#80. Navigating Ethical Decisions in Animal Welfare - Dr. Adam Feltz

Dr. Adam Feltz of The University of Oklahoma discusses the complexities of ethical decision-making, particularly in relation to animal welfare. He shares his journey from philosophy to psychology, emphasizing the importance of knowledge in shaping moral judgments about animals. The discussion covers various factors influencing animal ethics, including cultural traditions, education, and policy implications. Dr. Feltz also explores the need for informed consumer choices and the potential of lab-grown meat and smaller farms as a solution to animal harm.

The Ethical interactions lab: https://ethicalinteraction.org/meet-the-lab

Transcript

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Welcome everyone to the Smooth Brain Society. From healthcare to public policy to animal welfare, ethical decisions shape the world we live in. Yet we rarely stop to ask how these decisions are formed. Our guest today sits at the intersection of psychology, philosophy and real world decision making. Dr. Adam Feltz is a professor of psychology at the University of Oklahoma and one of the world's leading experts on how we make ethical judgments. His groundbreaking research uncovered fundamental philosophical biases in moral judgment leading to the development of the ethical interaction theory, which we will hopefully soon learn a bit more about. With publications spanning health, medicine, finance, policy design, human factors engineering and beyond, Dr. Feltz's work has shaped how we think about ethical decision support, choice architecture and risk communication. His current research focuses on law and policies that directly impact animal welfare, bringing rigorous science to some of the most challenging moral questions of our time. An award-winning teacher and scholar, Dr. Phelps is also a co-founder and co-director of riskliteracy.org, a member of the Center for Applied Social Research at Oklahoma University, and serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Experimental Psychology Applied and the Psychology of Human-Animal Intergroup Relations. Today, we'll explore how ethical decisions are formed, why disagreement is so common, and how better science can help us make wiser, more humane choices. Welcome to the Smooth Brain Society, Dr. Feltz Yeah, thanks for having me here. No, awesome. Thank you for coming on. I guess the first question we ask everybody is just a very simple kind of what is your origin story? What's your background? How do you end up in this sort of space of research? Yeah, yeah, it started a long time ago, actually. this journey started when I was a pretty young graduate student. So I was a first year graduate student. I was a uh graduate student in philosophy. And after my first two semesters or so, I got pretty disillusioned um by the apparent lack of progress that seemed to happen in lots of philosophical areas. um Until I took a class on the philosophy um of decision making. So how should we go about making decisions and what constitutes good decisions and what influences our decisions? uh And most importantly, how can we make people's decisions better? um And I got excited about that. was like, that is what we should be doing. Maybe we should spend a little bit less time focusing on some of these really esoteric issues and spend a little bit more time thinking about how philosophy can help inform people making better decisions. um And since that point, um That kind of shaped the rest of my career. So I started doing lots of empirical work, started hanging out with people in psychology and people in behavioral economics. And then, you know, one thing led to another. My first job out of grad school was in a philosophy department, but then I pretty quickly switched over to cognitive science. And now I'm in a psychology department working on these types of issues. So I think that's the story. Yeah, that sounds m interesting in the fact that you were so early on interested in it. m I guess a question that of that's one for me is like a lot of people think maybe animal ethics is kind of obvious or abstract. You never really kind of get anything between. How do you define animal ethics and why does it matter as well, I guess? Oh, OK. We'll start with an easy question, I guess. So what's we start you hard. So yeah, animal ethics, that can be, uh I think that can be pretty difficult to define, but I think maybe one way to think about is how do human actions as they relate to animals, how should they be governed? So what are some of the, so just like interactions with any other creature. So ethics governs how humans should interact with one another. There's one way of thinking about animal ethics is how we think about how we should interact with non-human animals. So think that's the animal ethics bit. Now, why should we care about it? uh Maybe this will come out later in the talk. I don't know. So um if you're not already caring about it, I'm not totally sure that we can make anybody care about animal ethics. But on one level, if animals are the kinds of creatures that are capable of exp- experiencing pain and pleasure or having interest or something like that, then at least on some views, those interests should count. um And the way that we interact with them should count just as much as they count for any other creature capable of having those experiences. And so I think maybe that's the best I can do. Well, you said, no, you don't think you're gonna make anybody care about animal ethics. Is there like any other form of ethics you can make people care about? Or is it just, you think like that's the thing which is just internal to everyone? Yeah, maybe I should have been a little bit clearer when I said that. know, given enough time and effort, we can probably make people care about stuff that they really don't care about. uh You know, I don't know if I would feel super comfortable doing that um as a researcher because I'm not totally sure what the correct set of moral values are. You know, I think luckily for the animal stuff, we don't have to worry too, too much about that because I think there's some pretty good evidence suggesting that lots and lots of people care pretty deeply about animal welfare. And so something else is happening with the way that they relate to animals that might be able to explain why they behave in ways that harm them. Yeah. thus far, it from what I understand is your work looks at how people make moral judgments about animals. And what have you learned about why we maybe treat some animals as morally important and others maybe more expendable? Yeah, this is the question. I think this is what lots of us are struggling with, like being able to explain why people are making the decisions that they do about animals. um I don't know of any super great answer, but um I think it would be surprising if the decisions that we make involving animals would be substantially different than the decisions we make about anything else in our lives. um And so oh we can get as complicated as you want, but just take a real simple decision-making model. So the way that people go about making decisions involve two things. They might involve a lot of other things, but they involve at least two things. And one of them is what you value or what kind of desires you have. um And then the second element is what you believe. And almost every contemporary model decision making that I know of incorporates at least those two elements. um And so the decisions that we make about animals are likely to have that same structure. So we're going to have certain beliefs about animals, and we're going to have certain values and desires about animals, and those two things together then dictate what intentions we form and then what subsequent actions we end up performing. um And so think given that basic model, I think we've got pretty good evidence. think the past 20 years, we've gotten pretty good evidence that people do have different values and desires when it relates to animals. um And a lot of them are um pretty conducive to animal welfare. um And if they weren't, it'd be really weird. There would be no justification for what's been called the meat paradox, where people say that they care a whole lot about animals, like they love their pets. They don't want farmed animals to suffer. But then what do they do? They go to the supermarket. They buy food that contribute to a system that almost for sure harms those animals pretty significantly. So how do we square those two things? Well, I don't think it's squaring them on the values necessarily. uh You know, I think probably one of the things that we've discovered in our research that might be a little bit unique is it's large, you know, at least partially explained by what people know about animals. And not their beliefs about animals or what they think about animals, but actually what they know about some of the facts of the conditions under which farmed animals are kept. And so I think that may be what we can show. So it's not just... beliefs themselves, like, because lots of people have looked at beliefs about animals, like, do they believe that animals can experience pain? um But what we contribute is, um it's the knowledge element. So it's not just what people believe, um it's what they know about animals. And there's a subtle but important distinction between beliefs and knowledge. um And so on common conception of knowledge, not