Congrats on what looks like a really successful first 2 years! I’m a big fan :)
I said this elsewhere, but the collaboration of many folks in the effective animal advocacy space that has led to work like this makes me really happy. (I think of the RP / CE / SWP collaboration here as an awesome success story for EA!)
Some questions on your electric stunning guesstimate:
The shrimp weights you’re using (14g) seems kind of low compared to the estimated mean weights RP published recently (which have central estimates of 17g for L. vannamei and 36 for p. monodon). What are these based on? I think these could have a somewhat significant effect on your bottom line # of shrimp stunned
Looks like you’re directly using the agreed upon % of shrimp to be stunned, when going from [population of shrimp in each region] → [number of shrimp you think SWP will affect].
I’m wondering if you want to adjust this for the predicted follow through rate, which I think is a bit more similar to how folks have done corporate campaign evaluations in the past? (I’m not very familiar with the current literature / best practices here though!)
Do you have any tentative evidence on what the follow through / adherence rate is for stunning compared to the agreements made?
Hey Angelina—thank you so much for your kind words! It’s really heartwarming to see your enthusiasm and interest in our work :)
Shrimp Size The corporate producers we’re working with supply “headless peeled shrimps” (mainly to Northern Europe) which tend to be smaller on average for this market
This is different for example to “head on, shell on shrimps”, which are typically larger (and are mainly supplied to Asia and Southern Europe)
As we sign more commitments globally, we’ll likely want to supply ranges per producer depending on the market they supply
Adjusting for predicted follow-through We decided not to discount our estimates in this first model because we’re not sure how different this will look in practice between other types of corporate commitments and ours (i.e. comparing “hens & cage-free”, to “shrimps & stunners”)
The contexts seem different enough (producers, working in aquaculture, who are being bought equipment) that we don’t think we can reasonably predict how this will translate
Our plan is that hopefully in a ~year’s time we will have had some stunners in operation for long enough that we can accurately report on adherence rates, and update our numbers
Got it, thanks for the response!! Really appreciate it :)
On shrimp sizes:
Ah, I missed that you were inferring number of individuals affected based on production tonnage. It sounds like 14g is your estimate for the size of an individual ’headless peeled shrimp’s?
If so: I can’t quite tell whether all electrically stunned shrimp end up being counted as “production”, or if e.g. some are not in good enough condition to be used in production. If the latter is true (if a big portion of electrically stunned shrimp do not end up in production), could you be undercounting the number of individuals actually affected here?
This does seem like a nitpick though, and perhaps getting better evidence on how efficacious electric stunning is at improving shrimp welfare is the most relevant thing!
On adherence:
That makes sense! If you had the time, I’d be curious to know what your plan for monitoring adherence levels in the farms you partner with? No worries if you don’t have the capacity to respond!
That is a very good point and one we hadn’t really thought of.
The agreements don’t specify whether the tonnage commitment refers to live weight equivalent (i.e. whole shrimp) or headless peeled weight. My sense is that, from context, producers are interpreting it as the former. We will think about whether to clarify this going forward in the agreements or whether we prefer the ambiguity as it might work in our favour.
Regarding monitoring adherence, as of right now, we feel our most sensible approach is to base it on the representations that the producers will be making to their buyers. Defaulting obligations to SWP seems pretty innocuous for producers but defaulting or misleading their buyers is a whole different ballgame and one that could cost them their business. This is the reason why we always try to have the buyers being party to the agreements stating that they will prioritise stunned shrimp.
Thanks for your interest in shrimp welfare and I hope this addresses your questions.
The agreements don’t specify whether the tonnage commitment refers to live weight equivalent (i.e. whole shrimp) or headless peeled weight. My sense is that, from context, producers are interpreting it as the former.
Gotcha — if this is true, then 14g again seems kind of low for the average shrimp weights to use here! I expect using the 14g estimate will cause you to overestimate how many individuals you are affecting. Anyway I think you are already tracking this now, so I will stop belaboring the point :) Glad you are following up on this!
(No longer stand by this sentence) I’m a bit confused why the ambiguity would work in your favor: if producers are assuming the stunning requirements are based on live weight tonnage, doesn’t this mean they have to stun fewer shrimp in order to meet your requirements?
This is the reason why we always try to have the buyers being party to the agreements stating that they will prioritise stunned shrimp.
Interesting! I wasn’t aware there was such appetite amongst consumers to prioritise this issue — that’s pretty encouraging, thanks for sharing!
Thank you both for all the work you do. Hope to see you around!
I actually don’t think that we would be overestimating. Your original intuition was correct.
The way it works in practice is that buyers ask for a certain size of shrimp (e.g. 14g). This is always quoted in live weight equivalent. Then comes the second criterion of being peeled, etc. This normally means that somewhere between 35-50% of the weight is lost. If we just use 50% for simplicity purposes, there are two possible scenarios:
The producer assumes the agreement was for live weight equivalent and there is no change to our numbers, OR
The producer assumes that it refers to the volume actually sold. Because each shrimp weighs 50% less, we need to gross up our numbers by that factor, i.e. the number of individual shrimps would be 2x our estimate
Congrats on what looks like a really successful first 2 years! I’m a big fan :)
I said this elsewhere, but the collaboration of many folks in the effective animal advocacy space that has led to work like this makes me really happy. (I think of the RP / CE / SWP collaboration here as an awesome success story for EA!)
