Bruce Friedrich: How Alternative Proteins Will Save the Planet
Summary:
In this episode, we speak with Bruce Friedrich. Bruce is co-founder and president of The Good Food Institute, a Y Combinator-funded non-profit that promotes plant- and cell-based alternatives to animal products.
Some things we touch on in this episode:
How animal agriculture harms animals, the poor, and the climate.
Why Bruce loves Dorothy Day’s Catholic Worker movement.
Why alternative proteins are the “electric vehicles” of animal agriculture.
The power of positive example.
Bruce’s advice on top charities and careers for Christians who want to make an impact for God’s creation.
Articles, organizations, and other media discussed in this episode
Bruce co-founded The Good Food Institute to accelerate alternative protein innovation.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is one of the largest animal rights organization in the world, actively informing policymakers and the public about animal abuse.
Involvement in the Catholic Worker Movement has helped Bruce grow his heart for direct service.
Preventing the Next Pandemic is a 2020 UN report on the coronavirus and other ‘zoonoses’ — diseases that are transmitted between animals and humans.
Diet for a Small Planet by F.M. Lappé inspired Bruce to become vegan.
Drawing on Biblical references, Christianity and the Rights of Animals by A. Linzey explains why Christians are to treat animals with compassion.
World Resources Institute is a leading global research organization working on developing practical solutions to improve people’s lives and ensure nature can thrive.
Bruce’s 2022 piece in Foreign Policy: “Plant-Based Proteins Are Too Expensive”.
Animal Charity Evaluators can help you choose the most effective animal charities to which to donate.
Giving Green identifies effective climate giving opportunities for individuals and businesses.
Mercy for Animals is a leading organization calling for an end to factory farming.
Episode Highlights:
Christians aren’t working hard enough for the poor
[00:52:53] “It has not struck me that one of the problems of Christians is that we're working too hard to make the world better. It has definitely struck me that we are far more of the world than Jesus was and that Jesus calls us to be. So if I'm picking the ten problems that are plaguing Christianity, oh my gosh, “We just work too hard for the poor” is not on my top ten list.”
Massive waste from animal products
[00:09:48] “According to the World Resources Institute, the most efficient animal at turning crops into meat is the chicken. It takes nine calories in the form of soy, wheat, oats, other food that's fed to the chicken. It takes nine calories into the chicken to get one calorie back out. So you want 1000 calories of chicken, you need 9000 calories of feed. That is literally 800% food waste.”
Alt Proteins are the “electric cars” of animal ag
[00:09:48] “It's great to try to convince people to walk more and ride their bikes more. But inexorably globally, the world is going to consume more energy inexorably globally, the world is going to buy more cars and drive more miles. […] The idea is, yes, there will be more meat produced, but we can use plants and we can use silk cultivation to make plant based meat and cultivated meat.”
Finding charities with the greatest impact for God’s creation
[00:47:46] “In general, I think the effective altruism movement and how it thinks about charity is really, really smart. So how impactful is the organization? How focused on counterfactual impact is the organization? How tractable is the work that they're doing? How neglected is the work that they're doing?”
The Impact of positive example
[00:44:30] “So I do think the power of positive example is colossal. […] You can literally have thousands of times the positive impact through your advocacy that you will have and your example than you will have just by the direct work that you were doing.”
Animal Protection is a Christian Issue
[00:24:23] “As a Christian, I think that animal protection is absolutely a Christian issue.”
The Best Careers in Alt Proteins:
[00:37:02] “But I will say the relevant STEM focus scientists is probably the most important thing to go into. This is, at its heart, a science question. How do we biomimic the precise meat experience using plants or tissue engineering? How do we apply standard tissue engineering techniques but move it over to food from medicine and scale it up? So mechanical engineers may be the thing that is most necessary to help figure out what the production systems of tomorrow are going to look like and make them as efficient as possible. But we definitely need tissue engineers, we need meat scientists, we need chemical engineers, we need biotech scientists, synthetic biologists.”
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[00:00:02.890] - JD
Today, I'm speaking with Bruce Friedrich. Bruce is the president and co founder of the Good Food Institute. GFI is a Y Combinator funded nonprofit that works to accelerate the production of plant and cell based animal products. We talk about his organization, what it's like building it up from just a few employees to what's now almost 200 across over seven countries. We also talk about his work trying to create change on a systemic level as opposed to an individual or direct level and what that's been like for him. Bruce also was with Dorothy Day's Catholic Workers Movement, and he shares about that and about his faith and about what it means for him to make a radical impact with his time and with his career and his money. So I hope you enjoy the show, bruce, thank you so much for talking with me.
[00:01:10.700] - Bruce
I'm delighted to be here, JD. Thanks for having me.
[00:01:13.130] - JD
So we're meeting at the AVA conference. How's your conference going?
[00:01:16.600] - Bruce
It's amazing. I love this conference. And yeah, I mean, the vibe is just so positive and so compassionate and so it's terrific.
[00:01:25.630] - JD
Yeah. Have you been to many of these, or this is something new, right?
[00:01:29.850] - Bruce
No, I've been going to this for decades. This is a new iteration of it. But all the way back to, like, 1999, I think is when farm Animal reform movement started doing these conferences, and even that was the outgrowth of something that had stopped, I think, in 1997. And I was actually at the 1997 one as well. So, yes, I have been to more of these than I have not been to, and they have been most years absent COVID since, like, 1999.
[00:01:58.150] - JD
That's great. And I'd love to hear a bit more about your background, share with the audience a bit of your journey, also, starting with what you studied, where you went to school, up to what you did now. So maybe like, a two or three minute summary would be helpful.
[00:02:11.860] - Bruce
All right, well, I am very old, so a two to three minute summary is a little challenging. But yeah. I grew up in Oklahoma. I went to college in Iowa, a tiny little liberal art school called Cornell College in Iowa. In college, I studied economics. I focused on resource economics, and so I wrote my honors thesis on the Bretton Woods twins, the World Bank, and the IMF, and the degree to which those institutions were imposing structural adjustment programs on developing economies, much to the detriment of those developing economies. So studied resource economics was the focus of my economics degree. I ran a homeless shelter and a soup kitchen, a shelter for homeless families in inner city Washington, DC. For about six years, spent a lot of time immersed in the DC school system, the inner city school system, because it was a shelter for families. So mostly women and children, occasional complete units. We also did sanctuary work. This was the early 90s, so we gave shelter to undocumented families as well who were houseless. I did Teach for America for a couple of years, so I taught in inner city Baltimore. Education, especially inner city education, is something that I cared and care deeply about.
[00:03:30.280] - Bruce
I was Teacher of the Year from my school. Very proud of that my second year. And I have done animal protection. I was at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals for about 13 years, farm sanctuary for almost five. And then just seven years ago last month, I started working on what is now the Good Food Institute. Seven years ago last month, we were calling it. We didn't quite decide between Future Food Foundation and Future of Food Foundation and Future Foods Foundation, but we knew it was going to be FFF when we first started working on it just over seven years ago. And now it's the Good Food Institute. We are@gfi.org for anybody who wants to find out more. And we're now north of 170 total people. So seven years ago right now, it.
[00:04:21.670] - JD
Across six or seven countries now?
