You may be interested in my estimates for the total welfare of animal populations which I calculated assuming individual welfare per fully-healthy-animal-year is proportional to “number of neurons”^”exponent”. For exponents from 0.5 to 1.5, which I believe are reasonable best guesses, I got an absolute value of the total welfare of cattle, hens, broilers, and farmed black soldier fly (BSF) larvae and mealworms, finfishes, and shrimps ranging from 7.65*10^-4 to 2.48 times the total welfare of humans. So I believe the total welfare of humans may easily be much larger than that of farmed animals.
Nitpick. I think you meant “kill more farmed animals”, not just “kill more animals”. Abraham Rowe estimated agricultural pesticides kill “100 trillion to 10 quadrillion” insects per year, around 1 quadrillion (10^15). Hannah McKay and Sagar Shah estimated humans kill 1.12 trillion (= (76.2 + 134 + 440 + 472)*10^9) farmed broilers, finfishes, shrimps, BSF larvae, and silkworms per year, only 0.112 % (= 1.12*10^12/10^15) of the insects killed by agricultural pesticides.
Yep, I think farmed animal advocates sometimes miss that even if you only care about human-impacted animals (and not naturogenic suffering), the vast majority are wild animals, not farmed animals. The classic ACE graph could be replicated again with wild animals as the large boxes, and farmed animals as the small ones, and that’s putting aside climate change (which impacts way more wild animals).
That makes sense, Abraham. Here are some graphs I made illustrating that wild animals are neglected compared with farmed animals.
On the other hand, I think people advocating for a greater focus on helping wild animals, including myself in the past, often overestimate the robustness of their best guess that the absolute value of the total welfare of wild animals is much larger than that of humans. For individual welfare per fully-healthy-animal-year proportional to “number of neurons”^”exponent”, and exponents from 0.5 to 1.5, I got an absolute value of the total welfare of:
Wild birds, mammals, and finfishes ranging from 0.0412 to 376 times the total welfare of humans.
Yep, I agree that the case is complicated by total welfare potentially being dominated by invertebrates. That being said, I think many people in the community who might not be motivated by helping insects or nematodes or mites might still care about shrimp, and humans still kill 25 trillion wild shrimp (!) annually.
I agree the absolute value of the total welfare of wild invertebrates may well be much larger than that of wild vertebrates. For exponents from 0.5 to 1.5, I get an absolute value of the total welfare of soil ants, termites, springtails, mites, and nematodes ranging from 0.459 (= 0.0189/0.0412) to 2.60 k (= 977*10^3/376) times that of wild birds, mammals, and finfishes. However, my point was that the total welfare of humans may easily be much larger than the absolute value of the total welfare of wild animals including vertebrates and invertebrates.
I think the focus should be on cost-effectiveness, and the absolute value of the total welfare. These will be lower than suggested by animals killed because a higher number of these tends to be associated with animals with fewer neurons and welfare proxies. For exponents from 0.5 to 1.5, and only accounting for effects on target beneficiaries, I estimate the cost-effectiveness of the Shrimp Welfare Project’s (SWP’s) Humane Slaughter Initiative (HSI) has been 0.0114 (= 2.06*10^-5/0.00180) to 29.4 (= 20.6/0.701) times that of cage-free corporate campaigns (the graph below has my results for more interventions and exponents). So I do not know whether the interventions which most cost-effectively increase the welfare of wild shrimps are more or less cost-effective than the ones which most cost-effectively increase the welfare of chickens
Accounting for effects on soil animals and microorganisms, I have very little idea about whether any intervention, including SWP’s HSI which gets more farmed shrimps to be electrically stunned, increases or decreases welfare (in expectation).
Nice idea. We do have one WAW version of the classic graph, which I like in its simplicity, but it lacks the funding angle and if you do not see it next to the FAW classic, it’s not as meaningful. I’ll add this idea to our wish list of comms graphs.
Thanks for the bold take.
