Will policymakers like to implement a tax based on ‘suffering units’ with quite some uncertainty? I wonder if we can find a decent proxy that is easier for taxation.
I think it is worth trying. Higher welfare animals tend to grow slower and reach smaller slaughter weights, so taxing animal-years and animals slaughtered will tend to desincentivise welfare reforms, and, if there is a carbon tax, doubly so because they tendentially imply greater GHG emissions.
I agree the suffering of farmed animals is more uncertain than GHG emissions, but I think it may well be less uncertain than the suffering of humans caused by GHG emissions, which I would say is a more relevant comparison. Bressler 2021 estimates “the 2020 MCC [mortality cost of carbon] is 2.26 × 10⁻⁴ [low to high estimate −1.71×10⁻⁴ to 6.78 × 10⁻⁴] excess deaths per metric ton of 2020 emissions”. So there is significant uncertainty with respect to whether GHG increase or decrease human mortality. For comparison, below are the time hens and broilers spend in pain as estimated by WFP. I think the bars are supposed to be the 95 % confidence intervals, although I did not find information about this in the page.
The uncertainty respecting the suffering of animals is much larger than suggested by the above due to uncertainty in welfare ranges and pain intensities. Yet, one can at least be pretty sure eating animals causes them pain, and this happens very soon after consumption. In contrast, Bressler 2021 estimates roughly no impacts until 2055.
I still think you have a point because people may overestimate the uncertainty of the impacts on animals, and underestimate that of the impacts on humans. In addition, people may care about other types of uncertainty beyond uncertainty about the direction of the effect, which is the one I think is lower for animal suffering.
I think it is worth trying. Higher welfare animals tend to grow slower and reach smaller slaughter weights, so taxing animal-years and animals slaughtered will tend to desincentivise welfare reforms, and, if there is a carbon tax, doubly so because they tendentially imply greater GHG emissions.
I agree the suffering of farmed animals is more uncertain than GHG emissions, but I think it may well be less uncertain than the suffering of humans caused by GHG emissions, which I would say is a more relevant comparison. Bressler 2021 estimates “the 2020 MCC [mortality cost of carbon] is 2.26 × 10⁻⁴ [low to high estimate −1.71×10⁻⁴ to 6.78 × 10⁻⁴] excess deaths per metric ton of 2020 emissions”. So there is significant uncertainty with respect to whether GHG increase or decrease human mortality. For comparison, below are the time hens and broilers spend in pain as estimated by WFP. I think the bars are supposed to be the 95 % confidence intervals, although I did not find information about this in the page.
The uncertainty respecting the suffering of animals is much larger than suggested by the above due to uncertainty in welfare ranges and pain intensities. Yet, one can at least be pretty sure eating animals causes them pain, and this happens very soon after consumption. In contrast, Bressler 2021 estimates roughly no impacts until 2055.
I still think you have a point because people may overestimate the uncertainty of the impacts on animals, and underestimate that of the impacts on humans. In addition, people may care about other types of uncertainty beyond uncertainty about the direction of the effect, which is the one I think is lower for animal suffering.