Thanks for the comment! I first want to highlight that in our report we are specifically talking about institutional diet change interventions that reduce animal product consumption by replacing institutional (e.g., school) meals containing animal products with meals that don’t. This approach, which constitutes the majority of diet change programs that ACE MG funds, doesn’t necessarily involve convincing individuals to make conscious changes to their consumption habits.
Our understanding of a common view among the experts we consulted is that diet change interventions are generally not competitive with promising welfare asks in terms of cost-effectiveness, but that some of the most promising institutional diet change interventions plausibly could be. For example, I think some of our experts would have considered the grant ACE MG made to the Plant-Based Universities campaign worth funding. Reasons for this include:
The organisers have a good track record
The ask is for a full transition to plant-based catering, which reduces small animal replacement concerns
The model involves training students to campaign, meaning the campaign can reach more universities than the organisation could by going school-to-school themselves
As noted in the report, not all experts agreed that the institutional diet change interventions were on average competitive with the welfare interventions ACE MG funded. However, as you noted, this probably has a fairly limited impact on how cost-effective ACE MG is on the margin, not least because these grants made up a small fraction of ACE MG’s 2024 funding.
Thanks, Aidan. For reference, I estimated corporate campaigns for chicken welfare are 25.1 times as cost-effective as School Plates, which is a program aiming to increase the consumption of plant-based foods at schools and universities in the United Kingdom.
Thanks for the comment! I first want to highlight that in our report we are specifically talking about institutional diet change interventions that reduce animal product consumption by replacing institutional (e.g., school) meals containing animal products with meals that don’t. This approach, which constitutes the majority of diet change programs that ACE MG funds, doesn’t necessarily involve convincing individuals to make conscious changes to their consumption habits.
Our understanding of a common view among the experts we consulted is that diet change interventions are generally not competitive with promising welfare asks in terms of cost-effectiveness, but that some of the most promising institutional diet change interventions plausibly could be. For example, I think some of our experts would have considered the grant ACE MG made to the Plant-Based Universities campaign worth funding. Reasons for this include:
The organisers have a good track record
The ask is for a full transition to plant-based catering, which reduces small animal replacement concerns
The model involves training students to campaign, meaning the campaign can reach more universities than the organisation could by going school-to-school themselves
As noted in the report, not all experts agreed that the institutional diet change interventions were on average competitive with the welfare interventions ACE MG funded. However, as you noted, this probably has a fairly limited impact on how cost-effective ACE MG is on the margin, not least because these grants made up a small fraction of ACE MG’s 2024 funding.
Thanks, Aidan. For reference, I estimated corporate campaigns for chicken welfare are 25.1 times as cost-effective as School Plates, which is a program aiming to increase the consumption of plant-based foods at schools and universities in the United Kingdom.