only do they do those mental states, when somebody knows something, do they represent the world in some way, right? So I believe that the, you the Earth revolves around, or the moon revolves around the Earth, right? For that to be knowledge, it has to also be true. It might have to be some other things too, but it has to at least be true, right? And so, no uncommon conceptions, nobody can know something that's false, right? And so what we find is that to the extent that people know more, to the extent that they have more true beliefs about animals, they tend to engage in a whole host of animal-friendly behaviors, whether or not they consume fewer animal products, whether or not they're supportive of legislation to protect animal welfare on factory farms, whether or not they're willing to support animals and entertainment, we just see these cascading effects. And so I think that's what we've learned from our research. But then I guess the know and beliefs thing, I feel like people in general would sort of know that I guess a cow feels pain and a dog feels pain like the dog feels pain, but it's not that they're going around. They still have like a stake, but they're not going to go chop up their dog, are they? Is there also, is there also like a closeness element about it to an extent? I mean, this is a great question. So this is one we're struggling with in our lab right now. So right now we have pretty gross measures of what people know about animals. um And it's important to make these types of distinctions um because just because you know something about one thing doesn't mean you necessarily know everything about that thing. So for example, uh you might know a lot about being a car mechanic, but that doesn't mean you necessarily know how to fix a windmill or something. So even though you might have some technical knowledge, you might not generalize outside of that. We're finding the same thing is true for animals. So people might know some things specifically about animals used as food. So they're pretty good. It's like some people just know more about how animals are produced, what kind of factors are involved in animal production. But for other types of knowledge, like the actual conditions under which factory farmed animals live, those same people might not know very much. And so figuring out what those bits and the boundaries of those knowledge is one of the things that we're struggling with right now. And so for sure, I think there's pretty good evidence, although not univocal, right? There's pretty good evidence that most people would say that dogs can experience pain. And there's also pretty good evidence that they'll think that cows can experience pain. But there are other bits of information that they might not know about. just to throw one thing out, I'm not gonna put you guys on the spot, right? So, like, you know, is de-beaking a common practice on factory farmed chickens. You don't have to answer. So they go and so de-beaking is just when you go and you cut off the beak and there are lots of reasons why they do that. It's mostly to make sure that these animals are gonna live long enough so that they can get slaughtered. And in the United States, which is where most of my research lives, about 50 % of the people know that answer. And so about 50 % of the people don't know that. conjoined with other questions that are like that, um we find that the people who know more about uh factory farming, tend to engage in practices that support it less. um And so it's important, yeah, so it is important to get those distinctions just right to figure out what kinds of knowledge are playing a role in the production of people's actions. Yeah, that makes, I mean, absolute sense. Basically, I think from what I can see you're saying is like there's multiple reasons people care or don't care. it's scarcity, smartness. A lot of my friends, for example, won't eat pork or anything from a pig because they think they're smart. Saying that sheep and cows aren't smart. Religious reasons, pain, proximity, all these kind of different reasons. em Have you heard of somebody, I think her name's called Temple Grandin. who, I'm really, Mary Temple Grandin, who came up with, um I hope I don't butcher this, but she came up with a method with cows when they are taken to the slaughter, a way to kind of keep them calm, so they're not, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't know the person, but I know of this thing, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. As a way to be know, like, we should, we have an ethical kind of like, or a moral need, I guess, to, you know, look after these animals. Yes, we can eat them and we should eat them in here. At she came from Texas, so, know, like quite, you know, a meat-heavy estate, as far as I'm aware. And was very much so, like, you we deserve, they deserve to be looked after and, you know, go through the least pain as possible. So just an example that... just I think more recently was something that I knew about animal ethics and other people might know about animal ethics as well. But yeah, carry on. I I think just to Brett's point, I know that's the research aspect of like, or like the methodological aspect of ethical things, but I'm pretty sure both kosher and halal meats in terms of one of the aspects of them being kosher halal is sort of how the animals are cared for before they're slaughtered for the same sort of thing. think one aspect of it is that it is about like they are raised comfortably. They feel, yeah, they don't live stressful lives, et cetera, cetera, until the point of slaughter, I think is one aspect of them. So yeah. Yeah, think lots of people would feel if we moved in that direction, like that'd be way better. So I think lots of people, one of things that they object to is, it's probably not fair to say that the people who producing these proteins, they want to harm animals. It's just they're trying to make money. And so once you start taking these care efforts, it's probably going to eat into their bottom line a little bit. So if you give animals more space, then they're going to have fewer animals. If you take more time to slaughter the animals, then you're to be slaughtering fewer animals. And so those types of things play role. But then, Beth, you also raised an issue before. So I talk a lot about knowledge, just because of the kind of thing that I care about. It's not a silver bullet. There are lots of factors that are involved. And so at a minimum, knowledge by itself is typically inert, depending on what kind of view and knowledge you have. But just knowing something doesn't mean that you're going to act on it. Like you have to have some kind of motivation to do it. And so like these other things that you mentioned would be things that would motivate people. But now think about if you have these motivations. So let's say that you really care about uh protecting farm animal welfare or something. And you didn't know anything about how farmed animals were treated. You would likely just keep on going about consuming animals in the same old way because you just don't know any better. Like you can't actualize that value in an effective way just because you don't know. It'd be like the same kind of thing. Like, em can you effectively drive a car if you don't know what the traffic laws are? em Probably not, right? Like, maybe you luck into it. uh But probably not going to be reliable way to go about driving a car. And I think the same way is true for the type of consumption behaviors that people engage in. If they just don't know, it's going to be hard to actualize the values that they really care about. Yeah, I think you're very right. Motivation is the thing that of like power you through. And if we don't know, I don't know if you've, sorry, I'm going to tell another kind of story, which I think is just because it's just all kind of linking up really nicely. I don't know if you've heard of the woman who's in the US called Zoe Rosenberg. And she's recently been put away for I think it was three months because she saved four chickens from a slaughterhouse. I won't name the name of the chicken farm because they were sick, they were unwell. She's got video footage. furious that the company went full force at her, wanted to put her away for years. And she actually has got prison time for it. And as you were saying before, just touching on the fact that you're saying like, well, yeah, because it's companies, they've got to hit the margins. And if we can see what's happening, are we going to take a more active role for our motivations to push us to look into it more? Yeah, I mean, this is a good point. Like, it's hard to know. we don't, I mean, to be honest, I don't think we know exactly what bits of knowledge are going to be the most relevant for people changing their behaviors. Like, we just don't know yet. So is it going to be this, this kind of hot knowledge, you know, where you give people, you know, you know, some pretty evocative information that's not only going to convey, you know, some kind of content about the way the world is, it's also likely to evoke these emotional reactions in people. Like, that going to be the kind of thing that's going to move people around? Or can you do it with something less emotionally, you know, provoking? uh solutions calm down, don't they? I mean, there's so many different ways to motivate. We need a list of motivators to push people. But it's an open