Thanks for clarifying, Johannes. Strongly upvoted.
Note that these are overall quite weak assumptions and, crucially, if you do not buy them you should probably also not buy the cost-effectiveness analyses on corporate campaigns for chicken welfare.
I think estimates of the chicken-years affected per $ spent in corporate campaigns for chicken welfare may be more resilient than ones of the cost-effectiveness of CCF in t/$. According to The Humane League:
Nearly 2,500 corporate cage-free welfare policies, which protect hens from the most intensive forms of confinement, have been secured around the world.
1,157 companies have successfully transitioned away from using battery cages, resulting in meaningful change for millions of animals.
89% of all corporate cage-free commitments with a 2022 deadline (meaning companies promised to completely phase out battery cages by 2022 or earlier) have been fulfilled.
Just 4% of companies that pledged to be cage-free by 2022 are not yet fully cage-free (though they are publicly reporting on their progress), while only 7% are not yet publicly reporting on the status of their transition.
We’ve seen a complete transition to cage-free systems across industry sectors: 509 restaurants, 269 manufacturers, 174 retailers, 118 foodservice and caterers, 95 hospitality companies, 53 producers, and 19 distributors
As a side note:
Saulius estimated campaigns for broiler welfare are 27.8 % (= 15⁄54) as cost-effective as the cage-free campaigns concerning the above.
OP thinks “the marginal FAW [farmed animal welfare] funding opportunity is ~1/5th as cost-effective as the average from Saulius’ analysis”.
However, I accounted for both of these effects in my analysis.
Thanks, this updates me, I had cached something more skeptical on chicken welfare campaigns.
Do you have a sense of what “advocacy multiplier” this implies? Is this >1000x of helping animals directly?
I have the suspicion that the relative results between causes are—to a significant degree—not driven by cause-differences but by comfort with risk and the kind of multipliers that are expected to be feasible.
FWIW, I also do believe that marginal donations to help farmed animals will do more good than marginal climate donations.
Thanks for the follow-up! It prompted me to think about relevant topics.
Do you have a sense of what “advocacy multiplier” this implies? Is this >1000x of helping animals directly?
By helping animals directly, are you talking about rescuing animals from factory-farms, and then supporting them in animal sanctuaries? I am not aware of cost-effectiveness analyses of these, but here is a quick estimate. I speculate it would take 2 h to save one broiler. In this case, for 20 $/h, the cost to save a broiler would be 40 $ (= 2*20). Broilers in a conventional scenario live for 42 days, so saving one at a random time would in expectation avoid 21 days (= 42⁄2) of life in a conventional scenario, and contribute to perhaps 7.5 years of life in a sanctuary[1], such that the remaining life expectancy would become 130 (= 7.5*365.25/21) times as long. Based on my assumptions here, and supposing the welfare of a broiler in a sanctuary as a fraction of chickens’ welfare range is similar to the welfare of a typical human as a fraction of humans’ welfare range, I estimate going from a conventional scenario to a sanctuary is 22.8 (= (3.33*10^-6*130 + 2.59*10^-5)/(-5.77*10^-6 + 2.59*10^-5)) times as good as going from a conventional scenario to a reformed scenario. So the rescue would have a benefit equivalent to changing 479 days (= 21*22.8) of a broiler in a conventional scenario to one in a reformed scenario. Assuming the cost of maintaining the broiler in the sanctuary is much smaller than the cost of the rescue, which may be optimistic, the cost-effectiveness would be 0.0328 chicken-years/$ (= 479⁄365.25/40). If so, corporate campaigns for chicken welfare would be 250 (= 8.20/0.0328) times as cost-effective.
Relatedly, I Fermi estimated corporate campaigns for chicken welfare are 22.5 times as cost-effective as School Plates, which is a program aiming to increase the number of plant-based meals at schools and universities in the United Kingdom that is seemingly regarded as successful in advancing their intervention. It makes sense to me its cost-effectiveness is higher than that I estimated for rescuing broilers, but lower than that of corporate campaigns for chicken welfare. A direct rescue operations targets a single animal, School Plates presumably targets a university or schools in a given small region, and corporate campaigns target companies, which intuitively affect even more animals than the latter.
The 2 shallow analyses above seem qualitatively in agreement with what Founders Pledge’s approach of focussing on impact multipliers would predict. On the other hand, I would be nice to have more monitoring and evaluation of animal welfare interventions to calibrate heuristics.
I have the suspicion that the relative results between causes are—to a significant degree—not driven by cause-differences but by comfort with risk and the kind of multipliers that are expected to be feasible.
I suspect Ben Todd’s analysis underestimates variations in cost-effectiveness within causes, at least if one excludes indirect effects[2]. At the same time, it still seems like animal welfare interventions are generally more cost-effective than climate and global health and development ones. If corporate campaigns really are in the ballpark of 1.44 k times as cost-effective as GiveWell’s top charities as I estimated, and Open Philanthropy’s human welfare grants in their Global Health and Wellbeing portfolio, which supposedly takes advantage of multipliers, are 2 times as cost-effective as GiveWell’s top charities, then corporate campaigns for chicken welfare are around 720 (= 1.44*10^3/2) times as cost-effective as such grants.
