Good Food Institute
Promotes the development and adoption of alternative proteins in order to create a sustainable, humane and resilient food system.
Last updated: 7th November 2024
The climate cost and animal suffering caused by meat production
- 99% of animals in the U.S. [1] and 80% of animals in France [2] are factory farmed.
- Despite decades of vegan advocacy, global meat demand has tripled in the past 50 years [3].
- Livestock farming contributes to 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions [4], making it a major driver of climate change.
- Traditional meat production is highly inefficient, using vast amounts of land while causing deforestation and biodiversity loss.
Agriculture accounts for 70% of global freshwater consumption, worsening water scarcity issues [5].
The Good Food Institute’s work on alternative proteins
The Good Food Institute (GFI) promotes plant-based, fermentation-derived, and cultivated meat alternatives. Their goal is to make alternative proteins as tasty, affordable, and available as conventional meat.
- By capturing just 11% of the protein market by 2035, alternative proteins could cut greenhouse gases on a scale equal to decarbonizing the entire aviation industry [6].
- Alternative proteins use land and water more efficiently than traditional meat production:
- Plants provide nearly two-thirds of global protein on just one-fourth of agricultural land [8].
- Shifting to alternative proteins could free up land twice the size of China and India combined [9], helping mitigate 26 gigatons of CO2 equivalent annually [10].
- Plant-based meats can reduce water use by up to 99%, and cultivated meat by 66% [11].
- Plants provide nearly two-thirds of global protein on just one-fourth of agricultural land [8].
Impact of your donations on animal welfare
GFI has been recognised by leading animal charity evaluator, EA Animal Welfare Funds, as one of the most effective charities to donate to in order to reduce animal suffering.
Impact of your donations on the climate
GFI has been recognised by leading independent charity evaluators, Giving Green and Founders Pledge as one of the most effective organizations fighting climate change.
100 euros donated to GFI avoids 33 tons of carbon emissions [13] = approximately equivalent to 20 transatlantic flights [14]
'We work around the world to make alternative proteins—plant-based, fermentation-derived, and cultivated from animal cells—as delicious and affordable as conventional meat. By reimagining how meat is made, we can produce food that people love and usher in a future that benefits our planet and its inhabitants.' The Good Food Institute
‘The only way to significantly decrease industrial animal agriculture globally is to create alternatives that taste the same or better and cost the same or less […] Through the work of GFI’s scientists, policy experts and lobbyists, and corporate specialists all over the world, we are mobilizing the global research community to take the animal out of meat production. For someone who recognizes the myriad harms of the way meat is produced today, we believe there’s no better philanthropic opportunity than GFI.’
Tax Deduction: Maximise the impact of your generosity
Tax deductions in France are currently only available for donations to four of our recommended charities: Against Malaria Foundation, Good Food Institute, Helen Keller International, and Centre pour la Sécurité de l’IA
If you are taxable in France, you will benefit from a tax reduction of 66% of the amount of your donation up to the limit of the tax due or 20% of your taxable income.
In practice, this means that if you were planning to donate €100, you can triple this amount to reach a donation of €300 that you will declare, with a real cost of only €102 after tax reduction. This allows you to multiply the impact of your donation without increasing your planned expenditure.
You can read our full article on tax relief in France for more information.
We are able to offer tax deductibility for this association and all the organisations we recommend through our partners, Effektiv Spenden. If your tax residence is in Switzerland, please make your donations via this link, so that you can receive your tax receipt at the end of the tax year.
We work with partners around the world and can offer tax deductibility in many countries. Please contact us if you would like to make a donation from another country and we will discuss the tax options available to you. If you would like to donate and do not require a tax receipt, you can make a donation via Mieux Donner regardless of your country!
FAQs
Alternative proteins refer tothree manufacturing methods:
- Alternatives created from plant-based products
- Cultured meat
- Products derived from fermentation
The GFI finances and supports these three production methods and associated research.
Before a product can be placed on the market, regulators rigorously check its nutritional value and safety. The GFI works with the European Union and various governments to ensure a robust, evidence-based assessment.