question, right? So like, don't know if people are going to kind of feel it the right way. You know, like you can tell people all kinds of stuff, like, you know, you can tell people, hey, what's it like to fall in love? Right? And you could tell you could give them I don't know, you could give them a complete description of falling in love. And they're not going to really like get it the right kind of way until they actually kind of experience it. Right. So yeah. Yeah, you can't really, if you've not really experienced the emotion, it's very hard to evoke that emotion. If you're, they might view it in a complete different way. know, for example, on the opposite end of things, people might be like, this woman is trying to bring down, you know, m independent chicken farmer's livelihood for four chickens, you know, what is going, you know, so it can kind of go either way. Yeah, slightly off topic, but I just thought it was an interesting one to bring up kind of what's happening and, you know. you know, day to day. I guess maybe we should move on to like, because I'm kind of curious about how you do these experiments, you know, kind of the questions you come up with. Maybe if you could tell us about an experiment and kind of a process of that, unless you've got any other questions on getting into the philosophical ethics. Yeah, sure. So, you know, since we focus on knowledge, we usually start there. um And today what we do is we kind of focus on a topic, right? And so one of the ones that we first did was just knowledge of factory farming. And so we generate a list of questions. And these are all objective, like as objectively true or false as you can make something. So there shouldn't be any like super disagreement about people who know about the topic. And then we do some fancy stats on it um and we whittle it down uh until we get um items that are behaving the way that we want them to. um And then we test them. um And so then, you know, if something is knowledge, um then it should be pretty easy to change. Like, not that it's easy to change, but that it should be, you should be able to change it. um So one of first things we do, we test that, right? So we test, you know, we make these instruments so that some of the questions are really hard. so that only people who know a whole lot are gonna get them right. But most people fall somewhere in the middle. And then we see if we can change people's by giving some information about animals. so that's the first bit. um And then we see if those changes in knowledge are then related to other animal related outcomes. And so one very common one is just how much food, how many animal products they consume. And so we give people an intervention and then we... um And then we measure whether or not they learn something. And then we see if there's a change in their animal consumption behavior. And those studies are really difficult to do m because they take time because you have to measure how people are, ah their changes in their consumption behavior. um And so, yeah, sorry, the phone's ringing. And so that's what, and so, um yeah. And then we measure a bunch of other things too, right? Because like I said earlier on, um people's knowledge isn't the only thing that's playing a role. And one other factor that we use a lot are the 4 Ns. So whether or not people think it's normal, necessary, nice and natural to consume animal products, which is more like a value-laden justification. So one of the questions is something like, um do you think animals taste good? um And there's no right or wrong answer to that. It's almost self-ratifying if somebody says that. a product tastes good, then it tastes good to them. uh But it's not like there's an objective fact of the matter out there in the world about it. And so given that simple decision-making model, we want to see changes in both of those two things to affect people's behavior. And so far, we've done one study like this. So we actually fielded this longitudinally in a philosophical ethics class with an animal ethics component. And so we measured people's knowledge and their foreands and their animal consumption behavior at the beginning of the semester. And then they had the animal ethics component somewhere in the middle of the semester. And then we measured everything again at the end. And we found um that people learned something a little bit. They changed on their forends where they thought it was natural, necessary, nice, and normal to consume animal products. But then those two things combined then resulted in lower animal consumption. um And so that's one experiment that we've done. uh So I'm guessing that's done longitudinally, is it? So you test their knowledge, give them some more knowledge, then they go off and come back maybe, I don't know, a week, month later, yeah. so in America, think, oh gosh, I can't remember what semester we did it, but they're basically something like three and a half, four months apart. So you do the pre-test measurement and then about four months later you do the post-test measurement. The intervention happened somewhere in the middle, right? And then you see if things have changed by the end of semester. interesting. Next thing you should see is if it lasts like a year down the line because as someone who does intervention studies uh but for a completely different topic not for this it's you see the most effect like three months six months like immediately after the intervention it's whether it persists or a longer duration. I totally agree. So if we had unlimited funding, we'd just do cohort study. We'd just keep them around for forever and then just test them every year or so. I mean, we'll get to that question later, won't we? Yeah. that. So I have kind of two questions here and one might be a little bit tough. So if you don't want to answer it, won't force you. The first of all, what is, is there like an end goal for your research or is it just to see if attitudes can change or do you want there to be a change in attitudes? Yeah It's not the hard one either. You know, so I think this is, I think I can answer this one okay. So both as a scientist and just as a human, um what I want most is I want people to um actualize their most deeply held values, whatever those are. um And I think, you know, to a large extent, people probably aren't doing that super well when it comes to animal consumption. So it may not involve the elimination of animal consumption, but it might change the way they relate to animals um given their values. And so the end goal, in a perfect world, I would stop. If I was pretty confident people were sufficiently informed about the conditions of animals um and they could sufficiently integrate that information to the decisions that they're making, um whatever those decisions end up being, um I think then I would stop. Okay, I've got a question on this just for the sake of it. By stop, are we talking all animals? So this includes insects, invertebrates, everything, or is there like sort of like a level here as well in terms of judgments? Because I feel you when you're researching, you're mainly talking about farm animals in this case. farmed animals, mainly mammals. ah Yeah, so, you know, to the extent that something is capable of suffering, uh I think we would probably keep going until we stopped with those types of creatures. You know, the insect stuff, I just don't know those data well enough. I know people are working on these types of issues about insect proteins. I just don't know it well enough. I guess from your research, what do you think? Do you think it's philosophically or morally sound to eat animal products or meat? ah So given my own set of values, I tend not to. ah Yeah. That's that's that's fine. Yeah. we've been talking about sort of just like in terms of like eating and consumption but I wanted to ask a similar but not so similar question which is more like animals in research. um So do you do work on that sort of and not just animal ethics in use but in terms of things like that and knowledge but animal it's in research? So I think the answer to that is no, we don't do anything about animals in research. It's not that we're opposed to it. um It's just that we just haven't. We have done other stuff other than just kind of like um animals for food, like consumption. We've looked at other types of consumption behaviors, like in entertainment. So how do people feel about animals and entertainment, in particular rodeos? Because we're in Oklahoma. uh ah I think it's the national sport of Texas or the state sport of Texas, sorry. And so, yeah, so we look at rodeos and we get the same kind of pattern there too. So to the extent that people know more about how rodeo animals are treated, they tend to be less favorably inclined to go into rodeos. They tend to be less likely to endorse certain types of rodeo practices, um especially like the roping ones, because those are the ones that carry some of the biggest risk to the animals. um So yeah, but we see the same kind of thing over there too. I'd be surprised um if we saw something dramatically different if we were to do this about research animals. um But it's an open question. I mean, your point stands in the sense that you as you would see something very similar in Spain with the bullfighting and things like that as well. Yeah, because I feel the laws have really reduced the amount you can do. um Is there any anymore? I think there is, but it's so minimal. think