Thanks for sharing, Alina! Do you plan to consider the effects on wild animals of interventions targeting farmed animals?
I think the effects on wild animals of interventions targeting vertebrates which change feed consumption are much larger than those on farmed animals. I estimate:
Broiler welfare and cage-free corporate campaigns benefit soil nematodes, mites, and springtails 444 and 28.2 times as much as they benefit chickens.
School Plates in 2023, and Veganuary in 2024 harmed those soil animals 5.42 k and 3.58 k times as much as they benefited farmed animals.
For my best guess that wild animals have negative lives, considering effects on wild animals makes welfare reforms increasing the feed requirement per food-kg much more beneficial, but also renders increasing the consumption of animal-based foods very harmful. I worry your recommendations are not internally consistent. If I had the best guess that:
Wild animals have negative lives (like I actually do), I would not recommend organisations primarily aiming to decrease the consumption of animal-based foods.
Wild animals have positive lives, I would not recommend organisations primarily working on interventions targeting vertebrates which increase the feed requirement per food-kg, like broiler welfare and cage-free reforms.
One should exclusively focus on interventions which are beneficial regardless of whether wild animals have positive or negative lives, I would not recommend organisations primarily aiming to decrease the consumption of animal-based foods, or ones primarily working on interventions targeting vertebrates which increase the feed requirement per food-kg. I would instead focus on interventions targeting intervebrates (like the ones I recommended here), and ones targeting vertebrates which have a negligible impact on the feed requirement per food-kg, like humane slaughter interventions.
Strong downvote again for not engaging with the substance/āpurpose of the post (telling us about the great charities they are reviewing), and instead bringing in a sideline discussion about nematode/āwild animal welfare.
Thanks, Nick. I also upvoted your comment again because I appreciate when people share the rationale for their strong down or upvotes. I think my comment is a valid critique of ACEās methodology to select for evaluation and recommend charities, and therefore relevant to the post.
Ok I almost see that (downgraded to weak downvot) I think I see this post as being about their overall process rather than details. Thereās not one number in this post so they donāt seem to be engaging on that level
If this was a post was about the details of their methodology then I think getting into the details you mention would make more sens.
Hi Vasco, thank you for encouraging us to think about the downstream effects of farmed animal interventions on wild animals whose experiences are so neglected. As you noticed by the selection of charities weāve made, we are not confident enough yet of the potential impact on the wellbeing of free ranging individuals like nematodes or even insects and larger wild animals. It is possible that in our theory of change analyses of charities this question will come up. But we expect that the uncertainty will mean we wonāt give the answer much weight in this evaluation round. Thanks.
Could you elaborate on which type of uncertainty makes you discount effects on wild animals? I assume you are not neglecting these just because they have a high chance of being negligible. This also applies to interventions helping farmed insects, and you have made a grant to the Insect Welfare Research Society (IWRS). Rethink Prioritiesā (RPās) estimate for the probability of sentience of silkworms is just 1.21 (= 0.082/ā0.068) times their estimate for nematodes.
I guess you are neglecting effects on wild animals because the probability of them being beneficial is similar to that of them being harmful. Do you have any thoughts on the reasons I presented for that not being a sufficient reason to neglect the effects?
Hi Vasco, we intend to publish a blog post on the consequences of farmed animal welfare interventions for wild animals, after the busy work of charity evaluations is wrapped up for the season. Thank you.
Thanks for that! I would be happy to review a draft (for free).
@Animal Charity Evaluators, I would be curious to know what made you have that intention to publish a post about effects on wild animals. In particular, whether my posts had any influence.
You could alternatively have the best guess that either:
Soil nematodes, mites, and springtails are very likely not sentient.
The welfare of nematodes, mites, and springtails is very likely of negligible importance compared to the welfare of e.g. chickens.
Soil nematodes, mites, and springtails have very close to neutral lives on average (even if the welfare of each individual is significant).
The extreme uncertainty in the sign and magnitude of their welfare effectively ācancels outā in expectation (even if still having a large variance).. or cancels out once combined with uncertainty around whether there are other considerations missing from your analysis completely (other species we should be thinking about, possibility of sentience in bacteria under some spiritual worldview, etc).
I think under any of these points of view, even the final one, recommending organisations working on both sides of your divide would be internally consistent.
Thanks for the relevant comment, Toby! I only covered the options I consider most reasonable, but the ones you mentioned crossed my mind, and I think they are worth discussing. As far as I can tell, they can be summarised into 2 objections:
The expected welfare of soil nematodes, mites, and springtails being much closer to 0 than I estimated. This could be due to their probability of sentience being lower, their welfare range conditional on sentience being smaller, or their expected welfare conditional on a given welfare range being smaller (for example, due to the welfare distribution being closer to symmetric around 0, as you said).
The effects on soil nematodes, mites, and springtails are practically neutralised by considerations I did not cover.