Some questions on your electric stunning guesstimate:
The shrimp weights you’re using (14g) seems kind of low compared to the estimated mean weights RP published recently (which have central estimates of 17g for L. vannamei and 36 for p. monodon). What are these based on? I think these could have a somewhat significant effect on your bottom line # of shrimp stunned
Looks like you’re directly using the agreed upon % of shrimp to be stunned, when going from [population of shrimp in each region] → [number of shrimp you think SWP will affect].
I’m wondering if you want to adjust this for the predicted follow through rate, which I think is a bit more similar to how folks have done corporate campaign evaluations in the past? (I’m not very familiar with the current literature / best practices here though!)
Do you have any tentative evidence on what the follow through / adherence rate is for stunning compared to the agreements made?
Hey Angelina—thank you so much for your kind words! It’s really heartwarming to see your enthusiasm and interest in our work :)
Shrimp Size
The corporate producers we’re working with supply “headless peeled shrimps” (mainly to Northern Europe) which tend to be smaller on average for this market
This is different for example to “head on, shell on shrimps”, which are typically larger (and are mainly supplied to Asia and Southern Europe)
As we sign more commitments globally, we’ll likely want to supply ranges per producer depending on the market they supply
Adjusting for predicted follow-through
We decided not to discount our estimates in this first model because we’re not sure how different this will look in practice between other types of corporate commitments and ours (i.e. comparing “hens & cage-free”, to “shrimps & stunners”)
The contexts seem different enough (producers, working in aquaculture, who are being bought equipment) that we don’t think we can reasonably predict how this will translate
Our plan is that hopefully in a ~year’s time we will have had some stunners in operation for long enough that we can accurately report on adherence rates, and update our numbers
Got it, thanks for the response!! Really appreciate it :)
On shrimp sizes:
Ah, I missed that you were inferring number of individuals affected based on production tonnage. It sounds like 14g is your estimate for the size of an individual ’headless peeled shrimp’s?
If so: I can’t quite tell whether all electrically stunned shrimp end up being counted as “production”, or if e.g. some are not in good enough condition to be used in production. If the latter is true (if a big portion of electrically stunned shrimp do not end up in production), could you be undercounting the number of individuals actually affected here?
This does seem like a nitpick though, and perhaps getting better evidence on how efficacious electric stunning is at improving shrimp welfare is the most relevant thing!
On adherence:
That makes sense! If you had the time, I’d be curious to know what your plan for monitoring adherence levels in the farms you partner with? No worries if you don’t have the capacity to respond!
That is a very good point and one we hadn’t really thought of.
The agreements don’t specify whether the tonnage commitment refers to live weight equivalent (i.e. whole shrimp) or headless peeled weight. My sense is that, from context, producers are interpreting it as the former. We will think about whether to clarify this going forward in the agreements or whether we prefer the ambiguity as it might work in our favour.
Regarding monitoring adherence, as of right now, we feel our most sensible approach is to base it on the representations that the producers will be making to their buyers. Defaulting obligations to SWP seems pretty innocuous for producers but defaulting or misleading their buyers is a whole different ballgame and one that could cost them their business. This is the reason why we always try to have the buyers being party to the agreements stating that they will prioritise stunned shrimp.
Thanks for your interest in shrimp welfare and I hope this addresses your questions.
Gotcha — if this is true, then 14g again seems kind of low for the average shrimp weights to use here! I expect using the 14g estimate will cause you to overestimate how many individuals you are affecting. Anyway I think you are already tracking this now, so I will stop belaboring the point :) Glad you are following up on this!
(No longer stand by this sentence)
I’m a bit confused why the ambiguity would work in your favor: if producers are assuming the stunning requirements are based on live weight tonnage, doesn’t this mean they have to stun fewer shrimp in order to meet your requirements?Interesting! I wasn’t aware there was such appetite amongst consumers to prioritise this issue — that’s pretty encouraging, thanks for sharing!
Thank you both for all the work you do. Hope to see you around!
I actually don’t think that we would be overestimating. Your original intuition was correct.
The way it works in practice is that buyers ask for a certain size of shrimp (e.g. 14g). This is always quoted in live weight equivalent. Then comes the second criterion of being peeled, etc. This normally means that somewhere between 35-50% of the weight is lost. If we just use 50% for simplicity purposes, there are two possible scenarios:
The producer assumes the agreement was for live weight equivalent and there is no change to our numbers, OR
The producer assumes that it refers to the volume actually sold. Because each shrimp weighs 50% less, we need to gross up our numbers by that factor, i.e. the number of individual shrimps would be 2x our estimate
Hope this clarifies the issue.