it's in Seville. And I think it's only for a month at a time, but I wouldn't be surprised if bullfighting stops in Spain in the next, if it's not already, have to double check that, in the next five to 10 years, I think it's reduced so massively, so massively. yeah, like I said, it's tradition and people do want to keep it up. Do you see that a lot in the tradition side of things in your research? I guess that really influences the ends, like we were talking about how food animals, where the line is drawn, can be very culturally very different as well. Do you see those traditions playing a role as a major factor in your work? Yeah, only informally. So I don't think we've looked at this specifically uh as a variable. We have collected some kind of open responses. It's like people can freely respond to however they want to about stuff. And this issue comes up not infrequently. um And so there are a couple things. I think there was a cool paper that came out recently about why um vegans go back ah to eating meat. And one of the reasons was social exclusion. um And so And so I think if your friends are going to a barbecue and cooking hamburgers, they might be a little bit less inclined to invite you if you're going to be the one not wanting to eat hamburgers or something. But other cultural stuff, like we just had Thanksgiving in the United States where turkey is the main thing. And so people do express worries about those types of traditional foods, that they lose those traditions. So we haven't looked at it like we haven't done it like a quantitatively, but there some of those qualitative data that's kind of emerging out from some of stuff we do. Yeah, I don't know what it's like in the US, but in the UK, I've got a few friends who are vegan and they say it's getting better, but they say it's hard. Vegetarian is very doable, but veganism is quite tough. Just not a lot of places quite adhere to it. And I guess it's levels of veganism. I've got some vegetarian friends who are very happy for meat to be cooked next to their food. Other people want it completely separate. I guess it's what levels you kind of put to it. But yeah, like that as well, I haven't to... be like, can't eat that, I can only eat that. Yeah, I can definitely imagine is a problem. mean, the vegetarian vegan thing is a pretty interesting thing about India, right? So India probably has the largest vegetarian population in the world, but the amount of animal products used in the food is really, really high. Like everything's cooked in ghee, which is clarified butter. like I remember a lot of my friends being like, I'm vegan, India will be fine. Not really. Like, it's not that easy to find vegan foods. I mean, now obviously better, bigger cities and all. Generally speaking you get a lot of vegetarian food, but not necessarily Yeah, yeah. So imagine if a friend invites you over to their mom's house or to their mom's house for dinner or something, or you want to go out to dinner and they have to make special accommodations to make sure they find a place that will serve you. Yeah, I think there's some there's some important elements there that social elements. Yeah, so I know you've mainly focused on knowledge and you've just said, Sahir, that kind of different cultures. I guess two questions is, one, I'm gonna guess or is there other research in different cultures? There'll be different reasons why people may or may not eat meat. Yeah, for example, you said in Oklahoma, it's probably knowledge-based, not a lot of understanding, and Sahir, in India, it's probably more religious as well. What do you think about other cultures? I don't North Africa, for example, or Europe. I know, sorry, we're putting it out there, but I've gotten to a cultural thing recently where I'm just like, think we need to do research just in every single country to fully understand what it means. Yeah, gosh, I don't have a great deal of expertise outside of the United States, so I don't do a ton of cross-cultural stuff. You know, it would be, I mean, it's almost for sure going to be different in different places. I don't know how different. guess that's like, you know, I think I just don't know. And so but almost for sure, the knowledge bit is going to be different in different places. um And so the way that foods are produced in different parts of the world are almost for sure going to be different. um And so something that might be super relevant to know for a U.S. consumer might not be super important for somebody who lives, yeah, like in like, I don't know, Egypt. um And again, figuring out what these contours look like and what those boundaries are is one important thing, even in the United States. So it's not just a cultural thing. So outside of the knowledge, m what do you think would be, I think you do think that's probably the most important thing in the US that's kind of driving it. I know we've briefly touched on other factors, but have any other factors apart from knowledge come up like predominant in your work? yeah, yeah, like we could go on forever about some of the factors. But the ones in our research that we find to be some of the most useful for us are the 4 Ns that we talked about. So these are more like value-laden justifications for why people are consuming animal products. um We find that some things don't matter too much. um so, yeah, so we recently had a paper come out in FAIR that looked at geographic differences. And among the activism community, have been anecdotal reports that people living in high agriculture states, they're not going to be super receptive to activism type efforts, whereas people in low agriculture states would be more receptive to that kind of thing. And so we tested it. um And there were some differences between high agriculture states like Oklahoma and Kansas versus low agriculture states like Hawaii and Maryland. But they were really small. Like you could measure them, like you could see a difference, but it was incredibly small. So just for an example, one of the biggest effects we got were um about the acceptability of different killing practices that happen on factory farms. And so people in low agriculture states, I don't know, like on a six point scale, uh one being strongly not supportive of that practice, six being, yeah, that's perfectly okay. know, people in low agriculture states were like, you know, like a 1.9, you know, so they were like, man, that's probably not okay. the people in the high agriculture states, they moved up to like a 2.3, right? Which is still, no, it's really not okay, right? It's measurable, like, so they thought it was more okay than the low agriculture states, but probably not super practically important, depending on what your goals are for those types of... And so we find geography didn't matter too much in that study. We looked at other things. We looked at people's political orientation. That didn't matter too much. We looked at people's living locations, so whether they lived in urban, rural or suburban environments, that didn't matter too much. Like basically all the same sized effects. Like you could get some differences and tease them out, but they were pretty tiny. um And across all of those, the predictors that we've been talking about, like what people know and the 4 Ns, all of those predicted people's attitudes and behaviors towards animals. And it wasn't moderated. So it didn't depend on the state or the politics or the living location that people were in. It stayed pretty stable across all those. And so there are almost for sure other things out there. So one other thing that we looked at is people's numeracy, so um people's ability to use and understand statistical information. um We find that that's related to some of these outcomes, so especially consuming animal products. um And there are a host of other ones, like speciesism and meat commitment, things like that. Yeah, coughs. is that sort of like racism but against other species Yeah, that's really great. Yeah, that's almost perfect. Yeah, so it's treating the identical interest of animals differently just because they're another species. And so it'd be like racism that you treat the interest of another race different just because they're of a person of another race. Yeah. So the one thing which you didn't mention, and I don't know if you even have measured it, because you measured between like higher agriculture and lower agriculture states, but would you even measure in between people who work, I guess, within agriculture in higher agriculture states versus not? I assume that people who work on factory farms might want to justify their practices more than those who wouldn't. Oh, this is a great question. Like I remember talking with my collaborator on that Courtney Diller about this kind of thing. I have to go back and check the data. We didn't analyze them, but we had a really big data set. So it was a, I don't know, like 2000 people or something like that. And so we got a lot of, a lot of variables. I can't remember if we analyzed this. I think we asked them what their occupation was, but I don't think we like set a quota to get people who worked in agriculture. I don't know if we could have even done that. um But you're right, I feel like there are a few studies out there that looked at people who work um in animal agriculture, like in slaughterhouses, what their attitudes about these, I just can't remember it very well. But this would be a cool thing to look at. um