FWIW, I also do believe that marginal donations to help farmed animals will do more good than marginal climate donations.
Most chickens have a natural lifespan of around 10 years but same may live up to 15 years! Hens rescued from industry sadly may not live this long, even when kept as pets, due to their stressful start in life.
As an example of an indirect effect, rescues of farmed animals can be filmed, and the videos used to pressure companies to sign and fulfill their animal welfare pledges.
My estimation of the cost-effectiveness of rescuing a broiler had an error which I have now corrected. I was assuming the rescue would not change the lifespan of the broiler, but it would live longer in a sanctuary. Assuming 7.5 years (see 1st footnote above), corporate campaigns are just hundreds of times as cost-effective as the rescue (instead of thousands).
Thanks for clarifying, Johannes. Strongly upvoted.
I think estimates of the chicken-years affected per $ spent in corporate campaigns for chicken welfare may be more resilient than ones of the cost-effectiveness of CCF in t/$. According to The Humane League:
As a side note:
Saulius estimated campaigns for broiler welfare are 27.8 % (= 15⁄54) as cost-effective as the cage-free campaigns concerning the above.
OP thinks “the marginal FAW [farmed animal welfare] funding opportunity is ~1/5th as cost-effective as the average from Saulius’ analysis”.
However, I accounted for both of these effects in my analysis.
Thanks, this updates me, I had cached something more skeptical on chicken welfare campaigns.
Do you have a sense of what “advocacy multiplier” this implies? Is this >1000x of helping animals directly?
I have the suspicion that the relative results between causes are—to a significant degree—not driven by cause-differences but by comfort with risk and the kind of multipliers that are expected to be feasible.
FWIW, I also do believe that marginal donations to help farmed animals will do more good than marginal climate donations.
Thanks for the follow-up! It prompted me to think about relevant topics.
By helping animals directly, are you talking about rescuing animals from factory-farms, and then supporting them in animal sanctuaries? I am not aware of cost-effectiveness analyses of these, but here is a quick estimate. I speculate it would take 2 h to save one broiler. In this case, for 20 $/h, the cost to save a broiler would be 40 $ (= 2*20). Broilers in a conventional scenario live for 42 days, so saving one at a random time would in expectation avoid 21 days (= 42⁄2) of life in a conventional scenario, and contribute to perhaps 7.5 years of life in a sanctuary[1], such that the remaining life expectancy would become 130 (= 7.5*365.25/21) times as long. Based on my assumptions here, and supposing the welfare of a broiler in a sanctuary as a fraction of chickens’ welfare range is similar to the welfare of a typical human as a fraction of humans’ welfare range, I estimate going from a conventional scenario to a sanctuary is 22.8 (= (3.33*10^-6*130 + 2.59*10^-5)/(-5.77*10^-6 + 2.59*10^-5)) times as good as going from a conventional scenario to a reformed scenario. So the rescue would have a benefit equivalent to changing 479 days (= 21*22.8) of a broiler in a conventional scenario to one in a reformed scenario. Assuming the cost of maintaining the broiler in the sanctuary is much smaller than the cost of the rescue, which may be optimistic, the cost-effectiveness would be 0.0328 chicken-years/$ (= 479⁄365.25/40). If so, corporate campaigns for chicken welfare would be 250 (= 8.20/0.0328) times as cost-effective.
Relatedly, I Fermi estimated corporate campaigns for chicken welfare are 22.5 times as cost-effective as School Plates, which is a program aiming to increase the number of plant-based meals at schools and universities in the United Kingdom that is seemingly regarded as successful in advancing their intervention. It makes sense to me its cost-effectiveness is higher than that I estimated for rescuing broilers, but lower than that of corporate campaigns for chicken welfare. A direct rescue operations targets a single animal, School Plates presumably targets a university or schools in a given small region, and corporate campaigns target companies, which intuitively affect even more animals than the latter.
The 2 shallow analyses above seem qualitatively in agreement with what Founders Pledge’s approach of focussing on impact multipliers would predict. On the other hand, I would be nice to have more monitoring and evaluation of animal welfare interventions to calibrate heuristics.
I suspect Ben Todd’s analysis underestimates variations in cost-effectiveness within causes, at least if one excludes indirect effects[2]. At the same time, it still seems like animal welfare interventions are generally more cost-effective than climate and global health and development ones. If corporate campaigns really are in the ballpark of 1.44 k times as cost-effective as GiveWell’s top charities as I estimated, and Open Philanthropy’s human welfare grants in their Global Health and Wellbeing portfolio, which supposedly takes advantage of multipliers, are 2 times as cost-effective as GiveWell’s top charities, then corporate campaigns for chicken welfare are around 720 (= 1.44*10^3/2) times as cost-effective as such grants.
Thanks for sharing!
According to Goodheart Animal Sanctuaries:
As an example of an indirect effect, rescues of farmed animals can be filmed, and the videos used to pressure companies to sign and fulfill their animal welfare pledges.
My estimation of the cost-effectiveness of rescuing a broiler had an error which I have now corrected. I was assuming the rescue would not change the lifespan of the broiler, but it would live longer in a sanctuary. Assuming 7.5 years (see 1st footnote above), corporate campaigns are just hundreds of times as cost-effective as the rescue (instead of thousands).