iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

Target and Ahold brands (Food Lion, Giant Food) have released public roadmaps to reach 100% cage-free in the US Kroger sells the second most caged eggs in the US. And it has reneged on its 2025 commitment to go 100% cage-free

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

The Housing Theory of Everything, animal welfare edition New post on how UK NIMBYism, by blocking new barns, is preventing animal welfare improvements shadowprice.substack.com/p/uk-nimbyi...

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

Many farmers don't want state-based animal welfare laws overturned Some even regret using the inhumane methods that are now banned in states like Florida and California (under Prop 12)

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

The best overview of how US animal welfare laws might be overturned, and what we can do to stop it -- link in thread

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

Germany is one step closer to mandating video cameras in slaughterhouses

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

What do coal and chicken have in common? The Jevons Paradox In 1865, Jevons noticed that more efficient steam engines didn't cut coal use. Instead it boomed The same thing has happened with chickens: shadowprice.substack.com/p/half-as-m...

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

Efficiency gains in the the dairy industry cut cow numbers in the US, but the opposite happened in chicken farming Cheaper meat can drive demand that more than offsets the efficiency gains: shadowprice.substack.com/p/half-as-m...

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Alt protein use case: "enhancing food supply chain resilience, enabling biomanufacturing of foodstuffs in combat-forward environments, and providing tailored, high-quality nutrition to the Warfighter" taskandpurpose.com/news/army-m...

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

I started a blog called 'Shadow Price' — a reference to costs markets fail to price, and the hidden nature of factory farming The first post is a short case for why we should, and can, improve farm animal welfare Sign up for regular posts: shadowprice.substack.com/p/the-short-...

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

The modern world provides humans with many ways (TV, music, games + friendship) to mitigate pain perception Not only do factory farms routinely produce painful conditions, confinement and barrenness amplifies that pain by depriving animals of natural pain-suppressing mechanisms

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 23/02/2026

There's considerable ignorance about animal agriculture practices People overestimate the prevalence of high-welfare practices and underestimate low-welfare ones

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 23/02/2026

A Portuguese court has affirmed the public’s right to know about animal farming conditions — including high stocking densities, painful burns, and heavy antibiotic use

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

Hannah Ritchie shows beef subsidies are much higher than for chicken or pork If subsidies were removed, beef prices would likely rise more than chicken/pork, pushing some consumers from beef to chicken — increasing animals farmed (1 cow's meat takes 200 chickens to produce)

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 07/02/2026

After pressure from advocates, the 3th largest supermarket chain in the UK, ASDA, has committed to more humane shrimp slaughter Now, Aldi and Lidl are the only major UK retailers without a shrimp welfare policy

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

The spreadsheet altruists strike again: "My prize was $5,000, which I donated to the Against Malaria Foundation."

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

This neatly sums up why cages are on the way out in the UK UK citizens can tell the government to ban cages as soon as possible, via the link in the next tweet

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

China (the world’s largest chicken producer) has seen years of falling poultry prices due to production rising faster than demand Excess supply has been pushed into exports, while imports have fallen, partly due to HPAI bans and tariffsSo

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

Italy’s 2026 budget creates its first public fund to support a transition away from cages in farming (€500K, then €1M/year). It’s a small but concrete policy step to build from 40 million animals (egg-laying hens, pregnant pigs, & rabbits) are still kept in cages in Italy

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

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

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 31/01/2026

FAO forecasts booming meat demand over coming decades, assuming static income and price elasticities New IFPRI research models how elasticities for animal-source foods could change with income, aging, and urbanization This doesn’t imply falling consumption, but perhaps slower growth

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 31/01/2026

I expected this Nature paper to find a carbon tax on food would shift people from beef to chicken & fish, but it finds all meat consumption falls. Why?