Because you think about farmers, like the farmers who are actually owning these farms with animals on it, they pretty sure know what's happening on their farms. um And they do it anyway. And so it would be interesting to see what's happening with those folks. Maybe they just don't care very much. So if they didn't care, they're probably not going to change their behavior, em even if they know about it. or it's... go ahead sorry gonna say, I guess, I was gonna say is, I guess, is it the fact that you get to feed your family or you have to do some slightly unpleasant practices because you, otherwise you and your family are gonna lose your farm. is, I guess, yeah. I was thinking about this actually just this very morning. I was thinking, you know, how, how could we resolve this meat paradox? Well, one of them is like, you just, that's just me explained in terms of knowledge, right? People just don't know very much. But another one, like very commonly, you can have an ordered set of values, right? And you like, might value animal suffering a little bit, but that value is trumped by, you know, being able to make a livelihood and feed your family. Right. And so you could resolve it that way too. Um, and I don't know if anybody Maybe they have, I just don't know if anybody's looked at these different types of ordered values and how you could explain it in those ways. We're giving you a lot of different ideas here between different studies that you can do. Look forward to the acknowledgments in your future papers. ah And then I guess that will be different for, mean, so I, not that I, not too many parallels, but I grew up in the very north of the country, very farmer based, we used to go to our local butcher growing up. But we just don't really have that anymore because you've got Tesco who do it, you know, for the same price. Or like, I guess your equivalent of Walmart maybe, you know, who just do it for the same price. It's how do you, how do you, how do you tackle that? I think that probably is a very big one as well. Yeah. So many, so many, so many, so many issues. That's coming into the policy side of things, isn't it, a little bit? I know you, I read in your intro that you have done some policy related work. I don't know if it's with animals itself or, it is. So yeah, I wanted to like touch on that a little bit more. How do you square these into actual decision-making? Sure, so most of the stuff we've done is on the policy side involved working with lawyers, mostly about labeling issues for plant-based foods. there are, I don't know, there are a handful of issues that come up over and over again. So I think it's happening in the EU right now. I think maybe, I don't know how bad it is. I don't know what's happening in the UK quite, but there are lot, know, some of the policy level stuff is they want to make sure that Plant-based foods can't use traditional animal terms to describe the products. So you can't use the term like plant-based burger or ah veggie burger or soy milk. You have to call it like soy drink or veggie, I don't know what disc. um And so the main justification that one of the main justifications that people give who want to forward these types of policies is that these types of labels, the traditional the plant-based qualifier in the traditional animal term confuses consumers. And so people might mistakenly buy a plant-based burger thinking it's an actual animal burger or it might contain animal products inside of it when lots of them don't. um And so we've done some studies on this. um And one of the things about labels is that people might not know a whole lot about animal production, but they're pretty good about lots of stuff. It's remarkable how smart people are. And one of things they're really good at is understanding front of package food information, especially if it doesn't involve technical terms, complex uh numerical information. um If it's kind of descriptive and common sense, people get it. And so when you call something a plant-based burger, um the studies that we have done show that almost everybody understands that it's a plant-based burger. um You know, and there's some other issues that might be involved, you so maybe they don't really understand the nutritional contents of plant-based burgers, and it's true. So uh when you look and ask people nutritional information about plant-based products, they're not very good at understanding that information. But they're not very good at understanding the animal-based stuff either, right? And so, you know, changing these labels isn't likely to do a whole lot to increase consumer understanding of those products, A, because In one case, they already know it. They already know it's made out of plants. And the second one, just by changing the label to something else, is not likely to eliminate their pretty poor understanding of nutritional content, which is just about as bad as their nutritional understanding of animal-based products. um And so this is what we've done in that area. um it feels good because um we have a, not published, but it's going to come out soon, that if you change these, some other people have done this. If you change labels, um You call something like instead of a plant-based burger, like I'm assuming you both kind of understand the organoleptic properties of that, like how it tastes, how it smells, how you can use it. Like um if you change it to something like plant-based disc or oh plant, nobody knows what it can be used for. Like they don't know what it's going to taste like. They don't know what it smells like. They don't know what you can use it for. So the risk is that when you start changing some of these labels, you actually increase. people's confusion about that product, which is the exact opposite of the motivation that lots of the policymakers say they have when they put forward these policies. I mean, I'm, I'm not a judge or anything, but I, would just, I would just say it. I do not get the one for the burgers in the sense like a burger for me is like a sandwich kind of thing. So what is fit in it is just what's fit in it. Right. So it's a veggie or it's a beef or it's chicken or whatever. But when it comes to milk, I feel the only reason you don't call it like anything else is because otherwise you can't just label things as nut juice and get away with it. Like that's a bit... uh I think that's to help understanding although I have never seen anybody milk an almond so I don't know how that works. I've never found their udders ever so I don't know. No, mean, you one of the one of the one major criterion that the the USDA and the FDA in the United States use for evaluating whether or not uh evaluating whether or not a product label does a sufficient job of identifying the product is by looking at common or usual names for the product. And we've got some other data coming out that by now plant based qualifiers and traditional animal terms, these have become common or usual names for lots of these products. So just like when you, you know, when you, when you go buy a bag of oats, like you don't have to have a special disclaimer on it saying that it's oats, because everybody knows what oats are. The same kind of thing when you're talking about, you know, almond milk or soy milk. Everybody just knows what it is at this point. And any change away from that would have to have special justification. And you'd have to worry about people actually being confused because they already have terms adopted to talk about those products. And I guess it, as you said before, it's telling you what the purpose of it is. know, if it says, you know, like a plant-based burger, it's plant-based and it's a burger, soy milk, you you can put it in your tea, your coffee. If it's just soy drink, well, do I just, do I drink it? What, what, what, what kind of, what's the kind of the comparison with it? So yeah, I mean, to me, makes sense to me, but maybe not to other people. liquid so in even sketchy i'm just thinking of the weirdest names possible We'll have a brainstorm afterwards, bring that to your policymakers. em So you've kind of done some experiments with policy and you've done some on kind of knowledge. What is the next steps for you? you have any other experiments on the go or plans for experiments? Yeah, and so now we're getting into evaluating different ways to change people's uh animal related behaviors. um And so this is where the ethical interaction stuff comes in. at this point, psychology uh and related disciplines, we've got some pretty good tools that we can use to move people's behaviors around on average. um But those come with different costs and benefits. um And so One of the things that we do a lot of or try to do a lot of is educate people about stuff. And it probably makes sense because we focus so much on knowledge that we just want people to become more informed decision makers when they're making their decisions. But that's not the only way that you could go about changing people's behaviors. em And so there are lots of environmental factors that you could set up to change people's behaviors. em so some of these are things like you could just forbid something, like just outright make something illegal. That'd be one way to change people's behaviors. You can impose taxes. That'd be another thing to do. Other people try to do more subtle, uh less aggressive type of interventions. So they try to set up environments so that they know that that environment's