We recommend charities that
Focus on final outcomes:
Charities that prioritise the final outcome of their action and not indicators of impact. When talking about impact, it is essential to focus on the desired final outcome, such as improved opportunities and quality of life, rather than focusing on intermediate outcomes such as the number of books distributed.
Measure their impact
It’s surprising how few charities measure their impact. Our top recommended charities use scientific methods to evaluate the results of their actions, ensuring that their interventions produce the desired effects.
Are cost-effective
They save or improve the most lives per euro donated to them. Eg) our top recommended global health charities can save a life for as little as 3,000 euros, our top climate charities can avoid one ton of carbon emissions for just 1 euro and our top animal welfare charities can spare thousands of animals from factory farming for the same price of saving one animal in a refuge.
Are independently evaluated
All of our top charities are independently evaluated by world leading charity evaluators. See more information below.
We do NOT recommend charities based on their:
Location
A life is valuable whether it is based in France or the developing world.
Tax deductibility
Our top recommended charities are all tax deductible in Switzerland, but not in France. This is because French tax law dictates that a charity must operate from France in order to be tax deductible. We always prioritise the impact of a charity over its tax deductible status.
Overhead costs
Some of our charities such as Against Malaria Foundation have very low overhead costs, and some such as Clean Air Task Force – have much higher overhead costs. To explain why we don’t take overhead costs into account in our recommendations, imagine two charities:
- Charity A spends 10,000 euros a month on it’s operations and saves 1 life
- Charity B spends 20,000 euros a month on it’s operations and saves 6 lives
In the above examples Charity A saves 1 life for every 10,000 spent on it, whereas Charity B saves 1 life for every 3,300 euros spent on it. In this example – it’s clear to see that it’s not overhead costs that are important – but in fact the ratio of overhead costs to the desired impact. Research suggests that there is not much of a correlation at all between overhead and effectiveness.
Our recommendations are based on the research of independent experts
Finding the best aid organisations isn’t that easy. That’s why we work closely with experts who have been conducting extensive and in-depth research on the subject for many years. These experts are completely independent and work at the cutting edge of charity evaluation in their respective cause areas. They conduct rigorous tests on hundreds of charities to find out as precisely as possible how much good their programs achieve per euro spent. By comparing the cost effectiveness of so many charities, they are able to short list the most effective charities to donate to in order for your donations to have the biggest impact.
The charity evaluators whose research we primarily rely on are:
GLOBAL HEALTH AND DEVELOPMENT: GiveWell
GiveWell is the world’s leading research organisation that studies global health and development charities.
‘We search for the charities that save or improve lives the most per dollar. Our goal is to produce the world’s top research on where to give. Free, for everyone. We recommend a small number of charities that do an incredible amount of good’ (GiveWell)
GiveWell was founded in 2007 by Holden Karnofsky and Elie Hassenfeld, two former hedge fund employees. They wanted to do as much good as possible with their donations and found that there was little solid information available on how to do this. GiveWell invests more than 40,000 hours of research each year and has raised more than €1 billion for high-impact charities, saving an estimated 150,000 lives.
ANIMAL WELFARE: EA Animal Welfare Funds
The EA Animal Welfare Fund was rated as the top animal charity evaluator by GWWC’s ‘evaluating the evaluators project’ in 2024. They are therefore the primary charity evaluator we defer to in order to choose our top animal charities. We meet with them every few months to get up to date recommendations. They conduct thorough research into various animal welfare organisations to find those that help the most animals per dollar.
CLIMATE CHANGE: Giving Green
Giving Green is a nonprofit organisation that spends thousands of hours each year reviewing studies and climate charities to find the most cost effective interventions to combat climate change. From this research, they publish their top recommendations each year. Their team is made up of climate scientists, economists and impact evaluation experts with decades of experience working at the intersection of evidence-based policy and the environment. We meet regularly with Giving Green to discuss our climate recommendations and run climate workshops in collaboration with eachother.