[00:04:23.930] - Bruce
More than six or seven countries across six independent nonprofit organizations. So there is GFI, India, GFI, Israel, GFI, Brazil, GFI Asia Pacific, based out of Singapore, and GFI, Europe. And we have a lot of people around Europe, but mostly we're focused on lobbying the EU. So we have an office in Brussels and then focused on lobbying in the UK. And then also building scientific ecosystems throughout Europe, including in the UK. GFI is predominantly a science organization, although our global battle cry is that governments should be funding open access research and development into alternative proteins, and they should be incentivizing private sector activity on alternative proteins with a focus predominantly on climate impact and the difficulty of meeting obligations under the Paris Climate Agreement unless alternative proteins are successful.
[00:05:20.230] - JD
So now you're doing a lot with science, a lot with legislation, and a lot with alternative proteins. But you started out as an advocate, as an activist, and primarily motivated by your Christian faith. I'd love to hear more about that. But how does developing alternative proteins fit in with the problems you're trying to solve? What are those problems? Could you maybe walk us down? What pressing global problems GFI is trying to solve? What problems you are trying to solve?
[00:05:46.810] - Bruce
Yes. So GFI is the Good Food Institute and is predominantly a science organization. So the plurality of our team members across those six GFI organizations are scientists, and we are focused on building a scientific ecosystem. Our global battle cry, as I mentioned, is the policy work. So we are focused on convincing governments that they should be funding R and D, basically funding the scientists and incentivizing private sector activity. And that's still incentivizing private sector companies that are focused on the science of creating meat from plants and cultivating meat from cells. So if you're thinking about something like renewable energy or electric vehicles so we think alternative proteins are the food and AG climate solution that analogizes to renewable energy and electric vehicles. So if you're talking about something like renewable energy or electric vehicles, it's great to try to convince people to consume less energy. It's great to try to convince people to walk more and ride their bikes more. But inexorably globally, the world is going to consume more energy inexorably globally, the world is going to buy more cars and drive more miles. And there have been eleven peer review scientific studies about what meat consumption is going to look like in 2050.
[00:07:03.610] - Bruce
And the lowest prediction is 61% more meat by 2050.
[00:07:09.930] - JD
And that's above what it is right now.
[00:07:12.010] - Bruce
Yes. 61% more meat by 2050. Most of those predictions in the peer review literature indicate about double the amount of meat in 2050 relative to now. So just like the goal of renewable energy is to say yes, we're going to consume more energy, but instead of fossil fuels, we can use renewables. And just like the goal of the electric vehicle movement is to say yes, we're going to be driving more miles, but we can eliminate combustion engines and replace combustion engines with electric vehicles here too. The idea is, yes, there will be more meat produced, but we can use plants and we can use silk cultivation to make plant based meat and cultivated meat. So it analogizes. We think it is the one food and AG solution to the climate impact of industrial animal agriculture. That analogizes.
[00:08:00.110] - JD
So what I'm hearing is that if you are concerned about the environment, you're concerned about global warming, climate change, and you're concerned about cleaner energy and electric cars, like many, many are today, especially many Christians, then you should be even more concerned about the growing consumption of meat.
[00:08:17.600] - Bruce
At least as concerned. For sure. And renewable energy is critically important. Electric vehicles are critically important. But agriculture is a third of direct emissions. Animal agriculture is a fifth of direct emissions. As we shift to electric vehicles and renewable energy, the proportion attributable to animal agriculture is going to go up and up, especially as the world consumes more and more meat. But we can biomimic meat with plants. And a critical thing to underline about alternative proteins is this is not convincing people to eat differently. So just like renewable energy is focused on when you turn on the light switch, that energy is supplied by renewables, not by fossil fuels. When you drive, you're driving an electric car instead of a combustion engine. Here, probably everybody listening has a cell phone very nearby, maybe in their pocket. That cell phone is a phone, even though it doesn't have a cord. And it's probably also a camera, even though it doesn't have analog film. Meat can be made from plants. All meat is is lipids, aminos minerals and water. Meat is lipids, aminos, minerals and water. That is the entirety of what makes up meat. We can hire scientists and use plants which also have lipids, amino's minerals and water to make something that is indistinguishable from the point of view of the meat eater, but is healthier.
[00:09:38.820] - Bruce
And then with cultivation right now, the process of growing crops to feed them to animals so that we can eat animals is insanely inefficient.
[00:09:46.190] - JD
How so?
[00:09:48.810] - Bruce
According to the World Resources Institute, the most efficient animal at turning crops into meat is the chicken. It takes nine calories in the form of soy, wheat, oats, other food that's fed to the chicken. It takes nine calories into the chicken to get one calorie back out. So you want 1000 calories of chicken, you need 9000 calories of feed. That is literally 800% food waste.
[00:10:10.510] - JD
So the most efficient form of converting plants to animal protein is an 800% loss.
[00:10:17.450] - Bruce
Yeah, 800% food waste. Like everybody listening probably is concerned about food waste and considers it an ethical issue to throw away lots and lots of food. You are not personally throwing away eight plates of food for every plate you're consuming if you're eating chicken. But that's the relationship you're entering into. For beef, it's 40 calories into a cow to get one calorie back out in the form of beef. Insanely inefficient. But it's actually a lot so that's, you know, nine to 40 times as much land, nine to 40 times as many pesticides and herbicides, nine to 40 times as much water. But it's not just that. Then you're shipping those crops to a feed mill and you're operating the feed mill. You're shipping the feed to the industrial farm, and you're operating the farm. You're shipping the animals to the slaughterhouse, and you're operating the slaughterhouse. So it's multiple extra stages of gas guzzling, pollution spewing vehicles, and it's multiple extra factories, which are very energy intensive and also very polluting. So you crunch all of those numbers, and what you find is that inefficiency, which is 12,000 years of growing crops to feed them to animals so that we can eat animals, is an antiquated technology.
[00:11:18.940] - Bruce
It is absolutely due for an update. And the really exciting thing about it is that because it is so inefficient to do that, there's a lot of profit to be made if you consolidate all of that. And just either A, turn those crops directly into meat, plant based meat, or B, use those crops to just feed the cells rather than feeding the live animals. And most of that energy being burned up by the animal simply existing, a lot of it going into things like feathers and blood and bones that we're not going to eat with cultivated meat, with planted-based meat, it's a lot more efficient. It's one factory. So the supply chain is significantly condensed. So over time, just like renewable energy can be more profitable and electric vehicles can be more profitable, planted-based meat and cultivated meat can be more profitable.
[00:12:06.880] - JD
Are we sure that these decreases in energy usage aren't due to some other way of accounting for energy use? I know in the case of electric cars, sometimes they're purported to be more energy efficient. But really, when it comes to all of the intensive processes that go into making these more complicated electric cars or batteries, sometimes it leads to more environmental destruction. I know that's something critiques point out or critics point out. Is there a critical case like that to be made for alternative proteins?
[00:12:34.850] - Bruce
I don't think so. I mean, really, like, just if you think intuitively, like, you or I are going to be consuming 1500 calories a day if we basically don't get out of bed. 2000 calories a day if we're moderately active, a lot more if we're super athletic and we just burn off all of those calories. We don't probably gain weight maybe a little bit, but hopefully not that same sort of physiological relationship operates for animals. That's why it takes nine calories into a chicken to get one calorie back out. Some of that goes into non edible parts of the bird. Some of it, you know, most of it is just burned off by the animal existing. So just intuitively, when you think about what does it mean to take those same calories and turn them into something that is identical from the vantage of the consumer to meat, or if you think about what does it look like to turn that into cultivated meat? And with cultivated meat, I mean, it's just like, you know, if you take a cutting from a plant or a seed from a plant and you bathe that seed or that cutting and nutrients in a greenhouse, that plant will grow into a full plant.
