(Not speaking on behalf of RP. I don’t work there now.)
FWIW, corporate chicken welfare campaigns have looked better than GiveWell recommendations on their direct welfare impacts if you weigh chicken welfare per year up to ~5,000x less than human welfare per year. Quoting Fischer, Shriver and myself, 2022 citing others:
Open Philanthropy once estimated that, “if you value chicken life-years equally to human life-years… [then] corporate campaigns do about 10,000x as much good per dollar as top [global health] charities.” Two more recent estimates—which we haven’t investigated and aren’t necessarily endorsing—agree that corporate campaigns are much better. If we assign equal weights to human and chicken welfare in the model that Grilo, 2022 uses, corporate campaigns are roughly 5,000x better than the best global health charities. If we do the same thing in the model that Clare and Goth, 2020 employ, corporate campaigns are 30,000 to 45,000x better.[8]
About Open Phil’s own estimate in that 2016 piece, Holden wrote in a footnote:
Bayesian adjustments should attenuate this difference to some degree, though it’s unclear how much, if you believe – as I do – that both estimates are fairly informed and reasonable though far from precise or reliable. I will put this consideration aside here.
My understanding is that they’ve continued to be very cost-effective since then. See this comment by Saulius, who estimated their impact, and this section of Grilo, 2022.
Duffy, 2023 for RP also recently found a handful of US ballot initiatives from 2008-2018 for farm animal welfare to be similarly cost-effective, making, in my view, relatively conservative assumptions.
EDIT: Looks like Ariel beat me to this point by a few minutes.
(Not speaking on behalf of RP. I don’t work there now.)
FWIW, corporate chicken welfare campaigns have looked better than GiveWell recommendations on their direct welfare impacts if you weigh chicken welfare per year up to ~5,000x less than human welfare per year. Quoting Fischer, Shriver and myself, 2022 citing others:
About Open Phil’s own estimate in that 2016 piece, Holden wrote in a footnote:
My understanding is that they’ve continued to be very cost-effective since then. See this comment by Saulius, who estimated their impact, and this section of Grilo, 2022.
Duffy, 2023 for RP also recently found a handful of US ballot initiatives from 2008-2018 for farm animal welfare to be similarly cost-effective, making, in my view, relatively conservative assumptions.