[Question] Where would you donate $100 to animal welfare?

[Tejas Subramaniam]

Suppose you had a marginal $100 and cared principally about animal welfare as a cause. Where (to what specific charity) would you, personally, donate it and why?

What if it was a marginal $10,000? Is there a different third (or more) answer at some point between $100 and $10,000?

[Joey 🔸]

A high bar to beat would be Shrimp Welfare Project

[Vasco Grilo🔸]

Agreed, Joey:

I Fermi estimate the past cost-effectiveness of Shrimp Welfare Project’s (SWP’s) Humane Slaughter Initiative (HSI) is 431 DALY/​$, which is:

• 28.7 times my estimate for the (marginal) cost-effectiveness of corporate campaigns for chicken welfare, such as the one supported by The Humane League (THL).

• 43.4 k times my estimate for the cost-effectiveness of GiveWell’s top charities.

[Tejas Subramaniam]

Why do you think excruciating pain is 10k as intense as disabling pain? If I use these conversion factors (p. 30) instead, chicken welfare campaigns seem to win.

[Vasco Grilo🔸]

Hi Tejas,

The guesses from Laura Duffy you link to say exruciating pain is 60 to 150 times as intense as fully healthy life (“1 year of excruciating pain = 60 to 150 DALYs”). These imply 9.6 min (= 24*60/​150) to 24 min (= 24*60/​60) of excruciating pain would be needed to neutralise 1 day of fully healthy life. Do you think this is reasonable? Excruciating pain is defined as follows by Welfare Footprint Project (WFP; emphasis mine):

All conditions and events associated with extreme levels of pain that are not normally tolerated even if only for a few seconds. In humans, it would mark the threshold of pain under which many people choose to take their lives rather than endure the pain. This is the case, for example, of scalding and severe burning events. Behavioral patterns associated with experiences in this category may include loud screaming, involuntary shaking, extreme muscle tension, or extreme restlessness. Another criterion is the manifestation of behaviors that individuals would strongly refrain from displaying under normal circumstances, as they threaten body integrity (e.g. running into hazardous areas or exposing oneself to sources of danger, such as predators, as a result of pain or of attempts to alleviate it). The attribution of conditions to this level must therefore be done cautiously. Concealment of pain is not possible.

Some more clarification from Cynthia Schuck-Paim, WFP’s scientific director:

Examples [of excruciating pain] would include severe burning in large areas of the body, dismemberment, or extreme torture.

Intuitively, I feel like 1 s of excruciating pain per day every day would make my (roughly fully healthy) life neutral, supposing it did not have any effects outside that second. As I say in my cost-effectiveness analysis of HSI:

My assumptions for the pain intensities imply each of the following individually neutralise 1 day of fully healthy life:

• 10 days (= ¹⁄₀.1) of annoying pain.

• 1 day of hurtful pain.

• 2.40 h (= ²⁴⁄₁₀) of disabling pain.

• 0.864 s (= 24*60^2/​(100*10^3)) of excruciating pain.

[Rakefet Cohen Ben-Arye]

Good Food Institute (GFI), since it has made significant strides, as highlighted in my video based on their report.

In summary, some of GFI’s notable accomplishments include:

1. Receiving President Biden support in setting alternative protein as a focus area
2. Raising awareness to alternative protein at the UN’s COP27 climate conference
3. Collaborating with Upside Foods on chicken substitutes
4. Awarding $4 million in research grants

These achievements demonstrate GFI’s impact on advancing sustainable food solutions.

My answer would remain the same for small and large donations.

We shouldn’t let the “Drop in the ocean” mentality discourage us as much as it often does. Whether you accomplish something on your own and can claim full credit, or as part of a group where you’re one of many contributors, what truly matters is that you achieve your goal.