On the 1st objection, ACEās cost-effectiveness analyses rely on Ambitious Impactās (AIMās) suffering-adjusted days (SADs). In this system, silkworms have a welfare range of 0.46 (you can ask Vicky Cox for the private sheet with the estimates), 230 (= 0.46/ā0.002) times Rethink Prioritiesās (RPās) mainline welfare range of silkworms of 0.002. As a result, small invertebrates have a much greater welfare range in ACEās cost-effectiveness analyses than under RPās mainline welfare ranges. My estimates for the welfare of soil nematodes, mites, and springtails rely on RPās mainline welfare ranges, so I believe these animals would have a welfare much further away from 0 under AIMās, and therefore ACEās, assumptions about welfare ranges.
On the 2nd objection, I think it would be a surprising and suspicious convergence if considering unmodelled effects much larger than the ones currently being modelled practically did not change anything in terms of ACEās recommendations. My analysis of effects on soil nematodes, mites, and springtails significantly changed my cause prioritisation. At the very least, I would say ACE could explain why they think effects on wild animals are not worth considering.
I would not be surprised if effects on bacteria of changing cropland were much larger than those on soil nematodes, mites, and springtails. From Table S1 of Bar-on et al. (2018), there are 10^30 terrestrial deep subsurface bacteria, 10^9 (= 10^(30 ā 21)) times as many as nematodes, and I guess the welfare range of bacteria can seasily be much larger than 10^-9 that of nematodes. However, the number of bacteria per unit area is correlated with the number of soil nematodes, mites, and springtails per unit area, as both are driven by net primary production (NPP), and I would guess bacteria to have negative/āpositive lives conditional on soil nematodes, mites, and springtails having negative/āpositive lives. So I believe my conclusion that the cost-effectiveness of interventions targeting vertebrates is driven by changes in cropland would hold accounting for bacteria.
Thanks for sharing, Alina! Do you plan to consider the effects on wild animals of interventions targeting farmed animals?
I think the effects on wild animals of interventions targeting vertebrates which change feed consumption are much larger than those on farmed animals. I estimate:
Broiler welfare and cage-free corporate campaigns benefit soil nematodes, mites, and springtails 444 and 28.2 times as much as they benefit chickens.
School Plates in 2023, and Veganuary in 2024 harmed those soil animals 5.42 k and 3.58 k times as much as they benefited farmed animals.
For my best guess that wild animals have negative lives, considering effects on wild animals makes welfare reforms increasing the feed requirement per food-kg much more beneficial, but also renders increasing the consumption of animal-based foods very harmful. I worry your recommendations are not internally consistent. If I had the best guess that:
Wild animals have negative lives (like I actually do), I would not recommend organisations primarily aiming to decrease the consumption of animal-based foods.
Wild animals have positive lives, I would not recommend organisations primarily working on interventions targeting vertebrates which increase the feed requirement per food-kg, like broiler welfare and cage-free reforms.
One should exclusively focus on interventions which are beneficial regardless of whether wild animals have positive or negative lives, I would not recommend organisations primarily aiming to decrease the consumption of animal-based foods, or ones primarily working on interventions targeting vertebrates which increase the feed requirement per food-kg. I would instead focus on interventions targeting intervebrates (like the ones I recommended here), and ones targeting vertebrates which have a negligible impact on the feed requirement per food-kg, like humane slaughter interventions.
@eleanor mcaree, @Elisabeth Ormandy, @Vince Mak šø, and @Zuzana Sperlovašø, you may be interested in this comment, and my response to Tobyās reply.
Strong downvote again for not engaging with the substance/āpurpose of the post (telling us about the great charities they are reviewing), and instead bringing in a sideline discussion about nematode/āwild animal welfare.
Thanks, Nick. I also upvoted your comment again because I appreciate when people share the rationale for their strong down or upvotes. I think my comment is a valid critique of ACEās methodology to select for evaluation and recommend charities, and therefore relevant to the post.
Ok I almost see that (downgraded to weak downvot) I think I see this post as being about their overall process rather than details. Thereās not one number in this post so they donāt seem to be engaging on that level
If this was a post was about the details of their methodology then I think getting into the details you mention would make more sens.
Hi Vasco, thank you for encouraging us to think about the downstream effects of farmed animal interventions on wild animals whose experiences are so neglected. As you noticed by the selection of charities weāve made, we are not confident enough yet of the potential impact on the wellbeing of free ranging individuals like nematodes or even insects and larger wild animals. It is possible that in our theory of change analyses of charities this question will come up. But we expect that the uncertainty will mean we wonāt give the answer much weight in this evaluation round. Thanks.
Thanks for the reply.
Could you elaborate on which type of uncertainty makes you discount effects on wild animals? I assume you are not neglecting these just because they have a high chance of being negligible. This also applies to interventions helping farmed insects, and you have made a grant to the Insect Welfare Research Society (IWRS). Rethink Prioritiesā (RPās) estimate for the probability of sentience of silkworms is just 1.21 (= 0.082/ā0.068) times their estimate for nematodes.