going to influence people's choices. But they still give people option to choose something else if they want to without any real penalty. um And so sometimes it's called nudging or something along those lines. um What we're finding is that for a long time, people have claimed that nudging doesn't really have many ethical costs. So yeah, we're influencing people's choices, but we're doing it in a way so that they still have freedom. So we respect their autonomy to choose something else. What we're finding in our lab is that maybe formally that's true, uh but there are some costs associated with nudging people. And so one thing that we find is that, for example, nudging people doesn't It tends to reduce people's trust uh in the thing that people are being nudged to. um We find that uh it looks like it might infringe on certain autonomy elements. um So it doesn't really change much about the person. So when you educate somebody and they learn something, the person somehow changed. So they have a better understanding of the world. When you nudge somebody, you just set up an environment. You default them into something, and they tend to stick with that default. uh they may or may not change as a function of being in that environment. So they may not really understand why they're making the decision that they do. They just kind of stick with the default. Whereas if you're educating them, theoretically, they should understand better why they're making that decision. having a more complete set of information to make a decision from that's often thought to be an element of autonomy that could be left out, we're finding out that maybe it's a little bit more coercive than people. think that it is. Like it might be hard for some people to just psychologically to overcome some of those environmental influences. And so maybe it's not so easy for people to choose something other than a default compared to if they are educated. And so this is what we're doing. It's kind of, we got some preliminary evidence suggesting that this is true. And then once we start to get that information, we can start to evaluate, well, what are the costs and benefits of intervening in different ways? Like, so if we educate, what are the costs of that? And there are costs. So it tends to be expensive, tends to take time. It's not always easy. oh Whereas nudging people, that tends to be pretty quick, pretty easy to implement, but it might have some of these other ethical costs. And so you start to quantify these parameters, and then maybe you can start to integrate them to make a decision about which one is probably the most ethically appropriate given those costs and benefits. Can I have a quick example of what nudging would look like? Just because I don't know if heard that term before. I've heard it but not like maybe in this specific scenario. Yeah, yeah. So uh we could do it in the food domain. So some people have thought that one way to increase animal, plant-based consumption and decrease animal consumption is to default people into a plant-based meal. So they could choose an animal-based meal if they wanted to. It's just that when you walk into a cafeteria or the default option, let's say it's a soup. uh you get a plant-based soup. Now, you could choose something else if you wanted to. You could get something with animals in it. But you'd have to take a trivial but extra step to do it. And so some evidence suggests that that actually increases people's uh plant-based soup consumption. So it looks like in certain contexts that'll work. But an alternative way that you could go about doing it is you could just educate people about it. And you say, hey, look, maybe it's a good idea to have soup for any number of reasons. So it's better for your health. It's likely to be more environmentally responsible. It's likely to be better for animal welfare. And if people really understand that and then change, looks like you get not only do you protect their autonomy, you actually promote it. So they're actually making a more informed decision about their soup compared to if you just default somebody in, that they just go with the soup because it's easy. Or maybe they think it's a tacit recommendation that they should get soup or something like that. Bye. it makes sense. So, carry on here. Yeah, no, I guess it's, I guess a very similar idea to when plastic bags were sort of outlawed in, uh yeah, grocery stores here. And I mean, in theory, you could still like buy a bag from the store for like a pound or 50 P or whatever, but one, it's not the default anymore. So you're nudged in the direction of uh bringing your own bag or whatever. But then also there was so many signs around places. about like educating of the damage of plastics and things around. I remember in little, when it first started, there were so many signs up. don't think, I haven't seen many around recently. I've not paid attention anymore, but yeah, I guess. same thing in the US, I'm not sure. In Oklahoma, we still have single-use plastic bags. Like, they're still around. Yeah. we get charged anywhere between 30 and 60p for a plastic bag. yeah. So theoretically, you know, it's hard to know sometimes, but theoretically, the nudgers would say, well, you know, that sounds not necessarily so much like a nudge because there is a monetary cost associated with choosing the alternative. So it's supposed to so the way the alternative is supposed to be set up is it's not supposed to be a significant difference in time, effort, monetary uh outcomes. It should be a relatively trivial thing. Like instead of just getting the soup, uh the default soup, you say, hey, like, I'd like to get the animal based soup. Like it is a little bit of an extra cost, but it's trivial. Like it's just like saying a few words or something like that. You know, so but yeah, but it is similar to the plastic bag stuff. So if it's like if you if you had to ask for the plastic bag, like maybe that would be. Closer to what they had in mind without having to pay for the plastic bag. Because you said this is where the ethical interaction comes in, that's how you started. And you have this theory called the ethical interaction theory. Could you please, like, yeah, we're going back into the theoretical at the moment a little bit, but I just wanted to know what that is. I assume you've already given examples of it. Yeah. Yeah. And so the way that the interaction theory goes is you have a set of values uh that you're trying to evaluate different interventions on. uh And so it's hard to know what these values are. But once you pick those values, uh then you can start to quantify those values as a function of different interventions and then be able to integrate those, the way that you quantify those, into an outcome, uh into a decision about which intervention is likely to be ethically better. So the way we've done it is we just took the five APA principles. So the American Psychological Association's five principles for interacting with humans. And so there are things like, should respect people's autonomy. You should be fair. You should increase people's trust in uh science and stuff like that. And we use those as benchmarks to start to evaluate, well, how well do these interventions actually secure those values? um And they don't necessarily all do well on all of them. And so the interaction, the ethical interaction stuff, the theoretical stuff is, how do we quantify those different elements in a way so that we can compare them and then make an all things considered judgment about what the most ethical outcome is likely to be? Okay, so now bringing it to the animal, sort of animal food product sort of consumption, how would that sort of look in an example? Yeah. And so you pick your interventions, whatever they are. And so for us, we educate people. And then oftentimes what we do is we compare those against some type of nudging technique. So either we default people into an option, or we give people social norm information, like what most people around them are doing. And then we measure uh elements of these different ethical criteria. So how much does it increase trust? How much does it increase people's reasoning ability? How much does it increase? ah How hard it is to overcome some of those outcomes? um And then we measure those in different ways between the two interventions, and then we compare them. Does that help? Yeah, yeah. guess, I mean, I guess if we're talking about your cohorts, what do you say? At your university, you like split the class down the middle. Half of them you try to nudge, half of them you give sort of knowledge. Or like if you have two streams, do that to one and the other to the other and sort of see which works, the cost benefits of it, what sort of coercion's involved, what isn't, how much money you're actually spending on the knowledge implementations. for the classroom example, we used the ethics class and we matched it up to other non-ethics classes without that content. So like an intro to site class or something like that. Some of the stuff that we have done, we've done not necessarily in animals, but in recycled water is we've done lots of this stuff about, you you can get people to be accepting of recycled water by just defaulting them into those products. But it ends up that there looks like there are a host of costs associated with that. So like if you default people into Recycled water they'll accept the recycled water But then you ask them