You may be interested in my estimates for the total welfare of animal populations which I calculated assuming individual welfare per fully-healthy-animal-year is proportional to “number of neurons”^”exponent”. For exponents from 0.5 to 1.5, which I believe are reasonable best guesses, I got an absolute value of the total welfare of cattle, hens, broilers, and farmed black soldier fly (BSF) larvae and mealworms, finfishes, and shrimps ranging from 7.65*10^-4 to 2.48 times the total welfare of humans. So I believe the total welfare of humans may easily be much larger than that of farmed animals.
Nitpick. I think you meant “kill more farmed animals”, not just “kill more animals”. Abraham Rowe estimated agricultural pesticides kill “100 trillion to 10 quadrillion” insects per year, around 1 quadrillion (10^15). Hannah McKay and Sagar Shah estimated humans kill 1.12 trillion (= (76.2 + 134 + 440 + 472)*10^9) farmed broilers, finfishes, shrimps, BSF larvae, and silkworms per year, only 0.112 % (= 1.12*10^12/10^15) of the insects killed by agricultural pesticides.
Yep, I think farmed animal advocates sometimes miss that even if you only care about human-impacted animals (and not naturogenic suffering), the vast majority are wild animals, not farmed animals. The classic ACE graph could be replicated again with wild animals as the large boxes, and farmed animals as the small ones, and that’s putting aside climate change (which impacts way more wild animals).
That makes sense, Abraham. Here are some graphs I made illustrating that wild animals are neglected compared with farmed animals.
On the other hand, I think people advocating for a greater focus on helping wild animals, including myself in the past, often overestimate the robustness of their best guess that the absolute value of the total welfare of wild animals is much larger than that of humans. For individual welfare per fully-healthy-animal-year proportional to “number of neurons”^”exponent”, and exponents from 0.5 to 1.5, I got an absolute value of the total welfare of:
Wild birds, mammals, and finfishes ranging from 0.0412 to 376 times the total welfare of humans.
Soil ants, termites, springtails, mites, and nematodes ranging from 0.0189 to 977 k times the total welfare of humans.
For an exponent of 1.5, the absolute value of the total welfare of each of the above 2 groups of wild animals is much smaller than that of humans.
Yep, I agree that the case is complicated by total welfare potentially being dominated by invertebrates. That being said, I think many people in the community who might not be motivated by helping insects or nematodes or mites might still care about shrimp, and humans still kill 25 trillion wild shrimp (!) annually.
I agree the absolute value of the total welfare of wild invertebrates may well be much larger than that of wild vertebrates. For exponents from 0.5 to 1.5, I get an absolute value of the total welfare of soil ants, termites, springtails, mites, and nematodes ranging from 0.459 (= 0.0189/0.0412) to 2.60 k (= 977*10^3/376) times that of wild birds, mammals, and finfishes. However, my point was that the total welfare of humans may easily be much larger than the absolute value of the total welfare of wild animals including vertebrates and invertebrates.
I think the focus should be on cost-effectiveness, and the absolute value of the total welfare. These will be lower than suggested by animals killed because a higher number of these tends to be associated with animals with fewer neurons and welfare proxies. For exponents from 0.5 to 1.5, and only accounting for effects on target beneficiaries, I estimate the cost-effectiveness of the Shrimp Welfare Project’s (SWP’s) Humane Slaughter Initiative (HSI) has been 0.0114 (= 2.06*10^-5/0.00180) to 29.4 (= 20.6/0.701) times that of cage-free corporate campaigns (the graph below has my results for more interventions and exponents). So I do not know whether the interventions which most cost-effectively increase the welfare of wild shrimps are more or less cost-effective than the ones which most cost-effectively increase the welfare of chickens
Accounting for effects on soil animals and microorganisms, I have very little idea about whether any intervention, including SWP’s HSI which gets more farmed shrimps to be electrically stunned, increases or decreases welfare (in expectation).
Nice idea. We do have one WAW version of the classic graph, which I like in its simplicity, but it lacks the funding angle and if you do not see it next to the FAW classic, it’s not as meaningful. I’ll add this idea to our wish list of comms graphs.
Why Wild Animals? - Animal Charity Evaluators