD's, Starbucks, Subway) are now all fully cage-free. Globally, over 1,300 companies have fulfilled their cage-free pledges. McDonald’s, Burger King, and others also moved major shares of their pork from gestation crates to group housing. And courts upheld key state bans on crated-pork sales.

3. Chicken welfare reforms: France’s largest chicken producer, LDC, and UK retailer Waitrose committed to ending the worst practices. Germany's top retailer, Edeka, and top chicken producer, PHW, made similar pledges. These will improve the welfare for over 500M chickens/year.

4. Chick killing: 28% of Europe's hens now come from in-ovo sexed eggs (175M chicks spared killing). Netherlands joined France, Germany, Austria, Italy in phasing out the practice. Brazil installed its first in-ovo sexing machine, and in-ovo sexed eggs went on sale in the US for the first time.

5. Fish welfare: major UK, French, and Dutch retailers committed to stunning shrimp before slaughter; newly installed machines will stun 4B shrimp a year. Leading fish sustainability certifiers advanced welfare reforms for billions of farmed fish.

6. Plant-based progress: India, the Netherlands, and South Korea invested in alt-proteins, bringing global public investments to date to $2B+ globally. Big European retailers set plant-based sales goals, and European plant-based meat sales grew.

7. Fur's collapse: Poland banned fur farming, Switzerland banned fur imports, and Norway and Slovakia implemented their fur bans. Vogue, Hearst, and NY Fashion Week dropped fur, and globally fur farming is plummeting.

[Michelle Lavery @JMichelleLavery]

A very cool looking PhD opportunity to examine heat stress effects on welfare in wild animals, in a cluster of some of the best animal welfare researchers in the world at @BristolUni !

https://t.co/tNFEjQtjkd

[Lewis Bollard @Lewis_Bollard]

If we only let people treat animals in ways that most Americans think are acceptable, US farms would look very, very different...

[Marina Bolotnikova @mbolotnikova]

until quite recently, I had never thought much about fish, but now they're all I think about

Please read my piece about FISH MINDS! the great fish pain debate, and what it tells us about science and ourselves. gift link in reply!

[Michelle Lavery @JMichelleLavery]

my boss is doing stand-up and killing

[Lewis Bollard @Lewis_Bollard]

USDA: don't worry, the egg industry is adopting "gold standard" biosecurity measures to stop bird flu coming back this winter.

The egg industry:

[Neil Renic @NC_Renic]

Methodology

[Michelle Lavery @JMichelleLavery]

@robert_yaman Thank you for giving me fodder for the CG slack

[Lewis Bollard @Lewis_Bollard]

It would cost $33M to vaccinate US hens and turkeys for H5N1 and finally stop the virus.

Instead, USDA has wasted $1B+ paying farmers to kill 200M+ birds in the most inhumane ways.

All this to protect the meat chicken industry, which worries a vaccine would hurt its exports.

[Alexander Berger @albrgr]

Some news: Open Philanthropy is now Coefficient Giving! Our mission is unchanged but the new name reflects our growing work with other donors to multiply the impact of their giving.

🧵 on our work to make philanthropy a more efficient "market" and plans going forward:

[Jacob Trefethen @JacobTref]

🚨 Hiring scientists to help give away money 🚨

At @open_phil, we have given away $600M in biomedical research since 2016. Now, we're expanding the team to do more.

Hiring:
* Up to 3 Senior Program Associates
* Program Officer in strep A

Remote OK, salaries in links! (thread)

[Lewis Bollard @Lewis_Bollard]

My TED talk on factory farming just dropped on YouTube.

The talk is about to hit 250K views on @TEDTalks. Hoping we can pull back the curtain on factory farming to even more people on YouTube.