Update on the future of Sentience Politics

EAF incubated Sentience Politics since its founding in 2014 as a project working on political initiatives for animals and effective animal advocacy research. We believe both sets of activities are highly promising and should be continued. After a comprehensive strategic review, we’ve concluded that the best way to achieve these goals is by establishing two separate organizations. Accordingly, we are excited to announce that going forward Sentience Politics will focus exclusively on political initiatives, and a newly formed Sentience Institute will work on effective animal advocacy research.

Sentience Politics (sentience-politics.org) will become an independent entity focusing on political campaigning in Switzerland. Their current priority is the recently launched national initiative for a ban on factory farming. Meret Schneider and Sophie Kwass will lead Sentience Politics as co-directors, Jonas Vollmer and Tobias Pulver will stay involved as members of the board, and EAF will continue to provide operational support. A national popular initiative has been a long-term goal since we launched Sentience Politics three years ago and we’re very excited that this is now coming to fruition.

The newly founded Sentience Institute (sentienceinstitute.org) will be led by Kelly Witwicki and Jacy Reese. Their mission is to conduct research and outreach on effective strategies to expand humanity’s moral circle to include all sentient beings. One of their first pieces of work summarizes the evidence for and against important questions in effective animal advocacy. EAF has provided financial support in the form of a seed grant of $60,000 to ensure a successful launch, and we look forward to following their extremely important work!

Lastly, the Wild Animal Suffering (WAS) research project that once sat under Sentience Politics will be incubated by the Effective Altruism Foundation. Researchers Ozy Brennan and Persis Eskander will continue exploring ways to reduce the suffering experienced by nonhuman animals in nature. We are excited to learn more about wild-animal suffering from their research.

These changes present an exciting opportunity to keep doing valuable and neglected work in reducing the suffering of all nonhuman animals. We hope you will show the same commitment and support to Sentience Politics and the Sentience Institute that you have and continue to show us.

Announcement on the Sentience Politics blog (German)
Announcement on the Sentience Institute blog (English)