One interesting question this raises for me: how does this impact the cost-effectiveness of corporate chicken welfare campaigns in the EU? Would this have been likely to happen without those campaigns? If so, then the counterfactual we were trying to beat was much better than we had anticipated, so the impact of corporate campaigns could be much lower.
On the other hand, if corporate campaigns were instrumental for this, then we should probably treat all of the work and impacts (corporate and regulatory) together in assessing cost-effectiveness.
In addition, I would be interested in knowing whether transitioning broilers from conventional to reformed systems, and hens from conventional cages to cage-free aviaries increases the chance of further transitions to net positive systems. I expect this to be the case.
However, I think the lives of broilers in reformed systems, and of hens in cage-free aviaries are still net negative (search for “Conditions of broilers (-cQALY/cyear)” here). So, if transitioning broilers and hens directly from very negative to positive systems turns out to be easier than from moderately negative to positive (maybe people will think the cage-free systems are good enough), corporate campaigns may be harmful. To be clear, I think they are beneficial, but I am just wondering whether there has been research on this.
One interesting question this raises for me: how does this impact the cost-effectiveness of corporate chicken welfare campaigns in the EU? Would this have been likely to happen without those campaigns? If so, then the counterfactual we were trying to beat was much better than we had anticipated, so the impact of corporate campaigns could be much lower.
On the other hand, if corporate campaigns were instrumental for this, then we should probably treat all of the work and impacts (corporate and regulatory) together in assessing cost-effectiveness.
Good point.
In addition, I would be interested in knowing whether transitioning broilers from conventional to reformed systems, and hens from conventional cages to cage-free aviaries increases the chance of further transitions to net positive systems. I expect this to be the case.
However, I think the lives of broilers in reformed systems, and of hens in cage-free aviaries are still net negative (search for “Conditions of broilers (-cQALY/cyear)” here). So, if transitioning broilers and hens directly from very negative to positive systems turns out to be easier than from moderately negative to positive (maybe people will think the cage-free systems are good enough), corporate campaigns may be harmful. To be clear, I think they are beneficial, but I am just wondering whether there has been research on this.