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).
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).