other questions like well, how much would you? Complain to your city official if you had recycled water and they're like, oh, yeah, we complain how many of you would protest if you had recycled? Oh, yeah, we would protest how many of you would recommend something your family moved to where you live with recycled water No, I wouldn't recommend that. I but if you educate them takes more time and it's a lot more effortful they actually become more knowledgeable, they tend to be reduced on all those elements, right? So they tend to trust policymakers more. They'll say, hey, yeah, you can come here, live here, water's probably fine. um We're not gonna go protest. We're not gonna complain to city officials. Yeah. I guess the question is it, we're talking about being ethical, is it ethical to do the nudging? Even if people are or aren't informed, is it okay to take away that choice by nudging? Yeah, I think that's probably a larger question, know, can't become comfortable. and like the right answer to almost everything. Well, it depends. ah So it really, but honestly, it really does depend. like, so I think, yeah, I'm sure we're in print somewhere saying like, you know, education is one tool that we have. It's not always going to be the best tool. And there might be good reasons to select some other alternative, whether or not it's nudging, or just outlawing something or imposing some type of penalty. So maybe one example. oh would be, and we don't know, but just to illustrate uh the COVID epidemic, maybe there were good reasons that we should take a more heavy-handed approach to getting people to, for example, get immunizations, wearing masks, staying home when they're not feeling well. Maybe there was good reason to do that, even if it infringed on people's autonomy, because the consequences of doing that might've been so great. Fewer people would have been sick. Fewer people might have died. There might have been lower stress on the medical system. And so it just depends on what that balance is between the cost and benefits. And one of the benefits, and what nudges tend to do really well, is to maximize some exogenously decided upon outcome variable. Or they say, look, I know what I want people to do more of, and how do we set up environments to get people to do that? Nudges do a pretty good job of that. Especially when there was value homogeneity like so mostly everybody thinks the same have to has the same value Like people don't want to die like most people think that so you don't get a but when you get value heterogeneity And I think this is where we get it in the in the animal product stuff people really do just have you know Some different values about animals and so moving them all to not eating animals anymore I don't know I mean they're gonna be costs associated with that because some people's values will be will be thwarted It might be worth it because it's better for the animals. But again, that's a decision that we have to make once we quantify all these these criteria. Yeah, it's interesting. I think it might be time to ask my question. So you touched on it before, but if you had all the money in the world, you've just won a two billion, say dollar grant, or a three million dollar grant, two million pounds, we've been being, three million, billion dollar grant, and the FX boards have gone on holiday, so they're like, you know what, sounds like we've done some good work, go ahead, what would be your dream study? What would be my dream study? Man, yeah, that's a challenge. So I might cheat a little bit on this one. uh So I think what we would do is we would, I mean, the first step would be to develop the best educational platform to educate people about the facts of farmed animals. That'd be step one in the experiment. uh And then step two is we'd field uh those educational interventions and then compare them against other ways to get people to change their behavior, like nudging, like making stuff prohibiting things, like taxing, something similar, and do it everywhere. um And then see what the costs are. So see which one does better as a function of being educated or being nudged or being um prohibited from doing those things. I think that would be my dream study. guess the reaction if people are prohibited, um should an intervention be prohibition? We've seen, well, different types of meat prohibition, shall we say. Yeah, I don't think that would go particularly well, but... uh I mean, I was going to say it just be like a lot of people like in when alcohol was prohibited, people just like brewing it in their own houses, but then everybody just has their own farm at that point, right? Just like how it used to be. There is a really great British film. I'm gonna find it now, em basically about, I think it was back during one of the world wars where meat had to be very specifically delved out. And it's about this whole film about them stealing a pig that they want to eat. em And it's about them following this pig around and the big kind of like nightmare of all. I'm gonna find it now. It's actually very relevant. It has Maggie, had Maggie Smith in it and Michael Palin as well. and I'll put it in the chat. I think it might just be called pig actually. So here, that's how it goes though. If people just become family farms, I think lots of people would view that as a victory. If meat was just prohibited, theoretically, it depends on the farm, guess. But if the farm is doing, if the pig's doing pig stuff most of its life and kind of hanging out with other pigs and then has one really bad day, I mean, that's way better than a pig having a bad day every day of its life. Yeah. eh I mean, I guess a more general question is, do you see people moving in the right direction? feel like in, so in New Zealand, for example, we were talking about farming, I'm pretty sure caged eggs are now banned unless it's been reversed. But like I remember the Labour government a few years ago signing a policy to make that a thing. So you could have barn eggs that had to be free range and sort of Do you think policies like that are a step? Well, they sound like a step in the right direction, but do you know how quick these things are moving? I don't know how quick they're moving, know, because, you know, the bureaucracy can kind of gum stuff up. But I know, for example, in Oklahoma, you know, uh there are lots of farming practices on these intensive farms that people just don't endorse. m And largely, they just don't know about it. um And so one of the things that I know in Oklahoma, there's some grassroots support for getting rid of gestation crates for pigs. And these are when mother pigs give piglets, right? They don't want the mother pig to move very much. And so they basically just confine it into a space where it can't hardly turn around or anything so that the little pigs can nurse. And lots of people just don't know about that practice. And so I don't know where this is, but maybe there's going to be some ballot initiative where people are going to be able to vote on this. And there's a good bet that that's probably going to pass, right? So they'll probably do something to prohibit that specific behavior. And so I think I'm pretty optimistic about those types of things. So improving the condition of farmed animals on these really intensive farming um places. the massive reduction of animal product consumption, I'm a little bit less pessimistic. I'm a little bit more pessimistic about it. And for one, it's just so socially normed and ingrained. It's going to be hard to to fully get rid of it. But even if we make a small dent uh in it, it might still have some pretty massive impacts. I think that there were some studies that just recently came out just to give an example of the environmental impact. I can't remember exactly what the percentage was, but if something like uh North America and Western Europe reduced their animal product consumption by 15%, it would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by something like 40 % or something like that. And so it's not like a linear relation. So even these small changes can have some pretty important impacts. And so like getting rid of animal, like nobody eating animals anymore, that's probably not super realistic in the near term, barring some major thing happening. em But these smaller, maybe more incremental changes, those are, think, for sure in our reach. yeah well 15 percent ends up being what a couple meals a week or something which is not not impossible in in theory i guess there's an economic issue as well right when you're talking about the ballot initiative because if you do such things i guess the meat in america becomes more expensive and then you're competing in a global market with say meat from argentina meat from brazil whatever any other country which does not have these laws is my point and then uh you kind of lose out and there's that economic pushback which you also need to deal with. Yeah, and for sure, you know, one of the major predictors of uh people's consumption behavior is price. Like it's not the only thing, but it's a thing. um So to the extent that things get more expensive, people are likely to consume less of that thing. m And so you're right. Like it's hard to know what all the externalities are, like what would some of the unintended consequences of these policies would be. um And so these policies would almost for sure make uh meat products, animal products more expensive. Because the