I don’t yet have a good sense of how valuable this is v.s. the chicken not being produced in the first place, and I think this will end up being a major point of contention. My intuitive personal sense is that chicken lives are not “worth living” (i.e. ethically net positive) even if they are receiving the listed enrichments, but others would disagree:
https://nintil.com/on-the-living-standards-of-animals-in-the-united-kingdom
But overall I’m optimistic that there are or could be much more cost-effective interventions than the one I looked at.
If true, this wouldn’t change the cow/chicken analysis, but would make me much favorable towards eating meat + offsets as opposed to eating more expensive plant-based alternatives. As noted elsewhere, of course the optimific action is still to be vegan and also donate anyway.
One other thing that’s important, and that I should have emphasized more in my original comment: You are specifically interested in offsetting chicken consumption (not eggs), but I believe that most successful corporate campaigns to date were about hen welfare (i.e., chicken farmed for eggs).
At a glance, the post I linked to covers both ‘hen welfare’ and ‘broiler welfare’ (i.e., chicken farmed for meat). But it’s worth paying attention to whether cost-effectiveness estimates for hen welfare or broiler welfare differ, or if we even have ones for broiler welfare (if we do, I think they would probably me more uncertain since I would guess there is less data on cost, tractability, corporate follow-through etc.).
This of course also applies to the improvement in living conditions. I think (but am not totally sure) that everything about caged vs. cage-free is relevant for hen welfare only. For this, I would recommend looking at this report. I know that animal advocates have also tried to estimate the effect of potential welfare improvement for broilers (e.g., using different breeds) - including concerns whether some welfare improvements might cause an increase in farmed broiler population due to lowered ‘efficieny’, and whether this could make some measures net negative w.r.t total, aggregated welfare—but I don’t know of a good source off the top of my head.
Yeah, I’m hopeful that this is correct, and plan to incorporate other intervention impact estimates soon.
For that particular post, Saulius is talking about “lives affected”. E.g chickens having more room as described here: https://www.compass-usa.com/compass-group-usa-becomes-first-food-service-company-commit-100-healthier-slower-growing-chicken-2024-landmark-global-animal-partnership-agreement/
I don’t yet have a good sense of how valuable this is v.s. the chicken not being produced in the first place, and I think this will end up being a major point of contention. My intuitive personal sense is that chicken lives are not “worth living” (i.e. ethically net positive) even if they are receiving the listed enrichments, but others would disagree: https://nintil.com/on-the-living-standards-of-animals-in-the-united-kingdom
But overall I’m optimistic that there are or could be much more cost-effective interventions than the one I looked at.
If true, this wouldn’t change the cow/chicken analysis, but would make me much favorable towards eating meat + offsets as opposed to eating more expensive plant-based alternatives. As noted elsewhere, of course the optimific action is still to be vegan and also donate anyway.
One other thing that’s important, and that I should have emphasized more in my original comment: You are specifically interested in offsetting chicken consumption (not eggs), but I believe that most successful corporate campaigns to date were about hen welfare (i.e., chicken farmed for eggs).
At a glance, the post I linked to covers both ‘hen welfare’ and ‘broiler welfare’ (i.e., chicken farmed for meat). But it’s worth paying attention to whether cost-effectiveness estimates for hen welfare or broiler welfare differ, or if we even have ones for broiler welfare (if we do, I think they would probably me more uncertain since I would guess there is less data on cost, tractability, corporate follow-through etc.).
This of course also applies to the improvement in living conditions. I think (but am not totally sure) that everything about caged vs. cage-free is relevant for hen welfare only. For this, I would recommend looking at this report. I know that animal advocates have also tried to estimate the effect of potential welfare improvement for broilers (e.g., using different breeds) - including concerns whether some welfare improvements might cause an increase in farmed broiler population due to lowered ‘efficieny’, and whether this could make some measures net negative w.r.t total, aggregated welfare—but I don’t know of a good source off the top of my head.