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Quantifying The Small Body Problem - A Meta-Analysis Of Animal Product Reduction Interventions (Faunalytics)

When people reduce their consumption of large-bodied animals but consume more small-bodied animal products, animal suffering is increased, as more animal lives are impacted. Faunalytics and Bryant Research conducted a meta-analysis of the small body problem to evaluate its prevalence and offer recommendations for advocates.

Key Findings

  1. More research is vital. The meta-analyses undertaken in this report had statistical limitations, as there simply were not enough studies at our disposal to run the most robust and informative tests. Moreover, the studies currently at hand are highly variable, making it difficult to draw strong conclusions. We highly encourage advocates to conduct more studies on possible substitution effects that can be incorporated into meta-analyses such as the ones we report here.
  2. Overall, we found no evidence of the small-body substitution problem in response to animal product reduction interventions. On the whole, people do not appear to increase their consumption of small-bodied animals (e.g., chickens, fishes) when exposed to animal product reduction interventions. However, this comes with the caveat that studies were highly variable, meaning that some interventions did actually result in greater small-bodied animal consumption, even when the overall result — with all studies considered — was null.
  3. Overall, people did not decrease their consumption of animal products (neither large- nor small-bodied) when exposed to animal product reduction interventions. This may be alarming to advocates, as it implies that current advocacy strategies are ineffective. However, this is slightly reductive. Findings indicate that positive and negative results across the studies are canceling one another out, producing an overall null result. With this in mind, specific intervention types that do show success should be prioritized (see the fourth Key Finding). Moreover, new, innovative approaches ought to be considered.
  4. Despite no overall effect, some individual interventions did result in reduced animal product consumption. Choice architecture in particular was associated with reduced consumption of small-bodied animals. We recommend advocates incorporate choice architecture into their efforts whenever possible to maximize impact.

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