Yeah good point re Shrimp Welfare Project! I should have said “most animal funders don’t want to subsidise the animal ag industry without a clear mechanism for passing these costs over to the industry”.
For example, in the case of SWP, my understanding is that SWP wants to get these relatively cheap stunners ($50k and only a one-off cost) for a few major producers to show both producers and retailers that it is a relatively cheap way to improve animal welfare with minimal/no impacts on productivity. Then, I believe the idea is to get retailers (e.g. like this) to commit only to sourcing from producers who stun their shrimps, thereby influencing more producers to buy these stunners out of their own pocket (and repeat until all shrimp are being stunned before slaughter).
I think the case with feed fortification with layer hens is much less obvious and less simple due to the impact of feed costs (which are significant and ongoing), so IMO it wasn’t clear to animal funders how these costs would be passed onto the industry at a later date, rather than subsidising feed fortification in perpetuity.
A smaller note is that there is also a very small number of animal funders who follow this suffering-reduction-focused theory of change so if one major funder (e.g. OP) doesn’t fund you, this can be very problematic (as in the case of Healthier Hens). Also many funders don’t act rationally, so it’s also important the research takes that into account (not convinced that funders weren’t acting rationally in this case though).
But do EAs (and major funders especially) support SWP because they expect SWP to accelerate industry adoption of stunners paid for by the industry (or by others besides SWP/animal advocates)?
The ACE review barely discusses stunners, and only really in their section on room for more funding, where stunners account for essentially all the RFMF in 2024 and 2025, and there’s no mention of accelerated industry adoption of stunners not paid for by us.[1]
The EA Animal Welfare Fund grant just says “Purchase 4 stunners for producers committing to stun a minimum. of 1.4k MT (~100 million) of shrimps/annum per stunner”.
Stunning equipment will break down over time and eventually need to be replaced. Maybe they’re assuming the companies will repair/replace the stunners at their own cost as they break down, but I imagine they expect this to look good with only a few years of impact per stunner (or didn’t take into account the fact that stunners will break down).
The written rationale of Open Phil’s most recent grant to SWP doesn’t mention the possibility, either: “Open Philanthropy recommended a grant of $2,000,000 over two years to the Shrimp Welfare Project. Focuses include installing stunners at major shrimp producers, reducing stocking density on shrimp farms in South Asia, and increasing industry awareness of shrimp welfare.”
Other than by SWP themselves, I haven’t seen ~any online discussion of this acceleration.
It’s possible the grantmakers are sensitive to the possibility of acceleration of industry adoption of stunners paid for by the industry and are granting in part based on this, but it doesn’t show up in their written rationales. They say very little about the stunner plans in general, though.
And should we have had similar expectations for feed fortification costs to eventually be passed on and HH to accelerate feed fortification paid for by the industry (or not us)? Eventually we can move on from cage-free asks when+where cage-free becomes the norm (or the law), say. Maybe this is complicated by the fact that many companies are international, though.
relatively cheap stunners ($50k and only a one-off cost)
(...)
impact of feed costs (which are significant and ongoing)
Stunners aren’t a one-off cost in general: they’ll need to be repaired and replaced eventually if we keep killing shrimp and want them stunned. Someone will have to pay for that, just like ongoing feed fortification. So the only question is whether and how much SWP and HH accelerate the industry (or others besides animal advocates) paying for the respective costs. And again, written grant rationales for SWP don’t mention this acceleration, so it’s not clear the grants depended on expected acceleration.
And HH wouldn’t be paying for all of the feed, just some supplements. I do think SWP’s stunners work looks more cost-effective ex ante than HH did, though.[2]
I think this highlights a methodological issue with ACE’s review process: it isn’t sufficiently sensitive to the details and ex ante cost-effectiveness of additional future funding. Its cost-effectiveness criterion is retrospective wrt outputs, but SWP’s future plans with additional future funding are very different from what its cost-effectiveness was assessed on, and the ACE review of its future plans with additional funding is very shallow.
CE’s CEA of subsidized feed fortification was 34 welfare points per dollar assuming only an overall probability of success of 26%. The CEA for SWP assumes 100% probability of success. If we also assumed 100% for HH, HH would be at least 130=34/0.26 welfare points per dollar conditional on success (possibly higher, because there are still costs if it fails). The difference between conventional cage and cage-free is probably around 50 or fewer welfare points per year of life by CE’s estimates (comparing USA FF laying hens (battery cages) to wild bird or FF beef cow, say). Corporate cage-free campaigns were 54 years of life affected/$, so this would be <2700 welfare points/$ historically and say <540 welfare points/$=2700 welfare points/$/5 now, so I’d guess still a few times better than HH at >130 welfare points/$ conditional on success.
SWP has some track record with stunners already, so it is reasonable to assign them a higher probability of success than HH ex ante, and this can increase the gap.