[00:13:37.420] - Bruce
This is the same thing. But you take some cells from a chicken or a pig or a cow or a fish and you bathe those cells in nutrients and the cells multiply and grow. And it's basically the same process. And it's way, way cleaner. It's way, way more efficient. You don't need antibiotics. You don't need a fraction of the pesticides and herbicides dumped onto the crops because it's far fewer crops. It's just a much more efficient and better way of getting the exact same end product, but a more pure version of the end product.
[00:14:07.390] - JD
So I'll give it to you. It does sound a lot more environmentally efficient. Let's say that I'm not convinced that protecting the environment or at least reducing greenhouse gas emissions or energy use is among the world's most pressing problems. Let's say I'm a lot more concerned about other problems like global poverty or other issues. You argue that even so, developing alt proteins should be a very important cause. Can you walk me through some of those reasons why.
[00:14:35.430] - Bruce
Yeah. So I co authored an article that's in the current issue of Foreign Policy magazine. So fall 2022, Foreign Policy magazine, about the food security issue. In 2010, we grew about 750,000,000 metric tons of cereals to be fed to farm animals, and that doesn't include and now it's over a billion, more than a billion metric tons.
[00:14:57.510] - JD
It's hard to wrap my head around what is a billion metric tons even look like. Right?
[00:15:01.120] - Bruce
Yeah. Just one sort of point of comparison. The war between Ukraine and Russia displaced about 50 million metric tons of wheat, and that put the possibility of famine in developing economies on the front page of every newspaper in the world. Probably, certainly all the US newspapers. We feed more than 20 times that number of cereals are fed to chickens and pigs and other farm animals, even before you get to the 70% of the global soy crop. So about 270,000,000 metric tons of soy are also fed to farm animals. And what that does is it creates basically competition for grain and soy and competition for land between farm animals to feed wealthy people in the west and developing economies. It drives up the prices, literally prices people out and leads to famine. This is basically the entire point of the book diet for a Small Planet from 51 Years Ago by Francis Morlepe.
[00:15:57.990] - JD
You walk me through the economics here. So if we produce more feed for animals, how is that actually driving up prices, if anything, if you increase the supply when it decrease prices and maybe decrease food prices for the global poor?
[00:16:11.660] - Bruce
Well, no, because it's creating competition. So if there are 100 stereos and people really want to but you've got 200 people who want those 100 stereos, the price of the stereos is going to go up. Similarly, if you have a limited amount of land and a limited increasing demand.
[00:16:29.200] - JD
You're saying, competing buyers in this case. Because these agricultural farmers are bidding up the price of grain.
[00:16:37.050] - Bruce
Yeah. No, that's exactly right.
[00:16:38.190] - JD
Do we have an idea of what it would look like if we suddenly eliminated all crop use for animal feed, what that would do to food prices for the global poor, and how much people's real incomes or real consumption would increase?
[00:16:55.170] - Bruce
The one thing that would point toward an answer to that question, the UK government did an analysis at about the same time, and they said the 100 million metric tons of biofuels were driving up the price of cereals by about 30%. I'm guessing it's not a linear relationship, but we now have twelve and a half times as many crops being fed to farm animals. So something north of 30% is going to be the impact on the price of cereals for people who basically have no money. They're living in extreme poverty.
[00:17:22.680] - JD
There are still about, what, 6700 million people living under a dollar 90 a day living in extreme poverty, people for whom just buying food is a large part of their overall expenses. And those prices are going up and up and up because of you're saying using feed for animals.
[00:17:39.290] - Bruce
Yeah, no, that's exactly right. And this is one of the points in the current issue of Foreign Policy Magazine. Nigel Purvis, the CEO of Climate Works. I'm climate Advisors, and I have an article about this.
[00:17:51.590] - JD
And this is really why you got into this space. Right. It was because of your concern for the global poor, for the poor in general. Going back to your work, back in Grenell, doing sanctuary work, and also with the was it Catholic Workers Alliance or am I getting the name wrong?
[00:18:05.840] - Bruce
Just called Catholic Worker.
[00:18:07.110] - JD
Catholic Worker, right. Project of Dorothy Day. Right. Continued to the modern day. Can you tell us a bit more about that and how your desire to help the poor started this journey for you?
[00:18:19.390] - Bruce
Yeah, I got to college in 1987, and I joined an organization called Poverty Action Now. Poverty. Action now. We were volunteering at a Catholic Worker, actually, soup kitchen in Des Moines. I'm still friends with the guy who runs it. He's still running it. I don't know when he started, but sometime before 1987. Frank Cordaro. So I was volunteering at the soup kitchen in Des Moines through poverty. Action now. We were organizing fast each semester to raise money for Oxfam International, and I got my degree in economics.
[00:18:51.870] - JD
There's a similar thing today called 30 Hours Famine. I'm not sure if you've heard of that, but essentially a fast. I did it in church growing up to raise money for the global poor.
[00:19:01.040] - Bruce
Yeah, Oxfam was I mean, this was a coordinated campaign on university campuses by Oxfam in the don't know if they still do it, but we did it at my college, and it was fascinating. Like, fasting for 24 hours, and then the proceeds that are saved are donated to Oxfam International, which I thought was pretty great. And I majored in economics and I majored in economics specifically to major in resource economics to try to figure out what it would look like to distribute resources more in a way that allowed people not to starve, essentially. And one of the things that became very clear looking, especially at structural adjustment programs from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, is that a big part of the problem was that crops were being grown to be shipped to developed economies, from developing economies to be fed to farm animals. And that sort of relationship has just gotten worse in the 35 years since 1987. And I wrote my honors thesis, as I mentioned, on structural adjustment programs and this problem. And yeah, so the Good Food Institute, when we started working on it, the fundamental question we were trying to answer was, how are we going to feed close to 10 billion people by 2050 without burning the planet to a crisp.
[00:20:19.470] - Bruce
And a big part of the answer is we need to stop funneling more than a billion metric tons of cereals through animals in this massively inefficient relationship, where in the best case scenario, you have 800% food waste, with cattle, you have 3900% food waste, and it is a massive contributor to climate change. And that was sort of the founding argument observation of the Good Food Institute and our focus, which is just on alternative proteins as a replacement for industrial animal products. And one of the two other things that we talk about a lot more now, one of them is antimicrobial resistance. So the UK government has said that the threat to the human race from antimicrobial resistance is more certain than the threat from climate change. Already, 1.3 million people per year are dying from antimicrobial resistant superbugs. That's going to be 10 million people per year by 2050. And we are feeding about 70% of the medically relevant antibiotics that are produced by the pharmaceutical industry. They're fed to farm animals to keep those animals alive in conditions that would otherwise kill massive numbers of them. And then the other one is pandemic risk.
[00:21:33.230] - JD
Closely connected right, to antimicrobial resistance. This is risk of a pandemic emerging, right?
[00:21:39.310] - Bruce
I think you can look at them as two independent issues. So the problem with antimicrobial resistance is that we are feeding antibiotics to animals. 70% of the global supply of medically relevant antibiotics are fed to farm animals. And what that does is it allows superbugs to figure out how to beat the antibiotics, so that when you get sick or when you have an operation or something and you need antibiotics to stop an infection from occurring, the antibiotics don't work because the but the superbugs have figured out how to beat the antibiotics. It is a separate issue. Pandemic risk. The UN environment Program and the International Livestock Research Institute released a report in July of 2020 called Preventing the Next Pandemic. And I would encourage people to Google that. It's very easy to pull up nine of the world's foremost pandemic scientists. They came to consensus on the seven most likely causes of the next pandemic. The first one is increased meat consumption. If we have tens of billions of animals now, and we double that by 2050, every single one of those animals is a potential vector for the next COVID. And the second one was industrialization of animal agriculture.