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

Bulldogs are so named due to their previous use in 'bull-baiting', whereby dogs would be set on a bull to kill it -- for sport and as it was thought to improve the meat quality and tenderness Bull-baiting was outlawed in England with the Cruelty to Animals Act 1835

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

In good news, two big companies have pledged to use 'cage-free credits' (a bit like 'carbon credits') to keep their cage-free commitments in regions where cage-free supply is patchy

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

Portland is considering a ban on foie gras, which is leading to some interesting counterarguments from ban opponents

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 17/12/2025

I have a google alert for various farm animal welfare non-profits, and the most touching alerts are obituaries which request donations to an animal group in lieu of flowers

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 17/12/2025

Guess Europe's second most farmed land animal. Pigs? Cows? Ducks? It's rabbits — over 140 million are slaughtered annually, second only to chickens And most live in cages on industrial farms

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 15/12/2025

When governments won’t step up, companies sometimes build their own systems to patch a market failure. Usually that ends up as PR. But Germany’s supermarket-led animal-welfare label looks like a real exception: it’s reducing the lowest-welfare products, year after year 🧵

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 08/12/2025

EAs doing their end-of-year donations

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

On a budget smaller than the latest Spiderman movie, a small group of activists spared 500M+ animals from battery cages How? @DavidComanHidy and I break down the strategic lessons in @AllianceMag 🧵

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 23/11/2025

Humans domesticated cows and chickens over thousands of years, while fish species are being domesticated over decades There was virtually no salmon farming in 1980, and now 600 million are killed a year in aquaculture x.com/voxdotcom/s...

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

A grim new study: Researchers starved chickens for up to 10 days (nearly a quarter of their 42-day lives) to save on feed Didn't even bother to measure welfare. They call it an “efficient” approach

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Reposted by Martin Gould

Dustin Moskovitz @moskov.goodventures.org · 03/11/2025

I know there's a lot going on, but occasionally it's good to remind people that billions of animals suffer in crazy conditions in factory farms. In the U.S. it's gotten worse / denser in recent yrs, contrary to popular conception. www.palladiummag.com/2025/11/01/fac…

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 05/11/2025

Canada really lags other high income countries when it comes to the share of egg-laying hens out of cages As an example, Costco is 97% cage-free in the US but only 21% in Canada

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

Meat company Tyson has a "Open Prairie: Natural Meats" brand which you might assume means the animals are on an: "open prairie" in their "natural" environment But in Tyson's own FAQs...

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

"...preventing an hour of intense pain in chickens costs less than a hundredth of a cent"

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 29/10/2025

Exciting to see farm animal welfare philanthropy covered in the @ssir.org, and to read the reflections of @davidcomanhidy and @CampionShan on how donors can make a difference

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 19/10/2025

New comparison showing how small the farm animal movement is — there are many many opportunities for outsized impact

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

"...bird flu cases are again starting to increase, suggesting we may be headed into another ramp-up in infections. If rising egg prices catch us off guard this winter, it’ll be quite an achievement—after all, we changed nothing and somehow expected a different result."

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

Was the Consumer Reports analysis of protein powders bad science? 1. Their daily lead limits are nonsensically low 2. They don't compare protein powders to the protein/foods they replace 3. They only test each powder 2-3 times, which isn't enough given variation between batches

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

Touching story of a father and daughter realizing they want nothing to do with one of the cruelest practices in modern farming

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

As we enter the cooler months, we may see an uptick in bird flu cases, after the lull of summer

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 09/10/2025

A striking quote in Bloomberg from the president of the World’s Poultry Science Association, an industry group, about modern meat chickens:

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

There aren't many groups who support overturning US state-based cage bans, which provide hens and pigs with more room to move and express natural behaviors

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

New research finds little shelters for chickens (pic below), increase welfare and don't cause the chickens to produce less meat Easy win for welfare if the industry wants to take it...

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

Factory farm mortality rates are so high that 4.4 million tonnes of US animal feed are wasted and produce zero meat Post by @robert_yaman

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

A new survey of 986 U.S. chicken consumers shows how little people know about the meat they eat Only 10% knew what “stunning" is, the process meant to render chickens unconscious before killing. 3.5% could name the methods used (electric shock or gas)

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 09/08/2025

Pig can't be kept as pets in most US cities, due in part to the lack of an approved pig rabies vaccine USDA approves vaccine -> more people have pigs as pets -> farm animal welfare movement grows

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 08/08/2025

This article from 2010 helps you appreciate how far we've come. The share of hens in cages in the US is now 54%

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 27/06/2025

Most shoppers care about farm animal welfare In a new UK survey (n=2,334): • 90% said welfare was important • 52% picked it as a top 3 factor when buying meat/eggs But consumers face real-world barriers

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Martin Gould @martinvgould.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

There's something quite sad reading about the invention of cages for egg-laying hens The technology just didn't exist until the 1930s, and then swept the world in a couple of decades

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