whole reason that these practices are in place in the first place is to make those animal products less expensive. So you take them away, it's going to drive up the price. um And so yeah, don't know where the breaking point is. I just don't know. guess that becomes a classism issue then, doesn't it? When people, some people can only afford meat and others can't. That film, I've just put it in, it's called A Private Function, literally touches on all these things. And it's basically if meat was policed and prohibited, quite interesting. Yeah, I will give it, I think you might enjoy it. It's interesting, of like, the things of classism, because only some people can afford meat. It's rations, it's just post-World War. And then on top of that, like, so it's all kind of very policed. It's very interesting and kind of touches on lots of things we've just discussed. Yeah. Ideally, it would be that we eat less meat and the animals are looked after more, isn't it? So we're spending the same amount of money, I guess changing attitudes, it's very difficult on that. Okay, at this point, so we've been recording for about our five or so. um Are there any sort of questions you wanted us to ask with things that you want to touch upon which we haven't? And we can ask those kinds of questions to sort of wrap up over the next five, 10 minutes. Man, I think you all did a great job. I uh mean, I think pretty much everything on my list ah that I was kind of imagining, we touched on on one way or another. Yeah, I guess one question is like, what to you is like the biggest takeaway? What do you think is the biggest thing that we need? The biggest kind of message you want to leave, leave us. Yeah, the hot take won the... Yeah, should I ask it to here or do you want to ask it? Yeah. So Adam, what is your hot take? My hot take is people just don't know what they're doing when they're consuming animal products. Oh, in what way? Yeah. Yeah. This that requires lots of qualification. So, you know, mostly people aren't super informed about lots of the practices that are involved in the production of the food products that they consume. And probably they're not going to endorse lots of those practices. So they know that they're eating animals like nobody's missed like confused about that. But they just don't know how that how those products are produced. I think that's the major thing. that's really good actually it raises a question which i'd be interested to your take on sort of these lab-grown meats and things like that uh what are your thoughts on those is there any sort of like scope in them that sounds like a pretty cool idea if you could just stem cell a steak and it's the same structure you're probably not killing an animal when you're doing something but is that viable is that a thing You know, don't I'm no expert on this thing, right? I just went to a conference where I heard a couple of talks about, you know, reactors grow in these, you know, animal flesh, just not in an animal. You know, I think, you know, they I think what they what do they do? They biopsy or they take a culture from a live animal. So there is a little bit of harm there. But after that, there's no animal harm. Right. So it's they just grow the cells, you know, as far as I'm concerned, as long as people really understand what they're consuming. um And I don't know what all the costs and benefits and the risks are associated with with. lab-grown meat. As long as they understand what they're doing, I mean, I think once the animal is out of the picture, there's no animal ethics issue anymore. um It'd be a different kind of ethical issue. So um are people really understanding what that product is? So I don't think, I don't know. I think lots of people in the animal rights community, I don't know, it's hard to know sometimes, but I think lots of them would be okay with lab-grown meats. I mean, the ethics then becomes of sort of like with other, what would you say, other mass produced food, what's the term called? um I'm forgetting the term now. What do you call like junk food? know, like processed foods. Yeah. It's of comes the similar way, right? Because once it's lab grown stuff, so you can put whatever you want to it. You can use it for good and put extra nutrients in it, I guess. But if you didn't want to, you could also put like really weird addictive things in there as well. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Like, I'm no special expert on this kind of thing. But yeah, sorry, that was one thing, your hot take popped up, which I was like, we didn't touch on this. I guess the final question from me to sort of like wrap it all up is very similar to the hot take, guess. But if there's one piece of research which you've done, which you think people should know about, would that be? Yeah, so I think the one piece of research that I would like people to know about is how important knowledge is, not just beliefs about animals, but how much people actually know about animals, um how big a role that plays in the actions that people end up taking towards animal consumption. Awesome. I think that's great. Bet if you have anything else to ask? Yeah, that was spot on. I guess the question is, has studying animal ethics, has it changed your behaviour and thoughts and in your lab as well? Sorry if I'm allowed to ask that. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I actually wanted to give a uh recognition to some of the great grad students that I've got working in the lab. So Jenna Holt and Gwen Hong, they're about to be finished off. And then some new ones. So Yangying Li, Tian Tian, and Alex Leon, they're all in one way or another working on some animal related issue. And I don't know. I try not to pry too much into the grad students. I think. just like knowledge should, as you start learning more stuff, uh you change your behaviors. um And so, you know, I think probably some of the grad students, their behaviors have changed. I still think, you know, it's not like they've eliminated meat, but maybe they've become a little bit more aware and a more informed consumer. And even that, like that, even if that stopped right there, I'd be totally satisfied if we just made people more informed consumers about what they were doing. And so that's what the I think the grad students are doing that. And so me personally, yeah, I mean, I think it's softened my stance a little bit on people um who consume animal products. um So there are lots of reasons why people do it. I have my own reasons, but other people could have perfectly legitimate reasons for doing it too. um And so it may be a little bit more understanding of some of the factors that might be involved in those decisions. um Yeah. Yeah, because I guess the other question on your first majority, which we didn't ask, sort of, I assume you started this research once you already sort of stopped having animal products and things like that, or, and that's why you got into this. So yeah, so you went from a slightly harder stance on it to nuanced. Maybe is that the word? like it's more nuanced. like, I'm, you know, and I'm not entirely sure that it's like, I personally don't try not to consume animal products, but I'm not sure if that's like, right, right. You know, unlike, like, you know, like the atomic number of gold, I know what that, I mean, it has a number, uh but uh like, that just seems like a fact, whereas my personal animal, my personal food consumption, I'm not sure if there's a factor of the matter about that kind of thing. um So yeah, I think maybe it's become a little bit more nuanced. It sounds just like, it's just more mindfulness is what it's sounding like. Everyone's just a little bit more mindful and kind of understanding both sides to it seems to be just the best way forward. Yeah, we started lots of this ethical interaction stuff in non-socially normed areas. So we started uh mostly in recycled water and plastic recycling. And people really don't know anything about either one of those two things. So it's a nice kind of canvas to work on. um And so we thought, well, we got that thing ironed out. We figured out how to do it, especially for recycled water. We can do that. um But then we wanted to move into one of these more socially normed behaviors to see if we could do it there. if we could do it there, we can do it anywhere, I think. And so this was the major scientific reason why we went into the animal stuff. I had a personal interest in it, but it's one of these socially normed behaviors that um should be one of the most difficult things to change. Great. Yeah, I think that's a thing to go. It's a good point to end on actually. Yes, yeah, yeah. Well, in that case, thank you so much for coming on, Adam. Thanks for having me. This was a lot of fun. Yeah, it was lovely to meet you. Really, really interesting and thought-provoking. Love a philosophical chat. Brilliant, and thank you everybody for listening. Adam, if everybody wanted to reach out to you, learn more about you, can they find you? Yeah, so I've got uh my faculty web page at the University of Oklahoma. I think if you just Google Adam Feltz, I'm probably the first one who pops up. um We got a couple lab pages. So we have our physical lab page, but then we have another page that's devoted to uh animal research that should be linked there. Awesome. Brilliant. All right. And so again, thank you so much, Adam. Thank you everybody for listening and until next time, take care. Bye.