Obviously, I don’t speak for OP or EA AWF fund but they literally only publish 1-3 sentences per grant so I’m not surprised at all if they don’t mention it, even if it is a consideration for them. That said, I might just be projecting because this was partially the reason why I supported giving them a grant!
Agree though that stunners aren’t literally a one-off and never touch again, but as you mention I think the overall cost of the intervention to animals helped is significantly better for shrimp stunning in my opinion, as well the avenue for industry adoption being much more clear and more likely.
Just a couple of points on the original comment about AIM:
@mildlyanonymous, I’m glad you brought up the perception of the animal movement regarding AIM. I must say, I don’t have the same negative perception as you do but this may be biased:
i) motivated reasoning on my part as a AIM incubate, and
ii) feedback I get from the overall movement may be filtered by my interlocutors because of said affiliation
In any case, I would really invite whoever feels that AIM is ‘not collaborative with the movement’ to look again. AIM has launched or is planning to launch several organisations which are actively designed to support the movement:
To grow in Africa (AAA)
To bring in more talent into the movement (AAC)
Help orgs in the movement make better decisions (Animal Ask)
Bring in more money to a resource-strained cause area (work in progress)
If this is not the very definition of collaboration, I don’t know what is
Regarding SWP not doing what CE originally proposed we do: I’ve mentioned this openly at least in a couple of interviews (80K, HILTLS). My goal was not to demerit AIM’s research but rather to say that there is so much one can learn from desktop research in a low-evidence space such as animal welfare and it is the role of the founding team to explore the different permutations and see what sticks
IMO, AIM’s reports need to lay out at least a promising intervention, do a cost-effectiveness analysis on it (among other things), and see how it compares to say, cage-free campaigns to decide whether to kill it or explore deeper
I apologise in advance for not engaging further with the comments about AIM / animal movement but we are very (human) resources constrained at SWP and the case in favour of AIM has been sufficiently established IMO
Out ToC indeed aims to move the Overton window in such a way that eventually high-leverage stakeholders (e.g. retailers, certifiers) feel confident to demand the use of electrical stunning beyond the capacity of SWP to fund
On the other hand, none of our funders has included this as strict condition because:
i) it is much harder to measure, and much more importantly
ii) the intervention looks sufficiently impactful and cost-effective without having to incorporate such second-degree effects
Yeah good point re Shrimp Welfare Project! I should have said “most animal funders don’t want to subsidise the animal ag industry without a clear mechanism for passing these costs over to the industry”.
For example, in the case of SWP, my understanding is that SWP wants to get these relatively cheap stunners ($50k and only a one-off cost) for a few major producers to show both producers and retailers that it is a relatively cheap way to improve animal welfare with minimal/no impacts on productivity. Then, I believe the idea is to get retailers (e.g. like this) to commit only to sourcing from producers who stun their shrimps, thereby influencing more producers to buy these stunners out of their own pocket (and repeat until all shrimp are being stunned before slaughter).
I think the case with feed fortification with layer hens is much less obvious and less simple due to the impact of feed costs (which are significant and ongoing), so IMO it wasn’t clear to animal funders how these costs would be passed onto the industry at a later date, rather than subsidising feed fortification in perpetuity.
A smaller note is that there is also a very small number of animal funders who follow this suffering-reduction-focused theory of change so if one major funder (e.g. OP) doesn’t fund you, this can be very problematic (as in the case of Healthier Hens). Also many funders don’t act rationally, so it’s also important the research takes that into account (not convinced that funders weren’t acting rationally in this case though).
But do EAs (and major funders especially) support SWP because they expect SWP to accelerate industry adoption of stunners paid for by the industry (or by others besides SWP/animal advocates)?
Its stunner cost-effectiveness analysis and numbers of shrimp helped so far don’t reflect this possibility.
The ACE review barely discusses stunners, and only really in their section on room for more funding, where stunners account for essentially all the RFMF in 2024 and 2025, and there’s no mention of accelerated industry adoption of stunners not paid for by us.[1]
The EA Animal Welfare Fund grant just says “Purchase 4 stunners for producers committing to stun a minimum. of 1.4k MT (~100 million) of shrimps/annum per stunner”.
Stunning equipment will break down over time and eventually need to be replaced. Maybe they’re assuming the companies will repair/replace the stunners at their own cost as they break down, but I imagine they expect this to look good with only a few years of impact per stunner (or didn’t take into account the fact that stunners will break down).
The written rationale of Open Phil’s most recent grant to SWP doesn’t mention the possibility, either: “Open Philanthropy recommended a grant of $2,000,000 over two years to the Shrimp Welfare Project. Focuses include installing stunners at major shrimp producers, reducing stocking density on shrimp farms in South Asia, and increasing industry awareness of shrimp welfare.”
Other than by SWP themselves, I haven’t seen ~any online discussion of this acceleration.
It’s possible the grantmakers are sensitive to the possibility of acceleration of industry adoption of stunners paid for by the industry and are granting in part based on this, but it doesn’t show up in their written rationales. They say very little about the stunner plans in general, though.