[00:22:51.290] - Bruce
And they flagged two things. The first is more and more we are relying on fewer and fewer breeds of animals, which means those animals have depressed immune systems, which means they're more vulnerable to a zoonotic disease. And then the second is if you cram 50,000, we're doing more into more concentrated animal feeding operations. If you cram 50,000 chickens into a shed for broiler meat or hundreds of thousands of chickens into a shed for egg laying hands, depresses their immune systems further and you're basically begging for the next COVID. So nine of the world's leading pandemic scientists, and they say two of the seven most likely causes of the next pandemic, the 9th is also on the 7th, is also climate change, which we've been talking about are the way that we produce meat today. And all of that points toward, you know, GFI's focus, which is governments, for the same reason they're incentivizing drug development, for the same reason they're incentivizing renewable energy and electric vehicles. Governments should be incentivizing they should be funding basic science, and they should be incentivizing private sector activity in alternative proteins to stop the next pandemic, to stop antibiotic resistance, to make sure we can meet our obligations under the Paris Climate Agreement to preserve biodiversity.
[00:24:03.160] - JD
I'd like to talk about animal cruelty as something that Christians should or shouldn't be concerned about. You haven't mentioned that so far in our conversation. How much of that has played an influence in your work? And I also love to ask what the strongest arguments are to be concerned about this.
[00:24:23.350] - Bruce
As a Christian, I think that animal protection is absolutely a Christian issue. I read a book by Andrew Lindzey called Christianity and the Rights of Animals. The sort of update version of it is animal theology, which I cannot recommend highly enough. And he basically points out that other animals were designed by God to feel pain in the same way and to the same degree that human beings feel pain. And he also points out that other animals were designed to be raised. Mothers are supposed to raise their young. When Jesus is looking for a metaphor for God's love for humanity, he chooses a hen's love for her brood. And on industrial farms, these animals are denied their animal in us. So he basically says it mocks God to treat God's creatures so abysmally and to say, God has designed chickens to raise their young. We're going to raise them in conditions where they never even meet their young. God has designed mammals to nurse their young. We're going to take their young away basically immediately, whether they're cows or their pigs, and basically say, we know more than God about how animals should lead their lives.
[00:25:34.680] - Bruce
And we're going to inflict just almost unimaginable psychological and physiological suffering on animals as though they were not, they are not beloved by God when the Bible makes it very clear that they're beloved by God. So these are some of the issues that Lindzey spells out that had a colossal impact on me. So I actually adopted a vegan diet after I read Diet for a Small Planet in 1987. And it was the straight resources issue, was the straight, oh, my God. If it's going to take nine calories to feed a chicken to get one calorie back out while people are starving to death, that violates my religious principles about treating people in the Good Samaritan story can be cross applied. As how to think about human beings and to recognize that somebody who's suffering in Eritrea or Ethiopia or Somalia is no less important than somebody who's suffering down the street from me or a relative. And I'm not going to consume something that requires nine to 40 times the resources of something else while people are starving. Like, that is the thing that that really got me to adopt a vegan diet in 1987.
[00:26:41.330] - Bruce
And then I was running a homo shelter in a soup kitchen, a Catholic worker in Washington DC. Which I did for about six years before I joined PETA. And that's when I read Christianity and the rights of animals. And Lindzey just, like, makes the point that other animals are beings who are beloved by God and what's happening to them is basically a denial of God. And that really struck me.
[00:27:02.710] - JD
I think it's very interesting that you became vegan because of these resource questions. How do we optimize the amount of food we get in the hands of the global poor? And you just doubled down after you read Andrew Lindzey's piece. I think a lot of Christians, when we think about those who've made the choice to become vegetarian or vegan, we think of people who made this choice for non Christian reasons. Maybe we saw some video that moved us or we fell in with a more progressive crowd that cared about this issue and so we decided we need to care about this issue too. But very rarely does it seem to be this case for biblical reasons or even, as you mentioned before, for reasons of helping the global poor, which is just grounded in Scripture in so many places. Are there any particular passages that have been most motivational for you?
[00:27:53.750] - Bruce
I mean, there are a lot of passages that have been extraordinarily motivational for me. So, like the early just human rights concept, you look at everything going back to Genesis and Leviticus and Deuteronomy and the idea that the Earth is on loan to us. Like the entire concept of the Sabbath day and the Sabbatical, the Sabbath day, the Sabbath year. Like, all of the idea of allowing the land to regenerate and even allowing animals to eat on the on the Sabbath day, what is left over, et cetera. Like, all of that stuff, I think, is critically important in the Christian scriptures. Things like, go sell all that you have and give to the poor the story of the Great commandment who is my neighbor. Like, all of the sort of the concepts that lead many people who are people of faith and Christians to think outside of the moral universe of their family to the moral universe of the world. And then thinking just like, what is the economic system do to people in developing economies? And what is the genesis of the sort of massive amount of global starvation? And then recognizing, you know, obviously the way that we're producing.
[00:29:09.140] - Bruce
Food. And the fact that we're feeding massive amounts of crops to animals is directly contributing to global starvation and it's unethical. And as Christians, we should be leading our lives in a way that points toward what God talks about in the Escaton, which is no suffering for humans or animals, which gets us to the like, what are the passages that are motivating from an animal standpoint? And I think you look at the Garden of Eden and it's completely nonviolent. It's not until Genesis nine that God gives permission to eat animals. And if you read Genesis nine, it's like brutality has fallen upon the human race. There's like all kinds of violence. And God says, well, you're eating everything, so I'm going to give you animals to eat. But it's not exactly humanity's finest hour, and it's very much not the Garden of Eden, which is nonviolent. And then we also look at the Escondon vision of the prophets isaiah, Micah, Jeremiah. Even a lion is lying down with the lamb. And we're back to the vision of the Garden of Eden, which is nonviolence. So Jesus gives us the one prayer, and the prayer includes, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
[00:30:17.630] - Bruce
So we're a fallen species. We can't be perfect. But I don't think many people are going to argue that there will be slaughterhouses or industrial animal farms in heaven or that that is God's will. So to the degree that we can begin to approximate living our lives in ways that either A do approximate the Escaton vision and the Garden of Eden, or B don't, it seems to me pretty clear that we should go with A and we should try to live as much as possible, recognizing that we're a fallen species and we can't be perfect. But the fact that we can't be perfect shouldn't be an excuse to throw up our hands and do nothing. So if we can choose at a meal to do something that causes animals to suffer or not, it makes sense to me that we would go with the former. No, the latter the not.
[00:31:04.790] - JD
Bruce when I look at the US today, and I look at Christianity in the US. Today, I don't typically associate caring about animals or caring about alternative proteins with Christians, it seems like those who are running a lot of factory farms, those who are running a lot of slaughterhouses, are in states that are very red and very Christian. Why do you think that is? If it's so clear to you from scripture that this is something God cares about?
