Do you know about any plans (from you or someone else) to publish an updated version of this analysis (e.g. maybe the analysis you did respecting the period from 2016 to 2020)? Corporate campaigns for chicken welfare are plausibly the most cost-effective way of increasing nearterm welfare, so I think it is important to have updated values which could be used as a benchmark to assess other interventions.
Also, perhaps it’s a bit weird to use it as a benchmark because it’s the consumers who pay most of the cost for chicken welfare reforms (and, to a lesser extent, farmers, retailers, and sometimes governments). So the comparison with something like AMF is not very clean. Corporate campaigns are a bit more similar to lobbying governments to distribute bednets. Ugh, I notice that I’m a bit confused about this right now.
Nice point. I suspect your confusion comes from wondering whether the cost to the consumers and others should be considered as part of the cost or harms of the intervention. My understanding is that cost-effectiveness analyses only include in the cost of the intervention money coming from the people making the decision about whether to fund the intervention, so I would consider the cost to the consumers as part of the harms of the intervention. I also believe this would only minorly decrease the cost-effectiveness:
I would say the benefits to the chickens are way larger than the harms linked to having to buy marginally more expenside chicken meat and eggs (or no longer being able to buy these).
I assume there may also be beneficial health and economic effects to humans due to decreased consumption of chicken meat and eggs, depending on what foods are consumed instead.
I’d say there’s about 30% probability I will do it in the next two years. I’ve just started a project for Open Philanthropy about estimating what should be the speed-up values in cost-effectiveness estimates for corporate and legislative welfare reforms, as that is the most uncertain aspect of these estimates. Open Philanthropy is the main target audience for this type of stuff and I don’t think that putting the rest of the numbers together for a cost-effectiveness estimate would influence them much. I’m unsure if another cost-effectiveness estimate is what’s needed to finally attract other large-scale donors to fund welfare reforms. People who care about cost-effectiveness have gotten the message I think. A new estimate would probably output a similar number because reforms have probably gotten less effective, but I now think that I underestimated cost-effectiveness in this report.
I’ve just started a project for Open Philanthropy about estimating what should be the speed-up values in cost-effectiveness estimates for corporate and legislative welfare reforms, as that is the most uncertain aspect of these estimates.
Cool! I am looking forward to the results.
I’m unsure if another cost-effectiveness estimate is what’s needed to finally attract other large-scale donors to fund welfare reforms.
I was thinking that it could still be useful to inform Open Philanthropy’s allocation between animal and human welfare interventions in their global health and wellbeing portfolio.
Hi Saulius,
Do you know about any plans (from you or someone else) to publish an updated version of this analysis (e.g. maybe the analysis you did respecting the period from 2016 to 2020)? Corporate campaigns for chicken welfare are plausibly the most cost-effective way of increasing nearterm welfare, so I think it is important to have updated values which could be used as a benchmark to assess other interventions.
Also, perhaps it’s a bit weird to use it as a benchmark because it’s the consumers who pay most of the cost for chicken welfare reforms (and, to a lesser extent, farmers, retailers, and sometimes governments). So the comparison with something like AMF is not very clean. Corporate campaigns are a bit more similar to lobbying governments to distribute bednets. Ugh, I notice that I’m a bit confused about this right now.
Nice point. I suspect your confusion comes from wondering whether the cost to the consumers and others should be considered as part of the cost or harms of the intervention. My understanding is that cost-effectiveness analyses only include in the cost of the intervention money coming from the people making the decision about whether to fund the intervention, so I would consider the cost to the consumers as part of the harms of the intervention. I also believe this would only minorly decrease the cost-effectiveness:
I would say the benefits to the chickens are way larger than the harms linked to having to buy marginally more expenside chicken meat and eggs (or no longer being able to buy these).
I assume there may also be beneficial health and economic effects to humans due to decreased consumption of chicken meat and eggs, depending on what foods are consumed instead.
I’d say there’s about 30% probability I will do it in the next two years. I’ve just started a project for Open Philanthropy about estimating what should be the speed-up values in cost-effectiveness estimates for corporate and legislative welfare reforms, as that is the most uncertain aspect of these estimates. Open Philanthropy is the main target audience for this type of stuff and I don’t think that putting the rest of the numbers together for a cost-effectiveness estimate would influence them much. I’m unsure if another cost-effectiveness estimate is what’s needed to finally attract other large-scale donors to fund welfare reforms. People who care about cost-effectiveness have gotten the message I think. A new estimate would probably output a similar number because reforms have probably gotten less effective, but I now think that I underestimated cost-effectiveness in this report.
Thanks for the reply!
Cool! I am looking forward to the results.
I was thinking that it could still be useful to inform Open Philanthropy’s allocation between animal and human welfare interventions in their global health and wellbeing portfolio.