Other evaluators
Although we primarily defer to GiveWell, Giving Green and EA Animal Welfare Fund, we also read the research of other top charity evaluators including LongView Philanthropy, Founders Pledge and Animal Charity Evaluators to ensure we are not overly-reliant on any one source of research. When choosing our top charities we prefer organisations whose effectiveness is corroborated by multiple independent evaluators.
We process donations free of charge, which means we do not keep any of your donation for ourselves. However, the payment methods credit card, PayPal and SEPA direct debit incur fees from the payment services we work with. These fees are deducted from your donation. The amount is calculated as follows for donations within France:
Transfer : Free of charge within the SEPA payment area
Transfer via Donorbox: 2.55% + 0.25 €
Credit card : 2.95% + 0.25 € (for European cards)
PayPal : 3,15 % + 0,25 €
For donations of > 1,000 euros, we recommend a free bank transfer. PayPal and credit cards are not recommended for large amounts due to the costs.
Fees would also be incurred for a direct donation to the respective organisations. We have already negotiated with all payment providers and received particularly favourable conditions for non-profit organisations. We have specially advantageous conversion fees compared to traditional bank.
We also finance ourselves through donations, but completely independently.
If you would like to discuss the best way to donate through us, please get in touch.
Your donation is paid directly to the organisations you support, and only transaction costs apply. Mieux Donner does not deduct any money for its own operations.
If you would like a tax receipt to benefit from a tax deduction in France, we will transfer your donation to GFI via Transnational Giving Europe, which charges a 5% handling fee. This is currently the only option for making a tax deductible to GFI in France.
[1] How many animals are factory farmed? (Our World in Data) [Accessed 11/07/2024]
[2] Élevage intensif : plus de 8 animaux sur 10 en France (L214) [Accessed 07/11/2024]
[3] Meat Production (Our World in Data) [Accessed 11/07/2024]
[4] Global greenhouse gas emissions from animal-based foods are twice those of plant-based foods (Nature Food) [Accessed 11/07/2024]
[5] Water Scarcity (UNICEF) [Accessed 11/07/2024]
[6] The Untapped Climate Opportunity in Alternative Proteins (Boston Consulting Group, MA) [Accessed 11/07/2024]
[7] Half of the World’s Habitable Land Is Used for Agriculture (Our World in Data) [Accessed 11/07/2024]
[8] Global greenhouse gas emissions from animal-based foods are twice those of plant-based foods (Nature Food) [Accessed 11/07/2024]
[9] If the World Adopted a Plant-based Diet We Would Reduce Global Agricultural Land Use from 4 to 1 Billion Hectares (Our World in Data) [Accessed 11/07/2024]
[10] The carbon opportunity cost of animal-sourced food production on land (Nature Sustainability) [Accessed 11/07/2024]
[11] Beyond Meat’s Beyond Burger Life Cycle Assessment: A Detailed Comparison Between a Plant-Based and an Animal-Based Protein Source (Center for Sustainable Systems, University of Michigan) [Accessed 11/07/2024]
[12] Cost effective analysis calculations for animal welfare organisations (FarmKind) [Accessed 11/07/2024].
Please note that 5.3 animals helped per euro is highly uncertain and we wouldn’t be surprised if there is a magnitude of difference in the true figure. Full details of the assumptions and numbers used for FarmKinds calculations are shown in their spreadsheet. (We have used a conservative conversion of 1 euro:1 dollar from their calculations).
[13] The Good Food Institute, Deep Dive (Giving Green) [Accessed 11/07/2024].
Giving Green’s best guess for GFI’s cost-effectiveness is $2.98 per metric ton of CO2-eq in expectation. (We have used a conservative conversion of $2.98 : €3 for our impact calculation).
[14] Not the end of the world, Hannah Ritchie (2024)
Each transatlantic flight emits an average of 1.6 tonnes of CO2 equivalent.
Other animal welfare and climate charities we recommend
The Humane League
Over the past decade, THL has successfully secured commitments from more than 400 companies to cease battery egg production.
Clean Air Task Force
They have been instrumental in helping to pass several key policy reforms in the past few years including the EU methane pledge and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.