[00:31:32.890] - Bruce
You know, I mean, I think it probably goes back to like, we are human beings. We have a tremendous amount of cognitive dissonance. Yeah, I don't know what the answer to that is. What I will say is that especially for Catholics, if you look at Lodato c on care of our common home by the Pope, by Pope Francis, it is basically an animal rights treatise, and that gets significantly less attention than the environmental component of it. But it is like hardcore. It specifically denounces anthropocentrism by uses the phrase anthropocentrism and denounces it. Similarly. If you look at the Catholic catechism, it says that it is a violation of God to cause animals to suffer needlessly. And you can quibble about what caused animals to suffer needlessly means, but I've been vegan for 35 years, and all of the science indicates that you can be not just as healthy on an entirely plant based diet, but healthier on an entirely plant based diet. So what is needless if not causing animals to suffer completely unnecessarily? I think there's a reasonable argument that hunting can be justified if it's done ethically. I think there's a reasonable argument that something like animal welfare approved from the Animal welfare institute that eggs from animal welfare approved animals can be eaten ethically, but 99% of animal products are not.
[00:33:00.970] - JD
That there's a lot of standards for gold star animal welfare ratings. There are so many on the market now, it's hard to keep track of them all. How do we know which ones are legitimate? If I'm a Christian and I'm looking to still eat meat, ideally not right. Ideally I eat plant based meat, but if I'm committed, I'm going to have a steak and I don't have any plant based options near me. Are any of these labels trustworthy in your view?
[00:33:35.510] - Bruce
The main thing to say is that most of them are not, so most of them are legitimately, not as bad. So, like cage free, it does mean something and it's going to be not as bad. Most people who look at a cage free farm are still going to be completely horrified by the conditions as well as the slaughter conditions. I think the least bad, probably by a wide margin, would be 100% grass fed. And then probably if you're looking for something other than grass fed beef, animal welfare approved from the Animal welfare institute is the one label that probably aligns with what most people are thinking about when they think about animal welfare. But my hunch would be you're still going to be pretty shocked by the slaughter. Even with animal welfare approved, it's going to be significantly better than an industrial slaughter, but you're still probably going to be shocked by it. I remember this episode of Oprah where she had Michael Pollan on and they showed the most antiseptic imaginable cattle slaughter and the entire audience was just completely in shock. And Michael Pollan was like, wow, if you guys can't watch that, you really have no business well, you really have no business eating meat.
[00:34:43.460] - Bruce
Like, how many things are there in your lives that are being done for your benefit that you are paying to have done that? You recoil it even looking at them. And if the most antiseptic, most humane method of cattle slaughter causes you to freak out in the way that Oprah's audience freaked out in response to this. Like, really, where's the basic integrity and paying people to do much, much worse if you're going and eating beef at McDonald's or buying beef at Walmart?
[00:35:09.770] - JD
And there's also a price problem for those who are looking to be good stewards with their finances, to pay for the best treated cattle, to pay for the most humane animal products. It's just so expensive at that point. You might as well maybe go for the meat alternative.
[00:35:24.720] - Bruce
Yeah, I mean, the meat alternative is the thing that doesn't cause animals to suffer unnecessarily and doesn't require that you kill animals unnecessarily. And you look at the Escaton visions, you look at the Garden of Eden, you look at the prophets, and it's not humanely slaughtered animals. It's non slaughtered animals. It's literally the carnivores go back to not eating one another. So to the degree that we can approximate that, it seems to me that we should.
[00:35:47.470] - JD
Are there any other Christian organizations in the animal welfare space or plant based meat space that you're excited about? I'm familiar with CreatureKind. I'm familiar with SARX. I'm not familiar with many others. Are you?
[00:36:01.330] - Bruce
No, I am a big fan of CreatureKind, but I don't know that. I know SARX, but no, I'm not, and would love to see people change that.
[00:36:11.590] - JD
Then I'd like to transition now to talking quite explicitly about careers and what undergraduates especially can do to make an impact in this space. I'm curious what specific skills or talents are most needed in the planted-based meat space, especially looking forward in the next five to ten years or even 20 years. And then we can also talk about majors or conferences or grad programs that might be relevant. But yeah. When you're at GFI, what are you most looking for in people to hire? I know GFI is a think tank and advocacy group, but when you look at the plant based meat startups that you're working with, many of which are doing very well, what are they looking to hire for that they just can't find?
[00:37:02.310] - Bruce
I don't know that there's a just can't find. But I will say the relevant STEM focus scientists is probably the most important thing to go into. This is, at its heart, a science question. How do we biomimic the precise meat experience using plants or tissue engineering? How do we apply standard tissue engineering techniques but move it over to food from medicine and scale it up? So mechanical engineers may be the thing that is most necessary to help figure out what the production systems of tomorrow are going to look like and make them as efficient as possible. But we definitely need tissue engineers, we need meat scientists, we need chemical engineers, we need biotech scientists, synthetic biologists. So kind of the full range of STEM scientists basically focused on the project of making meat in a way that is updated from the 12,000 years of making meat in the current insanely and efficient manner.
[00:38:05.770] - JD
So basically, if you're working in STEM, there's a spot for you in some plant based meat startup.
[00:38:10.420] - Bruce
Yeah, that is right. Yeah, that's the basic answer. Although I would say there is an awful lot of work that people can do while they are in college. So like GFI, one of the programs I'm most excited about is our Alt Proteins project. And if you just Google Alt Protein project, it'll pop right up. But we have 36 university chapters and every chapter has two co founders. All of the cofounders go through a two day training from GFI. GFI, everything that we do, plugs into our objectives and key results, which is basically a KPI system that was popularized by Google that we use. And we also train all of the university chapters in the Alt Protein Project on OKRs and work with them to set OKRs and work with them to do quarterly reporting and so getting involved in basically educating others. So, like, if you are a science undergraduate at a top science school, you can do your work, which will be great, but you can also be a voice on campus to make sure that everybody else on your campus all of the other STEM scientists recognize that making meat from plants and cultivating meat from cells is a way to make a massive positive difference in terms of climate, biodiversity, global health, animal protection, while also moving into something that will be a very lucrative career, like most STEM sciences are.
[00:39:33.560] - Bruce
But the vast majority of people who are biotech scientists or chemical engineers or whatever, like they're thinking about roughly 10,000 different possible careers and alternative proteins is not yet one of them. We need to change that.
[00:39:46.970] - JD
In the podcast you did with Rob Wiblin at 80,000 Hours, you mentioned then that what we need are managers and business leaders who can come in to work at a lot of these planted-based meat meat orgs that are just scaling up rapidly and they need people to manage teams. Is that still the case? Do we still need MBAs or do you think there's an even greater bottleneck in the STEM?
[00:40:07.710] - Bruce
Well, there is definitely a greater bottleneck in the STEM and a part of that is that the MBAs are very aware of the opportunities and alternative proteins. So how so can you speak more about that? It's alternative proteins are a pretty well publicized venture capital opportunity. So if you are in business at school, there's a fairly reasonable shot that you have looked at one of the alternative protein companies. Like this is specifically the sort of thing that business school teaches you is to look for white space opportunities and look for disruption opportunities. And what are the industries that have been around for a really long time and are ripe for innovation? And the meat industry, the dairy industry, the egg industry are like, very clearly, incredibly antiquated and incredibly inefficient. So like, business schools are looking at those sorts of things, whereas the sciences tend to focus on the basics of the science. So if you are in tissue engineering, it would be very easy for you to go all the way through to PhD and postgrad and just really focus on human medicine and tissue engineering. And similarly, across all of the sort of STEM sciences, they're focused on the direct science of what is the scientific problem and how do you solve it without as much of a look at what are the new ways that we can apply this science that we're learning.
[00:41:32.910] - Bruce
So the opportunity to go into a scientific field and sort of go, you who you're a tissue engineer, you could also make meat for human consumption, not just organs. For therapeutics, is something that's less likely to be brought up on a scientific campus relative to an MBA.
