What are your current best guesses for the expected chicken-years improved per $ for broiler welfare and cage-free campaigns funded in 2024? Open Philanthropy thinks āthe marginal FAW [farmed animal welfare] funding opportunity is ~1/ā5th as cost-effective as the average from Sauliusā analysis [this post]ā, which suggests broiler welfare and cage-free campaigns improve 3.00 (= 15*1/ā5) and 10.8 chicken-year/ā$ (= 54*1/ā5).
Hey Vasco. I donāt know. I donāt have a birds eye view of the movement right now the way Open Philanthropy does. It depends on the region and the campaign a lot. I think I underestimated mean years of impact in this post which would balance things out a bit. I also never checked whether my guesses about implementation rates in this post are correct.
I imagine that a significant portion of work being done now is on ensuring that commitments are implemented. And any estimates the cost-effectiveness of implementation work are going to be a lot more subjective. Like we could show people graphs like this
and as if they look accurate (this graph is just for illustration purposes). But the people weād be asking would probably mostly be the people working on these campaigns, which introduces bias.
Itās not the first time you are asking about this. Perhaps you would be interested in creating a new cost-effectiveness estimate with my help? Iāve done multiple related projects and I have a bunch of theoretical thoughts on how to do a new estimate, but I donāt want to do it by myself. Like it would involve asking many animal advocates for opinions which causes me a lot of social anxiety, even though everyone I talked to about these sorts of things seemed lovely and friendly. Itās the sort of thing that Iād only consider doing if EA Animal Welfare Fund or Open Philanthropy funded it, because they would be the primary users of such research, and if they wouldnāt want to pay for it, then itās probably not worth doing. But uh, even if they did, Iām still unsure if that would be the most action-guiding project. But just wanted to throw this idea out there in case you or someone else is interested.
But the people weād be asking would probably mostly be the people working on these campaigns, which introduces bias.
Agreed. Ideally, one would use a less subjective methodology.
Itās not the first time you are asking about this. Perhaps you would be interested in creating a new cost-effectiveness estimate with my help?
Ah, I was just asking because I will publish a quick cost-effectiveness effectiveness estimate of corporate campaigns for chicken welfare in the next few weeks, but I am currently not planning to start a longer project. Thanks anyway for throwing the idea out there!
Like it would involve asking many animal advocates for opinions which causes me a lot of social anxiety, even though everyone I talked to about these sorts of things seemed lovely and friendly.
Maybe running surveys would be a way of partially mitigating the social anxiety.
Hi Saulius,
What are your current best guesses for the expected chicken-years improved per $ for broiler welfare and cage-free campaigns funded in 2024? Open Philanthropy thinks āthe marginal FAW [farmed animal welfare] funding opportunity is ~1/ā5th as cost-effective as the average from Sauliusā analysis [this post]ā, which suggests broiler welfare and cage-free campaigns improve 3.00 (= 15*1/ā5) and 10.8 chicken-year/ā$ (= 54*1/ā5).
Hey Vasco. I donāt know. I donāt have a birds eye view of the movement right now the way Open Philanthropy does. It depends on the region and the campaign a lot. I think I underestimated mean years of impact in this post which would balance things out a bit. I also never checked whether my guesses about implementation rates in this post are correct.
I imagine that a significant portion of work being done now is on ensuring that commitments are implemented. And any estimates the cost-effectiveness of implementation work are going to be a lot more subjective. Like we could show people graphs like this
and as if they look accurate (this graph is just for illustration purposes). But the people weād be asking would probably mostly be the people working on these campaigns, which introduces bias.
Itās not the first time you are asking about this. Perhaps you would be interested in creating a new cost-effectiveness estimate with my help? Iāve done multiple related projects and I have a bunch of theoretical thoughts on how to do a new estimate, but I donāt want to do it by myself. Like it would involve asking many animal advocates for opinions which causes me a lot of social anxiety, even though everyone I talked to about these sorts of things seemed lovely and friendly. Itās the sort of thing that Iād only consider doing if EA Animal Welfare Fund or Open Philanthropy funded it, because they would be the primary users of such research, and if they wouldnāt want to pay for it, then itās probably not worth doing. But uh, even if they did, Iām still unsure if that would be the most action-guiding project. But just wanted to throw this idea out there in case you or someone else is interested.
Thanks, Saulius!
Agreed. Ideally, one would use a less subjective methodology.
Ah, I was just asking because I will publish a quick cost-effectiveness effectiveness estimate of corporate campaigns for chicken welfare in the next few weeks, but I am currently not planning to start a longer project. Thanks anyway for throwing the idea out there!
Maybe running surveys would be a way of partially mitigating the social anxiety.
Great! Feel free to let me know if me reviewing your estimate would be useful, no worries if not :)
Thanks for the offer, Saulius! Here is the draft.
Published.