I guess you are neglecting effects on wild animals because the probability of them being beneficial is similar to that of them being harmful. Do you have any thoughts on the reasons I presented for that not being a sufficient reason to neglect the effects?
Hi Vasco, we intend to publish a blog post on the consequences of farmed animal welfare interventions for wild animals, after the busy work of charity evaluations is wrapped up for the season. Thank you.
Thanks for that! I would be happy to review a draft (for free).
@Animal Charity Evaluators, I would be curious to know what made you have that intention to publish a post about effects on wild animals. In particular, whether my posts had any influence.
You could alternatively have the best guess that either:
Soil nematodes, mites, and springtails are very likely not sentient.
The welfare of nematodes, mites, and springtails is very likely of negligible importance compared to the welfare of e.g. chickens.
Soil nematodes, mites, and springtails have very close to neutral lives on average (even if the welfare of each individual is significant).
The extreme uncertainty in the sign and magnitude of their welfare effectively ācancels outā in expectation (even if still having a large variance).. or cancels out once combined with uncertainty around whether there are other considerations missing from your analysis completely (other species we should be thinking about, possibility of sentience in bacteria under some spiritual worldview, etc).
I think under any of these points of view, even the final one, recommending organisations working on both sides of your divide would be internally consistent.
Thanks for the relevant comment, Toby! I only covered the options I consider most reasonable, but the ones you mentioned crossed my mind, and I think they are worth discussing. As far as I can tell, they can be summarised into 2 objections:
The expected welfare of soil nematodes, mites, and springtails being much closer to 0 than I estimated. This could be due to their probability of sentience being lower, their welfare range conditional on sentience being smaller, or their expected welfare conditional on a given welfare range being smaller (for example, due to the welfare distribution being closer to symmetric around 0, as you said).
The effects on soil nematodes, mites, and springtails are practically neutralised by considerations I did not cover.
On the 1st objection, ACEās cost-effectiveness analyses rely on Ambitious Impactās (AIMās) suffering-adjusted days (SADs). In this system, silkworms have a welfare range of 0.46 (you can ask Vicky Cox for the private sheet with the estimates), 230 (= 0.46/ā0.002) times Rethink Prioritiesās (RPās) mainline welfare range of silkworms of 0.002. As a result, small invertebrates have a much greater welfare range in ACEās cost-effectiveness analyses than under RPās mainline welfare ranges. My estimates for the welfare of soil nematodes, mites, and springtails rely on RPās mainline welfare ranges, so I believe these animals would have a welfare much further away from 0 under AIMās, and therefore ACEās, assumptions about welfare ranges.
On the 2nd objection, I think it would be a surprising and suspicious convergence if considering unmodelled effects much larger than the ones currently being modelled practically did not change anything in terms of ACEās recommendations. My analysis of effects on soil nematodes, mites, and springtails significantly changed my cause prioritisation. At the very least, I would say ACE could explain why they think effects on wild animals are not worth considering.
I am wary of causing large harm to soil nematodes, mites, and spirngtails in the hope that other unmodelled undescribed effect will neutralise it. I estimated School Plates in 2023 increased 1.20 billion wild-animal-years (mostly nematode-years) per $, and nematodes seem to have pretty painful experiences. From FĆ©lix and Braendle (2010), āFrequently co-occurring predators [of nematodes] include fungi, which, depending on the species, invade the nematode through spores attaching to the cuticle or the intestine, or use trapping devices that immobilize the animal and perforate itā. From FrĆ©zal and FĆ©lix (2015), āparasites infect their host via the two most exposed parts of the nematode, the cuticle and the intestine. Some non-invasive bacteria form a biofilm along the nematodeās cuticle or directly stick to it (Hodgkin et al., 2013). Other bacteria proliferate in the nematode gut, which may induce constipation and likely impairs nutrient uptake (FĆ©lix and Duveau, 2012). The most intrusive parasites enter and proliferate inside the nematode body. Some pierce the cuticle (e.g., Drechmeria coniospora [Couillault et al., 2004], Figure 2J), while others enter intestinal cells via the apical membrane (e.g., microsporidia and Orsay virus [Troemel et al., 2008; FĆ©lix et al., 2011])ā.
I would not be surprised if effects on bacteria of changing cropland were much larger than those on soil nematodes, mites, and springtails. From Table S1 of Bar-on et al. (2018), there are 10^30 terrestrial deep subsurface bacteria, 10^9 (= 10^(30 ā 21)) times as many as nematodes, and I guess the welfare range of bacteria can seasily be much larger than 10^-9 that of nematodes. However, the number of bacteria per unit area is correlated with the number of soil nematodes, mites, and springtails per unit area, as both are driven by net primary production (NPP), and I would guess bacteria to have negative/āpositive lives conditional on soil nematodes, mites, and springtails having negative/āpositive lives. So I believe my conclusion that the cost-effectiveness of interventions targeting vertebrates is driven by changes in cropland would hold accounting for bacteria.