[00:41:52.140] - JD
Are there any particular conferences you would recommend for undergraduates or graduates who are interested in entering this space? Places where they can meet with future employers or test out their interest or competence in a given area?
[00:42:04.570] - Bruce
Well, the first thing I would say is that GFI, if you go to Gfi.org community. So we do a monthly science of Alt Protein webinar. We do a monthly business of Alt Proteins webinar. We do lots of technical seminars. We operate as sort of a think tank for alternative proteins. And we produce lots and lots of reports, scientific reports, market reports, policy reports, policy proposals, et cetera. We do webinars for a lot of them. And then we do have the community@gfi.org community, so there's a good places to meet people and sort of network. We also do networking webinars. So after the science or business of Alt Proteins webinar, we'll ask people to dial into another number and then we do networking on zoom. There are quite a few Alt protein conferences now, but they are almost all really focused on business further to the exchange that we just had. So for entrepreneurs, there are lots and lots of outlets, for scientists, there are fewer outlets. Although we do have GFI's Alt proteins project. So we have 36 university chapters around the world and we are creating a more sort of this is very handholding. GFI has five full time team members that oversee the Alt Protein project, and it's a pretty rigorous process to get in.
[00:43:22.690] - Bruce
We are moving toward something that will allow for more and more chapters with less handholding, which would be a good opportunity in addition to the things that I just mentioned. But then the thing that I think is particularly valuable is go to the conferences for your scientific discipline. So I spoke at the In Vitro Biology Annual Conference in San Diego a few months ago and had like 500 people in the room for a presentation I gave at 830 in the morning about using in vitro biology to save the planet, talking about exactly what we're talking about now to all of these in vitro biologists. And my hunch is that basically nobody in the room had been thinking in this way until they saw the synopsis in the program. So there is the opportunity to meet employers, but also the opportunity to go talk to other people in your field about this as a place to focus.
[00:44:19.970] - JD
How important do you think it is to go to these conferences or to be involved in some kind of community that's thinking about these problems as opposed to just exploring on your own with the internet and just looking at job opportunities?
[00:44:30.970] - Bruce
Well, I think you, as somebody who goes into this field, are one unit of good in this field. So that's awesome. It's a little bit like if you are a vegetarian, you will save x number of animals in your life. One effective conversation with somebody who convinces them to be a vegetarian too has just doubled your entire life as a vegetarian in terms of the good that you're doing in the world. So I do think the power of positive example is colossal. And I do think people meeting other people who are doing things is how other people will think about oh, I could do this too. So it's great if somebody as an individual is going to become an in vitrobiologist and focus on alternative proteins, but going to in vitrobiology conferences, or if you are a biotech scientist or a mechanical engineer and going to those conferences and talking about what you're doing and putting yourself forward to give presentations and lead workshops on alternative proteins, like you can literally have thousands of times the positive impact through your advocacy that you will have and your example than you will have just by the direct work that you were doing.
[00:45:41.390] - JD
One thing that Christians that I talk to you consider is earning to give pursuing paths in finance or other lucrative areas in order to earn a lot of money and to give most of it away. Is this something that those in the plant based meat space can think about? Is this an option for them or is it better left to those in finance or in tech?
[00:46:08.390] - Bruce
Well, I mean, I think all of us should be thinking about typing. I think earning to give generally a shorthead hand for earn as much money as possible and then live on something super reasonable and give the rest away. That's what earning to give refers to. So, no, I think you are unlikely to find your most lucrative opportunity as a science in this space unless you become the co founder and CTO of a company that does particularly well, which is an option if somebody is Becoming A CTO Of A Company and Co Founder Of A Company Which Gives You A Lot Of Equity. And you're filling a white space and you're building that company. You would have the opportunity to give away a ton of money if you're successful. Generally speaking, I think if somebody is a scientist and they're thinking about earning to give, probably going to Google or one of the really big biotech companies or something like that, where you can make lots, you can make hundreds of thousands of dollars or more. If you're early on, you can get millions of dollars in equity or more and give that money away, which I think is a phenomenal option for people.
[00:47:12.010] - Bruce
And then the other thing that that does, especially if you're like good at networking, you end up in sort of a rarefied social circle where you can direct a lot more philanthropic resources by.
[00:47:24.370] - JD
Becoming a giver yourself. You enter into these communities of givers where you can influence others. You're saying, yeah, that's exactly right.
[00:47:30.260] - Bruce
So I, as somebody who runs a nonprofit organization, have a very different relationship from people who give away a lot of money, where I'm having interactions with them, encouraging them to give to GFI or encouraging them to give to other charities that I care about.
[00:47:43.320] - JD
What are some other charities that you care about?
[00:47:46.550] - Bruce
I'm a big fan of from an animal perspective, I basically agree with the animal charity Evaluators. So I really like wild animal initiative. I really like the Humane League. I really like Mercy for Animals full analytics. From an environmental standpoint, I think Giving Green has some really great recommendations for climate charities that are impactful neglected. And the work that they're doing is extremely tractable across all cause areas. I think the folks at the researchers at Founders Pledge. So if you go to Founders Pledge and look at their cause areas and their recommendations, I think they do a pretty phenomenal job. I mean, across effective altruism like Give well, and the charities that open philanthropy gives to. So in general, I think the effective altruism movement and how it thinks about charity is really, really smart. So how impactful is the organization? How focused on counterfactual impact is the organization? How tractable is the work that they're doing? How neglected is the work that they're doing?
[00:48:55.000] - JD
You've argued before that this approach is quite aligned with the Christian approach. How so? This sounds a bit technical and a bit yeah, a bit modern. But how does this connect back to your Christian roots and your the way you think about doing good as a Christian?
[00:49:12.940] - Bruce
Yeah, the thing that had the most impact on my entire life trajectory and is still dispositively responsible for how I think about the world goes all the way back to my confirmation class when I was twelve years old, and I'm now Roman Catholic. I converted when I was at the Catholic Worker in 1990. But then I was Evangelical. ELCA So lutheran evangelical Lutheran Church of America And at my church for confirmation, we studied Matthew 25 and Matthew 25. The works of Mercy Passage is the one time in the Gospels when Jesus talks about what salvation looks like and people will remember some people were saved, some people were not saved. The people who were saved said to well, in Jesus story, they said, Master, why are we saved? And he said, When I was hungry, you fed me. When I was naked and imprisoned, you clothed and visited me. When I was hungry, you fed me. And then the people who were not saved, just for effect, were the people who, when they were hungry, homeless, second in prison, naked, they were not helped. And they say, well, when did we help you? Or when did we not help you?
[00:50:24.250] - Bruce
And Jesus says, when you did it to the least of me. These you did it to me. And so that's the entire foundation of the Catholic Worker Movement. And there are houses that feed the hungry and house the homeless. And there are Catholic Worker houses outside prisons because mostly we warehouse are poor. So people can't afford to visit people in prison. So they provide free housing to people who are going to visit their family members in prison or loved ones in prison. And so for me, the question we should be asking ourselves, you take the Matthew 25 story and the Golden Rule and you pair them. So if you are hungry or homeless or sick or in prison, how do you want your advocates to be thinking about their advocacy? Or if people are tithing to try to help you, how do you want the people who are funding the nonprofit organizations to be thinking or the people who are running the nonprofit organizations, how do you want them to be running the nonprofit organizations? And I think you want applying the Golden Rule, the nonprofit organizations, to be really focused on maximum positive alleviation of your suffering.