And should we have had similar expectations for feed fortification costs to eventually be passed on and HH to accelerate feed fortification paid for by the industry (or not us)? Eventually we can move on from cage-free asks when+where cage-free becomes the norm (or the law), say. Maybe this is complicated by the fact that many companies are international, though.
Stunners aren’t a one-off cost in general: they’ll need to be repaired and replaced eventually if we keep killing shrimp and want them stunned. Someone will have to pay for that, just like ongoing feed fortification. So the only question is whether and how much SWP and HH accelerate the industry (or others besides animal advocates) paying for the respective costs. And again, written grant rationales for SWP don’t mention this acceleration, so it’s not clear the grants depended on expected acceleration.
And HH wouldn’t be paying for all of the feed, just some supplements. I do think SWP’s stunners work looks more cost-effective ex ante than HH did, though.[2]
I think this highlights a methodological issue with ACE’s review process: it isn’t sufficiently sensitive to the details and ex ante cost-effectiveness of additional future funding. Its cost-effectiveness criterion is retrospective wrt outputs, but SWP’s future plans with additional future funding are very different from what its cost-effectiveness was assessed on, and the ACE review of its future plans with additional funding is very shallow.
EDIT: MHR’s CEA of stunners based on SWP’s CEA turned out a few times less cost-effective than historical corporate cage-free campaigns after accounting for moral weight and pain intensities and durations, so probably roughly competitive or better now, as Open Phil’s “marginal FAW funding opportunity is ~1/5th as cost-effective as the average from Saulius’ analysis”.
CE’s CEA of subsidized feed fortification was 34 welfare points per dollar assuming only an overall probability of success of 26%. The CEA for SWP assumes 100% probability of success. If we also assumed 100% for HH, HH would be at least 130=34/0.26 welfare points per dollar conditional on success (possibly higher, because there are still costs if it fails). The difference between conventional cage and cage-free is probably around 50 or fewer welfare points per year of life by CE’s estimates (comparing USA FF laying hens (battery cages) to wild bird or FF beef cow, say). Corporate cage-free campaigns were 54 years of life affected/$, so this would be <2700 welfare points/$ historically and say <540 welfare points/$=2700 welfare points/$/5 now, so I’d guess still a few times better than HH at >130 welfare points/$ conditional on success.
SWP has some track record with stunners already, so it is reasonable to assign them a higher probability of success than HH ex ante, and this can increase the gap.
Obviously, I don’t speak for OP or EA AWF fund but they literally only publish 1-3 sentences per grant so I’m not surprised at all if they don’t mention it, even if it is a consideration for them. That said, I might just be projecting because this was partially the reason why I supported giving them a grant!
Agree though that stunners aren’t literally a one-off and never touch again, but as you mention I think the overall cost of the intervention to animals helped is significantly better for shrimp stunning in my opinion, as well the avenue for industry adoption being much more clear and more likely.
FYI you described the “Electric Shrimp Stunning: a Potential High-Impact Donation Opportunity” post as “SWP’s CEA of stunners,” but I have no affiliation with SWP.
Just a couple of points on the original comment about AIM:
@mildlyanonymous, I’m glad you brought up the perception of the animal movement regarding AIM. I must say, I don’t have the same negative perception as you do but this may be biased:
i) motivated reasoning on my part as a AIM incubate, and
ii) feedback I get from the overall movement may be filtered by my interlocutors because of said affiliation
In any case, I would really invite whoever feels that AIM is ‘not collaborative with the movement’ to look again. AIM has launched or is planning to launch several organisations which are actively designed to support the movement:
To grow in Africa (AAA)
To bring in more talent into the movement (AAC)
Help orgs in the movement make better decisions (Animal Ask)
Bring in more money to a resource-strained cause area (work in progress)
If this is not the very definition of collaboration, I don’t know what is
Regarding SWP not doing what CE originally proposed we do: I’ve mentioned this openly at least in a couple of interviews (80K, HILTLS). My goal was not to demerit AIM’s research but rather to say that there is so much one can learn from desktop research in a low-evidence space such as animal welfare and it is the role of the founding team to explore the different permutations and see what sticks
IMO, AIM’s reports need to lay out at least a promising intervention, do a cost-effectiveness analysis on it (among other things), and see how it compares to say, cage-free campaigns to decide whether to kill it or explore deeper
I apologise in advance for not engaging further with the comments about AIM / animal movement but we are very (human) resources constrained at SWP and the case in favour of AIM has been sufficiently established IMO
Regarding the discussion between @James Özden and @MichaelStJules, you are both right to some extent:
Out ToC indeed aims to move the Overton window in such a way that eventually high-leverage stakeholders (e.g. retailers, certifiers) feel confident to demand the use of electrical stunning beyond the capacity of SWP to fund
On the other hand, none of our funders has included this as strict condition because:
i) it is much harder to measure, and much more importantly
ii) the intervention looks sufficiently impactful and cost-effective without having to incorporate such second-degree effects