About International Shrimpact Day™

November 25th, 2025

This giving season, FarmKind is partnering with Substacker Glenn from United States of Exception to launch a friendly, tongue-in-cheek fundraising war against GiveDirectly's annual Substack campaign.

They have the big names and cash transfers, we have 440 billion crustaceans on our side!

The goal: Rally some of Substack's most thoughtful writers to raise funds for Shrimp Welfare Project — one of the world's most innovative and impactful charities, reducing the suffering of over 1500 animals per dollar.

The campaign will run from International Shrimpact Day™ (November 25th) through Giving Tuesday (December 2nd).

Why shrimp: The stakes are high and the opportunity is massive!

  • 440 billion shrimp are farmed annually — 4x the total number of humans that have ever lived and 5x the total number of cows, pigs, sheep, chickens and other poultry farmed each year.

  • The scientific consensus is that shrimp are likely capable of feeling pain (see our sources) and they suffer on intensive factory farms. Current practices include eyestalk ablation (crushing eyestalk of female breeder shrimp without anesthetic) and slaughter by asphyxiation.

  • Shrimp Welfare Project (SWP) is the first and only organization dedicated entirely to helping them. They’re recommended by Animal Charity Evaluators and are exceptionally cost-effective, sparing ~1,500 animals from unnecessary suffering for every dollar they spend.

The "Shrimp Wars" angle?

To Shrimp or Not to Shrimp?

Over the past year on Substack, we've seen a spirited and, at times, heated back-and-forth about the moral importance of shrimp.

This discourse, which some have called the ‘Shrimp Wars’, began with a post arguing that the Shrimp Welfare Project is the best charity in the world.

Many found this claim to be absurd, responding with provocative titles like 'Nobody Cares About Shrimp,' 'Death to Shrimp,' and 'Three More Reasons Shrimp Should Die' . On the other side, writers made rebuttals and further claims, like ’Yes, you should save 10^100 shrimp instead of one human’.

Team Shrimp vs. Team Human

We're timing our campaign alongside GiveDirectly's annual Substack fundraiser, creating a playful competition: who will raise more money, and more importantly, who will have a bigger impact?

To be clear, we think GiveDirectly is a great charity (in fact, one of FarmKind’s co-founders donated a total of $19,701 to them back in his for-profit days). But we think this lighthearted rivalry will be positive-sum because:

  • Cut through donation fatigue: It’s a fresh narrative that makes both Giving Season campaigns more interesting

  • More intrigue: "😯 Humans or shrimp — who will Substack pick?" is more likely to go viral than each fundraiser would in isolation

  • Cross-pollination: Team Shrimp’s audience will discover GiveDirectly, Team Human discover shrimp welfare — everyone wins!

Prominent Substackers will battle it out in two live debates

In addition to the 30+ Substackers writing posts for Team Shrimp during the campaign and ~10 writing for Team Human (GiveDirectly), we’re hosting two debates on Substack Live:

Debate 1 — To Shrimp or Not to Shrimp? (A constructive debate)

  • Motion: “Donating to help shrimp is a good idea”

  • Affirmative: Jeff Sebo — Professor at NYU who explores the edge-cases of who deserves moral consideration — from insects to AI. Jeff is the author of “Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves” and “The Moral Circle: Who Matters, What Matters, and Why”.

  • Negative: Lyman Stone — The loudest anti-shrimp voice on Substack, a public policy researcher and a vocal pro-natalist

  • Moderator: Peter Singer — The most influential living philosopher, whose work inspired the effective giving movement and the modern farm animal welfare movement

  • Date: Wednesday November 26th , 5pm ET (if you’d like to receive a link ahead of time, let us know here)

Debate 2 — Team Human vs. Team Shrimp (A lighthearted debate)

  • Motion: “Donating to GiveDirectly instead of the Shrimp Welfare Project is a chump move”

  • Affirmative: Bentham’s Bulldog — Prolific and influential philosophy blogger and a leading pro-shrimp voice on the internet

  • Negative: Jeff Maurer — Writer of the political comedy Substack “I Might Be Wrong” (#5 on the Humor top list) and former writer of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

  • Moderator: Josh Szeps — Journalist, broadcaster and host of the Uncomfortable Conversations podcast, “creating a safe space for dangerous ideas”

  • Date: Monday December 1st , 5pm ET (if you’d like to receive a link ahead of time, let us know here)