[00:51:33.230] - Bruce
And that's this analysis. So the sort of foundational observation of the effective altruism movement is that most charities are not thinking in terms of how can I do the most good in my area? And it should be if you apply Matthew 25 and you pair it with the Golden Rule and then you can bring in animal liberation slash Christianity and the rights of animals for, like, animal charities. How do we alleviate the maximum amount of suffering per unit of input or the maximum injustice?
[00:52:05.170] - JD
Or there's many different ways of framing this as well.
[00:52:07.670] - Bruce
Yeah, no, I think that's exactly right. And that feels to me like absolutely how Christians should be thinking about how we live in the world. How do we do the most possible good in the world for the least of these?
[00:52:21.490] - JD
Are you ever concerned that this can be overly demanding? So take for instance, the Matthew 25 passage, which is quite shocking and has shocked many into action, but maybe it also shocks many into a kind of paralysis where some Christians might wonder, am I doing enough? And am I really saved. Right. You mentioned this is, according to you, the only passage where Jesus says what we need to do to be saved. But does this maybe prescribe a kind of works-based righteousness where our salvation is linked to how effective we are or how much good we happen to do?
[00:52:53.060] - Bruce
I don't know. It has not struck me that one of the problems of Christians is that we're working too hard to make the world better. It has definitely struck me that we are far more of the world than Jesus was and that Jesus calls us to be. So if I'm picking the ten problems that are plaguing Christianity, oh my gosh, we just work too hard for the poor, is not on my top ten list.
[00:53:28.370] - JD
Is there a risk, though, in saying that what makes one Christian is how Christ like they are that people who for much of their life have lived, admittedly sinful lives, but want to make a change, they feel bit overly burdened or maybe they don't see the grace that God has for them.
[00:53:46.150] - Bruce
That concept does not resonate for me. I mean, I think Jesus says, go sell all that you have and give to the poor. Jesus says, you did it to the least of these. You did it to me. Jesus says, who is my neighbor? Everybody is my neighbor. Jesus says that we should suffer with the poor and Jesus calls us to the works of mercy. And the vast majority of Christians are like, really not picking up the gauntlet that Jesus has thrown down in my estimation.
[00:54:15.820] - JD
Then what does grace do for you and the concept of grace, how does that fit within your Christian life?
[00:54:25.910] - Bruce
I'm a lot more book of James and faith without works is dead, which I think is one of the things that brought me to Catholicism and away from Lutheranism. So I spend a lot more time thinking about what does it look like to lead a faithful life? And you look at even the Book of John, which is sort of the primary grace book of the Gospels. The book of John is the one. John, three, whatever, 316, 316. You just accept Jesus and everything is better.
[00:55:01.040] - JD
Right?
[00:55:01.700] - Bruce
But if you look at I mean, if you read the Book of John, like over and over, jesus says, what does it mean to believe in me, but that you do the works that I do. So that is like an incomplete passage. If you don't, then go on and say, okay, what it means to believe in Jesus is that you do the works that Jesus did. What did Jesus do? Like, he hung out with the lepers, he hung out with the poorest. He challenged people to care about everybody. So I don't thoroughly resonate with anything that we do. We will be saved through grace.
[00:55:37.470] - JD
You started out doing a lot of this in person ministry to the poor, into the suffering working in these Catholic Workers houses and so forth. But now you're doing much more high level, abstract things. You're working with governments, you are lobbying for change, you are facilitating research that seems a bit far removed from the kind of, the kind of direct service that Jesus in the early Church was so involved in. Do you think that they are the same somehow? And how is it that you transition from that direct work with the Dorothy Day Catholic Workers to this much more high level work? Do you think it's a departure or do you think it's part of the same journey?
[00:56:21.070] - Bruce
Well, I will say I love that question because the people who I am most look up to, most admire the people I just totally love. And when I see people from my sort of Catholic Worker past so zone like, no time has passed. They're just like such beautiful, wonderful people. And so I struggle with that question because when I was at the Catholic Worker, one of the other precepts of the Catholic Worker are voluntary poverty. So you literally don't have any money and you were living with the poor, suffering with the poor, eating the same food and sleeping in the same spaces. And so I spent a lot of time sleeping in church basements and sleeping in shelters with people who are houseless. And it really is, I mean, it really is sort of a level of we are emulating Jesus that I think is so beautiful. And I am now in a situation where like I really do, I mean, everything I've done since I was twelve has been focused on living out my Christianity, living out my Catholicism. Like everything is filtered through what does it mean to be faithful. And I did get to a place where I thought this is an incredibly ethical life of following Jesus.
[00:57:51.510] - Bruce
But what if I can actually have more of an impact, more of a positive impact for the people who are suffering than I am having by living in exactly the same conditions as the people who are suffering? And I don't know that the calculation that I made is the right calculation but what I ended up doing was basically a Matthew 25 plus the golden rule calculation that says if I am somebody who is in a developing economy and I am starving. Or if I am somebody who is in, I am a subsistence farmer and climate change is going to wipe out my livelihood and wipe out my village. Or if I am any of these people in the global south and the global meat industry is about to kill me and hundreds of millions of others like me. How do I want somebody who has the resources in a developed economy? What do I want them to be doing? So focusing single mindedly on maximum possible impact to help the world as much as possible is what I ended up landing on. And. I have a strong biblical explanation, justification and faith based for that.
[00:59:11.310] - Bruce
And I think it is I don't think it's a difference of kind. I think it's a difference of degree. It's still applying my faith as somebody who follows Jesus and wants to take Jesus's call to humanity seriously. It is still an analysis of that but it's definitely a different way of living in the world than being a part of the Catholic Worker movement.
[00:59:33.020] - JD
Do you think that in some way being a part of the Catholic Worker movement was something you needed in order to make these radical commitments in your own life towards the good and towards the path crisis calling you towards? For you personally, do you think that was a necessary step to getting to where you are today or do you think there was a world where Bruce Fried just graduated from Grenell and instead went directly to work for animal advocacy and other related causes?
[01:00:04.350] - Bruce
Well, I didn't know about animal advocacy meaningfully until I was years at the Catholic Worker and somebody gave me the book Christianity and the Rights of Animals. So I don't know I legitimately take seriously. Like I really like the Apostle Paul's concept of being happy and celebrating in affluence and happy and celebrating in want.
[01:00:30.430] - JD
Be content in every circumstance, right?
[01:00:32.380] - Bruce
Yeah, I like that a lot. I really like the idea of the needs of tomorrow will take care of themselves. Like really sort of focusing on a day to day focus on how am I, how do I show up in the most Christ like possible way today so what it might look like to flash back and ask myself. I'm very happy. I would not trade my six years of Catholic Worker experience for anything. They're absolutely essential to who I am. And spending six years running a large soup kitchen at the height of the crack epidemic in Washington, D. C. And running a homeless shelter also at the height of the crack epidemic but sort of different issues. And the degree to which I had a snapshot into the world of inner city education in Washington DC. And then doing Teach for America and teaching in inner city Baltimore and really getting a deep understanding of what America's poor go through and the degree to which the cards are stacked against them from elementary school because of course they have no control over whatsoever. That sort of understanding definitely affects how I think about everything now.
[01:01:44.660] - Bruce
And I wouldn't trade it. I wouldn't go back in time and say I should have started on a sort of more EA path earlier. But for me at this moment in time, it definitely feels right to be focused on effective altruism as a key and integral part of my faith without saying that anybody currently making different choices. People figure out their own faith based path and to me at least as long as the focus is I am going to make the world better, I am going to live for the least of these. That feels like the non negotiable. Whether you're earning to give or you're actually living at a Catholic worker or in some other service arena, if your focus is on the least of these and I would include animals in the least of these for the reasons that Lindzey lays out. It feels to me like that is a faithful life, regardless of whether you ascribe to Christianity or atheism or anything else, for that matter.
[01:02:42.980] - JD
What would you say to Catholics who are ethnic Catholic Workers houses or Christians who are very near and dear to suffering in its direct forms and are wondering, should I stay here or should I pursue some more indirect but possibly more impactful path?
[01:03:02.050] - Bruce
I mean, that's where my heart is. Like, I mean, I said, when I go back to the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker for one of the clarifications of thought, or when I go to the sort of faith based peace community, the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker, the other part of the Catholic Worker. So it's the works of mercy. It's living in voluntary poverty, and it's challenging the structures that require the works of mercy. So what Dorothy Day referred to as the filthy, rotten system that keeps people homeless and naked and sick and in prison. So the structures that entrench that and so there is a lot of advocacy and protest, et cetera. And there's a community, the Atlantic Life community, that's focused on challenging those structures. So when I go back to an Atlantic Life community event or I go to the Dorothy Day or one of the other Catholic Workers, those people are living lives of just like, absolute devoted faith.
[01:03:53.700] - JD
Do you think more effective altruists should pursue these monastic communities of radical generosity, of radical service?
[01:04:01.360] - Bruce
I mean, that is earned to give, right? So, I mean, the idea of earned to give like Peter Singer, the challenge of Peter Singer and the Singer solution to global poverty is to start from the premise, which is like, super flipping Catholic Worker. And I said to Peter, very Catholic worker, he doesn't love that. But the idea that you've got the shoes and you don't jump into the pond to save the drowning girl because your shoes cost $80 or whatever, and what's the difference when you can get a really nice pair of shoes for $10 and give away $70 and, you know, save people? Like, that concept is very, very Christian. I mean, that is very in the realm of go sell all that you have and give to the poor. And so Peter's challenge is to move in that direction as much as you can move in that direction with the recognition that if you're giving away giving what we can, if you're giving away at least 10%, that should be sustainable for pretty much everybody. And then earning to give is like, can you give away 90%, can you give away 95% depending on how much money you make?
[01:05:08.450] - Bruce
So I do think all of that, I think that is fundamentally the challenge of EA already is figuring out how you can do the most good, which strikes me as like a super Catholic Christian way of thinking about who we should be in the world.
[01:05:22.920] - JD
This is great. Yeah. Any final thoughts for those listening who are considering a career in plant based meat or in advocacy, maybe thinking back on your own story, is there something you wish you knew when you were younger? Sounds like you weren't familiar with paths for animal advocacy or even above that, I suppose in an abstract sense, plant based meat to not just address animal cruelty, but also global poverty and these other things. But is there anything yeah. You wish you knew or you would like others to know, listening who are in this discernment process?
[01:06:00.370] - Bruce
Yeah, I think more education is better than less education, and more discernment is better than less discernment. I think there's a lot of value in thinking at each stage about what you're doing and why you're doing it. I sort of went from thing to thing to thing in ways that I wouldn't go back and change. But just generally speaking, I think being thoughtful and recognizing that how you spend your time can have a greater or lesser impact and it's worth applying the Golden Rule in ways that might be counterintuitive. Oftentimes people will say, I mean, I do think there is an overwhelming amount of work that is being done that's not really doing that much good. I think the central question of effective altruism, it's oftentimes seen as hyper rational and so it might turn off Christians in the same way that people who are hyper rational might be turned off by Christianity. I think they're pretty super easy to reconcile. And I would say if you, if you take the EA challenge to do the most good you can, that fits in really nicely with Christianity. And if you take the Christian challenge, I mean, I guess in both cases it's do the most good you can.
[01:07:17.630] - Bruce
And with Christians there's oftentimes less of a focus on trackability and counterfactuals than I think there should be. And with EA's, I think EA's probably maybe right off religion a bit to there a bit to the peril of impact and effectiveness.
[01:07:35.500] - JD
What do you think EA's can learn from religion?
[01:07:38.010] - Bruce
I think EA's can just be more compassionate about religion more than learn from religion. I mean, I think the way EA's are thinking about the question is how can I do the most good I can? And I think that's a fairly central question for religion as well. Religion oftentimes does, I think, operate in the realm of the deontological and probably more than it should. If you apply the Golden Rule, probably most people or animals who are suffering are going to be a lot less interested in whether what you are doing is strictly speaking, right and a lot more interested in whether what you are doing is, strictly speaking, going to alleviate as much suffering as possible.
[01:08:21.570] - JD
A phrase differently, whether what you're doing is following a duty or whether it's actually helping them.
[01:08:26.240] - Bruce
Yeah, I think that yeah, that's a great way. That's a great way of framing it. But yeah, just generally speaking, I think the idea I loved when Pope Francis was like, who might a judge I do think there's a degree to which attempting to tell anybody else that what they need to learn from somebody else or whatever. I think whatever context you're in, the central question of how can I do the most good possible in recognizing that what might seem intuitively like the answer is more often than not, probably not the answer. And being open to all of the various cognitive foibles of being human and being willing to challenge and think through whatever our preconceptions are and being able to learn and explore is going to be pretty critically important. For people who want to learn more about Gfi.org Gfi.org newsletters, you can get our monthly reports and be kept in the loop about everything happening with policy, science, et cetera, on alternative proteins.
[01:09:29.260] - JD
Great. Then one final question if you have time. Do you have any recommendations, given your experience in advocacy and transitioning out of advocacy towards more systemic solutions, technological solutions, do you have any advice for how advocates for effective altruism can best reach their audiences? Do you think advocacy is still effective there, or do you think there's another route that most EA community builders or EA advocates should go?
[01:09:58.510] - Bruce
I think for people who are EA, the EA forum is a pretty phenomenal place to work out your thinking and get into really great discussions of whatever our preconceptions are and to learn more. The EA forum can sometimes get a little dominated by a bit of groupthink, is my impression. The EA conferences are very much not that. So the EA conferences, I've really enjoyed AVA. It's really been like inspirational and fun and awesome. But in terms of like positively moving the ball, the conversations at the EA conferences, you have a lot more people who are not already like minded and the one on one. So if you go to the EA conference, you can set up one on ones with people and have conversations.
[01:10:46.250] - JD
Would you recommend an EA conference for someone who hasn't been before? We were talking earlier about the best conferences to go to, whether someone's interested in planted-based meat or otherwise. It sounds like you're recommending that as.
[01:10:57.440] - Bruce
An option for Christians, especially for Christians who are thinking about career path or you figured out your career path and you want to advocate for it. There are lots of seekers at the EA conference, so there are lots of seekers and there are lots of guides so going to the EA conferences and seeking out people who have expertise and people are just insanely generous with their time. So the EA conferences, I think, are just phenomenal intellectual experiences and also phenomenal experiences for having conversations with people about the best way to do good in the world with our vocational and the rest of our lives.
[01:11:36.060] - JD
Well, Bruce, thank you for being generous with your time and look forward to supporting you. And if others want to get in touch, they can go to the Gfi.org website. Anything else you'd like to shout out now?
[01:11:46.850] - Bruce
No, I think that's pretty much it. JD. I really appreciate who you are in the world and you're bridging the EA and Christian communities. I think it's incredibly valuable, and I'm grateful to you for doing it and delighted to be a part of it.
[01:11:58.540] - JD
Thank you, Bruce.
